From this negative and positive definition it follows that death and resurrection form a differentiated unity. If we want to interpret the New Testament testimonies in a way that does not run counter to their intentions, we may not simply make the resurrection into an interpretative device, a means by which faith expresses the meaning of the cross.
That is one of the more popular means of explaining things, today, for Christians who find the central claim of Christianity embarrassing, the belief that Jesus rose from death, as his closest followers and Paul said they experienced. As John Dominic Crossan has, somewhat more modestly said than his critics will sometimes attribute to him, he doesn't believe in "bodily resurrection" though, when confronted with the testimony in the New Testament of those who knew him in life who claimed he appeared to them, he rather truthfully but weakly said, “The honest answer must be, I do not have the faintest idea, nor does anyone else.” Which can be said about any ancient text or even a text that makes a claim about something for which there is no other evidence.
He claims that the author of Mark's Gospel made up the story of the empty tomb and that later authors took up the story. Though I think the countering argument is that if Mark wanted to make up something for people to believe he could have chosen something more easy for them to believe. As Hans Kung pointed out, Mark's Gospel doesn't contain the story of the raising from the dead of Lazarus. It does contain the story of Jesus raising the daughter of Jarius but the text of Mark has Jesus, himself, denying that she was dead, that she was "sleeping". You would think that if she were dead, Mark would certainly not have said Jesus denied it - it would be rather odd for someone making it up to make him a liar. Given that, I think attributing the story of the empty tomb to Mark is a rather thin reed that, itself, which would need support, especially considering Paul's earliest claims about having encountered the risen Jesus.
As to believing that the tomb was empty, I don't have any reason to doubt it, though I find the exposition in Kung's book that points out that the glorified Jesus was in a form which was fully physical in any sense we would know that but far more than just that to be believable. It certainly matches the descriptions of his encounters with his friends and others, certainly the encounters with Paul as given in the texts. Though I think Crossan is an excellent scholar - a few estimated dating of books which look suspiciously convenient to his case, perhaps aside - I think he's too apt to be under the influence of old-fashioned materialism, the world of the university and academics of our time. The claims of the monotheism that comes out of the Hebrew scriptures are not compatible with that 18th-19th century form of materialism, though, I would point out, neither is modern science, strictly speaking.*
Resurrection means dying into God: Death and resurrection are most closely connected. Resurrection occurs with death, in death, from death. This is brought out most clearly in early pre-Pauline hymns in which Jesus' exaltation seems to follow immediately on the crucifixion. And in John's Gospel especially Jesus' "exaltation" means both his crucifixion and his "glorification" and both form the one return to the Father. But in the rest of the New Testament the exaltation comes after the humiliation of the cross.
Note: Here are a few of many sites that deal with the pre-Pauline hymns which are rather fascinating to consider. I would guess that like most of the scholarship into the period before we have explicitly written texts, there is some variance of opinion [the Reddit site complains of an abundance of fringe theories online] but I think it's entirely reasonable, considering what Paul, the earliest source we have, as of now, says about his reliance on what he was taught, it is certain that some of his material, certainly the ideas he transmits, must have been in existence before his conversion.
"Dying into God" is not something to be taken for granted, not a natural development, not a desideratum of human nature to be fulfilled at all costs. Death and resurrection must be seen as distinct, not necessarily in time but objectively. This is also emphasized by the ancient, presumably less historical than theological reference: "on the third day he rose again," "third" being not a date in the calendar but a salvation date for a day of salvation. Death is man's affair, resurrection can only be God's. Man is taken up, called, brought home, and therefore finally accepted, saved, by God into himself as the incomprehensible, comprehensive ultimate reality. He is taken up in death or - better - from death as an event in itself, rooted in God's act and fidelity. It is the hidden, unimaginable, new act of the Creator, of him who calls into existence the things that are not. And therefore - thought not a supernatural "intervention" contrary to the laws of nature - it is a genuine gift and a true miracle.
The belief in this, the central claim to the authority of Jesus, the mainstay of the reliability of his moral teaching and claims about the nature of reality relies on the statements of experience of the risen Jesus by his followers and, as in Paul, by his enemies who later became his followers. That that testimony is not given in forms that are entirely congenial with modern standards does not change the fact that that is the form that they are in, hardly anything from the classical or earlier or even later human history would match modern standards of courtroom or, ideally, scientific or modern-historical evidence. That fact has been used by the enemies of Christianity to attack it, one of those facts that Hans Kung noted in a passage posted here last week, has to be dealt with squarely by someone who does believe it. They have to, themselves, consider it squarely and honestly if their own belief is to be maintained against self-doubts and external attacks. I especially value Kung's handling of the facts because it is rigorously honest about the state of the evidence and his treatment of it, noting where it can withstand modern methods and were its case is weaker and, as well, where modern methods can be anything from unhelpful to deceptive. I have, of course, been emphasizing the ways in which such modern methods of testing are not applied in science and other areas of modern thought, comparing those to the demand that religion stand up to them.
I should say that I'm kind of feeling some regrets that I'm not including Hans Kung's many, detailed footnotes and links to texts that you would get from the book, On Being Christian. Of course a lot of what he cites are in books that you'd have to go to a really good library to find, something which I have to admit I haven't done. Every source he cites which I have been able to trace has proven that his representation of it is entirely reliable.
Also note, in answer to someone who is complaining, I could type out the umlauts, I've got a program that would do that, I have not because they wouldn't be helpful to most English speakers. I think it was the estimable Garrison Keillor who said an umlaut to an English speaker means "you can't pronounce this vowel."
* I have noticed that there are atheist-materialist-scientistic online sources that make something out of Hans Kung's stated choice that he wouldn't deal with the, then emerging, literature about near death experience and claims of mediumship, aparitions, etc. in his book Eternal Life? claiming that he "rejected" those claims. I don't find anywhere he explicitly rejects them. I think, ever honest and ever careful about his language, they should have looked at the subtitle of his book, "Life After Death as a Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem. I think that, at that time, 1982, there hadn't been much in the way of academic study or extensive medical reporting on the phenomenon of resuscitated patients reporting such experiences. Since the book is based on a series of lectures Kung gave at Tubingen University. I would certainly think that there was every reason for him to take that position at that time and in that setting for entirely honest reasons and also to maintain the academic credibility among contemporary academics.
That doesn't mean that what people have claimed about their experiences is valueless, especially in light of the many atheist-"skeptic" counter-claims to dispose of them being shown to be either invalid or utterly preposterous and unevidenced. They can be believed by rational people who find such evidence convincing, the question, then, is of the legitimacy of their belief OR THEIR NON-BELIEF. The matter of non-belief certainly needs to be distinguished from a refusal to consider the possibility that someone reporting their experience is credible. The modus operandi of post-WWII atheist materialism, especially since the rise of the pseudo-skeptical group CSICIOP, is to a priori declare that any statments or accounts or evidence which does not fit within their ideological framing is, by fiat, declared to be illegitimate. In that they follow on the already discredited methods of the logical positivists. It is a demand to a priori adopt their framing as the only allowed one in all things. That they have to declare their sole expertise in things they couldn't possibly know about, peoples' internal experience, in this case, their experience in all cases that are not to the atheists' liking has not been something that has had universal agreement, which enrages them when they encounter it.
Ideological refusal to consider the possibility of the sole witness talking about things they have witnessed is accurately depicting reality because they don't like it is no more intellectually credible than someone who credulously believes any claim ever made because they like it. Negation doesn't protect someone from error and it certainly doesn't add a jot to the likelihood that they are being honest, which is one of the more stupid of basic stands of modern, atheist-materialist-scientistic orthodoxy.
My approach has been that individuals are the only real experts on the contents of their experience, especially when those experiences have no manifestation that an external observer could witness. There are some claims of near death experiences I find to be not credible and some, for which, the one and only expert witness seem credible to me. Sometimes the difference might be merely the language they express it it, but that's true of everything we hear. What is especially credible, for me, is when their experience is strong enough to have reportedly changed their life to make them a better person. That is not unrelated to why I find Paul and Peter and James credible, because of the reported changes in their behavior attributed to their experience of the risen Jesus. I think the first years in which the "Church" arose among those who had known Jesus is some of the most powerful evidence there is in favor of the Resurrection.
I would point to the rather harsh treatment of those early reports of near death experience in Edwin Quinn's Translator's Preface to Eternal Life? as what you could typically expect in the treatment of those accounts in 1983, the year the translation was published. I do think it's rather unfairly harsh, especially considering the further consideration of the often ridiculous explanations that the "skeptics" mounted to discredit such accounts. His comparison of what they experienced to "the banal descriptions by the characters in Max Frisch's Triptychon, What Feuerbach and Frued have described as projections and illusions," is uncalled for and rather snobbish. Yeah, Freud has just tons of credibility on that count, doesn't he. Even then Freud had already been rather more credibly discredited than the people who reported their experiences while "clinically dead".
That he does so in what he certainly thought was a higher purpose, to support the theological position that what the New Testament addresses in the resurrection is not life like what we experience but I think modern theology might go overboard in separating it from what we experience. I suspect they do so to maintain their academic credibility and in that they no less than those near death experiencers are speaking out of their own experience, had in, possibly, but definitely reported in terms understandable in this life.
I do think that 20th century Catholic and much Protestant theology has been too eager to adopt skeptical attitudes that will make them more accepted in the academy. Skepticism that is open to possibilities is one thing, skepticism that shuts off and derides is no more intellectually creditable than insult comedy. I have to say that the text that Edwin Quinn translated doesn't support his attitude. Kung, takes a far less harsh a view of things, I think it's more plausible to attribute it to Karl Rahner but I find Kung to be quite open minded and more carefully honest than that.
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