While Easter Sunday is long past, the effects continue. The bodily resurrection of Jesus has been explored historically, theologically, and philosophically. I'd like to explore a few major results and conclusions of that research in this post. And, of course, here are my top 3 recommended reads from renowned New Testament Scholars!
What Scriptural Chapters Focus on the Resurrection?
Though the resurrection to transformed life is a fairly prevalent theme throughout the New Testament, hinted at in the Old, there are five pericopes that focus more exclusively on describing and analyzing the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Other historical sources from around the time of the New Testament manuscripts do address the question, but the first part of scholar and evidentialist apologist Michael Licona's 700+-page analysis verifies that the New Testament documents provide the best-quality historical evidence.
1 Corinthians 15
The almost-final chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church starts with a reminder of historical facts (v. 1) and ends with a logical conclusion to be faithful (v. 58). What are some points Paul develops?
- The salvific Gospel-as-story centers on Christ's physical death and bodily resurrection which happened in line with the rest of the Bible (God's story)--omitting these components invalidates the faith of the hearers of the Gospel
- Several post-resurrection appearances to other people occurred
- Because Christ was raised, the dead will/can also be raised
- After the dead are raised (general resurrection), Christ will co-reign with the Father
- God, on raising a dead person, will give him or her a new type of material body like a second layer over the old-creation body (vs obliterating the old creation)
Romans 8 is a great chapter to follow up with if you'd like to focus on the comparison of old and new creation, but that is only tangentially relevant to this post. The typical dating ascribed to 1 Corinthians 15 is very early relative to the earthly life of Jesus (one source notes that the creedal material could date to as early as AD 30).
Canonical Gospel Accounts
Each of the four Gospels included in the Bible (hence "canonical") devotes some space to describing the resurrection of Jesus: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. There are differences in the accounts, owing to differences in individual perspective and historical conventions for bioi (first-century biographies). (Licona's book addressing this question is on my TBR.)
Matthew 28 particularly highlights the two women going to the tomb first, one highly visible angel outside the tomb, the guards' falsified report under the priests' direction, and the commission to the eleven disciples at Galilee some time after the Resurrection.
Mark 16 notes an additional woman going to the tomb with the other two, one ordinary-looking angel inside the tomb, and (in the later ending) a few post-Resurrection appearances including the road to Emmaus. The second-to-last verse mentions the Ascension as well.
Luke 24 notes an unspecified number of women, two dazzling angels in the tomb's vicinity, Peter's follow-through to the women's report, much more detail of the Emmaus account, an instructional appearance to the eleven, and the Ascension at Bethany.
Finally, John 20-21 focuses on one woman who told Peter and the Beloved Disciple what she saw, two angels' and Jesus' appearance to her, appearances to the 10 then to 11 (including Thomas), then to 7 who were fishing, an individual discussion with Peter, discussion about the Beloved Disciple, and an assurance that the account is highly selective of the many things that Jesus said and did.
What are my Underlying Assumptions?
I have 3 philosophy- and history-related assumptions that are the "ground rules" undergirding the implications I'll discuss later in the post. Even more basic, however, is that good methods for doing history (see the link to Licona's resurrection book above) lead us to put a basic trust in the reliability of the manuscripts we have for the 4 Gospels and 1 Corinthians 15.
Theistic Worldview
A worldview is the way by which we (as individuals and collectively) look at the world to make sense of it and decide upon our own thoughts and actions related to it. A theistic worldview is any that includes an openness or predisposition to the existence of a god. In this post, I touched on Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga's establishment of the rationality of holding such a worldview. Essentially, for multiple philosophical and logical reasons, it is more rational overall to believe that some sort of deity exists than to believe that one cannot exist.
Bodily Nature of Resurrection
It has been argued that the concept of resurrection was equivalent to separation of the soul from the body, revival of an almost-dead body, or other things. In several historical analyses, N. T. Wright has convincingly argued that, despite the centuries-old influence of Platonism on the surrounding cultures, first-century Jews conceived of resurrection as God raising a dead body back to bodily life, here on earth at least for a time. Thus, Scripture passages speaking about Jesus being raised are consistent with His body returning to life and being transformed into a body that is not subject to suffering or death.
