The Reality of the Resurrection

The New Testament Witness

Stefan Alkier, Leroy A. Huizenga

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781481301039
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

In The Reality of the Resurrection Stefan Alkier bridges the chasm between history and theology. Through a patient historical, canonical, and hermeneutical study, Alkier demonstrates that the resurrection of Jesus is inextricably bound to the general eschatological resurrection of the dead. Jesus' resurrection is no isolated miracle but is instead the crucial disclosure of the nature of reality, the identity of God, and the destiny of human beings. Interpretation of Jesus' resurrection is thus necessarily and unavoidably both historical and theological.

Through a descriptive exegetical survey of New Testament rhetoric, Alkier locates the resurrection of the Crucified One within a distinct narrative world. He then employs the semiotics of C. S. Peirce to develop a creative epistemology that avoids propositional literalism and modernist reductionism. Alkier finally outlines how resurrection impacts Christian praxis.

The Reality of the Resurrection witnesses to that which Paul names as of "first importance"--not only for the early Christian communities but also for the shaping of our communities today.

PART I

Resurrection and the New Testament
Exegetical Investigations

Chapter 1

The Pauline Literature

The letters of the Apostle Paul are not only the oldest writings of the New Testament; they are also the oldest Christian writings of any kind that have come down to us. But not all the letters that name Paul as the sender were authored by him. Stylistic and material differences from those letters more certainly formulated by Paul lead one to distinguish between Proto-Pauline and Deutero-Pauline letters. First Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon are unanimously assigned to the Proto-Pauline letters. With the Letters to the Colossians and the Ephesians, however, one finds substantial differences regarding the resurrection over and against the Proto-Pauline letters. But one can also make out clear shifts of emphasis that point to a later time of composition and a different author in 2 Thessalonians and the so-called Pastoral Letters.

The Letter to the Hebrews, which does not claim Paul as the sender, was assigned in the early Church to the Corpus Paulinum as well. While the letters designated here as Deutero-Pauline exhibit a substantive closeness to the Proto-Pauline letters in spite of their serious differences, and while these also intended and, indeed, therefore employed the name of Paul in order to fashion a “Pauline” theology for their own respective situations with his authority, the Letter to the Hebrews, with its priestly approach, presents such a discrete theology that it will receive its own chapter and will not be ranked here with the Deutero-Pauline letters.

The Letters of the Apostle Paul

“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain” (1 Cor 15:13-14). The significance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which these verses from 1 Corinthians 15 discuss and which can hardly be overestimated, matters not only for the strategy of the argument of this chapter, but also for 1 Corinthians as an entire letter. In fact, Paul’s theologia crucis,¹ his “word of the cross” as the speech of the eschatological, powerful, and salvific action of the merciful and just creator God,² emerges from it.

Richard B. Hays,³ Ben Witherington III,⁴ Eckart Reinmuth,⁵ and finally Ian Scott⁶ have convincingly demonstrated that the framework of Pauline discourse exhibits a narrative substructure, and that the word of the cross as the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in this God- and world-interpreting narrative has been given a decisive role. This role fundamentally transforms the great story in which Paul, the persecutor of the church, lived.

In connection with Hays and others, Scott represents the thesis that the theological knowledge of Paul is structured by a great, coherent narrative that extends from the creation of the world to the new creation at the end of the world. This great story forms for Paul the hermeneutical framework for the interpretation of the world, the interpretation of history, and every single event in past history as well as present and future. Pauline rationality is thus not a Greek logic rationality but rather a hermeneutical-narrative one, whose criterion constitutes the coherence of the great narrative.

Ethical knowledge is included in this narrative theology as well. Believers are located in this story. Concrete ethical problems or instructions are, therefore, formulated in view of how one should play one’s role in the story well—that is, action must correspond to the role. The reflective unfolding of this story, as it is found in the Proto-Pauline letters, helps one understand both how to live and what consequences to expect, if one gives oneself over to this story as a true story. The indispensable Spirit of God, however, necessarily effects the leap, the decision for the truth of the story. If this leap has taken place through the work of the spirit of the story of Jesus Christ, then an experience-saturated, faithful relationship to God and to Jesus Christ develops for believers. The relationship is to God through giving him the worship due him alone. It is to Jesus Christ through imitating his life in the community with him as the Kyrios. In this way the narrative of the cross and resurrection forms the center of its own action and self-understanding. Believers live in the great story in the assurance that through their sharing in Jesus’ fate of death they will be raised at the end of the ages and will receive eternal life in order to live with him in eternal communion. I shall explore the individual letters of Paul in order to make this thesis concrete with a view to Pauline discourse about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead.

