1859 and the Resurrection

[EarlyActs]

1859 AND THE RESURRECTION



Resurrection Week 2025



1859 was a highly consequential year. We may recognize a few things here and there about it, but not know it was all in the same year. Let’s see what we have:

Karl Marx produced DAS KAPITAL and unleashed a ‘final solution’ to privately held capital. He modeled his thoughts after the strain of the French Revolution which resulted in Robespierre’s ‘Reign Of Terror.’ Way to go Karl.

Huxley pressed Darwin enough to get ORIGIN OF SPECIES finished and out there. In a way, he had to. While the new theory of vast time was undercutting many Biblical truths, there was one item on the horizon which would certainly have damaged the theory in its most recent aspects.

That was Schneider’s study of tectonic plates and how the shapes of land masses of earth were recently broken into their current form. Schneider believed this corresponded to the worldwide narratives of a global catastrophe. This would have drastically shortened the time span of earth geology from Lyell and Hutton’s views.

But the Huxley family pushed ORIGINS internationally and beat Schneider out of the market, only being handled by a small Paris press.

Finally, Dickens completed A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Here is an account in dramatic fashion that is sympathetic to the masses of France in the 1790s, but totally aware that Marx was following the mob-rule, police-state ‘answer’.

So what about the resurrection?

In TALE, Sydney Carton has a self-declared worthless life in the law practice, but is very interested in the case of one Miss Lucie Manette. In a masterful Dickens coincidence, Carton looks like Lucie’s boyfriend who is accused of spying for the French, and Carton is able to save Darney by discrediting witnesses.

Carton wants to improve his life, including give up drinking, and has somehow latched on to John 11’s line: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” And somehow this inspires Carton to befriend the new couple in spite of losing Lucie to Darney. And then a moment arises when he is seriously needed.

The coincidence of looking like Darney enables him to pull off a jail switch when Darney is accused by the French ‘Reign of Terror’ of aristocratic roots, which Darney had rescinded. Carton gives his life for the Darney family, again quoting “I am the resurrection…” as his hope for his demise.

Dickens used one of the most powerful lines of Jesus to let the English world gain a warning about where Marxism would lead.

 

[DialecticSkeptic]

The opening post attempts something ambitious, namely, connecting the intellectual upheavals of 1859 to a deeper theological point about resurrection and hope. But it's difficult to see the connection he attempts to make, particularly with the distracting historical inaccuracies. With the benefit of historical precision and clearer expression, the connections being drawn between literature, ideology, and faith could be legitimate and powerful. Rather than offering a conspiracy theory or melodramatic cultural lament, it could be sharpened into a reflection on how secular ideologies like economic Marxism and social Darwinism attempt to resolve the human condition without resurrection—while Dickens, drawing from the gospel of John, paints a picture of true hope requiring a cross and an empty tomb.

• Marx did not publish Das Kapital in 1859 but almost ten years later in three volumes spanning nearly 30 years (1867–1894).
  
  ​
• I don't know who Schneider is supposed to be, but nobody was studying plate tectonics in the mid-19th century—because that discipline wasn't formalized until the mid-20th century (c. 1965-1967).

And the idea of an old earth did not undercut any biblical truths—although it did undercut certain interpretations and beliefs, like a recent special creation.

 

[EarlyActs]

The opening post attempts something ambitious, namely, connecting the intellectual upheavals of 1859 to a deeper theological point about resurrection and hope. But it's difficult to see the connection he attempts to make, particularly with the distracting historical inaccuracies. With the benefit of historical precision and clearer expression, the connections being drawn between literature, ideology, and faith could be legitimate and powerful. Rather than offering a conspiracy theory or melodramatic cultural lament, it could be sharpened into a reflection on how secular ideologies like economic Marxism and social Darwinism attempt to resolve the human condition without resurrection—while Dickens, drawing from the gospel of John, paints a picture of true hope requiring a cross and an empty tomb.

• Marx did not publish Das Kapital in 1859 but almost ten years later in three volumes spanning nearly 30 years (1867–1894).
  
  ​
• I don't know who Schneider is supposed to be, but nobody was studying plate tectonics in the mid-19th century—because that discipline wasn't formalized until the mid-20th century (c. 1965-1967).

And the idea of an old earth did not undercut any biblical truths—although it did undercut certain interpretations and beliefs, like a recent special creation.

[MOD EDIT: Rule-violating text removed from post.] Marx did get his roots from the Robespierre mob of the French Revolution.

 

[EarlyActs]

They are not "distracting" inaccuracies [MOD EDIT: Rule-violating text removed from post]. They are the fabric of the destruction of our society, so decide whose side you are are on.

 

[DialecticSkeptic]

Marx did get his roots from the Robespierre mob of the French Revolution.

That is a different claim from the one you made originally which the historical evidence contradicts. You said that "Karl Marx produced Das Kapital" in the "highly consequential year" of 1859.

They are not "distracting" inaccuracies …

If easily refutable historical inaccuracies compromise the credibility of your post, then they are distracting from the point your post intends to make. As I said, "With the benefit of historical precision and clearer expression, the connections being drawn between literature, ideology, and faith could be legitimate and powerful" (emphasis added).

 

[EarlyActs]

History of the Christian Church, p 413:

Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto 1948.

 

[DialecticSkeptic]

History of the Christian Church, p 413:

Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto 1948.

And that is not Das Kapital, which is what your original claim was about.