THE ALBATROSS OF THE RESURRECTION
The resurrection an albatross? For the ardent, literalist Christian that has to sound like pure heresy. Even the most progressive Christian might find such a statement hard to swallow. Most Christians, fundamental literalist, and progressive have been indoctrinated to believe that the resurrection is a factual event, even if there is little to non-existent historical evidence of such an occurrence.
To show how much of an albatross the resurrection is today, one only has to listen to sermons or homilies on the various Easter readings from the Gospels. It is either treated as a fact that one must believe or the Gospel reading regarding it, is treated to little commentary or is skirted by the preacher talking, instead, about one of the other readings appointed for the day. The only thing in the resurrection story that might - just might - serve as some sort of evidence of its being related to an actual event is the possibility of the tomb empty. Beyond that, the sightings of Jesus and the recorded conversations with him in the canonical Gospels are, at best, an inconsistent mix of spurious experiences that lack any credible evidence of ever happening.
In all the differing Gospel accounts of Jesus's resurrection there is something extremely ephemeral about claims of Jesus appearing to his disciples. He reportedly appears and disappears without warning, in spite of his disciple being in secure locked room. In fact the Gospel of Luke addresses the issue of the disciples wondering if they were seeing Jesus' ghost. To prove that he wasn't a ghost, Jesus tells his disciples to touch him and then asks for something to eat. We don't know if any of the disciples touched Jesus, but we do read that he ate. This of course was before the Ghostbuster movie came out and showed a ghost, Slimer, eating hotdogs. In trying to debunk the debunkers in their audiences, the Gospel writers actually give some credibility to the doubts people had about the resurrection being an actual event and not some form of paranormal activity or some type of group hysteria.
The problem with the resurrection as a fact is that there is no credible explanation for it and, for all practical purposes, it seems in the twenty-first century, at least, an unnecessary story as it adds nothing to the teachings of Jesus. Even the Gospels make no attempt to explain it, other than to say that he appeared to his disciples. While the Gospels of Luke and John try to emphasize a real physical presence by Jesus eating food or cooking fish for breakfast by the Sea of Galilee, the earliest New Testament commentary on the resurrection of Jesus by Paul doesn't. He claims that Jesus died a physical body and was raised a spiritual body, which is mostly ignored in Christian theology, where the term "body" takes precedent over the spiritual descriptor of that term.
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The Cambridge dictionary defines resurrection as "the act or fact of bringing someone back to life, or bringing something back into use or existence." This is a very helpful definition; in that, it offers a person two ways of understanding Jesus' resurrection story. The first way is to treat it as an act or a fact of bringing someone back to life. The second is bringing something (or in this case someone) back into use or existence.
For the most part all Christian denominations treat the resurrection story as Jesus being brought back to life by God as something necessary to be believed as a fact in order to be saved. To require belief that this is a fact after Jesus not appearing in physical form to anyone for the past two thousand years raises the question why he didn't stick around and finish the job of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth.
The second coming of Jesus has lost most of its punch, nowadays. At one time, Christians believed that being resurrected from the dead would occur at the end of the world or the end of time. Over time, however, people started believing that when a person dies they either go directly to heaven or hell where they will dwell for eternity. Most Christians that I know look forward to seeing their dead loved ones again the moment they die, which further deteriorates the need of Jesus' second coming in which he judges the living and dead, as most think they will be immediately judged as to where they will spend eternity. All of this pushes the issue of credibility.
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Believing something to be true does not make it true, nor is believing in the incredible a test of one's faith. That's the bait of a snake oil salesman. Paul sometimes fits that bill; especially when he says, "If Christ be not raised, then ... your faith is in vain." (1 Corinthians 15:14) Spoken like a certified snake oil salesman.
While Paul side-stepped the need to prove Jesus was physically resurrected from the dead. In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul writes, "It (the body) is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. (1Corinthians 15:44). Paul does not specify what a spiritual body is, but then again, Paul never saw the physical Jesus prior to his conversion. As far as I can tell, Jesus' appearance to Paul was always of a spiritual nature.
Paul also uses a technique that one could describe as reversed-engineered logic regarding the resurrection of Jesus. One would normally think that the resurrection of Jesus would serve as proof that there is such a thing as being resurrected from the dead. Paul doesn't go there. Instead, Paul says that if there is no such thing as resurrection then Jesus could not have been resurrected, "Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen" (1 Corinthian 15:12-13). (Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® )
What?
This is the kind of twisted logic that Paul uses from time to time in order to worry people into believing the incredible. Paul continues, " For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: ...Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable" (I Corinthians 15:16 & 18-19).
According to the Acts of the Apostles, Peter used guilt to convince people that Jesus was raised from the dead:
You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. ... Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus." Acts 3:14-15 & 19-20 NIV)
The irony is that the resurrection story of Jesus actually did not result in changing the course of human events. It is neither a matter of fact nor is it a matter of faith. Rather it is a matter of belief; that is, intellectual assent to an ideology or theological speculations about Jesus. You either believe it as a fact or you don't. If you don't believe it, nothing changed, and your are still in your sins. Likewise, if you believe it as a fact nothing changes, you still need to repent of your sins in order to be saved. That is the way it was before Jesus was crucified and that is the way it remains. If Christ died for all, nothing changed as far as the course of human events is concerned. There have been no direct historical results of his reported physical resurrection.
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"Why then does the resurrection story resonate with so many people?
