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The messianic expectations that Jesus aroused and the movement gathered about him were shattered by his death.1 But after a few days some of his followers and later others claimed he had been raised from the dead. The New Testament does not support any theory that this belief arose after his death as a matter of course in light of Jewish teachings current at that time about the resurrection of the righteous. By all accounts Jesus’ resurrection was experienced by his followers as a second interruption, as unexpected and difficult to assimilate in terms of their expectations as was his death. In light of Jesus’ resurrection, the hopes and beliefs about him, broken by his death, were reformulated into new understandings of him as the Christ. These reformulations were also stimulated by the belief that the risen Jesus had been exalted to a unique status in relation to God and by the experience of salvation, a new experience of the Holy Spirit, associated with faith in him. All this helped transform the movement Jesus had begun within Judaism into what eventually became another religion, sharing much with Judaism, but distinct in the belief that Jesus is the Christ.

The Belief in Resurrection in

Second Temple Judaism

Those who first claimed that Jesus was risen from the dead were Jews. They made use of Jewish beliefs in the resurrection to understand what they claimed to have experienced. The exact origins of these beliefs are difficult to discern. The notion of resurrection from the dead is found explicitly in Daniel 12:2 as an answer to the question of theodicy, presumably in relation to the sufferings of faithful Jews during the Maccabean Revolt.2 The belief expressed here that the dead would be resurrected at the end of time, “some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan 12:2), was part of the apocalyptic tradition within Second Temple Judaism, which formed the matrix of Jesus’ ministry and Christian faith.3 While explicit statements of belief in the resurrection are not common in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, the belief is not foreign to it. The notion of resurrection fits with the understandings of God’s righteousness, creative power, and faithfulness found therein, as a fulfillment of God’s justice and promises to Israel.4 It can be seen as an outgrowth of these themes.

The concept of resurrection was at hand then, during Jesus’ ministry and after his death. Jesus seems to have endorsed a belief in it.5 He may have looked forward to his own resurrection in some way. But the New Testament gives little evidence that Jesus’ resurrection as experienced by his disciples and others was expected to follow his death. Predictions that he would die and rise again, such as Mark 9:31, are generally seen to have been produced by the early church after Easter, rather than being statements made by Jesus during his ministry. Like Paul’s statement that Jesus had died and risen in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Cor 15:4), these were attempts to make sense of the scandal of his death on the cross and are expressions of faith that it was God who had raised him to new life. Descriptions of Jesus’ resurrection in the New Testament suggest that there was a dialectical relationship between predominantly Jewish notions of resurrection and the encounters that people had with Jesus after his death. These experiences were such that the early church used notions of resurrection to describe what had happened to Jesus, and in doing so, transformed these notions. What can be known historically about the events that gave rise to this?

What Can Be Known Historically about

Jesus’ Resurrection?

To begin with, Jesus’ resurrection is not described in the New Testament as a historical event on par with others, but as a uniquely transcendent event that began a new age of salvation. It is presented as an eschatological event impinging upon history in subsequent appearances of the risen Christ, the empty tomb, and the continuing witness of the early church. Here an event expected at the end of history happened to one person in the midst of it. The end of history, the destiny of creation, became partially present or was anticipated in the one person of Jesus, ahead of time as it were.6 The occurrence of Jesus’ resurrection is never portrayed in the New Testament. Instead it is presented as beyond the reach of human power and explanatory reason to describe. This has implications for what can be known about it. Technical or explanatory reason must be used to interpret the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ resurrection and to assess and interpret the belief that he is risen. But explanatory reasoning cannot prove that Jesus’ resurrection occurred in the way that a historical event can be proven to have taken place. This is partly because of the fragmentary nature of the accounts of it and partly because of its transcendent nature. The New Testament traditions indicate that the risen Christ remains transcendent to those who believe in him.7 Attempting to prove the facticity of Jesus’ resurrection clashes with this by effectively trying to reduce the risen Jesus to an object that can be manipulated. Even the appearance accounts found in the Gospels of Luke and John, which stress the palpable nature of the body of the risen Jesus, also emphasize that he is not an object subject to human manipulation. One can bear witness to Jesus’ resurrection,8 but one cannot prove its occurrence.

