Is the resurrection na 'historical event' O. Collins

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IS THE RESURRECTION AN 
‘HISTORICAL’ EVENT?’ 
G . G. O’COLLINS, S.J. 
Pembroke ColIege, Cambridge 
There is no end to the literature dealing with the resurrection of Christ. 
Last year the dialogue between Professors Lampe and MacKinnon, 
The Resurrection, appeared. Already this year S . H. Hooke’s The Resur- 
rection of Christ and N. Clark‘s Interpreting the Resurrection have been 
published. In July the SCM Press put out their translation of Jurgen 
Moltmann’s Theology of Hope, a work of systematic theology in which the 
resurrection plays a vital role. In May Harper and Row has published as 
volume three of New Frontiers in Theology a discussion of the controversial 
views on revelation and history recently put forward by Wolfhart Pannen- 
berg, for whom the reality of Christ’s resurrection is as important as it is 
for Moltmann, even if it is understood in a different way.’ 
This is a mere sample from current writings on the resurrection. The 
literature is vast and the issues are many.3 I wish to confine myself to one 
question: should we describe the resurrection as an historical event? 
I will be arguing from the position that the resurrection is a real, bodily 
event involving the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Speaking on the basis of 
this supposition I am putting one question: is it appropriate to call the 
resurrection historical ? Many writers do describe the resurrection in that 
way. Pannenberg, for example, calls the resurrection ‘an historical event’4 
and is satisfied that an historian, using the usual methods of historical 
verification, can investigate’ and establish the reality of the resurrection.6 
This article is a slightly abbreviated version of a paper originally delivered to the 
Theological Society in Queens’ College, Cambridge, on March 9th, 1967. Some foot- 
notes have been added. 
Recent literature dealing with the resurrection includes also, for example, C. F. D. 
Moule, The Phenomenon of the New Testament. Studies in Biblical Theology. Second 
Series (London, 1967), esp. ch. 1 ; F. Viering (ed.), Die Bedeutung der Auferstehungs- 
botschafr fiir den Glauben an Jesus Christus (Gutersloh, 1966); B. Klappert (ed.), 
Diskusion urn Kreuz und Auferstehung (Wuppertal, 1967). 
Klappert suppliesausefuloutlineof most of theimportant issues (op. cit., pp. 10- 52). 
Grundziige der Christologie (Giitersloh, 1964), p. 95. 
‘Whether or not Jesus was raised from the dead is a historical question insofar 
as it is an inquiry into what did or did not happen at a certain time’ (New Frontiers in 
Theology, Vol. 3, Theology as History, ed. J. M. Robinson and J. B. Cobb mew York, 
19671, 128). 
Grundziige der Christologie, pp. 85-103. 
38 1 
382 G . G. O’COLLINS 
H. F. von Campenhausen, Pannenberg’s teacher at Heidelberg, writes in a 
somewhat similar way: ‘For all its contemporary, vivifying reality, the 
resurrection is still an actud event ofthe historicalpast, and as such it was 
handed down, proclaimed and believed. And so the proclamation of it 
cannot evade the historical question, and cannot in any circumstances 
be withdrawn from the task of historical investigation.’’ In his Bampton 
Lectures Alan Richardson shows much the same attitude when he asks: 
‘What sort of evidence might lead to the judgement that the resurrection 
of Christ was an event of history?’2 For ‘whether, in fact, Christ rose from 
the dead, is an historical question and one which involves the assessment 
of historical e~idence’.~ Professor Lampe agrees that the resurrection is an 
event to be dealt with by the historian. For, although the historian ‘cannot 
pronounce upon the significance which faith discerns in what happened 
at Easter’ he has ‘every right to investigate the records of these happenings 
and to pronounce upon the probability or otherwise that they did in fact 
O C C U ~ ’ . ~ It would be easy to go on adding examples of theologians who- 
often in very different ways-will speak of the resurrection as an historical 
event or the object of historical research. 
One reaction to such talk about the resurrection is the position Ernst 
Fuchs takes up. He draws attention to such passages as Rom 10:9 ff. and 
2 Cor 4: 13 ff., where the resurrection is presented as an object of faith and 
confe~sion.~ Fuchs’s point is that the resurrection cannot be both the 
object of faith and something to be investigated and verified by historians. 
But is that so obvious ? Is believing incompatible with historical investigation 
and proof? A second objection from Fuchs has more immediate force. 
‘Der Ablauf der Osterereignisse und das leere Grab’, trans. from S. Neill, The 
Interpretation of the New Testament 18614961 (London, 1964), p. 287 (italics mine). 
