© Dr M D Magee, Contents Updated: Monday, 12 February 2007
Willi Marxsen, a professor of New Testament at Munster university says faith in the resurrection is faith in the church, or as S Paul put it:
If Christ has not been raised, then our “kerygma” is in vain, and your faith is in vain.1 Corinthians 15:14
Faith depends on the resurrection, so the resurrection really is not something to gloss over. History is important in this because the resurrection purports to be an historical event, but talk of resurrection does not appear for the first time in Christianity. “It occurs much earlier.” So these older traditions should be investigated too.
Just what do Christians mean by “Jesus is risen”, a statement that every Christian would accept? Even Christians who would willingly kill each other agree on this. The question is not that Christians say it—they all do—but what do they mean when they do say it? Words do not have unambiguous meanings. Even single words can be understood differently, and so even short combinations of words, like this one, can have multiple interpretations. One short sentence, apparently accepted by different parties, can actually hide disagreement.
In the sentence “Jesus is risen”. What does “Jesus” mean? Does it mean Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ or the Son of God? Does “Jesus” mean a man, a demigod or a god? On the face of it Jesus was a man, a Jewish leader. A man rising from the dead is more than remarkable, it is miraculous, but not a god. A remarkable man, however, is believable, but a god appearing as a man is hard to believe, especially today. What then is meant by “risen”. Can it be expressed more clearly by adding the word “bodily” to it so that we have “bodily risen”? As a minimum of interpretations, if a Christian is asked what they mean by “Jesus is risen”, one will say, “I mean Jesus has risen bodily from the tomb”, while another will say, “Jesus has risen spiritually”. Does it signify the rising of a spiritual body? Or does it mean the body “risen” was a normal human one? That this latter is the right meaning might be implied by the tomb it was laid in being empty. If, though, the rising was a “spiritual” one, what does that mean? Is it simply a way of saying that Jesus was set in the hearts of his disciples, or in the proclamation of the church?
What seemed banal and self evident is far from it, though many Christians will never have considered it a problem. Yet it is a problem that is at the heart of Christian unity. The Christian who means that Jesus rose bodily when he says “Jesus is risen” might take a dogmatic view about it, and tell others they are wrong to think it means spiritual resurrection. Or the reverse. Who is right? Faced with this dilemma, the Christian turns to the New Testament, but finds no resolution there because both views are supported in it. It could be considered from the viewpoint of modern knowledge, but no Christian will do it. “God has spoken”, they say, and has never spoken since, they believe.
The sentence “Jesus is risen” has to be examined even more closely, professor Marxsen says. What is meant by “is”? Many Christians believe that Jesus is, that is, when they say “Jesus is risen”, they mean he is! He is alive, still, at the present time, not just a figure from the past. The stress is on the present. Although it is an item of faith with no proof, Jesus lives. Others, though, less fundamentalist, perhaps, accept that the announcement, “Jesus is risen”, is a statement from the past. It is an announcement of a particular historical event of 2000 years ago that had in it a message from God. The confession of faith in the living Jesus depends on this historic event. Plainly the two interpretations are interwoven, but they are still different viewpoints. The fact that a Christian has faith in one view or the other does not help in distinguishing them because under both views the Christian believes in Jesus and has faith—accepting either view is Christian—but that has no bearing on the truth or otherwise of the statement. They have a view but still no idea whether it is based on what is true, false or inaccurate.
As a simpler example, belief in Jesus—having faith—does not confirm or deny that he was born of a virgin. Faith is not an instrument communicating information from the past. Faith in the proclamation, “Jesus is risen”, does not have anything to say about how the resurrection happened. It is simply faith that it did. To come to conclusions about the resurrection, other sources of information are needed, like experience. Experience says that dead men do not rise again. It is impossible, and so the tomb cannot have been empty. Christians reject this as irrelevant information.
Another source of information is other people, parents, preachers and peers. Such people often offer the information to persuade someone of their beliefs and thus persuade them to believe, or to strengthen their belief. It becomes part of faith, and when someone suggests some aspect of faith like this is wrong, the Christian gets scared of losing faith. That is why Christians do not like discussing the resurrection. They fear they might lose faith.
So, how do Christians get their information about the resurrection? A typical answer is that the Christian trusted the person who taught them to believe. That being so the Christian ought to recognize to themselves that they are accepting the word of someone else, and unless that person has confirmation of what they are teaching, it is only their opinion. What if they were wrong? It is not to suggest they were wrong, but simply that the Christian does not know the person who taught them was right. Who taught the teacher what they were teaching? If the process was the same one, there is no assurance the teacher had anything but an opinion taught to them, by whoever taught them. So, the Christian’s belief that “Jesus is risen” depends upon a chain of tradition back to the beginning of it.
