X. Moving from Resurrection to Theology
X. Moving from Resurrection to Theology
1. GOD AND THE CONFIRMATION OF JESUS
A. General Comments
1. Avis: Avis argues that the basis of faith in the resurrection is that Jesus was one with God.
2. Bauckham: Writes on the close connection between God, faith, Jesus’s resurrection, and our hope of resurrection. The God who raises the dead is sovereign over all life. Jesus preached a radical faith in God.
3. Brown: Colin Brown observes that Jesus’s resurrection is the “ultimate vindication by God the Father of Jesus,” whose ministry was also attested during his life by miracles. Without the resurrection, Christians would be misrepresenting God.
4. Davis: Says the resurrection means that God will triumph over all His enemies.
5. Dawe: For believers, Dawe says, the resurrection is vindication of Jesus and that even death is not beyond God’s power.
6. Goergen: States the resurrection is an act of God, since God has the power of death and it is God who raised Jesus. Accordingly, Jesus was also “vindicated by God.” This event also “disclosed Jesus as God’s chosen one.”
7. Grant: For believers, Grant holds the resurrection was “utterly satisfying evidence” of divine power in the world.
8. Hebblethwaite: Hebblethwaite relates Jesus’s resurrection to evidence for the incarnation and its uniqueness and meaning, as well as eschatology and morals.
9. Lorenzen: Says the resurrection shapes our conception of God. By raising Jesus, “God affirmed and validated Jesus’ understanding of God.”
10. O’Collins: In his chapter in Avis’s edited volume, O’Collins offers some initial thoughts on God’s special acting in history in the resurrection. He is more detailed in his treatment of God acting in history elsewhere. O’Collins thinks these links need more development. Further thoughts on the resurrection to the Trinity are also provided. Jesus himself thought that there would be “divine vindication of his message.”
11. Oden: Says Jesus’s resurrection was the act of a “triune God.”
12. Rowland: Notes the resurrection provides a connection between Jesus’s ministry and the preaching about him. The Acts speeches refer to the resurrection as God’s vindication of Jesus.
13. Talbert: For Luke, Talbert says, the resurrection showed God’s ap-proval of Jesus, while the crucifixion was the human disapproval.
14. Thatcher: States the resurrection was the work of a divine agent who “had good reasons” for their action (only God knows what they are).
15. Wells: Wells notes that both Flew and I (Habermas) seem to agree that if Jesus was raised, then it would prove Jesus’s deity, but that this wasn’t the New Testament view.
16. Wilckens: Claims the resurrection meant that God identified Jesus as the “Righetous One” and the Messiah. Jesus’s resurrection also shows God’s validation of Jesus’s ministry. It was “God’s final decision.”
B. Divine Action Pattern
1. General Comments
A) Baxter: Within the miraculous option, a number of items need to be considered along with the events themselves, which “include features of Jesus’ teaching, actions, and impact . . . reconstructed by oneself studying ordinarily as historian and exegete.”
B) Beckwith: Beckwith says a miraculous event is identified when the event is (1) scientifically inexplicable, (2) happens in a significant religio-historical context, and (3) is performed by a god. This also can serve as confirmation of a message or communication of information.
C) Craig: On the miraculous nature of the resurrection, he states that nobody suggests that Jesus rose from the dead by only natural means. There are two reasons for this: (1) the resurrection is such a clearly unnatural event that it is understood to be a supernatural event (because Jesus was transformed, not merely resuscitated). (2) The supernatural explanation makes sense in the religious context in which it occurred.
D) Cupitt: Cupitt objects that Moule’s argument for the objectivity of the appearances is circular because it argues from (1) the disciples’ purely historical experiences, (2) to God’s causation, (3) to God’s confirmation of the original experiences. (Question: Does [or at least must] Moule make move 3? It seems that step 3 is more properly from step 1 to other doctrines or truths [although it is far from clear that this is what Cupitt means; it seems, rather, that Cupitt simply missed the sense of step 3].)
E) Davis: Says a miracle would have to be understood within a divine context.
F) Dawson: Dawson moves from Jesus’s resurrection to the existence of God, the person of Jesus, “a spiritual world,” and life after death.
G) Griffith: Griffith notes that the belief that Jesus was raised by God “is obviously more complex” than the issue of whether Jesus was raised from the dead, but it is beyond his present topic “to discuss the additional considerations which would need to be taken into account.”
H) Gundry: Gundry says we need “theological and philosophical argumentation” to show that God performed the resurrection.
I) Habermas and Flew: Both discuss some of the parameters of this topic.
J) Hebblethwaite: Summarizing six unique components which, together, might account for Jesus’s uniqueness, Hebblethwaite contends that these features combined to contribute to belief in Jesus’s deity. Directly afterward, Hebblethwaite states that these components are historical. He also says that there is nothing comparable to these circumstances.
K) Kannengiesser: Says the resurrection proves “divine action” in several areas, such as Jesus as Savior, Messiah, and salvation.
L) Moreland: Moreland says there are a number of features that provide the “interpretive grid” for Jesus’s resurrection.
M) Packer: Says the resurrection would benefit from being understood in the context of Israel’s history as well as Jesus’s ministry.
N) Pannenberg: Claims the resurrection provides an interpretive framework for the life and ministry of Jesus. Pannenberg also points out that there was a linguistic framework for the disciples’ experiences found in the word “resurrection,” and this is what the disciples used to interpret their experiences.
O) Thatcher: Thatcher indicates that Jesus’s resurrection, if it occurred, would make sense of certain claims Jesus made during his ministry.
P) Wright: Wright notes that a resurrection alone would not lead one to conclude that the person was a savior or the Son of God or anything specific. This is not what happened, however, because Jesus’s resurrection confirmed “what Jesus was already believed to be.” Resurrection demonstrated to all that the pagan views were wrong and it was now time to “bow the knee before the true God.” One could believe, albeit paradoxically, that God’s kingdom had arrived if Jesus were vindicated by the resurrection after the crucifixion. It was the resurrection that led the disciples to understand that Jesus was something more than a possible messiah.
2. Jesus’s Life and Resurrection Combined
A) Barnett: Along with a life filled with miracles, Barnett says the resurrection signified that Jesus was “the Messiah, qualified to save others.”
B) Wright: Wright observes that Jesus’s ministry and resurrection could only make the effect they did together because, “by themselves,” they never would have happened.
3. Jesus as Miracle Worker
A) Twelftree: Twelftree is quite clear that Jesus was a miracle worker and that this conclusion is not one based simply upon faith. These miracles also reveal Jesus’s “identity as God himself at work: indeed, God is encountered in the miracles. Thus the miraculous activity of Jesus is the eschatological work and message of salvation.”
2. GENERAL CONFIRMATION OF JESUS
A. Barnett: In short, “the resurrection must have made everything Jesus had said and done beforehand fall into place . . . so as to provide the ultimate explanation of his identity.” Barnett says it is “basic” to the understanding of the earliest disciples that the resurrection gave credibility to Jesus as the Messiah. Ultimately, Jesus’s resurrection demonstrated that Jesus was not only the Messiah but was also able to save.
B. Bird: Bird makes some excellent comments regarding how the resurrection confirmed who Jesus was as well as Jesus’s message.
C. Borg: Supports the idea that the resurrection was “God’s yes to Jesus,” not in the sense of confirming doctrine but in a “comprehensive sense.”
D. Brown: Colin Brown points out that the resurrection is the “ultimate vindication” of Jesus by God. Jesus’s resurrection is a “seal” on all that Jesus said and did as being consistent with the work of God.
E. Callahan: It is not clear whether Callahan believes there is a connection if the resurrection occurred, but he does seem to agree that the earliest Christians believed there was a connection between the resurrection and Jesus’s identity.
F. Carroll and Green: Say that Luke’s Jesus is validated as the Messiah and Son of God because of the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus.
G. Clark: Royce Clark apparently thinks that, with Pannenberg, Jesus’s resurrection is “God’s vindication of Jesus’ claims,” including an “eschatologically divine nature that his resurrection would prove and make him the Christ.” But unlike Pannenberg, this is about the only difference between Jesus and others in the Gospels who were raised.
H. Clifford and Johnson: Clifford and Johnson believe the resurrection functions, in part, as a confirmation of Jesus’s deity.
I. Craig: Craig points out that Jesus’s resurrection confirms his claims of divinity.
J. Davis: Says Jesus’s resurrection is what makes him unique among others and is evidence from God that Jesus was no fraud but rather is Lord. To those who ask Davis why we should try to prove the resurrection, he responds: Why not just try to live it? For Davis, the truth of the resurrection makes the deciding difference in both meaning and practice.
K. Dunn: Dunn, whether knowingly or not, argues that Paul’s definition of the gospel gave significance to Jesus’s mission, which could be seen as a form of confirmation.
L. Ehrman: Ehrman notes in a number of places how the resurrection separated Jesus from others in the ancient world. Ehrman argues that it was Paul’s view that only by believing in the Messiah could one be placed into a restored relationship with God, and the reason for this is because the Messiah had died for the sins of others, and God confirmed that this death brought atonement by raising Jesus from the dead. Ehrman makes similar comments later in relation to the creed of Rom 1:3–4, but argues that Paul adds “in power” to show that Jesus was elevated to an even higher divine state at the resurrection, while the original author of the creed only believed that Jesus was elevated at the resurrection. A similar move is also made regarding Acts 2:36.
M. Elliott: The implications of Jesus’s resurrection are referenced throughout the New Testament, and Elliott gives some examples.
N. Evans: C. Stephen Evans thinks something like Swinburne’s argument is defensible or probable.
O. Fackre: “God spoke the divine yes in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
P. Gethin: Gethin says that Buddhists don’t know what to make of the arguments from resurrection to theology and truth.
Q. Goergen: “In the resurrection, Jesus was vindicated by God.” The resurrection also “ratified the teaching of Jesus, authenticated his ministry. In short, Goergen holds the resurrection of Jesus “vindicated, validated, and authenticated Jesus.” He mentions areas such as salvation, fellowship with Jesus, Jesus’s life with God, and eschatology.
R. Green: Joel Green refers to Jesus’s resurrection as a “definitive sanctioning” as well as “divine affirmation” and “unassailable confirmation” of Jesus.
S. Hagner: Says the resurrection definitely has important apologetic implications.
T. Harrington: “The reason Jesus’ followers made the claims that they did about His death and Resurrection, His teaching about God’s kingdom and the Christology implied by it was that they were prepared to do so by the person and teaching of Jesus.”
U. Harris: Says the resurrection confirmed the messiahship, sonship, and work of Jesus.
V. Holleman: In the earliest teachings, Holleman claims, Jesus’s resurrection “is a vindication, an act of God.”
W. Hurtado: “It is also generally accepted that the resurrection of Jesus was understood by the first Christians as involving two things: (1) the vindication of the one crucified as a messianic claimant; and (2) his exaltation to a position of heavenly glory.”
X. Jansen: Like others, Jansen says the resurrection was “God’s Yes to the ministry of Jesus.” Jansen discusses how God vindicated and exalted Jesus.
Y. Kannengiesser: Says Jesus’s resurrection is proof that extends to other items, such as “the power of the saviour, of the messiah . . . divine action . . . the fulfillment of God’s salvation in our history.”
Z. Kee: Howard Clark Kee states that by Jesus’s death and beyond, “Jesus foresaw that God would act to vindicate him and his faithful followers.”
AA. Lewis: Alan Lewis writes that not only does Jesus’s resurrection “authenticate God’s powerful deity and loving fatherhood; it also confirms and vindicates the divine Sonship of the risen one, which was so in doubt while his body lay interred throughout the second day.”
AB. Mack: According to the New Testament, Mack writes, the resurrection was “thought to establish the truth of God’s great plan.” The conventional picture is that the Gospels move from resurrection to the truth of Jesus’s kingdom teachings.
AC. Mathewson: Mathewson addresses God’s vindication of Jesus through the resurrection.
AD. Meyer: Says Jesus’s resurrection was understood as the “divine vindication of Jesus.”
AE. Nickelsburg: Nickelsburg writes that, for Mark, Jesus’s “resurrection has vindicated [Jesus’s] teaching and conduct.”
AF. O’Collins: O’Collins shows the “coherence” between the resurrection and several doctrines.
AG. Osborne: Osborne writes that the “interpretation of the early church is historically valid” and the steps from Messiah, Lord, and divinity to mission “[proceed] logically from the resurrection in authenticating” Jesus’s teachings.
AH. Packer: Says Christians refer to Jesus’s resurrection when asked to show why their view is true. The resurrection affirms and shows Jesus’s deity while also validating his teachings and confirming that he died for our sins. It also shows that he is the coming judge while providing hope for believers that they will be raised like him. “Nor are they wrong.”
AI. Pannenberg: Says Jesus’s resurrection was the “most powerful” authentication of his authority.
AJ. Perkins: “Resurrection is spoken of in connection with the vindication of Jesus, the one who was crucified, who died and who was buried.” Reviewing Hagner’s chapter in Longenecker’s edited work on resurrection: “This approach provides a plausible basis for Christian faith in resurrection as evidence for Jesus as the Son of God.”
AK. Perrin: Says the visions convinced the witnesses that “God had vindicated Jesus out of his death.”
AL. Peters: States the resurrection was “God’s act wherein the faith of Jesus was vindicated.”
AM. Pilch: For Pilch, Jesus’s resurrection, for his followers at least, demonstrated that “Jesus was truly pleasing to God and distinctively blessed by God.”
AN. Price: Charles Price recognizes that, for believers, the resurrection “brings forgiveness of sins and eternal life . . . its power to transform lives.”
AO. Purves: Notes that Jesus was not made Christ at the resurrection, but rather that the resurrection affirms he was and is the Christ.
AP. Rahner: Rahner contends that Jesus is the revelation of God and that Jesus is vindicated in the resurrection.
AQ. Smith: Robert Smith says that, for Matthew, the resurrection was the greatest miracle. It demonstrated God’s confirmation of “Jesus as his agent for establishing his kingship.” It is also the event signaling that the new age has begun.
AR. Swinburne: Says resurrection shows the truth of doctrines like revelation, deity of Christ, atonement, and the basic Christian worldview.
AS. Talbert: For Luke, Talbert writes, the resurrection serves as “guaranteeing the identity of Jesus through the events of passion, resurrection, and ascension.”
AT. Torrance: Says without incarnation and resurrection, Christianity would be entirely different, but with them it can certainly stand against all opposition. The resurrection is the event from which we are to understand the gospel. It also forces us to think about the coherence of creation, love, and salvation among other doctrines. Like Paul, without the resurrection, there is no Christianity. The resurrection should be understood theologically and historically.
AU. Wedderburn: Wedderburn recognizes that Paul and the rest of the New Testament witness moves from Jesus’s resurrection to the believer’s resurrection. Wedderburn does not think we can make this move; we ought to be agnostic about both Jesus’s resurrection and ours. In fact, he clearly opposes any “triumphalistic view” that moves from Jesus’s resurrection to various other theological tenets.
AV. Witherington: Witherington notes that not only is it reasonable, but it is also biblical, to argue that God vindicated Jesus (ministry, teachings, etc.) by the resurrection. By itself, this vindication would not be enough to start the church; the appearances of Jesus would be needed to demonstrate this vindication.
AW. Wright: Wright observes that only together could Jesus’s ministry and resurrection make the effect they did, because “by themselves,” they never would have happened. Vindication of Jesus’s teachings is a natural conclusion from Jesus’s own expectations and the Jewish mindset. The early church also believed that Jesus was vindicated through the resurrection and was of the utmost importance to them. Easter moves from eschatology to soteriology, which “quickly gives birth to Christology,” including mission and ecclesiology. Wright notes that the key meaning of the resurrection in the Gospels and Acts is that Jesus’s message is vindicated. Wright notes that Jesus’s claims that he is the one God is using to restore his people are “highly controversial,” and that he believes he will be vindicated (by which he means resurrected). Wright stresses that if Jesus was not resurrected, it would have been “inconceivable that anyone would have regarded Jesus as Messiah.” As noted above, Wright again points out that the resurrection alone would not have had an intrinsic messianic meaning. It would contain that meaning, however, if it was “in some way present already.” How one views Jesus will depend greatly upon what one does with Jesus’s resurrection. He then goes on to describe the differences among docetic figures, a teacher of truths, and a prophet Messiah.
3. CHRISTOLOGY
A. General Comments
1. Barnett: Says the “earliest window” into Christianity shows high Christology resulted from confirmation of resurrection.
2. Bloesch: States resurrection brought “a complete awareness of [Jesus’s] divine sonship.”
3. Borg: In the New Testament, Borg writes, the resurrection means that “Jesus is Lord.” This means not only that Jesus is alive, but that he is alive and Lord. The disciples offered prayers and hymns to Jesus.
4. Brown: Raymond Brown says that “resurrection christology” was a development in the pre-50 church that built on who Jesus was in light of his resurrection. After looking at a number of pre-50 New Testament texts, Brown defines “a two-step christology” as the view that understood Jesus as resurrected and the Messiah. It perhaps had its origins when the “first disciples” learned new truths about Jesus that they did not know before. These would be truths about Jesus that he also possessed during his lifetime but did not recognize then.
5. Davis: Davis rightly notes that many have claimed to be a messiah or guru, but who can we believe and why? Jesus’s resurrection is the proof for Jesus’s messianic status. No other such figures have been resurrected.
6. Drane: Drane points out that Jesus’s claims were verified by the resurrection.
7. Durrwell: Durrwell provides many details on connecting the resurrection to Jesus’s deity, especially Lord, Son of God, and High Priest. Jesus’s resurrection meant that God made the Messiah Lord and as one who also shares with the Father in both lordship and creation.
8. Goergen: In a section entitled “Jesus is Lord,” Goergen notes one of the ways “Lord” is used in Judaism. “‘Lord’ means God.” But later, Goergen says that in “ordinary Palestinian Aramaic usage” in preresurrection times, references to Jesus as Lord “did not denote the divinity of Jesus. . . . The post-resurrection use of kyrios, however, was different.” The title took additional meaning in gentile circles, but even in Jewish circles it took on more meaning than before the resurrection. Though in a “Palestinian Jewish setting,” it did not necessitate divinity.
9. Grant: Grant argues that the appearances of the risen Jesus are the best Christians can do to prove Jesus was the Messiah. This will never be enough proof for the “secular historian,” but it is an incredible witness to the character of Jesus. While there’s not enough proof, faith is needed.
10. Hagner: Hagner contends that Jesus’s resurrection is the highest christological point in the Synoptics. The resurrection “vindicates” what Jesus said and did. It is also “obvious” that it was the “impetus” for the church’s christological thought.
11. Hebblethwaite: Says the resurrection gave rise to understanding Jesus’s death and demonstrated a high Christology. The resurrection didn’t by itself prove Jesus’s divinity—Lazarus wasn’t thought to be divine. But when combined with six other factors—including Jesus’s special claims to authority—we see how there was a gradual belief that the Messiah was divine (including, eventually, the incarnation). The resurrection and incarnation belong together here, as these are not simply epistemological issues but ontological ones as well. Hebblethwaite makes references to Jesus’s divinity.
12. Hengel: States the resurrection appearances gave the disciples confidence that Jesus was raised by God as the Messiah. Their experiences with the risen Jesus also confirmed Jesus’s claims and actions, including that Jesus was at the right hand of God (Ps 110:1) and was free from sin. Hengel also discusses early christological texts like Phil 2:6–11 that reference Jesus’s preexistence and death.
13. Hurtado: “The fact is that we simply have no evidence that any figure, whether human or angelic, ever featured in the corporate and public devotional practice of Jewish circles in any way really comparable to the programmatic role of Jesus in early Christian circles.”
14. Künneth: Künneth discusses connections between the resurrection and Christology.
15. Ladd: Ladd notes that Jesus’s death and resurrection are at the foundation of Paul’s Christology.
16. Merklein: Says Easter is the starting point for formulating a Christology.
17. Meyer: For Meyer, the lordship of Jesus follows from Jesus’s death and resurrection.
18. Moule: Says the Easter event caused the disciples to conclude not that Jesus was a prophet or even the Messiah, but that he had been raised in an entirely unexpected and new way, which also meant that he was “therefore Son of God (in a far more than messianic sense), and ‘Lord,’ and the climax . . . of God’s plan of salvation.” None of the Old Testament prophets would be close to fitting such a description.
19. Newman: Newman connects the resurrection with numerous creedal passages addressing Jesus’s deity.
20. O’Collins: Notes that Jesus made unparalleled claims during his ministry, which included claims of his own personal authority as being, in many ways, equal to God’s authority. He states that further research is needed regarding the connection between Jesus’s resurrection and Christology.
21. Oden: If there was any debate about who Jesus was, Oden states, the resurrection confirmed Jesus and ended the debate. Jesus’s lordship and sonship were implied and proven by the resurrection. Oden’s categories reflect this line of argumentation as well.
22. Osborne: Regarding the resurrection, Osborne notes some trends: (1) moves from functional Christology to an ontological Christology, though noting that early statements could still have ontological meaning; and (2) the resurrection was the “functional impetus” that gave the content for doctrine and grounded christological titles. Osborne explains that “cosmic lordship . . . had its origin in Palestinian motifs.” Matthew saw the resurrection as vindication of Jesus’s lordship.
23. Packer: Packer notes that Habermas highlighted the connection between resurrection and Christology as a “strong argument” for Jesus’s deity, as the disciples also recognized.
24. Pannenberg: For a first-century Jew, Pannenberg observes, Jesus’s resurrection “can only mean that God himself has confirmed the pre-Easter activity of Jesus.” Included in this is that Jesus’s life also reveals God. Furthermore, the God of Israel is over all humanity. Elsewhere, Pannenberg writes that the belief in Jesus’s resurrection also implied that God had approved of Jesus’s life and ministry; the resurrection was a confirmation. And the belief in Jesus’s divinity that makes one a Christian is spelled out at Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon. At other places, Pannenberg contends that the resurrection was a “divine vindication” of Jesus as the Messiah. He emphasizes that Jesus’s life, teachings, and actions reflect God, which, because of the resurrection, are not arrogant claims for Jesus to make. Rather, Jesus’s life reveals God the Father. Pannenberg also discusses Jesus sharing in God’s identity and preexistence (as well as the incarnation). Given the resurrection and Jesus’s relationship to God the Father, the idea of Jesus’s preexistence is “inescapable.”
25. Perkins: Discusses several senses from the New Testament in which the resurrected Jesus is Lord. One of the implications is that of obedience. Reviewing Longenecker’s edited work on resurrection, she gives some positive comments regarding Hagner’s approach to connecting resurrection and Christology.
26. Peterson: David Peterson says that for Matthew, the resurrection “demonstrates” Jesus’s divine status. For John, the resurrection shows that Jesus is legitimately worthy of worship.
27. Sanders: Notes the early disciples moved from Jesus’s resurrection to “various titles” for Jesus, such as “Anointed,” “Christ,” “Lord,” and “Son of God.”
28. Selby: Selby moves from the resurrection to the lordship and authority of Jesus.
29. Stuhlmacher: Says the empty tomb and resurrection of Jesus indicate Jesus was not just another martyr, but rather, that God had elevated Jesus (Rom 1:3–4).
30. Sumithra: Sumithra stresses the interrelationship between resurrection and Christology.
31. Torrance: Torrance notes that by claiming the things he did, Jesus placed himself with God.
32. Wilckens: Says the resurrection meant that Jesus’s claims were right, and that God confirmed and approved those claims (and actions) by raising Jesus from the dead. Jesus has several titles relevant here too. Though there was a crucifixion, the resurrection was the God’s final word on who Jesus was.
33. Witherington: Witherington finds a bridge between Jesus’s resurrection and divinity, contending that the resurrection vindicates Jesus.
34. Wright: Says it’s not as easy as we are often told to make the argument from Jesus’s resurrection to his “divinity.” Rather, it was from a “combination of beliefs” that moved the argument from “Messiah” to “Lord of this world,” to his death being a victory, to Jesus’s work also being the work of the God of Israel. It is not simply because Jesus was resurrected, therefore, that he is divine. Paul’s point is that by the resurrection, Jesus was demonstrated to be the Messiah and Lord. To Jesus’s followers, Jesus’s resurrection meant that he was the Messiah. If Jesus was not resurrected, it is “inconceivable” that Jesus would have been considered the Messiah.
