Resurrection

Texts and Interpretation, Experience and Theology

Karl Olav Sandnes, Jan-Olav Henriksen

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781532695872, 9781532695889
• eBook ISBN: 9781532695896
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Christian faith depends upon the resurrection of Jesus, but the claim about Jesus' resurrection is, nevertheless, disputed. This book, written by a New Testament scholar and a systematic theologian in conjunction, develops the conditions for the claim. It carefully analyzes the relevant texts and their possible interpretations and engages with New Testament scholarship in order to show nuances and different trajectories in the material. The picture emerging is that the New Testament authors themselves tried to come to terms with how to understand the claim that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead. But the book does not stop there: by also asking for the experiential content that gave rise to the belief in the resurrection. Sandnes and Henriksen argue that there is no such thing as an experience of the resurrection reported in the New Testament--only experiences of an empty tomb and appearance of Jesus, interpreted as Jesus resurrected. Hence, resurrection emerges as an interpretative category for post-Easter experiences, and is only understandable in light of the full content of Jesus' ministry and its context.

Part I: Theoretical Presuppositions

Resurrection is an Interpretative Category

In order to explore the possible answers to the abovementioned questions, we have to recognize from the outset that resurrection is an interpretative category. The notion resurrection does not apply to any phenomenon that any human person has ever experienced (not even Jesus himself, as his capacity for experiencing a post-resurrection state presupposes that he had already been raised from the dead). The claims “Jesus has risen” or “God has resurrected Jesus”—both claims central to the Christian faith—are not based on any experience of the resurrection itself. These claims are based on other observations: the experiences of the empty tomb, and the appearances of Jesus after his death. It is the combination of these latter elements that makes it possible to claim that Jesus was resurrected.

When we speak of the resurrection as something unique, we, therefore, reserve this category for a specific interpretation of the conditions for events that have in principle been, at some point, observable by humans. To see resurrection as an interpretative category implies that it is based on an abductive inference7 from experiences of other elements than the resurrection itself. The potential uniqueness of the resurrection of Jesus is, therefore, itself based on a decision about how to use this category: what people believe when they believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead is that something happened to him that has not happened to anyone else. It is an exclusive category, applied to him only.

This use of the category “resurrection” as exclusive does not imply that the other experiences that caused the claim about Jesus’s resurrection are in the same manner unique or exclusive: It is likely that people could, for different reasons, have experienced empty tombs earlier and later, and not only in the case of Jesus. We also know that throughout history, a considerable amount of people have had visions of recently deceased persons and that this is still the case today.8 In that regard, none of the experiential elements that constitute the claim that Jesus has risen are something to be considered as possible to apply exclusively to him. However, the claim that he is resurrected is. It is the claim that these experiences can be explained or interpreted as pointing to his resurrection that is the specific element that we must focus on if we want to speak about the exclusivity of what happened. The resurrection, therefore, does not depend only on the experiential content or the basis for the experiences people have, but also on how one relates these theologically to the ministry of Jesus before Easter. Hence, what Christians believe is that something special happened to Jesus that has not happened to any other human person, and the reason for this belief is a specific interpretation of the facts that Jesus’s tomb was empty and that he appeared to his followers in the time following his crucifixion and burial. They saw these events as related to and confirming the truth and validity of Jesus’s ministry before his death.

Keeping this in mind, we can proceed and ask on what grounds it is possible to claim that there is something unparalleled in the faith in the resurrection of Jesus that cannot be seen as in analogy with any other experience we can have? Surely, we know that it is possible that a tomb can be empty, and we have reasons to believe that people have had visions of Jesus after his death and did so in ways that may be seen as potentially parallel or analogous to how other dead persons may appear after death as well. In this regard, we move beyond the type of scholarship that restricts itself to stating things about Jesus only up until the time of his death: there is more than enough anthropological evidence to suggest that appearances of people after their death is something that actually takes place. Hence, there seems to be nothing impossible, unparalleled, or without analogy in the actual experiences that constitute the background for the claim and belief that Jesus was raised from the dead.

What seems impossible is the content of the claim itself: that someone has risen from the dead and entered a new form of life. Despite mythological stories about such events, as well as some of the visions from the Old Testament (Ezekiel, chap. 37 in particular) this is not a likely thing to happen, and therefore unexpected and not anticipated. Against the backdrop of the above considerations, one has to admit that nothing seems to attest to the possibility or probability of a resurrection to happen in the actual experiences that humans have. That is so even when we know that sometimes dead people do appear, or tombs turn out as empty. However, the resurrection itself is not something that can be easily linked to our present world, emerging from present conditions of experience, and something likely to happen within reasonable horizons of expectation.9

In a way, that seems to be exactly the point about resurrection: when we see it in light of what happened on Good Friday, the resurrection is the total opposite, that for which all conditions of possibility are eradicated by the death of Jesus. Jesus manifested the powers of life, but when he was himself dead, these manifestations were no longer possible. The claim about resurrection nevertheless states that the power of life is still at work, still present, still operational. The question still remains: How can we understand the resurrection? What does it mean from a theological point of view? These are questions that will occupy us in this part of the book.

Theoretical Building Blocks for the Claim that Jesus Did Rise from the Dead

This chapter aims at clarifying some basic elements regarding how to understand experience and its conditions in general, in order to then, subsequently, say something about what it can imply for the understanding of the experiences that the disciples had after the death of Jesus.

When humans have a profound experience of something, it does not leave them unaffected. This claim goes for all kinds of experiences, including those of empty tombs or visions of the deceased. Such experiences can be confusing, and they may provide reasons for transformations in how you live and what you think, in ways that entail a change in values, perceptions, ideas, and commitments that you have had hitherto.

From the outset, we need to distinguish between experiences and things that just happen. Whereas experiences in a qualified sense are what will occupy us in the following, mere occurrences that do not register any change in those to whom they befall are not what we have in mind here. In German, one can distinguish between these two categories of events by speaking about Erfahrung viz. Erlebnis. We will develop this distinction more thoroughly below.

We nevertheless first need to say here that we are not taking our point of view from a pre-established concept of “religious experience” as something that is set off from or can be easily distinguished from other types of experiences that humans have. We would even prefer to speak of “experiences with or by religion” instead, meaning that there are experiences in human life that are more likely to be interpreted in the framework of, or by means of, the semiotic resources that religious traditions offer for the interpretation...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Abbrevations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Theoretical Presuppositions
• Part II: The New Testament Discourses on Resurrection
• Part III: Resurrection Faith
• Part IV: Concluding Reflections
• Bibliography