Historicity of the Resurrection

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Unit D

Did Jesus Really Rise From the Dead?

© Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D./Magis Institute July 2011

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N.T. Wright’s Arguments for the Historicity of the Resurrection

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Introduction

The previous unit showed that Saint Paul and all the Evangelists agree on one point (though in very different ways), namely, that Jesus appeared in a transmaterial-corporeal form on multiple occasions to multiple witnesses, implying that these appearances were physically mediated and physically seen. The many attestations to this point, from different traditions and in very different ways, the early dating of the resurrection narratives (before 50 AD ), and Paul’s validation of the witnesses’ testimony, bestows considerable historical probity on the testimony of Paul and the Evangelists. Is there any other way of verifying or corroborating the historicity of the resurrection appearances as described? In his two exhaustive studies of historical research into Jesus (Jesus and the Victory of God and The Resurrection of the Son of God), N.T. Wright gives three kinds of arguments for the historicity of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances:

(1) implications of the historicity of the resurrection from the uniqueness of the early Church’s development (Section 1),

(2) an argument for the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection from early Christian mutations of the notion of “resurrection” (Section 2), and

(3) an argument for the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection from mutations in the notions of “messiah” and “kingdom” (Section 3).

A summary of these three historical arguments will show not only how historically well-grounded the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus really are, but also how accurately Paul and the Evangelists have described it – as transmaterial-corporeal appearances.

After completing this historical project, we will be in a position to discuss the impact of the resurrection on the Church’s declaration that Jesus is Lord (Section 4).

Implications of the Historicity of the Resurrection from the Uniqueness of the Early Church’s Development

E. P. Sanders presents the key insight of Wright’s argument as follows:

What is unique [about Jesus’ claim to bring the kingdom of God] is the result. But, again, we cannot know that the result springs from the uniqueness of the historical Jesus. Without the resurrection, would his disciples have endured longer than did John the Baptist’s? We can only guess, but I would guess not.

Wright expands this insight by noting that it applies not only to the disciples of John the Baptist, but also to the followers of:

Judas the Galilean, Simon, Athronges, Eleazar ben Deinaus and Alexander, Menahem, Simon bar Giora, and bar-Kochba himself. Faced with the defeat of their leader, followers of such figures would either be rounded up as well or melt away into the undergrowth. The other possibility was to latch onto a new leader…

None of this happened to the early church. The disciples maintained their identity and strangely did not replace Jesus as the true leader of their community. Indeed, the early Church acknowledged Jesus as the leader of the community. Wright is justifiably amazed by this and notes:

in not one case do we hear of any group, after the death of its leader, claiming that he was in any sense alive again, and that therefore Israel’s expectation had in some strange way actually come true.

Not only do Jesus’ disciples survive and maintain their identity, they uniquely uphold Jesus as their leader (after the crucifixion) and assert that He is the fulfillment of Israel’s promised destiny. But this early community is even stranger still. It actually begins to worship Jesus as Lord, associate Him with divine status, and attribute to Him co-eternity with the Father. This is not only historically unique, but also apologetically unappealing – so much so that the early Church had to pay the ultimate cost for it (including separation from the synagogue and even persecution).

Yet the history of the early Church is stranger still. The community organized itself in a unique way – resembling neither its Jewish predecessor, nor an ethnic group worshipping a tribal deity, nor a private religious club. Wright observes:

So different was it, after all, that the early Christians sometimes had to argue to the authorities, against apparent appearances, that they were in some sense or other a ‘religious’ organization.

Yet the early Church’s self-organization was stranger still. It organized itself into a missionary community that not only went beyond the boundaries of Israel but also to the very frontiers of the Roman Empire, making it one of the most pluralistic religious organizations in history of religions. With a crucified Messiah as its head, the early Church formed one of the most dynamically expansive communities in history.

We are now led back to N.T. Wright’s probative questions. Why didn’t the Church follow the patterns of other groups whose leaders had been persecuted? Why did it (uniquely) consider Jesus as its continued leader? Why did it consider Jesus (after the crucifixion) to be the fulfillment of Israel’s destiny? Why did it organize itself so uniquely? Why did it worship Jesus and endure persecution for that worship? How did it become one of the most inspired and dynamically expansive organizations in the history of religions with a publicly humiliated and executed “Messiah” as its sole leader?

The answer to these questions requires some kind of cause which would serve as a sufficient explanation for why Christianity does not follow the pattern of other religions or messianic movements. Why does Christianity pick up momentum from a crucified leader when other messianic movements at the time quickly faded away? Why didn’t Christianity pick out another leader in the face of its leader’s crucifixion, like other messianic movements whose leaders were executed? Above all, why did it become such a powerful Messianic movement capable of threatening the Roman Empire within two generations after that same empire executed its Messiah and (with the help of others) tried to extinguish it through persecution?

It is neither reasonable nor responsible to conclude that these remarkable anomalies which characterize early Christianity (but do not characterize any other religious movement in the first or any other century) do not require a cause (sufficient explanation). What kind of cause is required? A powerful one – one capable of overcoming the crucifixion of the movement’s leader, capable of communicating both imminent and transcendent hope in the midst of the crucifixion of the movement’s leader, capable of revealing that God’s kingdom had arrived in the world, and capable of providing sufficient momentum to turn a little Jewish sub-cult into an empire-wide – indeed, worldwide religion within two generations. This powerful cause would seem to be the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in combination with His gift of the Holy Spirit.

The forthcoming two arguments (in Sections 2 and 3) will lend great probity to this conclusion, revealing the reality of what modernity finds quite unpalatable – the glory of God in our midst – the arrival of God’s kingdom in the world.

An Argument for the Historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection from Early Christian Mutations of the Notion of “Resurrection”

Wright’s argument for the historicity of Jesus’ bodily resurrection is grounded in his exhaustive study which shows that the early Church’s mutations of the Jewish resurrection belief cannot be explained from within second-Temple Judaism, or paganism. These rapid, widespread mutations seem to require an experience by multiple witnesses of an appearance of Jesus very similar to the one portrayed in the resurrection narratives and implied in 1Corinthians 15 (see Article C), along with an experience of the empty tomb.

Stated in Wright’s more formal way, the resurrection appearances portrayed in the Gospel narratives and implied by Saint Paul along with the evidence of Jesus’ empty tomb, provide a necessary and sufficient condition for these mutations. Since no other known hypothetical explanation provides both a necessary and sufficient condition for the early Church’s mutations of resurrection belief, it is highly probable that the Gospel narratives’ portrayal of Jesus’ transmaterial-corporeal appearance and His empty tomb are historical. As will be explained below, this argument does not perfectly establish the historicity of Jesus’ bodily resurrection, but it does achieve a very high degree of probability, and comes as close as any historical argument can to showing its historicity.

Wright describes the well-known elements of necessary and sufficient conditions in a simple, lucid way – a necessary condition is one without which an effect cannot occur (for Wright, electricity is a necessary condition for the function of his computer). A sufficient condition is one that will “get the job done” (for Wright, a sufficient condition of his remaining awake at night are bagpipes outside his window). The problem is that sufficient conditions do not have to be necessary (there are other possible explanations for Wright staying awake, besides the bagpipes playing outside the window). Furthermore, all necessary explanations are not necessarily sufficient (electricity alone is not enough to run the computer – it needs software, and presumably an intelligent user, etc.).

Therefore, if we are going to prove that a condition really had to exist (that it really had to be historically present), we will have to show that: (1) it is sufficient to explain certain historical phenomena and (2) all other known explanations or groups of explanations are not sufficient (making the condition in question the only sufficient explanation). How does this apply to Wright’s argument? Wright first shows that something highly unusual took place in the early Christian Church, namely, a very rapid and widespread mutation of resurrection belief that is quite unique by both Jewish and pagan standards. The question naturally arises, “What could be the historical cause(s) of this highly unusual phenomenon?” The first explanation is the one given by the Christian Church itself – namely, that Jesus appeared to His apostles and other early witnesses in a transmaterial-corporeal state, and His tomb was empty. Wright then moves through the twofold steps mentioned above:

(1) he shows that this explanation is a sufficient condition for explaining the rapid, widespread mutation in resurrection belief within the Christian Church, and

(2) he then shows that other explanations and groups of explanations are not sufficient to explain this. He tests six major ones which will be discussed below in II.B. Other explanations may be adduced, but they are inferior to the ones listed in II.B.

The Transmaterial-Corporeal Resurrection of Jesus as Sufficient Condition

Wright shows that early Christians operated within the “mental milieu” of second-Temple Judaism, and particularly one strand of this milieu. Scholars can see the remnants of this strand of second-Temple Judaism in Christian beliefs, but they are radically changed in several respects which are not traceable to that strand.

So how did the notion of “resurrection” develop during second-Temple Judaism (from 516 BC to 70 AD)? Wright shows that second-Temple Judaism’s notion of “resurrection” may be generally viewed as the present state of those who had died being replaced by a future state in which they would be alive once more (a whole community restoration to bodily life).