B. Resurrection to Christology
1. Clifford and Johnson: They offer a number of good bullet points that connect the early churches’ Christology and the resurrection.
2. Dunn: Dunn notes that Paul believed that Jesus was raised from the dead and that Jesus must therefore be God’s Messiah.
3. Pannenberg: Pannenberg provides a discussion on the resurrection and its connection to Christology.
4. JUSTICE AND JUDGMENT
A. Allison: Says ultimate justice is connected to our views of death. Jesus’s teachings (“Love your enemies,” etc.) that require self-sacrifice and humility are self-defeating if there is no ultimate justice and the just are not “exalted.”
B. Clifford and Johnson: They point out that the resurrection is necessarily related to “the messianic rule of God in Christ and the question of judgment” and refer to Paul’s comments in Acts 17 as an example.
C. Crossan and Reed: Crossan and Reed stress that the resurrection is deeply connected to God’s goodness and justice.
D. Davis: Davis describes a soft view of separation in which God’s wrath upon sin seems utterly diminished, while God’s love for others such that he lets them choose to be separate from him is central. Davis briefly describes the issue and then presents the idea that salvation is universally available. He also notes the idea of postmortem evangelism, but says that he does not endorse it because it is only speculative.
E. Dunn: Dunn points out that Paul and others in the New Testament (including Jesus) utilize reward language for good works (Matt 6:1–6; 10:41–42; 25:34–40; 1 Cor 3:14; 9:24–25; Phil 3:14; Col 3:24; 2 Tim 4:8).
F. Durrwell: Durrwell views a number of New Testament texts on this subject.
G. Künneth: Künneth addresses the resurrection and judgment.
H. Mathewson: Mathewson briefly highlights the aspect of justice and judgment as it relates to the resurrection.
I. Perkins: Perkins includes a section called “Resurrection and Judgment.”
J. Stuhlmacher: Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians 15 illustrate that believers will be forgiven because of Jesus’s “intercession” on their part. Resurrection is also related to final judgment.
K. Wright: Wright writes that the resurrection is connected to calls for justice, and this was a major theme for early Christianity. Comments are also made regarding Luke’s account of Abraham, Lazarus, and the rich man.
5. SALVATION
A. Bauckham: Bauckham points out that Jesus was the “focus of all Christian relationship, through him, to God.”
B. Caird: Caird considers the resurrection as the “ground” of salvation.
C. Elliott: Notes various New Testament writers link the resurrection to a new relationship between humanity and God, one that is also connected to eternal life. The resurrection also connects the forgiveness of sins and new creation.
D. Gaffin: Gaffin relates the resurrection at length to redemption, adoption, justification, sanctification, and glorification, concluding that the resurrection is the foundational piece of Paul’s soteriology.
E. George: Says the purpose of the Fourth Gospel’s emphasis on resurrection is to bring the reader into greater commitment and faithfulness.
F. Goergen: States one of the areas of theology confirmed by Jesus’s resurrection is salvation. “There is no theology of redemption” without the resurrection.
G. Hagner: Hagner emphasizes repeatedly that the resurrection is the foundation of the gospel.
H. Hansen: Hansen makes a brief reference about Jesus’s resurrection and union with Christ.
I. Hebblethwaite: Hebblethwaite refers to the “universal soteriological efficacy” of “the Risen Christ.”
J. Hurtado: Jesus is the one “through whom the eschatological hope of salvation is to be realized and with whom now one must come to terms.”
K. Jansen: Jansen offers a discussion on Jesus’s resurrection and redemption.
L. Künneth: Künneth relates the resurrection to salvation.
M. Ladd: Death is clearly not the end for Jesus, Ladd claims. Believers are justified through Jesus’s resurrection.
N. Lorenzen: Says the resurrection leads to “the priestly work of Christ” as well as “forgiveness and reconciliation to the believer” through Jesus’s “intercession on our behalf to God.”
O. Matzko: Matzko makes several comments regarding Jesus’s resurrection, forgiveness, transformed lives, and salvation. He notes we have been saved and are to put on a new path that lives in the fullness of the risen Jesus. Matzko also comments on humanity’s reconciliation and participation.
P. Moule: Moule argues from Jesus’s resurrection, to his deity, to the height of “God’s plan of salvation.”
Q. O’Collins: O’Collins makes comments quite similar to Rom 1:3–4 and 10:9–11 regarding the gospel, resurrection, and salvation. He also discusses the resurrection as redemption.
R. Oden: Under the category “The Meaning of His Resurrection,” Oden’s subcategories show the place of the resurrection in soteriology: (1) “The Atoning Value of His Death Confirmed”; (2) “His Sacrificial Self-Offering Accepted”; (3) “His Suffering Vindicated”; (4) “His Victory over Sin Demonstrated.”
S. Osborne: Osborne discusses how a resurrection theology led to early soteriological themes like the creeds found in Acts and Romans. The Gospel of John developed soteriological themes from its emphasis on Jesus’s resurrection.
T. Pannenberg: Says, for Paul, the resurrection is a condition for salvation.
U. Pinnock: Begins his essay by pointing out that, on the subject of salvation, even evangelicals generally overemphasize the cross instead of the resurrection in their discussions, preaching, theology, and hymns. The result is that the meaning and significance of the redemptive aspects of the resurrection have been forgotten or ignored. “Resurrection must be central” to the New Testament concepts of salvation, Pinnock states, citing Rom 4:25; 5:10; 10:9; 1 Cor 15:17. It is “pivotal” for salvation. An important component of this is Jesus’s connection “with humanity as the last Adam.” Soteriology is more than mere spirituality, justification, and legal language (though it is not less than those). It also includes moves from “regeneration to glorification,” and in a holistic (mind, body, soul, and strength) manner.
V. Rahner: In the resurrection, he writes, we have the clearest indicator of salvation. The resurrection vindicates the savior Jesus.
W. Talbert: Talbert states that, for Luke, “the resurrection functions both to provide the means by which salvation may flow from Jesus and to define the nature of the ultimate victory over death.” The resurrection also led to Jesus’s “new function as cosmic Lord.”
X. Torrance: Says the incarnation and resurrection provide the foundational framework for understanding the gospel. Similar to Paul, if the resurrection is not a literal event, “then atonement and redemption are empty vanities” and Jesus “cannot be our Redeemer.” If Christ was not raised, then Jesus’s death cannot save.
Y. Walker: On the importance of the empty tomb for salvation, Walker contends that the bodily nature of the resurrection is “a corollary of a fully sacramental, incarnation faith.”
Z. Wilckens: When God raised Jesus from the dead, it “established . . . his movement” and also validated aspects of judgment. Wilckens also notes how the kingdom of God refers to both salvation and destruction (i.e., final judgment). He also stresses that Jesus offers a call to repent and a confident salvation for those who turn from their sin toward God. Wilckens notes that the resurrection confirms this message and is God’s final word. This also led the disciples to go out on mission and proclaim the good news to all nations.
AA. Witherington: Witherington notes that not only was Jesus raised to eternal life, but Jesus could offer eternal life “by means of” the Holy Spirit. Witherington adds that our lives are hidden in the living Christ who is in heaven.
AB. Zahl: Zahl notes a concern of focusing too much on the crucifixion to the detriment of the resurrection. We are justified, argues Zahl, because Jesus is alive, and so justification can be “carried forward into the present and future by the Resurrection is Easter truth.”
6. FORGIVENESS
A. Clifford and Johnson: Say the resurrection was the divine yes to forgiveness and gives us confidence that we have been forgiven. It also implies that we should similarly forgive others.
B. Mathewson: Mathewson demonstrates God’s faithfulness and justice to “forgive our sins, and to purify us from all unrighteousness.”
C. Purves: Purves notes that the death and resurrection are central to forgiveness.
D. Wright: Wright notes several aspects of forgiveness as they are related to the resurrection, both Jesus’s and the future resurrection.
7. JUSTIFICATION
A. Wright: Wright contends that the resurrection justified all believers. Wright seeks to show that Christ’s death on the cross was God’s way of atoning for our sins. Christus Victor is proclaimed in Wright’s “atonement theology” on this point as Christ victoriously atoned for our sins.
8. OVERCOMING SIN
A. Fuller: Says the picture behind the language concerning the risen Jesus in John 20:19–20 and what he says regarding sin is a freedom from its power, which also requires a decision. Those who decide to follow Jesus can “participate in the victory of Christ: their sins are remitted, they are released from this power.”
B. Hansen: Hansen writes about how the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead also indwells the believer and gives them the power to be liberated from sin, addiction, and self-destruction while living in the resurrected life.
C. Hodgson: Says the resurrection event can be characterized as an experience that is primarily about freedom “from the bondage of sin and evil.”
D. Mathewson: Mathewson discusses how the resurrection provides help for overcoming temptation.
E. Moltmann: States belief in Jesus’s resurrection enables people to be free from the lies and illusion of worldly value judgments because their focus is now on “future life.”
F. O’Collins: Says Christians can live in a new, resurrected life and experience freedom from sin.
G. Wright: “The call of the gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love.”
9. FEAR OF DEATH
A. General Comments
1. Davis: Davis notes several components regarding the fear of death: (1) It is inevitable. (2) Death is mysterious. (3) It is something we face alone. (4) We will also be separated from friends and family who are still alive. (5) Death creates unrealized goals and desires. (6) It is fearsome because we may cease to exist entirely.
2. Lewis: Alan Lewis died of cancer during the writing of his book, but in it he addressed the issues of the fear of death. “Still, the promise is that death shall have no longer the last word on our lives and destiny.” “If with faith’s pure gift of courage we lose our fear of death, then we are in fact delivered from its evil also; for what is truly demonic about disease and death is less what they can do to us than the fear of what they might or might not do which they poisonously instill in us. . . . And to lose the fear of death itself is to be delivered, too, from the fear of the other little deaths in life.”
3. Trites: If Jesus did not rise from the dead, Trites points out, then there would be no hope or inspiration for the martyrs referred to in Revelation.
4. Wright: References the second-century doctor Galen, who refers to the fact that Christians lack a fear of death.
B. Boldness
1. Clifford and Johnson: Clifford and Johnson highlight various aspects in which believers can, and should, live lives confidently and boldly in light of the resurrection.
2. Mathewson: Mathewson discusses how the resurrection can provide boldness for believers.
C. Taunting Death
1. Mathewson: Mathewson notes that the resurrection is a victory over death and that Paul taunts death.
2. Wright: Notes Paul brings together Isaiah and Hosea and uses them to taunt death as now being powerless.
D. Death of Death
1. Allison: Says the resurrection enables us to deny the final word of death.
2. Mathewson: Mathewson notes that the resurrection is a victory over death and that Paul taunts death.
3. Wright: Wright points out that death no longer has power.
10. BELIEVERS’ RESURRECTION AND IMMORTALITY
A. General Comments
1. Allison: Allison refers to death and resurrection as inauguration of the general resurrection of the dead. Eternity is guaranteed because of God’s work.
2. Badham: Badham’s argument is that the main meaning of the resurrection for Christians is that Jesus’s resurrection brings confidence about life after death for Jesus and humanity.
3. Barnett: Barnett points out that since Jesus was raised, believers think they will be raised too. For Paul, Jesus’s resurrection is the lynchpin for the believers’ resurrection.
4. Barton: John Barton similarly notes that Paul argues from Jesus’s resurrection to that of believers.
5. Bauckham: Bauckham contends that it is a given for Jesus that there is an afterlife. Though there is some nuance, the New Testament writers demonstrate “impressive convergence” regarding the fact that believing in Jesus’s resurrection “entails” a resurrection for Jesus’s followers. Bauckham cites John 5:21, 26; 11:25–26; Acts 3:15; Rom 8:11; 1 Cor 6:14; 15:21–22, 45; 2 Cor 4:14; 5:15; Phil 3:7, 10–11; Rev 1:18.
6. Bloesch: Our resurrection “gains its meaning and purpose” from Jesus’s resurrection.
7. Borg and Crossan: While Borg and Crossan argue for spiritual language and a spiritual body by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, they make the following comment regarding Paul’s response to those in Corinth who thought the resurrection was immortality: “He answers his own question in stages, insisting throughout that resurrection is about bodies, not about disembodied immortal souls. At the same time, he also insists that the resurrected body is not simply the predeath body brought back to life.” Note, however, their comment that for Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, “the resurrected body—including the body of Jesus—is a spiritual body: raised imperishable, raised in glory, raised in power. . . . The risen Christ is a life-giving spirit.” See also the comments by Crossan and Reed below.
8. Brown: Perhaps speaking of Paul’s view, Raymond Brown notes that through Jesus’s resurrection, eternal life is shared to believers.
9. Caird: Says the resurrection has implications for all of humanity. Christians will eventually participate in an event like Jesus’s resurrection. Christians will go through their own “transformation” in the future. Concerning the nature of the future life, there are strong pictures presented in the New Testament. This new life has a social component to it and is “beyond the power of death to destroy it.” There are various forms of eschatological imagery, pictures, or symbols (e.g., court, wedding). “The City to come is a vibrant, functioning society, large enough to include all.”
10. Clifford and Johnson: Provide a great overview of over a dozen views (from Zoroastrianism to postmodern spiritualities) of life after death and how they relate to the Christian resurrection.
11. Crossan: Crossan summarizes his view that “the general resurrection has begun with Jesus.”
12. Crossan and Reed: In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul argues for a similar yet different resurrected body. It is one empowered by the Holy Spirit. Crossan and Reed suggest that Paul’s answer to why a bodily afterlife is better than a Platonic soulish experience is because the bodily reflects God’s justice and the goodness of creation. They emphasize that the general resurrection is “not about heavenly evacuation, but the earthly transfiguration of this bodily world.”
13. Davis: One of the implications of Jesus’s resurrection is that we will also be resurrected. Davis suggests that everyone has humanity on their hearts. He provides several reasons why death is feared (see above). However, because of Jesus’s resurrection, we have hope that we can have eternal life. Our “loving relationships” with God, family, and friends are not stopped by death. For the believer, the resurrection is the only convincing evidence for all of this. Death need no longer be our biggest fear.
14. Dawe: Dawe points out that Jesus’s resurrection is evidence that God has power over death.
15. Donahue: Similar to Dawe, he holds that physical resurrection means the members of the church cannot be separated from one another, even by death.
16. Drane: Drane points out that an important part of Jesus’s ministry was that it taught that believers could also “share” in everlasting life. Drane points out that “quality and quantity of life” is changed because the risen Jesus’s resurrection is a “pledge and a promise” for eternal life.
17. Dunn: For believers, resurrection means that death is followed by “recreation.”
18. Durrwell: Durrwell notes that “we shall enter fully into communion with Christ in his death and glory: on the day of our death. . . . Then we, too, shall come with Christ to full participation in the mystery of the salvation of the world.” He then offers a lengthy treatment of the believers’ resurrection and eternal life and the kingdom.
19. Fackre: Says resurrection leads to eternal life and its “many scenes—personal, social, cosmic.” Fackre also points out that there are both individual and communal or corporate elements of biblical eschatology. Yet, there is also a “final liberation and reconciliation of all things including the healing of nature as well as self and society.”
20. Gaffin: Gaffin treats at length the future resurrection of the believer based on Jesus’s resurrection.
21. Goergen: Goergen considers some ideas about Jesus and the righteous regarding resurrection but thinks these “are suggestive and tentative.” “There is also the question of whether personal development continues after death.” Goergen prefers this possibility and cites Hick’s Death and Eternal Life.
22. Grant: For Christians, Grant says, the resurrection is evidence for an afterlife.
23. Green: Michael Green includes a detailed discussion on the “security of dead believers” and the resurrection of the body.
24. Hagner: Says resurrection brings a new understanding of the way the world works, and one in which Jesus’s resurrection provides “irrefutable” evidence that death is not the end. This new reality “has already begun,” and in the future belongs to the believer in spite of death’s present activity. In the New Testament, Jesus’s resurrection is an example of what the general resurrection will be like.
25. Hansen: Writes that for Paul, Jesus’s resurrection “guarantees” the resurrection of believers, citing Rom 8:11.
26. Harris: Jesus’s resurrection foreshadows the believers’ resurrection. On immortality, Harris notes that in the New Testament, three terms are used for it seventeen times: five apply to God, and the other twelve apply to man. Of the latter twelve, all but one (1 Pet 3:4) apply to the future state. Out of the eleven that apply to the future state, ten are from Paul and one from 1 Peter. The terms never apply to “soul,” and two of these terms—aphtharsia and athanasia—have dual meanings. Aphtharsia means both nondecay and “being incapable of decay.” Athanasia means both deathlessness and “being incapable of dying.” He notes the connection between immortality and eternal life. There is the quality of life whereas death is not present, as reflected in God sharing the divine nature with humanity. Harris notes that there are aspects of this that do not apply to souls. On eternal life in the New Testament, Harris points out that it is sometimes said that as an adjective it is qualitative, having the characteristics of the age, and that the temporal sense is secondary. Harris says that this meaning “would be difficult to sustain either from secular Greek literature or from the LXX, where temporal considerations predominate.” He notes that aiōnios is life that is both present and future, “being destined never to cease.” Harris again compares immortality to eternal life, as they are interwoven with resurrection. Three differences are noted: (1) a primary and secondary quantity or quality, (2) future and positive, and (3) positive and negative components (in Paul). Elsewhere, Harris also compares resurrection and immortality in the New Testament. Harris summarizes the resurrection in 1 Cor 15:52 as the reception of permanent immortality. Resurrection involves resuscitation, transformation, and exaltation. For Paul, there are three meanings of resurrection. Through the spiritual body the newly resurrected communicate in the “heavenly world.” Additionally, Harris points out that reembodiment indicates that there is continuity and discontinuity regarding one’s identity. He notes similarities and differences between the believer’s future resurrection and Christ’s resurrection. Harris then identifies three ways that resurrection influences our understanding of immortality according to Paul: (1) it is personal; (2) it is corporate; and (3) it involves a body. Conversely, the concept of immortality also influences Paul’s understanding of resurrection: (1) it is not merely an event, but a state of affairs; (2) it is permanent; and (3) it is held together by God.
27. Hebblethwaite: Says in heaven, believers will see Jesus as the exalted Lord.
28. Hick: Includes both unending life and resurrection life in his discussion.
29. Holleman: Says Jesus’s resurrection was thought to be the beginning of the “inaugurated” end of time and the eschatological resurrection of the dead and the prototype of the believer’s resurrection.
30. Jansen: Jansen discusses Jesus’s resurrection and the believer’s resurrection.
31. Kannengiesser: Says Jesus was not only able to overcome death, but the resurrection is “proof of his triumph.”
32. Kaufman: Kaufman says that traditional Christianity holds that the cross and resurrection conquer death. “In the end [believers] will receive their heavenly reward, the gift of eternal life in God’s everlasting kingdom.”
33. Kee: Howard Clark Kee says Jesus believed that through his death and afterward, God would vindicate him and his followers, who will eventually be “reunited in fellowship.” Early Christians thought that there is no finality in death and were “persuaded that God had demonstrated the validity of this expectation by raising Jesus from the dead.”
34. Kelly: For Paul, Kelly writes, Jesus’s resurrection signals a new future hope and life for those who faithfully follow Jesus. Jesus’s victory over death is also a victory for Christians.
35. Künneth: Relates Jesus’s resurrection to resurrection of the body.
36. Ladd: States Paul bases his eschatology on the resurrection. With Jesus’s resurrection comes God’s promises. Ladd refers to Pannenberg’s view and offers some additional comments regarding the “goal of history,” and that its ultimate goal is the general resurrection, which has already been foreshadowed in Jesus’s resurrection.
37. Lewis: Alan Lewis points out that in the resurrection, “the promise is that death shall have no longer the last word on our lives and destiny.”
38. Longenecker: Longenecker traces in detail the suggested evolution in scholarly views of Paul’s thought from 1870 to the present. Then he concludes that there are three shifts in Paul’s thinking concerning the resurrection of the believer.
39. Lorenzen: Lorenzen notes three conclusions that are based on the resurrection of Christ: (1) God “struggled with death and removed its ultimate threat” by Jesus’s resurrection; (2) something more powerful than death has entered history, and it “can relativize [death’s] dehumanizing power”; and (3) God, not death, will ultimately determine our “destiny.” The resurrection is the foundation for the believer’s hope, because “God who received Jesus into himself will also receive us.”
40. Lüdemann (via Rodd): Lüdemann says that the earliest Christians related the resurrection to “the experience of the overcoming of death, and ‘an eternity faith,’ meaning that ‘eternal life has become the life of human beings.’”
41. Maier: Says resurrection guarantees salvation and our resurrection.
42. Marshall: In an essay on the resurrection of Jesus in the Qur’an, Marshall notes that for the New Testament writers, Jesus’s resurrection is a promise to believers for their own future hope of a resurrection and eternal life. Not only does the resurrection serve as the argument for the believer’s resurrection, but it represents our future state.
43. Mathewson: Mathewson notes the importance of the resurrection as it relates to immortality and our longings for immortality.
44. Meier: Meier argues concerning Mark along with the New Testament writers, that the hope of eternal life for believers is “grounded” in Jesus’s resurrection. Meier also offers some discussion on the differences and similarities between Jesus’s view of the resurrection of body and that of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
45. Meyer: Says the uniqueness of the resurrection is that it was a foretaste of the future. He makes some additional comments regarding the resurrection of the dead in particular. The “event of salvation in Christ effected a radical reorganization of human destiny,” and Jesus’s resurrection became the model.
46. Moltmann: “The Christian resurrection hope which is grounded on the remembrance of Christ’s sufferings and resurrection” provides hope not only for the resurrection of believers, but also the “world to come.” Moltmann finds a past-present-future relationship regarding the resurrection of the dead as a “totally unique” way of bridging temporal periods. “Eternal life can only be bodily life; if it is not that it is not life at all.” Moltmann refers to a continuing “somatic identity.” He stresses that it is the holistic nature of humanity that survives and that what changes is our ability to die, sin, and suffer. This transformation occurs “diachronically.” Moltmann writes that eternal life is one that is infused with and participates alongside the divine as God indwells his creation and evil is fully expelled. Paul links Jesus’s resurrection with believers’ hope of their own resurrection.
47. Muddiman: In his chapter in Barton and Stanton, Muddiman argues at length from Jesus’s resurrection to the believer’s resurrection. Paul argues both from Jesus’s resurrection to the future (1 Cor 15:12) and the reverse (1 Cor 15:13). Jesus rose, as indicated by the empty tomb and appearances, but “it is not so clear” what sort of body he had. If we are raised, it will be part of what is also occurring to all of creation. Muddiman notes that it is “impossible” to imagine what human existence would be like without some sort of bodily analogue (e.g., spatial limitations). Still, mysteries remain regarding the nature of this new life. However, our bodies will be different than Jesus’s because we “need resurrection bodies” for our own lives and to continue our relationship. There need to be ways to distinguish between one person and another. Thus the empty tomb and appearances are not “patterns” but symbols for our resurrection. Muddiman adds the nuance that these connections do not necessarily reflect a one-to-one correspondence. Nevertheless, they provide helpful analogies.
48. O’Collins: Says Jesus’s view was that there was an afterlife. Jesus alludes to Dan 12:3 and also refers to large dinners. Jesus’s uniqueness here is demonstrated by his claims about his position in these events as the “unique agent of salvation and coming judge.” Jesus’s resurrection and the death and resurrection of the believer’s body are further discussed.
49. Oden: Oden points out that followers of Christ share in the resurrection of Jesus and receive eternal life. Oden details the believer’s resurrection body—we will be raised like Jesus, with continuity of a body that is transformed and glorified, including luminosity.
