A listener named Cecilia asks Father Dave about one aspect of the Nicene creed: “What Scriptures are being referred to when we say, ‘He rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures?’”
“In our context, now that we are living after Christ, things can have multiple meanings,” Father Dave begins. “We know that it describes in the Gospels that Jesus had died, and then three days later he rose from the dead. So in one sense, we’re proclaiming that in accordance with the Scriptures that describe that. However it also means, as we see in the New Testament, a reference back to what we would call the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures.”
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Father Dave references a time this phrase is used in the New Testament. He says, “In Chapter 15 of First Corinthians, Saint Paul is writing to the Corinthians, and he says, ‘Now I am reminding you, brothers, of the Gospel I preached to you, which you indeed received and in which you also stand. …For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.’ So Paul is saying, Hey, I’m not making this stuff up. This was handed on to me, and this is very important, so I’m going to hand it on to you.”
“When Paul is making reference in his time to the Scriptures, he’s not ever talking about the New Testament, because there wasn’t a New Testament yet; he became part of it,” Father Dave says. “When Paul’s alive, and says ‘the Scriptures,’ he means what we call the Old Testament. …There are foreshadowings [to Jesus] that we see in the Old Testament that the scholars have linked to us.” He notes that a study Bible or the USCCB website has footnotes attached to verses such as this one that offer more information.
“I’ll give you two examples that it actually gives in this footnote, and one is from the Book of the Prophet Hosea, Chapter Six, where he says, ‘Come, let us return to the Lord. For it is he who has torn, but he will heal us; he has struck down, but he will bind our wounds. He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up to live in his presence.’ This is what we call a foreshadowing,” Father Dave says. “What we believe in Christian theology is we are able to be raised up because of Christ being raised from the dead after three days. So that would count as an Old Testament allusion, meaning foreshadowing to that.”
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Another example Father Dave explains is from the Book of Jonah. “It says, ‘The Lord sent a great fish to swallow Jonah, and he remained in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.’ This was foreshadowing Jesus’ descent into hell, and then after those three days and three nights, ascending,” he says, and also offers the Book of Isaiah with more specific examples of this prophecy.
“There’s a great deal in the Old Testament that, through the particular humans it was written down by and through that original audience, would have been heard in one way,” Father Dave continues. “Jesus came and essentially said, Hey guys, all that stuff you’ve been reading: That’s about me. Because of that knowledge, we now trust the Lord and can look at and interpret the Old Testament through that lens.”