There is nothing like this concept in paganism. As Wright shows, the pagan world was dominated by the belief that the soul would be separated from the body, that the body would die and never be restored, and that the soul was very likely destined to be in Hades, manifest as a mere shadow of its former self.

Second-Temple Judaism, in contrast, held that the Creator was good, and that sometime after death (after a period of “sleep”) the Creator would restore the body back to life in a way that was similar to its previous state. During the period of 2Macabees and beyond, the metaphor of resurrection (used to describe Israel’s return from exile) became literal and described the Creator’s restoration of embodiment to those who had died. This would be done collectively at some future date when all the righteous would be restored to bodily life together in a new world.

As Wright notes, the above doctrine requires an intermediate state – generally, a continuance of existence as a disembodied soul in a realm like Sheol, until the time of the future age when Yahweh would restore these incomplete beings to embodiment. There are some exceptions to this outlook (e.g., the Sadducees, who believed that the disembodied soul-like state would continue in perpetuity), but these were rare, and frequently bore resemblance to Hellenistic (pagan) thinking.

Early Christian thought was formulated within the context of this Second Temple thinking, but it was significantly different. Wright lists many significant mutations from second-Temple Judaism which are uniformly recognized in Christian writings and doctrine. Five of the more important uniformly manifest mutations are as follows:

(1) The Jewish picture of resurrection was a return to the same kind of bodily life as the one experienced before death (except in a new world with the righteous). Paul’s and other Christian’s views always entailed transformation into a very different kind of life – incorruptible and glorious, while still maintaining embodiment.

(2) No one was ever thought to have risen from the dead before the initiation of the final age by Yahweh – yet this happens with Jesus, and is part of early Christianity.

(3) No one connected the Messiah to the resurrection or the Jewish doctrine of resurrection to the Messiah prior to Christianity: “There are no traditions about a Messiah being raised to life: most Jews of this period hoped for resurrection, many Jews of this period hoped for a Messiah, but nobody put those two hopes together until the early Christians did so.”

(4) For the Jewish people, the eschatological age was in the future; for Christians the eschatological age had already arrived (and would be completed in the future).

(5) The doctrine of resurrection is central to the earliest writings of Christianity (e.g., 9 out of 10 of the primitive kerygmas), central to the writings of Paul and all the Gospel writers, and is the interconnecting theme among early Christian doctrines. The doctrine of the resurrection grounds Christology, particularly the doctrine of Christ’s glorification and, in part, the doctrine of Christ’s divinity; it grounds the Christian doctrine of soteriology – “for if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised” (1Cor 15:16); it shows God’s vindication of Jesus’ teaching; it grounds Christian eschatology; and is, in every respect, central to all other doctrines. Second-Temple Judaism does not place the resurrection in any such central role, and does not use it as an interconnecting theme for its doctrines.

The above five uniformly manifest mutations require some kind of explanation – a sufficient explanation, because there is no natural path of causation from the view of second-Temple Judaism to that of Christianity (particularly with respect to the resurrection) as might be expected. Indeed, a different, more nuanced doctrine spontaneously emerges and is uniformly manifest within the Christian worldview. Now, uniformly accepted central doctrines which are quite different from the intellectual-religious milieu in which they are immersed, just don’t happen by spontaneous generation or pure chance (consider the odds!). Thus, they point to a cause – normally a very powerful cause. It would not be either intellectually honest or academically responsible to ignore the need for this cause.

So, why did the early Christian Church uniformly change the Second Temple Judaic view of resurrection to one of transmaterial embodiment instead of maintaining the view that resurrection would be a return to physical embodiment? Why did it claim that the final age had already arrived instead of deferring it to the future? Why did it connect resurrection and messiahship? Why did it make resurrection central to all doctrines instead of holding that it was one among many doctrines?

Are Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances (as implicitly given by Paul and narratively given by the Gospel writers) sufficient to explain the above five mutations? Clearly they are. As shown in the previous article, the Pauline account as well as the Gospel accounts all show elements of transmaterial embodiment in the appearance of the risen Jesus. The already-initiated final time is indicated by both the corporeality of the appearance (revealing resurrection and the final time in second-Temple Judaism) and the transmaterial transformation of the appearance (indicating the presence of divine glory in the world and an initiation of the eschatological age). Jesus’ resurrection appearance was so powerful that it was considered to be a proof not only of His messiahship, but also of His lordship (with all of its divine implications); and so powerful that it became central to the whole of early Christian doctrine. Thus, the historical reality of Jesus’ transmaterial-corporeal appearance is sufficient to explain these uniformly promulgated mutations in early Christian doctrine and worldview. Indeed, as will be seen, it is the most historically plausible and elegant explanation. Now the question remains, “are Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances the only adducible sufficient condition?”

The Transmaterial-Corporeal Resurrection of Jesus as the Only Adducible Sufficient Condition

What makes a sufficient condition necessary? In mathematics, science, and metaphysics, necessary conditions are provable – meaning that if the condition is not accepted as true, an intrinsic contradiction, a contradiction of fact, or a contradiction of an axiom will result. However, in historical method, necessary conditions cannot be deductively proved, and so one is left with inductive method, which is less conclusive, but nevertheless efficacious.

What does inductive method consist in?—showing that all other feasible alternative explanations are insufficient. In history there are two categories of such alternative explanations: (1) the historical milieu out of which an historical phenomenon arose, or (2) a cause (or causes) for a radical break with the historical milieu. Generally speaking, if the historical milieu explains the phenomenon, then there is no need to postulate a cause for a radical break with the historical milieu. However, if the historical milieu does not explain the phenomenon, then one must postulate a cause sufficient to explain a radical break from that milieu.

Wright accomplishes this task by asking what might have caused the early Christians to mutate second-Temple Judaism’s view of resurrection in the above five ways (see above, II.A). The most obvious cause is the one mentioned above, namely, Jesus’ transmaterial-corporeal post-resurrection appearance to multiple witnesses. He then provides six alternative explanations which cover the range offered by historical and exegetical critics over the last two centuries. The first two are explanations from the historical milieu of early Christianity: (1) second-Temple Judaism and (2) paganism. The last four are causes which might explain a radical break from the historical milieu of early Christianity: (3) early Christian interior visions or experiences, (4) the empty tomb alone, (5) cognitive dissonance, and (6) a new experience of grace.

Wright believes that both the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus and the empty tomb constitute a sufficient condition to explain the above five mutations in the early Christian view of resurrection, and so he postulates a seventh alternative explanation, namely, the resurrection appearances alone (i.e., without the empty tomb). Although I agree with Wright in principle, I depart from him in one respect. I believe that the experience of the risen Jesus (even if His appearance were significantly transformed in glory, light, and power) could have had sufficient corporeal elements to suggest to the women, the disciples, and Paul that Jesus was embodied – and even continuous with His former embodiment. In some parts of his argument, Wright suggests that the early witnesses’ conclusion about Jesus’ corporeality would have had to have been tied to the experience of the empty tomb (i.e., that the empty tomb is an integral part of a sufficient condition). Given that Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance was embodied (as well as transmaterial), there could have been sufficient corporeality in the appearance to explain the early Christian doctrine of the resurrection without necessarily making recourse to the empty tomb.

Nevertheless, I do believe that the empty tomb is an historically deducible conclusion from the resurrection appearances; for even if the disciples had not experienced the empty tomb prior to the resurrection appearances (as I believe they did), the resurrection appearances would have compelled them to go back to the tomb to check for the body that they had in some respect experienced in the appearance. Not to have done so would have left the apostles open to an undefeatable polemic from their critics (“Those disciples claimed that Jesus was bodily alive, yet we have discovered his body still in the tomb”). The early Church was not subject to this polemic, but instead was confronted by a very different polemic from its adversaries which suggests that the tomb was quite empty – “His disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep” (Matt 28:13). In view of this, it is highly implausible that Jesus’ tomb was not discovered to be empty by both His disciples and others. As noted above, I agree with Wright in principle – namely, that the resurrection appearances would have had to have been accompanied by a verification of the empty tomb by Jesus’ disciples and others, but I do not believe that the resurrection appearances alone (given that they had an integral dimension of corporeality) could not have been sufficient in themselves.

Let us return now to the idea that the elimination of these six (or, in Wright’s case, seven) alternative explanations gets us as close to a necessary condition as historical method can provide. Wright readily acknowledges that some ingenious historian could invent yet another historical explanation which may not duplicate the six alternatives he refutes, but the tenability of these new alternative explanations becomes more and more problematic. Recall that there are two kinds of alternative explanations: (1) the historical milieu and (2) a cause (or causes) which might explain a break with the historical milieu. With respect to explanations from the historical milieu, there are no other alternative explanations to second-Temple Judaism, paganism, or some combination of the two. This means that a new alternative explanation will have to be a cause which explains a radical break with the historical milieu. As we shall see, these new alternative explanations (beyond visions, the empty tomb alone, cognitive dissonance, and Schillebeeckx’s new experience of grace), become progressively more untenable because they require more implausible historical assumptions, more unfounded speculation to weave the implausible historical assumptions together, and very extravagant explanatory devices (violating Ockham’s razor) in order to make them work. The historians who invent them may well be ingenious, but the explanations fall far short of plausibility and elegance.

