The Resurrection as Reintroduction: Rowan Williams on Icons of the Resurrection of Christ

Fresco of the Anastasis ("resurrection"), Chora Church (14th c., Constantinople)

Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor.

The classic icons of the Resurrection depict the Lord Jesus’ descent among the dead. In the icon, Christ stands astride the shattered gates of Sheol, surrounded by a mandorla that figures the depths of the divine life,   He grasps Adam and Eve by the hand, while other characters from the history of Israel—David and Solomon, Moses and Samuel—look on.  

In a rich meditation on the icons of the Resurrection, Rowan Williams suggests that they show “the effect of God’s action on human history up to that point, and, implicitly, the effect of God’s action on all history.” [1]  The icon dramatically depicts Christ’s liberation of human beings from the place of bondage and division into the peace of God.  “We are compulsive dividers, separators, and in these divisions we deny ourselves the life God is eager to give,” but Christ is “the one who bridged all these divisions.” [2]

The icons of the Resurrections, Williams suggests, fit with the theological vision of the great seventh-century Christian thinker, Maximus the Confessor, who “speaks of how every one of the great separations human beings have got used to is overcome in the person and the action and the suffering of Jesus”:

“The divide between man and woman, between paradise before the fall and the earth as we now know it, between heaven and earth, between the mind’s knowledge and the body’s experience, between creature and creator—all are overcome in the renewed humanity that Christ creates.” [3]  

So in the icons where we see Christ reaching out to both Adam and Eve, “it is as if he is reintroducing them to each other after the ages of alienation and bitterness that began with the recriminations of Genesis.  The resurrection is a moment in which human beings are reintroduced to each other across the gulf of mutual resentment and blame; a new human community becomes possible.” [4]  Christ stretches out his arms of love across all our divisions and gathers us into one new humanity, for “he is our peace” (Eph. 2:14). 

If the resurrection is “an introduction”, it is so “because the resurrection of Jesus brings us into friendship with the divine life itself”:

“It is because the uttermost of death and humiliation cannot break the bond between Jesus and the Father that what Jesus touches is touched by the Father too.  As he grasps Adam and Eve, so does the Father; as he draws together the immeasurable past with all its failures and injuries, it is the Father to whom he draws it.  Because of his relation with the Father , a new relation is made possible between ourselves and this final wellspring of divine life.  The Christ of this icon, standing on the bridge over darkness and emptiness, moving into the heart of human longing and incompletion, brings into that place the mystery out of which is life streams.” [5]

Thanks be to God, for “Christ’s love has gathered us into one,” congregavit nos in unum Christi amor. [6]

[1] Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ (Eerdmans, 2003), p. 24.

[2] Ibid., p. 30.

[3] Ibid., pp. 30-31.

[4] Ibid., p. 31.

[5] Ibid., p. 40, 41.

[6] From the antiphon “Ubi caritas."