What I’m Reading: The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth

But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.  So the other disciples were saying to him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe."

After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you."
Then He said to Thomas, "Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing." Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!"  Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed."

Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.  John 20: 24 – 30

I’ve just finished reading The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth by the German scholar Willi Marxsen.[i]  It is a book that I’ve had sitting on my shelves for some time, but until now I hadn’t attempted to read. I picked it up at a used book store and put it on my book shelf (and, since I’ve moved a few times since then, packed it, unpacked it and re-shelved it.)  And now that I’ve finally gotten around to reading it, I’m not quite sure what to say about it. There was much in the book that I appreciated and found very helpful.  But I disagree with the Marxsen’s overall theses. 

Let me start with my disagreement and when that is all said I can, to some extent, put it aside and share what I liked and learned from Marxsen.

The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is the book form of a series of lectures that Marxsen gave at the University of Münster, exploring the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus.  In it he carefully explores what we can and can’t know from the various texts in the New Testament.

To begin, Marxsen makes it clear that we cannot explore the actual historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus.  It is an event beyond realm of the historian.  We can learn from the New Testament what the authors of the gospels and epistles assert happened and what they believed happened.  We can learn from them their interpretation of what happened, but we cannot explore what actually happened.

What we have then, is their interpretation. And this is my attempt to interpret what Marxsen wrote.

1 – We have no witnesses to the resurrection.  No one was there.  No one observed it.
2 - Our New Testament texts are assertions about what the authors believed happened.
3 – The texts that we have are somewhat contradictory.  The details of the post-resurrection events are different in each of the gospels and they are not able to be fully harmonized into a single cohesive narrative.
4 – If the texts present differing accounts of the post-resurrection events then we cannot know the underlying historical reality.
5 – BUT if the texts present differing accounts of the post-resurrection events then the historical reality may not be of vital importance.
6 – What then?
7 – The miracle of the resurrection isn’t in the resurrection of Jesus, but rather in the finding of faith.
8 – The idea, or the “interpretation” (his word) that ‘Jesus is risen’ is miraculous because we believe not necessarily because it happened as a historical event.

“It is undeniable, I think, that we are here dealing with an interpretive statement.  For no one saw the resurrection of Jesus; at least we know of no one who claimed to do so.  But this shows sufficiently clearly how the declaration that Jesus had risen came to be made: it was an inference – an inference derived from personal faith.  Even if Peter found faith because he saw Jesus, that would not affect our conclusion that talk of the resurrection of Jesus was reasoning from effects to cause; that is to say, it was an interpretation.” [ii]

According to Marxsen, if I’ve understood him correctly, those who claimed to be witnesses to the resurrected Jesus - were only witnesses because they already believed in the person and message of Jesus; they saw what they wanted to see – they saw what they already believed.

“Now one must not detach the interpretation (Jesus is risen) from what is being interpreted (the finding of faith) and then say that the interpretation has independent reality – that it has reality apart from the reality which one has experienced.  The text themselves make it clear that this is inadmissible.  It is only those who believed, we are told, who saw Jesus.  It is impossible to detach the vision from the reality of faith…”[iii]

 And this surprises me: that Marxsen, who appears to be a careful reader of the texts, can say something like this: “It is only those who believed …who saw Jesus.”

The gospels do not present the disciples as believing and then (because they believe) seeing the resurrected Jesus.  What we discover in each of the gospels (even within their contradictory details) are disciples who are frightened and broken and dispirited – followers who have lost their faith. 

The women go to the tomb expecting to find his body – when he has already repeatedly told them that he would be raised from the dead.  They brought spices to anoint his dead body.  When they discovered the empty tomb they were perplexed and frightened.  The disciples who met (and didn’t recognize) the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus described their faith in the past tense – “we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel.” 

And very clearly Thomas said, “I will not believe until I see it myself.”

This is not a picture of Jesus’ disciples reinterpreting their acceptance of his teaching after Good Friday and then expressing that newly found faith in the phrase “Jesus is risen.”  He is not raised because they/ we believe.  We /they believe because he is risen.

Marxsen is right to point out that we cannot explore the physical / historical reality of the resurrection.  We cannot (barring the invention of a time-travel device) observe whatever it was that happened in that tomb on that Resurrection Sunday.  But to say that the resurrection was only (my word) in the disciples discovery of their faith in Jesus’ message and teaching, even after his death is to miss the point.

