7: Twentieth Century: Barth, Bultmann, and Beyond

7

Twentieth Century: Barth, Bultmann, and Beyond

Throughout most cycles of contemporary Western theology, there has been widespread agreement among critical scholars across a very wide conceptual spectrum that Jesus’s preaching of the kingdom of God plus his death and resurrection appearances represent the central message of Christianity. Of course, such recognition requires none of these scholars to acknowledge the existence of a literal kingdom or an actual resurrection event. Rather, this agreement requires only the understanding that this teaching and proclamation occupied a central position in the early procla­mation of the faith. Within these parameters, many nuances abound.

This position has long been asserted by orthodox believers based on New Testa­ment passages such as the highly influential text in 1 Cor 15:12–20. Uniqueness and significance is also admitted by many critical scholars surrounding these elements. Many examples may be drawn from scholarly works published in the mid-twentieth century.

One instance is New Testament scholar Willi Marxsen, who asserts that among the vast array of subjects in Christian theology, “the question of Jesus’ resurrection plays a decisive part; one might even say the decisive part.” Actually, if we are uncertain about the faith or if our hope is obscure, since these are “closely connected” to the resurrection message, then “there is a risk of jeopardizing more or less everything to which a Christian clings.”

Marxsen is not the only scholar who analyzes the subject in this manner. Günther Bornkamm likewise acknowledges the ultimate importance of the resurrection: “There would be no gospel, not one account, no letter in the New Testament, no faith, no church, no worship, no prayer in Christendom to this day without the message of the resurrection of Christ.” Jürgen Moltmann affirms strongly that “Christianity stands or falls with the reality of the raising of Jesus from the dead by God. In the New Testament there is no faith that does not start a priori with the resurrection of Jesus.”

If we are anywhere close to being accurate regarding these assessments, then the subject of Jesus’s resurrection has always been of prime importance since the time of the earliest church. We will observe later how most scholars also agree that the historicity of this event is a major factor in knowing whether, or to what extent, the truthfulness of Christian theology and practice follows. Repeated appraisals and various other considerations of the resurrection appear regularly in Christian studies, but these are justified by both its centrality and the new varieties of contemporary criticism.

Our primary purpose in this chapter is to survey five approaches to the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection that typified the critical scholarly scene from the wake of German liberalism’s fall through just past the mid-twentieth century. This will lead into the next formative period of thought that occupies most of our attention in this study: from 1975 to the present. Even the testimony just given regarding Marxsen’s thoughts on how truths may follow from the resurrection is only one indication of how views can vary widely on this subject. Among other benefits, the survey in this chapter will indicate the contrast between how scholarly trends can change and how they may typically lead naturally into the next generation of study.

Before viewing these five models that survey and demarcate recent views regarding the relationship between the resurrection and history, we will overview briefly the resurrection positions of the two most prominent theologians in the twentieth century: Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann. This will be helpful in order to build the “historical resurrection bridge” all the way from the eighteenth-century deists through Friedrich Schleiermacher to present thinkers. Further, these two giants will also figure prominently in the remainder of the chapter, so the overview should serve as a much-needed introduction to these trends.

Karl Barth

Albert Schweitzer’s critique of the perceived failure of the First Quest for the historical Jesus was a big blow to be sure. However, the appearance of Barth’s volume The Epistle to the Romans was one of the chief reasons for the actual death of nineteenth-century German liberalism along with the outbreak of World War I. Having studied under some of the greatest minds of the early twentieth century, like Wilhelm Hermann and Adolf von Harnack, Barth reacted against the dominant message of unbiblical views regarding God; sin; and real, supernatural truth, among other issues. He called for renewed emphasis on the sovereignty of God, the reality of human sinfulness, and the need for salvation. This volume sought to reassert that biblical message, and it shocked the theological establishment.

Barth never hesitated to challenge what he took to be nonbiblical preaching and teaching, whether it was that of nineteenth-century liberalism or otherwise. For example, in another volume of eight very early messages, some of which even predate The Epistle to the Romans, Barth develops many key theses that follow a particular set of themes. Chief among these are the inability of human effort to reach God, therefore eschewing all man-made efforts and religions; human sinfulness; the transcendence and sovereignty of God, who is “Wholly Other”; and the necessity of faith. Throughout, there is a pervasive emphasis on Scripture and allowing God’s Word to speak truth to us, replacing our own thoughts on this subject.

Especially in his latter messages, Barth also takes on major German liberal scholars and themes, such as “the all-leveling and uncreative spirit of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” Schleiermacher particularly is named quite frequently. In one instance, he is not a good theological teacher because “he is disastrously dim-sighted in regard to the fact that man as man is not only in need but beyond all hope of saving himself.” Schleiermacher is also called out for his experience-centered theology. Others named include Troeltsch, Ritschl, and Rothe, while Kierkegaard is praised and placed in a list with Luther, Calvin, Paul, and Jeremiah!

In the process of challenging liberal theology, the immense combined influence of Karl Barth along with Rudolf Bultmann (though for quite different reasons) had an inhibiting effect on the Jesus of history landscape—neither of these scholars appreciated historical Jesus studies very much. Through their influence on a couple generations of students, this interlude came to be known as the “No Quest” period. Neither of these thinkers appreciated the First Quest for the historical Jesus, and they maintained those objections throughout their careers. Both also reacted strongly to the theology of German liberalism as a whole.

Particularly for Barth, who was easily the more conservative of the two scholars, it is often missed that he hardly denied either the truth or the historical facts of the New Testament gospel message. Rather, it was the exercise of discovering or requiring historical evidence that Barth considered to be outside the pale of faith. As he asserts in one of his most authoritative venues speaking of Jesus’s resurrection: “There is no proof, and there obviously cannot and ought not to be any proof, for the fact that this history did take place (proof, that is, according to the terminology of modern historical scholarship).”

Unfortunately, especially earlier in his career, Barth juxtaposed a number of comments that often appeared to confuse the fact and even truth of the resurrection with its evidential moorings. Examples from his earlier works indicated his overly dialectical emphasis and included thoughts such as: “In the Resurrection the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is, without touching it.” This was followed directly by the straight­forward comment, “The Resurrection is therefore an occurrence in history, which took place outside the gates of Jerusalem in the year A.D. 30.” Immediately after that: “The Resurrection is not an event in history at all.” Still another rather strange-sounding comment in the same volume reads: “We have already seen that the raising of Jesus from the dead is not an event in history elongated so as still to remain an event in the midst of other events. The Resurrection is the non-historical.”

Further, in The Word of God and the Word of Man, the resurrection is “not in time. It is not one temporal thing among others.” Again, “the resurrection of Christ . . . is not a historical event.” But immediately afterward, Barth states, “though it is the only real happening in is not a real happening of history.” So we should apparently not pursue with arguments whether or not the resurrection was a historical event. Barth frequently answers such historical questions as “the see-saw of ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’”

About a decade after these early sermons and messages, Barth’s language seemed to change very subtly. He still plainly emphasized the unprovability of the empty tomb and the resurrection—Paul didn’t mean to evidence these events, and neither should we. These occurrences are “not to be counted, weighed, and measured.” They can “only be proved by revelation itself.” On the negative side, if we wish to rely on historical investigation alone, how do we know that negative natural results might not emerge toward which, strangely enough, Barth seemed rather nonchalant? But on the positive side, there was little talk of the “Yes, it’s historical . . . No, it’s not” sort of dialectic, regardless of the caveats that follow.

Still, the biggest change occurred another two decades later when the first part of the fourth volume of his Church Dogmatics was written. Clearly the dialectic could still be seen: “The death of Jesus Christ can certainly be thought of as history in the modern sense, but not the resurrection.” Yet Barth went on to affirm that the resurrection did indeed happen, commenting just a little later that “the New Testament is speaking of an event in time and space.”

As Barth worked his way to the conclusion of the matter, he stated in surprisingly strong terms: “If Jesus Christ is not risen—bodily, visibly, audibly, perceptively, in the same concrete sense in which He died, as the texts themselves have it—if He is not also risen, then our preaching and our faith are vain and futile; we are still in our sins.” Thus, the apostles, as true observers of the resurrection “were witnesses of an event which was like that of the cross in its concrete objectivity.” So when the disciples saw Jesus alive, “He encountered them formally (eating and drinking with them) in the same way as He had encountered them before . . . (eating and drinking with them).” In these last words, then, Barth states the matter rather straightforwardly.

We will address later the subject of what Barth was attempting to accomplish by making these seemingly confusing statements. However, in spite of the dialectical language that has no doubt frustrated many readers, Barth affirmed the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.

Approaching Jesus’s resurrection in what has been described as a fideistic manner, we will include Barth in that “faith only” camp in the survey of the five resurrection models below. Overall, Barth’s influence was immense. Godsey states that Barth “more than any other, has shaped the theology of the church for almost half a century.” Later, Godsey remarks, “In him a Church Father has walked among us, a theologian of such creative genius, prodigious productivity, and persuasive influence that his name is already being associated with the elite group of Christian thinkers that includes Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin.” There is no shortage of scholars who identify Barth as the most influential theologian of the twentieth century or repeat similar accolades.

A Critique of Barth’s Notion of Prehistory

For Barth, Jesus was definitely raised from the dead in a bodily manner that was observable to the witnesses’ physical senses. But his repeated shying away from the actual specifics of historical research or other evidence for this event that might indicate this to be a fact of the past was criticized on many occasions. A few vulnerable points will be mentioned briefly. Strictly for our purposes in these volumes, the initial conundrum appears to be the most serious one for Barth. In a sense, the additional criticisms and concerns here could be viewed more as extensions of the initial aspect rather than separate items, though with projections that reach out into other areas.

The primary as well as the most comprehensive critique involves the belief that Jesus’s resurrection occupies a sort of “prehistory” or “saga” that definitely includes some aspects of objective history, while other facets such as providing strong evidence in favor of the event must be abandoned. This may be the chief problem of Barth’s interpretation, for he asserts that the resurrection is not history in the modern sense of this term. Rather, this event really occurs in some species of redemptive or religious history. However, how do we define, categorize, or indicate the essence or truth of events that history simply cannot ascertain? Such an in-between ground, whether it is termed prehistory, saga, legend, or referred to, as Barth does, as the “boundary” or “frontier” of history, keeps it from the watchful eye of careful research and the ability to ascertain factuality.

As former Oxford University historian William Wand perceptively points out, “History is concerned only with such events as happen within the space-time continuum. Events, real or imagined, which occur in an eternal or spiritual sphere are not the proper subject of history. The reason is that history has no tools by which it can deal with such events.” Thus, historiography can only be occupied with claimed events that are thought to have occurred in time and can be investigated by the tools of historical research. Since there are no means whereby events that occur in a religious or other in-between sphere can be so investigated, they do not actually fall within the scope of history. As Wand contends, events thought to have happened only in such an elusive realm cannot be properly regarded as history, even if they were real events. Historical facts must therefore be open to verification and research.

Admittedly, a resurrection would have a different origin from other events if it entered the realm of the past as a direct act of God. If Jesus’s resurrection had occurred by strictly natural means, such as historical causation, such a response might be shown by examining other alternatives. Barth is correct in asserting that it is possible for an event to be caused by divine action and still be a part of history, which could indeed make it unique. But such a divine origination may not be investigated, evidenced, or known to be the case. This would hardly bother Barth, however. If research into the resurrection is exempted from the process of historiography, can faith alone simply plug that gap?

There is an immense difference between simply proclaiming that this occurrence was unique due to its being a direct result of God’s revelation and holding that it ought not be investigated or known to have occurred. If such an occurrence did happen in history, even though its entry would definitely be unique, becoming part of the natural process would make it open to historical investigation.

