He Is Risen

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He Is Risen
(C) 2003, Don Mize

An article, “The Jesus debate that never dies,” carried by the Africa
News Service in 13 April 1998, restates the arguments against the
resurrection of Jesus. The original article seems to have been written
by Margaretta wa Gacheru and to have appeared in The Nation
(dateline Nairobi). Many of the arguments are merely updates of
ancient rhetoric and can be summarized as follows: Jesus only
appeared to die on the cross; the whole story is an invention; the
scientific world view makes it impossible to believe; the resurrection
was a psychological reaction on a mass scale; and/or that the disciples
stole the body of Jesus.

An empty tomb proves nothing but that the tomb is empty. An absent
body proves only that the body is gone. However, arguments for the
resurrection have always existed. An 11 April 2001 United Press
International article entitled “Faith: Historians Say Resurrection a
Reality” gives an update. A summary follows: the earliest Christian
writings insist on the admittedly illogical fact of the bodily resurrection
as central to the gospel (I Corinthians 15), choosing fact over
understanding; Tacitus, the Roman historian, mentions the death of
Christ (Tacitus, Annals XV); Luke should be taken as seriously as any
other ancient historian; early Jewish arguments against the
resurrection agree that the tomb was empty; Jesus probably could not
have survived, medically speaking, given the torture and the
crucifixion (Matthew 26-28); a half dead Jesus escaping the tomb
would not cause a reaction of worship.

Pinchas Lapide, a Jewish New Testament scholar quoted in the article,
points out that for a beaten and weary band of disciples to be
transformed overnight into a victorious faith movement by some
psychological delusion would be a greater miracle than the
Resurrection. Also, Lapide points out that anyone attempting to invent
a story would not have women be the first to find the empty tomb:
women were so lowly regarded in that society as to make their
witness useless. The article concludes by pointing out that the
resurrection of Jesus remains the best explanation for the origin of the
Christian faith.

As interesting as arguments for and against the resurrection may be,
the fact remains that few people believe in a risen Christ because of
logic or probability. The risen Christ walks abroad confronting, now
as then, those in despair. An article in the 3 January 1997 issue of
Theological Studies by Kilian McDonnell entitled “Spirit and
experience in Bernard of Clairvaux” discusses the concept of
“experience” in the writings of St. Bernard (1090-1153). St. Bernard
lived before modernism drove a wedge between theology and
experience. McDonnell concludes, among other things, that Bernard’s
concept of experience is that the experience of God is a gift, not
something a person can make happen.

Also, Bernard saw the dangers involved in interpreting one’s own
experience. For Bernard, faith and Scripture marked the boundaries of
experience, acted as escorts for experience, and authenticated
experience. McDonnell rightly concludes that, even though an appeal
to experience has dangers, religious experience cannot be replaced by
texts, authority, theological demonstration, or anything else.

Dostoyevsky, the Russian novelist, was arrested as a young man and
sentenced to be executed by a firing squad. Mark Richard Barns tells
the story in the 1 September 1998 issue of the World & I in an article
entitled “Dostoyevsky and holy Russia.” Minutes before his scheduled
execution as he was saying goodbye to his friends, Dostoyevsky
looked at the world and the people around him with a new
fascination. A general rode up and read a decree from Czar Nicholas I
that reduced the death penalty to hard labor. Dostoyevsky always
dated the beginning of his spiritual regeneration to the minutes before
his mock execution: he saw things differently. While in prison in
Siberia, and during his forced service in the army, he read the Gospels
constantly. After he was pardoned by Czar Alexander II in 1859, he
began to set forth his insights in novels considered among the greatest
in world literature.

Dostoyevsky wanted to restore the mystical element to the Russian
Orthodox Church, for he realized that the living Christ made present
through the Holy Spirit is not understood by logic but by experience.
In Brother’s Karamazov, in a fable told by one of the characters, the
Grand Inquisitor jails the returned Christ and points out all the
weaknesses of his followers after fifteen centuries of Christianity.
The only answer Christ gives to all the arguments is to kiss the old
man, shaking him to his core.

When I was fourteen years old, during a family crisis, I began to pray
and read my Bible in a different way. The resulting religious
experiences changed my life. Although my understanding of my faith
has changed (and will continue to change), no one can take away
from me those early experiences. I discovered in my own existence
the first gospel proclamation: “he is not here; he is risen.”