It's hard to tell whether or not Fr. Kung actually believes in the Resurrection or some kind of collective sense of the story's "truth" in a superhistorical sense. Kung denied biblical inerrancy before he wrote "The Church" and has often been a steadfast enemy of the Church, so in one sense it's suprising to hear the Archbishop cite him, however much we might agree with the sentences themselves, we should not overlook the fact that Kung himself was a modernist and liable not to attribute historicity to the Gospel narrative.
He quoted from “The Church,” a work of theologian Fr. Hans Kung authored before his more controversial writings:
“…without the raising of Jesus from the dead the community of believers, the Church, is meaningless. Only the certainty that the Crucified Christ lives on as the Risen Christ, glorified by God, gives us the solution to the riddle of Jesus as a person and makes the Church possible and real.”
The first Christian disciples’ affirmation of this faith gave birth to a new community which celebrated the “breaking of the bread” with “glad hearts,” Fr. Kung wrote, quoting Acts 2.
The theologian said this new group was an “eschatological community of salvation.” He used the theological word for “last things” such as heaven, hell, the general judgment of mankind by God, and the resurrection of the body.
Archbishop Nienstedt explained that the source of the Church’s mission is the conviction that Christ is risen and fully alive and present to the community of believing Christians
But he also says:
The prelate then cited Jesus’ words in Matthew 28: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
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