2. The Two Different Of Resurrection Testimony

Let us turn now to the individual Resurrection accounts in the New Testament. As we consider them, the first thing we notice is that there are two different types of testimony, which we may label the "confessional tradition" and the "narrative tradition".

The Confessional Tradition - The confessional tradition crystallizes the essentials in short phrase that establish the kernel of what took place. The are an expression of Christian identity, a "confession" indeed, by which Christians recognize one another, by which they identify themselves before God and man. I would like to propose three examples.

At the end of the Emmaus story, the two disciples find the eleven Apostles assembled in Jerusalem and are greeted with these words: "The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!" - Luke 24:34 - In its context, this functions as a brief narrative, but it also serves as a formula of acclamation and confession, in which the essential is proclaimed: the event itself and the witness who testifies to it.

We find a combination of two formulae in the tenth chapter of the Letter to the Romans: "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved". - Rom. 10:9 - In this example - as also in the account of Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi - Matt. 16:13-16 - there are two elements to the confession: it is said that Jesus is "Lord" which in terms of the Old Testament meaning of the word refers to his divinity. Then comes the confession of the fundamental historical event: God raised him from the dead. This already makes clear what the significance of the confession is for Christians: it brings salvation. It leads us to the truth that is salvation. We have here a prototype of the confessional formulae used in Baptism, which always link Christ's lordship to the story of his life, death, and Resurrection. In Baptism man hands himself over to the new life of the Risen One, Confession becomes life.

By far the most important of the Easter confessions is found in the fifteenth chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians. As with the account of the Last Supper - 1Cor. 11:23-26 - Paul emphasizes strongly that he is not speaking on his own initiative here: "I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received" - 1Cor. 15:3 - Paul deliberately takes his place within the chain of reception and transmission. Here, regarding the essential content on which everything depends, what is demanded above all is fidelity. And Paul, who characteristically places so much emphasis on his personal witness of the Risen One and on the apostolate that he received directly from the Lord, insists here with great emphasis on literal fidelity in the transmission of what has been received, on the common tradition of the Church from her beginnings.

The Gospel of which Paul speaks is the foundation "in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it [that is, the word, the literal formulation] fast" that "I preached to you" - 1Cor. 15:1-2 - In this central message, what matters is not only the content, but also the literal formulation, which must be preserved intact. This link with the very earliest tradition is the source of both the unity of the faith and its universally binding nature. "Whether then it was I or they [the others who proclaimed it] so we preach and so you believe" - 1Cor. 15;11 - In its nucleus the faith, even down to its literal formulation, is one - it binds all Christians.

When exactly and from whom Paul received this confession has been the object of further inquiry, just as we saw in the case of the Last Supper tradition. In any event, it forms part of the primary catechesis that he as a convert would have received while still in Damascus, but its essential content was doubtless formulated in Jerusalem and therefore dates back to the 30s - a real testimony to the origins.

The text handed down in the First Letter to the Corinthians has been extended by Paul, inasmuch as he has added, among others, his own encounter with the risen Lord. For Saint Paul's self-understanding and for the faith of the early Church I find it significant that Paul felt entitled to add on to the original confession, with equally binding character, the risen Lord's appearance to him and the apostolic mission that came with it. He was evidently convinced that this revelation of the risen Lord to him was still a central part of the emerging creedal formula, that it belonged to the faith of the universal Church as an essential element intended for all.

Let us listen now to the whole text, as Paul presents it: "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, then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive... Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me." - 1Cor. 15:3-8 -

In the view of most exegetes, the original confession ends with verse 5, that is, with the appearance to Cephas and the Twelve. From further traditions, Paul added James, the group of over five hundred brethren, and "all" the Apostles - here he is evidently applying an understanding of "apostles" that extends beyond the circle of the Twelve. James is important because with him, Jesus' family, who had previously been decidedly ambivalent - Mark 3:20-21, 31-35; John 7:5 - enter the circle of believers and also because James is the one who assumed the leadership of the Mother Church in the Holy City after Peter's flight from Jerusalem.

Jesus' Death - Let us turn now to the confession itself, which demands more detailed consideration. It begins with the phrase: "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures." The fact of his death is qualified by two additional expressions: "for our sins" and "in accordance with the Scriptures."

Let us begin with the second expression. It is important for the whole approach taken by the early Church toward the facts of Jesus' life. What the risen Lord taught the disciples on the road to Emmaus now becomes the basic method for understanding the figure of Jesus: everything that happened to him is fulfillment of the "Scriptures." Only on the basis of the "Scriptures," the Old Testament, can he be understood at all. With reference to Jesus' death on the Cross, this means that his death is no coincidence. It belongs in the context of God's ongoing relationship with the people, from which it receives its inner logic and its meaning. It is an event in which the words of Scripture are fulfilled; it bears within itself Logos, or logic; it proceeds from the word and returns to the word; it surrounds the word and fulfills it.