Descriptions of Jesus’ resurrection in the New Testament can be categorized into a formula tradition of brief summary or kerygmatic statements, and a narrative tradition of more extended accounts of appearances of the risen Christ or of the empty tomb.9 The formula tradition includes brief summary statements like “God raised Jesus from the dead” (Rom 10:9), which may have been one of the earliest expressions of faith in Jesus’ resurrection.10 Such statements are also combined with others about Jesus’ death, as in Peter’s speech in Acts 2:23–24, and sometimes with statements about the risen Christ’s exalted state, as in Ephesians 1:20. This formula tradition includes the list of those to whom the risen Christ appeared that Paul gives in 1 Corinthians 15:5–8, as well as statements that the Son of Man will be killed and then rise again, found in passion summaries such as Mark 8:31 and 9:31.11 It is generally regarded as older than the narrative tradition. Examples of it such as Acts 2:32 indicate that the belief that God raised Jesus from the dead probably formed the center of the earliest Christian faith and preaching.

The narrative tradition includes accounts of the empty tomb and appearances of the risen Jesus that conclude the Gospels, and accounts of Paul’s conversion in Acts. These typically present dramatic descriptions of the basic message found in the formula tradition. They can be subdivided into narratives of appearances focusing on the risen Jesus giving a command or instruction (Matt 28:9–10), narratives in which the risen Jesus appears incognito and then is recognized (Luke 24:13–35), and narratives about the empty tomb (Mark 16:1–8).

Various degrees of commonality exist among these summary and narrative traditions. All describe Jesus’ existence as being transformed through his being raised from the dead. Apart from the brief summary statements (Rom 10:9; Mark 9:31), most describe Jesus as appearing to some of his followers after his death.12 Those that give a time frame to these appearances locate the first as happening on “the third day” following his death, though Paul’s list in 1 Corinthians 15:5–8 indicates that appearances of the risen Jesus may have continued for several years.13 Traditions describing appearances typically portray Jesus as revealing himself to those to whom he appeared and as appearing in a transformed existence continuous with and yet different from his human form before death. His appearances frequently involve a commissioning to some task, usually connected with his resurrection. Finally, all accounts are embedded in discourses in which Jesus’ resurrection is seen to have saving significance for others.

There are irreconcilable differences among these accounts. To whom did Jesus appear? Paul speaks of Jesus appearing first to Peter, then to the Twelve, then to more than five hundred “of the brothers,” then to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all to himself (1 Cor 15:5–8). This list includes appearances that the narrative accounts lack (those to the five hundred, to James and to Paul), and omits appearances to Mary Magdalene (John 20:14–17), to the women (Matt 28:9), and “to seven disciples by the Lake of Galilee” (John 21: 2) that the narrative traditions include. Paul’s account does not mention the empty tomb or the body-like form of the risen Christ, which some narrative accounts stress. The narrative traditions also differ among themselves as to which women went to the tomb, when they went, what they saw, what they found and were told there, what they did next, where the risen Jesus appeared (Jerusalem or Galilee), and who saw him first.14 These differences are such that the various accounts of Jesus’ resurrection cannot be harmonized with each other. This has been seen as evidence against their historical reliability.

Some of these differences can be attributed to these accounts being written so as to establish the authority of specific people in the early church and to express the theology of an early church community or New Testament author. Raymond Brown argues that as the narrative accounts convey both a report of an occurrence and an interpretation of this, the differences between these accounts should be seen as expressing different interpretations of the underlying occurrence and not as evidence against its historicity.15 But the question then arises, where do the underlying events end and interpretations begin? The question “Did something happen?” becomes “What happened?”

The accounts of Jesus’ resurrection do not point to any one event as the source of the belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Instead they describe or mention a number of appearances, in which the form of the risen Jesus may not always have been the same. Also, these accounts are too fragmentary, contradictory, and bear evidence of too much reshaping to enable one to construct a coherent account of the events lying behind them. Attempting to determine the historicity of details in the narrative accounts of Jesus’ resurrection does not yield much in the way of firm results. For example, the empty tomb is only explicitly mentioned in narrative traditions concluding the Gospels. This suggests that it is a late development, probably an interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection originating in the early church.16 But why would anyone invent a story in which women were the chief witnesses in a patriarchal culture where their testimony was disvalued? This suggests that these accounts may have a historical basis. Also, it is unlikely that the message of Jesus’ resurrection could have survived in Jerusalem if his body could be shown to still be in the tomb or a grave.17 This also suggests that the empty tomb is historical. All three arguments are insightful but none can be conclusive. The accounts of the empty tomb have a symbolic character. They “dramatize” the faith of the early church in Jesus’ resurrection.18 But historical inquiry cannot determine the historicity of what they relate.

