Christus Surréxit! Surréxit vere! Alleluia!
One of the motivating factors behind my most recent post was that it is easy for people to underestimate the full emotional and spiritual impact of the events that serve as the core of the mystery of faith. Whether as historical events, or when considering their deeper spiritual significance, it is easy to treat it as no more than a series of stories or doctrinal formulae that we repeat mechanistically. without letting its full impact wash over us.
This is true particularly with regard to the Resurrection. First, to take part in a little bit of elementary-level Lectio Divina: place yourself in the shoes of the Apostles, or the Blessed Virgin Mary; imagine you had followed this man, Jesus of Nazareth, as a great religious leader, possibly a prophet, maybe even the Messiah promised by God to your ancestors in the Old Testament Scriptures, the One Who would defeat all of Israel’s enemies and reestablish the Davidic Kingdom, and in doing so, bring all of humanity to a knowledge of the One, True God; day by day, the man you attached yourself to dispenses with words of profound spiritual wisdom, performs miracles, and even transfigured Himself upon Mount Tabor, implying that God is present with Him and in Him in a particularly profound manner; imagine, after following this man for several years, He is betrayed by one of His followers, accused of crimes He did not commit by the leaders of His own nation and religion, and handed over to pagan political leaders, who proceed to sentence Him to death, one of the most gruesome and visibly traumatizing forms of capital punishment available at that time; imagine having the source of your spiritual hope completely shattered, but after three days of dealing with the emotional, existential or spiritual trauma of this, something that would have brought one to the point of despair, you see your spiritual teacher, the man who once believed to be the Messiah, appear to you and your fellow disciples in the flesh; after this, He continues to appear to you before ascending to heaven in a glorious manner.
Imagine how seeing all of this would have solidified your former sense of hope in Christ as the fulfillment of the Messianic promises, and how this would have shed new light on the traumatic and dread-inducing events that had taken place just a few days prior. What was once the cause of a sense of despair is now radically reinterpreted in light of the narrative of hope that being a disciple of Christ inevitably leads you to believe.
One may see the Resurrection as a beautifully strange series of events. One may see that it would have made sense that such an event would have transformed the despair of the Apostles into the missionary zeal whereby they (almost quite literally) travelled to the ends of the earth to spread the message of Christ. One may hope that the stories surrounding the Resurrection, or at least the broader message behind it, is true, since that would showcase that Christ was God and not merely another victim of human sinfulness or of the brutality of a totalitarian regime that ruled with an iron fist, thereby providing justification for ones choice to become or remain Christian.
Yet, the spiritual significance of the Resurrection is more than being something interesting that happened 2,000 years ago, or just one variant of the broader category of religious stories meant to evoke some vague feelings of hope in the face of hardship, or an interesting story that sheds light on the history, development or inner logic of Western or Christian spirituality or theology. It is something even deeper than a potential prooftext for the Divinity of Christ, but rather expresses a specific dynamic concerning God’s larger plan of salvation that is often glossed over.
Christ, in rising from the dead, quite literally defeated death. Many people spiritualize this concept. And, to a large degree, the notion of Christ defeating death is a reference to a defeat of spiritual death: in dying on the Cross, Christ set an example of self-giving love, obedience to God’s authority, and humility, which are at the center of the moral life of Christians; in His Passion and Death, He made the ultimate Sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, thereby making satisfaction for our sins and meriting grace (by which we are purified of the effects of sin, united to God, and given the ability to strive towards heaven). In rising from the dead, He explicated that which was implicit in His Death, namely how He defeated the forces of sin and evil. In all of us He reconciled us to the Father, thereby making eternal life, that is, unending union with God in heaven, possible.
