How can you explain the resurrection? 4

I finished the book, fittingly on Palm Sunday in the morning. It has been tremendous to read this wonderful scholarly work on the resurrection of Jesus. There is an enormous amount of information in it, and I struggle to see how anyone could be so dedicated to a topic to devote so much energy into developing an argument such as this one. I am immensely impressed with N.T. Wright as a scholar on this topic and I hope to read some more of his books at some point.

Regarding the content, I am obliged to agree with Tim Keller’s exclamation when he put it down at the end, and say “Wow, it did happen!”

This is Wright’s argument throughout the book, that something did in fact happen on the first Easter, and that something was that Jesus really was bodily raised from death after three days. The explanations modern scholars have come up with simply fall flat when examined, two of which include: what is called “cognitive dissonance”, basically meaning that the “supposed eye-witnesses” simply wanted to believe that Jesus came back; and what is best described as a “spiritualization” of the supposed events, meaning that Jesus didn’t actually rise from death, but the resurrection language used in the Gospel accounts is there because it represents something metaphorical about Christian faith, that Jesus is alive in some spiritual way in the faith of believers, and was not physically brought back from death.

But Wright shows in his next to last chapter how improbable these explanations are in light of the accounts of (1) the discovery of the empty tomb and (2) the appearances of Jesus to his followers, including women as the primary witnesses. Wright shows how (1) and (2) are sufficient and necessary historical conditions for the subsequent belief that Jesus physically rose from the dead.

By sufficient, it is meant that the empty tomb and the meetings with Jesus sufficiently explain the subsequent Christian faith and belief that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead.

By necessary, it is meant that the empty tomb and meetings with Jesus are necessary to explain the subsequent belief in his resurrection from death.

The necessary condition is essentially the attempt at proving that the resurrection is true, though I believe Wright intended it to carry a little less force logically (as he stated in The Resurrection of Jesus, Fortress Press January 2006, pg. 22). I would think though that this is what he truly thinks, that it does in fact serve as near proof of the historical reality of Jesus’ resurrection.

It’s fascinating stuff. I recommend reading this book. It appears to be an almost comprehensive survey of all scholarly work on the resurrection from the perspective of history.