One can gather that a few days after Jesus’ death some of his followers, and later others who had not been followers, like James and Paul, had experiences leading them to believe that God had raised Jesus to new life. The appearance of the risen Christ to the disciples or the Twelve is implied in Mark 16:7 and narrated in Matthew 28:16–20; Luke 24:36–49; and John 20:19–23. These accounts of this appearance, though similar in many respects, do not seem to be dependent on each other. Paul also gives what appears to be an independent version of the same appearance in 1 Corinthians 15:5, 7.19 The relative independence of different accounts of the same appearance, combined with the agreements between them, is sufficient to infer that a real event lies behind them.20 There is also Paul’s testimony that the risen Christ appeared to him, one of several appearances that he speaks of in addition to this to the Twelve. Thus, while one cannot claim to know much in the way of details about Jesus’ resurrection, one can conclude that his disciples and others did have experiences in which they believed Jesus had appeared to them after his death, in a transformed existence, and that they concluded from this that he had been resurrected from the dead by God.

Modern historiography has typically used two criteria to assess the historicity of reported events like this. One is critical and the other constructive. The critical criterion requires that past events be similar to the historian’s own experience.21 For an event to be accepted as historical it “must be analogous to other events within the human world.”22 By this criterion it is difficult to accept the resurrection of Jesus as historical even though there is sufficient evidence to claim that the appearance of the risen Christ to the Twelve did happen. What the resurrection accounts describe is too unique, too unlike what is generally experienced by most people, to be “integrated into the world of modern convictions.”23 Yet in the clash between this criterion and the New Testament there is also agreement. The New Testament also characterizes the resurrection of Jesus as utterly unique and without analogy in history. The uniqueness of this event is part of the proclamation of it. The resurrection of Jesus was a scandal to the expectations and experiences of Paul’s time (1 Cor 1:23) as well as being a scandal to the expectations of the present.

This criterion that only events similar to present experience can be accepted as historical has been questioned. To do justice to an event like the Holocaust one must speak of it as incomparable,24 as lacking analogy in important respects to present experience. If the criterion of analogy is pressed too far it can become imperialistic towards others and make one’s own experience a confining prison. Yet even if there can be incomparable events in history, Jesus’ resurrection still remains contradictory in significant ways to modern experiences and expectations. It clashes with the experience of most that the dead do not rise and that incalculable suffering and injustice frequently find no answering miracle.

But there is also resonance between contemporary experience and Jesus’ resurrection. Globalization has made every person a potential neighbor to others, so that there has been in many contemporary societies a “colossal extension of a Gospel ethic to a universal solidarity,”25 extending to every corner of the earth and, in light of the environmental crisis, beyond the human community. The belief that this striving for justice is meaningful implies a belief that in the end the executioner will not triumph over their victim.26 This is analogous to faith in Jesus’ resurrection. In this respect Jesus’ resurrection is analogous to one of the underlying presuppositions of contemporary Western experience. It does not fit with the contemporary experience of history in which innocent victims often perish unaided, yet it does fit with some of the beliefs about the meaningfulness of life that structure the contemporary experience of many.

A second general criterion for historical inquiry is that of constructive or imaginative interpolation. This involves postulating as historical what is not stated but nonetheless implied by the accepted evidence in terms of modern experience.27 For example, if historical sources describe a person as assembling ingredients for making a pie, and then later as eating a pie made from these ingredients, the analogy to present experience dictates that the historian must postulate that someone made these ingredients into the pie that was eaten in order to construct a coherent history based on these sources. Without this kind of imaginative construction there can be no coherent account of history.28

This second criterion has led many to argue that some causal event must be posited to account for the rise of faith in Jesus’ resurrection after his death.

[The Easter faith] could not have been self-generated, nor could it have arisen directly from Jesus’ proclamation of the advent of the kingdom. If the only sequel to that proclamation was the crucifixion, then that proclamation would have been demonstrably false. Jesus had proclaimed the coming of the kingdom and it had not come. Instead, his message had ostensibly been utterly discredited by the crucifixion.

