The Appearances of the Risen Christ (Part 12)

So what happened on the first Easter that so completely transformed the lives of his disciples? The New Testament answer to that question is crystal clear: Jesus rose from the dead, in a new and glorified body that was nevertheless recognizably him. It was beyond anything that the disciples expected, or could have imagined. It also vindicated his implicit claims to be the Messiah, Savior and Lord, and the message of the Kingdom that he both lived and preached. Indeed, it was an experience so astounding that in just a few encounters, spread out over a period of 40 days, it set a nucleus of his disciples on fire with love and zeal, so that they became willing to sacrifice their lives to spread the good news about Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.

And it also has been called into question by many historians for the past 400 years. In that time, a number of alternative explanations for what happened on that first Easter have been proposed. Here are the most significant ones.

1) It was a purely “spiritual” event in the hearts and minds of Christ’s disciples.

They experienced the ongoing influence of the divine Spirit of Love that had filled the heart and the life of Jesus when he was with them, and after his death they discovered that this same Spirit lived on in their hearts, and was not conquered by his crucifixion. The main problem with this theory is that it expressly contradicts all of the historical sources we have concerning the Easter events. Both the 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:

“And behold, Jesus met them and said ‘Hail!’ and they came up and took hold of his feet and worshipped him.” (Mt 28:9)

“And as they were saying this Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace be to you.’ But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them, ‘why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle me and see; for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it before them.” (Lk 24:36-43)

“Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.’” (Jn 20:26-27)

“[Peter said] ‘And we are witnesses to all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him manifest; not to all people, but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.’” (Acts 10:39-41)

One historian who tried to keep this “spiritual experience only” theory alive was the Anglican New Testament scholar Marcus Borg. In his book Jesus: The Life, Teachings and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (2006) he wrote: “[V]isions can involve not only seeing and hearing, but even a tactile dimension, as dreams sometimes do. Thus, a story in which Jesus invites his followers to touch him or is seen to eat does not intrinsically point away from a vision” (p. 278). By “vision” here Borg evidently means not a purely subjective, fictitious, imaginary experience, but a true inner, spiritual, supernatural encounter that occurs solely in the mind and heart of the religious devotee, and does not involve any objectively verifiable, tangible presence. The trouble is that such “visions” are experienced solely by individuals — multiple individuals do not experience the same visions at once, any more than numerous individuals can dream the same dream at once. When they do have the same vision, we call them objective “apparitions,” not purely internal visions. Moreover, characters in dreams and visions can indeed eat things — but what if the food in the sensory, material world actually disappears as they do so? Are we to suppose that the disciples were so stupid and gullible that they didn’t notice that the fish that the risen Jesus ate before them was still on the plate, untouched after he left them?

Borg continues:

“Even if one takes seriously that one could touch him, as suggested in some of the Easter stories, it would be ridiculous to imagine that the risen Jesus has a flesh-and-blood body. How much would he weigh? How tall would he be? Does he still have to eat? These are ridiculous questions — which is exactly my point. According to the Easter stories themselves, the risen Jesus is not confined by time and space, but enters locked rooms, journeys with his followers without being recognized, appears in both Galilee and Jerusalem, vanishes in the moment of recognition, and abides with his followers always, ‘to the end of the age.’…

“If the risen Jesus exists as a body, it is a body so radically different from any meaning we give to the word “body” that it seems misleading to use the term. … It seems idle to me to try to assign meaning to the notion by speaking of a ‘glorified body’ or ‘transformed physicality,’ as if these phrases make the matter more intelligible. We should leave it in the language of paradox, as Paul does—a ‘spiritual body’—and simply admit that the risen Jesus transcends our categories of body, flesh and blood. Epistemological humility and ontological modesty are called for.” (p. 288-289)

Intellectual humility, however, means being open to all of the evidence before us in order to comprehend a mystery as best we can, not “cherry-picking” from it in order to fit with our own, pre-conceived notions that what is supernatural cannot also in some way be physical too.

Saint Paul does not tell us in his epistles that the reality of the risen body totally transcends our concepts of flesh and blood. His paradoxical language is his way of communicating that there is analogy between an earthly human body and a heavenly celestial body (see I Corinthians 15: 35-41). In other words, in some ways they are similar, and in other ways they are not. And this is exactly what the Gospels show us as well. The two kinds of bodies are similar in that the risen Jesus was recognizably himself; he could be touched, and he could even eat physical food (not, evidently, because he needed to, but to show his apostles that he was not a ghost). And yet unlike someone in an earthly body, he could appear and disappear, and pass through the locked doors of the cenacle.

