Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus I: Demonstratio Christiana

Unbelievers contend that faith in the risen Jesus was not born of the resurrection, but that, apart from the miracle of the resurrection, it can be explained either from the oriental myths, or from the prophecies of the Old Testament, or from the image of Jesus impressed upon the minds of the disciples. The contrary is easily proved.¹

1. Oriental myths, which they wrongly call myths of the "resurrection," are found among almost all the more ancient peoples, namely among the Babylonians (the god Tammuz), the Phoenicians (Adonis), the Phrygians (Attis), the Egyptians (Osiris), the Greeks (Dionysus). Nevertheless, there is lacking both a parallelism between the oriental myths and the resurrection of Jesus, and an influence of the oriental myths upon the resurrection of Jesus.

There is no parallelism between the oriental myths and the resurrection of Jesus. Those myths simply lament the death of natural vegetation as winter draws near and celebrate the regeneration of natural vegetation in the springtime. The god of vegetation descends to the underworld in winter and returns to the earth in spring. It is therefore a matter of a mere fable, by which the changes of the seasons are deified. The Christian resurrection, on the contrary, concerns the concrete, individual, historical person of Jesus, whom the believing disciples had known and loved, and whose bodily death and return to bodily life they narrate. Hence there is absolutely no similarity between the oriental myths and the resurrection of Jesus.

There is no influence of the oriental myths upon the resurrection of Jesus. The mythological cults by which the changes of the seasons were celebrated were wholly unknown to the Jews contemporary with Jesus. For no traces of these cults are found in the Jewish monuments. A fortiori, those Galilean fishermen, who believed in, preached, described, and at last sealed with their martyrdom the resurrection of their Master, did not turn to the vegetation gods of the pagans. Hence it is absurd to explain the disciples' faith in the resurrection from the oriental myths.

2. The prophecies of the Old Testament do indeed foretell the resurrection of the Messiah, without, however, mentioning the circumstance of the third day.² Hence this circumstance at least the disciples did not draw from the Old Testament. But even the prophecy of the resurrection itself they understood only after experiencing the resurrection of Jesus. Steeped in the messianic conception of the rabbis, they had never been able to grasp the idea of a dying and rising Messiah. When Jesus spoke of his future death and resurrection, Peter sharply rebuked him: "God forbid, Lord: this shall never happen to you!"³ When Jesus was already dead, and they found his tomb empty and heard from the mouth of the angel that he had been raised, "they did not yet know the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead."⁴

Nay more, although the risen Jesus, as the disciples were going to the village of Emmaus, interpreted "in all the Scriptures" the things that concerned the death and glorification of the Messiah,⁵ they themselves, convinced by experience alone, recognized the risen Master in the breaking of the bread.⁶ Hence, thereafter preaching to the Jews, they declare that Christ died and rose again "according to the Scriptures,"⁷ not contrary to the Scriptures. Therefore they did not draw their faith in the resurrection from the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, but rather learned the prophecies of the Old Testament about a dying and reviving Messiah from the fact of the resurrection of Jesus.

3. The image of Jesus did indeed remain deeply and profoundly impressed upon the minds of the disciples. Yet however much they recalled Jesus, once living and now already dead, they by no means conceived the image of a rising and risen Master. This is evident from the psychological state which the disciples exhibited after the death of Jesus. With Jesus dead on the cross, the disciples mourned and wept between the Parasceve and the Pasch,⁸ with every hope of the resurrection excluded. At dawn of the Pasch the women went to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, expecting nothing but his corruption.⁹ Finding the stone rolled back and the tomb open, they did not suspect that Jesus had risen, but that the body had been stolen away.¹⁰ The angel bringing the news of the resurrection does not instill faith in them, but strikes them with great terror.¹¹ The apostles thought this same news to be "an idle tale, and they did not believe."¹² Shortly afterward Peter found the tomb empty; he did not, however, believe, but "went away wondering to himself at what had come to pass."¹³ In the afternoon of the Pasch two of them were going to the village of Emmaus, "sad." And when Jesus inquired about their despair, one of them, named Cleophas, answered and said to him: "You alone are a stranger in Jerusalem and have not known the things that have been done in it in these days? ... Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a man, a prophet mighty in work and word before God and all the people. And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him up to the condemnation of death, and crucified him. But we hoped that it was he who should redeem Israel: and now besides all this, today is the third day since these things were done. But certain women also of our company terrified us, who before it was light were at the sepulchre, and not finding his body, came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels, who say that he lives. And some of our people went to the sepulchre, and found it so, as the women had said, but him they found not."¹⁴ From all these things it is clear that the disciples by no means cherished an image of the risen Jesus, and that they acquired their faith in the risen Jesus solely from the fact of the resurrection. The paschal faith can in no way be explained without the paschal fact.

