For a Christian, the appearances of the Risen Christ after the resurrection are, to my way of thinking, the easiest way to understand the truth of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Having said that, I also know that Jesus would be very happy if we believed the truth of the resurrection without having to rely on the eye witness testimony of those who say they saw, spent time with and talked to the Risen Christ.
After all, when Thomas was confronted by the Risen Lord, who showed Thomas his wounds, Thomas finally believed that Jesus was raised, calling Jesus, "My Lord and my God!". Many think that Thomas actually put his hand into Christ's side, but that is not true. It was the sight of Christ and the offer to allow Thomas to reach out and prove it really was Jesus that allowed Thomas to believe that the one standing before him was Jesus.
But Jesus' reaction to Thomas is telling. While He clearly wanted Thomas to believe, and is glad that Thomas now believes, Jesus states, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
Jesus is not scolding Thomas here; but he is saying that there is something blessed about those who believe that He was raised without having any proof. And, since most of us who live in this generation do not claim to have seen the Risen Christ personally, that can be a word of comfort to those who have not had to struggle with their faith.
But, however you come to belief: through doubting and difficulty, or by trusting from the beginning, content with the simple proclamation that the resurrection is true, Jesus is also saying that he will provide a way for us to believe.
Each of us must walk our own spiritual path. For some, like me, that path will be difficult. And there will be inevitable stumbles along the way. For others it will be smooth and mostly downhill. And yet, as in the time of the Risen Christ, some will not believe and will take a path away from Christ.
We are told of at least one in the Bible who believed before any appearance by the Risen Lord, and before the eye witness testimony of others who had seen Him. According to St. John, when the "beloved disciple", who outraced Peter to the tomb, went into the empty tomb, and saw the linen wrappings that the body had been in, he believed.
And, at the other extreme, we are told by St. Matthew that, even after the appearances, and even as the Risen Lord was being seen and worshipped by many on the mountain before he gave them the Great Commission, "some doubted." For some, then, even personally seeing the Risen Lord was not enough to convince them to believe the truth of the resurrection.
Times have not changed all that much. I think that would be true today, were he to appear right now. Some already believe that he is here, with us; and yet others neither feel his presence nor would they believe it if he were to manifest himself to us precisely as he did to those disciples on that mountaintop. The truth is that we are all at different places in our personal faith journeys. The good news is, of course, that we are taking that journey.
It seems to me that there are, in fact, some who can believe simply because, for example, the angel in the tomb said he was raised; or who believe simply because the tomb was empty and the linens discarded. But it is likely that more of us are like Thomas than are like the beloved disciple. It is clear that God knew that about us, and therefore there were numerous appearances by the Risen Lord to many people between the time he was raised and the time he ascended into heaven.
I do not think that the only reason he appeared to so many was in order that they might believe. Clearly he also appeared to them to re-establish relationships with them, relationships that had been severed at his death. But primarily he appeared to them to put them to work: after all, that is what the Great Commission in Mathew 28 is all about: establishing the Church and giving it a mission, a job to do.
But regardless of the motives of Jesus when he appeared to many, those appearances are the basis on which most people believe. They do not provide scientific proof, but they do provide the testimony of trustworthy eye witnesses, which is proof enough for those who believe by faith.
If you read all of the stories of the resurrection appearances carefully you will very soon discover that, just like the stories of Jesus' crucifixion and death, these accounts differ one from the other. There are differences in such things as to whom he appeared, how often, when, in what order, where, what he said, what he did, and so forth.
We could spend the next month or two trying to sort all that out, and we could do a good job of it by the time we were done. I have done it and it is boring work. For now it is enough to understand that if he appeared to many different people in many different places and at many different times it is not far fetched that there would be many different stories about his appearances.
I think we will be better served in this series if we focus less on what is different about these stories and more on what their similarities tell us. While there are differences in the details, there are far more important and overriding similarities. And it is these similarities that provide the clues to us of the importance of these events in how we Christians live our lives.
So the remainder of this reflection will focus on what the appearances as a whole tell us about the Risen Lord and His intentions for Christians. We will, after this post, be referring to individual accounts. We will focus on their similarities and on their overall importance.
We do not begin with the Gospels, but with St. Paul. We may not realize it, but we first learn that there were appearances by the Risen Lord from Paul. Writing before the Gospel accounts were recorded, Paul, in First Corinthians 15, tells us the basic kerygma, or proclamation, of the faith.
