Introduction

The Introduction explains the basic outline of the book’s threefold argument for the credibility of Jesus’ Resurrection: historical evidence derived from the New Testament witness, the strangeness of the claim, and the revelation of supreme love in a manner that shows the unity of the Scriptures. Second, it explores “participatory” knowledge and the limits of historiography. Jesus is best learned about from within the Church. Third, the Introduction responds to Troeltsch’s influential claim that historical inquiry can only involve “normal” happenings; anything else belongs to the realm of “faith.” Fourth, the Introduction presents the plan of the book. Fifth, it reviews various reasons why scholars think that the enterprise of arguing for the reasonableness of Jesus’ Resurrection is an unnecessary or doomed enterprise. Sixth, it concludes by treating theological apologetics and human reason. Two exemplars are highlighted: Richard Swinburne and Gerald O’Collins.

Remembrance of the Risen Jesus

Why did the risen Jesus risk the communication of the truth of his Resurrection to the Church’s historical memory? The chapter examines this question by exploring scriptural and liturgical remembering. With regard to scriptural remembering, it draws especially upon the work of Richard Bauckham, who argues that the Gospels are based upon eyewitness testimony. The second mode of historical memory that connects later believers with Jesus and his disciples/apostles consists in liturgical remembrance. The chapter explores this remembrance by focusing upon what biblical scholars have to say about Luke 22:19’s reference to liturgical remembrance, in light of theological reflection upon the unity of word and sacrament. Here again, the passing of the generations need not produce a separation of later believers from the disciples’ communion with the risen Jesus. Through liturgical remembrance, which includes proclamation of Scripture, later believers share intimately in the disciples’ communion with the risen Jesus.

Why Doesn’t the Risen Jesus Appear to Each Generation?

If Jesus is risen, why does he not manifest his risen flesh to each generation? This chapter’s answer is twofold. The first section of the chapter, drawing upon Hans Urs von Balthasar, explains that fallen humans cleave to our lives in this world. Since this is so, ascension—Jesus’ and ours—is necessary. Given our need to “ascend,” the second section examines the work of the biblical scholars Michael Morales and Brant Pitre. Morales’s Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? carefully explores how Jesus fulfills the Temple sacrifices. Pitre’s Jesus and the Last Supper describes a New Passover and New Exodus by which the crucified, risen, and ascended Jesus seeks to draw Israel and the nations into his transcendent kingdom. Ascending with and toward Jesus in self-sacrificial love, we are sustained eucharistically by Jesus so that our Passover may be complete.

The Strangeness of Jesus’ Resurrection

The strangeness of the New Testament testimony to Jesus’ Resurrection has led people to seek alternative explanations for this testimony than the explanation offered by the New Testament. This chapter first discusses contemporary ways of explaining away the New Testament’s claim that Jesus concretely manifested himself in his risen flesh to his disciples. Second, the chapter examines the intrinsic strangeness of the New Testament claim that Jesus’ corpse was raised from the dead to glorified life. Third, the chapter engages Thomas Aquinas’s theology of the Resurrection of Jesus. Aquinas rejects any spiritualizing of the raising of Jesus’ corpse to glorified life. His discussion draws upon John of Damascus’s On the Orthodox Faith as an important patristic witness to the bodiliness of the Resurrection of Jesus. Damascene is aware of Gnostic and Muslim perspectives that spiritualized Jesus’ death and Resurrection, and the chapter briefly surveys a number of these perspectives.

The Old Testament Witness

In contemporary biblical scholarship that investigates the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead, scholars generally pay some attention to the Old Testament. The first part of this chapter therefore examines the findings of the New Testament scholars Dale Allison and N. T. Wright and the Hebrew Bible scholar Jon Levenson. The chapter next examines St. Thomas Aquinas’s use of the Old Testament in commenting on John 20–1, the chapters of John’s Gospel that treat Jesus’ Resurrection appearances. In his commentary, of course, Aquinas is not attempting to investigate the historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection. Commenting on John 20–1, Aquinas includes 139 quotations from the Old Testament. The chapter argues that the verses selected by Aquinas play a valuable cumulative role in supporting the truth of the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

Jesus’ Resurrection and Catholic Apologetics

This chapter explores the importance of theologically defending the historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection. Specifically, it engages the work of Joseph Fenton, Pierre Rousselot, and Bernard Lonergan. Lonergan’s philosophical theology gives room for natural reason’s work of understanding and judging, and thus for an apologetics rooted in natural reason rather than in supernatural faith. Lonergan does this while appreciating the great significance of what he calls “the eye of love.” The chapter also credits Lonergan for defending the quest to know the concrete historical particulars in all their messy particularity. At the same time, Lonergan’s appreciation for historical particulars does not guide his own theological apologetics, which focuses instead on the universal dynamism of human nature toward maximal self-transcendence. Therefore, the chapter argues that Lonergan’s approach to theological apologetics could learn from Fenton’s insistence upon explicitly defending the historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection.

Conclusion

In dialogue with Brian Robinette and Jürgen Moltmann, the chapter asks what kind of apologetics is appropriate to the subject matter of Jesus’ Resurrection. It argues that Jesus’ Resurrection does have “external grounds” for its truth. It can be considered credible even without supernatural faith. Yet, even if non-believers can reasonably affirm that Jesus’ Resurrection happened, such knowledge becomes truly living and powerful within the whole worldview of faith, what Lonergan calls the “horizon of love.” Behind this approach to theological apologetics stands the masterwork of John Henry Newman. In his Grammar of Assent, Newman remarks that certitude in historical matters comes from “the cumulation of probabilities, independent of each other, arising out of the nature and circumstances of the particular case which is under review.” This book provides such an accumulation of probabilities, which Newman deems to be sufficient (through what he calls the “illative sense”) for certitude.

Contemplating Jesus Risen

This chapter argues that a contemplative attitude toward Scripture’s portraits of Jesus helps one appreciate the credibility of the proclamation that Jesus rose from the dead to glorified life. The alternative consists in taking a reductive approach that is inadequate to the testimony as a whole. The chapter first attends briefly to certain elements of what Aquinas has to say about contemplating Jesus Christ, by way of providing some background in the Christian tradition. Second, it examines the efforts of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI to perceive the face of Christ through the biblical portraits of Christ. In his Jesus of Nazareth, his meditation upon the New Testament narratives about Jesus’ Resurrection provides him with grounds for judging the historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection. Third, the chapter surveys the case for the credibility of Christian claims that is offered by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book Love Alone Is Credible.

The Historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection

Central to the data about Jesus’ Resurrection is what kind of experience lies behind it on the part of the disciples. This chapter explores three answers to the question of what happened on the first Easter. All three scholars profess belief in Jesus’ Resurrection, but they differ with regard to what they think historians can say about the experience of those who first proclaimed that Jesus is risen from the dead. Edward Schillebeeckx suggests that the Resurrection narratives arose from faith-experiences of the disciples, without requiring us to hold that they saw the glorified body of the risen Jesus. Dale Allison considers that the disciples must indeed have seen Jesus after his death, but that from a historical perspective these sightings are likely to have been hallucinatory visions. Lastly, N. T. Wright thinks that the historical evidence indicates that the disciples had concrete encounters with the risen, tangible Jesus.