|
Free - pdf "lite" version now available.
- Full text, but read-only
- Great for computer / PDA viewing
- Printing disabled
- Copy/paste disabled
- 5.5 X 8 format
- No bookmarks
These features are enabled in the full version, which is also formated to 8.5 X 11 for your printing convenience.
Click here to download the "lite" version.
- 300 K pdf file.
|
Full-version eBook (printable pdf file) available for immediate download.
- $3.50 USD
Best deal: part of eBookstore. |
The
Meaning of the Resurrection©
by Philip St. Romain, D. Min.
Previously published as Jesus Alive
in Our Lives
Ave Maria Press, 1985
- Edited, updated, and re-written in 2001 -
All rights reserved. No part
of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the written permission of the author.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 85-71676
International Standard Book Number: O-87793-293-X
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Publishers interested in
reproducing this work are invited to contact
the author
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1.
The Witness of the Church
2. The New Life in Christ
3. The Incarnation: God is With Us
4. When Good Things Happen to Bad People
5. Courage to Live
6. Meaning in Life and History
Suggested Reading
|
To all scientists and other
seekers of truth: that they may come to believe in the resurrection
of the Lord of all truth.
Acknowledgments
Like so many other books, this one began with a
question. During the course of my campus ministry days at Louisiana
State University, I was asked to give a talk to students on the
meaning of the resurrection. This forced me to take a good, hard look
at the status of my own beliefs, and prompted the memories disclosed
in the Introduction. I would like to thank the students from that
Awakening Retreat community for the many opportunities and challenges
they extended to me through the years.
We live at a time in history when biblical scholarship is richer than
ever. Many of the ideas in this book derive from the researches of
Raymond Brown, Roland Murphy, John McKenzie, Hans Kung, Karl Rahner,
and Avery Dulles, to name a few. A small book on the resurrection by
Thomas Merton also deserves special mention here.
Many thanks to Father John Edmonds, ST., Father Dan Drinan, C.M.F.,
Shirley Smith and Philip Sheridan for reading this manuscript and
providing helpful feedback. Frank Cunningham and the editorial staff
at Ave Maria Press also provided direction and encouragement through
several drafts of the manuscript.
Finally, I acknowledge my indebtedness to Lisa, my wife, for her
editorial and moral support. Without her help, this book could have
never been written.
Introduction
Why another book about the resurrection of
Jesus of Nazareth?
It would be an understatement to say that much has already been
written about this most significant of Christian beliefs.
In order to answer this question, I feel compelled to share a bit of
my own journey in faith. About 12 years ago, I attended a Cursilo and
was deeply moved by the experience. As a biology graduate student and
somewhat of an agnostic at that time, my training in science led me
to search out credible evidence for the resurrection to bring my mind
into sync with my almost embarrassingly enthusiastic heart. I read
the scriptures with an open mind and was deeply moved by the
teachings of Jesus and the story of his passion and death. I was
unimpressed by the resurrection stories, however. There seemed to be
contradictions among the evangelists as to who the witnesses were,
where the appearances took place, whether or not there was a
guard.
Like most Catholics when confused about religious matters, I turned
to my local parish priest, in this case an extraordinarily
well-educated campus minister. He told me he doubted that Jesus'
corpse was transformed to new life and he surmised that the empty
tomb passages were probably mythological stories with no historical
rootings. This was quite disconcerting, but like a good scientist I
was prepared to believe the truth even if it was unpleasant. But why,
I asked myself, should I take the word of only one man on so
important a topic? I would have to study and make up my own mind;
that much was for sure.
The very next day I bought a copy of Raymond Brown's book, The
Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of
Jesus.
It was not easy reading! I followed the
gist of his research as best I could and found myself surprisingly
pleased with his affirmation of the traditional dogmas regarding
these matters. My mind gave my heart permission to remain excited
about the spiritual life, and so I scheduled an appointment to meet
with my campus minister again. He did not seem surprised by Brown's
conclusions, but told me that it was more important to reflect upon
the meaning
of the resurrection than upon the event
itself. I have since come to agree with him, although when I left his
office that day I felt he had been evasive and even dishonest with
me.