“Let us look at the first-hand witnesses.  For them there would have been one considerable difference compared with the time when they had to do with the earthly Jesus.  Commitment to the promise of the earthly Jesus demanded a trusting faith; and that was venture.  It was impossible to tell by looking at him who the earthly Jesus was.  They could only believe that he represented God in this world; and they could only believe that when they acceded to his demand. This commitment to what Jesus demanded had no guarantee behind it.  Jesus rejected the demand for signs as a preliminary legitimation.  He wanted daring faith.

“A verifiable resurrection, with its multiplicity of proofs, would have altered everything in one respect. Jesus would now have received his legitimation.  Who he was would now be a matter of certainty.  The demand for signs would, so to speak, have been fulfilled.  It would have continued to be hard enough for these witnesses to live the later life of faith.  But it would no longer have been a venture for the witnesses to enter on that life.  Indeed it would have been a counsel of wisdom; it would now have been simply stupid not to do what Jesus had demanded.  The path of the witnesses would no longer have been the path of faith because Jesus’ demand would now be law.  The witnesses would have been the only people who no longer needed to make the venture of faith – and therefore did not need to believe at all.”[iv]

This argument appears to makes a measure of sense, but it doesn’t seem to square with the gospels (at least as far as I understand them.)  Jesus did indeed reject the people’s request to give repeated miraculous signs to demonstrate the validity of his claims – yet he also told them that the only sign they would be given was the “sign of Jonah,” that the son of man would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” – a reference to his resurrection.[v]

Even if Marxsen’s argument is valid – that the resurrection appearances to Jesus’ disciples negated their need for faith –and especially for a venturing and bold kind of faith – that claim can’t be used for those of us who come after.  We have not seen the resurrected Jesus (at least those of us who haven’t had a mystical vision like Paul).  We have not been able to probe his wounded hands and side. And yet, “these things are written so that [we] might believe…” 

And It seems to me (and I admit that I could be wrong. I could have misunderstood Marxsen’s argument) that this makes the disciples who proclaimed “he is risen” witnesses not to the resurrection of Jesus as vindication of his teaching and of the salvific work of God, but rather witnesses to their faith in their own faith.

I do not believe that Marxsen has made a compelling argument for his case that the resurrection of Jesus was not a concrete historical event but was only (my word) the disciples “interpretation” (his word) of their rediscovery of their faith in Jesus after his death.

That said, there were some things that I really did appreciate about Marxsen’s book – and I want to accentuate these agreements as much as possible.  For while we might disagree on some things, I do believe that we can stand together under the creedal statement “Jesus is risen,” no matter that he and I might understand that statement in dramatically different ways.

I definitely agree with Marxsen that what Jesus called his followers to was a life of extraordinary faith – radical faith – to a “venture” in faith:

“That means, quite simply, not trying to be self-sufficient but letting go. We are offered the chance of seeing through the circumscription of our lives and throwing it aside.  We are offered the chance of letting tomorrow’s worries belong to tomorrow and not to today. We are offered the chance – a chance which is also a challenge – of seeking out the other person instead of defending ourselves from him.”[vi]

I also really like Marxsen’s emphasis on the fact that the faith of the post-resurrection followers is in reality a continuation of the pre-crucifixion followers.  It is not something that they pulled together after the death of Jesus. The “earthly” Jesus is the same as the “risen” Jesus.

“…since all the Gospels mention the resurrection of Jesus, the resurrection is surely intended to be (at least among other things) the basis for contemporary involvement with Jesus (he is risen); so the previous accounts of Jesus’ ministry is evidently designed to unfold the content of this involvement.  But this would mean that the Gospel message of the resurrection does not merely begin at the point where the resurrection itself is the theme; it begins much earlier. It is certainly the past which is described at the beginning of the Gospels, but the point of the description is to show in concrete terms what faith in Jesus ought to look like today.  At the end we are then told why these past events are still binding on us today: Jesus is risen.”[vii]

We may not agree on all points of theology and doctrine, but if we can agree that 1) Jesus is risen and 2) that faith in this Jesus is a bold and daring venture into radical living in this world, then that is more than enough for me. 

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[i] Marxsen, Willi The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, trans. Margaret Kohl,

Fortress Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1970.

[ii] Page 138

[iii] Page 140

[iv] Page 150

[v] Matthew 12:38 – 40

[vi] Page 183

[vii] Page 41