Resurrection of Christ

RESURRECTION OF CHRIST

This is of fundamental importance in Christianity, both historically and doctrinally. As a fact indisputable proved, it was the crowning demonstration of the truth of all Christ’s claims, 1Co 15:14-18 . He had repeatedly foretold it; and his enemies were careful to ascertain that he was actually dead, and to guard his tomb for additional security. Yet he rose from the dead on the third day, and appeared on eleven different occasions to numerous witnesses, convincing even those who were the most doubtful, and after forty days ascended to heaven from the mount of Olives. To this all-important fact the apostles gave great prominence in their preaching.Mal 1:22 2:24-32 4:33 10:40,41. In its relation to Christian doctrine it stands as a rock of strength, assuring us of God’s acceptance of the expiatory Sacrifice, of Christ’s triumphant accomplishment of the work of redemption, and of his raising to immortal life the souls and bodies of his people. He was buried under the load of our offences; but he rose again, almighty to justify and save us. His dying proved the greatness of his love; his rising again shows that his love had secured its object.

Fuente: American Tract Society Bible Dictionary

Resurrection Of Christ

I. The place of the Resurrection of Christ in the Apostolic Church.

II. The apostolic evidence for the fact.

i.The primary evidence.

ii.The documentary evidence.

1.The witness of St. Paul.

(a)The empty grave.

(b)The appearings of the Risen Christ.

2.The witness of the Gospels.

(a)The empty grave.

(b)The appearings.

III. The nature of Christs Resurrection-Body.

i.The Gospel witness.

ii.The witness of St. Paul.

IV. The significance of the Resurrection of Christ for Apostolic Christianity.

i.Evidential significance-in respect of

1.The Person of Christ.

2.His work.

3.The Christian hope.

ii.Essential or constitutive significance-for

1.Christ Himself.

2.Christian life and experience in all its forms.

(a)Justification.

(b)Sanctification.

(c)Bodily resurrection.

3.The consummation of the Kingdom of God.

V. Attempted naturalistic or semi-naturalistic explanations of the apostolic belief.

i.Older forms.

1.The swoon theory.

2.The theft or fraud theory.

3.The subjective vision or mental hallucination theory.

4.The objective vision or telegram theory.

ii.More recent forms.

1.The psychological or psychical research theory.

2.The mythological theory.

3.The spiritual significance theory.

4.The supernatural-without-miracle theory.

I. The Place of the Resurrection of Christ in the Apostolic Church.-The fundamental fact on which the Apostolic Church rests is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. What lies at the basis of everything else determining the whole round of apostolic thought and life is the conviction that the Jesus who was crucified was raised from the grave by the power of God and is now the Exalted and Sovereign Lord. Apart from this the very existence of Apostolic Christianity as exhibited in the NT is unintelligible and inexplicable. Three aspects of this fundamental significance of the Resurrection may here be indicated.

(a) It is the fontal source or spring of the apostolic faith, that which brought the Church into existence and set it moving with that wonderful vitality and power which lie before us in the NT. Much of modern historical criticism attempts to find the impulse which constitutes Christianity in the impression of the life and teaching of Jesus on His disciples. But so far as that went, and if that were all, there would have been no such thing as the Christianity of the apostles. There might have been memoirs of Him, there might have been a school of thought founded on His teaching, but there would have been no living faith, no Christian gospel, no Apostolic Church. He had spoken as no man had ever spoken; He had done many mighty works, works which none other man did (Joh 15:24). And more than what He said and did was what He was-the unique impression of His life and personality, whereby He made men feel that in Him they were face to face with one who was none other than the great Promised One of God, the Christ (Mar 8:29, Mat 16:16, Luk 9:20), the Holy One of God (Joh 6:69; cf. Act 3:14, the Holy and Righteous One).

Yet the faith called forth by the life of Christ was a faith which broke into fragments under the crash of the Cross. The creative force or dynamic of Christianity has, as a matter of history, to be found in an event that carries us beyond the limits of the earthly life. It was the Resurrection, viewed as a great declaratory act of God, the fact that God raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand (Eph 1:20), that re-interpreted and re-established the faith evoked by the Life, and for the first time gave Him His true place as Lord and Christ in their lives. This is best seen by reference to the reports of St. Peters speeches in the Acts, in which, by general consent, we have a true representation of the earliest Christian preaching. In these speeches St. Peter starts indeed from the historical Person of Jesus and front facts well known to his hearers regarding His life on earth: Jesus of Nazareth, a man accredited to you by God through miracles and wonders and signs which God performed by him among you, as you yourselves know (Act 2:22); anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him (Act 10:38).

This Divine approval of Jesus on earth, as certified by His works, was, however, apparently contradicted and denied by His death on the Cross, which to the Jew was the symbol of Divine rejection (Act 5:30, Act 10:39; cf. Deu 21:23). But the difficulty thus presented to faith by His death was removed or annulled by the Resurrection on the third day (Act 10:40), which is represented as a great historical act on the part of God, who thereby reversed Israels act of rejection and vindicated the claim of Jesus to be the Christ, whom ye crucified, whom God raised (Act 4:10; cf. Act 2:24; Act 2:32; Act 2:36, Act 3:15).

Thus through the Resurrection Jesus is proclaimed not only as Messiah (Act 3:18-20; Act 4:25-28), but as Lord (Act 1:21, Act 2:21; Act 2:33; Act 2:36, Act 3:13; Act 3:21, Act 5:31, Act 10:36), Saviour (Act 5:31, Act 4:12, In none other is there salvation), Prince of life (Act 3:15, Act 5:31), and Judge of quick and dead (Act 10:42, represented as in accordance with the teaching of Jesus Himself). So men are called to repentance and to be baptized in the name of Christ for the remission of sins and receiving of the gift of the Holy Spirit (Act 2:38, Act 10:43).

(b) Not only is the resurrection of Christ the fontal source or spring of Apostolic Christianity, so that from it the apostolic gospel dates; it is itself the very centre and substance of His gospel. So far from being a mere accessory or appendage to the apostolic message, a detached event added on to the life and teaching of Jesus to assure the disciples of His survival of death and of the truth of His claim, in it lay germinally and as in a kernel the whole gospel they had to preach; so that the preaching of Christ is for the apostles the preaching of His resurrection, and their primary function is to be witnesses of the fact (Act 1:8; Act 1:22, etc.). St. Paul but represented the common apostolic mind when, writing to the Corinthians, he said: If Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain (, there is nothing in it, it has no real content); and your faith is vain (, it is futile, to no purpose, fruitless of effect); ye are vet in your sins (1Co 15:14; 1Co 15:17). If Christ died and in that lorn Syrian town lies in His grave like other men, then the whole gospel of the apostles falls to the ground, for the good news they have to declare is that God hath raised up Jesus from the dead and made Him the Exalted Lord to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth. This Jesus whom ye crucified God hath made both Lord and Christ (Act 2:36)-this is the concentrated essence of the gospel they proclaim. There is nothing else in it except what conies out of this, and belongs to this, and is illumined by this.

The resurrection of Christ, viewed not as a mere revivification of His earthly body but as His entrance on a state of exalted power and Lordship, is the key which unlocks the inner meaning and significance of His earthly life and ministry. The earthly life of Jesus, with its amazing memories, is seen to be a very incarnation of God, a sending forth of His Son by the Father, the event to which all else in the worlds history had been moving (Gal 4:4). The Death on the Cross, the very symbol of shame, which had seemed to wipe out for them the meaning of the Life, becomes in the light of the Resurrection full of Divine meaning and significance, the central disclosure of redeeming self-sacrificing Love.

But more than this; the revelation of the life and death of Christ attained its end and became an effective reality only through the Resurrection. For only through His being raised from the dead and His exaltation to supreme power and sovereignty with the redeeming virtue of His life and death in Him, did Christ enter fully on His career as Prince and Saviour (Act 5:31), and become the life-giving principle of a new humanity (1Co 15:22), the second Adam (Rom 5:12 f., 1Co 15:45), inaugurating a new era in the process of Divine creative evolution. The religion of the apostles is communion with a Risen Lord. Only in Him, in Christ, in union with a living Saviour, have we redemption and renewal of life (Eph 1:7, Col 1:14; Col 2:13, Rom 3:24).

(c) As the entrance of the crucified and buried Jesus on a state of exalted power and glory in which He is Lord both in grace and in nature, the Resurrection is, further, the fundamental determinative principle of the whole apostolic view of the world and life. It pervaded and revolutionized their whole universe of thought, controlling and governing their interpretation of existence and creating a new intellectual perspective so that all things-God, the world, man-came to be viewed sub specie Resurrectionis. The characteristic apostolic title for God becomes God the Father who raised Jesus Christ from the dead (e.g. Rom 4:24; Rom 6:4; Rom 8:11, Col 2:12, 1Pe 1:21). The God in whom they believe is One whose character is once for all made manifest in that He raised up Jesus Christ. The Cross and the Burial had seemed to be the triumph of evil in the world, the final defeat of holy love. But by the Resurrection and Exaltation God had vindicated the holiness of Jesus, and by thus vindicating Jesus had vindicated and authenticated Himself. At the great crucial moment in the worlds moral history, in the case of a perfectly holy life, the omnipotence of God-in apostolic language the working of the strength of his might (Eph 1:19)-was shown to be on the side of goodness and righteousness. Through the resurrection of Christ, too, as no merely spiritual resurrection-the survival of personality beyond death-but a rising from the grave and from the power of death, God has convincingly manifested the supremacy of spirit over the strongest material forces.

The long struggle between nature and spirit was concentrated climactically in the body of Jesus, and by His bodily resurrection from death and the grave-and what other kind of resurrection from the grave could there be?-victory is shown to remain with spirit. Death itself, the crowning manifestation of the seeming victory of material forces over spirit, has been vanquished and overcome; and this supreme and crucial revelation of the power and character of God sheds its transfiguring light over all other revelation in nature and history, illuminating the mysteries of life here and of destiny hereafter. By the Resurrection assurance of personal immortality is given to men, and the present life in the fullness of its embodied existence is lifted above the vicissitudes of time and invested with infinite meaning and eternal value. Wherefore-such is the conclusion of St. Pauls great argument in the Resurrection chapter in 1Cor.-be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord (1Co 15:58). In a word, the resurrection of Christ was for the apostolic mind the one fact in which the world and history arrived at unity, consistency, coherence; the pledge and the guarantee of the gathering together in one of all things in Christ (Eph 1:10). It was the breaking in upon human life of a new world of triumph and hope, in which were contained at once the pledge and the ground of the consummation of Gods purpose for the world. Hence the vitalizing and energizing optimism of the apostolic outlook on life-born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1Pe 1:3).

That the Resurrection holds this place of centrally determinative importance in the Apostolic Church is a fact which, if not always sufficiently realized by the friends of Christianity in subsequent centuries, is at all events acknowledged by her opponents. D. F. Strauss, e.g., the most trenchant and remorseless of her critics in dealing with the Resurrection, acknowledges that it is the touchstone not of lives of Jesus only, but of Christianity itself, that it touches all Christianity to the quick, and is decisive for the whole view of Christianity (New Life of Jesus, Eng. translation , 2 vols., London, 1865, i. 41, 397). If this goes, all that is vital and essential in Christianity goes; if this remains, all else remains. And so through the centuries, from Celsus onwards, the Resurrection has been the storm centre of the attack upon the Christian faith. The character of this attack has varied from age to age. To-day it differs in important respects from what it was even fifteen or twenty years ago. The application of new and more stringent methods of criticism to the evidence, the rich store of new material provided through recent researches in comparative religion and mythology, the re-discovery of Judaistic apocalyptic literature, and the new interest in the psychology of religion-all this has given a now face to the critical attack.

It is not, indeed, that the apostolic belief in the resurrection of Christ, or the centrality of this belief to Apostolic Christianity, is denied. These are admitted on all sides as incontestable. What is called in question is the validity of the belief, the historical reality of the fact or facts on which the belief was based. It is held that in the light of the new critical methods applied to the evidence, and the new knowledge made accessible to us to-day in the light of what is generally, though ambiguously, called modern thought, it is no longer possible for us to believe in the Resurrection as the apostles believed in it. In particular, in much present-day discussion it is maintained that, in view of modern scientific-historical criticism of the evidence, it is impossible to believe in the resurrection of Christ in any other sense than that of a spiritual resurrection. The result is that to-day we are faced with this somewhat new situation, that not by the opponents of Christianity only, but by some of its most honoured supporters and advocates in their effort to recommend Christianity to the modern mind, the bodily resurrection of Christ is denied, or minimized as forming no vital or essential part of the Christian faith.

We shall first of all examine the nature and extent of the historical evidence which is presented in the apostolic writings for the fact of the Resurrection, and thence educe the nature or character of the apostolic belief in the fact. Thereafter we shall consider the meaning or significance of the Resurrection for Apostolic Christianity-this in itself is part of the apostolic evidence for the fact, as the true nature of a cause becomes apparent only in its effects-and finally examine the main critical attempts to explain the belief without acknowledging the fact. In the course of the inquiry the conviction will be expressed and supported that the recorded evidence for the resurrection of Christ, though in many ways disappointingly meagre and when critically examined not devoid of contradictions, or discrepancies, is yet adequate and sufficient for the purpose in view, and that those critics who come to negative conclusions do so less because of difficulties connected with the evidence than because of presuppositions or praejudicia of a dogmatic or philosophical character with which they come to the examination of the subject. The evidence available for the resurrection of Christ, it is recognized, can appeal aright only to those to whom the fact has a significance altogether different from that which an ordinary fact of human history can ever possess. Mere historical evidence is of itself incompetent to generate true Christian faith in the Resurrection. This depends on anterior and prior considerations determining our religious attitude to the fact-upon our philosophy of life and, in the last resort, upon our estimate of Jesus Christ Himself.

II. The apostolic evidence for the fact

i. The primary evidence.-In proceeding to examine the evidence for the fact it should be remarked, to begin with, that this is much wider than is often represented. The historical evidence presented in the NT narratives-upon the examination of which the truth of the Resurrection is often decided-is after all but a small pan of the witness by which the fact is established. The primary evidence lies further back, in the transformation effected in the lives of the apostles, giving rise to the Christian Church; in the fullness of that energizing life and power of which the NT writings are themselves but the product. To realize the greatness of this transformation we have but to take the picture of the apostles after the event as given in the Acts, and compare it with that before as given in the Gospels. Sadness has given place to joy, weakness to Strength, cowardice to courage, despair to confidence. The men who, timorous and un-understanding, had forsaken their Master in His hour of utmost need, who counted all their hopes in Him lost when He was put to death, who, disillusioned and hopeless, had for fear of the Jews shut themselves up within closed doors, now face the rulers of the land proclaiming that He whom they had condemned and crucified was indeed the Christ, the Messiah, in whom alone there was salvation (Act 4:12), and summoning them to repentance and to baptism in His name for the remission of their sins and the receiving of the gift of the Holy Ghost (Act 2:38).

Such a change, such a moral and spiritual transformation, with the results following, demands a sufficient cause. What the apostles own explanation was we know-the Resurrection whereof we are witnesses [Act 2:32; Act 3:15; Act 5:32; Act 10:39, etc.). They believed that the Crucified Jesus was now the Risen and Exalted Lord, raised from the dead on the third day by the power of the Father-a belief which early found institutional expression in the observance of the first day of the week as in the Lords Day. Whether they were deceived or not, is not now the question. It is sufficient at present to note that this is the primary evidence in relation to which all other evidence must he seen. It is not this or that in the New Testament-it is not the story of the empty tomb, or of the appearing of Jesus in Jerusalem or in Galilee-which is the primary evidence for the resurrection; it is the existence of the Church in that extraordinary spiritual vitality which confronts us in the New Testament (Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, p. 111f.). This is where the apostles themselves placed the emphasis. He hath poured forth this which ye both see and hear (Act 2:23), says St. peter in his first sermon, referring to the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost as proof of the resurrection and exaltation of Christ; and in his second sermon or address the healing of the cripple is adduced as further proof (3:16). In his view the evidence of the Resurrection was not merely a past event on the third day, but present religious experience. The Resurrection was not an isolated event. It was the beginning of a new and living relation between the Lord and His people. The idea may be expressed by saying that the apostolic conception of the Resurrection is rather the Lord lives than the Lord was raised Christ lives, for He works still (Westcott, The Gospel of the Resurrection, p. 294 f.). Thus it is that the continued existence of the Church, and of the moral miracle in which the Church consists, is a vital part of the evidence for the Resurrection. If the Resurrection were not a fact continued into the present, the historical incidents recorded would soon have faded, like all merely historical facts, into a past significance.

The remembrance of this primary evidence for the Resurrection has important consequences. (1) The Apostolic Church, the Christian society, existed before any of the NT narratives were written, and essentially is independent of them. Therefore even if the narratives were, as alleged, conflicting and confused-nay, even if it could be shown that there are features in them whose historical value is doubtful, this would not of itself disprove the fact of the Resurrection. We should in that case know less than we thought we did about the mode of the Resurrection life of Christ, but our faith in the Resurrection itself, of which the existence or the Church is the primary evidence, would not be disturbed. (2) It is only in relation to this primary evidence that the historical evidence presented in the narratives can be estimated aright. The narratives were written form within the Church, they were the product of the faith created by the Resurrection. Further, they relate to a fact which is no mere event of the past, but continues as a living power in the present, and so must be viewed in the context of living history and experience. Historical criticism, therefore, which isolates the narratives from this living context, and analyzes them out of relation on the one hand to the experience of which they are the outcome, and on the other to the experience in which they result, is in its nature abstract, and can give only a limited or partial view or the facts.

ii. The documentary evidence.-With this fundamental and primary evidence for the Resurrection before us, we pass to consider what is commonly called the historical evidence, that presented in the NT documents or narratives.

1. The witness of St. Paul.-The earliest documentary evidence to the fact of the resurrection of Christ is that presented in the writings of St. Paul.

(a) The empty grave.-St. Paul is sometimes appealed to in support of a purely spiritual Resurrection, as teaching that it was the spirit of Christ which rose into new life, and his view is contrasted with the more materialized representation of the Gospels. The empty tomb and the resurrection of the Body were, it is alleged, no part of St. Pauls teaching, but a later development. Schmiedel, e.g., supports his contention of the unhistorical character of the evidence for the empty tomb by reference to the silence of Paul -a silence which would be wholly inexplicable were the story true (Encyclopaedia Biblica iv. 4066). Weizscker urges that St. Paul says nothing of what happened at the grave because he knew nothing of it (Apost. Age2, London, 1897-99, i. 5). And Harnack, while thinking it probable that the Apostle know of the message about the empty grave, holds that we cannot be quite certain about it. In any case, certain it in that what he and the disciples regarded as all-important was not the state in which the grave was found, but Christs appearances (What is Christianity?, Eng. translation 3, London, 1904, p. 164 f.). What are the facts? In the first Epistle of his which has come down to us, which is also the first extant NT writing-1Thess.-written from Corinth about a.d. 51, St. Paul simply asserts the fact of the Resurrection without defining its nature. He recalls how the Thessalonians turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, oven Jesus (1Th 1:9 f.); if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, etc, (1Th 4:14). The fact is referred to incidentally as if it were a matter unquestioned in the Church. This is St. Pauls general attitude in his Epistles, and it is an attitude even more significant as an attestation of the Resurrection than any more direct evidence.

But St. Pauls conception of the nature of the fact is plainly indicated by the more explicit reference in 1 Corinthians 15, written about the year a.d. 55 (see Sanday, in Encyclopaedia Biblica i. 904), i.e., about twenty-five years after the Resurrection. Here St. Paul reminds the Corinthians of the fundamental facts of his preaching and of their faith-the gospel which I preached unto you by which also ye are saved (1Co 15:1 f.). In this earliest extant narrative of the facts, which is therefore the primary document in regard to the Resurrection, St. Pauls words are: For I delivered unto you first of all ( , first and foremost [Moffatt]) that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas, etc. (1Co 15:3 ff.). In this outline statement of the substance of his preaching in Corinth the following points of importance are to be noted:

(1) St. Paul explicitly refers to a rising on the third day, which was distinct from and preparatory to the appearances. This even ton the third day, as concrete an event as the death of Jesus, is set over against the burial, and is presented as the reversal of it, thus making clear what is meant by the fact. If St. Paul meant simply a spiritual resurrection, a manifestation of the spirit of Jesus from heaven, he need have said no more than that Jesus died and on the third day appeared to the disciples. The clause and that he was buried not merely emphasizes the full reality of His death, but points to the grave as the state from which the Resurrection took place. Why mention His burial unless it was His bodily resurrection he [Paul] had in view? (Dods, in Supernatural Christianity, p. 103). Who ever heard of a spirit being buried? Even Schmiedel somewhat inconsistently admits this: That Jesus was buried and that he has been raised (1Co 15:4) cannot be affirmed by any one who has not the reanimation of the body in mind (Encyclopaedia Biblica iv. 4059). So in the other two passages in St. Pauls writings where reference is made to the burial of our Lord (Rom 6:4, Col 2:12), In both, the Resurrection is presented as relative to the burial and as the reversal of it, showing that even if St. Paul does not explicitly mention the empty grave it was the bodily resurrection he had in view. This is borne out by the whole line of the Apostles argument in 1 Corinthians 15, St. Paul is replying to those in Corinth who denied, not the continued spiritual existence of the Christian after death, but the possibility of his bodily resurrection, on the ground that they could not conceive how the body could rise; and he does so by setting the resurrection of Christian believers, the quickening of their mortal bodies (1Co 15:42 ff.), in closest and organic connexion with the resurrection of Christ as the firstfruits of them that are asleep [1Co 15:20). Here, obviously, only a reference to the bodily resurrection of our Lord would have been relevant. This is the conception of the Resurrection which permeates his Epistles (e.g., Rom 6:4 ff; Rom 8:11, 2Co 5:1-5, Php 3:21), and it is reflected in the speeches of St. Paul reported in the Acts (Act 13:29 f., Act 17:31; Act 26:23). Such a conception of the Resurrection, indeed, was required by the whole context of Pauline thought on the matter. For St. Paul, as for the entire Jewish Christian community, sin and physical death stood in organic connexion with each other. Hence Christs triumph over sin involved for them His final and complete victory over the death not only of the soul but of the body as well.

(2) The significance of the term used in reference to the resurrection of Christ has to be noted as setting forth St. Pauls conception of the nature of the event. He does not say simply, He rose on the third day, but, He hath been raised () on the third day. The use of the perfect tense signifies that the event was of such a character as had an abiding effect on the condition of the Lord. His resurrection was not like other raisings from the dead recorded in the Scriptures, where the raising meant simply restoration to the old life and the old conditions, with the prospect of meeting death again in the future. Christ rose, St. Paul says, and remains in the risen state; He has triumphed over death: Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him (Rom 6:9). As risen He belongs to a new and higher mode of being. St. Pauls conception of the nature of Christs risen body is more fully elucidated by his teaching as regards the spiritual body (see more fully below, III. ii. and IV. ii. 2 (c)).

(3) This gospel which he had preached in Corinth, including as one of its great affirmations the fact that Christ was raised on the third day, was not, he says, peculiar or original to him. He had but delivered (, passed on [Moffatt]) what he had himself received ()-received not by direct revelation from Christ, but through tradition from those who were in Christ before him (see Lake, The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, p. 38 ff.). The channel through which he received the tradition he does not here indicate. In the Epistle to the Galatians, however, an Epistle accepted with practical unanimity by NT scholars though it is difficult to date it definitely, he tells us that three years after his conversion he went up to Jerusalem expressly to visit Cephas (Gal 1:18, ), that he stayed there for a fortnight, and that he saw St. James also. The term implies a careful and searching inquiry on his [Pauls] part (A. Edersheim, LT [Note: T Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Edersheim).] , London, 1887, ii. 625; cf. Knowling, Testimony of St. Paul to Christ, p. 222, and A. Sabatier, The Apostle Paul, Eng. translation , London, 1891, p. 81). That his knowledge of the details of the common Christian tradition may be traced to this visit and prolonged interview with two of the primary witnesses of the Resurrection is, therefore, altogether probable. As Schmiedel acknowledges, during his fifteen days visit to Peter and James (Gal 1:18 f.), he had the best opportunity to perfect his knowledge on the subject in the most authentic manner (Encyclopaedia Biblica iv. 4057).

Through this visit, therefore, if not indeed already at his conversion, he came into possession of the facts which he had handed on to the Corinthians as the common Christian tradition. Some hold (e.g., W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, Gttingen, 1913, p. 90 ff.,) that the tradition which St. Paul here repeats, though indirectly derived from the older apostles, was mediated for him by the Hellenistic Christianity of Damascus and Antioch, and suffered modification accordingly. But St. Paul distinctly asserts (Gal 1:11) that the substance of his preaching in Corinth was identical with that of the other apostles. This is a fact of the first importance. St. Pauls conversion took place not long after the death of Christ. Lightfoot dated it six or seven years after the Crucifixion, but the trend of more recent criticism is to place it much earlier, within a year or two of this event. Harnack places it in the year following the Death, as do also McGiffert and Moffatt, while Ramsay makes it three or four and Weizscker five years after (see article Chronology of the NT in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) i. 424). St. Pauls visit to Jerusalem, therefore, and his interview with St. Peter and St. James fall possibly within five years, but certainly well within ten years, of the Resurrection. We have, accordingly, in documents which all reasonable critics admit, the clearest evidence as to what the fundamental facts of Christianity were, as taught in the primitive community, within the first decade of the event, those who were primary witnesses of the Resurrection. These were that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that on the third day he was raised from the dead according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to His disciples. If St. Pauls testimony, therefore, proves anything, it proves that the earliest apostolic witness included not only the fact of appearances of the Risen Christ, but the empty grave and the Resurrection on the third day.

(4) One other point in St. Pauls summary statement is to be noted. The atoning death of Christ (for our sins), and His resurrection on the third day are represented as being according to the scriptures ( , Gal 1:3 f.). St. Pauls belief in the Resurrection on the third day has been represented as a deduction or inference from OT prophetic Scripture, based on theological rather than historical grounds (Lake, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, p. 264), or as due to a Messianic dogmatic, a pre-Christian sketch of the Christ-portrait derived from widespread non-Jewish myths (chiefly Babylonian in origin) and embodied in Jewish writings (see. e.g., T. K. Cheyne, Bible Problems, London, 1904, p. 113). In answer to this it is sufficient here to note that St. Paul claims to stand in this matter precisely on the same ground as the earlier apostles. The gospel be had preached to the Corinthians in its two great affirmations-the atoning significance of the Death and the reality of the Resurrection on the third day-was not, he claims, original to him; he had but handed on the tradition which he had himself received. The attempt to explain the primitive apostolic belief in the Resurrection on the third day as an inference from Scripture will be considered later (below, IV. ii. 3).

(b) The appearings of the Risen Christ.-St. Pauls witness to the Resurrection includes, however, not only the rising on the third day but the fact of subsequent appearings of the Risen Lord. In his outline statement in 1 Corinthians 15 the following list of appearances is given: He appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve; after that he appeared to over five hundred brethren at once, the majority of whom survive to this day though some have died; after that he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also-this so-called abortion of an apostle (1Co 15:5-8).

The purpose for which St. Paul adduced this list has to be noted, for the consideration of this at once removes certain objections which have been urged against it. There were some members of the Corinthian Church (, 1Co 15:12) who denied the fact of the resurrection of the dead-not the resurrection of Jesus in particular, but the resurrection of the dead generally. They said, There is no such thing as a resurrection of dead persons ( 1Co 15:12; cf. 1Co 15:29, dead men are not raised at all []), asserting a universal negative. Who these were St. Paul does not say, but we know that in his missionary labours among the Greeks the subject of teaching which proved the chief stumbling-block was the resurrection of the dead. In Athens, e.g., we are told that, when he began to speak of the resurrection of dead men ( ), they derided the very idea, and their manifest impatience and ridicule forced him to terminate his speech abruptly (Act 17:32; cf. Act 26:8). These in Corinth shared the prejudice of Greek culture against the idea of a bodily resurrection. They denied the possibility of the fact. They repeated the dogma Dead men do not rise as the last word of philosophy, much as in modern times the similar dogma Miracles do not happen has been repeated as the last word of science.

To deny the resurrection of the dead is by implication to deny Christs resurrection, and to do this is to contravene the Gospel witness, and, further, as St. Paul shows by the reductio ad absurdum argument, to render the whole saving worth of the gospel ineffective (Act 26:14-18), and to show that they believed the gospel heedlessly or at haphazard ( Act 26:2) without seriously realizing the facts involved. So, before advancing to the doctrinal discussion which was the real purpose of his argument in this great chapter, St. Paul felt called to rehearse the historical evidence for Christs bodily resurrection which he had received, and which he had already delivered to them by word of mouth when he was among them. In this rehearsal he recalled not only the Burial and the fact of the Resurrection on the third day, but a summary of the chief appearings of the Lord after His resurrection. Whether St. Paul is here giving his own summarized statement of the principal witnesses to the Resurrection or, as some maintain, a stereotyped or formulated summary list which he bad himself received and had handed on to the Corinthians (a selection made for purposes of preaching [Sanday, Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ii. 640a] does not affect the argument. In either case the list given is a summary statement of evidence already received.

The remembrance of this supplies a complete answer to the objections drawn from St. Pauls omitting to refer to certain appearances recorded in the Gospels. Weizscker, e.g., argues from St. Pauls silence as to the appearance to the women at the grave, recorded in the Gospels, and from his placing the appearance to St. Peter first in his list of Christophanies, to his ignorance of the fact. The only possible explanation is that the Apostle was ignorant of its existence (Apost. Age2, i. 5). And from this he proceeds to draw the inference that, since Pauls knowledge of these things must have come from the heads of the primitive Church, therefore it is the primitive Church itself that was ignorant of any such tradition, which is, therefore, a later product (p. 6). Such is the conclusion to which Weizscker comes on the supposition on which he proceeds that St. Paul is here relating the appearances in order to prove the fact of the Resurrection, proof which he under-takes so earnestly and carries out with such precision (p. 5). To like effect Schmiedel: By his careful enumeration with then next next then lastly ( , Act 15:5-8) he guarantees not only chronological order but also completeness (Encyclopaedia Biblica iv. 4058). On this ground he argues, like Weizscker, from St. Pauls omission of reference to the appearance to the women to his ignorance of the fact, and hence to the supposition that the Jerusalem Church, from which St. Paul derived his facts, included in its testimony to the Resurrection no such stories of the appearing of Jesus to the women as are now found in the Gospels. It is doubtless a fair inference from St. Pauls manner of expressing himself that he gives the appearances which he mentions in what he considers their chronological order. So much then after that , etc., denotes or implies.

But there is nothing to show that he considers his enumeration exhaustive. Indeed, there is everything against it. The statement here given is almost as condensed as it could possibly be, and it is difficult to see how it could ever be mistaken for an exhaustive evidential account of the proofs of Christs resurrection. In this list nothing more than the names or numbers of the witnesses are given. No mention is made of locality or other detail of the appearances, not from lack of knowledge but because the Corinthians themselves would be able to fill in the details from memory. The passage is but a recapitulation of oral teaching, giving in a summary fashion what he had enlarged upon in all its circumstances and significance when he was among them. For this summary purpose St. Pant selects the appearances to the leaders of the Church whose names were well known to the Corinthians and would carry weight with them, and who were, like himself, specially chosen and commissioned to be witnesses of the Resurrection (1Co 15:15; cf. Act 1:22; Act 4:33)-Cephas, the Twelve, St. James, all the apostle-mentioning, besides these, only the great crowning manifestation of the Risen Lord to more than five hundred brethren at once. This in itself would explain the omission of the appearance to the women which had a more private significance and would not he of special interest to the Corinthians. It may have been on this ground too, as Sanday suggests (Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ii. 639b)-because the two disciples involved were not otherwise conspicuous as active preachers or prominent leaders-that the appearing on the way to Emmaus is not mentioned. In any case, the mere omission to mention this appearing or that to the women cannot be held to argue St. Pauls ignorance of the fact (though this was possible), much less warrant the conclusion that the manifestation of Jesus to the women had no place in the primitive Church tradition.

(2) Whether St. Paul means that that entire list of appearances here given (with the exception, of course, of that to himself) formed part of the original tradition which he had received has been disputed. The grammatical construction continues unbroken to the end of Act 4:5 (that he hath been raised on the third day and that he appeared to Cephas, then the twelve) and then changes (then he appeared, etc.): and some hold that these later appearances were added to the list by St. Paul himself. But it is precarious to make the more grammatical structure of the sentence the basis of reasoning. Such a break is not unusual with St. Paul. Certainly the implied idea would seem to be that St. Paul is here summarizing the common tradition which he had received, and it is natural to suppose that the recapitulation extends to the end of the series. Chase interprets the break in construction, if intentional, as denoting that the Apostle regards the appearances which he mentions as falling into two groups, and infers that he places the appearance to Cephas and that to the Twelve among the events of the third day (Gospels in the Light of Hist, Criticism, p. 41).

A detailed examination of St. Pauls summary list will show how far it is in line with the Gospel accounts and confirms the narratives there given.

(i.) He appeared to Cephas. The source of St. Pauls knowledge of this appearance is scarcely open to dispute. When he went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, who can doubt that while St. Paul had much to say of his experiences on the Damascus road St. Peter told how the Master had appeared to himself on the very day of the Resurrection. Of the Evangelists, Luke alone mention this appearance and assigns to Peter the privilege of being the first apostle to whom the Risen Lore appeared (Luk 24:34). The source of Lukes knowledge is not difficult to trace.

(ii.) Then to the twelve. The twelve is here used as the official title of the apostolic body-a technical phrase (cf. Godet, in loc.; Lake, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, p. 37)-without exact regard to number. It is probable that the incident to which St. Paul here refers was the appearance to the Ten in the Upper Chamber on the evening of the Resurrection (Luk 24:36, Joh 20:19), or the appearance to the Eleven (Thomas being present) a week later (Joh 20:26); or it may be that St. Pauls reference would cover both these incidents. It is the fact of the manifestation of the Lord to the assembled company or His selected companions that in referred to, and the absence of Thomas on the day of the Resurrection is an accident. Accordingly, even if others were present on the first of these occasions, as Lukes language seems to imply (the eleven and those that were with them, Luk 24:33), the significance the appearance would rest in the recognition of the Lord by His chosen friends.

(iii.) Then he appeared to above five hundred brethren once for all ()-rather than at once or simultaneously (cf. Rom 6:10, Act 7:27; Act 9:12; Act 10:10)-the implication of being that not only did they see the Lord together but the occasion in question was the only one on which thin large company of disciples had so wonderful an experience (CQR [Note: QR Church Quarterly Review.] lxi. [1906] 328). The identity of this appearance with that on a mountain in Galilee recorded in Mat 28:16 f.-the appearance foretold in the promise of Mat 28:7; Mat 28:10 and anticipated in Mar 16:7 -has been maintained by many. And certainly this appearance would seem to require location in Galilee, not in Jerusalem. An appearance to so large a body of disciples at one time could only have taken place on the Galilean hills (Swete, Appearances of our Lord after the Passion, p. 82). Matthew, indeed, speaks only of the eleven disciples in connexion with this meeting in Galilee, but in the expression some doubted ( , Mat 28:17) there has been found an Indirect indication of the presence of a Larger body. In the small body of the eleven there is hardly room for a some (Orr, Resurrection of Jesus, p. 190). Further, as H. Latham (Risen Master, Cambridge, 1901, p. 290) urges, a meeting with the Eleven Only would not have necessitated an appointment in the hill country. It could have been held with perfect safety in a room at Capernaum. Matthews speaking only of the eleven disciples in connexion with the meeting may be explained by the fact that his interest lay wholly in the commission of the Risen Lord to the apostles which was given at this meeting (cf. Chase, Gospels in the Light of Hist. Criticism, p. 42). The identification can never indeed he more than a probability. Weiss (in loc.) rejects it, and E. von Dobschtz (Ostern und Pfingsten, Leipzig, 1903, p. 34). followed by Harnack and Lake, attempts to identify the appearance with the coming down of the Holy Spirit upon the assembled company on the Day of Pentecost. But in any case it is to noted that St. Paul, writing twenty-five years after the Resurrection, says that the majority of those more than five hundred were still living and could be interrogated by his readers for themselves as he had doubtless interrogated them. Of this appearance the Apostle makes much, including it even in a summary list; as well indeed he might, for, even if the Eleven could be deceived deceivers, was it credible that their error or their fraud would be shared by so large a company? Some there must have been among them who, as the days went on, would have exposed the imposture or betrayed their doubts. But if any doubts of this kind had arisen, it would have been dangerous for the Apostle to appeal to the survivors of the five hundred in a letter written to Corinth, where he had enemies who were in frequent communication with Jerusalem (Swete, Appearances, p. 83 f.).

(iv.) Then ha appeared to James. Of this appearance we have no notice in the Gospels. An extra-canonical account of it is found in the fragment of the Gospel according to the Hebrews preserved by Jerome (de Vir. Ill 2), a Palestinian work of the end of the 1st or beginning of the 2nd century. The Lord went to James and appeared to him; for James had sworn that he would not eat bread from the hour in which he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he saw Him raised from the dead. Bring, the Lord said, a table and bread. He brought bread, and (Jesus) blessed and brake it and gave it to James the Just and said to him, My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of Man has risen from the dead. This cannot, however, with any confidence be connected with the appearance to James the Lords brother of which S. Paul speaks (Swete, p. 89 f. cf. J. B. Mayor, Epistle of St. James 3, London, 1910, p. 27). Though not thus referred to elsewhere in the NT, corroboration of the fact may be derived from the light thrown by it on what we are told of the Lords brethren after the Resurrection. That they did not believe in Him during the days of His public ministry is recorded in the Fourth Gospel (Joh 7:5; cf Mar 3:21). After the Ascension, however, we find them included among the little company of believers (Act 1:14); and within a short time we find St. James in particular president of the Jerusalem Church (Act 15:13). The natural explanation of the change in contained in St. Pauls assertion He appeared to James. It seems impossible to doubt that St. Paul derived his information direct from St. James himself during his fortnight, visit to Jerusalem (Gal 1:18); and this appearance is included in the summary because of the special value attached to the testimony of St. James from the fact that he was the eldest brother of the Lord and head of the Jerusalem Mother Church, as well as from the fact of his previous unbelief.

(v.) Then to all the apostles. The appearances in this list being set down in chronological order, the incident to which St. Paul here refers may with a reasonable degree of probability be identified with the one appearance of Christ to the Eleven before the Ascension, more circumstantially narrated by Luke (Luk 24:50 f., Act 1:6 f.; cf. Mar 16:14 f.). Act 1:22, which speaks of those who had companied with the Eleven from the beginning until the day that he was received up, would support the contention of those who hold that on the occasion of this appearance others were present besides the Eleven, and that St. Paul means to convey this by distinguishing an appearance of all the apostles from an appearance to the twelve. St. Pauls wider usage of the term makes such an interpretation possible.

The appearances recorded by St. Paul may thus be held to correspond to appearances recorded in the Gospels, with the exception of that to St. James, which we have seen reason to assume he obtained at first hand during his visit to Jerusalem. The further appearances of the Risen Christ recorded in the Gospels of which there is no mention in St. Pauls summary-the appearance to the women, to Mary Magdalene, to the travellers to Emmaus, to the seven at the Sea of Tiberias-may have been omitted for the reason already indicated, viz. that they were of less interest for the purpose in view, having little more than a private significance. St. Pauls list, therefore, helps us to verify, and at one or two points to supplement, the narrative of the Gospels. The significance of this has to be noted. It has often been asserted that the Gospel story of the Resurrection was not committed to writing till thirty or forty years after the events recorded, and that this period allows time for the incorporation of details which may be nothing more than tradition. But here we have written down within twenty-two or twenty-three years of the event (taking the date of 1 Cor. as a.d. 55) a list of witnesses expressly affirmed to be part of the tradition which St. Paul had received either at his conversion (a.d. 31 or 33) or, at latest, during his visit to Jerusalem three years later, from first-hand sources, thus taking us back to within a few years of the event. And how remarkable a list it is-Cephas, James, the twelve, more than five hundred brethren, and all the apostles. To realize the weight of this testimony it must be taken as a whole and not in its isolated parts. The number and variety of the persons to whom the manifestations were made, as well as the character and status of the witnesses and the simultaneous perception by many, make this it statement of evidence for the Resurrection which cannot be made light of by the impartial historian.

(3) The most important appearing of all, as giving St. Pauls direct evidence to the Resurrection-an addition to the traditional list received-has yet to be considered. Behind St. Pauls preaching of the Resurrection there stood not only the testimony of others, but the great historical fact of the Risen Lords appearing to himself on the way to Damascus. Last of all ( ) he appeared also to me-to this so-called abortion of an apostle ( v. 8).

The Authorized Version translation as to one born out of due time finds the suggestion in to be that he was born too late to witness one of the normal appearing of Christ after the Resurrection and before the Ascension. But J. Weiss points out (H. A. W. Meyer, Kommentar ber das NT, Gttingen, 1868-78, Eng. translation , London, 1873-95, in loc.) that means born not too late but too early, too quickly, the suggestion being that of the suddenness end violence of St. Pauls birth into Christ. His was an unripe and violent birth (cf. G. G. Findlay, Expositors Greek Testament , 1 Cor, London, 1900, in loc., the unripe birth of one who was changed at a stroke from the persecutor into the Apostle, instead of maturing normally for his work). In either case the point is the abnormality of St. Pauls birth into faith and apostleship, and probably the significance of the article is, as Weiss points out, that was an insulting epithet flung at St. Paul by those who belittled his apostleship. In their eyes he was a real Missgeburt. St. Paul adopts the title and gives it a deeper meaning, arguing that, notwithstanding his abnormality and unworthiness, his apostleship was as valid as that of the older apostles.

A considerable body of negative criticism has maintained that the appearance to St. Paul was of an inward visionary character, and that, since he includes it in his list with the others without any discrimination between them except as regards time, using the same word () to describe all the appearances, he must have regarded these as like his own, visionary. Weizscker, e.g., says: There is absolutely no proof that Paul presupposed a physical Christophany in the case of the older Apostles. Had he done so he could not have put his own experience on a level with theirs. But since he does this, we must conclude that he looked upon the visions of his predecessors in the same light as his own (Apost. Age2, i. 9; cf. O. Pfleiderer, Christian Origins, Eng. translation , London, 1906, pp. 136f., 160f.). The more materialistic accounts of the appearances given in the Gospels are the outcome of later unhistorical embellishments. The truth, however, is, as Westcott points out (Gospel of the Resurrection, p. 111), that the exact converse is the proper line of argument. St. Paul, we have seen, conceived of the Resurrection as a bodily resurrection, in this believing himself to be at one with the older apostles, and his use of the same term to describe all the appearances shows that he regarded the appearance of the Risen Lord to himself on the road to Damascus as of the same kind as those granted to the others. He believed, and always acted on the belief, that he had seen the Risen Lord in the same sense as did those who saw Him during the forty days, that he was a witness of Christs resurrection in the same sense as the others were, and the last of such witnesses; and this seeing he regarded as containing the basis and justification of his apostolic mission. He claimed to be as directly commissioned by our Lord in person as any other of the apostles (Gal 1:11-17). Am I not an apostle, have I not seen Jesus our Lord? ( , 1Co 9:1) (cf. Joh 20:18, ; Joh 20:25, Joh 20:29, ). The phrase seems to have been current in the Apostolic Church in speaking of a personal experience of the appearances of the risen Christ (Swete, Appearances, p. 41 n. [Note: . note.] ). That the reference here is to a risen appearance and not to a seeing of Jesus during His earthly life is obvious. For even if, as some maintain, St. Paul had so seen the Lord, what he is concerned with in this passage is his claim to be an apostle and a witness equally with the Twelve of the Lords resurrection; and to justify this claim a seeing of the Risen Lord was necessary.

The visionary character of this experience has sometimes been argued from the mere use of the term , but this in illegitimate. The term is, indeed, sometimes used of visionary seeing (e.g. Act 16:9); but it is used equally of seeing which is not visionary (e.g. Act 7:26). What it suggests in almost every case is the idea of something sudden or unexpected; that which is seen is conceived to be so, not because one is looking at it or for it, but because it has unexpectedly thrust itself upon the sight (Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, p. 116). Support for the visionary interpretation of the appearance has, however, been sought by reference to St. Pauls words elsewhere.

Two passages in particular have been adduced: 2Co 12:1-9, Gal 1:15 f. To take the latter first: When it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me even from my mothers womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me ( ), that I might preach him among the Gentiles. That this revelation refers to his experience near Damascus is indicated in v. 17; and it is urged that in these words St. Paul unequivocally asserts the inward character of the revelation granted to him, and that this meaning must in consequence be applied to all other passages in his writings where the point is spoken of.

But St. Pauls assertion here of the inward character of the revelation does not require us to resolve the whole manifestation into an inward experience and exclude an accompanying or preceding appearance vouchsafed to the senses. Lightfoot (in loc.) maintains that the words, when it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, should be taken in close connexion with the words immediately following, that I might preach him among the Gentiles (this giving the content of the inner and spiritual revelation); while the words, called me by his grace, should he understood as a reference to the actual event on the Damascus road on which the inner revelation supervened. However this may be, the admission of an inner revelation does not exclude an external manifestation as well. Even such a negative critic as Meyer admits this: It is not therefore (because of the inward revelation) to be denied that Paul conceived the appearance of Christ to him to be objective and external (Die Auferstehung Christi, p. 186). The revelation of God to him was two-fold, the inward supplementing the outward. Such an inward revelation indeed, as Knowling points out, was necessary to complete and interpret the outward. Without this the outward appearance could never have been recognised for what it was in its full meaning, nor could the Apostle have been assured against all suspicion of an illusion of the senses (Testimony of St. Paul, p. 184). The outer revelation separated from the inner would have been valueless, and would have left St. Paul in the same bewildered state as the companions of his journey. But the outward revelation, though valueless without the inward, was a necessary condition and presupposition of it.

In the other passage referred to, 2Co 12:1 ff., St. Paul writes, I must needs glory, though it is not expedient; but I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord, etc. May not the Apostle, it is urged, have seen the Lord in one of these ecstatic visions, visions with regard to which he could not even affirm whether he was in the body or out of it? But this very passage, as Sabatier truly observes, shows that Paul, so far from comparing the manifestation of Christ to him at his conversion with the visions he afterwards enjoyed, laid down an essential difference between them (The Apostle Paul, p. 65). Of the latter he speaks with the utmost reserve and reticence-of which it is not expedient that he should glory. But the former he places in the forefront of his preaching, as containing not only the grounds of his conversion, but, as we have seen, the basis of his claim to apostleship. Moreover, St. Paul describes the appearance of Christ here referred to as the last of a series-last of all ( ). The force of the words is often overlooked. They do not mean merely that St. Paul was the last of the particular series or persons named in the previous verses; he does not say that Christ appeared to him the last; but that He appeared to him for the last time, i.e. as in a series which was now closed (Knowling, p. 182). St. Paul, we know, had many visions and revelations of the Lord after this, and he could not therefore tell us more definitely than he does by this expression last of all how fully and clearly he distinguished between the Damascus vision and every other vision of the Risen Saviour (cf. Weiss, on 1Co 15:8 : All later visions of Christ belong for Paul to a different category, they cannot be viewed in the same way as proofs of the Resurrection).

This external objective character of the appearance of the Risen Christ to St. Paul is corroborated by an examination of the three accounts of it given in Acts (Act 9:1-22; Act 22:1-16; Act 26:1-18). The first occurs in the course of Lukes own narrative of the circumstances of St. Pauls conversion. The second occurs in the report of St. Pauls defence before Lysias, when Luke was probably present (a we section). The third is in the report of St. Pauls defence before Agrippa, when Luke again was probably present. Of these different accounts Schmiedel says that they contradict one another so violently that it is difficult to imagine how it could ever have been possible for an author to take them up into his book in their present forms (Encyclopaedia Biblica iv. 4063). The divergences, however, relate to details, not to the essential facts. In the essential point there is the same impression throughout (H. Weinel, St. Paul, Eng. translation , London, 1906, p. 77).

The chief variations concern (i.) the effect of the appearance upon St. Pauls companions: in the first account they are described as hearing the voice but beholding no man (Act 9:7, , ); in the second it is said, They beheld indeed the light, but heard not the voice or him that spake to me (Act 22:9, ); (ii.) the place of Ananias: in the first account Saul is bidden to arise and go into city, where it shall be told him what he must do. So also in the second account. The instruction is then left to be given by Ananias. But in the third account the instruction is given by the Lord Himself and no mention is made of Ananias. These variations, however, are relatively unimportant. As regards (i.), in the very variation a significance has been discerned. They may have heard a vague sound (, genitive), and yet not the articulate, intelligible voice (, accusative), which fell upon St. Pauls ear with a definite meaning (H. A. A. Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, London, 1904, p. 86; cf. Thayer Grimms Gr.-Eng. Lexicon of the NT, s.v.). As regards (ii.), St. Pauls omission in Acts 26 of the part of Ananias may be sufficiently explained by the difference of circumstances. He naturally dwelt on it in his defence before a Jewish mob (Acts 22), because the mention of Ananias and his part would be reassuring to his hearers, while in speaking before Festus and Agrippa at Caesarea such a reference would be uncalled for. In Acts 9 we have the historians own circumstantial narrative of the course of events where we would expect Ananias to be mentioned.

In regard to St. Pauls own experience of the appearance the different accounts agree in the following details. (i.) A light from heaven suddenly shone round about him as he journeyed to Damascus (Act 9:3, ; Act 22:6, ; Act 26:13, ). Of this light Sauls fellow-travellers also were cognizant. (ii.) From the shock of this dazzling light Saul falls prostrate on the ground. (iii.) He hears a voice (the others heard only a sound), which he discovers to be that of the Glorified Jesus speaking to him in words which he can understand. Whether, besides seeing a splendour of light and hearing a voice, St. Paul saw also the Risen Lord in bodily form the accounts in Acts do not explicitly assert-though this seems implied in what is said by contrast of the experience of his companions, who are described as hearing the voice but beholding no man ( , Act 9:7), and in Barnabas subsequent announcement to the Church at Jerusalem that Saul had Seen the Lord in the way (Act 9:27; cf. his announcement to St. Paul himself, the Lord, even Jesus, who appeared unto thee, Act 9:17; cf. Act 22:14).

That St. Paul believed he had seen the Lord in His risen body is involved in the references to the event in his letter to Corinth which we have already considered (1Co 9:1; 1Co 15:8). In the former passage, in defending his apostleship he claims to have seen Jesus Christ our Lord. The primary apostolic function was to witness to the resurrection of Christ, and in order to discharge this function it was requisite that the Apostle should with his own eyes have seen the Risen Lord. In the latter passage, in which he classes his own experience with the earlier appearances of the Risen Christ, his purpose is to prove not the continued spiritual existence of the Christian, but his bodily resurrection; and only a reference to the bodily resurrection of our Lord and a bodily appearance would have been relevant. But according to the account in Acts the aspect of the appearance which chiefly impressed him was the Divine glory of it, the glory of that light (Act 22:11). And this is reflected in many passages in his letters-2Th 1:9-11; 2Th 2:8, 1Co 15:44-49, Rom 8:18; Rom 8:29, 1Ti 6:15 f., 2Ti 1:10 f., and especially Php 3:20 f. (the body of his glory). The vision he saw was of Christ glorified; but this Glorified Christ was identical with the Crucified Jesus of Nazareth (Act 22:8, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest; Act 26:15, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest). And, however the phenomena perceived by his senses were to be described, what is important to note is the immediate effect that the appearance had upon him, for St. Paul himself in his accounts of it is concerned with the significance of the fact rather than with any precise descriptive details. He became, through it, absolutely convinced that the Jesus who was crucified and whose followers he was persecuting was indeed the Risen and Exalted Lord (); and this conviction revolutionized his whole thought and life, energizing in him unto a new life of absolute devotion and surrender whereby he became henceforth the property () of a crucified but living and glorified Christ (Rom 1:1, Gal 1:10, Php 1:1). His own explanation of the transformation is contained in these words, He appeared to me also-words in which he claimed for himself the same kind of revelation as that made to Peter, James, and the other apostles after the Resurrection.

Various attempts have been made to explain the appearance on purely natural grounds. Any explanation to be satisfactory, must be able to give a sufficient reason for the greatness of the revolutionary change referred to in the persecutors experience, with its lasting moral and spiritual effects (i.) Taken to this test, the attempt to account for the experience as a species of epileptic seizure in scorching heat, the product of excitable nerves and atmospheric effects-a view identified with the name of Renan (cf., more recently, Weinel, St. Paul, p. 82f.)-is at once condemned as inadequate. (ii.) W. James speaks of a form of sensory automatism which he calls a photism, a hallucinatory or pseudo-hallucinatory phenomenon, and represents St. Pauls blinding heavenly vision as a phenomenon of this sort (Varieties of Religious Experience, London, 1902, p. 251f.). The parallelism between St. Pauls experience and the modern instances quoted is hard to find, but inasmuch as James himself claims that his hypothesis does not necessarily involve a denial of the heavenly or Divine origin of the appearance to St. Paul, his hypothesis need not be considered as a purely naturalistic one. (iii.) Chief of such naturalistic attempts is that which would represent the appearance as the result of St. Pauls psychological condition (Strauss, Baur, Holsten). Doubts or misgivings, so it is represented, had been wording in his mind for some time previously, scruples of conscience as to his persecuting proceedings. Such scruples were induced largely by his experience of the calm confidence, and triumphant joy of the Christians in persecution, as compared with his own inner consciousness of turmoil, born of the conflict between self and the holy law of God.

Strausss classical representation of the case may be quoted: They [the believers in Jesus] showed a state of mind, a quiet peace, a tranquil cheerfulness, even under suffering, which put to shame the restless and joyless zeal of their persecutor. Could he have been a false teacher who had adherents such as these? could that have been a mendacious pretence which gave such rest and security? On the one hand, he saw the new sect in spite of all persecutions, nay, in consequence of them, extending their influence wider and wider around them; on the other, as their persecutor he felt that, inward tranquillity growing less and less which he could observe in so many ways in the persecuted. We cannot therefore be surprised it in hours of despondency and inward unhappiness he put to himself the question: Who after all is right, thou or the crucified Galilean about whom these men are so enthusiastic? And when he had once got as far as this the result, with his bodily and mental characteristics, naturally followed in an ecstasy in which the very same Christ whom to this time he had so passionately persecuted appeared to him in all the glory of which His adherents spoke so much, showed him the perversity and folly of his conduct, and called him to come over to His service (New Life of Jesus, i. 420). Time and again-so C. Holsten represents the case in his searching analysis of St. Pauls state of mind at his conversion (Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus, Rostock, 1868)-the reproachful image of Jesus, as described by Stephen and other Christians, stood before his soul and made appeal so that he was half persuaded to Join himself to His followers. In such a state of mind he journeyed to Damascus, when he experienced his vision. This view is supported, it is held, by the words reported in the narrative of his conversion as spoken to St. Paul by Christ Himself, It is hard for thee to kick against the goad (Act 26:14). In what else can it have consisted, asks Pfleiderer, than in the painful doubt as to the lawfulness of his persecution of the Christians-in the doubt, therefore, whether the truth was really on his side, and not rather, after all, on that of the persecuted disciples of Christ? (Influence of the Apostle Paul on the Development of Christianity [HL [Note: L Hibbert Lecture.] ], Eng. translation , London, 1885, p. 35).

Now it is not necessary to deny all inward psychological preparation on St. Pauls side for the experience issuing in his conversion. Otherwise, as Pfleiderer truly enough observes, his conversion would have to be recorded as a magical act of God, in which the soul of Paul would have succumbed to an alien force (ib. p. 34). Such visions do not happen in a vacuum (Moffatt, Paul and Paulinism, London, 1910, p. 10; cf. P. Feine, Theologie des NT, Leipzig, 1910, p. 202). It was the difference in this inward or psychological preparation between Saul and his journey companions that partly explains why the occurrence meant one thing to him and another to them.

As elements in Sauls psychological preparation contributing or disposing towards the result, the two factors referred to by supporters of this theory may be admitted. (1) The wonderful demeanour of the followers of the crucified Nazarene, their triumphant joy and calm, unswerving loyalty even in persecution, could not but leave a powerful impression on such an ardent and sensitive nature as St. Pauls. In particular, the calm confidence and heroism of Stephen in face of death and his dying vision of the Lord probably sank deep into his soul. And then (2) the impression made by these would he emphasized by contrast with his own experience of inward turmoil and dispeace. The words reported in the narrative of his conversion, It is hard for thee to kick against the goad ( ), are no doubt full of significance in this connexion. Even if proverbial, and as such not to be pressed too closely with regard to St. Pauls state of mind before his conversion (so Knowling, in Expositors Greek Testament , London, 1900, on Act 26:14), taken in connexion with references in his letters they reveal a profound internal conflict going on within Sauls soul, a deep misgiving concerning his own religious position and standing before God. A Pharisee of the Pharisees, he had striven to attain peace with God through fulfilment of the Law, but already upon him the painful sense of failure and moral despair was pressing (cf. Romans 7). His soul had been pierced and lacerated by his sense of moral impotence in face of the Law. Like a stupid beast, Saul knew not whither this incessant goad was driving him, nor whose was the hand that plied it (Findlay, Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) iii. 702b). He could not but contrast his own state of mind with that of the followers of Jesus. But with all this there is in the narratives no hint of doubt on Sauls part of the rectitude of his persecuting zeal, nothing to show that he ever suspected the real truth to lie in the direction of the new sect of the Nazarenes.

St. Pauls own uniform representation of his mental condition on his way to Damascus is not that of doubtful misgiving, but of conscious rectitude undisturbed by the least shadow of doubt that in persecuting the Christiana even to death, he was doing Gods will. I verily thought within myself that it was my duty to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth (Act 26:9). To Saul the position of the Jesus-sect was a blasphemy against God. It was not only that their so-called Messiah had been put to death. That in itself to the mind of Saul, the orthodox Jew, shattered the claim that Jesus was the Christ. The conception of a Suffering Messiah was, to quote Holstens own words, so far removed from the orthodoxy of Jewish belief that a suffering Messiah, during the lifetime of Jesus, was still to His disciples an inconceivable and enigmatical representation (op. cit. p. 98). But it was above all the peculiar form of the Death which disproved the claim of Jesus to be the Messiah. To a Jew, the Cross was the very emblem of Divine rejection. Cursed, not merely by man but by God, is every one that hangeth on a tree (Gal 3:13; cf. Deu 21:23. Hence , 1Co 12:3). To the mind of Saul of Tarsus the death on the Cross appeared a Divine retribution on a blasphemous claim. God Himself had endorsed the verdict of Caiaphas and Pilate, and in proclaiming a crucified Messiah the followers of Jesus were fighting against God.

Thus to Saul the suppression of the Jesus-sect was a sacred duty and a meritorious service for the glory of God. The followers of Jesus spoke, indeed, of a resurrection of their crucified Master, but no one had seen Him save some of their own company, and to Sauls mind it was the uttermost heresy, and he simply refused to believe it. The young Pharisee was, indeed, far from being at peace within himself. Yet this very inward dispeace only fanned his anti-Christian zeal to new flame and urged him forward more fiercely than ever in loyal adherence to the traditions of his fathers, if thereby he might the better fulfil the righteousness of the Law. As he says himself, he was exceedingly mad against them (Act 26:11). With all the intensity of his nature he set himself to stamp out the heresy. Not content with harrying the Christians in Jerusalem, he persecuted them even unto strange cities. Such was the spirit in which he started on his way to Damascus, when all at once his persecuting zeal was brought to a halt. An incident occurred which cleft his life in twain and drove him, in spite of himself, into a new channel (Sabatier, The Apostle Paul, p. 60). The mental conditions, therefore, out of which a self-generated vision of the Glorified Jesus might conceivably have been formed were wanting in him at the time.

The whole impression conveyed to the reader of the narrative in Acts is that of the suddenness, unexpectedness, surprisingness of the change in the persecutors psychological condition (Act 9:3; Act 22:6). And this is corroborated by the references in St. Pauls own letters. He always referred to the event which formed the turning-point of his life as a sudden, surprising, overwhelming experience. The very language he uses in reference to it emphasizes this. I was apprehended () by Christ Jesus (Php 3:12)-a remarkable word which denotes that the persecutor was seized upon suddenly, taken hold of by Christ, and subdued as if by main force. He looks upon himself in 2Co 2:14 as a suddenly subdued rebel, whom God leads in triumph about the world. The same suggestion of suddenness and violence we have seen already to be implied in the term . That this, and not a gradual change, is the view required by St. Pauls language is admitted by so unprejudiced a critic as H. J. Holtzmann in his edition of the Acts: It is at all events certain that the Apostle knows nothing of a gradual process which has drawn him closer to Christianity, but only of a sudden halt which he was compelled to make in the midst of an active career (Handkommentar zum NT3, Tbingen, 1901, ii. 70f., quoted Knowling, Testimony of St. Paul, p. 189).

2. The witness of the Gospels.-The apostles, in their preaching of Jesus and the Resurrection, would from the first be called upon to substantiate their statements by detailed historical evidence. One of the first requirements in missionary teaching of the Resurrection would be a summary of the principal witnesses. Thus arose, we may well believe, for missionary and catechetical purposes such a list of the chief appearances as that given in 1Co 15:3-8. But, especially as time went on, more would be required than this. How can you believe in a crucified Messiah? How can you preach the gospel of forgiveness and justification in His name? To such challenging questions the full answer would be not merely an adducing of the evidence for the Resurrection, but an account of the life and ministry of Jesus on earth-essentially a Passions-Geschichte-showing that the suffering of the Death was the climax of a life of service and suffering on the part of One who claimed to be the Messiah, and who supported His claim by His works. So the main facts of Christs life and teaching on earth would be recalled, and an oral tradition would grow up based on first-hand evidence derived from the apostles and other eye-witnesses; until, as time went on and the possibility of distorting the facts grew ever greater, it would become necessary for apologetic and practical purposes to put on record the tradition hitherto preserved in the Church only by oral means. Thus arose written narratives of our Lords life and ministry as culminating in the Death and Resurrection, the primary aim of which was not historical or biographical, but that expressed by the word gospel. These signs are recorded that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life through his name (Joh 20:31; cf. Marks heading of his, work, The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Joh 1:1).

The generally accepted results of recent criticism with regard to the relations of the Gospels may he represented shortly as follows. Two main sources are to be recognized: (1) a collection made at a fairly early date of the saying and discourses of Jesus, the chief object of which was, according to Sanday, to set before its readers (the new converts in the different Churches) some account of the Christian ideal, the character and mode of life expected of them as Christians (Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics ii. 575a); this original document is identified with the Logia mentioned by Papias (Eus. Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.) iii. 39) and usually christened Q (Quelle, the original source); (2) a later document supplementing Q, a narrative or sketch of the Lords public ministry which was practically, it not quite, identical with our present Second Gospel written by John Mark, the companion of Peter, and embodying the substance of that apostles reminiscences of his Masters words and works. (The original ending of the narrative is lost, and the present ending [Joh 16:9-20] is a later appendix; but the fact that it appears in nearly all extant Manuscripts and versions points to an early date, and perhaps to a close relation with Mark himself.) Then a little later came two fuller narratives, going behind the Ministry to the Birth. The writers, Matthew and Luke, writing for different classes of readers, with the two main sources referred to before them as basis of their narratives, arranged and edited independently the material thus supplied, sometimes interpreting it, sometimes giving it new point and fullness, and each adding information derived from his own minute investigations. This dependence of Matthew and Luke in their narrative portions on Mark is reckoned the one solid contribution of literary criticism (F. C. Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission, Edinburgh, 1906, p. 37; cf. W. C. Allen, International Critical Commentary , S. Matthew3, do., 1912, p. vii).

It cannot, however, be argued that, while Mark is a primary authority, Matthew and Luke are secondary authorities. Much critical argument proceeds on this assumption, as if the narratives of the First and Third Gospels were a simple writing up and embellishing of Marks stories, and any details not found in the latter were to be rejected as unhistorical and legendary. Luke, e.g., in the most important portion of his whole narrative-the Passion and the Resurrection sections-wholly deserts Mark and prefers to rely on independent information. As to the source of this information, Chase (Gospels in the Light of Historical Criticism, pp. 12, 62f.) makes out a strong case for James and the elders of the Church with whom Luke was brought into personal contact in Jerusalem some twenty-five years after the Passion (see Act 21:15 ff.). Now James was a primary witness of the Resurrection, one of those who saw the Lord, so that Luke in his narrative would be in touch with first-hand information as much as Mark (cf. Luk 1:2). Then later still, the writer of the Fourth Gospel, having a knowledge of the Synoptic Gospels wrote his narrative, wishing to supplement and perhaps in some details to correct them. In connexion with the narrative of the Resurrection in particular, the writer, with his more precise and consecutive account, affords valuable information. There is a growing tendency among critics to hold that, in substance at least, this Gospel represents a genuine work of the apostle John written in his old age, containing authentic reminiscences of the Lords words and works. These reminiscences indeed have been moulded by the writers meditation through many years on their significance, so that reminiscence and interpretation are often so interwoven that it is difficult to say where one ends and the other begins, but this does not detract from the trustworthy character of the Gospel. It is a blending of fact and interpretation; but the interpretation comes from one who had an unique position and unique advantages for getting at the heart and truth of that which be sought to interpret. It is the mind of Christ seen through the medium of one of the first and closest of His companions (Sanday, The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel, Oxford, 1905, p. 169). Indeed, Johns account may be truest to reality. The history of a great movement will be told long years afterwards with the nearest approach to truth, not by the prosaic observer who noticed only what lay on the surface, but rather by one who at the time discerned something of its grandeur, and who as he recalled it instinctively idealized it. Idealization is perhaps a necessary condition for the preservation of the memory of a momentous spiritual crisis (Chase, p. 17). (Ch. 21 is an appendix to the Gospel which closed at the end of ch. 20. Yet it must have become an integral part of the Gospel at an early period, for no trace exists of a Gospel without it. The style also is similar to the rest of the Gospel, so that on both internal and external evidence an increasing number of critics support Godets contention: Either John himself composed this piece some time after having finished the Gospel, or we have here the work of that circle of friends and disciples who surrounded the Apostle at Ephesus, who had often heard him relate the facts contained in it, and who have reproduced them in his own language.)

It is often urged against the narratives of the Gospels that none of the writers were first-hand witnesses, but if the Fourth Gospel, as a growing weight of criticism encourages us to believe, is a genuine work of the apostle John, we have at least one such witness of first-rank importance. But further, Mark was the companion and interpreter or Peter, another primary witness. Besides, Luke was the companion of St. Paul, and St. Paul had direct communication with Peter, James, and other members of the original apostolic company; and Luke lays stress on the fact that the things which he relates rested on the testimony of those who were eye-witnesses. The Gospel of Matthew, if not directly the work of that Apostle-another first-hand witness-must have been written by one so closely associated with him that it ever afterwards passed as Matthews own. We are thus, throughout, in contact with first-hand information, and all claim to be but recording a tradition well established in the Church, and derived originally from the apostles.

Approximate probable dates for the Gospels may be given as follows: Mk. a.d. 60-70, Mt. Lk. (Gospel and Acts) a.d. 70-80; Jn. a.d. 85-100-all falling probably within the 1st century. The extra-canonical Gospels, the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of Peter, parts of which have been preserved, and both of which belong probably to the beginning of the 2nd cent., add little or nothing of a trustworthy character to the canonical accounts of the Resurrection.

The witness to the Resurrection in the Gospels may be thus exhibited: (a) Empty grave on the third day (Mar 15:42-47; Mar 16:1-8, Mat 27:57-66; Mat 28:1-8, Luk 23:50-56; Luk 24:1-12 (22-24), Joh 19:38; Joh 20:13); and (b) post-Resurrection appearances (MK [Appendix ] Mar 16:9-20, Mat 28:9-20, Luk 24:12-53, Joh 20:14-29; Joh 20:21 [Appendix ], Gospel acc. to Hebrews, xii. 50-57, Gospel of Peter, xiv. 58-60).

The historical value of the Gospel witness to the Resurrection has been called in question on various grounds, chief of which are: (1) Alleged discrepancies between the different accounts. This was already one of the chief objections to the Gospels in the earliest reasoned criticism of Christianity that has come down to us-The True Word of Celsus, written about the end of the 2nd cent. (see Origen, c. Celsum, ii. 56-63, v. 56, 58). H. S. Reimarus, writing nearly a century and a half ago, enumerated ten irreconcilable contradictions or discrepancies in the narratives (G. E. Leasing, Wolfenbtteler Fragmente, 1774-78). In reality, says a more recent critic, the number is much greater (Schmiedel, Encyclopaedia Biblica iv. 4041). And Harnack, on the basis of examination of the various narratives, feels himself driven to an Agnostic despair of history, which regards the problem of what happened on the first Easter morning as absolutely insoluble. (2) The presence of mythical and legendary elements in the accounts. Even the empty grave on the third day can by no means be regarded as a certain historical fact, because it appears united in the accounts with manifest legendary features (Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, Eng. translation , 7 vols., London, 1894-99, i. 85n.). (3) The insufficiency of the evidence, even if allowed, to satisfy the demands of scientific historical inquiry. Secure evidence of the resurrection of Jesus would be the attestation of it in a decided and accordant manner by impartial witnesses. But Jesus showed himself to his adherents only: why not also to his enemies, that they too might be convinced, and that by their testimony posterity might be precluded from every conjecture of a designed fraud on the part of his disciples? (Strauss, Life of Jesus, Eng. translation 2, London, 1892, pt. iii. ch. 4. sect, 140, p. 738), To like purpose Renan demands that the evidence for the Resurrection be such as would convince a commission, composed of physiologists, physicists, chemists, persons accustomed to historical criticism, and on this basis criticizes the NT narratives as not satisfying scientific conditions or rational principles (Life of Jesus, Eng. translation , London, 1873, Introd., p. 29f.). We shall consider the two parts of the witness separately, keeping these objections in view.

(a) The empty grave.-The narratives agree as to the following facts. (1) On the morning of the first day of the week, the third day after the Crucifixion, very early, certain women went to the grave (Mat 28:1, Mar 16:1 f., Luk 24:1; Luk 24:10, Joh 20:1); (2) they found the stone rolled away and the grave empty (Mat 28:2-7, Mar 16:3-6, Luk 24:2-6, Joh 20:1; Joh 20:11 f.); (3) they were informed by angelic means that Jesus had risen, and that they were bidden to convey the news to the disciples (Mat 28:5-8, Mar 16:6-8, Luk 24:4-11, Joh 20:11 f.). Divergences in detail have to be acknowledged, though they are slight in comparison with the general agreement, and do not impugn the trustworthiness of the central facts in the common tradition.

Chief of these divergences are the following. (1) In regard to the number of the women. John represents the visit to the sepulchre as made by Mary Magdalene alone (Joh 20:1), while the others (Mt., Mk., LK.) represent her as in company with other women, variously named. (2) As regards the purpose attributed to the women in coming to the tomb, two of the Evangelists, Mark (Mar 16:1) and Luke (Luk 23:56; Luk 24:1), represent this purpose as the anointing of the body of Jesus, while John records the fact that the anointing had already been done by Joseph and Nicodemus at the time of the entombment. (3) In regard to the angelic message, Matthew and Mark speak of one angel at the tomb; Mark representing him as a young man arrayed in a white robe, appearing to the women on their entering into the tomb (Mar 16:15), while Matthew has an independent story of a great earthquake, and represents the angel as rolling away the stone and sitting upon it (i.e. outside the tomb, Mat 28:2-5). Luke and John, on the other hand, speak of two angels as appearing to the women (or woman), Luke representing the interview as occurring inside the tomb (Luk 24:3-5), while John represents Mary Magdalene as still remaining outside (Joh 20:12).

In regard to such divergences or alleged discrepancies we have to remember two things. (1) The aim of the narratives is not to supply evidence or proof for a court of law, but rather to supply information regarding facts already believed, as Luke says, fully established (), in the Church, concerning which they had already been catechetically instructed (v. 4, ). This explains the often naive and informal character of the narratives. None of the Evangelists aims at giving a complete account of everything that happened on that wonderful Easter morning and day. Each selects and combines with his own special object in view. From this incompleteness arises much of the seeming contradictoriness of the different narratives. E.g., John speaks only of Mary Magdalene at the sepulchre probably because he has a special story to tell of her-though the we of Joh 20:2 seems to imply the presence of others. (There is no need to suppose that the women came all together to the sepulchre. It is more probable that they came in different groups or companies.) (2) We have to remember further that the Resurrection day was necessarily one of intense excitement and agitation. This is vividly reflected in the narratives-the shock of amazement of the witnesses, their incredulity, their mingled fear and joy. So it is possible that the events of the day were told by different witnesses in a different order, and with differences in detail. The excitement of the moment may have left the memory dazed and unable to form any distinct impression of what was seen and heard, so that from the first there would be a certain confusion in the stories. But to discredit the narratives because they betray imperfections such as these is altogether unreasonable. So far from being incompatible with, they rather confirm, their historical veracity. The usual character of human testimony is substantial truth under circumstantial variety (W. Paley, Evidences of Christianity, in J.S. Memes Christian Evidences, London, 1859, pt. iii. ch. 1. p. 203).

It need not be denied that some details of the narratives may possibly be unhistorical or legendary. In Matthews story, e.g., about the resurrection of many bodies of the saints, and their appearance to many after the Resurrection (Mat 27:51 f.), we seem to have something akin to what we find in the Apocryphal Gospels (cf. Chase, Gospels in the Light of Hist. Criticism, p. 31). But the earthquake account (given only by Matthew, which is the only account of how the stone was rolled away) and that of the angelic visitation when ruled out (e.g. Lake, Resurrection, p. 251f.) as legendary and unhistorical, are so not so much because of any insufficiency of evidence, as through prejudice against the supernatural, which, however, is of the very essence of the narratives throughout.

Luke records (Luk 24:12) that, on receipt of the message of the women, Peter went to the sepulchre and found it empty, with only the grave-clothes left. This verse is of doubtful authority-being absent from important Western documents-and is omitted by Westcott and Hort and by Tischendorf as a later insertion, though, as F. Blass points out (Philology of the Gospels, London, 1898, p. 189), Lukes account contains another reference to a visit to the grave on the part of some of the apostles (Luk 24:24), the genuineness of which there is no good ground for calling in question.

John in his account that of an eye-witness of the facts-tells us (Joh 20:3-10) that, on receipt of the message of the women, Peter and himself went to the grave and found the condition as the women had said. He gives a circumstantial description of the way in which the grave-clothes were found lying; in particular, that the napkin which had been round His head was found folded up (Joh 20:7, ) by itself, apart from the other bandages, doubtless at the raised end of the chamber where the head rested (see Latham, Risen Master, plate 2, for an imaginary sketch of the interior of the tomb). Lathams theory is that the word implies that the head-cloth still partially retained its annular form (p. 43), and that the other grave-clothes still retained the general outline of the human form (p. 50). If this interpretation be correct, the suggestion of the careful observer (, Joh 20:6) would be that the Body had somehow passed out of the grave-clothes, rather than that it had been removed by human hands for burial elsewhere. In any case, the position of the clothes is noted by the Evangelist as significant.

In this connexion the significance of the incident recorded in Mat 28:11-15 is to be noted-the attempt of the Jewish authorities to bribe the guard to misrepresent the facts and say that the disciples removed the body-a saying which is commonly reported among the Jews until this day. This fraudulent transaction proceeds upon the admission by the enemies of Christianity that the grave was empty-an admission which is enough to show that the evidence for the empty grave was too notorious to be denied (Cambridge Theological Essays, ed., H. B. Swete, London, 1905, p. 336).

The whole story of the guard at the tomb, which is narrated only Matthew (Mat 27:62-66) has been called in question. But the action of the authorities in setting a watch at the tomb is altogether credible. Had not Jesus spoken repeatedly of His being put to death and rising again the third day (Mat 16:21; Mat 17:22 f., Mat 20:16; Mat 20:19 and ||s)? And may not such words have come to the ears of His enemies? Had not indeed His mysterious words about the building of the Temple in three days been quoted against Him before the chief priests and Pharisees (Mar 14:58; cf. Joh 2:18-22)? And with such in their minds, was not the fact that the body of Jesus had been committed to His friends for burial enough to create the fear that His disciples might remove it and afterwards pretend that He had risen? To meet this apprehension, a watch was obtained, and to make security doubly sure, the tomb was sealed with the official seal.

Nothing, indeed, in the Resurrection-story of the narratives is more strongly attested than the fact of the empty tomb on the third day after the Crucifixion. It is not only attested by the women, and subsequently by Peter and John-interested parties-but also acknowledged by foes. This is the fundamental fact at the basis of the apostolic belief in the Resurrection on the third day. It is not uncommon among negative critics to represent the case as if the belief were a deduction or inference from certain prophetic references, a belief resting on theological rather than historical grounds (Lake, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, p. 264). Strauss set the way in his endeavour to show how the belief might have originated from OT hints (New Life of Jesus, i. 438 f.). O. Holtzmann (Life of Jesus, Eng. translation , London, 1904, p. 336) lays much stress on Hos 6:2 : After two days will he revive us: on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live before him. Schmiedel (Encyclopaedia Biblica iv. 4067) appeals to 2Ki 20:5 as a text that has special relevance in this connexion. Others combine with these OT hints the predictions of Jesus Himself (e.g. Meyer, Die Auferstehung Christi, p. 181 f.), while more recently others trace the belief primarily to a Messianic dogmatic, a pre-Christian sketch of a dying and rising Messiah which found its way into Jewish writings from Oriental sources, chiefly Babylonian (see, e.g., Lake, pp. 197 f., 261; Cheyne, Bible Problems, p. 110 ff.). The OT hints and pre-Christian Messianic belief alone or combined with the predictions of Jesus, it is represented, naturally took shape in the belief in the Resurrection on the third day, or were the pre-disposing cause for this belief. The belief created the Resurrection rather than the Resurrection the belief. But what are the facts? The Gospels tell us unmistakably that the disciples had no anticipation whatever of the resurrection of their crucified Master. For all that, Jesus did predict His resurrection on the third day and represent this as foreshadowed in the Scriptures (Mat 16:21; Mat 17:22 f., Mat 20:16; Mat 20:19, Mar 8:31; Mar 9:31; Mar 10:33, Luk 9:22; Luk 18:31; Luk 24:6-7; cf. Luk 24:46). The astonishment of the disciples at the empty tomb is explained by the reflexion that as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead (Joh 20:9). So far from the victory of the Messiah over death through a resurrection being part of the current Jewish Messianic belief, the very idea of a suffering and dying Messiah was to His disciples an inconceivable and enigmatical representation (Holsten, op. cit. p. 98; cf. Mat 16:21; Mat 17:23). Suffering and death for the actual possessor of the Messianic dignity are in fact unimaginable, according to the testimony of the prophets (Dalman, Words of Jesus, Eng. translation , Edinburgh, 1902, p. 265). Psa 16:10 is the only passage which the NT writers quote as prophetic of the Resurrection, but it is clear that its Christian interpretation was by no means obvious before the event. The proof from Scripture prophecy of the Resurrection on the third day was thus an interpretation or confirmation after the event, and, under the influence of Jesus post-Resurrection teaching, an afterthough, as Lake himself admits (p. 30). It is not the prophecies which suggest the fact, but the fact which extracts and explains the prophecies. The attempt to trace the belief in the event on the third day ultimately to Oriental sources will be more fully considered below (V. ii. 2). But meantime the fact is to be emphasized that no detail is better attested in connexion with the Resurrection than the discovery of the empty tomb on the third day, and any criticism which ignores this cannot justly lay claim to be scientific.

It has often been pointed out that in the Gospels none of the witnesses claims to have seen our Lord leave the tomb. Of the Resurrection itself there was no eye-witness. This is sometimes adduced in disparagement of the Gospel evidence. But this very silence of the narratives is a significant corroboration of their historical trustworthiness. If the accounts of the events at the empty grave were as legendary as some recent criticism would represent, the silence is almost, inexplicable. A faith that was capable of creating, with absolutely no basis in fact, so circumstantial an account of the emptiness of the Tomb, would assuredly not have left without a witness the one moment on which the significance of its whole creation seems to depend (Cambridge Theol, Essays, p. 332). A comparison with the account given in the apocryphal Gospel of Peter brings into clear relief the self-restraint of the canonical Gospels (cf. Orr, Resurrection of Jesus, p. 260f.).

(b) The post-Resurrection appearances.-Though the empty grave on the third day is thus adequately attested, this, according to the evidence, was not in and by itself the cause of the disciples belief in the Resurrection. According to the Evangelists, it was not simply the fact of the empty tomb, not even this supplemented by the angelic proclamation that the Lord had risen, which produced in the disciples the conviction that their crucified Master was indeed risen from the dead. The women returned, as they were bidden, to tell the disciples what they had seen and heard at the empty grave, but this story of the women seemed in their opinion to be nonsense (); they would not believe them (Luk 24:11 [Moffatt]; cf. Mar 16:11; Mar 13:14, Joh 20:25, . For a whole week Thomas refused to believe). Peter and John go to the grave and find the condition of things as the women had said. They stoop down and enter in and find the grave-clothes lying where the body had rested, with the head-cloth folded up by itself, instead of lying beside the other bandages, and they return home wondering what had happened (Luk 24:12 [Moffatt]), perplexed and unable to explain what they saw. John indeed, writing many years after, says of himself that he saw and believed (Joh 20:8, ). The meaning of these words is doubtful. It has been suggested that, from the manner in which the grave-clothes lay folded, John was led not merely to believe in the emptiness of the grave, but to the idea of resurrection. So, e.g., Cyril of Alexandria: Ex involutis linteaminibus resurrectionem colligunt, as the Latin version renders it (Migne, PG lxxiv. 683, quoted by W. J. S. Simpson in Dict. of Christ and the Gospels ii. 507a); cf. Latham, Risen Master, and Dods, Expositors Greek Testament , in loc. But if such was the case, it does not appear that he said anything to the others on the subject. On the other hand, to say that he believed here means simply became convinced that the grave was empty and the body removed may be saying too little. Probably it is nearest the truth to say with Swete: There arose in his [Johns] mind at that moment a nascent confidence that in some way as yet unknown their darkness would be turned to light, and the victory of the Christ be secured. For the present, however, the mystery remained unsolved; they seemed to have exhausted their means of getting at the truth, and both men went home again (Appearances, p. 6). Even as regards the women themselves, the chief impression we receive of their mental condition from the narratives is that of terrorized amazement. The dazzling vision and the voice from the grave filled them with dismay. They fled from the sepulchre, and on their way back to the city they spoke not a word, so great was their terror. They were seized with terror and beside themselves (Mar 16:8 [Moffatt]). Not the empty grave, therefore, and not the angelic report merely, but these followed by and in essential connexion with the subsequent self-revelation of the risen living Lord in the shape of manifestations or appearings of Himself to them (or what were taken to be such), were what, according to the narratives, gave rise to the apostles belief in the Resurrection.

