Now Christianity proposes a completely different account of how history comes to a climax and what precisely constitutes the new order of the ageswhich helps to explain why so many of modernitys avatars, from Diderot to Christopher Hitchens, have specially targeted Christianity. On the Christian reading, history reached its highpoint when a young first-century Jewish rabbi, having been put to death on a brutal Roman instrument of torture, was raised from the dead through the power of the God of Israel. The state-sponsored murder of Jesus, who had dared to speak and act in the name of Israels God, represented the worlds resistance to the Creator. It was the moment when cruelty, hatred, violence, and corruptionsymbolized in the Bible as the watery chaosspent itself on Jesus. The resurrection, therefore, showed forth the victory of the divine love over those dark powers. St. Paul can say, I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, nor any other creature can separate us from the love of God, precisely because he lived on the far side of the resurrection.

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  • Philosophy — Deep thoughts on existence, knowledge, and the nature of reality

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