Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus I: Demonstratio Christiana

1. The testimony of the Gospels. The final chapters of all the Gospels testify to and describe the resurrection of Jesus.¹ That the Evangelists describe it in the manner of history, not in the style of legend, is evident from what we have said in another place against the legendary hypothesis.² Indeed, Matthew and John narrate the resurrection as eyewitnesses; Mark, as the interpreter of Peter, who himself was an eyewitness and the principal spectator of the narrated event; Luke, finally, follows those "who from the beginning themselves saw"³ and especially the apostle Paul, to whom the risen Christ had appeared. Hence we cannot doubt the due knowledge of the Evangelists, and since not even their adversaries doubt their truthfulness, what the Gospels narrate concerning the resurrection is simply historical.

The rationalists, however, object with two difficulties, the one drawn from textual, the other from real criticism.

Textual criticism rightly affirms that the conclusions of the second and fourth Gospels,⁴ which narrate the resurrection of Jesus, were added after the books of Mark and John had already been written. But even if this be true, the evangelical testimony concerning the resurrection of Jesus remains unimpaired. For it is certain: 1° that the authors of the additions in question were most probably the Evangelists themselves, or certainly their disciples,⁵ and 2° that Mark and John, even in the body of the Gospels certainly written by themselves, testify to the resurrection of Jesus. Therefore textual criticism cannot avail to diminish the force of the testimony which the Gospels render to the resurrection of Jesus.

Real criticism concerns the discrepancies⁶ of the evangelical accounts of the resurrection. To be sure, each of the Evangelists relates the events in question in a somewhat different manner, according to the different purpose he set himself and the different catechesis he employed. Yet the discrepancies of the accounts do not touch the principal fact of the resurrection, but only lesser circumstances, and although a discrepancy may stand, nowhere is a contradiction of the accounts detected. This being so, the very diversity of narration does not weaken, but confirms, the truth of the narrated resurrection. For the more freely the four writers testify to the same principal fact, the greater historical faith they deserve.

2. The testimony of Paul. According to the witness of the Acts of the Apostles and of the Pauline epistles, the resurrection was the most essential part of the gospel of the Apostle of the Gentiles. From the first day of his preaching⁷ St. Paul proclaims the resurrection of Jesus on every occasion and regards it as the foundation of Christian faith and hope.⁸ More explicitly, however, he speaks of the resurrection of Christ in c. 15 of the first Epistle to the Corinthians. For at Corinth a dispute had arisen about the resurrection of the dead. Paul settles this dispute by appealing thus to the resurrection of the Lord: "Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you have received, and wherein you stand; by which also you are saved: if you hold fast what I preached to you, unless you have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all, which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he was seen by Cephas, and after that by the eleven. Then he was seen by more than five hundred brethren at once, of whom many remain until now, but some are fallen asleep. After that he was seen by James, then by all the apostles. And last of all he was seen also by me, as by one born out of due time ... For whether I, or they: so we preach, and so you believed. But if Christ be preached, that he rose again from the dead, how do some among you say, that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen again. And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God: because we have given testimony against God, that he raised up Christ, whom he raised not up, if the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not again, neither is Christ risen again. And if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins ... But now Christ is risen from the dead, the firstfruits of them that sleep."⁹

In these words St. Paul most clearly sets forth and extols the fact and the significance of the resurrection. He also indicates without doubt the origin of the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus, tracing it back to the double source of Christian tradition and of his own experience. And first, indeed, he had learned the resurrection of Jesus from the tradition of the apostles, of Peter especially and of James, as well as of the 500 disciples who had seen the risen Christ. This tradition he had received in the third year after his conversion, while he remained at Jerusalem.¹⁰ Before that, however, he already knew the resurrection by his own experience, when Christ on the way to Damascus appeared to Saul himself and converted him into Paul. This appearance and conversion took place shortly after the death of Jesus and perhaps, as Harnack thinks, in the same year in which the Lord died.¹¹

It is clear, therefore, that Christians from the very beginning believed in and preached the resurrection of Jesus.

3. The testimony of Peter. The Acts of the Apostles report catecheses delivered by Peter even before the conversion of Paul, namely, in the first days of the nascent Church. The principal theme of these catecheses, however, is the testimony rendered to the resurrection of the Lord. On the day of Pentecost Peter dares to preach before a multitude of Jews and Gentiles: "Jesus of Nazareth ... by the hands of wicked men you have crucified and slain: whom God hath raised up, having loosed the sorrows of hell... This Jesus hath God raised again, whereof all we are witnesses."¹² In the porch of Solomon the Prince of the Apostles testifies the same: "You killed the author of life, whom God hath raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses."¹³ In the presence of the Sanhedrin, by which Jesus had been condemned, he insists: "The God of our fathers hath raised up Jesus, whom you put to death, hanging him upon a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be Prince and Saviour, and we are witnesses of these words."¹⁴ In the house of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, Peter affirms: "And we are witnesses of all things which [Jesus] did in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they killed, hanging him upon a tree. Him God raised up the third day, and gave him to be made manifest, not to all the people, but to witnesses preordained by God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose again from the dead."¹⁵ Then, throughout the whole time of his preaching, Peter founds all his hope and all his faith upon the resurrection of Jesus.¹⁶ Even to the last days of his life he extols the faith and the graces of the resurrection: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy hath regenerated us unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."¹⁷

According to these testimonies of the Gospels, of Paul, and of Peter, the faith of the disciples in the resurrection of Jesus comprised three things: a) the fact itself, namely, that Jesus rose again. That the first Christians had and preached this persuasion of the resurrection as ineluctable from the beginning, unanimously and constantly, all unbelievers concede.

b) The object of the resurrection, namely, that Jesus rose from the dead, i. e., returned from bodily death to bodily life. While the unbelievers feign that Jesus "revived spiritually in the minds of the faithful" or "passed over to a mystical life in the heavens," the disciples, on the contrary, cry aloud that the "crucified and buried" one came forth from the sepulchre alive; that Jesus was "raised up" as "the firstfruits of them that sleep"; that Jesus was "neither left in hell, nor did his flesh see corruption";¹⁸ that his resurrection is the exemplar and the pledge of our resurrection according to the flesh.

c) The singular circumstance, namely, that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. All the Evangelists testify that Jesus was buried toward the evening of Friday, remained in the sepulchre on the Sabbath, and left the sepulchre at dawn of the Lord's day. Paul insists, according to the apostolic tradition, that Christ rose again "on the third day";¹⁹ Peter confirms: "Him God raised up the third day, and gave him to be made manifest."²⁰

Therefore that article of the Apostles' Creed, "On the third day he rose again from the dead," truly corresponds to the persuasion and the confession of the whole Church from the first days after the death of Christ. The faith of the disciples in the risen Jesus did not arise by evolution, but in time it equals the very event of the resurrection. So great and such a persuasion could be born only of the evidence of the fact.

And in truth this persuasion rests on a twofold argument: the empty sepulchre of Jesus and the appearances of the risen Christ.²¹