A pointer toward a deeper understanding of this fundamental relationship with the word is given by the earlier qualification: Christ died "for our sins". Because his death has to do with the word of God, it has to do with us, it is a dying "for". In the chapter on Jesus' death on the Cross, we saw what an enormous wealth of tradition in the form of scriptural allusions feeds into the background here, chief among them the fourth Suffering Servant Song. - Isaiah 53 - Insofar as Jesus' death can be located within this context of God's word and God's love, it is differentiated from the kind of death resulting from man's original sin as a consequence of his presumption in seeking to be like God, a presumption that could only lead to man's plunge into wretchedness, into the destiny of death.

Jesus' death is of another kind: it is occasioned, not by the presumption of men, but by the humility of God. It is not the inevitable consequence of a false hubris, but the fulfillment of a love in which God himself comes down to us, so as to draw us back to himself. Jesus' death is rooted, not in the sentence of expulsion from Paradise, but in the Suffering Servant Songs. It is a death in the context of his service of expiation - a death that achieves reconciliation and becomes a light for the nations. Thus it is that the twofold qualification that Paul adds, when handing on this creedal formula, to the expression "he died" opens up the path from the Cross to the Resurrection.

The Question Of The Empty Tomb - Next in the confession of faith, direct and without commentary, comes the statement "he was buried." This makes it clear that Jesus really was dead, that he fully participated in the human destiny of death. Jesus traveled the path of death right to the bitter and seemingly hopeless end in the tomb. Jesus' tomb was evidently known. And here the question naturally arises: Did he remain in the tomb? Or was it empty after he had risen?

In modern theology this question has been extensively debated. Most commentators come to the conclusion that an empty tomb would not be enough to prove the Resurrection. If the tomb were indeed empty, there could be some explanation for it. On this basis, the commentators conclude that the question of the empty tomb is immaterial and can therefore be ignored, which tends also to mean that it probably was not empty anyway, so at least a dispute with modern science over the possibility of bodily resurrection can be avoided. But at the basis of all this lies a distorted way of posing the question.

Naturally, the empty tomb as such does not prove the Resurrection. Mary Magdalene, in John's account, found it empty and assumed that someone must have taken Jesus' body away. The empty tomb is no proof of the Resurrection, that much is undeniable. Conversely, though, one may ask: Is the Resurrection compatible with the body remaining in the tomb? Can Jesus be risen if he still lying in the tomb? What kind of resurrection would that be? Today, notions of resurrection have been developed for which the fate of the corpse is inconsequential. Yet the content of the Resurrection becomes so vague in the process that one must ask with what kind of reality we are dealing in this form of Christianity.

Be that as it may: Thomas Soding, Ulrich Wilckens, and others rightly point out that in Jerusalem at the time, the proclamation of the Resurrection would have been completely possible if anyone had been able to point to a body lying in the tomb. To this extent, for the sake of posing the question correctly, we have to say that the empty tomb as such, while it cannot prove the Resurrection, it nevertheless a necessary condition for Resurrection faith, which was specifically concerned with the body and, consequently, with the whole of the person. In Saint Paul's confessional statement, it is not explicitly stated that the tomb was empty, but this is clearly presupposed. All four Gospels speak of it extensively in their Resurrection accounts.

For a theological understanding of the empty tomb, a passage from Saint Peter's Pentecost sermon strikes me as important, when Peter for the first time openly proclaims Jesus' Resurrection to the assembled crowds. He communicates it, not in his own words, but by quoting Psalm 16:8-10 - as follow: "... my flesh will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life." - Acts 2:26-28 - Peter quotes the psalm text using the version found in the Greek Bible. The Hebrew text is slightly different: "You do not give me up to Sheol, or let your godly one see the Pit. You show me the path of life." - Ps. 16:10-11 - In the Hebrew version the psalmist speaks in the certainty that God will protect him, even in the threatening situation in which he evidently finds himself, that God will shield him from death and that he may dwell securely: he will not see the grave. The version Peter quotes is different: here the psalmist is confident that he will not remain in the underworld, that he will not see corruption.

Peter takes it for granted that it was David who originally prayed this psalm, and he goes on to state that this hope was not fulfilled in David: "He both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day." - Acts 2:29 - The tomb containing his corpse is the proof of his not having risen. Yet the psalm text is still true: it applies to the definitive David. Indeed, Jesus is revealed here as the true David, precisely because in him this promise is fulfilled: "You will not let your Holy One see corruption."

We need not go into the question here of whether this address really goes back to Peter and, if not, who else may have redacted it and precisely when and where it originated. Whatever the answer may be, we are dealing here with a primitive form of Resurrection proclamation, whose high authority in the early Church is clear from the fact that it was attributed to Saint Peter himself and was regarded as the original proclamation of the Resurrection.

