From Canon R. H. W. Arguile
Sir, - Easter is a good time to be discussing what the
resurrection means. A former colleague, now a Roman Catholic
priest, told me of his shock when he discovered, as a curate, that
his vicar meant by "Christ is risen", very much the same as saying
"Che lives."
It seems to me that Mr Antony Alexander (Letters, 12 April)
falls into the same hole. I hold a good many people in my heart
whose bodies lie in their graves. The hope that they give me mostly
rests on their articulated and embodied conviction that human life
is in the hands of God. If they were wrong, I, too, am
mistaken.
Mr Alexander's view that we should be guided by some sort of
science may lead in directions with which, I guess, he would not be
happy. There is something more to us than how science would
describe us. If there is not, then maybe Dostoevsky is right:
anything goes.
On the contrary, we may argue that the New Testament writers,
out of their communal experience, were trying to describe the
transcendence of personal relationships and of human personality,
using the cat-
egories of the day. The assurance of forgiveness and the promise
of new life here and hereafter then become givens, which every
generation must express in its own terms.
John Hick made the point that whatever happens to our bones, the
gift of God of new life might easily mean the remaking of our
bodies from new; but incorporating the same memory traces and
instruments of personality would do the job. After all, the
physical constituents of our bodies change all the time, and yet we
remain more or less the same (too much more in my case, according
to some of my friends).
R. H. W. ARGUILE
10 Marsh Lane, Wells next the Sea
Norfolk NR23 1EG
From Mr Edward Nugee QC
Sir, - Many people will agree with Mr Alexander that the
Gospel accounts of the resurrection are inconsistent with the laws
of science created by God, and in particular those relating to the
substantiality and indestructibility of atoms and molecules and the
bodies that they make up; and will agree that it is unlikely, and
contrary to the nature of God as we see it in other contexts, that
he would intervene to set these laws aside in the ways described in
the Gospels.
But his alternative explanation, although quite widely held,
that "the resurrection was something that took place in the hearts
and minds of Jesus's disciples", is totally incon- sistent with
evidence much earlier than that of the Gospels. When Paul, writing
20 or more years be- fore the Evangelists, lists several occasions
on which Christ appeared after his death (1 Corinthians 15.3-8), I
have no doubt that he was writing what he believed to be the truth;
and I have little doubt that the facts were imparted to him (as he
puts it) by Peter when he spent a fortnight with him in Jerusalem
not long after the crucifixion, and met James, Jesus's brother
(Galatians 1.18-20, where he goes out of his way to emphasise that
he is speaking the truth).
Paul does not suggest that in the appearances that he lists
Christ had a physical body; and in the many modern cases in which
Jesus has appeared, (such as his well-known appearance to Bishop
Hugh Monte- fiore, which converted him almost instantaneously from
being a devout Jew to a Christian), albeit, as he emphasised, a
Jewish Christian, there is never a credible suggestion that the
appearance was accompanied by a physical body.
Of the various explanations for the fact that body of Jesus was
not found on the first Easter Day in its temporary resting-place in
the tomb near the site of the crucifixion, the most plausible, in
my view, is that of the Jewish scholar Joseph Klausner, who
suggests that Joseph of Arima- thea had it removed and buried in a
more convenient place after sun- down on the sabbath, leaving the
shroud (which was not a conventional burial wrapping) and the
sudarium (now at Turin and Oviedo respectively) in the tomb, where
Peter and John found them the next morning.
There is no evidence that the dis- ciples knew Joseph, a senior
mem- ber of the Sanhedrin, at all well; and once they had met the
risen Christ, the location of his body became immaterial.
Unless one is going to discard the whole of the first few
chapters of Acts and much of Paul, it is obvious that on the first
Easter Day, Jesus made it clear beyond argument that he was alive,
even if in a different form from the life he had led on earth. The
explosive growth of Christianity is not explicable unless this is
the case: it would not have grown as it did as the result of a
gradual realisation that "the reality of Christ was spiritual", nor
is that the gospel that Peter, Paul, and others preached.
EDWARD NUGEE
Wilberforce Chambers
8 New Square, Lincoln's Inn
London WC2A 3QP
From the Revd Kenneth Padley
Sir, - The first-century apostles risked life and limb to
take the gospel around the known world. After the ignominious
horrors and abrupt finality of Jesus's death, would they not have
needed more than a conviction that "he was still with them in
spirit" to lure them a second time from their fishing nets?
Physical resurrection does indeed imply a contravention of the
ordinary workings of the created order, but surely this emphasises
rather than diminishes its importance. Only the God who set the
universe in motion may contravene its laws, and, when he does, he
really wants us to take notice.
KENNETH PADLEY
The Vicarage
St Michael's Street
St Albans AL3 4SL
From Mr Philip W. Keeble
Sir, - I was delighted to read Antony Alexander's letter
about the "non-physical interpretation of resurrection". It is
always a thrill when an "out and out heretic" comes out of the
woodwork and stands up for what they believe, even if they have ab-
solutely no concept at all of what the Bible says, or what a
Sovereign God is capable of - nor, indeed, of what the bodily
resurrection of Jesus implies.
I say it is a thrill because so many similar views are held in
secret by those who keep quiet to protect their stipends.
Well done, Mr Alexander. Let's hear more of the same boldness of
spirit from the pulpit. That will allow us to be able to sort the
goats out from the sheep.
PHILIP W. KEEBLE
Swn-y-Mor
Glasffordd, Marianglas
Anglesey LL73 8PB