[Dialogue] Spong 10/17 Back to Miracles

[KroegerD at aol.com]

October 17, 2007 
The Fourth Fundamental:  Miracles and the Resurrection, Part V  

Did Jesus literally and physically walk out of his grave, restored to life,  
on the third day following his crucifixion? Those who drafted the Five  
Fundamentals thought so and insisted that anyone who did not say a convincing  "yes" 
to that proposition could no longer claim to be a Christian. The  
resurrection of Jesus in a physical, bodily form was thought of as the central  miracle, 
the one unwavering truth to which all must adhere. It gives one a sense  of 
how badly eroded these fundamental convictions have become in our time when  we 
realize that no reputable biblical or theological scholar today would be  
willing to assert that the resurrection of Jesus must be understood as a  physical 
resuscitation of his dead body to live again inside the life of this  world. 
Unfortunately, most people are not biblical scholars and they do not  realize 
that this interpretation of the Easter experience that turns it into a  
narrative about the three days dead Jesus literally walking out of the tomb is  the 
product of the third Christian generation and finds its origin primarily in  
the late ninth and early tenth decades when the gospels of Luke and John were  
written. This resuscitated body was never the transformative experience that  
occurred at some point after the crucifixion and that convinced Jesus' 
disciples  that something about his life transcended the ultimate barrier of death 
and  opened a pathway into the eternity of God.  
Paul, the first writer in the New Testament knows of no resuscitated body. He 
 does say that "if Christ be not raised we of all people are the most to be  
pitied." The question is, however, what did he mean by the word "raised?" We  
note first that Paul always uses a passive word for the resurrection. Jesus  
never rises for Paul, God always raises him. God is the one who initiates the  
action. Jesus is the one acted upon. So the question becomes: to what did God  
raise Jesus? For Paul it was clearly that God raised him into what God is, 
that  is into the eternal presence out of whom Jesus could manifest himself to 
certain  chosen witness. In Romans (1:1-4), Paul states this very overtly. God 
designated  or declared Jesus, to be the Son of God by the action of "the 
spirit of  holiness" in raising him, not from death back to life in this world, 
but from  death into God. Resurrection and ascension were two parts of the same 
action for  Paul. Later when resurrection was changed to mean resuscitation, a 
means to get  Jesus back into the life of God had to be developed. That is 
what accounted for  the 10th decade narrative of Jesus ascending into the sky. 
When the minds of  first century Christians tried to conceptualize their 
experience it was almost  inevitable that they would in time literalize these 
symbols, but that was not  the way this life changing experience was first 
understood.  
A second piece of Pauline writing develops this point even further with two  
specific references: In I Corinthians 15, written perhaps three years before 
the  epistle to the Romans, Paul makes it clear that resurrection had nothing 
to do  with a physically resuscitated body. He says, "Flesh and blood cannot 
inherit  the Kingdom of God." He talks about a spiritual body growing out of the 
physical  like a stalk of corn grows out of a seed. He stretches vocabulary 
almost to a  breaking point to say that resurrection is real, but it is not 
physical. Later  in that same epistle Paul lists those to whom the raised Christ 
"made himself  known." That word is frequently translated "appeared," making 
people think of a  physical encounter when the word more closely means "was 
made manifest" and  suggests that the viewer has had his or her eyes opened to 
see a new reality. It  has a sense about it of infinite sight, an insight or a 
second sight. Paul's  list of those to whom the raised Christ was made manifest 
is fascinating in many  ways: Cephas (i.e. Peter) is first, and then come 
"the Twelve." Please note that  the group identified as "the Twelve" still 
apparently includes Judas Iscariot.  Paul dates the resurrection "on the third day" 
by which time it would have been  quite impossible for a replacement for Judas 
to have been elected. Indeed Luke  says the choice of Matthias to replace 
Judas Iscariot did not take place for  weeks. It is interesting to trace the 
origins of the story of the betrayal. It  makes its first appearance when Paul 
dates the Last Supper as having occurred  "on the night he was handed over." It 
is the word translated "handed over," that  was later rendered betrayed, that 
becomes the catalyst around which the  narrative about Judas Iscariot 
developed. Judas Iscariot does not appear to have  been an original part of the 
earliest Christian story. There is no other  reference to a betrayal in the entire 
Pauline corpus. It is quite obvious that  Paul did not know the tradition that 
one of the Twelve had been a traitor. That  narrative begins only in Mark. 
Paul's list of "witnesses" continues with the  mention of "500 brethren," a story 
that has no counterpart in any gospel. Then  it moves to James who is 
unidentified. Is this James Zebedee, James the son of  Alphaus or James the brother of 
Jesus? The consensus among scholars today is  that this is James the brother 
of Jesus, who became the leader of the church in  Jerusalem and Paul's 
adversary. Next come "the Apostles." Who are they? Paul has  already listed "the 
Twelve." Is this a different group? Finally, Paul lists  himself as one to whom 
Jesus was made manifest. Paul's conversion is placed by  most scholars between 
one and six years after the crucifixion. Paul could not  have possibly seen a 
resuscitated, physical body. The book of Acts calls Paul's  "seeing of the 
Lord" a vision on the road to Damascus. While Paul himself does  not mention the 
road to Damascus, he does talk about an ecstatic experience in  which he was 
lifted to the "third heaven," where he saw things that people do  not normally 
see. Reading Paul convinces the scholars that resurrection  understood as a 
physically resuscitated body was not an idea that Paul ever  entertained. Recall 
that Paul wrote between the years 50 and 64.  
