Program / Course 16: Historical Defense / Lesson 5.1
What you will learn
- State precisely what the earliest Christians meant by resurrection.
- Distinguish resurrection from resuscitation, immortality of the soul and mere continued influence.
- Identify the earliest sources for the claim and the order in which they appear.
- Describe the debate over whether the earliest claim was about a bodily or a visionary event.
The big idea
Before asking whether the resurrection happened, a historian must ask what exactly was claimed. The earliest Christians said that God had raised Jesus from the dead, that he had appeared to chosen witnesses, and that he now reigned as Lord. They did not mean that his spirit lived on, that his teaching continued or that he had been revived to ordinary life. Scholars agree on the content of the claim, and they differ widely on whether the claim describes an event in the world, a visionary experience, or a way of expressing faith.
Key terms
- Resurrection
- In the early Christian sense, God raising a dead person to a new, transformed and lasting bodily life, not simply returning to the old life.
- Resuscitation
- A dead person returned to ordinary mortal life, who will die again. Lazarus in John 11 is an example.
- Immortality of the soul
- The idea, common in Greek thought, that a person’s soul survives death while the body is left behind.
- Kerygma
- The Greek word for the proclamation, meaning the basic message the early church preached.
- Exaltation
- The belief that God raised Jesus to a place of honor and authority at his right hand.
- Spiritual body
- Paul’s phrase in 1 Corinthians 15:44 for the form of the risen body. Scholars debate what he means by it.
Background
If the question is whether the resurrection happened, the first task is to say what the resurrection is. Many arguments, for and against, fail because the two sides mean different things. A critic who attacks the idea that Jesus merely revived is not attacking the Christian claim, and a defender who proves that the disciples had experiences has not yet shown what the experiences were.
The best way to find the claim is to go to the earliest sources. Paul’s letters, written between about AD 50 and 60, come first. The Gospels follow, and the speeches in Acts, which preserve earlier preaching in Luke’s form. This lesson reads them for the content of the claim and leaves the question of truth for later.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: The core claim in the earliest sources
The earliest known Christian writing, 1 Thessalonians (about AD 50), already speaks of waiting for God’s Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead (1 Thessalonians 1:10). Romans 1:3-4 uses a compact formula that many scholars think Paul took over from earlier tradition, speaking of Jesus declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 2:6-11, perhaps an early hymn, tells how God exalted Jesus above every name.
These texts agree on three things: Jesus died, God raised him, and he now holds a unique place of honor. The resurrection is described as an act of God, not a recovery by Jesus. It is a claim about what God did.
Step 2: What the claim was not
It was not a claim of resuscitation. Lazarus, the widow’s son and others in the Gospels are brought back to ordinary life and later die. Jesus is described as raised never to die again (Romans 6:9). Nor was it simply a claim of immortality of the soul. Greek thinkers such as Plato spoke of the soul surviving the body, but for the early Christians the body was involved, and they spoke of the body being transformed (1 Corinthians 15:42-44).
It was also not a claim that Jesus’ memory or cause lived on. Writers of the time could say that a great man lived on in his teaching. The Christians said something stronger: that he was alive. N. T. Wright argues that this is why the term resurrection, rooted in Jewish language, was chosen, since no other word meant bodily life after death.
Step 3: The appearances and the tomb
The earliest creed lists appearances to Peter, the Twelve, more than five hundred, James, all the apostles and finally Paul (1 Corinthians 15:5-8). The Gospels add stories of the empty tomb and of meetings in which the risen Jesus eats, speaks and is touched. The appearances are described as real encounters, not as dreams.
The earliest preaching in Acts presents the resurrection as the key to the whole message. Peter says that God raised Jesus and that the apostles are all witnesses (Acts 2:32). The apostles’ main mission was to testify to the resurrection (Acts 4:33). Scholars debate how closely Luke reproduces earlier sermons, but the emphasis agrees with Paul.
Step 4: The nature of the risen body
Sources describe the risen Jesus in ways that seem hard to combine. He passes through closed doors and is not recognized at first (Luke 24:16; John 20:19), yet he eats fish and invites Thomas to touch his wounds (Luke 24:42-43; John 20:27). Paul speaks of a spiritual body, a physical body animated and transformed by the Spirit, different from the natural body (1 Corinthians 15:44).
Scholars differ on how to understand this. Many, like Wright and most Catholic and Orthodox theologians, hold that the claim was of a bodily event in which the same Jesus was raised in a transformed body. Others, such as Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in different ways, held that the earliest Christians described visionary or spiritual experiences, and that the stories of physical encounters came later.
Step 5: Why precision matters
The claim has a specific shape. It combined a bodily transformation, an act of God, a place in history and a present reign. A historian who tests the claim must keep that shape in view, because explanations that account for only part of it, such as the disciples’ grief or their sense of Jesus’ presence, may not explain the rest.
It also matters for the limits of history. History can assess whether the disciples reported seeing Jesus alive, and what might have caused that. Whether God raised him is a claim about divine action, and its assessment depends on further beliefs, as Lesson 1.4 explained.
- What exactly is claimed here: a revival, a survival of the soul, a vision, a bodily transformation?
- Which source is earliest, and what does it say?
- Is the claim about an event in the world or about an experience of the disciples?