Why do so many people believe it to be a fact?
To answer those questions one needs to differentiate between belief and faith, which brings to mind what I wrote about belief and faith when I started blogging. From my post on "Belief" posted on December 14, 2014, I wrote:
The most enduring type of belief are those of an ideological (theological) nature. Most ideological beliefs were handed down to us, or we gave our assent to them because they satisfy an emotional or intellectual need. Ideological beliefs are not dependent on empirical or fact-based knowledge and are less likely to change. As such, ideological beliefs can be concretized to the extent that any change to the conditions upon which they were predicated will likely be interpreted in such a manner as to authenticate the original conditions on which they are based. As a result, conflicts can arise between those espousing non-ideological beliefs and those with strong ideological beliefs.
From my post on Faith posted on December 19, 2014, I wrote:
On the surface, faith can appear miniscule, weak, and a refuge of last resort, but I would suggest otherwise. Faith appears gentle but exerts tremendous force. It can give one the strength to hold on through impossible situations. It can allow one to let go of something thought impossible to live without. Its impact on the lives of individuals, people in general, and the course human events has been and continues to be immense. Faith faces forward. We are blind where the future is concerned. We don't know what lies around the corner. Yet in faith we face the future and turn the corners of life. Faith contends with doubt. Where there is faith there is doubt. Faith does not require certainty and certainty requires no faith. Certainty is matter of one's perceiving a known outcome. Certainty with regard to belief is a matter of holding to concrete ideas in spite of obvious contradictions. Faith does not require intellectual assent. Faith is an action. Faith gives one the ability to let be or to let go in the midst of doubt. Faith is a force.
Biblically speaking, especially with regard to the New Testament, faith is related to trust rather than believing in things. Jesus appears to have been a person of faith, a deep faith that God was leading the way in his and our lives, a faith that allowed him to let go of his ego and his doubts, a faith that allowed him to challenge the religious authorities of his day. In fact, according to the Gospel, Jesus was constantly challenging the beliefs of the scribes and Pharisees, which I see as trying to increase their faith as opposed to holding on to their entrenched beliefs about righteousness. The Gospels comment on more than one occasion how Jesus marveled at the faith gentiles exhibited as opposed to his fellow Jews.
My understanding of faith is directly linked to my understanding of Jesus as faithful Jew who loved God by loving his fellow human beings, something he grew into as he pursued his ministry of bringing awareness of the Kingdom of God to the people of Galilee and Judea.
The story of Jesus' resurrection resonates with so many Christians because it offers hope that there is more to life than this life and because there are instances/occurrences in nature and in some human outcomes which seem to point that resurrection or experiencing new life in this life. On the other hand many Christians profess belief in the resurrection story of Jesus because they want certified assurance that death is not the end to their existence and that a better life awaits them based on their ability to believe.
ANOTHER UNDERSTANDING OF THE RESURRECTION
This brings us to the second part of of the Cambridge Dictionary's definition of resurrection, "...bringing something back into use or existence." This definition offers one a different understanding of Jesus' resurrection story, one that does not require believing it to be a factual event.
One can only imagine the fear and the sense of loss those closest to him must have experienced. While I don't consider the story of Jesus' resurrection to be a factual event, I can accept that those closest to him; those who loved him as they loved themselves experienced his presence in their lives. I read somewhere that the historian, Flavius Josephus, who wrote about the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, made an observation about the Church in Jerusalem regarding how much the followers of Jesus loved him.
If so, there was something about Jesus that people forty years after his crucifixion were enthralled by him and his way of living and his way of loving. In that sense, they kept Jesus alive. In that sense Jesus was brought back to life within their lives. That too is resurrection and it is a resurrection that I can personally accept and understand. As such, I often talk about Jesus as not only the risen Christ, but also the rising Christ.
The problem with the resurrection story is that it serves more as a distraction to the teachings of Jesus which, in my opinion, is the real saving act of Jesus' ministry. It is what he taught by word and deed to the people of his day that show us a way if not, The Way. His teachings have retained their relevance.
Unfortunately, for the last eighteen hundred years, Jesus' teachings have been put on the back burner of theology as the resurrection story has been been kept center stage. I used to believe that the resurrection of Jesus served to verify the truth of Jesus' teaching, but I am now inclined to think of the resurrection story as a distraction to what Jesus taught and what he was attempting to offer the people he knew and deeply cared about.
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If Christianity is to remain relevant, its relevance must be rooted in what Jesus taught, not in the Church's centuries old teachings about Jesus. The story of Jesus' resurrection when treated as a fact cannot be proven and remains problematic; in that, it requires a person to suspend one's ability to reason and respond rationally to it. One can say that all religions require a suspension of human reasoning at some point and to a certain degree, to which I will respond, "And in doing so, all religions harbor irrationality as a necessary facet of belief."
There is another way in which rationality and reason can be introduced into religion, and that is by properly identifying what is fact and what is fiction and taking what is fiction and considering its mythical relevance. Mythology is the primary foundation of any theology. The resurrection story as myth, has relevance in exposing the resurrection stories that occur in our lives; that in giving up or letting go of something important can lead to a new way of life, that in the death of something, a job, a friendship, a marriage, an addiction, new life or a new way of life emerges. This is the power of Jesus' resurrection story in which Jesus was brought back into the lives of his followers, as The Way to a better life through what he taught them.
Norm
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