15:1 Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2 through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you--unless you have come to believe in vain. 3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me....11b.... so we proclaim and so you have come to believe. (NRSV)
Although no specifics of the resurrection appearances are given here, this proclamation is significant. It was written in Christ's own generation and shows clearly that the belief in the resurrection was based on oral tradition, that is on verbal stories, not yet written down, but authenticated by still living eye-witnesses to the events of the appearances. For the earliest church then, what was accepted as true was the eye-witness testimony, which was passed on verbally, from one local church to another.
Notice how Paul summarizes this witness: "[This] we proclaim, and so you have come to believe." Paul is telling them that they have heard the proclamation, and that their belief is based not upon their personal knowledge, but on their trust that the proclamation is true. It is based first on testimony and then on proclamation. In the church those two ways of communication are called witnessing and preaching.
Later in the life of the early church, as claims and counter-claims about the truth of the resurrection continued to spring up, and as the eye witnesses began to age and die, these oral testimonies were written down, along with all of the other stories and parables that we have come to know as the Gospels. As each gospel was written, and as more time passed, we see the trend moving from the simple narrative of Mark to the more complex and explanatory gospel of Matthew, then to the attempt to clarify the stories of Jesus by Luke, and finally, to the unabashedly apologetic gospel according to John.
[Apologetic here means "defending the faith" not "apologizing" for it. Apologetics is a form of Christian writing or speech that seeks to defend the claims of the church against any who attack those claims.]
The gospels are then much more than the simple statement of the faith that Paul gave to the Corinthians, although the Gospels do contain clear statements of the faith. But they also seek to defend the truths upon which the faith is built against attacks from both within the church and from outside of it.
Even the first and shortest gospel, the gospel according to Mark, has far more explanation in it than does the proclamation in First Corinthians. By the time we reach the gospel of John, the explanations that defend the proclamation of faith, including God's raising of Jesus by resurrection, are much, much longer than the proclamation itself, and serve both apologetic and theological purposes far more complex than simply believing that the appearances happened.
Not counting the much later appearance to Paul on the road to Damascus, the stories of the appearances are in the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John. I do not include Mark as being in the stories that record the resurrection appearances because there are no resurrection appearances in the original manuscript of Mark.
In fact, the Gospel of Mark, which is the earliest Gospel written, has no neat ending, so two were supplied much later, a shorter ending and a longer ending. If you look at your Bible you'll note that the "longer ending" of Mark does include appearances. But that second ending was written much later by a redactor. We will discuss the Gospel according to Mark in the next post in this series so we can understand why he did not include the appearances.
We also will look in two further posts at the Gospels according to Matthew and Luke. With Mark they form what are called the synoptic gospels, that is they can be read together and come from similar original sources.
We will not look at John's Gospel because while there are very detailed discussions of resurrection appearances in John, the entirety of those writings are to serve apologetic and theological purposes that go far beyond understanding whether or not the appearances happened.
Next time we shall explore together the resurrection narrative of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, and seek to determine why the original manuscript of the writer did not contain any mention of resurrection appearances. Many have found that to be a strange and mysterious thing, but there is actually an elegant and simple explanation.
God bless you all.
Monte
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this is a well thought-out, reasoned piece based upon very little specific information.....
This cannot be anymore true. Our belief will come to us if we earnestly seek. As another spiritual book says, "trudge the Road of a Happy Destiny."
You caught the core of the reason that I started the details with the testimony of St. Paul. Good thinking, friend. We need to think about how faith could emerge among those who had not witnessed. That is precisely why Paul's testimony is so important.
There is very little specific information in the Pauline kerygma in 1Cor15: 1-11 yet is is the entire basis of the spread of faith among the gentiles. And to this day it is the best Biblical summation of the faith. Both the Apostles and Nicene creeds are based on it.
What is amazing to me is that at that time there were no written gospels, all was handed down verbally, and there was testimony of living witnesses, including Paul who had met the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus.
But lay people literally had only proclamation and testimony on which to base their faith. And yet the gentile church grew greatly between the time of the death of Christ and the publication of the first Gospel, Mark. It grew much faster than did the Jerusalem church under Jesus' brother, James. Some would think that was just dumb luck, or that people were more superstitious then, etc. To me, as one of faith, it looks like divine intervention. But it is still amazing, isn't it?
Thanks for reading and commenting. Excellent deduction, my friend.
