In 2003, the year he was consecrated bishop of Durham, Tom Wright published his magisterial work The Resurrection of the Son of God.Footnote ¹ This volume of more than 800 pages is a monumental defence of the reality of the resurrection. Immensely learned and circumspect, the book impresses the reader with its academic and theological passion. In my view, Bishop Wright has succeeded in building a theological cathedral of illuminating historical insights, convincing and surprising exegetical observations, and thoroughly argued systematic conclusions. No prophetic intuition is needed to predict that this book will remain a classic among the writings which stimulate further thinking and discourse about this most important and highly controversial topic of faith.

In the following I will join the ranks of those in the academy, the church and beyond who have welcomed and praised this book. I will, however, challenge Tom Wright to reconsider the capstone of his cathedral. This capstone is an understanding of the bodily resurrection – grasped in such terms as ‘alive again’, ‘robustly physical’ – which is next to impossible to distinguish from a mere resuscitation. I should like to show that the biblical traditions press for a more sophisticated and yet realistic understanding of the bodily resurrection, and would like to win Tom Wright over to this view because I share his academic, apologetic and pastoral concerns, which are connected with an adequate understanding of the reality of the ‘bodily’ resurrection of Jesus Christ. To illuminate my main objection, I will contrast a question from the conclusion of Wright's impressive book with the question I think would have to be asked at this point.

As I would like to show, it is not only theological and academic honesty, but also the biblical texts themselves which challenge us to turn this quote, slightly modified, against the author who, in my opinion, seems to underestimate the power and the realism of faith and of the Spirit :

Wright has written a fascinating book. I deeply share his passion for theological realism. But this realism has to include the spiritual dimensions of reality, and not to support all those who dismiss them as bad supernatural entities or who misuse them for all kinds of subjectivist imaginations and illusions.

Just re-affirmation and re-making of creation?

The book is the third volume in Tom Wright's series dedicated to Christian Origins and the Question of God. It follows upon an encompassing study on the Jewish roots of Christianity entitled The New Testament and the People of God (1992) and a book on the historical Jesus called Jesus and the Victory of God (1996). The work on the resurrection ‘started life as the final chapter’ of the Jesus book. Yet it can very well be read without a familiarity with the two preceding publications. As such an independent work it will be presented and discussed in the following.

Wright argues for the appropriateness and validity of a historical investigation of the resurrection, for a search for ‘historical knowledge . . . that can be discussed without presupposing Christian faith’ (p. 22). He rightly fears a theology which starts with ‘a closed epistemological circle, a fideism from which everything can be seen clearly but which remains necessarily opaque to those outside’ (p. 21). In part 1, ‘Setting the Scene’, he thus sets out with a broad investigation into ‘Life Beyond Death in Ancient Paganism’ (pp. 32ff.), ‘Death and Beyond in the Old Testament’ (pp. 85ff.) and ‘Hope Beyond Death in Post-Biblical Judaism’ (pp. 129ff.). Wright maintains that the topic of the resurrection had no place in the pagan ideas about life after death. He diagnoses an ‘infrequent’ belief in the resurrection in the Old Testament canon, but perceives a helpful message in its ‘simple and direct’ language: ‘It involves, not a reconstrual of life after death, but a reversal of death itself . . . Creation itself, celebrated throughout the Hebrew scriptures, will be reaffirmed, remade’ (pp. 127ff).

As I will try to show in detail in the discussion of Wright's reflections on the New Testament witnesses, it is already here that I see the pre-stage of a problem, i.e. the emphasis on a re-affirmation and a re-making in connection with the resurrection. This emphasis can very well affirm the continuity between the pre- and the post-resurrected life and thus the realism of the resurrection. This understanding, however, makes it difficult to fully appreciate the potentials of the discontinuity of the transformation involved in the resurrection. In my opinion, this conceptual and hermeneutical decision to centre on the reaffirmation and remaking in connection with the resurrection already emerges in the first parts of the book. Wright's thorough investigation of the resurrection hope in post-biblical Judaism also serves preparatory purposes. Along with the historical and exegetical investigations he repeatedly warns against a confusion of the resurrection with a continued existence of the soul after death or against the misconceptions of a non-bodily revivification. I wholeheartedly agree with these intentions and warnings. The slight but important difference between our interpretations – which, however, implies serious consequences – concerns the specific transformation of the body in the resurrection.

Did Paul see a still physical body of Jesus Christ?

