Fr. Ron Rolheiser teaches us that Jesus’s death and resurrection was not merely a rescue mission for sin, but as the restoration of God’s original, intended design for humanity—an “Edenic” state of eternal life and communion with God that existed before the chaos of sin. The resurrection was a “second creation” or “new light” that transcended the original, overcoming the darkness of sin and death by rearranging the very atoms of the cosmos.
In the resurrection, God creates light a second time, which unlike the physical light of Genesis 1, can never be extinguished. This new light and life represent a return to the original, eternal design of creation intended in Eden. The resurrection was not just a spiritual or metaphorical event, but a “real, cosmic, and corporeal” one. It rearranges the “atoms of this universe” to reflect a new, higher form of existence where death no longer has the last word.
When Jesus dies, the world goes back to its original “formless void” (or chaos). The resurrection functions as the new, permanent ordering of that chaos into a creation that is “perfectly transparent to [God’s] design.” Jesus was the redeemer who transformed the nature of death rather than simply sparing people from it. He “splitt[s] the moral atom” through his perfect obedience, releasing a creative power that reverses the effects of sin.
His “descent into hell” was the taking of his humanity into the deepest, darkest, and most broken parts of the human experience (the “void” created by sin) and, by staying in that love, “thaw[ing] out our frozen souls” The resurrection proves goodness and life are stronger than evil and death. The “stone that entombs them always eventually rolls back,” releasing life from every grave.
The “New Life” Jesus brought was the transition of life to death to the new process of birth, where “we need to be born again from the earth’s womb” into a more permanent, eternal life. Because of the resurrection, the “ending of our story… is a happy ending.” All of human history will be vindicated in the end, as love and truth will ultimately triumph over the chaos and pain of our fallen state. The goal is a return to a state where, as in the Garden of Eden, we are in direct, unhindered communion with God, who “is a gracious and loving presence, even when we are sweating blood.”
Jesus’s resurrection is the definitive, irreversible restoration of the original, divine intention for humanity—a state of life, joy, and love that is more vibrant and enduring than the life known before the resurrection.
