Resurrection in Retrospect

A Critical Examination of the Theology of N. T. Wright

Peter Carnley

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781532667510
  9781532667527
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532667534
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

In 2003 the British New Testament scholar N. T. Wright published The Resurrection of the Son of God, arguing vigorously that the Resurrection of Christ should be handled purely as a historical event--subjected to historical reason and critical-historical research. This book critically examines Wright's arguments. Peter Carnley demonstrates the flaws in the view that the Resurrection should be understood essentially as Jesus' return from the dead to this world of space and time in a material and physical body. Carnley argues that the Resurrection of Christ is a "mystery of God," which must necessarily be appropriated, not by reason alone, but by faith. Evidence relating to a past occurrence can be known only retrospectively. Yet Easter faith has to do with apprehending in the present a concretely experienced reality--which Saint Paul called "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:2). An epistemology of the identification of the Spirit in faith as the living presence of Christ will be found in the companion volume to this book: The Reconstruction of Resurrection Belief.

1

Introduction

Matters of Method

In 2003 the eminent British New Testament scholar N. T. Wright1 published the third volume of a series on Christian Origins and the Question of God. This particular volume was titled The Resurrection of the Son of God.2 It is an impressively detailed and weighty tome, which, including indices and bibliography, runs to a whole 817 pages. Given its sheer length and the detailed nature of its prose, I am sure I cannot have been the only reader to have wilted in the course of the first attempt to read it. Indeed, if I am honest, I think I must own that on more than one occasion I skipped through some sections in order to get to the conclusions.3

Quite apart from the daunting task of working through Wright’s detailed discussion, it must be said that this lack of enthusiasm at the time of the first reading of The Resurrection of the Son of God also surfaced because it almost immediately became apparent to me that I held some very serious reservations about the fundamental thrust of the book’s basic argument. While it could be contended that the judgment “that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead” is a judgment of faith, given that it is usually understood by Christians to be a transcendental “act of God” with profound cosmic implications, not least for the salvation of humanity, Wright’s contention is that Christ’s Resurrection is to be handled straightforwardly, at least in the first instance, as an event of the past history of this world. Before the Resurrection is spoken of in theological terms as a “mighty act of God” for the salvation and transformation of humanity, and as something therefore that must necessarily be appropriated by faith, Wright’s contention is that it is to be handled quite simply as an event of historical time. It is of a piece with any other historical event that might be located in a particular geographical place and at a datable time in the past, such as Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BC,4 or the death of Augustus in AD 14, or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.5 That it actually happened can therefore be established using historical reasoning alone, employing the secular techniques of critical historical research. Thus, Wright sets out on a quest for “historical knowledge about the resurrection, of a sort that can be discussed without presupposing Christian faith.”6

In this way, Wright’s fundamental methodological contention is that the exercise of the historical reason may be relied upon to provide what is imagined to be a sure foundation for consequent interpretive judgments, including judgments of faith. These might include belief in God as the ultimate author of the event, or the belief that Jesus’ Resurrection was an event with transcendental implications for the restoration and renewal of humanity. Alternatively, appeal may be made to it to ground the more general belief in life beyond death for all human believers. Once the actuality of its occurrence is proved by historical research it can be interpreted in faith as the promise of an ultimate fulfillment relating to the eternal destiny of all people. In this case, judgments of faith of this variety become a kind of optional extra that may be entertained by religiously minded people. However, the affirmation of the actual occurrence of the Resurrection itself is said by Wright not to be a judgment of faith of this kind, but a conclusion of critical historical research. This may be reached by anybody, whether religiously inclined or not, using the historical reason. Wright therefore claims that there is “no reason in principle why the question, what precisely happened at Easter, cannot be raised by any historian of any persuasion.”7 What he means, more specifically, is that any historian of any persuasion may not only “raise the question” as to whether the Resurrection occurred, but may actually come to the conclusion that it did in fact occur, simply by employing the secular methods of critical historical research. Indeed, Wright claims that he, working purely as a historian, can actually prove the occurrence of the Resurrection to any right-thinking person of any or no religious persuasion at all. This is what he sets out to do in The Resurrection of the Son of God.

