[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.]
N.T. Wright’s chapter discussing Paul is also his first
chapter discussing Jesus movement resurrection. Therefore, he first discusses
briefly his view that resurrection in the Jesus Movement was generally uniform
and simultaneously different from Judaism. He then moves into the second
portion of the chapter in which he discusses resurrection in Paul outside of
the Corinthian correspondence which he will spend the next two chapters discussing.
I argue that Wright’s general position about Paul’s presentation in 1
Thessalonians and Philippians is generally quite well done – with a few
exceptions, but that his characterization of the Jesus movement’s uniformity on
resurrection is rather overstated. Given that this chapter covers these two
topics, I will break this down into two sections.
1.
Wright’s general views about resurrection in the
early Jesus Movement
Wright argues that one of the major elements that gave the
Jesus movement a clear identity was the generally uniform view of resurrection.
Wright explains it as surprising given the diversity of views in the
Greco-Roman world, even within Judaism:
One of the most striking features
of the early Christian movement is its virtual unanimity about the future hope.
We might have expected that Christians would quickly have developed a spectrum
of beliefs about life after death, corresponding to the spectrums we have
observed in the Judaism from within which Christianity emerged and the paganism
into which it went as a missionary movement; but they did not.[1]
He argues that the views of the Jesus movement were
relatively unanimous – where they would not be the same for other issues. He
argues that it is amazing that it seems to be in line with the dominant Jewish
view of the time. However, he notes that this is particularly surprising
because Christians saw resurrection quite differently from Judaism. They used
the same words, but interpreted it quite differently in the same way.
There are substantial mutations
from within the ‘resurrection’ stream of Judaism. In particular, the historian
must account for the fact that, with early Christianity thus being so clearly a
‘resurrection’ movement in the Jewish sense, the well-established metaphorical meanings
emerge instead. How does it come about, in other words, that early Christianity
located its life-after-death beliefs so firmly at the ‘resurrection’ end of the
Jewish spectrum, while simultaneously giving the word a metaphorical meaning
significantly different from, through in long-range continuity with, the
meaning it had within Judaism? How do we account for both the strong similarity
between Christianity and Judaism (there is no sign, in early Christian
resurrection belief, of anything remotely like a move in a pagan direction) and
the equally clear dissimilarities?[2]
Wright then argues that Christians had basically the same
view of the resurrection that was dependent upon one basic stream of Judaism,
but which had interpreted it in a new way. Wright presents this as quite a
conundrum.
The challenge with Wright’s presentation here is that it
overstates the case. He argues for “general” unanimity. The only way that early
Christianity was unanimous on resurrection is if one used the word “general” quite
broadly. He is certainly right that the view presented by the vast majority of
the figures in the New Testament (though not all) won out, but it would take
several hundred years to get there.
Wright centered his focus on the unanimous view that humans
believed in a bodily resurrection: “It meant bodily resurrection; and that is
what the early Christians affirmed.”[3]
While this is somewhat true, what it looked like and when it occurred varied
quite aggressively. For example, in his discussion of Paul he includes
Colossians and Ephesians as having essentially the same view as Paul.[4]
However, Colossians and Ephesians (Ephesians being dependent upon Colossians)
have been famously challenged as to Pauline authorship precisely because of
their contrast on the doctrine of resurrection. Ephesians treats resurrection
as something that has already happened:
But God who is rich in mercy, out
of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved –
and raised us up with him and seated us
with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to
come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us
in Christ Jesus.[5]
What is key here is that the concept of being raised is
clearly in the past tense. Paul firmly opposes this and sees resurrection a
thing that will happen at the end of days when it will be truly bodily
resurrection from the grave. Wright argues that these are in far more continuity
than discontinuity, but his discussion plays down the real tension that these
two ideas propose.
Further, if one considers work that did not make the New Testament, it is clear that there was not such a unanimous view of resurrection as Wright wishes there were. For example, the question of a bodily resurrection was challenged by many thinkers. Origen of Alexandria (d. 254), for instance, argued that when we are reunited with God (he argued we all were already once), we would be, if corporeal at all, very incorporeal to a point where we can’t imagine ourselves having any real physical body. In fact, he argued that soma – the “body” can only be seen as an extension of the psyche – the soul. The actual fleshly body – sarx – passes away into the fire. This is simply one very influential figure to show that the view was not nearly as “universal” as Wright would like. There were certainly many different perspectives on the topic. Just because a number of authors in the New Testament agreed did not mean that the movement as a whole agreed.
2.
Paul (outside of the Corinthian correspondence)
For all the concern I had about Wright’s presentation of the
general view of resurrection, I tended to value very much what Wright said of
Paul’s view on resurrection. He overplays some elements – for instance his
valuing of Romans as the key for resurrection language – but if that is the
biggest problem, then I would be quite satisfied.
What Wright does, though, is focuses on the question of when the bodily resurrection will take
place. He seems to want to argue that the modern concept that the people who
have just died have souls who are hobnobbing in a kind of ethereal state has
little grounding in Paul. Wright directs this point head on:
How does resurrection in this
passage function within Paul’s larger picture? Initially, as an incentive to
the right sort of grief (1 Thess. 4.13): not the kind of grief that overtakes
people without hope, people in the pagan world the Thessalonians knew so
well…This in, in fact, as close as we come in early Christian literature to the
theme much beloved of preachers at funerals, namely the promise of a reunion
beyond the grave with Christians already dead. Nothing is said, one way or the
other, about such a reunion taking place before the resurrection itself; but
the pastoral logic of the passage insists that an eventual reunion is what the
creator God has in mind, and will accomplish at the time of Jesus’ return.[6]
Wright shows that 1 Thessalonians 4 – one of Paul’s clearest
discussion of the resurrection, does not discuss any element of a current
half-resurrection where those who are asleep are somehow interacting. Instead,
it argues that these figures are very clearly asleep and will not rise until
the day of the Lord.
Wright does a very good heuristic move, however, by showing
the challenge of this view. He focuses on Philippians 1 which has his angst
wherein he seems to suggest that his dying would be unity with Christ.[7]
This would seem to suggest a kind of current state of being with Christ before
the resurrection. Wright argues that this can be understood in context. He
mentions nothing about any resurrection connected with this intermediate state.
Instead, he says that it is a comment about a way in which those who have “died
in Christ” are somehow united with him even though they are asleep. It is not
to suggest the great value of this state, rather, it can be argued, it is to
show the weakness of the current world in which we live. The argument is that
our present life is so hard – not that the intermediate one before the
resurrection will be so good.
What is to be appreciated in Wright’s analysis is that he is
fair to those who disagree with him and shows why it is they do so. What he
could have done better in 1 Thessalonians was to emphasize the communal concern
of resurrection. He mentions it once in quote cited above, but on the whole, he
falls into the usual trap of understanding 1 Thessalonians 4 of thinking that
it was responding to those who have died and the question of if they had
“missed it.” If that was the case, then verse 1 would have solved it – they did
not miss it. The next 6 verses are set to explain what will happen all with the
idea that the dead will be with them in
the future and that there is no
priority of those who have died from those who are alive. It is as if the
primary problem was not the question that those who died might miss it, but
whether they would really be a community in the future. This aspect seems
woefully lacking in Wright’s analysis and without it, the conversation becomes
too one-sided and does not explain the complexities of the text.