50. Perkins: Perkins examines several New Testament passages regarding the resurrection of believers and eternal life.
51. Peters: Peters notes that Jesus’s resurrection, among all the other elements, needs to also be understood as a “prolepsis” that occurred as an anticipation of what will happen to the rest of creation. Ultimately, Christian faith places its trust in the promises and faithfulness of God, and the God who raised Jesus from the dead will also transform all creation. Easter indicates the present living in light of the expectation of an already but not yet present kingdom of God.
52. Pinnock: Pinnock indicates that Jesus’s resurrection also points to the general resurrection.
53. Rahner: Rahner notes that all humanity desires eternal life.
54. Segal: Segal points out that followers of Christ will ultimately be transformed into a “spiritual body” (not physical) like Christ’s. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul uses a unique bodily language. For Paul, the word “bodily” resurrection means “that the body is visible” while the soul is not. Flesh and blood cannot enter eternity, but the risen body of Christ can. Therefore, neither will our body be flesh and blood. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul does note that believers “share in Christ’s immortality.”
55. Selby: Selby discusses implications of resurrection for life after death.
56. Soskice: Soskice rightly notes the pain suffered by those who have lost a love one and argues there “is nothing ‘wrong’ with the hope of heaven.” For Christians, there is not only the hope of heaven, but also the hope for a new creation here on earth.
57. Stanley: Says believers will be raised like “the risen Christ” as in Paul’s “primitive formula” in 1 Thess 4:14.
58. Stuhlmacher: Stuhlmacher points out that Jesus’s resurrection is a promise and evidence that the general resurrection has inaugurated. Old Testament texts like Isa 26:19; 66:24; Dan 12:2–3, and others provide background for our understanding. Referring to Paul’s teaching, Stuhlmacher argues that believers can enter the kingdom of God with the help of Jesus Christ, and they do this “with a new heavenly body, within a creation redeemed from all perishableness (Rom 8:18–30).” Stuhlmacher relates Jesus’s resurrection to Christian hope and the resurrection of the body.
59. Talbert: For Luke, the resurrection defines “the nature of the ultimate victory over death.” Talbert contends that Luke’s description of the resurrection is very similar to Paul’s in 1 Corinthians 15. The resurrected Jesus eating with his disciples “anticipates the coming Messianic banquet in the Kingdom of God.”
60. Topel: “We will experience a similar transformation [to Jesus’s resurrection] at death and will continue to grow into the parousia as an essential consummation of our communitarian natures.”
61. Torrance: “When the believer dies, he goes to be with Christ and is in his immediate presence, participant in him and made like him.” There, the believer await the parousia.
62. Witherington: Witherington argues that the resurrection is evidence that there are powers greater than death, namely God. God has the ultimate authority and the final decision, not death. Additionally, just as God raised Jesus from the dead, so too can believers be raised.
63. Wright: In the context of resurrection, Wright follows Paul and uses the analogy of going through death into a “new country beyond.” This was how earlier believers understood resurrection, as “passing through death” and into bodily life, which will also happen to all of creation. Wright notes there are promises throughout the New Testament that discuss how evil, pain, and suffering will be removed and that there will be a “new mode of life” for humanity and creation. Followers of Jesus believed that the God of Israel, the creator of the universe, would be bodily resurrected and, unlike other Jews of Jesus’s day, they believed that an individual resurrection had already occurred as a proleptic of the future general resurrection. This is found in Paul, John, 1 Peter, Revelation, and so on. Paul in 1 Cor 15:35–49 argues for both continuity and discontinuity regarding the seed analogy. Wright also discusses the idea of transphysicality, but the Christian view goes far beyond it and is, therefore, “without historical precedent.”
B. The New Testament View of Resurrection Is Uniquely (Trans)Physical
1. Craig: Craig points out some general features of the resurrected body and that it is an “immortal, powerful, glorious, Spirit-directed body, suitable for inhabiting a renewed creation.”
2. Davis: Davis briefly notes the transformation of Jesus’s body.
3. Green: Joel Green notes that Paul affirms in 1 Corinthians 15 that our present bodies are not proper for eternal life. Our bodies are not merely containers for our souls, but rather a transformation or glorification of our bodies. Green then adds that Paul argues that what happened to Christ’s body will also occur with the bodies of believers.
4. Lampe: Says resurrection “grasps the entire person and subjects this person to a transforming and newly creating act called ‘resurrection.’”
5. Wright: Wright makes several comments on this point, especially the “transphysicality” of the resurrection body. As noted above, the Christian view goes far beyond the Jewish understanding and is “without historical precedent.” Wright comments on the incorruptibility the resurrected body will have.
C. Healed and Glorified Body
1. Mathewson: Mathewson discusses how the resurrection will provide healed and glorified bodies for believers.
2. Clifford and Johnson: The resurrection is seen applying to the whole person holistically without bias or partiality.
D. Continuity and Discontinuity
1. General Comments
A) Ehrman: Ehrman notes that believers think the resurrected body will be deeply interconnected with the present body but also transformed.
B) Oberdorfer: Oberdorfer makes some general comments regarding continuity and discontinuity.
C) Polkinghorne: Briefly notes the continuity and discontinuity of the resurrection. For Jesus, it is the same body, but one that “possesses wholly new properties, so that he appears and disappears within locked rooms.”
D) Purves: Purves also notes some elements of discontinuity and continuity regarding resurrection bodies.
2. 1 Corinthians 15 Seed Language
A) Crossan and Reed: Crossan and Reed point out that the seed analogy in 1 Corinthians 15 is connected to the resurrection body having both continuity and discontinuity.
B) Davis: Davis argues that Paul’s use of the seed analogy “requires” the same body (continuity) going through some change and transformation (discontinuity).
C) Lampe: Regarding the seed analogy and what is sown and raised, Lampe points out that it is not referring to a “spiritual” body in the sense that it is not material. Rather, Paul states that “God’s Spirit is the only force that creates the new body.” Just as a tree or plant transcends the seed but remains in physical continuity, so does the resurrection body.
D) Wright: Says Paul in 1 Cor 15:35–49 is headed toward Phil 3:21, though the apostle does not come out and directly state it. Rather, Paul argues for continuity and discontinuity via the seed language.
3. Resurrection Body in General
A) Eckstein: Eckstein discusses Luke and how he incorporates continuity and contrast concerning the resurrection body.
B) Green: As noted above, Joel Green argues that Paul affirms in 1 Corinthians 15 that our present bodies are not proper for eternal life. Our bodies are not merely containers for our souls but rather a transformation or glorification of our bodies. Green then adds that Paul argues that what happened to Christ’s body will also occur with the bodies of believers. Additionally, “Paul teaches that this change will take place when Christ returns [intermediate state?].” Each of these factors, and others, are reasons why there is value and meaning for the believer in the present.
C) Lampe: “Therefore, the spiritual body of the resurrected is something ‘unnatural,’ that is, something beyond the possibilities inherent in the present creation. It will be part of a new creation with new possibilities.”
D) Murphy: Murphy argues that “the very laws of nature will be transformed in the eschaton” and so “we cannot know by means of what ‘physical’ processes this body functions.”
E) Russell: Russell notes three areas of continuity (physicality, reign of God in the church, and personal identity) and three areas of discontinuity (encounters with Jesus are not resuscitation, sin not possible, general revelation will not be resuscitation).
4. Identity
A) Anderson: Ray Anderson contends that the Bible is silent regarding the continuity of identity as one goes through death and resurrection.
B) Welker: Welker offers some discussion regarding the continuity of personal identity and how a transformed body may be able to provide more opportunity for the continuity of identity while also expanding the possibility for community.
E. Discontinuity Only
1. Carrier: In a chapter on the spiritual body, Carrier suggests that not only does Paul “deny continuity” but he also stresses discontinuity.
F. Resurrection of the Cosmos or Transformation of Creation
1. See also: “Creation and Ecclesiology” (section 25) below.
2. Clifford and Johnson: These authors make a number of comments here that may be summed up in their closing sentence: “The resurrection promises us an eschatological hope for a transformed world.”
3. Hansen: Hansen identifies Paul’s recognition of Jesus’s resurrection as also applying to the restoration of all creation.
4. Mathewson: Mathewson acknowledges that the earth was also being transformed through the resurrection.
5. Murphy: Murphy contends that the “laws of nature will be transformed in the eschaton.”
6. Polkinghorne: “In Christ there is a destiny for matter as well as for men and women.”
7. Wright: Wright argues that in God’s defeat of death, God not only rescued humanity but will rescue also all of creation. Accordingly, earth is God’s kingdom where his reign will occur. Elsewhere, Wright makes various comments arguing that heaven will be on earth. “To put it bluntly, creation is to be redeemed; that is, space is to be redeemed, time is to be redeemed, and matter is to be redeemed.” Wright also draws an analogy from being a citizen in ancient culture and being a citizen in God’s kingdom (cf. Phil 3:20). Accordingly, believers will “colonize earth with the life of heaven.”
G. Jesus’s Comments on the General Resurrection
1. Meier: Notes that multiple sources refer to Jesus discussing (or alluding to) the general resurrection. Meier finds relevant texts in Mark, Q, L, and (possibly) M. This is a fact that should not be surprising. Only in Jesus’s discussion with the Sadducees is the general resurrection a specific question presented to Jesus, though in other teachings it is alluded to or presupposed (citing, for example, Matt 8:11 and parallels; Luke 14:14; Matt 11:21–24 and parallels; Matt 12:41–42 and parallels; Mark 9:43–47; 14:25). Jesus connected the general resurrection with the kingdom of God and part of God’s restorative plan for Israel. Meier concludes that Jesus’s discussion with the Sadducees about resurrection likely occurred in Jerusalem.
H. Our Bodies Will Be Like Christ’s
1. General Comments
A) Anderson: Ray Anderson notes that Jesus’s resurrection provides the believer with “assurance” that this will happen to them as well.
B) Daley: Daley finds that it was widely agreed upon by “virtually all early Christian writers” that believers will share in Jesus’s resurrection.
C) Eckstein: Jesus’s resurrection “assures” believers of their own resurrection.
D) Ehrman: Ehrman notes that for Paul, believers hope to be resurrected in a similar manner and kind as Jesus.
E) Green: According to Joel Green (and similar to Ehrman), Paul affirms that believers’ bodies will be like that of Jesus’s body.
F) Leuschen: “To say that Jesus rose bodily from the grave as the first fruits of human beings is to declare the believer’s future as well, a future that embraces one’s whole being, not least the bodily nature of human existence.”
G) Mathewson: Mathewson notes that believers’ bodies will be alike, and that includes physicality.
H) Meier: Meier explains the viewpoint of early believers that Jesus’s resurrection was “the efficient and/or exemplary cause—the energizing archetype—of the resurrection of believers, still to come.”
I) Murphy: Murphy notes that “Jesus’ resurrection signals that ours will follow,” which is one reason why believers hope in the resurrection.
J) Peterson: Eugene Peterson notes that most of Paul’s references to the resurrection are related to either the centrality of the resurrection or that our resurrection will be like Jesus’s.
K) Purves: Purves writes, “Our future resurrection is tied at all points to Jesus’ resurrection and therefore to him, and is possible only on that basis.”
L) Wright: Wright contends, like others, that Paul argued for Jesus’s resurrection to be a model for the believer’s resurrection body. Paul is one of the clearest New Testament writers on the subject (1 Cor 12:12–28), but it is found elsewhere too (John 11:25; 1 Pet 1:3–5; Rev 2:10, etc.).
2. Resurrection Found throughout Early Christian Writings
A) Meier: Meier observes a number of references to the resurrection of believers, such as the letters of Paul (or those associated with Paul), the four Gospels, Acts, and 1 Peter, among others. More specifically, he cites, in the following order: 1 Cor 15:20–22; 1 Thess 4:13–18; 5:9–10; 1 Cor 6:13–14; 15:44–49; 2 Cor 3:18; 4:10–15; Rom 8:17, 29; 14:7–10; Phil 3:20–21; Col. 1:13–20; 2:9–15; 2 Tim. 2:8–13; Heb 2:8–10; 5:7–10 (albeit with different categories from resurrection to exaltation and salvation to perfection); Acts 4:2; 26:23; 1 Pet 1:3–5, 18–21; 3:18–4:7; Rev 1:5. Meier points out that the climax of the Gospels is Jesus’s death and resurrection.
I. Language to Describe Resurrection Body
1. Dunn: Dunn describes the difficulty in the conceptualization of a resurrection body and in articulating “seeing” a resurrection body.
2. Murphy: Following McClendon, Murphy notes the reports of Jesus’s appearances are to be understood as “word pictures” and are in-adequate to fully describe Jesus.
3. Purves: Purves notes the nonexistent “human categories of thought by which to bring [the resurrected Jesus] to expression.” He notes later that with the resurrection appearances, “something utterly new broke into history.”
J. Heaven Will Be on Earth
1. Ehrman: Notes that the future kingdom will be earthly.
2. Wright: Wright makes various comments arguing for this point.
K. Eternal Life
1. Harris: Harris’s chapter provides some insight on this topic.
2. Lincoln: Referring to his analysis of John, Lincoln helpfully points out that eternal life is not just quantity or duration. Rather, Jesus’s resurrection “denotes the quality of life appropriate to that age.” He prefaces this comment by saying eternal life can “be experienced in the present” according to John.
3. Polkinghorne: Polkinghorne points out that Jesus’s “resurrection is both the foretaste and the guarantee” of eternal life (and more). This point is similar to Schloss and Eckstein.
4. Wright: Wright gives some details regarding life after death (i.e., intermediate state to resurrection state).
11. NATURE OF INTERMEDIATE STATE
A. General Comments
1. Eckstein: Regarding an apparent interim state, Eckstein comments that Luke has “remarkably subtle anthropological notions.”
2. Fackre: Fackre relates resurrection to an intermediate state, briefly considering both “soul sleep” views as well as “awake” texts. He seems to favor the former.
3. Harris: There are some hints in Harris that there is an intermediate state.
4. Lampe: Lampe points out that, for Paul, before the final resurrection of the dead, a person is going to be with Christ. This means that Paul has “three stages” that include life, preresurrection afterlife, and postresurrection afterlife.
5. Pamment: Pamment thinks that Paul rejected the belief in the “continuing existence of a disembodied soul before the resurrection.”
6. Witherington: The New Testament, according to Witherington, sees an “interim condition” where one lives in heaven without a body.
7. Wright: Wright states that Christianity affirms an intermediate state. Wright refers to two passages in Acts that speak revealingly about the possibility of an intermediate state. Wright also notes that the widespread belief in resurrection has a relationship regarding the intermediate state, which was viewed in a variety of ways. Wright finds Phil 1:23 to be the most explicit text from Paul regarding the intermediate state.
B. Nature of the Intermediate State
1. Davis: Davis holds to the idea of temporary disembodiment as coherent (he also holds permanent disembodiment and physicalism to be coherent in chapter 6). He notes, however, that there are other possible options for believers.
2. Wright: Wright makes some comments regarding the analogy of sleep as a way of referring to the physical death of the body. Ultimately, however, believers are consciously with Jesus. He notes there is no reason that this state should not be referred to as heaven. Wright argues that when ancient Christians would use the language of “heaven” for the afterlife, what they were referring to was a temporary intermediate state. Wright references texts like Luke 23:43; John 14:2 (due to the Greek); Phil 1:23 with 3:9–11, 20–21; 2 Tim. 2:18. Similar to Lampe above, Wright contends for a two-stage process where, at death, one enters the intermediate state and then, second, the resurrection. He reminds readers that the word “resurrection” had nothing to do with going to heaven but with bodily eternal life. “Resurrection isn’t life after death; it is life after life after death.” Wright stresses that resurrection “wasn’t a way of talking about life after death. It was a way of talking about a new bodily life after whatever state of existence one might enter immediately upon death.
12. PRESENT AND FUTURE TEACHINGS AND HOPE
A. General Comments
1. Clifford and Johnson: Say that the gospel preached by the earliest disciples, and believers today, was the resurrected Christ, which is simultaneously connected to moral transformation and repentance in the present by sharing in the life of the resurrected Jesus.
2. Crossan and Reed: Referring to 1 Thessalonians, Crossan and Reed recognize the connection between Jesus’s resurrection in the past, the coming resurrection in the future, and the process in between. Jesus’s resurrection indicates something radically different from the Pharisees’ understanding, namely that the general resurrection has already started with Jesus. They then go on to stress that bodily resurrection was about God’s justice and goodness. Additionally, the immortality of the soul would not be able to address and transform the earthly material world that has been marred by evil. Thus, God’s goodness and justice are about a transformed body and a transformed cosmos.
3. Dunn: Dunn makes some brief comments about how Paul and Jesus share the same dual emphasis and eschatological tension of the present and future.
4. Ehrman: Says Jesus’s miracles provide, according to the New Testament, a “foretaste” in the present of the future kingdom.
5. Mathewson: Mathewson discusses how the resurrection is both a future and present event.
6. Meier: In Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, Meier writes, there are indications of a future world. The general resurrection in the future was an important part of Jesus’s teaching, along with the kingdom of God. Part of the teachings on the kingdom of God included a future kingdom that was also beginning now in the present. Meier notes that there is an odd mix of future and present eschatology here. Jesus had a concern that those living in the present kingdom would enter the coming kingdom of God.
7. Moltmann: States that trusting in Jesus’s resurrection enables one to be freed from the false fears of death because one can focus on the life to come.
8. Neill and Wright: They contend that Jesus was no mere ghost but instead something far more dramatic and significant. Namely, Jesus had defeated death, and the world and cosmos had been changed.
9. O’Collins: O’Collins discusses the resurrection and future hope.
10. Schuele: Schuele notes that Jesus’s resurrection clearly addresses the afterlife and, thus, bridges the past, present, and future.
11. Segal: Segal believes that Paul spoke of the transformation of believers occurring in the present that continues until Jesus’s return.
12. Twelftree: Twelftree contends that one must conclude that, at the very least, God’s kingdom had both present and future elements to it. He points out that Jesus’s miracles (and exorcisms) are “the eschatological kingdom of God in operation or made manifest” in the present.
13. Welker: Welker notes that Jesus’s resurrection “calls” for witnesses to participate in and be transformed by that very participation.
14. Wright: Wright notes Jesus’s resurrection is “clearly” connected to calls for justice in the present as well as the future. We are supposed to contribute to the future kingdom by bringing it here on earth. This provides hope for the future physical, incorruptible, and glorious resurrection and thus provides people with the ability to act within the present as well. Wright notes there are signs of the kingdom “now” (e.g., hospitals), but there is still an obvious “not yet” component as well (e.g., prisons). Wright also draws an analogy between being a citizen in ancient culture and being a citizen in God’s kingdom (cf. Phil 3:20). Accordingly, believers will “colonize earth with the life of heaven.”
B. In the New Testament
1. Green: Joel Green notes that Paul affirms in 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrection is important for the present life of the believer.
2. Wright: Wright argues that it is clear for Paul that Jesus’s resurrection is something that has effects now and in the future. Wright argues from 1 Corinthians 15 regarding the continuity of the present and the future and how the present is affected by the future for believers. He argues that both present and future aspects are in John.
C. Present Emphasis
1. Clifford and Johnson: State that God’s kingdom has already begun to break into our world (including creation and our stewardship of creation) and the lives of believers. The Gospel preached by the earliest disciples, and believers today, was the resurrected Christ, which is simultaneously connected to moral transformation and repentance in the present by sharing in the life of the resurrected Jesus.
2. Peterson: Eugene Peterson argues that all of the things Christians can do (e.g., feed others, clothe the naked, work for justice, love our enemies) do not require a significant amount of training; a child can do most of these things.
3. Purves: Purves identifies that part of a Christian’s responsibility is to bring part of the kingdom to earth here and now.
4. Wright: “Life after death, it seems, can be a serious distraction not only from the ultimate life after life after death, but also from life before death.” Wright goes on to stress that we can enjoy part of the future kingdom in the present. He also stresses the importance of our bodily existence as it relates to future and present healing (similar to Crossan and Reed). Accordingly, at Jesus’s resurrection, not only was death defeated but new creation was inaugurated and Jesus’s followers were sent (and equipped) on their mission to proclaim this victory. “The call of the gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love.” To do so involves taking up one’s cross as Jesus did. Such work would be dramatically different if we were to be bodiless souls. The resurrection provides hope for the future physical, incorruptible, and glorious resurrection and thus provides us with the ability to act within the present as well. Wright also draws an analogy between being a citizen in ancient culture and being a citizen in God’s kingdom (cf. Phil 3:20). Accordingly, believers will “colonize earth with the life of heaven.” He provides some comments on the church’s mission as it relates to Jesus’s resurrection and eschatology.
13. PRESENT PHASE OF THE KINGDOM
A. Caird: Caird notes that there is some perplexity between “the future [beginning] immediately at death” (noting some texts) and a future resurrection of the body (as if it were a problem). For first-century Jews, Jesus’s resurrection meant that they were already at the end of history.
B. Hagner: Says this new reality “has already begun.”
C. Hardy: Notes the “resurrection is, in fact, the inauguration of the Kingdom of God.”
D. Hengel: Says these events were believed by the earliest followers of Jesus to be the beginning of the world’s end and the beginning of God’s rule.
E. Holleman: Says Jesus’s resurrection was thought to be the beginning of the “inaugurated” end of time or eschatological resurrection of the dead. Holleman thinks this idea was originated by Paul.
F. Johnson: Johnson points out that John is not arguing that believers are living in God’s heavenly kingdom in the present, but rather, that in Jesus there is the hope of eternal life and the world has already been judged.
G. Ladd: Ladd notes two points in time: the end of time and the anticipation of that time as presented within history. Jesus’s resurrection is a foretaste of the end, though already beginning now in the present.
H. Pannenberg: Pannenberg states that Jesus’s resurrection means “the end of the world has begun.”
I. Peters: Similar to Ladd above, Jesus’s resurrection for Peters is a foretaste or anticipation of eschatology.
J. Rowland: Notes the resurrection and Jesus’s proclamation of the imminence of the kingdom are “closely linked.”
K. Torrance: States New Testament eschatology is neither just realized nor just futuristic, but rather it portrays both present and future “woven together all the time in Christ.”
L. Williams: Says the resurrection relates to the “inauguration of the Kingdom.”
M. Wright: Says the “promised new age” had broken into “a surprised and unready world.” For early believers, eschatology has started in the present. Though a paradox, it would be understandable to think that the kingdom of God arrived because Jesus’s shameful death was not the final word, but rather, because Jesus was “vindicated.”
14. RESURRECTION-CENTERED WORLDVIEW
A. Purves: Purves argues that in the New Testament, Jesus’s resurrection is the central “lens through which everything is viewed.”
B. Wright: Wright argues that Paul’s worldview was centered on and around Jesus’s resurrection. This was also the case for other early Christians. Wright stresses that what is at issue here is one’s worldview and that the resurrection creates a clash for one’s worldview, especially between those who allow for God and God’s justice and those who do not. Wright then, rightly, argues that Jesus’s resurrection is the type of event that, although it can be known historically, has the power to challenge one’s larger worldview. Accordingly, he says he presents the resurrection as such a challenge.
15. DISCIPLES’ MISSION, DISCIPLESHIP, AND THE RISEN JESUS
A. General Comments
1. Various Scholars: Various scholars have noted that Jesus called Paul, designating him to gentile missions, a call also apparent in the Gospels.
2. Alsup: At the conclusion of a lengthy section on words of commission, Alsup thinks that the sending out is original, while the promises to be with the disciples and to send the Spirit were apparently introduced by the Gospel authors. The commissioning words by the resurrected Jesus were all within the cadence of the evangelists. Still, the fact that all three evangelists diverge so widely from the central point indicates that the sending was in the source they used. The existence of the kerygma itself requires explanation and can be explained by the sending of the disciples. But it is still presumptuous to speculate on what can be traced back to Jesus. One needs to conclude that at the earliest stages there was a belief of being sent. Acts 1:3 relates some of these words regarding the kingdom.
3. Drane: Says the resurrection brought about God’s “new society.”
4. Elliott: Notes that for Matthew and Luke, “the mission of the church beginning at Jerusalem is initiated by a command of the risen Jesus.”
