The Kernel and the Husk/Christ's Resurrection regarded naturally
XXII
My dear ——,
My last letter broke off rather abruptly with a promise to do my best to set forth hereafter the Resurrection of Christ as it may be regarded from a natural point of view.
Looking at the facts in this light, we have in the first place to set before ourselves the short life of One of whom we must merely say that He was unique in the goodness and grandeur of His character, and that He died with the unfulfilled purpose of redeeming mankind from sin, deserted for the moment by the few disciples who had adhered to Him almost to the last. He died, for the time, the most pitiable, the most despair-inspiring death that the world has ever witnessed, asking in His last moments why He had been "forsaken" by God. But His death—pardon me if I deviate for one moment from material to celestial facts, provided that I never deviate into miracles—was really the triumph over death, and His Spirit had in reality (we speak in a metaphor) broken open the bars of the grave and ascended to the throne of the Father carrying with Himself the promise of the ultimate redemption of mankind. This was now to be revealed to the world as the culminating vision in that continuous Revelation through the Imagination by which the minds of men had been led to look beyond this life to a life that knows no end. Speaking terrestrially, we must say that the influence of Jesus, love, faith, remorse, were moulding the hearts of the disciples on earth to receive the truth; speaking celestially we may say that Jesus bent down from His throne by the right hand of God to prepare them for the manifestation of His victory. What in this crisis exactly befell on earth we shall never know. The tradition that Jesus appeared on the third day, or after three days, to His disciples, is so naturally derived from the prophecy of Hosea "on the third day he shall raise us up"—a prophecy probably applied by Jesus to Himself—that we can place no reliance on its numerical accuracy. Nor do we know exactly where Jesus first appeared to His disciples. The oldest tradition[1] declared that they were to "go to Galilee" after their Master's death, and that He had promised to guide them thither; but a subsequent account interpreted the words about "Galilee" quite differently.[2] In any case, before many days had elapsed, to some one disciple, perhaps to Mary Magdalene—out of whom there had been cast "seven devils"—it was given to see the Lord Jesus.
Here, by the way, we must note the remarkable prominence given in all the Gospels to the part played by women in receiving the first manifestations of Christ's Resurrection. Writers who were careful to avoid giving occasion for unbelief might naturally have desired to give less prominence to the testimony of highly imaginative and impressionable witnesses; and indeed St. Paul, in his brief list of the appearances of Jesus (possibly because writing as an Apostle who had seen Christ, he desired to confine himself almost entirely to manifestations witnessed by Apostles), makes no mention of the appearances to women: their prominence, therefore, in all the Gospels, testifies strongly to the early and universal acceptance of the tradition that women were the first witnesses to the risen Saviour. But to resume. The news quickened the faith even of those disciples who had not seen and who could not yet believe; and presently apparitions were seen—a thing almost, though (I believe) not quite, unique in visions—by several disciples together. Probably the most frequent occasions for these manifestations were when they had met together to partake of the body and blood of their Master; and it was in the moment of the breaking of the bread that the image of the Living Bread was flashed before them, appearing in the form of Jesus giving Himself for them, and uttering words of blessing, comfort, or exhortation, audible to the ears of the faithful, who at the same moment were handling His body and touching the blood which flowed from His side. At other times he appeared before them with other messages; to the women he seemed to wave them off as if deprecating a too close approach, or as if bidding them go hence and carry the glad tidings to the Apostles; others He seemed to rebuke for their want of faith; in the sight of others, His hands, outstretched in the attitude of parting benediction, seemed to send forth His disciples to preach His word with promise of His presence; but how these messages were conveyed, whether by gesture simply, or by spiritual voice (as in the case of St. Paul), audible perhaps to one, and by him interpreted to the rest, or audible to all that were in the same faithful sympathy—these and other details cannot now be determined.