The very fact of the church’s kerygma therefore requires that the historian postulate some other event over and above Good Friday, an event which is not itself the “rise of the Easter faith,” but the cause of the Easter faith.29

Also, it is not simply faith in Jesus’ resurrection that must be explained, but the way preceding notions of resurrection were substantially modified by the early church.30

The concept of resurrection has a significantly different position in the New Testament compared to its place in Second Temple Judaism. The idea was present in the Jewish religious traditions that formed the matrix for Jesus’ activity and the life of the earliest churches. But it did not figure in any movement in Second Temple Judaism as prominently as Jesus’ resurrection does in the New Testament. The notion of resurrection and more specifically Jesus’ own resurrection also was not prominent in the teachings of Jesus. Yet in the New Testament one finds a “confident and articulate faith in which resurrection has moved from the circumference to the centre.”31 Jesus’ resurrection seems to have provided the “decisive impulse”32 for this and for the development of most theologies in the New Testament.

All of this suggests that what happened after Jesus’ death was dramatic enough and sufficiently tied to Jesus’ person that his followers invoked the notion of his being resurrected and exalted to describe it. The resurrection of Jesus thus appears to have been an interruption that affirmed his public ministry and yet transformed its meaning and his person. It is this kind of circumstantial evidence that led to the conclusion of Martin Dibelius that between the death of Jesus and the rise of faith in his resurrection the historian has to posit “something” that precipitated this change in his disciples.33

Such evidence cannot prove the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. The faith of the disciples “even with all its distinctiveness, could have resulted as well from an equally distinctive illusion as from a distinctive fact,”34 though it is unlikely that different witnesses like Paul, James, Mary Magdalene, and the disciples would all have suffered the same delusion. Still, though the belief in Jesus’ resurrection was necessary for the early church to come into being, it could have been a mistake.

In conclusion, the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is enigmatic. One can know historically that the shattered community was transformed, moving from despair to hope and joy, and in the structure of its beliefs. One can also discern formal evidence sufficient to argue for the historicity of some of the reported appearances of the risen Jesus. But the substance of what the witnesses convey is so unique that it cannot easily be accepted as historical. It clashes with contemporary experience and convictions in significant ways even as it resonates with them in others.

As noted earlier, the nature of Jesus’ resurrection also affects how it can be known. Jesus’ resurrection cannot be explained in terms of empirically deduced principles or its historicity proven by critical inquiry, yet it can be understood, received as testimony, as a revelation of God. Understanding is a form of knowledge different from explanation.35 The two are always related and intermingled but nonetheless distinct. Explanatory knowledge is technical in nature; it seeks to grasp reality in terms of law-like principles and is not tied to personal experience. While explanatory knowledge is necessary to know the basic parameters of an event like Jesus’ resurrection or the Holocaust, there is a dimension to the meaning of each that goes beyond what can be ascertained by technical reason and that can only be conveyed by testimony. Understanding such testimony always has “an identity cost”36 because understanding is a self-involving form of knowledge. To understand the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection is to have one’s identity changed. The appearance narratives in the New Testament all portray that to come to believe that Jesus is risen is to undergo a conversion.

Thus the nature of Jesus’ resurrection is such that there can be no binding logical argument leading from empirical inquiry to faith in it.37 In this all are contemporaries of those who first believed that Jesus was risen. There is evidence that supports their witness but it can never be conclusive. At some point one finds oneself moving from unbelief to faith, or one doesn’t. Not everyone makes the journey and those that do aren’t morally superior to those who don’t. While one can give reasons for one’s faith, one cannot finally prove or demonstrate its truth.38 Jesus’ resurrection is something that one bears witness to, but not something one can prove. Furthermore, belief in Jesus’ resurrection has never rested on the reports of his appearances as risen alone. It was and continues to be based also on experiences of the Holy Spirit associated with faith in his resurrection.39

Though faith in Jesus’ resurrection is intellectually defensible, it has several “in spite of” qualities so that it always remains subject to doubt and question. One must believe in Jesus’ resurrection in spite of the limitations of our cognitive faculties, which are unable to master or grasp it with “scientific certainty.”40 One believes in Jesus’ resurrection in spite of the Holocaust and other events of suffering and evil that make Jesus’ resurrection impossible to assimilate to present experience.41 Consequently faith in Jesus’ resurrection is easily mocked. It also displaces one. It makes one a pilgrim in this world, journeying towards the coming universal redemption that Jesus’ resurrection promises.42 The ambivalence of contemporary experience to Jesus’ resurrection depends partly on one’s social location and situation.43 Its eschatological nature means that it can never be domesticated. It is a revelation of the otherness of God, which is both a source of hope and joy and also of judgment. It presses towards the coming of a new heaven and a new earth, when evil and sin will be no more. It can be a powerful moral source that engenders resistance born of hope and love against oppression, suffering, and evil. It is not meant to be proven, but to be celebrated, lived, and proclaimed.

