The Resurrection

[lunamoth]

Our next seminar topic is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Our lesson readings walked us through all the arguments people give for the Resurrection not being an actual historical event. I may post some of that here as I prepare for class.

One interesting point of the reading is that belief in the historical Resurrection is often treated as the definitive point and claim of Christianity.

I'd be interested in hearing your understanding of this from your denomination's doctrine and teachings.

I hope other mods are OK with this, but I feel that this discussion is suited for this forum because while of course I want to know your understanding of this, more importantly I am interested in your understanding juxtaposed to your denominations' doctrine or compared to tradition/orthodox teachings.

Compare, not debate.

 

[juantoo3]

I find this subject to be the crux of the matter (pardon the pun). I so wanted to ask this very question of Mr. Crossan at last week's lecture...unfortunately it wasn't to be. I guess I'll have to buy the book...some day.

In the meantime I look forward to the responses this garners!

 

[lunamoth]

I find this subject to be the crux of the matter (pardon the pun). I so wanted to ask this very question of Mr. Crossan at last week's lecture...unfortunately it wasn't to be. I guess I'll have to buy the book...some day.

In the meantime I look forward to the responses this garners!

I read one of Crossan's very long works, I think it was called The Birth of Christianity. It was his scholarly work but organized for the lay person. I think Crossan, though a liberal scholar, still comes down on the side of a historical Resurrection. Was that your impression from his talk?

Added: I just wiki'd Crossan and it appears that he does not believe in a historical Resurrection. I think his point about the Gospel of Peter and an early 'Cross' narrative predating the Gospels is interesting.

NT Wright (NT scholar and a Bishop), one of my current favorites, clearly comes down on the side of a historical Ressurection. Marcus Borg, a scholar but not a theologian (Episcopalian, I think his wife is an Episcopal Priest), leans toward a spiritual Resurrection and leaves the meaning of a 'literal or historical' Resurrection as unaddressable (I think).

 

[lunamoth]

NT Wright (NT scholar and a Bishop), one of my current favorites, clearly comes down on the side of a historical Ressurection. Marcus Borg, a scholar but not a theologian (Episcopalian, I think his wife is an Episcopal Priest), leans toward a spiritual Resurrection and leaves the meaning of a 'literal or historical' Resurrection as unaddressable (I think).

I just re-skimmed the chapters on the Resurrection in "The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions." This book was written by both Wright and Borg, each giving their views on various topics. Borg clearly says that in his view the historical Resurrection is 'irrelevant.' However, I like Borg's books quite a lot and still agree with much of what he says about the meaning of the Reusrrection in our daily lives and relationship with Jesus. Even if he misses kind of a main point.

 

[Nick_A]

1Corinthians 15

12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

20But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27For he "has put everything under his feet."[c] Now when it says that "everything" has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. 29Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? 30And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? 31I die every day—I mean that, brothers—just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord. 32If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised,
"Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die."[d] 33Do not be misled: "Bad company corrupts good character." 34Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.

If the experts want to deny the Resurrection they only further an additional form of Christendom. The trick is in beginning to understand what St. Paul means if one seeks to return to the source before these "improvements" in order to experience the depth of Christianity.

 

[juantoo3]

If the experts want to deny the Resurrection they only further an additional form of Christendom. The trick is in beginning to understand what St. Paul means if one seeks to return to the source before these "improvements" in order to experience the depth of Christianity.

At the risk of seeming unscholarly, I would like to comment, and I will be brief.

The historical veracity of the story is crucial to me...truth as reality, reality as truth. Hence, if there is any genuine merit to crediting the miraculous and divine birth of Christianity to a Messiah who rose from the dead three days after being laid to rest in a sealed tomb and thereby demonstrating the power of his living testamony, the resurrection stands as the pivotal and seminal moment, without which the rest is nice, but certainly nothing substantively different than what anybody else already has / had.