The list of the appearances given in the various narratives is as follows:

(1) Marks account (in the genuine portion) records none. But the abrupt way in which the narrative breaks off in the middle of a sentence at Mar 16:8 (for they were afraid of [Moffatt]) points to the fact that the writer meant to add some account of the meeting of the Risen Lord with the disciples in Galilee referred to in Mar 16:7. The probability is that such was added and that it is lost. There is good reason for believing that Matthew has worked up into his last chapter much of the matter contained in the lost ending of Mark, adding certain incidents for which he relied upon his own resources (see Chases article The Lords Command to Baptize in Journal of Theological Studies vi. [1904-05] 481 ff.). The Mk. Appendix (Mar 16:9-20) records appearances to Mary Magdalene (Mar 16:9), to two disciples on the way to Emmaus (Mar 16:12), and to the Eleven at meat (Mar 16:14).

(2) Matthew records two appearances-the first to the women in or near Jerusalem on the morning of the Resurrection (Mat 28:9 f.), and then to the Eleven in Galilee on a mountain where Jesus had appointed them (Mat 28:16-20), the meeting referred to in forecast in Mark.

(3) Luke records three: to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus (Luk 24:13-32), to the eleven and them that were with them in Jerusalem (Luk 24:36 ff.), and to Peter, this preceding the last and being indirectly stated (Luk 24:34; cf. 1Co 15:5). Luke also refers (1Co 15:50 f.) to a meeting on the day of Ascension at Bethany (more fully reported in Act 1:4-12).

(4) John, writing with knowledge of the other Gospels and filling up from his reminiscences what the others had left untold, records four: the appearance to Mary Magdalene in the garden (Joh 20:14-17); an appearance to the disciples (without Thomas) the same evening in Jerusalem (Joh 20:19-23); another appearance a week later to the disciples (with Thomas) in Jerusalem (Joh 20:26-28); and lastly, an appearance to seven disciples some time later at the Sea of Tiberias (Joh 21:1-14).

(5) Extra-canonical Gospels.-The Gospel acc. to the Hebrews tells of an appearance to James, and the Gospel of Peter seems on the point of narrating an incident not unlike the appearance to the seven at the Sea of Tiberias when the fragment ends abruptly. Both narratives, however, are distinctly secondary in character and add nothing of a trustworthy nature to the canonical accounts.

It is against the accounts of the appearances in the Gospels that the argument from discrepancies has most force. It has to be frankly admitted that the records present many difficulties in the way of constructing a coherent harmonized account. Whichever way we turn, difficulties meet us, which the documents to which we have access do not enable us to remove (Sanday, Outlines of Life of Christ, p. 180). These difficulties concern in the main two points: (i.) the sequence or time order of the appearances, and (ii.) their place or locality.

(i.) The sequence or time order of the appearances.-None of the Gospels presents us with an ordered statement of the whole facts. St. Pauls list in 1 Corinthians 15 is no doubt given in chronological order, but it does not profess to be complete, and leaves room for other appearances to be added. By the time the Gospel accounts were written, however, it may have been too late to find out with any precision how this or that additional appearing preserved in tradition was related in time to the others. In particular the relation of the appearance to Mary Magdalene (recorded by Jn. and Mk. Appendix ) to the appearance to the women recorded in Mat 28:9-10 is left by the narratives in uncertainty-an uncertainty connected with the seeming confusion in the First and Third Gospels, between Marys return to Jerusalem and the return of the other women. Again, Luke gives the impression that all the appearances took place on the day of the Resurrection, and that the Ascension itself took place on the evening of that day. But this is contrary to what we find in the other Gospel accounts, where the appearances are represented as extending over a considerable time. And it is contrary to Lukes own account in Acts 1, where he interposes forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, and assumes the appearances of Christ to be spread over the whole period (cf. Act 13:31, many days). The latter contradiction is made much of by Strauss and Keim, and, more recently, by Weizscker and Meyer. The explanation is to be found, however, in Lukes highly compressed or condensed style of narrative in the closing chapter of his Gospel (cf. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen, London, 1895, p. 17, compressed to the highest degree). Chase maintains that there are good grounds for thinking that the opening section of the Acts was already composed before the closing section of the Gospel (Gospels, p. 46), and Denney says that in all probability it was produced continuously with it (Jesus and the Gospel, p. 142). Having in view from the beginning to write a sequel to his Gospel, giving a more detailed account of the events leading up to the Ascension, the Evangelist fore-shortens and compresses the narrative in the Gospel, treating two or three distinct occasions as if they were continuous, knowing that facts well known in the Church would render impossible the supposition that all the events recorded took place in a single day.

(ii.) The scene or locality of the appearances.-More serious is the difficulty which confronts us here. St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 makes no mention of locality, but the Gospel accounts are divided between Galilee and Jerusalem. Matthew and probably Mark (original conclusion) lay the stress upon Galilee. In Mark indeed (in the genuine portion) no record is given of any appearances, but the women are bidden by the angel at the tomb to say that the Risen Lord would meet the disciples in Galilee (Mar 16:7). The same message of the angel is given even more emphatically in Mat 28:7 -Go quickly and tell-and (unless Mat 28:9-10 represent, as P. Rohrbach maintains [see A. B. Bruce, Expositors Greek Testament , in loc.], the same fact in another form) repeated by Jesus Himself when He appears to these women on their way to execute the charge of the angel (Mat 28:10). A promise to the same effect had already been given by Jesus to His disciples before they left the upper room for the Garden of Gethsemane, and is recorded by both Matthew and Mark (Mat 26:32, Mar 14:28).

In accordance with this message and promise is the programme of appearances given in the First Gospel. The eleven disciples departed into Galilee (Mat 28:16), and there saw Jesus, and there also received the great commission, Go and make disciples of all nations. No record is given of any appearance of Jesus to the apostles in or near Jerusalem. And it is probable that the original conclusion of Mark carried out the same programme. Luke and John, however, confine their account to appearances in Jerusalem and neighbourhood. Luke, who records (in ch. 24) the appearances to the two on the way to Emmaus, to Peter, and to the Eleven, all in or near Jerusalem, ends his account with a command of Jesus to the disciples to remain in Jerusalem until they were clothed with power from on high (Luk 24:49). But this appears definitely to exclude any departure into Galilee, and the possibility of an appearance there. In line with this is the different representation of the angelic message given in Luke from that in Matthew and Mark. The Marcan version, He goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you (Mar 16:7), becomes in Luke, Remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, etc. (Luk 24:6 f.). That is to say, the message as given by Luke becomes not a direction to go into Galilee, but a reminder that Christ spoke to them about His resurrection when He was yet with them in Galilee. In like manner, all the appearances mentioned in the Fourth Gospel except that in the Appendix (ch. 21) are placed in Jerusalem, and the author indicates that the disciples remained at least a week in Jerusalem after the Resurrection (Joh 20:26).

What are we to make of this discrepancy? Are these two versions or traditions to be regarded as contradictory and irreconcilable alternatives, only one of which can be received, the other being ruled out as unhistorical? This is how, e.g., Strauss and Weizscker represent the case (New Life of Jesus, i. 435, and Apost. Age2, i. 2 f.). If so, the question is, Which is the more trustworthy? The usual course among critics has been to prefer the tradition in Matthew and Mark as the snore primary, and to confine the appearances to Galilee. The appearances to the apostles at Jerusalem were, it is represented, unknown to Matthew and Mark, and form a later addition to the earliest version of the Resurrection story which spoke only of Galilee.

This Galilaean theory, which we shall go on to discuss, is generally maintained in connexion a naturalistic visionary theory of the Resurrection. The advantage of it for this purpose is obvious. By separating the appearances from the events of the third day and transferring them to Galilee, it gives more time for visions to develop amid scenes coloured by memory and imagination. As Strauss puts it, If the transference of the appearances to Galilee dis-engages us from the third day as the period of the commencement of them, the longer time thus gained makes the re-action in the minds of the disciples more conceivable (New Life, i. 437). Support for this Galilaean theory has been sought in the extra-canonical Gospel of Peter, where in xiv. 58-60 the disciples are represented as returning to Galilee in sorrow and therefore without knowledge of the Resurrection. The difficulties of this theory have been forcibly pointer out by F. Loofs (Die Auferstehungsberichte und ihr Wert, Leipzig, 1898, pp. 18-25), who shows that it requires an impossible misrepresentation of the facts. To place the first appearance of our Lewd in Galilee, it is of course necessary to transfer the apostles from Jerusalem. But this has no historical basis whatever. The words, they [the disciples] all forsook him and fled (Mar 14:50), the upholders of this theory interpret as referring to a flight not from the Garden of Gethsemane, but direct home to Galilee.

This interpretation, however, is refuted by the facts recorded. It is, as J. Weiss calls it, a scientific legend. The oldest tradition expressly mentions that on the very night of the flight Peter was found in the high priests palace (Mar 14:54; cf. Mat 26:5-8) and there thrice denied his Lord. The message sent to the disciples through the women on Easter Day, according to the earliest Evangelist, was this, He goeth before you into Galilee, implying, as Loofs points out (p. 19), that the disciples were still waiting in Jerusalem. And so John, who predicts the scattering (Joh 16:32), yet gives detailed accounts of the meetings in Jerusalem. If Mat 28:9-10 is accepted as genuine, the fact that the Evangelist records the appearance to the women in Jerusalem, in which the previous direction of the angels to the disciples to go into Galilee is received front Jesus own lips, shows that the appointed meeting in Galilee was not held to exclude earlier appearances.

Further (see Chase, Gospels, p. 45), to argue that the silence of Matthew (probably following his source Mark) as to any appearance to the apostles in Jerusalem, means ignorance of the fact, and that, therefore, the appearances in or near Jerusalem are to be looked upon as a later addition to the earliest form of the Resurrection-story, which spoke only of Galilee, proves too much. Even as regards Galilee, Matthew mentions only one appearance to the apostles. Are we, therefore, to conclude that he and his source were unaware of any other appearance? We know from St. Paul that a list of appearances was handed down in the Apostolic Church from the earliest times, and that this formed part of the catechetical instruction given in the churches. The facts about the appearances, therefore, would be familiar to his readers, and just here may be found the sufficient explanation of their silence. The Evangelists felt at liberty to make a selection of the facts, each from his own point of view.

If the theory which would confine all the appearances to Galilee is thus unsuccessful in accounting for the facts, is Loofs any more successful in transferring all the appearances to Jerusalem, as he does is arguing ha favour of the tradition represented by Luke and John? To carry out his theory, Loofs is obliged to separate John 21 from the rest of the Gospel, treating it as having little or no connexion with it, and finding in it a combination of two incidents, one of which (the fishing scene of Joh 21:1-14) has been misplaced (Luk 5:1-11), while the other (the dialogue of Joh 21:15-23) was originally unconnected with Galilee. On this Sanday says: These are strong measures, which, however high our estimate of the tradition, Lk-Jn, are obviously not open to one who thinks that the identity of style between John 21 and the rest of the Gospel is too great to permit of their separation (Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ii. 640b).

The attempt to treat the narratives as alternatives and to confine the appearances either to Galilee or to Jerusalem being thus unsatisfactory, we seem compelled to combine the traditions much as they are combined in the Fourth Gospel (with Appendix ) and in the Appendix to Mark, and to recognize appearances both in Jerusalem and in Galilee. If Mat 28:9-10 is to be treated as a later addition, the purpose of the insertion apparently, as Rohrbach suggests, was to cancel the impression otherwise produced that Jesus was seen only in Galilee. This is supported by St. Pauls list of appearances in 1 Corinthians 15, which, though it makes no mention of place, suggests Galilee for the scene of the appearance to the 500 hardly less clearly than it suggests Jerusalem for the appearance to Peter and the Eleven.

We cannot, indeed, fit the narratives into each other so as to leave no difficulties or contradictions unsolved. As regards the details of the different traditions it would seem that from the first there was a certain amount of confusion which was never wholly cleared up. But these difficulties with regard to details are discounted as serious objections when we remember-a fundamental consideration in this connexion-the aim of the Evangelists in the Gospels. The narratives constitute not primarily a history, but a Gospel of the Resurrection (Westcott). They were written not to create belief in the resurrection of Jesus in the minds of men to whom the fact was unfamiliar, but to inform more fully those who had already received the general tradition of the Church, and to show the significance of the fact, both for Him and for them. Believing in the resurrection themselves, and writing for those who believed in it, they [the writers] aimed at giving such an account of it as should bring out its permanent significance for the Church (Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, p. 153). With this in view each writer selects the facts which he considers most appropriate to his object. He is so far indifferent to their connexion with other facts which he is not concerned to relate. He may pass over a great part of the evidence, or he may mass it together in a generalized statement; and, while he will not consciously depart from historical truthfulness, he will yet so handle his materials that, in order to estimate them aright, we must keep distinctly before us his special aim.

The different interests or points of view of the Evangelists will determine the perspective in which the facts are viewed, and the different aspects of the facts emphasized. Matthew, e.g., is occupied throughout his Gospel with the Galilaean ministry of Jesus as that in which he beheld the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy. So in his account of the appearances he concentrates on the meeting in Galilee with its great commission, Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations. To this as his objective he hastens on without pausing on intermediate events. While Matthew concentrates on the meeting in Galilee, Luke is chiefly interested in the appearances in Jerusalem on the Resurrection day as leading up to the promise of the Spirit and the Ascension at Bethany, and ignores the appearances in Galilee. We do the Evangelists injustice, therefore, when we regard them as witnesses in a court of law, who have been appointed to prove a fact, and who have deliberately taken it in hand to do so (W. Milligan, The Resurrection of our Lord, p. 57). Not that the narratives are not evidence, but they are not put forward as presenting the complete evidence. There is not the least ground for supposing that the Evangelists told us all they knew, nor yet the least necessity that they should have done so. They recorded what was sufficient for their purpose. To bring out the meaning or significance of the appearances to the disciples, they may have condensed into a single representative or typical scene what they knew to be different appearances.

Thus we find that even so conservative a critic as Denney counts it not in the least improbable that in the great appearing of Jesus to the eleven recorded in all the gospels (Mat 28:16-20, Mar 16:14-18, Luk 24:36-49, Joh 20:19-23) we have not the literal record of what took place on a single occasion, but the condensation into a representative scene of all that the appearances of Jesus to His disciples meant. And if Jesus nevertheless had in point of fact appeared in different places, we can understand how one evangelist should put this typical scene in Galilee and another in Jerusalem. When we see what is being done we should rather say that both are right than that either is wrong (Jesus and the Gospel, p. 155 f.). The main thing in all the narratives is not the details of time or place or circumstances-in regard to these a certain confusion may remain through unassimilated and unharmonized traditions-but the fact of the appearing of the Risen Christ to His disciples, together with the significance of the fact. And to establish this, to justify and sustain the faith that Jesus is risen from the dead, the narratives, though fragmentary and in no case presenting an orderly statement of the whole facts, supply sufficient evidence. So that Sanday, while recognizing to the full the difficulties in the narratives, yet maintains that no difficulty of weaving the separate incidents into an orderly well-compacted narrative can impugn the unanimous belief of the Church which lies behind them, that the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day and appeared to the disciples (article Jesus Christ in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ii. 641a).

This enables us also to answer the other objection brought against the apostolic narratives-that the appearances recorded were only to the circle of His disciples, to interested parties, and, therefore, that the evidence presented is not of a kind to satisfy the demands of scientific historical inquiry. This objection, urged, as we have seen above, by Strauss and Renan, is one which occurs already in Celsus criticism of Christianity written about the end of the 2nd century. After these points, says Origen, taking up Celsus objections one by one, Celsus proceeds to bring against the Gospel narratives a charge which is not to be lightly passed over, viz, that if Jesus desired to convince men that He was really divine He ought to have appeared to those who had ill-treated Him, and to him who had condemned Him, and to men generally ( ) (c. Cels. ii. 63). The fact to which this criticism refers is, it should be noted, explicitly acknowledged by the apostles. Him, says Peter, God raised on the third day, and allowed him to be seen not by all the People but by witnesses whom God had previously selected, by us who ate and drank with him after his resurrection from the dead (Act 10:40 f. [Moffatt]).

The evidence was designed not to satisfy scientific experts, but to evoke and support belief in the Resurrection on the part of those whom God had previously selected that they might be witnesses to others. If the fact to be testified to were the manner of the Resurrection and the exact sequence of the physical changes that accompanied it, supposing this capable of description in scientific terms, then, no doubt, the disciples were not qualified witnesses. They were born 1900 years too soon for this. But if the essential truth to be conveyed was the personal identity of Him who died and was buried with Him who was raised and appeared, what evidence is to be compared with that of intimate personal friends? (Cambridge Theol. Essays, p. 323). To impugn their witness as not impartial is to forget what the narratives uniformly testify, that so far from being predisposed to believe in the fact, their predisposition was all the other way.

There are two other considerations which may be brought forward in support of the restriction of the appearances of the Risen Christ to His disciples. (i.) This limitation or restriction is in keeping with Christs manifestations during His earthly life. To appear to outsiders, to His opponents or enemies or men generally, in order to convince them of His resurrection and thus turn them to belief in Him, would have been contrary to the principle whereby He consistently refused to present miraculous proofs in order to force unwilling belief. When on one occasion the Pharisees asked Him to give them a sign which should remove their unbelief, we read that He sighed deeply in his spirit, and said, Why doth this generation seek a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation (Mar 8:12). Faith induced by such signs was not of the proper quality (cf. Luk 16:31). This is not the kind of evidence that convinces. True faith is morally and spiritually conditioned. The principle which governed the action of Jesus on earth in His manifestation of Himself still determined the action of the Risen Christ. Why is it that you are to appear to us and not to the world? If any one loves me we will come to him (Joh 14:22 f.). (ii.) Especially is this the case when we remember that the purpose of the appearances was not merely to convince of identity but to reveal a new order of life. If the Resurrection were simply a return to life under normal conditions, the mere survival of death, the objection urged might have more weight. Outsiders, men generally, can tell whether a man who is dead at one moment has returned the next to a normal human life. But the resurrection of Jesus was a rising to life under new and more spiritual conditions, the revelation of a new kind of life, and because of this it could appeal only to those who were capable of receiving such truth. Such a revelation could be received, its significance could be appreciated, only by those of spiritual receptiveness, who had the faculties to discern the possibilities of a new life in Him. Only they were competent witnesses.

Here we are in a realm where the scientific expert is not the expert in the case. There are those who go the length of maintaining that the Resurrection-Body of Jesus was in its very nature such as required a spiritual susceptibility to discern, making it impossible for the outward senses alone to recognize its existence. Westcott, e.g., says, If it [the Resurrection] was a foreshadowing of new powers of human action, of a new mode of human being, then without a corresponding power of spiritual discernment there could be no testimony to its truth. The world could not see Christ, and Christ could not-there is a Divine impossibility-shew Himself to the world (Revelation of the Risen Lord, p. 11; cf. The Gospel of the Resurrection, p. 162 f., Human sense alone was not capable of discerning Who He was). But even if such a manifestation could have been made it would have been valueless for the purpose in view in the manifestations. Even if the world could have visibly recognised the identity of the risen with the earthly Jesus, yet it could have had no perception of what His risen life meant, seeing that the transformation in Him, which was quite as real and essential as the identity, required spiritual receptivity for the discernment of its significance (Forrest, The Christ of History and of Experience7, p. 156 n. [Note: . note.] ).

Literature.-B. F. Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection6, London, 1888, ch. i., Revelation of the Risen Lord2, do., 1882; W. Milligan, Resurrection of our Lord, do., 1881, lect. ii.; W. Sanday, Outlines of the Life of Christy2, Edinburgh, 1906, article Jesus Christ, Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ii. 638-642; R. J. Knowling, Witness of the Epistles, London, 1892, Testimony of St. Paul to Christ, do., 1905; A. C. McGiffert, A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, Edinburgh, 1897, pp. 39-44, 55f.; F. Loofs, Die Auferstehungsberichte und ihr Wert, Leipzig, 1898; E. von Dobschtz, Ostern und Pfingsten, do., 1903; P. W. Schmiedel, Resurrection and Ascension-Narratives in Encyclopaedia Biblica iv. 4039-4087, The Evidence for the Resurrection of Christ in CQR [Note: QR Church Quarterly Review.] lxi. [1906] 323 ff.; K. Lake, The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, London, 1907; H. B. Swete, The Appearances of our Lord after the Passion, do., 1907; J. Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, do., 1908, pp. 107-159; J. M. Thompson, Miracles is the New Testament, do., 1911, pp. 161-205; F. H. Chase, The Gospels in the Light of Historical Criticism, do., 1914, p. 39 ff.; T. J. Thorburn, The Resurrection Narratives and Modern Criticism, do., 1910 (a criticism of Schmiedels article in Encyclopaedia Biblica ); W. P. Armstrong, The Place of the Resurrection Appearances of Jesus in Biblical and Theological Studies (PriNoeton), New York, 1912, p. 307 ff.; W. J. Sparrow Simpson, The Resurrection and Modern Thought, London, 1911, bks. i. and ii.; R. H. Hutton, Theological Essays4, do., 1895, Essay vi. Christian Evidences, Popular and Critical, and Essay viii. The Incarnation and Principles of Evidence.

III. The apostolic witness to the nature of Christs Resurrection-Body.-That the grave was found empty on the third day, that on the same day He appeared to His disciples, and that these appearances, succeeding upon the empty grave, had already given rise on the third day to a belief in the Resurrection, are facts historically well attested by the Gospel narratives and corroborated by St. Pauls account. But there is more than this. The appearances of the Risen Christ were, according to the apostolic witness, not mere appearances and nothing more; they were in the nature of interviews, sometimes for a considerable length of time, between Him and His disciples. There is no such thing in the New Testament as an appearance of the Risen Saviour in which He merely appears. He is always represented as entering into relation to those who see Him in other ways than by a flash upon the inner or the outer eye: He establishes other communications between Himself and His own than that which can be characterised in this way (Denney, Death of Christ, London, 1902, p. 67). And the apostolic narratives bear witness to a certain view of the nature or mode of existence of the Risen Christ.

i. The witness of the Evangelists.-In the picture given in the Gospel narratives we have a noteworthy combination of seemingly opposite qualities in the Risen Christs mode of existence.

(a) On the one hand, Christ seemed to have resumed the form of bodily existence maintained while on earth. His mode of existence was not phantasmal or apparitional like a ghost, but embodied. He appeared in a body possessing attributes and functions which attested its physical reality and identity (or continuity) with the former earthly body.

(1) He could be seen, touched, handled, as a purely spiritual existence could not (Luk 24:39 f., Joh 20:20). Indeed we are told that He offered Himself to their touch and handling to convince the disciples of His bodily existence: Feel me and see; a ghost has not flesh and bones as you see I have (Luk 24:39 [Moffatt]; cf. Joh 20:20). Or, as another report has it, coming either from the Gospel according to the Hebrews or from the Doctrine of Peter: Take handle me and see that I am not a bodiless spirit (Ignatius, Smyrn. 3, , , ). On flesh and bones Westcott says: The significant variation from the common formula flesh and blood must have been at once intelligible to Jews, accustomed to the provisions of the Mosaic ritual, and nothing would have impressed upon them more forcibly the transfiguration of Christs Body than the verbal omission of the element of blood which was for them the symbol and seat of corruptible life (Gospel of the Resurrection, p. 162 n. [Note: . note.] ). We are not told that the disciples availed themselves of the test at Jesus invitation. But in Mat 28:9 we read, They [the women] took hold of his feet and worshipped him. If the disciples did not actually touch Him it was, it would seem, because they were so convinced, by sight, of His reality, that they abstained out of reverence from subjecting Him to the further test (Forrest, The Christ of Hist. and of Exper.7, p. 148 n. [Note: . note.] ).

The body was apparently capable also of partaking of food, for we are told that as they were still incredulous and wondered, He took a piece of a broiled fish which remained from the evening meal and ate before them (Luk 24:41-43; the words and of a honeycomb are omitted by the best Manuscripts ). This touch in the incident, which is mentioned only by Luke, has been called in question by Loofs and others as secondary and representing the more realistic shape which the legend of the Resurrection ultimately took. Even Denney shares this doubt: There does seem something which is not only incongruous but repellent in the idea of the Risen Lord eating, and he finds in it one illustration of Lukes tendency to materialise the spiritual (Jesus and the Gospel, p. 146). In support of this it has been noted that in the case of the meal with the two disciples at Emmaus (Luk 24:30), and in the later scene of the seven beside the Lake recorded in Joh 21:4-13, it is not said in either case that Jesus Himself partook of the bread which He distributed to others with His own hand. If we retain this touch, we must say with Clement of Alexandria, He did not eat for the sake of His body, but for their sakes with whom He conversed, to convince them that they were not seeing a ghost. If there be resurrection of the body, there is no reason why such a body should not have the power of taking food without depending on it (E. R. Bernard, Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) iv. 234a). But even if we eliminate this detail in the picture, which admittedly is the least certain element in it, the picture in its essentials is not appreciably altered. The Risen Christs mode of existence was such that human eyes could see and human hands could touch and feel Him.

(2) Further, the body in which He appeared was a body identical (or continuous) with the body which He had on earth, and which had suffered on the Cross and been laid in the tomb. Apart from the fact that the grave in which the body of Jesus had been laid on the Friday evening was found empty on the morning of the third day, identity (or continuity) was evidenced by the fact that the Risen Body bore the marks of the Passion, the print of the nails in the hands, and the spear-mark in the side (Luk 24:39 f., Joh 20:27).

Luk 24:40, , is called in question as omitted in some authorities, but Joh 20:20, where probably the same appearance is described though there is a seeming discrepancy in the number of disciples present, is undoubted. See Plummer, International Critical Commentary , St. Luke2, Edinburgh, 1898, in loc.

The identity, it would seem, extended still further. Mary recognized Him by the familiar tone of the voice (Joh 20:16) and the two disciples by the familiar gesture in the breaking of bread (Luk 24:31).

(b) On the other hand, the body if the same was yet somehow not the same. It had undergone some marvellous change. If there was identity, there was yet contrast. The Risen Body had mysterious peculiarities which distinguished it from the natural earthly body. Indeed, so prominent were these distinguishing peculiarities that the Risen Lord is uniformly represented in the narratives as with difficulty persuading the disciples of the identity of the two. Chief of these peculiarities are-

(1) The transcendence of the ordinary laws of material or physical existence.-Matter was no longer an obstacle. The Risen Christ could pass through a closed sepulchre (apparently implied by Mat 28:2) and through shut doors (Luk 24:36, Joh 20:19-26). Distance could not delay His movements; He could be present in different and distant places at short intervals (Luk 24:15; Luk 24:34). Suddenly He appears without apparent physical locomotion (Luk 24:36, Joh 20:19; Joh 20:26, Jesus stood [] in the midst). As suddenly He disappears (Luk 24:31, He vanished from their sight, -a disappearance, not a local withdrawal). Here apparently is an emerging from and a withdrawal into complete invisibility at will. And then, finally, as illustrating this transcendence of the ordinary laws of material existence, we are told He ascended from earth to heaven in visible form (Luk 24:51, Act 1:9; cf. Mar 16:19).

The words in Luk 24:51 and all Luk 24:19 in Mark 16 are regarded as doubtful by textual criticism, and, even if they be accepted, it has been contended that they do not of themselves imply a visible ascent (see E. P. Gould in International Critical Commentary , St. Mark, Edinburgh, 1896, p. 309). But such a visible ascent is directly stated in Lukes second treatise, Act 1:9 f., and the subsequent joy of the disciples (Luk 24:52 f.) distinctly points to some such visible representation of His final triumph over death (cf. Forrest, The Christ of Hist. and of Exper.7, p. 413).

(2) Difficulty of recognition from mere outward appearances.-So great was the change that, it would seem, the mere external form and features failed to disclose who He was, even to those with whom He had had familiar intercourse on earth. Mary Magdalene mistook Him for the gardener, until He called her by her name (Joh 20:14-18). The two men on the way to Emmaus not only walked but conversed with Him for a considerable length of time, yet did not know who He was till He was made known to them in the breaking of bread (Luk 24:30-32). When He stood in the midst of the assembled disciples He seemed so strange to them that they imagined it was a ghost they saw and they were scared and terrified till he showed them his hands and feet (Luk 24:37-40 [Moffatt]; cf. Joh 20:20, his hands and his side). And again, at the Sea of Tiberias, when Jesus stood on the beach, the disciples (among whom were four apostles) failed to recognize Him (Joh 21:4).

This is the more striking when we consider (i.) that the appearances were not momentary glimpses, but, at least in several of the cases, prolonged interviews; and (ii.) that even when He appeared to the same people a second or third time they were still at first perplexed and had their doubts as to His identity. What was the cause of this non-recognition? It may be that the failure of Mary Magdalene to recognize Jesus at the beginning was due, as some maintain, to her eyes being dimmed with tears, and her mind bewildered and perplexed-this, combined with the dimness of the early morning light. It may be that the two disciples on the way to Emmaus failed to recognize Him because of mental preoccupation with their grief, and absorption in their puzzled discussion of the story told by the women. Their eyes were holden (, overpowered, spellbound) that they should not know him ( ), says Luke in explanation (Luk 24:16). These words need not be taken to imply any special supernatural action on their senses on the part of the Risen Christ, who would not be seen by them till the time when He saw fit (see Plummer, International Critical Commentary , in loc.). They may mean simply that they did not know Him; that, through some conditions on their side, they failed to recognize Him (cf. Moffatts translation, they were prevented from recognizing him). It has to be remembered that in this case neither of the two, so far as we know, belonged to the company of the apostles, and so they may never before have come into close quarters with the Master, so that their failure to recognize Him was not surprising (cf. Swete, Appearances, p. 23). Once more, in the incident at the Lake of Tiberias the words of the Evangelist, when early morn was now arrived, or arriving ( , other Manuscripts ), suggest that the disciples may have been hindered from recognizing Jesus on the shore by the dimness of the dawning morning light. These and such like conditions may have contributed to the effect. Their mental condition in particular has to be taken into account as an operating factor in the case. It is altogether probable that their surprise and bewilderment, combined with their hopeless grief, made them less capable of exact observation than in ordinary circumstances. Yet the narratives convey the impression that there was something more in the case than this; that some mysterious change had occurred in Jesus outward appearance which at least assisted non-recognition and excited awe in the beholders (Luk 24:37); that some change in bodily appearance had taken place corresponding to the mysterious change already referred to in Christs relation to ordinary physical laws.

He appeared to them in another form ( ), says the Mk. Appendix of the manifestation to the two on the way to Emmaus. That the words mean only that to the two on the way to Emmaus He presented a different appearance from that to Mary Magdalene (possibly, as Alford suggests, through His dress being changed, giving the impression not now of a gardener or labourer at work, but rather of a traveller with his loins girt, shces on feet, and staff in hand) is altogether improbable. The natural interpretation of the words is that He appeared in a different form from that He had on earth, that some change had come over Him so that He did not look the same as when He was with them before the Passion ( always signifies a form which truly and fully expresses the being which underlies it [H. A. A. Kennedy, in Expositors Greek Testament , London, 1903, on Php 2:6]).

This is supported by the cumulative evidence of the narratives, the uniform testimony of which is that, while the same, some mysterious change had come over His whole mode of existence. It is a change which attaches to all that we read in the Gospels of the appearances of Jesus. It was not only, as we have seen, that His risen body was no longer subject to ordinary physical laws, but the manner of His intercourse with His disciples after His resurrection was altogether changed. His appearances were occasional. He appeared only when He willed to appear. There is a strange aloofness and reserve about His attitude to them. He is no longer their companion as He used to be; He speaks of the time when I was yet with you (Luk 24:44). Though He invites them to feel Him and see that they may be thus convinced that He was no phantasm or apparition, but indeed the Risen Jesus, He forbids Mary Magdalene to keep clinging to him (Joh 20:17, ) so as to hold Him in possession. The prohibition of Jesus meant that the old earthly intercourse and relations with His disciples which Mary wished to resume could not be restored, that they were for ever past, and that their place was to be taken by a new and higher kind of fellowship, to be realized only when He had completed His earthly self-manifestation, and had ascended unto the Father. (Joh 20:17, ). For the present He is, in His intercourse with them, hovering between the old and the new in a transitional condition, combining the seemingly opposite qualities of tile material and spiritual, embodied in another form.

This combination of two opposite sets of characteristics in the appearances of the Risen Christ Weizscker (Apost. Age2, i. 9-11) makes the basis of criticism of the credibility of the Gospel accounts. They represent, he says, two different layers of tradition. The appearances were in their earliest form purely spiritual or visional; but, as time went on, the craving for external and palpable signs, combined with popular realistic ideas of a carnal Resurrection, led to a gradual materializing of the visions, and an endowing of the visional with physical attributes, thus overlaying history with legend. So Harnack and others hold that the idea of a bodily Resurrection was a form subsequently imposed on a more primary spiritual belief in the Lords continued life. This overlying of the Gospel representations by popular realistic conceptions was a process which history shows speedily manifested itself in the early Church. But the combination of contrasted traits-the dual quality or double aspect of His appearances-is of the very essence of the Gospel accounts throughout, present in what Weizscker terms the earlier layers of the tradition as really as in the later. And if the Resurrection he what it is uniformly represented in the narratives as being-not the simple reanimation of His mortal body which Harnack speaks of (Hist. of Dogma, i. 85 n. [Note: . note.] ), a resuscitation and restoration to the former conditions of existence, but the entrance on a new order of life, then the combination in the Gospel accounts of the appearances of apparently inconsistent aspects, so far from casting doubt on these accounts, is a strong evidence of their historical trustworthiness.

For such a conception of the mode of existence of the Risen Christ the disciples had absolutely no precedent. On the contrary, it was to them, as the records show, a most novel and strange idea for which they were unprepared, and which with difficulty they were persuaded to receive. It was opposed to both Jewish and Greek ideas on the subject. The Resurrection as it actually took place would be quite foreign to Jewish ideas, which embraced the continuance of the soul after death and the final resurrection of the body, but not a state of spiritual corporeity, far less, under conditions such as those described in the Gospels (Edersheim, LT [Note: T Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Edersheim).] 4 ii. 624). About the current Jewish conception of the Resurrection-Body there was little that was spiritual. The future body, as to material and organisation, was conceived as essentially of the same quality as the present (F. W. Weber, Lehren des Talmud, Leipzig, 1880, p. 353, quoted by Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, p. 227). In Apoc. Bar. (e.g. l. 2) it is stated that the bodies of the dead shall be raised exactly as they were when committed to the ground. After this has been done for purposes of recognition by friends, a glorious change will take place: they shall be made like unto the angels, and be made equal to the stars, and they shall be changed into every form they desire from beauty into loveliness, and form light into the splendour of glory (li. 10; cf. the more spiritual ideas prominent in Enoch, e.g. l. 4, civ. 4, 6, cviii. 11, etc.). The changed body is still however, described largely in sensuous physical terms, while here, in the case of the Risen Christ, was a body so spiritualized that they thought it was a spirit. On the other hand, the Alexandrian Greek conception was that of emancipation from the body and continued existence as pure spirit. But, besides the fact that the tomb was empty, here was a body which could be not only seen but touched and felt, and presented evident marks of identity with the body of earth. Feel me and see, a spirit hath not flesh and bones. The marvel of the records is the perfect simplicity, the perfect naturalness with which the two sets of characteristics are combined in the same narratives, as if those who put the facts together were conscious of no difficulty in the apparent contradiction (Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection, p. 9). If we take one series of events, the Resurrection might appear to have been a mere coming back to life; if we take another, it might appear to be purely spiritual or spiritualistic. But the records combine both, and thus differentiate the apostolic representation of the resurrection of Jesus from the two current conceptions-from the sensuous conception of it held by the Pharisees, and from the spiritualistic conception of the Alexandrian or Greek philosophers.

Such a representation had no precedent, and can be explained only by the new revelation conveyed to the disciples through the appearances and intercourse of the Risen Christ, as recorded for us in the narratives. Through these appearances and self-manifestations Christ sought to impress on His disciples, on the one hand, the identity of the Risen with the Crucified Jesus, and on the other, that His resurrection was not a mere restoration to life but a triumph of His whole personality over death and His entrance on a new and higher mode of existence. So Jesus offered Himself to the senses of the disciples, even to their touch and handling, if this were needed to convince them of His identity-even, it may be, to the eating of bread, if only so the feeling that He was a phantasm or apparition could be removed. But when this was attained, when doubt of His identity was removed and the disciples thought to resume the old familiar intercourse, He manifested the characteristics of a more spiritual form of existence, and they learned the truth, that the Resurrection was the entrance on a new order of life and a higher kind of fellowship. So the Ascension is represented in the Gospel narratives as the natural and necessary sequel of the Resurrection. The visible lifting from the earth marked the close of the visible intercourse and the beginning of the more spiritual for which the disciples were gradually prepared by the teaching of the forty days (Joh 20:17; cf. Luk 24:49, Act 1:8, John 14-16) (see Denney, article Ascension, Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) i. 161). The contention (e.g. Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in New Light, London, n.d., p. 156 f.) that the body of Jesus during the forty days underwent a gradual process of spiritualization or glorification, a process of resurrection, which was consummated in the Ascension does not seem to be supported by the narratives. On the very day of His resurrection the spirituality of His risen body was as manifest as in the case of the appearance by the Sea of Tiberias (cf. Luk 24:31; Luk 24:36, Joh 21:4 ff.; see Forrest, Christ of Hist. and of Exper.7, p. 411 f.).

With the essential nature of the Resurrection-Body the Evangelists were not concerned. But from the temporary manifestations of the Risen Body during the forty days there were two things, either of which they might have thought it to be, which they came to know it was not. It was not simply the old earthly body resumed, and it was not a mere phantasmal existence. And one thing they knew it, was-it was a body no longer subject to physical limitations and restrictions, but completely under the control of the spiritual nature or will, so under control that it could manifest itself in such material form or forms, if this were necessary, for evidential purposes. Already during, the earthly ministry there were, according to the Gospels, pre-glimpses of this control of body by spirit. Two of the best attested incidents in the narratives-His walking on the sea and the Transfiguration-are instances in point. The chief significance of the Transfiguration has been found by some to consist just in this, that it was meant to prepare the disciples for the Resurrection and for the appearance of the Risen Jesus in glorified form (see, e.g., H. A. A. Kennedy in Journal of Theological Studies iv. [1903] 270 ff.).

ii. The witness of St. Paul.-St. Pauls teaching on the nature of the Resurrection-Body as spiritual is but the further carrying, out of the teaching of the forty days, and is intelligible only against the background of the appearances of Christs risen body, reports of which he would receive from first-hand witnesses. In regard to the Risen Body he holds firmly the two points borne witness to by the Gospel accounts: (1) the identity between the body which was buried and the body which rose. Some critics maintain that there is no substantial identity between the two in St. Pauls teaching; but apart from the analogy of the seed, the words that Christ died and that he was buried and that he hath been raised on the third day are, as Feine points out (Theol. des NT, p. 362), susceptible of no other interpretation than that of identity. But (2) equally with identity the difference between the two is insisted on, represented by the distinction between the seed and the perfected plant: Thou sowest not that body that shall be (1Co 15:37). St. Paul speaks of the risen body as a body not of flesh and blood (flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, v. 50) but one transfigured and transformed. A distinction is drawn between the psychical or natural body and the pneumatical or spiritual body, the former the vehicle of self-manifestation under earthly conditions, the latter the organ of self-manifestation under supra-terrestrial conditions. The difference consists not in the body ceasing to be material or being changed into spirit, but in the material being entirely subjected to the dominion of the spirit. The risen body of Christ was spiritual not because it was less than before material, but because in it matter was wholly and finally subjugated to spirit, and not to the exigencies of physical life. Matter no longer restricted Him or hindered. It had become the pure and transparent vehicle of spiritual purpose (Gore, Body of Christ, p. 127). (For the striking corroboration of St. Pauls conception of the spiritual body supplied by recent science, see below, IV. ii. 2 (c).

St. Pauls view has been contrasted with that of the Evangelists, as less materialistic, and the difference has been traced to the more spiritual character of the appearance of the Risen Christ to St. Paul as compared with those to the older apostles. But we have to remember the difference of relationship to the Risen Lord between St. Paul and the older disciples. That St. Paul had ever seen Jesus during His earthly life and ministry is doubtful. Ramsay, C. Clemen (Paulus, Giessen, 1904), and J. Weiss (Paulus und Jesus, Berlin, 1909), among recent critics, maintain that he had. The weight of probability, however, is against the supposition (see Feine, Jesus Christus und Paulus, Leipzig, 1902, pp. 93, 350) (2Co 5:16 cannot be cited for or against, for what St. Paul is contrasting here is the knowledge of Christ after the flesh [not in the flesh] with the knowledge of Him after the spirit-the difference between the estimate of Christ formed by St. Paul before his conversion and after). Recognition of identity under changed conditions was not, therefore, the primary requirement in St. Pauls case, as it was in the case of the older apostles. The aim of the appearance to him was to convince him that the Jesus who was crucified and whose followers he persecuted was indeed the Risen and Exalted Christ. To him, therefore, Christ was manifested in the majesty of His Divine glory, a Figure invested in dazzling splendour, with none of those more tangible characteristics which He manifested to the earlier apostles and which seemed necessary for evidential purposes. Though thus less tangible, however, the appearance to St. Paul was not less objective than those to the earlier apostles. In St. Pauls own judgment it was the same kind of appearance as that to Peter, James, and the others-He appeared to me also.

