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Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday
For much of Christian history the church has given no place to Holy Saturday in its liturgy or worship. Yet the space dividing Calvary and the Garden may be the best place from which to reflect on the meaning of Christ's death and resurrection. This superb work by the late Alan Lewis develops on a grand scale and in great detail a theology of Holy Saturday.
The first comprehensive theology of Holy Saturday ever written, Between Cross and Resurrection shows that at the center of the biblical story and the church's creed lies a three -day narrative. Lewis explores the meaning of Holy Saturday -- the restless day of burial and waiting -- from the perspectives of narrative (hearing the story), doctrine (thinking the story), and ethics (living the story). Along the way he visits as many spiritual themes as possible in order to demonstrate the range of topics that take on fresh meaning when viewed from the vantage point of Holy Saturday.
Between Cross and Resurrection is not only incisive and elegantly written, but it is also a uniquely moving work deeply rooted in Christian experience. While writing this book Lewis experienced his own Holy Saturday in suffering from and finally succumbing to cancer. He considered Between Cross and Resurrection to be the culmination of his life's work.
The first comprehensive theology of Holy Saturday ever written, Between Cross and Resurrection shows that at the center of the biblical story and the church's creed lies a three -day narrative. Lewis explores the meaning of Holy Saturday -- the restless day of burial and waiting -- from the perspectives of narrative (hearing the story), doctrine (thinking the story), and ethics (living the story). Along the way he visits as many spiritual themes as possible in order to demonstrate the range of topics that take on fresh meaning when viewed from the vantage point of Holy Saturday.
Between Cross and Resurrection is not only incisive and elegantly written, but it is also a uniquely moving work deeply rooted in Christian experience. While writing this book Lewis experienced his own Holy Saturday in suffering from and finally succumbing to cancer. He considered Between Cross and Resurrection to be the culmination of his life's work.
491 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 24, 2022
I was keen to get into this book as I was curious to see where the author would take a book on “Easter Saturday”, let along develop a theology from it. The book is divided into 3 parts - and in many ways I would have liked Part 1 as a devotional book by itself. In fact, I do hope to read Part 1 again at a future date for its devotional aspects. However, I found that whilst I realise the author is developing a theology, we end up in the dark for too long.
I did appreciate the good coverage that the author did of Luther, Calvin, Augustine, Barth, Moltmann and Jungel. As a Lutheran pastor I appreciated the emphasis on the theology of the cross. But I would argue that Scripture spends much more time on the Crucifixion and on the Resurrection then it does on the time in tomb - important though this is.
I did appreciate the good coverage that the author did of Luther, Calvin, Augustine, Barth, Moltmann and Jungel. As a Lutheran pastor I appreciated the emphasis on the theology of the cross. But I would argue that Scripture spends much more time on the Crucifixion and on the Resurrection then it does on the time in tomb - important though this is.
August 25, 2012
Lewis's magnum opus...Written with a Reformed doctrinal slant as it's peppered throughout with quotes from Karl Barth's Christian Dogmatics. It also takes heavily from the philosophical language of Moltmann, and Jungel. A liberationist perspective is also highly brought forth in the book. Overall, there were some gem quotes in the book despite these perspectives.
February 14, 2021
Where you may not agree with every bit of the theology in this book (everyone has their own opinions now), it is a beautiful book that teaches that the in-between time of waiting is full of grace.
May 25, 2012
I was very excited to read Alan Lewis' posthumously published bok on the theology of the cross. I have to say, I am somewhat disappointed. What I had heard was about an extremely cutting-edge discussion of the question of how the cross affects our view of God, but instead we have a book that does an amazing job dealing with the Biblical story, but terrible with theological history.
First, the book is structured in three parts. The first part is "Hearing the Story," in which Lewis attempts to help us to re-hear the gospel story in it's context, and in the emotional and theological impact it had on it's first hearers. This is by far the best part of the book, and really worth the entire price of the book. This is like a 100-page (good!) sermon, where Lewis brings up how shocking the story of the death of God on the cross really is.
