do not rise and that incalculable suffering and injustice frequently find no answering miracle.
But there is also resonance between contemporary experience and Jesus’ resurrection. Globalization has made every person a potential neighbor to others, so that there has been in many contemporary societies a “colossal extension of a Gospel ethic to a universal solidarity,”25 extending to every corner of the earth and, in light of the environmental crisis, beyond the human community. The belief that this striving for justice is meaningful implies a belief that in the end the executioner will not triumph over their victim.26 This is analogous to faith in Jesus’ resurrection. In this respect Jesus’ resurrection is analogous to one of the underlying presuppositions of contemporary Western experience. It does not fit with the contemporary experience of history in which innocent victims often perish unaided, yet it does fit with some of the beliefs about the meaningfulness of life that structure the contemporary experience of many.
A second general criterion for historical inquiry is that of constructive or imaginative interpolation. This involves postulating as historical what is not stated but nonetheless implied by the accepted evidence in terms of modern experience.27 For example, if historical sources describe a person as assembling ingredients for making a pie, and then later as eating a pie made from these ingredients, the analogy to present experience dictates that the historian must postulate that someone made these ingredients into the pie that was eaten in order to construct a coherent history based on these sources. Without this kind of imaginative construction there can be no coherent account of history.28
This second criterion has led many to argue that some causal event must be posited to account for the rise of faith in Jesus’ resurrection after his death.
[The Easter faith] could not have been self-generated, nor could it have arisen directly from Jesus’ proclamation of the advent of the kingdom. If the only sequel to that proclamation was the crucifixion, then that proclamation would have been demonstrably false. Jesus had proclaimed the coming of the kingdom and it had not come. Instead, his message had ostensibly been utterly discredited by the crucifixion.
The very fact of the church’s kerygma therefore requires that the historian postulate some other event over and above Good Friday, an event which is not itself the “rise of the Easter faith,” but the cause of the Easter faith.29
Also, it is not simply faith in Jesus’ resurrection that must be explained, but the way preceding notions of resurrection were substantially modified by the early church.30
The concept of resurrection has a significantly different position in the New Testament compared to its place in Second Temple Judaism. The idea was present in the Jewish religious traditions that formed the matrix for Jesus’ activity and the life of the earliest churches. But it did not figure in any movement in Second Temple Judaism as prominently as Jesus’ resurrection does in the New Testament. The notion of resurrection and more specifically Jesus’ own resurrection also was not prominent in the teachings of Jesus. Yet in the New Testament one finds a “confident and articulate faith in which resurrection has moved from the circumference to the centre.”31 Jesus’ resurrection seems to have provided the “decisive impulse”32 for this and for the development of most theologies in the New Testament.
All of this suggests that what happened after Jesus’ death was dramatic enough and sufficiently tied to Jesus’ person that his followers invoked the notion of his being resurrected and exalted to describe it. The resurrection of Jesus thus appears to have been an interruption that affirmed his public ministry and yet transformed its meaning and his person. It is this kind of circumstantial evidence that led to the conclusion of Martin Dibelius that between the death of Jesus and the rise of faith in his resurrection the historian has to posit “something” that precipitated this change in his disciples.33
Such evidence cannot prove the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. The faith of the disciples “even with all its distinctiveness, could have resulted as well from an equally distinctive illusion as from a distinctive fact,”34 though it is unlikely that different witnesses like Paul, James, Mary Magdalene, and the disciples would all have suffered the same delusion. Still, though the belief in Jesus’ resurrection was necessary for the early church to come into being, it could have been a mistake.
In conclusion, the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is enigmatic. One can know historically that the shattered community was transformed, moving from despair to hope and joy, and in the structure of its beliefs. One can also discern formal evidence sufficient to argue for the historicity of some of the reported appearances of the risen Jesus. But the substance of what the witnesses convey is so unique that it cannot easily be accepted as historical. It clashes with contemporary experience and convictions in significant ways even as it resonates with them in others.
As noted earlier, the nature of Jesus’ resurrection also affects how it can be known. Jesus’ resurrection cannot be explained in terms of empirically deduced principles or its historicity proven by critical inquiry, yet it can be understood, received as testimony, as a revelation of God. Understanding is a form of knowledge different from explanation.35 The two are always related and intermingled but nonetheless distinct. Explanatory knowledge is technical in nature; it seeks to grasp reality in terms of law-like principles and is not tied to personal experience. While explanatory knowledge is necessary to know the basic parameters of an event like Jesus’ resurrection or the Holocaust, there is a dimension to the meaning of each that goes beyond what can be ascertained by technical reason and that can only be conveyed by testimony. Understanding such testimony always has “an identity cost”36 because understanding is a self-involving form of knowledge. To understand the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection is to have one’s identity changed. The appearance narratives in the New Testament all portray that to come to believe that Jesus is risen is to undergo a conversion.
Thus the nature of Jesus’ resurrection is such that there can be no binding logical argument leading from empirical inquiry to faith in it.37 In this all are contemporaries of those who first believed that Jesus was risen. There is evidence that supports their witness but it can never be conclusive. At some point one finds oneself moving from unbelief to faith, or one doesn’t. Not everyone makes the journey and those that do aren’t morally superior to those who don’t. While one can give reasons for one’s faith, one cannot finally prove or demonstrate its truth.38 Jesus’ resurrection is something that one bears witness to, but not something one can prove. Furthermore, belief in Jesus’ resurrection has never rested on the reports of his appearances as risen alone. It was and continues to be based also on experiences of the Holy Spirit associated with faith in his resurrection.39
Though faith in Jesus’ resurrection is intellectually defensible, it has several “in spite of” qualities so that it always remains subject to doubt and question. One must believe in Jesus’ resurrection in spite of the limitations of our cognitive faculties, which are unable to master or grasp it with “scientific certainty.”40 One believes in Jesus’ resurrection