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Philosophy Lite: Facing the reality of the resurrection

Raymond Smith
  • By Raymond Smith
  • Originally published June 29, 2012 at midnight, updated June 29, 2012 at 4 p.m.

Perhaps I should have saved this one for Easter, but the resurrection is on my mind, and I write best when I'm inspired. The following article contains several quotes. I love quotations because these ideas have survived the centuries because of their beauty and power.

Cicero said in 50 B.C., "When I consider the wonderful activity of the mind, so great a memory of what is past, and such a capacity of penetrating the future; when I behold such a number of arts and sciences, and such a multitude of discoveries thence arising. I believe and am firmly persuaded that a nature which contains so many things within itself cannot but be immortal."

He speaks for most of humanity, because, as Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has put eternity in the hearts of men. King Solomon had tried everything in life to find lasting peace and significance. He came to the conclusion that only a relationship with the eternal God satisfies. We read in scripture again and again that one day we will see him face to face.

David Elton Trueblood, in his book, "The Philosophy of Religion," says, "Immortality may have many meanings, but there is only one that is really worth discussing, the survival of personal individuality after the shock of physical death. What so disturbs us, making death a part of the problem of evil, is the waste, which the destruction of personality would entail if it is final as it appears to be. Personality is the most precious manifestation of reality known in the world, being infinitely superior to things or abstractions."

Toward the end of his life, Victor Hugo (1802-85) gave this testimony, "Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart ... the nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the world to come. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and verse, but I feel that I have not said one-thousandth part of what is in me. When I have gone down to the grave I shall have ended my day's work; but another day will begin the next morning."

Concerning the stubbornness of some to come to the truth, read the words of Blaise Pascal (1623-62), "What reason have atheists for saying that we cannot rise again? Which is more difficult, to be born, or to rise again? That what has never been, should be, or that what has been, should be again? Is it more difficult to come into being than to return to it?"

There is more to religion than just believing in the resurrection. You have to do something about it. Jesus said, "I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?" (John 11:25-26). What do you believe? What will you do about it?

Raymond F. Smith is president of Strong Families of Victoria.