The second part is called "Thinking the Story," in which Lewis tries to discuss the way the church needs to think to be faithful hearers and proclaimers of that original story. He goes through a brief and selective history of theology to do this - first with the early church and the church fathers, and then skipping to the 19th century "kenotic" theologians, to Karl Barth, Jurgen Moltmann, and Eberhard Jungel. There's nothing wrong with dealing with select theologians, but Lewis reproduces really bad historiography along the way, including the disjunct between Augustine (who he says was a functional "unitarian"! That is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard, and makes it sound as if Lewis hasn't read a single word of Augustine's works) and the Cappadocians, one made popular by John Zizioulas and completely wrong. The argument is that God's being is best spoken of in terms of "community" rather than personhood, except that Lewis has absolutely no discussion of what "person" even meant for the theologians of the 4th century, and so uncritically takes over the idea of the Trinity as a "community" (again, without discussing what "community" means in our modern context!).
The third section is called "Living the Story," and this is a discussion of how Holy Saturday affects our perception of events such as the holocaust, the nuclear age, and environmental destruction. This section is ok, except here - as in many places in the book - Lewis' rhetoric is just so over the top to be melodramatic (I felt like I was watching Betty Davis' "Dark Victory," a movie where a woman going blind basically yells about it the entire time). When he gets to the discussion of his own illness - cancer, to which he ultimately succumbed - it's more interesting and less melodramatic, but there's nothing in this discussion that is particularly innovative.
Overall, I like the first section especially, and would recommend the book for that alone. However, his reading of theological history I think adds nothing to the discussion, and actually causes a whole bunch of problems.
First, the book is structured in three parts. The first part is "Hearing the Story," in which Lewis attempts to help us to re-hear the gospel story in it's context, and in the emotional and theological impact it had on it's first hearers. This is by far the best part of the book, and really worth the entire price of the book. This is like a 100-page (good!) sermon, where Lewis brings up how shocking the story of the death of God on the cross really is.
The second part is called "Thinking the Story," in which Lewis tries to discuss the way the church needs to think to be faithful hearers and proclaimers of that original story. He goes through a brief and selective history of theology to do this - first with the early church and the church fathers, and then skipping to the 19th century "kenotic" theologians, to Karl Barth, Jurgen Moltmann, and Eberhard Jungel. There's nothing wrong with dealing with select theologians, but Lewis reproduces really bad historiography along the way, including the disjunct between Augustine (who he says was a functional "unitarian"! That is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard, and makes it sound as if Lewis hasn't read a single word of Augustine's works) and the Cappadocians, one made popular by John Zizioulas and completely wrong. The argument is that God's being is best spoken of in terms of "community" rather than personhood, except that Lewis has absolutely no discussion of what "person" even meant for the theologians of the 4th century, and so uncritically takes over the idea of the Trinity as a "community" (again, without discussing what "community" means in our modern context!).
The third section is called "Living the Story," and this is a discussion of how Holy Saturday affects our perception of events such as the holocaust, the nuclear age, and environmental destruction. This section is ok, except here - as in many places in the book - Lewis' rhetoric is just so over the top to be melodramatic (I felt like I was watching Betty Davis' "Dark Victory," a movie where a woman going blind basically yells about it the entire time). When he gets to the discussion of his own illness - cancer, to which he ultimately succumbed - it's more interesting and less melodramatic, but there's nothing in this discussion that is particularly innovative.
Overall, I like the first section especially, and would recommend the book for that alone. However, his reading of theological history I think adds nothing to the discussion, and actually causes a whole bunch of problems.
December 3, 2018
Holy Saturday is the ignored day, sandwiched between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. This is a rare book, but much needed, in that it focuses on this overlooked day.
I wanted to give it four stars, but had to drop a star. I’ll say why later.
The structure of the book come in three parts. The first part is an attempt to make us see the events of the first Easter with fresh eyes. The author wants us to press pause and feel the shock and defeat of the cross. Don’t jump too quickly to the victory of Sunday.
The second part is my favourite. It is an in-depth theological examination of what happened within the triune God in that first Easter Saturday. Referring to a range of theologians, most often Karl Barth, Alan Lewis explores the Trinity and how they interact during the cross, the tomb and the resurrection. It’s the best sustained examination of the Trinity I’ve read. I was sometimes surprised by the insights, but I couldn’t disagree as it exposed the shallowness of my understanding of God the Father, Son & Spirit. And it led me to a renewed sense of wonder for the Christian God.
The third part looks at how Easter Saturday applies to the world & ourselves. Especially relevant in looking at suffering and the absence of God.
Why did I mark it down a star? It is a verbose book, where one adjective is not enough if three can be used. Sentences have sub-clauses, with sub-sub-clauses, until I lost track of it was about. Often I had to go back and re-read a page. I was going to insert a few examples here, but it would have vastly increased the length of this review!
