[The third in a series of posts on the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus.]
I find it helpful to keep two aspects of this discussion separate. Making some distinctions, at least initially, will help us to get our bearings. There is the issue of definition.What does "Christ is risen" mean? What does "the resurrection" refer to? Then there is the issue of epistemology. Can we "know", in any sense of the word, what occurred? The two strands obviously can have an impact on each other.The weight given to various aspects of what we know and don't know can influence definitions and our definitions, as well, can cause us to see what we expect to see.
First, having already laid the ground for this, I would like to sweep one option away. As I see it, the resurrection should not be defined as a re-knitting together of the exact same atoms that made up the body that died on the cross. Origen in the second century already anticipates problems with this view, and our modern scientific understanding of the body as more of a process than a substance makes it even less attractive. Add to this that Paul, as we have seen, seems to have a more 'transphysical' (N.T. Wright's word) or 'more than, but not less than' physical perspective. I believe we can safely discard Updike's definition.
Still, in some ways, this doesn't get at the heart of the matter. It is still a body, even if it is, to use the seemingly oxymoronic term found in many English translations, a "spiritual body". So let's agree that the traditional meaning is something like a new body, a resurrection body, that is different from but is also in continuity with the old body. To make the typology that follows simple to understand, I'll call this traditional perspective the 'ontological' as opposed to the 'psychological' definition of the resurrection. By 'psychological' I don't mean to disparage the view or to imply that there is nothing 'real' at stake. I use the term merely as a way to describe something that primarily happens in the realm of the psyche.
We also need to posit a basic division on the epistemological issue. Either the event is 'historical' or 'non-historical'. By 'historical' I mean that the story as such is capable of more than just historical investigation that locates it in a particular time and place. Clearly there are some aspects of the story that historians agree upon. Instead I mean something stronger like, "the story as a whole (or as basically given) is potentially able to be be shown to be superior to competing theories by reasonable historical argument". Wright (a conservative) and Clayton (a liberal), for example, are both champions of a form of abduction called 'inference to the best solution'. The 'historical' view, understood in this way, believes that we can, at minimum, use historical argument to decide upon the solution that fits the evidence best. The 'non-historical' view, by contrast, believes that the issue cannot either in principle be known by investigation because it contains miraculous elements, or that the evidence is so sparse that the result is the same.
The options that now result from placing the question of definition and the question of epistemology together are as follows:
1. Ontological-Historical (OH)
2. Ontological-Non-historical (ONH)
3. Psychological-Historical (PH)
4. Psychological-Non-historical (PNH)
These four perspectives often overlap in contemporary discussions about the resurrection, as we will see. Taking them as pure types, however, is a useful heuristic, and it allows us to better see how a creative solution that incorporates the insights of each might be possible. The first (OH) attempts to treat the resurrection in a similar manner to the evangelical apologists. In our postmodern world, as mentioned before, foundationalist assumptions have usually been dropped for inference to the best explanation. The cross and the resurrection are on the same plane of knowable history even if the evidence is sparse. Here the distinction between 'geschichte' and 'heilgeschichte,' used as technical terms, is blurred. The second (ONH) is more or less typical of theology that goes under the banner of 'narrative' or 'postliberal' theology. It is essentially fideistic, but often theologians in this trend have quite sophisticated arguments that are related to either the coherence of Christian theology or make slightly more ambitious claims about plausibility. The third and fourth (PH and PNH) emphasize the importance of the transformation of the person over any kind of ontological statements about what occurred The essential difference is that the PH perspective would make a stronger claim that the New Testament texts are actually being misread by traditionalists, whereas the PNH view remains ultimately unconcerned about how the texts are read. PNH is the "All that matters is..." view. Again, these are just pure types and they interact in a variety of ways with each other.
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