Yet, for Barth this is not why this process will not work. It is simply not a matter of whether or not the proper tools are available to proceed with such a historical study. Rather, the underlying rejection is caused by his presuppositions regarding the split between historical research and faith in God’s revelation. Back to the days of leaping over Lessing’s ugly ditch, there is an absolute and unsolvable separation between historical investigation on the one side and faith in God’s revelation on the other. God has spoken and requires faith in his person and message. Biblical belief does not come from doing good research but from stepping out in commitment to God. Hence, Barth removes revelatory events from the scope of historical study, thereby isolating them from these procedures, because such an act is required. In the process, he removes them from any historical inspection.

It will convince very few scholars to assert the truth of the resurrection, announcing that certain events actually occurred, while adding that a historical examination is just not allowed. In such instances the response from both believers and unbelievers very well may be that the dialectic is nauseating. Either the resurrection really happened in verifiable history or it did not occur in normal history at all. But employing fancy theological verbiage to affirm its occurrence in an unverifiable, unobservable realm of thought presents all the marks of a contradiction. It appears to desire all the benefits of historicity but without taking any of the risks!

Barth’s own backdrop of being a victim to his predetermined theological views might be why he struggled so much in explaining his position and frustrated many readers in the process! His sentences weave back and forth continually until the reader wonders if they can ever be reconciled. However, Barth had no choice but to reject historical evidence and to embrace a faith commitment, yet he was absolutely required to believe that Jesus’s resurrection and appearances occurred in real history. The double requirement did not fit together well.

German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg agreed with this initial criticism of those who took positions such as this one. He asserts:

If we would forgo the concept of a historical event here, then it is no longer possible at all to affirm that the resurrection of Jesus or that the appearances of the resurrected Jesus really happened at a definite time in our world. There is no justification for affirming Jesus’s resurrection as an event that really happened, if it is not to be affirmed as a historical event as such. Whether or not a particular event happened two thousand years ago is not made certain by faith but only by historical research, to the extent that certainty can be attained at all about questions of this kind. . . . The only method of achieving at least approximate certainty with regard to the events of a past time is historical research.

As pointed out, it is another mere confusion for a theologian like Barth to say that an event actually occurred in history, but not in the same realm of history as other events do. As Pannenberg adeptly points out, it is improper to make comments concerning Jesus’s resurrection being a historical event if, as such, it can only be known by faith and not by historical research. If one asserts that an occurrence is not even able to be investigated, it cannot be proclaimed with any certainty that the event ever happened at a certain time and place in this world. Such an event is not really known historically because, on this view, no measurable concept of history exists in this particular realm. Therefore, without sufficient grounds, it cannot be known for sure that this event still happened just like other incidents in the past. Simple claims do not determine the historicity of events.

Another historian, John Warwick Montgomery, also objects to Barth’s use of prehistory. The following statement points out the folly of such a concept: “To claim objectivity, but to remove any possibility of determining it, is by definition to destroy objectivity.” If a historical event is not open to investigation in some sense, in what sense can it be knowable other than perhaps as a faith statement? The historical “middle ground” of prehistory, removed from such processes of verification, is next to meaningless. Montgomery thus agrees with others that this particular area of Barth’s idea of history is foreign both to the discipline itself as well as to the biblical records.

Many other scholars have also noted Barth’s tendency to rely on the concept of prehistory and similar ideas and the subsequent weaknesses in his approach to Jesus’s resurrection that have resulted. They realize both that historians recognize no such realm of history and that the very assertion that such a realm exists with both historical and nonhistorical characteristics is itself contradictory.

The next concern extends from this critique of Barth regarding his stance on Jesus’s resurrection to a greater tension. Unless there is a way out of the earlier dilemma, there would appear to be little hope of ascertaining if other portions or even the whole of the Christian faith can be shown to be true. If Barth’s notion of faith cannot stand alone as its own justification, serving as its own standard, then where may a believer turn? Of course, this is assuredly not to say that Christianity is false or anything of the sort. In fact, many believers would probably take a stance fairly close to Barth’s while never doubting their faith.

The potential upshot of this approach is that it might otherwise be difficult to show that Christianity as a whole is actually true by other means. The subjective, personal stances above provide no reason why someone else should believe this particular system or accept Christianity over alternative views. Faith simply is not a panacea for all theological problems because there are no grounds upon which its claims may be based. In spite of Barth’s defense of faith in revelation as the only way (as opposed to either historical research or rational approaches), it still remains that this faith cannot verify itself or demonstrate its own validity. This can only mean that one cannot know if the grounds for belief are solid or not. Barth was not interested in verifying the grounds of Christianity, and neither are many other Christians, but for those who wish to build on solid, knowledge-producing doctrines, how are we to know if faith is true and secure? Perhaps worse yet, how is Christianity to be distinguished from other views or able to answer evidential questions from other faith systems?

These initial two criticisms of Barth are internal critiques. The next concern applies to Barth’s understanding of God’s revelation in human events. Barth contends that God reveals himself in certain revelatory acts, like Jesus’s resurrection, which occur in man’s prehistory and not as an actual part of verifiable history. But if revelation is not given via evidence in historical facts, which are open to historical research, or based on natural revelation or theology, then how is Jesus’s death revelatory? Barth definitely holds that the crucifixion is part of God’s revelation, since Jesus died a substitutionary death to pay for the sins of those who surrender their lives to God in faith.

Yet, Barth is also quite clear that the crucifixion is fully historical: “The death of Jesus Christ can certainly be thought of as history in the modern sense, but not the resurrection.” Here it seems that there is an internal inconsistency in a major area of theology. If one holds that the death of Jesus is an indispensable part of God’s reve­lation (as Barth is correct in doing), then it would seem that one must abandon the previously held idea that God never acts meaningfully in this “secular” kind of history. But since the cross is a regular historical fact in every sense of the term, as Barth also acknowledges, then this means that the resurrection could likewise be objective, verifiable history and still be a revelatory event as well. This should particularly be the case when in both the New Testament and Barth these two events are inseparable, being the flip sides of each other.

The next critique of Barth’s treatment of the resurrection is that he holds that the New Testament does not make any attempt to demonstrate that the resurrection of Jesus did occur. He holds, rather, that the earliest Christians were only interested in accepting this event by faith and preaching it. Thus, Paul was not even trying to present evidence for this occurrence by citing the famous list of witnesses in 1 Corinthians 15. As already noted for Barth, this text makes it quite plain that although Paul is speaking of the faith of the first-century Christians, he is also explaining how this faith has its basis in historical fact. However, he thinks that the text clearly shows that Paul does not at all intend to cite any kind of “proof” or objective basis here. As always for Barth, the twin issues are God’s revelation and faith, not evidence.

Even Bultmann disagrees with Barth here, noting that Paul does mean to use the list of the appearances of Jesus as evidence for the resurrection. Bultmann notes that there were two current “proofs” for this event in the early church, both of which are found in 1 Corinthians 15. There was the appeal to eyewitness testimony, as just mentioned (especially 15:5–8) and the appeal to the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy (15:3–4). This testimony is valuable at this point mainly because it is apparent that Barth desires to utilize Scripture to reinforce his own polemic, whereas Bultmann actually objects to Paul using such evidence in spite of believing that he does just this. Barth’s desire of course does not in itself mean that he is necessarily mistaken here. But it does appear that Bultmann is more accurate in ascertaining Paul’s obvious motives here, even though Bultmann does not agree with Paul.

Reginald Fuller’s own position is somewhat close to Barth in his view on this question. He holds that Paul’s primary intention was to identify his preaching of the resurrection with that of the earliest eyewitnesses. But he also believes that Paul intended to include the eyewitness accounts in order to indicate that Jesus actually appeared to his followers. He likewise agrees that 1 Cor 15:6 is the chief pointer to the fact that Paul was establishing evidence to be used on behalf of these appearances.

It must be kept in mind during this entire discussion that the overall point being discussed is whether Barth or Bultmann thought that Paul and the Gospel authors were attempting to provide evidence for Jesus’s appearances, not whether any of these texts are critically acclaimed. The general point was that Barth did not want to indicate that evidence was being given, whereas Bultmann and Fuller thought it was clear that Paul was doing so.

There are additional passages in the New Testament besides Paul’s writings that also endeavor both to provide evidence for Jesus’s resurrection appearances and to use this event as the basis for establishing other beliefs, contrary to Barth’s view. It has been argued quite frequently that the Gospels in particular sought to demonstrate the reality of Jesus’s resurrection by emphasizing that he appeared to his disciples in bodily form. Although Jesus’s new body had undergone changes, it is reported that Jesus allowed his followers to examine this new body. We are even told that Jesus was touched and “held,” thus demonstrating that he was alive. This emphasis is especially evident in passages like Luke 24:36–43, which undeniably indicates that Jesus had risen.

It is even taught plainly in Acts 1:3 that Jesus “presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs” (RSV). In fact, the Greek word used here for “proof” (tekmēriois) literally means a positive or certain proof. Hence it was the intention of several New Testament authors to show that Jesus had risen.

In addition, it should be mentioned that the resurrection is also used in the New Testament to support other Christian doctrines. For instance, Acts 17:30–31 shows that the earliest church believed that God verified Jesus’s earthly teachings by raising him from the dead. Further, Acts 2:22–24, 36, and Rom 1:4 are other examples that point to Jesus being accepted as the Lord, Messiah, and the Son of God based upon the resurrection.

Barth was unsuccessful in teaching his untenable notion of history, including that an event could have occurred literally without being able to investigate it. One huge problem was leaving believers without grounds for their faith, both here and in other major areas of theology. Barth’s emphasis on early Christian preaching instead of the need to also provide evidence shows that his interpretations of Scripture at these points were mistaken, being rather clearly governed by his overpowering presuppositions. His discussions with Bultmann pointed clearly to these issues. Finally, the claim that the New Testament does not attempt to establish the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection appearances is simply not supported by the facts.

For the reasons given above, it becomes evident that Barth’s thesis fails. These critiques point out some of the key weaknesses to which this view is most vulnerable as well as the inadequacies involved. In short, Barth declares clearly that there “cannot and ought not to be any proof” in these matters. But since there is very strong historical evidence for Jesus’s resurrection appearances, then his view of prehistory’s characteristics is seriously mistaken.

Rudolf Bultmann

In spite of Barth’s incredible influence, by the mid-twentieth century, Rudolf Bultmann may have surpassed him in that respect. Barth and Emil Brunner, another highly acknowledged theologian in his own regard, both recognized in an interview that “Bultmann is king.” However, Brunner thought that Bultmann and Barth remained “the strongest contenders for this leadership.” Another theologian, Edmund Schlink, parsed their influence this way: “In the field of systematic theology Barth still has more control, while in the New Testament field, it is Bultmann who holds more influence.”

Just before turning to a survey of five models of resurrection research in the mid-twentieth century, we would do well to survey Bultmann’s early position on the resurrection of Jesus since it exacted so much influence on this mid-century research. From the beginning of his theological career, Bultmann treated the resurrection as a mythical occurrence. In one of his earlier writings, he stated that the resurrection teaching was due to “devout imagination.”

In his famous 1941 essay “New Testament and Mythology,” which furthered the demythologization agenda, Bultmann responded in more detail. In one sentence, he mentioned “the historical event of the crucifixion,” while then commenting on the “definitely non-historical event of the resurrection.” Then in his opening words in the section on “The Resurrection” he stated rather boldly, “But what of the resurrection? Is it not a mythical event pure and simple? Obviously it is not an event of past history.” Shortly afterward, he judged that “a historical fact which involves a resurrection from the dead is utterly inconceivable!” Related components of the resurrection message, such as the empty tomb and the ascension, are likewise mythical.

So how should the early church’s central message be treated today? For Bultmann, as with other supernatural claims, the meaning of the resurrection proclamation must be demythologized. Unlike his qualms with the nineteenth-century German liberal approach to myth, which often simply excised the mythical language from the text, Bultmann held that it has to be inquired as to what the ancient authors intended the mythical language to signify. He combined Christ’s death and resurrection into “an inseparable unity . . . a single, indivisible cosmic event.” In spite of the resurrection not being literally true, the result brings “the possibility of authentic life.”

