The Resurrection of God Incarnate

Swinburne, Richard , formerly Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion, University of Oxford The Resurrection of God Incarnate Print publication date: 2003 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-925746-1 doi:10.1093/0199257469.001.0001 Abstract: The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead involved a violation of natural laws, and so could have happened only if natural laws depend for their operation on God, who set them aside on this occasion. The main reason he would have for setting them aside would be any reason he had himself to become incarnate; the Resurrection would then be the divine signature on his work, showing that he had become incarnate. So any evidence from natural theology that there is a God with a certain nature, and any reason to suppose that having that nature would lead a God to become incarnate, is evidence (background evidence) that some sort of super-miracle like the Resurrection would occur. Any evidence against the existence of God or against him being such as to become incarnate would be evidence against the Resurrection. I argue that God does have reason to become incarnate—to provide atonement, to identify with human suffering, and to reveal truth. Our evidence about the life of Jesus (the prior historical evidence) is such that it is not too improbable that we would find it if God was incarnate in Jesus for these reasons. Our evidence about what happened after the death of Jesus (the posterior historical evidence) is such that it is not too improbable that we would find it if Jesus had risen from the dead. For no other prophet in human history, is there anything like this combination of prior and posterior historical evidence. Given a moderate amount of positive background evidence, it then becomes very probable that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead. Keywords: atonement, Jesus Christ, Christianity, human suffering, incarnation, philosophy, philosophy of religion, religion, Resurrection, Richard Swinburne, theology The Resurrection of God Incarnate end p.i end p.ii The Resurrection of God Incarnate CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD end p.iii Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Richard Swinburne 2003 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographcs rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Swinburne, Richard. The Resurrection of God incarnate/Richard Swinburne. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Jesus Christ—Resurrection. 2. Philosophy and religion. I. Title. BT480 .S95 2003 232′.5—dc 2002030361 ISBN 0-19-925745-0 ISBN 0-19-925746-9 (pbk.) end p.iv Preface In the course of the past thirteen years I have written a tetralogy of books concerned largely with the philosophical issues involved in specifically Christian (as opposed to general theistic) doctrines.1 I was concerned to spell out these doctrines (for example, the doctrine that Jesus was both divine and human) in a coherent way, and to provide some initial a priori probability for supposing them to be true. However, I always emphasized that to show these Christian doctrines to be more probable than not we require some evidence (though not an enormous amount of evidence) of a detailed historical kind to support the claim that Jesus of Nazareth led a certain sort of life, gave certain teaching, died on the Cross, and rose bodily from the dead on the first Easter Day. In this book I seek to provide that evidence, in particular evidence for the Resurrection which—if it occurred—would be the divine signature on the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of the Church which he founded. I have used in this book material from two previous papers of mine: 'Evidence for the Resurrection', in S. T. Davies, D. Kendall, and G. O'Collins (eds.), The Resurrection (Oxford University Press, 1997), and 'Evidence for the Incarnation', in M. Meyer and C. Hughes (eds.), Jesus Then and Now (Trinity Press International, 2001). My thanks to the publishers concerned for permission to reuse this material. Very many thanks to Mrs Chio Gladstone for her patient typing and retyping of versions of the book. I am most grateful to Professor Christopher Tuckett (and also to two anonymous referees for the Oxford University Press) for reading an earlier version of the book and producing most useful comments. My greatest gratitude is to Professor Chris Rowland, with whom I gave classes on the 1 Responsibility and Atonement (Clarendon Press, 1989); Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy (Clarendon Press, 1992); The Christian God (Clarendon Press, 1994); and Providence and the Problem of Evil (Clarendon Press, 1998). end p.v Resurrection on two occasions, who guided me on what I should read on the detailed historical issues, and commented most valuably on an earlier draft of the whole book as well as on yet earlier drafts of parts of it. end p.vi Contents Introduction 1 Part I: General Background Evidence 1. Principles for Weighing Evidence 9 2. God's Reasons for Incarnation 32 3. The Marks of an Incarnate God 55 Part II: Prior Historical Evidence 4. The Historical Sources 69 5. The Life and Moral Teaching of Jesus 83 6. Jesus Implied his Divinity 98 7. Jesus Taught his Atonement 117 8. Jesus Founded a Church 127 Part III: Posterior Historical Evidence 9. The Appearances of the Risen Jesus 145 10. The Empty Tomb and the Observance of Sunday 160 11. Rival Theories of what Happened 174 12. The Significance of the Resurrection 187 Part IV: Conclusion 13. The Balance of Probability 201 Appendix: Formalizing the Argument 204 Index of Biblical References 217 Index of Names and Subjects 222 end p.vii end p.viii Introduction Richard Swinburne The initial topic of this book is the examination of the evidence for the core physical element of the Resurrection of Jesus understood in the traditional sense—of Jesus being dead for thirty-six hours and then coming to life again in his crucified body (in which he then had superhuman powers; e.g. he was able to appear and disappear). Of course, the Resurrection is traditionally supposed to have a cosmic significance which goes infinitely far beyond this core physical element. The Jesus who died and is risen is Jesus Christ, Messiah and the Word of the God, the second person of the Trinity. His Resurrection constitutes God the Father's acceptance of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross for the sins of the world; and the initiation of a process of redeeming humanity and nature in respects both physical and spiritual. But the Resurrection has—it is traditionally supposed—this cosmic significance only because of its physical core. The Word of God is risen from the dead only because the human Jesus is risen from the dead (only qua human can the Word rise); a human can be resurrected fully only if he is resurrected in an embodied state (for although, I believe, we can exist without bodies, bodies make for the fullness of human existence—such is the traditional Christian and Jewish view) and, although Jesus could have risen in an embodied state with a totally new body, resurrection of a changed old body would manifest 'resurrection' as opposed to mere coming-to-life again most eminently. The Father accepts the sacrifice of Christ by bringing to life what had been sacrificed; thereby he proclaims that suffering and death have been overcome. To initiate the redemption of humanity and of the natural order, he needs to bring to life a previously damaged body, not only a soul. And he gives his signature of approval to the teaching and sacrifice of Christ by doing an act which God alone can do—of interfering in the operation of the natural laws by which he controls the universe. For the coming-to-life end p.1 again of a body dead for thirty-six hours is undoubtedly a violation of natural laws. The core physical element in the Resurrection of Jesus has for these reasons been supposed to be a very important element in the Christian creed. I shall in future understand by 'the Resurrection' simply the core physical element. This present book is very different from the writing of a typical New Testament expert (whether radical or conservative) on this issue, because only the final third of the book deals with the kind of evidence normally thought by such an expert to be relevant to this issue: what the New Testament and other early documents had to say about what happened after the death of Christ.

Load more