[Dialogue] 12/31/09, Spong: The Origins of the New Testament, Part XI: Resurrection as Paul Understood It

[elliestock at aol.com]

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Thursday December 31, 2009 

The Origins of the New Testament
Part XI: Resurrection as Paul Understood It

It is quite easy to see how one could read Paul, especially those epistles known as I Thessalonians and Galatians, and come away believing that Paul saw the resurrection of Jesus as a literal miracle in which a deceased body, quite physically, was restored and walked out of a tomb alive and once more was part of the life of this world. That distortion in understanding Paul is the all but inevitable result of reading Paul through the lens of the later gospels, especially Luke and John, in which this understanding of resurrection had clearly come to be believed. Paul, however, had never seen and would never see a gospel. He died before the first gospel was written. His view of resurrection, as a matter of fact, is quite different from what most suppose.
Nothing makes this as clear as an examination of other writings that are authentically from the pen of Paul. In Romans (1:1-4) Paul writes: God declared (or designated) Jesus "to be the Son of God" by raising him from the dead. That does not mean physically resuscitating him back into the life of this world, as many have argued. If it did the words attributed to Paul in Colossians would make no sense. In this epistle Paul is made to suggest that the resurrection was the account of Jesus being raised into the presence and eternity of God: "If then you have been raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God." Please be aware that the story of Jesus being at the right hand of God is a reference to the resurrection, not the ascension, since the story of the ascension, against which these words are misinterpreted, would not be written for almost thirty more years. The word "raised" in Paul's mind embraced both dimensions of what would later be separated into the dual activities of "resurrection," that is, being raised from death and the grave, and "ascension," which meant being united with God in heaven. For Paul those two actions were one thing. Jesus was not resuscitated back into the life of this world; he was raised into being part of who God is. It was not resuscitation, it was transformation. This interpretation is confirmed once more in another text from Romans that we quoted earlier in this series. There Paul writes: "Christ being raised from the dead, will never die again, death has no more dominion over him — the life he lives, he lives to God." A person raised physically back into the life of this world would surely die again. That is the universal law of life — all living things ultimately die. It is clear that resuscitation back into the physical life of this world is not what Paul had in mind when he spoke of Jesus "being raised." Again in Romans, Paul suggests that "As Christ was raised from the dead by the glor y of the father, we too might walk in newness of life." That is, in this Christ figure a new dimension has been added to our lives that is not subject to death. Paul later speaks of being raised to the "new life of the spirit." He says that the one (Jesus) "who was raised from the dead, and who is at the right hand of God," has been enthroned as part of the life of God, understood as dwelling above the sky, external to the life of this world. Still later Paul writes to the Romans: "Who will ascend to heaven to bring Christ down?" In the mind of Paul, resurrection raised Jesus into the presence and being of God. Paul argues in 1st Corinthians that "flesh and blood cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven." He is so obviously not talking about the physical resuscitation of the body of Jesus so that he could return to his former life. It is not for this life that we have hope. Resurrection was rather the transformation of who he was to a realm or to a state of consciousness beyond the boundaries of time and space. That is why Paul goes to such lengths to make a distinction between our natural bodies and something he called "a spiritual body."
We have trouble envisioning what this is all about for two primary reasons. The first is that we are using human words that are bound by both time and space to describe an experience that, if it is real, is beyond time and space. Second, our minds have been corrupted by later understandings of resurrection, shaped primarily by the last two gospels to be written, Luke and John. In those gospels the physicality of the resurrected Jesus is emphasized. The portrait of the raised Jesus drawn in these two 9th and 10th decade pieces of writing is a body in which death has been reversed. He asks for food to demonstrate that his gastrointestinal system is functioning. He is portrayed as both walking and talking to demonstrate that his skeletal system, his vocal chords and his larynx are functioning. He is interpreted as teaching and opening their minds to the meaning of scripture to demonstrate that his brain is functioning. He is said in Luke to have argued that he was not a ghost and to have urged the disciples to touch his very physical flesh to demonstrate that he was in fact fleshly. In John he is pictured as inviting Thomas to examine his wounds. Of note is the fact that only in Luke and John are resurrection and ascension portrayed as separate events. As two distinct acts resurrection and ascension have very different meanings. Resurrection gets Jesus physically back into the life of the world; ascension gets him back to his origins that were thought to be in God, God's self.
What we need to embrace is the oft-forgotten fact that Paul was a Jew and that he thus processed everything that he experienced in and through the life of Jesus in terms of the Jewish traditions. So to hear Paul's words in this proper Jewish context, we have to look at the traditions of the Jews for examples of people being raised from life or even being "translated" from death into God's presence. In none of these cases was this act conceived of as a physical resuscitation back into the life of this world. There are three such episodes in the Hebrew Scriptures and each one of these three finds itself referred to in the Christian story. It is clear that these Jewish stories served as the examples that were destined to shape not only Paul's thought on the resurrection, but also informed all early Christian thinking.
The first one of these Jewish stories involved a man named Enoch, whose story is told in a single verse in the fourth chapter of Genesis. He is identified simply as the father of Methuselah, who was presumed to be the oldest person in the Bible, having reached according to the Bible the ripe old age of 969 years. Of Enoch it was said that he "walked with God and was not, for God took him." Enoch was considered to have lived a life of such goodness and holiness that his virtue was rewarded by being lifted beyond death into the immediate presence of God. Later much mythology gathered around the figure of Enoch, and during the inter-testament years he was said to have authored a book that described the realm of God as only an eyewitness could do. This "Book of Enoch" found a place in writings called the "Pseudapigrapha" and from that position exercised great influence on the developing Jesus story.
The second of these Jewish stories described the final events in the life of Moses, the greatest of all the Jewish heroes, the founder of Israel and the father of the law. The death of Moses is recorded in Deuteronomy 34 with great care, but also with much mystery. Moses was said to have died in the wilderness of the land of Moab with only God present. God was said to have buried him in a grave that God had prepared, the location of which is "unknown from that day to this." God was portrayed as writing an epitaph that presumably was designed to eulogize this gigantic figure. It was not long, however, before the tradition began to grow that Moses had not actually died, but had been transformed and transported into God's presence and was now himself an inhabitant in the dwelling place of God.
The final figure in this Jewish trilogy was Elijah, probably second to Moses alone in the hierarchy of Jewish heroes. Elijah was deemed to be the father of the prophets and thus of the prophetic movement in Judaism. When the Jews defined Judaism, it was in terms of its twin towers — the law and the prophets, or Moses and Elijah.
The story of Elijah's death is told in II Kings, again with details that are full of wonder and mystery. In effect the narrative says that Elijah did not really die at all. He was rather transported into the presence of the living God by a magical, fiery chariot drawn by magical, fiery horses and propelled heavenward by a God-sent whirlwind. In that new status, as one who shares in the presence of God, Elijah was portrayed as dispensing a double portion of his spirit onto his single disciple, Elisha, who had been chosen to be his successor. When Luke wrote the story of Jesus' ascension in the book of Acts, he borrowed many of the details from this story of the ascension of Elijah. In a revealing interpretive clue, Mark, Matthew and Luke all relate the story of the "Transfiguration" of Jesus in which it was said that Jesus conferred with Moses and Elijah, both of whom had transcended the limits of death and were already dwelling in the presence of the God of life.
These were the things that the Jewish Paul had in mind when he said that Jesus had been raised from the dead. The resurrection was for Paul the act by which God affirmed the life of Jesus as holy by raising him at death into the eternal life of God. Jesus was thus able to offer to his followers a pathway through himself into the eternity of God. The raised Jesus was thus the mediator of this access, the way into eternal life for all who came through him. The resurrection of Jesus in its earliest formulation thus had nothing to do with empty tombs, physical resuscitations and apparitions. Those expansions would all come later in the developing Christian story. This is, however, where Paul was and this is what the resurrection of Jesus meant in the primitive Christian community.
When this series resumes, we will look at Paul's most systematic work, the Epistle to the Romans.

