The resurrection of Jesus Christ

It has seemed that there are only two options regarding the resurrection. Either the dead body of Jesus was resuscitated or it was not. If it was, then this has been taken to be proof of the existence of a God who could reverse the processes of death. As we understand it today, this would amount to a reversal of chemical reactions, bacterial growth and invasion, cell rupture and the rest of the physiological and molecular chaos that death produces. The God whose existence this is evidence of is one who is able to interrupt the processes of nature.

One of the triumphs of the Enlightenment was that it unconsciously retrieved the concept of nature as natural as it was originally conceived in the first creation narrative. By “natural” I mean that the world was not inhabited by Gods and ghosts. The sun was not a God but a light in the sky and so on with the rest of the creation. The controversy between science and religion has revolved around whether God existed as a supernatural being and whether he could interfere with natural processes. We must admit, I think, that science has won the day here and has successfully chased God from the physical world. This is a triumph for theology because it can now proceed without the idea that any knowledge of God can come from the physical world and return to its proper study of the traditions of scripture and the church.

This would seem to undermine any talk about the resurrection. While science must be given its due with regards the physical world, what should not be admitted is the way it views knowledge as being the sole possession of the scientific or empirical method. There are other kinds of knowledge that do not rely on observation and experimentation and we use that knowledge every day to navigate crucial aspects of our lives. The favouring of the objective over the subjective in the scientific method has robbed us of our trust in our inner experience of life so necessary to any religious sensibility.

My contention is that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not an event that may be observed and examined so as to come to a conclusion about its reality or not, but rather is based on the subjective; the experience of the presence of Christ. It is interesting that there are no accounts of the resurrection in the Bible. No one saw what happened in the darkness of the tomb on the third day.

What we do have in the New Testament are accounts of the appearance of the risen Lord. In hearing of the appearances, believers have, without thought, made the causal connection between resurrection and appearance. While this is a reasonable deduction it goes against the primary witness of scripture to the appearances, the experience of the presence of the risen Christ, and makes the resurrection the primary event that makes the appearances possible. But what if we are faithful to the texts and make the appearances the primary event and concentrate on the subjective rather than the objective? In other words instead of saying that Christ appeared because he was raised, we reverse the causal direction and state that Christ was raised because he appeared.

This would mean that the appearances are the primary historical experience, the subjective event, and the resurrection becomes a metaphor defined by the appearance.

There are many texts that would favour this view. It is quite clear from at least three of the appearances of the risen Christ that this was no resuscitated person. The gospel of Luke (24:13-35) gives us the story of the road to Emmaus on which Jesus joined his disciples. We are told that “their eyes were kept from recognising him”. So the risen Jesus, incognito, accompanied them on the day’s journey even interpreting the scriptures to them. When they came to their destination they invited him to stay with them and it was when Jesus broke the bread that their eyes were opened and they recognised him, upon which he vanished from their sight.

The second example is the appearances of the risen Jesus given by the gospel of John (20:1929). He appeared to them in a house, the doors being locked “for fear of the Jews” and similarly disappeared.

The third example also comes from John (20:11-18) and is the story of how Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb and finds that the body is not there. She saw Jesus standing by but did not know him. Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him”. When Jesus addresses her by her name she recognises him.

These three examples of resurrection appearances appear to cancel out the idea that Jesus was restored to life, resuscitated. There is something else going on here. The appearance stories insist that the risen one is the crucified one having still the wounds in his hands and feet and side. They also insist that the risen one is not a spirit or a ghost, even if he can appear and disappear at will and enter locked houses. The resurrection of Jesus is not the persistence of an idea but the physical presence of the Lord. This would be in line with the Bible’s contention that there is no life other than life in the body.

The contention that the resurrection was a fact of history in which Jesus was resuscitated quickly runs into trouble. Did he die again? Where are his bones? But what is more, when one insists that God has reversed the processes of death we have to roll out a whole theology of the omnipotence of God and his power to alter the physical processes of the world, against which atheists rightly protest. But most importantly, if the resurrection was a physical historical event it is trapped in time and becomes more remote from us by the second, contrary to the sayings of Jesus that he will be with us until the end of the age.

When we confess that Jesus is raised because he appears, making his appearance primary, then we can understand the theology of the presence of Jesus as “Emmanuel”, God with us, not only two millennia ago but now and in the future. For the message of Easter day is that God has vindicated this one whom we murdered and in doing so turned the tables on us so that our judgment falls back on us. We who wrought death were judged as dead and the one who we killed was judged as living.

In the strange economy of the atonement this meant that we were freed from the dealing death powers that held us in thrall and we were released into life. “The special thing, the new thing about the exaltation of Jesus Christ is that One who is bound as we are is free, who is tempted as we are is without sin, who is a sufferer as we are is able to minister to Himself and others, who is a victim to death is alive even thought He was dead, who is a servant (the servant of all servants) is the Lord.” (Karl Barth) This is the language that is proper to the discussion of the resurrection of Christ, it is metaphorical as the parables of Jesus are metaphorical. It refers to realities that are subjective rather than objective but nevertheless hold the key to our understanding of life.

The appearances of Jesus to his disciples did not happen in a golden age when such things could happen, but is the primary experience of all Christians in all times. Specifically, the reason that Christians attend church is to experience the presence of Christ, in his body that is the church and in the Word preached and the sacraments celebrated. Christian theology is always a theology of presence; the church cannot be reduced to a memorial society or a body of people who follow a common religious way. It is said that every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection. Perhaps it is better to say that every Sunday is a celebration, and experience, of the presence of Christ.

Mark (16:1-8) has no account of the appearance of Jesus. At the end of the gospel Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome go to the tomb to anoint the body. They discover a young man dressed in a white robe (clearly Mark’s version of an angel) who says to them “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, and tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” The gospel then ends in an inauspicious way with the verse: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” So inauspicious is this ending that later authors added verses that recounted appearances of Jesus as well as of an ascension.

While it is easy to discount Mark’s gospel because it was the earliest and does not have the stories of Luke or the grandeur of Matthew or the subtlety of John, this is an important witness to the resurrection because it points to the discovery of the risen Christ in Galilee (read world) in the future. Mark deftly avoids all of the arguments about the nature of the resurrection appearances and points instead to the future of the Church. The resurrection is not an event in time that is quickly relegated to the past, but an ongoing expectation in future time and in the world; we live in the resurrection. This is similar to the last words of the risen Christ in Matthew’s gospel: “And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.”

The experience of Christ is a work of the Spirit and as such is subjective. This is quite unlike the life and death of the Son which is an objective historical datum. That Jesus was “crucified under Pontius Pilate” confirms this historical nature. That there were no witnesses to the resurrection and that the dominant expression of the resurrection is in the form of “appearances” bears witness to its subjective nature. The problem with modernity, since the rise of empirical science, is that historical fact takes precedence over, or even abolishes the subjective in the name of truth. This has produced “scientific man” who will not believe anything unless there is objective, observable evidence. A thorough application of this principle would produce a person who was uninterested in art or love, a frightening prospect. It is no wonder that there exists the character of the mad scientist.

The resurrection is at the centre of Christian faith and there have been many attempts to remove it as a problem for modern man so that belief is possible. In the process it has often been left behind as a superfluous myth to our loss. In this brief article I have attempted an apologetic for the resurrection without reducing its power and importance to the faith while giving a theological treatment of it that is faithful to the Scripture. My hope is that Christians may be able to rejoice on Easter morn with the traditional greeting “Christ is risen!” and be answered equally enthusiastically by “He is risen indeed!” and do so with a clear conscience.