The resurrection of the Son of God

He is risen indeed!

THE RESURRECTION OF THE SON OF GOD
By N.T. Wright
SPCK. 817 pages. £35.00 (pb)
ISBN 0 281 05550 5

It is not often that one is privileged to review a masterpiece, but that is precisely what Tom Wright's latest volume in his major theological project, 'Christian origin's and the question of God', is.

What was originally to form the final section of 'Jesus and the Victory of God' has turned into a major study in its own right. Tom Wright presents this work as a 'weed clearing exercise', digging deep to uncover the roots of the smothering weeds which have grown up in the theological garden of academia regarding the resurrection of Jesus. He particularly has in his sights the widely accepted view in New Testament scholarship that the earliest Christians did not think of Jesus as having been raised bodily from the dead, with the tendency to cite Paul as the chief witness for a more 'spiritual' view point.

Like Charlie Moule had done many years before, Tom Wright argues that from a historical standpoint one cannot adequately explain the rise of Christianity on any grounds other than that Jesus of Nazareth was raised bodily from the dead. This was not a mere resuscitation of an identical body, but a body which was, to use Tom's phrase, 'transphyical' - the same yet different, continuous with what went before and at the same time discontinuous - being able to suddenly appear and disappear for example.

The book is divided into five parts.

Setting the scene

Part 1 sets the scene by placing beliefs about 'life after death' in their historical context: the relationship between resurrection and questions of history and theology; beliefs about life beyond death in ancient paganism, the Old Testament and post-biblical Judaism. The breadth of material covered is simply breathtaking and the mastery with which the material is handled, magisterial. Wright convincingly shows that: 1. In ancient paganism death was a one-way street. As we would say 'When you are dead you are dead' - you stay that way. Therefore when the early Christian claimed that Jesus had been raised from the dead they were also claiming something for him which was not true of anyone else. 2. That, in the OT, resurrection language involves the reversal of death itself arising out of the vision of the creator-covenant God who will not allow relationship with him to be broken. 3. That in post-biblical Judaism, 'resurrection' is not a term which is used to refer to 'life after death' (going to heaven when we die), but 'life after life after death'! It covered two ideas - the restoration of Israel on the one hand and the newly embodied life of all YHWH's people on the other.

Paul and resurrection

In Part 2, Wright considers the idea of resurrection in the writings of Paul as well as the accounts of Paul's encounter with the risen and ascended Jesus on the road to Damascus. He shows that on the spectrum of beliefs surveyed earlier, Paul's thinking is rooted in the Jewish world, not the pagan one and that within the Jewish spectrum he is to be placed at the Pharisaic end together with the writers of apocalypse works. He believed in the future bodily resurrection of all the true people of God but that Jesus resurrection has already taken place as a foretaste of what is to come. Paul also uses 'resurrection' terminology metaphorically.

Everything else

Part 3 grapples with resurrection beliefs in early Christianity apart from Paul. This covers the gospel traditions outside the Easter narratives, all other NT material as well as early Christian writings, together with the apocrypha and the Nag Hammadi texts. Very helpfully, Wright draws together the threads of the first three parts of the book by considering the place of the resurrection in the world view of early Christianity. In terms of their praxis, they believed that they were already living in God's new creation. Although tombs of prophets and martyrs were venerated, this did not happen with Jesus's tomb. There was also the transfer of the Lord's Day from the last day of the week to the first day of the week. In terms of the symbolism used, baptism and the Lord's supper, they simply breathed 'resurrection'. In terms of the questions posed by world views, those of identity and purpose - the resurrection was absolutely central. Where did all of this come from if not an actual historical event as attested to by the early Christians themselves?

Having cleared away much of the undergrowth that has accumulated in NT scholarship over the years, in Part 4 Wright considers the Easter stories themselves, their origin and character. What is particularly striking are the surprises of the resurrection narratives - no embellishments with OT texts (think of how Matthew does this with almost every other event); the failure to link Jesus's resurrection with the general resurrection hope of believers; the ambiguous portrayal of Jesus, very 'earthy' - he eats and drinks, and yet he can appear and disappear with no attempt to try and explain this (given the influence of Daniel 12 on contemporary Jewish thought, that the righteous will shine like stars, why is Jesus's body not portrayed as shining?); and the fact that women are the first eyewitnesses when their evidence would not be considered trustworthy in a court of law. All of these things cry out for a historically plausible explanation. These are not the sort of accounts one would write if they were created retrospectively as a result of some 'faith experience' (contra Bultmann and Schillebeeckx), but they are the rough-and-ready narratives one would expect from an early tradition. There then follows a masterful consideration of each of the Easter narratives which carefully and intriguingly unpacks the theological distinctives of the four evangelists.

Sufficient and necessary

In the final part of the book, Tom Wright argues that the empty tomb together with the appearances of Jesus provide both the sufficient and necessary conditions for the rise of early Christian belief. What is more, it is the bodily resurrection of Jesus which provides a sufficient and necessary condition for the empty tomb and the appearances. Rival explanations are shown to be woefully inadequate.

The last chapter links the resurrection to the other aspect of Wright's theological enterprise, the question of God and how this gave rise to a high Christology very early on. Jesus was not simply 'the Son of God' understood messianically (although that was the case), but 'he is the one in whom the living God, Israel's God, has become personally present in the world, has become one of the human creatures that were made from the beginning in the image of this same God' (p. 733). Wright also demonstrates how revolutionary and politically subversive this belief was then and still is.

As with all of Tom Wright's writings, this book is a joy to read by virtue of the way it is written. Someone once described him as writing, 'wonderfully, accessibly and as smooth as fine chocolate'. That is true. To read Tom Wright is almost an enriching aesthetic experience, as well as a rewardingly spiritual and intellectual one. He writes with great clarity and piercing wit (I found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion!) and leaves no stone unturned (pardon the pun).

There is also a wonderful providential irony here. Twenty years ago, the then Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, was publicly arguing for the very anodyne liberal view the present Bishop of Durham has so effectively demolished.

This is a book which is to be highly recommended. It is a model of serious scholarship, rigorous thought, clarity of expression and deep devotion.

Melvin Tinker,
vicar of St. John's, Newland, Hull