It points to a third source of information—what was written concerning Christ in the New Testament. Some might say that this should have come before the teacher, but few can deny that, in coming to Christianity, someone acting as a teacher first brings the message. Still, having been taught something, the Christian can turn to the New Testament itself. But in doing so, again they should recognize that they are not coming to it with an open mind, but with the commitment already passed on by one or another teacher. The Christian does not open the gospels free of prejudice. They are already to some degree conditioned to accept what they read.
To be fair, Christians ought to acknowledge this, for as soon as they read, they do so with ready made interpretations in their heads, and might not therefore be receptive to alternatives, or even think of any—and the alternatives might be the right ones! Whatever tradition the Christian has been brought up in—been taught before they began to read the New Testament freely for themselves—will have biased their outlook. It is only by realizing it that they have any chance of getting rid of their preconceptions and coming freely to their faith. Only by doing it can the texts—God’s Word—speak directly to them without being filtered by an already prescribed tradition that might be wrong. What is right ought to be important to a Christian. False interpretation passed on through well meaning but mistaken tradition can only result in some people not being saved when they think they are.
So, the sentence, “Jesus is risen”, has been passed down the centuries as the central idea of credal faith, yet there are different understandings of what it means. Is it possible to get a better idea of it, and, if so, what is it? The main source of information is the written texts, but there is reason to doubt them too, though all affirmations of the credo stem from them. There is a consensus among Christians that the texts are valid, but that is arguing in circles. Belief comes from the texts, so cannot be used as an argument to affirm them. Maybe Christians have some other reason for believing the texts. Indeed, they do! The bible is the Word of God! It is uniquely inspired. No Christian will be persuaded that they could be wrong about this, but a problem still remains—they actually might be wrong!
They have been persuaded by believers, like themselves, that these texts are the word of God, and therefore infallible, but they could have been misled. The texts might not even have the true facts of the resurrection in them because, though the story might have been faithfully transmitted by honest believers who wrote the original texts, they themselves had no texts to rely on. There is a long historic gap between the event of the resurrection and it being written down by the gospel authors, the evangelists. So, while it is possible to believe that the evangelists writing the texts could have been inspired by God, what they were being told by fallible human beings might have been wrong, and so the gap in transmission has not been bridged. Nothing unequivocal can be pointed to that could persuade a doubter of their divine inspiration that might alleviate the problem. Nothing special in the character of the texts themselves affirms the authors were not themselves recording just what they already believed. They might still have been misled.
Christians themselves are certain the gospels are the direct evidence of ordinary people alive at the time. Inspiration by God could not have been the source of gospel infallibility. Ordinary people might be inspired to write, but they cannot be inspired to be infallible. Christians accept that the character of the gospels exclude an infallible source from on high. If the gospels were infallibly inspired, they ought to be internally consistent. God knew the precise truth about the resurrection, and so anyone somehow infallibly inspired by Him must have written what God Himself knew about it—exactly—unless God is a liar or fallible Himself. Yet Christians point to the inconsistencies in the gospels as proof that they are records of human, and therefore fallible, witnesses to the event, remembered and preserved with the distortions and lapses of memory that humans are prone to have.
Some Christians might still dispute that the bible is fallible even though it seems to conflict, so it needs a closer scrutiny still, but first there is another reason why the Christian turns to the texts—they are closer to the events than any extant oral tradition. They are historical sources, and without sources, we can know little about the past. Even so, caution about them is needed, because who the authors were or what their purpose was is not certainly clear. We might turn to the texts with a question in our heads, but the texts might not have been written to answer it. Was the New Testament written mainly to explain that “Jesus is risen” or how “Jesus is risen”, to affirm the resurrection, or to explain it—or for some other purpose? Affirmation of it might be the right answer and suffice for the Christian, but it means that the texts are not intended to be primarily a source of information. To affirm belief, something might be better suppressed, and something else presented unfairly favourably.
Moreover, to affirm faith, the evangelists must already have had a faith to affirm, and the Christian who wants to get to the root of faith ought not to overlook it—the evangelists had an axe to grind. They had already been persuaded, but the question remains, “Were they right?”. They had the same problems as these being considered here. What did they understand by “Jesus is risen”, and did they all understand it in the same way, and for the same reasons? The meaning of “Jesus is risen” is not a modern problem. It applied even then when the authors of the New Testament books wrote, much closer to the root of faith, so there should not be any shame in asking about it now. Thomas the apostle insisted on unequivocal evidence.
