[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.]
In this section of Wright’s study, he dialogued directly and
carefully with the resurrection (“easter”) narratives in the four gospels.
Because of the vast amount of work done on these narratives by critical
scholarship, he spends as much time discussing and challenging critical
scholars – particularly John Dominic Crossan – as he does dialoguing with the
primary resurrection texts. Wright’s argument is generally that the Gospel
narratives hold a remarkably similar view as that found in Paul and the rest of
the New Testament. He encapsulates his view in a quick summary at the end of
the unit:
We have seen that early Christian
resurrection-belief has a remarkable consistency despite varieties of
expression, and that this consistency includes both the location of
Christianity at one point on the spectrum of Jewish belief (bodily
resurrection) and four key modification from within that point: (1)
resurrection has moved from the circumference to the center; (2) ‘the
resurrection’ is no longer a single event, but has split chronologically into
two, the first part of which has already happened; (3) resurrection involves
transformation, not mere resuscitation; and (4) when ‘resurrection’ language is
used metaphorically, it no longer refers to the national restoration of Israel,
but to baptism and holiness.[1]
This general narrative he has presented is interesting and
worth much consideration. Further, his careful analysis of the four
resurrection narratives causes Wright to have a solid foundation and teaches
important lessons about building a larger theology from various texts. However,
his interest in uniformity become nearly too extreme, and he nearly falls into
the trap of thinking that pericopes in the New Testament can only be about one
thing rather than many.
Wright’s main argument of the book is for unanimity in tone
for the Christian resurrection message. However, in this section, he seems to
be boxing a different opponent – the idea that the resurrection narratives were
later developments to address problems in the early church rather than
historical discussions. He particularly challenges J.D. Crossan in several
instances for the suggestion that none of the gospel writers know the
historical story, but instead, it is a later development to address later
needs. This idea of a non-developed story permeates through these chapters.
Consider Wright’s conclusion to this section to see this interest:
In particular, though each
evangelist has told the story in such a way as to ground a particular
understanding of Christian life and particularly Christian mission to the
world, the basic stories themselves, of the empty tomb and the appearances of
Jesus, show no signs of having been generated at a later stage. There is no
reason to imagine that they were generated either by a newly invented apologetic
for the fact that the word ‘resurrection’ was being used of Jesus, or out of a
desire to provide legitimation for particular leaders or particular practices.
It will of course always remain possible for scholars to think of clever ways
in which this might after all have been so, in which the idea of the stories as
late apologetic fiction might be rehabilitated; but the main barriers against
such a reconstruction are strong and high.[2]
Wright has a very clear interest to disprove the idea that
these stories were developed over time to solve later problems. He argues that
the texts themselves, primarily due to their diversity, show that they were not
developed in a standard tradition. Instead, he argues, the diversity shows
their individuality and therefore not an interest in depicting a single
“orthodox” anachronistic picture:
There can be no doubt that each
evangelist has told the story in his own way. Even where there is good reason
to suppose that one used the other as a source – which I assume for at least
Luke with Mark, with Matthew’s use of Mark remaining probable and Mark’s use of
Matthew and outside chance – there is remarkably little verbal overlap.
Instead, we find in each of the stories not so much a sign of steady
development from a primitive tradition to a form in which the evangelist simply
wrote down what the tradition at that point had grown into, but rather a
retelling of primitive stories by the evangelist himself in such a way as to
form a fitting climax to a particular book.[3]
Here he argues that the gospel writers, if they were in
cahoots with later polemical issues, would have frankly done a better job of
addressing them if that was their primary purpose. Instead, the gospels do not
show enough of a steady development for this interest.
This stance, while being laudable, creates a slight logical
problem for Wright’s argument. He at once argues that our best hermeneutic for
the easter stories is the witness of the early church as a unified whole, while
at the same time arguing that it is the diversity and lack of unity in message
which challenges the idea that these were later developments. It is not easy to
hold both positions. If one argues for diversity – and I agree with Wright on
this point – then it is not so clear for such clear unity of tradition.