As noted above, historical method does not lead to a deduction of necessity in the same way as mathematics, metaphysics, and science. However, it can arrive at very high probability by narrowing the range of sufficient alternative explanations to the point where new alternative explanations become speculative, bloated, implausible, and quite candidly, laughable. I believe Wright has accomplished this in his argument in Chapter 18 of The Resurrection of the Son of God. I will briefly outline his refutation of the sufficiency of the above six alternative explanations for early Christianity’s five mutations of second-Temple Judaism’s view of resurrection. This will substantiate (as far as historical method can) the historicity of Jesus’ transmaterial-corporeal appearance to His disciples as the only adducible sufficient condition.

Wright begins with an examination of the two explanations from early Christianity’s historical milieu: (1) second-Temple Judaism, and (2) paganism.

(1) Second-temple Judaism. Much of the foregoing analysis in this article has been devoted to explaining five early Christian mutations of second-Temple Judaism’s view of resurrection. These mutations are so significant that they simply cannot be explained by the early Christians’ Jewish background (see above, Section II.A.). It is no more probable that early Christians could have derived their unique view of resurrection from second-Temple Judaism without an extraordinary cause (like Jesus’ resurrection), than deriving the periodic table and the laws of chemistry from medieval alchemy without the discovery of quantitative-experimental scientific method. Readers desiring a more enhanced explanation of this will want to read Wright’s exhaustive analysis in The Resurrection of the Son of God.

(2) Paganism. Paganism offers virtually no possibility of explaining the Christians’ view of resurrection, let alone their mutations of second-Temple Judaism. As shown above, paganism generally held that the soul would be separated from the body, that the body would die and never be restored, and that the soul was very likely destined to be in Hades, manifest as a mere shadow of its former self. The contrast between paganism and early Christianity is so stark that the attempt to derive the latter from the former is simply out of the question.

As may also be apparent, a combination of second-Temple Judaism and paganism is equally incapable of producing the unique uniform early Christian view of resurrection. This view stands on its own with its elements of both bodily resurrection and transmateriality; with its proclamation of a resurrected messiah; its view of an already initiated final age; and the centralization of resurrection within its doctrinal structure. It is, in a word, irreducible to the elements of its historical milieu.

Inasmuch as early Christianity’s view of the resurrection cannot be explained by its historical milieu, Wright turns to causes which might explain early Christianity’s break with its historical milieu (beyond the obvious one—Jesus’ appearance in transmaterial embodiment): (3) visions, (4) the empty tomb alone, (5) cognitive dissonance, and (6) Schillebeeckx’s new experience of grace.

(3) Early Christian interior visions or experiences. Given that the unique, uniform, early Christian view of resurrection did not come from its historical background, might it not have come from an interior vision of Jesus after His crucifixion? Wouldn’t a vision be sufficient to produce a whole new viewpoint on resurrection which becomes the central integrating theme of the doctrine of a religion which spread unceasingly throughout an empire which persecuted it? Wright suggests:

Most people in the ancient world (though not so many, it seems, in the modern world) knew that visions and appearances of recently dead people occurred. … Various theories can be advanced about the psychological state of the person who experiences them, though the evidence seems to suggest that in some cases at least the phenomena are clearly related to actual events….

There are two problems with this hypothesis: (a) interior visions did not communicate resurrection of the body in the ancient world, and (b) the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus were experienced by multiple witnesses which explains its endurance and evangelizing power. Let us discuss each in turn.

With respect to the first point, Wright shows that visions of the dead in the ancient world were quite normal and that these visions were never interpreted to be a resurrection of the body:

The more “normal” these “visions” were, the less chance there is that anyone, no matter how cognitively dissonant they may have been feeling, would have said what nobody had ever said about such a dead person before, that they had been raised from the dead.

Recall that “raised from the dead” refers to a resurrection of the body, and that this occurred with respect to Jesus, and that this grounded the early Church’s belief in the initiation of the final age. There is no reason to believe that a vision of Jesus after death would have had any more effect than the frequently occurring visions of other dead people – there is certainly no reason to believe that it would have had such a gigantic effect. The mere suggestion is a leaping non-sequitur.

There is another related objection to the sufficiency of the vision hypothesis, which is again linked to the normalcy of “visions of the dead” in the ancient world. The resurrection of Jesus had three verifiable effects: (a) it created a new, unique doctrine of the resurrection, (b) this doctrine became the central, integral theme of Christian doctrine, and (c) it provided the main force for the belief in Jesus’ messiahship and lordship which ultimately resulted in the spread of Christianity in the midst of persecution. Given that visions of the dead were quite normal in the ancient world, how could it have had these three remarkable effects? Again, we must point out the obvious leaping non-sequitur.

The vision hypothesis is not only incapable of explaining the Christian view of resurrection and the gigantic historical effect it had; it is also incapable of explaining the early Christian testimony to multiple, simultaneous witnesses. Paul speaks about Jesus appearing to the Twelve, and then to more than 500 brethren all at once, and then to all the apostles (which could have been over a period of time, but could have also been in groups). Unless one wants to discount all appearances to groups or a multitude (which is problematic in light of Paul’s remark, “most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep,” which invites contemporary readers and listeners to investigate for themselves), one has to explain how multiple witnesses can experience the same interior vision. Does God give the same interior vision to 500 people and coordinate all of their perspectives so that they believe that they saw the same thing? Wouldn’t it have been easier for God to just let Jesus appear in a physically mediated way so that one appearance would do, and He wouldn’t have to coordinate more than 500 independent experiences? Isn’t this carrying intrasubjectivity a bit too far? In order to take empirical objectivity out of the equation, critics have to complicate God’s work enormously. Why would God have done this? Because of a preference for inner visions rather than physically mediated, empirical appearances? Hmmm.

Then again, one might object, “Why attribute the multiple vision theory to God? Couldn’t it have naturally occurred?” The odds of 500 people having the same vision all coordinated to give the impression of having experienced the same reality by pure chance are exceedingly, exceedingly remote. If one accepts that appearances to groups are historical (which are attested to by Paul, Matthew, Luke, and John), then the interior vision explanation is neither tenable nor sufficient.

(4) The empty tomb alone. Some exegetes have contended that the empty tomb alone was sufficient to motivate early Christian belief in a bodily resurrection. They seem to believe that the stories about Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances were mere add-ons either to enhance the empty tomb story or to redress the polemic that they (Jesus’ disciples) had stolen the body. This hypothesis again emerges as quite insufficient for two reasons: (a) it suffers from the same problem as interior visions, namely, that empty tombs and grave robbery were quite normal in the ancient world; and (b) an empty tomb does not explain four out of five of the mutations made by early Christianity to the notion of resurrection in second-Temple Judaism. Let us take each in turn.

Wright addresses the first point with remarkable precision:

An empty tomb without any meetings with Jesus would have been a distressing puzzle, but not a long-term problem. It would have proved nothing; it would have suggested nothing, except the fairly common practice of grave-robbery. It certainly would not have generated the phenomena we have studied in this book so far. Tombs were often robbed in the ancient world, adding to grief both insult and injury. Nobody in the pagan world would have interpreted an empty tomb as implying resurrection; everyone knew such a thing was out of the question. Nobody in the ancient Jewish world would have interpreted it like that either; “resurrection” was not something anyone expected to happen to a single individual while the world went on as normal.

Again, we are confronted by our familiar leaping non-sequitur, which reveals the prima facie insufficiency of this explanation.

The second problem is equally devastating to the hypothesis, namely, that the empty tomb alone does not explain four out of five of the Christian mutations of resurrection in second-Temple Judaism. First, recall that Christians changed the doctrine of resurrection from “a return to former embodiment” to “transmaterial embodiment.” An empty tomb alone certainly does not demonstrate this unique and uniform change in doctrine. Secondly, second-Temple Judaism believed that resurrection would occur for the entire community of the righteous, but early Christianity believed that it happened to a single individual. Again, an empty tomb alone does not demonstrate this. Thirdly, second-Temple Judaism did not link messiahship with resurrection while the early Christian Church integrally linked them. Again, an empty tomb alone does not give any clue to the vindication of Jesus’ messiahship after his crucifixion. Finally, Christians believed that the final age had been initiated through a single person while earthy life continued on as at least quasi-normal. This was completely unheard of in second-Temple Judaism, and an empty tomb alone certainly would not have justified this belief.