The Nature of Jesus’ Resurrection

During the twentieth century a debate has raged in Western Christian thought over the nature of Jesus’ resurrection. This is related to the question of its historicity. One position, exemplified in the work of Willi Marxsen and popularized by John Shelby Spong,44 interprets Jesus’ resurrection as a subjective event happening in the minds and hearts of his disciples and those who accept their message. Jesus is risen as people continue to live in his name. Opposed to this interpretation are others that stress the objectivity of Jesus’ resurrection, arguing that he appeared in bodily form as some appearance accounts portray him.45 Between these two poles lie a host of positions concerning the nature of Jesus’ resurrection. Marxsen’s subjective interpretation avoids the cognitive difficulty associated with affirming Jesus’ resurrection as an objective event. But the danger is that it empties the event of its objective content, which the New Testament insists on and which is crucial to its meaning. Elisabeth Johnson affirms the objective reality of Jesus’ resurrection but declares it “an unimaginable event enveloped in the mystery of God”46 and focuses instead on its salvific meaning.

It is important to note that the New Testament offers different images of the risen Jesus. The Gospel of Mark as included in the biblical canon does not depict the risen Jesus after his death but relies instead on the empty tomb and the angel’s words to describe and interpret Jesus’ resurrection. Paul affirms that the risen Christ has a spiritual body but does not describe what this looked like when the risen Jesus appeared to him. Some scholars argue that in the resurrection appearances “Jesus appeared as a blinding light rather than as a human body.”47 Luke and John on the other hand stress the palpable nature of the body of the risen Christ.48 In attempting to describe the nature of the risen Christ at this point in time, when there is renewed confidence in some quarters in the truth claims of religion in relation to other forms of knowledge and experience like the natural sciences, it is important to heed Johnson’s emphasis on the mystery of Jesus’ resurrection. All the New Testament witnesses affirm that Jesus’ resurrection included his body. But an emphasis on the physicality of the risen Jesus that forgets his transcendent nature can easily lead to absurdity and worse.49 It is not possible to develop an understanding of the appearance of the risen Jesus that harmonizes with every detail of every account of it in the New Testament. The body of the risen Jesus is palpable in some accounts. Yet in Mark’s Gospel it is simply absent.

Still one can discern certain commonalities among the accounts of the risen Jesus in the New Testament. A first is the emphasis on the continuity and discontinuity between the risen Jesus and Jesus of Nazareth. The risen Jesus is continuous with Jesus who was crucified. This affirms that Jesus’ death was really overcome in his resurrection. Second, this continuity is crucial to locating the presence of the risen Christ. The risen Christ is present in preaching, prayer, praxis, worship (especially in the Eucharist), and fellowship that is in continuity with the public ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. The risen Christ is also present where Jesus of Nazareth was present: among the poor, the oppressed, and the suffering. The risen Christ meets people today in the faces of victims. Finally, the risen Christ in present in movements for peace and justice that have continuities with his public ministry.

Jesus’ resurrection does not simply restore him to life, but transforms him to new life. The risen Jesus is more than Jesus of Nazareth was. Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed the coming of the reign of God. The foundation of this new reality is constituted through his resurrection. As the foundation of God’s coming reign, the risen Christ is objectively present to history as the otherness of God that makes possible a struggle for justice, an acceptance of one’s self, and an affirmation of one’s humanity in inhumane situations.50 Within history the risen Christ is not confined to one place as Jesus of Nazareth was, but is present as a pneumatological reality throughout history in the faces of victims, in the struggle for peace and justice, and in the worship of the church. Jesus of Nazareth was male, but once risen Jesus is present in and imaged by women and children as well.51 Finally, the risen Jesus is the fulfillment of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ resurrection is partly the culmination of the incarnation, the final yes of God to the life and humanity of Jesus and to the goodness of creation. Thus the risen Jesus is both continuous and discontinuous with Jesus of Nazareth.