Monte
Two books did help, tho. One, a modern theology, explained that an ancient saint, St. Anselm, said that Christianity was "faith seeking understanding." And it was explained that, as Kierkegaard said, one must make a leap of faith FIRST to truly understand what faith was all about.
Then a second book, Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis, has a wonderful few pages on how the choice was that either Jesus was as mad as a boiled egg or that he was Lord and Savior, and there was no option in Jesus' teaching other than to call him Lord or call him mad.
I prayed and prayed about that and one day that was as normal as any other when I was about 50 years old I woke up and realized that I actually did believe. No lightning bolts, no speaking in tongues, no shower of falling stars. Just the calm knowledge that I believed that there really was a good purpose to life and that God knew what that was and if I wanted some of that I had to believe. It has been a great ride ever since!
Monte
I find this paragraph intriguing in that the Gospels being written from word of mouth passed along through time, realizing there was no media, internet, or analysis. I see it as faith at it's apex. --rated--
Paul wrote from the late AD 40s to the 50s, some 20 years from the time of the crucifixion. All he had were the oral testimonies and no doubt scraps of ritual prayers, etc. that were written out.
By the time of Mark, writing a few years after Paul wrote Corinthians, Mark likely had the stories told by the itinerant preachers like Paul, visiting witnesses, and much oral and some written pieces of data from his own community.
Mark writes very much for his community, as did all of the Gospel writers and most of them likely did not think they were writing for people beyond their time and place. Luke comes the closest to intending to write for a larger audience. While John writes while in exile to the struggling church he led but now he is unable to be with them.
It is clear that by the time Luke and Matthew, writing about 45 to 55 years after Christ was crucified, they both had Mark's Gospel, plus the oral and written materials from their own communities, and they also shared a common source document that is lost to history but is called "Q" for the German "Quele" meaning "source."
We know that they shared copies of this source because both Gospels are word for word identical in many places, and yet there is no hint that these writers knew one another.
Likewise, Matthew really relies heavily on Mark, mostly word for word and then lengthening, broadening and changing the details in many places based on his own sources and ideas.
John, writing much later, likely 70 or more years after the crucifixion, had access to the other Gospels but there is little indication that he used them for much more than having a list of things and events that he also covers, but even that is unclear.
John is by far the most theologically sophisticated and is much more interested in showing us how Jesus is God, not simply a man or even just a Son. There are long speeches that Jesus gives to the disciples that are all about theological necessities for carrying forward the faith, and there are many places where John intends to broaden the meaning of the faith and shine the light only on Christ. His Christology is the highest of any writer in the Bible and his apologetics are the most carefully reasoned and simultaneously the most cutting in his response to criticism of the faith.
All in all the Gospels have been a fertile vineyard that I have much enjoyed working in. And like you, I too find that time a time when faith was at an apex because they believed so much with so little supporting materials or even supporting people except for the handful of new Christians like themselves who met in house churches to worship, pray and care for one another.
Monte
We can by the content of their writing and by the styles of their language get their dates of writing pretty close but there is massive argument on that still. And we can pretty well guess whether they were writing from a gentile or jewish community based on the language they use, etc.
Believe me, there is far more fiction than fact about any details about the writers.
The good thing about that is that they had no ego involvement in their work. They did not write so that they would look good. They did not write a history of Jesus. But all wrote with Jesus as the center of their efforts. They did not write history although we can glean a sense of history from their works.
But they wrote theology and they wrote it from the heart. It would not have occurred to any of them that their names were important so that they would get credit for the writing. In all cases the names were ascribed to the documents after the fact.
If you like mysteries this is an area in which you should thrive!
Monte
Love ending my evening with this post and your inspirations.
God bless and protect you, dear Monte. And keep you well.
Blessings and shalom,
Monte
While I yet retain my skepticism about eyewitness accounts of anything, the correlation and overlap -- and even the differences -- are, if not definitive, certainly compelling.
Rated
"The truth is that we are all at different places in our personal faith journeys. The good news is, of course, that we are taking that journey."
(BTW, I took New Testament 101 in college and my prof was Elaine Pagels, later well-known for her books on Gnostic Gospels. Sorry for the totally random name-dropping.)
I have always said that there is a big difference between reading the Bible and studying it, but a lot of people don't get that. Too often when we just read it we end up saying "So what?" and miss the fact that there is a lot of "what" in there. I am grateful that I can offer that fleshing out of information to the community here in OS.