What was his height and weight? We do not know, although when he appeared to his disciples he seemed to be the same physical size as he was on earth. Perhaps he can be “with us always, to the close of the age” as he promised (Mt 28:20) because his risen body and soul occupies another dimension of existence, a heavenly dimension, from which he can see us always, and which can intersect with our space-time-matter-energy dimension at any point, as he wills. As for all this being “ridiculous”: well, unlike Borg’s theory it fits with all of the evidence, not just some of it, and it was the risen Jesus himself who said he still had “flesh and bones’ (Lk 24:39). So, Jesus was being ridiculous because he unveiled a mystery that does not fit with Borg’s personal philosophy that what is “spiritual” or religiously significant must also be completely immaterial, or completely incomprehensible.

Besides, it stands to reason that the fullness of human life, healed and brought to fruition in heaven, is a body-and-soul reality, since human beings in this life are body-soul creatures. Thus, the risen Jesus was no more likely to be a pure spirit than we ourselves will be, whenwe join Him in heaven.

There are some other theories about what happened at the first Easter that do indeed merit the description “ridiculous.” Here is one of them. …

2) The “Swoon” theory: in other words, Jesus didn’t actually die on the Cross.

He just went into a swoon, and after he was taken down from the Cross, his body later was spirited away by Joseph of Arimathea who rolled away the stone, got him out of the tomb, and revived him with proper medical care. Then Jesus “appeared” to his disciples and convinced them that he had risen gloriously from the dead. The evidence given for this theory is that it often took people several days to die on a cross, whereas Jesus, a healthy young carpenter, supposedly expired in only three hours (which is why Pontius Pilate was surprised when he was told by his soldiers on Good Friday afternoon that Jesus was already dead, Mark 15:44-45).

We need to remember, however, that unlike most victims of crucifixion, Jesus first had been scourged, beaten throughout the night, and crowned with thorns by his captors. Scourging itself in Roman times was so brutal that many prisoners died from blood loss as a result of scourging alone, for the Romans used whips studded with metal and bone that gouged the flesh with every stroke. In fact, Jesus was so weakened by the tortures he suffered the night before his crucifixion that he could not carry the cross- beam the next morning to the place of his execution, so the soldiers had to compel someone in the crowd to carry it for him (Mk 15:21).

Also, historians of the ancient world tell us that Roman soldiers in charge of executions would be condemned to death themselves if they failed to carry out a sentence properly, and their prisoner somehow escaped or survived. Thus, they utilized the deadly skills that they had been taught for use on the battlefield to make absolutely sure that the condemned were really dead, thrusting their spear through the ribs at precisely the right place so that the spear would impale the heart. And in fact, that is precisely what we see happen to Jesus on the Cross after he died — the soldiers made doubly sure he had expired: “[B]ut when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water” (Jn 19:33- 34). When the heart stops beating, blood collects in the heart itself and watery-plasma in the pericardial sac around the heart; hence the flow of “blood and water” when Jesus’ heart was pierced.

Furthermore, many people witnessed the placing of the body of Jesus in the tomb, and so if Joseph of Arimathea and his confreres rolled away the stone on Saturday night to get Jesus out, they would have had only one day to revive and heal him before Jesus had to appear to his disciples and convince them he was risen from the grave.

None of this adds up.

Let’s close this installment of our web series with quotes from two authors who sum up the improbabilities involved in the Swoon theory, a theory which no leading scholar in the field defends today:

“Jesus was crucified, and a professional executioner declared him dead. To ensure Jesus was dead, a spear was thrust through his side and a mixture of blood and water poured out of his side because the spear burst his heart sac. Jesus’ body was wrapped in upwards of one hundred pounds of linen and spices, which, even if he were able to somehow survive the beatings, floggings, crucifixion, and a pierced heart, would have killed him by asphyxiation. Even if through all of this Jesus somehow survived (which would itself be a miracle), he could not have endured three days without food, water, or medical attention in a cold tomb carved out of rock. In summary, Jesus died.” (Quoted in Price, Radical Hope, p. 23)

And lastly, from John Stott:

“Are we then seriously to believe that Jesus was all the time only in a swoon? That after the rigors and pains of trial, mockery, flogging and crucifixion he could survive 36 hours in a stone sepulcher with neither warmth nor food nor medical care? … That then, weak and sickly and hungry, he could appear to the disciples in such a way as to give them the impression that he had vanquished death? That he could go on to claim that he had died and risen, could send them into all the world and promise to be with them unto the end of time? That he could live somewhere in hiding for forty days, making occasional surprise appearances, and then finally disappear without explanation? Such credulity is more incredible than Thomas’s unbelief.” (John Stott, Basic Christianity. Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2006 edition, p. 61)

Next time: Biblical Scholars and the Witness of St. Paul to the Risen Lord

Robert Stackpole, STD
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