The question has been raised whether St. Paul derived his view of the resurrection-body entirely from what he had seen and heard of the Risen Lord, or was partly influenced by contemporary Jewish or Hellenistic ideas. Lake, e.g. (Resurrection of Jesus Christ, p. 23 ff.), maintains that the Pauline doctrine of a transubstantiation of the body at the resurrection is one which was in the main familiar to the Jews, yet he recognizes the influence on St. Pauls doctrine of his knowledge of appearances of the Risen Lord in the light of which knowledge he re-formed his ideas on the Resurrection generally. The question of the influence on St. Pauls doctrine of Christs own teaching on the resurrection has also to be considered. Feine (Jesus Christus und Paulus, p. 181 f.) points out certain remarkable similarities between St. Pauls teaching in 1 Cor. and the narratives of our Lords discussion with the Sadducees in Mar 12:18 f., Luk 20:27 f. The condition of the risen is described by Jesus as being as the angels of God in heaven (Mar 12:25, ), or like the angels (), and as being sons of God, being sons of the resurrection (Luk 20:36). That is to say, they possess a heavenly or spiritual organism, and are conformed to the likeness of God. (see Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, pp. 100, 234). This Christian tradition of Jesus eschatological teaching, if received by St. Paul, was, however, illumined and defined by the manifestations of Jesus to himself and to the other apostles. Others maintain (e.g. Reitzenstein; see J. Weiss, on 1Co 15:44) that St. Pauls contrast between the natural body ( ) and the spiritual body ( ) was derived from the Greek mystery-religions. But the Greek antithesis is based on a dualistic conception of human nature, and St. Pauls contrast is in quite a different category.

Literature.-On the Resurrection-Body see E. M. Goulburn, The Resurrection of the Body (BL [Note: L Bampton Lecture.] ), London, 1850; J. H. Skrine, CR [Note: R Contemporary Review.] lxxxvi. [1904] 860-871; The Resurrection-Body: a Study in the History of Doctrine, CQR [Note: QR Church Quarterly Review.] lxviii. [1909] 138 ff.; R. H. Charles, Eschatology, Hebrew, Jewish and Christian, London, 1899; R. C. Moberly, Problems and Principles, do., 1904; C. Gore. The Body of Christ, do., 1901; C. H. Robinson, Studies in the Resurrection of Christ, do., 1909, ch. 2.; W. J. Sparrow Simpson, The Resurrection and Modern Thought, do., 1911, chs. 24-29.

IV. The significance of the sesurrection of Christ for Apostolic Christianity.-The significance of the Resurrection for the Apostolic Church may be represented under a twofold aspect, (i.) as evidential, (ii.) as essential or constitutive.

i. Evidential significance.-In the older mode of treatment of the Resurrection, in English theology especially, main stress was laid upon its evidential value as the confirmation or proof of the truth of Christs claims as to His person and work. To place the chief emphasis on this aspect of its significance is to give the Resurrection too abstract and external a character, and is the correlative of that view of the miracles of Jesus natural to 18th cent. theology, which lays stress on their value as credential appendages rather than as an essential part of Jesus redemptive revelation. According to the invariable apostolic representation, however, the resurrection of Christ is not merely something consequent upon the redemptive revelation of His life and work on earth, something added on to it as the reward and guarantee of its efficacy; it is itself an essential and constitutive part of the revelation necessary to its culmination or completion. While this is so, the importance of the evidential aspect of the Resurrection is not to be minimized. This is, indeed, where we must begin in our study of the apostolic representation. For the apostles the first and primary significance of the Resurrection lay undoubtedly in the fact that it was the Divine confirmation of Jesus entire claim as to His person and world. Thus it is-and, the importance of the fact has to be noted, as it is often overlooked-that it is always God to whom the apostles impute the raising of Christ. His resurrection was the immediate act of God the Father, who by this gave His verdict concerning Jesus, thus once for all reversing Israels act of rejection, and refuting the Jews charge of blasphemy. Whom they slew, hanging him on a tree, him God raised up (Act 10:39 f.). This is the uniform apostolic representation common to St. Paul and the earlier apostles (cf. Act 2:24; Act 2:32; Act 2:36; Act 3:15; Act 4:10; Act 5:31; Act 13:30-39; Act 17:31, 1Th 1:10, Rom 1:4; Rom 6:4, 1Co 15:15, Gal 1:1, Eph 1:20, Php 2:9, 1Pe 1:21, Heb 13:20). So that St. Paul says, If Christ did not rise we are detected bearing false witness to God ( ) by affirming of him that he raised Christ. (1Co 15:14-15 [Moffatt]). And if this affirmation or witness is false, then their whole view of the worth of Christs person and work is without validity. Their preaching of Christ is empty (v. 14) and faith in Him is vain (v. 7). To develop this evidential significance of the Resurrection into its details:

1. Evidential with regard to His Person.-(a) Through the Resurrection conclusive proof was afforded of the Messiahship of Jesus. This aspect of its significance was that which was primarily emphasized in the earliest apostolic teaching as represented by the sermons of St. Peter recorded in the early chapters of Acts. That Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, the Divinely sent One in whom all the hopes of Israel were to be realized, cannot be seriously doubted. In calling Himself the Son of man He adopted a title which, it is now generally recognized, involved Messianic pretensions (see Sanday, The Life of Christ in Recent Research, Oxford, 1907, p. 123 ff.). This claim He had already supported by His life and work. His miracles-works of God wrought through Him (cf. Joh 14:10)-were proofs of His mission as Gods accredited messenger to Israel (Act 2:22, a man accredited to you by God through miracles, wonders, and signs which God performed by him among you; cf. Act 10:38, anointed of the Holy Ghost and with power he went about doing good, for God was with him). This claim, however, was apparently contradicted and denied by His death on the Cross, which to the Jew was the symbol of Divine rejection (Act 5:30, Act 10:39). Through the Death on the Cross, therefore, the Jews verdict on Jesus seemed Divinely supported. But through the Resurrection as not merely His being raised on the third day (Act 10:40), but His being exalted to the right hand, of God in power and glory, Israels act of rejection was Divinely reversed, and the claim of Jesus to be the Christ was for ever vindicated. This Jesus has God raised up (Act 2:32). The God of our fathers has glorified Jesus his servant (Act 3:13; cf. Act 2:33, Act 5:31, Act 7:55). God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified (Act 2:36; cf. Act 9:22). Uplifted then by Gods right hand, and receiving from the Father the long-promised holy Spirit, he has poured on us what you now see and hear (Act 2:33 [Moffatt]). There could be but one conclusion-earths rejected was Gods accepted.

(b) Through the Resurrection the Divinity of Jesus was established. He was shown to be not only Messiah, but the Son of God. A unique relation to God He had Himself claimed. The title Son of God, indeed, is very rarely found applied by Jesus to Himself. More often it is used to describe the impression made by Him upon others (e.g. on the possessed, Mar 3:11; Mar 5:7 and ||s; on the centurion, Mar 15:39 and ||s). The crowning instance is the confession of Peter, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God (Mat 16:16). That on this matter of His Divine Sonship our Lord maintained a great measure of reserve and reticence was quite in keeping with His whole method of self-revelation. The truth of His Divine Sonship was not one that could be taught the disciples as a dogma; it must be allowed to break naturally upon them as they increasingly divined the uniqueness of His character. But we see in the records of the Evangelists how Jesus consistently sought to guide the thoughts of His disciples concerning Himself into true and worthy lines. He uniformly claimed to stand in a unique relation to God. He habitually speaks of God as my Father (Matthew 23 times), never embracing Himself with His disciples as being in the same sense sons of God. He attributes to Himself powers and prerogatives which imply essential ccequality with God. He claims perfect mutuality of knowledge as well as of will with the Father, whereby He possesses an exclusive power of manifesting Him (Mat 11:27, Luk 10:22). He claims to do for men what only God can do-to grant forgiveness (Mat 9:6, Mar 2:10, Luk 5:24) and to bestow the Holy Spirit (Mat 10:19, Luk 12:12). And, further, He demands from men that complete surrender and utter devotion of life which can be granted only to God (Mat 10:37, Luk 14:26). So it is altogether in keeping with the Synoptic representation when the Fourth Gospel records such sayings as these: I and the Father are one (thing or essence, ) (Joh 10:30), He who has seen me has seen the Father (Joh 14:9), I am in the Father, and the Father is in me (Joh 14:11), the Jews sought the more to kill him because he said, God was his peculiar () Father, making himself equal to God (Joh 5:18).

The claim of Jesus to be the Son of God is thus implied in His attitude throughout, and for refusing to disown it He was counted a blasphemer and condemned to death (Mat 26:63; Mat 26:65 f., Mat 27:43; cf. Joh 10:36). Such a death-a hanging on a gibbet-seemed to be a confirmation of the judgment of His enemies, but the Resurrection was Gods great declaration in action substantiating the truth of Jesus claim: declared Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead (Rom 1:4). No blasphemer was He. The Resurrection declared, defined, or marked Him out to be () what He always truly was-Son of God. For the Sonship thus declared in power ( -no longer in humiliation but in power, the power of exalted Lordship) by the Resurrection was according to or answered to the spirit of holiness ( ), the spirit of exceptional and transcendent holiness which was the inmost reality in the person and life of Jesus, and testified to His peculiar relation to God. Divine Sonship, that is to say, was not an honour to which for the first time Christ was exalted after His death. The Resurrection only displayed Him as being what He was inalienably from the first, and installed Him in the dignity which corresponded to His nature. In virtue of His resurrection Christ is established in that dignity which is His and which answers to His nature (Denney, Expositors Greek Testament , on Rom 1:4).

For St. Paul the conviction of the Divine Sonship of Jesus dated from the appearance to him on the way to Damascus of the Glorified Christ. What was revealed to him then was that the Crucified One was the Son of God in power. So that the gospel he immediately began to preach was that Jesus is the Son of God (Act 9:20). It is sometimes maintained that the Son of God was a recognized title of the Messiah (cf. En. cv. 2; 4 Ezra 7:28 f., 13:32, 37, 52, 14:9), and that we cannot argue from the mere use of the phrase to His Divinity. But it is not a case of thus arguing. We have but to take the first writing of his which has come down to us-1 Thess.-to see there writ large what the assertion of the Divine Sonship of Jesus meant for St. Paul. In this first extant NT writing (written, according to Sanday, probably about a.d. 51, i.e. about twenty years after the Resurrection) three remarkable predictions are made of Jesus.

(1) In the first verse, the Glorified Jesus is bracketed in dignity with God the Father. St. Paul and his companions give solemn greeting to the Church of the Thessalonians (which is) in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (v. 1). The wonder of such a juxtaposition is realized only when we remember that St. Paul was a strict Jew, in whose blood therefore monotheism ran like a passion. Yet this Jewish apostle does not scruple to place Jesus side by side with God, and assume a like estimate of Him on the part of those to whom he writes.

(2) In this brief letter Jesus is more than twenty times referred to as, Lord (). The disciples had been in the habit of addressing their Master as Lord during His lifetime, using the term as a title of authority in a sense not very different from that in which any Rabbi might be addressed by his pupils (Joh 13:13 f.) (see Sanday in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ii. 648b). But that sense is no longer adequate to the apostolic usage; the word has become filled with a deeper meaning, being used as the Septuagint equivalent of the OT Jahweh and as signifying Divine power and sovereignty. What Jahweh was to Israel, that Jesus was to the religious consciousness of St. Paul-the One who has earned the place of Sovereign in his heart, and whom he feels constrained to worship and serve.

(3) Prayer is addressed to Jesus directly, and not merely offered in His name-Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way unto you (Joh 3:11). And all this, it is significant to note, is referred to by the Apostle only in the passing, without the slightest indication that it was a novel or unfamiliar attitude to his readers. In his subsequent Epistles St. Paul gives fuller and more developed doctrinal expression to his conviction of the truth of the Divine Sonship of Jesus. Personal pre-existence in the God-head is unambiguously affirmed of Him in 2Co 8:9 (ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, etc.) and in Php 2:6 ff. (though he was divine by nature, he did not snatch at equality with God but emptied himself by taking the nature of a servant, etc. [Moffatt]). In Col 1:15-20 His cosmic significance is dwelt upon. As the image () of the invisible God, He occupies a position of unique pre-eminence and sovereignty, and is agent or mediator and end in creation as well as in redemptive history (in him were all things created all things have been created through him, and with a view to [] him; cf. 1Co 8:6; 1Co 10:4). But already in his earliest as truly as in his latest writings full, eternal, essential Divinity is ascribed to Jesus as Son of God, whereby He is placed alongside the Father in honour and worship.

St. Pauls usage of the term Son of God in this transcendent sense has been traced to Hellenistic influence. While the title had been employed by the earliest Christian community in a very harmless sense, St. Paul gave it the altogether new and mythical sense of a God who had descended from heaven, a sense which was intelligible enough to Greeks and heathen but not to Jews with their strict monotheism; and in so doing he became the creator of the new Christology, which drew its inspiration, not from history, but from something above it-from a mythical being, and which won over the heathen for this very reason (Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, Eng. translation , 2 vols., London, 1903-04, i. 250). Son of God, as employed by St. Paul, is thus held to be primarily a Gentile title, one which was sometimes applied to the Emperors, like the title Lord (e.g. it is so found in a letter of the Emperor Augustus dated a.d. 5; see Expositor , 6th ser., vii. [1903] 114, and Knowling, Testimony of St. Paul, p. 44). This Imperial usage, Deissmann conjectures, may have first suggested to St. Paul the application of the title to Jesus (Bibelstudien, Marburg, 1895, i. 167, Eng. translation , Bible Studies, Edinburgh, 1901, p. 166 f.). But Son of God, if a Gentile, was also a Jewish title, and, as Knowling points out, it is most significant that the first and earliest intimation which we have in Acts of St. Pauls Christian teaching is this, that in the synagogues-not to Greeks or Romans, but to Jews and proselytes-he proclaimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God (1Co 9:20).

If St. Paul had interpreted Son of God differently from the other apostles, and if the deification of Christ had been due to him, the surprising thing is that we do not hear of any opposition on this point between him and the other apostles. The older apostles and St. Paul differed no doubt in many things, but there is no trace that they differed in the estimate which they formed of the Person of Christ, and of His relationship to the Father. St. Pauls representation of Christ is only a more developed expression of what is present already in solution in the primitive apostolic teaching. Of this St. Peters sermons in Acts and his First Epistle may be taken as representative.

In St. Peters sermons in Acts, while no attempt is made at a fully developed doctrine of the Person of Christ, He is quite definitely placed on the side of God as over against man, the theme of the gospel and the object of faith. Through His resurrection and exaltation Jesus is proclaimed not only Messiah (Act 3:18-20; Act 4:25-28), but giver of the Holy Spirit (Act 2:23), Prince of life (Act 3:15, Act 5:31), Saviour (Act 4:12, Act 5:21), and Judge of living and dead (Act 10:42, a prerogative which in the OT belongs to God and to God alone). Prayer is offered to Him directly (Act 1:24, Act 7:59), so that one mode of describing Christians in these early days was to speak of them as those that called upon the name of Jesus (Act 9:21). And already in his first sermon we find St. Peter applying to Christ the term Lord (, Act 2:21; Act 2:33; Act 2:36; cf. Act 3:13; Act 3:21; Act 5:31; Act 10:36), the same term as is used of Jahweh in the Septuagint , thus assigning to Him Divine sovereignty and authority. The mere use of the word may not in itself necessarily involve Divinity. The Jews applied it to their Messiah (Mar 12:36 f. and ||s) without thereby, it is said, pronouncing him to be God. But, as Knowling points out, it is not merely that the early Christians addressed their Ascended Lord so many times by the same name which is used of Jehovah in the Septuagint but that they did not hesitate to refer to Him the attributes and the prophecies which the great prophets of the Jewish nation had associated with the name of Jehovah (Expositors Greek Testament , on Act 2:21).

In his First Epistle St. Peter represents the same point of view in slightly fuller and more developed form. The Spirit of God is definitely spoken of as the Spirit of Christ (1Pe 1:11); and although the title Son of God is not employed, we find the expression the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (1Pe 1:3), with an undeniable implication of Christs special Sonship. Christians are called to sanctify in their hearts Christ as Lord (1Pe 3:15) to words which in the OT are applied to Jahweh and His sanctification by Israel (Isa 8:13). He is proclaimed to be Lord not only of the spiritual world but of the material as related to and subserving the spiritual, angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him (1Pe 3:22). It is a disputed question whether 1Pe 1:11 and 1Pe 1:20 do or do not imply the real pre-existence of Christ. While the language of the former seems satisfied if we take it to mean simply that the Divine Spirit, now so bound up with Christ that it can be called His Spirit, moved also in the prophets of old, the latter passage is more significant. While the word foreknown () in no way involves the pre-existence of Christ, since it is used even of Christians in 1Pe 1:2, yet the unusual combination of foreknown with manifested may justly be considered as placing the matter beyond doubt. Only that can be manifested which was in being before manifestation (H. R. Mackintosh, The Person of Jesus Christ, Edinburgh, 1912, p. 45 f.). With the sermons of St. Peter in Acts and his First Epistle as representing the general conception of Christ current in the earliest Apostolic Age may be coupled the Epistle of St. James, where Jesus is extolled as the Lord of glory (1Pe 2:1) and ranked with God in honour and dignity (1Pe 1:1); and the brief Epistle of Jude, who describes Jesus as our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ (1Pe 1:4), whose slave () he is (1Pe 1:1).

As representing the more developed apostolic doctrine, we have not only the Epistles of St. Paul but the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Johannine writings. In Hebrews the central thought is that of the Divine Sonship of Christ, in virtue of which He is the Mediator of the new and beater covenant (Heb 12:24; Heb 9:15; Heb 8:6). He is announced as a Son (Heb 1:2), transcendently related to God, the effulgence of the Fathers glory and the very image of His substance (Heb 1:3), creator, upholder, and heir of all things (Heb 1:2; Heb 1:10), who, though thus eternal and Divine, because the children were partakers of flesh and blood, Himself likewise partook of the same and is now through His suffering and sacrifice exalted at the right hand of the majesty on high (Heb 1:3, Heb 8:1, Heb 10:5). In the Fourth Gospel the emphasis on the Divine Sonship, marked throughout, so that even suck a critic as J. Weiss admits that in this Gospel Christ is God in the fullest sense, possessing those qualities which constitute the nature of the Deity (Christ: The Beginnings of Dogma, Eng. translation , London, 1911, p. 148 ff.). The view of the writer is summed up is the Prologue in terms of the rebaptized Loges conception of which he predicates His eternity (existed in the very beginning, Heb 10:1 [Moffatt]), His eternal personal relation to God (was with [] God Heb 10:1; was with God in the very beginning, Heb 10:2), His agency creation (through him all existence come into being, no existence came into being apart from him, Heb 10:3), giver of life and light to the whole race of mankind, the medium alike of creation and of revelation (in him life lay, and this life was the Light for men, Heb 10:4; the real Light which lightens every man, Heb 10:9). In 1 Jn. such a unity between God and the Son is recognized that he who confesses the Son hath the Father also (1Jn 5:20). In the Apocalypse Christ is represented as He whom all creation unites to worship as it worships God Almighty (Rev 1:6; cf. Rev 7:12). God and the Lamb receive united adoration (Rev 5:13, Rev 7:10). He is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End (Rev 1:8, Rev 21:6, Rev 22:18.), the Lord of the churches, who holds their stars or guardian angels in His hand (Rev 1:16; Rev 1:20), who is Ruler of the nations and King of kings, the all-wise and almighty Judge of the nations (Rev 7:9, Rev 15:4).

2. Evidential with regard to His work, especially His death.-The Resurrection was not only the confirmation of Christs claim to Sonship and Messiahship; it was through this the Divine justification of Jesus claim as to the redemptive character of His life and work as culminating in His death, and the public declaration of its acceptance. The Messiah was looked for as coming in outward glory, but Jesus came in a way that was the very opposite of this. His life on earth had been one of humiliation and suffering, of self-denying service and sacrifice for others, until at last the culminating point of His sacrifice was reached in His death. All were offended in Him. He needed to be justified, and the Resurrection was His Divine justification or vindication. In the Epistle to the Philippians His resurrection (and exaltation) is connected with His making himself of no reputation and taking upon Him the form of a servant (Php 2:6-11). In Romans (Rom 1:4) it is in contrast with His having been made of the seed of David according to the flesh that He is said to have been declared Son of God with power. Above all, His death needed justification. Jesus had Himself while on earth proclaimed the necessity of His suffering and death. But this was so contrary to Jewish conceptions of the Messiah that the first disciples had difficulty in attaining to it. The idea of the Messianic sufferings and death is one that wakes no echo in the heart of any Jewish contemporary of our Lord, not excepting even His disciples (L. A. Muirhead, Eschatology of Jesus, London, 1904, p. 206), and the Death on the Cross when it came was fatal, in Jewish eyes, to Messianic claims. This was the great . It was His resurrection, and the fact that by it He had been declared the Son of God with power, that showed the peculiarity and importance of His death. So St. Paul represents the case. If Jesus was indeed both Lord and Christ, as through his experience on the Damascus road he had come to know, the death which He died could not be what it seemed to be, a curse, the death of a malefactor and blasphemer, but a Divine appointment for the salvation of men. There must be in it a Divine virtue. God was in Christ, even Christ the crucified, reconciling the world unto Himself (2Co 5:19; cf. 1Co 15:17, Rom 4:25; Rom 6:4-7). It was a vicarious death; He was delivered up for our transgressions (Rom 4:25), and the Resurrection was the assurance that God had accepted Christs atoning work, and that the foundation of perfect reconciliation between God and man had been laid. In the light of the revelation of the Resurrection, the Death on the Cross lost its shame and became a spring of blessing, the central commendation or proof of Divine love (Rom 5:6).

Already in the primitive Christian community, following hints of the Lord Himself in His earthly and then in His post-Resurrection teaching, we have the atoning significance of the Death represented. That Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures-not only the fact of the Death but its atoning significance-was part of the tradition which St. Paul had received and which, he claimed, was common to himself and the older apostles (1Co 15:3; 1Co 15:11). The inference, Weizscker acknowledges, is indisputable; the primitive Church already taught, and proved from Scripture, that the death of Jesus exerted a saving influence in the forgiveness of sin (Apost. Age2, i. 130 f.).

This is borne out by the reports of St. Peters speeches in the Acts, where the death of Jesus is represented as a Divine necessity, taking place by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God (Act 2:23; cf. Act 4:28), and as in accordance with prophecy (Act 3:18; cf. Christs post-Resurrection teaching, Luk 24:2, Isaiah 53 seems to have been the special passage in the Apostles mind-the Suffering Messiah being frequently identified in these early speeches with the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah, e.g. Act 3:13, Act 4:27; cf. Act 8:35). So, although represented as a crime on the part of the Jews (Act 2:23, Act 3:13-15, Act 5:30), the death of Jesus is viewed as a fact Divinely foreordained and Divinely necessary. This Divine necessity of the Death has reference to its saving or redemptive significance in virtue of which the great blessing of the gospel, offered in the name of Jesus, is the forgiveness of sins (Act 2:38, Isa 3:19, Act 5:31, Act 10:43). In these early sermons or discourses the redemptive significance of the Death is not developed. We have to remember that the Petrine speeches in the Acts were called forth by special circumstances and (except the speeches recorded in Act 10:30-43; Act 15:7-11) were all addressed to non-Christian Jews at Jerusalem. We have no right, therefore, to look to them for the full cycle of Christian doctrine which even in the beginning of the Gospel Peter had apprehended (Chase, Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) iii. 793b). In the First Epistle of Peter we have a somewhat more developed doctrine; the atoning efficacy of the suffering and death of Christ being described in varied language-covenant blood (Act 1:2), ransom (Act 1:18 f.), sin-bearing (Act 2:20 ff.), substitution, the sacrifice of the righteous for the unrighteous (Act 3:18).

In St. Paul the redemptive significance of the Death is further developed. He died for our sins (1Co 15:3, 2Co 5:21); a ransom (, 1Ti 2:6); through His death there is inaugurated a New Covenant (1Co 11:28), in which the Divine purpose of salvation is realized: deliverance from wrath (Rom 5:9), from the curse of the Law (Gal 3:13), and the imparting of eternal life (1Th 5:9 f.). The shedding of His blood was a sacrifice which had propitiatory value (Rom 3:25 f., Rom 5:9, 1Co 5:9), in virtue of which men are brought into a new relation to God, treated as righteous (Rom 3:24), accepted in the Beloved (Eph 1:6). This sacrificial significance of the Death is specially emphasized by the writer to the Hebrews, who finds in the sacrifices of the Old Covenant types and shadows of the sacrifice of Christ. Through its propitiatory efficacy the Death is viewed as a crown of glory (Eph 2:9; cf. Eph 5:8 f.). In the Johannine writings Jesus Christ the righteous is represented as the propitiation for our sins (1Jn 2:2; 1Jn 4:10; cf. Rev 1:5; Rev 5:6; Rev 5:9; Rev 5:12), in the Gospel the suffering and death being viewed, as in Heb., as a glorification (Joh 13:31). He [St. John] does not ever, like St. Paul (e.g. Php 2:8-9), separate it [the Passion] as a crisis of humiliation from the glory which followed (Westcott, on Joh 12:32; cf. Milligan, Resurrection, p. 314).

3. Evidential with regard to mans eternal destiny.-Another aspect of the evidential significance of the resurrection of Christ for the Apostolic Church is that which concerns the eternal destiny of those who through him do believe in God. Already in the OT we have foreshadowings of the belief in a continued personal life with God after death. The religious relation of the soul to God was felt to carry with it the pledge of such a continued life. Fellowship with God constitutes a bond which death cannot sever. Immortality is the corollary of Religion. If there be religion, that is, if God be, there is immortality (Davidson, Job, Cambridge, 1884, p. 296). As Jesus Himself put it, interpreting and supporting this fundamental OT source of the faith in immortality, God is not a God of dead people but of living (Mat 22:32, Mar 12:27, Luk 20:38). And this immortality was for the Hebrew an immortality of the whole personal being of man, body as well as soul. The conception of a disembodied future life was entirely foreign to the OT-belonging to ethnic not to Hebrew thought. Such a destiny, indeed, could be for the OT believer but a hope, a faith, a faith venture, though involved in the very nature of religion as fellowship with God. If certainty, if assured confidence of such a full personal immortality, was to be attained, some more sure word of God must be spoken; and such a sure word the Apostolic Church found in the resurrection of Jesus. As the crowning example of a life lived in fellowship with God, and trusting God for the future, Jesus supplied the test case, the crucial instance, of Gods love.

Since therefore Jesus-the man Jesus-was raised from the grave, the faith in the Resurrection grounded in the life of fellowship with God has received its final seal and assurance. The resurrection of those who are His is guaranteed-For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with him (1Th 4:14). The empty grave therefore, as Harnack admits with some inconsequence, is the birthplace of the indestructible belief that death is vanquished, that there is a life eternal (What is Christianity?3, p. 165).

St. Paul puts this evidential significance of the Resurrection first negatively: If Christ be not risen, then they also which have fallen asleep in Christ have perished () (1Co 15:18). They have perished not in the sense of suffering annihilation or extinction of conscious existence, but of undergoing deprivation of continued existence, in any sense in which it is worth having-deprivation of life through separation from God, the Sheol state of existence. (For St. Pauls use of and as the antithesis of and see Kennedy, St. Pauls Conception of the Last Things, p. 119ff.) But now hath Christ been raised and become the first fruits () of them that are asleep (1Co 15:20). This is the more positive statement of it. As the first ripe sheaf is the earnest and guarantee of the coming harvest, so the resurrection of Christ is the pledge and guarantee of the resurrection of those who are His (cf. Col 1:18, Rev 1:5, , the first born from the dead). So St. Peter speaks of Christians being born anew to a life of hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, born to an unscathed, inviolate, unfading inheritance (1Pe 1:3 f. [Moffatt]).

The resurrection of Christ is not only the assurance or pledge of the full personal immortality of believers; it is also the revelation of the nature of this immortal life. It has brought life and immortality to light (2Ti 1:10); it has displayed it to our view. He has risen in possession of a body like ours, only glorified and made free from the law of sin and death, a body spiritual in the sense of being the perfect instrument of the purposes of spirit. In this glorified embodied state of the Risen Christ we have a look at the nature of the future state of believers. At present we are pent up in a body which is but an imperfect medium of our will or spirit. It is a body of death (Rom 7:24), full of weakness and corruption, limiting our powers of service. But this body that belongs to our low estate shall be transformed till it resembles the body of his Glory (Php 3:21 [Moffatt]). For if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you (Rom 8:11). (On the connexion between the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of believers, whereby the former is not only the pledge or guarantee but the ground of the latter, and the moral significance of the doctrine, see, further, below, IV. ii.)

ii. Essential or constitutive significance.-The heart of the apostolic representation is not reached until it is perceived that the Resurrection is not simply an external seal or evidential appendage added to guarantee certain truths about Christ and His work, but an essential or constitutive element in the work itself, an integral part of His redemptive revelation. Such a view as that of Herrmann already referred to, which lays the chief stress on the impression produced by Christs life, making the Resurrection at most a deduction of faith without vital relation to redemption, fails to do justice to the inner meaning of the fact. This more inner vital significance of the Resurrection for apostolic thought and life as the necessary sequel of the Incarnation and Crucifixion, and essential to the completion of the work of redemption, may be presented under the following heads:

1. What it meant for Christ Himself.-The Resurrection was essential to Christian faith, because of what it meant for Christ Himself. As the transition from a state of humiliation to a state of exaltation, the entrance in His risen manhood on a new life of exalted power and sovereignty, whereby He became Lord over all, the Resurrection formed a new beginning in the life of Christ Himself. This is the central significance of the Resurrection insisted on by St. Peter in his sermons recorded in Acts: God hath made him both Lord () and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified (Act 2:36); Him hath God exalted at his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour (Act 5:31); therefore being by the right hand of God exalted he hath poured forth this (Act 2:33), and the healing of the lame man is pointed to as further evidence of His exalted sovereignty (Act 4:10). , the Septuagint name for Jahweh and the characteristic apostolic title for the Exalted Jesus, defines Him as One who is sovereign in the spheres both of grace and of nature, Lord not only over the Church but over all creation. This too is the connotation or significance of the phrase at the right hand of God-a phrase borrowed from Psa 110:1 and oftener used in the NT than any other words of the OT. It defines Christs exaltation as a sharing in the universal sovereignty and almighty power of God. So in 1Pe 3:22 the statement that angels and authorities and powers are made subject unto him is the affirmation of His personal participation in the universal sovereignty of God, whose servants the angels and authorities and powers are.

This is most strikingly expressed by St. Paul, for whom the greatness of the Resurrection, as the supreme manifestation of Divine power (the surpassing greatness of his power, Eph 1:19 [Moffatt]), consisted in the fact that it was not merely the raising of Jesus from the dead, but His exaltation and enthronement in the heavenly sphere ( ) the sphere of spiritual activities , which lies behind the world of sense, the sphere of all the ruling forces of the universe (J. Armitage Robinson, St. Pauls Epistle to the Ephesians, London, 1903, pp. 21, 20), above all the angelic Rulers, Authorities, Powers, and Lords-above all powers whether of the natural sphere or of the spiritual-and all this for redemptive ends, that He might be head over everything for the church, the church which is his Body (Eph 1:20-22 [Moffatt]). As he puts it in the Epistle to the Philippians, God raised him high and conferred on him a Name above all names [], so that before the Name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven, on earth, and underneath the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Eph 2:9-11 [Moffatt]). The Resurrection thus constituted a crisis in the experience of Christ Himself. Through it His activity was raised to a new level, whereby He became clothed with absolute might to carry out the issues of His saving work on earth.

The frequency with which St. Paul speaks of Jesus as Lord () is remarkable. The word occurs some 131 times in his writings (see Feine, Theol. des NT, p. 344). In his first Epistle, 1 Thess., the title is applied to the Risen Christ more than 20 times. The peculiar significance of St. Pauls use of the term is sometimes minimized on the ground that it was used in ancient times to express the relation of a king to his subjects-cf. Act 25:26, where it is applied to the Roman Emperor-and in Oriental religions to express the relation between a god and his worshippers. So Deissmann maintains that the Pauline title the Lord is a genuinely Oriental predicate, and that St. Paul uses it as a silent protest against the acknowledgment of any other Lord, even the Roman Emperor, as a rival to the Lordship of Christ (see Feine, Jesus Christus und Paulus, p. 38). So Heitmller and Bousset claim that St. Pauls view of Jesus as was determined by the Hellenistic Christianity which he found in Damascus and Antioch. But if it was a Gentile it was also a Jewish title, being the Septuagint name for Jahweh, and this for St. Paul as a Jew was its nearer context. And St. Pauls application of the term to the Exalted Jesus was in line with the usage of the early Christian community (see above, iv. i. 1). To say, as Pfleiderer does, that the common faith of St. Paul and the early disciples in Jesus as Lord was due to a pre-Christian conception of Messiah which came ultimately from oriental sources, is to cut it off from its origin in apostolic experience and to leave unexplained what is the central and essential fact to be explained-how Lordship came to be predicated of One who died on a Cross of shame.

When we ask in what ways the Risen Lord exercises His sovereignty and power, we find the apostolic writers dwelling especially upon two manifestations of it: (a) the giving of the Holy Spirit, and (b) the intercession of Christ at the Fathers right hand.

(a) The giving of the Spirit is represented by the apostles as the gift of the Exalted Lord by which He carries on His work on earth, and secures the ends for which He lived and died. Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, says St. Peter, connecting the fact with the exaltation of Christ, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured forth on us what you now see and hear (Act 2:33). So intimately was the giving of the Spirit connected with the exaltation and glorification of Christ that St. John can say that there was no gift of the Spirit before the Ascension. Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified (Joh 7:39). He was anointed with the Holy Spirit Himself, and by the power of the Spirit accomplished the work given Him to do; but not till His work on earth was done and His glory entered did He possess the Spirit in such wise as to be able to bestow it on men. It was the promise of the Father-part of Christs reward for His work on earth-and, as such, a sure proof of Gods acceptance of that work.

Thus it is that the characteristic apostolic name for the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ or the Spirit of the Lord [Jesus] (Act 16:7 Revised Version , Rom 8:9, 2Co 3:17, Gal 4:6, Php 1:19, 1Pe 1:11), not only as having dwelt in Christ Himself, but as being the gift of Christ as Christ was the gift of the Father (cf. Joh 14:26; Joh 15:26). Further, the Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ as having Christ for His theme, His office being to witness to, interpret, and glorify Christ, and thus carry on His work on earth (cf. Joh 15:26 f., Joh 16:14). As such the Spirit is characterized chiefly in three ways: (1) as the Spirit of truth, to lead men into the truth as it is in Jesus, to take of the things of Christ and show us their meaning (Joh 14:26; Joh 15:26; Joh 16:13 f., Act 2:4; Act 6:10 et passim, 1Co 2:10; 1Co 12:3, etc.); (2) as the Spirit of holiness, to convince of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment (Joh 16:8), to help our infirmities (Rom 8:26), to set free from the power of sin and death (Rom 8:2; Rom 8:10; Rom 8:13, Gal 5:25, etc.), to produce the virtues of the Christian character which are the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22, Eph 5:9), and to conform us in body and in spirit into the likeness of the Risen Christ (Rom 8:29 f., Rom 10:13, 1Co 3:16; 1Co 6:19; 1Co 15:42-44, 2Co 3:18, Gal 2:20, etc.); (3) as the Spirit of power, to enable men to be effective witnesses in word and life to the Risen Christ (Act 1:8; Act 3:12; Act 4:7, etc.).

The function of the Spirit was thus to realize a new kind of fellowship between Christ and His followers-a spiritual fellowship with a living, everywhere present Lord-in and through which they were led into new truth and holiness and power. The coming of the Spirit, therefore, is not to be looked upon as a compensation or substitute for an absent Christ; it is the higher mode of Christs own presence, to which He pointed forward when He said, I will be with you all the time, to the very end of the world (Mat 28:20). On Christs own life, the promise the Comforter will come is interchangeable with I will come to you (Joh 14:18; Joh 15:26).

St. Paul in more than one passage expressly identifies the Risen Christ with the Holy Spirit (e.g. 2Co 3:17, the Lord is the Spirit, and 2Co 3:18, we are changed into the same image by the Lord the Spirit). And on this ground it is sometimes argued that for St. Paul the Risen Exalted Christ and the Holy Spirit are really one and the same (e.g. von Dobschtz, Ostern und Pfingsten, p. 34). To identify the Risen Lord and the Spirit, however, without qualification in the face of the three-fold benediction in the same Epistle (2Co 13:13) is unwarranted. What St. Paul meant was that between the Spirit and the power of the Risen Christ no experimental distinction could be made. The truth of the passage is the same as that of Rom 8:9 ff.: If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His. And if Christ is in you, etc. Here, so far as the practical experience of Christians goes, no distinction is made between the Spirit of Christ and Christ Himself; Christ dwells in Christians through His Spirit (Denney, Expositors Bible, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians London, 1894, p. 134). What the Apostle means by his form of verbal identification [the Lord is the Spirit] is rather the religious certainty that Jesus Christ, in whom God redeems men, and the Spirit, in whom He communicates Himself to men, are so indissolubly bound up in one, act so absolutely for the same end and through the same means, that from the standpoint of the practical issue they are seen as merged in each other. They are one as the fountain and the stream are one. Christ in you, or the Spirit of Christ in you; these are not different realities; but the one is the method of the other (Moberly) (H. R. Mackintosh in Hastings Single-vol. Dictionary of the Bible , p. 708b; cf. the same writers The Person of Jesus Christ, p. 374).

(b) While thus through the Spirit the Exalted Christ carries on His work on earth, by His intercession at the Fathers right hand He Himself carries on His work in heaven. This aspect of the Risen Christs activity is specially emphasized in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where it is represented as the culmination of His high-priestly functions, the entering through his own blood, i.e. with the virtue of His atoning sacrifice in Him, into the holiest of all to appear in the presence of God for us (Heb 9:24), and the guarantee of the full effectiveness of His redemptive work, wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession () for them (Heb 7:25). But in the other apostolic writings, both Pauline and Johannine, His intercession at Gods right hand is equally represented as the culminating aspect of Christs work, and with a kind of adoring awe which is quite peculiar even in the New Testament (Denney, Studies in Theology, London, 1894, p. 162). It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession () for us (Rom 8:34, who actually pleads for us [Moffatt]). These things write I unto you that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (1Jn 2:1).

It would no doubt be misleading to represent His heavenly intercession as oral or vocal, as taking place in words or spoken entreaty. Words imply distance and duality of a kind incongruous with the identity of life subsisting between Christ and the Father. Theirs is a unity that needs no language (Mackintosh, The Person of Jesus Christ, p. 377). When the apostles speak of His making intercession for us, they are not speaking of specific acts done or words spoken by Christ in His glory. His glorified presence is an eternal presentation; He pleads by what He is (R. C. Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood, London, 1897, p. 246). On the other hand, it would seem to be doing less than justice to the apostolic thought to represent His intercession as nothing more than His appearance and constant presence before God for us, with the virtue of His atoning life and death in Him, God being thus continually reminded, as it were, at once of the efficacy of Christs atoning work and of the needs of humanity.

Apparently we should interpret the apostolic language (e.g. Heb 4:16, that we may find grace to help in time of need, grace for timely succour) as implying that the intercession of Christ is not a continuous unvarying representation to God on behalf of men on the part of the Exalted Christ, but an intercession which relates itself sympathetically to the varying needs and exigencies of the believers life. This direct personal representation to God on our behalf is not to be conceived as limited to prayer. The verb translated intercede means to deal or transact with one person for another, and, when it stands alone without any limiting expressions, ought to be understood in a much wider sense than petition or prayer, viz. as including the whole series of transactions in which one person may engage with another on behalf of a third (Milligan, The Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord, p. 151). Christs intercession is the whole action or transaction in the presence of God of the Exalted Christ, whereby, on the ground of His atoning work, the full blessings of salvation are made over to those who come to God through him (Heb 7:25; cf. Rom 8:34).

2. What it meant for humanity.-In virtue of its being thus the entrance on a new life of exalted power and Lordship in which He exercises His full redemptive activity, the resurrection of Jesus constitutes a new beginning in the life of humanity, ushering in a new creative epoch. The Risen Jesus becomes a new life-principle in men, a life-creating Spirit (1Co 15:45, ) introducing men into a new world of spiritual experience. This epochal significance of the Resurrection St. Paul represents by saying that in and by His resurrection Christ became the second Adam, the Founder and Head of a new humanity, so that the resurrection of Christ represents as real a crisis in the history of man as his creation (Rom 5:12 f., 1Co 15:45 ff.). The first Adam became a living soul (1Co 15:45, , a person possessing a principle of life)-this marks the crisis of mans creation. The second Adam became a life-creating spirit (ib.)-this marks the crisis of mans redemption whereby he becomes a new creation ( ) and henceforth walks in newness of life (Rom 6:4, ).

This new life into which believers are introduced through union by faith with the living Lord St. Paul can describe only by saying that he possesses the Spirit () of Jesus Christ (Rom 9:9), that the Spirit of Christ or the Spirit of God mediated through the Exalted Christ dwells in him (Rom 9:11) or that Christ lives in him, so that he can say, I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me (Gal 2:20; cf. Rom 8:9-11). The life He now lives as a human being has, as its central determining principle, not himself but Christ. Christ is our life (Col 3:4, ). The of the believer is the very of the Exalted Christ (cf. Rom 8:10, 2Co 4:10 f.). Christianity for St. Paul is the condition of being in Christ ( ). A man in Christ-that is his definition of a Christian. The new dispensation or epoch inaugurated by the Resurrection is the dispensation of the Spirit predicted by Christ Himself (Joh 14:16; Joh 14:26; Joh 15:26; Joh 16:7).

