From Question 26 to Question 58, the Heidelberg Catechism explains the Apostles’ Creed line by line.
(If you are new here, the Heidelberg Catechism is a widely-used and much-loved Reformed summary of biblical Christian teaching that I’ve been blogging on since its 450th anniversary in 2013.)
Some lines get explored across a few questions. Some take just one.
For instance, after discussing the trial crucifixion and death of Jesus, following the Creed the Catechism asks,
41 Q. Why was he “buried”?
The practical answer.
The simple answer comes to mind: Because he was dead. Of course he was buried. That’s what people do with dead bodies.
But, as you may have noticed, the Catechism always expects us to find a bit more than the simple and obvious answer. The authors wanted us to find something helpful. There should be, in every doctrine of the faith, something to benefit us.
At the very least, biblical teaching is there to teach us what we need to know to find faith in Christ, then to deepen our trust in the goodness Christ’s promises toward us. That will comfort us and equip us to live the lives to which we are called.
But is there a particularly helpful message in Christ’s burial? At first glance the Catechism’s tiny answer seems to admit this is a stretch:
A. His burial testifies
that he really died.
The hint of something more is in the word at the end of the first line: it “testifies” to something. That something is Christ’s death — which was already dealt with in the previous line of the Creed.
I think the writers of the Catechism were counting on us to ask some questions of our own at this point. If you were to ask someone who knows the history of Christian controversies why the Apostles’ Creed would add this extra emphasis to Christ’s death, here’s what you would find out.
The ancient answer.
Back in the earliest centuries there were groups on the fringes of Christianity, or groups within Christianity that articulated different views of who Jesus actually was.
Some were “gnostics,” religious groups that borrowed bits and pieces from Christianity and Judaism and Paganism and Philosophy. They initiated their members into their own secret “knowledge” or “gnosis.”
Some of these were influenced by Greek philosophy that sometimes taught that there was one perfect invisible God, far removed from our physical world.
Everything in our physical world changes — and they were convinced that God cannot change.
Therefore, they thought, the Christ who comes from God cannot be really human. He merely appeared or seemed human.
Groups who held these views came to be known as “Docetists” based on the Greek verb “dokeo” which means “I seem.”
Back when the Apostles’ Creed was written, there was this ancient problem of people trying to say Jesus wasn’t really human.
Why was Christ buried? Heidelberg’s answer
So Heidelberg’s answer to the question of why Jesus was buried is to strongly affirm the practical answer and the reason behind the ancient answer.
The situation is analogous to that of the inimitable Coroner of Munchkin Land, when the house landed on the wicked witch:
As Coroner, I must confirm, I thoroughly examined her
And she’s not only merely dead,
She’s really most sincerely dead.
It wasn’t enough to say Jesus was merely dead. That would never answer the human tendency toward a gnostic denial of Jesus’ humanity.
Jesus burial testifies that he was “really most sincerely dead.”
Which means he had been most sincerely alive, most sincerely human and subject to change just like you and me.
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It’s interesting to think of the “ancient answer” in that way – a refutation of the heresies.
However, I’m not sure that’s the answer that Scripture wants us to get from the burial story.
As one of my seminary professors, Fr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, points out, we want to see Joseph as a good guy, but the joke is really on him and us!
Jesus had been continually preaching that he was to rise on the third day. Then, while on the cross, he was taunted with the cry, “Come down from there,” yet he didn’t comply.
Then, after he had died, the proof that he truly was dead isn’t the tomb or burial, but the soldier who pierced his side.
If you follow the Greek closely in Mark, Joseph asks Pilate for the “body” but he doesn’t get it (Jesus’ body is under the authority of God alone), instead he gets the “corpse.” An interesting word change!
Then what does he do? He seals it in a rock tomb! If Joseph truly believed and had paid attention to what Jesus was teaching, why would he seal someone in a tomb who was expected to rise from the dead!?!?!? It makes no sense, unless it’s a dig against him, or our typical expectations (“let the dead bury the dead”?).
I think the point of the burial is twofold: 1) The Romans have no control (all they have is a corpse) and 2) despite even those searching for the “Kingdom of God” working against God, he is still fully in control (you could be dead and sealed in a tomb, and it doesn’t matter).
Thanks, Fr. Dustin.
The question in not really what scripture signifies by Jesus’ burial, in all its nuances.
Rather it is why the Apostles’ Creed specifically mentions the burial when it might seem enough to say he died and rose.
The Creed is so brief, so terse in naming the events in single words, that I do not think it likely they had Joseph on their mind.
The Catechism takes this as a meaning-laden re-emphasis of his death. I suspect that in the era the Apostles’ Creed was evolving docetism was on the Church’s mind, and that helps account for the emphasis on bodily death.
P.S. I noted that Christ refused to come down from the cross because that’s precisely what Joseph does – take Jesus down from the cross. Theologically, the last image we have of our Lord is as a crucified messiah.
This idea that Jesus was “really most sincerely dead” as a way of affirming that Jesus had been “really most sincerely alive” is very compelling for me.
A merely “divine” Jesus would be a no help to me or most sick and dying people who I’ve prayed with or visited. Even a “resurrected” Jesus isn’t helpful if the resurrected Jesus is thought of in isolation from Christ crucified.
We need a God who is with us — really with us — even in suffering and dying not a God who is above it all. Only then is the resurrection really meaningful.
Thanks Gary.
In emphasizing these pastoral implications you are very much in line with the kind of mindset the writers of the Catechism brought to their work. They constantly ask “How does knowing this help us? How does this comfort us? How does this build faith?”