He is risen. He is risen indeed! A blessed Easter to all.
Today we look at the fourth chapter of Tom Wright's book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.
Previous posts are:
1-2. Introduction, Confusion about the Afterlife in the World and Church
3. Early Christian Hope in Its Historical Setting
Chapter 4 is "The Strange Story of Easter."
A lot of the material in this chapter, again, is familiar from The Resurrection of the Son of God, but in Surprised it is in a very accessible form. He begins with a number of notable features to the gospel resurrection stories that imply that they have a historical basis.
1. They do not quote the Bible much.
If, as some have argued, the early Christians invented these stories because of expectations from the Bible, they have not left a paper trail. Where are the fulfillment quotes, "This happened that it might fulfill..."?
2. Women as the principal witnesses doesn't seem something you would make up.
"Nobody would have made them up" (55) and they are silently dropped from the tradition in Paul.
3. The portrait of the resurrected Jesus isn't what you would have expected them to make up.
He doesn't shine like a star as in Daniel. He has a body, but he passes through locked doors. "No biblical texts predict that the resurrection will involve this kind of body.
4. These texts don't mention the future resurrection.
While this was what it was previously all about. "Easter has a very this worldly present-age meaning" (56).
"I conclude this first section of the chapter with the proposal that it is far, far easier to believe that the stories are essentially very early, pre-Pauline, and have not been substantially altered except for light personal polishing, in subsequent transmission or editing" (57).
Easter and History
This section corresponds to a chapter in Resurrection (a much longer chapter). Wright proposes a two pronged hypothesis: "first, Jesus' tomb really was empty; second, the disciples really did encounter him in ways that convinced them that he was not simply a ghost or hallucination" (58).
Wright dismisses the cognitive dissonance theory, that the disciples so wanted Jesus to be alive that they convinced himself that he really was. The problem, as he explores in much greater detail in Resurrection, is that lots of "messiahs" and military leaders die without their followers thinking they were raised. And they don't end up with religions named after them still 2000 years later (I'm embellishing a little).
He runs through several other alternative explanations and finds them all wanting. He is not suggesting that the math proves the resurrection, only that it is by far the best explanation. He spends a little time talking about the presumption that, because resurrections don't happen, this couldn't have been one. "Worldview issues are at stake here and cannot be dealt with by the old liberal strategy of pretending... that to believe in the resurrection of Jesus is impossible for those who accept what one writer as called 'current paradigms of reality'" (69).
I suppose this is the key question from an evaluative standpoint. If resurrections can happen, then this event has all the markings of a true resurrection. If they can't happen, then there must be another explanation. Some of us are reading a book by John Polkinghorne that compares method in quantum physics with method in theology. He finds many parallels (he was a nuclear physicist who turned to the Anglican priesthood I think in his forties--physicists do their most significant work in their twenties, so I guess he retired to theology). He points out that quantum physics defies "common sense" regularly.
"What I am suggesting is that faith in Jesus risen from the dead transcends but includes what we call history and what we call science" (71). "The resurrection is not, as it were, a highly peculiar event within the present world (though it is that as well); it is, principally, the defining event of the new creation, the world that is being born with Jesus" (73).
He ends with a quote from Wittgenstein: "It is love that believes the resurrection" (72). :-)
Showing posts with label Surprised by Hope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Surprised by Hope. Show all posts
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Tom Wright's Surprised by Hope 2
Yesterday we began reviewing Tom Wright's book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.
1-2. Introduction, Confusion about the Afterlife in the World and Church
Today we look at Chapter 3: "Early Christian Hope in Its Historical Setting."
In this chapter Wright brings us up to speed on Jewish thinking on the afterlife at the time of Christ. This is a very, very abbreviated of the 78 page chapter 4 dedicated to Jewish "intertestamental" literature in his much longer work, The Resurrection of the Son of God.
He starts with a fun review of a 10 minute argument between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper at Cambridge in 1946 with lots of witnesses. Nevertheless, even to this day it is not completely agreed exactly what happened or was said in those 10 minutes. There is agreement on some basic elements, but disagreement on others. Wright's point seems pretty clear. He wants us to see the diversity of the gospel resurrection accounts as a potential indication of their historicity. The accounts, he suggests, are not developments of each other but are independent accounts that vary accordingly.