By those who, like pfleiderer and Beyschlag, trace St. Pauls view of Christ as the second Adam, the man from heaven (1Co 15:47), to the influence of Philos Jewish-Hellenic conception of a pre-existent heavenly Man, the Urmensch or archetypal model of mans creation, St. Paul is represented as conceiving of Christ in His pre-incarnate state merely as Man in heaven, the prototype of humanity (see J. Weiss, on 1Co 15:47, and Feine, Theol. des NT, p. 353). Even if we assume, however, that St. Paul borrowed the contrast in the first place from current Hellenic thought, using the schema lying to his hand, he filled it with a content determined not by the speculations of Alexandrian philosophy but by his own experience of the Risen Christ. He seems, indeed, expressly to contrast his own point of view with that of Philo, by designating the man from heaven not the First Man as in Philo, but the Second Man. That is not first which is spiritual but that which is natural (1Co 15:46). It is only at His resurrection that Christ is represented by St. Paul as becoming the second Adam, the life-giving head of a new humanity.

For the apostles, accordingly, Christian life and experience in all its forms depends upon the Resurrection.

(a) Our justification depends upon it. The great passage here is Rom 4:25 : He was delivered up for our trespasses ( ) and was raised for our justification ( ). The latter clause is sometimes taken to mean that the Resurrection is necessary to our justification in the sense of being the great proof that the sacrifice of the Death was Divinely accepted, thus evoking faith in us. He was delivered up [to death] because of our trespasses [to make atonement for us]: and He was raised because we were justified by His death. On this interpretation the significance of the Resurrection for our justification becomes reduced to a divine declaration that we are accepted with God (G. B. Stevens, Pauline Theology, London, 1892, p. 254; cf. B. Weiss, Biblical Theology of the NT, Eng. translation , Edinburgh, 1882, i. 437). Its purpose is evidential; it is little more than a certificate or testimonial to the validity of the Death. That the Resurrection has this evidential significance we have seen. But this is only a partial statement of the apostolic view. If this were all, no inner or essential connexion is to be traced between the Resurrection and our justification, but one which is purely external and temporary; and the Resurrection would be a matter which can be dispensed with as soon as faith is gained, or is unnecessary if faith is gained in some other way (see, e.g., Pfleiderer, Paulinism, Eng. translation , London, 1877, i. 119).

But this is not adequate to the Pauline thought. The Resurrection is necessary to our justification, not merely because of the difference it makes to us as certifying the atoning efficacy of the Death and thus evoking faith in us, but also because of the difference it makes to Christ Himself. It marks the point at which His sovereign power as Lord is made effective. Our justification, the basis for which has been laid in the Death, becomes an accomplished fact and effective reality only through Christs rising again, with the virtue of His atoning life and death in Him, to apply His atonement in those who are united with Him by faith. That which redeems is not Christs atoning death apart from His living Person into union with whom we are brought by faith. Nearly every error in theories of the Atonement may be traced ultimately to separating the propitiatory work of Christ from Christ Himself. The very ABC of Apostolic Christianity is that we are saved not by believing the fact that Christ died for our sins but by union with the Crucified and now Risen Exalted Saviour. Only through union with a living Saviour who has in Him the virtue of His atoning death do justification, forgiveness, and all the blessings of redemption become ours-In whom we have redemption through his blood (Eph 1:7, Col 1:14). We are accepted in the beloved (Eph 1:6); there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). Justification is ours as we are in Christ in such living union with Him that His life becomes identified with ours and ours with His. Because of this identification or incorporation Christs acts are repeated in us so that in His death we die to sin, crucified with Christ (Gal 2:20), and in His life we live to righteousness. But it is only by His risen life that Christ can come into such living union with men as thus to effect their redemption.

The apostolic thought accordingly is this: He was delivered up [to death] on account of our trespasses [to make atonement for them]; and He was raised on account of our justification [that it might become an accomplished fact]. His rising again was the necessary antecedent of His applying to His elect the virtue of that Atonement which His dying wrought for all men. He died to purchase what He rose again to apply (J. H. Newman, Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification3, London, 1874, p. 206). So it is that the resurrection rather than the death of Christ is spoken of as the cause of justification. It is doubtless true, as Denney urges, that Paul did not make an abstract separation between Christs Death and His Resurrection, as if the Death and the Resurrection either had different motives, or served ends separable from each other (Expositors Greek Testament , on Rom 11:23-25). Christs work is one and its end one. He both died and was raised for our justification. But this end was made effective only through the Resurrection; cf. Rom 8:34 : Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead; Rom 5:10 : saved by his life; and 1Co 15:17 : If Christ be not risen your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews the same truth is presented from the point of view of the Priesthood of Christ. Just as in OT ritual only when the high priest took the blood within the veil and sprinkled it upon the Mercy Seat was the offering for sin completed and the covenant-fellowship with God established, so Christs offering for sin is not completed until in the heavenly sanctuary He presents Himself through his own blood (1Co 9:12), i.e. with the virtue of His atoning death in Him. Only then is the new covenant-fellowship between God and sinners established. It is in Him as the living prevailing High Priest, and not merely through something He did in the past, that we have peace with God.

(b) Our sanctification, our moral and spiritual renewal or quickening, depends upon it. This is but a further explication of (a). In Christ, and through union with Him, we have pardon; in Christ, and through union with Him, we have sanctification of life. Through His resurrection, therefore, Christ becomes a life-creating Spirit (1Co 15:43), the source of spiritual quickening to believers. Here and now they share in the power of Christs risen life, whereby they become the subjects of a moral and spiritual resurrection. Through union with Christ by faith, and symbolically in baptism, they are crucified with Christ (Gal 2:20) unto sin, engrafted (, united vitally) into the likeness of his death (Rom 6:5), the old nature being annulled by the introduction through faith into the in Christ environment, the environment of the power of the exalted victorious Lord. They rise with Him and live with Him, engrafted into the likeness of his resurrection, that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life (Rom 6:4 ff.; cf. Rom 8:9-11, Eph 2:4-7, Col 2:12; Col 3:1-3, Php 3:10 f.).

This spiritual resurrection through union with the Risen Christ St. Paul describes as being quickened together with him and raised up with him and made to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:4-6). This renewal in which the Christian life consists is a manifestation in us of the power of his resurrection (Php 3:10), or, as St. Paul more often puts it, of the same mighty power of God which had effected Christs resurrection and enthronement in the heavenly places, that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and (raised) you when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins (Eph 1:19 f., Eph 2:1; cf. 2Co 4:14). The resurrecting energy of God in raising Christ and in raising us when we were dead in trespasses and sins is one and the same. The one act is the prolongation of the other, the manifestation in two steps or stages of the same Divine miraculous energy. Every conversion, every advance in the new life, is part of that great new creation which began at the open grave, which advanced at Pentecost, and which will only reach its consummation when every knee shall bow to Christ and every tongue confess that He is Lord (Cairns, Christ and Human Need, p. 186). St. Paul, indeed, speaks of the Christians resurrection and enthronement as a Divine act contemporaneous with the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ (J. Armitage Robinson, on Eph 2:6), as if it were already achieved. It is involved in the latter ideally in posse, but it has to be worked out really in esse. But one is as much the creative work of His Spirit as the other. And the outcome of this working of the Spirit St. Paul describes as being transformed into the same image (), passing from one glory to another, inasmuch as (this influence proceeds) from the Lord the Spirit (2Co 3:18, ). Not mere semblance is implied in St. Pauls use of , but semblance resting on identity of nature, community of being (Kennedy, Last Things, p. 294). So that the end is nothing less than perfect assimilation to the very nature of God Himself.

(c) The bodily resurrection of believers depends upon it. Already in the Apostolic Age there were those who, under the influence of non-Christian dualistic pre-suppositions, declared that there was nothing more to hope for than a moral and spiritual rising from the dead, that the resurrection has taken place already (2Ti 2:18). And similar attempts are made to-day, under the influence of the dualistic pre-suppositions of modern thought, to confine the resurrection to the moral and spiritual side of our natures, and thus to exclude the physical. And sometimes the authority of St. Paul is claimed for such a position. Matthew Arnold, e.g., claims that in St. Pauls teaching the expression resurrection from the dead has no essential connexion with physical death. Resurrection, in its essential sense, is for Paul the rising, within the sphere of our visible earthly existence, from death in this sense [obedience to sin] to life in this sense [obedience to righteousness]. Christs physical resurrection after he was crucified is neither in point of time nor in point of character the resurrection on which Paul, following his essential line of thought, wanted to fix the believers mind. The resurrection Paul was striving after for himself and others was a resurrection now, and a resurrection to righteousness (St. Paul and Protestantism, ed. London, 1887, p. 55 ff.).

How little this represents St. Pauls point of view may be seen, not only from the argument in 1 Corinthians 15, which we shall presently consider, but from such a passage as Rom 8:10 ff. where St. Paul impressively reasons from the indwelling of the Spirit (or the Risen Christ) in believers, not only to their moral but to their bodily resurrection. If Christ is in you, the body is dead [consigned to physical dissolution] because of sin [of Adam]; but the spirit [the human spirit of the believer] is living as the result of righteousness [of Christ]. And, he goes on-for the spiritual resurrection which has already taken place through the indwelling of the Spirit in the believer is not all-if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also make your mortal bodies live by his indwelling Spirit in your lives. For St. Paul, as for Jewish thought generally, personal life was an indissoluble unity of soul and body. (On the Hebrew synthetic view of life, see Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, pp. 113, 153, 157.) There is no trace in his thinking of the Hellenic dualistic antagonism between body and spirit. And the quickening or making alive which is the result of the indwelling extends to the whole personality, physical as well as moral and spiritual.

It may be, as Matthew Arnold complains, that popular theology has confined the idea of the resurrection both of Christ and of the Christian too much to the bodily resurrection, thus losing sight of the profoundly spiritual conception of the Resurrection for apostolic thought. Jesus had already taught, according to the Johannine account (Joh 11:25 f.; cf. Joh 6:40; Joh 6:44, Joh 5:21, Joh 3:36), that the root of the resurrection-life lay in living organic connexion with Him who is the Resurrection and the Life, and apostolic teaching is in line with this. The ground, the operating principle of the resurrection, both spiritual and physical, of the believer is the indwelling in him of the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of the Risen Christ, or the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead. The link which makes the Christian participate in Christs resurrection is the possession of His Spirit-Christ in you the hope of glory (Col 1:27).

Not only is Christ in His resurrection a firstfruit (1Co 15:20, ) of them that have fallen asleep, the promise and earnest of the resurrection of His followers; He is further the (Col 1:18), the first principle and potency of this resurrection. As death was grounded in Adam, so life is grounded in Christ. As in Adam all die [all who belong to Adams family], so also in Christ shall all be made alive [all who belong to Christ] (1Co 15:22). The new life derived from Christ, i.e., includes the body as well as the soul in the sphere of its quickening. The indwelling Spirit is a regenerative principle or power for the whole personality, physical as well as moral, leading not only to a moral resurrection now but to a physical resurrection hereafter. Nay more, this physical quickening whose final fruit and issue is in the resurrection after death, is already begun here on earth, leading to a gradual inward transformation of the body (2Co 4:16, renewed from day to day). Through the indwelling of the Spirit, there is already going on in the believer that subjugation of matter to spirit which in its highest manifestation and outcome was exhibited in the resurrection of Christs body, transfigured and transformed into a more glorified mode of being, and which, in its final issue in the believer, shall transform () the body of our humiliation into conformity with the body of his glory ( ), according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things to himself (Php 3:21; cf. 1Jn 3:2).

How different a conception of the future life is this from the current Greek conception familiar to the Corinthians, and prevalent in Jewish-Alexandrian literature. The prospect before St. Paul (and the apostles) is not that of a bodiless state, the deliverance of the soul from its earthly prison house ( ), but the rising to new life of the entire personality. We that are in the tabernacle do groan, being burdened;-St. Paul has just been emphasizing the contrast between the weariness and burden of the present earthly life and the glory which awaits the Christian in the eternal future-for this reason ( ), not for that we would be unclothed (or stripped, ), but that we would be clothed upon (), that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life (2Co 5:4). These words are sometimes taken as giving expression to an intense desire on St. Pauls part that Christ should come (the Parousia take place) before his death, so that he might be spared the terrifying experience of bodily dissolution, and have the corruptible put on incorruption and the mortal put on immortality without that trial. If Christ comes first, the Apostle will receive the new body by the transformation, instead of the putting off, of the old; he will, so to speak, put it on above the old (); he will be spared the shuddering fear of dying; he will not know what it is to have the old tent taken down, and to be left houseless and naked (Denney, Expositors Bible, 2 Con., p. 175 f.; cf. Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, p. 266). But it is equally true to the Apostles thought to interpret the words simply as affirming the Christian conception of the future life as opposed to the Greek conception prevalent in Corinth-this in any case is implied-We groan, not that we long for a disembodied existence, a condition of spiritual nakedness; rather our longing is for the new embodied condition, the possession of the spiritual body.

Some verses in 2 Corinthians 5 (esp. 5:8, We choose rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord) have been held to evidence an advance on St. Pauls part, in the interval between 1 Cor. and 2 Cor., to a more spiritual view of the Resurrection, a disembodied immortality (e.g. H. J. Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der NT Theologie2, 2 vols., Tbingen, 1911, ii. 193; Charles, Eschatology, pp. 397-403). But the words do not justify such a position. St. Paul is simply asserting his confidence that the condition of the believer which is in prospect (the possession of the ), which is guaranteed by the pledge of the , is infinitely preferable to his present condition of being at home in the body (the ). And the supposition of a change of conception on St. Pauls part in his later Epistles-in itself very unlikely when we consider the short interval between the two Corinthian Epistles-is decisively negatived by Php 3:21.

The moral significance of such a doctrine cannot be overrated. It gives a new sanction to bodily consecration and temperance. Each sin against the body is no longer, as it was on the Greek conception, a stain on that which is itself doomed to perish, but a defilement of that which is consecrated to an eternal life-Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost? (1Co 6:19); the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body your bodies are members of Christ. Glorify God therefore in your body (1Co 6:13-20); let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body (Rom 6:12). The nature of the resurrection-body of believers St. Paul sets forth in 1Co 15:35-42, where he endeavours to answer in detail the question, With what kind of a body ( ) do they come? This was the difficulty which perplexed the Corinthian Christians, and led some of them (, 1Co 15:12) under the influences of Greek thought to deny altogether the possibility of a bodily resurrection. Like most similar present-day objections, the difficulty was based, as St. Paul shows, upon the supposition that it was the identical body laid in the grave that was raised again, that the resurrection meant a revivifying of the present material body, which, as we have seen, was the current popular Jewish idea.

The difficulty or problem of the resurrection of the body St. Paul seeks to elucidate by means of the analogy or metaphor of the sowing of seed. It was an analogy already used by Jesus Himself (Joh 12:24), though, as writers of the religious-historical school especially maintain, the use of this analogy or metaphor from the world of vegetation may have been suggested to St. Paul by the prevalence of such nature-myth ideas in popular religious thought, in which case the analogy would appeal with peculiar force to his readers (see J. Weiss, on 1Co 15:36; cf. Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, p. 241). St. Pauls argument on the basis of this analogy is directed to remove the objection to the resurrection of the body derived from its alleged incredibility, and must not be pressed beyond its purpose.

His argument is as follows: What you sow ( ) is not made alive () unless it dies (1Co 15:36). The seed deposited in the earth has to die before it can develop into a fuller, larger life. The apparent extinction is the condition of a higher vitality. It is not impossible therefore, nor even improbable, that our present body may through death develop into a new and more perfectly equipped body. The fact that we cannot beforehand conceive the nature of this body is no valid objection to the possibility. The same life principle can clothe itself in altered bodily semblance. Who could foretell without previous observation what would spring, e.g., from a grain of wheat? The grain of wheat itself gives to the eye no token or foreshadowing of the stalk with ears and grain that is to develop out of it by Gods working in the economy of nature. What you sow is not the body that is to be, it is a mere naked undeveloped grain ( ) of wheat, e.g., or some other seed. But God ( in contrast to in 1Co 15:36) gives it a body according as He willed ( ), not as He wills-the aor. denotes the first act of Gods will determining the constitution of nature (T. C. Edwards, 1 Corinthians2, London, 1885, p. 434; cf. Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, p. 243). And to each kind of seed (he gives) a body peculiar to itself (), the body best fitted to give effective expression to the life which possesses it. So the presumption is that God will find a fit body for mans redeemed nature as He does for each of the seeds vivified in the soil.

For you must not suppose, St. Paul argues-coming now (1Co 15:39 f.) to closer quarters with the assumption on which the objection to the resurrection was based, viz. that it is the same identical body that is laid in the grave that is raised up from it-you must not suppose that there is no other kind of than that consisting of which you now possess. Even as regards earthly fleshly bodies, there are great varieties in the Divine economy of nature, bodies of men, of beasts, of birds, of fishes, each fitted to life in its own element. And there are not only earthly bodies ( ) but heavenly bodies ( ), bodies for heavenly beings just as there are for earthly, and great varieties here also, each fitted to their several distinctive ends or constitution. So, he says, summing up his discussion on this point, with the resurrection of the dead, the quickening of the present body through death into another body unimaginably different from it is in the inexhaustible variety of Gods resources-for the secret of all is the power of God-as possible and likely as the springing up of the seed in a wholly different fuller and larger form of life. God, we may well expect, will equip the redeemed life with a body or organism as fitted to the conditions of the future life as the present body is to the conditions of earth.

This future body or organism he describes by contrast with the present body in the following four particulars: The sowing is in corruption ( ), the rising in incorruption ( ), sown inglorious ( ) it rises in glory ( ), sown in weakness ( ) it rises in power ( ), sown a natural body ( ) it rises a spiritual body ( ) (1Co 15:43 f.). In the last contrast the root cause or reason of the other contrasts is given. Corruption, dishonour, and weakness are the characteristics of a natural body; incorruption, glory, and power are the characteristics of a spiritual body. The , the natural principle of being, the life-force in the individual, has by Gods appointment an organism corresponding to itself, the , the body whose substance is , with all which that, in the actual condition of human nature, implies; whose end is necessarily , decay. The , on the other hand, the Divine gift, the power which enters human nature in response to faith, and changes it so that henceforward it is governed by a Divine principle, will be equipped with an organism corresponding to itself, the , the body which has no fleshly element inherent in it, which therefore enters upon , incorruption, immortality, as its necessary sphere of existence (Kennedy, p. 252 f.).

Now there is here a difference of interpretation. The first impulse is to refer the sowing here spoken of to the burial and dissolution in the grave after death, and the rising to the corning forth from the grave after death. (So Bengel, e.g. Of , he says, verbum amCEnissimum pro sepultura.) But many scholars hold that this is unwarrantably to limit the Apostles point of view and to confuse his analogy. Our present life, it is held, is for St. Paul the seed time (Gal 6:7 ff.), and our mortal bodies (Rom 8:10 f.) are in the germinal state, concluding with death, out of which a wholly different organism will spring. The attributes of (cf. Rom 8:21), (cf. Php 3:21), (cf. 2Co 13:4) are, it is said, those that St. Paul is wont to ascribe to mans condition in his present state of existence in contrast with the , , , of the post-resurrection state (cf. 2Co 4:7; 2Co 4:10; 2Co 4:16; 2Co 5:1; 2Co 5:4, Rom 1:4; Rom 8:18-23; see Findlay, Expositors Greek Testament , in loc.; Milligan, Resurrection, p. 168; Charles, Eschatology, p. 392). The difference of interpretation is important for its bearing on the question as to when the process of transformation from the one kind of body to the other takes place, and the latter interpretation is in line with what we have seen to be St. Pauls view, that through relation to Christ the resurrection-life, not only moral but physical, begins here, to be consummated after death.

What, however, St. Paul is concerned with in this passage is primarily the contrast between the two bodies, the natural and the spiritual, and their genetic relations. The we have in relation to Adam, the natural head of the human race, who through the Divine creative inbreathing became a living soul ( ). The we have in relation to Christ, the second Adam, who through the Resurrection has become a life-creating Spirit ( ), the founder and head of a new humanity (1Co 15:45). Man the first is from the earth earthy (, material [Moffatt]).Man the second is from heaven ( , 1Co 15:47). (On this contrast between the heavenly man and the earthly and its relation to current Hellenistic ideas, see Weiss, in loc., and Feine, Theol. des NT, p. 353.) And as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so we are to bear (reading ) the likeness of the heavenly man (1Co 15:49). Not the body of flesh therefore, the self-expression of the , the natural principle of life which we have in relation to Adam the first member of the race, is that which will be raised up as the organism of our future glorious existence, for it is subject to weakness and corruption. The I admit, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption (1Co 15:50). This , the body of our humiliation, shall be exchanged for a body made like unto () the body of Christs glory, the body of the Exalted Lord, the second Adam, who in His risen heavenly life possesses a , a body which is the perfect organ and instrument of the Spirits self-expression. What the substance of this spiritual body is, is not described (is it ?), only its formative principle. To call it spiritual is not to assert its immateriality or to identify it with spirit, but to affirm its complete subordination to the purposes of spirit. Just as the natural or psychical body does not consist of soul, neither does the spiritual or pneumatical body consist of spirit (cf. Simpson, Resurrection and Modern Thought, p. 331).

The support afforded by modern science to the apostolic view of the Resurrection-Body, in particular to St. Pauls doctrine of the spiritual body and its connexion with the natural, is striking and noteworthy. The whole trend of modern psychology is to draw the two sides of mans nature, the bodily and the spiritual, more closely together by emphasizing the dominance of spirit over matter, recognizing that

of the Soule the bodie forme doth take;

For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make

(Spenser, An Hymne in Honour of Beautie, 1.132 f.).

The Identity even of our present bodies is now conceived by science in a less materialistic fashion, as consisting not in identity of the particles of matter of which the body is composed, for this is continually changing, but in that which organizes them and makes them the instrument or medium of its expression, the vital organic constructive principle which in its own nature is spiritual. As Origen expressed it, drawing out the Pauline teaching, the body is the same not by any material continuity, but by the permanence of that which gives the law, the ratio () of its constitution, the ratio insita a Deo (see Westcott, article Origenes, DCB [Note: CB Dict. of Christian Biography.] iv. 138n.). Further, the essential meaning of body, science itself is more and more insisting, is the vehicle of manifestation or expression of spirit, and this will take different forms in different conditions of existence. The real meaning of the bodily life is its spiritual meaning. The bodily being is but vehicle, is but utterance of the spiritual, and the ultimate reality even of the bodily being is only what it is spiritually (Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood, p. 40). A human body is the necessary-is the only-method and condition, on earth, of spiritual personality. It is capable, indeed, of expressing spirit very badly it is, in fact, almost always falling short of at least the ideal expression of it. And yet body is the only method of spiritual life; even as things are, spirit is the true meaning of bodily life; and bodies are really vehicles and expressions of spirit; the perfect ideal would certainly be, not spirit without body, but body which was the ideally perfect utterance of spirit (Moberly, Problems and Principles, p. 358). Admitting the scientific truth of this view of the relation of body and spirit, O. Lodge recognizes the probability of a future embodied state. Since our identity and personality in no way depend upon identity of material particles, and since our present body has been composed by our characteristic element or soul, it is legitimate to suppose that some other body can equally well be hereafter composed by the same agency; in other words, that the spirit will retain the power of constructing for itself a suitable vehicle of manifestation, which is the essential meaning of the term body (Man and the Universe, London, 1908, p. 281 f.). In particular, he recognizes the reasonableness of the Christian doctrine of a bodily resurrection. Christianity both by its doctrines and its ceremonies rightly emphasises the material aspect of existence. For it is founded upon the idea of Incarnation; and its belief in some sort of bodily resurrection is based on the idea that every real personal existence must have a double aspect-not spiritual alone, nor physical alone, but in some way both. Such an opinion is by no means out of harmony with science. Christianity, therefore, reasonably supplements the mere survival of a discarnate spirit, a homeless wanderer or melancholy ghost, with the warm and comfortable clothing of something that may legitimately be spoken of as a body; that is to say, it postulates a supersensually appreciable vehicle or mode of manifestation, fitted to subserve the needs of future existence as our bodies subserve the needs of terrestrial life (J. Hibbert Journal vi. [1907-08] 294 f.; cf. The Material Element in Christianity, ib. iv. [1905-06] 314 ff., and Substance of Faith, London, 1907, p. 106).

To a great many questions raised by the inquiring mind in this connexion no answer is supplied by the Apostle. As to the nature of the process or method by which the natural body will be changed at the Resurrection into the spiritual body, St. Paul never speculates. His interest was practical, not theoretical. He was writing as a missionary, not as a dogmatic theologian, and he confines himself to positive conceptions. It is sufficient for him that he is sure of two things: (1) that the cause or operating principle () is the power of the new Divine life in the believers nature, the same power that raised Jesus; and (2) that the end or consummation of the process is the transformation into the likeness of the body of Christs glory. We are apt to dwell more on the difference between the resurrection of Christ and that of Christians. In one respect, in particular, Christs resurrection was different from the resurrection of believers. The body of Christ saw no corruption. If Christs natural body had remained in the grave, no demonstration had been given in His resurrection of that continuity between the earthly body and the risen body which is implied in St. Pauls representation. So St. Paul recognizes two orders (1Co 15:23, , groups or divisions) of the risen: the one contains none but Christ the firstfruit (), who rose on the third day; the other is composed of those who belong to Christ who shall rise afterwards (), defined as at the Parousia. But as to how they shall rise St. Paul does not speculate.

Again, no information is given as to the Apostles conception of the state after death of those who had died or shall die before the Parousia. St. Paul betrays little interest in the Intermediate State. The influence upon his heart and mind of the crucified and risen Messiah fixed for ever the point of emphasis in his outlook upon the future. He was able to ignore many aspects of the Last Things on which Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic had set great importance. To go to Christ, to be with Christ, overshadowed all the accompaniments of the End. He knew that nothing could separate His followers from the love of Christ in time or in eternity (Kennedy, Last Things, p. 312). As Wernle succinctly expresses it, the longing [to be with Christ] spans the chasm that lies between death and the resurrection, and proceeds straight to the desired goal, to the meeting with Jesus (Beginnings of Christianity, i. 287).

So it is that even on a question apparently so central as that of a general resurrection little light is given in St. Pauls writings. His absorbing interest was in the resurrection of believers, the resurrection whose operating principle or is the power of the indwelling Spirit. And his description of the resurrection-body as spiritual, i.e., a fit organ for the spirit, is one which cannot refer to any but Christians. A resurrection of unbelievers as well as believers is involved in his recognition of a universal judgment at the Parousia of Christ (Act 24:15, Rom 2:5 ff; Rom 14:10; Rom 14:12, 1Co 6:2; 1Co 11:32, 2Co 5:10), but such a resurrection occupies a subordinate place in Pauline eschatology and must proceed on different lines. What St. Paul is interested in is the resurrection of Christians, and the other though recognized is not dwelt upon or in any way elaborated-possibly he had not come to definite conclusions on the matter. A resurrection of the wicked as well as of the righteous was recognized in Jewish apocalyptic literature (cf. Dan 12:2, Apoc. Bar. xxx. 2-5 and 2Es 7:32-37), though the more general view in apocalyptic Judaism limited the scope of the resurrection to the righteous. In the teaching of Jesus a general resurrection is presupposed. In Joh 5:28 f. He speaks of a resurrection of all that are in the graves, and distinguishes a resurrection of life ( ) from a resurrection of condemnation or judgment ( ). The rejection of these verses as an interpolation on the ground that their teaching is not found in the Synoptics or elsewhere in John itself is not justified. Charles (Eschatology, p. 371 n. [Note: . note.] ) holds that the doctrine of the resurrection of the wicked in Jn. is an intrusion due to Judaistic influence. But a general resurrection of just and unjust forms at least the background of the thought in Mat 5:29 f., Mat 10:28, Mat 12:41 f., Mat 25:31-46, Luk 11:32, Joh 12:48.

In the Fourth Gospel, it is true, a profounder view of the resurrection-life is revealed than that contained in the Synoptics. The resurrection is represented as intimately connected with the spiritual renewal or quickening which comes of organic relationship between Christ and believers (Joh 11:25 f.; cf. Joh 6:40; Joh 6:44, Joh 5:21, Joh 3:36). So that, while the resurrection in some sense of unbelievers is affirmed (Joh 5:28 f., Joh 12:48), it must have a widely different basis and meaning from that of believers. It is referred to the omnipotence of the Father: the Father raiseth the dead and quickeneth them (Joh 5:21). But faiths primary interest is in the resurrection of life, the resurrection of those who are in Christ, and the apostolic writers often use language as if there were no other. So it is that scanty reference is made to a general resurrection in St. Pauls writings. Lightfoot (on Php 3:11) distinguishes firmly between (or ) and , the former being equivalent to , the latter to (Joh 5:29).

There are indeed those who hold that in 1Co 15:24 there is an explicit reference to the resurrection of unbelievers, interpreting as the last act (of the resurrection) (Meyer) or the remainder, the rest of men, those not in Christ, as forming a third . According to this view, a resurrection of believers takes place at the Parousia, then, after an interval of indefinite duration-between the point marked by and the following in which Christ gradually subdues all His enemies-a resurrection of the wicked (see Lietzmann and J. Weiss, in loc.). Such a millennarian view finds support in Rev 20:4 f., where, although there is no specific reference to the resurrection of the wicked, this is implied in the expression the first resurrection, as well as in the connexion established between the Resurrection and the Judgment. But the introduction of such a thought is quite irrelevant to St. Pauls argument here where he is answering the difficulties raised as to the resurrection of those who have died in Christ. St. Pauls interest throughout is in the resurrection of Christians, and for the rest he is content to urge men to the attaining of this resurrection (Php 3:11), and to warn them of the fate attendant on the rejection of Christ (Rom 2:5, 2Th 1:9; cf. 1Th 1:10, Php 3:19, etc.).

3. What it means for the Kingdom of God.-The resurrection of Christ, as thus the ground not only of the moral but of the physical resurrection of believers, is further the pledge and ground of the ultimate dominance of spiritual interests, the consummation of the Kingdom of God. This is its wider cosmic significance.

(a) The redemption of the body from the power of death and the grave, St. Paul shows, is an essential part of the Divine world-plan, necessary to the fulfilment of Gods Kingdom through Christ (1Co 15:20-28). Without this Christ is not Lord of all; all things are not subdued unto Him (1Co 15:27). Then comes the end ( , not merely the termination, but the consummation, expressing and manifesting the goal of the whole process) when he shall have abolished every rule () and every authority () and power ()-every force or power antagonistic to the Divine dominion. The last enemy to be abolished is death ( ). For St. Paul, death, not the mere physical experience, but, as for Hebrew thought generally, this experience in co-relation with sin, was the supreme enemy (see Kennedy, Last Things, p. 113). When he ( -St. Paul almost personifies it) has been vanquished, Christs dominion is complete (cf. Heb 2:14, Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and Rev 20:14). In the resurrection of Christ we have the assurance that sin and death are not the final realities in the universe, but are destined to be swallowed up in victory.

(b) In the redemption of the body through Christ, we have the pledge of the ultimate subjugation of the entire material order to the purposes of spirit, the revelation of the destiny of the whole material universe to be included in the transformation wrought by Christ. The material order has shared with the moral and spiritual in the consequences of sin. It has been subjected to futility (, Rom 8:20), to vain striving; the full purpose of its existence has been defeated through mans sin. Like human life, it is in thraldom to decay (Rom 8:21, ) and waits with eager longing (Rom 8:19) for the freedom of the glory ( ) of the children of God (Rom 8:21). The redemption of the body ( ) which is the climax of material evolution, the rescue of it from the bondage of , and the transfiguring and transforming of it so as to make it the complete instrument of the spirit-this contains the promise of the transfiguration and transformation of the entire creation, new heavens and a new earth (2Pe 3:13, Rev 21:1), all things new (Rev 21:5). In the resurrection of Christ as the pledge and ground of the moral and physical resurrection of believers we have, accordingly, the assurance that the redemption of Christ involves the rectification of the material as well as of the spiritual universe. This new condition of things Jesus once names the regeneration or new birth (, Mat 19:18) of all things. (St. Peters phrase in Act 3:21 [ ] rendered in Authorized Version until the times of restitution of all things is hardly a parallel.)

(c) So, finally, in the resurrection of Christ we have the pledge of the consummation of Gods redeeming purpose-the summing up () all things in Christ, the things in heaven, and the things on earth (Eph 1:10), and thus the bringing in of final world-unity, when Christ is all and in all ( , Col 3:11). For it pleased (the Father)-this was His aim-through () him to reconcile all things unto () himself whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens (Col 1:20; cf. Php 2:9-11). The Resurrection, that is to say, was for the apostles not only the completion of the incarnation and atonement of Jesus; it was the fulfilment of the original purpose of God in creation, the consummation of the whole evolutionary process. This is expressed most definitely by St. Paul in Col 1:15 ff., where Christ, the firstborn of all creation ( ), its norm and type, that which sets for it its true end-for in him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth all things have been created through him, and unto [with a view to] him ( , Col 1:15 f.)-is described as the beginning (, the first principle), the first begotten from the dead in order that He might become ( ) prominent over all ( , no doubt purposely left indefinite, including every province of creation [Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, p. 298]). Through the Resurrection, as the culmination of the Incarnation and Atonement, by means of which Christ becomes the or life-giving principle of a new humanity, Gods aim in the whole process of creation attains its end.

Literature.-On the significance of the Resurrection see W. Milligan, Resurrection of our Lord, London, 1881, lects. iv., v., vi.; B. F. Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection7, do., 1891, chs. ii. and iii.; S. D. F. Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality4, Edinburgh, 1901, bks. iv., v., vi.; J. Orr, Resurrection of Jesus, London, 1908, ch. x.; D. W. Forrest, Christ of History and of Experience7, Edinburgh, 1914, lect. iv.; E. Griffith-Jones, The Ascent through Christ6, London, 1901, bk. iii chs. i. and ii.; W. J. Sparrow Simpson, Resurrection and Modern Thought, do., 1911, bk. iii., article Resurrection of Christ, in Dict. of Christ and the Gospels ii. 512; B. Lucas, The Fifth Gospel, London, 1907, p. 160ff.; D. S. Cairns, The Risen Christ, in Christ and Human Need, do., 1912, p. 176f.; H. Scott Holland, The Power of the Resurrection, in Miracles, do., 1911, p. 118ff.; S. Eck, Die Bedeutung der Auferstehung Jesu fr die Urgemeinde and fr und, in Hefte zur christlichen Well, xxxii. [1898]; R. H. Grtzmacher, Modern-positive Vortrge, Leipzig, 1906, pp. 109-129, Jesu Auferstehung und der Mensch der Gegenwart.

V. Attempted Explanations of the Belief.-The character and significance of the apostolic belief in the resurrection of Christ have been considered, and the historical evidence on which the belief was based. It remains to review the attempts which have been made to account for the apostolic belief and its consequences without acknowledging the full fact of the Resurrection, as this is represented in the apostolic writings.

i. Older forms of explanation.-Some of the older naturalistic hypotheses may now be regarded as obsolete and abandoned. They have practically only a historical or antiquarian interest, and do not need to be re-argued at length. Yet they are not on that account to be overlooked. As monuments not only recording past history, but serving as warnings to all time of the futility of certain methods of explanation, they demand passing notice.

1. The swoon theory.-According to this theory, Jesus supposed death on the Cross was in reality only a swoon, a case of a suspended animation. In the cool air of the cavern tomb He revived and again appeared among His disciples. This explanation-a favourite one in the school of 18th cent, rationalism, and associated especially with the name of Paulus-is now hopelessly discredited. To escape with His life after having been nailed to the Cross meant that the Resurrection, if resurrection it could be called, was a return to life under the same conditions as before, and this, as we have seen, is not the kind of fact with which the records deal. The practical difficulties of the theory are insuperable. If Jesus had presented Himself merely as one who had stolen half-dead out of the sepulchre, His appearance would have produced the impression of weakness and helplessness, not that of a conqueror over death and the grave. (For a trenchant statement of these practical difficulties see Strauss, New Life of Jesus, i. 412.)

2. The theft or fraud theory.-A second hypothesis, which may also be taken as now practically discredited, is the theory that the disciples, in order that they might still have a message, stole the body and pretended that Jesus had risen. The theory is an old one-the oldest of all indeed, if we may believe the story of Mat 25:11-15, which was still current in the days of Justin Martyr (Dial. with Trypho, 17). The theory thus anticipated by the Jewish authorities was urged, though with some difference of detail, by Celsus (see Origen, c. Cels. ii. 56). It is identified in modern times chiefly with the name of Reimarus. The theory thus stated would found Christianity on imposture or fraud. But no sober critic now challenges the good faith of the first disciples in their witness. They really had the impression of having seen him (Schmiedel, Encyclopaedia Biblica iv. 4061). A more recent form of the theory is that adopted by O. Holtzmann (Life of Jesus, p. 499), that the body was quietly removed by the owner of the grave without the knowledge of the disciples. Joseph of Arimathaea, feeling, on reflexion, that it would not do to have in his respectable family vault the body of a man who had been crucified, had the body of Jesus secretly removed and buried elsewhere. Another form of the theory is that suggested by A. Rville (see Jsus de Nazareth. tudes critiques sur les antcdents de lhistoire vanglique, Paris, 1897, ii. 420 ff.), that the leaders of the Sanhedrin bribed the soldiers to remove the body lest the tomb might become an object of pilgrimage to Jesus followers in Galilee, and fanatical outbreaks might occur in Jerusalem. Lake gives what he holds to be a more possible hypothesis. His suggestion is that the women in the dusk of the morning came to a tomb which they thought was the one in which they had seen the Lord buried. They expected to find a closed tomb, but they found an open one; and a young man, who was in the entrance, guessing their errand, tried to tell them that they had made a mistake in the place. He is not here, said he; see the place where they laid him, and probably pointed to the next tomb. But the women were frightened at the detection of their errand and fled, only imperfectly or not at all understanding what they heard (The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, p. 251 f.). B. H. Streeter (in Foundations, London, 1912, p. 134) claims that with a little ingenuity it is not difficult to imagine more than one set of circumstances which might account on purely natural grounds for the tomb being found empty.

But, apart altogether from the consideration that the theory in these different forms contradicts the historical evidence in vital points, and that to ascribe to fraud or mistake the rise of a belief with such revolutionary effects in the thought and life of the disciples is altogether improbable as an adequate explanation, there is one fact on which all such theories come to grief. Within a few weeks of the Death and the Burial the disciples were boldly proclaiming in the streets of the very city where Jesus had been crucified, and even before the authorities who were responsible for the Crucifixion, that God raised Him up on the third day, and through this public proclamation were making multitudes of converts. If their testimony was false, why did not the Jewish and Roman authorities for ever silence the disciples by pointing to where the body of Jesus still lay, or by showing how it had come to be removed from the tomb in which it had been laid after the Crucifixion? What could have been at once easier and more effective? Even after an interval of fifty days, as medical science acknowledges, the body must have been recognizable. The silence of the Jews is as significant as the speech of the Christians (Fairbairn, Studies in the Life of Christ, p. 357). did not in this case spells could not, and the empty tomb remains an unimpeachable witness to the truth of the message that the Lord had risen (Orr, Resurrection of Jesus, p. 213f.).

3. The subjective vision or mental hallucination theory.-This is the most weighty of the older theories put forward to explain the apostolic belief in the Resurrection, without acknowledging the actual fact. According to this theory the so-called appearances of the Risen Christ were due to the excited state of mind in which the disciples were after the death of their Master. Overwrought and mentally distraught by the shock of His death, and yearning for His presence, they saw apparitions or visions of Him. But these were purely subjective-phantasms or mental hallucinations. They longed to see Him; they expected to see Him; and they thought they did see Him. Their thought was perfectly honest, but it was nevertheless a hallucination. For persons in a state of unusual mental excitement and expectancy, especially when they are also of a highly strung nervous temperament, such visions are, it is represented, common phenomena of religious history, and are often contagious. So it was in the case of the appearances of Jesus. They began with the women, probably with Mary Magdalene, an excitable and nervous person. Her story that she had seen the Lord was eagerly embraced; it spread with lightning rapidity, and with the force of an epidemic. What she believed she had seen others believed they too must see, and they saw. The visions were the product of their dwelling in fond and affectionate memory on the personality of their Master, which, after the first shock of despair was over, they came to feel was such that He must have survived death. So it is that Renan represents the case. As he puts it, Ce qui a ressuscit Jsus, cest lamour (Les Aptres, Paris, 1866, ch. i., Eng. translation , London, 1869). With this Strauss combines reflexion upon certain passages of the OT expressing faith in the Resurrection, together with recollection of the Masters own predictions of the fact. The inadequacy of such a theory to account for a belief with such incalculably momentous results as the belief in the Resurrection has often been exposed, but because of its continued prevalence in one form or other in the present day-such recent critics as Schmiedel, Weizscker, Harnack, A. Meyer, and Loisy support it-the chief objections to it, in addition to the fundamental consideration referred to at the end of last section, which applies equally against all forms of the vision theory, may be briefly indicated.

