For me the Gospels are a profound "wisdom writing." Whether or not they have any truth (and I certainly don't believe in an actual resurrection) is, for me, mostly beside the point. So what we have is a just a strange set of texts that we can pan for gold in.

You're really going to have to redefine your terms. The two options you present us with are not in any way mutually exclusive in their present form.

I switched up some of the wording. Tell me if that helps with your answer.

Well, here's the thing. That there was a string of events that convinced the immediate disciples beyond any doubt that the man they had seen crucified was alive is beyond doubt. It is very probable that the first of those events was the discovery of an empty tomb but as the former Bishop of Durham (only recently sadly departed) so memorably pointed out if that's all there was to it Christianity would have been stillborn.

However it is also obvious that the account of those events given in the gospels are, probably quite deliberately ahistorical. That is to say that the resurrected Christ transcends mundane categories. He can be touched by Thomas yet he appears and disappears in ways that suggest something other than corporeality.. He is recognisably the man Jesus in some stories yet he goes completely unrecognised by disciples on the road to Emmaus. So it is never really clear whether the Gospel writers themselves actually believed the resurrection to be physical. Their accounts are never intended to be factual in the usual sense of the world though they do describe real experiential encounters with the living Christ.

So if the question is a base 'did the Resurrection happen?' the answer is yes, no, well possibly, and maybe not. As a purely historical question 'did x happen?' it is simply undecidable. Whichever of the options you present one chooses it can only be a matter of speculation and personal bias.

So, I understand my question is loaded and possibly poorly phrased for such a difficult concept; but, from what I conclude from your response, is it that you believe that the resurrection could be an actual experience perceived from the disciples and they recorded it down as such. But, they were maybe misperceiving or misinterpreting something that wasn't empirically factual, but rather superimposing their personal beliefs about Jesus dictate what they determined as actual fact.

Is there a third option? Jesus' resurrection is a true story which doesn't transcend the laws of nature? In this case, a misunderstanding of either the laws of nature, or of Jesus' resurrection, or both, would create the impression that if Jesus was resurrected, the laws of nature were transcended.

When you say it "would create the impression that if Jesus was resurrected, the laws of nature were transcended," it seems to me that that mainly points to our faulty understanding of the laws of nature.

Now, our faulty understanding of the laws of nature may also result in a misunderstanding of Jesus' resurrection, but I find that the two are intrinsically related; therefore, it would fall under option number 2.

I may be wrong, or I may not be understanding your statement correctly.

What do you think?

1. Was Jesus' resurrection only a work of literature with no physical grounds that such a thing occurred? — saw038

Whether Jesus was raised from the dead is a secondary question. The primary question is, "Does God exist?" If God exists, Jesus could have been raised from the dead, because God could put life back into a dead body if he chose to do so. Of course, it is possible that God exists and Jesus wasn't raised from the dead. Maybe the Jews were right: God exists, but the Messiah has not come yet. Jesus was a great guy, but not The One, maybe.

If the Christians were right that God exists, but wrong about Jesus being the Son of God, then they were in deep trouble when the guy they thought was incarnated God (if they actually thought that -- they might not have at the time) was crucified, died, and on the third day was still totally dead. The disaster was Jesus' death, not the lack of a resurrection. He doesn't seem to have had time, as far as we can tell, to build up a deep following to take over for him upon his demise. The 12 apostles and followers had only had Jesus for 3 years--not very long. Even if he was God incarnate, the material Jesus was working with was not the finest grain of wood. Even as the endgame crisis approached, they kept drifting off into la la land.

The Gospels, and Paul's letters, were not written to be literature. Sure, one can read/teach the Gospels and the Old Testament as literature, and some of it is just fine as literature goes, but the Bible is best understood and appreciated as the faithfuls' account of God's actions in the world.

2. Was Jesus' resurrection a true story that transcended the realm of physical laws as we currently perceive them? — saw038

If Jesus was resurrected... yes, it was a very scandalous violation of the universe's rules and regulations. How DARE God pull a stunt like that on us -- who does he think he is?
Oh, well, I see ...