I can easily deduce a Jesus as teacher of wisdom who may or may not have done so many of the miraculous things attributed to him...and still come away firm in my faith *if* there is some substantive validity to the resurrection.

On the other hand; without the resurrection, the rest of the story is no different, substantively, than *any* other Pagan hero-god mythos common in that time and place.

I believe this is generally the direction Crossan was pointed, although he was necessarily vague...he was selling his latest book...

 

[juantoo3]

Marcus Borg, a scholar but not a theologian ... leans toward a spiritual Resurrection and leaves the meaning of a 'literal or historical' Resurrection as unaddressable (I think).

Borg clearly says that in his view the historical Resurrection is 'irrelevant.'

Like you said, this shouldn't derail into a debate, so I must confess my ignorance of Borg's work. However, this attitude surprises me. Admittedly, there are matters I *want* to be true, but it seems to me suppressing reality in order to maintain an illusory truth is a kind of deception that transcends mere willful ignorance. I mean no slight whatsoever with my observation. It just seems...so contrary to the scholastic ideal.

 

[lunamoth]

Like you said, this shouldn't derail into a debate, so I must confess my ignorance of Borg's work. However, this attitude surprises me. Admittedly, there are matters I *want* to be true, but it seems to me suppressing reality in order to maintain an illusory truth is a kind of deception that transcends mere willful ignorance. I mean no slight whatsoever with my observation. It just seems...so contrary to the scholastic ideal.

I don't think it is willful ignorance. I think it is an expected human reaction in a world that rejects the supernatural. I plan to write another post later about that.

 

[lunamoth]

OK, some of arguments against a historical Resurrection.

1. Fraud perpetuated by the disciples (because they preferred preaching the Gospel to working! - Reimarus, writing in 1778). Disciples stole the body and hid it. This was probably a point raised very soon after the start of Christianity.

2. Resuscitation, Jesus is an example of 'deliverance from premature burial.' This theory was promoted by HEG Paulus writing in 1828. Jesus allowed the lie to persist. He dressed in gardeners clothes, which is part of the reason Mary did not recognize him.

3. A traditional myth, an idea promoted by DF Strauss (writing in 1835-36). Never meant to be literal.

4. It was a 'spiritual resurrection' of the faith of the apostles, perhaps accompanied by hallucinations/visions (C Weisse writing in 1968).

5. The disciples' attempt to convey the meaning of the Cross (Bultmann writing in 1953). This is closest to Borg's anaylsis. The meaning and power of the cross is taken very seriously, but the historicity of the Resurrection is denied.

 

[PandaMentionalBeing]

Another argument is based upon the Solstice, where the SUN sets in the same spot for three days. The ancients seen this as symbolic for the Son's/Sun's Death, and Resurrection at the end of the three days.

 

[Janz]

lunamoth,
I have had some of my more scholarly; but extremely devote Anglican friends recommend NT Wright so I have started reading some of his essays. Very interesting stuff and what appeals to me is that both liberals and conservatives criticize him. Here are a couple of thoughts from his essay: The Resurrection and the Postmodern Dilemma.
I guess I believe that the most of the arguments regarding the Resurrection are grounded in Modernity while our culture is moving toward postmodern thought.

First, knowledge and truth. Where modernism thought it could know things objectively about the world, postmodernism has reminded us that there is no such thing as neutral knowledge. Everybody has a point of view, and that point of view distorts. Everybody describes things the way that suits them. There is no such thing as objective truth. Likewise, there are no such things as objective values, only preferences. I heard somebody say at a meeting in 1996, “Today, attitudes are more important than facts—and we can document that!” That statement trembles on the brink between modernity and postmodernity. The cultural symbols that encapsulate this revolution are the personal stereo and the virtual-reality screen; everyone creates their own private world.

Second, the self. Modernity vaunted the great lonely individual, the all-powerful “I,” symbolised perfectly in Descartes’s cogito ergo sum and in the proud claim, “I am the master of my fate. . . the captain of my soul.”1 But postmodernity has deconstructed the self, the “I.” The “I” now may be just a floating signifier, a temporary and accidental meeting place of conflicting forces and impulses. Just as reality collapses inward upon the knower, the knower deconstructs itself.