(1) Such a psychological condition as is necessary to the vision theory is absent on the disciples part. With hearts sad and hopes broken, so far from expecting a Resurrection, they could hardly be persuaded of the fact even after it occurred (Luk 24:11, Joh 20:9-25, Mar 16:11; Mar 16:13), The women themselves who went on the third morning to the tomb went to anoint a dead body, not to behold a Risen Lord. (2) With reference to Strausss attempt to base the expectation on certain passages of the OT, there is no evidence of any Jewish belief in Jesus time of a resurrection from the dead before the last day, much less of such a resurrection as took place in the case of Jesus (see Edersheim, LT [Note: T Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Edersheim).] 4 ii. 624). Even Jesus own intimations that He would rise again, frequently as they were given (e.g. Mat 16:21; Mat 17:9; Mat 20:19; Mat 26:32, etc., and ||s), seem to have made no impression upon the disciples. The thought was so strange to them that they were unable to receive it. Only after the event were these predictions understood (cf. Joh 2:22). (3) The tradition of the third day and of the appearances already on this day of the Risen Christ in Jerusalem is set aside as affording too little time for the rise of visions. So the upholders of the vision theory feel the necessity of transferring the appearances of Jesus from Jerusalem to Galilee, thus not only giving more time for visions to develop, but transferring them to scenes where memory and imagination could more easily work. This involves the separating them from the empty tomb and the events of the Easter morn, which we have seen to be facts firmly rooted in the apostolic tradition. The inadequacy of Strausss endeavour to show how the belief in the third day may have originated from OT hints (New Life, i. 438 f.) has already been referred to. (4) The fact that the manifestations were made not merely to this or that individual but to companies of persons at the same time, the twelve, all the apostles, more than five hundred, increases many-fold the difficulty of explaining as the product of subjective vision the fact to which they bear witness. There are no doubt genuine instances of collective delusion, an impression received or idea conceived by one ardent soul being transmitted by a kind of electric sympathy to others ready to bear witness that they have had a like experience. Schmiedel gives some instances (Encyclopaedia Biblica iv. 4083); but there is this fundamental difference between these and the appearances of the Risen Christ, that in the latter case, as the narratives bear distinctly on their face, the whole company was instantaneously affected in the same way. (5) The theory is inconsistent with the fact that the visions came so suddenly to an end. After the forty days no appearance of the Risen Lord is recorded, except that to St. Paul, the circumstances and object of which were altogether exceptional. It is not thus that imagination works. As Keim says, the spirits that men call up are not so quickly laid (Jesus of Nazara, vi. 357).

4. The objective vision or telegram hypothesis.-Keim, realizing the difficulties of the last theory, advanced the hypothesis that the appearances, while essentially of the nature of visions, were not purely subjective-the result of the enthusiasm and mental excitement of the disciples-but real, objectively caused manifestations of the Risen Christ. His theory is that, while the body of the Crucified Jesus remained in the tomb, His living spirit sent telegrams to the disciples to assure them that He still lived, telegrams or supernatural manifestations which the disciples took for bona fide bodily appearances of their Risen Master (Jesus of Nazara, vi. 364). Keim thinks that in this way he saves the truth of the Resurrection. Though much has fallen away, the secure faith-fortress of the resurrection of Jesus remains (p. 365). The aim of the theory is, while acknowledging a kind of resurrection, to relieve the mind from the difficulty of believing in an actual resurrection of the body from the grave. The root of the theory is thus aversion to the recognition of the supernatural in the physical realm. In such a theory, Keim himself acknowledges, the supernatural is not altogether eliminated. Christian faith oversteps these boundaries [of the natural order], not merely in the certain assurance that Jesus took his course to the higher world of God and of spirits but also in the conviction that it was he and no other who, as dead yet risen again, as celestially glorified even if not risen, vouchsafed visions to his disciples (p. 360). The intervention of the supernatural in the normal, mental, or psychological order of the disciples experience is thus presumed. Once we admit such an intervention, however, there is no reason why we should not proceed further to the full apostolic affirmation-for which this is a poor substitute-that Jesus burst the bands of death and came forth bodily from the tomb on the morning of the third day.

Of this theory Bruce remarks with truth that it is a bastard supernaturalism as objectionable to unbelievers as the true supernaturalism of the Catholic creed, and having the additional drawback that it offers to faith asking for bread a stone (Apologetics, p. 393). Besides, there is the further difficulty urged by Bruce that Keims hypothesis requires us to believe that the faith of the Christian Church is based upon a revelation from heaven which was in fact misleading. Christ sends a series of telegrams from heaven to let His disciples know that all is well. But what does the telegram say in every case? Not merely, My Spirit lives with God and cares for you; but, my body is risen from the grave. If the resurrection be an unreality, if the body that was nailed to the tree never came forth from the tomb, why send messages that were certain to produce an opposite impression? (ib.). The hypothesis really means that Christ deceives His disciples by inducing them, and through them the whole Christian Church, to believe a lie. The new turn given to the theory by psychical research will be considered below (ii.1).

Literature.-For criticism of older theories see T. Keim, Jesus of Nazara, Eng. translation , 6 vols., London, 1873-83, vi.; A. B. Bruce, Apologetics, Edinburgh, 1892, pp. 383-398; W. Milligan, Resurrection of our Lord, London, 1881, lect. iii.; J. Orr, Resurrection of Jesus, do., 1908, ch. viii.; A. M. Fairbairn, Studies in the Life of Christ, do., 1881, ch. 18:

ii. More recent explanations.-The character of the attach on the Resurrection in recent times has changed in some important respects. New knowledge and new critical methods have given rise to new ways of attempting to explain the belief in the Resurrection without accepting the full facts presented in the apostolic narratives. A close relation exists between these different theories-they are but different aspects of the same attempt to remove or minimize the supernatural in Christianity-but different forms can be distinguished according to the difference of emphasis.

1. The psychological or psychical research theory.-A new turn, and with it a new vogue, has been given to the objective vision theory in recent times by bringing the appearances of the Risen Christ recorded in the narratives into line with the phenomena of psychical research. The late F. W. H. Myers, the leader in this movement, held that psychical research had definitely established the reality of telepathic intercommunication between this world and another. Observation, experiment, inference, have led many inquirers, of whom I am one, to a belief in direct or telepathic intercommunication, not only between the minds of men still on earth, but between minds or spirits still on earth and spirits departed (Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, p. 350). And so highly did Myers estimate the worth of the evidence supplied by these psychical investigations that he predicted that in consequence of the new evidence, all reasonable men, a century hence, will believe the Resurrection of Christ, whereas, in default of the new evidence, no reasonable men, a century hence, would have believed it (ib. p. 351). The ground of this prediction he proceeds to state: Our ever-growing recognition of the continuity, the uniformity of cosmic law has gradually made of the alleged uniqueness of any incident its almost inevitable refutation and especially as to that central claim, of the souls life manifested after the bodys death, it is plain that this can less and less be supported by remote tradition alone; that it must more and more be tested by modern experience and inquiry (ib.).

The position thus stated has found considerable support, among both theologians and scientists. It is to the type of phenomena collected by the Society of Psychical Research, and especially by the late Mr. F. W. H. Myers, that Lake, e.g., turns for help in understanding the nature of the appearances of the Risen Christ (The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, p. 272). As to the results already obtained in this sphere he expresses himself more cautiously than Myers. He thinks it possible that at least some evidence already exists pointing to the fact of such communications having taken place. But we must wait until the experts have sufficiently sifted the arguments for alternative explanations of the phenomena, before they can actually be used as reliable evidence for the survival of personality after death (p. 245). As to the value of the evidence, however, when thus sifted and substantiated, Lake has no doubt. The belief in the Resurrection even in the sense of the personal survival of Jesus after death depends on the success of the experiments and investigations of psychical research. It must remain merely an hypothesis until it can be shown through these experiments and investigations that personal life does endure beyond death, is neither extinguished nor suspended, and is capable of manifesting its existence to us (ib.). Some of the leading representatives of present-day science, too, have found in the phenomena of psychical research new support in favour of belief in the recorded appearances of Christ after His death. Lodge, e.g., maintains that the narratives of the appearances are substantially accurate records of genuine psychical experiences on the part of the apostles. The appearances during the forty days are mysterious enough, but they can be accepted very much as they stand, for they agree with our experience of genuine psychical phenomena the world over (cf. Man and the Universe, p. 290). This relating of the appearances of the Risen Christ to psychical phenomena is held to explain some of the difficulties belonging to the narratives, in particular the apparent discrepancy in regard to the locality of the appearances (see Resurrection Christi, London, 1909; Interpreter, vi. [1909-10] 306).

Now this branch of psychological science is still in its infancy, and it is difficult to speak yet of any definiteness of results. But already it is evident that a new chapter in the discussion of the Resurrection has opened here. The whole question of relation of body and spirit has taken on a new aspect through these Investigations. The mystery of human personality and the possession of hitherto unrecognized powers, not only of mind over mind, but of mind over body, is being revealed as never before. The evidences of hypernormal mental control, especially in the hypnotic state, over bodily processes (e.g. the production of blisters and ecchymoses of the skin, the so-called stigmata by verbal suggestion) show that mind has the power of exerting a far greater influence over body than had been generally recognized by physiologists (see, e.g., MacDougall, Body and Mind, ch. xxv.). And the evidence produced by such investigations of the control of matter by spirit in extraordinary if not preternatural ways may aid not a little in removing prejudice to the facts recorded in the narratives as to the resurrection and ascension of Christ. When scientists of world-wide reputation, trained in the strictest school of scientific inquiry, such as Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Sir Alfred Wallace, declare, as they have done, that they have verified the fact by repeated experiment that ponderable bodies can be moved without physical contact by some hitherto unrecognised force which was brought into play by the action of human will, it is no longer possible to treat with scientific contempt the assertions contained in the Gospels that Christs material body disappeared from the tomb as the result of a hitherto unrecognised force which was exerted upon it without physical contact (Robinson, Studies in the Resurrection, p. 97). It is doubtful, however, how far help can be obtained from this quarter in understanding the bodily manifestations of Jesus to His disciples recorded in the narratives. The verdict of most critics will, we fancy, be at present one of non-Committal.

Against the attempt to bring the resurrection of Christ into line with the phenomena dealt with by psychical research and to make belief in the Resurrection dependent on the scientific verification of these phenomena in the way that Myers and Lake suggest, various objections may be urged.

(1) It does less than justice to the apostolic claim. According to Myers, the essential claim of the tradition of Christs resurrection is taken to be the souls life manifested after the bodys death. Its claim extends, that is to say, only to a spiritual Resurrection, a Resurrection in the sense of a personal survival of Jesus, an assurance that though His body was laid in the tomb and remained there He lived in spirit. What we mean by resurrection is not resuscitation of the material body, but the unbroken survival of personal life (Lake, p. 265). So it is held that the existence of verified apparitions would substantiate all that is useful in the study of the resurrection, and make human experience in all ages akin (J. H. Hyslop, Psychical Research and the Resurrection, Boston, 1908, p. 383). As for a physical resurrection, this must remain incredible so long as such phenomena are not now frequent, and as long as human experience does not reproduce it as a law of nature (ib.). But it was not upon such spiritual apparitions or manifestations of surviving personality that the faith of the Church in the resurrection of Christ was built; it was, as we have seen, upon His victory over death and the grave, as witnessed by the empty tomb on the third day and His subsequent appearances.

(2) To place the appearances of the Risen Christ on the same level as spiritualistic apparitions of the dead-no more miraculous or significant than they-given to assure the sorrowing disciples that their Master was still living in the world of spirits, thus making human experience in all ages akin, is to eliminate just that which is of distinctive worth and value in His appearances, and to fail to realize the true significance of the Resurrection for apostolic thought. The Resurrection claims to a new beginning, a new departure in experience, a revelation sui generis. For the apostles the Resurrection had a significance far beyond the incidental revelation of the truth that Christ lives on after death. It was a fact of the largest moral and spiritual significance, for it meant His exaltation at the right hand of God, supreme in the material as well as in the spiritual world, and as such led to a revolution in apostolic thought and life. To compare the appearances and manifestations of the Risen Christ with their unique and far-reaching results to the spiritualistic apparitions of psychical research and alleged communications from the other world is to compare the incomparable. When any of the resurrections investigated by the Society for Psychical Research has consequences of a moral and spiritual character to be compared with the NT or the Apostolic Church-then, but not till then, will we believe it is the same kind of thing as the resurrection of Jesus. So-called messages or communications from the other side of death we have in abundance, but they are mere inanities and platitudes which we are as well without. If communication is established at all with the spirit-world, it is merely with the dregs and lees of the unseen universe-with spirit who either have not the power or else the will to communicate anything of importance to man (W. P. Paterson, Hastings Single-vol. Dictionary of the Bible , p. 458a).

(3) A scientific proof or verification of the Resurrection by experimental methods on evidence open to all alike, such as Myers and Lake desiderate, would have no religious value. The belief in the resurrection of Jesus depends on an initial appreciation of the uniqueness of His personality-it is belief in Jesus as risen-and this is spiritually discerned. (4) The object of the theory is to bring the resurrection of Christ into line with natural phenomena and our ever-growing recognition of the continuity, the uniformity of cosmic law (Myers. Human Personality, p. 351), and thus to get rid of the supernatural especially in the physical realm. The empty tomb and the event on the third day become, on this theory, mistakes for which some explanation has to be found. What Lakes suggested explanation is has already been considered (V. i. z).

Literature.-On this theory see F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, ed. London, 1907; K. Lake, Historical Evidence for the Resurrection Jesus Christ, do., 1907; O. Lodge, Survival of Man, do., 1909, article The Immortality of the Soul, pt. ii., in J. Hibbert Journal vi. [1908] 574 ff.; F. Podmore, The Newer Spiritualism, London, 1910; W. MacDougall, Body and Mind, do., 1911, ch. xxv.

2. The mythological theory.-The theory adduced from the side of the study of comparative religion and mythology is perhaps the most characteristic modern form of explanation. It is connected, in its most recent phase, with the rise of the school of thought usually called Neo-Babylonian or Pan-Babylonian from its attempt to account for much in Bible story through the influence of conceptions imported into Judaism from the Orient, and derived chiefly from Babylonia. The fundamental principle of this school or movement in relation to Christianity is the demand that the religion of Jesus Christ, including its OT preparation, be studied by the scientific-historical method, not as if it were something unique and apart, a holy island in the sea of history, but in its place in the stream, and in essential connexion with religions chronologically and geographically adjacent to it. As applied to the NT, the attitude of the school may be represented by the thesis of H. Gunkel that in its origin and shaping (Ausbildung) in important and even in some essential points the religion of the NT stood under the influence of foreign religions, and that this influence was transmitted to the men of the NT through Judaism (Zum religionsgeschichtl. Verstndnis des NT, Gttingen, 1903, p. 1); or by that of Cheyne: There are parts of the New Testament-in the Gospels, in the Epistles, and in the Apocalypse-which can only be accounted for by the newly-discovered fact of an Oriental syncretism, which began early and continued late (Bible Problems, p. 19). Among the beliefs thus accounted for is the belief in the resurrection of Jesus in the form in which this appears in the NT. Myths of the death and resurrection of gods, resurrection legends, derived ultimately from Babylonia, were spread, it is represented, through the whole East, and these, entering through many channels, chiefly through the mystery-religions, became attached first to the figure of the expected Messiah in Jewish literature, and then through Judaism to Jesus of Nazareth, and had a powerful influence in moulding the NT representation of His resurrection.

It is nothing new to draw comparisons or analogies between the NT story of the resurrection of Jesus and the myths of the death and resurrection of gods in pagan religions. Celsus had already made a beginning in this direction. He compared the NT narratives of the Resurrection with similar myths in Greek story (see Origen, c. Cels. ii. 55 f.). What is characteristic of this new scientific school of thought is that it is no longer comparisons or analogies merely which are sought between the Gospel narratives and pagan myths, but an actual derivation the one from the other. Gunkel, e.g., thus derives from Oriental, and ultimately from Babylonian, conceptions, the NT story of the Resurrection from the dead on the third day (op. cit. pp. 76-83; cf. pp. 31-35), the Ascension (ib. p. 71 f.), and the origin of Sunday as a Christian festival (ib. pp. 73-76). And Cheyne holds that the apostle Paul, when he says (1Co 15:3 f.) that Christ died and that He rose again according to the Scriptures, in reality points to a pre-Christian sketch of the life of Christ, partly derived from widely-spread non-Jewish myths, and embodied in Jewish writings (Bible Problems, p. 113). This is the theory of Strauss over again, with the substitution of Babylonian mythology for OT prophecy.

In criticism of such an attempted derivation of the apostolic belief in the Resurrection it has to be said: (1) that the fundamental assumption or allegation on which the application of the theory to the NT story depends, viz. the influence of Oriental conceptions on Jewish thought in the way of giving rise to a pre-Christian sketch of a dying and rising Messiah, is unjustified. That Jewish thought in the time of Christ was familiar with the idea of a resurrection of the dead-a resurrection of the body at the last day-is certain (though Gunkels attempt to trace its origin to extra-Jewish Oriental sources must be contested; see Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, p. 64). But that the idea of a dying and rising Messiah formed part of this thought, that the idea of a resurrection from the dead was connected with the Messiah in current Jewish beliefs, is contrary to evidence. The notion of a resurrection of the Messiah had nothing corresponding to it in the beliefs of Judaism. Even when Jesus had given repeated intimations of His death and resurrection, and had represented this as in accordance with OT prophecy, so contrary was the idea to contemporary Judaism that the disciples themselves were slow of heart to believe the things that Jesus had spoken to them (Luk 24:25 f., Luk 24:44-46).

(2) Not only is the fundamental assumption of the theory without support, but the analogies quoted between the NT and extra-Jewish mythological thought are altogether inadequate for the purpose in view. If God is in all history we may expect to find a preparation for the higher in the lower in the way of foreshadowings or prefigurations of Christian truths in ethnic religions. But the analogies cited to explain the Christian ideas are no real parallels. Take, e.g., the mythological explanations of the Resurrection on the third day. Why was the third day fixed upon for the occurrence? Strauss maintained that it was because of OT hints. The insufficiency of such an answer Gunkel and Cheyne acknowledge, and they claim that the matter can be satisfactorily explained only from the historical-religious point of view, as due to the influence of pagan myths of solar deities on Jewish thought. The three days of Jonah and the three and one half of Dn. (Dan 7:25; Dan 12:7) and the Apocalypse (Rev 11:12; Rev 11:14) are all forms of Oriental sun-god myths (Gunkel, p. 82 ff.; Cheyne, p. 110 ff.). To this influence also is due the observance of Sunday as the day of the commemoration of the Resurrection. The Lords Day was the day of the sun-god. Easter Sunday was the day of the suns emergence from the night of winter (Gunkel, pp. 74, 79). It is not strange that this was the day on which Jesus was said by the primitive Christian community to have risen. It is really an ancient Oriental festival which has here been taken over by the early Church. But a borrowed story ought at least to have some real likeness to its source, and there is no true analogy between the story of Christs death and resurrection on the third day and the pagan myths of slain and risen gods, beyond the general ideas of death and survival. These myths were polytheistic in origin, and were a poetic rendering of the phenomena of the yearly death and revival of vegetation represented in ritual and personified. The death and resurrection of Christ, on the other hand, were historical facts which bore no relation whatever to these myths. The resurrection of Attis, Adonis, and Osiris was an annual affair symbolizing the suns victory over winter in spring. The resurrection of Christ, however, was commemorated not only once a year at Easter, but also every Sunday. Had it been suggested by pagan myths and rituals, its commemoration would have shown some trace at least of the rites which suggested the belief, but nothing such is found. That Christs death and resurrection took place at the time of such a pagan commemoration may be regarded as a coincidence and nothing more, although it may have had some influence in furthering the acceptance of the story itself among pagans. The pagan beliefs in slain and risen gods, therefore, bear no real likeness to the account of Christs death and resurrection in the NT. Attis, Adonis, and Osiris are in no sense historical characters. They are ideal embodiments of the decay and reanimation of natural life year by year. Even if the apostles knew of such myths there is no evidence that they suggested to them the idea of a resurrection of their Masters. All the evidence shows that the last thing the disciples expected was such a resurrection. The change in their attitude came about suddenly. It was not a slow growth, and it claimed to be based on an alleged occurrence which it was within the power and in the interest of many to disprove had it been but a myth-the empty grave on the third day together with His subsequent appearances. This was their own explanation of the ethical and spiritual power which differentiates their belief from that of alleged pagan counterparts, and this is the only explanation that is adequate to the facts.

Literature.-On the Mythological Theory see, further, J. Orr, Resurrection of Jesus, London, 1908, ch. ix.; T. J. Thorburn, Jesus the Christ: Historical or Mythical?, Edinburgh, 1912; R. J. Knowling, Testimony of St. Paul to Christ, London, 1905, p. 282 ff.

3. The spiritual significance theory.-Another tendency which is dominant at the present time is that which lays emphasis on the spiritual worth or significance of the resurrection of Christ while surrendering or sitting loose to the belief in a bodily rising from the grave. A bodily Resurrection, so far from being of the essence of the Christian faith, is represented as a temporary excrescence which can be dropped without affecting it in any vital way. This is a tendency associated especially with a certain section of the Ritschlian school of theologians and connects itself naturally with the disposition in this school to seek the ground of faith in an immediate religious impression-in something verifiable on its own account-and to dissociate faith from doubtful questions of criticism and uncertainties of historical inquiry (Orr, Resurrection of Jesus, p. 23 f.). The basis of faith must be something fixed; the results of historical study are continually changing (W. Herrmann, Communion of the Christian with God, Eng. translation 2, London, 1906, p. 76). The certainty to which Christian faith holds fast is that Christ lives, but this is a judgment of value, or, as Herrmann prefers to call it, a thought of faith (Glaubensgedanke), a conviction based on the impression of religious worth produced by the earthly life of Jesus, and not affected by any view that may be held as to the historical Resurrection. The belief in the Resurrection is thus not a belief based on historical evidence in regard to an event in the past, but a faith inference from a prior judgment of His person. Foremost among representatives of this position stands Harnack, who has probably done more than any other to popularize the theory.

In his Hist. of Dogma (i. 85-87) Harnack contends (1) that there is no satisfactory historical evidence of the actual bodily Resurrection. None of Christs opponents saw him after his death. The succession and number of the appearances can no longer be ascertained with certainty. The disciples, and Paul, were conscious of having seen Christ not in the crucified earthly body, but in heavenly glory. Even the empty grave on the third day can by no means be regarded as a certain historical fact, because it appears united in the accounts with manifest legendary features, and further because it is directly excluded by the way in which Paul has portryed the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. But (2) Harnack goes further, and pours ridicule on the attempt to find such evidence. He scouts the idea of faith being dependent on historical evidence at all. Faith must be independent of evidence coming to us through the testimony of others. To believe in appearances which others have had is a frivolity which is always revenged by rising doubts. But the faith which is thus independent of historical evidence is, it speedily appears, a faith which is indifferent to the question of the physical Resurrection. Faith has by no means to do with the knowledge of the form in which Jesus lives, but only with the conviction that he is the living Lord. The faith in the Resurrection and the belief in the empty tomb are two different things. The historical question and the question of faith must clearly be distinguished here. In his later lectures on What is Christianity? Harnack gives expression to the same view in his famous distinction between what he calls the Easter message and the Easter faith. The Easter message tells us of that wonderful event in Joseph of Arimathaeas garden, which, however, no eye saw; it tells us of the empty grave into which a few women and disciples looked; of the appearance of the Lord in a transfigured form-so glorified that his own could not immediately recognise him; it soon begins to tell us, too, of what the risen one said and did. But the Easter faith is the conviction that the crucified one gained a victory over death; that God is just and powerful; that he who is the firstborn among many brethren still lives (What is Christianity?3, p. 163 f.). To found the Easter faith on the Easter message is to rest it on an unstable foundation. What he [Paul] and the disciples regarded as all-important was not the state in which the grave was found, but Christs appearances. But who of us can maintain that a clear account of these appearances can be constructed out of the stories told by Paul and the evangelists; and if that be impossible, and there is no tradition of single events which is quite trustworthy, how is the Easter faith to be based on them? Either we must decide to rest our belief on a foundation unstable and always exposed to fresh doubts, or else we must abandon this foundation altogether, and with it the miraculous appeal to our senses (p. 164 f.). It must have been, he thinks, even to the disciples themselves not so much the Easter message as the impression of His personality which was the ultimate foundation of the Easter faith that He was still alive. This impression of the personality of Jesus at least is a simple matter of fact which no historical criticism can in any way alter (ib.).

This position is open to objection on the following grounds. (1) It is based on a view of the relation of faith and history-an attempt to make faith independent of historical evidence-which cannot be accepted. Mere historical evidence, indeed, is incompetent of itself to generate true Christian faith in the Resurrection. For this there is needed also an estimate of the moral and religious uniqueness of Jesus derived from the impression of His personality, which prepares the mind for the proper appreciation of the evidence. Only to those who have received this impression is the Resurrection truly credible. In this sense it is true to say that the belief in the Resurrection is a value judgment or thought of faith; and that no appearances of the Lord could permanently have convinced them [the disciples] of his life, if they had not possessed in their hearts the impression of his Person (Hist. of Dogma, i. 86 n. [Note: . note.] ). But this is not to make faith independent of historical evidence. It may be and is involved in a proper estimate of His worth that He could not be holden of death, which means not merely that Jesus lives, as the Ritschlians put it, but that He is risen from the dead. But, if all historical evidence for the fact were either wanting or discredited at the bar of criticism, faith would be involved in insoluble contradiction. The Easter faith cannot dispense with the Easter message which is its historical attestation, an attestation which has to be judged by the principles of historical criticism. (2) When we take the Position to the test of the narratives its inadequacy is further established. Harnack holds that the distinction between the Easter faith and the Easter message is one already drawn in the NT. The story of Thomas is told for the exclusive purpose of impressing upon us that we must hold the Easter faith even without the Easter message: Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. The disciples on the road to Emmaus were blamed for not believing in the resurrection even though the Easter message had not yet reached them. The Lord is a Spirit, says Paul; and this carries with it the certainty of his resurrection (What is Christianity?3, p. 163 f.). But the support thus found involves a misrepresentation of the facts. The words to Thomas (Joh 20:29) are a rebuke to him for distrusting the testimony of his fellow-disciples and refusing to believe the Easter message without the personal verification of it by his own senses. The reproach to the two on the way to Emmaus (Luk 24:25 f.) is directed against their hesitation to believe the story of the women, confirmed as this was by prophetic prediction, and the previous intimations of Jesus Himself.

St. Pauls conviction that the Lord is the Spirit is the direct outcome of the appearance to him of the Risen Christ outside Damascus, which he reckons in the same category as the earlier appearances to the other apostles. The stress St. Paul lays on the appearances as evidence of the resurrection of Christ (1Co 15:5-8), combined with his reference to the burial, altogether for bids the attempt to detach his Easter faith, or that of the early Christian community, with which in these matters he knew himself to be at one, from the Easter message. It would have conveyed no meaning to Paul or to any member of the original Christian circle to say that it was the spirit of Christ which rose into new life, or that He rose again in the faith of His devoted followers, who could not bear the thought that for Him death should end all (Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, p. 113). The rising of which they speak is relative to the grave and the burial. They did not need to be assured that His spirit survived death. Not one of them doubted that. What they did need to be assured of, if their faith in Jesus was to be re-established, was His victory over death and the grave, and nothing but a bodily resurrection would have convinced them of that. It may be, as A. E. Garvie suggests (Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus, London, 1907, p. 439), that Jesus Himself would have esteemed the Easter-faith, the conviction that His life and work were of such infinite value to God that He must prove the conqueror of death, without the Easter message-the sensible evidences of the reality of His Resurrection-as much more precious that this belief which rested on the signs of sense. As during His earthly ministry He rated low the faith that rested on His miracles (Joh 4:48), so the belief in His resurrection which needed sensible evidence might be less satisfactory to Him, because showing less spiritual discernment of His worth, that a humble and confident trust in His word. And for us to-day brought up within the Christian Church, the heirs of the past with the evidence of Christs working through the centuries before us, belief in the Risen Lord may not depend so immediately or directly on the historical testimony of the empty grave and the appearances. But if one thing is made more plain and certain by the narratives than another it is that the disciples were quite incapable of the belief without the Easter message. Deeply as He had stamped Himself upon them in His earthly intercourse, the disaster of His death paralyzed their faith in Him, and this was regained and reconstituted only through the Easter message of the empty grave and the subsequent appearances.

But, it may be said, the Easter message, though thus needful, from the point of view of the early Christian community, to re-establish their faith and thus set the Church agoing-all the more so that for them as Jews a resurrection without an empty grave was unthinkable-is no longer necessary to the Christian faith, and may be dropped without affecting it in any vital way. Essential to the first disciples, so essential that as a matter of history the Apostolic Church sprang from the conviction that the body of Jesus was not left in the grave, it is no longer essential to us to-day. The Christian faith, it is urged, is not bound up with holding a particular view of the relation of the Glorified Christ to the body that was laid in Josephs tomb. Faith, it is said, is to be exercised in the Exalted Lord, and of this faith belief in a resuscitation of the Body is no vital part. This is the position taken up in the latest outstanding illustration of the attempt to conserve a spiritual Resurrection while denying or minimizing the fact of a bodily resuscitation-that of Sandy in his pamphlet Bishop Gores Challenge to Criticism (1914). Sanday is of opinion that we ought to be satisfied with a heart-felt expression of the conviction that the Risen Lord as Spirit still governs and inspires His Church, while sitting loose to the question of what became of His body. In regard to the resuscitation of the body of the Lord from the tomb, the accounts that have come down to us seem to be too conflicting and confused to prove this. But they do seem to prove that in any case the detail is of less importance than is supposed. Because, whatever it was, the body which the disciples saw was not the natural human body that was laid in the grave. The central meaning of the Resurrection is just that expressed in the vision of the Apocalypse: I am the first and the last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore (Rev 1:18) (p. 20). All else in the apostolic representation is unessential for us to-day, and can be spared. The bodily Resurrection is but a symbolical representation of the essential fact, the result of the world of ideas in which the first disciples moved. Their world of ideas was one in which the Resurrection was conceived as a bodily resuscitation. Their minds were steeped in the Old Testament and their thoughts naturally ran into the moulds which the Old Testament supplied (pp. 24, 25), with its belief in nature-miracles gathering round great personalities in a pre-scientific age-a belief which perpetuated itself in the New Testament (p. 27). For the first disciples, therefore, the nature-miracle of the bodily Resurrection seemed necessary to the completeness of the idea, but it is so no longer. It has done its work and can be spared. It is like a lame man laying aside his crutches (p. 28).

Sandays position may be further elucidated by reference to a sermon of his published some years previously in Miracles (London, 1911). It was in Jewish circles that the belief in the Resurrection first sprang up. But among the Jews the characteristic form of the belief in a life after death, or (as they expressed it) life from the dead, was the Pharisaic doctrine of a bodily resurrection. This was the form of the belief which the first disciples had in their minds, and which naturally and inevitably shaped and coloured all their experiences. This was pre-eminently so with St. Paul, who before his conversion had been a zealous Pharisee. So it was in the last resort this Pharisaic doctrine that was taken over by the Christian Church, and that from the first dictated the form of the Christian conception. It could not he otherwise. It was the one alternative open to those who believed in life from the dead at all. In that mould the belief of the first disciples was cast, and it has remained dominant in the Church down to our own time (p. 16 f.). But it is characteristic of our time to attempt to go behind this form of the belief, to show how it arose naturally in certain circumstances, and to distinguish between the question of its origin and that of its permanent validity. And I for one do not feel that I can condemn those attempts. I do not think that we are called upon to regard the precise form of the Pharisaic doctrine as the last word on the subject. It is only the relative expression or outward clothing of a Divine revelation. It was through the medium of minds possessed and dominated by these ideas, and, indeed, practically not conscious of the existence of any other, that the first announcement that Christ was alive and not dead was given to the world (p. 17 f.). But we have to distinguish between what the ancients themselves really thought and what we moderns should think. Indeed this is the main problem before us at the present day (p. 23).

The view of nature-miracle at the root of Sandays position will be examined in the following section, but meanwhile two considerations may be urged in criticism of this depreciation of the bodily resurrection. (1) It is no doubt true that faith to-day is to be exercised directly in the Exalted and Glorified Lord, hut our faith must ultimately rest on historical fact, and it is difficult to understand how Christian faith can ever be really indifferent or agnostic with regard to the facts about the empty tomb and the Risen Body, which form so essential a part of the apostolic evidence. To make the belief in the physical resurrection of merely temporary significance-to set the Apostolic Church agoing-while now it may be cast aside as no longer necessary, is to spurn the ladder by which we have risen to our Christian faith and to leave this faith in the air. It is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive how faith in an Exalted Lord could ever have been attained if the fact of the bodily resurrection of Jesus had not first been recognized. It is founded basally on the belief that the resurrection of Jesus was the actual raising in glory and power of that which was sown in dishonour and weakness; and faith can never be indifferent to this its historical foundation. (2) To sit loose to the bodily resurrection of Jesus is to do less than justice to the fullness of the apostolic representation of the essential constitutive significance of the Resurrection for the Christian faith (see above, IV. ii.). The rising of Jesus from the grave was for the Apostle at once the guarantee and the ground of the Christians full redemption and immortality, body as well as spirit having its place in the renewed Kingdom of God, who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory (Php 3:21). If the body of Jesus rotted away in the grave, then what guarantee have we that material forces are not after all supreme, and that Christ is indeed Lord over all, in nature as well as in grace, Lord of life and of death? The Resurrection-Body is indeed not the same natural human body that was laid in the grave. It is this body so changed as to be described as a spiritual body, but this is very different from representing it as simply dropped and lost, left behind in the grave to see corruption. The plain question to be answered is, Was the body of Jesus left lying in the tomb on the hillside of Jerusalem, or in some other tomb, or was it not? If it was, what then? Let us suppose it to be firmly established that, instead of being raised, the body of Jesus was for some reason removed from the tomb in which it was first laid, and buried elsewhere, and that this or something like this is all the ground there is, beyond the pious imaginations of the disciples, for the belief that the body of Jesus was raised from the grave. On this supposition the apostolic doctrine of redemption becomes seriously attenuated, and our Christian faith turns out to be a very different thing from what it was for the early Church.

The view under criticism is really based not so much on a scientific examination of the historical evidence as on a dogmatic or philosophical attitude which, while seeking to preserve what is essential to Christian faith, could sacrifice the supernatural in the physical realm as being what Herrmann explicitly calls it, a great hindrance to men today (Communion2, p. 80) in the way of accepted Christianity. That this is so is recognized with characteristic frankness by Sanday in this pamphlet. It is professedly because he finds the evidence on behalf of the bodily Resurrection unsatisfactory that he ranges himself with the modernists in doubting the fact. But this denial or minimizing of the bodily Resurrection is made, he recognizes, in an apologetic interest, viz. of commending Christianity to the modern mind by removing what he calls the greatest of all stumbling-blocks in the way of its acceptance, the admission of miracle in the physical realm. I know, he says, that the suggestions I have made will come with a shock to the great mass of Christians; but in the end I believe that they will be thankfully welcomed. What they would mean is that the greatest of all stumbling-blocks to the modern mind is removed, and that the beautiful regularity that we see around us now has been, and will be, the law of the Divine action from the beginning to the end of time (Bishop Gores Challenge to Criticism, p. 30). The ground of this repugnance to the recognition of the physical supernatural or nature-miracle will be considered in the following section.

Literature.-On the Spiritual-Significance Theory see J. H. Shrine, Miracle and History, London, 1912; J. Orr, The Christian View of God and the World, Edinburgh, 1893, lect. vi. note C (p. 512ff.); D. W. Forrest, Christ of History and of Experience7, do., 1914, p. 158ff.; B. Lucas, Fifth Gospel, London, 1907, p. 160.

4. The supernatural-without-miracle theory.-The real motif of all theories which attempt to explain the apostolic belief in the Resurrection without accepting the full apostolic representation of the fact is the repugnance to the admission of the supernatural in any specific or unique sense in the physical realm. This is the presupposition or praejudicium lying behind and determining the attitude of modern thought to the evidence; so that the fundamental apologetic problem to-day in connexion with the Resurrection is, as it has been in all ages, the problem of the supernatural. The latest evidence of this is the attitude of Sanday to the bodily Resurrection as definitely elicited by his controversy with Gore. His entire and strong belief in the central reality of the Supernatural Resurrection Sanday affirms (Bishop Gores Challenge, p. 28); but he claims that this need not involve the admission of the nature-miracle of the resuscitation of the Body from the tomb. Sanday adopts the old distinction between contranaturam and supra naturam miracles. The latter, the healing-miracles of the Gospels, were abundantly accounted for by the presence in the world of a unique Personality, and by that wave of new spiritual force which flowed from it in ever-increasing volume. They involved no real breach in the order of nature (p. 24). The nature-miracles of the Gospels, however, with the bodily resurrection of Jesus as the supreme instance, are represented as not merely thus supra naturam but as contra naturam, involving a definite reversal of the natural physical order (p. 23). The conception of nature-miracles took its rise in the region of the Old Testament through the influence of myths or legends gathering round great personalities in a pre-scientific age and perpetuated itself in the New Testament (p. 27). But the admission of such miracles is contrary to the postulate of modern science, the uniformity of nature, the beautiful regularity that we see around us the law of the Divine action from the beginning to the end of time (p. 30), and must be dropped. So the watchword of much current Christian apologetic in its attempt to recommend Christianity to the undetermined is the supernatural without miracle. This is the point of view represented in an extreme form by J. M. Thompsons Miracles in the New Testament (London, 1911).

At the root of this modern repugnance to the supernatural in the physical region lies the conception of miracle as a violation of natural law, or a breach in the order of nature, This is the view of miracle which, e.g., controls Schmiedels negative criticism. By miracle we here throughout understand an occurrence that unquestionably is against natural law (Encyclopaedia Biblica iv. 4040), This is the view which already underlay Humes famous argument in his essay On Miracles (Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, 2 vols., ed. London, 1907) as to the insufficiency of evidence for the alleged Gospel miracles in face of our experience of the regularity of nature, and of the notorious fallibility of human testimony to extraordinary events. A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined (ii. 93). He takes the Resurrection as his typical example. It is no miracle that a man should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death has yet been frequently observed to happen, But it, is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed, in any age or country (ib.). Briefly, it is contrary to experience that a miracle should be true, but not contrary to experience that human testimony should be false (cf. ii. 105).

While the healing miracles of the Gospels, or most of them, may he scientifically explicable in accordance with laws recognized by modern science (what M. Arnold called moral therapenties), the nature-miracles, with the bodily Resurrection as the supreme instance, are ruled out as violations of natural law. This objection to nature-miracles, however, goes back to a view of nature and natural law which, as the offspring of a mechanical view of the world, is now obsolete, yet which continues to influence thought in subtle ways. If nature be regarded as a closed mechanical system owing its origin, it may be, to the creative power and wisdom of the Divine, but now a self-sufficient, self-running, order bound together by iron bonds of natural law, then what we call miracle can be conceived only as an intervention from without, an inroad or intrusion into an ordered and complete mechanical whole. But if nature, as a more adequate philosophy is now teaching us, and as science itself is increasingly recognizing, is no such closed mechanical system shut in upon itself, but alive, moving, a growing organism, a process of creative evolution; if its laws are not ultimate realities or entities which bind the universe into a changeless mechanism of material forces, but simply modes of the Divine activity, forms of Gods self-expression-then a very different conception of miracle presents itself. The distinction between natural and supernatural becomes a distinction between lower and higher forms of Divine activity. What is called the natural order is Gods basal method of working in the world, the indispensable condition of all stable rational experience. What are called the laws of nature are the general laws of sequence based on past observation and experience of the Divine working on this basal level-a convenient shorthand method of summing up our existing knowledge-whereby we can say that if the same conditions are fulfilled the same results will follow. In this sense nature is uniform or regular. If the conditions are changed, however, and new forces are introduced whereby a new level of Divine working is brought about, the ordinary laws of nature are not violated or contradicted but transcended their action is controlled or modified for higher ends. Standing at the lower level and without experience of the higher, the new experiences may seem to contradict what is natural at that level, to be in that sense contra naturam, while really, as St. Augustine long ago pointed out, being only contrary to nature so far as yet known (non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura [de Civ. Dei, xvi. 8]). From the point of view of the physical order the phenomena of organic nature and still more of self-conscious personality will appear as if they contradicted the laws of that order. They would be contradictory only if these laws were assumed to be final and ultimate instead of being means to ends beyond themselves.

Apply this to the nature-miracles of Jesus, and in particular to His bodily resurrection. If we regard Jesus of Nazareth as one whose life moved wholly on the plane of our ordinary human experience, the contra naturam argument might be urged with plausibility. But in Jesus, as the narratives present Him, we have a new phenomenon in human history, unique in His character, person, and work. He stood in the midst of a sinful world, the alone sinless One, living in perfect communion with God, and claiming a unique relation to God and man-a claim which He substantiated in the experience of those who submitted themselves to Him, making them veritably new creations. This is a miracle in the moral and spiritual sphere as wonderful as any alleged miracle in the physical. It is a new departure in human history-in this sense contrary to experience-so that we cannot criticize Him by the light of any canons drawn from our past experience of ordinary humanity. In the case of such a new phenomenon we should antecedently expect that He would manifest Himself in new and unfamiliar ways. As with the appearance of man there were introduced new powers and properties unimaginable from the animal point of view and therefore from that point of view seemingly supernatural-so with the appearance of the Christ we ought to expect new powers and properties unimaginable from the human point of view and therefore to us seemingly supernatural, i.e. above our nature (J. le Conte, Evolution in Relation to Religious Thought, London, 1888, p. 362).