This emphasis continued far past this influential 1941 essay. In the Shafer Lectures at Yale University Divinity School and the Cole Lectures at Vanderbilt University, both in the fall of 1951, Bultmann explained his view that this ­demythologization process had already begun in the pages of the New Testament in the writings of Paul and even more earnestly in John’s writings.

Providing a crucial distinction, Bultmann provided further instruction on the demythologized meaning of the resurrection: “Belief in the resurrection and the faith that Christ himself, yes God Himself, speaks in the proclaimed word (II Cor. 5:20) are identical. . . . If he heeds it as the word spoken to him, adjudicating to him death and thereby life, then he believes in the risen Christ.” In other words, Bultmann explains that belief in the resurrection is one and the same with believing that Christ is being proclaimed as the Word of God. So heeding Jesus’s words means believing in the resurrection, taken not as a literal historical event but as one’s living authentically.

In sum, for Bultmann the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not a historical event, but a myth. But rather than simply expunging myth from the text as ancient trappings, it must be demythologized and retained, as with other myths, in order to unpack and apply its existential significance and meaning. Christ did not die an ordinary death, for this event signifies salvation and judgment for the world (though again, not literally or in any orthodox understanding of these doctrines). In him, we are confronted with the message of God’s risen messenger, requiring a decision with authentic life consequences.

Contemporary Approaches

By the early 1960s, Carl Henry had completed his interviews with many of Europe’s most influential theological and New Testament scholars. But in spite of the testimonies of both Karl Barth and Emil Brunner above that Bultmann was the theological leader at that time, this New Testament scholar’s influence was definitely waning. Strikingly, the first sentence of Henry’s lead chapter read as follows: “After ruling German theology for more than a decade, Rudolf Bultmann is no longer its king.” Or as Georg Werner Kümmel, Bultmann’s successor at the University of Marburg, attested, the Bultmannian school of thought had “broken to pieces.”

It would be impossible to deny, however, that Bultmann still undoubtedly cast a very long shadow over critical theology in the mid-twentieth century. It would take a couple more decades before this German scholar had lost virtually all of his influence. But when the time finally came, the change was definitely thoroughgoing.

Rather than a unified movement arriving on the scene and pushing out previous scholarly strongholds, as largely had been the case with German liberalism in the nineteenth century as well as with Barth’s and Bultmann’s movements earlier in the century, the field was now exhibiting a wide degree of fracturing. Kümmel divided the “competition” into at least four different camps.

Risking the possibility of oversimplification, we will list five theological models that may be demarcated during the middle of the twentieth century, specifically with regard to the state of resurrection research. Each model is a critical attempt to describe a specific position regarding the nature of Jesus’s resurrection appearances. Occasionally, the differences between each type will be based on only slight, carefully nuanced distinctions. Our list will begin with those scholars who deny or doubt seriously the historical reality of Jesus’s resurrection appearances, usually because they question the existence of the supernatural realm itself. Then we will move to other views that culminate, finally, in the position that the risen Jesus actually appeared bodily, mostly to his followers, and that these events are well supported by historical and other data.

Granted, there are numerous potential angles from which to study Jesus’s appearances, so it ought not be pretended by any means that the only important perspective or angle is one of historicity. However, agreeing with Paul (1 Cor 15:12–20) and against Marxsen at this point, many scholars still hold that any theological meaning for this event depends on the prior question of historicity.

It should also be acknowledged fully that it is always risky to attempt to identify the positions of a broad cross-section of scholars on almost any issue, let alone an absolutely crucial one. This is particularly true with regard to the resurrection appearances, due to the numerous subtle shades of meaning that may be apparent (or not so apparent!) even to the trained eye. In fact, it is rather frustrating to read certain well-known scholars on this topic and to come away still attempting to understand their positions, as if they were purposely being obscurantist. Intriguingly, this latter practice was more common in the decades we are discussing here than is the case today.

Although our procedure here is potentially somewhat hazardous for more than one reason, it should be helpful to sort out the plethora of resurrection views plus the accompanying philosophical outlooks involved. There will necessarily be some overlap since some scholars exhibit tendencies toward more than one model. Other scholars can be identified only in fairly approximate terms due to their incomplete descriptions of their own positions. Still, even these broader categorizations will hopefully still serve our purpose here, while at the same time reveal some “strange bedfellows.”

The first model comprises those mid-twentieth-century scholars who manifest the tendency either to dismiss or at least to question seriously the reality of both the resurrection and Jesus’s appearances, often due to the influence of eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume’s essay “Of Miracles.” The empty tomb is usually rejected as well, though some of these researchers do recognize its historicity. While being more radical in their criticisms, these academics still accept a number of the basic surrounding facts as being historical. Quite surprisingly, they also tend to either reject or at least disregard the naturalistic explanations for the appearances. A widespread preference here is just to assert that an undefined “something” occurred to Jesus’s followers—some real and actual though private experience—while concluding that a more exact description of these experiences cannot be ascertained.

Bultmann and his followers claimed that the real cause of the disciples’ transformation is obscured by the New Testament texts and is of little interest anyway. So, it is not crucial to inquire into the exact nature or cause of these experiences: “The resurrection itself is not an event of past history. All that historical criticism can establish is the fact that the first disciples came to believe in the resurrection. The historian can perhaps to some extent . . . reduce the resurrection appearances to a series of subjective visions. But the historical problem is not of interest to Christian belief in the resurrection.” Similarly, Marxsen also believes that reconstructing the nature of these encounters cannot and should not be attempted, including whether the disciples actually experienced appearances of the risen Jesus. It simply makes very little difference since the chief point is that, regardless of what happened, faith is still warranted.

Some scholars in this first model could be better characterized by what they do not (or feel they cannot) say than by what is stated explicitly. So it is with the later view of Helmut Koester, who asserted that it was not his concern to inquire into the nature of Jesus’s appearances, but that they may nevertheless best be characterized as the “catalyst” that started the early Christian missionary activity and church-planting activities in the first place. Whatever else may be said, the resurrection revealed nothing new, but it did change life for the first believers.

For another German theologian, Hans Küng, the resurrection should not be considered “a supernatural intervention which can be located and dated in space and time.” Once again, it is “not an event in human space and human time.” It can be known that Jesus died, and that this event was followed by the disciples’ rise of faith and their proclamation of the Easter message. But nothing objective can be apprehended, observed, or checked out concerning either the resurrection event itself or Jesus’s appearances.

As part of the so-called Death of God movement, theologian Paul Van Buren likewise held “something happened” that changed the disciples’ outlook from one of initial discouragement to faith. While these experiences were more than subjective and were articulated in terms of actual appearances of the risen Jesus, their nature remains a mystery and still cannot be ascertained.

Another researcher who probably best fits this model, despite some differences, is former Oxford and London professor C. F. Evans. Placing much more emphasis on textual and theological considerations, Evans spent much less time on historical concerns. Yet, he judged that both strong and weak positions regarding the historicity of the empty tomb and resurrection appearances were unwarranted. Instead, he preferred rather agnostic conclusions, including some inconclusive moves. Another influential New Testament exegete who was also strongly influenced by Bultmann’s work and preferred some similar positions was German scholar Hans Conzelmann.

Certain recent trends still reflect views that resemble the scholarly positions constituting this first model, though the position as a whole appears to be much less popular today. Possibly the waning of Bultmann’s widespread influence has caused this position to suffer a similar fate with thinkers supporting these options.

There are a few other indications that this last point is accurate. For example, Norman Perrin, formerly of the University of Chicago, was often viewed during these decades as a major American representative of at least some of Bultmann’s positions, frequently exhibiting similarities to the latter’s New Testament interpretations. But strangely enough, in a volume on this subject written very shortly before his death, Perrin concluded that the tradition behind Jesus’s appearances was firmly based. In fact, his synopsis of what actually happened appears at least to allow for some sort of objective visions whereby Jesus actually commissioned the apostles for a new mission. Beyond this, Perrin did not think that anything further could be said. Here it seems clear that Perrin may have moved quite far beyond Bultmann.

Another example comes from Helmut Koester, Bultmann’s former pupil mentioned above. When writing a brief section on the cross and resurrection, Koester asserted, “We are on much firmer ground with respect to the appearances of the risen Jesus and their effect.” He then concludes the matter: besides Paul, from whom we have “immediate testimony,” the fact that “Jesus also appeared to others (Peter, Mary Magdalene, James) cannot very well be questioned.” Like Perrin, this testimony clearly exceeds anything Bultmann would have concluded.

So this first model expresses a disbelief or at least agnosticism concerning both Jesus’s resurrection as well as his postmortem appearances. Instead, some sort of actual, private experiences are postulated without any further description. The empty tomb is sometimes accepted but usually dismissed. Even though the natural alternative hypotheses are usually either simply ignored or sometimes even rejected, the events regarding the miracle claims are still assumed never to have happened, often with a salute to Hume and his famous essay that argued against the existence of miracles. A number of the best-attested events adjoining these occurrences are still thought to be historical, however.

The mid-twentieth-century scholars constituting the second model are distinguished from the first group by their increased interest in the nature of the disciples’ experiences and their more frequent acceptance of a literal resurrection event. Further, although the naturalistic theories opposed to this event are generally rejected and the empty tomb is sometimes affirmed, the chief earmark of the scholars in this second model is that they insist that these original experiences still cannot be verified historically, even probabilistically, or otherwise evidenced. They can only be apprehended, recognized, and accepted by an act of faith.

Thus, while the resurrection is quite often considered a historical event, it is known in a distinctly different way than the crucifixion or other regular historical events. The resurrection is sometimes even proclaimed as having occurred in a different type or species of history, which is very seldom defined or described in any detail in these scholars’ works. These thinkers insist that while the cross is a normal historical event (described in German as historisch), the resurrection is a type of revelatory history or story (described as geschichtlich) that can only be understood, grasped, or believed through the eyes of a faith commitment. Or it might be concluded that a particular event even encompasses both aspects of history and revelation. For instance, the crucifixion is an event of regular history (historisch), while the interpretation that this event manifests the possibility of redemption or the atonement is therefore a revelatory occasion (geschichtlich).

The theologians and exegetes placed in this second model have usually been influenced heavily by Søren Kierkegaard and by Barth, who held that the resurrection should be accepted by faith as a literal event, but that it cannot be ascertained by any historical investigation or other “proofs.” Barth could scarcely have rejected the naturalistic alternative theories any more emphatically than he did. Further, he asserted that Jesus appeared empirically to his disciples, yet these occurrences happened in a different domain of history and cannot be verified historically. As he states rather enigmatically, “We cannot read the Gospels without getting the strong impression that as we pass from the story of the passion to the story of Easter we are led into a historical sphere of a different kind.” Barth continues, referring to “the peculiar character of this history.”

Similar views closely aligned with Barth’s position were held by other major “neoorthodox” theologians, such as Emil Brunner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Reinhold Niebuhr, including related comments by others regarding this nonverifiable species of “history.” These frankly odd statements often concerned comparisons between the different modes of the past in which the event of Jesus’s crucifixion occurred in normal history and the resurrection “occurrence” in this revelatory realm.

These contrasts grew somewhat less common in the decades after these scholars discontinued their formative writing, but aspects remained popular in some later circles. For instance, Bornkamm noted the failure of naturalistic hypotheses pertaining to Jesus’s resurrection, but still, in a style quite reminiscent of Barth, asserted that the resurrection appearances could only be accepted by faith apart from any historical examination. Reinhold Niebuhr remarked in a more puzzling manner for some that “the story of this triumph over death is thus shrouded in a mystery which places it in a different order of history than the story of the crucifixion.”

