94. Jesus in the Drama of Salvation Quote

 Man, this dude took a while to drop a jewel in this book, but he finally came through half way through the book. Listen to this piece on the resurrection and culture.

"In accordance with Girards theory of the sacred, cultures were regularly erected over the graves of the slain victims, as they presuppose that the society has reached an inner peace, which spontaneously sets itself up by means of the violent driving out and sacralization. The grave, which covers up the corpse , thus becomes on the one hand the symbol of that great process of veiling on which every society is based, and on the other the first clearly defined cultural sign, because with it the distinction between sacred and profane is symbolically pinned down: Culture always starts form the grave. The grave is always the first human memorial, which has to be erected over the victim  who has been driven out, the first, most elementary, most fundamental layer of cultural signs. No culture without a grave, no grave without culture. If the sealed grave is really the great symbol of the sacred cultures, insofar as they cover something over, then it is more than an accidental detail that the accounts of Easter in the gospels begin with the narration of the opened grave, in which there is no longer a corpse to be found. ... In a violent conflict, the murdered corpse is the emperical sign there from the very beginning, that there has been a victim and that some one else was the victor. Talk of an Easter victory can not therefore lightly pass by this sign....the opened grave has, against the background of Girards theory, an important symbolic meaning. It shows that the new beginning constituted by Easter reaches so deep that the ultimate foundations of human culture itself, until now veiled, are laid bare" p. 129-130


Another sign pointing us to the fact that we have not even begun to understand the riches and wisdom and depth of the gospel. The incarnation, Ministry, Death, Burial, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus are saturated with the mystery of God and the concrete ....everything. WOW! is all I have to say.