{"id":144636,"date":"2026-04-20T08:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T12:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=144636"},"modified":"2026-04-20T15:05:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T19:05:06","slug":"karl-rahner-for-easter-the-son-of-man-cannot-have-risen-alone-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=144636","title":{"rendered":"Karl Rahner for Easter\u2013the Son of Man \u2018cannot\u2019 have risen alone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From here<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe heart of the earth has accepted and received the Son of God; and it is from a womb so consecrated, this womb of the \u2018hellish\u2019 depths of human existence, that the saved creature rises up. Not just (not even temporarily) in the Son alone. It is not that he alone descended and so rose again as victor because death could not hold him captive. \u2018Even now\u2019 he is not the firstborn among the dead in the sense that he is even now the only human being to have found the complete fulfillment of his whole human reality. . . . the Son of Man \u2018cannot\u2019 have risen alone. What, we may ask, is really to be understood by his glorified bodily condition (if we take it seriously, and don\u2019t spiritualize it into another way of talking about his eternal \u2018communion with God\u2019) right up to the \u2018Last Day\u2019, if meanwhile it should persist all by itself\u2014something which is precisely unthinkable for the bodily condition (though glorified)? So when we find in Mt 27:52 s. that other bodies too, those of saints, rose up with him (indeed even \u2018appeared\u2019\u2014as he himself did\u2014to show that the end of the ages has already come upon us), this is merely positive evidence from Scripture for what we would have expected anyway, if definitive salvation has already been unshakably founded, death conquered, and a man, for whom it is never good to be alone, has entered upon the fulfillment of his whole being. Hence to try to set aside this testimony from Matthew as a \u2018mythological\u2019 intrusion, or to argue away its eschatological meaning with ingenious evasions\u2014such as that it is merely a matter of a temporary resurrection or even of \u2018phantom bodies\u2019\u2014would not be in accord with the authoritative voice of Scripture. It is a fact that by far the greater part of the Fathers and the theologians, right up to the present day, have firmly maintained the eschatological interpretation of the text as the only one possible from the exegetical point of view.\u201d<\/p>

The Son of Man must be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in Him
may have eternal life.

John 3:14-15

The Resurrection (1631-1632) by Anthony van Dyck pic.twitter.com\/SmggsNLJrJ<\/a><\/p>— SaintsandScripture (@Saint_of_theDay) April 15, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote>