The Resurrection More Than A Report Of A Miracle and Entirely More Than A Metaphor

First Part

Footnote 

Second Part

Second difficulty.  We tried to understand the numerous miracle stories of the New Testament without assuming a "supernatural" intervention - which cannot be proved - in the laws of nature.  It would therefore seem like a dubious retrogression to discredited ideas if we were now suddenly to postulate such a supernatural "intervention" for the miracle of the resurrection:  this would contradict all scientific thinking as well as all ordinary convictions and experiences.  Understood in this way,  the resurrection seems to modern man to be an encumbrance to faith, akin to the virgin birth, the descent into hell or the ascension. 

The reverse side.  It is possible that the resurrection has a speial character preventing it from being placed without more ado on the same plane as other miraculous or even legendary elements of the primitive Christian tradition.  Virgin birth, descent into hell and ascension are in fact listed together with the resurrection in the "Apostle's Creed,"  which stems from the Roman tradition of the fourth century/  but in the New Testament itself, in contrast to the resurrection, they appear only in isolated passages and without exception in later literary strata.  The earliest New Testament witness, the Apostle Paul, never mentions the virgin birth, descent into hell or ascension, but firmly maintains the resurrection of the Crucified as the center of Christian preaching.  The resurrection message is not the special experience of a few enthusiasts, the special teaching of some apostles.  On the contrary, it belongs to the oldest strata of the New Testament.  It is common to all New Testament writings without exception.  It proves to be central to the Christian faith and at the same time the basis of all further statements of faith.  The question therefore may at last be raised as to whether in the resurrection we are faced with something absolutely final, an eschaton - something which does not face us in the virgin birth, descent into hell or the ascension - where it is no longer appropriate to speak of an intervention within the supernatural system against the laws of nature.  We shall have to look into this more closely. 

It was about the first time that I wrote anything about the new atheist fad when I pointed out that despite one of those things Richard Dawkins was saying to get into the news, that the Virgin Birth story was testable with science, not only the fact that there were no genetic or other samples of the mother, the son or any proposed human father to test - and so it could not be a claim testable with science - since, as told in the two Gospels that mention it present it as a unique event in the history of the world, as given no other proposed even testable claim of a "virgin birth" could reliably dispose of the claim.   I did that while saying that I don't happen to believe the story or to consider it especially important I had enough respect for science to reject the claim that science could be used to either debunk or support the claims of the Virgin Birth.  

As an aside, those atheists, uneducated and allegedly educated, who make jokes about the Virgin Birth being parthenogenic, expose their ignorance of parthenogenesis which, human beings having XY sex determination, would not have produced a male offspring, there being no male gamete involved.   As I recall, Dawkins didn't make that mistake in anything he said but  some people who did that surprised me.  Some of whom had studied biology at a collegiate level.   And it was a hell of a long time ago that I took that kind of biography course. 

That said, it is clear from the descriptions of the Resurrection in the Gospels, in Paul's conversion experience, both as described by the author of Acts and in Paul's letters, the Resurrection of Jesus was not the reanimation of a dead body as is claimed in the other stories of Jesus raising the dead in the Gospels.  

The descriptions of the experience of the risen Jesus, the sudden appearances in locked rooms, the sudden disappearances, his appearances to Paul during his conversion experience and as he was under detention make it clear that they were not claiming that his resurrected form was merely a physical body though as they went out of their way to talk about him eating with his followers, in giving the story of him offering to let the skeptical Thomas put his fingers in the wounds on his arms and feet,  they were not claiming he was merely physical or merely physical in his new body, which was, though, related in some way with the body that died.  What is being described is clearly nothing like the bodies of people as studied by science nor is it merely a metaphor for the emergence of the early movement, the Church.  

I find the recourse to "metaphor" in recent biblical discourse to be far less convincing as something addressing what the texts actually say but, even more so as an explanation for the remarkable emergence of Christianity, something which, earlier, I showed surprised someone as sophisticated and gelid-eyed an observer as Tacitus when everything about the events of the crucifixion and subsequent persecution of those who not only stayed with a belief in the Jesus they had known but so many who never saw him in life.   The emergence of Christainty in the context it started and emerged in is remarkable in a way that is even more unexplanable if the Resurrection of Jesus was meant as a mere metaphor for the very phenomenon it inspired.   The only thing I can believe is that not only did those who heard Paul and the others talk about what they'd experience believe that Jesus had risen from the dead,  but that those who report their experience of the risen Jesus were reporting their own experience, not indulging, as a group, in a literary device.  

I have decided to go farther into this chapter of Hans Kungs On Being A Christian and so will pick up the posting of these sections as I get a chance to do so.