Denying the miracle of the resurrection, unbelievers account for the empty tomb in this way: either Jesus, overcome by a mere swoon, left the tomb; or the disciples stole the body of Jesus; or, finally, the Jews removed it. The falsity of these hypotheses is manifest.¹

1. That Jesus, awakened from a swoon, left the tomb is set forth by the older rationalists and certain recent ones as follows: Jesus on the cross, having suffered only a fainting fit from the lance-thrust, was greatly revived by the spices. When an unexpected storm with a great crash of thunder arose, he was fully roused from his syncope, and the tomb was opened, so that the soldiers guarding the sepulcher fled in terror. With these put to flight, Jesus crept out of the tomb, was discovered by the pious women, and was cared for by the disciples, until, after 40 days had elapsed, worn out by his wounds, he died. Such is the hypothesis of apparent death.²

They were wont to refute this hypothesis with many historical and medical arguments, proving that Jesus had truly died. Yet it is not worth the trouble to expend so much fruitless labor. For Jesus himself demonstrated the hypothesis of apparent death to be absurd: by impressing upon the disciples the appearance of his true resurrection, and by requiring of the disciples faith in his true resurrection.

By impressing upon the disciples the appearance of his true resurrection. The Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the epistles of St. Paul describe Jesus from the day of Easter as perfectly healthy, indeed as the prince of life, the victor over death and the tomb. But this conviction could certainly not have been impressed upon the minds of the disciples by a half-dead man creeping out of the sepulcher, in need of and using medical care, lying in weak and even sickly health, and at length succumbing to the fever of his wounds.³

By requiring of the disciples faith in his true resurrection. Jesus had foretold to his disciples his death and his resurrection.

Already now he announces to them that he has truly risen; he convinces them by many arguments of his return to life; entering and going out with closed doors, he reminds them of his glorious body assumed in the resurrection; finally ascending into heaven, he bears witness to them that, death overcome, he enters into his glory. In a word, he constantly inculcates and demands faith in his true resurrection. Therefore he truly died and truly rose again, not merely in appearance. Otherwise we should have to call Jesus a most base impostor.

2. That Jesus was carried off by the disciples by stealth was spread abroad by the rulers of the Jews. For when the terrified guards had hurried from the tomb into the city, the chief priests with the elders, having called a council together, "gave the soldiers a large sum of money, saying: 'Say, "His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep." And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.' So they took the money and did as they were instructed. And this saying," says Matthew the evangelist, "has been spread abroad among the Jews to this very day."⁴ Indeed, later Jews, on the testimony of St. Justin,⁵ repeated the same fable, which finally Reimarus in the eighteenth century served up anew, to the very ridicule of the rationalists.

In truth this hypothesis of theft and deceit is refuted by the manner of acting of both the Jews and the disciples.

By the manner of acting of the Jews. The Jews had left nothing untried to forestall deceit; they had sealed the tomb with a seal and fortified it with a military guard, saying: „Lest his disciples come and steal him away and say to the people: 'He is risen from the dead', and the last error will be worse than the first."⁶ Nevertheless, when the tomb was found open and the body removed, the Sanhedrin took care to have the legend of the theft spread abroad. Yet it does not inquire into the guilt of the disciples and the soldiers of the guard, nor does it punish them for the horrible crime imputed to them. Indeed, it suffers the disciples to go about freely and to preach the resurrection of Jesus before the people and before the council itself,⁷ without even charging them with bearing false witness. By this manner of acting the Sanhedrin of the Jews⁸ openly shows how falsely it accuses the apostles of theft. The same appears a fortiori from the manner of acting of the disciples.