Mark, writing in the early years of the 8th decade, never relates an account  
of the raised Christ appearing to anyone. He just confronts his readers with 
an  empty tomb, a symbol of the conviction that death cannot contain him. 
Matthew,  writing in the early to mid 9th decade takes the first step toward a 
physical  understanding of resurrection when he portrays the women in the garden 
as being  capable of grasping the feet of Jesus. My perception is that one 
cannot grasp  feet that are not physical. Two things, however, call Matthew's 
accuracy in this  instance into question. First, he has quite deliberately 
changed Mark's  narrative upon which he bases his entire gospel. In Mark the women 
never see  anything other than an empty tomb. Matthew has thus altered his 
original source.  Luke, who also has Mark in front of him as he writes, follows 
Mark's text  accurately. In Luke the women do not see the raised Christ. Even if 
one is a  biblical literalist one has to face the fact that in the New 
Testament, by a two  to one vote, this story in Matthew is regarded as an inaccurate 
alteration of  the original text.  
The second thing that calls into question the accuracy of Matthew's story of  
the woman seeing a physical, raised Jesus in the garden is that in this 
gospel's  only other resurrection narrative it is clearly not a resuscitated, 
physical  Jesus who meets with the disciples. It is rather a vision of a glorified 
Christ  who comes out of the sky robed in all of the messianic symbols that 
were  traditionally attached to the Son of Man who would inaugurate the Kingdom 
of  God. This visionary Christ comes to give the disciples the great 
commandment  that launched the church. It is clearly not a resuscitated body, but a  
transformed, glorified one. Please recall that when Matthew wrote, no account of 
 Jesus' ascension had yet entered the developing Christian story. When we  
discover that in our earliest New Testament sources of Paul and Mark there is no 
 physical, bodily seeing of the raised Jesus, then it becomes obvious that 
the  physicality of the resurrected body is a later development of the 
tradition.  Mark's women confront the emptiness of the tomb, hear a resurrection  
announcement given by a young man in a white robe and then flee in fear saying  
nothing to anyone, despite the fact that the messenger had instructed them to go  
to Galilee with the promise that Jesus would meet him there. Is this to be  
understood as the promise to meet Jesus in some resurrected, physical form in  
Galilee? Or is it the eternal command to return home to one's roots if one is 
to  encounter the holy? In time it was certainly read in the former sense, but 
the  evidence points to the latter sense being the original meaning.  
When one comes to the late ninth and tenth decades writing of the gospels of  
Luke and John, the seeing of the raised Lord has surely become physical. The  
flesh of his raised body can be physically touched. Indeed Jesus invites them 
to  do so, maintaining that he is not a ghost since ghosts do not have flesh 
and  blood. This raised Jesus eats, demonstrating a functioning 
gastro-intestinal  system, he talks, teaches and interprets Scripture, demonstrating 
functional  vocal chords, larynx and brain, and he walks with Cleopas and his friend 
on the  road to Emmaus revealing a functioning skeletal system. The 
resurrection is now  understood as a very physical phenomenon. Yet both Luke and John 
indicate that  these images may be more symbolic than real since they also add 
very  non-physical dimensions to the resurrected Jesus. In Luke, the body of 
Jesus can  materialize out of thin air and it can also disappear in the same 
manner. In  John, Jesus can enter the locked and barred upper room without 
bothering to open  the doors. To turn the conviction that Jesus has somehow 
transcended the  ultimate barrier of death and broken its power into a literal 
narrative about  the resuscitation of a deceased body was probably inevitable, given 
the human  need to use words to talk about life changing experiences. There 
are, however,  great amounts of textual evidence that this was clearly not what 
Easter meant  originally. What then did it mean? That is my topic for next 
week's column.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note  from the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores  everywhere and by clicking here!_ 
(http://astore.amazon.com/bishopspong-20/detail/0060762071/104-6221748-5882304)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Barbara Wendland from Temple, Texas, writes:  
I share your feelings about "This is the Word of the Lord" in worship  
services, but I wonder why you perpetuate this misplaced adulation of the Bible  by 
continuing to participate in it. Why worry about what's considered "proper"  
for a bishop, when it's something that is contrary to what you believe is 
right?  I'm a United Methodist who hears and is offended by the same thing in UMC  
worship services, but I don't have the influential platform that you have. 
Since  you have that platform and are very brave about using it in many ways, I 
wish  you would also use it by openly refusing to go along with this kind of 
language  in worship.  
Dear Barbara,  
First, if one is to work for change in an institution as I do, one must be  
part of that institution. Change agents or critics who are outside the Church  
never finally make an impact.  
Second, there are effective and ineffective ways to make one's protest.  
Rudeness or calling attention to oneself without the chance to show why a  
particular tradition is disturbing is not a productive way to protest. If every  
person in a public worship were free to object publicly to every disagreeable  
practice, worship would be turned into a cacophony of competing voices.  
My real platform is found in my books or my weekly columns. There I have time 
 to spell out my arguments and people have time to interact with my comments  
positively or negatively or both. The ideas are the issue, not the person who 
is  objecting. I much prefer it that way. The way you are suggesting would 
transform  church critics into bullies. I don't think bullies make lasting 
contributions.  
John Shelby Spong 



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