Nonetheless, most people buy into the view that says that, physically, life is an inevitable march towards death, which is something built into the very fabric of existence. Death is just a brute fact. It has always been there, and will always been there. Yet, this is not the proposition put forward by Christianity. Death is seen not as a brute fact of creaturely existence, but rather as a result of the corruption of creaturely existence by sin. Sin or moral failure is a turning away from God, Who is the Source of all being and existence, and thus is a return to the nonexistence from which we came. Sin therefore not only corrupts us morally, psychologically, or spiritually, but also corrupts the very fabric of our existence. Death is therefore an expression of the corruption caused by sin. When Christ rises from the dead, He is not only affirming spiritual life in the fact of spiritual death, nor is He merely renewing us on a spiritual level, but is also renewing or affirming physical life in the face of physical death. As St. Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians,
But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the Firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead came also through a human being. For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life, but each one in proper order: Christ the Firstfruits; then, at His coming, those who belong to Christ; then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to His God and Father, when He has destroyed every sovereignty and every authority and power. For He must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for “He subjected everything under His feet.” But when it says that everything has been subjected, it is clear that it excludes the One Who subjected everything to Him. When everything is subjected to Him, then the Son Himself will [also] be subjected to the One Who subjected everything to Him, so that God may be all in all. … What you sow is not brought to life unless it dies. … So also is the resurrection of the dead. It [the body] is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible. It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious. It is sown weak; it is raised powerful. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one. … This I declare, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. … For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For that which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality. And when this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality, then the word that is written shall come about: “Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God Who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:20-28, 36, 42-44, 50, 52-58)
In a word, Christ has risen from the dead. This is taken as a sign that Christ had defeated death. While God creates all that is, the created world, due to the reality of sin, is in rebellion against God. God, in His plan of salvation, is bringing all of creation back to Himself, and in doing so is subjecting to Himself all that is in rebellion against Him. This includes death. God did not create death; death is a result of sin. Death is thus the result of our rebellion against God. Thus, God, acting through His Only-begotten Son, is therefore subjecting death to Himself, which He does by destroying death. St. Paul not only affirms that Christ rose from the dead, but that the Resurrection is something that spills over into the rest of creation. In the End Times, St. Paul writes, the bodies of those who are dead will be reunited to their souls, and those alive at the End Times will never taste death. There will thus come a time where there is no suffering, corruption or death. And this makes sense: Christ is victorious over death; yet, can He be truly be victorious over death if He does not bring an end to death, not only metaphorically or spiritually but also literally? Christ defeated death in a spiritual sense by making salvation possible. Yet, Christ rose from the dead in a bodily sense, and Christ’s Resurrection is what makes possible our resurrection.
St. Paul also affirms that the human body, at the moment of its death, is physical and corruptible; yet, it will be raised in an incorrupt and spiritual form. This spiritual and incorrupt body is what the Church has traditionally called “the glorified body.” In the Supplementum of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiæ, it is written that the resurrected body, in its glorified state, will include the following qualities (in addition to its immortality): 1)Impassibility (it will never suffer or experience anything contrary to its nature); 2)Subtlety (the body, while remaining distinct from the soul, will be so perfectly subject to the soul and its powers that it will be as perfectly conformed to the soul as is possible for a body to be); 3)Agility (since the glorified body is perfectly subject to the soul, there will be no obstacles to the body carrying out the motions of the soul, which is the principle of the body’s motions); and 4)Clarity (the souls of the saved will be so closely united to God that glory they will experience will shine in and through the body) (see Summa Theologiæ, Supplementum, Qq. 82-85). Yet, only the saints will undergo the glorification of the body; the damned, on the other hand, St. Thomas teaches, will, while remaining immortal, still be subject to deformity, pain and corruption. The reason for this is rooted in a quite straightforward understanding of traditional Catholic soteriology, which sees salvation as being possible only as a result of union with and conformity to Christ: if Christ truly rose from the dead, then death will, after the End Times, be no more, and this is something that applies to all parts of creation; yet, if Christ’s resurrected body was glorified, and only the saints will be perfectly united and conformed to Christ, then while both the saved and the damned will have resurrected bodies, the saints will have something the damned do not, namely bodies that are not only immortal but also glorified.