– John Shelby Spong
 



Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong


Jann G. Gilley from Charlotte, North Carolina, asks:
You said in a recent lecture at Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte that you believe you love people into being loveable. What about sociopaths?
Jann G. Gilley from Charlotte, North Carolina, asks:
You said in a recent lecture at Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte that you believe you love people into being loveable. What about sociopaths?



Dear Jann,
Indeed, sociopaths do not appear at first glance to fit into this way of viewing life. The first thing we need to determine is whether sociopaths are genetically produced or environmentally produced abnormalities. If it is a genetically or neurochemical precondition, then all that remains possible to us is to contain them within society and minimize the pain they inflict on others. Unfortunately, the process usually means that we do not discover their pathology until someone has been hurt by their behavior.
If sociopathology is an environmentally produced reality brought about by human abuse, either physically or psychologically, then we seek to counter it in a retraining process. The one thing we do not do is to tolerate destructive behavior. That requires what some psychiatrists call tough love. No person has a license to abuse anyone else regardless of the causes of his or her abusive behavior. So society must hold everyone accountable. That means treating by incarceration if necessary. That means institutional care for long terms, including lifetime, if no assurance can be given that responsible action has replaced systemically destructive action. The goal of all life is wholeness. Some people are so wounded that wholeness is not realistic, then lesser goals of safety and as much freedom as possible become that on which our sights are set.
Human wounding can be severe. Some human "givens" make wounding all but inevitable. Our goals as Christians do not change. The Christ we serve stated his purpose and ours to be that of giving life abundantly to all. It is the exigencies of life that define what the limits of abundant life are in every individual situation.
Some of the criminal behavior that creates headlines is clearly the work of sociopaths and psychopaths. No matter how heinous the crime, from Adolf Hitler to the Manson family, I do not favor execution. However, I do favor putting these people into a situation where they can never harm another person. Some people do sacrifice their right to live in a free society forever.
Thank you for your question.

– John Shelby Spong






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