Easter quotes

WE currently suffer physical limi-tations, we get weary in our work, and we groan in our illnesses. We do so knowing that the full redemption of our bodies is promised. Our hope is to have glorified bodies like that of our risen Lord! This is in marked contrast to Greek philosophy of immortality of the soul or the rational aspect of the self in a future escape from the body. … [We] believe in resurrection and in a transformed body. We will have our identity in all eternity.
Myron S. Augsburger, Soli Deo Gloria

THOSE first-century Jews who expected the Resurrection saw it as a single event, the raising to new bodily life of all at the very end. But it is central to Paul and, after him, to all other early Christian writers that the Resurrection is now a two-stage event—or better, a single event taking place in two moments, as Paul puts it: Christ the first fruits, and then at his coming, those who belong to him.
N. T. Wright, in The Resurrection of Jesus

[T]here really is no story about the Resurrection in the New Testament. Except in the most fragmentary way, it is not described at all. There is no poetry about it. Instead, it is simply proclaimed as a fact. Christ is risen! In fact, the very existence of the New Testament itself proclaims it. Unless something very real indeed took place on that strange, confused morning, there would be no New Testament, no Church, no Christianity.

FREDERICK BUECHNER, The Magnificent Defeat