My problem was quite simple. It was impossible for me to allow myself
to grapple with the meaning of an event that might have been
only
mythological. If Jesus did not really
rise from the dead, then the resurrection has no real meaning other
than its poetic comment on the life of a great man. I might just as
well have dusted off my old Greek mythology texts as studied the
Bible; the Greeks wrote fascinating myths and promoted a values
system close to the one I had already embraced. With my biology peers
exerting considerable pressure for me to abandon the resurrection
question (or else to use religion simply as a social outlet, which a
few did themselves), I soon became tormented by a severe existential
crisis, the center of which concerned the mystery of Jesus.
In addition to my thesis research (on the evolution of two mouse
species), I began reading everything I could get my hands on about
Jesus, thus hoping to cast off conclusively or embrace the tenuous
strands of faith remaining in my heart. What I found was that there
are three types of books about the resurrection; each made its own
unique contributions in helping me to grow in my understanding of
Jesus and the church:
1. Devotional treatments take the fact of the
resurrection for granted, focusing instead on its meaning for those
who follow Jesus.
2. Dogma deals with the theological implications of the
resurrection, i.e., how we are to understand what the risen Christ
reveals to us about God and humanity. In most cases, dogmatic
theologians begin with the fact of the resurrection and spend little
time investigating its nature.
3. Exegeses of scripture are examinations of how the
Bible is put together and what it is saying. When applied to the
resurrection narratives, however, the various types of biblical
criticism (redactionary, literary, historical, etc.) sometimes leave
one wondering if the sacred writings are rooted in any historical
substrate at all! Some, like Raymond Brown, conclude that the
resurrection narratives in scripture do point to miraculous
appearances of the once-crucified Jesus to his band of stunned
followers. Others turn the narratives into mere mythology.
I sincerely wish there had been a fourth category of books more
available at that time; science and the resurrection would have been
just what I needed to read about, for it was squaring the
resurrection with the scientific world-view that gave me my most
intense headaches. If, for example, we are saying that the body of
Jesus was transformed to new life --
that his tomb was really empty on Easter
Sunday--then what are we saying might have happened to his body? (A
less interesting, but intriguing question might be raised concerning
the microorganisms in his body.) It is one thing to claim that a
man's spirit has risen, for this would not be a debatable matter; it
is another thing entirely to claim that a corpse has been not just
resuscitated, but completely transformed so that it can no longer
die. To state simply that God did it, or else that we do not know and
need not trouble over such matters is to shun dialogue with a
predominantly agnostic group of very influential people
-- namely,
scientists. Many scientists are exceedingly impervious to persuasive
appeals based on emotionalism or claims of the miraculous. All
scientists (and non-scientists) know, too, that dead people usually
remain dead. If, therefore, we would like scientists to be active
participants in a world religion that owes its origin to the
resurrection of a dead man, then we must at least be willing to
discuss with them any scientific questions implied by the
resurrection. These people are not nearly so close-minded as some
might imagine, for the emerging post-Einsteinian world-view is
nowhere near as smug in its view of the possibilities in nature as
were the Newtonians. At any rate, such discussions and reflections
would have helped me out considerably --
and still would, I believe.
I must confess that I have never been able to explain the
resurrection of Jesus using a scientific approach. Nevertheless, I
emerged from those grad student crisis days a believer, and have been
since. Like
most Christians, I suppose, my faith has surfaced from a variety of
roots. A simple apologetics of sorts finally stabilized my mind and
allowed me to become convinced that one could be intellectually
honest and believe, and still not understand everything. This is,
after all, the way we comprehend much of the world, and is also the
state of science as a whole. It was essential for me that faith not
demand irrationality, for the lessons of history clearly point to
grave consequences for individuals and societies that abandon the
light of human reason.
More than on apologetics, however, my faith has come to rest in a
growing conviction that Jesus
Christ is alive in my life. I know that
when I pray, something amazing happens inside of me that is
qualitatively different from when I just sit quietly, or read a book,
or do anything else; I know that in the depths of my being I am not
alone; finally, I know that when I live as Christ calls me to, I am
happy. This is enough to dispel most of my residual agnosticism most
of the time. Perhaps there will come a day when physicists will be
able to identify dimensions of reality that at once embrace and
transcend space-time as a sphere does a mere circle. I believe they
eventually must,
for I am convinced that Jesus lives in
such a dimension, and that at least part of our minds are in touch
with it.
About This Book
I have written this book to try to make more
accessible some of the studies and reflections concerning the
resurrection of Jesus that I have been privileged to read. Because
this topic is so central to Christian belief, I hope to help focus
for believers as well as non-believers the world-view and lifestyle
implied by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. As the reader
will see, belief in the resurrection can make a tremendous difference
in how one perceives and copes with several of life's most
challenging issues.
Chapter One will be an attempt to summarize briefly what the Bible
(hence, the church) and science can and cannot tell us about the
resurrection experience of the apostles and the early church. It is a
chapter for the mind, and hopefully it will whet the reader's
appetite for the more scholarly works listed
&t the
end of this book.
Chapters Two to Nine will focus on the meaning of the resurrection.
They are reflections for the mind, but also for the heart and the
will. In truth, the resurrection was never intended to be an idle
belief, but a lived-out experience.
Reflection/discussion questions for each of these chapters are
included in an appendix to help the reader internalize and digest the
various topics covered. Writing in a personal journal, dialoguing
with a spiritual director and discussing the book in a group are also
ways to help the subject matter come alive.
Chapter
One
The Witness of the Church
We should be guilty of extreme dullness if we
did not marvel at times that the church is the only institution in
the world that centers its life and activities on the premise that a
man who lived about 2,000 years ago is still living and involved in
the affairs of humanity. Ironically, this institution, which makes
such fantastic claims about Jesus of Nazareth, is passionately
dedicated to promoting sanity and clear-thinking.
Yet everything we know about Jesus of Nazareth
comes to us from the church. Unfortunately, there are no accounts
from non-Christian sources contemporary to Jesus' times that give us
anything more than what the church was already saying about the man.
What we know about Jesus we know from the writings of late
first-generation and early second-generation followers. Those
writings, considered to be authoritative and in keeping with
traditions already firmly established at that time (50-120 A.D.),
were accepted as canonical; they are the writings we today call the
New Testament.
But what does this New Testament really tell us
about Jesus? Anyone who reads its chapters will find them decidedly
sympathetic toward Jesus and his teachings. This strong element of
subjective bias is admitted by responsible scripture scholars of all
Christian denominations. It is obvious that the evangelists and St.
Paul believed very strongly that Jesus was the Messiah long awaited
by the Jews. What kind of objective truths might we expect from such
authors?
Fortunately, we have learned quite a lot about
the culture and the history of the Roman Empire's Middle East during
the past century. Much of this can help us to understand customs and
practices that might seem strange to us today. The Roman method of
crucifixion, for example, is described in many non-Christian
writings, all of which suggest that the biblical account of the
crucifixion of Jesus is fairly true to the usual procedure. We are
also more knowledgeable of the peculiar political relationship which
existed between the Jews and the Romans -- an arrangement which
necessitated collaboration between both parties in the death of
Jesus.
Historical criticism has helped us to realize
that there is much about Jesus in scripture that comes with the
clarity of hindsight. After Pentecost, the followers of Jesus retold
stories about him with a deeper understanding of the events of his
life than when those events first occurred. The feeding of the
multitudes, for example, eventually became a symbol for the Bread of
Life who was broken and whose blood was poured out for all. It is
certain that Jesus' disciples missed this point at the time it
happened.
Form and literary criticism have taught us that
we had best consider the kind of writing we are dealing with when
pondering the meaning of scripture. In scripture we find poetry,
parables, letters (epistles), prayers, genealogies, apocalyptic
writings and myths. All of these literary forms of expression reveal
truth, but the content of that truth cannot be understood without
considering its literary context. Who, for example, would take
literally John's description of Jesus found in the Book of
Revelation? We all know that in making his point about the birds in
the sky Jesus must have known that many birds do in fact die of
starvation every day. No one takes the parables as literal
explanations but as symbolic inferences of what God's kingdom is all
about; I, for one, would be sorely disappointed if heaven turned out
to be a gigantic batch of leavening dough (see Mt 13: 33). The Word
of God comes to us in human words, and we need to keep that in mind
when studying scripture.
What the Scriptures Are
If all we know about Jesus comes to us from the
church, and if the church's remembrance of Jesus as found in
scripture is interpreted by faith, then what, might we ask, can we
know about what Jesus really did and said among us?