If in the early creedal formula from Jerusalem, transmitted by Saint Paul, it is stated that Jesus rose according to the Scriptures, then surely Psalm 16 must have been seen as key scriptural evidence for the early Church. Here they found a clear statement that Christ, the definitive David, will not see corruption - that he must truly have risen. "not to see corruption": this is virtually a definition of resurrection. Only with corruption was death regarded as definitive. Once the body had decomposed, once it had broken down into its elements - marking man's dissolution and return to dust - then death had conquered. From now on this man no longer exists as a man - only a shadow may remain in the underworld. From this point of view, it was fundamental for the early Church that Jesus' body did not decompose. Only then could it be maintained that he did not remain in death, that in him life truly conquered death.

What the early Church deduced from the Septuagint version of Psalm 16:10 also determined the viewpoint of the entire patristic period. Resurrection essentially implies that Jesus' body was not subject to corruption. In this sense, the empty tomb is a strongly scriptural element of the Resurrection proclamation. Theological speculations arguing that Jesus' decomposition and Resurrection could be mutually compatible belong to modern thinking and stand in clear contradiction of the biblical vision. On this basis, too, we have further confirmation that a Resurrection proclamation would have been impossible if Jesus' body had been lying in the grave.

The Third Day - Let us return to our creedal formula. The next article states: "He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures." - 1Cor. 15:4 - "In accordance with the Scriptures" applies to the entire phrase, not specifically to the third day, although this is included. The essential point is that Resurrection itself is in accordance with the Scriptures - that it forms part of the whole promise that in Jesus became, not just word, but reality. So for scriptural background we could certainly look to Psalm 16:10, but also to basic promise texts like Isaiah 53. There is no direct scriptural testimony pointing to the "third day."

The thesis that the third day may possibly have been derived from Hosea 6;1-2 cannot be sustained, as Hans Conzelmann and likewise Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer have shown. The text reads: "Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn, that he may heal us; he has stricken, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him." This text is a penitential prayer on the part of sinful Israel. There is no mention of resurrection from the dead, properly speaking. The text is not quoted in the New Testament or at any point during the second century (cf. Hengel and Schwemer, Jesus und das Judentum, p.631). It could become an anticipatory pointer toward resurrection on the third day only once the event that took place on the Sunday after the Lord's crucifixion had given this day a special meaning.

The third day is not a "theological" date, but the day when an event took place that became the decisive turning point for the disciples after the calamity of the Cross. Josef Blank formulated it like this: "The expression 'on the third day' is a chronological indication in harmony with the earliest Christian tradition in the Gospels, and it relates to the discovery of the empty tomb." (Paulus und Jesus, p.156)

I would add: it relates to the first encounter with the risen Lord. The first day of the week - the third after Friday - is attested in the New Testament from a very early stage as a day when the Christian community assembled for worship. (1Cor. 16:2; Acts 20:7; Rev. 1:10) Ignatius of Antioch (late first century, early second century) provides evidence, as we saw earlier, that for Christians Sunday had already supplanted the Jewish Sabbath culture: "We have seen how former adherents of the ancient customs have since attained to a new hope; so that they have given up keeping the Sabbath and now order their lives by the Lord's day instead (the day when life first dawned for us, thanks to him and his death)" (Ad Magn., 9:1)

If we bear in mind the immense importance attached to the Sabbath in the Old Testament tradition on the basis of the Creation account and the Decalogue, then it is clear that only an event of extraordinary impart could have led to the abandonment of the Sabbath and its replacement by the first day of the week. Only an event that marked souls indelibly could bring such a profound realignment in the religious culture of the week. Mere theological speculations could not have achieved this. For me, the celebration of the Lord's day, which was a characteristic part of the Christian community from the outset, is one of the most convincing proofs that something extraordinary happened that day - the discovery of the empty tomb and the encounter with the risen Lord.

The Witnesses - While verse 4 of the Pauline confession expounds the fact of the Resurrection. verse 5 introduces the list of witnesses. "He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve" it states succinctly. If we regard this verse as the conclusion of the original Jerusalem formula, then this indication of names carries particular theological weight: it reveals the very foundation of the Church's faith.

On the one hand, "the Twelve" remain the actual foundation stone of the Church, the permanent point of reference. On the other hand, the special task given to Peter is underlined here, the commission that was first assigned to him at Caesarea Philippi and then confirmed during the Last Supper - Luke 22:32 - when Peter was, as it were, introduced into the Church's Eucharistic structure. Now, after the Resurrection, the Lord appears first to him, before appearing to the Twelve, and thus once again renews Peter's particular mission.

If being Christian essentially means believing in the risen Lord, then Peter's special witnessing role is a confirmation of his commission to be the rock on which the Church is built. John, in his account of the risen Lord's threefold question to Peter, "Do you love me?' and Peter's threefold commissioning to feed Christ's flock, clearly underlined once more Peter's continuing mission vis-a-vis the faith of the whole Church. - John 21:15-17 - So the Resurrection account flows naturally into ecclesiology; the encounter with the risen Lord is mission, and it shapes the nascent Church.

The Narrative Tradition.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -