Biblical Scholars and the Witness of St. Paul to the Risen Lord (Part 13)
Strange as it may seem, perhaps the strongest challenge to belief in the glorious, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ has come not from the ranks of skeptical historians, but from biblical scholars. Since the early twentieth century, many New Testament scholars have embraced something akin to a purely “spiritual” interpretation of the Easter events (see article #11 in this web series), often claiming that the stories of the appearances of the risen Jesus are primarily “symbolic” tales created by the early disciples to express their experience of the ongoing and powerful presence of the Spirit of Jesus in their midst.
According to New Testament scholar Norman Perrin, for example, it was precisely during their Eucharistic fellowship meals, as they gathered together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper as their Master had commanded, that the earliest Christians encountered his living (albeit intangible) presence. Perrin saw this as the implicit message of St. Mark’s Gospel, which many believe was the first gospel to be written. The fact that the text of Mark’s Gospel ends abruptly, without recording any stories of the appearances of the risen Lord is cited as strong evidence for this theory.
But there is not much else to be said for it. First of all, Mark may be missing its original ending, for the Greek text we possess ends awkwardly in Mark 16:8, with a conjunction. Reza Aslan has argued that there is evidence that other ancient Greek texts similarly end with conjunctions — nevertheless, that was not common literary practice. Moreover, in the main body of St. Mark’s Gospel there are hints that resurrection appearance stories may have been part of the original text (e.g. Mk 8:31 and 9:31: what would be the point of Jesus predicting that he would rise again “on the third day” if no one actually would see him on that day to corroborate it?). In any case, why would the disciples have bothered to celebrate the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist at all if they did not already believe that Jesus was risen from the dead? “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving”: what would they be giving thanks for if the end of the Jesus story, as far as they knew, was his death on the Cross? In short, having purely “spiritual” experiences at the Eucharist could not be the foundation of their Easter faith, because celebrating the Eucharist itself presupposes Easter faith!
We also need to remember that the earliest traditions recorded in the New Testament regarding the resurrection of Jesus are not in St. Mark’s Gospel, but in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, written about 20 years after the first Easter. Most scholars believe that in chapter 15 of that epistle, Paul passes down to his readers a formal summary of the appearances of the risen Lord that goes back to the earliest days of the Church. The language that he uses here (”I delivered to you … what I also received”) is remarkably similar to the formula of words used by the ancient rabbis as they passed down their traditions from generation to generation:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [ i.e., Peter], then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (I Cor 15:3-8)
Some New Testament scholars have attempted to “poke holes” in St. Paul’s witness to the resurrection here. For example, they claim that in this passage, curiously, St. Paul never mentions an empty tomb. Moreover, he counts the blinding vision by which he saw the risen Christ as an “appearance” of the Lord in the same manner as the appearances to Peter and the other apostles. This has led to the theory that St. Paul did not believe in a bodily resurrection of Jesus at all, and that in his mind all of the appearances of the risen Lord were just like his own experience on the road to Damascus: inner visions, rather than bodily, tangible apparitions. On this theory, only a couple of decades later, when the gospels according to Matthew, Luke, and John were penned, did this original Easter spiritual experience become “mythologized” into the empty tomb and corporeal appearance tales.
In short, some biblical scholars cobble together from all this what we can call the “Spiritual Experience Becomes Myth” view. The silence of Saint Paul regarding the empty tomb in I Corinthians 15 (the earliest Easter testimony), coupled with the lack of any resurrection appearance stories at the end of St. Mark’s Gospel as we have it (possibly the earliest gospel to be written), make it highly likely (so they say) that the original Easter experience was a purely spiritual and internal affair, and that this was later “mythologized” by Matthew, Luke and John into the Easter stories that we have in the gospels now.
Again, please see article #11 in this web series, where initial problems with any purely “spiritual” theory of the first Easter are thoroughly discussed. Above all, as I argued there: “The main problem with this theory is that it expressly contradicts all of the other historical sources we have concerning the Easter events. The other three Gospels and the book of Acts, for example, make it clear that the risen Jesus was tangibly present to his disciples, in a flesh-and-blood, corporeal way.”
Beyond that, the “Spiritual Experience Becomes Myth” view depends on acceptance of the claim that St. Mark’s Gospel was the first to be written (which some scholars do not accept), and that the original text of this Gospel was missing Easter resurrection appearance stories (which is also debatable — see above in this article).
Most of all, however, this theory distorts St. Paul’s view of the resurrection in general, and his testimony in I Corinthians 15 in particular. He was not, in fact, totally silent about the empty tomb, either in I Corinthians 15 or in the rest of his writings
First of all, St. Paul states that Christ was raised on the third day “according to the scriptures” (I Cor 15:4). What scripture did he have in mind here? Clearly, the same one St. Peter mentions in Acts 2:31, and that Paul himself mentions in Acts 13: 34 and 37, namely: “Thou wilt not let thy holy one see corruption” (Ps 16:10). By citing this scriptural passage, both Peter and Paul stress that the body of Jesus did not decay in the tomb as did the body of his forefather King David (Acts 13:37). Hence, in I Corinthians 15:4 St. Paul makes an implicit statement of belief in a corporeal resurrection and an empty tomb right from the start. The body of the Messiah, Paul implies, did not remain in the tomb to decay, just as the scriptures had predicted.
Second, elsewhere in his writings, St. Paul sees the bodily resurrection of Jesus as a promise that “our lowly bodies” too will one day be changed “to be like his glorious body” (Phil 3:21; cf. Rom 8:11 and Col 2:9). Why would St. Paul contradict his own theology of resurrection by implying in I Corinthians 15 that Jesus was not raised in a glorified, tangible body?
Third, St. Paul claims that his teaching on the resurrection of Jesus was in full accord with the teaching of all the other apostles (I Cor 15:11), several of whom St. Paul knew personally (Gal 1:18-20). Early apostolic preaching clearly states that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead (Acts 2:29-32 and 10:41).
Fourth, it is hard to believe that Paul would pass on a different tradition about the resurrection than St. Luke, given that Luke was his friend and travel companion (Col 4:4; Philemon 24; II Tim 4:11; Acts 16:28). But Luke’s account of Easter definitely speaks of an empirically verifiable, corporeal resurrection of Jesus (Lk 24:39; Acts 1:3).
Fifth, St. Paul actually makes a distinction in I Corinthians 15 between his own experience of the risen Lord, and the appearances to the other apostles, and to the five hundred brethren at once. He writes: “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (I Cor 15:8). This indicates that he understood his own experience of the risen Christ as something additional and out of the ordinary (indeed, unlike the other resurrection appearances of Jesus, it was a post-Ascension encounter with Christ). One cannot legitimately argue, therefore, that St. Paul believed that all of the appearances of the risen Jesus were inner, blinding visions such as he had experienced on the Damascus road.
Finally, it hardly seems likely that Paul, a Jew from the Pharisaic tradition, could conceive of a “resurrection” at all, except in a bodily, corporeal sense. Indeed, Paul makes it very clear in Acts that he continues to believe in the teaching of the Pharisees about bodily resurrection (Acts 23:6-10). For a Pharisaic Jew like Paul, therefore, to say that a man was “raised from the dead” certainly implied that he was raised in the fullness of his humanity, body and soul.
To sum up: what we have in I Corinthians 15 is the earliest written record of the appearances of the risen Jesus in glorified flesh, a record that implies in several ways that Jesus’ body was no longer in the tomb. This record comes from St. Paul, a friend of eyewitnesses to the appearances of the risen Lord, who had experienced an extraordinary confirmation of their testimony himself.
Next Time: Back to the Empty Tomb
Robert Stackpole, STD
© 2020 Mere Christian Fellowship
