Why Was He Called Lazarus?
By JOHN YOUNG
Characters in the parables of Christ are usually not named, but simply referred to, for example, as “a certain man,” or “a Samaritan.” The parable of Lazarus and the rich man is an exception; the poor man is named Lazarus. Incidentally, the rich man is not named: He is often called Dives, but that is simply Latin for “a rich man.”
The obvious reason why Christ named him Lazarus is to link him with the historical Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary. This becomes clear if we examine the parable. F.J. Sheed, in his excellent book To Know Christ Jesus, has interesting insights into this parable.
When the rich man goes to Hell and implores Abraham to let Lazarus come back and warn the rich men’s five brothers of “this place of torment,” Abraham tells him, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31). This links up with what happened when Jesus brought the historical Lazarus back from the dead yet the authorities would still not believe.
As St. John tells us in his Gospel (chapter11), many people believed in Jesus because of this great miracle, and as a result the Jewish authorities made plans to have Jesus killed. By raising His friend Lazarus Jesus set in motion the events that led to His crucifixion. The authorities also planned to kill Lazarus; or as Sheed puts it, “to return him to Abraham’s bosom.”
The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together to decide what to do about Jesus. “If we let Him go on thus, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation” (John 12:48).
So the words in the parable, “they would not believe even if someone came back from the dead,” are a prediction of the Jewish authorities’ refusal to believe in the miracle of the return of Lazarus to life and in the Resurrection of Christ.
Of course, radical Scripture scholars (who are legion) would reject this interpretation because they don’t believe Christ foretold the future and they don’t believe in the return of Lazarus to life or in Jesus’ physical Resurrection.
Incidentally, the views among modernist scholars regarding the dating of the Gospels, putting them as late as possible, is influenced by their rejection of miracles and of the foretelling of future events. For example, Christ’s prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple (Matt. 24:2) is asserted to be an addition made after the event. So a modernist view is that Matthew’s Gospel was written after AD 70, although there is good reason to place it much earlier.
Indeed, the idea of anyone being raised from the dead seems absurd to the skeptic, both today and in the past. When St. Paul made his famous speech in Athens, he seems to have been listened to attentively at first, but the mood of some in the audience changed when he spoke of Resurrection from the dead.
“Now when they heard of the Resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, ‘We will hear you about this again’” (Acts 17:32).
Later, when he was a prisoner in Jerusalem, and he spoke of the Resurrection of Christ, the procurator Festus interrupted: “Paul, you are mad. These long studies of yours are driving you mad” (Acts 26:24). Today we find the same skepticism, even among Catholic scholars, some of whom reject the physical Resurrection of Christ.
To come back to the parable and its connection with Lazarus the brother of Mary and Martha. An interesting question is: Did Lazarus remember anything from when he was dead? After all, death is not annihilation; it is the separation of body and soul, and the soul is spiritual. Being spiritual it has the faculties of intellect and will.
But I don’t believe he remembered anything during the time his dead body was in the tomb. The reason is that during the present life our intellect, which is spiritual, always operates together with the body, or more precisely, with our sense knowledge. That’s why our mental activity is affected by tiredness, old age, or other weaknesses of the body. The spiritual soul doesn’t get old.
A consequence of this relationship is that there is nothing in our intellect that did not have its beginning in sense knowledge. But since any experiences Lazarus had, if he had any, while in the tomb had no connection with his body (they would have been in the separated soul) he wouldn’t remember them when he returned to life.
Coming back to the parable and its interpretation: A view in the Middle Ages was that the rich man was not in Hell but in Purgatory. Their reason for this view was that the souls in Hell want everyone else to be there, so the rich man would not have wanted his five brothers on Earth to be warned of the fate awaiting them if they did not repent. But I think that involves taking this point too literally, which can easily happen in the interpretation of a parable.
All Christ’s parables provide matter for meditation, and this one more than most, particularly because of its connection with the historical raising of Lazarus to life. Jesus knew that in restoring His friend to life He was doing an act that would lead to His own death.
