Did Jesus Rise From the Dead? (6 page)

We can also conclude that the Resurrected Christ’s appearances were physical, bodily appearances. The evidence I’ve presented thus far leaves it open whether the resurrection appearances were physical or merely visionary in nature; we’ll examine later whether even visionary experiences of the risen Jesus can be plausibly explained on purely psychological grounds. But if the appearances were physical and bodily in nature, then a purely psychological explanation becomes virtually impossible—so it’s worth asking, What we can know about the nature of the resurrection appearances?

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
—1 Corinthians 15:42—44

Paul implies that the appearances were physical in two ways. He conceives of the resurrection body as physical; all commentators recognize that Paul does not teach the immortality of the soul alone, but rather the resurrection of the body. In 1 Corinthians 15:42—44, Paul draws four essential contrasts between the present, earthly body and our future, resurrection body.

Only the last of these contrasts might lead us to believe that Paul didn’t believe in a physical, resurrection body. But we must ask what Paul meant by the words, which I’ve translated as “natural/spiritual”?

The Greek word for
natural,
when translated, literally means “soul-ish.” Now it’s evident that Paul doesn’t mean that our earthly bodies are made out of soul. Rather, his use of “natural” means “dominated by, or pertaining to, human nature.”

By the same token, when he says our resurrection bodies will be “spiritual,” he doesn’t mean that they will be made out of spirit. Rather, he means “dominated by, or oriented toward, the Spirit.” It’s the same sense of “spiritual” as when we say that someone is a spiritual person.

We can be sure of Paul’s meaning by looking at the way Paul uses precisely these same words in 1 Corinthians 2:14—15, several chapters earlier and within the same letter.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
—1 Corinthians 2:14—15

Clearly
natural person
doesn’t mean physical person; rather, a person oriented toward human nature. Similarly,
spiritual person
doesn’t mean an intangible, invisible person; it refers to a person oriented toward the Spirit. We find the same contrast in 1 Corinthians 15. The present, earthly body will be freed from its domination by sinful human nature and will become, instead, fully empowered and directed by God’s Spirit. Paul’s doctrine of the resurrection body therefore implies a physical resurrection.

The second way
Paul, along with the rest of the New Testament, implies a physical resurrection is that he distinguishes a
resurrection appearance
of Jesus from a
vision
of Jesus. The resurrection appearances of Jesus soon ceased, but people continued to see visions of Jesus in glory. Now the question is: What is the difference between a resurrection appearance and a vision of Jesus?

The answer of the New Testament seems to be clear: A vision, even though caused by God, was purely in the mind of the visionary, whereas a resurrection appearance was an extra-mental event in the external world.

We can compare Stephen’s vision of Jesus described in Acts 7 with the various resurrection appearances of Jesus. Stephen saw a vision of a man—not a man who was physically present, for no one else experienced anything at all—and it was a completely private experience. By contrast, the resurrection appearances were not inner, subjective experiences—they could be experienced by anybody who was there.

Paul had visions of Jesus in his life as a Christian; but he could properly regard his experience on the Damascus Road as a resurrection appearance of Jesus rather than a vision, even though it took place after Jesus’ ascension, because it involved phenomena in the external world, such as the light and the voice, which Paul’s traveling companions also experienced to varying degrees. Therefore, the distinction between a vision and a resurrection appearance of Jesus also implies that the resurrection appearances were physical.

Now, the Gospel-appearance narratives also show that the appearances were physical and bodily; in fact, every resurrection appearance cited in the Gospels unanimously testifies to a physical, bodily appearance. If you think about it, that’s really impressive; had
none
of the original appearances been a physical, bodily appearance, then it would be very strange to have a completely unanimous testimony in the Gospels that
all
of them were physical, with no trace of the supposed original, visionary appearances. It’s unlikely that such thorough corruption of oral tradition would occur in so short a time, especially while the original eyewitnesses were still about.

Now if all the appearances were originally non-physical visions, then we’re at a complete loss to explain the rise of the Gospel appearance narratives. For physical, bodily appearances would be folly to Gentiles and a stumbling block to Jews—since neither could embrace the notion of physical resurrection of the dead—but both would have been quite happy to accept claims of visionary appearances of the deceased.

In all honesty, we have to say that the only basis for denying the physical, bodily nature of the post-mortem appearances of Jesus is not historical, but philosophical; namely, such appearances would be stupendous miracles, and many critics simply cannot swallow that claim. But if that’s the problem, then we need to go back to square one and think about the question of God’s existence; if God exists, there’s no good reason to be skeptical about miracles. For as the agnostic philosopher Peter Slezak nicely put it in our debate on God’s existence, for a God who is able to create the entire universe, the odd resurrection would be child’s play! Unfortunately, most New Testament scholars are not trained in philosophy and therefore, make elementary blunders when it comes to these questions.

On the basis of the aforementioned evidence, we can conclude that the fact of Jesus’ post-mortem appearances to various individuals and groups under a variety of circumstances is firmly established historically and, moreover, that these appearances were bodily and physical.

Part III

THE ORIGIN OF
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

Now we come to the third fact to be explained: the very origin of the Christian faith. Everybody knows that Christianity sprang into being midway through the first century AD, but that raises the obvious question: Why did it come into existence? What caused this movement to begin? Even skeptical New Testament scholars recognize that the Christian faith owes its origin to the earliest disciples’ belief that God had raised Jesus from the dead. In fact, they pinned nearly everything on this belief.

CONVICTION OF
THE PROMISED MESSIAH

Jews had no conception whatsoever of a Messiah who, instead of triumphing over Israel’s enemies, would be shamefully executed by them as a criminal.
Messiah
was supposed to be a triumphant figure who would command the respect of Jew and Gentile alike, and who would establish the throne of David in Jerusalem. Yet Jesus’ disciples held deeply a conviction that he was the promised Messiah—a Messiah who failed to deliver and to reign; was defeated, humiliated, and slain by his enemies; and was a contradiction in terms. Nowhere do ancient Jewish texts speak of this sort of “Messiah.” So it’s difficult to exaggerate, therefore, what a catastrophe Jesus’ crucifixion would have been for the disciples. It wasn’t just that their beloved teacher was gone; rather, Jesus’ death on the cross meant the crushing defeat of any hopes they had entertained that he was the Messiah.