Third, the story. Modernity implied a narrative about the way the world was. It was essentially an eschatological story. World history had been steadily moving toward, or at least eagerly awaiting, the point at which the industrial revolution and the philosophical enlightenment would burst upon the world bringing a new era of blessing for all. This huge overarching story—such overarching stories are known in this postmodernist world as metanarratives—now has been conclusively shown to be an oppressive, imperialist, and self-serving construct. It has brought untold misery to millions in the industrialized West, and to billions in the rest of the world, where cheap labor and raw materials have been ruthlessly exploited. It is a story that serves the interest of Western industrial capitalism. Modernity stands condemned of building a new tower of Babel. Postmodernity has gone on to claim, primarily with this great metanarrative as the example, that all metanarratives are suspect. They are all power games.

Collapsing reality, deconstructing selfhood, and the death of the metanarrative—these are the keys to understanding postmodernity. It is a ruthless application of the hermeneutic of suspicion to everything that the post-Enlightenment Western world has held dear. It corresponds exactly with the microchip revolution, which has generated and sustained a world m which creating new apparent realities, living in one’s own private world, and telling one’s own story, even though it does not cohere with anybody rise’s story, becomes easier and easier. This, on one level, is what the Internet is about. We live in a cultural, economic, moral, and even religious smorgasbord. “Pick-n-mix” is the order of the day.

For more reading as to how people of faith should respond see:
The Resurrection and the Postmodern Dilemma by N.T. Wright

I studied this when I was in Seminary; and it has been many years; however, I found myself intellectually stimulated by the theories of the late Stanley J. Grenz: Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context and the Contemporary Christian Philosopher, Nancey Murphy: Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism.

I don't know if this helps but I found it interesting.

 

[Janz]

Of course, for N.T. Wright the resurrection is a historic event - coherent with the world view of Second Temple Judaism - fundamental to the New Testament. I have yet to study the concept of Second Temple Judaism but I am looking forward to doing so.

 

[lunamoth]

lunamoth,
I have had some of my more scholarly; but extremely devote Anglican friends recommend NT Wright so I have started reading some of his essays. Very interesting stuff and what appeals to me is that both liberals and conservatives criticize him. Here are a couple of thoughts from his essay: The Resurrection and the Postmodern Dilemma.
I guess I believe that the most of the arguments regarding the Resurrection are grounded in Modernity while our culture is moving toward postmodern thought.

Thank you for the link Jamarz. I've read some NT Wright and I like his stuff quite a lot. (I disagree with his conclusions about homosexuality, but that does not invalidate his theology).

This essay is great and I'm going to forward it to the rest of my seminar class. He has a lot of sermons and writings online but I don't think I've read this exact one before. I especially like the end:

And how long must it be before we learn that our task as Christians is to be in the front row of constructing the post-postmodern world? The individual existential angst of the 1960s has become the corporate and cultural angst of the 1990s. What is the Christian answer to it? The Christian answer is the love of God, which goes through death and out the other side. What is missing from the postmodern equation is, of course, love. The radical hermeneutic of suspicion that characterizes postmodernity is essentially nihilistic, denying the very possibility of creative or healing love. In the cross and resurrection of Jesus we find the answer: the God who made the world is revealed in terms of a self-giving love that no hermeneutic of suspicion can ever touch; in a Self that found itself by giving itself away, in a Story that was never manipulative, but always healing and recreating; and in a Reality that can truly be known, a Reality that, being known, reveals a new dimension of knowledge, the dimension of loving and being loved.

We have a chance, as this century draws to a close, to announce this message to the world that so badly needs it. I believe we have this as our vocation: to tell the story, to live by the symbols, to act out the praxis, and to answer the questions in such a way as to become, in ourselves and our mission in God’s world, the answer to the prayer that now rises, not just from one puzzled psalmist, but from the whole human race and indeed the whole of God’s creation: O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling. And when we ourselves are grasped by that light and that truth by the strange glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we, from within the crisis of truth in the contemporary world, can say to those parts of our world that are still dismayed: Why are you cast down? Why so disquieted? Was it not necessary that these things should happen? Hope in God; for we shall again praise him, our help and our God.

And then his great parable about the two post-modernists on the road to Dover Beach.

 

[Janz]

^ Me, too. The Theology of Hope. Isn't that the underlying Truth of the Gospel of Grace?

 

[lunamoth]

^ Me, too. The Theology of Hope. Isn't that the underlying Truth of the Gospel of Grace?

I think that is pretty much hitting the nail on the head.

 

[wil]

My denomoninations thought is that it is the culmination of his teachings. He could have simply ascended, and avoided the cross, but he was teaching us to overcome, and proving the prophecy.

Me personally, I don't buy it. I can accept that it could have happenned but I don't believe it is proven. There is a thought that he and the group were using a drug to immitate death, lowering heart beat, breath etc. Lazurus was a test subject that was written about. I think that is possible, but I think more probable is the followers needed a resurection, a G!d/man to stack this new religion up against the old ones... we need our miracles.

For me it is part of my salvation for sure, the fact that I need to die to my self and be born anew...

 

[lunamoth]

My denomoninations thought is that it is the culmination of his teachings. He could have simply ascended, and avoided the cross, but he was teaching us to overcome, and proving the prophecy.

Me personally, I don't buy it. I can accept that it could have happenned but I don't believe it is proven. There is a thought that he and the group were using a drug to immitate death, lowering heart beat, breath etc. Lazurus was a test subject that was written about. I think that is possible, but I think more probable is the followers needed a resurection, a G!d/man to stack this new religion up against the old ones... we need our miracles.

For me it is part of my salvation for sure, the fact that I need to die to my self and be born anew...

Would you welcome a follow-up question to this wil?

 

[Nick_A]

Greater emphasis is on crucifixion in traditional Christianity. God "gave his only son to die for us" - death being the measure of God's love for us. Jesus "died for our sins," and is thus our savior.

In esoteric Christianity the crucifixion was necessary and Jesus knew it had to come.
From this point of view, all the arguments about the crucifixion as evil are irrelevant. It had to happen so there is nothing to argue about.

The resurrection is about the creation of the "New Man."

Romans 6 refers to freedom from the old man.

5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with,[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

Ephesians 2 refers to the creation of the New Man in a new body that reconciles our lower and higher natures.

14For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Colossians 3 refers to the process of the birth of the new man

9Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

1 Corinthians refers to the body of the new man

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"[e]; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we[f] bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

Secular politics argues the crucifixion and who is at fault. Esoteric understanding knows that the crucifixion was necessary to begin the ladder, the vine, that connects heaven and earth with Jesus at the beginning. After the resurrection, those capable could follow.

John 15
1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. 3You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

The vine grow upward toward the sun, towards the "good," the Father.

 

[Thomas]

Hi Lunamoth —

In looking at your Resurection arguments, it's worth looking at the people behind them, as it were — notably the movement grew out of German philosophical attitudes to the Enlightenment.

In matters of philosophy, the emphasis in Germany was on the invalidity of historical data. Prior to the Enlightenment, all history was suspect, deeply flawed, and unreliable. What one has to do, by textual criticism, is strip away everything that is superficial and superstitious, to arrive at the truth.

The First Quest for the Historical Jesus
It is a given of course therefore, that history is untrue, although how truth can be extracted from unreliable data is not explained. So, in asking the question "Who was Jesus?" there are certain facts we must start from:
1 He was not the Son of God.
2 He was not born of a virgin.
3 He did not perform miracles.
4 He did not resurrect from the dead.
5 Nigh-on everything we know about Him is a myth.