The question for him is "What should we believe about Jesus' resurrection and why" (33). On the other hand, "The issue is not whether the Bible is true or not. The issue is not whether miracles occur or not. The issue is not whether we believe in something called the supernatural or not. The issue is not whether Jesus is alive today and we can get to know him for ourselves. If we treat the question of Easter simply as a test case in any of those discussions, we are missing the point" (33-34). For Wright, these are subsidiary issues, not the main issue, which is the fact of the resurrection itself and its implications.
Now he gets into the ideological background. Two types of pagan belief, he says (this is chapter 2 of Resurrection, 52 pages). Some believed we become shades in the underworld who wish they had a body (e.g., Homer, Virgil). Others like Plato were disembodied souls and didn't want another body. In either case, there was no return. I question this sentence, "Most of the ancients believed in life after death" (36). I don't know if the images of mindless shades in the underworld really constitutes any real sense of afterlife, and there is the R.I.P. of the ancient world: non erat, eram, non sum, "I was not, I was, I am not."
Then he dives into Jewish background. "Resurrection meant bodies. We cannot emphasize this too strongly, not least because much modern writing continues, most misleadingly, to use the word resurrection as a virtual synonym for life after death in the popular sense" (36). Yes, there were the Sadducees who didn't believe in any life after death. Yes, there was Philo who believed in diembodied souls after death. But resurrection meant embodiment.
Alas. I did a lot of thinking on these things while I was in Germany in 2004, but I never got it into published form. Argh. I'm open, but I'm not fully convinced that this was the only way the word resurrection could be used. In Resurrection, Wright makes a lot of good points, I think, with the evidence. I think it was he, for example, who convinced me that the book of Wisdom affirms resurrection.
But while I largely agree with him, I do have some questions about the way he argues that resurrection always means embodiment. He has this "every instance" tendency (we've seen it with the phrase, "the righteousness of God," for example). I agree quite a bit with Wright's reading of Acts 23:8 on "angels" and "spirits" being immediate states at death. But the fact that they are in apposition to the word resurrection makes me think we cannot disassociate spirit and angel afterlife forms from the notion of resurrection. I also believe that the Enochic tradition tended toward some sense of spirit resurrection, whatever that might mean (e.g., 1 Enoch 104 and 22).
Wright ends the chapter with 7 indications of how surprising the nature of early Christian resurrection belief is in the light of its background context. And "the early Christian hope centered firmly on resurrection" (41). Then notes these seven things:
1. In early Christianity there is virtually no spectrum of belief about life beyond death. "There is no trace of a Sadducean view or of that of Philo" (42). I think there may be a little more complexity than he allows for, but I substantially agree with him.
2. Resurrection is a far more central belief for the early Christians than it was in second Temple Jewish literature.
3. Early Christianity was far more clear about the transformed body of Jesus than Jews were about what sort of body those resurrected would have.
4. The resurrection event, which was a single event in Judaism, has become a two stage process.
5. Early Christianity is unique in seeing the resurrection as something that believers should participate even now, working with Jesus in the power of the Spirit to implement what Jesus has already achieved.
6. The idea of resurrection as the restoration of Israel has disappeared as a meaning for the word.
7. Resurrection has become associated with the Messiah, which arguably it had never been prior to Christ.
In short, it is impossible "to account for the early Christian belief in Jesus as Messiah without the resurrection" (48). And "this demands a historical explanation" (51). I completely agree. If I try to get into the mind of an atheist looking at this data, I believe that faith in Jesus' resurrection is absolutely essential to explaining the early Christian movement. No wimpy Q community or Gnostic spirituality will account for the origins of Christianity. Whatever you believe about what really happened, I believe we are compelled to conclude that the early Christians sure thought Jesus had physically risen from the dead.
1-2. Introduction, Confusion about the Afterlife in the World and Church
Today we look at Chapter 3: "Early Christian Hope in Its Historical Setting."
In this chapter Wright brings us up to speed on Jewish thinking on the afterlife at the time of Christ. This is a very, very abbreviated of the 78 page chapter 4 dedicated to Jewish "intertestamental" literature in his much longer work, The Resurrection of the Son of God.
He starts with a fun review of a 10 minute argument between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper at Cambridge in 1946 with lots of witnesses. Nevertheless, even to this day it is not completely agreed exactly what happened or was said in those 10 minutes. There is agreement on some basic elements, but disagreement on others. Wright's point seems pretty clear. He wants us to see the diversity of the gospel resurrection accounts as a potential indication of their historicity. The accounts, he suggests, are not developments of each other but are independent accounts that vary accordingly.
