“…If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.”
– Jaroslav Pelikan

This pithy summary of the meaning of history from historian Jaroslav Pelikan is probably his best known quotation. Its main point—that the resurrection of Jesus Christ two thousand years ago is the single event in the history of the world so important that upon its veracity hangs the meaning of everything before and after it—is laid out in brilliant and bold simplicity.

But, as is sometimes necessary in such a powerful and compact statement, within it is buried an implied clause. It’s not totally accurate that nothing else matters if Christ is risen, but rather that nothing matters apart from the resurrection of Christ. The truth of this historical claim is the linchpin upon which the doctrine of the Incarnation of God—and his project to rescue humanity from the futility of a life that terminates in the shadowing nothingness of hades apart from our Creator and source of being—is completely dependent.