By the manner of acting of the disciples. Supposing a theft, the disciples would from the first morning of Easter have simulated Jesus risen again. On the contrary, they were incredulous; they thought the news of the resurrection brought by the women to be a delusion; beholding the empty tomb they remained skeptical, and they did not believe Jesus risen until compelled by the evidence of the arguments. From this, however, they were changed into other men, who, spurning fear and doubt, boldly profess the resurrection of Jesus before Jews and Gentiles, demand faith in the resurrection of all, and moreover bravely pour out their blood and their life, in order to adore and proclaim Jesus risen from the dead. Would they have so acted, or could they have so acted, if they had stolen away their dead master and shamefully buried him elsewhere? No one fails to see that by this manner of acting of the disciples the hypothesis of theft charged against them collapses.

3. That Jesus was removed by the Jews with foresight is maintained by the most recent adversaries of the resurrection. And indeed:

Some contend that the Sanhedrin itself removed the body of Jesus and buried it in another place, lest the honored tomb of Christ become a sanctuary of the Christians.⁹ But what then? Did not the Sanhedrin, in acting thus, foresee that it was fostering the resurrection hope of the disciples and the „last error worse than the first"? But if it did not foresee it, why does the Sanhedrin not resist that error already arising? Why does it not confound the preachers of the resurrection by pointing out and exhibiting the body of Jesus buried in another place? Why does it not accuse the apostles of lying as they spread abroad the resurrection, but only threatens them, „that they speak henceforth to no man in this name [Jesus]"?¹⁰ What biting irony: the Sanhedrin of the Jews stole away the body of Jesus for the benefit of the resurrection preached by the Christians!

Others contend that Joseph of Arimathea himself transferred the body of Jesus elsewhere, lest "that malefactor" be forever associated with the dead of his own family in the tomb.¹¹¹² But that opinion not only contradicts the Gospels of Matthew and John, eyewitnesses of the event, but is in itself swollen with absurdities. For why does Joseph bury the body of Jesus with the greatest honors in his own new tomb, if he is ashamed to keep it longer in that same tomb? Why does he remove the body immediately at the great days of Easter, when nevertheless to be mingled with the dead was forbidden under penalty of defilement? Why do the members of the Sanhedrin not call Joseph, their colleague, to account concerning the body of Jesus hidden by him? Why do they not compel him to produce the dead body, so as to confound the disciples preaching Jesus risen? Why does not Joseph himself, of his own accord, convict the preachers of the resurrection of error and fraud, by exhibiting the "corpus delicti"? Manifestly, because he had not taken Jesus out of the tomb.

Therefore all natural explanations of the empty tomb of Jesus vanish: the disciples did not secretly steal Jesus away; the Jews did not remove him with foresight; Jesus himself did not, as one apparently dead, abandon the tomb. Therefore he rose from the tomb gloriously and miraculously.

We have proved that the risen Jesus appeared to the disciples.¹ The adversaries, however, having denied the resurrection, hold that those apparitions were not real but imaginary, not external but internal, not true but deceptive: that first Mary Magdalene and the other women, then Peter and the rest of the apostles, and finally the whole multitude of the faithful persuaded themselves, by a morbid suggestion, that they saw Jesus, although in reality Jesus appeared to no one. This theory of „visions" or „hallucinations" or „illusions" Celsus proposed, Renan and Strauß renewed, and today almost all radicals, liberals, and modernists approve.² They are refuted, however, by the psychology, the criticism, and the experience of the disciples.

1. The psychology of the disciples. The adversaries imagine that after the death of Jesus the disciples awaited his resurrection with the greatest confidence and the most ardent desire. But the more they were separated from the tomb in time and place, the more their hope and burning affection for seeing again their beloved master grew, until either Mary Magdalene or Peter put forward the first visions of the resurrection.

These first visions, like a stone cast into water, touched ever new circles of the faithful day by day, until all Christians underwent hallucinatory visions of the resurrection.

Nothing, however, is falser than the psychological state of the disciples thus described. We have proved more than enough³ that the disciples were deprived of every hope and expectation of the resurrection of Jesus. This being so, it was psychologically impossible that they should suffer hallucinatory visions of the resurrection of Jesus. For hallucinations are subject only to those things to which the mind is vividly and strongly attentive day and night. Hence the disciples, even if they had been visionaries, would not have had visions of the risen Jesus, but of Jesus dead in the tomb as to his body, glorious in paradise as to his soul.