The problem that Wright presents is that he sees “development of ideas” as presented by Crossan as just as unified as his own position – either the resurrection narratives are historically complex narratives about resurrection in similar ways to Paul or they are anti-docetic pieces that are written to address a later development. The problem here is why it is that these points have to be mutually exclusive. Consider Wright’s discussion how he characterizes the way scholars have characterized the “problems” that the resurrection narratives are trying to solve:
As the first century winds towards
its close, three problems begin to rear their heads. First, the problem which
Ignatius addresses: was Jesus really human, or did he only ‘seem’ (dokeo, hence “docetism”) to be a true,
flesh-and-blood being? This, it has been assumed, is the setting for Luke’s and
John’s fuller, and more ‘bodily’, stories of the risen Jesus: breaking bread,
expounding scripture, inviting Thomas to touch him, cooking breakfast by the
shore. Second, the developed ‘Easter legends’, including stories of appearances
and the empty tomb, create a problem: how does one relate these stories to the
basic belief in Jesus’ exaltation? Thus there are invented, around the same
time and in the same texts as the anti-docetic material, stories of an
‘ascension’ which affirms both the initial embodied resurrection and the
exaltation, which is now seen as a second stage. Third, some version of the
broad consensus recognize a third problem in the early church: that of rival
claims for apostolic authority, dealt with by telling stories which pit one
apostle against another.[4]
This characterization suggests that the primary issues for
the easter narratives are to solve these problems. He then spends some time
addressing why it does not make logical sense for these issues to be the
primary point of the easter narratives. For example, because I will reply to
this issue later, consider what he says about the idea that the easter
narratives were written to counter a docetic Christology:
The one thing they can not be trying to do, despite a long
tradition of scholarship which I have already mentioned, is to disprove
docetism. It seems to me totally incredible that stories like these, especially
those in Luke and John, represent a late development of the tradition in which
for the first time people thought it appropriate or necessary to speak of the
risen Jesus being solidly embodied. The idea that traditions developed in the
church from a more Hellenistic early period (in this case, a more ‘non-bodily’
view of post-mortem existence) to a more Jewish later period (in this case, a
more embodied ‘resurrection) is in any case extremely peculiar and ,though
widely held in the twentieth century, ought now to be abandoned as historically
unwarranted and simply against common sense. If there was likely to be
development, the model we find in Josephus, for example, suggests that we might
expect a Hellenistic-style ‘spiritualizing’ of the tradition, not a re-Judaizing
of it. It is far more likely that a very Jewish perception of how things were,
in very early Christianity, gave way, under certain circumstances, to a more
Hellenistic one by the end of the century – though that itself would need
careful investigation before we simply assumed it. In the cases before us, it
makes no sense to think of Luke sitting down to compose an anti-docetic
narrative about the genuine human body of Jesus and allowing himself so far to
forget this important purpose as to have Jesus appear and disappear, not be
recognized, and finally ascend into heaven. Similar things must be said of
John.[5]
Here, there are multiple points I will address, but the
first is his fundamental structure of his argument. He argues that thinking
that this narrative was anti-docetic does not make much sense because as a general whole the early Christian
movement began as “Jewish” and then became “Hellenized.” If we were to imagine
that the gospels wanted to make the movement less “docetic” then the order
would be inverted – it would take something that is “generally Hellenized” and
try to make it “more Jewish.” The problem with this argument is that it creates
a uniformity in history which is rare to find and would be quite amazing given
his very argument for the diversity of opinions in the gospels. Why are we
suggesting that all Christian
documents moved from one direction to another? Further, even if he was right
that this movement from “generally Jewish” to “generally Hellenistic” was
accurate (and I do not think it is), then he also is expecting that every group
progressed at the same time. The only way that his logic is anachronistic is if
he believes that every Christian
group began as “Jewish” at the same time and then shifted in thinking at the same time, so the idea that any
group could have to be reminded of the Jewish nature of Jesus would be out of
order. In fact, we know very well that there were a variety of people doing a
wide variety of things trying to figure out Jesus’ significance. Paul shows his
own differences with the Jerusalem apostles, his frustrations with differences
of opinions with other missionaries, and even differences with his own church
plants. If there is one thing we do know about the earliest church is that it
was not all unified and progressing in the same manner.
Therefore, it seems that Wright wants to have his cake and
eat it too. He wants to argue for the integrity of the easter narratives as
early messages proven by the fact that they diverge from one another, while at
the same time, suggesting that they generally cohere and are providing a single
message. What is more, he demands that any idea of a development to address
later problems needs a movement that develops as a unified whole to address
them. The problem is not Wright’s logic that many of the earliest groups
started as fundamentally Jewish and then became later more involved in
Greco-Roman culture. I have no doubt that for many groups that is true. The
problem is that he expects this to be the case for all groups. If there is one thing I am convinced by in the
first-second century Christian movement, it is for diversity. There were all
different types of Christian groups acting in rather different ways. There is
no reason to suspect they were uniform.
The second critique I have is his general dismissive
attitude about the resurrection narratives not being anti-docetic. He argues
that this is anachronistic and doesn’t make much sense given some of the things
Jesus does. As he says, just because Luke has him eat fish and John has him
have physical hands with physical wounds in them, does not account for the fact
that Jesus can seemingly appear and reappear and even seem to get through
locked doors. If one was going to write a piece that was going to be anti-docetic,
then one would not expect someone to have these elements that usually would not
be understood as more spiritual than bodily. This would be convincing if the
argument was that the resurrection narratives were only about being anti-docetic. Take, for example, the Gospel of
John. Many scholars think that John 20 and 21 are actually two different
endings to the gospel that have been pressed together to present different
ideas. Yes, it is true that John 20 does mention Jesus somehow getting through
“locked doors.” However, one should note it never actually says that Jesus
transcended the locks – we are told nothing about it. Who is not to say that
they didn’t let Jesus in? Their doors were locked “for fear of the Jews” not
because they wanted to see if Jesus could appear at random. On that note, the
text is completely silent. Further, note Thomas’s declaration only comes after seeing Jesus in the flesh. These
two points alone would not be enough – but what of the testimony of 1 John –
that there were some, using the Gospel of John, who argued that Jesus never was
really in the flesh – some kind of “docetism.” Many scholars are not therefore
arguing that the whole of the gospel of John was an anti-docetic tract, rather,
they are arguing that these details were added to take what was being taken as
a docetic document and changing it to make an argument. Some would even say
that the person who did this was the author of 1 John (and also claim it adds
several sections, not just the one – the prologue, chapter 6, etc.). Therefore,
Wright is not wrong to suggest that the resurrection narrative is not only an anti-docetic tract – of course
it is not. However, I do not understand why it can not also be doing that in addition to other things.
All of this is not suggest that this section of his book is
a failure. Of course it is not. Instead, this is to argue that there are very
interesting ideas and a fascinating general view of the easter stories
presented here. The problem is simply in how far he goes in his criticism of
some other scholars. He has no problem showing that Crossan has gone too far – I,
and most scholars, would agree. The challenge he faces is not going too far in
the equal and opposite reaction.
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