“If christ was not raised, then our gospel is null and void, and so is your faith” (1 Cor. 15:14, NEB). That is the way Paul put it, and that is the way it has seemed to Christians through the centuries.
But in recent times many have been taking a hard look at this central proposition of the Christian faith. There has been a spate of books and articles examining the subject from a variety of angles, mostly critical. The evidence has been subjected to close scrutiny, and so have the conclusions drawn from the evidence.
A few have come out in open opposition to the idea that Jesus rose. Some of them have made extremely wholehearted statements repudiating the whole idea. But it has been much more common for people to reinterpret the evidence than to deny that it has any reality. They have gone along with C. F. Evans, who suggests that in this area “the question for ‘believing knowledge’ is not so much whether to believe but what it is which is to be believed.”
Traditionally Christians have marshalled the evidence to show that Jesus’ tomb was empty on the third day after the crucifixion. It is unreasonable to hold that foes removed the body and equally so to hold that friends took it. This shuts up to the thought of a resurrection with physical aspects. Next the resurrection appearances are examined. These are shown not to be hallucinations, and we are left with the conclusion that Jesus rose.
To many this time-honored approach is as convincing as ever. But in many circles today it is questioned. With no desire to deny the possibility of miracle, some scholars are asking, “Is this the way the evidence should be treated?” They point out that all the evidence comes from convinced believers, and they suggest that we should ask what these men were trying to say. Thus Willi Marxsen holds that “all the evangelists want to show that the activity of Jesus goes on” (The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, p. 77; Marxsen’s italics).
If that is what the Bible writers are saying, we should, of course, accept it. But is it? Surely the empty tomb means more.
A lot depends on how we approach ancient sources. The careful historian does not simply transcribe the writers of antiquity. He weighs what they say and tries to evaluate it. For example, if he reads in some ancient writer that on a certain occasion five million people came into Jerusalem, he does not accept it simply because the statement is ancient. He says, “Jerusalem in antiquity could not have held so many. There was not the physical capacity on the site. This cannot be true.” But he will go on to ask, “Granted that the statement cannot be accepted as it stands, what does it tell us?” Clearly it tells us something about the crowd present on the occasion. It also tells us something about the writer.
I have given a fairly obvious example of a process carried on all the time by historians in one form or another. They must weigh their sources. When an ancient historian narrates something that is quite impossible, the modern scientific historian rejects the story as fact. But he does not necessarily dismiss it. He realizes that the ancient must have had some reason for his statement. So he tries to find out what it was and so to reach the reality that underlies the statement. It is something like this that modern New Testament scholars are trying to do when they examine the resurrection.
They think it highly unlikely that Jesus rose bodily. That kind of thing does not happen. They examine the New Testament carefully, comparing one resurrection account with another and testing each for consistency and probability. The result is that quite a few come to conclusions like that of Marxsen. Some are more radical; for example, Paul van Buren prefers not to speak of “the Easter event” as a “fact.” He thinks that the disciples were discouraged and disappointed before Easter, but they “apparently found themselves caught up in something like the freedom of Jesus himself” after Easter. But “whatever it was that lay in between, and which might account for this change, is not open to our historical investigation” (The Secular Meaning of the Gospel, p. 128).
All this may be made to sound both humble and convincing. It is humble, for the scholar is refusing to be dogmatic in the face of difficulties. And it sounds convincing, for when he is through he has said something that fits neatly into our twentieth century categories and world-view.
But we may well ask whether this is the right approach. Why should we regard the modern world-view as so binding? And why must our scientific historiography have the last word? Perhaps all that the objectors are really saying is that the resurrection of Jesus cannot be proved by the ordinary methods of historical criticism.
That may readily be conceded. Nobody claims that Jesus’ resurrection is just another resurrection. It cannot be “proved” if by that we mean adducing arguments to show that it fits into a neat human category. It is unique.
Of course there is a sense in which every historical happening and every historical personage is unique. There was only one Julius Caesar. There was only one Black Death. But the historian is apt to retort that this kind of uniqueness inheres in human affairs. That of the resurrection does not. Its uniqueness is different in kind.
This is, of course, true. If the resurrection of Jesus was only one of a whole class, it would not have the significance it has for Christians. Everything depends on the fact that Jesus’ resurrection is special. And that is why it cannot be “proved” by the normal canons of historical research. We have nothing with which to class it. The historian has no parallel by which to estimate its probability.
But that does not mean we cannot say anything. After all, the method of the scientific historian is not the only way of getting at truth. The scientist cannot prove that the beautiful thing is beautiful or the moral action commendable. Yet we do not doubt, either. Similarly the man of faith must be heard.
It is open to the Christian to say that the evidence demands our assent. Jesus rose from the dead, even though the scientist cannot use his normal criteria to establish the point.
The evidence for the resurrection cannot be discounted. We may agree that it does not “prove” that Jesus rose in such a way that any thinking person is bound to be convinced (as by a theorem in geometry). But it does point to an empty tomb, as Pannenberg has been insisting. And it does point to meetings between Jesus and his followers that convinced them, not that he still lived as, say, Moses lived, but that he had risen from the dead. To say that Jesus rose squares with the evidence. So far nothing else does.
LEON MORRIS
