Between Cross and Resurrection
A Theology of Holy Saturday
- Theology
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Published: 2003
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Publisher's Description
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 Resurrectionshows 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.
Endorsements (5)
“In this major study Alan Lewis offers a profound meditation on 'Holy Saturday,' the day between Good Friday and Easter when Christ lay dead and buried in the tomb and his followers experienced the absence and silence of God. Lewis challenges all triumphalist distortions of the biblical message and summons the church to hear anew, ponder well, and live out the story of the Son of God's passage to victory through suffering, abyss, death, and burial. This exploration of the 'Holy Saturday' theme in its theological, ethical, liturgical, and personal dimensions has few if any peers.”
“In this splendid, lucid, and refreshingly original work Alan Lewis does for Christian scholarship and faith what Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death did for social psychology: evoking what is best in the received tradition, he makes it speak to the life-and-death realities of the human condition here and now. One feels that it is not accidental that both Becker and Lewis were conscious of writing their seminal studies in the valley of the shadow of death. Such combinations of wisdom and courage are seldom achieved elsewhere. Between Cross and Resurrection is a 'must' for all who sense in the tradition Luther named theologia cruces a viable and timely alternative both to the cynicism and one-dimensionality of contemporary worldliness and to the outmoded triumphalism of a languishing religiosity. With his imaginative use of the symbol of Easter Saturday, Lewis describes a wonderfully nuanced gospel that never asks the reader to suppress the negating aspects of creaturely existence in order to affirm the essential goodness of a world beloved of its Creator.”
“It is wonderful to see the publication of Alan Lewis's study of a topic that was for him — and therefore will also be for us — so truly a life-and-death concern. This book serves as a fine tribute and memorial.”
“Lewis had a remarkable gift for incisive and elegant preparation of a profound theological argument.”
“This is the most remarkable and moving book I have ever read. Every page was written by a dying, saintly theologian who stood in the very presence of God, before whom readers too will find themselves hushed in continuous prayer and deep meditation. As we turn over each page, we are led by the late Alan Lewis on a profound and moving theological pilgrimage from the foot of the cross to the garden tomb and through the darkness of Holy Saturday to the wonderful light of Easter morning. This is a superb book of rich dogmatic and liturgical theology that will bring readers to their knees and lift them up again into the audible presence of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus and the communion of the Holy Trinity. . . Between Cross and Resurrection is a book every theological student and every minister of the gospel should study, use, and cherish”
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