1 Thessalonians

1 Thessalonians is regarded as Paul’s oldest extant letter and thus also as the oldest extant written record of Christian faith. It is directed to a community that Paul founded shortly before the composition of the letter.⁷ The concern of the letter is to strengthen the community on the way of faith marked out for it in the face of pressures, and thus to contribute to its sanctification. Taking account of their election,⁸ they should expect the coming (παρουσία) of the Lord. From that point on, they will be together with him forever (cf. 4:17; 5:23). “Their perspective on the immediate parousia shapes the theology of 1 Thessalonians from its organization to its ethical directives. . . . Thus a closed theological conception arises: In faith in Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, in the presence of the Spirit sent by God (cf. 1 Thess 4:8; 5:19), the community expects the coming of the Son from heaven who will save them from the wrath to come.”⁹ This theological conception and the fundamental concern of the letter that comes with it are born of the certainty that the crucified Jesus did not remain dead, but rather was raised by God and is now the living Kyrios of the community (cf. 1:1b).¹⁰

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ as the Fundamental Narrative of the Pauline Gospel

At the beginning of the letter Paul praises the young congregation for carrying on with the gospel, for remembering how they came to hear it from Paul, and for how this message of the gospel was effective among them: “[H]ow you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming” (1 Thess 1:9b-10).

The gospel Paul announced effected their turning from idols and their turning to the living and true God. In this way the vitality and truth of idols are denied. They are illusions that are powerless to effect anything.

In this section, however, the vitality and truth of God are not only maintained propositionally, they are also presented in a narrative manner, a narrative constituted by God’s act of resurrection and his coming wrath. In both ways is God’s immeasurable power shown.

The resurrection of Jesus is introduced as a unique and exceptional¹¹ event that has happened in the past. “V. 10 speaks of the expected ‘Son’ of God and in identifying him gives his name as ‘Jesus’—this is the one risen from the dead who saves believers from the coming wrath. This verse does not concern the expectation of an unknown, undetermined heavenly existence, but rather speaks of Jesus who was raised from the dead, whose story is represented in these succinct phrases.”¹² The readers learn nothing about the precise circumstances of the resurrection. They are informed, however, about the location of the Resurrected One. He is in heaven, for his return is expected from heaven. His coming again has as its first function the salvation of believers from the coming wrath of God.

Verses 1:9b-10 provide further insight into the narrative substructure of the gospel Paul announced in Thessalonica: the Day of the Lord, on which God’s wrath is poured out on all sinners, stands immediately at hand (cf. 5:1ff.). God has raised Jesus, his Son, from the dead and taken him into his heavenly life. On the Day of the Lord Jesus will come again out of heaven and will deliver those who have turned to the living and true God from God’s annihilating wrath. Without God’s powerful act of resurrection there would be no deliverance from his righteous wrath.

The plausibility of this narrative of the future wrath and the past resurrection of Jesus does not arise from empirical evidence of the possibility or actuality of resurrection. Rather, it is nourished by the theology of Paul the Jew, who, as such, knows the creative, but also the destructive power of God. Moreover, it stands in the framework of the apocalyptic understanding of time, which counts on an imminent end to this world.

This Jewish apocalyptic theology and cosmology, widespread at the time of Paul, gains something new through the narrative of the resurrection of an individual in the recent past. This event cannot be understood as a mere revivification of a dead man, because this Resurrected One does not continue his prior mode of life. Rather, Jesus has entered into his heavenly life, and indeed did so before the end of the age. Saving power is ascribed to this event, for the Resurrected One himself will be the deliverer. The resurrection of Jesus, having occurred in the recent past, is thus remembered as an eschatological event with a cosmic dimension.

This good news, this gospel, is more than a merely human word. It is the efficacious Word of God because it delivers those who have faith in this Word (cf. 1 Thess 2:13). In support of the divine nature of this Word Paul appeals to the experiences of the Thessalonians to whom he is writing. They have made his proclamation foundational in the constitution of their community. According to 1 Thessalonians, the proclamation of the gospel in Thessalonica did not occur only with the human words of Paul. It also came “in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1:5), so that the Thessalonians received it as that which it truly and effectually is: the reality-creating Word of God (cf. 2:13b). Paul reminds the Thessalonians that they have experienced the wonder working power of the Word of God itself. This is the very power that enabled them to accept the good news of salvation through Jesus, the one raised by God into heavenly life.¹³

The Question of the Resurrection of the Dead

Thus, the narrative of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ and of the saving function of the resurrected Crucified One on the Day of God’s judgment forms the core of the proclamation that grounds the community. Apparently the question of the resurrection of the dead does not belong to it. The sorrow of the Thessalonians over those from their community who have died threatens their eschatological joy and thus their sanctification. According to Paul they are uncertain whether their dead will have a share in the communion of eternal life with Jesus Christ, whose return is imminent. For this reason, in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 Paul imparts his knowledge of the apocalyptic scenario and therein combines traditional motifs of the Jewish hope in the resurrection of the dead with the conviction of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The “word of the Lord” in 1 Thessalonians 4:15 solves the fundamental problem of the Thessalonians on the basis of the fundamental conviction that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead (4:14a) and now communicates with the apostle as Lord of the community. The solution to the problem consists in assuring the anxious Thessalonians with the highest authority, namely that of their Kyrios, “that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died” (4:15).

Verses 16-17 now make clear what will happen at the eschaton: The Kyrios will come down, the “dead in Christ” will rise, those still living at that time will be caught up in the air. The resurrected and those who are caught up will meet their Lord in the air and will be together forever. Verse 14b is grounded in this scenario. As an effective word of comfort, this eschatological knowledge should mitigate the Thessalonians’ sorrow.

With a view to the question of the resurrection, let us note the following: In the center of Paul’s gospel proclamation in Thessalonica stands the “Jesus-Christ-Story” (Eckart Reinmuth) of death and resurrection. The resurrected Jesus Christ is the Lord of those who believe. At the time of the composition of the letter he is located in the heavenly realm and communicates with Paul, his apostle. He will come at the end of time to save from God’s wrath those who trust in the gospel of the resurrected Crucified One and therefore turn to God.

The day of the return of Jesus Christ cannot be dated, but it is so imminent that it is probable that the question of the resurrection of the dead was not a central theme of the proclamation in Thessalonica by which Paul founded the community. The sorrow of the Thessalonians to whom he writes over the uncertainty of the future of those who have died requires Paul to provide information about their fate. According to a word of the Lord, which Paul now communicates to the Thessalonians as apocalyptic-eschatological knowledge, those who have died, who during their lives turned to the gospel and thus at the same time turned to the true and living God and to the Lord Jesus Christ, will rise on the Day of the Lord. Thus, 1 Thessalonians does not speak of an individual resurrection immediately after one’s own death.

In view of this eschatological deliverance, the resurrection is not thought of as something necessary, but rather only as a means to the end of the participation of the dead in the eschatological community with its Kyrios. The return of the Kyrios is thought of as so imminent that it is not the resurrection of the dead, but rather the rising of the still living to meet the Kyrios that is regarded as normative.

Galatians

In the Letter to the Galatians the reader encounters the resurrection of Jesus Christ already in the first verse. Paul owes his apostleship to Jesus Christ and to the God “who raised him from the dead.” Verse 4 then provides information about the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ “gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” In this way the Galatians are reminded right at the beginning of the writing of the fundamental conviction of the Pauline Gospel in a pithy and concise manner. Paul does this because he sees that the Galatians to whom he writes stand in danger of deserting this gospel and thus jeopardizing their potential salvation (cf. 1:6-9; 3:1ff.). The letter functions to obligate the Galatians anew to the fundamental convictions of the gospel announced by Paul.¹⁴

This gospel is bound up with the divine appointment of Paul as an apostle of Jesus Christ, as an exemplar. Therefore, the miraculous story of how God made an apostle out of the persecutor of the church provides argumentative force with which Paul can demand that the Galatians rectify their thinking (cf. 1:6; 3:1). This miraculous story functions also at the same time as a proof of the reality of the resurrected Crucified One, as Paul perceived it. The recounting of the miracle¹⁵ in 1:13-24 is prepared for in 1:11-12 through the presentation of the assertion that is supposed to ground it, namely “that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” The narration of the miracle begins in verses 13-14 with the introduction of the problem: the Jewish zealot Paul persecuted the church of God.

Verses 15-16a narrate how the problem was solved. God made Paul an apostle of his church by revealing his Son to him. The confirmation of the miracle proceeds in two steps. First, Paul narrates how he immediately put his new commission into practice without opposition and went into the region of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword to the English Edition
• Foreword to the German Edition
• Introduction
• Part I Resurrection and the New Testament: Exegetical Investigations
• 1 The Pauline Literature
• 2 Hebrews
• 3 The synoptic Gospels and Acts
• 4 The Johannine Writings
• 5 The Catholic Letters
• Part II Resurrection and the New Testament: Systematic Interpretations
• 6 The Fundamental structure of Resurrection Discourse in the Writings of the New Testament and the Problem Posed for the Second Part of the Investigation
• 7 The Conception of Reality According to Categorical semiotics
• 8 Semiotic Interpretation of the Phenomena of Resurrection Discourse in the Writings of the new Testament
• 9 Semiotic Interpretation of Protestant Resurrection Discourse Today
• Part III Resurrection and the New Testament: Ecclesial and Educational Praxis
• 10 Protestant Discourse about Death and Resurrection in Funeral services
• 11 Resurrection as a Theme in Religious school Instruction
• 12 The Lord’s supper as a Gift of the Resurrected Crucified One
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Scripture Index
• Index of Names
• Subject Index