Part 2 deals with the topic ‘Resurrection in Paul’ (pp. 209ff.). Tom Wright – and here I agree, of course – leaves us in no doubt that the resurrection is connected with ‘a transformation’ of the body of Jesus Christ and the bodies of ‘those who belong to the Messiah’. He speaks of a ‘new, incorruptible bodily life’ (p. 271), which is the result of a ‘transformation, going through the process of death and out into a new kind of life beyond, rather than simply returning to exactly the same sort of life, as had happened in the scriptures with the people raised to life by Elijah and Elisha’ (p. 273). He clearly states: ‘resurrection was not resuscitation, but transformation into a non-corruptible body’ (p. 276). Wright demonstrates convincingly that Paul's complex perspective on the resurrection is firmly rooted in Judaism. He also underlines that Paul develops ‘new linguistic tools to articulate the fresh position to which he had come’ (p. 273), for instance the differentiation between flesh and body, sarx and soma.

I should like to turn to these observations briefly. It is important to see that Paul, by this differentiation, greatly surpasses all dualistic anthropologies of the past and the present which try to muddle through with duals like ‘body and soul’, ‘body and spirit’, ‘body and mind’, etc. Paul clearly sees that our body is not only a ‘robust physical’ entity, shaped by other material and physical realities (e.g. by eating and drinking), but that this ‘robust physical’ entity is also highly shaped by all kinds of mental and spiritual activities and realities. These mental and spiritual activities and realities, with their strong impacts on our bodies, are either primarily directed and nourished by earth- or world-orientated powers and realities or by the Spirit of God. On this level of claiming priority Paul can strongly underline the opposition between the powers of ‘flesh and spirit’ (cf. Rom 8:4ff.).

Paul certainly could not have the scientific knowledge of our days which informs us that materially the body changes completely within a number of years. Yet with his ingenious differentiation of ‘flesh and body’ he offers us potentials to understand the complexity of the body which is shaped by both material and spiritual realities and powers. He even goes beyond this triadic orientation of flesh–body–spirit by differentiating the human spirit and the Spirit of God. Furthermore, he sees that our ‘heart’ and our mind and intellect can serve different spirits, some of which want to bring us under the dominance of the flesh. Without a clear awareness of the complexity of this view of the body it is impossible to grasp what the biblical traditions have in mind when they speak of the resurrection of the body and why they even envision some eschatological hope for the ‘embodied’ flesh which – left to itself and its own powers – is doomed to decay. Although it is Paul who develops such ingenious conceptual tools, several of these differentiated anthropological realities – which, again, are not adequately presented in dualistic anthropologies and worldviews – are also grasped by other biblical authors.

Wright shows how much the focus on the resurrection shapes Paul's whole perspective on the history of God with the creatures, how the ‘controlling narratives’ of the Jewish tradition which included ‘creation and exodus, the foundation stories within any Jewish worldview’ (p. 274), are reinvested by Paul in order to speak of ‘the new creation and the new exodus’. Wright can fascinate his readers by bringing together a careful analysis of the key passages in Paul's letters which (may) refer to Paul's encounter with the risen Lord (Gal 1:11–17; 1 Cor 9:1; 15:8–11; 2 Cor 4:6; 12:1–4), and the texts in Acts which deal with Paul's conversion (Acts 9:3–9; 22:6–11; 26:12–19). In a summary ‘When Paul Saw Jesus’ (pp. 375ff.) he does not only offer his own constructive conclusion; he also states clearly which positions and moves he would like to critique and refute.

According to Wright, many interpretations of Paul's encounter with the resurrected Christ and his conversion present one, two or three of the following ‘moves’ which he rightly regards as inadaquate and misleading:

1. (1) a move ‘from a vision of heavenly light, as in Acts, to a “purely subjective experience”’;

2. (2) a move ‘from this supposedly Pauline “subjective experience of inner illumination” to the hypothesis that this was the sort of thing all the apostles experienced’;

3. (3) a move ‘from this universal non-objective experience to a denial of Jesus’ bodily resurrection’ (p. 393).