5. Fiorenza: Speaking positively, Fiorenza observes that the experiences of the risen Jesus are frequently connected to a new mission.
6. Fuller: States the experience of the resurrected Jesus gave the early believers the confidence in their mission through the Holy Spirit. The Christian community moved outward because of his appearances. Fuller also writes on the mission-founding nature of some of Jesus’s resurrection appearances.
7. Funk: Says the appearances served the purpose of “commissioning stories” that led to the church’s new mission. The appearances also legitimized specific leaders.
8. Green: Joel Green says Jesus’s resurrection gave the disciples the proof they needed to go out on mission. For Luke, Jesus’s resurrection is the center point of their mission.
9. Hagner: Notes that death and resurrection related to “great commission” and preaching repentance.
10. Harakas: Says the resurrection “creates an imperative for those who believe. They are to be agents of the forgiveness of sins which flows from Jesus Christ’s death on the cross and his resurrection victory.”
11. Jansen: Claims the resurrection message was entrusted to Jesus’s followers to take to others.
12. Kelly: Says that for Paul, Jesus’s resurrection was the “basis” for the “commissioning of apostles and disciples to preach the good news of . . . salvation.”
13. Kendall and O’Collins: They state that Jesus extended to the disciples “the call to a foundational mission.”
14. Lindars: Says there is a relationship between the resurrection appearances and the sending of the apostles, as they are features of the Gospels.
15. Lorenzen: Lorenzen discusses mission and what this means to the church today.
16. Meier: Meier argues that Christians believe that the resurrected Jesus sent the disciples out on a mission to share the gospel.
17. Moltmann: In the appearances, Moltmann writes, Jesus sent his followers just as the Father had sent him.
18. O’Collins: Says Jesus called the disciples to a mission. O’Collins also thinks this call “died with [the disciples].”
19. Olson: Notes the resurrection is what sent out the disciples to evangelize the world.
20. Osborne: That the resurrection puts believers on mission is mentioned by Osborne.
21. Pannenberg: Pannenberg notes that the resurrection included a gentile mission and that Jesus’s lordship applies to all nations.
22. Perkins: States that the resurrection is connected to calls to evangelize and the preaching of the good news, noting that this also includes some significant responsibility.
23. Perrin: Says the risen Jesus called the disciples to a new mission, and they responded to him.
24. Plevnik: “Underlying” all four Gospel resurrection accounts, writes Plevnik, “is the identify motif and the mission mandate.”
25. Selby: Selby says that Jesus’s resurrection “certainly involves mission.” Selby moves from resurrection to mission in the early church and also examines today’s implications.
26. Talbert: In Luke–Acts, says Talbert, the resurrection grounds church missions in at least three ways: (1) It is founded upon the command of the risen Jesus. (2) The Holy Spirit is the gift given to empower believers on mission. (3) Without point 2, there would be “no personal desire to bear witness.” In this sense, Acts 1:8 is actually a promise, not a command.
27. Williams: “An objective word from beyond, a summons and an invitation like the summons and invitation given in the days of his flesh.”
B. Jesus on Discipleship
1. Meier: Meier notes what it took to qualify as a disciple as well as certain criteria surrounding Jesus’s calling of the disciples and the implications of becoming a disciple (saving or losing one’s life; taking up one’s cross; facing hostility from one’s family). He also discusses the boundaries of women and those who chose to leave their homes to follow Jesus.
C. Disciples and Money
1. Meier: Meier makes several comments regarding the role of finances and the disciples. Jesus argued strongly against “excessive concern about or trust in money and property.” Jesus did not require that all who followed him had to give up their livelihoods; otherwise there would have been no one providing support for their ministry.
D. Differing Groups and Levels of Disciples
1. Meier: Meier notes three types of followers of Jesus: the outer groups and crowds, the middle circle of long-term followers and pupils who would absorb his message and praxis, and the Twelve.
E. Missions
1. Clifford and Johnson: They state the missionary gospel message preached by the earliest disciples, and therefore the message for believers today, is the resurrected Christ, which is also linked to moral (social) transformation and repentance here and now by sharing in the life of the resurrected Jesus.
2. Green: Green notes that the resurrection was proof of “Jesus’ interpretation of Scriptures and of God’s purpose,” which also equipped the disciples for their mission. “Certainty at this level was necessary.”
16. ETHICS, JUSTICE, MATERIALISM, AND SOCIAL CONCERNS
A. Clifford and Johnson: Clifford and Johnson make several observations regarding the implications of the resurrection for ethics, including Jesus’s moral teachings, human ethics within creation, and stewardship of creation.
B. Conzelmann: Says Paul’s hope is not just for the future, but it is also for the making of a better present world.
C. Fackre: Claims we need to move from the resurrection to its implications for present pain (e.g., AIDS victims, the poor, crime, battered women). After mentioning Moltmann, Fackre says, “Hope mobilizes, while despair paralyzes.” Accordingly, the evils we see in the world (starvation, poverty, ecological concerns, etc.) are “unacceptable.” God’s purposes involve bodies, and not just our personal bodies but relational bodies (e.g., the church, politics) as well.
D. Girdwood: Although Girdwood appears to struggle with the interventionist aspect of the resurrection, he still says, “We must learn to take up the implications of the cross in discipleship.” God directs us to a different kind of intervention: God’s presence in the present. God’s intervention “can take the form of healing . . . courage . . . inspire reconciliation . . . involves a profound moral commitment to the way of the cross. It inspires in us discipleship.”
E. Green: Says Jesus’s resurrection is connected to and consistent with various motifs in Luke such as feeding the hungry, care for the marginalized, redemption, and negating presumed value systems related to honor or shame.
F. Hansen: Hansen observes five different connections between resurrection and ethics (Jesus’s authority, liberty to believers, new communities where Jesus’s love is expressed, guarantees accountability, and conformity to Christ). Jesus’s resurrection affirms and confirms, for Paul, Jesus’s moral instruction. It grounds Christian behavior.
G. Hardy: In a chapter on the resurrection and Third World spirituality, Hardy argues that the resurrection and hope of believers should not lead toward fatalism. It should, rather, drive them toward life in the fullest sense in the present and for all. Those who follow Jesus reject wealth and pursue justice. Trusting in the risen Jesus will “challenge” believers who accept “consumerism” and will open their eyes to “the face of Christ in the poor.”
H. Hebblethwaite: States that the spirit of the risen Jesus conforms Christians to Christ to transform society and to overcome evil in the world in the present.
I. Johnstone: Says Jesus’s resurrection is related to ethics, including issues like justice, nonviolence, liberty and liberation, love, and ecology.
J. Kaufman: “The powerful Christian incentives toward self-giving, toward service of the weak, the poor, the unfortunate, toward self-sacrifice for others’ well-being . . . are all rooted” in the symbol of the cross and the value of suffering for others as seen in Jesus.
K. Künneth: States the resurrection is connected to ethics.
L. Lampe: Lampe notes a connection between 1 Corinthians 6 and the body, and the relationship that ethics has with Jesus’s resurrection.
M. Lehmann: Lehmann notes that there is an element of a “political feast” for Easter that is often overlooked. However, the context of Lehmann’s comment seems to indicate that he is speaking more here of social involvement with the needs of others: the “political implications of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus are evident both in Scripture” and in church history. Later, Lehmann curiously contends that the politics of Easter and the politics of resurrection are one and the same. Accordingly, there is a dramatic change in the value systems. Lehmann writes, “The God of the oppressed preserves the oppressed from ideological self-destruction through the gift to them of the truth that sets them free.” Lehmann cites Athanasius and especially Augustine (on the interplay of the two cities as they are related on earth) as examples. Bonhoeffer is another example, who Lehmann notes taught us in Letters and Papers that the world looks different when we see history from the standpoint of those who are marginalized and weak. Lehmann concludes that the resurrection empowers believers to live with a “a lively and liberating confidence” to “share [Jesus’s] sufferings” and stand for the weak of this world. This appears to be Lehmann’s summary of what is meant by Easter being a “political feast.”
N. Lorenzen: Lorenzen discusses forgiveness and discipleship and meeting the needs of others.
O. Marshall: Says the resurrection works as a foundation for “ethical motivation” for believers. Marshall cites O’Donovan for concentrating on the resurrection as the beginning of ethics.
P. O’Collins: O’Collins observes that liberation theologies do not comment much on Jesus’s resurrection. O’Collins thinks they should, because they are concerned about justice and could be “greatly enriched” by greater reflection on Jesus’s resurrection. The resurrection inspires liberation and other ethical themes. Jesus’s resurrection and love are also discussed. In an entire article on resurrection and love, O’Collins first comments that little has been written on this subject by contemporaries. He then explores the topic in detail and writes on the Father’s love for the Son, the Son’s for the Father, the Holy Spirit’s love toward both, the risen Jesus’s love for humanity, and humanity’s love for the Lord. He develops thoughts on the nature of love and five other related themes on love.
Q. O’Donovan: The first part of his book is on the foundations of ethics, which arise from the gospel. Ethics that derive elsewhere are not distinctively Christian ethics. Additionally, these ethics are founded upon Jesus’s resurrection. This gives Christian ethics an objective basis. Ethics is thus cognitively grounded in terms of its justification. In his review of O’Donovan, Gustafson summarizes part 1 by writing: “Christian ethics is grounded in the created moral order that is redeemed and transformed by the resurrection and that is known exclusively in Christ.” The second part of O’Donovan’s book is on the subjective basis for ethics, chiefly as communicated by the Holy Spirit. Gustafson summarizes part 2, saying, “Christians are illumined by the Spirit so that they clearly see and know the moral order and can freely participate in it so as to order life toward its true end.”
R. Osborne: Says the resurrection “demands” that believers start making the world a better place now, in the present, and not ignore the world around them by solely focusing on the future. The social and evangelistic components coexist with one another.
S. Perkins: States the crucifixion confronts our worldly assumptions and value judgments (e.g., power).
T. Selby: Writes on the resurrection, justice, and the vindication of suffering persons.
U. Wright: The Jewish concept of resurrection of the body, says Wright, showed that God does care about justice at the proper time. Wright observes that the resurrection is understood, by the time of Paul, as also referring to new ethical commitments that one can follow when empowered by the Holy Spirit.
17. COMMITMENT
A. Fuller: Fuller states that for John, there is a call for discipleship and commitment.
B. Green: Michael Green devotes a chapter to the resurrection and discipleship, including self-denial and how to live Jesus’s “dying and rising life.”
C. Hallman: Hallman (presumably a process theologian) says that a theology of the resurrection “clearly entails a christology of call and response.”
D. Hebblethwaite: Immediately after speaking of the resurrection, Hebblethwaite says that only through sacrifice are lives transformed.
E. Johnson: Says we are called to follow Jesus and imitate him as our moral example and pattern. Johnson is very good on Luke’s challenges concerning material possessions. Johnson starts one chapter by noting that he is following the implications “of a strong belief in the resurrection for knowledge of Jesus.” Such belief is more than a mere intellectual assent and means that one must live in a manner after Jesus (e.g., suffering). This is the Jesus who was resurrected and is the model for believers.
F. Küng: States the core of Easter’s proclamation is to become a disciple of Jesus, “to die with Christ and to rise with him, as Paul expresses it.”
G. Lorenzen: Says discipleship requires the resurrection (note the title of Lorenzen’s book). Lorenzen recognizes a “radical discipleship” and discusses Bonhoeffer’s concepts of “costly grace” leading to “radical discipleship.”
H. Lüdemann: Lüdemann says that Jesus “issued a radical call to discipleship.” But he relates it immediately to the resurrection.
I. Moltmann: Writes that those who are Jesus’s disciples must be willing to take up their cross.
J. Neill: Says Jesus makes more demands on his followers than any other religious leader.
K. Nickelsburg: Although he postulates that Mark wanted to show by the women’s response that they had failed to respond properly to the message at the tomb, Nickelsburg argues that Mark still wanted to serve a pastoral function by facing “his readers with the way of the cross and the necessity of suffering discipleship.” The meaning was to reassure his readers during persecution.
L. O’Collins: Says resurrection needs to lead us to consider the implications of discipleship. He discusses these calls “to new obedience” and a new life in Christ.
M. Perkins: Perkins refers to Q presenting a radical discipleship that is dependent on the tomb being empty.
N. Smith: Robert Smith says for Mark, the resurrection does more than just confirm Jesus’s sonship. Mark is doing much more as a way of defending Jesus’s call to discipleship. Jesus’s resurrection confirms his ministry and calls to discipleship.
O. Torrance: States the incarnation and resurrection call for “the intelligent commitment of belief.”
18. COMMUNITY
A. Clifford and Johnson: Clifford and Johnson stress that the resurrection dignifies and values every human being and encourages the affirmation and inclusion of all.
B. Green: For Luke, according to Green, the resurrection grounds the description of the community of Jesus’s followers.
C. Harakas: States the resurrected Jesus brought the disciples peace: “Peace is a content-full state that allows for harmonious relationships, for communion and spiritual accord.”
D. Harris: Says that for Paul, the resurrection of the dead is personal and plural so it properly “highlights the communal and interpersonal nature of the resurrection state.”
E. Hodgson: States Jesus Christ is present in the Christian community in “many shapes,” such as female and male; gentile and Jewish; black and white; African, Asian, European, and American; homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual, and celibate.
F. Johnson: States that through his death and resurrection, Jesus identifies his community with his body. This means two things follow: (1) As members of the community, we can learn from one another. (2) It is in the community context that wisdom is provided for interpreting Jesus.
G. Moltmann: Moltmann thinks that the resurrection of the dead introduces the issue of community and resists isolation.
H. Newman: Notes that one theme of a couple of New Testament texts like 1 Pet 4:14 and 2 Cor 3:18 is that Jesus’s resurrection transforms believers so that they can build “cohesive communities.”
I. Selby: Selby uses H. A. Williams (True Resurrection) and discusses resurrection and community.
J. Williams: Says resurrection means repentance, forgiveness, and togetherness. Jesus’s life is intertwined with his community.
K. Wright: With regard to Luke’s account of Abraham, Lazarus, and the rich man, Wright says Jesus’s resurrection is “clearly” connected to calls for justice.
19. EVIL AND SUFFERING
A. General Comments
1. Davis: Says the resurrection means God is ultimately victorious, which is meaningful when it seems that evil has won the battle. But Jesus told his disciples that evidence for God’s victory can already be seen. God’s final victory is in his kingdom. Jesus’s resurrection is evidence of God’s victory over not just death (cf. Rom 6:9) but all evil. Hence, the resurrection is not just good news but the best news. Like Job, we don’t know why evil occurs, but it will be defeated one day.
2. Girdwood: Begins his article by saying he has seen too many believers “pray fervently to God for acts of deliverance” and “find themselves in a quandary” when God does not answer. Since these are “false expectations about God,” he proposes a noninterventionist model in dealing with suffering instead of escaping it. Girdwood notes that there are not promises from God to intervene miraculously. The evil and “risks” that are in the world are encountered by both believers and unbelievers. Girdwood understands he is questioning the standard beliefs of many. We must reassess what is meant by God’s intervention. Girdwood contends that God suffers with people. But the view that the resurrection is some kind of “‘victory’ over the powers of evil . . . is problematic.” Apparently this is some kind of “escapism,” since, in the resurrection, “God remains present with us as the appearances of the risen Christ testify.” Girdwood seems to think that the cross and resurrection appearances demonstrate that God didn’t take us out of the world and away from suffering but, like Jesus, directs us into the world to be his disciples and represent him directly in the lives of those who suffer.
3. Green: Michael Green addresses suffering, making six excellent points from the perspective of the cross and resurrection.
4. Guenther: Guenther explains how the resurrected Jesus meets our needs: “He greets our fear and disbelief with loving acceptance, assuring us that he doesn’t mind our questions and our probing.” Jesus’s cross “is an icon of suffering,” a statement about the vulnerability of our flesh and our ability to hurt others.
5. Hodgson: States the resurrection is the “reversal from death to life, from defeat to victory, from suffering to joy.”
6. Johnson: Johnson discusses discipleship, which involves suffering with Jesus.
7. Lewis: Reflects on the problem of evil. Lewis is an interesting source because, according to the back cover, he died from cancer while writing this work.
8. Lorenzen: States that God was with Jesus in the garden and on the cross. He was with the 5,000 Anabaptists executed in sixteenth-century Switzerland, the millions of Jews murdered in the Holocaust, those who suffered at Hiroshima, and all those who have cancer or are tortured. The resurrection says God was present in his Son’s sufferings and ever since. Sufferers (including Jesus) may have felt forsaken, but they were not. We have the hope that one day there will never be any more suffering. God “exposed his own being to suffering and death—yet without ceasing to be God.” This is clearly the case during the crucifixion.
9. Mathewson: “Celebrate this new life whenever you feel discouraged about your present circumstances. Celebrate it when you find your life disappointing and when things do not turn out the way you expected or dreamed. Celebrate that God raised Jesus from death so that you could be united with Jesus in his resurrection.” Mathewson also comments that “Christians will experience complete healing when the time comes for God to restore everything. . . . Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has healed us ‘already but not yet.’ Thank God that he has started the process, and that complete healing will eventually come.”
10. Moltmann: Relates the cross to suffering in multiple ways, especially Jesus’s suffering on the cross. One of those ways is showing solidarity and companionship to others who have been humiliated and “emptied of their identity as he was . . . from Spartacus to the concentration camps.” There is overlap between Jesus’s sufferings and our sufferings, his cross and humanity’s crosses. Second, Moltmann connects it to atonement. The view of vicarious atonement comes from “very early” in Christianity. According to the New Testament, Jesus Christ is the one who atones for the guilty. If God doesn’t suffer, then the cross is another human tragedy. People who suffer often blame God with abandoning them, but those who “cry out” while suffering are also participating in Jesus’s “death cry.” Moltmann suggests that a God who cannot suffer is impoverished and cannot love. Jesus is unique among world religions because none of them, at the core, have someone who was martyred. Jesus is on the side of victims when he puts himself on the cross and atones for sins. Jesus’s cry was answered by God, and God answered this cry by resurrecting Jesus. Jesus’s resurrection brings hope that God hears our cries and that our suffering is not the final word.
11. O’Collins: Addresses ways in which the resurrection relates to our present. O’Collins includes the “costliness” of the resurrection as it is related to what he terms the “epistemology of pain” and suffering.
12. Osborne: On the basis of the vindication of the Son of God, the Gospel of Mark provides hope to the persecuted that there is ultimate victory.
13. Pamment: Notes that in 2 Cor 5:2 and Rom 8:18 and following, Paul reminds us that what we suffer in the present can’t be compared with our future hope. Paul doesn’t wish to die in hopelessness while living a life of “faithlessness, and hence the anxiety when under the strain of persecution.”
14. Pinnock: Jesus “became part of the human tragedy in order to redeem it.” Pinnock then goes on to describe how Jesus can identify with humanity and transform it, among other things.
15. Purves: Purves explains that because of the resurrection, evil does not have the last word.
16. Segal: Segal argues that the bodily resurrection, for Paul, is a guarantee from God that evil will ultimately be defeated and is a foretaste of that victory.
17. Smith: Robert Smith believes that for Mark, Jesus’s suffering alone is not proof that God disapproved of Jesus or was impotent, but the resurrection changes all of this and affirms those who have suffered. Smith also notes that Luke wanted his readers to see the resurrection as an encouragement during suffering.
18. Trites: Writing on martyrdom, she notes the book of Revelation is based on Jesus’s resurrection and conquering of death because, without it, there is no hope.
19. Winter: Says the resurrection provides believers with confidence that good will ultimately be victorious over evil.
20. Wright: While evil was not wiped out, Wright states “the” initial and decisive victory has already been established in Jesus’s resurrection. Wright states this victory was understood in the past tense, as an event that already occurred in the real world, though work remained to be done. This was the basis for early Christians’ hope, joy, and efforts to transform the principalities of this world. Wright points out how Paul, in 2 Corinthians, stresses God’s work despite present suffering, which is founded in Jesus’s death and resurrection. “The call of the gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love.” This provides hope for the future physical, incorruptible, and glorious resurrection and thus enables the church to act within the present as well.
B. Suffering and Hope
1. Clifford and Johnson: Say the risen Christ can provide hope for us in the present by being with us, even amid our suffering.
2. Leuschen: Within the New Testament, “the word hope takes on a new, enhanced significance. For the Christian, hope is assured.”
3. Mathewson: Mathewson discusses how the resurrection can provide hope in the midst of suffering for believers.
4. Purves: Highlights the fact that suffering should be expected but should be endured with a joyful, hopeful, resurrection-focused attitude in the present.
C. Assurance
1. Witherington: “The point of the resurrection was not to be a demonstration or proof that nonbelievers were wrong, but a confirmation, reassurance, and empowering for witness of believers in Jesus, who turned out to be correct.”
2. Wright: Wright points out how the resurrection was a conquering of evil. Additionally, the transformation of the disciples to joy was because of Jesus’s triumph over evil.
20. PSYCHOLOGY AND COUNSELING
A. Green: Michael Green devotes a chapter to the resurrection and counseling, including dealing with guilt, desolation, low self-image, loneliness, defeat, bereavement and fear of dying, occult issues, and marriage. Green says, “The empty cross of Jesus is the key.”
B. Lewis: Alan Lewis discusses how the resurrection is liberating for the oppressed and hurting.
21. EVERYDAY LIFE
A. General Comments
1. Clifford and Johnson: They address how the Christian concept of resurrection addresses the whole person, including different personality types (intellectual, artist, authoritative, etc.).
2. Conzelmann: Says Paul is arguing not just for an afterlife but for the living out of that future life in the present world.
3. Cupitt: Cupitt says, “My faith is apostolic because I believe in the same sort of way . . . I share the same sort of experiences as the first disciples.”
4. Davis: Davis argues that one’s beliefs should make a difference in the present world.
5. Dawe: As one of the two evidences for Jesus’s resurrection, Dawe lists “the experience of new life in Christ.”
6. Durrwell: Says we can “live now” in the present in a way that reflects our final destination. Durrwell provides a lengthy biblical and theological treatment of the new life of the church after Jesus’s resurrection.
7. Gaffin: Gaffin examines at length how the believer “has already been raised with Christ.”
8. Guenther: After speaking about the resurrected Jesus appearing to his disciples, Guenther writes, “He greets our fear and disbelief with loving acceptance. . . . He still comes in everydayness. He still says: see my hands and my feet.”
9. Harakas: “Resurrection faith needs to become a way of life.” Then, summarizing the rest of his article: “Here is the agenda for the post-Easter journey—joy and peace, mission and forgiveness, faith and proclamation, love and life. Certainly enough to keep Christians busy.”
10. Hodgson: Reminiscent of Bultmann, Hodgson thinks the essence of the functionalist view is that the emphasis is not on the miracle that happened in past history but “on the saving, life-giving, redemptively transformative work of the risen Christ.” Jesus is no longer physically present but comes in the sacraments and sharing. Jesus’s resurrection moves “from defeat to victory” and “brings life out of death.”
11. Holleman: For Paul, Holleman writes, our dying and rising with Christ takes place in the present world and “at the moment of one’s conversion or baptism.”
12. Lehmann: Says the power of the resurrection “is the power to live in this life without taking this life for granted” and the power to not allow the worldly achievements to become one’s sole meaning or purpose.
13. Lorenzen: Says that for the disciples, Jesus’s resurrection meant “a radically new orientation of life.” Jesus’s resurrection provides forgiveness for the past and “lays the foundation for a new beginning.”
14. Mathewson: Mathewson discusses how the resurrection can provide purpose for believers.
15. Moltmann: States, “New creation is beginning.” It has already started.
16. Newport: Newport reminds us that believers “don’t have to wait until [they] die to get at least the down payment on eternal life.”
17. Oden: Discusses the present benefits of our risen life in Christ.
18. Perkins: Perkins laments that for too many Christians, the resurrection “has no revelatory power and certainly no ordering relevance to their lives.”