Likewise, influential Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner pointed out that just because the resurrection cannot be incorporated “into the normal world of space and time” does not mean that this event should be denied. For Marcus Barth, Jesus’s resurrection was actually a real occurrence in history but, in words quite reminiscent of his famous father, it “is an event which occurs at the boundary of empirical scientific knowledge . . . beyond the realm of experience and sensation which is accessible to rationality and empirical investigation.”

An exceptionally informed view (that also reaches beyond this second model) is the position of Thomas Torrance. A well-known Scottish translator and interpreter of Karl Barth’s theology, not to mention a major theologian in his own right, Torrance carefully and repeatedly explained his acceptance of the literal resurrection of Jesus. He placed more “objective” emphasis on the historicity of this event than did Barth, such as his identification of the resurrection as “an event that happens within history . . . a happening within the same order of physical existence to which we belong . . . an event in space and time.” He even drew a distinction between his position and that of the early Barth, whom Torrance surprisingly identifies as holding that the resurrection was “not . . . really historical.” A footnote there implies that Barth only held such a view in his earlier stages (1910–1931). But it should be objected that Barth continued to speak of the resurrection having occurred in a different sphere of history long after this. At any rate, Torrance still agrees with Barth that the resurrection cannot be proven, but is “apprehended only by faith.”

Like Torrance in the sense of being a bit removed from this second model in some of his responses, Neville Clark also proceeded beyond the scholars in this group. But then, he failed to go as far as they do in other places. For examples, Clark pointed out the nature of the early creedal evidence for the resurrection appearances and emphasized the “indisputable facts” in their favor, including “the belief of the early church that he has risen.” This “reality . . . seems to defy definition but demand explanation.” This last assertion was because, like others taking this approach, he disliked naturalistic hypotheses. Yet Clark also seemed to differ in being a little more equivocal about the empty tomb and in questioning the bodily nature of Jesus’s appearances. Moreover, very much like the other scholars here, Clark held that the resurrection cannot be proven but can only be known to believers by faith.

Other scholars, like Helmut Thielicke, held similar views. For Thielicke, the resurrection is the center of the Christian faith and grounds Christian theology as a whole. Stated more strongly than some earlier scholars might have liked, this occurrence is definitely “established as a factual event, taking place within time and space,” even though inexplicably so. In spite of the presence of contradictions in the various texts (which Thielicke termed “quite edifying”), naturalistic theses cannot explain away the event itself. However, there is no objective proof to be had and, “the believer alone can apprehend this event. . . . Apart from this situation of faith, Easter is indeed unverifiable.” Still, for believers, it is exceptionally well attested.

These are the earmarks of this second model. Scholars within this model usually affirm the resurrection appearances and hold a more positive view toward them and often the empty tomb as well. Naturalistic hypotheses are also viewed as failed explanations. But neither the resurrection nor the appearances can be “proven” in any sense. These scholars eschew evidential verification, including photographs (even if cameras had been present in the first century) or any other sort of objectification. Rather, these events represent private occurrences that can only be apprehended, truly understood, or believed by the eye of faith. Especially for those closer to Barth’s position (who was apparently the pacesetter here), while these more miraculous events really happened, they did so in this undefined and undeveloped notion of history, seemingly a type of revelatory space where normal historical investigation cannot occur.

The third model consists of scholars who generally exhibit more significant interest in the actual aspects of the resurrection appearances themselves, although from a different angle. Like the researchers from the second model and even some of those from the first category, naturalistic theories are also rejected. Similar to those in the second model as well, these scholars quite often hold that the resurrection event can chiefly be known or appropriated by faith apart from evidential methods. But there are at least two significant dissimilarities between those who championed this third view and those who gravitated to the previous position. Scholars in this third group usually proceeded a step further, developing a more or less abstract reconstruction of the historical appearances of the risen Jesus. Additionally, they tended to produce a few arguments for the empty tomb being the best explanation for the data as opposed to the more straightforward faith approach.

The chief difference between these last two models, then, is the attempt by those in the third group to go beyond undifferentiated, generalized statements of resurrection faith without descriptions of the phenomena behind the New Testament texts in an effort to ascertain at least a minimal understanding of what really happened, including providing some details for the acceptance of Jesus’s appearances and the empty tomb. However, those constituting this third model still agreed that the resurrection was an eschatological event that was not demonstrable by historical methodology per se, although some held that this event will be verifiable in the future. The chief difference here is the willingness to identify some outward characteristics of the appearances while still holding that faith was not to be placed in these reconstructions per se.

The popularity of this third position derived most significantly from the 1956 publication of a volume on the resurrection by a German theologian at the University of Marburg, Hans Grass. Arguing that the Gospel depictions of Jesus’s corporeal resurrection appearances were legendary, Grass contended that the application of critical procedures to the New Testament texts nonetheless revealed that Jesus actually did appear to his disciples. Yet the appearances were of a more spiritual body that could not have been photographed. Unlike most of the scholars in this model, Grass also rejected the empty tomb accounts as legendary. Other researchers followed Grass’s lead in interpreting Jesus’s resurrection appearances as veridical visionary manifestations that truly occurred, rather than as physical phenomena.

Influential Tübingen University theologian Jürgen Moltmann likewise held that the disciples witnessed visionary appearances of the risen Jesus involving spoken messages that charged his followers with a mission of service in the world. These events were not verifiable but occurred in eschatological history that would be subject to future verification. Ulrich Wilkens likewise concluded that the historical process cannot determine exactly what happened. While naturalistic theories can be refuted and the historical facticity of the empty tomb upheld, Jesus’s appearances were private revelations, being indications of a future, eschatological existence.

Reginald Fuller’s chief work on this subject was a major, detailed effort that roughly did for English-speaking audiences what Grass’s volume did for Germans. Fuller insisted that the disciples’ thorough transformations necessitated an adequate explanatory cause. This cause was Jesus’s appearances, which are defined historically as visionary experiences of light accompanied by auditory messages communicated to the earliest witnesses. The messages both proclaimed that Jesus had been raised to a new eschatological existence and imparted a mission to his followers, such as Paul’s commission to preach to the gentiles. Such phenomena were not subjective visions but were actual experiences occasioned by an external source. But even though these appearances of Jesus provided the source of the Easter faith and message, these occurrences were removed from historical demonstration.

For Cambridge University’s Michael Perry, while there was no clear match between Jesus’s resurrection appearances and the phenomena studied in psychical research, these latter cases were still helpful in making certain comparisons. Intriguingly, Perry opts for the historicity of the empty tomb because the “historical evidence for it is powerful.” Yet he also appreciates the similarities with “spontaneous apparitions of the dead.” At the end of the day, however, Perry judged that the resurrection appearances were actual events that point to the believer’s resurrection.

In an exceptionally brief description, eminent German New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias similarly stated his view that the resurrection appearances of Jesus occurred as spiritual visions of shining light. Through these experiences, Jesus’s disciples experienced their teacher as the risen Lord.

Preferring to study the resurrection as a historical question, Roman Catholic theologian Gerald O’Collins postulated that Jesus’s appearances ought to be termed “Christophanies” since they involved manifestations of Jesus as “glorified and divinized as fully as that is possible.” Though he often produced reasons for his conclusions, similar to the others here, O’Collins held that these appearances cannot be known except by the exercise of faith. Throughout at least his earlier publications on Jesus’s resurrection appearances, O’Collins surprisingly stated little else about the actual nature of the appearances. They involved sight, although it is unclear if they were experiences of light, and they differed from other visions or revelatory encounters in the New Testament. While realizing that these comments were not very detailed, he held that “we have to follow the austere Pauline lead (1 Cor 15:5–8; Gal 1:12, 16).” Still, very helpfully, Collins emphasized the “language of sight,” which is a dominant feature in the major New Testament texts. Other scholars likewise concurred on these and other similar points.

In sum, the researchers included in the third model were among the first critical scholars to begin breaking away from the rather nonevidential molds of both Barth and Bultmann. Going even further back to the heart of nineteenth-century German liberalism (against which these two renowned German scholars also revolted), the few small steps taken by those within this third emerging model to unpack some of the historical details of the resurrection appearances were still quite crucial. Further, providing details regarding the nature of these objective visions was something that groups of scholars had hardly done in well over a century. Even though these researchers maintained the central importance of faith and some of them rejected the empty tomb, they presaged some changing times on the horizon.

The fourth model comprises scholars who held that the available textual and historical data were actually sufficient to demonstrate the probability both that Jesus’s burial tomb was discovered to be empty soon after his burial and that Jesus was raised from the dead and appeared literally to his followers. The naturalistic alternative theories fail to explain these events as well. But unlike any of the forgoing models (with the possible exception of a few individual scholars here and there), the scholars within this fourth model maintained that strong historical evidence could be assembled for these occurrences. History is an ally, and faith alone is not the best way to adjudicate these events.

The best-known theologian to detail these conclusions during this period was Wolfhart Pannenberg, who argued strongly against any naturalistic theories and who championed the hypothesis that God’s use of historical facts was his chief revelatory mode, hence promoting what came to be recognized as a strong reaction to the previous dominance of Barth and Bultmann on these subjects. Yet, Pannenberg tended to dismiss a corporeal resurrection body, instead favoring appearances that were described in terms of a spiritual body that appeared from heaven and was recognized as Jesus. He imparted to his followers an auditory message that, at least in Paul’s situation, was accompanied by a light phenomenon.

Somewhat similar to Pannenberg’s position in a few places while still holding a view that was not as carefully developed and stopped short of Pannenberg’s overall thesis, Richard R. Niebuhr took a few steps in this general direction. But the moves taken by Niebuhr remain significant given both the publication of his views before Pannenberg’s chief theses were generated and the initial emergence of a number of these elements, particularly as viewed against his background in the well-known Niebuhr family. Richard R. Niebuhr preferred a position on the resurrection appearances that at least drew somewhat upon historical investigation. The appearances are affirmed often as real historical events, and they were probably bodily in nature. Yet, hard evidence is available, hence indicating that there is a limited historical ability to probe the details of these events.

New Testament scholar A. M. Hunter employed textual considerations and applied some initial forms of historical investigation to conclude that Jesus’s tomb was empty and that his resurrection appearances were clearly indicated by the facts. New Testament theologian John A. T. Robinson pointed out that while historical studies cannot ascertain the exact details, they may be sufficient to formulate a probable case for this event. A premier American New Testament scholar, Raymond Brown, after conducting an extensive study of the textual data, likewise supported the facticity of the empty tomb as well as Jesus’s bodily resurrection appearances.

In a similar though less systematic manner, Leonhard Goppelt found that the available data favored both the empty tomb as well as the resurrection appearances of Jesus. He critiqued Hans Grass’s thesis in that it did not go far enough in its conclusions. A professor at both Cambridge and Durham who employed a more positive perspective on the Gospel traditions than some of his colleagues, A. M. Ramsey was even clearer in his defense of the empty tomb and Jesus’s appearances.

Though written a few years later, it would be worthwhile to mention one other view here. After a close look at the research, influential British theologian James D. G. Dunn examined the pros and cons for both the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances of Jesus. He concluded that it is almost impossible to reject the assertion that the disciples’ experienced visionary phenomena that cannot be explained by alternative natural hypotheses. Further, the empty tomb is “almost as difficult to deny.” In much more recent publications, Dunn continued to express similar conclusions.

The scholars constituting the fourth resurrection model broke even more demonstrably from the former theological movements than did the ideas expressed in the last group. On a greater scale, some influential scholars found that views such as Pannenberg’s Christology were the most creative and original in some forty years. This newly championed emphasis on the role of history is perhaps typified by Brown’s complaint that just because Jesus’s resurrection and exaltation alongside the giving of the Holy Spirit all have strong eschatological dimensions, this does not necessitate the removal of Jesus’s appearances from historical research. For sure, even though some of these scholars hedged on the bodily nature of Jesus’s appearances, it is more than obvious that several new ideas had now been placed on the table for further research and discussion.