One can indeed see tendencies of these ‘moves’ in many famous interpretations of the resurrection accounts, elements of the first two of them even in such classics as Bultmann and Pannenberg. Against all of them Wright boldly wants to affirm Jesus' bodily resurrection. He states that a careful reading of the texts leads to the conclusion that Paul ‘had seen the risen Jesus in person, and that his understanding of who this Jesus was included the firm belief that he possessed a transformed but still physical body’ (p. 398). It is very important to explain what is meant here by ‘seeing in person’ and by a ‘still physical body’. Wright seems to be convinced that the resurrection is no resuscitation, but rather a transformation. However, at this stage of his book it is very difficult to grasp what kind of transformation he envisages. His fear that Paul's ‘seeing’ of the Resurrected One could be falsely interpreted as merely seeing a heavenly light and thus as a merely subjective impression seems to dominate the interpretation in such a way that the differentiation between resurrection and resuscitation becomes blurred. What is meant by the still physical body that Paul saw?

Wright wants us to understand that Luke adds ‘that Paul's seeing of Jesus was accompanied by dazzling light. He never says, however, that Jesus appeared to Paul either as the source of that light or as being of light’ (p. 390). In order to prevent the threat of a dissipation of the bodily resurrected Lord into a light appearance which could mean a loss in objectivity, Wright wants to hold on to three elements in this experience: first, a dazzling light which, however, is just ‘accompanying’ the encounter; second, the audition in which the resurrected Jesus identifies himself; and third, a personal encounter with a ‘still physical body’. I do not see this third element either in the witnesses of Paul or in Acts, which state that Paul's fellows could not share his full experience (either ‘hearing a voice but seeing nobody’ (Acts 9:7), or they saw the light, but did not hear the voice (Acts 22:9)). There is no indication of the third element, the ‘still physical body’ – beyond the visual physicality of a powerful light which makes Paul fall to the ground and blinds him for three days (Acts 9:9) or at least until he comes to Damascus (Acts 22:11). Together with the self-identifying and calling voice, this light appearance constitutes ‘what Paul saw’. It is difficult to grasp why the falling and blinding should not account for an ‘objectivity’ of this experience, not to speak of the powerful and far-reaching conversion of Paul's life. The lack of an intersubjective sharing of this experience, however, should warn us against too straightforward and too simple attempts to testify to the objectivity of the resurrection.

In my view, there is no basis in the texts (and there is no need, either) to speak of an encounter with a ‘still physical body’ which was merely ‘accompanied by dazzling light’ in order to secure the objectivity of Paul's resurrection experience. A blinding light that throws a person to the ground and a call that dramatically changes a life can hardly be confused with a merely subjective impression. And the unique event at Damascus does by no means support a ‘move’ towards the opinion that ‘this was the sort of thing all the apostles experienced’. Finally, although there are many open questions about how to relate Paul's seeing of the risen Lord to the encounters witnessed to by the gospels, there is no lack of convincing power in the constellation without a ‘personal encounter with a STILL physical body’.

The resurrected body – a robustly physical body?

Part 3 deals with the New Testament and early Christian writings apart from Paul and from the ‘Easter stories’ in the gospels (pp. 401ff.). It partly also deals with the questions I have raised. It does so by introducing the terms ‘transphysical’ and ‘transphysicality’ (p. 477; cf. pp. 616–17, 678–9). Wright comments: ‘This new mode of embodiment is hard to describe, but we can at least propose a label for it’. With this new term Wright intends to put ‘a label on the demonstrable fact that the early Christians envisaged a body which was still robustly physical’ (pp. 477–8). The reasons for Wright's insistence on a ‘still robustly physical’ body seem to be convincing. The early Christians ‘did not say that they had seen signs of the heavenly presence of Christ. They said that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead’ (p. 479). Wright strengthens his point by reflecting on the Jewish and scriptural traditions that could have been used by the early witnesses to explain what had happened to Jesus (for instance, Daniel 12:1–3). But what in fact is the meaning of ‘still robustly physical’, if Wright's affirmations are to be maintained that the ‘resurrection is no resuscitation’ and ‘a transformation happened to the pre-Easter body of Christ’ (cf. pp. 587, 594 and often)?

Wright tries to support his view by a reconstruction of the ‘worldview’ held by early Christianity which, as he says, shows ‘a robustly bodily form of resurrection belief’ (p. 583). Against existentialist eschatologies he argues that the realism of the early Christians, their commitment to live and work in history, to shape communities and to centre their symbolic world around the witness to Jesus Christ and his discipleship clearly speaks against a fixation on a Lord ‘gone to heaven’. ‘If the Christians had believed . . . that their aim should be to join him there in the future, and indeed to experience some anticipations of that blessing in the present, why should the present world be of any concern to them?’ (pp. 582–3). But this does not yet answer the question on what kind of ‘still robustly physical body’ of the resurrected Christ the ‘robustly bodily form of resurrection belief’ was concentrated. The ‘central task of reading the Easter accounts’ of the gospels, dealt with in part 4 of the book, should be of some help in answering this burning question.