What about a combination of the empty tomb plus a vision? Though the combination of these two might be somewhat more unusual than an empty tomb alone or a vision alone, the fact remains that it would not have been unusual in the ancient world for a tomb to have been robbed and a vision of the dead to have occurred. Though the combination is more unusual, it certainly does not warrant a whole new doctrine of the resurrection, the centrality of the doctrine to all other doctrines, and the power to motivate the inception of a religion in the midst of persecution. Furthermore, the combination does not justify any of the above-mentioned mutations of second-Temple Judaism’s doctrine of resurrection by early Christians. The combination of an empty tomb and a vision would not have indicated to ancient people transmaterial embodiment, the initiation of the final age, or the initiation of that final age by a single individual. Finally, it would not have indicated the messiahship-lordship of Jesus. Wright sums up by noting:

Had the tomb been empty, with no other unusual occurrences, no one would have imagined that Jesus was the Messiah or the lord of the world. No one would have imagined that the kingdom had been inaugurated. No one, in particular, would have developed so quickly and consistently a radical and reshaped version of the Jewish hope for the resurrection of the body. The empty tomb is by itself insufficient to account for the subsequent evidence.

We now move from what might be termed “more historically plausible and empirically/psychologically verifiable explanations” (such as historical milieu, visions, the empty tomb alone, or some combination of the three), to less historically plausible and less empirically/psychologically verifiable explanations. As will be seen, the forthcoming more complex explanations multiply the number of unwarranted historical assumptions and greatly amplify the explanatory systems needed for their believability. We will discuss the two explanations which Wright considers, while remembering that future explanations will have to continue this tendency to multiply unwarranted historical assumptions while increasing the explanatory apparatus for their believability.

(5) Cognitive dissonance. Wright summarizes this alternative explanation as follows:

This is the theory that the disciples were suffering from “cognitive dissonance”: the hypothetical state, studied within social psychology in which individuals or groups fail to come to terms with reality, but live instead in a fantasy which corresponds to their own deep longings.

Essentially, the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance begins with a group’s deep longing or yearning for some particular state of affairs which is followed by a disappointment of this yearning. The group cannot reconcile itself to the fact that its deepest yearning has been disappointed, and so it perpetuates a group state of denial which then provokes it to reorganize its view of reality to conform to this denied state of affairs. The group attempts to increase its numbers in order to help justify its interpretation of the denied state of affairs. Festinger and others have used examples of Japanese soldiers who have convinced themselves that they did not lose the war, and even a (somewhat dubious) flying saucer cult whose adherents convinced themselves that their intervention had caused God to save the world from a flood (which the cult predicted would happen, but did not). The cult was studied from the “inside” by various anthropologists (whose suggestions to the group may have exacerbated the phenomenon).

The application to the early Christian Church will by now be obvious – the early Christian Church really wanted Jesus to be the Messiah, and they were very disappointed when Jesus was crucified. Being unable to reconcile themselves to this fact, they reorganized their reality to resolve their dissonance and disappointment by projecting His resurrection into their reality. They further substantiated this by adding converts to their ranks.

There are several problems with this hypothesis. As the reader will by now suppose, this explanation does not explain four out of five mutations introduced by Christians into second-Temple Judaism’s notion of the resurrection. Why would cognitive dissonance have caused the early Christians to believe in a completely unique notion of the resurrection (i.e., transmaterial embodiment)? This goes completely beyond the needs of resolving their dissonance. Again, why would cognitive dissonance have caused the early Christians to believe in a completely unique view of the final age (initiated by a single individual while earthly life continued as quasi-normal)? This also goes completely beyond the needs of resolving their dissonance. Again, why would cognitive dissonance have caused early Christians to make their unique doctrine of the resurrection central and integral to all other doctrines? This is again far beyond the needs for resolving their dissonance. Thus, cognitive dissonance explains neither the need for nor the content of these mutations. The only mutation it seems to have a hope of explaining is the early Christians’ connection of messiahship and resurrection, but even then, the changed notion of messiahship (see below Section III) and resurrection are completely unexplained by the needs of resolving the dissonance. Wright sums this up as follows:

The real problem is something that any first-century historian should recognize: that whatever it was that the early Christians were expecting, wanting, hoping and praying for, this was not what they said, after Easter, had happened.

Cognitive dissonance arises out of disappointed expectations, but the early Christians did not expect anything like transmaterial embodiment, the initiation of the final age, the resurrection of a single individual, or the doctrinal centrality of the resurrection. Therefore, cognitive dissonance is an insufficient explanation for these historical occurrences.

(6) Schillebeeckx’s “new experience of grace.” Edward Schillebeeckx’s proposal may be summarized as follows: Peter (and some other disciples, apparently through his influence) had a wonderful experience of forgiveness and conversion which led him/them to believe that Jesus was still alive. This led to cultic practice which then began to develop stories about the empty tomb (perhaps in light of veneration of the tomb), and even stories about post-resurrection narratives. Each Evangelist approaches the stories differently (from the context of the faith community in which they were writing), which not only explains the origin of the stories, but also their seeming differences:

Mark, says [Schillebeeckx], develops from the cultic legend associated with pilgrims visiting the holy sepulcher…. Matthew, misleadingly, introduces the (Jewish) idea that a body has to be involved. Luke, in order to address Greeks, invokes a Hellenistic “rapture” model as part of a theios aner (“divine man”) Christology, only then to drop it again when he writes some of the speeches in Acts. Paul is first called to a mission to the Gentiles, and this grounds and legitimates his Damascus Road experience, his “seeing” of Jesus as “the Christ.”

Aside from the usual failure to sufficiently explain the five mutations in the early Christian view of resurrection, Schillebeeckx’s proposal presents a host of historical-critical problems to which Wright devastatingly responds:

This view is ingenious and subtle, but demonstrably wrong on almost every count. … His invention of a supposed “Jewish-biblical way of speaking”, in comparison with which stories of the risen Jesus appear crude and naively realistic, stands the truth on its head. His picture of the cultic practice of visiting Jesus’ tomb, upon which he bases his reading of Mark, is without foundation. He is right to say that Matthew tells stories which assume that “resurrection” means bodies, but wrong to imply that this is an odd innovation in the tradition. His analysis of a “rapture” tradition is unwarranted, and does not in any case apply to Luke (when Jesus disappears in Emmaus this hardly constitutes a “rapture”, since he reappears in Jerusalem shortly afterwards). His account of Paul is inaccurate in its reporting both of the Acts stories and of Paul’s own evidence. …

I quote Wright extensively here to illustrate an important point, namely, that as we depart further from the four initial alternative explanations eliminated earlier by Wright, the number of unwarranted (and implausible) historical assumptions begins to multiply as well as the convolutions necessary to explain them. We now have five sets of either incorrect or completely gratuitous historical assumptions amplified by completely unprovable speculations (two-thirds of which are demonstrably wrong) and woven together through an explanatory apparatus which only a person of Schillebeeckx’s skill is capable of appropriating as realistically intelligible.

But we must return to the point at hand, namely, does Schillebeeckx’s hypothesis explain the five uniform mutations within the early Church’s view of the resurrection? The answer is, once again, that it is not even close. Even though Schillebeeckx attempts (unsuccessfully) to give an explanation of some of the unusual features in the Gospel narratives, he does not explain the five Christian mutations of second-Temple Judaism. Peter’s experience of forgiveness and conversion (no matter how graced) does not explain the uniform Christian view of resurrection as transmaterial embodiment. Furthermore, Peter’s (and possibly other disciples’) interior experience of forgiveness and conversion does not explain why the Church held that the final age had been initiated (which second-Temple Judaism linked specifically to a group resurrection from the dead at that final age). Schillebeeckx’s explanation for this is no more efficacious than those of the visions and empty tomb (alone) mentioned above. The same holds true for the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah and Lord (with lordship having divine implications). How in the world did Peter’s experience of forgiveness and conversion lead the early Church to proclaim Jesus to be what was, in second-Temple Judaism, unthinkable – namely, the Lord? Finally, how did Peter’s experience of forgiveness and conversion cause the primitive Church to put the resurrection at the integrating center of all its doctrine? The Schillebeeckx alternative proposal (like all the others) fails the test of sufficiency when one is historically required.

Wright’s proposed seventh alternative explanation – the resurrection appearances alone (without the empty tomb). Though I believe that Wright’s argument (given above) is quite brilliant, I do not think he has to postulate that the resurrection appearances alone are insufficient in order to make it work. In fact, I think he weakens his argument by doing this because he is then constrained to show that the empty tomb is necessary to ground the corporeal aspect of the early Christian view of resurrection. As noted above, I believe that the corporeal aspect of the Christian view of resurrection can be adequately grounded by a strong corporeal dimension within the post-resurrection appearances themselves (even though these appearances very probably had a strong transmaterial character which resembled or implied glory, light, power, and the spiritual domain). Thus, I do not see why the empty tomb would be necessary. Nevertheless, I do believe that the empty tomb is historically demonstrable from the occurrence of the post-resurrection appearances because even if the apostles had not experienced the empty tomb prior to the resurrection appearances (as I believe they did), the resurrection appearances would have compelled them to go back to the tomb to check for the body that they had in some respect experienced in the appearance. Not to have done so would have left the apostles open to the criticism that the one they claimed to be resurrected was still in the tomb which would have had devastating consequences. As it happened, the Church’s critics were only able to claim that his body was stolen which implies quite strongly that the tomb was indeed empty.