3. M. Robinson remarks that ‘in his programmatic essay’ (‘Heilsgeschehen und Ge- 
schichte’, Kerygma und Dogma 5 (1959), pp. 218-37,259-88) ‘Pannenberg is arguing in 
defense of von Campenhausen’s approach to Jesus’ resurrection’ (Theology as History, 
p. 32, n. 92). Klappert points out how Pannenberg-at least by the time he published 
Offenbarung als Geschichte in 1961-goes beyond von Campenhausen in the role he 
attributes to historical investigation in our understanding of the resurrection (Diskus- 
sion urn Kreuz und Auferstehung, pp. 21-3). 
History Sacred and Profane (London, 1964), p. 195. 
Ibid., p. 190. 
The Resurrection, p. 33. Pannenberg complains that ‘such a splitting up of historical 
consciousness into a detection of facts and an evaluation of them. . . is intolerable to 
Christian faith, not only because the message of the resurrection of Jesus and of God’s 
revelation in him necessarily becomes merely subjective interpretation, but also because 
it is the reflection of an outmoded and questionable historical method. It is based on the 
futile aim of the positivist historians to ascertain bare facts without meaning in history’ 
(Theology as History, pp. 126 ff.). 
‘Die Spannung im neutestamentlichen Christusglauben’, GIaube und Erfahrung 
Tubingen, 1965), pp. 292 ff. 
IS THE RESURRECTION A N ‘HISTORICAL’ EVENT? 383 
If Jesus’ resurrection is an historically verifiable event, surely those whose 
profession it is to deal with history should be obviously the first to re- 
cognize it as such? Historians as a class should be pre-eminent among 
believers.‘ 
Yet I think we can leave aside the question of whether believing in the 
resurrection excludes proving it and the incidence of acceptance of the 
resurrection among historians. The heart of the matter seems to me: is 
the resurrection of Christ of such a nature that it can properly be called 
historical? We can, of course, produce a more or less elaborate account 
of what it takes to be an historical happening and then declare that the 
resurrection fails to verify our description. We could, for example, demand 
three things: (1) that the causality at work, or rather the whole chain 
of cause and effect constituting the alleged event, should be at least in 
principle open to examination; (2) that the alleged event should be wit- 
nessed to by impartial observers and not merely by highly committed 
friends of the one involved in it; and (3) that the alleged event should bear 
some analogy to the kind of happenings we commonly experience.2 Before 
admitting anything as an historical event we could postulate such require- 
ments and then point out that the resurrection fails to meet our tests. 
First, we cannot investigate the causality involved. While claiming that 
Jesus was raised by the power of God, the canonical scriptures make no 
attempt to give an account-let alone a precise and detailed account- 
of how it occ~r red .~ Second, only believers testified to the appearances 
of the risen Lord. Finally, the resurrection bears no analogy to our 
common experience. Thus the resurrection would fail to qualify as an 
historical event.But clearly there is danger of pre-judging the issue by 
multiplying the requirements for what it takes to make an historical 
happening. 
Some writers, on the other hand, seem to minimize the requirements 
‘Theologie oder Ideologie?, Theologische Literaturzeitung, 88 (1963), col. 259. 
2 This requirement was emphasized above all by E. Troeltsch, for whom comparison 
with what is already known should provide our touchstone for assessing the probability 
that a reported incident actually occurred. Pannenberg (Kerygma und Dogma 5 (1959), 
pp. 264-7) and Moltmann (Theologie der Hoffnung [Munich, 196S5], pp. 158 ff.) refer 
to the relevant sections in Troeltsch’s writings and make valuable criticisms of his 
demand. J. M. Robinson summarizes Pannenberg’s comment: ‘Comparison is for the 
sake of establishing that which is individual and distinctive about the phenomenon 
under consideration. Hence such comparison may not be used to obscure that which is 
distinctive, by classifying it as just another instance of a given category. The result of 
this corrective is that the lack of historical analogy loses any decisive role in determining 
the historicity of an event’ (Theology us History, p. 31); cf. Pannenberg’s remarks, ibid., 
p. 264, n. 75. 
3 As K. Grobel points out, even the Gospel of Peter does not describe the resurrection ; 
ibid., pp. 171 ff. 
384 G. G. O’COLLINS 
by using ‘historical’ as if it were just about synonymous with ‘what has 
happened’. Pannenberg, for example, writes : ‘There is no justification for 
affirming the resurrection of Jesus to be an event that really happened, 
if it cannot be affirmed historically as such.” For Professor Lampe the 
object of historian’s research is what has ‘actually happened’.2 But is 
something that has ‘happened’ to be described automatically as ‘historical’? 
Take, for example, the creation of the world or the coming of Christ to 
presence in the Eucharist. We could recognize such things as significant 
events that have happened and do happen, yet few would be willing to 
call them ‘hi~torical’.~ 
Eventually I must face the question and take responsibility for some 
working account of what the ‘historical’ is. I suggest that we should require 
an historical occurrence to be something significant that is known to have 
happened in our space-time continuum. The last element is important. 