Christ has proven Himself to be victorious, and to be saved is to participate in Christ’s victory, including His victory over death. Part of the reason why St. Paul sees the resurrection as a necessary part of God’s Plan of salvation is because Christ, in His Mission of salvation, counteracts what happened in the Fall, with one of the effects of the Fall being the introduction of suffering and death. When St. Paul talks about Christ’s Resurrection undoing the effects of the Fall (not just in 1 Corinthians 15, but also later in Romans 5), St. Paul has in mind the words of Genesis 2:17, when God forbids the eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, with the consequence of the eating of the forbidden fruit being death. Most Biblical scholars state that Genesis 2 was influenced primarily by a theological tradition within Ancient Israelite religion labelled by scholars as the Priestly Source, that is, those spiritual and moral teachings that developed among the priestly class in ancient Israel. According to some commentators, the earliest sources within Ancient Israelite religion saw death as an inevitability, not seeing it as something that contradicted God’s Plan of salvation, but rather as a brute fact of physical existence; the Priestly Source thus most likely defined the death that resulted from sin as a form of spiritual death that resulted from the alienation from God that resulted from disobedience to the Divine decrees. By the time the New Testament was written, Genesis 2:17 had been reinterpreted as implying that the death resulting from sin was not of a purely spiritual nature, but also included physical death, with Christ defeating death on both a spiritual as well as on a physical level. Yet, such a view was not without precedent in the Old Testament.
The Book of Wisdom presents one such example in the Old Testament of death resulting from sin. In particular, chapter 2, verses 23-24, provide what, for modern-day Catholics, seems like a particularly Christian-sounding conception of death: “For God formed us to be imperishable; the image of His own Nature He made us. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who are allied with him experience it.” The author of the Book of Wisdom repeats the view found in Genesis that humans are created in God’s image, but more specifically defines what this entails: to be in the image of God is to imitate certain fundamental qualities of the Divine Nature, including immortality. Death is therefore the result of the corruption of human nature. Some Biblical scholars have speculated that the author of Wisdom had two ideological opponents in mind: the first were the Sadducees, a sect within Second Temple Judaism that included, among other tenants, a denial of the afterlife and of the resurrection of the body. The author of Wisdom saw immortality - both in terms of of the immortality of the soul and in terms of the resurrection of the body - as a fundamental spiritual reality. Part of why they feared denying the reality of immortality was because of the implications of another worldview they were responding to, namely Epicureanism. The Epicureans believed that all that exists is the material realm, which came into existence by chance. Some have even interpreted verses such as Wisdom 2:2 as implying a proto-reductionism, that reason is nothing more than a product of the chance material and biological conditions coming together in just the right place and time to form our physical existence. If live is the result of randomness, if reason is but an illusion, and if our existences end with the end of our physical life, then there is no objective morality, and the only purpose to life is the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain. The author of Wisdom is, in particular, responding to those who take such an ideology to its most extreme conclusion: their life is centered on self-indulgence and persecuting the righteous. In their belief that there is nothing beyond this life, or that anything beyond this life is of no importance, they ally themselves with the devil, and, in a sense, welcome or invite death into the human condition. Yet, the righteous will be rewarded with immortality and vindication at the time of God’s judgment.