It can hardly be thought that the accusation that the apostles stole Jesus’ body was not a real polemic initiated by Jewish authorities against the early Church, because there is absolutely no reason why Matthew would have brought up such an apologetically unappealing (indeed, apologetically undermining) suggestion if it were not true. Why plant the seed of “the apostles stealing the body of Jesus” in the minds of believers and potential believers unless the Church was compelled to respond to a charge that had really been leveled against it? This inference is confirmed by the fact that Matthew responds to this charge by telling the story that the soldiers were bribed to say this, indicating that the apostles had not stolen the body, but that this was an explanation of the missing body invented by the Jewish authorities (Mt. 28:11-13). The entire response to the charge does not make any sense unless there was a charge; and the charge does not make any sense unless there was a missing body; and the missing body does not make any sense unless there was an identifiable tomb in which the body lay, and the body was not in that identifiable tomb.

Some contemporary exegetes have suggested that Jesus was not placed in a tomb, but instead, a mass grave or, in the case of Crossan, left in an unknown place. Aside from the fact that it is highly, highly unlikely that the followers of Jesus would not have kept track of Jesus’ body, one must return to the above argument – why would the Jewish authorities have charged the apostles with stealing His body unless there were a provably missing body? If there were any ambiguity about where the body lay (e.g., in a mass grave), then there would be no problem about a missing body. One would not have to explain why one couldn’t find the body. The authorities could have just said, “The body is in some ambiguous place, or it was mislaid” – no problem. But the fact is that the authorities feel compelled to charge the apostles with stealing the body, which implies that a body is gone from a known place – presumably a tomb (the most identifiable burial place).

The same holds true for some exegetes who have claimed that the apostles lost track of the body. Aside from the fact that it is virtually unbelievable that the followers of Jesus would have lost track of His body (as John the Baptist’s disciples were aware of where John’s body lay, despite the danger and the fact that he was in prison), there remains the previous inference, namely, that the authorities feel compelled to charge the apostles with stealing the body, which does not make any sense if there is not a missing body from an identifiable place.

I do not want to make too much out of the polemical charge against the early Church in Matthew’s Gospel, though it is quite telling. Rather, I would want to combine the implications of this polemic with my original point, namely, that the moment the apostles started preaching that Jesus had appeared to them (and began making converts on the basis of that preaching), it seems virtually undeniable that the early Church’s adversaries would not have made every attempt to produce a body that would disprove (or at least undermine) the apostolic claim. This, apparently, they could not do. When one combines this fact with the above reasoning about the polemic (the apostles stole the body), it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the authorities made every attempt to find out where the body lay, that they in fact did find out where it was, and that it was gone. If the body had not been put into an identifiable place (such as a tomb), the charge of theft would not have been necessary. Now, if the authorities could have identified where the body was, we must suppose that His followers could do the same.

Two final points about the empty tomb. First, the very probable historicity of the empty tomb (as indicated above) would have given further grounding to the early Church’s assertion of transmaterial-corporeal resurrection, because it not only provides additional evidence for corporeality (beyond the corporeal features of the appearances), but also provides evidence of continuity between Jesus’ earthly embodiment and His new transmaterial embodiment. This probably explains Paul’s unique and nuanced use of the words “physical body” and “spiritual body” in 1Corinthians 15:44.

Secondly, we must remember that logical ordering can frequently be the opposite of natural ordering, because something which is “after” in nature is frequently used to demonstrate something which is “before.” This is certainly the case in the above reasoning. Just because one uses the transmaterial-corporeal resurrection appearances to demonstrate the historicity of the empty tomb, does not mean that the apostles’ discovery of the empty tomb came afterwards. In all likelihood, it came before the resurrection appearances (as discovered by the women) exactly as the Gospel narratives describe it. In view of the above evidence for the empty tomb, it does not seem at all unreasonable to conjecture that somebody – particularly the women – would have wanted to go to the tomb either to mourn or to perform the rituals which they were unable to do during the Passover. At that juncture they would have discovered (early on) that the tomb was quite empty, and would have subsequently discovered that the apostles were quite amazed at this because they had not stolen the body (being a bit too busy hiding out from the local authorities). In view of this, I think we can feel secure about accepting the general story in the Gospel accounts about the discovery of the empty tomb. We may conclude with the widely accepted view of Geza Vermes:

When every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be that the opinions of the orthodox, the liberal sympathizer and the critical agnostic alike – and even perhaps of the disciples themselves – are simply interpretations of the one disconcerting fact: namely that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb.

Conclusion to Wright’s Proof

As implied above, Wright’s argument stands quite firmly without an assertion of the empty tomb as necessary. He has exhaustively treated the background of the Christian Church in second-Temple Judaism, and even in its connection to paganism; he has incisively elucidated five mutations uniformly held in the early Christian view of resurrection which require sufficient explanation because of their departure from second-Temple Judaism; and he has come as close as any historian can to showing that the post-resurrection appearances (as reported in Paul and the Gospels) are not only a sufficient explanation but also the only adducible sufficient explanation of these five mutations in the Christian view of resurrection. He has done this by demonstrating the complete insufficiency of the currently known alternatives. Therefore, I believe that he has given a rigorously probative argument for the historicity of Jesus’ transmaterial-corporeal resurrection appearances as both physically mediated and physically seen. Since it is very difficult to justify how Jesus’ tomb could not have been empty in light of His resurrection appearances (given the undefeatable polemic which critics would have been able to initiate against the early Church), I believe that Wright has also demonstrated the historicity of the empty tomb.

We must now return for a brief moment to the point made earlier about Wright’s implication that the post-resurrection appearances is the only adducible sufficient explanation. Recall that historical method cannot demonstrate the necessity of a condition in the same way as the methods of mathematics, metaphysics, and empirical science because it cannot eliminate all alternative possibilities through deductive proof. It is therefore relegated to eliminating alternative possibilities inductively – that is, one at a time. Though this approach is quite tedious and can never achieve deductive certitude, it can, as noted earlier, come close to the truth by eliminating the most obvious suspects – those alternative explanations which are empirically evident, psychologically evident, explanatorily evident, and therefore, more historically plausible (e.g., Jewish historical milieu, pagan historical milieu, visions, and the empty tomb alone). New alternative explanations are thereby constrained to rely on more unverified (and implausible) historical assumptions, more historical speculations about those assumptions, and more elaborate (and frequently over-elaborate) explanatory devices to get the explanatory job done (e.g., the cognitive dissonance theory and Schillebeeckx’s proposal).

But this gives a natural advantage to the simpler explanation (in this case, Wright’s contention that the transformed-corporeal post-resurrection appearances, as both physically mediated and physically seen, provide a sufficient explanation for all five mutations), because it has far more verified and plausible historical assumptions, far fewer speculations about those assumptions, and a much less elaborate explanatory device (conformable with the canon of parsimony – Ockham’s razor). In the method of the natural sciences and social sciences (as well as history), these simpler explanations are thought to come closer to the truth (reality) for obvious reasons. Thus, even though Wright cannot deductively demonstrate the elimination of all alternative explanations, he can certainly come close to the truth (reality) through the method he has chosen and successfully expedited.

Those who still hold out for the non-historicity of the resurrection appearances (and empty tomb) will have to contend with Wright’s argument. He cannot be simply ignored, because his exhaustive historical survey of the milieu in which early Christianity arose reveal five mutations which require a sufficient explanation. One cannot ignore this any more than physicists can ignore experimental evidence which disproves their currently held theory. It is not intellectually honest or academically responsible. Now if those critics are to respond to Wright in an intellectually honest and academically responsible way, they will have to come up with a sufficient alternative explanation for the five mutations; an explanation which hopefully does not include the multiplication of unverifiable (and implausible) historical assumptions and the construction of explanatory apparatuses which violate “Ockham’s razor.” In other words, they will have to come up with a sufficient alternative explanation which is as believable and lean as the one upon which Wright himself relies, namely, that Jesus really did appear in a transmaterial-corporeal form, to His apostles and others, after some of them had experienced the empty tomb.

An Argument for the Historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection from Mutations in the Notions of “Messiah” and “Kingdom”

Wright constructs a corollary argument based upon the emergence of the Christian messianic movement and two doctrinal changes intrinsic to it: “messiah” and “kingdom.” The argument given in Section II above for the historicity of the resurrection is by far the most developed argument provided by Wright and can truly stand on its own. Nevertheless, the following corollary argument provides additional support for the historicity, understanding, and implications of Jesus’ resurrection.

In order to better understand the significance of the Christian mutations in the concepts of “messiah” and “kingdom,” we will want to recall the insight mentioned above about the incongruity between Jesus’ crucifixion and first century Christianity’s expansion into a powerful messianic movement.

