The Strength of the Evidence for Easter (Part 15)

As we come to the end of the Jesus Story, we need to consider four last ways in which many people have been ensnared by doubts when considering what happened on the first Easter.

To begin with, some scholars try to cobble together what we can call “combo theories” to try to explain away the claim that Jesus was raised to new life in a glorified body, as the gospels claim. We already considered one such theory in article #13 in this series: the “Spiritual Experience Becomes Myth” option. This theory was a combination of two skeptical theories about the resurrection combined into one.

A second, popular “combo theory” can be called “The Empty Tomb Leads to Hallucinations” theory. This is the notion that it was precisely the finding of an empty tomb by the disciples on Easter Sunday that led them to recall their Master’s cryptic predictions of rising again “on the third day.” Their resulting mental state of religious excitement and anticipation was maximally conducive to individual and collective hallucinations of the Lord they longed to see.

The trouble with combo theories is that they usually add together the pitfalls of each of their parts, rather than providing us with any really new options. For example, the “Empty Tomb Leads to Hallucinations” theory offers no plausible explanation of why the tomb was empty. Did the women and the disciples go to the wrong tomb on Easter morning? Did thieves steal the body? Was the body never placed in an identifiable grave at all, but only thrown into a common pit with the bodies of other crucified criminals? We have already examined each of these alternative explanations, and found them sorely wanting.

Second, most of the problems with the “hallucination” theory that we discussed in article #12 in this series remain unaddressed. At best, this combo theory only removes one of those stated problems (that the apostles and the women were not in a psychological state of heightened expectancy when they began to encounter the risen Jesus). And even then, it is contradicted by all of the evidence we have from the Gospels about the state of mind of the disciples at the time. The theory simply states that the apostles must have entered a psychological state of heightened expectancy once they found the empty tomb — but that contradicts all the evidence from the gospels (see article #12 in this series) that most of them were slow to believe, at least until the risen Lord was standing right in front of them, eating and drinking with them and showing them his wounded hands and side.

Other skeptical scholars try to pick holes in the small details of the Easter story. For example, W. G. Kummel in his book Theology of the New Testament (1974) claimed that there are several small improbabilities in the gospel accounts. For example, that the women went to the tomb in the early morning to anoint the body of Jesus not knowing who would roll away the stone; that they waited until the third day after death to anoint the body, despite the hot, Palestinian climate; and that they anointed him with “spices,” which was not the normal Jewish custom. Kummel’s nit-picking, however, does not stand up under close scrutiny. He forgets (1) that there was apparently a gardener of the tombs who might have helped roll away the stone (Jn 20:15), or perhaps they hoped that the Roman soldiers who had been left on guard would have come to their aid (Mt 27:62-66); (2) that the women surely waited until the third day to anoint the body of Jesus because they had been unable to finish the proper burial preparations on Friday afternoon, since the Sabbath day (which began at sundown on Friday) was fast approaching; and (3) that the corpse was being kept in the coolness of a sealed cave in the rock. (4) The “spices” to which Mark and Luke refer were probably the aromatic oils and salves which the Jews commonly used to anoint the dead. In short, none of the points raised by Kummel really holds water. But even if one or two of them did, what would that prove? That the gospel writers were not professional historians by modern standards, and just pulled together the bits and pieces of the story as best they could? How would that in any major way affect the historical evidence for the central claims that the evangelists were making: that the tomb was found inexplicably empty on Easter morning, and that Jesus subsequently appeared to his disciples, risen from the dead?

More seriously, perhaps, some scholars point out that there is a major discrepancy in the accounts of the appearances of the risen Lord. Matthew, and the longer ending of Mark, record that the risen Jesus appeared to his disciples only in Galilee, while Luke makes no mention of any appearances at all in Galilee: everything for him takes place in or near Jerusalem, right up until Jesus bids farewell to them from the Mount of Olives. Saint John, meanwhile, records appearances both in Jerusalem and in Galilee. Is the geography of the Easter story, therefore, hopelessly muddled?

Not necessarily. See the outstanding book on this subject by Evangelical scholar John Wenham, titled Easter Enigma (2005). It seems likely that Jesus appeared to his disciples on Easter Sunday in Jerusalem because they had not at first believed the report of the women that they had seen Jesus alive, and that he had instructed that they should all go to Galilee to meet him there (Mt 28:10; cf. Lk 24:11). After the initial round of resurrection appearances in and around Jerusalem during Easter week, therefore, the disciples journeyed back to Galilee as the Lord had commanded — and several weeks after that, they returned to Jerusalem for the Ascension (Lk 24:50-53).

We need to remind ourselves here that the Gospels are not “biographies” in the modern sense of the term; they do not intend to tell us everything about the life of Jesus that the authors know, nor everything about Easter. Rather, they select from what they know those episodes and events that highlight the truths about Jesus that they wanted to emphasize for their readers. Saint Luke sees Jerusalem as an important theological symbol in salvation history: it is no wonder that the appearances of the risen Lord that he cared most to relate are the ones that happened there. But Matthew and John had other concerns, and their own reasons for the ones they chose to set down.