The fifth and last model to be discussed here comprises scholars who agreed with the previous group that the historical and other evidence refutes naturalistic theories, that Jesus’s burial tomb was discovered to be empty very soon after his death, and that Jesus actually rose and then appeared alive to his followers. But the primary difference between this model and the prior two is that, additionally, the scholars in this fifth group held firmly to the position that Jesus rose and appeared bodily. Granted, there are many different conceptions of the term “body” as well as shades of meaning, frequently making this a difficult issue to decipher precisely.

For our purposes here, it will be specified that the chief notion utilized by those in this last group is the sense more or less described in the Gospels, though with occasional caveats. But it ought to be noted carefully that this view is generally not necessarily held because the Gospels state such a position but because it is often held increasingly by scholars at present that Paul also held a comparable view. On the one hand, these reports do describe several indications that Jesus’s body had been transformed in some sense. The stone walls did not impede Jesus leaving the burial tomb. He appeared and disappeared elsewhere as well. Additionally, he was not always recognized by those who saw him. Yet, he still rose and appeared in a physical body, with the wounds of Roman crucifixion still present.

It must be admitted that it is still sometimes difficult to ascertain who holds this general concept of Jesus’s resurrection body and who does not for more than one reason. Some of the scholars already discussed above also espouse the position that Jesus was raised bodily. This appears to be quite clear, for example, in the works of Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance. Although Marcus Barth, Goppelt, and Ramsey likewise make this point, at least the last two regard the view taken by Luke and John as being too drastic. In the case of Richard R. Niebuhr, though he affirms the historicity of the resurrection appearances, the bodily element is not quite as clear.

Many (though not necessarily all) of the scholars who constitute this fifth model were generally more conservative. One example of distinctive contributions by some of these scholars can be observed in the volumes they published on these subjects. Fuller Seminary professor George Eldon Ladd situated a defense of the resurrection within the context of a brief apologetic for both the Gospel passages as well as Paul’s testimony, one that faced squarely the contemporary critical challenges. Another Fuller Seminary professor, Daniel Fuller, presented a masterful survey of contemporary twentieth-century trends on the resurrection followed by championing the Luke-Acts corpus as an excellent means of answering critical objections. Both of these texts supported treatments of the empty tomb and the bodily nature of Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances.

At least one crucial observation describes some scholars whose views extend across all five of these models and thus should be mentioned here as well. Namely, a stream of sophisticated research has provided very intricate evaluations of the New Testament data concerning the sort of body in which Jesus’s early followers believed that he appeared after his resurrection. These observations and others like them have even grown in influence to the extent that these researchers across all five models have tended to move in the direction of embracing what has been identified as bodily appearances in the biblical accounts, even if the commentator making the point did not personally endorse that position. In other words, it has progressively been recognized that the New Testament witnesses regarded Jesus’s appearances as being bodily in nature, with different nuances among these commentators.

Robert Gundry’s influential work on New Testament anthropology included a chapter devoted to the crucial subject of Paul’s agreement with the Gospel authors regarding the nature of Jesus’s resurrection body. Gundry concluded, “Paul uses sōma precisely because the physicality of the resurrection is central to his soteriology.”

Later volumes devoted to this same theme have continued to emerge, arriving at quite similar conclusions on the New Testament teaching. These include massive works on the intricate meanings of the relevant terms, such as N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God and John Cook’s Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis. Wright asserts that the key terms for resurrection (such as anastasis and egeirō) had a constant bodily meaning “until we come to a new coinage in the second century.” The initial theme of Cook’s volume is that “there is no fundamental difference between Paul’s conception of the resurrection body and that of the Gospels.” These sources agree in concluding that even Paul viewed Jesus’s appearances as being bodily in nature. Likewise, Michael Licona’s The Resurrection of Jesus contains a detailed treatment of these matters. Licona’s conclusion, which is similar to Wright’s, is that no “known author from the eighth century B.C. through the third century A.D. employed these terms to contrast physical and immaterial bodies.” Thus, bodily events are often thought to be in view with regard to Jesus’s appearances. Other major works have added to these conclusions.

It must be noted carefully here once again that the issue being discussed is not whether or in what form Jesus may actually have appeared, but rather what the canonical authors are thought to have held on the subject of Jesus’s resurrection body. This conclusion alone is very important because the situation has essentially changed since the mid-twentieth-century ideas that have largely been discussed in this chapter.

At present, the overall current view has perhaps even reached the tipping point in this matter, with many scholars agreeing with the thesis that, at least for the earliest Christians, the primary view in the New Testament writings was that Jesus appeared bodily to his followers. At present, this view is shared by many recent scholars, including representatives from each of the five models introduced in this chapter, that is, across the entire liberal-conservative spectrum. This includes atheist, agnostic, and self-identified non-Christian researchers. Of course, such scholarly agreement does not make this view true, but it must be recognized that some major changes of opinion have emerged on this issue due not to any sort of headcount but to the textual data thought to account for these trends.

In sum, the fifth model holds many of the characteristics of the fourth, though exhibiting a firmer commitment to the historicity of the empty tomb, including developing further arguments for this event. The major distinctive here is the firm position regarding the bodily nature of Jesus’s resurrection appearances. Intriguingly, it was hardly realized by critical scholars at the time that this fifth emerging view would become a major critical position just a few decades later. This was not the overall position in the mid-twentieth century.

Conclusion

In retrospect, several significant observations may be drawn from across this overview of mid-twentieth-century resurrection models. One major conclusion derived from both this chapter as well as from discussions elsewhere in these volumes is that amid the opposition to the resurrection event characteristic of scholars categorized in the first model, the utilization of naturalistic theses that oppose this occurrence seems to have diminished significantly among them, and even more so moving into the twenty-first century. Scholars in the first model objected to the historicity of this event, but often did so without espousing specific alternative theses. This is particularly the case where a scholar was willing to embrace just a single hypothesis, including the possibility of having that view disproven.

A second aspect is found too commonly among both very influential scholars and less prominent writers during this period. Even while addressing the specific historical subjects that have most concerned us here, these authors tended to either utilize tendencies such as dialectical “back-and-forth” language or employ imprecise terms like “vision,” making it difficult to identify precisely their historical responses to the central questions being addressed. As a result, even a very experienced resurrection scholar who is used to such moves can still feel unsure publishing their description of another scholar’s views, despite having read over their work several times.

This can be a frustrating characteristic of some authors, perhaps as holdovers from the dialectical methods of the Barth and Bultmann eras when these tendencies were far more common. Now it is certainly possible that the reader is the one who missed something. However, it seems likely that on other occasions some authors may have been somewhat unsure of their own positions on the current state of the research or perhaps changed their view at some later time. Such propensities likewise could have occurred chiefly among those who do not wish to be labeled or pinned down on these difficult issues. Or perhaps the effort was to protect a position from the watchful eye of modern science. It is even likely that for some researchers, especially at the beginning of the breakaway from their former major German liberal professors, it was simply easier in human terms not to upset the status quo so completely. Others may simply have adjusted their positions later.

A third fascinating feature that emerges from the study of these resurrection models is that it could matter significantly when the individual works were written. For example, those scholars who were publishing in the 1950s and the early 1960s were far more likely to be quite reticent both in what stance they took as well as how they expressed it. The overall earlier tendency was not to express much exuberance or bombast when mentioning pro-historical comments or positive considerations in favor of Jesus’s resurrection appearances, but rather to discuss them only briefly, often with hints, and perhaps even downplay these angles just a bit. It seems that this hesitance might have disappeared entirely if the same author were writing on this subject just a couple of decades later. There were several times in reviewing these publications when taking a guess at the copyright date based on how the author expressed their views sometimes hit the vicinity quite closely.

A fourth observation is that some intriguing connections between these five models appear to have emerged, although it is difficult to be dogmatic here. The third group seems to be a more recent development growing out of the second, where it was seemingly concluded that Karl Barth and the others upon whom he had such a powerful influence placed too much emphasis on the disjunction between history and faith. In that sense it could be seen as a parallel move made by the Second Quest for the historical Jesus scholars as they similarly developed out from the so-called No Quest period led by Barth and Bultmann, due to the stated failure of these two luminaries to employ much historical investigation.

Model four is a more recent defense of the resurrection among critical scholars who might be viewed partially as reacting against the naturalistic assumptions held by those in the first model. Like the third model, the fourth also contains scholars who objected strenuously to the emphasis of those we located in the second model who opposed historical reasons for faith. But it did not proceed as far as the more traditional, often orthodox view represented by those constituting the fifth model, perhaps due to the latter placing more emphasis on the Gospel data. On the last point, it is rather intriguing that a few of N. T. Wright’s and Stephen Neill’s dozen developments they identified in New Testament studies since 1861 concern positive developments related to the state of Gospel study.

Conversely, models one and five may be viewed as direct antitheses with almost totally divergent views on the nature of the New Testament as a reliable historical document. Models two and four are also rivals on the issue of historicity, especially, as alluded to earlier, where the so-called Christology from below of the Pannenberg school was widely seen as a reaction to Barth’s and Emil Brunner’s Christology from above.

It is also very important to note that of these five models, only the first is specifically characterized by a rejection of (or an agnostic attitude toward) the resurrection and appearances of the risen Jesus. Each of the other four groups accepts the historicity of these events, in spite of downplaying the role of historical research by the second model, plus perhaps a few other caveats here and there.

Just as significant in terms of the last consideration is the observation that the first model is largely represented by those scholars who have lost the vast majority of their influence in recent decades. As indicated in the very first line of Carl F. H. Henry’s published interviews with many of the major early 1960s European theologians, “After ruling German theology for more than a decade, Rudolf Bultmann is no longer its king.”

True, other advocates of the nonhistoricity of the resurrection have taken up much of the slack. However, those engaged in the most recent research almost uniformly utilize different methods than those who held these views in the middle of the twentieth century. In other words, the more recent critical scholars have moved on to new territory. Still, the new skeptical researchers neither possess the magnetism nor the influence that Rudolf Bultmann’s views did during the mid-twentieth century. Moreover, varying positions that support the facticity of the resurrection appearances are presently much more popular than the highly skeptical positions.

Fifth and last, we alluded during this chapter to what some may view as quite a strange but largely uniform phenomenon in resurrection studies. Across all five models, there is a strong tendency throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century to find enormous amounts of meaning in the resurrection event, especially for practical application to Christian lives today. This quite intriguingly includes even some very skeptical thinkers for whom Jesus never rose in the first place! This trend extends to the majority of the researchers across all five models.

For example, Bultmann’s famous pronouncement is that even though Jesus’s resurrection is mythical, Jesus is somehow still risen in the church’s preaching. As he asserts: “Christ meets us in the preaching as one crucified and risen. He meets us in the word of preaching and nowhere else. The faith of Easter is just this—faith in the word of preaching.”

Another instance is Marxsen’s somewhat similar proclamation that “one cannot believe in the resurrection as an event which happened in the past.” So Marxsen ends his book Jesus and Easter with the proclamation that, as such, the resurrection “cannot provide any security for faith.” However, the key to “all of this is on the basis of Jesus’s invitation to faith. It is the living Lord who” can lead to the apprehension of truths such as our being able to “bring reconciliation,” forgiveness, brotherhood, peace, faith, and so on. Further, we can still claim, “To me he is still present. He, the Jesus whom God has raised from the dead, has led me into this faith.”

This rather incredible juxtaposition maintained by those who do not accept the historicity of this event but still make these and other moves from Jesus’s resurrection to theology, ethics, action, and involvement with others is simply amazing. But it is definitely a prominent feature of the contemporary theological landscape. The resurrection of Jesus has always “preached”!