As the early Christian community grew in its
understanding of Jesus as the Messiah whose life, teachings, death
and resurrection fulfilled countless prophecies of old, it was
natural that this understanding would accompany narration of the
naked, historical facts about Jesus' life. If the writers of
scripture were posing as historical scientists, we could fault them
on this point. What we have, instead, is a loving, faith- filled
memory of the key events in Jesus' life with a fuller understanding
of the meaning of those events.
The scriptures were written by people of faith
to provoke faith and to deepen religious insight. They never attempt
to present themselves otherwise. Historical, mythical and theological
data in scripture are true in the sense that they honestly express
the understanding of the significance of the life of Jesus held by
the early church.
The scriptures are not writings about history
in the 21st-century sense of the term. There is a tremendous neglect
for historical and biographical details among all of the authors of
the New Testament. Why, we do not even know what Jesus looked like!
Mark's gospel, the earliest of the four, neglects any mention of his
origins; none of the writings tells us anything significant about his
education-- something that would seem to be of interest when
discussing a spiritual genius like Jesus. Contemporary biographers
must find these omissions appalling!
In the same breath, however, we must be quick
to acknowledge that scripture is not entirely a-historical. Strewn
throughout its pages are names of people whose existence can be
confirmed by non-biblical sources. Scripture is generally true to
geography and seldom poses events to have taken place in the wrong
time. We do know that Jesus has a definite place in history; he was
born during the reign of Augustus and died during the reign of
Tiberius. A few names and places jotted down as asides by the
evangelists let on this much.
From the foregoing it should now be clear that
scripture does not permit an accurate formulation of a biography of
Jesus (even though many such books have been written). Events from
his life preserved for us were written down because of their meaning
to the early church. As the appendix to John's gospel states in a
moment of historical fidelity: "There are still many other things
that Jesus did, yet if they were written down in detail, I doubt
there would be room enough in the entire world to hold the books to
record them." (Jn 21:25 NAB). Let us, therefore, expect no more from
scripture than scripture proposes to give: a quasi- historical
account of the meaning of certain events in the life of Jesus of
Nazareth.
Scripture and the
Resurrection
In this chapter, we are considering the
evidence for and the significance of the resurrection of Jesus. Given
the nature of scripture described above, what evidence for the
resurrection can be gleaned from the New Testament?
Upon reading the resurrection accounts in the
gospels and in Paul's letters, we will immediately note their
insistence upon the possibility of living a new life in the Spirit.
This possibility, for them, derives from the crucifixion and
resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth (see Rom 8:1-11). It is apparent
that they view this resurrection as more than a merely symbolic or
poetic way of referring to the advancement of the Christian way of
life. In the New Testament, the spread of Christian values is
explained as a consequence of the work of the risen Jesus, and not
vice versa.
The origin of the church can be traced to the
testimonies of those who claimed that Jesus rose from the dead. This
faith still forms the unifying center of Christian beliefs and
practices. It would, therefore, seem reasonable to inquire first of
all what exactly the church is proposing for our consideration, and,
secondly, the evidence in favor of her sacred message. What, in other
words, does the church mean when speaking about the resurrection, and
why should we take this belief seriously?
When attempting to comprehend the nature of
Jesus' resurrection as described by the church in scripture, one
immediately notices the conspicuous absence of any clear, objective
evidence for it. No one saw him rise, and one wishes that Jesus would
have followed his own earlier counsel and shown himself to the
priests. Furthermore, there is disagreement among the narratives as
to when he appeared, and where, and to whom, and what he did and said
on those occasions. As might be expected, critics of Christianity
have long called attention to these inconsistencies, insinuating that
the authors got their contrivances mixed up.
Inconsistent though the resurrection accounts
in scripture might be, it is certain that they are not mixed-up
contrivances. Matthew and Luke wrote their testaments with Mark in
hand, and the author of John must certainly have been aware of the
other gospels when he wrote his exalted work over 25 years later. If
anything, the differences in the four gospels are intentional, and
not the consequence of confusion and forgetfulness. Scholars have
pointed out that the discrepancies are consistent with the themes
developed by the authors throughout the whole of their
works.
If we put aside the differences in characters,
places and activities in the resurrection narratives and focus
instead on the experience of encounter with the risen Jesus described
therein, we find the gospels consistent in emphasizing the following
points:
1. The empty tomb passages show that the
risen one experienced was Jesus of Nazareth and not someone else.
