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The Appearances of the Risen Lord: Faith, Fact, and Objectivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

William P. Loewe
William P. Loewe*
Affiliation:
The Catholic University of America
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Abstract

The present decade has seen the publication of a large number of christologies. Chalcedon no longer sets the logic of these new works. Taking their cue from biblical studies, they assign the resurrection a key position as the swing-point from the earthly Jesus to the ensuing theological and dogmatic tradition of Christian faith. They likewise agree in locating the origin of faith in the resurrection in the events which gave rise to the Easter appearance tradition within the New Testament.

At this point significant differences emerge. The present article offers a sample of representative positions in order to exhibit how they differ with regard to the kinds of question they are willing to entertain about the Easter appearances as well as with regard to the kinds of reality claim they wish to assert. The article concludes that the key issue dividing them is the philosophical question of the nature of objectivity.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Fall 1979 , pp. 177 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1979

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References

1 See Vawter, B., “The Priority of Christ,” This Man Jesus: An Essay Toward a New Testament Christology (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973), pp. 13–16Google Scholar; Moltmann, J., “The Identity and Relevance of Faith,” The Crucified God (ET New York: Harper and Row, 1974), pp. 7–31.Google Scholar

2 Kasper, W., Jesus the Christ (ET New York: Paulist Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Küng, H., On Being A Christian (ET Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976)Google Scholar; Schillebeeckx, E., Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (ET New York: Seabury, 1979).Google Scholar

3 Lane, D., The Reality of Jesus: An Essay in Christology (New York: Paulist Press, 1975).Google Scholar

4 Sobrino, J., Christology at the Crossroads: A Latin American Approach (ET Maryknoll, NY.: Orbis Books, 1978).Google Scholar

5 Boff, L., Jesus Christ Liberator: A Critical Christology for our Time (ET Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1978).Google Scholar

6 O'Collins, G., What Are They Saying About Jesus? (New York: Paulist Press, 1977)Google Scholar; What Are They Saying About the Resurrection? (New York: Paulist Press, 1978).Google Scholar

7 Vawter, op. cit.

8 O'Collins, G., The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1973).Google Scholar

9 Schillebeeckx is a notable exception, in that he carries out his own critical exegesis at great length.

10 Pannenberg, W., Jesus—God and Man (ET Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968), p. 66.Google Scholar

11 Fuller, R., book review in Interpretation 29 (1975), p. 325Google Scholar; cited by O'Collins, G., What Are They Saying About the Resurrection? p. 11.Google Scholar

12 For a challenge to this widely accepted premise, see Mackey, James P., “Christian Faith and Critical History: The Systematician and the Exegete,” in Ryan, Thomas J., ed., Critical History and Biblical Faith: New Testament Perspectives (Villanova, PA: The College Theology Society, 1979), pp. 59–90.Google ScholarMackey, develops his own approach to the resurrections in Jesus—The Man and the Myth (New York: Paulist Press, 1979).Google Scholar

13 Vawter, op. cit., p. 21. Vawter's survey of christological titles represents the position which R. Brown describes as typical of Catholic exegetes in the Seventies, namely, one which ascribes only an implicit christology to Jesus himself. See Brown, R., “Who Do Men Say That I Am? Modern Scholarship on Gospel Christology,” Horizons 1 (1974), pp. 35–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 50. Vawter is building on an argument developed by Evans, C. F., Resurrection and the New Testament (London: SCM, 1970), pp. 128–31.Google Scholar

15 This kind of qualification is reminiscent of Bultmann's controversial statement in “The New Testament and Mythology”: “If the event of Easter Day is in any sense an historical event additional to the event of the cross, it is nothing else than the rise of faith in the risen Lord, since it was this faith which led to the apostolic preaching. The resurrection itself is not an event of past history.” Bartsch, H. W., ed., Kerygma and Myth (ET New York: Harper and Row, 1961), p. 42.Google Scholar See the discussion of this point in Geyer, H. G., “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: A Survey of the Debate,” in Moule, C. F. D., ed., The Significance of the Message of the Resurrection for Faith in Jesus Christ (London: SCM, 1968), pp. 105–35.Google Scholar

16 Vawter, op. cit., p. 41.

17 O'Collins, , The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, p. 9.Google Scholar

18 Moltmann, J. likewise stops short of critical inquiry and contents himself with the lexicographical data as an adequate description of the appearances in The Crucified God, pp. 166–68.Google Scholar

19 O'Collins, op. cit., p. 35.

20 Brown, R., The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1973), p. 92.Google Scholar

21 There is, however, a point of difference between Vawter and O'Collins. Vawter simply emphasizes the priority of fact over the meaningfulness of the fact which faith is to appropriate. This emphasis may be logical, but it is also abstract. Hence O'Collins notes that concretely, when one attempts to arrive at a judgment of fact concerning the resurrection, the uniqueness of the material under consideration sets a limit to the compelling force the available evidence can exert; he therefore posits a prior appreciation of the meaningfulness of the facts in questions as necessary to dispose one towards a positive judgment. See O'Collins, op. cit., pp. 57–73.

22 Kasper, W., Jesus the Christ, pp. 136–40.Google Scholar

23 Sobrino, J., Christology at the Crossroads, pp. 375–76.Google Scholar

24 Küng, H., On Being a Christian, p. 346.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 364. Emphasis in the original.

26 Kasper, like Küng, rejects the notion of miracle as a case of direct, unmediated divine intervention. And like most contemporary authors, he stresses that the fact of the empty tomb is of itself wholly ambiguous, so that while it can serve as a sign or indicator to faith, it is nothing like a proof of the resurrection. Nonetheless, he also asserts that with the clarification that comes with the proclaimed word, the ambiguity of the sign is dispelled; hence it would seem to follow for Kasper that in the case of the empty tomb, unlike any of the other New Testament miracles, faith does finally commit one to asserting as fact this one instance of unmediated divine activity.

27 For a recent articulation of this kind of position, in addition to the references to J. Mackey in note 12 above, see Galvin, John P., “Resurrection as Theologia Crucis Jesu: The Foundational Christology of Rudolf Pesch,” Theological Studies 38 (1977), pp. 513–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Küng, op. cit., p. 375.

29 Lohfink, G., “Extreme Theologie orderradikale Erneuerung des Glaubens? Zu einem neuen Buch von Hans Küng,” Herder Korrespondenz 28 (1974), p. 541.Google Scholar My translation, emphasis in the original.

30 Fuller, R., The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 181.Google Scholar

31 See Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. 64–69.Google Scholar