I remember some years ago seeing a book about the death of God, and
(I think) the problem posed by his gigantic body decaying on earth. Too
ridiculous, I thought.
Nietzsche famously wrote “God
is dead,” a nonsensical notion that gained some popularity some decades
ago. If God is God—almighty, eternal, the source of all being—how could
He die? If He could, He wouldn't be God.
And yet, many people take for granted the really astonishing thing that Christians profess: namely, that God WAS dead.
That is really amazing, if you think about it.
No,
God, as a Divine Being, could not die. Not, until, that is, He had
taken up life as a man. Even then, no one could kill Him—remember those
who tried to throw Him off a cliff?—unless He let them.
But
the real death of God did not cause an ecological disaster. It did
cause an more than an earthquake—more like a cosmos-quake.
It
meant that death was changed. Death was no longer a dead-end. Once the
All-Powerful dropped into the abyss of death but didn't remain there, it
became a passageway to eternal life.
The sin of Adam
and Eve and had locked the gates of heaven from the outside, but they
and their descendants were incapable of opening them again. Only God
could do it. So he came out and broke the lock of sin, and used a cross
to do it.
God did die—and it's a wondrous thing.
And now He is risen—Alleluia!