19. Perrin: Claims Mark’s resurrected Jesus means that we experience “the ultimacy of God” in our “everyday existence.”
20. Peters: Says Easter indicates the present “participating in an as yet outstanding universal reality that has taken on the limits of finitude, in the eternal and everlasting kingdom that has taken on the limits of temporality and ephemerality.”
21. Pinnock: Says Bultmann was wrong about the historicity of the resurrection, but right about “a strong existential dimension” to the resurrection.
22. Rahner: States we can only believe in Jesus’s resurrection “because of this apostolic witness and in dependence on it . . . our faith remains tied to the apostolic witness.”
23. Selby: Says Jesus’s resurrection relates to John’s concept of present life.
24. Stanley: Following Fitzmyer on Phil 3:10–11, Stanley says the power of the resurrection comes from God and provides a “new vitality, and finally proceeds from him as the life-giving, vitalizing force . . . that Christians in union with Christ experience and live.”
25. Wright: According to Wright, Paul argues that without the resurrection, “the central nerve of Christian living would be cut.” The church is to “implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love.”
B. Political and Social
1. Green: Joel Green finds that Jesus’s resurrection is “intertwined” with Luke’s concern for the poor, downtrodden, and outcast.
2. Lewis: Discusses how the resurrection has political and social consequences.
3. Wright: Wright also discusses how the resurrection has political and social consequences. He does this at various places with varying levels of detail, and sometimes stressing the kingdom of God as overthrowing the kingdoms of the world.
C. Baptism
1. Purves: “Baptism is a declaration through action that we have died and risen with Christ.”
2. Wright: Wright notes that Christians live in the present in light of a future judgment by Christ, and baptism in 1 Peter seems to be the point of a “symbolic beginning of the Christian life” (1 Pet 3:21–22; cf. 4:1–2).
D. Suffering and Hope
1. Clifford and Johnson: They state the risen Jesus can provide hope for us in the present by being with us, even in the midst of suffering.
2. Leuschen: “For the Christian, hope is assured; it is directed to the future, and its content is the resurrection.”
3. Mathewson: Mathewson discusses how the resurrection can provide hope amid suffering for believers.
E. Experiencing God’s Power
1. Johnson: Johnson notes that the power experienced by believers through the confession that Jesus is Lord is the Holy Spirit; “the Spirit is given because Jesus is raised.”
2. Mathewson: Mathewson discusses how the resurrection can provide believers with the ability to experience of God’s power.
F. Boldness
1. Clifford and Johnson: Clifford and Johnson highlight various aspects in which believers can, and should, live confidently and boldly in light of the resurrection.
2. Mathewson: Mathewson discusses how the resurrection can provide boldness for believers.
22. OUR IMAGINATION
A. Various Scholars: In Barton and Stanton’s edited volume, they note that the essays by John Bowden “Resurrection in Music,” John Drury “According to Poetry,” and Dennis Nineham “Tolstoy’s Resurrection Revisited” address resurrection and our imagination. See also the essays by Norman Klassen, Wendy Porter, Neil Taylor, Pat Pinsent, Graham Holderness, John Anonby, and Kevin McCarron in part 3 (“Resurrection in the Arts and Literature”) of the edited volume by Porter, Hayes, and Tombs.
B. Clifford and Johnson: Provide an interesting look at the differences between the artistic depiction of the cross compared to the resurrection. They also highlight the media’s depiction of resurrection, immortality, life after death, and the hope for eternal life.
C. Moltmann: Moltmann says (in a way reminiscent of F. Schaeffer) that Christian painters had the freedom to express their imaginations.
D. O’Collins: Makes suggestions on how “engaging our imagination” can help us with the question of what the resurrection could be like. O’Collins suggests areas like the arts and contemplative work—including some on disciplines—physics and biology could provide insight. He also includes some intriguing thoughts on the analogy between our genetic structure as the “stuff” that provides bodily continuity and how “God’s action” provides continuity for our lives before and after death. O’Collins also mentions love, freedom, thought, and sex, including some thoughtful comments on the latter regarding union and ecstasy as an anticipation of heavenly glory.
E. Whitney-Schenk: Before drawing conclusions, she comments that we can’t prove the resurrection, but also discusses knowing the resurrection instinctively as we learn about beauty, harmony, and balance.
F. Wright: Wright argues that we should exercise our imagination with the way things will be one day once they have been restored.
23. PHYSICS
A. O’Collins: O’Collins offers more thoughts on how the resurrection might fit in with contemporary science.
B. Torrance: Gives great thoughts on the new physics and resurrection.
24. INCARNATION
A. Hebblethwaite: Hebblethwaite argues that the incarnation was not a belief before the resurrection. The incarnation with the resurrection is, for Christians, an important example of God’s interaction and connection to creation. It makes no sense to ask if Jesus might have been incarnated as God if he was not raised from the dead. The incarnation only makes sense in connection to the resurrection. Jesus’s resurrection confirms Jesus’s identity. Hebblethwaite also answers the question of whether Christ could be further incarnated on other planets and galaxies. He answers no, in that such an incarnation would also require a resurrection, and raises some other issues.
B. Torrance: Torrance offers many comments on the incarnation in his book Space, Time and Incarnation. Torrance refers to the hypostatic union of two natures in Jesus. He says this conception of the incarnation was forced upon people who were predisposed not to accept it.
C. Wink: According to Wink, Jesus “infiltrated the Godhead” and “God was, in Jesus, taking on a human face. God would never be the same.” He adds that, “from now on, Jesus’ followers would experience God through the filter of Jesus. Incarnation means not only that Jesus is like God, but that God is like Jesus.”
D. Wolterstorff: “At the core of what was going on in the strange, baffling presence on earth of Jesus of Nazareth was God dwelling among us human beings more intimately than ever, embodied.”
25. CREATION AND ECCLESIOLOGY
A. Durrwell: Durrwell states that through Jesus’s resurrection, Jesus shares in the “universal lordship and participates in the creative action of the Father.”
B. Kannengiesser: Says the resurrection indicates the combined role of Jesus and God in creation.
C. Künneth: Künneth discusses both resurrection and creation in his book.
D. Mathewson: Mathewson acknowledges that the earth was also being transformed through the resurrection.
E. Moltmann: Says Jesus’s resurrection brings the expectation of a new creation, in keeping with Romans 8.
F. Neill: Says Jesus’s “resurrection brought into being a new creation.”
G. Neill and Wright: They note the disciples affirmed not only that death no longer had any hold on Jesus but that the “whole universe had become a new place, that the new world-order was already here, because Jesus had risen from the dead.”
H. Oden: Says the resurrection affirms that “God remains sovereign in material creation.”
I. Olson: Although fairly brief, Olson has a strong treatment of the resurrection in relation to the stewardship and redemption of earth. Olson notes that many scholars (mentioning Pannenberg and O’Donovan) who treat the resurrection do so solely in relation to humans and not creation. Others don’t relate their treatment of nature specifically to the resurrection (Moltmann), or they “ignore a strong biblical foundation.” Olson’s main argument is that our theology of nature and creation is centrally based on the corporeal resurrection of Jesus. For Paul, just as resurrection removed human guilt and reconciled us to God, so the resurrection “cancelled the curse which sin and the fall have brought upon nature.” So the resurrection is “the cosmic event!” Just as Jesus’s corporeal resurrection body had new properties, so will nature, including perhaps more dimensions and realities than we now know. “The redemption of the entire cosmos . . . is assured by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” “Christians need to be made more aware of God’s concern for nature and his intent to redeem us and it together.” In a brief response, Steven C. Bouma-Prediger compliments Olson for a treatment that is “both right-headed and much needed.”
J. Peters: To understand the resurrection more fully, Peters writes, it should be understood as “anticipation in Jesus’ person of what God will do to transform and renew the whole of creation.”
K. Purves: Purves notes that Jesus’s resurrection redeemed space.
L. Soskice: Says the resurrection also proclaims “the transformation of the universe” and the restoration of creation. There is hope for other social, ethical, justice, and environmental issues as well.
M. Stanley: In Rom 8:18–23, Stanley notes that Paul understands “Christ’s resurrection as already permeating the material universe.”
N. Torrance: Says there is a “profound interrelation” between resurrection, redemption, and creation. Resurrection needs to be coherently worked out with creation.
O. Wright: Because Jesus was raised, Wright states, the early believers also recognized a transformation of the entire cosmos. Creation will be liberated from the destruction. The individual hope of resurrection is located within the wider breadth of resurrection hope of all the cosmos, including a new heavens and a new earth.
P. Zahl: “For Paul, the Resurrection of Jesus is also the ultimate case of creatio ex nihilo, the creation of something (life) from nothing (death).”
26. RESURRECTION AND THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
A. Avis: Says the agent of the resurrection is the Holy Spirit, who gives life to believers and meets Jesus, who meets his people in the Spirit (Rom 1:4; 8:11; 1 Cor 15:45; 2 Cor 3:17).
B. Carnley: Carnley argues his chief thesis, that we can move from the nature of Jesus’s appearances to our present experience of the Holy Spirit as confirmation. Still, he wishes to avoid limiting Easter to merely an “experience of the raised Christ as Spirit.” There is a “continuing presence of the raised Christ as Spirit.” This provides an additional piece of evidence for faith.
C. Craig: Claims the case for Jesus’s resurrection certainly doesn’t depend solely on historical evidence. Millions of believers over the centuries have held to their faith based upon their own experience of the risen Jesus, present through the Spirit. Craig goes so far as to say that belief in the resurrected Jesus might even be considered a properly basic belief.
D. D’Costa: Key to John’s theological view of Jesus’s resurrection, according to D’Costa, is the giving of the Holy Spirit (John 20:23). He says we need to check John’s other relevant texts on the Holy Spirit, like 14:15–18, 25–27; 15:26–27; and 16:7–15 to further explicate what John meant.
E. Durrwell: Provides an in-depth treatment of the biblical theology of Jesus being raised and transformed by the Spirit. The risen Christ is the source for sending the Holy Spirit.
F. Fuller: Says the resurrected Jesus “bequeathed” the Holy Spirit to his followers. Then, as a Spirit-filled group, they went out on their mission because of the experiences of the risen Jesus.
G. Goergen: States that Jesus, after the resurrection, “inaugurated” a community of believers called the church, and did so through the Holy Spirit.
H. Jansen: Jansen discusses this topic in detail.
I. Johnson: The most crucial message about Jesus for Johnson is that he is alive today, and this is chiefly manifest through the work of the Holy Spirit. For example, the relationship between Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the believer is deep according to Paul. Jesus’s presence persists in the apostles through the Holy Spirit’s power. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, believers are able to be free in Christ.
J. Künneth: In a section on the “presentness” of Jesus, Künneth speaks of the “Christspirit,” but it is difficult to know what he means.
K. Lorenzen: Says we experience Jesus’s presence in our lives through the Holy Spirit.
L. McMahon: Drawing from semiotic theory and similar analysis, McMahon points out that there is (in some sense) room “in which Jesus or the Spirit can intervene” in our lives.
M. Moltmann: Says the early faith in Jesus’s resurrection was not the appearance experiences alone but also by an “experience of God’s Spirit.” Believers can participate “in the process of resurrection.” In Rom 8:11, Paul connects the perfect, present, and future tenses of the resurrection of Jesus, the indwelling of the Spirit, and the resurrection of the dead. Faithfulness is founded on the “present ‘proof of the Spirit and of power’ (Lessing’s phrase), not on historical judgments based on probability.”
N. Perkins: In chapter 8 of her book, entitled “Resurrection as Jesus’ Presence,” Perkins argues the resurrection is related to the Johannine emphasis on the coming of the Comforter, which is a distinct way of referring to sensing the divine presence. There is a foretaste in the present through the presence of the Spirit that indicates there is not heartbreak in the end. She seems to refer to this as “resurrection symbolism.”
O. Pinnock: Says the Holy Spirit was the “effective cause” of the resurrection. To recognize this, one must “recover the muscular quality” of the Spirit in creation and restoration.
P. Rahner: States that believers experience, in the Spirit, Jesus’s resurrection and victorious mission.
Q. Rowland: Notes the Holy Spirit was a pledge (following Rom 8:23; 2 Cor 1:22), and the resurrection began with Jesus.
R. Schneiders: Says John’s resurrection theology is distinctive, in that the resurrection is the means by which the glorified Jesus nourished his disciples’ lives, indwelling them and leading them to spirituality.
S. Talbert: Notes the church was empowered for its mission through the resurrected Jesus’s gift of the Holy Spirit. Until then, his followers did not desire to be witnesses and, with this in mind, Acts 1:18 is a promise rather than a command.
T. Torrance: Claims the believer has risen with Jesus and participates in the resurrection power through the Spirit. The Holy Spirit provides two relations with the believer: a present relation “here and now” that ties together our past in Jesus with our new creation, and a relation between our past in Jesus and our present and future.
27. SACRAMENTS, ORDINANCES, AND DISCIPLINES
A. Durrwell: Says the risen Messiah comes “invisibly” and meets everyone. However, he comes “visibly in the sacraments” such as baptism and, most of all, the Eucharist. Durrwell provides many details on Jesus’s resurrection and the sacraments.
B. Hebblethwaite: Citing David Brown’s work on the Trinity, Hebblethwaite notes that the resurrection and exaltation led to worshiping Jesus. The earliest believers understood their situation as those who were in a relationship with the living Lord. Through prayer, sacrament, and fellowship, they can experience a “mutual indwelling” of his presence. Hebblethwaite also discusses Christ’s presence and the sacraments.
C. Hodgson: States Jesus’s presence in the sacraments, as in Luke 24, is a key means of showing his presence as the risen Christ.
D. O’Collins: Because of Jesus’s resurrection, O’Collins writes, he is present in the sacraments, Bible reading, forgiveness, witnessing, and so on. Through these, we can also experience the risen Christ.
E. Talbert: For Luke, Talbert writes, meals together are important. After the resurrection, the Eucharist is connected to Jesus’s appearances.
28. REVELATION AND HERMENEUTICS
A. Green: Joel Green points out that the resurrection casts a backward shadow and provides the “hermeneutical key” for interpreting the past and the future while affirming Jesus’s interpretations.
B. Lorenzen: Lorenzen similarly identifies the resurrection as the key for hermeneutics.
C. O’Collins: O’Collins offers some thoughts on the resurrection as revelation.
D. Oden: In a brief subsection entitled “History as Revelation,” Oden, seemingly influenced by Pannenberg, understands history to be connected to God’s revelation.
E. Torrance: In Torrance’s view, the resurrection is tied to God’s special revelation. Incidentally, Torrance admits a circularity in his treatment of Scripture, but not a “vicious circularity” since there have to be some ultimate beliefs that are not independently evidenced. Without such belief, even science couldn’t function.
29. UNIQUENESS OF CHRISTIANITY
A. General Comments
1. Anderson: In a detailed treatment, Norman Anderson argues that Christianity has a unique apostolic kerygma of the incarnation, deity, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He also offers a treatment of the mystery religions, the plan of salvation, and means of revelation.
2. Andrews: “The Christian faith is the only world religion that takes as its logo an emphatic symbol of death. And yet the central affirmation of Christianity is hopeful life.”
3. Bauckham: Bauckham notes that Jesus’s resurrection is historically unique as well as within God’s purposes.
4. Davis: Davis rightly notes that many have claimed to be a messiah or guru. He asks, who can we believe and why? Jesus’s resurrection is the proof for Jesus as Messiah. No others have been resurrected.
5. Dawson: Dawson speaks of the “unique act” that brought the “unique” person back from the dead.
6. Gethin: In an essay on the resurrection and Buddhism, Gethin admits the deeds done by Jesus (healing and raising the dead) are typically considered to be a “yogin’s abilities.” Then he admits that he is unaware of any yogins who brought other people back to life, or personally died and came back to life, within the Buddhist traditions.
7. Hebblethwaite: Says the resurrection is a key difference between Christianity and Hinduism. While Vishnu takes on many different avatars (human and animal), these are just a “screen.” Hebblethwaite argues that it is not a simple difference of numbers, whereby the Christians believe in one incarnation while Hindus believe in many; there is a “logical difference.” The incarnation and resurrection are unique. After speaking about Jesus’s appearances, he argues that there are no other cases of “comparable phenomena.”
8. Hurtado: “The fact is that we simply have no evidence that any figure, whether human or angelic, ever featured in the corporate and public devotional practice of Jewish circles in any way really comparable to the programmatic role of Jesus in early Christian circles.”
9. Künneth: Speaks of the uniqueness of both the resurrection and the appearances.
10. Moltmann: “Only the Christin faith is essentially a resurrection faith.” Speaking about the past-present relation regarding the resurrection of the dead, Moltmann points out that the resurrection is also unique in bridging the past and the future.
11. Moule: After arguing from Jesus’s resurrection to his deity and presenting “God’s plan of salvation,” Moule states that no Old Testament prophets could do what Jesus did.
12. Neill: Says if we take the Gospels “as critically as you will,” then still “Jesus is not in the least like anyone else who has ever lived. The things that he says about God are not the same as the sayings of any other religious teacher. The claims he makes for himself are not the same as those that have been made on behalf of any other religious teacher. . . . The demands he makes on his followers are more searching than those put forward by any other religious teacher.”
13. O’Collins: Says Jesus’s resurrection is “by far the strongest claim” for God’s action in the world that is “made by any of the great religions.” He then asks, “What signs and evidence can other religions (and ideologies) invoke to back their rival claims?” O’Collins also thinks that the resurrection should play a much more important role in “interreligious dialogue,” which, citing Paul Knitter, has largely ignored the subject.
14. Oden: Oden points out that there are no parallels in other religions to Jesus’s life, where a bodily resurrection connects and confirms his life and teachings and also provides eternal life.
15. Packer: Packer points out that Christianity is unlike other religions (Islam, Hinduism, polytheism, etc.), and to argue otherwise ignores facts. The chief difference centers on salvation. This is all indicated by the resurrection.
16. Sanders: Sanders briefly notes the uniqueness of Jesus’s resurrection and that without it, the movement probably would not have lasted very long.
17. Singh: Singh argues that pluralism can be true “without [Christian theology] losing its proper understanding of the mystery of God in Christ authenticated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
18. Wright: Wright highlights the distinctive meanings of resurrection among pagans, Jews, and Christians. He says that Jesus’s resurrection was unique compared to other events. He adds some details about eight other Jewish spiritual movements, none of which claimed that their leader was resurrected after death. Wright notes that there is “virtually” no spectrum regarding resurrection in the New Testament. The Gospels tell the most unique story in history—that God addresses the evil in the world by taking it on himself. Wright points out how the resurrection was a conquering of evil. Wright notes the transformation of the disciples to joy because of Jesus’s triumph over evil.
B. Resurrection
1. (Trans)Physical Nature of Resurrection Bodies
A) Craig: Craig offers various comments regarding the resurrection body, which is proper for new creation.
B) Green: Joel Green notes that Paul affirms in 1 Corinthians 15 that our present bodies are not proper for eternal life and need to be transformed. Paul does not simply claim that souls move from one place to another, but rather, that there is a transformation of the body (cf. Phil 3:21). Our bodies will be raised like that of Jesus, which means transformed.
C) Wright: Wright makes several comments on this point, especially the “transphysicality” of the resurrection body. The Jewish belief in resurrection prepared the groundwork for transphysicality, but the Christian view goes far beyond it and is, therefore, “without historical precedent.” This notion is made more explicit in Paul than it is in the Gospels.
2. Failed Messianic Movements
A) Tabor: Tabor notes that there was something peculiar about the disciples because they did not do what other groups did when their believed messiah died. Rather, those who followed Jesus continued his movement and it grew. One would have expected chaos and a new leader because, in other instances, the movements stopped with the death of their leader. These are historical questions. Tabor thinks the movement survived because of (1) James, (2) John the Baptist’s preaching, and (3) Jesus’s preaching regarding the end of the ages.
B) Wright: Wright argues that other movements where the leader was killed did not start proclaiming that their leader was still alive, let alone “resurrected.” Wright makes this point in another volume as well, citing a number of other leaders who died and were not proclaimed to have been resurrected. In such instances, a new leader was picked for their respective movements. This leads one to ask the historical question, Why were Jesus’s disciples different? There was no category of a failed messiah who was still viewed with respect or continued to be revered.
3. Resurrection with One Person before the General Resurrection
A) Crossan and Reed: Crossan and Reed note that Paul refers to a “stunningly original adaption” to theology (Pharisaic theology in particular), namely that the general resurrection “has already begun” with Jesus’s resurrection. The individual resurrection of Jesus shows that this would no longer be an instant moment but as a (likely brief) extended period of time.
B) Wright: Wright notes that ancient Judaism, let alone gentile religions, did not have a conception of a particular individual rising before the general resurrection.
4. Not Expecting a Single Resurrection
A) See: “The Disciples Did Not Expect the Resurrection (or Crucifixion)” (section 4.C) in chapter 3.
30. JESUS’S PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE SECOND COMING
A. General Comments
1. Davis: Davis argues that we will have confirmation whether the resurrection happened or not at the eschaton.
2. Durrwell: Durrwell’s discussion moves from resurrection to the parousia and other end-time events.
3. Fackre: The resurrection is linked by Fackre to major eschatological events like the resurrection of the dead, Christ’s return, final judgment, and everlasting life. Jesus will return as Lord, and there will be a “multi-dimensional hope” for humanity. There is a reason for Christ’s return: it vindicates Jesus and “entails our facing up to the response we make to the gift given.”
4. Hurtado: Notes that Jesus was proclaiming the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom.
5. Künneth: Künneth relates the resurrection to eschatology. This includes glorification, judgment, the end of time, the resurrection of the body, and the new world.
6. Meyer: Says Jesus’s coming is seen in light of his death and resurrection.
7. Moltmann: Moltmann notes that the resurrection not only defeats death but also history.
8. Rowland: For Paul, Rowland writes, Jesus’s resurrection is a hope for the future that will be completed with Jesus’s full reign as the Messiah and the general resurrection.
9. Selby: Selby discusses implications of resurrection for eschatology.
10. Stein: Says the Jesus who died, was buried, raised, and appeared is also returning.
11. Torrance: Torrance relates the resurrection from believer’s death, to being with Christ, to awaiting his coming and final resurrection of the body.
12. Wenham: Wenham briefly describes both Jesus’s and Paul’s view of the second coming. He notes that there is an element of both nearness and distance.
B. Jesus Was Wrong about the Second Coming
1. Allison: Allison makes (somewhat unclear) comments as to whether Jesus expected the end times as near or whether it was his own resurrection.
2. Ehrman: Argues that Jesus was simply mistaken about his second coming.
3. Lüdemann: Lüdemann notes that Acts seeks to add a corrective regarding the imminent return and replaces it with the coming of the Spirit.
C. Jesus Was Not Wrong about the Second Coming
1. General Comments
A) Blomberg: Blomberg argues that most of Jesus’s teaching “presupposes a significant interval,” and this is evident because Jesus spends energy and effort providing moral commands and instructions that include topics like taxes, divorce, and so on.
B) Neill and Wright: Make various comments about Jesus’s understanding of the end times given the fact he was preaching an apocalyptic message.
C) Wright: Wright contends that the evangelists themselves were not expecting an imminent end of the world. The apocalyptic language, rather, referred to the end of the “present world order.” Wright observes that the early church does not appear concerned by the fact that Jesus did not return in the literature written after AD 70. This includes Clement, Ignatius, and others. Wright also addresses the problem of the parousia. He also notes an interesting point regarding the second coming of the Son of Man.
2. Jesus’s Comments Interpreted Differently
A) Blomberg: Blomberg notes that there are “only three cryptic references” to Jesus’s return and it is widely recognized that each of these can be interpreted differently. Mark 9:1 refers to transfiguration; Mark 13:30 refers to future signs that precede Christ’s coming; Matt 10:23 refers to a “perennially incomplete mission.”
B) Riches: Riches notes that Dodd conceded to Jeremias’s book The Parables of Jesus regarding Jesus envisaging a future stage of fulfillment.