Belief in immortality was a major part of the theological and spiritual worldview of the author of Wisdom. But, there are two important things to note: firstly, the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body is affirmed primarily on metaphysical and anthropological grounds; secondly, while the notion of physical death being a product of sin, and physical resurrection being a result of God’s saving mission, is much more explicit in Wisdom than in earlier Old Testament literature, such as Genesis, the author of Wisdom fluctuates between speaking of life and death in physical terms and in spiritual terms. The importance of bodily resurrection is seen when one examines certain elements of Ancient Israelite eschatology, that is, the Ancient Israelite view on the End Times. A major part of Old Testament literature was the belief that the People of Israel were God’s chosen people. Because of the close relationship between God and His People, the nation of Israel and the government structures contained therein were seen as ways of extending the God of Israel’s authority to all of creation. For Ancient Israelites, the End Times meant that God would intervene in the life of His People as He had in the past, as their protector and savior. For the Israelites, salvation had two elements to it: firstly, an explicitly material element; secondly, a strongly communal element. Old Testament literature strongly emphasized the notion that salvation was the result of obedience or submission to God; yet, unlike later Christian literature, and even to some extent modern Jewish thought, the primary result or fruit of obedience to God was not primarily internal spiritual blessings, but external material blessings. It’s not that physical blessing was seen as superior to spiritual blessing, or that material blessing was a symbol for spiritual blessing; rather, obedience to God resulted in the reception of spiritual blessings, which in turn produced material blessings. Secondly, salvation was not merely the salvation of individuals (though it did include that); it also include the salvation of communities. When God blessed His People, He was not only blessing any individual Who, through a life of repentance and holiness, was open to God’s Plan, but also the community as a whole. The perfection of the community, which included its material and political prosperity, was a result of God’s reward, whereas social and political decline was seen as a punishment for sin. As John McKenzie, a former professor of theology at DePaul University, wrote in his overview of the major elements of Old Testament theology and spirituality, the term messiah - Hebrew for “anointed one” or “chosen one” - could be used to refer to a wide range of figures set aside by God to bring about salvation for His People. Yet, while there were many messiahs, there would be a specific Messiah - the Messiah - who would take the form of a king-like figure descended from King David who would intervene on behalf of Yahweh to reestablish the Kingdom of Israel. His reign would be one of peace between nations, during which time all people would be brought to a knowledge of the One, True God. His reign would be the definitive expression of the Power of Yahweh, thereby bringing the Kingdom of Israel to perfection and making it the perfect channel for Yahweh’s authority (and therefore blessing) to express itself on earth. As McKenzie wrote, the Messiah is “the anointed king of the Davidic dynasty who would establish in the world the definitive reign of Yahweh…[whose] saving act would not be the work of ordinary historical forces, but the kind of visible inbreak of Yahweh’s power into history that had been seen in the exodus.”
For the Old Testament writers, actions of the Messiah in the End Times thus necessarily included a reestablishment of the Kingdom of Israel. Yet, for some Old Testament writers, it was believed that all members of the House of Israel would participate in this renewed Davidic Kingdom, as this was the common inheritance of all members of the People of Israel. We see this in the words of Daniel 12:1-4,
At that time there shall arise Michael, the great prince, guardian of your people; it shall be a time unsurpassed in distress since the nation began until that time. At that time your people shall escape, everyone who is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some to everlasting life, others to reproach and everlasting disgrace. But those with insight shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament, and those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever. As for you, Daniel, keep secret the message and seal the book until the end time; many shall wander aimlessly and evil shall increase.
The Book of Daniel, which was written about a century before the Book of Wisdom, was one of the first Old Testament texts to write of the resurrection of the dead, as well as one of the first Biblical texts to make use of the term “everlasting life.” The only other direct reference to the resurrection of the dead being an integral part of God’s saving plan for Israel were the words of the Prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 37:1-14 (written around the 7th century B.C.). The prophet Ezekiel was given a vision by God of a field of bones. He was commanded by God to prophesy over the bones, which caused them to come to life. The bones were identified, in verse 12, as those of members of the House of Israel living in exile after the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel. This prophecy comes shortly after another prophecy revealed in Exodus 36:16-38, which describes the future restoration of the Kingdom of Israel.