The Messianic Movement

Wright’s basic argument runs as follows: In second-Temple Judaism, the Messiah was anticipated to defeat paganism, to cleanse/restore the temple, and to initiate a new age for Jerusalem. In contrast, Jesus dies ignominiously at the hands of the pagans without seemingly cleansing the temple or initiating a new age for Jerusalem; yet Jesus is declared to be Messiah – not only for Israel, but for the entire world, for all time, and for all eternity – which leads almost immediately to a remarkably powerful messianic movement. If the members of the early Church were not completely self-deluded, their actions require a sufficient explanation (cause).

The thought of Jesus as Messiah does not begin at His resurrection. It decidedly originates with Him in His ministry. His possession of the Holy Spirit, His frequently manifested miraculous power, His use of the title “Son of Man,” and His taking on the mission reserved for Yahweh alone, all indicate that He thought of Himself in precisely that way, and communicated this to His disciples. Nevertheless, His view of messiahship was quite different from anything anticipated by second-Temple Judaism. Wright observes in this regard:

…the Messiah was supposed to win the decisive victory over the pagans, to rebuild or cleanse the Temple, and in some way or other to bring true, god-given justice and peace to the whole world. What nobody expected the Messiah to do was to die at the hands of the pagans instead of defeating them; to mount a symbolic attack on the Temple, warning it of imminent judgment, instead of rebuilding or cleansing it; and suffering unjust violence at the hands of the pagans instead of bringing them justice and peace.

Wright goes on to observe that Jesus’ public humiliation, persecution, and execution should have destroyed His “messianic pretensions or possibilities” even in the eyes of true sympathizers, and shows that this is precisely what happened in other cases in Jerusalem around the same time, noting particularly the case of Simeon ben Kosiba and Simon bar-Giora. He uses the latter to illustrate what happens when pretensions toward messiahship are greeted with public execution – the claim to messiahship is abandoned, whatever movement may have existed is disbanded, and the memory of the messianic figure is forgotten, with the result of “Roman victory; Roman justice; Roman empire; Roman peace; all because the Jewish leader had been killed.” Needless to say, this forms a dramatic contrast to the public execution of Jesus, which produced the most powerful messianic movement in history. This begs for a sufficient explanation. Really, really enthusiastic followers? They would have to have been more enthusiastic than Jewish zealots! A vision? A feeling of forgiveness and conversion? Not likely.

But this is only half the story. It is not simply that Jesus’ messiahship survived; it turned into an immediate powerful messianic movement. His messiahship is then linked to lordship (with its divine implications), and His reign is claimed to be identical with the reign of God. Even if one maintains that cognitive dissonance (see the above treatment in Section II.B) can make people stay the course in the midst of a reversal of fortunes and even alter reality to achieve this end, it is difficult to imagine it creating immediately powerful messianic movements. There appears to be a need for another cause – a powerful extrinsic cause that would allow many fundamentally authentic and realistic human beings to become the originators of the most influential religious movement in the history of humankind, in the face of public execution. This cause, in my view, would not only have to have convinced these followers about the inception of the final age, but also would have to have given them the power and inspiration to initiate this movement. I would submit that this twofold powerful cause is the transmaterial-corporeal resurrection appearances and the Holy Spirit, respectively.

Mutations in Two Interrelated Beliefs

Two interrelated beliefs underwent a metamorphosis similar to that of the resurrection (though their combined effect was not as central or integrative to early Christianity as the resurrection): “messiah” and “kingdom of God.” Each will be discussed in turn.

(1) “Messiah.” Wright’s general argument proceeds as follows. “Messiah” within the context of second-Temple Judaism was uniformly altered by the early Church in four very significant respects. If one were to assume that such significant departures from the intellectual-religious milieu did not occur by spontaneous generation or pure chance, it would seem to require a sufficient explanation (cause). In view of the fact that this cause would have to be quite powerful and indicative of the initiation of the final age, it would seem to be the same cause as the one producing the early Christian transformation of “resurrection” and the initiation of the Christian messianic movement in the face of Jesus’ public execution – namely, a powerful (transmaterial) yet corporeal post-resurrection appearance of Jesus.

Wright observes that the early Christians caused a transformation in second-Temple Judaism’s notion of messiahship in four ways:

It lost its ethnic specificity: the Messiah did not belong only to the Jews. The “messianic battle” changed its character: the Messiah would not fight a military campaign, but would confront evil itself. The rebuilt Temple would not be a bricks-and-mortar construction in Jerusalem, but the community of Jesus’ followers. The justice, peace and salvation which the Messiah would bring to the world would not be a Jewish version of the imperial dream of Rome, but would be God’s dikaiosune [righteousness], God’s eirene [peace], God’s soteria [salvation], poured out upon the world through the renewal of the whole creation.

From a cultural anthropological perspective, this transition should produce amazement, because Jesus’ followers come out of a very tight-knit, high-group sense of “elect people;” yet they successfully initiate a universal view of kingdom where no people, tribe, or culture has privilege. It is almost impossible to imagine this universalistic view arising out of either second-Temple Judaism or any of the pagan empires of that day. It is not only a cross-cultural view of kingdom – it is trans-cultural. It is so generous in its universal, trans-cultural perspective that it does not let Israel hold onto its own Messiah. Furthermore, it is trans-material (a temple not made out of bricks and mortar, but out of the community of Jesus’ followers) and in every respect trans-worldly (constituted by God’s righteousness, peace, and salvation).

Once again, the historian is confronted by the question of how people from an exceedingly high-group culture could create a universal, trans-cultural, trans-material, trans-worldly view of kingdom which is not only discontinuous with the ideas of second-Temple Judaism and paganism, but also with their collective ethos and cultural norms. One might conjecture that this transition is attributable to Jesus’ teaching on these matters. But one must remember that Jesus’ teaching on the universal kingdom is somewhat indirect (even acknowledging that He came to bring God’s salvation to His people first). Yet even if His teaching were direct and completely clear, it would still not explain how the early Church followers were able to abandon the Jewish sense of messiahship and even their own cultural/religious preferences and dispositions. Generationally ingrained beliefs reinforced over a lifetime of experience within a culture are difficult to overcome even when teaching is direct and clear – particularly in the face of public execution.

So the historian must respond to the need for some other new extrinsic cause. In my view, this cause would have had to have been a powerful and convincing manifestation of the beginning of the final age and the initiation of God’s kingdom in the world through His presence among us. Again, this cause would seem to be the spiritually transformed-corporeal resurrection appearance of Jesus.

(2) “Kingdom.” Second-Temple Judaism viewed the “kingdom of God” in terms of a restoration or recreation of Israel which included “the return from exile; the overthrow of pagan empire; and the return of YHWH to Zion.” But Christianity viewed the kingdom as having already arrived despite the fact that Caesar’s kingdom was clearly still going strong and the restoration of Israel had certainly not occurred. Christianity did hold with second-Temple Judaism that the kingdom would be brought to perfection in the future, but held that this future would not be a restoration of earthly existence, but rather a glorification of the whole created world – a glorification which brings everything to its perfection and fulfillment:

Indeed, the whole created world eagerly awaits the revelation of the children of God. … The world itself will be freed from its slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God (Rom 8:19-21).

Thus, there are three significant Christian mutations of second-Temple Judaism’s belief in “the kingdom of God”: (1) the kingdom has already arrived (but it will be perfected in the future); (2) the kingdom is here on the earth (though it will be brought to perfection in God); and (3) when the kingdom is brought to perfection, it will not be merely a restoration of earthly existence, but a glorification of it. Thus, the early Christians believed that earthly creation was good, and should not be disdained – because it is part of the kingdom of God. Further, the early Christians were not content to merely await the coming of a future kingdom; they thought they were responsible for the earth and its history – because it is part of the kingdom of God – right now. Wright notes that this is why early Christians felt they had to confront the empire instead of just waiting around for an imminent “end time.”

Once again, the historian must ask the question of why the early Christian Church transformed the belief in “kingdom” in such an unexpected way. In the face of Caesar’s ongoing reign and the absence of a restoration of Israel, it makes no sense for the early Church to be proclaiming to itself, let alone to the Jewish and pagan worlds, that the kingdom had already arrived – unless it had some powerful extrinsic reason for doing so; for it would have opened the Church up to the ridicule of outside groups which would have forced a thoroughgoing self-examination of its beliefs. Yet, the early Church not only proclaimed this belief boldly; it made it one of the most important of its doctrines.

One might respond that Jesus was the origin of this “already but not yet” version of the kingdom, and this would be essentially correct because Jesus did preach the coming of the kingdom in His own person (see article G). Yet, once again, the historian must face the question of how Jesus’ preaching in this regard could have survived His public humiliation, persecution, and execution. Why would the Christian Church have elevated Jesus’ preaching of the arrival of the kingdom in His own person to a most important position in the face of His execution? Why would it have done this uniformly and universally? The risk of being laughed off the proverbial historical stage was too great – unless something else happened.