Notes

Many additional texts for consideration might include Matt 12:38–40; Luke 24:45–48; Acts 4:2, 33; 17:30–31; and 1 Pet 1:3–9. The early sermon summaries likely contained in Acts 1–5, 10, 13, and 17, as well as the early pre-Pauline creeds such as Rom 1:3–4; 4:24–25; and 10:9 all center on the proclamation of the resurrection and definitely could be brought into these discussions too.

Willi Marxsen, The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, trans. Margaret Kohl (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970), 12.

Günther Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth, trans. Irene and Fraser McLuskey with James M. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 181.

Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, trans. J. W. Leitch (New York: Harper & Row, 1967) 165.

Marxsen denies typical Christian arguments, for instance, that because Jesus’s resurrection happened, other theological beliefs such as the believer’s resurrection will also follow directly (Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, 174, 184, 186), even though he recognizes that these sorts of teachings are certainly found in the New Testament (168–69 and elsewhere). This probably has much to do with his not holding to either Jesus’s literal resurrection (147) or the bodily resurrection of others (187). Still, perhaps strangely enough for those who think that only conservative Christians make these sorts of moves, Marxsen still sees some crucial benefits to truths in the present that, without being somehow “proven” by Jesus’s resurrection, are still related to it or follow from it. This includes beliefs that God somehow endorsed who Jesus was, the need for repentance, and the benefits of faith and hope for the future (esp. 125, 168–69, 187–88). We will address this subject in a later chapter, where it will be seen that, in a more recent work, Marxsen argues much more clearly that doctrine and practice do indeed follow in some sense from the resurrection.

The emphasis here is not so much on specific dates, though these will often be in view, but rather on the sweeping trends and eddies of the last century before 1975. The point here is not so much the formulations of hard and fast time demarcations as much as noting key tendencies in thought that predate and lead up to the time period with which the majority of this overall study is concerned, from approximately the last quarter of the twentieth century to today.

Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns, 6th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933).

Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. Douglas Horton (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956).

Barth, Word of God, mainly when he speaks of building the tower of Babel in chap. 1 (15, 20–24, 27) and also chap. 8 (282–83, 285, 323–24).

Barth, 11, 17, 167.

Barth, 24, 41, 45, 74–75, 168, 288.

Barth, 25, 27.

This is the theme of entire messages in Barth, Word of God, such as chaps. 2–4 as well as chap. 6 (199, 200, 214, 216) and chap. 7 (229–30, 235, 240–42, 247, 249, 266).

Barth, 226.

Barth, 195–96.

Barth, 285–86.

Such as the additional comments like those in Barth, 148–49, 197.

Barth complained, though rather mildly, concerning the New Testament scholars “who to my amazement have armed themselves with swords and staves and once again undertaken the search for the ‘historical Jesus’—a search in which I now as before prefer not to participate.” Karl Barth, How I Changed My Mind, trans. John D. Godsey (Richmond, VA: Knox, 1966), 69.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 4.1, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 335.

These three comments are all found just a few lines apart and are each included in the very same paragraph; see Barth, Epistle to the Romans, 30.

Barth, 195, cf. 203.

Barth, Word of God, 89–90.

Barth, Epistle to the Romans, 204. For other examples, see Barth, Word of God, 207, 216, 256.

Karl Barth, The Resurrection of the Dead, trans. H. J. Stenning (New York: Revell, 1933), 131–43. The two quotations are taken from 137 and 140.

Barth, 135–36.

Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1:336.

Barth, 4.1:351–52.

Godsey, “Preface,” in Barth, How I Changed My Mind, 3.

Godsey, “Portrait of Barth,” in Barth, How I Changed My Mind, 9.

Such as Daniel Jenkins, “Karl Barth,” in A Handbook of Christian Theologians, ed. Dean G. Peerman and Martin E. Marty (Cleveland: World, 1965), 396, 398, 409; Gregory W. Dawes, ed., “Karl Barth (1886–1968),” in The Historical Jesus Quest: Landmarks in the Search for the Jesus of History, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 268–70.

Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1:336, and esp. 351–52.

Barth, 4.1:300–301, 334, 336.

Barth, 4.1:336, and cf. his earlier Resurrection of the Dead, 134, 139.

J. W. C. Wand, Christianity: A Historical Religion? (Valley Forge, PA: Judson, 1972), 23.

This is what C.S. Lewis referred to as the backward direction of a miracle being linked to God, while its forward direction “is interlocked with all Nature just like any other event.” See Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 82–84, quotation on 82.

Barth refers to other options for explaining the resurrection and clearly rejects them. After listing many of them, he states: “To-day we rightly turn up our nose at this” not only because of “the many inconsistencies in detail” but because they fail in various other ways to be the best explanations of the existing reports. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1:340–41.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Lessing’s Theological Writings, ed. Henry Chadwick (London: Black, 1956), 53–55, esp. 55.

Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man, trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977), 99.

John Warwick Montgomery, History and Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1971), 87–88.

Montgomery, 106–7.

John Warwick Montgomery, Where Is History Going? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1969), 111–12, cf. 115.

In addition to Carl F. H. Henry, ed., Jesus of Nazareth: Saviour and Lord (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), 11–12, compare Henry’s comments in the dialogue on the resurrection in the appendix to Montgomery’s History and Christianity, 85, 96, 105; Daniel P. Fuller, Easter Faith and History (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 69, 71, 82–84; Bernard Ramm, A Handbook of Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), 90. Barth’s position in contrast to Bultmann’s here is summarized by Charles C. Anderson, Critical Quests of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969), 128–39. Clark Pinnock also agreed with what he considered to be contradictory aspects of Barth’s concepts in personal correspondence with the author, dated July 19, 1971.

Ramm, Handbook of Contemporary Theology, 90.

Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1:248–54, for instance; cf. Ramm, Handbook of Contemporary Theology, 16, 108.

Barth, 4.1:336, cf. 334–38, 353.

See Henry, Jesus of Nazareth, 10, where a similar criticism is developed.

However, the Barth who wrote The Resurrection of the Dead was closer to his former liberal days and made some strange comments. About the empty tomb, he states that whether it was truly empty or not “is really a matter of indifference” (135). Later (136–38), he makes the cryptic comment that perhaps some issues might drive us to the liberal side regarding the idea of visions. (Incidentally, Barth mentions both objective and subjective visions in this context, though without evaluating either.) There are aspects of this early Barth in The Resurrection of the Dead that one does not witness in Church Dogmatics, where he criticizes the subjective vision thesis (4.1:340).

This tendency to believe that the New Testament never intends to demonstrate that the resurrection happened is evident in both the early and the late Barth. Compare his Resurrection of the Dead, 131–38, with his later Church Dogmatics, 4.1:335, where many of the comments could even be switched with very little if any loss of meaning!

Rudolf Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” in Bultmann et al., Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch, trans. Reginald H. Fuller (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), 39.

Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel, 2 vols. (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1951, 1955), 1:82.

See Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1:334–36.

Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” 39.

Reginald H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 29.

Besides this portion and 1 Cor 15:3–8, see such passages as Matt 28:8–9; John 20:17 (in the Greek), 19–31; Acts 10:39–41. Bultmann also believes that the Gospels and Paul endeavor to provide evidence that Jesus had appeared to the apostles. Besides his recognition that 1 Cor 15:3–8 clearly does so, Bultmann likewise recognizes that Luke 24:39–43 is another good example of this tendency (“New Testament and Mythology,” 39).

This is admitted by both Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” 39, and by Marxsen, Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, 169. Marxsen notes that the preaching of repentance and belief in the lordship of Jesus are both based on the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, according to these verses.

Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 1:27.

Barth, Church Dogmatics, 1.4:335, see also 334–36.

Carl F. H. Henry, “Has Winter Come Again? Theological Transition in Europe,” Christianity Today, November 21, 1960, 3.

Henry was the editor of Christianity Today (and was himself an eminently qualified scholar in the fields of both philosophy and theology). He toured western Europe in the early 1960s to interview a large number of the leading, best-known theologians to assess areas such as current research trends along with matters of influence. The result was a very informative series of absolutely fascinating articles that appeared in this influential magazine. The articles were later included, along with some new material, in Henry’s volume Frontiers in Modern Theology: A Critique of Current Theological Trends (Chicago: Moody, 1965), see 13 for the citations from Brunner and Schlink. (The Barth and Brunner quotation above is on 11.)

Originally published in 1934, Rudolf Bultmann, “The Study of the Synoptic Gospels,” in Form Criticism: Two Essays on New Testament Research, trans. Frederick C. Grant (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962), 64.

Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” 34.

Bultmann, 38.

Bultmann, 39.

Bultmann, 34–35, 39.

Bultmann, 38–39.

Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1959), esp. 32–34, also 60–62, 80.

Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, esp. 1:305–6.

As per our earlier discussions in volume 1 on the philosophy of history, Bultmann demarcated some of the influences on him from the writings of Benedetto Croce and especially R. G. Collingwood, pertaining to the historian’s “participation in history.” This concerns topics such as the subjectivity of the historian’s conclusions and even some rather startling comments such as: “Therefore, historical research includes the readiness to hear the claim which meets one in the historical phenomena.” These requirements include “the demand for freedom from presuppositions, for an unprejudiced approach, which is valid for all science, is also valid for historical research. The historian is certainly not allowed to presuppose the results of his research, and he is obliged to keep back, to reduce to silence, his personal desires with regard to these results.” Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology: The Presence of Eternity (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 118–22, also chaps. 8 and 9, both on “The Nature of History.”

After our earlier treatment of Barth, we presented a critique primarily of his prehistorical interpretation of history with regard to Jesus’s resurrection. No separate critique was given for Bultmann since, unlike Barth, Bultmann rejected the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection and his appearances. Thus, as with other naturalists and those of similar positions, the response to Bultmann appears in the resurrection evidence presented in volume 1, plus the additional critiques throughout this present volume, since Bultmann made comments from time to time addressed by some of the chapters here.

Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” 38–39; Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 1:305–6.

Henry, Frontiers in Modern Theology, 13.

As per the comment of John Macquarrie in his essay “Rudolf Bultmann,” in Peerman and Marty, Handbook of Christian Theologians, 462.

Kümmel listed these mostly German scholarly groups as the conservatives, the Heilsgeschichte scholars, the post-Bultmannians, and the so-called Wolfhart Pannenberg school of thought. Then he listed some independent scholars who presumably did not fit very easily into any of these four categories. Some of these theological scholars were apparently listed in more than one of these groupings. See Henry, Frontiers in Modern Theology, 13–14.

Gerald O’Collins notes six contemporary interpretive models of Jesus’s resurrection, only one of which emphasizes the historical aspect. These categories emphasize the resurrection as history, redemption, revelation, the ground of faith, the ground of hope, and the ground of kerygma. See O’Collins, What Are They Saying about the Resurrection? (New York: Paulist, 1978), 7–34. On the other hand, we are basically dividing the historical question regarding the appearances into five distinct perspectives. However, in later sections of these volumes, especially volume 4, we will also turn to other angles that emphasize the relationship between the resurrection and theology, ministry, and even personal practice.

Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” 42. It should be noticed that Bultmann does not personally endorse these subjective visions here. He could well be open to them, but that he does not really endorse particular naturalistic hypotheses elsewhere in any detailed way is a further indication that such is not his intent.

Marxsen, Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, chaps. 3–4, esp. 77, 96, 111, 119, 147, 152.

Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 1:84, 86. Another tendency to notice here is that while those influenced by Bultmann, such as his pupil Koester, usually acknowledged that the resurrection event, however it is taken, is the center of Christian belief (as Marxsen, Bornkamm, and Koester all indicated above), they often comment very little regarding it. Koester’s two large volumes and Bultmann’s own two-volume New Testament theology say exceptionally little about the resurrection. But how is this the case in a multivolume New Testament introduction or theology when it is the central focus point in the development of the historical Christian faith? Or how can Koester assert above that “the resurrection revealed nothing new”? How can this be the case when it opened a new door for the Christian church and propelled it in a new direction? It seems that we see here the influence of how worldviews often trump the data. When historical events, and supernatural ones in particular, impinge on our thinking in such a central way that we cannot speak of the development of entire movements without them, which we largely ignore in practice, it would seem that these are quite revealing scenarios. In fact, these tendencies seem to shout the disparity between the founding event and one’s theory. Needless to say, something is deficient here.

Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, trans. E. Quinn (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 348–53.

Paul Van Buren, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 126–34.

C. F. Evans, Resurrection and the New Testament (London: SCM, 1970), esp. 130, including the critical view that exaltation preceded resurrection as the earliest Christian position (136–43). O’Collins (What Are They Saying, 12) concurs in this interpretation of Evans’s view.

Some of Hans Conzelmann’s thoughts on the resurrection appearances are found in his 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, trans. J. Leitch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 251.

Of course, some scholars still hold similar views, including dismissals of supernatural events, frequent denials of the empty tomb, and resistance to the actual resurrection appearances. Yet, embracing specific naturalistic theories and taking a stand there still remains the minority option at present. This should all become more obvious when we look at views of scholars such as Thomas Sheehan, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and Bart Ehrman.

This opens the possibility that Perrin had actually moved from the most skeptical position to being a proponent of the third model below.

Norman Perrin, The Resurrection according to Matthew, Mark and Luke (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 78–84.

Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2:84.

It is difficult in all examples below to ascertain precisely which scholars espouse faith in literal resurrection appearances of Jesus to his followers because some of these authors do not answer the question directly. But it is sufficiently clear in most cases here.

See especially Søren Kierkegaard’s works Philosophical Fragments, trans. David F. Swenson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), chaps. 3–4; and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), chap. 1, and 86, 188–90. In a number of usually philosophical sources, the twentieth-century witnessed a huge shift as to whether, or to what extent, Kierkegaard really deserved to be treated as a forerunner to scholarly views such as those of Barth and Bultmann in their fideist (or fideist-like) positions on the epistemic value or even the usefulness of history as an evidential ally for Christian truth. On the newer position, see Stephen F. Evans, “Apologetic Arguments in Philosophical Fragments,” in Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1994), chap. 4, esp. 82–83; Evans, Passionate Reason: Making Sense of Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). While doubting but not contesting such a position on Kierkegaard, a more practical solution may be twofold: (1) Even if Kierkegaard is ultimately not guilty of teaching this anti-evidential view of history, and if the proper angle depends on his frequent use of pseudonyms and other rather obscure notions that only philosophers could basically decipher and figure out, and with perhaps a few exceptions only in the twentieth century, then Kierkegaard himself is apparently in for a good deal of the blame for the misinterpretations and misunderstandings of his views. After all, some of Kierkegaard’s publications, such as those listed above, certainly display much of the “old” language. (2) Perhaps more importantly for our purposes, even if the new view of Kierkegaard is completely correct, at least much of the interpretation by Barth, Bultmann, and their colleagues took the old interpretation of Kierkegaard, thinking that these were plainly Kierkegaard’s own positions. So at the very least, according to their interpretations, Kierkegaard was interpreted as inspiring many of their notions at this point.

The progress in Barth’s ideas on this subject is both very intriguing and informative. Barth’s most authoritative statement of these views is found in Church Dogmatics, esp. 1.4:334–36, 351–52. The quotations above are from 334 and 335, respectively.

See, for instance, Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, vol. 2 of Dogmatics, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1952), 366–72.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, trans. John Bowden (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 71–77.

Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and History: A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of History (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 145–50.

The contrast exhibited in Niebuhr’s Faith and History plus various comments by Barth are examples of some of the difficulties involved in ascertaining the precise differences regarding how these researchers defined the respective realms in which they surmised that Jesus’s crucifixion and his resurrection are thought to have occurred. This lack of clarification was a common feature with members of this school of thought and was presumably due to the seemingly steadfast refusal by these scholars to define or quantify these or various other notions. Specifications are virtually never provided in the relevant resurrection literature, perhaps being due to factors such as the dialectic nature of their message, the lack of clarity among these researchers themselves, the resistance concerning measuring and specifying such ideas, or even the realization that making such distinctions would be very difficult to parcel out, clarify, and defend. A fair guess as to the meaning from some of these writings might be that whereas the crucifixion was virtually always taken as a straightforward historical event, the resurrection was viewed as a revelatory occurrence, and God’s revelation is not open to investigation. If this demarcation is anywhere close to the mark, it should be added that this distinction would be true whether the particular scholar held that the resurrection actually occurred, as with Barth, or if it were either doubted or denied, as with Niebuhr. In all cases, the resurrection was revelatory, should not be evidenced and, in the end, was basically almost inscrutable.

Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth, 180–86.

Niebuhr, Faith and History, 147.

See chap. 3 of Karl Rahner, Belief Today, vol. 3 of Theological Meditations (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1967), 127.

Marcus Barth and Verne H. Fletcher, Acquittal by Resurrection (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964), vi–vii. Compare 14–15, 29 with 25, 31 for this contrast. An intriguing parallel is found in Karl Barth, Resurrection of the Dead, esp. 134, cf. 131–42.

T. F. Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 86–88, cf. also 21, 89–91, 94–95, 171–75.

Torrance, 95n8.

Karl Barth, The Faith of the Church, trans. Gabriel Vahanian, ed. J. L. Leuba (New York: Meridian, 1958), 105–8.

Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 18–19, also 220.

Neville Clark, Interpreting the Resurrection (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967), 96.

Clark, 89–91, 97–98, 100, 104.

Clark, 93–95, 98–99, 104.

For instance, see Helmut Thielicke, “The Resurrection Kerygma,” in Leonhard Goppelt, Helmut Thielicke, and Hans-Rudolf Müller-Schwefe, The Easter Message Today: Three Essays, trans. Salvator Attanasio and Darrell Likens Guder (New York: Nelson, 1964), esp. 59, 61, 70–73, 77. On the inability of critical hypotheses to disprove the resurrection, which is one of Thielicke’s chief emphases, see 72, 77–78, 81–91, 103–4. For another of his themes of the resurrection grounding Christian theology, see 59–61, 76, 80, 91.

This is not to imply that these third model scholars approved or engaged in the practice of apologetic argumentation, for this was not the case. Whatever their intent at this point, there was nonetheless a tendency among some of these researchers to provide reasons, including what might be considered defenses of their position, in contrast to the absence of this activity in the second model.

Hans Grass, Ostergeschehen und Osterberichte, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962), 93, 226–49, also 232.

Grass, 93.

The term “visions” is perhaps more often than not employed without sufficient care. We are not utilizing the word here as a synonym for hallucinations or some entirely subjective phenomena. The scholarly discussions differentiate between subjective and objective visions, with the initial experiences being closer to the subjective, internal variety, while the latter type are like Grass’s view and were thought to be actual appearances of a less than physical body, perhaps accompanied by light. This more visionary notion of Jesus’s appearances explains, for instance, why the literal empty tomb was considered to be superfluous.

Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, trans. J. W. Leitch (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 172, 181, 188, 190, 197–98, 202; Moltmann, Religion, Revolution and the Future, trans. M. D. Meeks (New York: Scribner’s, 1969), 49–55.

Ulrich Wilckens, Resurrection: Biblical Testimony to the Resurrection. An Historical Examination and Explanation, trans. A. M. Stewart (Atlanta: Knox, 1978), particularly 116–25.

Fuller, Formation of the Resurrection Narratives, 46–49, 169–72, 181.

In fact, Perry finds much disparity between psychical theses and the resurrection appearances. See Michael C. Perry, The Easter Enigma (London: Faber & Faber, 1959), 125, 157, 175–88, 190, 239–40.

Perry, 228, also 101–2, 218–28.

Perry, 157, 171, 240–41. More than once, Perry mentions Jesus’s being raised bodily (194–95, 240–41) but seems to settle, all things considered, for less than real bodily events (157, 171, 196, 240–41). Even the striking possibility of more than one type of bodily appearance is at least alluded to as a possible position in the early church (238). How this fits with the empty tomb, which Perry clearly appears to hold, is difficult to tell. Admittedly, there is much skipping back and forth in this volume, and if some potential areas of confusion have been noticed in this brief discussion, it is most likely because such confusion exists! In fact, Perry seems to state or at least infer that he has not always landed on unchanging conclusions either (241–43)!

Joachim Jeremias, “Easter: The Earliest Tradition and the Earliest Interpretation,” in New Testament Theology, trans. John Bowden (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), esp. 308–9.

O’Collins, What Are They Saying, 14, 55, 62.

These clarifications are made in O’Collins’s responses to the emphases of Reginald Fuller, Pheme Perkins, and Hans Kessler. See Gerald O’Collins, Interpreting the Resurrection: Examining the Major Problems in the Stories of Jesus’ Resurrection (Mahweh, NJ: Paulist, 1988), 5–21.

O’Collins, 20.

Though chiefly in books subsequent to the period that we are considering here, see the examples in O’Collins’s volumes Interpreting Jesus (London: Chapman, 1983), 112–14, 116–17, 122–23; Jesus Risen: The Resurrection—What Actually Happened and What Does It Mean? (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1987), 118–19; and Interpreting the Resurrection, 12–19.

It also seems likely that Cambridge University professor G. W. H. Lampe could probably best be construed as taking a similar position to others in this third model. Like Grass, Lampe holds that the Christian teaching of the empty tomb is a myth (17, 40, 53, 58–59). Although very few details are provided, Jesus’s appearances were nonbodily in nature (15, 39, 59), and these appearances cannot be proven in any way but only accepted by faith (32–33, 36–37, 58). Yet, these occurrences were probably not hallucinations (19–20, 37–38), and they are the best reason for holding that believers will also rise from the dead (58–60, 98). Page citations from G. W. H. Lampe and D. M. MacKinnon, The Resurrection: A Dialogue, ed. William Purcell (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966). Rather incredibly, in a slightly later publication where the specifics of his precise position are difficult to identify at a few specific points, Jewish New Testament scholar Pinchas Lapide firmly accepts the facticity of Jesus’s resurrection and his subsequent appearances, even though they are recognized by faith. Further, he also provides good reasons to accept these conclusions. See Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983), esp. 92, 95–99, 118, 125, 127–28.

Most notably, Wolfhart Pannenberg et al., Offenbarung als Geschichte, ed. Wolfhart Pannenberg (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), as pointed out on 132 in particular. The English version is Revelation as History, trans. David Granskou (New York: Macmillan, 1968), esp. Pannenberg’s “Introduction,” 1–21.

See particularly Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man, 88–106, esp. 92–93 for details.

His father was the well-known professor H. Richard Niebuhr of Yale University Divinity School, while his uncle was the even more influential Reinhold Niebuhr, professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary—both of whom were also close to previous conversations on a few of these matters.

Richard R. Niebuhr, Resurrection and Historical Reason: A Study in Theological Method (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1957), 23, 95, 171, 175–78. Both Evans (Resurrection and the New Testament, 177) and Daniel Fuller (Easter Faith and History, 172–77) were among the researchers who discussed aspects of Niebuhr’s position on the historicity of the resurrection appearances while offering critiques.

For example, see A. M. Hunter, Jesus: Lord and Savior (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 98–107; Hunter, Bible and Gospel (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), chap. 10.

John A. T. Robinson, Can We Trust the New Testament? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 120–29. For an earlier, positive comment on the evidence for the empty tomb, see Robinson, Exploration into God (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 113. This comment was made during the Raymond Fred West Memorial Lectures at Stanford University in 1966.

Raymond E. Brown, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist, 1973), 125–29. For a brief article that makes many strong and helpful comments, see Brown, “The Resurrection and Biblical Criticism,” Commonweal, November 24, 1967, 232–36.

Leonhard Goppelt, “The Easter Kerygma in the New Testament,” in Goppelt, Thielicke, and Müller-Schwefe, Easter Message Today, 44–52.

