The Reality of the Resurrection: The New Testament Witness

11. Resurrection as a Theme in Religious School Instruction

249 Chapter 11 Resurrection as a Theme in Religious School Instruction In his substantive essay on “Dying, Death, and Resurrection as Themes for Children and Youth,” Werner Thiede rightly calls for more attention to be paid to the pedagogy and praxis of religious instruction in schools, for the complex of themes his title adumbrates. Thiede shows that with their level of language acquisition children not only encounter the empirical experience of death but also endeavor to find meaningful answers to the question of death with the development of their cognitive categories, as Piaget more or less described them. Elementary school students already “require the most meaningful answer possible to questions about the ‘last things,’ after they become aware of the finality of life and the world as a whole.”1 This requirement occurs throughout the entirety of childhood and continues into adolescence—and beyond—because the question about their own identity as a question about the possibilities and limits of their own lives is expressed in this way. Thus is promised the question of meaning arising from life itself, “which is generated by knowledge of one’s mortality and works itself out on all levels of human thought and action.”2 Thiede also sets forth the significance of this complex of questions for dealing with dying children and those children and youth at risk of suicide. Even if the complex addressed last can be proven only through empirical investigation , and with difficulty, the developmental and social-psychological fact of the increasing suicide fantasies among children and youth in our time sets before us the task of clarifying in our religious pedagogy how consideration of biblical language about the resurrection of the dead can further children and youth on their way in the development of their own self-understanding and world-understanding. 250—The Reality of the Resurrection On the other hand it appears strange that the theme of the resurrection of the dead is so rarely found in schoolbooks. In view of the fundamental significance of resurrection theology for Protestant and Catholic religious instruction, one can comprehend Hubertus Halbfas’ irritation when he writes, In all available religion books, one checks for examples in their chapters about the resurrection and ascension of Christ: There one finds a beautiful Easter picture (but what is “beautiful,” really? What didactic relevance does an individual picture from the high middle ages have?), texts from the Gospels and 1 Corinthians, a liturgical hymn and some practical application, reasons why the resurrection depicted by these means brings Christendom joy and fills it with hope, but the word “resurrection” for its part finds no elaboration, nor does the motif of the “three days,” nor the difference between resurrection and appearance stories, nor the relevance of the “empty tomb.” Such an omission can only regarded as a refusal to provide information, and society suffers altogether from this deficit.3 Certainly Halbfas’ call for more “material yield [Sachhaltigkeit]” in religious instruction as well as in society hardly suffices to solve the problem of finding a fitting depiction and life-promoting reflection on biblical language about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead in a comprehensive way, for Halbfas’ religion-pedagogical concept comes much too close to the danger of copying religious instruction at the university level, of setting too much emphasis on the transmission of knowledge, and of not sufficiently taking into account the emotional and social realities of students as a whole. Nevertheless, with Halbfas we must emphasize the duty to transmit information in religious instruction, when for example in a book of religious instruction one finds only two pages on the topic of the resurrection that then only consist of pictures without introducing the material issues of this difficult topic. The homework assignment4 paired sensibly with the pictures burdens the students with reflecting upon the theology of the resurrection on their own; nothing is laid before them to aid their consideration of the material. They themselves are already supposed to know the significance of “Good Friday” and “Easter.” Sowelcome is the approach of this schoolbook Mitten ins Leben (In the Midst of Life) for its use of the emotional and creative capacities of students as an entry into religion, thus taking up and employing the phenomenon of the category of Firstness, that the theological silence of these two pages on the theme of “Death and Resurrection” is perplexing. Finding nothing to aid...