There were, in a word, two reasons why the Ancient Israelites affirmed the notion of the resurrection of the dead: firstly, due to the belief of sin as something that corrupts human nature, and secondly, due to the belief that the resurrection of the dead allowed all of humanity to partake in the restored Kingdom of Israel. In the New Testament, stories surrounding Jesus’ Resurrection, and the theological implications the New Testament authors drew from these events, built on both of these two elements of Old Testament eschatology. If Christ was the Messiah, it would make sense that the notion of resurrection would play prominently in the New Testament account of Christ’s life. Jesus’ Death and Resurrection were seen as a defeat of the forces of sin and death, and therefore the Resurrection was seen as the most explicit signs of the ushering in of the Kingdom of God. When one looks at Jewish literature at the time of Christ, the notion of “the Kingdom of God” had a very specific meaning: like classic Old Testament literature, talk of a future Kingdom whereby the God of Israel would manifest His Power was a major feature; yet, unlike classic Old Testament literature, which saw the Kingdom of God primarily in terms of the Davidic Kingdom, Jewish literature at the time of Christ strongly emphasized a specific dynamic of the Kingdom of God, namely the Kingdom of God as a means of manifesting His Judgment and bringing creation more closely under His Authority. It is thus understanding of the Kingdom of God that most closely influenced the understanding of the Kingdom of God found in the New Testament: in Christ, the Divine Presence enters into creation in one of the most direct manners. The effects of this unfold in the life of the believer, and, more broadly, in the life of the Church. Individual believers growing in holiness, and the Church carrying out its mission, perpetuates what is started in the saving mission of Christ.
This makes sense, given the words of St. Paul in Romans 5: most of this chapter is rooted in an antithetical parallelism between Christ and Adam: Adam, in rebelling against God, brought sin into the world, and through sin, death; likewise, through Christ’s obedience to the Father’s Plan of salvation, justification and life came about (cf. Romans 5:12-18). Sin is rebellion against God, and therefore a desire to no longer be subject to the Kingdom of God. Yet, it is through this rebellion that death entered into the world. Conversely, if Christ truly ushers in the Kingdom of God, He must defeat those two things that were most intimately tied with our rebellion against God’s Kingdom: sin and death.
Yet, the New Testament also emphasizes the notion that death is a result of sin, and thus the moral purification of the human person must also lead to a broader ontological purification, part of which results in an overcoming of death. As Christ Himself says,
I am the bread of life; whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and whoever believes in Me will never thirst. … No one can come to me unless the Father who sent Me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day. Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For My Flesh is true food, and My Blood is true drink. Whoever eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood remains in me and I in him. (John 6:35, 44, 53-56)
Christ Himself is true spiritual nourishment, that is, Christ is the Source of spiritual life. Christ provides spiritual life through establishing union between us and Him, whereby He dwells in us, and we dwell in Him. We become partakers in the Divine Life through our union with Christ. This establishes eternal life, which can be seen as both spiritual life, that is, purification from sin and fellowship with God, but also includes something further, namely the resurrection on the last day. God is the Source of Life, both spiritually and physically, and thus having life in Christ and partaking in the Divine Life through Christ restores our life both spiritually and physically.
This is something repeated in the teachings of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, quoted earlier. Among the Church Fathers, one of the most profound articulations of this spiritual reality was found in the writings of St. Athanasius. In fighting against the Arian heresy, Athanasius argued that part of the reason why we must affirm that Christ is not merely a creature, but God incarnate, is because mankind, through sin, corrupted the image of God within himself. He could only do this by uniting human nature to His Divine Nature, thereby uniting the image of God to that of which it is an image. When the image of God is as it should be, mankind has the fullness of life; when it is corrupt, our life is also corrupted, lessened - in a word, we are subject to death, both spiritually and physically. As the great defender of Nicene orthodoxy writes:
Thus, then, God has made man, and willed that he should abide in incorruption; but men, having despised and rejected the contemplation of God, and devised and contrived evil for themselves (as was said in the former treatise), received the condemnation of death with which they had been threatened; and from thenceforth no longer remained as they were made, but were being corrupted according to their devices; and death had the mastery over them as king (cf. Romans 5:14). For transgression of the commandment was turning them back to their natural state, so that just as they have had their being out of nothing, so also, as might be expected, they might look for corruption into nothing in the course of time. For if, out of a former normal state of non-existence, they were called into being by the Presence and loving-kindness of the Word, it followed naturally that when men were bereft of the knowledge of God and were turned back to what was not (for what is evil is not, but what is good is), they should, since they derive their being from God who IS, be everlastingly bereft even of being; in other words, that they should be disintegrated and abide in death and corruption.
