impossible to assimilate to present experience.41 Consequently faith in Jesus’ resurrection is easily mocked. It also displaces one. It makes one a pilgrim in this world, journeying towards the coming universal redemption that Jesus’ resurrection promises.42 The ambivalence of contemporary experience to Jesus’ resurrection depends partly on one’s social location and situation.43 Its eschatological nature means that it can never be domesticated. It is a revelation of the otherness of God, which is both a source of hope and joy and also of judgment. It presses towards the coming of a new heaven and a new earth, when evil and sin will be no more. It can be a powerful moral source that engenders resistance born of hope and love against oppression, suffering, and evil. It is not meant to be proven, but to be celebrated, lived, and proclaimed.
The Nature of Jesus’ Resurrection
During the twentieth century a debate has raged in Western Christian thought over the nature of Jesus’ resurrection. This is related to the question of its historicity. One position, exemplified in the work of Willi Marxsen and popularized by John Shelby Spong,44 interprets Jesus’ resurrection as a subjective event happening in the minds and hearts of his disciples and those who accept their message. Jesus is risen as people continue to live in his name. Opposed to this interpretation are others that stress the objectivity of Jesus’ resurrection, arguing that he appeared in bodily form as some appearance accounts portray him.45 Between these two poles lie a host of positions concerning the nature of Jesus’ resurrection. Marxsen’s subjective interpretation avoids the cognitive difficulty associated with affirming Jesus’ resurrection as an objective event. But the danger is that it empties the event of its objective content, which the New Testament insists on and which is crucial to its meaning. Elisabeth Johnson affirms the objective reality of Jesus’ resurrection but declares it “an unimaginable event enveloped in the mystery of God”46 and focuses instead on its salvific meaning.
It is important to note that the New Testament offers different images of the risen Jesus. The Gospel of Mark as included in the biblical canon does not depict the risen Jesus after his death but relies instead on the empty tomb and the angel’s words to describe and interpret Jesus’ resurrection. Paul affirms that the risen Christ has a spiritual body but does not describe what this looked like when the risen Jesus appeared to him. Some scholars argue that in the resurrection appearances “Jesus appeared as a blinding light rather than as a human body.”47 Luke and John on the other hand stress the palpable nature of the body of the risen Christ.48 In attempting to describe the nature of the risen Christ at this point in time, when there is renewed confidence in some quarters in the truth claims of religion in relation to other forms of knowledge and experience like the natural sciences, it is important to heed Johnson’s emphasis on the mystery of Jesus’ resurrection. All the New Testament witnesses affirm that Jesus’ resurrection included his body. But an emphasis on the physicality of the risen Jesus that forgets his transcendent nature can easily lead to absurdity and worse.49 It is not possible to develop an understanding of the appearance of the risen Jesus that harmonizes with every detail of every account of it in the New Testament. The body of the risen Jesus is palpable in some accounts. Yet in Mark’s Gospel it is simply absent.
Still one can discern certain commonalities among the accounts of the risen Jesus in the New Testament. A first is the emphasis on the continuity and discontinuity between the risen Jesus and Jesus of Nazareth. The risen Jesus is continuous with Jesus who was crucified. This affirms that Jesus’ death was really overcome in his resurrection. Second, this continuity is crucial to locating the presence of the risen Christ. The risen Christ is present in preaching, prayer, praxis, worship (especially in the Eucharist), and fellowship that is in continuity with the public ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. The risen Christ is also present where Jesus of Nazareth was present: among the poor, the oppressed, and the suffering. The risen Christ meets people today in the faces of victims. Finally, the risen Christ in present in movements for peace and justice that have continuities with his public ministry.
Jesus’ resurrection does not simply restore him to life, but transforms him to new life. The risen Jesus is more than Jesus of Nazareth was. Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed the coming of the reign of God. The foundation of this new reality is constituted through his resurrection. As the foundation of God’s coming reign, the risen Christ is objectively present to history as the otherness of God that makes possible a struggle for justice, an acceptance of one’s self, and an affirmation of one’s humanity in inhumane situations.50 Within history the risen Christ is not confined to one place as Jesus of Nazareth was, but is present as a pneumatological reality throughout history in the faces of victims, in the struggle for peace and justice, and in the worship of the church. Jesus of Nazareth was male, but once risen Jesus is present in and imaged by women and children as well.51 Finally, the risen Jesus is the fulfillment of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ resurrection is partly the culmination of the incarnation, the final yes of God to the life and humanity of Jesus and to the goodness of creation. Thus the risen Jesus is both continuous and discontinuous with Jesus of Nazareth.
Second, the resurrection of Jesus has both subjective and objective dimensions. Purely subjective accounts such as those of Marxsen fail to provide an adequate explanation for the rise of faith in Jesus’ resurrection but do attend to an essential dimension of it: the subjective response of those who believe in it. Jesus’ resurrection presents people with a call to mission and enables them to live it out. If people did not answer this call, part of the purpose of Jesus’ resurrection would have remained unfulfilled. Similarly, Paul in Romans 4:25 describes Jesus’ resurrection as occurring for the sake of peoples’ justification. This purpose is only realized when people come to believe that Jesus is risen and that they are reconciled to God through this.52 Throughout the New Testament Jesus’ resurrection is presented as a saving event that has “occurred and yet is quite without effect except as it is subjectively appropriated by individuals.”53 The resurrection of Jesus thus includes the creation of a community that gathers and lives in his name. Without this, it would leave no trace “in the world to which its message was addressed.”54 Regardless of how Jesus’ risen form is conceived, his resurrection is seen to have been an event intended to find further expression in the lives of others.
What is at issue is an appearance that we can say is “grounded in reality.” At the same time the life of the risen Christ is now lived in self-revelation to other human beings. That life is carried out in comforting them, in strengthening them, and in sending them forth. What is at issue is thus an appearance that we can say “grounds reality,” because the appearance brings itself to bear as the strengthening, gathering, commissioning, calling, and sending of human beings.55
In sum, Jesus’ resurrection has an inherently subjective dimension. It would be incomplete without those who believe in it.
However, the New Testament traditions do not describe Jesus’ resurrection as happening only in the minds and actions of his disciples, but as an eschatological event that initiates a new era in salvation history. The eschatological framework in which it is interpreted varies. But in general the resurrection expected at the end of time is seen to have already happened in the person of Jesus. This is the beginning of a new creation