So one of the scripture readings at the Easter service yesterday was from 1 Corinthians 15, where St. Paul argues for the reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus not only from the evidence of testimony (including his own encounter, recorded in idealized detail in the Book of Acts), but from a kind of inexorable logic. It seems that some of the good Christians of Corinth were teaching that there was to be no general resurrection of the dead; St. Paul chastises them on this by asking a simple question: If there is no resurrection of the dead, how can they preach that Jesus was raised from the dead? He goes off on a riff, insisting that either Jesus was raised from the dead, which proves that the dead shall indeed be raised, or the dead do not raise, in which case Jesus was not raised, and all of the kerygma of the early Church is a lie. He even says, at one point, that if the dead are not raised, then Christian who so believe are even more pitiable than others, because their entire worldview, their entire message, is based upon a lie. All they teach, all they preach, all their work in the world, all their hope for the coming Kingdom of God is a fanciful tale.
I realized with that marvelous insight that comes with time and a tired brain, as that particular passage was read, that N. T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God is nothing more than 800 or so pages expanding this particular theme. That is to say, while we can certainly discuss the differences and distinctions among a variety of Scripture scholars and theologians on the question, for Wright in this particular work - for all the chapters on the raising of the dead in the thought of antiquity and related cultures of the Levant; of the emergence of the resurrection of the dead in Second Temple Judaism; of the way the early Christian believers took that idea and molded it to suit their needs - in essence, Wright is insisting on the reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead as necessary to keep the rest of the Christian message from being understood as nonsensical.
On this point he is exactly right. Even more than the death of Jesus - important as that is - it is his rising from the dead never to die again that clinches our understanding of who we are as a people. Our reverence for his teachings, our collective memory we call Scripture and tradition, our liturgy and worship all melt in to air if we deny the reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Yet, my guess is if we were to poll most Christians, across denominations and ideological perspectives, I would think it quite likely most believers today would deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. They would interpret it, in all likelihood, allegorically; in many ways, German Scripture scholar Rudolf Bultmann anticipated this particular way of thinking in his existentialist readings of the New Testament. Going back even further, we can read the Glaubenslehre of Friedrich Schleiermacher as doing much the same thing. Rather than "deny" the resurrection, Schleiermacher and many of his followers in the period of Romantic theology in the 19th century reinterpreted it (see Karl Barth's lectures on 19th century theology, Protestant Thought: From Rousseau to Ritschl, a work praised by no less a scholar than Martin Marty).
For all that Wright insists on the basic reality, the fact of Jesus resurrection from the dead, he skirts many issues, not the least of them being any way to historically verify (or perhaps falsify) the claim. One reason I think this is so is far too much of the scholarly discussion around this very heated question involves an understanding of the subtle distinctions in German theology of the different ways to speak of "history". Rather than get mired in such detail, he takes the path of St. Paul. He discusses The Martyrdom of Polycarp and other pre-Constantinian writings that testify to the intractability of many Christians' belief in the resurrection of Jesus and what it means for them. He garners from this review of so many people being quite willing to refuse, even under torture, to deny the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, that it was for them something real in a way that defies our contemporary attempts to reinterpret it and therefore deny it.
Yet, the question as we emerge from the celebration of Easter Sunday, is pressed upon this writer: Do I believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and with that belief in my own resurrection from the dead at the end of time?
I can only give a simple answer to this question: Yes.
If you want proof, I have none to offer other than the efficacy of the Christian faith in my own life. Proof is for people who don't want to believe, as far as I'm concerned. Beyond the simple fact that I do so believe, I can only say that I am edified by many of those who at one and the same time skirt the question of the reality of the resurrection, yet affirm the significance of such belief in the life of the Church. Yet, I think such people - Paul Tillich, the aforementioned Bultmann, my former bishop Joe Sprague - are far too willing to succumb to the modernist temptation; they are willing to trade that most precious gift laid at the feet of the Church, the proclamation of new life in the risen Christ, for far more convoluted discussions of "meaning" that divorce that meaning from any actual event (and, ah, that last word is another freighted by far too much meaning).
If this declaration makes the reader uncomfortable; if it makes my other writings no longer worthy of serious consideration because I am willing to submit myself to this bit of pre-modern thought, then all I can say is, "Oh, well." The resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and what it portends not just for me personally - not really the center of my won faith anyway - but for all of creation, makes of my own belief not something that is negotiable. On the contrary, it roots all the other things I believe - my trust in science as an explanation for all sorts of phenomena in the world; my political and social beliefs; my rage at injustice; my hope for the future in the face of all sorts of evidence that it might not be as bright as one could wish - and I find all these confirmed each and everyday in countless ways. I need not justify to those who would reject belief in the resurrection of Jesus why it is so I believe. I make the declaration, and can explain how it functions as a source of hope and life for myself and millions of other believers. Beyond that, well, if you don't like it, all I can say is, "Been nice talking to you." I will affirm the resurrection anyway. Those who rest easy in their modernist pose have many other qualities that I find distasteful, so I am really not interested in their good opinion at any rate.
So, with millions of believers around the world, I say with all seriousness, "He is risen, indeed!"
Virtual Tin Cup