They also suggest that there was no evidence which could be used
by critics to refute the resurrection.
2. The encounter was with no ghost or mere
figment of the imagination. The verses describing meals together
are attempts to bring this point home (after the risen one left,
there were scraps on the plate).
3. The risen one was not merely a
resuscitated Jesus animating the same mortal corpse. Unlike
Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead, Jesus would never die
again; he had conquered death forever.
4. The risen one revealed himself in a very
special way to only a small, elect group. Their experience of him
was much more profound than was that enjoyed by those who believed on
their words.
5. The risen one did not return to bring
vengeance to bear against his executioners, but to augment an age
of reconciliation and forgiveness.
After all is said and done, these common points
speak more in favor of a similarity of experience among the apostles
than the differences in the stories do against. Although expressed in
a variety of ways, the resurrection narratives all remain faithful to
what must have already been a stable consensus of opinion regarding
the apostles' encounter with the risen Jesus. We are aware, today, of
variations among the stories of individuals who all witness the same
phenomenon; how much more can we expect differences in relating
experiences of the ineffable. The miracle is that these narratives
are as similar as they are!
Historical Considerations
Now that we have a better idea as to what the
church is proposing we believe about the resurrection, it is time to
ask in earnest just why anyone should give serious consideration to
so remarkable a claim. Because I do not believe that blind,
unquestioning faith is a very great Christian virtue, and because I
know that reason must be at least partially converted if one's faith
is to be real, I have found it important in my own life to examine
the scriptures with a view to glean from them whatever historical or
circumstantial evidence that might help to substantiate its claims.
This used to be not so difficult, since the scriptures were simply
interpreted literally. Apologetics were comparatively simple when one
considered the stories of the empty tomb with its guards, angels,
mystified women and earthquakes to be historical facts without
qualifications. Many Fundamentalist Christians still accept all that
is written about the resurrection in scripture to be historical in
nature, but scholars from the mainline Christian denominations assure
us that the literal historicity of these accounts is doubtful.
Whatever historical experiences underpin them are difficult to grasp
with certainty, since they have all become so thoroughly embellished
with legendary and theological elements as to cloud over the initial
experiences.
We need not lay aside our Bibles as mere
mythologies yet, however; there is still a great deal of history left
intact by the critics -- enough to formulate the simple apologetics
enumerated below:
1. Jesus of Nazareth lived in the Middle
East sometime between 4 BC and 30 AD. He was certainly a Jew and
an extraordinary enough person to attract a sizable following. This
merited him the scorn of the religious leaders of his day. The sheer
number of healings attributed to him also points to a very special
ministry of making people whole.
2. Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.
Death by Roman crucifixion was considered scandalous; it is
doubtful that the early church would have sought to ennoble its hero
by inventing such a death for him. Furthermore, the procedure used to
execute Jesus that is outlined in the passion narratives is referred
to by Paul and other later writers, and seems never to have been
denied by the persecutors of the church.
3. Jesus' corpse was laid in a known grave
site. We are on shakier ground now, for scholars have identified
numerous mythological and legendary elements in the passages
concerning the empty tomb. Nevertheless, several factors still attest
to a known grave site. First of all, the tradition of Jesus being
buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea: why should it not be true?
Secondly, the accounts of the women visiting the tomb: these would
seem to be a faithful recollection, especially since the women's
reports (which turned out to be true) were doubted by the future
pillars of the church, the apostles. Third, an unknown grave would
have allowed the Jews to produce any mutilated corpse and claim that
it was Jesus'. As far as we know, the church's persecutors never
claimed that Jesus' corpse lay rotting somewhere.
4. Jesus' tomb was empty Easter morning.
Some modern scholars would not be happy with this conclusion, but
a couple of considerations strongly recommend its reasonableness.
There can be no doubt that Jesus' corpse would have constituted
overwhelming evidence against the resurrection, reducing it to a
psychic phenomenon open to severe criticism from those outside as
well as within the church. Furthermore, it is difficult to imagine
the early Christian martyrs so bravely facing death -- all the while
knowing that their Master's corpse lay rotting somewhere. For Jewish
converts resurrection meant bodily resurrection and no other kind,
since to be a person meant to be in the body. That being said, it is
important to note that the empty tomb does not of itself prove that
Jesus rose from the dead.