Core Doctrines in Ecumenical Creeds
The three ecumenical creeds, or statements of faith across the Christian church in its many denominations, are the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian, in increasing order of length and detail. A post from last year over at The Renaissance Biologist discusses just how it is possible to determine which teachings of the Christian faith are core or otherwise non-negotiable. I assume in this post, as do other conservative and moderate Christians, that the three creeds do contain the truly core doctrines. Assuming this, what should be on the "core" list?
- God the Father created heaven and earth (mechanism not specified)
- Jesus (God the Son) is eternally preexistent, of the Father's substance, incarnated in Mary by the Holy Spirit--remaining 100% divine and 100% human--was crucified, died and was buried, descended into hell, was raised to life, ascended thereafter to be in the Father's realm, and will return for judgment and eternal reign
- God the Holy Spirit gives life, proceeds from the other two Persons, spoke through the prophets
- The Holy Trinity has one essence/substance but 3 distinct Persons (who thus have equality of divine attributes such as divinity, glory, and eternality)
- There is one universal Church set apart for God; in this church the saints (Christians) have fellowship with each other
- There is one Baptism that forgives sins
- The dead will be raised bodily toward eternal life in the new creation (those in God's family) or eternal punishment (those outside of God's family)
Thus, both Christ's and our bodily resurrection are to be believed in by anyone who calls him/herself a Christian.
What are Major Implications of Jesus' Resurrection?
Although some claims in this section may seem more historical than theological, it is important to remember that the Christian faith is based on happenings that occurred within history. Thus, it is important to use the tools we have (our brains, others' brains, and solid thinking/reasoning) to walk through what happened historically in our search for theological implications.
Preface: Two Problems to Avoid
Before we dive in, then, I (as a non-historian but a friend of people with greater historical knowledge, all with good heads on our shoulders) see the need to establish a conservative middle ground. On the right side is one error to avoid, and on the left is another.
What is the problem on the right? There is a tendency in some circles (specifically a segment of young-earth creationism) to differentiate historical science (including presupposing that scientific laws or constants have changed over time, making history far less certain than lab-based experiments) from observational science. Ars Technica explains the problem with artificially differentiating these from a scientific and theoretical perspective. More importantly for the Christian, the Resurrection logically falls for people in these circles into historical science. This undercuts the entire historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus, and with that the Christian faith.
What is the problem on the left (and potentially also on the right)? It is "doing history" but without a historical mindset. That is, it is projecting current beliefs and standards onto the past rather than evaluating the past by its own standards. One common current belief is that historical records and sources should be as detailed and temporally precise as a video recording. However, that is not how things worked (especially before the advent of video!).
Rationality of Trust/Faith in Jesus
Greater thinkers than I have established that, by reasonable historical standards, that (1) Jesus Christ existed in history and (2) His bodily resurrection is the best explanation for the extent of evidence from the first century AD. Given that biblical manuscripts and extracanonical materials (e.g., the writings of the Apostolic Fathers) emphasize that to trust or believe in Jesus is required to be saved (i.e., enter the family of God), it is better to believe in Jesus if the Bible's claims about Him correlate to actual historical happenings, than if they don't.
Future General Resurrection
As the ecumenical creeds state, the resurrection of "the dead" will occur bodily at some point in the future. Whether the dead are Christian or not, Christ is the firstfruits. 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 note that He is the firstfruits for the corpus of Christians, while verse 52 seems to include the non-Christian dead as well. It was important for Paul to remind his audience--the church at Corinth--of the specific upcoming resurrection for all of them. In Judaism, resurrection is assumed for all people but most strongly implied as important for the Messiah's people.
Baptismal Efficacy
A frequently cited text about Holy Baptism (Romans 6) draws an explicit parallel between one's baptism into Christ and the death of Christ. The stated implication in verse 4 is that, just as He was raised, so are we spiritually raised now (and, per other texts, will be physically resurrected for the new creation as He was on Easter).
The ability of baptism to regenerate the spirit of a person is a hotly debated topic that I am loath to step into, even in my congregation. However, for this post I want to highlight the (Wright et al.) view that the purpose of baptism for the early Christians was the same as circumcision for Jews--to bring a person into the covenant family, whether or not the person later continued to act as if they were in the family. Interestingly, Jews baptized infants and allowed adults to baptize themselves; early Christians applied the infant practice to everyone.
Do you see other major (or minor) implications of the Resurrection? Feel free to share in the comments below!
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