"Why did not the adversaries of Christ confront His followers by producing the body from the tomb, thus disproving the story that His body had risen from the dead?" The tomb was probably empty. That is probable for two reasons, first because the earliest traditions agree that the women going to the tomb found the stone rolled away; and secondly, because the adversaries of Jesus appear to have themselves subsequently circulated a story that the disciples had stolen away the body. This they would hardly have done if they had known that their own explanation could be at any moment refuted by opening the tomb, which would have shewn the body still lying there. Possibly some of the enemies of Jesus had themselves removed the body, influenced by some of those predictions of Jesus about Himself, which, though they had not the power to inspire the disciples with faith in the moment of His death, had power to inspire His enemies with a vague fear. Being almost surprised in the act, they may not have had time to replace the great stone at the entrance of the tomb, when the women arrived; if so, the action of Christ's own enemies prepared the way for the belief in His resurrection by exhibiting to the sorrowing disciples the stone rolled away and the empty sepulchre. First came the cry, "He is not here," and that prepared the way for "He is risen."
How long the visionary period lasted we cannot tell. It is almost certain that there were many more visions than the five recorded by St. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 6, 7). At least one of St. Paul's five visions, that to St. James, is not mentioned in any of our extant Gospels; on the other hand St. Paul omits some of those peculiar to the third or fourth Gospels, as well as the manifestations to the women. Perhaps the visions were so many, and all so like each other, that the Church found it difficult to select which to record; and each Evangelist chose those which appeared to him fittest, either because they were the earliest, or because the witnesses were numerous, or because they were apostolic, or because they contained the most striking proof of a veritable resurrection. We may therefore easily accept the statement that the period of visions lasted for forty days or even for a much longer time, probably till the disciples felt emboldened to take an active course in preaching the Gospel.
Concerning Christ's manifestation to St. Paul I have said enough in my last letter—if anything needed to be said—to shew that it must have been of the nature of a vision, and (in a sense) "subjective." But it differs from the rest in that it was made to an enemy while the other manifestations were made to devoted disciples. Love, remorse, faith, affection, stimulated the Apostles to cry, "He cannot have died," and prepared their souls to see the image of Jesus risen; but where, it may be asked, was the spiritual preparation in the heart of St. Paul to receive such a vision? You may trace it in the words which St. Paul heard from Jesus: "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." They shew that the future Apostle had been struggling, and struggling hard, against the compunctions of conscience. Being a lover of truth from his childhood, he was prepared to give up all for its sake; but recent events had made him ask whether he was not fighting against the truth instead of for the truth. He had been persecuting the Christians; but their faith and patience had made him doubt whether they might not be right and he wrong. When the first martyr Stephen looked up to heaven and there saw Jesus seated at the right hand of God, then or soon afterwards, the question must have arisen in the mind of the persecutor, "What if the follower of the Nazarene was speaking truth? What if the crucified Jesus whom I am now persecuting was really exalted to God's throne?" Such was the struggle through which Saul's mind was passing when the Spirit of Jesus, acting indirectly through the constancy and faith of His persecuted disciples, having first insensibly permeated and undermined the barriers of Pharisaic training and education, now swept all obstacles before it in an instantaneous deluge of conviction that this persecuted Jesus was the Messiah. At that same moment the Messiah Himself (who during these last months and weeks of spiritual conflict had been bending down closer and closer to the predestined Apostle from His throne in heaven) now burst upon the convert's sight on earth.
But I think I hear you saying, "All this sounds well; but he has repeatedly described these visions of the risen Saviour as subjective: how then can he call them real? What is real?" Let me refer you to the paper of Definitions which I enclosed in a previous letter.[3]
1. Absolute reality cannot be comprehended by men, and can only be apprehended as God, or in God, by Faith.
2. Among objects of sensation, those are (relatively) real which present similar sensations in similar circumstances.
Now if you try to regard the manifestation of the risen Christ under the second head, as an "object of sensation," you must pronounce it "unreal," inasmuch as it would not "present similar sensations in similar circumstances;" by which I mean that, with similar opportunities of observation, different persons (believers, for example, and unbelievers) would not have derived similar sensations from it. But your conclusion would be false because you started from a false premiss: these manifestations cannot be classed "among objects of sensation."
The movements of the risen Saviour appear to me to have been the movements of God; His manifestations to the faith of the Apostles were divine acts, passing direct from God to the souls of men. Since therefore these manifestations belonged to the class of things which "can only be apprehended as God, or in God, by faith," I call them "absolute realities"—as much more real than flesh and blood, as God Himself is more real than the paper on which I am now writing.