5. The followers of Jesus founded a church
based on belief that Jesus rose from the dead. This ragtag band
of fishermen, tax collectors, merchants, prostitutes and down-home
country folk -- all broken and despairing on Good Friday--became
transformed into the world's most courageous people. Something
happened to them; they say they met the risen Christ.
These five simple points have withstood the
critical scrutiny of scripture scholars and constitute the objective,
historical roots of the church. Taken separately, each point means
little; taken as a whole, they collectively attest to the
reasonableness of belief in the resurrection.
Science and the Resurrection
Religious faith is not simply the product of a
process of logical, deductive reasoning such as are the conclusions
of science. Faith, by definition, moves beyond evidence into the
realm of the unseen and unprovable (see Heb 11:1), rooting itself in
hope and trust. Because of this transcendent orientation of faith,
many rational agnostics have assumed that faith is anti-rational and
dose-minded. But science can only examine that within religious
experience which can be measured and analyzed with instruments.
Moving beyond this space-time world in its focus, Christian faith can
never really be verified or denied. The best that science can ever
hope to do is to try to explain how the realities affirmed by faith
might not be credible.
Christian faith need never be afraid to face
the scientific world-view while continuing to affirm its sacred
truths. Witnesses of the risen Jesus in the early church never came
across as paranoid that they would be caught in a lie. Whatever
arguments against the resurrection they encountered were faced with
the assurance that nothing could be found which would in any way
discredit their faith.
Belief in the resurrection is difficult for
many scientific-minded people because they cannot comprehend how,
given our understanding of nature, Jesus could have risen to new
life. The resurrection suggests a wholesale violation of the very
laws of nature that scientists usually find operating predictably and
consistently. Scientists loathe suspension of nature's laws, for a
God who at one moment runs the universe through its laws and the next
moment suspends them is a God who removes predictability from the
universe. Regarding "miraculous phenomena" such as faith-healing and
psychokinesis, scientists have sought natural explanations for these
phenomena. Regarding the biblical stories of Jesus multiplying fish
and loaves, or Jesus walking on water and calming storms, scientists
and many contemporary theologians are likely to give a condescending
smile and pass these stories off as excessive displays of faith among
the early followers of Christ. The resurrection of Jesus is another
matter, however, since the existence of the Christian church is a
serious matter indeed, owing its origin to belief in the
resurrection. And, as we have seen in the previous section, the
historical evidence in favor of the resurrection is rationally
persuasive, which makes things even more difficult for
scientists.
No one ought to be too snobbish concerning our
21st-century view of reality, however. There is much about reality
that science does not yet understand. The very origins of the
universe remain enshrouded in mystery, as does the origin of life and
the nature of mind. Just as our digestive systems and DNA managed to
function quite well before we began to learn how they operated, and
just as plants turned sunlight into food before we grasped the
photosynthetic process, so it may be that we live our lives on the
edge of a spiritual universe whose existence our present
understanding of physics does not reveal to us. If such a dimension
really exists, then our present understanding of the laws of nature
will have to eventually take it into account. Perhaps this kind of
knowledge is only years away; perhaps it will forever remain
accessible only to those who die in Christ and so join him in this
new dimension of reality.
There are many who, at this point, will want to
interject evidence for this afterlife dimension by referring to the
experiences of the clinically dead who "returned to life" or by
pointing to spiritual mediums and other esoteric phenomena. This data
is not immune to other interpretations, however. For one thing,
"afterlife" experiences by the clinically dead are not really
afterlife at all; the patients never really died. Those who really
die never return to tell about the dark tunnels, beings of light and
meetings with deceased relatives that some (but by no means all) of
the clinically dead experience. It is not at all clear that the
afterlife experiences of the clinically dead are objective
experiences of another dimension of reality; perhaps they are only
dreamlike hallucinations caused by altered nerve impulse transmission
patterns in the brains of people who are close to losing brain
function altogether (several researchers have made this point with
data to back it). The experiences of psychic mediums are even more
suspect; this field is notorious for fraud and deception. At any
rate, medium and afterlife experiences give us little clue as to how
Jesus could have been raised from the dead.