- How do the accounts describe the body of the risen Jesus?
- What did the claim mean in the Jewish world of the time?
- Does an objection answer the actual claim or a weaker one?
Examples
Lazarus and Jesus
Lazarus comes out of the tomb still wrapped in grave cloths (John 11:44) and returns to his old life. Jesus’ risen state is described differently. He is said never to die again, and the New Testament calls him the firstfruits of those who sleep (1 Corinthians 15:20), meaning the first of a new kind of life.
Plato and Paul
In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates faces death confident that his soul will be released from the body. Paul does not see the body as a prison to be left. He expects it to be raised and changed. The difference shows why Greek hearers at Athens mocked the idea (Acts 17:32).
Two readings of Easter
One scholar reads the Gospel stories as evidence that the disciples found Jesus physically alive again. Another reads the same stories as the way they expressed an experience of his continuing presence. Both agree that something happened to the disciples that made them proclaim him raised. They differ on its nature.
Different perspectives
Catholic
The Catechism teaches that the resurrection of Christ was a real historical event with a bodily reality, and also a transcendent event beyond history, because the glorified body is not that of an ordinary man. The same Jesus was raised and is present to the church.
Orthodox
Orthodox Christians celebrate Pascha as the victory over death, in which Christ trampled down death by death. The resurrection is both a historical event and the beginning of the renewal of all creation, and the emphasis is on the transfigured body.
Protestant evangelicals
Most affirm the bodily resurrection as a historical event essential to the faith, and see Paul’s statement that without the resurrection faith is futile (1 Corinthians 15:14) as defining its importance.
Liberal Protestants
Some, like Marcus Borg, hold that Easter is true whether or not there was a physical resuscitation, that the earliest experiences were of Jesus’ living presence, and that the bodily stories are later and symbolic. Other liberal Protestants accept the bodily claim.
Skeptical historians
Many accept that the earliest Christians sincerely claimed that Jesus had been raised and appeared, while holding that historical method cannot confirm a resurrection and that the cause lies in the disciples’ experience.
Jewish scholars
Jewish scholars such as Pinchas Lapide have accepted that the disciples had a real experience and sometimes have granted that the resurrection could have been a divine act, without accepting that it makes Jesus the Messiah in the Christian sense. Others disagree.
Why it matters
Clear definition prevents arguments at cross purposes. When a student knows what the early Christians claimed, the later evidence and the alternative explanations can be judged against the claim itself, not against a simplified or exaggerated version of it.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: The resurrection means that Jesus’ spirit lived on.
Correction: The earliest Christians used the language of bodily raising, which was distinct from survival of the soul. The claim included a transformed body.
Misunderstanding: Jesus was simply revived, like Lazarus.
Correction: The sources describe a transformed life that does not end in death again. That is a different claim from resuscitation.
Misunderstanding: Scholars agree that the Gospels invented the physical details.
Correction: Some do, and others argue that the physical element is early and central. The question is debated.
Misunderstanding: History can show what happened to Jesus’ body.
Correction: History can weigh evidence about the tomb and the appearances. What happened to the body is an inference, and the divine action is beyond what the historical method can assess alone.
Knowledge check
What did the earliest Christians mean by resurrection?
They meant that God raised Jesus from the dead to a new, transformed, lasting bodily life, that he appeared to chosen witnesses, and that he now holds divine authority. They did not mean a mere revival, a surviving soul, or a continuing influence. The claim used Jewish language about the end-time raising of the dead.
How is resurrection different from resuscitation?
In resuscitation, a dead person returns to ordinary mortal life and will die again, as with Lazarus. In the Christian claim, Jesus is raised to a life that death cannot touch, in a transformed body. Paul calls him the firstfruits of those who have died.
Where does the earliest evidence for the claim appear?
In Paul’s letters, beginning with 1 Thessalonians about AD 50, and in formulas he quotes, such as Romans 1:3-4 and the creed in 1 Corinthians 15. The Gospels and the speeches of Acts are later but agree on the main content, though they add more detail about the empty tomb and appearances.
What is the disagreement about the nature of the risen body?
Some scholars, with most Catholic and Orthodox thinkers, hold that the earliest claim was of a bodily event in which Jesus was raised in a transformed body. Others hold that the earliest experiences were visionary and that the physical stories came later. Paul’s spiritual body is read in both ways.
Think it through
- What did you think the resurrection meant before this lesson? What has changed?
- Why might the first Christians have chosen the word resurrection and not another?
- Does the difference between bodily and visionary change what the resurrection means for faith?
- Which version of the claim seems to you the most testable by history?
Independent assignment
Defining the claim
In your own notebook, write 300 to 500 words. Define the early Christian claim of resurrection in your own words, citing at least two passages. Then state two weaker claims that are sometimes confused with it, and explain why each differs. Do not send this to anyone.
Further study
- N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God Read selectively on resurrection belief in the ancient world and in the earliest Christianity.
- Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Word Read for a later theological account of what the resurrection achieved.
- Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church Read the section on the resurrection of Christ.
- Council of Nicaea (325) and Council of Constantinople (381), The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed Note the statement that on the third day he rose again.
- 1 Thessalonians 1:10 God’s Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead.
- Romans 1:4 Declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection.
- 1 Corinthians 15:44 It is raised a spiritual body.