Was Jesus raised bodily from the dead after his crucifixion? And is belief in his resurrection necessary for Christian faith? In analyzing the biblical resurrection testimony, I discovered that Jesus' body probably corrupted in the earth some two thousand years ago. But I discovered also that my faith in the living Christ has a surer foundation than belief in an ancient miracle. In what follows, I will review the analysis that led me to my conclusion about the resurrection, finishing with a brief discussion of the impact of that conclusion on my faith as a Friend.

Scholars have defined two elements of the resurrection; namely, the objective and the subjective. The former usually refers to the question of what, if anything, happened to Jesus after his death, while the latter refers to the rise of the resurrection belief in the minds of Jesus' disciples. In examining the New Testament testimony to the resurrection of Jesus, I found that the texts themselves provide keys to understanding both elements. I also found that the two elements form an organic unity when we do not limit the objective aspect solely to the fate of Jesus.

Critical examination of the New Testament reveals that its authors, and the earlier traditions upon which they relied, did not share our modern concept of history; they altered events and even the words of Jesus to suit their theological and literary purposes, and they created "historical" events to serve as vehicles for the communication of religious messages and faith-inspired experiences. Such activities can be traced in textual developments from earlier to later New Testament works, and they resulted in many contradictions among the various books. The historicizing tendency in particular provides us with a key to understanding the two forms of resurrection testimony that seem to point to objective, historical events; namely, the tradition of the empty tomb, and the accounts of appearances of the risen Jesus.

The meaning of the empty tomb has been debated since New Testament times. Certainly the fact that someone's tomb is discovered to be empty does not prove, or even suggest, that the person has been raised from the dead. (The original New Testament assertion is that Jesus was raised by God, not that he rose by his own power.) If Jesus' tomb was in fact found empty, there are reasons other than his resurrection why it may have been so. Perhaps there was a mistake about where he was buried. Perhaps someone removed the body. The evangelists themselves recognize the ambiguity of the empty tomb. All of them provide one or more messengers to reveal the meaning of the scene, although in John's Gospel Jesus himself appears before the angels can speak. Matthew even provides unsympathetic witnesses in the form of guards--not to the resurrection itself, for the New Testament never asserts that anyone witnessed the resurrection, but to the rolling away of the stone by an angel.

The empty tomb, then, is at best ambiguous; it may also be apocryphal. Like other victims of Roman crucifixion, Jesus may have been thrown into a common grave after his death. According to Acts 13:29, it was those who had Jesus crucified who buried him. This presents the possibility that the burial of Jesus in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathaea is a legend, and that the empty tomb tradition is a product of the New Testament's historicizing tendency. Mark, the earliest gospel, originally included no appearance narratives, but ended with the young man's revelation of the empty tomb to the women who "said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid" (Mk. 16:8) and whose testimony would have had little weight in a patriarchal society. The story of the empty tomb, with its messenger of revelation, is reminiscent of Old Testament theophanies. In the absence of appearance stories, it could well have served the Markan tradition as a narrative vehicle for the belief that Jesus had been raised.

Unlike Mark, the later gospels do provide narrative accounts of appearances of Jesus. There are, however, unresolvable contradictions among them. Furthermore, these relatively late compositions are replete with elements of myth and legend. We cannot simply assume that these narratives record what we would consider to be objective history; on the contrary, they appear to be further instances of historicization.

Much earlier than the appearance narratives in the gospels--and, in some respects, in contradiction to them--is 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, where Paul gives us a list of appearances with no narrative detail. The list seems to be part of a liturgical or credal formula originating perhaps within five years of the crucifixion. Consequently, this passage is often relied upon as a "proof text" for the historicity of the appearances of Jesus. However, it is possible that the passage in question is a composite of a pre-existing formula and additional elements from Paul. The original formula proclaimed simply that Jesus died in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised from the dead in accordance with the scriptures. The list (or lists) of appearances, including the appearance to him, was provided by Paul. While this view obviously does not reject an early date for the appearance tradition, it does suggest that the earliest proclamation of the resurrection, as represented by the formula Paul quoted, did not include that tradition.

Some scholars hold, therefore, that the appearances of Jesus represent a visual model which described experiences of forgiveness and vocation that were interpreted by the disciples as revealing the continuing presence of Jesus. I agree that "appearance of Jesus" was probably an articulating model for the disciples' experience. However, I think that it was Jesus' resurrection which first dawned upon the disciples; from this revelation came the confidence that neither the forgiveness and vocation Jesus had offered them nor the Kingdom he had proclaimed had been nullified by his death. This, it seems to me, is a more natural, and therefore more likely, sequence of events. In either case, however, it was the revelatory experience of Jesus which was primary; later, the appearance accounts became a common way of understanding and communicating that experience.

We find, then, that we can be certain of the historicity of only one event: somehow the disciples came to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead. In attempting to understand this event, we must give full weight to the transformation of the disciples it effected. People who had fled in fear at Jesus' arrest, and who may at first have believed that the crucifixion was God's rejection of Jesus and his message of the Kingdom, began to proclaim publicly, in the very city of the crucifixion, that Jesus had been exalted to God and would soon bring in that Kingdom in power. Certainly any theory that explains the rise of the resurrection faith simply in terms of a subjective process by which the disciples continued to be inspired by Jesus' message will not do justice to this transformation. We must remember that the disciples staked their lives and salvation on their resurrection belief. As Paul says, they understood that anyone who would fabricate such a story would be guilty of misrepresenting God (1 Cor. 15:15). The disciples' belief in the resurrection of Jesus could not have arisen without an objective event or reality as a catalyst.