The question for him is "What should we believe about Jesus' resurrection and why" (33). On the other hand, "The issue is not whether the Bible is true or not. The issue is not whether miracles occur or not. The issue is not whether we believe in something called the supernatural or not. The issue is not whether Jesus is alive today and we can get to know him for ourselves. If we treat the question of Easter simply as a test case in any of those discussions, we are missing the point" (33-34). For Wright, these are subsidiary issues, not the main issue, which is the fact of the resurrection itself and its implications.
Now he gets into the ideological background. Two types of pagan belief, he says (this is chapter 2 of Resurrection, 52 pages). Some believed we become shades in the underworld who wish they had a body (e.g., Homer, Virgil). Others like Plato were disembodied souls and didn't want another body. In either case, there was no return. I question this sentence, "Most of the ancients believed in life after death" (36). I don't know if the images of mindless shades in the underworld really constitutes any real sense of afterlife, and there is the R.I.P. of the ancient world: non erat, eram, non sum, "I was not, I was, I am not."
Then he dives into Jewish background. "Resurrection meant bodies. We cannot emphasize this too strongly, not least because much modern writing continues, most misleadingly, to use the word resurrection as a virtual synonym for life after death in the popular sense" (36). Yes, there were the Sadducees who didn't believe in any life after death. Yes, there was Philo who believed in diembodied souls after death. But resurrection meant embodiment.
Alas. I did a lot of thinking on these things while I was in Germany in 2004, but I never got it into published form. Argh. I'm open, but I'm not fully convinced that this was the only way the word resurrection could be used. In Resurrection, Wright makes a lot of good points, I think, with the evidence. I think it was he, for example, who convinced me that the book of Wisdom affirms resurrection.
But while I largely agree with him, I do have some questions about the way he argues that resurrection always means embodiment. He has this "every instance" tendency (we've seen it with the phrase, "the righteousness of God," for example). I agree quite a bit with Wright's reading of Acts 23:8 on "angels" and "spirits" being immediate states at death. But the fact that they are in apposition to the word resurrection makes me think we cannot disassociate spirit and angel afterlife forms from the notion of resurrection. I also believe that the Enochic tradition tended toward some sense of spirit resurrection, whatever that might mean (e.g., 1 Enoch 104 and 22).
Wright ends the chapter with 7 indications of how surprising the nature of early Christian resurrection belief is in the light of its background context. And "the early Christian hope centered firmly on resurrection" (41). Then notes these seven things:
1. In early Christianity there is virtually no spectrum of belief about life beyond death. "There is no trace of a Sadducean view or of that of Philo" (42). I think there may be a little more complexity than he allows for, but I substantially agree with him.
2. Resurrection is a far more central belief for the early Christians than it was in second Temple Jewish literature.
3. Early Christianity was far more clear about the transformed body of Jesus than Jews were about what sort of body those resurrected would have.
4. The resurrection event, which was a single event in Judaism, has become a two stage process.
5. Early Christianity is unique in seeing the resurrection as something that believers should participate even now, working with Jesus in the power of the Spirit to implement what Jesus has already achieved.
6. The idea of resurrection as the restoration of Israel has disappeared as a meaning for the word.
7. Resurrection has become associated with the Messiah, which arguably it had never been prior to Christ.
In short, it is impossible "to account for the early Christian belief in Jesus as Messiah without the resurrection" (48). And "this demands a historical explanation" (51). I completely agree. If I try to get into the mind of an atheist looking at this data, I believe that faith in Jesus' resurrection is absolutely essential to explaining the early Christian movement. No wimpy Q community or Gnostic spirituality will account for the origins of Christianity. Whatever you believe about what really happened, I believe we are compelled to conclude that the early Christians sure thought Jesus had physically risen from the dead.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Tom Wright's Surprised by Hope 1
I thought I would blog through Tom Wright’s book from last year, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, over the course of Easter season, hopefully finishing around Pentecost. James Dunn’s second volume seems to be a little stalled but I would like to dedicate perhaps as much as the rest of the year to moving through it as soon as it is out. Then maybe during Advent I can go back and finish Dunn's volume on Jesus.
John Drury has already blogged through Surprised by Hope and I have every reason to believe that you will get more benefit from his review than from mine. My approach, as anyone who has read me will know, is much more evaluative (especially when it comes to exegesis) and less edifying. But alas, I am who I am.
Today I want to look at the Preface and first two chapters, tomorrow at chapter 3. Then Sunday I hope to look at chapter 4. Then on the following Sundays till Pentecost I hope to review roughly two chapters a week. If I have time to interface with the longer version, The Resurrection of the Son of God, I will.
