Resurrection faith: N.T. Wright talks about history and belief

NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLAR N. T. Wright, who has taught at Cambridge, Oxford and Montreal, recently became the canon theologian at Westminster Abbey in London. He is both a vigorous investigator of the historical Jesus and an effective communicator of the gospel. His scholarly works include a two-volume project on the origins of Christianity: The New Testament and the People of God (1992) and Jesus and the Victory of God (1996). More popular works include The Original Jesus: The Life and Vision of a Revolutionary (1996) and Luke for Everyone (2000), which is part of a series of "New Testament Guides for everyone" distributed in the U.S. by Pilgrim Press. Tom Wright is also well known for carrying on a lively public debate on Jesus with the American scholar Marcus Borg, which led to their joint book The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (2000). We recently spoke with Wright about his life as a historian and believer.

You once wrote: "Authentic Christianity has nothing to fear from history." Why is that?

Well, it's a slightly polemical remark, directed at those Christians who think Christianity is simply a matter of the community of faith telling its own story, and who don't even want to discuss issues of the historical Jesus because they think the Bible and the tradition have told us all we need to know. That seems to me profoundly wrong. The Gospel writers think they're talking about things that actually happened. If they didn't happen, then I've got other things to do with my life. If, for example, Jesus died of influenza at the age of 25 and everything about the crucifixion was made up, then something pretty significant about Christianity is lost. Of course, the primary issue here is the resurrection. I am not going to stay up nights sweating about such matters as whether Jesus walked on water.

One of the underlying issues here is that of miracles. Does the postmodern context, with its suspicions of rationalism, open up the issue of miracles in a way that it hasn't been open since the 18th century?

I think that's true. When Marcus Borg and I debate each other on these topics, we don't use the word "miracle" because we both agree that the term is too infected by post-Enlightenment debates. It is accompanied, especially in America, with the idea that God exists outside natural processes and sometimes reaches in and does something and then pushes off again. That is how a lot of people think of miracle, though that view is more part of the superman myth of God than part of Christian theology and history.

In any case, I think God can do whatever God wants. I don't think we know what the limits are. And our discussion of the limits is too much shaped by the terms of modern philosophy.

Can't we talk about empirical limits, however? We know certain things, such as the laws of gravity--and that human beings cannot walk on water.

I've been told that in some Muslim fundamentalist circles people are taught to walk on water as a spiritual exercise. I'm prepared to believe it. I do think there are all sorts of odd things that happen in the world. And there are several stories in the Gospels--the resurrection is the main--one which have the flavor of people saying: Look here, you're not going to believe this, but this is what happened.

How do you, as a historian, approach the resurrection?

Well, we know quite a lot about first-century Jewish movements, many of which ended with the leader's death. I've tried to imagine myself in the world of someone like Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian. He hears about the demise of a messianic leader or prophetic leader, and is told that this leader has been raised from the dead. He is going to ask: What do you mean he's been raised from the dead? And he will not be satisfied if the answer is: Well, I had this vision, or I felt my heart warmed, or I felt that God had forgiven me for letting the leader down. He would say, "Well, fine, I'm glad you had that experience. But why did you say he's been raised from the dead?" My point is that resurrection is something that had a quite clear meaning at that time. It was something that every pagan knew doesn't happen. And a lot of Jews (the Sadducees and some others) believed it doesn't happen. Those who did affirm the resurrection did not think it was just a way of saying, "He is Lord."

The historian has to offer a plausible hypothesis of why the disciples used the language of resurrection. My hypothesis is that there were two things: an empty tomb and sightings of Jesus. An empty tomb by itself doesn't mean that much, nor do visions--many people have had visions, particularly after somebody they love has just died. Given the accounts of the empty tomb and of the sightings, however, I think the historian is faced with two parts of an arch with the piece in the middle--the resurrection--missing. The question is: Are these just two isolated phenomena?

The historian cannot prove the resurrection in the same way that one can prove that Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D. But I think the historian can say: Here are the plausible explanations. And there is an extreme implausibility of virtually all the rival suggestions, such as the one that James, the brother of the Lord, was walking around in the garden at the same time, and because he looked rather like Jesus, the women saw him in the half light. That story is not going to last more than an hour or two.