In N.T. Wright’s third chapter of Surprised by Scripture, he asks the question, “Can a scientist believe in the resurrection?” In fact, this question does not need to be limited to scientists—it can easily apply to anyone who says, “How can any rational person be a Christian? We all know that dead people can’t come back to life. Science has proven it.”
To that mindset, Wright starts off by stating that the revered “scientific method” of the modern world, while certainly a tremendous method to understand how things work in the natural world, is not—indeed cannot be—the only way to understanding in all areas of life. Science obverses and strives to understand the repeatable facts of nature; historical events and occurrences on the other hand are essentially unrepeatable: there was only one Battle of Gettysburg, Waterloo, Destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 AD. Therefore, as wonderful as the scientific method is to understand the natural world, it simply is not possible to use the scientific method when trying to understand historical events.
And so, when we come to the resurrection of Jesus, Wright points out what should be obvious: (1) Jesus’ own disciples claimed he had physically come back to life, and (2) the early Christians were not under the impression that things like Jesus’ resurrection had happened elsewhere. Basically, it was physical, and it was unique and unrepeatable.
Wright then points out that the concept of resurrection was a thoroughly Jewish concept—it was the belief that when God returned to His people, that the righteous who had died would be resurrected. “Resurrection,” therefore, when hand in hand with the dawn of the new Messianic age. That being said, though, not all Jews believed in the resurrection. “Resurrection” was a belief of some Jews.
But Wright points out that with the dawn of Christianity, there were seven “early mutations” of the traditional Jewish view of resurrection.
- Unlike within Judaism, all Christians held to the belief of the resurrection. There was no variation among Christians.
- Whereas with Judaism, resurrection was important, but not the most important thing, within Christianity, the resurrection took center stage. As Wright says, if you take away the birth accounts of Jesus, you lose four chapters in the New Testament; if you take away the resurrection, “you lose the entire New Testament, and most of the second-century fathers as well.”
- The third mutation concerned the Christian view of the resurrected body. Simply put, it would be like the body of the resurrected Jesus. It would be a “Spirit-driven body”—meaning, it would be incorruptible; it would “run,” if you will, on the life of God Himself.
- The fourth mutation was the Christian proclamation that “the resurrection” had split in two. It had happened with Jesus, but another “phase” was yet to come: the future resurrection of his followers at the renewal of creation. This concept is the bedrock worldview of the entire Christian worldview. It is what scholars call “inaugurated eschatology,” or more simply, the “already/not yet” understanding of the resurrection.
- The fifth mutation was what Wright calls “collaborative eschatology”: the Christian belief that “God had called them to work with him, in the power of the Spirit, to implement the achievement of Jesus and thereby anticipate the final resurrection, in personal and political life, in mission and holiness.” Remember was what said in the previous post about the “vocation” of Adam? This is it. We are God’s image-bearers, and we work out salvation in Christ throughout the world.
- There was now a new metaphorical use of resurrection: baptism was a living metaphor for dying an rising again, for example. Look through Paul’s letters, you’ll see the “resurrection as metaphor” everywhere when discussing living the Christian life.
- Finally, resurrection now became associated with messiahship. Nobody in Judaism expected the Messiah to die in the first place. He was supposed to defeat the Romans, not get killed by them. Yet the early Christians pointed to Jesus’ resurrection as proof that he really was the Messiah and Lord of all. Why? Because he had defeated a far greater enemy than Rome; he defeated death itself.
Four Features of the Easter Stories
Wright’s point is that all these things are the object of a historian, not a scientist. We are not dealing with repeatable natural occurrences. We are dealing with historical claims, so what can we make of them? Wright points out four interesting features of the Easter stories:
- Throughout each gospel, there are hosts of Old Testament quotations and allusions; but strangely, the resurrection narratives are almost entirely void of any OT allusion. That is quite an odd thing, don’t you think?
- The fact that each account emphasizes that women were the initial witnesses of the resurrection. Given how women were held in such little regard in the first century, no one in their right mind, would simply make up a story involving women as the key witnesses.
- Then there is Jesus himself: he wasn’t some phantom or angelic feature—he clearly had a real physical body and was a real human being. But then there was something strangely different about it—it had been transformed into something the disciples recognized but didn’t fully understand. It was a “new physicality.” It seemed quite at home in heaven and earth, and it was no longer corruptible.
- Finally, in the resurrection accounts there is “the entire absence of mention of the future Christian hope.” The significance of the event was clear: Jesus had been raised, therefore he is the Messiah and the Lord of the world.
Wright points out that all these features are very, very early. If you want to know what the earliest Christians believed, this was it.
History, Science and Easter
Wright emphasizes that the best historical explanation regarding Jesus what that (1) the tomb really was empty, and (2) the disciples really encountered him in ways that convinced them that he wasn’t simply a ghost or hallucination. And more importantly, the kind of body that was raised seemed to be a new kind of physical body. Given that fact, Wright points out, “if something like this happened, it would perfectly explain why Christianity began and why it took the shape it did.”
What does that mean? Wright makes it simple: the New Testament proclamation, with Jesus’ resurrection as the bedrock foundation, is that of a new creation—not something merely symbolic or metaphorical, but a very real new creation. Therefore, as Wright says, the resurrection of Jesus “is not an absurd event within the old world but the symbol and starting point of the new world.”
Wright goes on to say, “If there really is a new creation on the loose, the historian wouldn’t have any analogies for it, and the scientist wouldn’t be able to rank its characteristic events with other events that might otherwise have been open to inspection.” So where does that leave us?
Wright concludes by saying that faith in Jesus risen from the dead both transcends but includes what we call history and science. It is something Wright calls “The Thomas Challenge”:
[With the scientific method] “…when something turns up that doesn’t fit the paradigm you’re working with, one option at least, perhaps when all others have failed, is to change the paradigm, not to exclude everything you’ve known to that point but to include it within a larger whole.”
The resurrection, as Wright argues is the lynchpin of an entirely new worldview that is not beholden to the corruptible reality of this age. He states, “…the resurrection is not…a highly peculiar event within the present world, though it is also that; it is the defining, central, prototypical event of the new creation, the world that is being born in Jesus.”
And the way to know and understand that new creation is through faith and love. As Wright states,
“…although the historical arguments for Jesus’ bodily resurrection are truly strong, we must never suppose that that will do more than bring people to the questions faced by Thomas and Peter, the questions of faith and love. We cannot use a supposedly objective historical epistemology as the ultimate ground for the truth of Easter. To do so would be like someone who lit a candle to see whether the sun had risen.”
So can a scientist (or historian) believe in the resurrection? Sure. But science and historical inquiry only can get you to the nature of the question, and the doorstep to a new reality. The old instruments, even though they get you to the door, will be found wanting once you walk through.
