The Third Difficulty

It was one of those eerie moments you sometimes get when I read Hans Kung's "Third difficulty" a couple of weeks ago because it so closely matched something that I'd thought of during Holy week, reading the Passion-Resurrection parts of the Gospels, that none of them actually depicted the actual event, the event held to be the most significant event in human history, the thing which guarantees the rest of the Gospels and, as Christian theology developed, the entirety of salvation history.  I agree with what Kung said, that that uniform resistance to the temptation to depict the actual Resurrection across all four Gospels is a significant fact that counts in the favor of the Gospel writers veracity.  It was reading this passage after Easter that led me to decide to post this series going through Kung's critical thinking on the subject.  

Before starting I will point out that contrary to a lot of perhaps Perry Mason and TV crime show learned assumptions, what is presented as eye-witness reporting constitutes evidence.  You can choose to believe or choose to not believe it or find it credible but it does constitute evidence, especially if it has been subjected to critical treatment.  More on that after the passage.

Third difficulty.  There is no direct evidence of a resurrection.  There is no one in the whole New Testament who claims to have been a witness of the resurrection.  The resurrection is nowhere described.  The only exception is the unauthentic (apocryphal) Gospel of Peter which appeared about A. D. 150 and at the end gives an account of the resurrection in a naive, dramatic fashion with the aid of legendary details;  these - like so many apocryphal elements - entered into the Church's Easter texts,  Easter celebrations, Easter hymns, Easter sermons, Easter pictures, and were thus mingled in a variety of ways with popular belief about Easter.  Even such unique masterpieces of art as Grunewald's unsurpassed depiction of the resurrection in the Isenheim altar can be misleading in this respect. 

The reverse side.  The very reserve of the New Testament Gospels and letters in regard to the resurrection creates trust.  The resurrection is neither depicted nor described.  The interest in exaggeration and the craving for documentation, which are characteristic of the Apocrypha, make the latter incredible.  The New Testament Easter documents are not meant to be testimonies for the resurrection but testimonies to the raised and risen Jesus. 

Clearly and sensibly, Hans Kung read the testimony of the Gospel of Peter and, subjecting it to critical analysis, he does not choose to believe the evidence presented in it.  In fact he uses that false witness to make his argument that the choice of the Gospel writers to NOT do what you would expect someone inventing a fiction to do, to describe the actual central event in their tale to give weight to their accounts.  If no one saw what happened in the tomb, as you would expect there to be no one in the sealed tomb, there would be no witnesses to the event, instead they give accounts of encounters with the risen Jesus.  

Given what Kung also points out about what the Resurrection is held to be by those witnesses, not the mere restoration of a human being to ordinary human life which would, finally, end in the death of that ordinary though extraordinary human, the Resurrection of Jesus is held to be a different state of existence, physical and more than physical - if my understanding of him is correct - perhaps something like I've heard a number of current Episcopalians assert in regard to their conception of what the final resurrection of the dead will result in.  

So all of the snark from would-be people of fashion informed by zombie movies and popular fiction, the kind of used and impoverished imagination apparently as much imagination as such people of fashion are capable of, entirely misses the mark if you take what Paul and the Gospel authors say as the definitive accounts of the risen Jesus.  

That view of resurrection and The Resurrection is generally a part of a larger conception of the Creation and the final end of the created universe that seems to be one of the most important ways of understanding the entire New Testament, perhaps including Revelation, the authenticity of which I'm not entirely sold on, to tell you the truth.  Though current events, the world going to hell more literally than any other point in human history, makes my skepticism of it lessen.  Its credibility rises in ways that the Marxist eschaton becomes less credible with every passing day.