31. IMPORTANCE OF SATURDAY
A. Lewis: The importance of Saturday tying Good Friday to Easter Sunday is a theme throughout Lewis’s book. If we view these events properly (including Saturday), we take “time to regard the death of Christ in all its unabbreviated malignancy and infernal horror, we both protect the cross itself and throw into the sharpest relief the resurrection gospel: that out of just such a cross as this, and the occupied grave that followed it, come life and joy and hope.” Lewis shows Jesus’s perceived failure and reminds readers of the defeat felt by the disciples knowing that Jesus’s body was in the tomb.
B. Purves: Purves discusses the various issues that would be present during the period between the cross and resurrection: emptiness, loneliness, defeat, and so on.
32. RESURRECTION TO DOCTRINE WITHOUT APOLOGETIC
A. Barker: Margaret Barker stresses the centrality of the resurrection and adds that, along with Jesus’s death, it is the foundation for theology.
B. Borg: Borg notes five meanings regarding Jesus’s death and resurrection that are found in the New Testament. Virtually the same five are summarized again elsewhere, with Borg adding that they were central to the early Christian community.
C. Brown: Colin Brown notes that for Peter Carnley, the “resurrection theology is the foundation of all theology.”
D. Donahue: Says resurrection cannot be isolated from the rest of the New Testament and doctrines like salvation, Christology, and ethics.
E. Green: Joel Green briefly discusses the theological significance of the resurrection from Luke’s point of view.
F. Hagner: Hagner provides a helpful and concise overview of the theological significance of Jesus’s resurrection.
G. Lorenzen: Lorenzen discusses several aspects of resurrection and discipleship. He also connects resurrection to life after death, intercession for believers, forgiveness, reconciliation, Christ’s presence by the Holy Spirit, and guards against misunderstanding Jesus. See also his comments on God and suffering. Note also his discussion on a radical new perspective on life. He reads the resurrection in light of the “hermeneutical key,” salvation, and the needs of others.
H. Lüdemann: In his review of Lüdemann and Özen’s book, Rodd says Lüdemann claims that early Christians connected resurrection belief to “the forgiveness of sins, the experience of the overcoming of death, and ‘an eternity faith,’ meaning that ‘eternal life has become the life of human beings.’”
I. O’Collins: Connects resurrection (without argument) to salvation, the Trinity, God’s self-revelation, creation, the incarnation, and the crucifixion, and then he agrees that all Christian doctrine is connected to the resurrection.
J. Osborne: Kenan Osborne develops an entire resurrection theology.
K. Rodd: Rodd, in his review of Avis’s edited volume, connects Jesus’s resurrection to doctrines such as the “kingdom of God, the hope of the transforming power of God in history, the Holy Spirit, and the parousia.”
L. Selby: Selby says, “The resurrection is linked to a variety of theological concepts.” He then discusses numerous connections.
M. Stein: Stein argues that, for the disciples, Jesus’s resurrection was connected to “the rise of faith and its beneficial consequences—justification, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, eternal life, the promise of a future resurrection.”
33. RESURRECTION AND GENERAL REVELATION
A. Clifford and Johnson: These two offer some thoughtful but somewhat unclear examples of resurrection that could be considered from the perspective of natural theology. Some of the examples are from creation (sleeping and waking, different seasons, caterpillar into butterfly), different flood accounts in various religions, and comparisons to claims of reincarnation.
34. JESUS’S PRESENT EXISTENCE
A. Avis: Avis notes that Jesus instantly “translated . . . to glory and became one with the Father.”
B. Borg: For Borg, “Jesus lives” and continues to be experienced even today.
C. Davis: Davis states that at the end of the ages it will be clear that Jesus lives, but we can also know from his resurrection that he lives today.
D. Dawe: Says Jesus is “personally present and at work in the congregation of the faithful.” He adds that the Messiah is also present in “worship, preaching, healing, and helping ministries of the church in a direct personal fashion.”
E. Durrwell: Durrwell is similar to O’Collins on the sacraments, arguing that Jesus is present in the world today and is here “visibly in the sacraments of his presence,” which include baptism and the Eucharist.
F. Goergen: Says Jesus continues “to function in a new mode on our behalf.”
G. Hallman: Presumably a process theologian, Hallman says, “Jesus [has] an ongoing, real, personal, and effective existence. He is able to affect me analogously to the way my mind affects my body.” Hallman thinks we can say that Jesus is alive today—really alive—without reference to deity. Jesus is neither dead nor simply a memory of some sort. “The living Jesus represents not tradition, but intense challenge, call, and originality of response.” “That the second person of the trinity rises from the dead is not surprising because he cannot die.” (Note: it is unclear to me how Hallman means some of this.)
H. Hebblethwaite: Notes the earliest believers considered themselves to have been in relationship with the resurrected Jesus. Through the sacraments and disciplines, “they experienced his presence as a mutual indwelling, they in him and he in them.”
I. Johnson: Johnson’s main theme is that “the real Jesus is the living, resurrected Jesus.” Through his resurrection, Jesus is alive and Lord. Jesus acts and speaks today and works through the Holy Spirit. Perhaps Johnson’s best argument for this approach is that, while the Gospels concentrate on the historical Jesus, in the epistles “it is the living presence of Jesus that is most explicit, with attention to his human ministry left largely implicit.” Therefore, we don’t live the Christian life by mere intellectual assent but by encountering a living person by certain practices and disciplines like baptism, the Lord’s Supper, fellowship, reading and meditating on Scripture, assisting others in their needs, prayer, and fasting. “The conviction that Jesus is alive and powerfully active in the believing community is the implicit, and sometimes explicit, presupposition of all the writings of the NT.”
J. Küng: Says Jesus lives on in some sense. The resurrection is not just about the past but “the person now present.” The “Living One” is also present today, “inviting, demanding and promising.”
K. Moule: Moule refers to Jesus’s “aliveness.”
L. O’Collins: O’Collins says there are a few ways in which Jesus is alive and present in word, the sacraments, community, suffering, and in Spirit. Jesus is alive now, on a “divine level.” Personal experience of the risen Christ points to both the reality of the resurrection as well as present continuity. O’Collins says he has already developed “seven elements” regarding the “experiential knowledge” of the presence of Jesus. Then he adds three more ways one can experience the risen Christ: (1) bodily through worship in a wider community of believers, (2) through pain and suffering, (3) through future orientation—the glorified one who is to come (though in what sense is unclear). O’Collins also asks why only a few contemporary discussions on Christology discuss Jesus’s present existence or presence.
M. Oden: Oden contends that Jesus is alive now as the living Lord and God.
N. Packer: From the resurrection, Packer states, Christians learned that Jesus is more than just someone they remember; Jesus is alive as a savior, master, and loving friend to those who follow him.
O. Pannenberg: Due to the good reasons for Jesus’s resurrection, Pannenberg says Jesus is still alive.
P. Perkins: Perkins devotes a chapter to “Resurrection as Jesus’ Presence” and examines a variety of New Testament texts and ideas.
Q. Stein: That Jesus is living is a subjective conviction, but it has been experienced by people throughout the centuries.
R. Talbert: For Luke, Talbert writes, “salvation flows from the living Jesus” for believers in the ancient world as well as those living today.
S. Torrance: Torrance notes that Jesus is alive now, in the present, and encounters us while also waiting for us.
T. Wink: After saying he is not denying the facticity of the resurrection, Wink says the resurrection is not something to be merely believed, “but an experience to be shared.” Wink adds, “It is the spirit of Jesus present in people . . . here, now, on this good earth.”
U. Wright: Wright also points out that Jesus is currently alive.
35. ESCHATOLOGICAL VERIFICATION
A. Davis: Says that while naturalists “can rationally reject” the Christian message, they will not be able to at the eschaton.
B. Pannenberg: Pannenberg notes that when Jesus’s kingdom is established, opposition claims will disappear. The final verification for the Christian message will be the eschatological resurrection of the dead.
36. PROBLEMS ARISING FROM LIBERAL POSITIONS
A. Boring: Asks if Bultmann is guilty of “double talk or duplicity” in his preaching when he proclaims a particular text to be Jesus’s words after having published his view that Jesus never spoke these words. Boring decides that this is not a problem because the Spirit or Christ may speak through us in a sermon.
B. Fuller: Incredibly, Fuller describes the dilemma of the modern preacher trying to preach the resurrection as found in the New Testament as one in which the preacher knows the historical-critical arguments and is “embarrassed” to say Jesus appeared to the disciples because he is concerned (in the back of his mind) about scholars like Bultmann criticizing him. Conversely, he is also “embarrassed” to deny Jesus’s appearances in front of his congregation. Fuller suggests that one not do the historical-critical work while preaching; rather, they should simply preach. He notes some other, less bombastic reflections on the same subject, including some poor examples of spiritualizing exegesis on the resurrection.
C. Wedderburn: Admits that his agnostic thesis concerning Jesus’s resurrection and that of believers presents certain pastoral problems. It means living with uncertainty. The main difficulty is a pastoral difficulty as one seeks to address death and the bereaved. It is healthier if a person lives this life fully instead of depending on the “panacea” of eternity anyway. All he can suggest is throwing ourselves on the love and mercy of a God who “suffers with us.” Wedderburn thinks these moves make Christianity “invulnerable” to falsification.
37. PROCESS PHILOSOPHERS ON IMMORTALITY
A. Hallman: Hallman says that Charles Hartshorne and perhaps Lewis Ford agree against personal immortality, but John Cobb “has been more positive about the possibility of life after death.”
B. Ogden: Schubert Ogden gives two reasons against “subjectivity immortality.” It implies human self-assertion and its relationship to idolatry. Our idolatry reflects a desire to be like God.
38. BARTHIAN REFLECTION ON RESURRECTION
A. Fiorenza: Fiorenza refers to a “trans-empirical” view that argues the resurrection actually happened but not in the normal sense or in space-time.
B. Frei: The editors of the volume in which Frei’s essay appears label his position on the resurrection as basically “Barthian.” Frei says that the resurrection data are “beyond possible verification.” Accordingly, “there is no historical evidence that counts in favor of the claim that Jesus was resurrected.” However, and curiously, “reliable historical evidence against the resurrection would tend to falsify it decisively.” Nevertheless, this is “a good thing” because, otherwise, it is hard to say how the Christian faith would “involve historical risk.”
C. Fuller: On a limited Barthian move, Fuller states the resurrection “took place at the boundary between history and meta-history, between this age and the age to come.” He notes that the resurrection was initially proclaimed instead of narrated. Fuller says it is “clear” that Jesus’s resurrection is “not definable as an historical event,” and thus “it cannot by definition be historical but must occur at the point where history is transcended.”
D. Gibson: Says some Christians want to remove the resurrection from “logical scrutiny,” but he provides no argumentation for how such a view is connected to “faith.” If they had been present for Jesus’s miracles, they would be challenged because of a similar false dichotomy of faith and proof. Faith is not mutually exclusive with logic, and there is no real competition between faith and proof.
E. Grant: Grant appears to straddle the fence, and he says that faith is required to believe and that some of the reports are outside of space-time (e.g., appearances).
F. Kasper: States that history can’t prove resurrection or the empty tomb. It can help with faith but “cannot provide proof.” “Easter is not a fact to be cited as evidence for believers” as it is “not historically verifiable, but only the faith in it.” There is no connection for those who are “neutral.” Extraordinary miracles don’t force people to believe: “believing-seeing” is needed. The main question has nothing to do with whether anything occurred, but whether one gives oneself to Jesus.
G. Kee: Howard Clark Kee starts by saying a number of positive things about the eyewitness nature of the resurrection testimony by Paul and others, including the ability to check out the testimony. However, Kee still says the resurrection “cannot be considered a historical event—something that happened in the past.”
H. Küng: “But neither the raising itself nor the person raised can be apprehended, objectified, by historical methods.” Nor does Küng read it as an “event which can be verified by historical science with the aid of historical methods” since there is “nothing to photograph or to record.” It is very difficult to specify any more than this on the appearances for Küng—the presence of dialectic is obvious. Küng asks if Jesus was raised corporeally. He answers, “Yes and no, if I may recall a personal conversation with Rudolf Bultmann.” On the “no” part of this equation, Loewe says that Küng is “avoiding the invocation of direct supernatural intervention to explain the appearances, and he becomes incoherent in the effort.”
I. Moltmann: Places a fairly strong emphasis throughout on the value of history regarding the resurrection. But Moltmann then says that “anyone who describes Christ’s resurrection as ‘historical,’ in just the same way as his death on the cross, is overlooking the new creation with which the resurrection begins.” He adds that faith cannot be “based on probability.”
J. Rahner: Says the Easter experience was “given only in faith,” while history can only conclude the fact of the disciples’ “conviction.” It is “obvious” the resurrection “neither can be nor intends to be a ‘historical’ event.”
K. Spong: States Peter’s experiences were “from the realm of God, and that realm is not within history; it is not bounded by time or space.”
L. Torrance: On Barth and others, Torrance notes that the early Barth held to a view of “some sort of super-history” where the resurrection would (somehow) connect to history without being historical. Brunner held it too, but Barth “certainly sloughed [it] off.” But scholars like Bultmann, Dodd, and Reinhold Niebuhr have since hung onto it as well. For Torrance, the resurrection occurred in real, everyday, time-space history. It is “an event that happens within history” and “within the same order of physical existence to which we belong.” There is remarkable evidence for Jesus’s resurrection in the New Testament. Torrance even wants to go as far as ridding ourselves of the “segregation” between the sciences and theology, which, for the resurrection, would be to take “seriously empirical correlates in space and time, such as the empty tomb, which would be open to testing.” Yet it is still the case that Jesus’s resurrection “nevertheless cannot be known in the same way in which we know natural objects or creaturely events.” Moreover, only believers can recognize this by faith. The incarnation and resurrection are “bearing their own proof in the self-evidencing reality of God’s own Word and Truth.” Because “by their nature, they are not verifiable in terms of the kind of evidence and argument which obtain within the natural sciences.” If they could be verified in this manner, “they would not be miracles, far less ultimates.” Still, “no blind act of faith is required.” Faith is coupled with objective reality. Together they “are and must be open to the kinds of questions raised within the natural sciences” but ultimately cannot be explained apart from God.
M. Wedderburn: He agrees with Lüdemann that we should challenge those who claim that there are historical events that can occur outside of historical inquiry.
N. Williams: Says the actual event of the resurrection “cannot belong to history.”
O. Wink: “Jesus’ resurrection was not an event for the world, but reserved for the disciples.” It was the church that turned the event into a historical one, with an emphasis on the laws of nature and “absolute historical certainty,” while faith was “redefined.” After saying he’s not denying the historicity of the resurrection, he states, “The historical is the wrong category for understanding resurrection. The resurrection is not a fact to be believed, but an experience to be shared.” Earlier he wrote, “My difficulty comes from the claim that the resurrection is an objective fact, like the division of cells or the Los Angeles earthquake.”
Notes
Paul Avis, “The Resurrection of Jesus: Asking the Right Questions,” in The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, ed. Paul Avis (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1993), 17.
Richard Bauckham, “God Who Raised the Dead: The Resurrection of Jesus and Early Christian Faith in God,” in Avis, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 136.
Bauckham, 142.
Bauckham, 143.
Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 287–88.
Brown, 288–89.
Stephen T. Davis, Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 200–201.
Donald G. Dawe, Jesus: The Death and Resurrection of God (Atlanta: Knox, 1985), 101.
Donald Goergen, The Death and Resurrection of Jesus, vol. 2 of A Theology of Jesus (Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1988), 143–44.
Goergen, 161.
Goergen, 162.
Michael Grant, Saint Paul (London: Collins, 1976), 79.
Brian Hebblethwaite, “The Resurrection and the Incarnation,” in Avis, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 155–56, 167.
Thorwald Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship: Interpretive Models, Biblical Reflections, Theological Consequences (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 264–65.
Gerald O’Collins, “The Resurrection: The State of the Questions,” in The Resurrection: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Resurrection of Jesus, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 21–26.
Gerald O’Collins, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Some Contemporary Issues (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1993), 40–50.
O’Collins, “State of the Questions,” 25.
O’Collins, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 28–31.
Gerald O’Collins, The Easter Jesus, 2nd ed. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1980), 49–50.
Thomas C. Oden, The Word of Life, vol. 2 of Systematic Theology (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1989), 466. For details, see 466–67.
Christopher Rowland, “Interpreting the Resurrection,” in Avis, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 76.
Rowland, 76.
Charles H. Talbert, “The Place of the Resurrection in the Theology of Luke,” Interpretation 46, no. 1 (1992): 21–22.
Adrian Thatcher, “Resurrection and Rationality,” in Avis, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 178. See also 177.
G. A. Wells, A Resurrection Debate (London: Rationalist, 1988), 18. See also ix, 3.
Ulrich Wilckens, Resurrection: Biblical Testimony to the Resurrection: An Historical Examination and Explanation (Edinburgh: St. Andrew’s Press, 1977), 125.
Wilckens, 126.
Wilckens, 130.
Anthony Baxter, “Historical Judgement, Transcendent Perspective and ‘Resurrection Appearances,’” Heythrop Journal 40, no. 1 (1999): 35.
Francis Beckwith, David Hume’s Argument against Miracles: A Critical Analysis (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989), 104.
William Lane Craig, “On Doubts about the Resurrection,” Modern Theology 6, no. 1 (1989): 71.
Craig, 71–72.
Don Cupitt, Explorations in Theology 6 (London: SCM, 1979), 30.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 28.
Ralph Dawson, Was There a Resurrection?: The Challenge to Reason and Belief (New York: Vantage, 1977), 114–15.
Stephen Griffith, “Could It Have Been Reasonable for the Disciples to Have Believed That Jesus Had Risen from the Dead?,” Journal of Philosophical Research 21 (1996): 319n16.
Robert Gundry, “Trimming the Debate,” in Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment? A Debate between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann, ed. Paul Copan and Ronald K. Tacelli (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 105.
Gary Habermas and Antony Flew, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, ed. Terry L. Miethe (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1987), 3, 39–42, 49–50.
Hebblethwaite, “Resurrection and the Incarnation,” 160.
Hebblethwaite, 158.
Charles Kannengiesser, “The Theological Dimension of the Resurrection,” in How Could We Sorrow?: Essays on the Resurrection, ed. Michael W. Higgins (Waterloo: University of St. Jerome’s College Press, 1989), 39–40.
J. P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, “Atheism and Leaky Buckets: The Christian Rope Pulls Tighter,” in Does God Exist?: The Debate between Theists and Atheists (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2009), 232.
James I. Packer, “Response to the Debate,” in Miethe, Resurrection Debate, 148.
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 2:345.
Pannenberg, 2:348–49.
Thatcher, “Resurrection and Rationality,” 180.
N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, vol. 1 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 399–400. See also N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, vol. 2 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 488.
N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 93; Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 370.
Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 132.
Wright, 659.
Paul Barnett, The Birth of Christianity: The First Twenty Years (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 186.
N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of Christian Origins and the Question of God series (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 244–45. See also 553–54, 583.
Graham H. Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle Worker: A Historical and Theological Study (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1999), 345.
Twelftree, 343.
Paul W. Barnett, Jesus and the Logic of History (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 94–95.
Barnett, Birth of Christianity, 185. See also 8.
Barnett, 186.
Michael F. Bird, “Did Jesus Think He Was God?,” in How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature. A Response to Bart D. Ehrman, ed. Michael F. Bird (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 67.
Marcus J. Borg, “An Appreciative Disagreement,” in Jesus and the Restoration of Israel: A Critical Assessment of N. T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God, ed. Carey C. Newman (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999), 125n5.
C. Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind, 287–88.
Brown, 288. See also 289.
Tim Callahan, Secret Origins of the Bible (Altadena, CA: Millennium, 2002), 370.
John T. Carroll and Joel B. Green, Death of Jesus in Early Christianity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 70, 77–78.
Wayne Royce Clark, “Jesus, Lazarus, and Others: Resuscitation or Resurrection?,” Religion in Life 49, no. 2 (1980): 240.
Ross Clifford and Philip Johnson, The Cross Is Not Enough: Living as Witnesses to the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012), 53–54.
William Lane Craig, in Paul Copan, ed., Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 68–69, 158.
Stephen T. Davis, Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 197. See also 193–98.
Davis, 191–92.
Davis, 192.
James D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 50.
Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 6–7, 116–18, 127–28, 130–32, 151, 205–10, 222–24, 227, 229–30, 236, 249.
Ehrman, 214.
Ehrman, 223–24.
J. K. Elliott, “The First Easter,” History Today 29, no. 4 (1979): 210.
C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incarnational Narrative as History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), chap. 10, esp. 256–58.
Gabriel J. Fackre, “I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body,” Interpretation 46, no. 1 (1992): 52.
Rupert Gethin, “The Resurrection and Buddhism,” in Resurrection Reconsidered, ed. Gavin D’Costa (Oxford: Oneworld, 1996), 210–12, 214.
Goergen, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, 161.
Goergen, 162.
Goergen, 162–64.
Joel B. Green, “‘Witnesses of His Resurrection’: Resurrection, Salvation, Discipleship, and Mission in the Acts of the Apostles,” in Life in the Face of Death: The Resurrection Message of the New Testament, ed. Richard N. Longenecker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 245.
Donald A. Hagner, “Gospel, Kingdom, and Resurrection in the Synoptic Gospels,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 120.
D. J. Harrington, review of Jesus, the Servant-Messiah, by Marinus de Jonge, America 166, no. 9 (1992): 222.
Murray J. Harris, Raised Immortal: Resurrection and Immortality in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 72–76.
Joost Holleman, Resurrection and Parousia: A Tradition-Historical Study of Paul’s Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 143–44.
Larry W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 94.
John Frederick Jansen, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ in New Testament Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980), 46.
Jansen, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 46–52.
Kannengiesser, “Theological Dimension of the Resurrection,” 39–40.
Howard Clark Kee, What Can We Know about Jesus?, Understanding Jesus Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 112.
Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 62. Cf. 80.
Burton L. Mack, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 3.
Mack, 5.
Steven D. Mathewson, Risen: Fifty Reasons Why the Resurrection Changed Everything (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), 96–97, 100–102.
Ben F. Meyer, The Aims of Jesus (London: SCM, 1979), 66.
George W. E. Nickelsburg, “The Genre and Function of the Markan Passion Narrative,” Harvard Theological Review 73, no. 2 (1980): 182.
Gerald O’Collins, “Believing in the Risen Christ,” in Gottes Zukunft—Zukunft der Welt: Festschrift für Jürgen Moltmann zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Hermann Deuser et al. (Munich: Kaiser, 1986), 73–74.
Grant R. Osborne, The Resurrection Narratives: A Redactional Study (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), 293.
Packer, “Response to the Debate,” 143–44.
Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Response to the Debate,” in Miethe, Resurrection Debate, 132.
Pheme Perkins, “Reconciling the Resurrection,” Commonweal 112 (1985): 203.
Pheme Perkins, review of Life in the Face of Death: The Resurrection Message of the New Testament, edited by Richard N. Longenecker, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 62, no. 1 (2000): 179.
Norman Perrin, The Resurrection According to Matthew, Mark and Luke (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 83.
Ted Peters, God—The World’s Future: Systematic Theology for a New Era, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), xii.
John J. Pilch, “Appearances of the Risen Jesus in Cultural Context: Experiences of Alternate Reality,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 28, no. 2 (1998): 59.
Charles P. Price, review of Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, by Gary R. Habermas and Antony Flew, Virginia Seminary Journal 42, no. 1 (1990): 2.
Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry: Serving in the Hope of the Risen Lord (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010), 98.
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 280.
Robert H. Smith, Easter Gospels: The Resurrection of Jesus According to the Four Evangelists (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983), 88–89.
Richard Swinburne, Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 74–76, 109–11.
Talbert, “Resurrection in the Theology of Luke,” 21–22.
Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 20.
Torrance, 20.
Torrance, 25.
Torrance, 171.
Torrance, 94.
A. J. M. Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 103, 135, 153.
Wedderburn, 134, 151–52, 160, 168–69, 218–20, 225.
Wedderburn, 98–99, 225.
Ben Witherington III, “Resurrection Redux,” in Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan, ed. Paul Copan (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 130–31.
