I said last week that this week's Christian Carnival was being hosted over at Lady 4 Jesus. I stand corrected (as a man in orthopaedic shoes once said) as the Carnival will now be hosted over at White Ribbon Warriors.

The second lecture in the series of lectures I've been to this week saw N T Wright seeking to cover some familiar issues he wrote about in the Resurrection of the Son of God but also seeking to move beyond some of those issues and not only look at what we can know historically about the resurrection, but also how we can know it.



Wright dealt effectively with the ideas of those like Crossan (right) and Borg (left)

He opened by recounting the famous public argument between Wittgenstein and Popper at Cambridge University in the 1940s, pointing out that despite the many eyewitness accounts, no one is able to accurately recall exactly what did happened, but this does not mean that nothing happened. So too with the resurrection - the Gospel accounts conflict and record various different sequences of events, but this does not authorise the sceptics to conclude that nothing happened.

After briefly outlining what the resurrection is not (a divinely given answer to the question 'can God do miracles?' or 'is the Bible true or not?'), Wright outlined some of the many attitudes to death and the afterlife that existed in the first century. For the pagans, the idea of bodily resurrection was simply a non starter. Death was a one way street and at best offered a shadowy bodiless existence in the underworld. Everybody knew that they would all die, and no one came back from the dead - and certainly not with a new and glorious body.

The Jews thought differently on the other hand, although their views were by no mean unanimous. Some (e.g the Sadducees) rejected the idea of a future resurrection or anticipated some kind of platonic bodiless existence (e.g Philo).  Jesus himself actually says remarkably little about resurrection, and talk of his own forthcoming death and subsequent vindication were perfectly in line with Jewish messianic ideas of the time. However, it seemed that the crucifixion was to be the end of the Messiah ('we had hoped he would be the Messiah') but after Easter the disciples proclaim him to truly be the Messiah because (unlike all the other would-be Messiahs) he had actually been raised from the dead. In short, Wright argued, the idea of full bodily resurrection is not a pagan idea, but a thoroughly Jewish messianic idea, which was taken on by the church.

The Church modified many Jewish ideas about resurrection in the light of Jesus' death and resurrection in what Wright termed 'early church mutations'. In Judaism for instance, the idea of resurrection was important but it was not central. Compare this with the early church emphasis on the centrality of the resurrection for instance, and the shift in thought becomes apparent. Furthermore, Judaism saw  resurrection as a single event at the end of time, but Jesus' resurrection in the middle of history now caused the church to rethink that idea. Jesus had been raised, but believers were still waiting for their own resurrection, which was in turn part of a much bigger thing the Creator God was going to do when he would finally make the whole creation anew. Thus belief in the resurrection does not mean abandoning the world to its fate, but being part of what John Dominic Crossan calls 'collaborative eschatology' - in the power of the Spirit the church begins to inaugurate the coming new creation in anticipation of God's final coming to earth to restore it and make it new. (Wright was keen to credit Crossan for this point and stressed that although they are 'sparring partners', they are good friends - perhaps my illustration is a tad inaccurate)

After continuing to explain how the churhc transformed and expanded the doctrine of resurrection, Wright turned to the question of the historicity of the Gospel accounts. He was fiercely critical of revisionist sceptism about the historicity of the resurrection narratives and made some thoughtful points regarding their genuineness:

i) The Gospel writers all draw heavily on the other scriptures - but the resurrection narratives do not, when they easily could have done. This, suggests Wright, leads us to think that we are dealing with genuine eyewitness and oral tradition material, not something constructed artificially.

ii) Unlike many other parts of the Gospel, there is little or no textual relation between the resurrection narratives, which suggests they rely on numerous independent sources rather than a single common origin which has then been duplicated.

iii) Despite the supreme theological significance the early church gives to the resurrection in its scriptures and creeds, the resurrection narratives contain almost no theologising or creed-like formulations (unlike Paul, for example) which again suggests authenticity and not that the narratives are the product of early church imagination.

iv) The reliance upon women for the resurrection appearances - unthinkable in a male dominated oral tradition

v) Some critics have suggested the parts about Jesus eating etc were added in the 2nd century to combat docetism. This can hardly be taken seriously, says Wright, because the parts about Jesus walking through closed doors would have been music to docetic ears.

vi) The sense of urgency the resurrection narratives give is very clear: Jesus is raised and is Lord of the world, we must act immediately. there is none of the later eschatological thought about Christian hope that is found elsewhere in the NT. The lack of theological development suggests the resurrection narratives are very early.

Wright closed this section with another fierce attack on reductionists who have posited all kinds of ridiculous ideas to explain the resurrection narratives (e.g. the disciples reinterpreted his death, but really they just understood that his soul had gone to heaven, or they were so upset they hallucinated it all). In short, the best explanation for the resurrection beliefs of the early church are based on the simple fact that they really happened, no other suggestion fits the evidence as well.

Methodology

Lastly (and hopefully more on this tomorrow), Wright offered a few suggestions about method and asked how can we know about the resurrection. He is quick to point out that we cannot 'prove' the resurrection in a rational sense, as it has no analogy in history. Any methods we use to invesitgate it will have formed based on experiences of history where there have been no resurrections. Yet if we are right, and the resurrection did happen, it happened within history and so it has the power to transform and shape history towards its eschatological goal.

Traditional methods of knowing and seeing are limited when it comes to the resurrection. Wright rather helpfully used the story of Thomas to make his point. The historical rationalists are like Thomas, demanding empirical proof of the raised Jesus. Yet Jesus' response is first to challenge Thomas to believe, and it is only then that Thomas gets the evidence he needs and exclaims 'My Lord and My God'. This serves as a good example to show how faith and historical enquiry meet in the study of the resurrection. We cannot convince people of the resurrection by simple rational argument, because belief in the resurrection cannot leave one remaining in a state of non-commital, it is not a neutral historical event. We are to witness to it however, and pray for those who do not yet believe. Wright closed by saying that although we can amass evidence for the resurrection, it is love that believes it. This does not mean that it is a mere subjectivism that 'feels' the resurrection is real, because as with Peter, Thomas, and the others, their love required an external object in the world outside the lover - the resurrected Christ.

Reflection

I'll keep this short because I need to be in bed, but once again I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture and found it both educational and spiritually edifying. The survey of the historical situation surrounding early church belief in the resurrection was excellent, though I would have liked to have heard a bit more on the methodology by which we understand the resurrection (though in a stiflingly hot room, I was having trouble taking it all in by that stage). Some interesting questions were asked, but the most tricky one of all was by a friend of mine who enquired "if Jesus left the burial linen in the tomb, how was it that he had clothes by the time he appeared to the women? Where did he get them from?" That's a tough one even for N T Wright.

Tomorrow's lecture is entitled 'New world, new bodies.' Should be great.

Tonight was the first of four lectures that N T Wright is giving at my college this week on the theme 'Life After life After Death' which will be looking at the Christian ideas about resurrection and life after death in both theology and the New Testament. Those who have read The Resurrection of the Son of God and For All the Saints will be familiar with much of what Wright outlined in his opening lecture. The lectures are being published by Paternoster next year so there won't be any audio available and I'm limited as to what I can quote but here's a few thoughts on tonight's lecture entitled Present Confusion About Future Hope.


As in all my lectures, I made thorough notes 


The lecture began by reflecting on public responses to death in world events of recent years, from the public outpouring of grief over the death of Princess Diana to the drama of 9/11 to the unimaginable carnage of the Tsunami. More than ever before, Wright noted, people are questioning and positing all kinds of various ideas about life after death, and the Christian doctrine of the bodily resurrection of the dead has become confused and muddled in the melée of ideas to do with death and what happens afterwards.

Most worryingly, the church seems to have substituted the idea of a bodily resurrection and the future making new of all things for ideas about a soul going to heaven when we die. Not only is this idea supremely anti-biblical, but too often the Gospel is shorn of the good news for the future of the whole physical creation and instead the emphasis has been placed on the post-mortem fate of our immmortal souls. The secular world is also greatly confused about what it believes about life after death, and the wide range of beliefs in the different world religions and as well as the prevalent pantheism and emphasis on reincarnation (which Wright described as "psychoanalysis by another means" - because people are simply creating their futures as a means of self-discovery) show just how little untiy and clarity of thought there is on the matter.

Wright then spent some time outlining the rise and fall of ideas about the afterlife over the last 2-300 years, and showing how often Christians have subconsciously ditched New Testament ideas about bodily resurrection and adopted often quite pagan ideas in their place. I hadn't really realised it until now, but Wright went through various popular hymns of the last 200 years to show how often Christians have got ideas about death and life after death completely wrong. Christian belief does not involve becoming a part of the natural world, losing ourselves in the ocean of God's divine essence, continuing our spiritual journey beyond the grave or enduring a spell in purgatory. Wright was particularly critical of the re-emergence of the doctrine of purgatory in recent years.

The second half of the lecture was entitled 'Confusion of Hope among Christians' and he began by sharing one or two thoughts on contemporary Christian attitudes towards death, most of which he felt did not understand death. We have begun to view death something to make peace with, and have begun to redescribe it in all kinds of ways to be able to accomodate it. Wright reminded us however, that death is a "horrid enemy" - but one that Christ has defeated and which will ultimately be swallowed up in victory. In the short term, death can be seen as a 'paradoxical friend' that ushers in our sleep before the resurrection of the dead, but we must remember that death is only temporary and will ultimately be destroyed by the power of God.

Wright moved on to an all too short discussion about heaven and hell, but often reminded us that the Christian replacement of the idea of resurrection and new creation with heaven and hell owes more to Plato and Dante than it does to Jesus and Paul. The NT talks about 'heaven' but not in the sense we understand it today. Likewise much biblical talk about hell often has little to do with the ideas we imagine about an endless post-mortem state of torment, but there'll be more on that in the rest of the week's lectures.

The unfortunate outworking of this has bene that instead joyfully anticipating the coming of heaven to earth and God making his dwelling with men, we now live in an escapist dualism where Christians are waiting for God to remove them from earth and carry us all off to heaven while the earth is done away with (pay attention Tim Lahaye). This is the opposite of the biblical picture, Wright explained. We are to value God's creation and ourselves (including the body) and look forward to not an escape from history, but to anticipate here and now the joyful fact that God will one day completely overthrow death and decay and make the world new. As agents of God's Kingdom on Earth, we are not to be passive escapists but we are to value God's world and to look to its transformation in the power of God's spirit.

Reflections

I have to say I thought Wright's delivery of his lecture was excellent. He has an extraordinary ability to communicate on so many levels simultaneously that he reached both to the professors and the non-specialists at the same time. I think one or two (or twenty) people were a bit surprised to hear that the New Testament teaching about the afterlife and the hope of the Gospel was not all about where your soul goes when you die. I'll also get my boasting done now as well by saying that I had a cup of tea with him afterwards and found him to be a very humble and friendly person - far from the image of him that is portrayed on certain minority websites and blogs as a false teacher bent on corrupting biblical doctrine.

As for the content of the lecture, there wasn't anything massively controversial from a theological or biblical point of view, but it was both spiritually refreshing and intellectually challenging and I'm thoroughly looking foward to tomorrow night's lecture when the subject will be 'The Resurrection of Jesus'