[This is
an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian
Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap
between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be
carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at
the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This
series of posts are concerning volume 3 –
The Resurrection of the Son of God.]
This first chapter of N.T. Wright’s third volume of his
series “Christian Origins and the Question of God” sets up well what Wright is
doing in this book. Therefore, some general comments will be made about the
book’s scheme and the suspicions that we will need to levy against Wright
throughout this book. It is important to take the time to lay out these views
now, so that in further analysis of subsequent chapters, the same points do not
need to be constantly rehashed. The major critique I have is Wright’s general
view of historiographic epistemology and the limits he sets for himself in his
study.
First, this volume is amazingly important to study because,
first, it is by far the most popular of the 5 volumes so far published of the
series and therefore has the most interest for an audience to take the time to
study it. Further, this book is particularly helpful because it is less out of
date than his previous volumes. The New
Testament and the People of God was written in 1992, and throughout the
critical reading of the book, I felt I was continually framing in a historical
lapse in scholarship. This volume – the
Resurrection of the Son of God was published in 2003 and is in dialogue
with the major scholarship that is still current. While a decade is no small
amount of time in the modern scholarly world, it is still generally true that
larger questions and frameworks remain the same. Further, many of the authors
have not changed. Therefore, far less accommodation for later developments need
to be made.
As to the content of the chapter – and thus the book – the
first point is laudable. Wright argues that this book will merge theology and
history. This is a helpful plan when one is considering the resurrection. It is
very difficult to discuss this “historically” without discussing theological
implications. Wright demonstrates this well throughout:
As the overall title of the project
indicates, and as Part I of the first volume explained, my intention is to
write both about the historical beginnings of Christianity and about the
question of god. I am, of course, aware that for over two hundred years
scholars have labored to keep history and theology, or history and faith, at
arm’s length from one another. There is good intention behind this move: each
of these disciplines has its own proper shape and logic, and cannot simply be
turned into a branch of the other. Yet here of all place – which Christian
origins in general, and the resurrection in particular – they are inevitably
intertwined.[1]
These, of course, do not have to be necessarily intertwined,
but Wright is not foolish and is very much in tune with his audience. Most of
the readers of these books are interested in not only what happened, but also
in its significance.
Wright, then, asks a fundamental question as the topic of
the book – what really happened on Easter morning? He argues that whatever
happened on that morning should explain the movement that followed:
So what did happen on Easter
morning? This historical question, which is the central theme of the present
book, is closely related to the question of why Christianity began, and why it
took the shape it did.[2]
Here, Wright’s analysis sets it tone – to understand the
event, it must explain the consequence. At some level this is accurate.
Something occurred at some point (given that we do not know precisely the date
of the resurrection as we are unsure exactly of the year in which this
occurred) that led a group to believe that Jesus was raised and built a movement
around him.
Wright, though admits that he is also interested in
challenging what he sees as the common scholarly and ecclesiastical view of the
resurrection. He argues that there are six key points that generally held – all
of which he disputes:
Though my approach throughout the
book will be positive and expository, it is worth nothing from the outset that
I intend to challenge this dominate paradigm in each of its main constituent
parts. In general terms, this view holds the following: (1) that the Jewish
context provides only a fuzzy setting, in which ‘resurrection’ could mean a
variety of different things; (2) that the earliest Christian writer, Paul, did
not believe in bodily resurrection,
but held a “more spiritual” view; (3) that the earliest Christians believed,
not in Jesus’ bodily resurrection, but in his
exaltation/ascension/glorification, in his “going to heaven” in some kind of
special capacity, and that they came to use “resurrection” language initially
to denote that belief and only subsequently to speak of an empty tomb or of
“seeing’ the risen Jesus; (4) that he resurrection stories in the gospels are
late inventions designed to bolster up this second-stage belief; (5) that such
“seeings’ of Jesus as may have taken place are best understood in terms of
Paul’s conversion experience, which itself is to be explained as a “religious”
experience, internal to the subject rather than involving the seeing of any
external reality, and that the early Christians underwent some kind of fantasy
or hallucination; (6) that whatever happened to Jesus’ body (opinions differ as
to whether it was even buried in the first place), it was not “resuscitated”,
and was certainly not “raised from the dead” in the sense that the gospels
stories, read at face value, seem to require.[3]
Here, Wright has painted a picture that is quite striking.
This view might be held by some – such as Marcus Borg – but serious questions
would remain as to the number of scholars who would hold all of these views. Further, these would not be the only views that they held – they also
would hold far more that would make such a picture make some kind of sense.
Unfortunately, this is a straw man that needs to be taken very critically.
Wright has framed the objections in ways to avoid what are the bigger problems.
For instance, many skeptics of the sources would not necessarily argue that the
problem is whether it was a bodily resurrection or not. Rather, the argument
would be whether there was any resurrection of any kind. Some hold that Jesus
was in no sense raised and that the story that it occurred was simply a
fabrication of Jesus’ early followers which then spread like wild fire.