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B1, I am sure that many will remain skeptics but faith comes sometimes by just gently peeling the layers off of the onion one at a time. When we try to chop it all up or pulverize it all at once all we get is squinty, watery eyes that can't see much of anything. So I am very thankful that you have decided to work through the peeling process with me. I am, as you know, a skeptical person by nature so you can imagine how hard I worked at trying to think my way to faith. Didn't work. But that was just me and the way I tend to approach life. Thanks for sticking with these Reflections and taking the time to comment.
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Hi, Dave. Appreciate you being here with me on this ride. Yes, I think that the fact that Thomas did NOT place his fingers inside the wound is often lost on many people. I wrote in the second paragraph above that what you say is very important. "Many think that Thomas actually put his hand into Christ's side, but that is not true. It was the sight of Christ and the offer to allow Thomas to reach out and prove it really was Jesus that allowed Thomas to believe that the one standing before him was Jesus." So, we are of one accord on the importance of that fact.
I do believe, as you do, that many do not need much to believe. Others, like I was, need a lot of time to get there. I am grateful that God is patient with those like me.
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Thanks to all who have read this post. I am pleased that there must be some both inside and outside who are reading who are not rating or commenting because I just looked at the stats on the post that OS keeps and in less than a day there have been 470 page views, which is a very large count for a religious piece on OS that has been up less than 24 hours. I am humbled and grateful.
God bless,
Monte
Thanks Monte ... I know this took a lot of work and time. I am so appreciative :)
In any case, thanks for reading and commenting. Your point is very well taken. The Bible was written by men and it would be very tempting in a patriarchal society to just leave out any reference to women in key roles or situations. That the first person that the Risen Christ saw and the first that he spoke to was Mary, and even that he spoke to her by name to reestablish relationship with her is a very telling point. That story had to have been very universally understood that there was no way to sweep it under the rug. That is a good and important point that you make.
Thanks again,
Monte
The cover of my favorite large study bible is covered in duct tape!! In any case, later redactors decided to provide two very different endings. The short one says little but the longer one, that is surely not Mark's ending, does include resurrection appearances. But it is written in a style wholly foreign to Mark. It will likely always remain a mystery.
I have one or two books by Elaine. She is a very good scholar. I am glad that you got to have her as a teacher. By now she probably mostly researches, writes and teaches a few seminars every year. Maybe not. I know some of the most famous of my professors, like Clint McCann, insisted on teaching at least one introductory class a semester. Clint told me that it reminded him of where he came from and that he liked the enthusiasm of the incoming seminarians.
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Hey, 1IM, so good to see you here. It always does my heart good. Those who consider themselves the most righteous are usually the Pharisees that Jesus had so much trouble with. The minute a Christian decides that he or she knows it all is the time that they do not know the half of it. Self righteousness is the bane of all religions. The sad thing is that the self righteous ones are always the loudest and the most obnoxious and usually the ones who the folks outside the church have the misfortune of running into. That does a whole lot of damage to the faith.
In any case, I figure that I know about a tenth of the things that are to be known about the things I have studied, and that percentage tends to drop a bit each year. I have decided that just figuring out the right questions to ask is work enough. Claiming to always know the right answers is the sure pathway to ignorance.
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God bless you both.
Monte
I just had an realization that God has given your illness to you so that you could write these postings. If he hadn't, you would be out riding your bike. Look at the following that you have and the people you have persuaded. There is a plan. Luv, Sigrid
Sue and I send our love,
Monte
God bless,
Monte
Great series. Am looking forward to more.
Monte
I've never heard of "apologetic" used in this way. I found that interesting. I also complete forgot the story of Thomas. Now I recall it as being the origin for the term "Doubting Thomas". So I'm never too old to learn or sometimes re-remember!
Thanks , Monte. Can't wait for the next installment. You have my curiosity piqued.
But today it means to say you are sorry when you apologize to someone.
I would imagine if you told someone you were going to apologize and then commenced to defend what you did they would think you were a real SOB.
In academia, in another instance, to do criticism, for example literary criticism or historical criticism, on some segment of the Bible or any other book that means to analyze the book carefully using the tools of the type of "criticism" that you employ. To "criticize" is a good thing and "criticism" can be positive or negative and anywhere in between. Odd, isn't it?
Monte
Resurrection...resurrectio...rise again...I have always seen it as metaphorical...