But even if the Christian thinks the evangelists meant to inform, what they recorded is what they believed happened. It might have been incorrect for quite innocent reasons. We are still not at the root of the statement “Jesus is risen”. We approach the texts certain that they can answer questions that they were never meant to answer. The author was stressing what was important to him, and it might not have been what is important to modern Christians. The danger is surely obvious. By forcing an answer to a question the text was not meant to answer, the modern believer is forcing into the text a meaning it does not and cannot have. God is being attributed with approving answers to modern worldly concerns that are not and could not have been His. That is how evil is done in God’s name. Giving the text a supernatural ability to answer every problem that ever can arise is making the text into God. It shows how important are the questions we are thinking about, and how foolish are those Christians who refuse to consider them out of faith, thereby falling into worse sins than they can imagine.
Information might have been provided primarily of an astounding event, a man rose from the dead bodily, and because of it the Christian can believe. Or faith was affirmed primarily and the proof is that a man rose from the dead in a miraculous way. If the second was the evangelists’ intention, then drawing out of it the detail of the first intention is erroneous, yet most scholars would say it is the second that is correct. In that case, it would be pushing the gospels too far to conclude that a man actually rose from the dead. On the other hand, accurate information was not so readily passed around in those days as it is today, so that even if the aim had been to give information, the Christian ought not to think it had to be precise by the time it was set down.
We cannot seriously deny that it is one thing to know about an event, and another to be convinced that it took place.W Marxsen, The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth
“Jesus is risen” is an expression of Christian faith, but what does this faith mean? Many modern Christians take the view that their faith is a sort of insurance policy guaranteeing them a life when they ought to be dead, but, if the resurrection affirms this insurance policy for those who believe it, then what is the point of the record in the gospels of Jesus’s ministry? Surely it is that anyone who has faith is expected to live and act the way God did when He lived on earth as a man. The idea that faith alone is sufficient for salvation is belied by many contrary passages in the New Testament besides Christ’s own example.
Acknowledging Christ as Lord is to be his slave. A Lord is a master. Slaves do not ignore their master, if they are wise, and the Christian gospels show what the master expects of them. To be involved with Jesus through faith must mean noting what he did in his ministry, and his ministry is worthless if it does not vividly show the Christian how to behave. Morally accepting faith in Jesus is risen is posturing unless it has some content. It is the public ministry of Christ that shows what the content of faith is. The point has to be made because, if the whole basis of faith can be found only in the last few chapters of the gospels in the passion narratives, the ministry is irrelevant, and could be omitted.
So, turn to the four gospels. Here are what seem to be four parallel texts, quadrupling the historic evidence. Four separate witnesses could hardly be all wrong. Yet, it is not so. No scholar nowadays, even Catholic ones, deny that the repetition almost word for word of passages in Matthew, Mark and Luke proves they are not independent. Few scholars demur from the view that Matthew and Luke have used Mark. Comparison of all three shows a lot of material, mainly sayings, common to Matthew and Luke but not Mark, suggesting another source no longer extant called “Q”. As Q is mainly sayings, and has nothing about the resurrection in it, it is not important for thinking about the sentence “Jesus is risen”, and indeed it is of little interest to Christians, most of whom know nothing at all about it.
What is important is that in Matthew, Mark, and Luke there is only a single account of the Easter events that gave the impetus to Christianity, but it is repeated three times. The importance of it is that Matthew and Luke can hardly have been eyewitnesses to the resurrection if they had to use Mark’s account rather than their own recollections. Not that they found Mark’s account entirely satisfactory because they added some detail to it, and they did not like the clumsy way Mark said things, and so improved the way he expressed himself, but they had no independent viewpoint, no slant of their own, as they must have had, if they really were eyewitnesses.
What then do the last chapters of the four gospels tell us about the resurrection? Consider them in turn.
In Mark, the earliest gospel, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome saw Jesus’s crucifixion from afar (Mk 15:40f). Then Joseph of Arimathea buried the dead Christ observed by Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses (Mk 15:47), on the day before the sabbath. On the day after the sabbath, early in the morning the three women brought spices to the tomb to anoint the body. It was the third day, counting inclusively as they did then—Friday, Saturday (the sabbath), Sunday. The tomb was sealed with a large stone. They had not thought earlier about how they would open the tomb, and wondered about it on the way, but it had already been moved when they arrived. Inside the tomb they were scared to find a young man in a long white garment. Calmly, the man said:
You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here. See the place where they laid him.