I submit that we have only to look to the Hebrew scriptures for that reality. It has been established, and confirmed by the translation of the Qumran documents, that it was not unusual for scripture to be applied to current events as if it had been written specifically about them. The disciples of Jesus had experienced the Kingdom of God breaking into history in the person and ministry of Jesus--in other words, they had experienced themselves as living in the eschaton, the end-time that was the prelude to the resurrection of the dead and the birth of a new world. They had put their faith in Jesus' firm conviction that, like the mustard seed, what had begun in a small way in their lives would inevitably and soon become a reality for all the world. But the image of the Kingdom of God, and the expectation of its imminent arrival, had come to Jesus and the disciples through scripture and through their interpretation of events of their time in the light of scripture. When the Kingdom they had experienced seemed threatened by the crucifixion, the disciples would have looked to scripture for the meaning of that event as well. It was, then, scripture itself that provided the objective basis for belief in the resurrection.

If scripture was the objective element, then the disciples' application of scripture to current events is the key to the subjective aspect of the resurrection belief. The disciples found revelation in scripture that God's eschatological servant Jesus must suffer and die but would not be abandoned to the power of death. One source of this revelation would have been the psalms. In Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46, for example, the dying Jesus quotes the beginning of Psalm 22, crying out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This psalm goes on to describe how the psalmist, with his mouth "dry as a potsherd," watches ruffians cast lots for his clothing--a scene that Matthew has historicized in 27:34. Psalm 22 ends with a paean of praise to God; evidently, God did not abandon the sufferer in the end. This theme of deliverance is sounded in other psalms as well. In Psalm 18:4-19 we read "When the cords of death held me fast...then in anguish of heart I cried to the Lord ...[and] He reached down from the height and...rescued me because he delighted in me." Psalm 16:10-11 declares "...for thou wilt not abandon me to Sheol [death] nor suffer thy holy one to see the pit. Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is fullness of joy, in thy right hand delight for evermore." And Psalm 116:3, 16b says, "The cords of death bound me, Sheol held me in its grip. [But] thou hast undone the bonds that bound me." The psalms, then, pointed to Jesus' deliverance from death. But they were not the only scriptural sources of light on the fate of Jesus.

Among other books, the book of the prophet Isaiah was a rich source of material for the evangelists. This complex and composite book contains marvelous visions of the Day of the Lord and the Kingdom of God. It asserts that the dead will rise (cf. Isa. 26:19), although the idea of an eschatological resurrection is more fully developed in apocalyptic books such as Daniel and (the extra- biblical) Enoch. More importantly, the book of Isaiah describes the "suffering servant" in terms that were later applied to Jesus. Isaiah 52:13-53:12 is, in fact, paralleled by the passion narratives of the gospels. This passage speaks of the innocent servant of God who is despised by his people, suffers and dies as a sacrifice for the sin of many, is buried, and is brought back from death by God. Scripture revealed, then, both the meaning of Jesus' death and the fact of his resurrection. Thus the disciples' earliest proclamation was that Jesus had died and been raised in accordance with the scriptures.

In scripture and its interpretation by the disciples, the objective and subjective aspects of the resurrection are united. They coalesce in a divine revelation received in faith through the sacred writings interpreted in light of the incipient Kingdom. Scripture revealed that Jesus had not died a failure; his death was, in fact, a part of the process of the Kingdom's arrival. That process had begun with his ministry and reached a climactic point in his resurrection from death to God's right hand, and it would continue on to its imminent and inevitable conclusion--the coming of the Kingdom of God in power. This revelation prepared the disciples to open their hearts to the spirit of Jesus and to continue Jesus' work of proclaiming the Kingdom and living out its implications.

I believe that this view of the rise of the resurrection faith has much to commend it. It accepts the evidence of critical research that the writers of the New Testament were concerned with proclamation (kerygma), not objective history. It respects the integrity of both the New Testament and the twentieth-century world-views, and that of the New Testament texts as well. And it understands the events related in the New Testament in terms of natural, human processes--in a way that does not, however, rule out the possibility of revelation.

Of course, this view means that Jesus' resurrection, while it may have mythic and spiritual truth, was not historical in the same way that his life and death were. For some, this conclusion is unacceptable. Paul, for example, felt that "if Christ was not raised, then your faith is empty.... If it is for this life only that Christ has given us hope, we...are most to be pitied" (1 Cor. 15: 17-19). But Paul spoke from within the apocalyptic world-view of primitive Christianity; our horizons are necessarily wider. Unlike Paul, we know that the eschaton did not occur some two thousand years ago. The life and teaching of Jesus direct our eyes not so much to the future as to the present, in which they open up for us the way to authentic being. The view of the resurrection offered here need not, therefore, invalidate our faith. My own experience testifies to that.

My conclusion about the resurrection of Jesus has helped me to open myself more fully to an experiential faith, a faith that is not dependent on the historicity of events of the past. I know from personal experience that the Spirit which was in Jesus--and which encounters me in the scriptural accounts of his life--is in me and is, in fact, the life at the deepest center of my being. Knowing that I am a part of this universe, I trust that this deepest meaning of my humanity echoes the meaning at the heart of the whole. I know, then, that the Christ-spirit is divine--of ultimate importance and reality. Knowing this, I trust that my unity with that Spirit somehow transcends death, although I do not assume that this "I" must continue to exist. I need an "objective" resurrection, therefore, neither as a basis of faith in the Spirit of Christ nor as a promise of personal immortality. I need it, in other words, not at all. Consequently, I am free to accept or reject it on my informed analysis of the historical evidence, and to remain open to such new light as may appear. Whether Jesus was raised bodily to life some two thousand years ago matters little to me now. What matters is that his Spirit is raised in my heart today. About the reality of that resurrection I have no doubt.

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