In short, He was a Jewish apocalyptic prophet who might well have worked seeming wonders, and might well have been wise beyond His years, but that's all He was, and He was crucified because He was a trouble-maker.
H S Reimarus (1694-1768), the founder of the Quest for the Historical Jesus, was a philosopher of the Enlightenment who worked on the principle that man can arrive at a knowledge of God based on the empirical evidence and proper reasoning. Taking it as given that everything prior to the Enlightenment was suspect — all 'history' was declared unreliable by the Enlightenment — then its evident that religion, especially a Christian one founded on the idea of revelation, is false, the product of primitive superstition.

Thus anything in Scripture that does not accord with empirical investigation and the proper exercise of human logic must be false. There were no miracles, no signs ... in fact most of Scripture can be disposed of. What we have to do is extract the truth from Scripture, and arrive at a vision of Jesus stripped of all the clothing of God, the supernatural, the miraculous, and so on, to find the man.

H E G Paulus (1761-1851) was another critic of Scripture. He was a rationalist and a Lutheran by influence so refuted all dogma and anything of the Church. He insisted on a natural explanation for everything that is recorded in Scripture, it's just that the authors were too ignorant to realise it.

D F Strauss (1808-1874) yet another anti-Christian and pantheist theologian who portrayed the "historical Jesus" as whose divine nature he denied, he, with the above, is still considered a pioneer in the historical investigation of Jesus.

Marcus Borg (b 1942), a proponent of the "Jesus Seminar" ("Third Quest") suggests "the details of Strauss's argument, his use of Hegelian philosophy, and even his definition of myth, have not had a lasting impact. Yet his basic claims — that many of the Gospel narratives are mythical in character, and that "myth" is not simply to be equated with "falsehood" — have become part of mainstream scholarship."
So in short, his methodology has been disputed and disposed of, but somehow it's product remains as viable.

F Baur (1792-1860), a leader of the Tübingen school of theology argued that Strauss' critique of the history in the gospels was not based on a thorough examination of the manuscript traditions of the documents themselves, but on his own assumptions of the historical process.

A Schweitzer (1875-1965) ended up challenging both the traditional view of Christianity, as well as the views proposed by 'First Quest' German theology. He believed Jesus expected the immanent end of the world upon his death, and that his disciples, illiterate to a man, failed to realise this — the message being changed by later disciples who realised it was too late to turn back.

Schweitzer eventually distanced himself from Reimarus and Strauss, accusing them of too-violently seeking to damage Christianity in pursuing their own philosophical agendas.

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

My denominations thought is that it is the culmination of his teachings. He could have simply ascended, and avoided the cross, but he was teaching us to overcome, and proving the prophecy.

But then surely there would be no resurrection, just a message, and a rather old and tired one, at that. There's nothing Jesus taught, except Himself, that was not orthodox Judaism ...

(By the way, that doctrine is refuted in John, and in Docetism ... )

Me personally, I don't buy it. I can accept that it could have happenned but I don't believe it is proven.

Oh ye of little faith!

There is a thought that he and the group were using a drug to immitate death, lowering heart beat, breath etc. Lazurus was a test subject that was written about. I think that is possible, but I think more probable is the followers needed a resurection, a G!d/man to stack this new religion up against the old ones... we need our miracles.

Then the whole thing is founded on a confidence trick and a lie ... not every 'enlightened' in my book ... I mean, if that bit is fake, then all of it is fake, so the whole lot is a lie, surely?

For me it is part of my salvation for sure, the fact that I need to die to my self and be born anew...

But according to you, He didn't die and wasn't born anew ... so not only do you think the story is fake, but you've constructed your own belief on what you know is a fake? If He didn't die, this 'born again' thing is just a crock of nonsense, it's not a fact, not a myth, not a metaphor, nor allegory, nor analogy ... it's just a lie.

I think God can do better than resort to magician's trick to fool an audience into believing in Him ... if not, He's not worth a light ...

Thomas