(Précis of a previously unpublished lecture at the University of Cambridge, Lent term 1968. Professor Charlie Moule, Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, was a highly acclaimed New Testament scholar. The title and some of the language in this talk are somewhat ‘Oxbridgian’ but the sentiments here are, I believe, worth serious study).

Is it possible, by reasoning, to go all the way to the sort of knowing to which a Christian estimate belongs? To this I answer ‘Yes’. Faith of course is not the same as reason; but it might turn out to be actually unreasonable not to believe.

The New Testament accounts of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus are of course biased – written confessedly by believers – but they’re about all we have (except for the scornful reference in Tacitus, and some antagonistic references in later Jewish literature).

In Palestine, in the twenty years after about the year 30 of our era, something remarkable occurred. A considerable number of people had the strong conviction that Jesus of Nazareth was alive after he truly died, and was, in a special sense, God’s Son. This conviction was embedded in the very early tradition which preceded the writings which became the New Testament.

It may be easier to adopt a stance of incredulity about all this – until you actually acquaint yourself with the documents. The earliest of these was written about the year 50 – about 20 years after Jesus’ crucifixion – in a letter by Paul to Christians at Corinth. Read 1 Corinthians 15:3-9, and note that it was written by an ex-Pharisee, someone who believed in an after-life beyond the general resurrection at the climax of history. The Pharisees’ idea of resurrection was of a transcendent, transhistorical culminating act of God. Now I simply fail to understand how the conviction that an *individual* who had been executed was alive again (see Romans 6:9f) could spring from the Pharisaic imagination. It was so unlike anything that a devout Jew might have conceived. Still less could the physical survival of a badly hurt person (which is what resuscitation theories require) have conveyed this notion – or the mere discovery of an empty tomb. So I am left with no plausible alternative to what the Christians said – that they were driven to this unique formulation by a unique, but clear and undeniable experience.

But this ‘aliveness’ related to a unique individual. The character that comes through the traditions is someone big and strange and original. Of course the Gospels represent the end-term of a period of some years of oral transmission – and naturally oral traditions become shaped, adapted and maybe distorted over time. Some scholars think that the Christian communities actually created for themselves a certain number of new sayings and incidents. I, for one, find it difficult to convince myself of that. Careful scrutiny of the documents, making due allowance for some distortion, yields some noteworthy results.

[1] First, Jesus was big (if one may put it so). He had an unsophisticated but powerful mind, cut through sham, and asked disturbing questions (see e.g. Mark 3:1-5, 7:5-13,11:27-33). But he was big not only in intellect, but also in integrity. The portrait that survives is of an attractive young man moving freely among people with loose morals with a tenderness and grace and an enjoyment of their companionship matched only by his un-selfconscious integrity.

[2] But Jesus was also strange. He was very close to God, addressing God as ‘Abba’ (rather like ‘Daddy’). And he conveyed the sense that where he was, God’s reign was being acknowledged. But he was also ‘at home’ in the world. Everything about him was authentic – his worship of God, his words, his conduct. He had no rabbinic degrees or external credentials: only this unique and transparent closeness to God.

[3] And he was original, attacking the religious complacency of his day with a very new and fresh picture of a merciful God. His convincing analogies were drawn from an acute observation of the world and were presented like the insights of a brilliant cartoonist. (See, eg. Mark 4:26-32, Matthew 13:45f., 21:28-32).

So it was not just anyone, but this known person – a man big, strange and original – that the Christians believed to be alive with an absolute and inextinguishable life. He wasn’t the figment of people’s imagination, but of Jews who, against their will, got squeezed out of synagogues, and against their own intentions, became differentiated as the sect of the Nazarene – and many of whom were ready to die for their conviction. All this is difficult to classify as superstitious fantasy.

‘So we are left with this dilemma. The rationalist in us all says: Explain away the Christian estimate; there is no room for it in a rational person’s beliefs; account for it by hallucination or error or mere superstition or trickery. But the historian in us says: But is that sufficient to explain this mighty before and after? – this big, strange, original Figure before, this extraordinary conviction after the death? The historian in us leads us, pretty relentlessly, as I believe, to the edge of that precipice of faith. To step over that precipice means allowing a transcendental factor into this story – allowing that history to lead to transhistory, that here, in an exceptional but inescapable way, the transcendental impinges on the course of history… To withdraw from the precipice and retrace our steps involves inventing tales about credulity and stupidity which ill accord with the extraordinary depth and sanity of what is presented. What are we to do?’

Full text: http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/

June 2009.

Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher

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