It’s a shame it isn’t more readable as it is a valuable book with important insights to share. If you want to think more deeply about suffering, then this is worth reading. And if you want to think more deeply about the Trinity, then I strongly recommend this book also.
I wanted to give it four stars, but had to drop a star. I’ll say why later.
The structure of the book come in three parts. The first part is an attempt to make us see the events of the first Easter with fresh eyes. The author wants us to press pause and feel the shock and defeat of the cross. Don’t jump too quickly to the victory of Sunday.
The second part is my favourite. It is an in-depth theological examination of what happened within the triune God in that first Easter Saturday. Referring to a range of theologians, most often Karl Barth, Alan Lewis explores the Trinity and how they interact during the cross, the tomb and the resurrection. It’s the best sustained examination of the Trinity I’ve read. I was sometimes surprised by the insights, but I couldn’t disagree as it exposed the shallowness of my understanding of God the Father, Son & Spirit. And it led me to a renewed sense of wonder for the Christian God.
The third part looks at how Easter Saturday applies to the world & ourselves. Especially relevant in looking at suffering and the absence of God.
Why did I mark it down a star? It is a verbose book, where one adjective is not enough if three can be used. Sentences have sub-clauses, with sub-sub-clauses, until I lost track of it was about. Often I had to go back and re-read a page. I was going to insert a few examples here, but it would have vastly increased the length of this review!
It’s a shame it isn’t more readable as it is a valuable book with important insights to share. If you want to think more deeply about suffering, then this is worth reading. And if you want to think more deeply about the Trinity, then I strongly recommend this book also.
March 27, 2021
My best attempt at distilling Lewis' 466 page work:
Only in Christ's death does He truly experience the fullest extent of being human. And, as Gregory of Nazianus stated in the 4th century, "the unassumed is the unhealed" (quoted on p. 151). In the crucifixion of Christ, the scandal of God's death reveals the love of God and hope for humanity. Because Christ plumbed the depth of the human experience through death, He rendered death defeated freeing us from its power. And through Christ's resurrection, God opened the door of freedom from the fear and power of death by offering us the gift of life eternal in union with him.
Something like that.
Lewis dove into an oft-overlooked part of Christian theology: Holy Saturday. What does it mean to say Christ died? What does that mean for the Godhead? What does it mean for us?
Just two quick quotes I loved:
"Only as we keep listening to the two stories, attend both to the contradiction between the crucified Jesus and the Risen Lord and to their identity can we hope to glimpse what the Scriptures mean when they say that the cross is God's greatest power and wisdom, and that only in dying may humans beings live" (p. 78).
"The New Testament story of the cross and empty tomb is the profound and dramatic confirmation of the Creator's Yes to our humanity" (p. 408).
If the Church is to be the Body of Christ, we must identify with the buried Christ Grief, lament, and death must not be foreign ideas. And in a world gone awry with sin, death, and evil, we ought to find solace in the fact that Christ assumed all of human history's evil in His death and burial. But like Christ's body, death does not have the last word. For the Church, burial is our reality; resurrection is our hope.
Only in Christ's death does He truly experience the fullest extent of being human. And, as Gregory of Nazianus stated in the 4th century, "the unassumed is the unhealed" (quoted on p. 151). In the crucifixion of Christ, the scandal of God's death reveals the love of God and hope for humanity. Because Christ plumbed the depth of the human experience through death, He rendered death defeated freeing us from its power. And through Christ's resurrection, God opened the door of freedom from the fear and power of death by offering us the gift of life eternal in union with him.
Something like that.
Lewis dove into an oft-overlooked part of Christian theology: Holy Saturday. What does it mean to say Christ died? What does that mean for the Godhead? What does it mean for us?
Just two quick quotes I loved:
"Only as we keep listening to the two stories, attend both to the contradiction between the crucified Jesus and the Risen Lord and to their identity can we hope to glimpse what the Scriptures mean when they say that the cross is God's greatest power and wisdom, and that only in dying may humans beings live" (p. 78).
"The New Testament story of the cross and empty tomb is the profound and dramatic confirmation of the Creator's Yes to our humanity" (p. 408).
If the Church is to be the Body of Christ, we must identify with the buried Christ Grief, lament, and death must not be foreign ideas. And in a world gone awry with sin, death, and evil, we ought to find solace in the fact that Christ assumed all of human history's evil in His death and burial. But like Christ's body, death does not have the last word. For the Church, burial is our reality; resurrection is our hope.
