For years I have debated at the Christian Forums website using the name Doubtingmerle. My favorite thread was titled Are there Credible Witnesses to the Resurrection Part 2. There was a huge predecessor thread to this one. Rather than make you struggle through that lengthy, repetitious first thread, I will summarize the necessary background material here. Then you can continue into Part 2.
In the Part 2 thread I played the role of a guest speaker. To be consistent, I will now go into character as a guest speaker.
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Thank you! Thank you! [Applause] It’s good to be here.
We are here to ask if a man, Jesus of Nazareth, rose from the dead. Now let me begin by saying, when it comes to resurrections, I am skeptical. Seriously. People do not rise from the dead. It certainly must be very rare if it happens at all. I tend to doubt claims of resurrections. And I suspect you do to.
A friend of mine once told me that he had seen his deceased grandfather. My friend is an honest man, and he was serious. He said he was at home and suddenly there was his deceased grandfather at the end of the hall, dressed in his full military outfit. His grandfather! He saw him there.
Now I am skeptical about this claim. If somebody would have dug up the grave at that moment, the corpse would have surely still been there. Probably my friend agrees that the corpse was still there. But that did not stop him from saying that he had seen his deceased grandfather.
Perhaps my friend was having a dream. Perhaps he had been drinking too much. Perhaps it started from his imagination, but after several repeats of the story, enhancing the story each time, he eventually subconsciously treated the story as real. Or maybe he was lying. There are so many explanations that are more likely than the idea that the corpse came out of the grave and visited my friend.
My friend comes from a Catholic tradition, so the whole concept of the spirit of a person living on after death would have been deeply engrained. Was he telling me the actual body came out of the grave, or simply that the spirit of this grandfather had emerged and manifested inside his house? I think it was probably the later. But one could ask: How was this dead man raised? With what body did he come?
Those questions are actually asked in the Bible. Paul writes them in I Corinthians 15 where he is talking about the general resurrection. Previously in that chapter Paul told us that Jesus rose from the dead and is the first fruits of a general resurrection that included himself and his followers. He then asks and answers the questions above:
35 But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?” 36 You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies; 37 and that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of [o]something else. 38 But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own. 39 All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of mankind, another flesh of animals, another flesh of birds, and another of fish. 40 There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. 42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown [p]a perishable body, it is raised [q]an imperishable body; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
I Corinthians 15:35-44
Paul here tells us the earthly body of the person, the terrestrial body, is different from the celestial body. The celestial body lives on after death. He compares it to sowing wheat. The grain that we planted never comes out of the ground. But somehow springing up from the inside of that seed comes another plant, with a different body. He explains that something similar happens in the resurrection. We plant the body. And somehow out of that physical body comes a spiritual, celestial body that lives on.
Could Paul also have been saying the same thing about Jesus? When he says that Jesus rose and was seen by witnesses (I Cor 15:3-8), was he merely saying that the inner spirit of Jesus, the soul, ascended from the seed, the physical body, and moved on to glory? We could ask Paul this same question about Jesus: With what body did he come?
Paul’s writings indicate he saw the risen Jesus as a spirit. The Jesus of his epistles is a celestial, spirit Jesus.
“I am crucified with Christ,” wrote Paul, “ nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Let’s dissect that verse. It is rather odd.
Paul says Christ lives in him. Wait, what? Inside of you, Paul, is a man, maybe 5’ 9” and 150 pounds? Well, no, that is not what Paul is saying. He appears to be saying that Christ was a spirit that lives in him.
Colossians, written in the Pauline tradition, says Christians have, “Christ in you, the hope of glory”. (Col 1:27) We find Jesus reportedly everywhere, inside every believer. This is something that a man of flesh and blood cannot do. Paul is speaking of a spirit Jesus, an astral Jesus, a spiritual body that can be spread out everywhere.
Let’s get back to Paul’s claim of the resurrection. With what body? The answer appears to be with a spiritual body, some ethereal reality that can permeate all of spacetime.
Notice that a spiritual resurrection does not require an empty tomb. It does not require a revived corpse. It does not require physical seeing, touching, and interaction. It simply requires the spirit to come out and be universal. I suppose those things could still happen, but they would not be required to produce a spirit resurrection.
I am spending this time on Paul because he is our earliest witness with anything substantial to say about the resurrection. As I have discussed elsewhere, the Gospels and Acts were written much later. They are by unknown authors who might not have had reliable information. If we are going to find any kind of credible witnesses, we are going to need to know what those that are contemporary to the event say. Paul is the earliest Christian writer to significantly cover the resurrection, so he is the best place to begin.
Now let’s look at Paul’s claim:
3 For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 After that He appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; 7 then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; 8 and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.