I don't think God exists, and therefore I can't think God raised Jesus from the grave. If I were changed back into thinking that God does exist, then it would be quite possible to believe that For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

I think I'm not saying that. The problem with the resurrection is exactly the same as with every other event in the life of Jesus, namely that we simply cannot reach beyond the early Christian experience of a living Christ. That's why I was careful to use the word ahistorical about the Gospel accounts. The Gospel writers had absolutely no interest in whether the stories carried in the traditions of their churches were accurate accounts of actual events. They did not waste time on fact checking. Their only interest is in how the stories illustrate, expand, and authenticate their immanent experience of God the Son who had died for their sins and was now alive.

The resurrection of Christ is in every sense real for the Gospel writers in the present moment and that is what they are writing about. For them the crucifixion and resurrection is a new contemporary event every day reinforced by the constant revisiting in the Eucharist and Baptisms. It is therefore fruitless to go to the Gospels in search of verification of actual events which happened (or didn't) as much as 90 years into the writers' past. In every sense the resurrection is beyond the reach of historical investigation. It is. if you like, the Schrodinger's Cat of history in a box that can never be opened.

There's been a lot of work done over the last few centuries by critical scholarship, which re-assessed the sources, the chronology of the accounts, and so on, in a forensic way. There are some interesting scholars who have drawn on those materials; Marcus Borg and Bart Ehrman come to mind; there's a wikipedia entry on the historicity of the resurrection here.

I don't think the historicity can be proven beyond reasonable doubt, but that is an element of the story - it is not something that can be put beyond all doubt. However, I have realised that I believe in the historicity of the resurrection. Part of the reason for that is that while I think the Bible is mythological in some respects, I can't accept that Christianity was grounded on myth, pure and simple.

And also, as I'm not wedded to physicalism, I have a different view of what can be considered the domain of possibility.

For some reason I find it more credible that God exists than the resurrection of Jesus happened.

Regarding whether God exists - belief in God isn't, or ought not to be, a proposition about something that exists. It is an interpretation of the nature of reality itself. Paul Tillich was a recent exponent of this understanding, although I have never studied him systematically. But he said the belief that God is something that does or doesn't exist is one of the causes of atheism. There's a brief exposition here.

When you say it "would create the impression that if Jesus was resurrected, the laws of nature were transcended," it seems to me that that mainly points to our faulty understanding of the laws of nature. — saw038

Why would you say this? It appears like very little is known about the actual process whereby Jesus was resurrected. Much that is said about this appears to be unsubstantiated speculation. So if one doesn't properly understand what is meant by "resurrected", when people say "Jesus was resurrected", it could be the case that this individual believes that "resurrected" necessarily implies that the laws of nature were transcended, when perhaps "resurrected" wasn't being used in that way.

Now, our faulty understanding of the laws of nature may also result in a misunderstanding of Jesus' resurrection, but I find that the two are intrinsically related; therefore, it would fall under option number 2. — saw038

This is another possibility as well. We may understand the laws of nature in such a way that we would define "resurrection", as logically impossible. This would mean that we assume premises of "laws of nature", and we define "resurrection" in such a way that it contradicts these premises. This falls into option #2. But if these "laws of nature" are incorrect, then "resurrection", as defined, might not actually be physically impossible. To maintain the position, that resurrection is impossible, we would have to correctly identify the applicable laws of nature, and redefine "resurrection", to maintain the logical impossibility.

"I have a different view of what can be considered the domain of possibility." What is your different view?

What I said is, if you're not wedded to physicalism - physicalism being that belief that reality is solely physical - then you're not inclined to rule out things just because physicalism says they couldn't happen.