My immediate misgivings about the validity of these contentions are explained by the fact that when I myself wrote on the theology of the Resurrection in The Structure of Resurrection Belief, which was published in 1987, I argued an entirely contrary thesis: that the primary category of “divine mystery,” if we are prepared to allow it to be brought to the discussion of the Resurrection (as St. Paul surely invites us to do8), entails that assent to the occurrence of the Easter Event is itself a judgment of faith, and not just a conclusion of the historical reason. It involves the interpretation of the reported experiences of the first Christians from the perspective of faith in God and even from the point of view of a pre-existing belief expressing the eschatological hope for resurrection beyond death. This already presupposes a set of dogmatic assumptions, which allowed the first Christians to interpret their Easter experiences in faith using the category of “resurrection.” Indeed, even before we begin to try to come to a conclusion about whether the Resurrection of Jesus happened or not, we have to edge towards an understanding of what it is we are setting out to prove, for questions of meaning are logically prior to questions of truth. If it is rightly approached as essentially a transcendental mystery of God we have to anticipate that we may find ourselves humbly confronted by the fundamental limitations of human reason—something quite the opposite of an over-confident conviction that Christ’s Resurrection was the kind of event that can be proved to have occurred by the exercise of the critical historical reason alone. We may anticipate therefore that the category of “mystery,” by contrast with something that is clearly and distinctly manifest to all who care to attend to it, will therefore dictate the need to utilize a multiplicity of different avenues of approach as we seek to handle its surpassing transcendental qualities.

The kind of multi-faceted approach to the theology of the Resurrection of Christ, which was therefore pursued in The Structure of Resurrection Belief, is anathema to N. T. Wright, who contends that the category of “historical event” is to be employed exclusively, as the only really legitimate means of dealing with it. Indeed, as he sets out to convince his readers that he can actually prove the occurrence of the Resurrection of Christ as a historical event, Wright contends that the evidence constituted by the story of the empty tomb together with the accounts of the first Easter appearances or “meetings” with Jesus, as he calls them, provides both the necessary and sufficient conditions to warrant the judgment that Jesus was raised from the dead and restored to life in this world, leaving the tomb in which his dead body had been laid empty.9 This, he says, is the only really plausible conclusion that can be drawn from the available evidence.

It can readily be conceded that Wright’s approach to an understanding of what is meant by the term “resurrection,” together with an examination of the evidence relating specifically to Jesus’ purported Resurrection, using the historical reason, may indeed be one way of attempting to handle the Easter Event. However, if it is not the kind of event “that can be discussed without presupposing Christian faith”10 that Wright assumes it to be, and if by definition the Resurrection is a mystery of God which “surpasses all understanding,” the use of the historical reason alone is bound in the long run to be found wanting. In order to reduce the transcending mystery of it, even to reasonably manageable proportions, not just one but various hermeneutical models may have to be employed, none of which may be entirely satisfactory in and of itself. This means that no single avenue of approach is likely to be without some difficulties, not least and quite specifically, the approach to it simply as a historical event. Indeed, in The Structure of Resurrection Belief I argued that even the most impressive past attempts to handle the Resurrection exclusively as a historical event (notably, for example, the earnest and high-quality attempts of B. F. Westcott in the nineteenth century and of Wolfhart Pannenberg in the twentieth century) turn out, at the end of the day, to be ultimately unsatisfactory. I have come to the same conclusion in relation to N. T. Wright’s own attempt in The Resurrection of the Son of God.

Wright himself does not suffer fools gladly. Indeed, those in the past who have pursued a quite different line of approach from his own in wrestling with the theology of the Resurrection of...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: 2 Baruch, Josephus, and The Wisdom of Solomon
• Chapter 3: Language and Experience
• Chapter 4: The Appearances Tradition
• Chapter 5: Paul and The Empty Tomb
• Chapter 6: The Empty Tomb
• Chapter 7: The Nature of Faith
• Chapter 8: The Verbal Expression of Faith
• Chapter 9: The Subjective Vision Hypothesis
• Chapter 10: Incorruptibility or Immortality?
• Chapter 11: Heaven
• Appendix 1: 2 Baruch 49–51
• Appendix 2: Jewish Sources on the Legal Status of Women
• Bibliography