Human personality is a unity in which spiritual and material are organically connected and mutually dependent, the spirit moulding the body and the body in turn influencing the spirit. Sin, accordingly, is a fact which though primarily moral and spiritual-a matter of the will-yet extends to and includes the physical as well, moral and physical mingling with and reacting on each other till the entire resultant may he spoken of as the body of this death-a complex whole in which it is impossible to disentangle the spiritual element from the diseased conditions and perverted functions of organ and tissue, which personal and ancestral sins have brought about (Illingworth, Divine Immanence, p. 92). In like manner sinlessness is a fact which, though primarily moral and spiritual, concerns the physical as well, a sinless soul carrying with it as its correlative an unstained body. It may be contrary to experience, as Hume says, that a human body should rise from the dead; it is contrary to our experience, that is to say, of ordinary human bodies, the bodies of sinful men. But in the case of a sinless personality like that of Jesus we have a fact so transcending ordinary experience that no amount of evidence drawn from such experience can warrant us in laying down beforehand how nature will react on such an one. It may be as normal for a sinless man to rise from the dead as it is for the bodies of sinful men to remain in the grave. At all events our modern scientific knowledge of the mutual interdependence of spirit and body makes it a priori probable that one who like Jesus was not holden of sin should also not be hold en of death. Without this the manifestation of His triumph over sin would be incomplete. But more than this. Jesus claimed not only to be sinless Himself but to have come into the world to destroy the dominion of sin in others. He stood over against men the alone sinless One claiming to have power to forgive and to redeem, and, in manifestation of His power to rectify the whole disorder caused by sin and restore the entire personality of man, body as well as soul, to Gods plan for it, He performed works of healing on the body. His healing of the one He connected with His forgiving of the other as parts of the same redemptive work. Of this redemptive Lordship, His own bodily resurrection was at once the consummating manifestation and the final guarantee; so that being such an One as He was and proved Himself to be per ejus beneficia it was not possible that he should be holden of death (Act 2:24).

It is in the light of these considerations that the physical Resurrection becomes credible, and even antecedently probable. It is not an isolated abnormal incident in an otherwise normal career. If the Resurrection were alleged to have occurred abruptly in the middle of a series of events which passed on slowly to their consummation unaffected by its interruption then we might have paused in doubt before so stupendous a miracle, and pleaded the uniformity of nature against the claims of such an event upon our belief (Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection, p. 105). But the Resurrection is the resurrection of Jesus, and, as such, an event at once with unique antecedents and unique consequents. Its context on either side is miraculous. It is the culmination of a unique human life, a life which was a moral miracle constituting a break in human experience, and making such physical miracle as the Resurrection altogether natural and congruous; a life too which was represented as the consummation of Gods purposes in all previous human history-for this is the essential meaning of the appeal to prophecy made by the apostles. Then there are the unique consequents of the fact-and the nature of a cause becomes apparent only in the effect-the rise of the Christian Church as a new and ever-increasing power in history constituted in the continuous miracle of Christian history and experience. It is when we consider the Resurrection thus in its context that we see the naturalness and congruousness of the fact. As the consummation of the Incarnation and the means of realizing its purposes, the Resurrection is at once an end and a new beginning. To this fact all former history converges as to a certain goal; from this fact all subsequent history flows as from its life-giving spring [ib. p. 104). And so, taking all the evidence together-evidence converging and cumulative-it is not too much to say with Westcott that there is no single historic incident better or more variously supported than the resurrection of Christ. (p. 137).

Literature.-On the Resurrection and the supernatural see B. F. Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection6, London, 1888, pp. 15-54; J. O. F. Murray, The Spiritual and Historical Evidence for Miracles, in Cambridge Theological Essays ed. H. B. Swete, do., 1905, p. 311 ff.; M. Dods, The Supernatural in Christianity (in reply to Pfleiderer), 2Edinburgh, 1894; J. R. Illingworth, Divine Immanence, London, 1898, The Gospel Miracles, do., 1915 (esp. ch. ii.); A. C. Headlam, The Miracles of the New Testament, do., 1914; A. J. Balfour, Theism and Humanism, do., 1915; H. Scott Holland in Christian Commonwealth, June 1909 (criticism of Sanday).

Literature.-The chief relevant literature on the various aspects of the subject has been indicated in the body of the article. On the whole subject the older works of B. F. Westcott. The Gospel of the Resurrection1, London, 1865, The Revelation of the Risen Lord2, do., 1882, W. Milligan, The Resurrection of our Lord, do., 1888, Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our. Lord, do., 1892, and S. D. F. Salmond, The Christian Doctrine of Immortality, Edinburgh, 1895, are not yet superseded. Among more recent works covering the whole field the more Important are A. Meyer, Die Auferstehung Christi, Freiburg i. B. 1905; L. Ihmels, Die Auferstehung Jesu Christi, Leipzig, 1906; J. Orr, The Resurrection Jesus, London, 1908; C. H. Robinson, Studies in the Resurrection of Christ, do., 1909; W. J. Sparrow Simpson, Our Lords Resurrection, do., 1905, The Resurrection and Modern Thought, do., 1911. Cf. E. R. Bernard, article Resurrection, Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) iv. 231-236; W. J. Sparrow Simpson, article Resurrection of Christ, Dict. of Christ and the Gospels ii. 505-514.

J. M. Shaw.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church

RESURRECTION OF CHRIST

Few articles are more important than this. It deserves our particular attention, because it is the grand hinge on which Christianity turns. Hence, says the apostle, he was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification. Infidels, however, have disbelieved it, but with what little reason we may easily see on considering the subject. “If the body of Jesus Christ, ” says Saurin, “were not raised from the dead, it must have been stolen away. But this theft is incredible. Who committed it? The enemies of Jesus Christ? Would they have contributed to his glory by countenancing a report of his resurrection? Would his disciples? It is probable they would not, and it is next to certain they could not. How could they have undertaken to remove the body? Frail and timorous creatures, people who fled as soon as they saw him taken into custody; even Peter, the most courageous, trembled at the voice of a servant girl, and three times denied that he knew him. People of this character, would they have dared to resist the authority of the governor?

Would they have undertaken to oppose the determination of the Sanhedrim, to force a guard, and to elude, or overcome, soldiers armed and aware of danger? If Jesus Christ were not risen again (I speak the language of unbelievers, ) he had deceived his disciples with vain hopes of his resurrection. How came the disciples not to discover the imposture? Would they have hazarded themselves by undertaking an enterprise so perilous in favour of a man who had so cruelly imposed on their credulity? But were we to grant that they formed the design of removing the body, how could they have executed it? How could soldiers armed, and on guard, suffer themselves to be over-reached, by a few timorous people? Either, says St. Augustine they were asleep or awake: if they were awake, why should they suffer the body to be taken away? If asleep, how could they know that the disciples took it away? How dare they then, depose that it was STOLEN. The testimony of the apostles furnishes us with arguments, and there are eight considerations which give the evidence sufficient weight.

1. The nature of these witnesses. They were not men of power, riches, eloquence, credit, to impose upon the world; they were poor and mean.

2. The number of these witnesses.

See 1Co 15:1-58 : Luk 24:34. Mar 16:14. Mat 28:10. It is not likely that a collusion should have been held among so many to support a lie, which would be of no utility to them.

3. The facts themselves which they avow; not suppositions, distant events, or events related by others, but real facts which they saw with their own eyes, 1Jn 1:1-10 :

4. The agreement of their evidence: they all deposed the same thing.

5. Observe the tribunals before which they gave evidence: Jews and heathens, philosophers and rabbins, courtiers and lawyers. If they had been impostors, the fraud certainly would have been discovered.

6. The place in which they bore their testimony. Not at a distance, where they might not easily have been detected, if false, but at Jerusalem, in the synagogues, in the pretorium.

7. The time of this testimony: not years after, but three days after, they declared he was risen; yea, before their rage was quelled, while Calvary was yet dyed with the blood they had spilt. If it had been a fraud, it is not likely they would have come forward in such broad day-light, amidst so much opposition.

8. Lastly, the motives which induced them to publish the resurrection: not to gain fame, riches, glory, profit; no, they exposed themselves to suffering and death, and proclaimed the truth from conviction of its importance and certainty. “Collect, ” says Saurin, “all these proofs together; consider them in one point of view, and see how many extravagant suppositions must be advanced, if the resurrection of our Saviour be denied. It must be supposed that guards, who had been particularly cautioned by their officers, sat down to sleep; and that, however, they deserved credit when they said the body of Jesus Christ was stolen.

It must be supposed that men, who have been imposed on in the most odious and cruel manner in the world, hazarded their dearest enjoyments for the glory of an impostor. It must be supposed that ignorant and illiterate men, who had neither reputation, fortune, nor eloquence, possessed the art of fascinating the eyes of all the church. It must be supposed either that five hundred persons were all deprived of their senses at a time, or that they were all deceived in the plainest matters of fact; or that this multitude of false witnesses had found out the secret of never contradicting themselves or one another, and of being always uniform in their testimony. It must be supposed that the most expert courts of judicature could not find out a shadow of contradiction in a palpable imposture. It must be supposed that the apostles, sensible men in other cases, chose precisely those places and those times which were most unfavourable to their views. It must be supposed that millions madly suffered imprisonments, tortures, and crucifixions, to spread an illusion. It must be supposed that ten thousand miracles were wrought in favour of falsehood, or all these facts must be denied; and then it must be supposed that the apostles were idiots; that the enemies of Christianity were idiots; and that all the primitive Christians were idiots.” The doctrine of the resurrection of Christ affords us a variety of useful instructions. Here we see evidence of divine power; prophecy accomplished; the character of Jesus established; his work finished; and a future state proved. It is a ground of faith, the basis of hope, a source of consolation, and a stimulus to obedience.

See Saurin’s Sermons, ser. 8. vol. 2: Robinson’s translation; Ditton and Wast on the Resurrection; Cook’s Illustration of the general evidence establishing the reality of Christ’s resurrection, p. 323. Ecc. Rev. vol. 4. but especially a small but admirable Essay on the Resurrection of Christ by Mr. Dore. Bish. Horsely.

Fuente: Theological Dictionary

Resurrection of Christ

The Gospel miracle, related by the four Evangelists, of Christ’s return to life. By His own power He reunited His body and soul, and issued alive from the sealed and guarded tomb, after His dead body had reposed therein from Friday evening until Sunday morning. This fact was predicted by Christ Himself, and offered by Him as the chief sign or proof of His Divine mission and Divinity. The Apostles after Him made it the cardinal point in their teaching, on which hinged the value of the Christian faith. Saint Paul says: “And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain: and your faith is also vain.” (1 Corinthians 15). Among the many masters who have represented this subject in art are: Aldegrever, Baldovinetti, Bellini, Annibale and Agostino Carracci, Contarini, Correggio, El Greco, Fra Angelico, Ghirlandajo, Murillo, Palma, Perugino, Pinturicchio, Pourbus, Rembrandt, Rubens, San Sepolcro, Tintoretto, Titian, Trevisani, Van de Velde, Vasari, Veronese, and Vivarini.

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Resurrection Of Christ

This great fact, by which he was declared to be the Son of God with power, stands out everywhere prominently on the pages of the New Test. as the foundation of the Christian faith (Rom 1:2; Act 13:32-33; 1Co 15:3-15). According to the Scriptures the disciples were assured, by the testimony of their senses, that the body of Christ, after his resurrection, was the same identical body of human flesh and bones which had been crucified and laid in the sepulchre (Mat 16:21; Mat 27:63; Mat 28:5-18; Mar 16:6-19; Luk 24:5-51; Joh 20:9-26; Act 1:1-11). Our Lord himself took special pains to make the impression upon the minds of his disciples that in his crucified body he was actually raised to life. He appealed to the testimony of their own senses Behold, says he, my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me here. He showed them his hands and his feet, which the nail-prints attested to be the same which had hung upon the cross. Our Lord also invited Thomas to thrust his hand into his wounded side; and, to remove the last remaining shadow of doubt from the minds of his disciples that it was he himself in thle same human body, he called for food, and he took aand did eat before them (Luk 24:39-43; Joh 20:27). The fact also that our Lord continued forty days upon earth after his resurrection, in the same human bovy in which he was crucified, shows plainly that he did not rise from the tomb in a glorified body. And the evidence is equally strong that he now dwells in heaven in a glorified body (Php 3:21; Col 3:4).

Since this event, however, independently of its importance in respect to the internal connection of the Christian doctrine, was manifestly a miraculous occurrence, the credibility of the narrative has from the earliest times been brought into question (Celsius, apud Origen. cont. Cels. i, 2; Woolston, Discourses on the Miracles, disc. vi; Chubb, Posth. Works, i, 330; Morgan, The Resurrection Considered [1744]). Others who have admitted the facts as recorded to be beyond dispute, yet have attempted to show that Christ was not really dead, but that, being stunned and palsied, he wore for a time the appearance of death, and was afterwards restored to consciousness by the cool grave and the spices. The refltation of these views may be seen in detail in such works as Less, Ueber die Religion, ii, 372; id. Auferstehungsgeschichte, nebst Anhang (1799); Doderlein, Fragmente und Antif/ragmente (1782). The chief advocates of these views are Paulus (list. Resurrect. Jes. [1795]), and, more recently, Henneberg (Philol. histor. krit. Commentar fib. d. Gesch. d. Begrabbn., d. Auferstehung u. Himmelfahrt Jesu [1826]). If the body of Jesus Christ, says Saurin, were not raised from the dead, it must have been stolen awav. But this theft is incredible. Who committed it? The enemies of Jesus Christ? Would they have contributed to his glory by countenancing a report of his resurrection? Would his disciples? It is probable they would not, and it is next to certain they could not. How could they have undertaken to remove the body frail and timorous creatures, people who fled as soon as they saw him taken into custody? Even Peter, the most courageous, trembled at the voice of a servant-girl, and three times denied that he knew him. Would people of this character have dared to resist the authority of the governor? Would they have undertaken to oppose the determination of the Sanhedrim, to force a guard, and to elude, or overcome soldiers armed and aware of danger? If Jesus Christ was not risen again (I speak the language of unbelievers), he had deceived his disciples with vain hopes of his resurrection. How came the disciples not to discover the imposture? Would they have hazarded themselves by undertaking an enterprise so perilous in favor of a man who had so cruelly imposed on their credulity? But were we to grant that they formed the design of removing the body, how could they have executed it? How could soldiers, armed and on guard, suffer themselves to be overreached by a few timorous people? Either (says St. Augustine) they were asleep or awake; if they were awake, why should they suffer the body to be taken away? If asleep, how could they know that the disciples took it away? How dare they then depose that it was stolen?

The testimony of the apostles furnishes us with arguements, and there are eight considerations which give the evidence sufficient weight.’

1. The nature of these witnesses. They were not men of power, riches, eloquence, credit, to impose upon the world; they were poor and mean.

2. The number of these witnesses. (See Corinthians 15; Luk 24:34; Mar 16:14; Mat 28:10.) It is not likely that a collusion should have been held among so many to support a lie, which would be of no utility to them.

3. The facts themselves which they avow: not suppositions, distant events, or events related by others, but real facts which they saw with their own eyes (1 John 1).

4. The agreement of their evidence: they all deposed the same thing.

5. Observe the tribunals before which they gave evidence: Jews and heathens, philosophers and rabbins, courtiers and lawyers. If they had been impostors, the fraud certainly would have been discovered.

6. The place in which they bore their testimony. Not at a distance, where they might not easily have been detected, if false, but at Jerusalem, in the synagogues, in the praetorium.

7. the time of this testimony: not years after, but three days after, they declared he was risen; yea, before the rage of the Jews was quelled, while Calvary was yet dyede with the blood they had spilled. If it had been a fralud, it is not likely they would have come forward in such broad daylight, amid so much opposition.

8. Lastly, the motives which induced them to publish the resurrection: not to gain fame, riches, glory, profit; no, they exposed themselves to suffering and death, and proclaimed the truth from conviction of its importance and certainty.

Objections have also been raised upon the apparent discrepancies of the Gospel narratives of the event. These discrepancies were early perceived; and a view of what the fathers have done in the attempt to reconcile them has been given by Niemeyer (De Evangelistarum in Narrando Christi in Vitam Reditu Dissensione [1824]). They were first collocated with much acuteness by Morgan in the work already cited, and at a later date by an anonymous writer, whose fragments were edited and supported by Lessing, the object of which seems to have been to throw uncertainty and doubt over the whole of this portion of Gospel history. A numerous host of theologians, however, rose to combat and refute this writer’s positions, among whom we find the names of Doderlein, Less, Semler, Teller, Maschius, Michaelis, Plessing, Eichhorn, Herder, and others. Among those who have more recently attempted to reconcile the different accounts is Griesbach. who, in his excellent Prolusio de Fontibus uide Evangelistoe suas de Resurrectione Donini Narrationes hauserint (1793), remarks that all the discrepancies are trifling, and not of such moment as to render the narrative uncertain and suspected, or to destroy or even diminish the credibility of the evangelists, but serve rather to show how extremely studious they were of truth and how closely and even scrupulously they followed their documents. Griesbach then attempts to slhw how these discrepancies may have arisen, and admits that, although unimportant, they are hard to reconcile, as is indeed evinced by the amount of controversy they have excited. The principal one of these discrepancies has been discussed under APPEARANCE SEE APPEARANCE .

For works on the general subject, besides those referred to under the preceding article, see Malcolm, Theological Index, s.v.; Darling, Cyclop. Bibliog. (see Index); and for monographs on the various points connected with our Lord’s resurrection, see those cited by Volbeding, Index Programmatum, p. 67 sq.; and by Hase, Leben Jesu, p. 160, 221, 225, 227, 230; also the following: Clausewitz, De AMortuorum Tempore Resurrect. et Chr. Resurrectione (Hal. 1741); Kunadius, De Sanctis Redivivis (Viteb. 1665); Hobichhont, De Sanctis Resurgente Christo Resurgentibus (Ros. 1696); Schtirzmann, De Anastasi Atheniensibus pro Dea Habita (Lips. 1708). Numerous articles on the subject are to be found in religious periodicals, among which, as the latest, we name Journ. Sac. Lit. Jan. 1853, Oct, 1854; Studien u. Kritiken, 1870, i; Zeitschr. f. wissenchaft. Theol. 1863; Theol. and Lit. Journal, Oct. 1857, Oct. 1858; Lond. Bib. Rev. April, 1849; Brit. and For. Ev. Rev. April, 1862; Bibl. Sacra, June, 1852. Oct. 1860, Oct. 1869; New-Englander, May, 1857; Meth. Quar. Rev. Oct. 1873, Oct. 1877; Christian Quar. Amril, 1876; Amer. Presb. and Theol. Rev. July and Oct. 1867; South. Presb. Rev. Oct. 1860; Mercersb. Rev. April, 1861; Danville Rev. March, 1863; Universalist Quar. April and Oct. 1861. SEE JESUS CHRIST.

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

Resurrection of Christ

one of the cardinal facts and doctrines of the gospel. If Christ be not risen, our faith is vain (1 Cor. 15:14). The whole of the New Testament revelation rests on this as an historical fact. On the day of Pentecost Peter argued the necessity of Christ’s resurrection from the prediction in Ps. 16 (Acts 2:24-28). In his own discourses, also, our Lord clearly intimates his resurrection (Matt. 20:19; Mark 9:9; 14:28; Luke 18:33; John 2:19-22).

The evangelists give circumstantial accounts of the facts connected with that event, and the apostles, also, in their public teaching largely insist upon it. Ten different appearances of our risen Lord are recorded in the New Testament. They may be arranged as follows:

(1.) To Mary Magdalene at the sepulchre alone. This is recorded at length only by John (20:11-18), and alluded to by Mark (16:9-11).

(2.) To certain women, “the other Mary,” Salome, Joanna, and others, as they returned from the sepulchre. Matthew (28:1-10) alone gives an account of this. (Comp. Mark 16:1-8, and Luke 24:1-11.)

(3.) To Simon Peter alone on the day of the resurrection. (See Luke24:34; 1 Cor. 15:5.)

(4.) To the two disciples on the way to Emmaus on the day of the resurrection, recorded fully only by Luke (24:13-35. Comp. Mark 16:12, 13).

(5.) To the ten disciples (Thomas being absent) and others “with them,” at Jerusalem on the evening of the resurrection day. One of the evangelists gives an account of this appearance, John (20:19-24).

(6.) To the disciples again (Thomas being present) at Jerusalem (Mark 16:14-18; Luke 24:33-40; John 20:26-28. See also 1 Cor. 15:5).

(7.) To the disciples when fishing at the Sea of Galilee. Of this appearance also John (21:1-23) alone gives an account.

(8.) To the eleven, and above 500 brethren at once, at an appointed place in Galilee (1 Cor. 15:6; comp. Matt. 28:16-20).

(9.) To James, but under what circumstances we are not informed (1 Cor. 15:7).

(10.) To the apostles immediately before the ascension. They accompanied him from Jerusalem to Mount Olivet, and there they saw him ascend “till a cloud received him out of their sight” (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:50-52; Acts 1:4-10).

It is worthy of note that it is distinctly related that on most of these occasions our Lord afforded his disciples the amplest opportunity of testing the fact of his resurrection. He conversed with them face to face. They touched him (Matt. 28:9; Luke 24:39; John 20:27), and he ate bread with them (Luke 24:42, 43; John 21:12, 13).

(11.) In addition to the above, mention might be made of Christ’s manifestation of himself to Paul at Damascus, who speaks of it as an appearance of the risen Saviour (Acts 9:3-9, 17; 1 Cor. 15:8; 9:1).

It is implied in the words of Luke (Acts 1:3) that there may have been other appearances of which we have no record.

The resurrection is spoken of as the act (1) of God the Father (Ps. 16:10; Acts 2:24; 3:15; Rom. 8:11; Eph. 1:20; Col. 2:12; Heb. 13:20); (2) of Christ himself (John 2:19; 10:18); and (3) of the Holy Spirit (1 Peter 3:18).

The resurrection is a public testimony of Christ’s release from his undertaking as surety, and an evidence of the Father’s acceptance of his work of redemption. It is a victory over death and the grave for all his followers.

The importance of Christ’s resurrection will be See n when we consider that if he rose the gospel is true, and if he rose not it is false. His resurrection from the dead makes it manifest that his sacrifice was accepted. Our justification was secured by his obedience to the death, and therefore he was raised from the dead (Rom. 4:25). His resurrection is a proof that he made a full atonement for our sins, that his sacrifice was accepted as a satisfaction to divine justice, and his blood a ransom for sinners. It is also a pledge and an earnest of the resurrection of all believers (Rom. 8:11; 1 Cor. 6:14; 15:47-49; Phil. 3:21; 1 John 3:2). As he lives, they shall live also.

It proved him to be the Son of God, inasmuch as it authenticated all his claims (John 2:19; 10:17). “If Christ did not rise, the whole scheme of redemption is a failure, and all the predictions and anticipations of its glorious results for time and for eternity, for men and for angels of every rank and order, are proved to be chimeras. ‘But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.’ Therefore the Bible is true from Genesis to Revelation. The kingdom of darkness has been overthrown, Satan has fallen as lightning from heaven, and the triumph of truth over error, of good over evil, of happiness over misery is for ever secured.” Hodge.

With reference to the report which the Roman soldiers were bribed (Matt. 28:12-14) to circulate concerning Christ’s resurrection, “his disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept,” Matthew Henry in his “Commentary,” under John 20:1-10, fittingly remarks, “The grave-clothes in which Christ had been buried were found in very good order, which serves for an evidence that his body was not ‘stolen away while men slept.’ Robbers of tombs have been known to take away ‘the clothes’ and leave the body; but none ever took away ‘the body’ and left the clothes, especially when they were ‘fine linen’ and new (Mark 15:46). Any one would rather choose to carry a dead body in its clothes than naked. Or if they that were supposed to have stolen it would have left the grave-clothes behind, yet it cannot be supposed they would find leisure to ‘fold up the linen.'”

Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary

Resurrection Of Christ

RESURRECTION OF CHRIST

1. St. Pauls summary of the Resurrection appearances (1 Corinthians 15) is, says Godet (Com. ii. 435), the most ancient and most official of the records we possess. If Harnacks chronology be made our basis (Gesch. der Altchristl. Lit. vol. ii. (i.) 236 ff.), our Lords death was in a.d. 29 or 30; St. Pauls conversion in 30; his correspondence with Corinth, 53. His visit to St. Peter at Jerusalem would be in 33. Thus he had known this tradition for nearly 20 years, and recorded it within 23 years of the Resurrection. On St. Pauls list of the witnesses we note:(1) That it is a list and not a narrative. It is the barest summary, expressed with the utmost conciseness (cf. Cambr. Theol. Essays, p. 331). (2) It is derived and not original (1Co 15:3 I received [], I delivered unto you []). If we here possess a primitive tradition orally communicated to St. Paul by the older Apostles, then it would be uncritical to infer that St. Paul knows nothing of any appearance which he does not record. (3) The order of the list is chronological. This is shown by the use of , : then to the Twelve; then to above 500; then to James; then to all the apostles. (4) The purpose is not primarily apologetic (cf. Cambridge Theol. Essays, 395, 329, 330). The Resurrection of Christ was not disputed at Corinth. The introduction of the list here is due to that instinct for systematic completeness, that determination to go down to first principles, which is eminently characteristic of St. Paul, rather than to any apologists desire to convince men who do not believe that Christ is risen. (5) The selection is evidently official (cf. Knowling, Testimony of St. Paul, p. 301)St. Peter as the first of the Apostles, St. James head of the Church at Jerusalem. Peter and James were at the time of writing the two most prominent persons in the Christian Society, St. Paul himself not being excepted (Ch. Quart. Rev., Jan. 1906, p. 330). The same applies to the Apostles in a body. The other appearance is recorded for its numerical importance. Thus the omission of the Women from this official list is not surprising. It is noticeable that the Fourth Gospel, although recording the appearance to Mary Magdalene, yet omits it from the official enumeration (Joh 21:14). Thus the Fourth Gospel supports St. Pauls procedure, and demonstrates that omission is not necessarily due to ignorance.

On St. Pauls list of the witnesses, see, further, Ch. Quart. Rev., Jan. 1906, 327331; Knowling, Testimony of St. Paul; Gess, Das Dogma von Christi Person und Werk, xvii.

2. The personal testimony of St. Paul to Christs Resurrection.A comparison of the three accounts of St. Pauls conversion in Acts 9, 22, 26, which may be respectively denoted A, B, and C, shows certain variations.

(1) The intervention of Ananias, contained in A and B, is omitted in C; the instruction given by him being in substance transferred in C to Christ. It may be, as Blass considers (Act. Apost. ix.), that the historic order is maintained in A and B rather than in C, since such instruction as to the Apostles duty would come more naturally under calmer circumstances and at a later time. It should also he noted that of these three accounts the first is the historians narrative in the course of the events, where Ananias would necessarily be mentioned. The second was spoken to the Jewish throng on the ascent to the Praetorium, where the mention of Ananias and his orthodoxy would be reassuring to the hearers (cf. Knowling, op. cit.). The third, spoken before the magistrates, omits him, because the reference would not in any degree strengthen the Apostles case, nor be desirable on Ananias account. Again, it is noteworthy that the incident of Ananias is, as Blass says, separable from the main event. Its omission by St. Paul in 1 Cor. shows this. It does, however, entail the important loss of reference to St. Pauls baptism given in A and B. It may be psychologically difficult to separate Ananias instructions from St. Pauls own reflexions. But this again is distinct from the momentous issue.

(2) The effect upon the attendants is recorded with variations. In A they are described as . In B, . In C the attendants are not mentioned. It is usually said that the distinction of case after implies that the attendants heard the sound (genitive) but could not distinguish the substance (accusative) of the message (cf. Grimm-Thayer, Lex.).

But, taking the extreme case that these details cannot be reconciled, do they vitally alter the central affirmation? Is not some confusion between the effect on St. Paul and that upon the attendants very readily accounted for on the religious principle that receptiveness varies with spirituality? Zeller (followed by Pfleiderer, Urchristentum, i. 61) has, indeed, made the most of these differences (Acts, vol. i. p. 287), on the ground that for the objective character of the appearance great importance must attach to the testimony of St. Pauls companions. But the essential points are perfectly clear; that the attendants were bewildered and confused by an external incident whose nature they evidently took for supernatural but could not further explain.

On the three narratives in Acts, see, further, Knowling, Testimony of St. Paul; Sabatier, Laptre Paul; Goguel, Laptre Paul et Jsus Christ; Chase, Credibility of Acts; Rackham, Acts.

So far as to St. Pauls personal testimony recorded in Acts. To this must be added the references in his Epistles. It is certainly remarkable that amid his courageous self-revelation no account of his own conversion is given in the Epistles. And yet any such account would obviously be necessary for his opponents rather than for his converts, who must have heard the story orally; and this is precisely what the allusions and inferences in the Epistles suggest. There are here three points to be remembered: (1) The external or objective character of the appearance outside Damascus; (2) the fact that this external appearance is not incompatible with intellectual preparation for the change; nor (3) with an inner revelation in the department of the intellect as to the significance and far-reaching character of the external revelation bestowed (cf. Maurice Goguel, Laptre Paul et Jsus Christ).

(a) Theologians were formerly disposed to confine the intellectual change in St. Paul to the period of reflexion subsequent to conversion. Modern writers place it chiefly in the period before. It may well have been in both. Consciousness of the impossibility of unaided compliance with the requirement of the moral ideal (Romans 7) may well have prepared the way for the acceptance of Christianity, although by no means necessarily even suggesting, still less involving, its truth. On this point the greatest caution is essential. We have no information. The elaborated hypotheses whereby St. Paul is supposed to have made the transition to Christianity in purely subjective ways are wonderful feats of critical ingenuity, but they have no necessary relation to history. What is certain is that he believed the transition to have been suddenly effected by the manifestation of the Risen Christ.

(b) Similarly with the question of the inner revelation of Christ within the mind of St. Paul (Gal 1:15-16 to reveal his Son in me). Because St. Paul received a mental enlightenment, it cannot possibly follow that he did not see an outward vision or hear a voice. Rather that which he heard and saw formed the external data of his inward thoughts and convictions. The careful distinction drawn by St. Paul between inner visions of the Lord (2 Corinthians 12), as to which he cannot tell whether they were in the body or out of the body, and the event appealed to in 1Co 9:1 as the certificate of his Apostleship, show how vividly conscious he was of the external objective nature of that vision of the Risen Christ (see Goguel, p. 82). But that there was an inner revelation also as the result of the external vision is, of course, essential to the value of the vision. Indeed, it would not be easy to exaggerate the vastness of this inner revelation, to St. Paul, provided always that space is left for the external circumstance which created it.

As to the external, objective character of St. Pauls vision of the Risen Christ, this and nothing less is required by the Apostles language. The metaphor of an untimely birth, which he employs in regard to himself (1Co 15:8), implies a sudden, violent, abnormal change which brought him weak and immature into a new spiritual world (Chase, Credibility, p. 72). Moreover, St. Paul places the appearance to himself in the same category with those to the Apostles in general (1 Corinthians 15; cf. Gal 1:13-14 and Lightfoots paraphrase).

3. Evidence of the Evangelists.The Synoptic problem must, of course, be studied elsewhere. Nor do our limits allow an analysis of the various documents. (1) The original of Mk., so far as we possess it, ends with the vacant grave, but no appearance of the Risen Master. [On the question of the last twelve verses of the present Mk. see above, p. 131 ff.]. (2, 3) But what the original Mk. no longer gives us is supplied by Mt. and. Lk., who almost certainly wrote with Mk. before them; and whose agreements may partially supply the missing conclusion of the earliest narrative. To do full justice to the documents would require a careful analysis and comparison of the appearances given by Mt., Lk., and Jn., together with the existing conclusion to Mark.

From what source the distinctive features of the Resurrection narratives in Mt. and Lk. were derived is not known. Attention has often been drawn to their diversities. They are certainly difficult to harmonize. But the substantial identity as to the central fact is not less impressive because of the diversities. The peculiar difficulties as to locality will be considered presently.

(4) The existing conclusion of Mark.We may say with confidence, writes Dr. Sanday (Criticism of the Fourth Gospel, p. 241), that its date is earlier than the year 140whether we argue from the chronology of Aristion, its presumable author, or from its presence in the archetype of almost all extant Manuscripts , or from the traces of it in writers so early as Justin and Irenaeus. It belongs at the latest, says Dr. Swete, to the earlier sub-Apostolic age (Apostles Creed, p. 66). (See, further, Chase, Syriac Element in Codex Bez, 1893, pp. 153157).

(5) The Fourth Gospel.The value set on this evidence will vary with critical estimates of the Fourth Gospel, into which it is impossible to enter here. Suffice it to say that a very marked tendency exists in more recent writers to return to older views. So advanced a critic as Jlicher, for instance, dates the Gospel between a.d 100 and 110 (Introd. N.T. p. 401). In no case is reception or rejection more influenced by philosophic and theological presuppositions than here.

We note then that the documentary evidence, while certainly less than we might desire, is adequate for its purpose. Partial discrepancies are not only compatible with, they may be confirmatory of, substantial veracity (cf. Gwatkin, Gifford Lect. ii. 48).

4. Canonical as contrasted with Apocryphal Gospels.The Canonical narratives form but a small portion of the early accounts of Jesus Christ. And it is important to consider why we lay exclusive stress upon the Four. The Canonical Gospels, as their name implies, cannot be regarded merely as documents; they are the property, and indeed the product, of a community, the Christian Church. The documentary evidence for the Resurrection requires to be supplemented by the evidence of the existence of the institution and its principles. The Church gave its recognition to certain Gospels, and refused it to others.

It was not the prestige of an Apostolic name that made it canonical, for the Gospel of Peter was rejected. Great antiquity and respectful quotation by learned Church writers did not avail to include the Gospel acc. to the Hebrews, nor did philosophical thought avail the document commonly called the Oxyrhynchus Logia (Burkitt, Gospel History and its Transmission, p. 230).

What was the principle which led to their exclusion? What was it that the Four Gospels had which these had not? The answer manifestly is, that the contents of the Gospels called Canonical were in harmony with the principles of the Christian community which received them. The Church recognized the Four as possessing characteristics in which the others were more or less defective. And, says Prof. Burkitt, it should not be forgotten that those of the non-canonical Gospels which we know enough of to pass judgment upon, show a sensible inferiority (p. 259). Marcions Gospel is in every way inferior to Luke, and the Gospel of Peter to either of the Synoptic accounts of the Passion (ib.). Their extravagant wonder-workings and obviously fictitious character impress readers of any school of thought (cf. Pfleiderer, Urchristentum, ii. 121).

5. The empty grave.This is witnessed to by (1) the Evangelists; cf. the original narrative of Mk. (Mar 16:1-8). There is no reason to doubt, says O. Holtzmann, that the women could not carry out their purpose [of embalming the body], simply because they found the grave empty (Life of Jesus, p. 497). According to the tradition accepted by St. Paul, the first manifestation was on the third day, and therefore in Jerusalem. This agrees with the Apostles visit to the grave, which should be contrasted with their visit with our Lord to the grave of Lazarus. That the grave was empty, would also seem to be required by Jewish contemporary ideas on resurrection (cf. Dan 12:2).

Considerable thought has of recent years been bestowed on St. Johns description of the manner in which the grave-clothes were lying. As far back as Chrysostoms time, attention was called to the fact that myrrh was a drug which adheres so closely to the body that the grave-clothes would not easily be removed (in Joan. Hom. lxxxv). Cyril of Alexandria suggested that, from the manner in which the grave-clothes lay folded, the Apostles were led to the idea of resurrection: Ex involutis linteaminibus resurrectionem colligunt, as the Latin version renders it (Migne, vii. 683). Lathams theory is that the word implies that the napkin which had been wrapped around the sacred head still partially retained the annular form thus given it (The Risen Master, p. 43). The grave-clothes still marked the spot where the body had rested, and still retained the general outline of the human form (cf. p. 50). If this interpretation be correct, that St. John saw the napkin which had been about the head of Jesus, not lying with the linen clothes, but apart, twisted round, away by itself, then the suggestion would be not only the emptiness of the grave, but that that which died had passed away into that which lived (Richmond, Gospel of the Rejection, p. 109).

On the evidence, so far, to the empty grave, we are constrained to say that the weight of the Evangelists united testimony is so strong that it cannot with any justice be rejected. (For critical acknowledgment of this see Our Lords Resurrection in Oxf. Libr. Pract. Theol. p. 87 f.).

(2) But it has been asserted that, whatever the Evangelists might think, at any rate St. Pauls theory of the Resurrection was independent of all interest in the empty grave (O. Holtzmann, Life of Jesus). His theory of the spiritual body, so it is said, does not require the resurrection of the material elements of the buried corpse. And it is further remarked that St. Paul, in his evidences of the Resurrection, not only makes no appeal to the emptiness of the grave, but actually makes no reference to the subject at all in his teaching. This supposed indifference of St. Paul to the question of the empty sepulchre is based partly on the character of his theology, and partly on his omission of any reference to the fact. But here we must remember St. Pauls antecedents. He was educated in the principles of the Pharisees, and doubtless held the prevalent theory of physical resurrection. As Schmiedel truly says, His theology came into being only after his conversion to Christianity. When he first came to know of Jesus as risen, he was still a Jew, and therefore conceived of resurrection at all in no other way than as reanimation of the body (EBi [Note: Bi Encyclopaedia Biblica.] iv. 4059); cf. 1Co 15:3-4. The suggestion in the term rose () as applied to the dead is that death is compared with sleep, and the resurrection out of the former to the awakening out of the latter. Moreover, the fact of the burial implies that the Resurrection was not merely of one who died, but also of one who was buried. Thus resurrection refers to an experience affecting the body, and not to an isolated experience of the soul; cf. Rom 8:11, where resurrection is described as quickening our mortal bodies. Thus the grave of Jesus cannot be considered by St. Paul otherwise than as empty (see Schmller in SK [Note: K Studien und Kritiken.] , 1894, p. 669). St. Paul believed in a highly objective resurrection, including a bodily somewhat, though of a non-fleshly order (V. Bartlet, Apost. Age, p. 4; Riggenbach, p. 7).

(3) There is the further evidence of the application to Jesus Christ of the passage in the sixteenth Psalm (Psa 16:10): Neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption (Act 2:27). St. Peter sees an exact parallel between this language of the Psalm and the physical experience of the dead Christ. It is a reference to the Resurrection. He [David] seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither did his flesh see corruption (Act 2:31). No contrast could be greater than between this and the ordinary experience as exemplified in David. David manifestly saw corruption. He is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day (Act 2:29). Corruption its sad work had done. The foul engendered worm had fed on the flesh of the anointed one. But St. Peters contention is that, in the case of Christ, the physical frame saw no corruption. The fact of the empty grave is here involved, and is, moreover, thrown out as a challenge in the very city where our Lord was buried; and that within six weeks of the burial! It has well been asked: Was not St. Peter disturbed by the misgiving that the hearers might interrupt him with the crushing remarkWe know where he was buried, and that corruption has begun its task (Ihmels, Die Auferstehung Jesu Christi, 1906, p. 26). The whole argument of St. Peter would be absolutely worthless, if any could refute the major premiss of the empty grave.

(4) The emptiness of the grave is acknowledged by opponents as well as affirmed by disciples. The narrative of the guards attempts to account for the fact as a fraudulent transaction (Mat 28:11-15). But this Jewish accusation against the Apostles takes for granted that the grave was empty. What was certain was that the grave was empty. What was needed was an explanation. So far as the present writer is aware, this acknowledgment by the Jews that the grave was vacated extends to all subsequent Jewish comments on the point.

Here, for instance, is a 12th cent. version of the empty grave circulated by the Jewish anti-Christian propaganda. The story is that when the queen heard that the elders had slain Jesus and had buried Him, and that He was risen again, she ordered them within three days to produce the body or forfeit their lives. Then spake Judas, Come and I will show you the man whom ye seek: for it was I who took the fatherless from his grave. For I feared lest his disciples should steal him away, and I have hidden him in my garden and led a waterbrook over the place. And the story explains how the body was produced (Toledoth Jesu; see Baring Gould, Lost and Hostile Gospels, p. 88). It is needless to remark that this daring assertion of the actual production of the body is a mediaeval fabrication, but it is an assertion very necessary to account for facts, when the emptiness of the grave was admitted and yet the Resurrection denied.

Substantially, then, St. Matthews narrative is corroborated by the admissions made by opponents of Christ. That the disciples removed the body was a saying commonly reported among the Jews until this day (Mat 28:15). And this admission by opponents is enough to show that the evidence for the empty grave was too notorious to be denied (Cambr. Theol. Essays, p. 336).

(5) The grave, then, was assuredly empty. But the emptiness of the grave does not demonstrate resurrection. The alternatives are that this was a human work or a Divine. Either somebody removed the corpse, or the Almighty raised the dead. The momentousness of the alternative it is scarcely possible to exaggerate. The ultimate decision must be largely influenced by the entire range of a mans presuppositions. Two antagonistic conceptions of God and the world and mankind meet at the grave of Christ. It will always be possible to construct naturalistic hypotheses to account for the vacant grave, but it is impossible to conceal the rationalistic assumptions upon which such constructions are based. We may here quote a recent and extremely independent critic.

It is admitted that with the Resurrection the body of Jesus also had vanished from the grave, and it will be impossible to account for this on natural grounds (Wellhausen, Das Ev. Matt. p. 150).

(6) If we keep to the evidence, it is certain that the empty grave was not the cause of the disciples faith. According to the Evangelists, the fact of the empty grave created no belief in the Resurrection in the case either of Mary Magdalene, or of the women, or of St. Peter. The only exception, and that under conditions of peculiar reticence and reserve, was St. John.

Thus the oft repeated expression that the faith of the Christian Church is founded on an empty grave is one which requires explanation. The Easter faith did not really spring from the empty grave, but from the self-manifestation of the risen Lord (S. Simpson, Our Lords Resurrection, p. 103).

6. The locality of the appearances.The narratives present us with a double series of manifestations of the Risen Lord, distinguished by locality: the Judaean series and the Galilaean series.

