Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus I: Demonstratio Christiana

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 The contrary is evident from the historical documents and especially the evangelical ones.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