hum

1st post ever.... be gentle!!

Having never worked up the energy to read N.T. Wrights tome "The Resurection of the Son of God" I have come across this summary by Wright himself. http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_J...surrection.htm Any comments as to his conclusions ?

Here are a couple of mine....
Wrights argument appears a plausible one but the question is, is it the only one ?
Is it the most plausable? Even if it is the most plausible does that make it the right one ?… I say this because through history things we haven taken to be plausable and self evidently true… have in the long run turned out to be nothing of the sort eg. Earth being flat and the planets and Sun rotating around the Earth…. The history of science is littered with discarded theories and “facts� that at one time best explained the evidence but at a later stage were found to be wrong.
It’s not like there is only one possible explanation for the N.T. writings and the belief in the resurrection.

Wright…

"First, there is a hare-and-tortoise puzzle currently vexing cautious-minded historians. I propose we take a tough line with it and simply insist on common sense. All writing, all history, all biography, is someone's 'construction' of reality. This leads many to say, again and again, that all we can know is 'Matthew's construction of Christian origins,' 'Mark's view of Easter,' and so on. There is a grain of truth in this. But the fact that the historian has a point of view does not mean that nothing happened. History proceeds, not just by deduction from each individual piece of evidence, but by abduction, by inference to the best explanation. We must not be browbeaten by an over-cautious epistemology. This is where the hare must stride confidently past the tortoise, ignoring the protests which say all he can ever do is halve the distance between them."

It may be fine to “stride confidently past the tortoise� but by what authority? It seems perilous to do this based on presupposition and as I have suggested… that this has in the past led to some serious error (Earth at center of universe) .

Wright....

"In fact, in this case, the evidence presents us with exactly the sort of result that Christian theologians ought to be happy with. I would not pretend to have found an argument that would force a sceptic to admit that Jesus 'must have' been raised from the dead. It is always open to anyone to say, at least, 'I can't think of a better explanation, but I know there must be one, because I intend to hold to my presupposition that dead people don't rise.' Cautious agnosticism is always an option."

Not sure how this is different from the Christian presupposing that it must have happened?

Wright....

"What historical investigation can do, and in this case I believe must do, is to clear away the overgrown thickets of misunderstanding, misreading, sheer bad history, and sometimes willful obfuscation, in order that the main texts can be allowed to say what they are saying and the main questions may stand out in their stark simplicity.
Historical investigation, I propose, brings us to the point where we must say that the tomb previously housing a thoroughly dead Jesus was empty, and that his followers saw and met someone they were convinced was this same Jesus, bodily alive though in a new, transformed fashion. The empty tomb on the one hand and the convincing appearances of Jesus on the other are the two conclusions the historian must draw."

I am not sure how he has arrived at this point….( especially as Wright himself has just said.. . "I would not pretend to have found an argument that would force a sceptic to admit that Jesus 'must have' been raised from the dead")
Surely all we can say is that the writers of the Gospels believed (or wanted us to believe) that this was the case. (taking into account the time lapsed between the event and also the at best, second hand perspective of the writers.)

Wright....

"I do not think that history can force us to draw any particular further deductions beyond these two phenomena; the conclusion the disciples drew is there for the taking, but it is open to us, as it was to them, to remain cautious. Thomas waited a week before believing what he had been told. On Matthew's mountain, some had their doubts.
However, the elegance and simplicity of explaining the two outstanding phenomena, the empty tomb and the visions, by means of one another, ought to be obvious. Were it not for the astounding, and world-view-challenging, claim that is thereby made, I think everyone would long since have concluded that this was the correct historical result. If some other account explained the rise of Christianity as naturally, completely and satisfyingly as does the early Christians' belief, while leaving normal worldviews intact, it would be accepted without demur."