I’ve heard rumors that this book will become a Christian classic. It’s an interesting thought and time will tell. As Wright himself points out, people’s orientation toward the future often correlates with what’s going on in the culture around them. When times are desperate, we often find either apocalyptic “God is about to break into history” thinking. Or otherwise, we find a focus on “you die and go to heaven, which is a better place.” Perhaps it is no surprise that in a time when we feel like we can actually make a difference and change the world, Wright has produced a book that emphasizes the this-worldliness of resurrection both present and future.
Of course Wright is right to point out the “this worldly” orientation of much of the New Testament’s eschatological imagery. When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, he was not talking about going off somewhere but about something that would happen here on earth. And when Paul speaks of meeting Jesus in the air, it is probably not to go off somewhere else but to return to earth and participate in the judgment of men and angels (and women too :-).
Wright of course is not the first to point these things out, although he correctly recognizes that these well known data have scarcely trickled down to the pew. Oscar Cullmann dropped the same bombshell on Germany over fifty years ago with a little book called Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead. It caused quite a stir, much more than Wright’s book will if for no reason other than our culture by and large doesn’t care any more about what famous theologians and biblical scholars say.
What is interesting in my own pilgrimage is that I went to my Wright-phase in the early 90s. Then I did a sabbatical in Tübingen exploring different Jewish trajectories on the afterlife. I never published the results of that study (although I did finish my Philo book thanks to their excellent library). I might add that a slough of other afterlife books came out about that time, making another one by me completely unnecessary.
I say proudly, however, that I presented some of my early research to the historical Jesus section of SBL in 1999 while Wright was working on The Resurrection of the Son of God, and Wright took a copy of my paper. My paper started (as did one I gave to the Q section the following year) by sketching out four streams of afterlife thought in Judaism at the time of Christ: 1) no afterlife (Sadducees), 2) otherworldly afterlife at a future time (Essenes), 3) otherworldly afterlife immediately at death (Philo), and 4) this worldly afterlife (Pharisees).
I note with a grin that Wright expanded Resurrection after the Fall of 1999 (xvi) to include material like Chapter 4, which presents the lay of the land of post-biblical Judaism in terms of 1) no future life, 2) blessed and disembodied immortality, and 3) resurrection. :-) He doesn't categorize things quite the way I do entirely and of course since he is a better scholar than I am, he includes things I didn't include. If I have time I'll review the fourth chapter of Resurrection tomorrow along with the third chapter of Surprised.
So many thoughts, so few published... As you'll see, I've since come to wonder whether the "die and go to heaven" view is as completely foreign to the New Testament as Wright makes it.
In the Preface, Wright indicates that two questions shape the book: 1) the ultimate future hope and 2) what it means for our work for God's kingdom now.
Chapter 1: "All Dressed Up and No Place to Go?"
This chapter is a warm up. He will expand on its brief comments later. There is great variety of belief out there about the afterlife and, interestingly, "I suspect there was never a period when Christian orthodoxy on the subject was the belief of even the majority of people in Britian" (8). Some historians suggest that belief in hell was a casualty of World War 1. He reiterates and illustrates the two questions that shape the book.
The chapter ends with three basic varieties of (unorthodox) afterlife belief he detects today: 1) no afterlife, complete end to existence, 2) some form of reincarnation, and 3) something along the lines of ghosts and spirits.
Chapter 2: "Puzzled about Paradise?"
Now he goes into more detail on the variety even among Christians. There is the sense by some that death is our friend, a slipping away to a better place forever where we will soon join our loved ones. No, Wright says. Death is an enemy, an enemy that Jesus has conquered and will see finally vanquished at the coming resurrection of all the dead.
The emphasis on heaven and hell is similarly unbiblical. The Bible has little to say about either, Wright says. He goes through several hymns that, he claims, "reveal the confusion we have got ourselves into" (23). And further, we have come to put more emphasis on Christmas (=two chapters in the NT) versus what should be the center, Easter. "Take that away and there is, almost literally, nothing left."
Key questions? How do we know about all this? Scripture, tradition, and reason, he says interestingly, is the Anglican way. The Methodists would add experience :-) Do we have immortal souls? They have minimal support in the NT, he says. What is the starting point? Jesus' resurrection, he says.
More, d.v., tomorrow...
John Drury has already blogged through Surprised by Hope and I have every reason to believe that you will get more benefit from his review than from mine. My approach, as anyone who has read me will know, is much more evaluative (especially when it comes to exegesis) and less edifying. But alas, I am who I am.