Again, the historian must ask why there are so many peculiarities in the early Christian doctrine of “kingdom.” Why did the early Christian Church believe that the kingdom included (in part) the earth – so much so that they respected the whole created world and took responsibility for its emergent history (even when they thought the parousia was imminent)? One does not have to look very far to see the intimate connection between the Christian reverence for the world (when they believed that the final age had arrived) and their belief in bodily resurrection. As Wright observes, if the Christians believed in Jesus’ glorification alone (apart from a bodily resurrection), they might well have viewed God’s redemption as being a redemption from creation rather than a redemption of creation.

So, how can these peculiarities within the Christian doctrine of kingdom be explained? Why did they believe in the redemption of creation, express respect for creation, and take responsibility for the emergence of earthly history even though they believed that the end time would soon come? Why did they preach the arrival of the kingdom in the face of Jesus’ public execution when this would have produced both ridicule and confusion? Why did they have this peculiar notion of God’s kingdom being here on earth? Why do they insist that it had already happened while Caesar’s reign continued and the Jewish people were not restored? Once again, the historian must identify a reasonable, responsible, sufficient explanation. This sufficient explanation would seem to require a certainty about Jesus’ transmaterial-corporeal resurrection which would have pushed all the above peculiarities into the domain of doctrinal importance while making sense out of the arrival of the kingdom in the face of public execution. This certainty about transmaterial-corporeal resurrection is best explained not by a vision or a feeling of forgiveness and conversion (which have no embodiment), or by the empty tomb alone (which does not proclaim the arrival of the kingdom and the presence of God on earth), but by the public witnessing of a physically manifested transmaterial-embodied Jesus. Once again, history reveals the same sufficient explanation for the early Church’s mutation of “kingdom of God” as its mutations and emphasis on transmaterial-corporeal resurrection and the messiahship of Jesus. The mutual corroboration among the emphatic preaching of these three mutated doctrines is inescapable.

Combined Conclusion

We may conclude with Wright’s observation about the interrelationship among the early Church’s mutation of bodily resurrection, messiahship, and kingdom:

They acted as if they really were the redeemed, new-covenant, returned-from-exile, new-Temple people of the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Of course, they also believed that they had had a quite new sort of ‘religious experience’ … ¶ Once again, therefore, as with the redefined resurrection belief which we have examined on a large scale, and the redefined messianic belief which we have sketched much more briefly, we are faced with the question: what would have caused them to do this, to speak and act in this way? Why did they not continue the kind of kingdom-movement that they had had in mind all along, and which they had thought Jesus was leading them into? How do we explain the fact that early Christianity was neither a nationalist Jewish movement nor a private religious experience? How do we explain the fact that they spoke and acted as if the coming denouement, the kingdom-moment, had already arrived, though in another sense it was still awaited; had come, in fact, in a sense which, though continuous with Jewish expectation, had also redefined it? How do we explain the fact that they went out into the Gentile world with the news of something that had happened at the heart of Judaism, in the belief that this was not only relevant but urgent for the whole world?

What could be the sufficient explanation (cause) for the above three interrelated historical anomalies? Could it be anything other than the appearance of Jesus in transformed embodiment after the crucifixion? It would take something as powerful as this (to indicate and initiate the presence of God and the final age), which would universally convince Jesus’ followers that He really was the Messiah despite his ignominious death at the hands of the pagans, and would cause the Church to universalize messiahship not only for all time and to the ends of the world, but also for all eternity and the kingdom of God.

Though Wright does not explicitly consider and eliminate other explanations for this phenomenon (beyond Jesus’ transformed-corporeal resurrection appearances), no other sufficient explanations come readily to mind. There does not seem to be anything sufficiently powerful or convincing that could explain how the early Church could be universally convinced of Jesus having initiated the final age and integrated into it the whole of God’s kingdom in the face of His death. A vision? A wonderful experience of forgiveness and conversion? Cognitive dissonance? It certainly did not come from second-Temple Judaism or paganism. What other historical circumstance might be able to explain this anomalous and powerful messianic movement? Once again, it is quite difficult to deny the historical necessity for something as powerful as a transmaterial-corporeal resurrection appearance. Furthermore, it seems to me that this post-resurrection appearance would have to have been seen by more than one or even a few witnesses, because one or a few could be thought to be a little overly distraught when proclaiming universal and eternal messiahship in the face of ignominious death at the hands of the pagans. This historical situation would seem to require a significant number of witnesses to corroborate what not only would seem to be impossible, but absurd, and to transform it into an immediate and powerful messianic movement.

Given the historicity of Jesus’ transmaterial-corporeal resurrection, we may now consider how this “eruption of God’s kingdom into the world” grounded the extraordinary Christian claim that Jesus is Lord.

The Resurrection and the Lordship of Jesus

The material from Units II-C&D not only grounds the historicity of the resurrection as both transmaterial and corporeal, but also shows why the early Church believed that the resurrection was the divine confirmation of the lordship of Jesus. Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance was clearly “other-worldly” – presumably having powerful elements of glory or exaltation. For Paul, it manifested power and glory (1Cor.15:36-53); for Matthew, it manifested “all power in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18); for Luke it manifested a terrifying spiritual appearance of Jesus (Luke 24:37); and for John, it manifested not only Jesus’ transmaterial power to pass through doors, but also that He was “ho kyrios” (John 20 and 21). The early Church could not have helped but conclude that God’s own presence had come into the world. But more than this, they would have seen this divine presence as confirming everything Jesus had said about Himself – particularly about His messiahship and bringing the kingdom of God into the world.

Now we must hasten to add that Jesus’ appearance was not simply transmaterial (resembling or implying divine glory, power, light, and the spiritual domain). It was simultaneously corporeal. There was something ingredient to the appearances which made Paul think that the appearance was a spiritual body – sōma; that causes Luke to attest to Jesus’ embodiment and wounds of crucifixion (as ingredient to His post-resurrection appearance); and that causes John to place both of his resurrection narratives within a material context (“breathed on them” – John 20:22, and “Come, have breakfast” – John 21:12).

Yet, Jesus’ continued embodiment does not mitigate the early Church’s experience of Jesus as “God’s own presence” (evident in the transmaterial dimension of His post-resurrection appearance). It reveals that Jesus is “God’s own presence” in the world – not just in the external world, but in embodiment – that is, intrinsically. This causes the early Church to believe that creation is good and that God has come (in Jesus) to redeem within the world rather than from the world. But far more than this, it causes them to believe that God’s own presence is so thoroughly in the world (i.e., both intrinsically and extrinsically) that the world is literally part of God’s kingdom! It causes them to believe that the kingdom has already arrived and that the final age is initiated – even though Rome was still going strong and Zion had not yet been restored in the way expected by second-Temple Judaism.

And even more than this, it caused the early Church to believe what Jesus had been saying about Himself all along, namely, that He is bringing the kingdom of God into the world and initiating the final age in His own person. In Him, the kingdom of God has already arrived in the world, and therefore, He is the Messiah. But He is more than the Messiah as traditionally conceived in second-Temple Judaism. He is the Messiah who will fulfill the mission which Yahweh reserved for Himself. Wright notes in this regard that second-Temple Judaism believed that Yahweh had reserved for Himself a threefold mission: “the return from exile, the defeat of evil, and the return of YHWH to Zion.” As will be seen in Unit II-G, Jesus certainly held that He was fulfilling these three tasks reserved to Yahweh alone. Jesus not only took on and fulfilled these tasks; He literally embodied them in Himself. And so Wright concludes:

I propose, as a matter of history, that Jesus of Nazareth was conscious of a vocation: a vocation, given him by the one he knew as ‘father’, to enact in himself what, in Israel’s scriptures, God had promised to accomplish all by himself.

We now see a second reason why the Church believed that the resurrection confirmed the divine status of Jesus. It was not only the divine presence within His post-resurrection appearance (e.g., transmateriality resembling or implying divine power, glory, light and the spiritual domain), but also the resurrection’s power to confirm that Jesus had fulfilled the tasks reserved to Yahweh alone, far beyond what second-Temple Judaism had anticipated – literally bringing God’s kingdom into the world. Now, the only way in which God’s kingdom can be brought into the world, the only way in which the world can be made a part of God’s kingdom, is through the presence of God in the world. The early Church believed that the resurrection confirmed that Jesus is “God’s own presence” in the world. The implications for Jesus’ Lordship are obvious.