Ben Witherington III et al., eds., New Proclamation: Year B, 2003, Easter through Pentecost (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 5.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 244–45. See also 553–54, 583.
Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 180; Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 125–26.
N. T. Wright, “In Grateful Dialogue: A Response,” in Jesus and the Restoration of Israel: A Critical Assessment of N. T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God, ed. Carey C. Newman (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1999), 269.
N. T. Wright, “Early Traditions and the Origin of Christianity,” Sewanee Theological Review 41, no. 2 (1998): 139–40.
N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 234–37.
N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, vol. 2 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 131. See also 132, 539, 659–60.
Wright, 488. See also 538, 659–60.
Wright, 659.
Wright, 659–60.
Paul Barnett, Jesus and the Logic of History (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 94.
Donald G. Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology, vol. 1, God, Authority, and Salvation (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 126.
Borg and Wright, Meaning of Jesus, 136; Borg, “Appreciative Disagreement,” 241.
Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to New Testament Christology (Mahweh, NJ: Paulist, 1994), 112.
Brown, 115.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 194–95.
Davis, 197.
Davis, 198.
John Drane, Introducing the New Testament (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 108.
Francis X. Durrwell, La résurrection de Jésus: Mystere de salut (Paris: Cerf, 1976), 89–126; Francis X. Durrwell, The Resurrection: A Biblical Study, trans. Rosemary Sheed, 2nd ed. (London: Sheed & Ward, 1986), 108–50.
Francis X. Durrwell, “Redemption, Creation, Resurrection: A Theological Investigation,” in Higgins, How Could We Sorrow?, 60.
Goergen, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, 174–79.
Goergen, 176.
Goergen, 177.
Goergen, 179.
Grant, Saint Paul, 85–86.
Hagner, “Resurrection in the Synoptic Gospels,” 119.
Hebblethwaite, “Resurrection and the Incarnation,” 156.
Hebblethwaite, 157, 160.
Hebblethwaite, 160.
Hebblethwaite, 163.
Hebblethwaite, 163. See also 164–65.
Martin Hengel, The Atonement: The Origins of the Doctrine in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 65–66. See also 72.
Hengel, 74.
Larry W. Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?: Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 22, 23–24, 28, 30, 48.
Walter Künneth, Theologie der Auferstehung, 6th ed. (Giessen: Brunnen, 1982), 112–53.
George Eldon Ladd, I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 146.
Helmut Merklein, “Die Auferweckung Jesu und die Anfänge der Christologie (Messias bzw Sohn Gottes und Menschensohn),” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 72, nos. 1–2 (1981): 1.
Meyer, Aims of Jesus, 63.
C. F. D. Moule, in “The Resurrection: A Disagreement: A Correspondence with C. F. D. Moule,” in Don Cupitt, Explorations in Theology 6 (London: SCM, 1979), 36–37.
Carey C. Newman, “Resurrection as Glory: Divine Presence and Christian Origins,” in Davis, Kendall, and O’Collins, Resurrection, 78–82. Cf. 88–89.
O’Collins, “State of the Questions,” 11.
O’Collins, 25.
Oden, Word of Life, 460.
Oden, 496.
Oden, 461–63.
Osborne, Resurrection Narratives, 283–86. See also 293–94.
Osborne, 289.
Packer, “Response to the Debate,” 146.
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man, trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 66–69. See also 108.
Pannenberg, 73.
Wolfhart Pannenberg, “The Historicity of the Resurrection and the Identity of Christ,” in The Intellectuals Speak Out about God: A Handbook for the Christian Student in a Secular Society, ed. Roy Abraham Varghese (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1984), 263.
Pannenberg, 264.
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:364.
Pannenberg, 2:365.
Pannenberg, 2:368.
Pannenberg, 2:370.
Perkins, “Reconciling the Resurrection,” 203.
Perkins, review of Life in the Face of Death (edited by Longenecker), 179.
Paul Barnett, Peter Jensen, and David Peterson, Resurrection: Truth and Reality (Sydney: Aquila, 1994), 16.
E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (New York: Penguin, 1993), 13–14.
Peter Selby, Look for the Living: The Corporate Nature of Resurrection Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 95–100, 179–80.
Peter Stuhlmacher, “The Resurrection of Jesus and the Resurrection of the Dead,” trans. Jonathan M. Whitlock, Ex Auditu 9 (1993): 47–48.
Sunand Sumithra, review of Jesus’ Predictions of Vindication and Resurrection, by Hans J. Bayer, Evanglical Review of Theology 11 (1987): 275.
Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 161.
Wilckens, Resurrection, 125. See also 126.
Wilckens, 130.
Witherington, “Resurrection Redux,” 130–31.
Borg and Wright, Meaning of Jesus, 163–65; see also N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999), 108.
Wright, Challenge of Jesus, 108–9.
Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 46, see also 36–37; Wright, “Early Traditions,” 139.
N. T. Wright, “Looking Again for Jesus,” Stimulus 4, no. 4 (1996): 23.
Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 488, 660.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 220.
James D. G. Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, vol. 2 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 357.
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:365.
Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 215.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 57.
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 (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 135. See also 342.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 154–56. Cf. 166.
Davis, 159–65.
Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels, 108.
Durrwell, La résurrection de Jésus, 216–21; Durrwell, Resurrection, 293–300.
Künneth, Theologie der Auferstehung, 287–89.
Mathewson, Risen, 104–13.
Pheme Perkins, Resurrection: New Testament Witness and Contemporary Reflection (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 295–96.
Stuhlmacher, “Resurrection of Jesus,” 53–54; Peter Stuhlmacher, Was geschah auf Golgatha? Zur Heilsbedeutung von Kreuz, Tod und Auferweckung Jesu, trans. Jonathan M. Whitlock (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1998), 69–88.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 438. See also 467.
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 128.
G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 412.
Elliott, “First Easter,” 210.
Elliott, 219.
Richard B. Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul’s Soteriology, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987), 75–143.
Larry George, “The Narrative Unity of the Fourth Gospel’s Resurrection: A Literary-Rhetorical Reading of John 20–21” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 1997), n.p.
Goergen, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, 162.
Goergen, 162–63.
Hagner, “Resurrection in the Synoptic Gospels,” 118–20.
G. Walter Hansen, “Resurrection and the Christian Life in Paul’s Letters,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 211.
Hebblethwaite, “Resurrection and the Incarnation,” 159.
Hurtado, One God, One Lord, 113.
Jansen, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 53–60.
Künneth, Theologie der Auferstehung, 154–65.
Ladd, Resurrection of Jesus, 31–32.
Ladd, 148.
Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 247.
David McCarthy Matzko, “Christ’s Body in Its Fullness: Resurrection and the Lives of the Saints,” in D’Costa, Resurrection Reconsidered, 116.
Moule, “Resurrection,” 36–37.
Gerald O’Collins, “Peter as Easter Witness,” Heythrop Journal 22, no. 1 (1981): 15.
Gerald O’Collins, What Are They Saying about the Resurrection? (New York: Paulist, 1978), 16–24; O’Collins, Jesus Risen: An Historical, Fundamental and Systematic Examination of Christ’s Resurrection (New York: Paulist, 1987), 173–79.
Oden, Word of Life, 461–62.
Osborne, Resurrection Narratives, 285–86.
Osborne, 290.
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:144–45.
Clark H. Pinnock, “Salvation by Resurrection,” Ex Auditu 9 (1993): 1.
Pinnock, 3.
Pinnock, 10.
Pinnock, 4.
Pinnock, 8.
Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Seabury, 1978), 264.
Rahner, 279. See also 280.
Talbert, “Resurrection in the Theology of Luke,” 22.
Talbert, 24.
Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 20.
Torrance, 88.
Torrance, 171. Cf. 175.
David Walker, “Resurrection, Empty Tomb and Easter Faith,” Expository Times 101, no. 6 (1990): 174–75.
Wilckens, Resurrection, 126.
Wilckens, 126–27.
Wilckens, 127–28.
Wilckens, 130.
Wilckens, 130–31.
Witherington et al., New Proclamation: Year B, 5.
Witherington et al., 6.
Paul F. M. Zahl, “Justified by the Resurrection : A Reformation Insight for Today,” Modern Reformation 7, no. 3 (1998): 29.
Zahl, 30.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 44–45.
Mathewson, Risen, 24. See also 28, 45–46, 68, 89–90.
Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 108–11.
N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), 90–93, 96–97, 142–65, esp. 142–43, 146, 156, 164–65.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 248.
Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 78–79, 86–100, 103, 114.
Reginald H. Fuller, “John 20:19–23,” Interpretation 32, no. 2 (1978): 184.
Hansen, “Resurrection and the Christian Life,” 212.
Peter C. Hodgson, Winds of the Spirit: A Constructive Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 268.
Mathewson, Risen, 59–60, 75–76, 87–88.
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 241.
O’Collins, Easter Jesus, 122.
Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 98–99. See also 95–98.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 203–4.
Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection, chap. 10, esp. 426–32.
Lewis, 426.
Lewis, 429.
Allison A. Trites, “Witness and the Resurrection in the Apocalypse of John,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 281.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 551.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 51–53.
Mathewson, Risen, 57–58, 75–76, 80.
Mathewson, 53–58, 98–99.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 358.
Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 219.
Mathewson, Risen, 53–58, 98–99.
Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 89, 115–17.
Dale C. Allison, The End of the Ages Has Come: An Early Interpretation of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 80, 100, 167, 171.
Allison, 178.
Paul Badham, “The Meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus,” in Avis, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 36.
Barnett, Jesus and the Logic of History, 129. Cf. 1 Cor 15:23.
Barnett, 129.
John Barton, “Why Does the Resurrection of Christ Matter?,” in Resurrection: Essays in Honour of Leslie Houlden, ed. Stephen Barton and Graham Stanton (London: SPCK, 1994), 109.
Bauckham, “God Who Raised the Dead,” 145.
Bauckham, 145.
Donald G. Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology, vol. 2, Life, Ministry, and Hope (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), 184.
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary behind the Church’s Conservative Icon (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 150.
Borg and Crossan, 151.
Raymond E. Brown, “The Resurrection of Jesus,” in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), 1373.
Caird and Hurst, New Testament Theology, 241.
Caird and Hurst, 412.
Caird and Hurst, 267.
Caird and Hurst, 277.
Caird and Hurst, 278.
Caird and Hurst, 413.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 141–60.
See Crossan’s comments in Copan, Real Jesus, 46.
Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 343.
Crossan and Reed, 344–45.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 202–9.
Davis, 194.
Davis, 203–4.
Davis, 202.
Davis, 206.
Davis, 207.
Davis, 208.
Dawe, Jesus, 101.
John R. Donahue, “Rolling Back the Stone: Review of Resurrection: New Testament Witness and Contemporary Reflection by Pheme Perkins,” Commonweal 112 (1985): 216.
Drane, Introducing the New Testament, 109.
James D. G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1985), 76.
Durrwell, “Redemption, Creation, Resurrection,” 58.
Durrwell, La résurrection de Jésus, 212–14, 255–62; Durrwell, Resurrection, 287–90, 349–59.
Fackre, “Resurrection of the Body,” 49.
Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption, 33–41.
Goergen, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, 116.
Goergen, 147. See John Hick, Death and Eternal Life (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 147.
Michael Grant, Saint Peter: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 1994), 89.
Michael Green, The Empty Cross of Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1984), 228–45.
Hagner, “Resurrection in the Synoptic Gospels,” 119.
Hagner, 99. Cf. 101.
Hansen, “Resurrection and the Christian Life,” 222.
Harris, Raised Immortal, chap. 4.
Harris, 273–74. Cf. Murray J. Harris, “Resurrection and Immortality in the Pauline Corpus,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 159–60.
Harris, “Resurrection and Immortality in the Pauline Corpus,” 160.
Harris, 165.
Harris, Raised Immortal, 182.
Harris, 182. See also 183.
Harris, 199. See also 201.
Harris, 269–72.
Harris, “Resurrection and Immortality in the Pauline Corpus,” 148.
Harris, 149.
Harris, 150.
Harris, 153.
Harris, 155.
Harris, 156–57.
Harris, 169.
Hebblethwaite, “Resurrection and the Incarnation,” 162–63.
Hick, Death and Eternal Life, 179–81.
Holleman, Resurrection and Parousia, 206–7. Also 137–38, 161.
Jansen, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 94–100.
Kannengiesser, “Theological Dimension of the Resurrection,” 40.
Gordon D. Kaufman, In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 381.
Kaufman, 378.
H. C. Kee, What Can We Know about Jesus?, 112–13.
Geffrey B. Kelly, “‘He Appeared to Me.’ 1 Cor. 15:8 as Paul’s Religious Experience of the End Time,” in Critical History and Biblical Faith: New Testament Perspectives, ed. Thomas J. Ryan (Villanova, PA: Villanova University, 1979), 115.
Kelly, 123. See also 124.
Künneth, Theologie der Auferstehung, 291–92.
Ladd, Resurrection of Jesus, 148.
Ladd, 149.
Ladd, 151–52.
Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection, 426.
Richard N. Longenecker, “Is There Development in Paul’s Resurrection Thought?,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 172–78.
Longenecker, 200–201.
Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 257–58.
Lorenzen, 246–47.
C. S. Rodd, review of What Really Happened to Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection, by Gerd Lüdemann with Alf Özen, Expository Times 107, no. 7 (1996): 195, apparently citing Lüdemann.
Paul L. Maier, In the Fullness of Time: A Historian Looks at Christmas, Easter, and the Early Church (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 205.
David Marshall, “The Resurrection of Jesus and the Qur’an,” in D’Costa, Resurrection Reconsidered, 175.
Marshall, 177.
Mathewson, Risen, 65–66, 98–99.
John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 5 vols., Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1996–2016), 3:432. See also 3:435 (with many references in 441n136).
Meier, 3:322–23, 411–44, 638, 642.
Meyer, Aims of Jesus, 68.
Ben F. Meyer, “Resurrection as Humanly Intelligible Destiny,” Ex Auditu 9 (1993): 16.
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 224–25.
Moltmann, 239. See also 268.
Moltmann, 259.
Moltmann, 261.
Moltmann, 262.
Moltmann, 333. See also 247–50, 259–68.
Jürgen Moltmann, “The Resurrection of Christ: Hope for the World,” in D’Costa, Resurrection Reconsidered, 81.
John Muddiman, “I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body,” in Barton and Stanton, Resurrection, 129–30.
Muddiman, 129.
Muddiman, 130–34.
Muddiman, 135.
Muddiman, 136.
Muddiman, 137.
O’Collins, Easter Jesus, 107.
O’Collins, Jesus Risen, 179–87; O’Collins, Easter Jesus, 110–11.
Oden, Word of Life, 472.
Oden, 479–82.
Perkins, Resurrection, 296–315.
Peters, God, 319.
Peters, 392.
Peters, 321.
Pinnock, “Salvation by Resurrection,” 7.
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 268.
Alan F. Segal, “Paul’s Thinking about Resurrection in Its Jewish Context,” New Testament Studies 44, no. 3 (1998): 412. Cf. 419.
Segal, 417.
Segal, 418.
Segal, 419.
Alan F. Segal, “The Risen Christ and the Angelic Mediator Figures in Light of Qumran,” in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. James H. Charlesworth, Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 318–19.
Selby, Look for the Living, 9–19.
Janet M. Soskice, “Resurrection and the New Jerusalem,” in Davis, Kendall, and O’Collins, Resurrection, 57.
David M. Stanley, “‘To Know Him and the Power of His Resurrection’ (Phil. 3:19): The New Testament Witness to the Central Mystery of Faith,” in Higgins, How Could We Sorrow?, 21.
Stuhlmacher, “Resurrection of Jesus,” 48. See also 51, 54.
Stuhlmacher, 51–53.
Stuhlmacher, 53.
Stuhlmacher, Was geschah auf Golgatha?, 69–73, 75–77.
Talbert, “Resurrection in the Theology of Luke,” 22–23. See the summaries on 130, 134, 136.
Talbert, 26.
Talbert, 28.
John L. Topel, review of The Death and Resurrection of Jesus: A Theology of Jesus, by Donald Goergen, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 52, no. 1 (1990): 157–58.
Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 102.
Witherington, “Resurrection Redux,” 138.
Wright, “Early Traditions,” 137.
N. T. Wright, “The Resurrection of Resurrection,” Bible Review 16, no. 4 (2000): 63.
Borg and Wright, Meaning of Jesus, 126–27.
Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 1:460–62. Cf. 370.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 341. Cf. Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 343.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 609. See also 477, 606.
William Lane Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?,” in Jesus Under Fire, ed. Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 157.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 198.
Joel B. Green, “‘Bodies—That Is, Human Lives’: A Re-examination of Human Nature in the Bible,” in Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature, ed. Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Malony (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 170.
Peter Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body,” in Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments, ed. Ted Peters, Robert J. Russell, and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 105.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 477–79. See also 230, 256, 273, 426, 450, 551, 606, 609.
Wright, 609.
Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 116–17.
Mathewson, Risen, 61–64, 116–17.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 45–46.
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 177. See also 178, 181.
Bernd Oberdorfer, “Schleiermacher on Eschatology and Resurrection,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 165–66.
John Polkinghorne, “Eschatological Credibility: Emergent and Teleological Processes,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 50.
Polkinghorne, 49.
Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 77.
Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 343.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 76.
Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body,” 108–9.
Lampe, 105–12.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 341.
Hans-Joachim Eckstein, “Bodily Resurrection in Luke,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 116–23.
J. Green, “Bodies,” 170.
Green, 170–71.
Green, 171.
Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body,” 106.
Nancey Murphy, “The Resurrection Body and Personal Identity: Possibilities and Limits of Eschatological Knowledge,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 202.
Robert John Russell, “Bodily Resurrection, Eschatology, and Scientific Cosmology,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 25.
Ray S. Anderson, “On Being Human: The Spiritual Saga of a Creaturely Soul,” in Brown, Murphy, and Malony, Whatever Happened to the Soul?, 193.
Michael Welker, “Theological Realism and Eschatological Symbol Systems,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 38; Jeffrey P. Schloss, “From Evolution to Eschatology,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 68–71.
Richard C. Carrier, “The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb,” in The Empty Tomb: Jesus beyond the Grave, ed. Robert M. Price and Jeffery Jay Lowder (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005), 117–18. See also 134.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 49.
G. Walter Hansen, “Resurrection and the Christian Life,” 221–22.
Mathewson, Risen, 41–44, 116–17.
Murphy, “Resurrection Body,” 202.
Polkinghorne, “Eschatological Credibility,” 49, 53–55.
Wright, Surprised by Hope, 104–5. See also 19, 45, 168–69, 198, 204, 210–11, 265, 293.
Wright, 190.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 453n103, 458, 465–67, 470.
Wright, Surprised by Hope, 211.
Wright, 293.
Meier, Marginal Jew, 3:442.
Meier, 3:442. See also 3:438–44, where Meier provides six arguments for his claim.
Meier, 3:438.
Meier, 3:638.
Meier, 3:443.
R. Anderson, “On Being Human,” 191.
Brian E. Daley, “A Hope for Worms: Early Christian Hope,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 136.
Eckstein, “Bodily Resurrection in Luke,” 123.
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 177. See also 178, 181.
J. Green, “‘Bodies,” 170.
James Leuschen, The Lost Gospel of the First Christians: The Original First-Generation Foundation You’ve Been Missing (Bloomington, IN: WestBow, 2013), 60.
Mathewson, Risen, 35–36, 51–52, 61–64.
Meier, Marginal Jew, 3:435. See 3:437. Similarly, 3:432.
Murphy, “Resurrection Body,” 204.
Eugene H. Peterson, Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2006), 102.
Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 39, 103.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 348. See also Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 460. See also 460–63.
Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 460–61.
Meier, Marginal Jew, 3:435.
Meier, 3:481n136.
James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, vol. 1 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 870–74.
Murphy, “Resurrection Body,” 205, see also 204–5; and Andreas Schuele, “Transformed into the Image of Christ: Identity, Personality, and Resurrection,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 222–23.
Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 35, 82.
Purves, 47, 95.
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 162, 305, 312, 314–15.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 453n103, 458, 465–67, 470.
Murray J. Harris, “Resurrection and Immortality in the Pauline Corpus,” 147–70.
Andrew T. Lincoln, “‘I Am the Resurrection and the Life’: The Resurrection Message of the Fourth Gospel,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 128.
Polkinghorne, “Eschatological Credibility,” 54.
Schloss, “From Evolution to Eschatology,” 57, 85; Eckstein, “Bodily Resurrection in Luke,” 123.
Wright, Surprised by Hope, 150–51. See also 41, 171.
Eckstein, “Bodily Resurrection in Luke,” 116, 120–22.
Fackre, “Resurrection of the Body,” 50.
Harris, “Resurrection and Immortality in the Pauline Corpus,” 165, 169 (corporate).
Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body,” 110–12.
Lampe, 111.
Margaret Pamment, “Raised a Spiritual Body: Bodily Resurrection According to Paul,” New Blackfriars 66 (1985): 385.
Witherington, “Resurrection Redux,” 139.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 551. See also 355.
Wright, 454, referring to Acts 12:15; 23:6–9; see also 132–34.
Wright, 203.
Wright, 367.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 107–9.
Wright, Surprised by Hope, 171–74.
Wright, 41, 56, 168–69, 172, 238–39, 242, 252, 256.
Wright, 41.
Wright, 45. See also 41.
Wright, 169. Wright’s main section on this issue can be found on 148–52. See also 41, 124, 197–98.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 30.
Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 173. See also 174.
Crossan and Reed, 344–45.
Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels, 108–10.
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 316.
Mathewson, Risen, 19–20, 43–44, 83–84, 103–4, 107–8.
Meier, Marginal Jew, 3:439.
Meier, 3:638.
Meier, 3:248.
Meier, 3:338, 438, 494, 633.
Meier, 3:438.
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 241.
Neill and Wright, Interpretation of the New Testament, 309.
O’Collins, What Are They Saying about the Resurrection?, 31–33.
Schuele, “Transformed into the Image of Christ,” 223.
Alan F. Segal, Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 435.
Graham H. Twelftree, “The Miracles of Jesus: Marginal or Mainstream?,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 1, no. 1 (2003): 118.
Twelftree, 121–22.
Welker, “Theological Realism,” 39, 42.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 438.
Wright, 355.
Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 92–100, 107, 115–19. See also 102, 125–26, 128, 132, 137, 146–47, 160–65.
Wright, Surprised by Hope, 265. See also 192–94, 293–95. See also 198.
Wright, 293.
J. Green, “‘Bodies,” 171.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 251 (cf. 246), 256–58, 273, 310, 359–61, 450.
Wright, 355–61.
Wright, 441. See also 444, 450.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 49–51.
Clifford and Johnson, 30.
E. Peterson, Living the Resurrection, 56.
Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 135–36.
Wright, Surprised by Hope, 197–98.
Wright, 204.
Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 98–99. See also 95–98.
Wright, Surprised by Hope, 204–5.
Wright, 211. See also 259.
Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 92–100, 107, 115–19. See also 102, 125–26, 128, 132, 137, 146–47, 160–65.
Wright, Surprised by Hope, 293.
Wright, 211.
Caird and Hurst, New Testament Theology, 271.
Caird and Hurst, 457.
Hagner, “Resurrection in the Synoptic Gospels,” 119.
Stanley Hardy, “The Resurrection: Keystone of Third World Spirituality,” in Higgins, How Could We Sorrow?, 68.
Hengel, Atonement, 66.
Holleman, Resurrection and Parousia, 137–38, 161. Cf. 206–7.
Luke Timothy Johnson, Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), 181.
Ladd, Resurrection of Jesus, 145.
Ladd, 152.
Pannenberg, Jesus, 67.
Peters, God, 318–19.
Rowland, “Interpreting the Resurrection,” 74.
Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 154.
Rowan Williams, “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Survey of the Material,” Irish Theological Quarterly 51, no. 3 (1985): 225.
Wright, “Early Traditions,” 127.
Wright, “In Grateful Dialogue,” 271.
Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 132, 660.
Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 34. See also 19, 35.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 274–75.
Wright, 581.
Wright, Surprised by Hope, 69.
Wright, 67.
Wright, 64.
