Sunday, April 17, 2011

Jungel Love absorbs death

“Resurrection means the overcoming of death. But death will cease only when it no longer consumes the life which excludes it, but when life has absorbed death into itself. The victory over death, which is the object of faith’s hope on the basis of God’s identification with the dead Jesus which took place in the death of Jesus, is the transformation of death through its reception into that life which is called eternal life. For that reason the death which was turned around on the cross of Christ is called a ‘Phenomenon of God.’ It is only short-circuited criticism which wants to see here a final triumph of death. Rather, what happens here is that turning around of death into life which is the very essence of love. The issue here is the truth in the profound statement (1 John 3:14): ‘He who does not love abides in death.’ Death is not turned around apart from love, because love alone is able to involve itself with the complete harshness of death.”
–Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 364.

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