Wright’s response to these seven points betrays his bias –
that whatever happens must explain what followed as an eventual world religion:
The positive thrust, naturally, is
to establish (1) a different view of the Jewish context and materials, (2) a
fresh understanding of Paul and (3) all the other early Christians, and (4) a
new reading of the gospel stories; and to argue (5) that the only possible reason why early
Christianity began and took shape it did is that the tomb really was empty and
that people really did meet Jesus, alive again, and (6) that, though admitting
it involves accepting a challenge at the level of worldview itself, the best
historical explanation for all these phenomena is that Jesus was indeed bodily
raised from the dead.[4]
His 5th point is actually the turning point. He
will dispute the other points piece by piece, but the piece of evidence he
demands to understand that many other scholars of the historical Jesus would
not necessarily require – is that whatever occurred must explain what followed.
To understand how Wright has presented this it is helpful to
consider what he is seeking when he discusses the historical event. He argues
that there are 5 levels of historical inquiry. For our purposes we will focus
on two. He rightly divides historical questions. The “first” question, he
rightly points, is that there are some things that we believe and are convinced
happened, but we have absolutely no way of knowing how or why they occurred –
here he uses the example of the extinction of the pterodactyl.[5] Anything that “happened” is therefore
“historical” – even if we can’t explain it. This portion is not very helpful
for analysis, because it’s whole point is that we cannot know whether it
occurred. Far more helpful is his third category – that which can be
verified/proved:
Third, there is history as provable event. To say that something is
historical in this sense is to say not only that it happened but that we can
demonstrate that it happened, on the analogy of mathematics or the so-called
hard sciences.[6]
The historian can admit that many things could have occurred
– and indeed have occurred – but only a portion of these things can be
verified. Wright paints this as logical positivism – and there are indeed
historiographers who start here, but in reality few stay here – most go beyond
this and posit what probably happened
given the very small number of set things that can be proved.
Wright argues that the study of the historical Jesus is its
own type of epistemology that fluctuates between what is “provable” and what
can be discussed. He argues that the worldview that must be satisfied is
post-enlightenment and this is the failure of the system:
Fifth, and finally, a combination
of (3) and (4) is often found precisely in discussions of Jesus: history as what modern historians can say about a
topic. By “modern” I mean “post-Enlightenment,” the period in which people have
imagined some kind of analogy, even correlation, between history and the hard
sciences. In this sense, “historical” means not only hat which can be
demonstrated and written, but that which can be demonstrated and written within the post-Enlightenment worldview.[7]
The problem with Wright’s presentation here is what is
implied rather than what is said. He seems to use the phrase
“Post-Enlightenment” as a kind of attack. Wright tries to suggest that this is
a scandal because these historians are using modern models to understand
ancient sources. The problem is history is
not an ancient source. Historical analysis is done in the present. One is confident in history – if it fits one’s own
epistemology. We can only posit what we believe is valid. Just because someone
in the first century was satisfied with an answer does not mean that we should
be in the 21st. I am not saying that modern historiography is
without error or does not need to be improved, but Wright’s trump card here really
makes very little by way of strong, provable, points.
The key to understanding Wright’s framework, though, is not
his critique of historiographers – as Wright says, his goal is a positive one.
The key to understanding Wright is his view of the connection between the
Easter event and the later Jesus movement. As stated above, in some sense, this
is and must be accurate. Wright, though, frames this movement in a way that
would not be satisfactory to many readers – though it is amazingly common.
Wright argues that the movement that followed Jesus was
unique. He uses this fact to retroject backward that the event they held must
have been sound. He argues against Troeltsch in this manner:
It is important to note what would
follow if we took Troeltsch’s point seriously: we would be able to say nothing
about the rise of the early church as a whole. Never before had there been a
movement which began as a quasi-messianic group within Judaism and was
transformed into the sort of movement which Christianity quickly became. Nor
has any similar phenomenon ever occurred again.[8]
This view is amazingly common among Christian apologeticists
and it is important to realize its weaknesses. Wright will go through this view
in depth later in the book that will display a far smarter presentation of this
point, but as to framework, this is not very strong.
First, Wright’s argument that there has never been a
movement like the Jesus movement is simultaneously true and ridiculous for what
he means by it. It is true only in the sense that there has never been any
other movement that is precisely the
same – if it were, it would just be called Christianity – as it would be the
same. However, Wright means more than just this – he argues that the uniqueness
of the movement is how a religious group could develop from a figure such as
this. He argues no movement since has done that. Unfortunately, it is hard to
argue this. For example, Manichaeism certainly did develop from a leader who
proclaimed himself to be divine and flourished for a lengthy time period (until
the 16th century).
Second, and probably more to the point, Wright treats the
earliest followers as monolithic. He argues that all of Jesus’ followers had a
general view of Jesus that was consistent. If there is one thing we have
learned about the earliest Jesus movement groups is that aside from a general
basis in Jesus in one way or another, very little else was common. This is why
some scholars refer to early “Christianities” rather than early Christianity. I
find this cloying as it makes it sound as if there were several religious
groups. I find the best way to describe the earliest groups were members of
Jesus movements – meaning that these people were varied and members of various
communities with some connection to Jesus.
All of this is not to say that I do not think Jesus was
resurrected nor do I think that the historical study of the event is
fundamentally flawed. I do, however, think we need to be honest about the
challenge of sources. I do not think – as so many people hold, Wright simply
being among them – that the only way for a movement to develop around Jesus was
for him to actually rise from the dead. That certainly is one real possibility,
but it needs to be seen as that – one possibility among many.
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