Wright, “Early Traditions,” 140; Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 480. See also Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2 vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1982), 2:84, 100.
John E. Alsup, The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel Tradition: A History-of-Tradition Analysis with Text-Synopsis, Calwer Theologische Monographien 5 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1975), 175–89.
Alsup, 212.
Alsup, 70.
Drane, Introducing the New Testament, 108.
Elliott, “First Easter,” 219.
Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “The Resurrection of Jesus and Roman Catholic Fundamental Theology,” in Davis, Kendall, and O’Collins, Resurrection, 243–44.
Fuller, “John 20,” 180.
Fuller, 181.
Reginald H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 35, 41–42, 115, 119–20.
Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 272.
J. Green, “Witnesses of His Resurrection,” 239.
Green, 245.
Hagner, “Resurrection in the Synoptic Gospels,” 118–20.
Stanley S. Harakas, “Now What?,” The Christian Century 114, no. 10 (1997): 291.
Jansen, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 60–64.
Kelly, “He Appeared to Me,” 115.
Daniel Kendall and Gerald O’Collins, “The Uniqueness of the Easter Appearances,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 54, no. 2 (1992): 292; O’Collins, What Are They Saying about the Resurrection?, 53–55, 59.
Barnabas Lindars, “The Resurrection and the Empty Tomb,” in Avis, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 127.
Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 143, 301–5.
Meier, Marginal Jew, 3:625.
Moltmann, “Resurrection of Christ,” 76.
O’Collins, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 18.
Gerald O’Collins, Interpreting Jesus (London: Chapman, 1983), 125–26.
Roger E. Olson, “Resurrection, Cosmic Liberation, and Christian Earth Keeping,” Ex Auditu 9 (1993): 130.
Osborne, Resurrection Narratives, 287.
Pannenberg, Jesus, 70–71.
Perkins, “Reconciling the Resurrection,” 203.
Perrin, Resurrection, 83.
Joseph Plevnik, “The Origin of the Easter Faith According to Luke,” Biblica 6, no. 4 (1980): 505.
Selby, Look for the Living, 95.
Selby, 90–95, 172–75.
Talbert, “Resurrection in the Theology of Luke,” 28–29.
Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1982), 117. Cf. 101, 117–20.
Meier, Marginal Jew, 3:47–57, 64–68, 72–73, 80–82.
Meier, 3:520–21. See also 3:635–36.
Meier, 3:627–28.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 30, 60.
Green, “Witnesses of His Resurrection,” 239.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 54–57.
Conzelmann, First Corinthians, 267. Cf. 293.
Fackre, “Resurrection of the Body,” 45.
Fackre, 46.
Fackre, 52.
Jim Girdwood, “Intervention and Resurrection,” Theology 101, no. 800 (1998): 95.
Green, “Witnesses of His Resurrection,” 242.
Hansen, “Resurrection and the Christian Life,” 206.
Hansen, 208.
Hardy, “Resurrection,” 68.
Hardy, 73.
Hardy, 75.
Hebblethwaite, “Resurrection and the Incarnation,” 167.
Brian V. Johnstone, “Transformation Ethics: The Moral Implications of the Resurrection,” in Davis, Kendall, and O’Collins, Resurrection, 339–60.
Kaufman, In the Face of Mystery, 378.
Künneth, Theologie der Auferstehung, 210–15.
Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body,” 113.
Paul Lehmann, “The Politics of Easter: A Political Celebration of Easter,” Dialog 19 (1980): 37.
Lehmann, 38.
Lehmann, 40.
Lehmann, 40–41.
Lehmann, 41.
Lehmann, 43.
Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 269–74, 319–20.
Marshall, “Resurrection of Jesus and the Qur’an,” 177–78.
Gerald O’Collins, “The Resurrection of Jesus: Some Current Questions,” America 153 (1985): 425.
O’Collins, “State of the Questions,” 26–27.
O’Collins, Jesus Risen, 188–200.
Gerald O’Collins, “Christ’s Resurrection as Mystery of Love,” Heythrop Journal 25, no. 1 (1984): 39–44.
O’Collins, 44.
O’Collins, 45–46.
Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 13.
O’Donovan, 13.
O’Donovan, 17.
James M. Gustafson, review of Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics, by Oliver O’Donovan, Journal of Religion 68 (1988): 132.
Gustafson, 132.
Osborne, Resurrection Narratives, 296.
Perkins, “Reconciling the Resurrection,” 204.
Selby, Look for the Living, 85–90, 168–72.
Wright, “Resurrection of Resurrection,” 10.
Wright, Surprised by Hope, 47.
Fuller, Formation of the Resurrection Narratives, 178.
M. Green, Empty Cross of Jesus, 212–14.
Joseph M. Hallman, “The Resurrection of the Human Jesus,” Process Studies 8, no. 4 (1978): 257.
Hebblethwaite, “Resurrection and the Incarnation,” 169.
Johnson, Living Jesus, 46, 193, 199–200.
Johnson, 165.
Johnson, 57.
Johnson, 97. Cf. 194.
Hans Küng, Eternal Life? Life after Death as a Medical, Philosophical and Theological Problem, trans. Edward Quinn (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 107.
Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 235.
Lorenzen, 143, 232–34.
Gerd Lüdemann, “Closing Responses,” in Copan and Tacelli, Jesus’ Resurrection, 159–60.
Jürgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today’s World, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 47.
Stephen Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths: The Christian Dialogue with Other Religions (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1984), 286.
Nickelsburg, “Markan Passion Narrative,” 297.
O’Collins, “State of the Questions,” 27.
O’Collins, Easter Jesus, 122–25.
Pheme Perkins, “The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth,” in Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research, ed. Bruce D. Chilton and Craig A. Evans (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 442.
R. Smith, Easter Gospels, 49–50.
Smith, 54.
Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 20.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 58–60.
Green, “Witnesses of His Resurrection,” 245. See also Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 304–5.
Harakas, “Now What?,” 291.
Harris, “Resurrection and Immortality in the Pauline Corpus,” 150.
Hodgson, Winds of the Spirit, 275.
Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 27–28.
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 270. See also 269.
Newman, “Resurrection as Glory,” 85–87.
Selby, Look for the Living, 20–37.
Williams, Resurrection, 102, 118–20; Williams, “Resurrection of Jesus,” 225–26.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 438.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 198–200.
Davis, 200.
Davis, 200–201.
Davis, 201.
Girdwood, “Intervention and Resurrection,” 90.
Girdwood, 91.
Girdwood, 92.
Girdwood, 92.
Girdwood, 93.
Girdwood, 93–94.
Girdwood, 94.
Girdwood, 95–96.
Girdwood, 94–95.
M. Green, Empty Cross of Jesus, 168–71.
Margaret Guenther, “Mediated through Flesh (John 20:19–31),” The Christian Century 112, no. 12 (1995): 388.
Hodgson, Winds of the Spirit, 267.
Johnson, Living Jesus, 97.
Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection, 55–56.
Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 259–63.
Lorenzen, 265.
Mathewson, Risen, 9.
Mathewson, 20.
Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today’s World, 38–39.
Moltmann, 40.
Moltmann, 41.
Moltmann, 43.
Moltmann, 45.
Moltmann, 46.
Moltmann, 65.
Moltmann, 68.
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 211.
Moltmann, 212.
O’Collins, “Risen Jesus,” 214.
Osborne, Resurrection Narratives, 288.
Pamment, “Raised a Spiritual Body,” 384.
Pinnock, “Salvation by Resurrection,” 6.
Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 104–6.
Segal, “Paul’s Thinking about Resurrection,” 416.
R. Smith, Easter Gospels, 54.
Smith, 133.
Allison A. Trites, “Witness and the Resurrection in the Apocalypse of John,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 281.
Michael M. Winter, review of The Resurrection: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Resurrection of Jesus, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, Heythrop Journal 39, no. 3 (1998): 335.
Wright, “In Grateful Dialogue,” 272.
Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 659.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 310.
Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 98–99. See also 95–98.
Wright, 92–100, 107, 115–19. See also 102, 125–26, 128, 132, 137, 146–47, 160–65.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 46–47.
Leuschen, Lost Gospel, 88.
Mathewson, Risen, 94–95, 98–99.
Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 117–23, 128–30.
Witherington et al., New Proclamation: Year B, 4.
Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 659.
M. Green, Empty Cross of Jesus, 188–90 (guilt), 191–92 (desolation), 192–94 (low self-image), 194–96 (loneliness), 196–98 (defeat), 198–201 (bereavement and fear of dying), 201–2 (occult issues), 202–3 (marriage).
Green, 188.
Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection, esp. 60–65, 80–82.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 161–80.
Conzelmann, First Corinthians, 267.
Cupitt, Explorations in Theology, 32.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 192.
Dawe, Jesus, 102.
Durrwell, “Redemption, Creation, Resurrection,” 58.
Durrwell, La résurrection de Jésus, 161–94; Durrwell, Resurrection, 202–49.
Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption, 41. See also 42–62.
Guenther, “Mediated through Flesh,” 388.
Harakas, “Now What?,” 291.
Hodgson, 270.
Hodgson, 271–73.
Hodgson, 267.
Holleman, Resurrection and Parousia, 207.
Lehmann, “Politics of Easter,” 43.
Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 187.
Lorenzen, 269.
Mathewson, Risen, 73–74.
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 221. See also 242.
John P. Newport, “Facing Toward the Millennial Year 2000 under Biblical Guidance with a Focus on the Resurrection,” Ex Auditu 9 (1993): 111.
Oden, Word of Life, 463–82.
Perkins, Resurrection, 320.
Perrin, Resurrection, 83.
Peters, God, 321.
Pinnock, “Salvation by Resurrection,” 9. See also 10.
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 274.
Selby, Look for the Living, 100–103, 175–78.
Stanley, “Power of His Resurrection,” 23.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 317.
Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 98–99. See also 95–98.
J. Green, “Witnesses of His Resurrection,” 242.
Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection, 75n10 as well as chaps. 8–9.
Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 121–25.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 549. See also 472–75.
Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 62.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 467.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 46–47.
Leuschen, Lost Gospel, 88.
Mathewson, Risen, 94–95, 98–99.
Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 107–8, 110.
Mathewson, Risen, 75–76.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 51–53.
Mathewson, Risen, 57–58, 75–76, 80.
Barton and Stanton, Resurrection, chaps. 17–19.
Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs, eds., Resurrection, JSNTSup 186 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999), 264–361.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 91–125.
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 222.
Gerald O’Collins, “Christ’s Resurrection and Our Imagination,” The Way 17, no. 2 (1977): 140.
O’Collins, 136–39.
O’Collins, 139–41.
O’Collins, 141–44.
Marci Whitney-Schenck, “Transfigured Christ in Light of Scientific Skepticism,” Christianity and the Arts 6, no. 2 (1999): 43–44.
Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 126–28.
O’Collins, What Are They Saying about the Resurrection?, 76–81.
Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 182–93.
Hebblethwaite, “Resurrection and the Incarnation,” 156.
Hebblethwaite, 161.
Hebblethwaite, 162.
Hebblethwaite, 164.
Hebblethwaite, 164–65.
For one example, see Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 21.
Torrance, 98. Cf. 94, 102.
Torrance, 17.
Wink, “Resonating with God’s Song,” 308.
Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Remember to Remember,” Reformed Journal 39, no. 9 (1989): 12.
Durrwell, “Redemption, Creation, Resurrection,” 60.
Kannengiesser, “Theological Dimension of the Resurrection,” 39.
Künneth, Theologie der Auferstehung, 166–84.
Mathewson, Risen, 41–44, 116–17.
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 252–59.
Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths, 284.
Neill and Wright, Interpretation of the New Testament, 309.
Oden, Word of Life, 464.
Olson, “Resurrection, Cosmic Liberation, and Christian Earth Keeping,” 124–25.
Olson, 123, 128–29.
Olson, 128–29.
Olson, 129.
Olson, 129.
Olson, 131.
Steven Bouma-Prediger, “Response to Roger Olson’s Paper: Resurrection, Cosmic Liberation, and Christian Earth Keeping,” Ex Auditu 9 (1993): 133.
Peters, God, 319.
Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 94.
Soskice, “Resurrection and the New Jerusalem,” 57–58.
Stanley, “Power of His Resurrection,” 21.
Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 175.
Torrance, 25.
Wright, “In Grateful Dialogue,” 269–70.
Wright, 272.
Borg and Wright, Meaning of Jesus, 126–27.
Zahl, “Justified by the Resurrection,” 29–30.
Avis, “Resurrection of Jesus,” 17.
Peter Carnley, The Structure of Resurrection Belief (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 248–65, esp. 248–49, 256, 259–62, 264.
Peter Carnley, “Response to Gerald O’Collins,” in Davis, Kendall, and O’Collins, Resurrection, 39.
Craig, “On Doubts about the Resurrection,” 73.
Gavin D’Costa, “The Resurrection, the Holy Spirit and the World Religions,” in D’Costa, Resurrection Reconsidered, 152–58.
Durrwell, La résurrection de Jésus, 68–87; Durrwell, Resurrection, 78–107.
Fuller, “John 20,” 180.
Fuller, 181.
Goergen, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, 163–64. See also 165.
Jansen, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 104–13.
Johnson, Real Jesus, 1, 69, 77, 103, 180, 194.
Johnson, 111.
Johnson, 169.
Johnson, 199–200.
Künneth, Theologie der Auferstehung, 195–99.
Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 247.
Edward John McMahon II, “The Death and Resurrection of Jesus in Luke 23:26–24:53: A Greimassian Analysis (Semiotics, Structuralism)” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 1984).
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 218.
Moltmann, 240.
Moltmann, 241.
Moltmann, 243.
Perkins, Resurrection, 261–63.
Perkins, “Reconciling the Resurrection,” 205.
Pinnock, “Salvation by Resurrection,” 8.
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 275.
Rowland, “Interpreting the Resurrection,” 79.
Sandra Marie Schneiders, “The Johannine Resurrection Narrative: An Exegetical and Theological Study of John 20 as a Synthesis of Johannine Spirituality” (STD diss., Pontifical Gregorian University, 1975).
Talbert, “Resurrection in the Theology of Luke,” 28–29.
Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 100. Cf. 95.
Torrance, 152–53.
Durrwell, “Redemption, Creation, Resurrection,” 56–57.
Durrwell, La résurrection de Jésus, 232–53; Durrwell, The Resurrection, 311–28.
Hebblethwaite, “Resurrection and the Incarnation,” 159.
Hebblethwaite, 159–60.
Hebblethwaite, 160.
Hodgson, Winds of the Spirit, 271–72.
O’Collins, What Are They Saying about the Resurrection?, 56–57.
Talbert, “Resurrection in the Theology of Luke,” 28. Cf. 26–28.
J. Green, “Witnesses of His Resurrection,” 239.
Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 319.
O’Collins, What Are They Saying about the Resurrection?, 25–29; O’Collins, Easter Jesus, 78–80.
Oden, Word of Life, 454. See also 455.
Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 1–14.
Torrance, 14–16.
Norman Anderson, Christianity and World Religions: The Challenge of Pluralism (Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1984), chap. 2, esp. 46, 80–82.
Anderson, 51–54 as well as chaps. 3–4.
Susan Ruth Andrews, “Jesus Appears,” Christian Century 116, no. 10 (1999): 341.
Bauckham, “God Who Raised the Dead,” 153.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 194–95.
Davis, 197.
Davis, 198.
Dawson, Was There a Resurrection?, 114.
Gethin, “Resurrection and Buddhism,” 205.
Gethin, 206.
Hebblethwaite, “Resurrection and the Incarnation,” 162.
Hebblethwaite, 163. See also 164.
Hebblethwaite, 158.
Hurtado, How on Earth, 22, 23–24, 28, 30, 48.
Künneth, Theologie der Auferstehung, 78–81, 88–93.
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 238.
Moltmann, 239.
Moule, “Response to Don Cupitt,” in Cupitt, Explorations in Theology, 36–37.
Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths, 286.
O’Collins, “Believing in the Risen Christ,” 76–77.
O’Collins, “Resurrection of Jesus,” 425.
Oden, Word of Life, 464.
Packer, “Response to the Debate,” 143.
Packer, 144.
E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 240.
Narendra Singh, “The Particularity of Christ and the Plurality of Religions: A Dialectical Paradigm for Developing a Christian Theology” (PhD diss., Asbury Theological Seminary, 1998).
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 74–84.
Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 400.
Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 110.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 477.
Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 94.
Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 659.
Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?,” 157.
J. Green, “Bodies,” 170.
Green, 170.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 477–79. See also 230, 256, 273, 426, 450, 551, 606, 609.
Wright, 609.
James D. Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 243. See also 245.
Tabor, 244.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 700.
Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 110. See also 170–81.
Wright, 658.
Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 342.
Crossan and Reed, 340.
Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 28. See also 28n67, 31.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 173.
Durrwell, La résurrection de Jésus, 204–11; Durrwell, Resurrection, 263–87.
Fackre, “Resurrection of the Body,” 46.
Fackre, 47.
Fackre, 48.
Hurtado, How on Earth, 3–4.
Künneth, Theologie der Auferstehung, 235–58, 281–99.
Künneth, 285–97.
Meyer, Aims of Jesus, 63.
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 214. Cf. 241.
Rowland, “Interpreting the Resurrection,” 81.
Selby, Look for the Living, 103–9, 142–55.
Robert H. Stein, Jesus the Messiah: A Survey of the Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996), 276.
Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 102. See also 143–44, 152, 158.
David Wenham, Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 295–99.
Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 145; cf. 214.
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 313–14, 316, 336.
Gerd Lüdemann, Early Christianity According to the Traditions in Acts: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 26, 30.
Craig L. Blomberg, “Where Do We Start Studying Jesus?,” in Wilkins and Moreland, Jesus Under Fire, 31.
Neill and Wright, Interpretation of the New Testament, 376–78.
Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 401.
Wright, 463.
Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 659.
Wright, 632.
Blomberg, “Where Do We Start Studying Jesus?,” 31.
John K. Riches, A Century of New Testament Study (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1993), 66.
Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection, esp. 40–42, 66–67, 75–78, 431.
Lewis, 40.
Lewis, 44–55, 79–80.
Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 14–17.
Margaret Barker, “Resurrection: Reflections on a New Approach,” in Porter, Hayes, and Tombs, Resurrection, 98.
Borg and Wright, Meaning of Jesus, 137–42.
Borg, “Appreciative Disagreement,” 239.
Colin Brown, review of The Structure of Resurrection Belief, by Peter Carnley, Calvin Theological Journal 30 (1995): 239.
Donahue, “Rolling Back the Stone,” 216.
J. Green, “Witnesses of His Resurrection,” 244–45.
Donald A. Hagner, “Resurrection in the Synoptic Gospels,” 118–20.
Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 246–47.
Lorenzen, 264–65.
Lorenzen, 187.
Lorenzen, 319–20.
Rodd, review of What Really Happened to Jesus (by Lüdemann and Özen), 195, apparently citing Lüdemann.
O’Collins, “Peter as Easter Witness,” 15–16.
Kenan B. Osborne, The Resurrection of Jesus: New Considerations for Its Theological Interpretation (New York: Paulist, 1997).
C. S. Rodd, “Talking Points from Books: Review of The Resurrection of Jesus Christ Edited by Paul Avis,” Expository Times 105, no. 5 (1994): 129.
Selby, Look for the Living, 117.
Selby, 116–25.
Stein, Jesus the Messiah, 274.
Clifford and Johnson, Cross Is Not Enough, 127–39.
Avis, “Resurrection of Jesus,” 17.
Borg and Wright, Meaning of Jesus, 135–36. See also Marcus Borg, “The Irrelevancy of the Empty Tomb,” in Copan, Real Jesus, 124.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 173. See also 198.
Dawe, Jesus, 102.
Durrwell, “Redemption, Creation, Resurrection,” 56–57.
Goergen, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, 163.
Hallman, “Resurrection of the Human Jesus,” 256.
Hallman, 257.
Hallman, 258.
Hallman, 258.
Hebblethwaite, “Resurrection and the Incarnation,” 159.
Hebblethwaite, 159–60.
Johnson, Living Jesus, 1. Cf. 4–5, 11–22, 79, 169, 195–203; Luke Timothy Johnson, “Luke 24:1–11: The Not-So-Empty-Tomb,” Interpretation 46, no. 1 (1992): 57, 60.
Johnson, Living Jesus, 195.
Johnson, 198.
Johnson, 201–3.
Johnson, Writings of the New Testament, 109.
Küng, Eternal Life?, 106.
Küng, 114.
Küng, 115.
Moule, “Resurrection,” 29. See also 34.
O’Collins, “Resurrection of Jesus,” 424.
O’Collins, Interpreting Jesus, 15.
Gerald O’Collins, Interpreting the Resurrection: Examining the Major Problems in the Stories of Jesus’ Resurrection (New York: Paulist, 1988), 75–77; O’Collins, Jesus Risen, 137–47, esp. 144–46.
Gerald O’Collins, “The Risen Jesus: Analogies and Presence,” in Porter, Hayes, and Tombs, Resurrection, 211.
O’Collins, 213–14.
O’Collins, 214–15.
O’Collins, “State of the Questions,” 25.
Oden, Word of Life, 496.
Packer, “Response to the Debate,” 143.
Pannenberg, “Response to the Debate,” 134–35.
Perkins, Resurrection, 257–91.
Stein, Jesus the Messiah, 272–73.
Talbert, “Resurrection in the Theology of Luke,” 22.
Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 89.
Wink, “Resonating with God’s Song,” 308.
Wright, Surprised by Hope, 134, 235, 251.
Davis, Risen Indeed, 173.
Pannenberg, “Response to the Debate,” 135.
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:350–51.
M. Eugene Boring, Sayings of the Risen Jesus: Christian Prophecy in the Synoptic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 235–37.
Fuller, “John 20,” 182.
Fuller, Formation of the Resurrection Narratives, 174, 182–88.
Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection, 129, 160, 168–69, 218–19. See also 221, 226.
Wedderburn, 221–23.
Wedderburn, 223–24.
Wedderburn, 225–26.
Wedderburn, 220.
Hallman, “Resurrection of the Human Jesus,” 254–55.
Schubert Ogden, “Meaning of Christian Hope,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 30, nos. 2–4 (1975): 160–63.
Fiorenza, “Resurrection of Jesus,” 246.
Hans Frei, “Of the Resurrection of Christ,” in Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays, ed. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 201.
Hans Frei, “Theological Reflections on the Accounts of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection,” in Hunsinger and Placher, Theology and Narrative, 86.
Frei, 87.
Fuller, Formation of the Resurrection Narratives, 23. Cf. 48, 181.
Fuller, 16. See also 22, 66, 112.
Reginald H. Fuller, “The Resurrection Narratives in Recent Study,” in Ryan, Critical History and Biblical Faith, 104.
Arthur Gibson, “Logic of the Resurrection,” in Porter, Hayes, and Tombs, Resurrection, 169.
Grant, Saint Peter, 93.
Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ, trans. V. Green (Mahweh, NJ: Paulist, 1976), 128.
Kasper, 129.
Kasper, 131.
Kasper, 139.
Kasper, 140.
H. C. Kee, What Can We Know about Jesus?, 1–2, 23, 86, 113.
Kee, 23.
Hans Küng, On Being a Christian (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 349–50.
Küng, 349. See also 105.
Küng, 351.
Loewe, “Appearances of the Risen Lord,” 190.
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 216–17, 222, 243.
Moltmann, 214.
Moltmann, 243.
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 277.
John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? A Bishop’s Search for the Origins of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 256. Cf. 289.
Torrance, Space, Time and Resurrection, 95.
Torrance, 19, 21, 90, 171–75.
Torrance, 87. See also 89.
Torrance, 89. Cf. 173.
Torrance, 189–90.
Torrance, 173. See also 18.
Torrance, 19.
Torrance, 22.
Torrance, 18.
Torrance, 19.
Torrance, 22–23.
Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection, 16. Cf. 17–18, 98.
Rowan Williams, “Between the Cherubim: The Empty Tomb and the Empty Throne,” in D’Costa, Resurrection Reconsidered, 97.
Wink, “Resonating with God’s Song,” 309.