(1) Any true criticism should start from the data of the original Mark. According to this (Mar 16:7), not only did the women visit the grave on Easter Day and therefore were still present in Jerusalem, but the message sent to the disciples, He goeth before you into Galilee, implies the presence of the disciples also in Jerusalem on that day. Accordingly the theory that they all forsook him and fled (Mar 14:50) means fled direct home to Galilee, is refuted by the implications of the same Evangelist (cf. Rrdam, Hibbert Journ., July 1905, p. 781). On the other hand, the direction he goeth before you into Galilee would seem to indicate that the lost conclusion of this Gospel must have contained a description of an appearance in Galilee. This may be true. But what we cannot determine is whether any Judaean appearance was also recorded.

(2) Mt. (28:9) relates that the first appearance took place to the women near Jerusalem, and then adds a manifestation to the Eleven in Galilee.

(3) Lk. contains an exclusively Judaean series of manifestations. He knows nothing of appearances in Galilee. The significance of this must depend on St. Lukes worth as a historian. Harnack has recently exhibited a profound mistrust of the Lukan account (Luke the Physician). St. Mark, who is assumed to have recorded nothing but a Galilaean series, is endorsed as correct. On the other hand, the high value of St. Luke as a historian is vigorously asserted by so critical a scholar as Ramsay, who came to the study greatly prejudiced against him. He places the author of the Acts among historians of the first rank (Paul the Traveller, pp. 4 ff., 8, 14). Then, further, St. Luke cannot possibly, as St. Pauls companion, have been ignorant of the Jerusalem tradition. How could he conceivably have written a version of the Resurrection manifestation which the Jerusalem Church could not receive? It is quite possible that he derived his information as to the 40 days at Jerusalem itself. St. Paul gives no locality, but the natural view is that he considered the first manifestation to have occurred in Jerusalem. Is it possible that St. Lukes exclusive interest in the Judaean series is due to the purpose for which his Gospel was written? Writing for Greek believers, it would be natural that he should concentrate attention upon the Holy City. Is it not possible conversely that St. Matthew, as Palestinian and Jerusalemite, gives for that very reason the more distant and less known manifestations in Galilee?

Harnack seems reduced to the singular position that the only evidence for the Galilaean series is St. Marks conclusion, and that does not exist. For he lays all stress, for St. Marks value, on St. Matthew as his copyist. He depreciates the independence of St. Luke and rejects the authority of St. John. Thus, after all, the testimony to a Galilaean series is reduced to a solitary witness whose testimony is lost.

The first impression derived from Lk.that the Ascension took place on the same day as the Resurrectionis partly corrected on further consideration of the Gospel itself. For there does not seem sufficient time to crowd all these events into a single day. Emmaus is reached towards evening when the day was far spent (Luk 24:29). The meal in the town must have taken some little time. And Emmaus is threescore furlongs (Luk 24:13) = 7 miles from Jerusalem. The whole journey would take the greater part of two hours. Then follows the conversation with the two and the Eleven. Afterwards, Christ Himself appears and gives them an instruction in the Scripturesthe Law and Prophets and the Psalms (Luk 24:44). This must have taken a considerable time. Finally is placed the journey to Bethany and the Ascension. This could scarcely be before midnight. Yet certainly (as Rrdam says) the account gives the impression that the event was conceived as happening in the daytime (Hibbert Journ., July 1905, p. 774). If the incident has suffered condensation, the difficulty is at once explained.

In this connexion it is worth noting that Ramsay describes St. Luke as deficient in the sense of time. It would be quite impossible from Acts alone to acquire any Idea of the lapse of time (Paul the Trav. p. 18). And the fault is not individual. It is the fault of his age. St. Luke had studied the sequence of events carefully, and observes it in his arrangement minutely, but he gives no measure of the lapse of time implied in a sentence, a clause, or even a word. He dismisses ten years in a breath, and devotes a chapter to a single incident. Thus Lukes style is compressed to the highest degree; and he expects a great deal from the reader. He does not attempt to sketch the surroundings and set the whole scene like a picture before the reader; he states the bare facts that seem to him important, and leaves the reader to imagine the situation (p. 17). These are said to be characteristics of the writer of the Acts. And they will explain some of the difficulties in his narrative of the Resurrection.

But it is asked, Since our Lords prediction was that He would meet the disciples in Galilee and the angels direction was in accordance with the same, is it not contrary to the logic of the situation, as well as to the original command, that appearances should occur in Jerusalem?To this difficulty Rrdams reply is:

This apparently insoluble difficulty is very easily explained. We learn (Luk 24:11; Luk 24:24) that nobody believed the womens tale, and even those who had listened most to their words returned disappointed after having seen the empty grave. This fully explains why appearances followed in Jerusalem. For that such sceptics would not go to Galilee to meet Christ is obvious. Therefore, just as the original story was that Christ appeared to the women, because they doubted the angels words, so the narrative goes on to relate how Christ had to appear to the apostles and the disciples together with them, as they did not believe the womens words (p. 778).

7. The nature of Christs resurrection body.(1) The statements of the Evangelists are commonly classified as of two kinds: (a) Those which exhibit a purely materialistic view, the most impressive instance being Luk 24:39 Handle me and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. (b) An immaterial series, illustrated in His vanishing and reappearing, in the difficulty of recognition and the alterations of form.

One school of criticism here endeavours to impose a dilemma, bidding us select between the two views, on the ground that it is impossible to accept both. Keim, for instance, says, There is a capricious alternating between a subtle and a gross corporeity which is self-contradictory (Jesus of Nazara, vi. 340). We may, however, decline the dilemma, and declare ourselves prepared to accept both series of statements, as forming parts of a perfectly conceivable and intelligible conception. This alternating between a subtle and gross corporeity, to adopt Keims expression, is, to begin with, profoundly original. The contemporary Pharisaic, idea of resurrection had no subtlety about it. It was grossly and even repulsively animal. The martyred Maccabees expect to repossess the same physical organs and limbs in the same condition as on earth. This is expressed with a coarseness which cannot be mistaken in 2Ma 7:11; 2Ma 14:46 (see also Grbler in SK [Note: K Studien und Kritiken.] , 1879, p. 682 ff.). It is resuscitation of the same body to the same estate as before. The Book of Enoch, it is true, speaks of the resurrection state as resembling that of the angels, but it describes the latter in such physical and animal terms as to deprive the resemblance of much value (cf. Enoch 51:4 with 15:1). The description of revealing every thing that is hidden in the depths of the earth, and those who have been destroyed by the desert, and those who have been devoured by the fish of the sea and by the beasts, that they may return and stay themselves on the day of the Elect One (61:5, ed. Charles, p. 160), is equally suggestive of a grossly material view.

The exact antithesis to the Pharisaic conception, which was prevalent in the Apostolic age, was the Greek conception of emancipation from the body and continued existence as pure spirit. See preceding article.

The view given by the Evangelists is independent of both of the above conceptions. It certainly possesses a strongly materialistic side. Yet with equal certainty it is no mere resuscitation of the animal frame. It is anything rather than a return to life under the same conditions. The broadest distinction is drawn by the Evangelists between the revivification of Lazarus and the Resurrection of Christ. Lazarus is obviously represented as granted a re-entrance into earthly life under the same conditions as before, to become again the possessor of a corruptible organism, subject to the same fleshly necessities, and destined again to expire in a second experience of physical death (cf. Kruger, Auferstehung, p. 21 f.).

(2) The Pauline conception of the risen body.St. Pauls doctrine is condensed into the two crucial phrases, a psychical body and a pneumatical body. The psychical body is the organ and instrument of the animal force; the pneumatical body is the organ and instrument whose vitalizing principle is the spiritual personality. The psychical body is that which discharges the functions of animal self-maintenance and reproduction. It is the organ adapted to life under terrestrial conditions. The pneumatical is the organ adapted to life under non-terrestrial conditions. It is the best self-expression of spirit (Our Lords Resurrection, p. 164 f.). Now, St. Pauls doctrine firmly maintains two points, of which the first is identity between the body which died and the body which rose. This is implied in all that we have seen of St. Pauls interest in the empty grave; in his illustration of the relation between the two states of the body as akin to that between the seed and the perfected plant. It is further taught by his description of his vision of Christ under the idea of Christs Resurrection.

But if, on the one hand, St. Paul affirms identity, he no less emphatically affirms a distinction between the characteristics and qualities of the body on earth and beyond it. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1Co 15:50). Thou sowest not that body that shall be (v. 37). The vastness of the distinction is so strongly asserted in the term the spiritual body, that the identity might almost seem to be, what it never is, really obliterated. But the risen body of Christ was spiritual, not because it was less than before material, but because in it matter was wholly and finally subjugated to spirit, and not to the exigencies of physical life. Matter no longer restricted Him or hindered. It had become the pure and transparent vehicle of spiritual purpose (Gore, Body of Christ, p. 127).

(3) A comparison of the Pauline doctrine with the Evangelists statements does not lead, then, to the conclusion that their principles diverge. There is an extreme improbability that St. Luke, for instance, considering his relation to St. Paul, should be in hopeless contradiction with the Apostles principles. But there is no manner of contradiction. The Evangelists are concerned with the historic manifestations of the Risen Christ, St. Paul with the intrinsic nature of the resurrection body. The former describe the body of Christ during the temporary periods in which its presence was ascertainable by the senses; the latter considers the body as it is in itself. The former say, This is what we touched and saw, and our hands have handled; the latter is concerned with the profound inquiry as to what constitutes the nature of the risen body. Thus the aspects are complementary not antagonistic.

(4) If we attempt, then, to formulate the Christian conception of the nature of Christs risen body, we shall affirm that, according to Christian doctrine, man consists of the personality or self together with a vehicle of self-manifestation. This vehicle is material. Under terrestrial conditions this vehicle must possess characteristics, properties, organs, adapted to such conditions. Otherwise it would be no self-expression at all. Such was the psychical body of Christ. But at death the self passed out of terrestrial conditions, leaving the fleshly condition of the body behind, but by no means continuing bodiless. The self is re-endowed with a vehicle of self-expression which is still material, only under the complete dominion of spirit. The self now exists under heavenly conditions. The fleshly organism would be impossible there, because hopelessly unadaptable to such conditions. Its whole system, construction, solidity, its parts and organs, its methods of self-maintenance, would be worse than meaningless under non-terrestrial conditions. We should suppose that the pneumatical or risen body of Christ was, in its normal state, as an ideally perfect utterance of spirit, imperceptible to the human senses as we now possess them. But the capacities of this ideally perfect self-expression are so great that it can manifest itself to persons living under terrestrial conditions. And we believe that this pneumatical body of Christ did temporarily assume such conditions of tangibility and visibility as to bring His subtle corporeity, for evidential and instructive purposes, within range of our grosser corporeity.

This leads to the difficult subject of the relation between the psychical and the pneumatical body of Christ. That they are related, in the Apostolic conception, is clear. But the question is, To what extent? Does the existence of the pneumatical body require the disappearance of the psychical? or can they coexist? Can the one remain intact within the grave while the other is declared to have risen? Is the emptiness of the grave in Josephs garden essential to belief in Christs transition into the pneumatical estate? Since it is impossible for us to determine the precise relation between these two conditions of the bodily life, we must be prepared for the possibility of the coexistence of the psychical and the pneumatical body. Would it therefore follow that the emptiness of the grave in Josephs garden is indifferent to Christian thought? No, not in the very least. We must surely here distinguish between the Resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of mankind. It was clearly necessary for evidential purposes that the risen Lord should reappear within a terrestrial environment, and that for the same reason His grave should be vacated. Belief in the reality of His Resurrection in presence of the corpse was to that age absolutely impossible.

Max Mller expressed years ago a regret that the Jews buried and did not burn their dead. For in that case, he thought, the Christian idea of the Resurrection would have remained far more spiritual. And the question has been quite recently asked, What kind of Resurrection would your gospel have exhibited if the body of Jesus had been cremated? Max Mllers regret is more than justified by the deeply materialistic conceptions which have heavily burdened the Christian mind. But it has no weight whatever in view of the teaching of St. Paul. The suggested cremation of the body of Jesus would not in the slightest degree have affected the Pauline conception of the pneumatical body. Nor would it have removed the necessity for visible and tangible manifestations under terrestrial conditions. Christ must in any case have reappeared with features and form as of old, whether His body had been buried or burned. The scars must have reappeared upon it. The facts of dissolution of ordinary human bodies have not altered the ordinary belief in their physical reappearance in the Resurrection. The disintegration of the body and its return to dust, the cremation of the martyrs, did not prevent mediaeval discussions whether one who died in childhood would appear full-grown in the future life. The Maccabees, at any rate, knew nothing of the Resurrection of Christ, but that did not prevent their holding the grossest ideas of a resurrection state. As for cremation, Christian reverence shrinks from discussing the cremation of our Lords sacred body, says Dr. Liddon; but cremation, had it taken place, could have made no difference except in the sphere of imagination (Liddon, Easter Sermons, i. 111).

If the account given by Sir Oliver Lodge, in the Hibbert Journal (Jan. 1906), of Christianity and science may be viewed as representative of modern thought, it would seem clear that contemporary thought ought not to have much difficulty in accepting the Pauline doctrine of the resurrection body. The question is, What is the relation between the spiritual personality and the material side of human existence? It is plain, he says, that for our present mode of apprehending the universe a material vehicle is essential (p. 318). The only evidence of the existence of spiritual activity is the manifestation of that activity through matter. We are manifested to each other through the medium of the senses. Now, argues the writer, this dependence of the spiritual on a vehicle for manifestation is not likely to be a purely temporary condition: it is probably a sign or sample of something which has an eternal significance, a representation of some permanent truth (p. 319). To suppose that our experience of the necessary and fundamental connexion between the two thingsthe something which we know as mind and the something which is now represented by matterhas no counterpart or enlargement in the actual scheme of the universe, as it really exists, is needlessly to postulate confusion and instrumental deception (p. 319). Consequently the conclusion is that, though it by no means follows that mind is dependent on matter as we know it, it will probably be still by means of something akin to mattersomething which can act as a vehicle and represent it in the same sort of way that matter represents it nowthat it will hereafter be manifested (p. 320). Now, certainly this statement of the relation of mind to matter, of personality to the vehicle of self-manifestation, is one which St. Paul would find no reason to dispute. As the writer himself recognizes, This probability or possibility may be regarded as one form of statement of an orthodox Christian doctrine (p. 320). Such advances of modern thought towards the Pauline conception are as hopeful as they are significant. What is wanted, he adds, to make definite our thoughts of the persistent existence of what we call our immortal part, is simply the persistent power of manifesting itself to friends, i.e. to persons with whom we are in sympathy, by means as plain and substantial in that order of existence as the body was here (p. 322). We may surmise that any immortal part must have the power of constructing for itself a suitable vehicle of manifestation, which is the essential meaning of the term body (p. 323).

For the nature of the resurrection body see Goulburn, Bampton Lectures; Skrine, Contemp. Rev., Dec. 1904, 870.

8. The sayings of the Risen Master are most significant. Their manner is perfectly distinct from that of the ministry. What Keim (Jesus of Nazara, vi. 354) describes as the simple, solemn, almost lifeless, cold, unfamiliar character of the manifestations, calls attention to the striking aloofness and unearthliness of the Easter tone. Familiarity is altered into distance and awful dignity. Yet with this difference, which is inevitable, if the circumstances are historic, the Personality is just the same. And as with their manner, so with their substance. They occupy, very marvellously, an intermediate position between the teaching of the ministry which they presuppose, and the teaching of the Apostles which they account for and explain.

9. Christs Resurrection and modern thought.Non-Christian explanations of Christs Resurrection.There are only two ultimate explanations possible: either the event was the action of God, which is the Christian explanation; or else it must be accounted for within purely earthly and human limits. Rejection of the Christian or supernatural account leaves the necessity of providing a naturalistic explanation; otherwise there would always be a danger that the supernatural, although cast out on principle, would nevertheless return again. Non-Christian theories of Christs Resurrection form a series. No one has summarized them better than Keim (vi. 327 ff.).

(1) There was the theory, now quite obsolete, which denied Christs death. He fainted away on the cross, and recovered in the grave. The valuable point in this theory is its recognition that the Apostles did really see their Lord alive again as a solid objective fact confronting them. Its monstrously irrational character lies in its impossible assumption that a half-dead form, with difficulty brought back to life, leading an exhausted existence, and finally dying over again, could ever have inspired in His adherents triumphant faith in Him as a risen conqueror and Son of God. The well-known sentences of Strauss have effectually disposed of this miserable fabrication, with all the wretched immoralities which it included. It is, says Rville, un tissu dinvraisemblances matrielles et morales (ii. 455).

(2) Another theory was that the body was secretly removed from the graveeither by opponents or by friends. Imagination hovers between Pilate, or the Sanhedrists, or Joseph of Arimathaea, or the gardener, or Mary Magdalene. Of the attempt to account for the empty grave as an imposture, Keim justly remarks: All these assumptions are repellent and disgraceful; they show that the holy conviction of the apostles and the first Christians has not in the slightest degree influenced the hardened minds of such critics (p. 325). This theory also has passed away. Critics, says Keim, have left off seeking an explanation from external facts.

(3) But there is still a world of mental facts. The naturalistic explanations of to-day are sought through psychology. There is the Vision hypothesisa self-generated appearance, the product of reflexion on the uniqueness of the Personality. Jesus followers, studying the Scriptures, came to the conclusion that it belonged to the vocation of the Messiah to pass through suffering to glory. From the principle, He must live, they passed involuntarily to the assertion, He does live, and to the further assertion, We have seen Him! Thus they took a leap from a conclusion of the intellect to a fact of history. Keims criticism is that reflexion requires time. Its advocates postulate a yearten years. But the Apostolic evidence concurs in asserting that the interval between the death and the belief in the Resurrection was exceedingly brief. Strauss himself gave up the theory, and adopted another. Not so much by way of reflexion, it is now said, as by the quicker road of the heart, of the force of imagination, and of strong nervous excitement, the disciples attained to belief in the living Messiah (p. 334). The invincible Jesus hovered before their minds (p. 343). When Mohammed died, his adherents swore to decapitate any one who dared to say that the Prophet had expired (p. 344). In reality Jesus was not dead to the disciples, since they had witnessed neither His Passion nor death nor burial. Back in Galilee the old associations revived, far from the disasters and the graves of Jerusalemunbounded excitement, intensified by abstinence from food and by the feverish moods of the evening, caused the limits of the outer and inner world to disappear. They thought they saw and heard externally, while they only saw and heard within. Martineau adopted something of this subjective theory of emotion and reflexion combined. It is the most popular non-Christian explanation of the day. But Keim deliberately rejects it.

Keim admits that the Apostolic age was full of more or less self-generated human visions. But if these visions had been the same in kind as the appearances of the Risen Christ, St. Paul would certainly not have closed his list with the fifth or sixth manifestation. Why does the Apostle consider the manifestation to himself as last of a series (, 1Co 15:8), obviously last of its kind, carefully differentiating it from the visions which may have come either to himself or to others? Having made such a sharp and clean division, it is to be taken as proved that there lay between the first 5 or 6 appearances and the later often-repeated visions such a great and broad gulf of time, and indeed of character, as rendered it impossible to reckon the latter appearances with the former (p. 353).

A vision of departed persons does not necessarily imply their resurrection. If Moses and Elijah were seen at the Transfiguration of Christ, did the disciples infer their resurrection? Contemporary belief in the Apostolic age had assumed that patriarch and prophet and saint of OT times lived on in Paradise, but this did not involve belief in their resurrection. Visions were perfectly compatible with the continuance of the dead body in the grave, and no belief in their resurrection would ensue. Why then did the Apostle, having seen Christ after His death, affirm His Resurrection (cf. Schmller in SK [Note: K Studien und Kritiken.] , 1894, p. 689)? Was it not because this seeing Him was consciously different from the seeing in a dream, or from any kind of seeing except one involving physical identity? The idea of resurrection introduces an after-death experience as it concerns the body. It affirms that that which rose is also, however altered, that which died.

Keims judgment, then, upon the Vision theory, as a whole, is as follows: All these considerations compel us to admit that the theory which has recently become the favourite one is only an hypothesis which, while it explains something, leaves the main fact unexplained, and, indeed, subordinates what is historically attested to weak and untenable views (p. 358).

(4) Keim then comes to his own explanation. If the visions are not something humanly generated or self-generated, if they are not blossom and fruit of an illusion-producing over-excitement, if they are not something strange and mysterious, if they are directly accompanied by astonishingly clear perceptions and resolves, then there still remains one originating source, hitherto unmentioned, namely, God and the glorified Christ (p. 361). Keim accordingly propounds a theory of objective Vision created by Christ Himself. If the power that produces the vision comes, as according to our view it does, entirely from without, and the subjective seeing is merely the reflex form of what is objective, the immediate cessation of the seeing and of the will to see, as soon as the operating power ceases to operate, becomes perfectly intelligible. Even the corporeal appearance may be granted to those who are afraid of losing everything unless they have this plastic representation for their thought and their faith (p. 362). Thus, according to this view, the Resurrection manifestations are a God-created message of victory. To quote Keims oft-quoted expression, they are a telegram from heaven, an evidence given by Christ Himself and by the power of God.

This objective Vision theory, although far beneath the Christian conviction, is nevertheless a very remarkable approximation towards it. It is a most significant recognition of the inadequate character of all purely subjective explanations of the Apostles belief. It acknowledges a God-created reality in the Easter faith. The theories of fraud and fiction and self-delusion are hereby deliberately set aside. The Almighty produced the Apostles faith.

On the objective Vision theory see, further, Steude, Auferstehung, p. 99; Lotze, Microcosmos, ii. 480 (English translation ).

The ultimate reasons for rejecting the Resurrection evidence are not historical. As Sabatier truly says, Even if the differences were perfectly reconciled, or even did not exist at all, men who will not admit the miraculous would none the less decisively reject the witness. As Zeller frankly acknowledges, their rejection is based on a philosophic theory, and not on historic considerations (LAptre Paul, p. 42). Strauss long ago fully admitted that the origin of that faith in the disciples is fully accounted for if we look upon the Resurrection of Jesus, as the Evangelists describe it, as an external miraculous occurrence (New Life, i. 399). Nothing can be more genuine than Strauss acknowledgment that he was controlled by a priori considerations, to which the fact of a resurrection was inadmissible; cf. p. 397:

Here, then, we stand on that decisive point where, in the presence of the accounts of the miraculous Resurrection of Jesus, we either acknowledge the inadmissibility of the natural and historical view of the life of Jesus, and must consequently retract all that precedes and give up our whole undertaking, or pledge ourselves to make out the possibility of the results of these accounts, i.e. the origin of the belief in the Resurrection of Jesus without any correspondingly miraculous fact.

This is his conscious, deliberate undertakingto give an explanation of the evidence on the presupposition of a certain view of the universe. It invariably amounts to this. At the grave in Josephs garden two antagonistic world-theories confront each other (cf. Ihmels, Auferstehung, p. 27; Luthardt, Glaubenslehre). Spinoza, it has been said, could not believe in the actual Resurrection of Jesus, because such belief would have compelled him to abandon his theory of the universe. Obviously the pantheist must account for the manifestation on naturalistic principles.

Those who are anxious to dissociate religion from facts will naturally resent the position which Christianity ascribes to Christs Resurrection. The relation between eternal truth and historic incidents cannot, of course, be treated in the limits at our disposal. But it must be remembered that a religion of Incarnation cannot possibly be dissociated from the facts of history. The objection, therefore, to the connexion between doctrine and history is fundamentally an objection to the whole principle of an external and specialized revelation, or to a progressive revelation which culminates in Divine personal entrance into history and self-manifestation within its limits (see Gwatkins Gifford Lectures).

Similarly, the attitude of individuals towards the evidence is affected by their conception of the relation of body and soul. There are, says Grtzmacher (l.c. inf. p. 120), ultimately three conceptions. Either body and soul are both integral portions of a complete humanity; or man is only body, of which the soul is nothing but a transient function; or man is only soul, and the body is its entanglement and its prison. Of these three theories, says the same writer, the last is the least congenial to modern thought. Psychology is strenuous in its insistence on the intimate and necessary relationship of soul and body (p. 121). The second theory is materialism pure and simple; but its unsatisfying character is to modern thought sufficiently obvious. There remains, in the long run, only the first conception, which places upon the body a very high value indeed. Immortality without embodiment is not a theory which harmonizes with the deepest reflexions of the day.

10. The Apostolic teaching on the meaning of Christs Resurrection

(1) Evidential as to His Messiahship.According to the prevalent interpretation of Deu 21:23, adopted by the LXX Septuagint , cursed of God is every one that is hanged upon a tree (cf. Josephus Ant. iv. viii. 6), the crucifixion of Jesus had, in Jewish contemporary thought, finally condemned Him in the sight of God and man. To a Jew the cross was infinitely more than an earthly punishment of unutterable suffering and shame; it was a revelation that on the crucified there rested the extreme malediction of the wrath of God. The idea was no theological refinement. It could not but be present to the mind of every Jew who knew the Law. Within a few years (1Co 12:3) it was formulated in a creed of unbelief . It found expression in the name by which in later days the Lord was known among the Jews, the hanged one (Chase, Credibility of Acts, p. 149). Whom ye slew, hanging him on a tree (Act 5:30). Here was a public, an impressive, a final attestation of what Jesus of Nazareth was in the sight of God. Here was an end (p. 150). There could be but one conclusion. Now here are appreciated the force and the meaning of the Resurrection. If the God of our fathers raised up Jesus (Act 5:30), then it was clear that the estimate inevitable from the hanging upon a tree had been mistaken, and must be reversed; that earths rejected was Gods accepted; then it was possible to believe of this Crucified One, Him hath God exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour (Act 5:31).

Thus, on the basis of the Resurrection, St. Peter describes Jesus of Nazareth as Lord and Christ (Act 2:36), Prince of Life (Act 3:15), only source of salvation (Act 4:12), ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead (Act 10:42; cf. Act 17:31).

It is the expression, says B. Weiss (Bibl. Theol. NT, i. 239), of the most immediate living experience, when Peter says that they were begotten again unto a living hope by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1Pe 1:3). Not till it took place was the dead Jesus manifested with absolute certainty as the Messiah.

(2) Evidential as certifying the redemptive character of His death.It required a new interpretation to be placed upon His death. The Resurrection showed the death to possess a Godward validity, affecting the Divine relations with mankind. It was the Divine response to the death, and the explanation to mankind of its meaning (see Gloatz in SK [Note: K Studien und Kritiken.] , 1895, p. 798; cf. Rom 6:4; Rom 6:10). The Resurrection, says Horn in a striking phrase, is the Amen of the Father to the It is finished of the Son (NK Ztschr. 1902, p. 548).

(3) Christs Resurrection is evidential of His Divinity.St. Paul begins the letter to the Romans with this thought: Rom 1:3-4 the gospel of God concerning his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead. Here the essence of the gospel, that is, of Christianity, is said to be concerning Gods Son. And the expression Gods Son is, says Meyer, not by any means to be taken merely as a designation of Messiah; it is in St. Paul a Son who has pre-existed, and proceeded out of the essence of the Father, like Him in substance (cf. Liddon, Analysis, p. 4). The gospel of God concerning His Son is concerned with Sonship in the highest of all senses. It designates neither adoption nor official place, but personal equality.

Gods Son, then, is viewed by the Apostle in two aspects, which both represent constituent elements of His nature,according to the flesh, and according to the spirit of holiness. The former describes His humanity, the latter His higher Self. Regarded in the former aspect, He was born of the dynasty of David; regarded in the latter, He was declared to be the Son of God. The term translated declared to be () might refer either to an actual appointment or to the declaration of a fact. If our exposition of the title Son of God be correct, it is the second that is intended here. Jesus is, then, here declared to be the Son of God with power by the Resurrection. A powerful demonstration of His higher Self has been made in the sphere of resurrection (cf. Liddon, Easter Sermons, vi. 94, iv. 58: Gifford on Romans; contrast Du Bose, Gospel acc. to St. Paul, p. 31).

(4) Instrumental in effecting Christs Exaltation. The Resurrection is in Apostolic theology by no means merely evidential. It is no mere certificate of acceptance. It is not merely an indirect means through which men have become believers, a matter which can be dispensed with so soon as faith is gained, or is unnecessary if faith is obtained some other way. It is also instrumental, and produces its own necessary and indispensable effects. It has primarily its own effect on Christ Himself. Obviously it does not only certify Him to be the Christ. It is instrumental in effecting His Exaltation. It is through the Resurrection that Christ enters into his glory (Luk 24:26; cf. Act 2:33, Rom 6:9). St. Paul (Act 13:33) applies to the Resurrection the Psalm, Thou art my Son, this day (i.e. Easter Day) have I begotten thee. The primary reference (? to the coronation of Solomon) is here, accordingly, mystically transferred to the Exaltation of Jesus. Not that the Resurrection constituted Him Gods Son (which He was throughout), but that it effected the transition into a glorified state. Jesus, as having expired on the cross, would be conceived by the Jews as transferred to the gloom of Hades. Jesus, as risen, was thereby exalted to a condition hitherto unprecedented among the occupants of the other world (cf. Rev 1:18). As the result of the Resurrection, Jesus is at the right hand of God, making intercession for us (Rom 8:34).

(5) The Resurrection is also instrumental in effecting justification. The great passage is Rom 4:25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. The two clauses are by no means identicalan antithesis of phrases without antithesis of meaningas an attempt to transpose them ought to show. St. Paul could not conceivably have said, Who died for our justification, and rose again for our sins. There is an intimate connexion between the categories of death and sin, and those of resurrection and justification. Moreover, both Death and Resurrection have their functions to discharge in completing the work of redemption. In the first place, Christ was delivered over to death as a Sacrifice on account of our offences. Thereby objectively reparation was made in behalf of humanity by its representative, and reconciliation secured. But this, while complete on the Divine side, leaves the earthward yet to be effected. The reconciliation must be subjectively appropriated by each individual. Accordingly Christ was raised again on account of our justification. Our individual acceptance is said to be due to the Resurrection. This is for two reasons: (a) because we can appropriate justification only by belief in the saving significance of Christs death. And we can attain to this belief only through the fact of the Resurrection (cf. B. Weiss, Bibl. Theol. i. 437). But it should be most clearly understood that this is only a partial statement of the truth. Our individual acceptance is also due to the Resurrection; (b) because it was only by His Risen Life that Christ became the new life-principle for mankind. Justice will never be done to this great passage so long as the effect of Christs Resurrection on our justification is restricted to its being a mere certificate of His acceptance with God (contrast Pfleiderer, Paulinism, i. 119, and Stevens, Pauline Theol. 254 f.).

The Resurrection becomes the medium through which the glorified life of Jesus is infused into the personality of the believer. Apostolic Christianity, we are profoundly persuaded, does not limit itself to the former of these two conceptions, but embraces the latter. It is not Christ outside us, but Christ within us that completes the Apostolic view. It is not the recorded Christ appealing to us across the centuries, but the Living Christ imparting His glorified strength, that is the ultimate Christian principle. This is the meaning of St. Johns teaching on eating Christ (John 6). This assimilation of Christ becomes possible only through His Resurrection. And St. Paul can mean no less when he writes, raised again for our justification. Thus, as B. Weiss says, the relation between the Death of Christ and His Resurrection is, that the former was the means of procuring salvation, the latter the means of appropriating it (Bibl. Theol. i. 437).

On this most important passage see, further, Meyer on Rom 4:25; Liddons Analysis; Newmans Sermon, Christs Resurrection the Source of Justification.

(6) The Resurrection of Christ is also, according to Apostolic teaching, instrumental in effecting the physical resurrection of all believers. As early as 1Th 4:14 St. Paul appeals to Christs Resurrection as the ground of consolation to the mourner. Similarly St. Peter is represented (Act 4:2) as preaching through Jesus the resurrection from the dead (cf. Rom 6:5; Rom 8:11, and above all 1 Corinthians 15).

Specially noteworthy is St. Pauls argument in Rom 8:10 f. On the supposition that Christ is in usif Christ has really entered into the individual believerif His power has taken possessionthen the result is (a) that although the bodythe human bodyis dead because of sini.e. belongs to the category of dead things owing to the influence of moral evilnot merely mortal but deadyet the spiritthe human spiritis life because of (Christs) righteousness. That is to say, a resurrection has taken place already on the spiritual side. We are already risen with Christin the region of personal renewalbecause the righteousness of Christ is in usimparted to us. (b) But if so (Rom 8:11)if the resurrection has already taken place in the spiritual,the new vitality shall in process of time extend itself into the physical: He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies.

The Christian doctrine proclaims both a moral and a physical resurrection. Attempts were made in the Apostolic age, under the influence of non-Christian presuppositions, to lay exclusive emphasis on the former and reject the latter. Men declared that the resurrection was past already (2Ti 2:18). Death was to be understood in a moral sense, and resurrection was its moral antithesis, it was a restoration out of the death of ignorance, a giving of life to the morally dead. Attempts are also made in modern thought to maintain exclusively a moral resurrection. But nothing can be more paradoxical than endeavours to shelter this exclusiveness under the authority of St. Paul. To say that in St. Pauls ideas the expression [resurrection from the dead] has no essential connexion with physical death (Matt. [Note: Matthews (i.e. prob. Rogers) Bible 1537.] Arnold), is to say what is preposterous to any one who has the great words of 1 Corinthians 15 ringing in his mind. It is, as has been accurately said, claiming the authority of St. Pauls spiritual teaching in order to discredit the historical faith without which he declared his preaching vain (Waggett, The Holy Eucharist, p. 200). All attempts to limit St. Pauls idea of resurrection to the moral sphere are worse than useless. The fact is that St. Paul did not gratuitously attach a relic of incongruous materialism to a spiritual theory complete and consistent with itself. He believed, indeed, in our Lords bodily Resurrection, but not in spite of his spiritualism: rather because of the triumphant character of his spiritualism (Wagett, p. 201). The severance of human life into two distinct departments, the one the spiritual and moral over which resurrection prevails, the other the physical over which resurrection has no power, is not a true spirituality, but a false and timid spirituality. It is false precisely through timidity, and by failing to invade in the name of Spirit the regions of sensible experience (Waggett, p. 200). The intimate connexion of the two spheres, the moral and the physical, is fundamental throughout the Christian revelation. Death in Christianity is physical, and death is also moral. And the two interpenetrate. Redemption involves an intimate association between the two. The Death of Christ is moral surrender and physical experience. Death physical is awfully real, as real in its province as is death in the moral sphere. It is therefore impossible, consistently with Christian principles of redemption, to separate sin and dissolution into two worlds having no connexion. The Christian conception is of a life-giving force which pervades the moral sphere already, and is to pervade the material hereafter. It has done both these already in the case of Christ. And the Spirit of Christ already pervades the Christian here in the present world. He is already morally risen with Christ. The force of the Resurrection of Christ is already at work in the sphere of mind and affection and will. But there is a redemption of the body yet to come. (On the relation of moral to physical resurrection, see also Du Bose, Gospel in the Gospels; and Denney, Atonement and the Modern Mind).

(7) Consequently it is seen that the Resurrection of Christ is the foundation of Apostolic Christianity, and this for dogmatic just as truly as for evidential reasons, (a) Their consciousness of its basal character is shown in the position it occupies in their witness. An Apostle is ordained to be a witness of the Resurrection (Act 1:22). The content of St. Pauls Christianity is thought at Athens to be Jesus and the resurrection (Act 17:18). The early sections in the Acts reiterate the statement, This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses (Act 2:32). (b) Moreover, negatively, the consequences to Christianity of a denial of the Resurrection of Christ were drawn out with all the dialectic force of St. Paul. And it is surely significant every way that this acute and searching analysis of the doctrine was made by one of the first teachers of Christianity. The fearlessness with which he propounds his great dilemmas is in itself extremely valuable and reassuring. He saw, with a clearness never surpassed, what the Resurrection of Christ involved; and seeing that, was calmly prepared to risk everything upon it. It would seem indisputable that St. Pauls entire exposition proceeds on the assumption that the Resurrection of Christ was not in controversy in the Church of Corinth. The section of Corinthian churchmen whom St. Paul has in mind accepted the Resurrection of Christ, but rejected the future resurrection of the dead. Their philosophic antecedents rendered such rejection entirely natural (see Heinrici, in loc.; Kennedy, St. Pauls Conception of the Last Things, 225), while their Christianity constrained them to make a concession to faith in the altogether exceptional case of Jesus Christ. They were practically combining incompatible elements from the Old and the New, and had not the clearness of thought to realize the incompatibility. There is certainly nothing abnormal to human religious experience in this. But to St. Pauls logical intellect it was intolerable. If there be no such thing as a resurrection of dead persons, then is not Christ risen (1Co 15:13). The denial of the general principle will not permit the affirmation of particular instances.

St. Paul then proceeds to show the effect of this denial of Christs Resurrection: first, on the proclamation of Christianity, whose sum and substance become words lacking in contents and in truth, if Christ be not risen; secondly, on the believers faith, which in that case becomes equally empty, being created by a baseless message; and thirdly, on the Apostolic proclaimers, who have delivered as fact what in reality is fiction, and have misrepresented God by affirming as His deed what He has not done. Thus in all three departments the denial of Christs Resurrection evaporates everything. The substance of Christianity has gone, the believers faith has gone, the Apostolic veracity has gone. To dwell on the second of these: The faith of a Christian depends on Christs Resurrection, because forgiveness depends on the redemptive power of Christs Death, and this is certified by the Resurrection. If the Resurrection is not historic fact, then the power of death remains unbroken, and with it the effect of sin; and the significance of Christs Death remains uncertified, and accordingly believers are yet in their sins, precisely where they were before they heard of Jesus name.

That St. Pauls estimate of the place of Christs Resurrection in Christianity is profoundly true seems proved, conversely, by the invariable results which follow upon its denial. Without belief in the Resurrection there may easily exist a reverence for the moral sublimity of Christs character, and a glad recognition of the religious value of His prophetic instruction. But these are widely different from faith in Him as understood by St. Paul. All distinctively Christian belief in Jesus has been founded on a knowledge of His Resurrection. It is this which has characterized and determined the nature of the faith which men have placed in Him. To their minds there has been a revelation which the Risen Christ has made, and which He could not have made otherwise than as having risen.

As a historic fact, it has been His Resurrection which has enabled men to believe in His official exaltation over humanity. It is not a mere question of the moral influence of His character, example, and teaching. It is that their present surrender to Him as their Redeemer has been promoted by this belief, and could not be justified without it. Indeed, those who deny His Resurrection consistently deny as a rule His Divinity and His redemptive work in any sense that St. Paul would have acknowledged. Pauline conceptions of Atonement are intimately bound up with Pauline conceptions of Easter Day. The former do not logically survive the rejection of the latter. Thus it comes naturally to pass that denial of the Resurrection issues ultimately in another religion, which, whatever may be said about it, is not Apostolic Christianity. The whole doctrine of reconciliation through the Words assumption of the flesh, redemption by incarnation, moral death and rising again of the individual believer in and with Christ, are inseparable from Christs own Resurrection.

Literature.On the doctrinal significance of Christs Resurrection see Php 3:10, Col 1:18; an cf., further, Grtzmacher, Moderne positive Vortrge, 1906, p. 113; Goguel, Laptre Paul et Jsus Christ, p. 256; Lux Mundi, p. 235; Borg-Schttmann in NK Ztschr. 1901, 667693.

W. J. Sparrow Simpson.

Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels

Resurrection of Christ

After our Lord had completed the work of redemption by His death upon the cross, He rose victorious from the grave, and to those who through faith in Him should become members of His body, He became ‘the prince of life.’ Since this event, however, independently of its importance in respect to the internal connection of the Christian doctrine, was manifestly a miraculous occurrence, the credibility of the narrative has been denied by some, while others who have admitted the facts as recorded to be beyond dispute, yet have attempted to show that Christ was not really dead; but that, being stunned and palsied, he wore for a time the appearance of death, and was afterwards restored to consciousness by the cool grave and the spices.

Objections of this nature do not require notice here; but a few words upon the apparent discrepancies of the Gospel narratives will not be misplaced. These discrepancies were early perceived; and various writers have commented on them with the view of throwing uncertainty and doubt over the whole of this portion of Gospel history. A numerous host of theologians, however, rose to combat and refute these objections; among others Griesbach, who remarks that all the discrepancies are trifling, and not of such moment as to render the narrative uncertain and suspected, or to destroy or even diminish the credibility of the Evangelists; but rather serve to show how extremely studious they were of truth, ‘and how closely and even scrupulously they followed their documents.’

Fuente: Popular Cyclopedia Biblical Literature

Resurrection of Christ

This is the great central fact on the testimony of which the structure of Christianity has been reared. If Christ be not risen, there is no salvation, since sin would still be reigning by death in universal sway. But Christ, who was made sin, is risen and is at God’s right hand, a manifest proof that atonement has been made, and that God’s righteousness has been vindicated. The result has been the sending of the Spirit from the Father. Abundant evidence was given to the disciples that Christ was risen from the dead. He appeared again and again, ate in their presence, and gave opportunity for identification. Evidence of the fact was also borne to the Jews by the apostles in the power and by the gifts of the Spirit, Act 4:10, confirming what they had themselves seen and heard and the testimony of the scriptures. The resurrection of Christ is the keystone of the faith of the Christian; at the same time it is the assurance on the part of God that He has appointed a day when He is going to judge the world in righteousness. Hence it has a voice to all.

It has been asserted that the accounts given of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus in the gospels are discordant and irreconcilable. This is not the case: it has been overlooked that Luk 23:54-56 refers to Friday evening, before the Sabbath, and Mat 28:1 refers to Saturday evening, after the Sabbath: the women return after viewing the sepulchre and finish their preparations, according to Mar 16:1.

Fuente: Concise Bible Dictionary