Yet there is another piece of the puzzle which grounds the early Church’s belief in Jesus’ Lordship. Jesus’ transmaterial-corporeal post-resurrection appearance vindicated what he had said about being the exclusive son of the father during his ministry. He addressed the Father as Abba (implying he was son), implied that he was the exclusive son of the father in the parable of the wicked tenants, and He claimed exclusive sonship in a central Q logion (“No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him” ). His post-resurrection appearance also vindicated his claim to be messiah to fulfill the mission reserved to Yahweh aloneand to bring the kingdom of God to the world in His own person. As will be seen in Unit G, the vindication of these claims led almost inescapably to the conclusion that Jesus could not have been made Son of God at his resurrection, but rather was Son from all eternity. He is Son, but not just an adopted Son at the time of the resurrection; not even an adopted Son in His messiahship during His ministry; but rather, a real Son – a Son from all eternity. Wright observes in this regard:

Does this mean that Jesus only became ‘Son of God’, in this sense or any other, at the resurrection? Certainly not. The whole point of passages like Romans 5.5-11, 8.3-4 and Galatians 2.19-20 and 4.4-7 is that what Jesus did in his public career and supremely in his death was to be understood as the work of “God’s Son” in this sense as well as the others, and that the resurrection declared that this had been the case. This is not to say that this conclusion was bound to be drawn by anyone at all hearing about Jesus’ resurrection. … However, within the world of meaning the early Christians found themselves exploring, it was clear that the resurrection did not suggest the adoptionist view that Jesus became, at Easter, something or someone he had not been before. It made clear to those who followed its inner implications, what had always been the case. It declared that Jesus always was ‘God’s Son’, in this sense as in the others.

Jesus claimed to be Messiah in a special way, to bring the kingdom of God in His own person, to fulfill the tasks reserved for Yahweh alone, and indirectly claimed to be God’s Son. He showed that he possessed the power and authority of Yahweh in exorcisms, healings, and raising the dead and, in His post-resurrection appearances, manifested Himself in God’s power and glory. His resurrection (in a transmaterial-corporeal form) confirmed all this. Wright notes in this regard:

…from very early on (it is already taken for granted by Paul), the fact that this Jesus had been raised by this god, when mulled over and reflected on in the light of all that Jesus had done and said, and all that Israel’s scriptures had said about the redeeming and reconciling action of this god, drew from the early Christians the breathtaking belief that Jesus was ‘son of god’, the unique ‘Son ‘of this God as opposed to any other. They meant by this not simply that he was Israel’s Messiah, though that remained foundational; nor simply that he was the reality of which Caesar and all other such tyrants were the parodies, though that remained a vital implication. They meant it in the sense that he was the personal embodiment and revelation of the one true god.

Yet in the midst of all of this, there are still two more pieces of evidence which confirm Jesus’ Lordship and divine sonship – the gift of the Holy Spirit (Unit II-E) and Jesus’ miracles in the ministry (Unit II-F). We will reexamine the divinity of Jesus after investigating these other two evidential grounds of the early Church’s proclamation that Jesus is Lord.

Footnotes

See Unit II-C, Section I.B.1.

See Unit II-C, Section I.C.

Sanders 1985, p. 240.

Wright 1996, p. 110. An extensive consideration of all these figures is given in Wright 1992 (Vol. I), pp. 170-181.

Wright 1996, p. 110.

See Unit II-B. See also the many indications of the community’s worship of Jesus in Matthew’s, Luke’s and John’s resurrection narratives (in Unit II-C, Section II).

See Unit II-B, Section III. See also Wright 1996, pp. 110-112.

Wright 1996, p. 111.

Wright 1996, p. 111. He also gives an extensive analysis of these “socio-cultural oddities” of the early Church in Vol. I—Wright 1992, pp. 362ff and 448ff.

See Unit II-E.

Wright 2003, p. 687.

Wright 2003, p. 687.

See Wright 2003, p. 201.

See Wright 2003, Chapter 2 – particularly pp. 78-82.

See Wright 2003, Chapter 4, particularly pp. 200-201.

See Wright 2003, p. 202-203.

See Wright 2003, p. 273, and also Unit II-C.

See the conclusion to Chapter 4 in Wright 2003, particularly p. 205.

Wright 2003, p. 205.

See Wright 2003, p. 272.

Recall from Unit II-C, Section I that a kerygma is an apostolic proclamation – quasi-creedal statement expressing the essentials of the faith. Dodd and others have identified ten of them, nine of which make the resurrection central to the early Church’s preaching -- Acts 2:14-39, Acts 3:13-26, Acts 4:10-12, Acts 5:30-32, Acts 10:36-43, Acts 13:17-41, 1Thess 1:10, 1Cor 15:1-7, and Rom 8:34.

See Wright 2003, p. 274. Paul makes it so central that he claims that if Jesus is not risen from the dead, “our preaching is in vain, and your faith useless.”

See Wright 2003, pp. 401-584.

See Wright 2003, p. 706.

See Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 18 in particular, and also 6 and 12.

See Wright 2003, Chapter 2 – particularly pp. 78-82.

Wright 2003, pp. 689-690.

Wright 2003, p. 690.

Wright 2003, pp. 688-689.

Wright 2003, p. 689.

Wright 2003, p. 697.

See Festinger 1957, pp. 258-259, and Wright 2003, pp. 697-698.

Wright 2003, pp. 697-699.

Wright 2003, p. 699.

Wright 2003, pp. 702-703.

Wright 2003, p. 703.

See Quarles’ response to Crossan’s contention that the Gospel of Peter is the source for the canonical Gospels in Unit II-M, Section I. See also Brown’s devastating response to Crossan’s contention that the apostles didn’t know much about Jesus’ crucifixion and burial in Unit II-M, Section I.A.

Recent archaeological evidence at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher shows details about the placement of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus in the Gospel of John to be remarkably accurate. See the research of Charlesworth 2006(b) and von Wahlde 2006 in Unit II-M, Section I.A.

This may help to explain why Paul uses the word “sōma” (instead of “sarx”) in 1Corinthians 15:44. “Sarx” is translated “flesh,” while “sōma” has a more general meaning that could even be extended to something like “whole person.” Paul selects “sōma” to emphasize the continuity between the physical body and the spiritual body. Since the continuity is of paramount importance to him, he must avoid the word “sarx” in reference to the physical body. This constrains him to invent a way of referring to flesh while maintaining the word which will express continuity with a spiritual body. He does this by coining the expression “sōma phuchikon” (“natural” or “physical” body). It is difficult to believe that Paul did not have both the corporeal features of the spiritually transformed appearance of Jesus and the empty tomb in mind when he developed this very nuanced theology.

Vermes 1973, p. 41.

See Unit II-E&G.

See Unit II-F.

See Unit II-G.

See Unit II-G, Section VI. Jesus considered Himself to be the messianic shepherd of Israel and to be responsible not only for bringing Yahweh back to Zion, but also for the defeat of evil and the restoration of Israel and the world. Inasmuch as Jesus took on these tasks, He put Himself quite literally (not merely figuratively) in the place of Yahweh Himself. As Wright observes: “Jesus’ prophetic vocation thus included within it the vocation to enact, symbolically, the return of YHWH to Zion. His messianic vocation included within it the vocation to attempt certain tasks which, according to scripture, YHWH had reserved for himself. He would take up himself the role of messianic shepherd, knowing that YHWH had claimed this role as his own. He would perform the saving task which YHWH had said he alone could achieve. He would do what no messenger, no angel, but only the ‘arm of YHWH’, the presence of Israel’s god, could accomplish. …[H]e believed he had to do and be, for Israel and the world, that which according to scripture only YHWH himself could do and be. … I propose, as a matter of history, that Jesus of Nazareth was conscious of a vocation: a vocation, given him by the one he knew as ‘father’, to enact in himself what, in Israel’s scriptures, God had promised to accomplish all by himself” (Wright 1996, p. 653).

Wright 2003, p. 557.

Wright 2003, pp. 557-558.

Wright 2003, p. 558.

Wright 2003, pp. 562-563.

Wright 2003, p. 567.

See Wright 2003, pp. 566-568.

See Wright 2003, pp. 582-583.

Wright notes, “…a sense of the creator god doing something new within creation, not of a god acting to rescue people from creation” (Wright 2003, p. 567).

Wright 2003, pp. 567-568.

Wright 1996, p. 651.

Wright 1996, p. 653.

Even though Jesus’ address of the Father as Abba may not have been as unique as Joachim Jeremias has suggested, it certainly was quite special, and along with other references to sonship, indicates that Jesus thought of Himself as Son. Wright observes in this regard, “[the use of ‘Abba’ as an address for God] points…to the Messiah as the special son, the one in whom Israel’s sonship is focused” (1996, p. 649), and Unit II-G, Section I.

Mark 12:1-12 and pars. Wright believes that this parable originates with Jesus (Wright 1996, p. 501), and that the combination of son (ben in Hebrew) and stone (aben in Hebrew and Aramaic) not only explains Jesus’ action in cleansing the temple and the impending judgment upon Israel (which will lead to the destruction of the Temple) but also refers to the messianic stone who is referred to in the parable as the son. It seems likely, therefore, that Jesus was referring to Himself as the messianic stone-son, that is, the messianic son. See Wright 1996, p. 501and Unit II-G, Section II.B.3.

Matthew 11:25-27/Luke 10:21-22. For the likelihood that this passage originated with Jesus, see Wright 1996, p. 650, and also Unit II-G, Section II.B.4.

See above Section III.A.

See Unit II-G, Section I.D.

See Unit II-G, Section I.C.

Wright 2003, p. 733.

See Unit II-F, Section IV

Wright 2003, p. 731.