Note that the resurrection was announced before any attention was drawn to the tomb being empty of Jesus’s corpse. The women were told to inform Peter and the disciples that Jesus had gone before them to Galilee where they would see him there, as he had said (Mk 14:28). The women fled trembling and amazed, but did not do as they were told because they said nothing to anyone.
Here (Mk 16:8) Mark ends, but additional verses have been added later, and different ones in different versions. Many contain additional verses, Mark 16.9-20, a harmonization from the other gospels. Some have a shorter ending and some just end at Mark 16:8. Did Mark mean to finish at Mark 16:8? Or has an original end been erased? As it stands, it ends at Mark 16:8, and the rest is spurious.
The account says nothing about the resurrection. It has already happened and the young man draws their attention to the absence of the body as proof. Mark says nothing about appearances, and so nothing about the nature of the resurrected Christ. An announcement of a future meeting in Galilee (Mk 16:7) implies perhaps that Jesus will seem normal, but nothing certain is said. The conclusion is that Mark was sure the tomb was empty, and little else.
Three women looked upon the crucifixion. They were the same as the three in Mark, except the mother of the sons of Zebedee replaced Salome (Mt 27:56). The laying of the body in the tomb was watched by Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. On the sabbath, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate because Jesus had prophesied he would rise from the dead after three days, and they wanted Pilate to prevent anyone from stealing the body to claim he had risen by putting a guard on the tomb. Pilate agreed to a guard, and they went to secure and seal the tomb with the stone. It was still the sabbath. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb to view it. While at the tomb, an earthquake occurred and an angel descended from heaven, rolled away the stone and sat on it. The terrified guards fell down as if dead. The angel told the two women not to be afraid. Jesus who was crucified was not there for he had risen as he had said, and they were invited to see the place where he lay. Then the angel told them to go quickly and tell the disciples that he has risen from the dead, and was going before them to Galilee, where they would see him. Only the invitation to look is mentioned, so we have to assume they did look in. The women then ran with fear and great joy to tell the disciples.
Both of these accounts can hardly be by eyewitnesses:
The two stories cannot be harmonized and the differences cannot be brushed aside. Matthew has more details like the guards but he had used Mark, altering his copy in nearly every passage, as we know by comparing the texts. The question is can one explain the alterations.
Then the women met Jesus (Mt 28:9-10), he greeted them, and they fell before him and took hold of his feet. Jesus repeated what the angel had already told them and what they were just about to do (Mt 28.8). Then the story of the guard was brought to an end (Mt 28.11-15). The men, having recovered from their faint, went into the city, not to Pilate but to the chief priest. The chief priests and elders bribed the guards to tell Pilate they had fallen asleep on duty, and the disciples had come and stolen the body. How they could know this while claiming they were asleep is not explained. Matthew says why he introduced the story of the guard, absent from the other gospels. It was because the theft of the body had been spread among the Jews “to this day” (Mt 28:15). Matthew had introduced the guard to defend against a criticism current when he was writing about 90 BC. This defense made it plain that Matthew relied on the empty tomb as proof of the resurrection. But whether the guard was an original invention of Matthew or a tradition already established cannot be decided. It does not really matter because it contradicts itself, and so cannot be true.
Next, the eleven disciples went to the mountain in Galilee Jesus had told them to go, though actually he had not told them to go to “a mountain” but only “into Galilee”. They fell before him, although some of them, it seems, were doubtful. Jesus proclaimed, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”. Did he mean this was given to him through the resurrection? It seems we must assume it, if he had not told the disciples he had that power earlier. The eleven were told to make disciples of all nations, by baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and by teaching them to keep all Jesus had commanded them. He ends with the promise, “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age”… meaning the end of this world.
To be disciples of the risen Jesus, Christians will observe, they did so through baptism and by keeping all that Jesus had commanded. The Christian must return to Christ’s ministry to know what he had commanded them, what he had preached.
The basis of Christianity, Matthew believed, is that Jesus rose from the grave and proved it by leaving his tomb empty, then appearing first to two women and after to his eleven disciples. Believing that, the Christian will then accept that the risen Jesus had personally explained that discipleship meant keeping his commands. The content of “faith in Jesus” is plainly stated by the risen Jesus himself. The discipleship of the earthly Jesus should be carried forward today by Christians. Faith alone just will not do!