The Resurrected One – ‘a human being among human beings’?

In part 4 Wright convincingly argues that the evangelists did not depend on Paul's resurrection message of the resurrection. They did not just embellish this message with some more or less strange, bewildering and entertaining stories about personal encounters with the post-Easter Jesus Christ. Instead, ‘we must assume that each of the evangelists had access to ways of telling this story which went back via different, though ultimately related, oral and perhaps written traditions’. Paul's account ‘looks like a brief summary of the other stories’ (p. 591) – an account which ignores many differences in the details of the stories but also omits elements common to all the evangelists (e.g. the role of the women as the first witnesses to the resurrection). Wright summarises commonalities and differences between the evangelists' accounts (pp. 613–14). In an ingenious step he highlights a common ‘surprise of the resurrection narratives’ in the form of a ‘strange silence’ and a strange witness. A common strange silence and a common strange witness indicate that the resurrection narratives of the gospels all refer in similar, yet – with regard to the details – in different ways to events that surprisingly happened in real space-time.

1. (1) They all tell their stories ‘with virtually no embroidery from the biblical tradition’ (p. 599, cf. pp. 599ff.);

2. (2) as in the case of Paul and Acts, they link the resurrection of Christ with a missionary imperative but they do not directly elaborate on personal and communal eschatological hope (p. 602ff.);

3. (3) quite different from Paul and the biblical traditions – especially Daniel – the resurrected Jesus ‘is never depicted . . . as a heavenly being, radiant and shining’ (pp. 604ff.);

4. (4) although ‘women were simply not acceptable as legal witnesses’ which explains why ‘the tradition which Paul is quoting . . . has carefully taken the women out of it’ (p. 607), all evangelists speak extensively of the presence of the women as the first witnesses to the empty tomb and to the resurrection appearances. Wright bluntly asks, if only one of the witnesses had spoken of this fact: ‘Would the other evangelists have been so slavishly foolish as to copy the story unless they were convinced that, despite being an apologetic liability, it was historically trustworthy?’ (p. 608)

It is with agreement and gratitude that I have followed Wright so far. I meet with great difficulties, however, when he states that the resurrected Jesus, in some respects, appears as ‘a human being among human beings’ and at the same time merely qualifies that ‘Jesus is almost routinely depicted in these stories as having a body with properties that are, to say the least, unusual’ (p. 605). Just a body with ‘unusual properties’ – this might well refer to winners of Olympic gold medals. As I have argued elsewhere, there is no indication in the resurrection narratives of the Bible that after Easter the resurrected Jesus Christ lived together with his followers as he had done before. Exclamations like: ‘Sorry, Jesus, that I did not recognise you immediately!’ or ‘It is so good that you are back, Jesus (“alive again”)!’ are absolutely unthinkable. To play this down with the assertion that there was also ‘discontinuity’, that this body was ‘somehow transformed’ (p. 609 and often), ‘somehow different’ (p. 611 and often) and that the body of the Resurrected One had ‘properties that are, to say the least, unusual’ blurs the clear perspective on the messages given by the New Testament texts. It also blurs a clear perspective on the realistic eschatological expectations and hopes to which these texts lay the ground.

The gospel testimonies to the resurrection present a complicated picture. They consistently emphasise the tension between palpable impressions on the one hand and, on the other, experiences of an appearance. With regard to the resurrection, they consistently emphasise the tension between theophany and doubt. The resurrection of Jesus is clearly not a physical reanimation. Much more happens in Jesus’ resurrection than in the raising of Lazarus or of Jairus's daughter. While a few resurrection testimonies, if we isolate them, seem to suggest a confusion of the resurrection with a reanimation, the biblical witnesses give a clear overall picture.Footnote ²

The Emmaus story is particularly revealing. The eyes of the disciples are kept from recognising the risen Christ. In the ritual of the bread their eyes are opened. But it is already the next verse that says, ‘He vanished from their sight’. Instead of complaining about a ghost, the disciples remember the earlier experience supporting this new view of Jesus Christ which, however, had not initially served as a revelation to them, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’ (Luke 24:30ff.).

It is characteristic of the resurrection appearances that they ‘establish a reality’. Or more precisely, there is a transformation of existence and reality which stems from them. The resurrection appearances have nothing to do with passing impressions. Also, they are ‘founded in reality’ in their connection back to the pre-Easter Jesus, his life and his work, even though they do not raise the issue of his reappearance, and although he is experienced in a new form. Despite the degree to which these experiences of the resurrection are accompanied by fear, uncertainty and even doubt – as the biblical texts show again and again – they lead to faith and the sending forth of witnesses. What kind of experiences do we have before us according to the witnesses of the gospels?

‘The two things which must be regarded as historically secure when we talk about the first Easter are the emptiness of the tomb and the meetings with the risen Jesus’ (p. 686).

What does the empty tomb reveal?

Wright repeatedly speaks of ‘the tomb-plus-appearances hypothesis’ (pp. 707, 711) and regards these ‘elements’ as the ‘key non-negotiable historical bedrock’ (p. 629). Most scholars would agree with him so far. They would probably also share his conviction: ‘The empty tomb alone would be a puzzle and a tragedy. Sightings of an apparently alive Jesus, by themselves, would have been classified as visions or hallucinations, which were well enough known in the ancient world’ (p. 686).

All four gospels bear witness to the empty tomb. In this they show similarities: the presence of the women in general and of Mary of Magdala in particular; the coming on ‘the first day of the week’; the strange interpreting messenger or messengers in the tomb or in front of it. Even among these commonalities there are differences which indicate that the witnesses refer to different traditions. They cannot provide a clear common answer to the questions whether there was one messenger or whether there were two of them, whether they were of earthly or heavenly origin, present in the tomb or outside of it, encountered by ‘the women’ or by Mary of Magdala alone. They do not speak with one voice on how many women were involved and whether male disciples were with them or not; finally, whether the witnesses were sent to Galilee, about 120 km away, to encounter the resurrected Christ, or whether they were to stay in Jerusalem. Apart from the common framework of first day, women, explicitly and prominently Mary of Magdala, messenger(s) in or at the tomb, they all agree in one respect, namely that the tomb was empty.

The empty tomb traditions supported by both the Christian and Jewish sides, but for different reasons, principally allow at least four differing interpretations:

1. (a) physical reanimation of the pre-Easter Jesus – an interpretation often defended in the past and sharply attacked by critics of the resurrection;

2. (b) theft of the body, explicitly pondered in Matthew and John;

3. (c) a ‘drawing away’ in an unimaginable, miraculous or even a magic fashion; and

4. (d) the mistaking of an empty tomb for the real tomb – an option which has been adopted only occasionally and only by few commentators.

It is very important to see with Tom Wright that the stories of the empty tomb alone are not sufficient to evoke belief in the resurrection.

• • According to Mark the result of the experience of the empty tomb is, ‘And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid’ (16:8).

• • Matthew speaks in some detail about the rumour that the body had been stolen by the disciples (28:11ff.; cf. 27:62ff.; and 28:15, a story ‘still told among the Jews to this day’).

• • Luke 24 notes that the disciples fail to believe the women's report, ‘these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them’ (24:11). Only Peter runs to the grave but – finding only the shroud and sudarium there – leaves in confusion ‘wondering at what had happened’ (24:12).

• • According to John 20, Mary of Magdala fetches Peter and the beloved disciple when she sees the open tomb, and after they have seen for themselves that it is empty, she breaks into tears over the stolen body. ‘They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him’ (20:13b). It is only about the ‘other disciple’, who reaches the tomb first and goes in second, that the gospel says, in rather a cryptic way: ‘he went in and saw and believed’ (20:8). This ‘belief’, however, obviously has no impact on Mary.

The stories of the empty tomb are not stories of triumph. On the contrary. They contain propaganda from the opposition that the disciples, full of deceit, were tomb raiders; they show fear and silence; disbelief, even among the disciples; amazed confusion; mourning over the supposed theft of the body. What we are confronted with is an entire typology of failure to recognise the resurrection and its proclamation. In all this, one message perseveres – that the body of the pre-Easter Jesus has disappeared. Does this then mean that the dead Jesus simply got up and walked away in order to turn up again later to everyone's surprise?

The variants of the four evangelists have one decisive point in common: the fact that the empirically and socially perceivable body of the pre-Easter Jesus is withdrawn. That is, the story of the resurrection provides us with absolutely no material for pathological investigations, no material for medico-legal autopsies or coronary inquiries. The empty tomb traditions speak in unison of a withdrawnness of the pre-Easter body – in whatever way that is to be classified – and this fact has to be respected.