1 Corinthians 15:3-8
Let’s start at the end. “He appeared to me also”. Now what did Paul see? He never really tells us. But 2 Corinthians 12:1-5 is generally thought to describe that event. Paul sees a vision of being transported to heaven and seeing Jesus. That’s it. He sees a vision of heaven.
Of course, many would also refer to the story in Acts where Paul sees Jesus. (Acts 9:1-9) I will begin by saying that I find Acts to be doubtful as history. Most critical scholars date Acts at 80 -130 AD, which is late. We don’t know the author, and don’t know if we can trust his story. The entire theme of people preaching a crucified teacher, Jesus, who escaped Roman justice and was now living free, while the Romans turned their eyes on all this, is completely implausible.
But let’s suppose Acts tells the story of Paul’s vision as Paul told it. We see nothing there that requires an empty grave. Nothing that requires a revived corpse. Nothing that requires Jesus to be alive in a physical body. We have only the claim of a voice from heaven and a blinding light.
Suppose someone tells you that yesterday he saw a blinding light and heard his deceased grandfather. Do you now believe that his grandfather is risen? Do you worship the grandfather as God? No, you do not. Now I don’t know all of you, but I can say with a high degree of confidence, “No, you will not.”
When Paul says Jesus was, “seen by me,” is that convincing? If that sight consisted only of seeing a bright light and hearing a voice, is that convincing? So is Paul a credible witness to the bodily resurrection. I think not.
What of the others that Paul mentions seeing Jesus. What did they see? Paul does not tell us. If we are going to read I Corinthians 15:3-8 at face value, I think we need to conclude that Paul was claiming they saw the same type of thing he apparently was claiming, a vision.
Ah, but you have read all the stories of Peter and the other apostles interacting with a bodily risen Jesus. Yes, but those stories come from the Gospels and Acts, which come later. We will discuss those later. Here we are looking only at the earliest record, at Paul. It appears that he claimed nothing more than a vision. One would expect that he thought the other apostles also saw nothing more than he did.
We have several books of the New Testament that claim to be written by the other apostles. We don’t know if any of these are genuine. Let’s assume for now that 1 Peter really was written by Peter as claimed. If he interacted with a risen Jesus, we would expect that story to flow spontaneously from his writing. It doesn’t. Here is what he says about the resurrection.
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
1 Peter 3:18-19
We find no passion of a man who had recently witnessed a bodily resurrection. Rather, we see a theological statement about Jesus going to preach to spirits. That sounds much more like a spirit Jesus than a Jesus in a body. So, even if this book is genuinely written by Peter, it does not confirm a bodily resurrection. We are not finding that in any of the earliest writings.
We concentrated here on Paul for good reason. He is the first written witness to say anything substantial on the resurrection. He is surprisingly short on details. He makes no specific mention that the grave was found empty. He tells no account of a person interacting with the risen Jesus. His list in I Corinthians 15 includes himself, but arguably he only saw a heavenly vision. Could the others have seen nothing more than a vision? Was Paul merely repeating rumors? We don’t know.
Paul taught a resurrection. What did he mean? It could be:
A) a spiritual resurrection of a Jesus who never even lived on earth.
B) a spiritual resurrection, in which the earthly corpse stays dead, but the spirit lives on in a spiritual body.
C) a bodily resurrection.
Now I think A (non-earthly Jesus) is probably the correct answer. I argue that in detail in another thread — Carrier: On the Historicity of Jesus, a community discussion starting at post 204. I won’t address that here.
To me, the next most likely answer is that Paul was saying B (a spiritual resurrection).
But first, let me say a few words about C (a bodily resurrection). It could be that Paul taught a bodily resurrection and was mistaken. Jesus could have survived crucifixion, and only have been thought to have risen again. The body could have been misplaced or stolen away by a rogue disciple such as Joseph of Arimathea. Or the rumor could have started years later while the body was who knows where. Something like that could have led to rumors that eventually led Paul to believing it happened.
But we have no need to resort to that. Paul’s own words indicate he is not even talking about a bodily resurrection. This brings us back to either A (heavenly Jesus) or B (spiritual resurrection).
Paul says that a spirit resurrection is what he is expecting for himself, that his body will die and decay, and the real Paul will live on.( 2 Corinthians 5:1-5). The earthly house decays and we have a new house for our souls prepared for us in heaven. As we saw in 1 Corinthians, Paul says specifically that the body that is planted is not the same body that comes up. Paul was expecting a new body.
If this is what Paul expected for himself, and Paul compares his resurrection to that of Jesus, I find it most likely that Paul had been thinking the same for Jesus.
We have looked at the earliest Christian record, at Paul. I see precious little in Paul that confirms that a bodily resurrection occurred.
In upcoming lectures, we will look at the Gospels, which were written later. Do they tell us things that credible witnesses were saying about a resurrection?
