The Transcendent Absence

The resurrection, that cardinal promise upon which Christianity stakes its claim to ultimate meaning, betrays what may constitute the Gospel's most radical theological insight, for when Mark's narrative concludes with women fleeing an empty tomb in wordless terror, offering neither the posthumous appearances that would vindicate faith nor the triumphant reversal that would justify suffering, what emerges from this narrative rupture transcends simple failure: the preservation of a divine love that manifests through absolute withdrawal rather than supernatural intervention, creating within its kenotic absence the terrible clearing wherein human meaning-making becomes simultaneously burden and necessity, gift and curse, freedom and abandonment. Read Full Article »