Maybe this venture of searching out ways in
which the resurrection can be squared with science was doomed from
the start, however. What if God, by raising Jesus to new life, did
not merely temporarily suspend the laws of nature, but transcended
them? What if the resurrection of Jesus signifies the creation of a
new realm of existence, a realm in which Jesus is truly the
first-born (see Col :15: 20)? If this is indeed the case, then
science will have to wait patiently with the church until this
dimension is revealed. For now, let us acknowledge that anyone who
believes in the resurrection will have to do so without completely
understanding how Jesus could have been raised up, what the nature of
his risen body is, etc. Even the apostles were not spared this
fate.
What About the Shroud?
Since the Shroud of Turin research team has
turned in the results of its late '70s investigations, many people
have come to see in this revered relic the most compelling piece of
evidence in favor of the resurrection existing today. The research
team proved conclusively that the image of the crucified man is not a
painting and that the bloodstains are in fact blood. No satisfactory
explanation as to how the image could have been made on the cloth has
been advanced to date; many of the world's most eminent scientists
were stumped on this point after over 100,000 hours of
research.
Anyone who has followed Shroud research can
only be awed by the religious and scientific implications of this
most extraordinary of all relics. The image corresponds in every way
to what we know about the crucified Jesus. The Shroud has, in fact,
helped us to better contemplate the extreme violence that Roman
crucifixion imposed upon subjects. We learned, for example, that
contrary to religious artistic depictions of the crucifixion, the
nails were driven into the upper wrists between the radius and ulna
bones, and not into the metacarpals of the hand, where they would
have torn away. Dr. Barbet's book, A Doctor at Calvary, provides a
moving and penetrating analysis of the medical aspects of crucifixion
based on what the Shroud reveals.
In the late 1980's, Carbon 14 tests on the
Shroud dated it to the 13th century. If this were true (and all of
the tests indicated that it was), then it would seem that the Shroud
could in no way represent the burial cloth of Christ. Since that
time, scientists have noted that these results could have come about
from a fire which the Shroud withstood in the 13th century. To check
this hypothesis, researchers took a small piece of cloth from the 1st
century AD, then exposed it to temperatures similar to what the
Shroud must have been exposed to in the fire of the 13th century.
They then dated the cloth using Carbon 14 methods and the results
indicated that the cloth originated from the 20th century. The
results of this study with respect to the Shroud's history are
obvious: it could well pre-date the 13th century, as it herring-bone
twill structure (1st century AD) suggests.
Whether the image on the Shroud is or is not
that of Jesus of Nazareth will probably never be known. As the Shroud
research team put it, there is no scientific test for Jesus. Few
people know that the Catholic Church does not officially recognize
the Shroud as the burial cloth of Jesus. Unofficial recognition is
there, of course, and church authorities in no way discourage
veneration of the relic by Catholics. But even if it could be proven
that the Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus, it
would witness more to the crucifixion than to the resurrection. There
is the remote possibility that the process which produced the image
on the Shroud might give us some insight into the resurrection;
several scientists have hypothesized that only a short burst of
intense heat could have done so. Still, it is doubtful that we shall
ever know with certainty how the image became burned onto the outer
fibrils of the linen threads. Like the empty tomb, the Shroud of
Turin stands only as a silent or incidental witness to the
resurrection.
Conclusions
Where are we then? What really happened Easter
morning?
All that we can say for sure is that several
women and a few men claimed to have encountered the same Jesus of
Nazareth crucified a couple of days earlier, but changed now in many
wonderful ways. Even the most skeptical among us must at least admit
that they believed they encountered him. It is the only thing
which explains the birth of the church, and it is enough to make our
faith credible.
In trying to explain just what might have been
the nature of this risen person they encountered, we confront a
mystery, a truth which transcends the fullness of our understanding.
But one thing that stands out is that the Church’s proclamation
of the resurrection is either the resurrection faith is the biggest
hoax ever perpetrated upon humanity, or it is God's mysterious work
of salvation through the person of Jesus Christ. These are really the
only logical options open to the inquiring mind. Any other evidence
for the resurrection will have to be gained from our own experiences
in living the life of faith that the church encourages. The mind can
take us no further.
Questions for Reflection and
Discussion
1. What kinds of thoughts and feelings have
been awakened in you by this chapter?
2. How do you feel about the discrepancies
among the resurrection narratives?
3. What kinds of qualities in people help you
to trust in their words?
4. Why are some people so threatened by the
advances of science?
5. Do you believe Jesus rose from the dead?
Why? (why not?)
. Shalom Place