Did Jesus Rise From the Dead? (11 page)

3.
Plausibility:
Ludemann attempts to make his Hallucination Hypothesis plausible by means of psychoanalyses of Peter and Paul. He believes that they both labored under guilt complexes, which found release in the hallucinations of Jesus. But Lude-mann’s psychoanalysis is implausible for at least three reasons: First, Ludemann’s use of depth psychology is based upon certain theories of Jung and Freud, which are widely rejected. Second, there’s not enough information to do psychoanalyses of Peter or Paul. Psychoanalysis is difficult enough to carry out even with patients on the psychoanalyst’s couch, so to speak, but it’s next to impossible with historical figures. That’s why historians reject the genre of psychobiography today. Finally, third, the evidence we do have suggests that Paul did not struggle with a guilt complex as Ludemann supposes.

Nearly fifty years ago, the Swedish scholar Krister Stendahl pointed out that Western readers have tended to read Paul through the lenses of Martin Luther’s struggles with guilt and sin. But Paul (or Saul) the Pharisee experienced no such struggle. Stendahl writes:

Contrast Paul, a very happy and successful Jew, one who can say ‘As to righteousness under the Law (I was) blameless’ (Phil. 3.6). That is what he says. He experiences no troubles, no problems, and no qualms of conscience. He is a star pupil, the student to get the thousand dollar graduate scholarship in Gamaliel’s Seminary.... Nowhere in Paul’s writings is there any indication . . . that psychologically Paul had some problem of conscience.
¹⁸

In order to justify his portrait of a guilt-ridden Paul, Lude-mann is compelled to interpret Romans 7 as a description of Paul’s pre-Christian experience. But since the late 1920s, almost all commentators have rejected this autobiographical interpretation of Romans 7, so Ludemann’s psychoanalysis is positively implausible.

A second way in which the Hallucination Hypothesis is implausible is by its designating the appearances to be merely visionary experiences. Ludemann recognizes that the Hallucination Hypothesis stands or falls on the assumption that what Paul experienced on the Damascus Road was the same as what all the other disciples experienced; but this assumption is groundless. In including himself in the list of eyewitnesses to Christ’s resurrection appearances, Paul in no way implies that the other appearances were just like the appearance he saw. Many of Paul’s opponents in Corinth denied that he was a true apostle, so Paul is anxious to include himself along with the other apostles who had seen Christ. Paul is trying to bring his experience on the Damascus Road up to the objectivity and reality of theirs, not to pull their experience down to merely visionary experiences.

So the Hallucination Hypothesis is implausible both with regard to its psychoanalysis of the witnesses and with regard to its blanket reduction of the appearances to visionary experiences.

4.
Less contrived:
Ludemann’s version of the Hallucination Hypothesis is contrived in a number of ways; for example, he assumes that the disciples fled back to Galilee after Jesus’ arrest; that Peter was so obsessed with guilt that he projected a hallucination of Jesus; that the other disciples were also prone to hallucinations; and that Paul had a struggle with the Jewish law, and a secret attraction to Christianity. There is no evidence for any of these assumptions.

5.
Disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs:
Some of the accepted beliefs of New Testament scholars today tend to disconfirm the Hallucination Hypothesis, at least in the way that Ludemann presents it. Examples include: the belief that Jesus was laid in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea; that Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty by women; that psychoanalysis of historical figures is not feasible; that Paul was basically content with his life under the Jewish law; and that the New Testament makes a distinction between a mere vision and a resurrection appearance.

6.
Exceeds other hypotheses in fulfilling conditions 1—5:
The Hallucination Hypothesis remains a live option today and in that respect, has outstripped its rivals. But the crucial question is whether it outstrips the Resurrection Hypothesis.

THE RESURRECTION
HYPOTHESIS

We’ve seen how poorly the customary explanations of the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ faith fare when assessed by standard criteria for testing historical hypotheses. They’re especially weak when it comes to explanatory scope and power and are often highly implausible.

But does the Resurrection Hypothesis do any better as an explanation of the evidence? Is it a better explanation than the implausible naturalistic explanations offered in the past? In order to answer these questions, let’s apply the same criteria to the hypothesis that “God raised Jesus from the dead.”

1.
Explanatory scope:
The Resurrection Hypothesis has greater explanatory scope than certain other explanations like the Hallucination Hypothesis or the Displaced Body Hypothesis precisely because it can explain all three of the main facts at issue—whereas, the rival hypotheses try to explain only one.

2.
Explanatory power:
This is, I think, the greatest virtue of the Resurrection Hypothesis. The Conspiracy Hypothesis and the Apparent Death Hypothesis, by contrast, just do not convincingly account for the empty tomb, resurrection appearances, or origin of the Christian faith; on these theories, the evidence (such as the transformation of the disciples) becomes very improbable. By contrast, on the hypothesis of Jesus’ resurrection, it seems extremely probable that the tomb should be empty, that the disciples should see appearances of Jesus alive, and that they should come to believe in his resurrection.

3.
Plausibility:
The plausibility of Jesus’ resurrection grows exponentially once we consider it in its proper philosophical context: namely, a theistic worldview, in its historical context, and Jesus’ own unparalleled life/radical personal claims. Given that God exists, the hypothesis that God would raise Jesus of Nazareth from the dead cannot be said to be implausible.

4.
Less contrived:
The Resurrection Hypothesis possesses great explanatory scope and power, but some scholars have charged that it is contrived. Being contrived, if you recall, is a matter of how many new suppositions a hypothesis must make which are not implied by existing knowledge.

By definition, however, it’s hard to see why the Resurrection Hypothesis is extraordinarily contrived. It requires only one new supposition: that God exists. Surely its rival hypotheses require many more new suppositions. For example, the Conspiracy Hypothesis requires us to suppose that the moral character of the disciples was defective, which is certainly not implied by already existing knowledge; the Apparent Death Hypothesis requires the supposition that the centurion’s spear thrust into Jesus’ side was just a superficial poke or is an unhistorical detail in the narrative, which again goes beyond existing knowledge; the Hallucination Hypothesis requires us to suppose some sort of emotional preparation of the disciples, which predisposed them to project visions of Jesus alive—again, not implied by our knowledge. And there are many more examples that could be listed—the aforementioned are just a few.

It should be noted, too, that scientific hypotheses regularly include the supposition of the existence of new entities, such as quarks, strings, gravitons, black holes, and the like, without those theories being characterized as contrived. Moreover, for the person who already believes in God, the Resurrection Hypothesis doesn’t even introduce the new supposition of God’s existence, since that’s already implied by his existing knowledge. So the Resurrection Hypothesis cannot be said to be contrived simply by virtue of the number of new suppositions it introduces.

If our hypothesis is contrived, then, it must be for some other reasons. Philosophers of science have found it notoriously difficult to explain what it is exactly that makes a hypothesis contrived. There seems to be an air of artificiality about a hypothesis charged as contrived, which can be sensed by those who are seasoned practitioners of the relevant science.