Christ rises from the dead in more than a metaphorical sense. He rises from the dead in more than a merely spiritual sense. Christ rose from the dead partly as the most explicit articulation of His victory over the forces of sin and evil, but partly because His Resurrection is itself part of the victory. If Christ did not rise from the dead, there is no hope of union with the Greatest Good, the Source of all goodness, namely God, and therefore there is not greater good than the goods of this life. Further, if Christ did not rise from the dead, then there is no hope of future resurrection for us, and thus our physical life is limited to this world. St. Paul, speaking to the Corinthians church of the necessity of belief in the Resurrection, speaks of how he endured much hardship in attempting to preach the Gospel. Yet, he writes, “If the dead are not raised at all…what benefit was it to me? If the dead are not raised: ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we will die.’” (1 Corinthians 15:29, 32)
What basis does mankind have for hope apart from the Resurrection of Christ? What motivation does man have to devote himself to lofty spiritual or moral goals (as opposed to a life of self-indulgence) if life is but an inevitable march towards death? In reality, Christ rose from the dead. If the spiritual life is possible only due to union with Christ, then to grow in the spiritual life is to participate in the victory of Christ over sin and death. An authentic journey is to have the fullness of life made possible by Christ. True spiritual life is a life that is perfected on both a spiritual or moral level, as well as on a physical level. The cause of all human anxiety and despair - and, conversely, the choice to abandon any pursuit of anything good, true or meaningful - is rooted in the fear of life ending, and realizing that this life is ordered towards no transcendent end. If life is not, by nature, ordered towards any transcendent or supernatural goal, then when we die, life is simply snuffed out. It physically ends, and all of it - our life and our death - was for nothing. Yet Christ, in making satisfaction for our sins and showing His victory in a symbolic manner through His Resurrection, made the forgiveness of sins and the reception of grace possible, thereby allowing man to strive towards his true end, namely union with God in heaven. Yet, in rising from the dead, Christ broke death’s iron grip on humanity, thereby making possible our future resurrection and glorification.
Through the events of the Easter Triduum, life is restored on multiple different levels. Thus, to summarize the words of Pope St. John Paul II, to be a Christian is to be an Easter people, a people who know that life has conquered death, and that life is not merely something that comes forth from and returns to nothingness; rather, to be a Christian is to realize that what Christ has done is a part of that larger liberative act whereby the fullness of life is made possible. Humans want meaning, life, goodness and moral perfection, and Christ makes this possible. To be a Christian is to allow this realization, and the spiritual effects thereof, to permeate every part of our life, and to live a life defined by joy, the fundamental, existential joy of knowing that our existences are no longer subject to sin, death and corruption, but are being prepared, at all times, to partake in the glory of Christ and the victory He has already won for us on the Cross and in the empty tomb.
Sources:
Fr. Richard J. Clifford, S.J., and Fr. Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm., “Genesis,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Fr. Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Fr. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Fr. Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990)
Fr. Lawrence Boadt, C.S.P., “Ezekiel,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Fr. Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Fr. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Fr. Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990)
Fr. Louis Hartman, C.SS.R., and Fr. Alexander A. DiLella, O.F.M., “Daniel,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Fr. Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Fr. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Fr. Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990)
Fr. Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., “The Gospel According to Mark,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Fr. Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Fr. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Fr. Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990)
John McKenzie, “Aspects of Old Testament Thought,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Fr. Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Fr. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Fr. Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990)
John Bergsma, Brant Pitre, A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2018)
St. Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Word, chapter 4, trans. Archibald Robertson, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, vol. 4, ed. Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., and Henry Wace, D.D. (Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1892)
Summa Theologiæ, Supplementum, Qq. 82-86, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, accessed on: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/