Second, the resurrection of Jesus has both subjective and objective dimensions. Purely subjective accounts such as those of Marxsen fail to provide an adequate explanation for the rise of faith in Jesus’ resurrection but do attend to an essential dimension of it: the subjective response of those who believe in it. Jesus’ resurrection presents people with a call to mission and enables them to live it out. If people did not answer this call, part of the purpose of Jesus’ resurrection would have remained unfulfilled. Similarly, Paul in Romans 4:25 describes Jesus’ resurrection as occurring for the sake of peoples’ justification. This purpose is only realized when people come to believe that Jesus is risen and that they are reconciled to God through this.52 Throughout the New Testament Jesus’ resurrection is presented as a saving event that has “occurred and yet is quite without effect except as it is subjectively appropriated by individuals.”53 The resurrection of Jesus thus includes the creation of a community that gathers and lives in his name. Without this, it would leave no trace “in the world to which its message was addressed.”54 Regardless of how Jesus’ risen form is conceived, his resurrection is seen to have been an event intended to find further expression in the lives of others.

What is at issue is an appearance that we can say is “grounded in reality.” At the same time the life of the risen Christ is now lived in self-revelation to other human beings. That life is carried out in comforting them, in strengthening them, and in sending them forth. What is at issue is thus an appearance that we can say “grounds reality,” because the appearance brings itself to bear as the strengthening, gathering, commissioning, calling, and sending of human beings.55

In sum, Jesus’ resurrection has an inherently subjective dimension. It would be incomplete without those who believe in it.

However, the New Testament traditions do not describe Jesus’ resurrection as happening only in the minds and actions of his disciples, but as an eschatological event that initiates a new era in salvation history. The eschatological framework in which it is interpreted varies. But in general the resurrection expected at the end of time is seen to have already happened in the person of Jesus. This is the beginning of a new creation that will embrace the whole earth.56 In the New Testament traditions it is the objective nature of this event that empowers the believing response of individuals. While Jesus’ resurrection is not complete without peoples’ subjective response, it cannot be reduced to it. In Jesus’ resurrection a victim is raised up from death, so that the executioner does not triumph over him. A part of creation is rescued from annihilation and elevated into the glory of God, as a foretaste of the destiny that awaits the rest. The resurrection of Jesus transcends the dichotomy of subjective and objective dimensions.57 As a saving event his resurrection has a relational dimension and a purpose that is not complete without its subjective appropriation by those who have faith in it. Yet this appropriation is a response to something that has happened apart from their response to it.

As Jesus’ resurrection has objective and subjective dimensions, it is both an event, an objective reality and a symbol expressive of its meaning, a promise that points beyond itself. It was an event before it became a symbol. Yet the transcendent nature of this event is such that it could only be interpreted in “metaphoric and mythic categories.”58 It is a symbol based on a real event,59 but its symbolic power is not limited to what historical inquiry can establish.60 Because it is based on a real event, it is a promise that presses towards its fulfillment, when what it symbolizes will become fully real. One can speak of it as a saturated event full of multidimensional and inexhaustible meaning61 that reshapes one’s worldview and continually presses towards new and further expressions of its excess of meaning. It presents an ultimate newness62 that can empower struggles for justice, acts of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Yet if the “in spite of” character of Jesus’ resurrection is forgotten it can become a source of imperialism and religious oppression.63 The meaning of Jesus’ resurrection is intrinsically tied to his cross. Jesus’ resurrection did not obliterate this, but stands in a dialectical relationship to the continuing realities of what his cross symbolizes, such as suffering from oppression, the tyranny of empire, and injustice. When the historical concreteness of Jesus’ cross is remembered, his resurrection becomes an expression of God’s preferential option for the poor. This is a transcendent principle.64 As the face of evil changes from age to age, Jesus’ resurrection calls for solidarity with and liberation of the new poor, who, depending on the time and place, may be Jewish, Islamic, or atheist.

The “in spite of” character of Jesus’ resurrection also relates to the church. The risen Jesus is still on the way to the fulfillment of what is promised in his resurrection and remains transcendent to the church, which always needs to learn new aspects of the truth of his resurrection. As a result the risen Jesus frequently confronts the church as a stranger and in judgment. Accompanying this, one of the key meanings of Jesus’ resurrection is forgiveness. The risen Jesus may confront the church through the voices of other religions. This difference between the risen Jesus and the church creates a dialogical situation between Christianity and Judaism65 and, by extension, between Christianity and other religions. Aspects of the meaning of the symbol of Jesus’ resurrection can be revealed through dialogue with the symbols and teachings of other world religions.