Now, that is not to blithely abstractify it...hardly....metaphors for me are realer than concrete things...or, rather, metaphors are, in Whiteheadian terms, "eternal"....in the Platonic sense...sort of...
Ach...try again...resurrection...of what? Of What? Body & soul....but..."body" is a temporal process. It's in time, which is not eternal....I can sort of picture an eternal "soul" to use a misguided word...a "spirit"....or....in terms of my own: a complete set of experiences in the temporal world somehow united and "understood" and taken "all at once" in eternity by a ....um....mind, I guess...a consciousness...but: body??
Help me here...
rated!JME
Please stay with the series because you will be pleased when you see this point I made expanded and clarified: "Ninth, the resurrected body is not "human" as we know it, but rather is, as St. Paul attests ...."glorified," all the while maintaining the same personal identity it had before death."
Believe me, I surely don't want the 70 year old body that I now have and I have every reason to believe that I will not. Certainly those who have been torn apart in wars, etc. do not want to get that human body somehow glued together. That is not what the resurrection of the body means. And that will become more clear in later posts in this series.
So, until we get to it, try to think about the "persona," the identifiable whole person, or "self," as what we will be after resurrection. And that "person" will be "glorified," a term mostly used in the Bible to describe the beauty and wonder of God, as in talking about God's "glory."
A glorified person, body and soul, is no longer "human" or "earthly". The human body dies, but a glorified body, fit for eternity, rises after death upon resurrection and we are rejoined again, body and soul, whole persons, even as we were in the road show preview here on the blue sphere, the preview known as life.
If you would like to see that as metaphoric that is fine, because St. Paul himself struggled with how to come to grips with a spirit/soul and a "glorified" body.
The truth is that we do not know. If you read First Corinthians 15 CAREFULLY you will see the best description of the process of death and resurrection and it leaves a very great deal out. Then if you read the Gospel descriptions of the resurrection there are other characteristics of the Risen Christ's "body" that you can add to the list of attributes. Eventually, when you have exhaustively studied all of this you will come away with a bit of knowledge that makes sense and a lot of speculation that is about as good as the speculator is keen. I am one of those speculators, but my speculation abides by rather tough theological guidelines for such speculation. We cannot say, for example, that we will look like Ronald McDonald, since there is nothing implied that we will. On the other hand there are several passages in the Bible that indicate that we will look just like us, cf: the Rich Man and Lazarus.
Perhaps what I end up describing is a metaphor. But I think it will prove after you get through this series to be a bit more than that. We do not know a lot, but what we do rather precludes some conclusions and leans us toward others.
Meanwhile, be of good cheer. If you end up with a spiritual metaphor that is better than the vast majority of people ever get to.
Nobody has done it but Jesus and he has not told us how. How about that?
Take care, friend.
Monte
I'll look forward to your examination of what the similarities between the gospels tell us. There's a message there, in the differences, and in the lacunae, the things that are not said. As you responded to Steve, there's "a lot of 'what' there."
It's the mark of a good essay when it provokes an intelligent, thoughtful discussion as this one has. As always, am grateful to you for sparking and hosting discussion on topics that don't get a lot of press in this forum.
As I got better at Bible commentary I became aware that I was almost unconsciously looking for things, little keys to understanding, particularly when the passage was opaque or could be read in more than one way. And I found that, more and more, there was sort of what is called in Christian education circles a "null curriculum" that the author knows is there but is "what is NOT stated." You are looking for what is NOT obvious. And unless you know that the writer looks at this kind of event only one way or that he has only one way of describing certain things and that he always favors or dislikes certain activities of the disciples, the it will simply elude you.
I found it particularly is true when reading between the lines about things like paternalism and the treating of women as chattel. So that when Jesus, for example, spoke first to Mary, that is very likely a truth because if it were not it would have been redacted out of the story. Likewise, when the disciples (all male) all deserted him we see the women who cared for him, likely helped finance his ministry, standing in the background prepared to continue their service to him by giving him a proper burial, even while the disciples are long gone. The "null curriculum" in that case is that, while not called "disciples" it was the de facto female disciples who were the most faithful.
I do hope that you enjoy the rest of the series.
Monte
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Dusty, thanks for reading and commenting. You are never late as long as the post is up. I hope that you continue to enjoy the series when the time fits what I know is your busy schedule.
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God bless both of you.
Monte