2. The criticism of the disciples. The theory of illusions supposes women and men who were enthusiastic, indeed hysterical to such a degree that they were overwhelmed by any phantasms whatever, their own or those of others. The contrary is evident from the historical documents and especially the evangelical ones. The disciples were by no means men prone to illusions, but of sound and serious mind, more inclined to incredulity than to credulity. This „realistic" and „critical" disposition they show throughout their whole life, but especially on the occasion and in the examination of the apparitions of the risen Jesus.

Mary Magdalene, whom Celsus calls a „fanatical woman",⁴ and Renan a woman hallucinated by passion,⁵ by no means eagerly recognizes Jesus appearing to her, but rather „saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus ... thinking that it was the gardener".⁶ Two disciples going to the village of Emmaus accompany Jesus, but at last recognize him in the breaking of the bread.⁷ The eleven apostles do not yet believe the two disciples telling of the apparition of Jesus⁸ and think the women's report of the resurrection accomplished to be a delusion.⁹ Nay more, when Jesus appears in their midst, they think they are seeing a ghost.¹⁰ Thomas refuses to believe, although all the apostles testify that they have seen the Lord: „Unless I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."¹¹ A little before the ascension Jesus appears to his own on the mountain of Galilee and at the sea of Genesareth, and yet the disciples, trusting in the testimony of their senses, do not recognize him.¹²

Hence all the disciples receive the apparitions of the risen Jesus with a critical, indeed hypercritical mind. A visionary, on the contrary, neither acts critically nor can act critically. The visionary image, which he retains in his mind and projects outward, the visionary immediately and necessarily recognizes and obstinately asserts to be true. Whence the criticism with which the disciples call the apparitions into the balance most certainly proves that they had not deceptive visions, but true ones, of the risen Jesus.

3. The experience of the disciples. The disciples not only critically examine the truth of the apparitions, but experience it through arguments both material and spiritual, by which Jesus proves his real presence.

With material arguments: Jesus addresses them in words, explains the Scriptures to them, and reproves their unbelief.¹³ He makes the journey with them, enters the inn, and reclines at table.¹⁴ He asks that food be set before him, blesses and partakes of the food, breaks the bread, eats fish and cooked food.¹⁵ 1° He shows his hands, feet, and side and offers them to be touched, saying: „Touch and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see me having ... Bring your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and be not unbelieving, but believing."¹⁶ These are certainly not signs of a ghost, but of a bodily presence.

With spiritual arguments: „He showed himself alive after his passion by many proofs ... speaking of the kingdom of God",¹⁷ instituting baptism, granting the power of remitting sins, conferring the primacy, teaching the mystery of the Trinity, promising his perpetual assistance to the Church. „Peace be to you! As the Father has sent me, I also send you. Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained ..."¹⁸ „Feed my lambs, feed my sheep ..."¹⁹ „All power is given to me in heaven and on earth; going therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ... and behold, I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world."²⁰ These sublime and most wise mysteries of the kingdom of God are certainly not the ravings of a visionary, but the last lessons of the Savior completing and bringing to an end the instruction of the disciples.

The psychology, criticism, and experience of the disciples exclude the theory of subjective visions so necessarily that certain rationalists, in despair, take refuge in the hypothesis of objective visions: they say that Jesus himself visited the disciples in soul²¹ and spirit, so that the disciples falsely thought him risen and present in body. Yet this hypothesis teems with the same absurdities as the theory of subjective visions: for both maintain that the disciples, being deceived, imagined the bodily presence of Jesus, when nevertheless they touched and handled the body of the risen master. Nay more, the hypothesis of objective visions surpasses the theory of subjective visions in absurdity, because it makes Jesus the author of the deception, inasmuch as he exhibited himself to be handled and touched with such evidence that the disciples were compelled to believe him risen. „He falls into Scylla, who wishes to avoid Charybdis."

By a threefold unshaken fact, therefore, the resurrection of Jesus Christ stands scientifically established, namely, the faith of the disciples of Jesus, the empty tomb of Jesus, the apparitions of the risen Jesus. All the supreme attempts vanish by which unbelievers have tried either to deny these facts or to explain them naturally. Whoever investigates the history of the resurrection free from a preconceived philosophy is compelled to confess: „Christ is risen from the dead, the firstfruits of those who sleep."²² „The Lord is risen indeed."²³