Theological and Soteriological Dimensions

of Jesus’ Resurrection

Jesus’ resurrection has theological and soteriological trajectories of meaning. Both summary and narrative traditions interpret it as God’s vindication of Jesus’ person and ministry over against the repudiation of both in his crucifixion. An early and permanent meaning of this, picking up the apocalyptic understanding of resurrection, was that here God’s love triumphed over evil in a definitive way that points towards a final overcoming of evil. As Jesus’ resurrection was a vindication of his person and message, it was also, for those believing in it, a revelation of God. It affirms the characterization of God in Jesus’ ministry and reaffirms the Jewish belief in God as a source of hope for the final overcoming of evil. It reveals God to be ultimate (Rom 4:17), yet also living,66 active in history in specific events and new ways and doing new things. The similarity of the grammatical structure of some early expressions of Easter faith such as “God raised him from the dead” (Rom 10:9) to some summary statements of faith in the Hebrew Bible such as “God brought Israel out of Egypt” (Deut 8:14) points to how the Easter faith of some parts of the early church was “an innovation within Judaism” that could regard “the Easter experience qualitatively as on the same level as God’s classical act, the Exodus of Israel from Egypt.”67 The resurrection of Jesus was thus seen by some as a defining event in the life of God.

Jesus’ resurrection was also interpreted as the exaltation of his person into the presence of God.68 This led to him being portrayed in the New Testament as the key figure and his coming as the decisive event in the history of salvation. The transformation of Jesus’ person here was also seen to affect the Holy Spirit and Jesus’ relationship to it. Through his resurrection and exaltation, Jesus went from being inspired by the Spirit during his earthly life to becoming the giver of the Spirit as the risen Christ.69 The Holy Spirit was experienced as present in a new way through faith in Jesus and became identified in the early church as the Spirit of Christ. Jesus’ resurrection was thus interpreted as part of a theological event that included his ministry and crucifixion and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. Through these events God became present in history in a new way.

This experience and interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection, combined with the idea of his exaltation into God’s presence, led to worship of Jesus in significant portions of the early church, soon including prayer and praise directed to him. This created a dialectical relationship between the early church’s communal memory of Jesus and its inherited understandings of God, so that throughout the New Testament “given concepts of God are used to interpret what happened to Jesus and what occurred within the Christian church and its mission, and faith in God is in turn shaped by faith in Jesus and related events.”70 Jesus’ resurrection thus had a far-reaching effect on the early church’s worship and theology.

Jesus’ resurrection was interpreted as revealing that God’s love is greater than sin and evil, so that it came to be seen as a source of hope against various forms of suffering and alienation. As God’s vindication of Jesus as a victim of violent injustice, Jesus’ resurrection revealed that God’s love is ultimately greater than forces of oppression that bear down on people from without. Interpreted as involving forgiveness for those who deserted him,71 Jesus’ resurrection also shows God’s love as able to overcome the damaging effects of one’s own actions to one’s identity. The saving significance of Jesus’ resurrection also extends beyond history and human relations. For Paul it promises the coming of a transformed existence in which sin and death are no more (1 Cor 15: 22). Its eschatological character “makes it an event of significance not only for Jesus’ person but for the whole of reality.”72 Theologians concerned with the environmental crisis have seen in the resurrection of Jesus’ body a promise of salvation for the whole creation73 and a call for faithfulness to the earth. As the cross symbolizes all that negates God’s presence and alienates people and creation from their divine destiny, Jesus’ resurrection is a source of an all-embracing hope.74 Its soteriological meaning reaches out to encompass virtually every form of alienation, suffering, and evil.

Jesus’ resurrection by itself has indeterminate meaning in relation to particular social conflicts within history. It only becomes concrete as a source of hope through the memory of his public activity that led to his death. The memory of his public ministry, which was vindicated by his resurrection, gives definition to its saving significance,75 so that Jesus’ resurrection brings hope to the poor and oppressed for liberation. More generally, it brings hope for a life beyond death to creation as a whole.