A. M. Ramsey, The Resurrection of Christ (London: Collins, 1961), 35–74.

James D. G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985), 66–78.

James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, vol. 1 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 828–41, 855, 864–65, 873–79, 882; Dunn, Why Believe in Jesus’ Resurrection? (London: SPCK, 2016), 31–34, 39–40.

Such as the comments by theologians Carl E. Braaten and even John B. Cobb Jr. on the dust jacket of the first English edition of Pannenberg’s volume, Jesus: God and Man.

Brown, Virginal Conception, 125–26.

This important topic is discussed in more detail in volume 4 of this study.

As noted above, these five positions incorporate a number of close nuances. Some interpreters may well even conclude that there is too narrow a focus precisely at this point and collapse the fifth model back into the fourth. Or as a sort of halfway position, this fifth view could be categorized as a development of the previous view and treated as a subcategory.

See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1:351–42; Torrance, Space, Time, and Resur­rection, 26, 164, 171.

Goppelt, “Easter Kerygma in the New Testament,” 43, 47–49; Ramsey, Resurrection of Christ, 108–9; cf. M. Barth and Fletcher, Acquittal by Resurrection, vi, 9, 11.

Niebuhr, Resurrection and Historical Reason, 175.

It could likewise be remarked here that this is in contrast to the first model above, which consisted of positions that were generally held almost entirely by nonconservative scholars, while the other three models may be viewed as various stages between these two positions.

George Eldon Ladd, I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), see chaps. 7–8 in particular.

Daniel P. Fuller, Easter Faith and History (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), esp. chaps. 7–8.

Robert Gundry, Sōma in Biblical Theology: With Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976; repr., Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987), esp. chap. 13, entitled “The Sōma in Death and Resurrection.”

N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 3:85–398, featuring crucial ideas here on xvii, xix, 31, 71, 82–83, 201–6, 273, 314, 321, 350–74, 414, 476–79; John Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 1, 54–55, 591, 618, 623, and elsewhere throughout this text.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 31 and elsewhere.

Cook, Empty Tomb, 1.

Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 2010), with his linguistic study on 400–437.

Licona, 416.

For just a few more of these sources that at least lean in this general direction, see Brown, Virginal Conception, 85–92; Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, xi, 87, 164, 171; William Lane Craig, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1989), 158, 393–95, cf. 345–46; cf. also Andrew Loke’s conclusions in his Investigating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: A New Transdisciplinary Approach (Oxford: Routledge, 2020), 201–6; and in Loke, “The Resurrection of Jesus: An Engagement with Dale Allison: A Review Essay,” in Philosophia Christi 24 (2022): 121–38, particularly 125–26. Michael R. Licona even thinks that the bodily aspect of Jesus’s postresurrection appearances is strong enough according to recent scholars to consider the inclusion of this notion as a minimal fact; see Licona, “In Reply to Habermas, McGrew, and McCullagh,” Southeastern Theological Review 3 (2012): 55–56. In the volume Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments, ed. Ted Peters, Robert John Russell, and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), several of the authors favor these more bodily elements in the resurrection appearances of Jesus, with this aspect also being extended to Jesus’s followers. See in this volume Robert John Russell, “Bodily Resurrection, Eschatology, and Scientific Cosmology: The Mutual Interaction of Christian Theology and Science,” 25; Michael Welker, “Theological Realism and Eschatological Symbol Systems,” 38; John Polkinghorne, “Eschatological Credibility: Emergent and Teleological Processes,” 49; Jeffrey P. Schloss, “From Evolution to Eschatology,” 69–71; Peter Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body,” 105–10; and Hans-Joachim Eckstein, “Bodily Resurrection in Luke,” 116–23.

Some of the very critical scholars who basically agree on this view, as categorized above, include Dale C. Allison Jr., The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (London: T&T Clark, 2021), 131–36, 224–25; Allison, Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 317, 324–25; John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom. A New Vision of Paul’s Words and World (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 6–10, 173, 296, 341–45; Gerd Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 35, 177, 200–201n145; Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperCollins, 2014), 132–33, 168–69, 176–78; cf. Geza Vermes, The Resurrection (London: Penguin, 2008), 6–7, 75–78, 134.

It is noteworthy that two of the best-known critical scholars who embraced single naturalistic resurrection theses, Gerd Lüdemann and John Shelby Spong, both passed away in 2021, leaving even fewer of those who made these choices.

For example, as already noted, in his early work Barth had the habit of answering questions regarding the historicity of the resurrection with both yes and no responses. An instance could be taken from Barth’s famous 1918 commentary, The Epistle to the Romans, where he entertains the historical question pertaining to Jesus’s resurrection and refers to “the see-saw of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ . . . which is characteristic of all that happens on the historical plane” (204). In his 1920 address, “Biblical Questions, Insights, and Vistas,” Barth stated his early views on this subject: “The resurrection of Christ . . . is not a historical event . . . though it is the only real happening in is not a real happening of history” (Word of God, 90). Many readers, it is feared, would respond after reading these last words with “Huh?” accompanied at the very least by a shrug of the shoulders. Then in his 1922 address, “The Word of God and the Task of the Ministry,” we have still other instances where Barth also applies his yes and no response to issues (Word of God, 207, 216).

While not as commonly as with Barth, Bultmann’s ambiguity was often manifest in his constant interchanging of the German terms geschichtlich and historisch, the translations of which need constantly to be kept in mind at the risk of severely misunderstanding a discussion on the historicity of the event in question. In Bultmann’s essay “New Testament and Mythology,” where the gospel message is the focus esp. on page 37, the translator supplies the German terms in an attempt to keep confusion to a minimum. This also might be contrasted with Hans Küng’s yes and no response while addressing the question of bodily resurrection in his Eternal Life? Life after Death as a Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem, trans. Edward Quinn (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 111.

Another scholar who was at least a candidate for these difficult expressions in his resurrection view is John Hick in his volume Death and Eternal Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), esp. 171–77. (A new edition of this book was published by Westminster John Knox in 1994, including the same pagination in both editions.) This situation was at least doubly puzzling in Hick’s case because, in another of his books published at about the same time as the earlier edition here, he appeared to report his view quite differently; see Hick, The Center of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 25–26. Then, in a dialogue that we had on the historicity of the resurrection appearances (along with a few other scholars) just a few years later at Louisiana State University, Hick concluded by espousing an entirely different position from his response in The Center of Christianity, favoring a view that is probably closest to our third model in this chapter!

Still another candidate for such a difficulty of expression was Hans Küng, especially in his views on the resurrection found in two of his volumes (On Being a Christian, 348–53; Eternal Life?, 91–112) where his positions are contrasted. A lesser-known example is that of James McLeman, Resurrection Then and Now (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1967), esp. chaps. 12–18, where many of our key historical issues of interest are discussed.

Most of these moves appear to have migrated in the direction toward greater acceptance of the resurrection’s historicity, as will be noted below, because these were the overall predominant trends in both theology as a whole as well as with the specific resurrection questions. Of course, these views could have moved in the other direction as well, from more to less historical views. An example of the latter was theologian William Hamilton, whose early, popularly written little commentaries on the Gospels still mildly registered some critical points here and there but plainly affirmed the resurrection and appearances of Jesus in historical terms. See Hamilton’s The Modern Reader’s Guide to Mark (New York: Association, 1959), 121–25; or his The Modern Reader’s Guide to John (New York: Association, 1959), 119–24. Of the two, his historical comments on Mark are slightly more positive. In a more scholarly volume, Hamilton still affirmed the following strongly worded comments in 1961: “I find myself in fairly strenuous opposition to that tradition in contemporary theology which denies the resurrection as an ordinary event on the one hand, while giving it a profound existential meaning on the other.” Continuing, he stated rather clearly, “I believe that the resurrection of Jesus can be affirmed as an ordinary event; the empty tomb tradition, at least, seems to me to contain historical material of a high degree of probability.” Then he drew these comments together: “But there can be no meaning for faith, I am sure, without this historical texture.” See William Hamilton, The New Essence of Christianity: Laying Claim to Those Few Things That Are Certain (New York: Association, 1961), 115–16n34. But Hamilton grew more and more “radical” in later years, even being one of the better-known proponents of the Death of God movement during the 1960s. One of his works that is quite far removed from the ones just mentioned was coauthored with Thomas J. J. Altizer, Radical Theology and the Death of God (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966). Another is William Hamilton’s On Taking God out of the Dictionary (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974).

An example of a slight move in the opposite direction from more to less skepticism is that of influential New Testament scholar Willi Marxsen, listed in our first model in this chapter and whose volume The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth has been mentioned above. Later in his career, he wrote another text on the same subject entitled Jesus and Easter: Did God Raise the Historical Jesus from the Dead?, trans. Victor Paul Furnish (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), one that is more measured and a little more positive in its conclusions, tending away from some of his earlier, more radical comments that were somewhat in the direction of agnosticism.

This is not to say that there is antipathy between the scholars of the fourth and fifth models over the historical nature of the four canonical Gospels. Actually, many scholarly volumes that are not easily labeled as to their theological stripe have made major advances in recent years by defending the historicity of the Gospels, either as a whole or in part. Just a very small group of such instances would include Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Evidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered; Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, vol. 2 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009); Dunn, The Oral Gospel Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013). Some older critical texts also exhibited some of these positive characteristics as well, such as A. T. Hunter, Bible and Gospel, and John A. T. Robinson’s Can We Trust the Gospels?, both mentioned above, plus Robinson’s magnum opus, The Priority of John, ed. J. F. Coakley (London: SCM, 1985).

Stephen Neill and Tom Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861–1986, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 360–64.

Henry states, “Pannenberg represents the farthest contemporary break from Barth and Bultmann and the dialectical theology.” See Henry, Frontiers in Modern Theology, 40.

Once again, as mentioned at the outset, the overview in this chapter was broad, hence necessitating generalities rather than detailed expositions of these five positions. Concerning the second group in particular, it has already been noted specifically that it is difficult to ascertain in all instances whether or not the resurrection is actually being affirmed as a literal event due to the language employed. However, since many in this group do indeed accept a literal resurrection, rejecting this event is therefore not some sort of internal characteristic of the second group as a whole, as it is with the first.

It needs to be emphasized that even the Barthian school (and most certainly Barth himself) did not necessarily reject the resurrection as a historical event. Though sometimes placing this event’s factual status in another, undefined historical realm, as we have seen, this model’s chief issue was the concern over the search for historical data, evidence, and what it thought was the downplaying of the importance of faith and revelation.

Henry, Frontiers in Modern Theology, 9.

Only Karl Barth surpassed Bultmann in influence during the twentieth century. Interestingly, Barth’s views also appear to be much more popular and influential today than are Bultmann’s. This is especially true in places such as graduate schools and seminaries where many of Barth’s ideas are still in vogue.

Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” 41. Comments like this can be found throughout Bultmann’s writings. Thomas Oden pointed out that, for Bultmann, the Christ event is the key to Christian ethics as well, not in the sense of God breaking into the natural or historical world with a miracle, which cannot be taken seriously. Nor can such acts be demonstrated in any way as historical fact. Rather, these realities are known only to “the eye of faith” since only faith apprehends their meaning. But Oden stated that he was not going to inquire in detail as to the specific nature of the Christ event. Thomas C. Oden, Radical Obedience: The Ethics of Rudolf Bultmann (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964), esp. 82–88. Rudolf Bultmann wrote a response in the same volume, expressing his appreciation for the clear and accurate portrayal of his views, though with some caveats (141–47, particularly 144, 147).

Marxsen, Jesus and Easter, 42.

Marxsen, 91–92.

Two more nonskeptical scholars from this time period who also developed detailed theses especially on the theological significance of the resurrection include G. Ernest Thomas, The Meaning of the Resurrection in Christian Experience (Nashville: Tidings, 1964); and Laurence W. Miller, Jesus Christ Is Alive! (Boston: Wilde, 1949).

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