Today I want to look at the Preface and first two chapters, tomorrow at chapter 3. Then Sunday I hope to look at chapter 4. Then on the following Sundays till Pentecost I hope to review roughly two chapters a week. If I have time to interface with the longer version, The Resurrection of the Son of God, I will.
I’ve heard rumors that this book will become a Christian classic. It’s an interesting thought and time will tell. As Wright himself points out, people’s orientation toward the future often correlates with what’s going on in the culture around them. When times are desperate, we often find either apocalyptic “God is about to break into history” thinking. Or otherwise, we find a focus on “you die and go to heaven, which is a better place.” Perhaps it is no surprise that in a time when we feel like we can actually make a difference and change the world, Wright has produced a book that emphasizes the this-worldliness of resurrection both present and future.
Of course Wright is right to point out the “this worldly” orientation of much of the New Testament’s eschatological imagery. When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, he was not talking about going off somewhere but about something that would happen here on earth. And when Paul speaks of meeting Jesus in the air, it is probably not to go off somewhere else but to return to earth and participate in the judgment of men and angels (and women too :-).
Wright of course is not the first to point these things out, although he correctly recognizes that these well known data have scarcely trickled down to the pew. Oscar Cullmann dropped the same bombshell on Germany over fifty years ago with a little book called Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead. It caused quite a stir, much more than Wright’s book will if for no reason other than our culture by and large doesn’t care any more about what famous theologians and biblical scholars say.
What is interesting in my own pilgrimage is that I went to my Wright-phase in the early 90s. Then I did a sabbatical in Tübingen exploring different Jewish trajectories on the afterlife. I never published the results of that study (although I did finish my Philo book thanks to their excellent library). I might add that a slough of other afterlife books came out about that time, making another one by me completely unnecessary.
I say proudly, however, that I presented some of my early research to the historical Jesus section of SBL in 1999 while Wright was working on The Resurrection of the Son of God, and Wright took a copy of my paper. My paper started (as did one I gave to the Q section the following year) by sketching out four streams of afterlife thought in Judaism at the time of Christ: 1) no afterlife (Sadducees), 2) otherworldly afterlife at a future time (Essenes), 3) otherworldly afterlife immediately at death (Philo), and 4) this worldly afterlife (Pharisees).
I note with a grin that Wright expanded Resurrection after the Fall of 1999 (xvi) to include material like Chapter 4, which presents the lay of the land of post-biblical Judaism in terms of 1) no future life, 2) blessed and disembodied immortality, and 3) resurrection. :-) He doesn't categorize things quite the way I do entirely and of course since he is a better scholar than I am, he includes things I didn't include. If I have time I'll review the fourth chapter of Resurrection tomorrow along with the third chapter of Surprised.
So many thoughts, so few published... As you'll see, I've since come to wonder whether the "die and go to heaven" view is as completely foreign to the New Testament as Wright makes it.
In the Preface, Wright indicates that two questions shape the book: 1) the ultimate future hope and 2) what it means for our work for God's kingdom now.
Chapter 1: "All Dressed Up and No Place to Go?"
This chapter is a warm up. He will expand on its brief comments later. There is great variety of belief out there about the afterlife and, interestingly, "I suspect there was never a period when Christian orthodoxy on the subject was the belief of even the majority of people in Britian" (8). Some historians suggest that belief in hell was a casualty of World War 1. He reiterates and illustrates the two questions that shape the book.
The chapter ends with three basic varieties of (unorthodox) afterlife belief he detects today: 1) no afterlife, complete end to existence, 2) some form of reincarnation, and 3) something along the lines of ghosts and spirits.
Chapter 2: "Puzzled about Paradise?"
Now he goes into more detail on the variety even among Christians. There is the sense by some that death is our friend, a slipping away to a better place forever where we will soon join our loved ones. No, Wright says. Death is an enemy, an enemy that Jesus has conquered and will see finally vanquished at the coming resurrection of all the dead.
The emphasis on heaven and hell is similarly unbiblical. The Bible has little to say about either, Wright says. He goes through several hymns that, he claims, "reveal the confusion we have got ourselves into" (23). And further, we have come to put more emphasis on Christmas (=two chapters in the NT) versus what should be the center, Easter. "Take that away and there is, almost literally, nothing left."
Key questions? How do we know about all this? Scripture, tradition, and reason, he says interestingly, is the Anglican way. The Methodists would add experience :-) Do we have immortal souls? They have minimal support in the NT, he says. What is the starting point? Jesus' resurrection, he says.
More, d.v., tomorrow...
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