In any case, that Jesus initially appeared to his disciples in Jerusalem seems likely just from St. Paul’s summary of the resurrection appearances in I Corinthians 15. Catholic theologian Karl Adam drove this point home in his classic work The Son of God (1960 edition):

This follows clearly enough from the introductory section of his account when [Paul] says that “according to the Scriptures” Christ “rose again the third day.” The point the Apostle accordingly has to prove in what follows is not that Jesus did appear at some time or other, but that he actually rose again “on the third day.” If his argument is not to break down at an important point, some at least of the appearances which he records must have taken place “on the third day.” This being so, they could not have occurred in Galilee, but only in Judea and Jerusalem; for it would have been impossible for the disciples to get to Galilee within the short time from Good Friday evening to Sunday morning. Moreover, the message of the angel at the sepulchre [Mt 28:7; Mk 16:7], that the risen Lord would go before them into Galilee, presupposes that the disciples on Easter morning were still in Jerusalem. Therefore, if Paul wished to testify to appearances of Christ “on the third day,” he could only have had in mind appearances which took place in Jerusalem. (p. 173)

Finally, some scholars put forward what we might call “theological” doubts about the resurrection of Jesus. The appearances of the risen Lord are not really “historical” events at all, it is said, since they transcend the course of normal history — thus the Easter accounts are not subject to being “proven” as historical reportage the way accounts of mundane events can be. Indeed, these scholars say, only persons aided by faith could “see” the risen Lord: his presence was not something in principle that anyone could have witnessed if they had been on the scene at the right time. For example, the author of one of the truly outstanding books of contemporary Catholic Christology, Roch Kereszty, O.Cist., slips into these theological doubts:

In contrast to a normal historical event, his appearance is not in principle verifiable by the sense experience of anyone who could have been present. He is seen only by witnesses selected by God, whose sense perception was aided by faith and who could refuse to believe (Acts 9:7; Mt 28:17). …

We cannot admit of a naïve fundamentalist realism according to which the disciples and Paul saw Jesus just as he actually was, in his glorified eschatological reality. … [T]he appearance of the risen Christ is the appearance of the eschatological reality in our world. His true body refers him to our world; therefore it makes sense to perceive him with our senses. In his risen and glorified state, however, he transcends our world; therefore it makes sense that we can recognize him only with the eyes of faith.

Thus, to use St. Thomas [Aquinas’s] felicitous expression, the appearances were effective “signs” through which the risen Christ revealed himself to the disciples.

They were effective signs because they did communicate to the seers the reality of the risen Christ. Nevertheless, they were only signs adapted to the sense experience, imagination and understanding of the disciples, rather than a face-to-face vision of God the Son in his glorified humanity, a vision which is beyond the capability of any mortal man. (Fundamentals of Christology, p. 55, and 65-66).

The problem here is that Kereszty approaches the evidence with a fairly narrow, a priori set of boundaries concerning what people could or could not have experienced with their five senses — and this blinds him to some of the empirical evidence actually presented in the gospels. For one thing, it is abundantly clear that a subjective state of faith was not necessary to enable someone to see the risen Jesus: as previously discussed, neither James, the brother of the Lord, nor Saul of Tarsus were believers at all until after they had seen Christ risen from the dead; the same goes for most of the apostles after the crucifixion, and especially “doubting Thomas” (Jn 20:24-29). In fact, the gospels drive the point home that the faith of the disciples was grounded in their sensory experiences of the risen Lord (e.g., Lk 24: 36-43), and certainly not that their experiences of him were grounded in faith. Their spiritual and psychological state before they saw him actually was one of profound sorrow and dejection (Lk 24:13-24; Jn 20:19), changing to fear, wonder and amazement when he first appeared to them (Lk 24: 37, 41). A theologian may conjecture that the fullness of Christ’s heavenly glory was veiled from them, so as not to overwhelm them (Lk 24:16), but what filled them with joy and empowered them for mission was the unshakeable conviction that they had seen, touched, and even shared meals with the risen and glorified Lord (Jn 21:9-15; Lk 24: 28-35; Acts 10:41). Moreover, the fact that they were chosen witnesses, specially selected by God (Acts 10:41), does not mean that they were chosen for their faith; rather, they were chosen because God knew in advance those whom he had providentially prepared to bear the burden of the early mission of the Church once he had brought them to Easter faith, by means of the empty tomb and the empirically verifiable appearances of his risen Son (Jn 20:20; I Cor 15: 3-8).

So, in the end, can the historian prove that Jesus rose from the dead? Of course, as we discussed in the series In Search of Jesus of Nazareth, the word “prove” is a slippery one. The strength of historical evidence on hand is directly related to the philosophical presuppositions of the person considering that evidence. A hardened atheist is not likely to be convinced by any preponderance of historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, as he or she is already convinced on other grounds that there is no God in the universe that could perform such a miracle. Someone agnostic about the existence of God, however, may be willing to admit at least that the Christian interpretation of the evidence fits all the data on hand better than the alternative theories available. As we have seen, no has yet pieced together a convincing explanation for the empty tomb, the appearances of the risen Jesus, and the sudden explosion of courageous faith and witness by his disciples just a few weeks after he was crucified — other than the explanation given in the New Testament. The historical evidence for Easter, therefore, can serve as a challenge both to atheists and agnostics alike to rethink their presuppositions and broaden their worldview, in order to make room for realities that they have hitherto dismissed or ignored.

If one approaches the historical evidence from the standpoint of belief in an all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing Creator God, however, it is hard to see how the evidence does not justify the claim that it is “true beyond a reasonable doubt” that Jesus rose from the dead. The preponderance of the historical evidence, the lack of any convincing alternative explanations, the fact that there is a God who could perform such a miracle, and the suspicion that, surely, if there was ever any historical figure among the friends of God whom he might vindicate by raising that person from the dead, Jesus would be the one — all of these considerations converge to provide a solid, rational foundation for the Easter Faith of the Church.

Next Time: The Meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus

Robert Stackpole, STD

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