I don’t think it is that hard to explain the rise of Christianity… it seems to parallel that of other religions.
The bottom line of Wrights argument seems to be that the early Christians believed the resurrection happened. That may be the case …it may have been the engine that drove the growth of Christianity, but that does not make it true. How many people believe all manor of urban myth and superstition?

The question that really needs answering is did it really happen!! …and unfortunately this is the question we can’t answer.

Wright argues that only the physical resurrection and appearances of Jesus could have altered and focused the early Christians. Is it possible that this “new� focus could also have been shaped by development ?…. By this I mean that the story was circulated to find meaning in Jesus’ death. I guess I’m thinking a bit like the way Saints are “made� by the Catholic Church ie. after their death miraculous stories are sought out, amplified and collected by supporters until a pretty average person has been elevated to stratospheric heights.

Vorkosigan

<howls with laughter><Wipes tears from eyes> Thanks, man. I can see that I don't need to be reading this stuff. What a waste of everyone's time and attention Wright is.

Steven Carr

That's a bit of luck, isn't it?

That is not a presupposition. It is an observation.

Wright believes Jesus was transformed into a new type of matter. Physical matter that can go through walls.

It takes a fair bit of evidence to discover a new type of matter. Ask the people at CERN for example.

Wright write 'Indeed, whenever the question of bodily resurrection is raised in the ancient world the answer is negative.'

So I guess Moses was not bodily resurrected when he appeared to the disciples. Was it a spiritual resurrection? Or an hallucination? Or did Moses die again, after he was raised from the grave, as Lazarus did?

wright writes 'There may or may not be various forms of life after death, but the one thing there isn't is resurrection: the word anastasis refers to something that everybody knows doesn't happen. The classic statement is in Aeschylus's play Eumenides (647-8), in which, during the founding of the Court of the Areopagus, Apollo himself declares that when a man has died, and his blood is spilt on the ground, there is no resurrection.'

Gosh! I guess everybody took their views from a character in a play.

But was resurrection really unknown?

Wright says 'The Jewish hope burst the bounds of ancient paganism altogether by speaking of resurrection. The supposed Zoroastrian origin of this belief is still argued by some but strenuously denied by others,......'

Wright carefully refrains from telling us why it is strenously denied by others. Perhaps the Zoroastrians had all gone to the theater to see Eumenides.

Wright says 'Finally, some at least of those who believed in the resurrection also believed in the coming of the Messiah, though the relation between Messiah and resurrection is not usually clear. The Messiah would defeat YHWH's enemies, rebuild or cleanse the Temple, and establish YHWH's rule in the world.'

Does Wright tell us why the people who wrote the Old Testament thought the Old Testament taught that about the Messiah? No, because Wright does not want his readers to question Jesus when he said that the Old Testament taught about a suffering Messiah who had to die and rise again.

Wright continues 'Almost all early Christians known to us believed that their ultimate hope was the resurrection of the body. There is no spectrum such as in Judaism. Some in Corinth denied the future resurrection (1 Corinthians 15.12), but Paul put them straight; they were most likely reverting to pagan views, not opting for an over-realized Jewish eschatology. Two named individuals in 2 Timothy 2.18 say the resurrection has already happened, but they stand out by their oddity, and they too bear witness to the fact that mainstream early Christianity did indeed hope for resurrection, even if by the end of the first generation some were using that language in a new way, to refer simply to a new present identity or spiritual experience — marking the road to the gnostic views of, for instance, the Epistle to Rheginos.

This almost complete absence of a spectrum of belief itself demands explanation, but before we can offer one we must add two further points.'

Amazing that Wright can produce examples of early Christians who did not believe what he means by resurrection, and then say that such things are 'almost complete abscence'.

How could Corinthian Christians, taught all the Gospel resurrection stories, have possibly denied a resurrection?

Are there early Mormons who denied that the Book of Mormon existed?

Amaleq13

If Vorkosigan hadn't been so overcome with tears of laughter, I'm sure he would have welcomed you to IIDB.

Welcome!