Resonating with God's song - John 20:19-31 - Living by the Word - Column

Christian Century, March 23, 1994 by Walter Wink

WE ARE JUST suckers if we let the reigning intellectual fashion decree that the resurrection is unbelievable. What is believable changes from generation to generation.

Seventy years ago, for example, some scholars judged Jesus' healing miracles to be impossible because they violated the "iron laws" of nature. Then, with the rise of psychosomatic medicine, the "available believable" changed; now Jesus could have healed psychosomatie disorders but not other diseases. Today, in the light of scientific studies of the placebo effect, the laying on of hands and prayers for the sick, we no longer know the limits of what can be healed by faith.

Notice that not a single shred of new evidence emerged after the first century. The issue depends solely on the intellectual fads of the age, and on what they permit us to believe. In a universe that becomes more amazing with each new discovery, it is arrogant to declare the resurrection impossible. That is not my problem with it; my difficulty comes from the claim that the resurrection is an objective fact, like the division of cells or the Los Angeles earthquake.

The resurrection appearances did not, after all, take place in the temple before thousands, but in the privacy of homes. They did not occur before the religious authorities, but only to the disciples hiding from those authorities. The resurrection was not a world-historic event that could have been filmed by "60 Minutes," but a privileged revelation reserved for the few.

Something did happen to Jesus: he infiltrated the Godhead. The very image of God was altered by the sheer force of Jesus' being. God was, in Jesus, taking on a human face. God would never be the same. Jesus indelibly imprinted the divine; God everlastingly entered the human. In Jesus, one might say, God took on humanity, completing an evolution inaugurated in Ezekiel's vision of Yahweb on the throne in "the likeness as it were of a human form" (Ezek. 1:26).

Jesus gave to God a body, nephesh, self; Jesus gave to God a human life prepared to resonate fully with God's song. The ascension/resurrection marks, on the divine side, the entry of Jesus into the God archetype; 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.

Something also happened to the disciples. They experienced the most essential part of Jesus' presence as still with them after Iris death. They had seen him heal, preach and cast out demons, but had regarded these powers as solely his. That power had always been in them as well, but while he was alive they had projected these latent, God-given powers onto him. It was natural for them to speak of them as his Spirit breathed into them, as if he himself had taken up residence in their hearts. And it was true: the God at the center of their beings was now indistinguishable from the Jesus who had infiltrated the Godhead.

The disciples also saw that Jesus' spirit continued to work its works in and through them. In their preaching they extended his critique of domination. Rudolf Bultmann said that Jesus rose into the kenygma or preaching of the church. This is partially true: Jesus' resurrection was not an event for the world, but reserved for the disciples. What mattered was that his life continued through them, and through them his mission was advanced. The disciples extended the domination-free order of God that Jesus had inaugurated.

The hypothetical "Q" document (sayings of Jesus common to Matthew and Luke) reflects a community that understood itself in this way. It pays little attention to Christology. Jesus does not call himself Messiah or Son of God or God but human being (son of man). The focus is not on him, but on his mission.

In time, however, the church made Christ the message, largely abandoning the mission. They turned the resurrection into an objective event of history: the faithful believed it had actually and literally happened. In the modern era this meant subjecting the resurrection to the intellectual fashions of historical science. Belief in a miracle that defied the "laws of nature" became the basis of Christian faith. The desire for absolute historical certainty substituted historical inerrante for literal inerrancy as a guarantor of truth. "Faith"--living by trust without certitude--was redefined as accepting certain dogmas as fact.

Thomas represents this modern demand for historical proof: he wants empirical evidence. When Jesus appears to him, however, he appears to forget all about actually placing his finger in the nail holes and his hand in Jesus' side. He instantly flips from skepticism to the most exalted confession in the New Testament: he calls Jesus "my Lord and my God." Jesus upbraids his literalism and anticipates the blessedness of all those future believers "who have not seen and yet have come to believe." Thomas wants proof; he gets presence.

I am not suggesting that the resurrection is nonhistorical, but that the historical is the wrong category for understanding resurrection. The resurrection is not a fact to be believed, but an experience to be shared. It is not a datum of history, but divine transformative power overcoming the power of death. Resurrection is not a contract for a time-share apartment in heaven. It is the spirit of Jesus present in people who continue his struggle against domination in all its forms, here, now, on this good earth. The rest is in God's hands.