September 7, 2024
This is my theology. An amazing book. Gripping from cover to cover. A synthesis of theology for the 21st century, building on the giants of church history and the 20th century, and firmly grounded in the scandal of cross and resurrection.
April 8, 2024
This is a tough book to rate because that final chapter is so very good. It’s just a shame that it takes a couple hundred pages of dense theological reading to get to that point. Reading that I didn’t find necessarily essential to the overall point.
Lewis was a dying man when he wrote this book and considered this volume to be his life’s work and so I’m sure he wanted all of his thoughts down on paper before going on to glory. So I’m not going to fault him there. In fact, I found the significance of this book only heightened by his personal circumstances which are not revealed until the final chapter.
I found his breakdown of the reception of the triduum and especially Holy Saturday to be interesting because it really isn’t thought about all that much. Especially the state of the world we are in now when we occupy the “now but not yet” of the resurrection. I appreciated his genealogy of interpretation and reception in this area, but as someone who doesn’t care so much about Barth or Möltmann I found my eyes glazing over quite a bit there.
Where this book’s strength really lies is in the third part where he talks about how Holy Saturday theology applies to history, to our current age, and to our personal lives. This is where the meat of the book is and really could have made up a much more solid book on its own. I’m not sure All the groundwork getting up to part 3 was necessary, but the actual theology in the final part is good.
Obviously the author is bound to the early 90’s temporally and so many of the concerns feel sometimes very prescient and other times quite dated. For example, his list of political positions was idealistic and dated and the fact that he ended part 3 with a discussion of women and how the sin of pride doesn’t affect them (a theological conversation I first encountered in seminary, have never believed, and still can’t believe is an opinion.) But his personal story of going through cancer and ultimately deciding to stop treatment and wait for death was moving and I really think this book would be a lot more powerful if he gave his story more breathing room. I get that would be “academically” gauche but who cares what the academy thinks? You’re dying man!
Overall, wasn’t enjoying myself all that much until I reached part 3 then it really took off. Definitely a theological text worth reading and shows that mainline theologians can do good theology at least back in the 90’s.
Lewis was a dying man when he wrote this book and considered this volume to be his life’s work and so I’m sure he wanted all of his thoughts down on paper before going on to glory. So I’m not going to fault him there. In fact, I found the significance of this book only heightened by his personal circumstances which are not revealed until the final chapter.
I found his breakdown of the reception of the triduum and especially Holy Saturday to be interesting because it really isn’t thought about all that much. Especially the state of the world we are in now when we occupy the “now but not yet” of the resurrection. I appreciated his genealogy of interpretation and reception in this area, but as someone who doesn’t care so much about Barth or Möltmann I found my eyes glazing over quite a bit there.
Where this book’s strength really lies is in the third part where he talks about how Holy Saturday theology applies to history, to our current age, and to our personal lives. This is where the meat of the book is and really could have made up a much more solid book on its own. I’m not sure All the groundwork getting up to part 3 was necessary, but the actual theology in the final part is good.
Obviously the author is bound to the early 90’s temporally and so many of the concerns feel sometimes very prescient and other times quite dated. For example, his list of political positions was idealistic and dated and the fact that he ended part 3 with a discussion of women and how the sin of pride doesn’t affect them (a theological conversation I first encountered in seminary, have never believed, and still can’t believe is an opinion.) But his personal story of going through cancer and ultimately deciding to stop treatment and wait for death was moving and I really think this book would be a lot more powerful if he gave his story more breathing room. I get that would be “academically” gauche but who cares what the academy thinks? You’re dying man!
Overall, wasn’t enjoying myself all that much until I reached part 3 then it really took off. Definitely a theological text worth reading and shows that mainline theologians can do good theology at least back in the 90’s.
May 24, 2020
This might be my book of the year.
Certainly it is a book of/for this year.
Much to disagree with, but much to fuel worship and prayer.
Can’t wait to read Emerson’s ‘evangelical theology of holy Saturday’ now.
Certainly it is a book of/for this year.
Much to disagree with, but much to fuel worship and prayer.
Can’t wait to read Emerson’s ‘evangelical theology of holy Saturday’ now.
April 23, 2022
Very helpful in reflecting on the relationship between the crucifixion and resurrection. The first section of the book was excellent, but overall the book was too verbose. I'm used to reading complex theology but got lost in the multiple adjectives and complex sentences.
March 20, 2020
This one is a weeper, my friends.