Conclusion

As an eschatological event with objective and subjective dimensions, Jesus’ resurrection does not have any one fundamental meaning. It has many. It receives a different interpretation in each of the Gospels and throughout other books of the New Testament. These share themes and emphases, but they cannot be reduced to one common denominator. Jesus’ resurrection formed a dynamic center of meaning in conjunction with preceding Jewish traditions, the memory of his ministry and death, and subsequent experiences of the Holy Spirit. It gave rise to the faith, after his death, that he is the Christ. In the next chapter we will examine how this faith developed over the subsequent centuries, so that this Jewish “rabbi” came to be affirmed by Gentile Christians as the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, at once fully human and fully divine.

1. Becker, Jesus of Nazareth, 345, 354; Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 428.

2. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, 2:575–97, 592.

3. Ibid., 597.

4. Levenson, Resurrection and Restoration, 200.

5. Meier, Marginal Jew, 3:438–44.

6. Pannenberg, Jesus, 67.

7. Williams, “Between the Cherubim,” 91–92.

8. The narrative accounts of the empty tomb and appearances of Jesus should be not be understood as objective accounts but as testimonies or witness to “a concrete singular event” that they invest with an absolute character (Schüssler Fiorenza, Foundational Theology, 30).

9. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 482; Perkins, Resurrection, 19.

10. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 483.

11. Ibid.

12. Carnley, Structure of Resurrection Belief, 224. While Mark’s Gospel does not describe an appearance, knowledge of a Galilean appearance seems implied in Mark 16:7 (Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 494).

13. Jeremias, New Testament Theology, 301.

14. Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection, 24–25.

15. Brown, Introduction to New Testament Christology, 169.

16. Segal, “The Resurrection: Faith or History?,” 134.

17. Pannenberg, “History and the Reality of the Resurrection,” 68–70.

18. Haight, Jesus, 135.

19. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 496.

20. Ibid.; Dunn, Christianity in the Making, 1:861–62.

21. Collingwood, Idea of History, 239–240.

22. Schüssler-Fiorenza, Foundational Theology, 31.

23. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 504.

24. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 332.

25. Taylor, Secular Age, 695.

26. Moltmann, Crucified God, 223–24.

27. Collingwood, Idea of History, 240.

28. Ibid., 241.

29. Fuller, Formation of Resurrection Narratives, 169.

30. Wright, Resurrection of the Son, 477; Leon-Dufour, Resurrection and the Message, 22.

31. Evans, Resurrection and the New Testament, 40; Perkins, Resurrection, 84, 102.

32. Pokorný, Genesis of Christology, 108.

33. Dibelius, Jesus, 141–44.

34. Carnley, Structure of Resurrection Belief, 169.

35. Schweitzer, “Dialectic of Understanding,” 252–55.

36. Taylor, “Gadamer on Human Sciences,” 141.

37. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 83.

38. Schüssler-Fiorenza, Foundational Theology, 33.

39. Carnley, Structure of Resurrection Belief, 260–61; Haight, Jesus, 144.

40. Marion, “‘They Recognized Him,’” 145, 150–51.

41. Moltmann, Crucified God, 173.

42. Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 32–33.

43. Baum, “Reflections,” 13.

44. Marxsen, Resurrection; Spong, Resurrection.

45. Wright, Resurrection of the Son.

46. Johnson, She Who Is, 163.

47. Robinson, “Very Goddess and Very Man,” 119.

48. Catchpole, Resurrection People, 96, 134.

49. Tillich, Systematic Theology, 2:155–56.

50. Cone, God of the Oppressed, 114, 130–31.

51. Johnson, She Who Is, 161–162.

52. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, 129.

53. Perkins, Resurrection, 318.

54. Ibid., 317.

55. Welker, “Resurrection and the Reign,” 8.

56. Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 395–96.

57. Kelly, Resurrection Effect, 15–16, 126–27.

58. Perkins, Resurrection, 318; see also Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 508.

59. Tillich, Systematic Theology, 2:154.

60. Taylor, Executed God, 103.

61. Kelly, Resurrection Effect, 33, 59.

62. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 179.

63. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide, 246–51.

64. Baum, “Afterword,” 143.

65. Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 32–33.

66. Collins, Birth of the New Testament, 55.

67. Becker, Jesus of Nazareth, 362.

68. Perkins, Resurrection, 318.

69. Dunn, “Towards the Spirit of Christ,” 13–14.

70. Dahl, Jesus the Christ, 180.

71. Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 391.

72. Johnson, “Resurrection and Reality,” 1.

73. Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 258–59.

74. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 211.

75. Käsemann, New Testament Questions, 63.