Wasn't it Thomas Jefferson who embarked on a project to 'naturalise' the life of Jesus? There's a summary here, saying that he was reticent about discussing his faith, but attempted to bring it into line with the Enlightenment ethos:

I...have made a wee little book... which I call the Philosophy of Jesus. it is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. a more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen. it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel, and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what it’s Author never said nor saw. they have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognise one feature. if I had time I would add to my little book the Greek, Latin and French texts, in columns side by side, and I wish I could subjoin a translation of Gassendi’s Syntagma of the doctrines of Epicurus, which, notwithstanding the calumnies of the Stoics, and caricatures of Cicero, is the most rational system remaining of the philosophy of the ancients, as frugal of vicious indulgence, and fruitful of virtue as the hyperbolical extravagancies of his rival sects. — Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was a Deist and read the Bible while omitting the miracles Jesus supposed committed. He viewed it as a philosophical doctrine, which is why he says, "I call [it] the Philosophy of Jesus."

I think that's what W was saying, though I'm thinking he sees it as more of a bad thing. We've been having quite the discussion in the "Mysticism" thread. I like to take Jesus as a literary character and a symbol that is lit by the kind of "primordial image" that Jung writes about. Nietzsche and Stirner are famous atheists, yet their conceptions of Christ as a kind of personality are profound. It's clear that their own "atheistic" work (on the notions of radical freedom and joy in this world) is an evolution of the concept of Christ.

Do you think it matters whether or not Jesus was a literary character or a true being if the overall effect was the same?

For me, anyway, there's a huge difference between Jesus as symbol and Jesus as the sort of being that can wash away "sin" and provide an afterlife. I believe in crime, a legal term, but not in sin, which is sometimes understood as a "magical" something that gets one tortured in the afterlife. I completely reject the "magic" and the "torture" and the "afterlife." Now if there really was a Jesus like there was a Socrates, I think the story of his teaching has been enriched by symbolism that is often taken literally. The death and resurrection were imported from older "mystery cults." Well, he could have been executed, but this would fit so conveniently into Mithra's story. As old as Christianity is, there are far older religions that it is largely a blend of. Anyway, (to me) this historical Jesus doesn't matter much, if he existed, but that's because I have a "heretical" understanding that views it as continuing into some of the great atheistic philosophers.

Those who believe in miracles thousands of years ago are probably going to want to "freeze" Christianity at the Gospels, which in the less symbolic realm of philosophy would be like having stopped with Plato.

The death and resurrection were imported from older "mystery cults." — Hoo

You state that as a fact which it is not. The weight of modern scholarship is very much against you on this point.

Hundreds of attempts at constructing a biography of Jesus were written post-Enlightenment by Deists and mainstream theologians alike. The skewering given to these efforts by Albert Schweitzer's The Quest For The Historical Jesus put a rather abrupt stop to all of that nonsense, at least in academic study.

You state that as a fact which it is not. The weight of modern scholarship is very much against you on this point. — Barry Etheridge

Is there a contemporary account of Jesus?

Not that we know of but what's that got to do with the price of bread?

Was Jesus' resurrection only a work of literature with no physical grounds that such a thing occurred — saw038

That's my choice.

For me the Gospels are really bad fiction writing." — Hoo

Fixed.

If Jesus indeed was resurrected, then it wasn't Jesus. It was Jesus2.0. The definition of death is the ceasing of biological functions, and unless we posit the existence of a soul, which seems to me highly unlikely even in the Aristotelian sense of it, we're left with the view that Jesus was re-animated somehow, and a new set of consciousness created, one different from the previous versions. Jesus couldn't have been resurrected. If the story is even true (which I think it not), he was psychologically cloned.

The definition of death is the ceasing of biological functions, and unless we posit the existence of a soul, which seems to me highly unlikely even in the Aristotelian sense of it... — darthbarracuda

You can't just dismiss the possibility of a soul, by saying it seems to be highly unlikely. You may be one who lives your life making decisions based on what "seems" to be the case, but this is philosophy, and we don't take "seems to me" as justification for any such assertion.

Trying to rationalize the basis of the Christian religion on the basis of 'what I can figure out' is surely a definition of futility.

Well that's what I've read, but it really doesn't matter to me. I understand the Gospels symbolically. I'd guess that people who believe in it literally are still getting the "symbolic" potency (which helps fasten the belief against "common sense.")