Want to read
April 14, 2018Page 32
The plot does not peter out on that amorphous, retrospective Saturday but advances with dramatic force to unfold a third day, with its unexpected, exultant conclusion, a humanly impossible and inconceivable finale. NOW we know the full scenario, and we can see with hindsight that the Friday had not been the last day of Jesus after all, but the first day of a new, unfinished, never-ending history. In its turn the Sabbath was no meaningless period of deflation after a disastrous climax, but a very specific, identifiable SECOND day, the day BEFORE the climax, a time of calm and waiting before the victorious storm. Inevitably, and properly, this knowledge of the end drastically reinterprets everything that has gone before in the story of those days.
Christian faith is not that Jesus was crucified, but that Christ crucified was raised; and that throws wholly new light on what his death meant in the first place.
the decisive criterion for every evangelical declaration, for every liturgical reenactment, for every theological interpretation of the cross and resurrection, is this: Does the Resurrection free us from thinking of the cross as it was before the resurrection? To answer No is to say that this is a story which must be told and heard, believed and interpreted, TWO DIFFERENT WAYS AT ONCE - as a story whose ending is KNOWN, and as one whose ending is discovered only AS IT HAPPENS. The truth is victim when either reading is allowed to drown out the other; the truth emerges only when both readings are audible, the separate sound in each ear creating, as it were, a stereophonic unity.
Page 38
Here, we are told, we must stop and ponder, must absorb the brutal facts, let the realization sink slowly in that Christ's life is finished and done, that he has drunk the cup of mortality to its last, most hellish drop. Yeet, ironically, the clouds of ambiguity roll back over the second day here once again, just when
The plot does not peter out on that amorphous, retrospective Saturday but advances with dramatic force to unfold a third day, with its unexpected, exultant conclusion, a humanly impossible and inconceivable finale. NOW we know the full scenario, and we can see with hindsight that the Friday had not been the last day of Jesus after all, but the first day of a new, unfinished, never-ending history. In its turn the Sabbath was no meaningless period of deflation after a disastrous climax, but a very specific, identifiable SECOND day, the day BEFORE the climax, a time of calm and waiting before the victorious storm. Inevitably, and properly, this knowledge of the end drastically reinterprets everything that has gone before in the story of those days.
Christian faith is not that Jesus was crucified, but that Christ crucified was raised; and that throws wholly new light on what his death meant in the first place.
the decisive criterion for every evangelical declaration, for every liturgical reenactment, for every theological interpretation of the cross and resurrection, is this: Does the Resurrection free us from thinking of the cross as it was before the resurrection? To answer No is to say that this is a story which must be told and heard, believed and interpreted, TWO DIFFERENT WAYS AT ONCE - as a story whose ending is KNOWN, and as one whose ending is discovered only AS IT HAPPENS. The truth is victim when either reading is allowed to drown out the other; the truth emerges only when both readings are audible, the separate sound in each ear creating, as it were, a stereophonic unity.
Page 38
Here, we are told, we must stop and ponder, must absorb the brutal facts, let the realization sink slowly in that Christ's life is finished and done, that he has drunk the cup of mortality to its last, most hellish drop. Yeet, ironically, the clouds of ambiguity roll back over the second day here once again, just when
March 12, 2012
This is a good book by a deceased PCUSA seminary prof about Holy Saturday. I read it with tha very clear agenda of seeing what he thought about Jesus being "dead dead" and I wasn't disappointed. I can't recommend this book for every, since he goes SO SLOWLY, dealing with (what must be his fellow PCUSAer's) every doubt and criticism, but does ultimately land in an orthodox spot. The book boils down to the fact that we must let Holy Saturday be what it is, part of Christ's humiliation, not his triumph. It is the boundary marker we must all cross in faith. The author wrote this book as he was dying of cancer but facing it with great hope. But if you're not prepared for footnotes full of Tillich and Bultmann, steer clear!
March 8, 2016
Very disappointing. Extremely wordy and repetitive, it quickly became difficult to keep reading as I often had to reread paragraphs (and sometimes pages) because I would lose focus of what he was trying to say in all the unnecessary words he used. Had to stop before I finished the first section. While I'm sure this is just what some people need to read and hear, it was not what I was looking for.
July 24, 2011
So far this is among the most important books I've ever read. Yes, I mean that. So far.
February 28, 2018
Great message and insight, but very repetitive. Stopped after about first 100 pages.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews