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11. "Life after Death in the New Testament"

A2 Religious Studies Synoptic Guide – Reid G and Tyler S (Philip Allan Updates, 2003)

‘Life after death in the New Testament' , pages 47-50 © A2 Religious Studies Synoptic Guide, Gorden Reid and Sarah Tyler, 2003, Philip Allan Updates

 

 

The raising of Lazarus (John 11: 1-44)

 

Varied Understanding

•  The raising of Lazarus takes place among people who believe in Jesus and love Lazarus, a friend and follower of Christ.
•  Lazarus has been dead and buried for 4 days before Jesus arrives, but Lazarus's sister, Martha, seems to believe that Jesus can still do something: ‘But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask' (John 11:22).
•  She does not really understand the power of Christ, however, probably thinking that Jesus will be able do something for Lazarus in the life to come — she mentions the ‘resurrection at the last day' (John 11:24) — but not in the present instance.
•  Yet this futuristic eschatology is about to be overtaken by a realised eschatology of the present, as Jesus declares that he is ‘the resurrection and the life' (John 11:25 ).
•  Martha declares her belief that Jesus is ‘the Christ, the Son of God' (John 11:27 ).

 

Jesus' resurrection

 

No explanation of ‘how'

•  In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus predicts his death and resurrection three times (Mark 8:31, 9:31, 10:34 & //s), and after the Transfiguration he warns the disciples to ‘tell no one until the Son of Man should have risen from the dead ' (Mark 9:9).
•  None of the predictions attempts to explain how Jesus' resurrection will be accomplished.
•  The evangelists were not concerned with the mechanics of God's miraculous activity, but rather with the reality of it, and the gospel accounts of the Resurrection do not attempt a description or analysis of what happened.
•  The Resurrection is not narrated, but proclaimed .

 

Links between Accounts

•  Although all four accounts are quite distinctive, enabling the evangelists to make use of the narrative to emphasise key themes that have run throughout their gospels, there are significant links between them.
•  All the gospel accounts include:
  •  the fact of the empty tomb
  •  the visit of women (in John's case Mary Magdalene only) to the tomb
  •  information that Jesus has risen from the dead conveyed by angels or by a mysterious stranger
  •  motifs of surprise, lack of recognition and disbelief
  •  instructions or commissioning by Jesus

 

Variations in Accounts

•  Not all the gospel accounts can be said, strictly speaking, to include a resurrection appearance
•  In Mark's account (the shortest, and possibly most reliable, one) the news that Jesus had been raised from the dead is not immediately believed by the disciples, male or female, although interestingly the women are more receptive than the men.
•  The appearances of Jesus in Matthew and in John 21 appear to be of a figure that is of a more mystical and spiritual nature than in the other accounts where, for example, Thomas is invited to touch him, or where he eats broiled fish.

 

Paul's teaching (1 Corinthians 15:3—9)

 

The Significance of Paul's Teaching

•  Paul's teaching on the Resurrection and its significance for all Christian believers is based on his conviction that ‘if Christ be not risen, then your faith is in vain' (1 Corinthians 15:17).
•  His is the earliest resurrection tradition , written at least 10 years before the earliest gospel account. It can be summarised in four key stages:
  •  Christ dies for our sins in accordance with the scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3b).
  •  He is buried (1 Corinthians 15:4a)
  •  He is raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:4b).
  •  Then he appears to various people (1 Corinthians 15:5—9).

 

The Appearances Support the Teaching

•  The list of appearances that follows seems to validate the first three points, which are presented by Paul as both historical and theological certainties;
•  Taken together, the four formulae are offered as the grounds on which the believer can be absolutely certain of the future hope of their own resurrection.
•  R. H. Fuller (1972) wrote: The presupposition of Paul's argument is that there is a constitutive and organic relationship between the resurrection and the future resurrection of believers… Christ's resurrection was the beginning of the eschatological process of resurrection… When, therefore, Paul goes on to define the nature of resurrected existence, what he says about it will apply equally to Christ.

 

The Appearances specified

•  Paul clearly seems to use the appearances

•  to Peter (Cephas),
•  the Twelve (interestingly, since Judas would be dead by then),
•  to ‘ more than 500 brothers and sisters ' ,
•  to James, to ‘ all the apostles ' ,
•  and ‘ last of all… to me ' — to prove the Resurrection.

•  Rudolph Bultmann claimed that this was a fatal step that leads to the further attempt to historicise it in the gospels, and ultimately in the highly imaginative accounts of the apocryphal gospels.

 

The resurrection of all believers Paul's teaching (1 Corinthians 15:12 —57)

 

Corrective Writing

•  R. H. Fuller suggested that Paul's readership in Corinth was anticipating not a bodily resurrection like Christ's, but simply the opening up of a new existence made possible by their baptism — a present state, but not accompanied by any concept of future hope.
•  Paul writes to them to correct this picture.
•  The resurrection of believers will, like Christ's resurrection, involve the resurrection and recreation of a body.
•  However, the corruptible and perishable flesh will be transformed into something incorruptible, something that can only be created by God in the miracle of the Resurrection.

 

Eternal life

 

 Eternal Life emphasised by John

•  In the Fourth Gospel , the emphasis on salvation as a present experience overshadows the idea of future salvation and bodily resurrection.
•  John teaches that as soon as a person makes this decision they enter into eternal life.
•  The transition from death to life has already taken place, and thus Jesus can say: ‘I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die ' (John 11:25—26).
•  Eternal life transcends physical death and nothing can separate humankind from the communion it has with God: ‘I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand ' (John 10:28 —29).
•  Robert Kysar called this the preserver theory.
•  He claimed that the evangelist includes some futurist references in order to preserve the traditional view along side his own present perspective, even though they are contradictory: arguably, the evangelist feels that the futurist perspective is no longer meaningful.

 

Interpreting the resurrection accounts

 

•  Rudolph Bultmann claimed that the ‘ real meaning of the resurrection message was not that an incredible event took place on Easter Sunday, but the cross is permanently available to us in the church's preaching as the saving act of God' (cited in Fuller, 1972).
•  Martin Dibelius observed that even the most sceptical historians acknowledge that something happened, but we cannot know the precise nature of this event, even though the New Testament writers believed it to be unambiguous. It is the task of the systematic theologian to wrestle with the scientific, philosophical, and theological problems posed by the New Testament message of Christ's resurrection, but it is the task of the New Testament scholar to probe the historical basis of this proclamation. (R. H. Fuller, 1972)