Historians deal with things that are localizable in space and datable 
time. It is interesting to find Richardson insisting that ‘the resurrection 
of Christ’ is ‘to be assessed one way or the other by the historian just like 
any other event in space or time’ (italics mine).4 While agreeing that his- 
torians do deal with events in space and time, I would like to argue that 
the resurrection is not an event in space and time and hence should not be 
called historical. Through the resurrection Christ passes out of the 
empirical sphere of this world to a new mode of existence in the ‘other’ 
world of God. He moves outside the world and its history, outside the 
ordinary datable, localizable conditions of our experience-to become 
an ‘other-worldly’ reality. The time in which our history takes place lasted 
for Christ up to the last moment in which his body lay dead in the tomb, 
still part of our world. The three days specify the last moments of his 
pre-risen existence, his last moments in human hi~tory.~ The resurrection 
meant that Christ entered on the new mode of existence of the glorified 
body, a ‘pneumatic’, Spirit-filled existence in which he is the source of life 
for mankind (2 Cor 3: 17; 1 Cor 15:43 ff.). For the most part his glorified 
existence is only to be described in negatives-as immortal, impassible, 
Grundziige der Christologie, p. 96; in response to Grobel’s position, however, 
Pannenberg wants to take ‘historical’ in the stronger sense in which I want to use it: 
‘I am’, he writes, ‘like Grobel of the opinion that historical events must be locatable in 
time and space’ (Theology as History, p. 265, n. 76). 
The Resurrection, p. 33 
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is also something significant which has 
Op. cit., p. 210. 
Hence I disagree with Grobel who holds that, while the resurrection does not 
qualify as an event in space, it has ‘a locus in time’ (Theofogy as History, p. 171 ; cf. pp. 
happened. Yet would we speak of it as an historical event? 
171-5). 
IS THE RESURRECTION A N ‘HISTORICAL’ E V E N T ? 385 
etc. Now historians deal with bodily human existences under the ordinary 
space-time conditions of our world. The risen Christ does not belong to 
this mode of human existence. If in fact Christ on the far side of the 
resurrection continued to exist under the bodily conditions which we 
experience and within which the historian operates, he would not be the 
risen Christ. 
It is instructive to contrast Christ’s resurrection with the raisings from 
the dead mentioned in the Gospels, viz. those of the young man from Naim 
(Lk 7: 11-17), Jairus’ daughter (Mk 5 : 35-43 and parallels) and Lazarus 
(Jn ch. 11). Leaving aside the question of the factuality of these accounts, 
we can recognize that what is presented here is clearly quite different from 
the resurrection of Jesus. It is not merely that the events themselves are 
described, whereas the resurrection of Jesus took place ‘in the silence of 
God’.’ Nor is the vital point of difference the fact that there is no problem 
of identification, no difficulty whatsoever, for example, in recognizing 
the daughter of Jairus after the event, whereas in the resurrection narratives 
there is the recurrent motif of men who had known the earthly Jesus 
failing to identify the risen Lord. The major contrast lies in the fact that 
the daughter of Jairus and the others resume life under normal bodily 
conditions and will presumably die again. Their space-time lives continue; 
the material for their biographies begins once again to mount up for some 
future historian. They had not entered yet into their final state of existence.2 
Jesus, on the other hand, does not return to life in our space-time con- 
tinuum. With his death and burial his biographical achievement for the 
historian is complete; he has moved into his final state of existence. 
To argue that the resurrection of Christ is not appropriately described 
as an historical event is not to assert that historical evidence and inquiry 
are irrele~ant.~ The Easter confession of the apostles understood itself 
to be derived from and concerned with Jesus’ resurrection. This proclaim- 
ing faith can be investigated by historians ; it is historically ascertainable. 
Ignatius of Antioch, Eph. 19, 1. 
Pannenberg himself draws attention to the great difference between these raisings 
from the dead and Jesus’ resurrection, but does not feel that this tells against his de- 
scription of the resurrection as an historical event (Grundziige der Christologie, p. 73). 
C. E. Braaten writes: ‘Would not the denial of the resurrection as an historical 
event seriously call into question the basis from which we could judge it to be real in 
any significant sense whatsoever? What kind of reality would the resurrection event be 
if it would lie wholly outside the bounds of what we experience as history? (New 
Directions in Theology Today, Vol. 2, History and Hermeneutics [Philadelphia, 19661, p. 
80). Notice the implicit shift in the argument: to deny ‘the resurrection as an historical 
event’ is to suggest that ‘it would lie wholly outside the bounds of what we experience 
as history’. Obviously unless the resurrection in some way enters our experience, we 
cannot call it real. But must everything which we judge to be real lie itself wholly 
within the bounds of what we experience as history? 
386 G. G . O’COLLINS 
Moreover, behind this confession lay the fact that the risen Christ appearedat definite times and places to a particular number of persons. Christ in 
his risen state is connected with a series of this-worldly events. These 
appearances are historical from the side of those who encountered the 
risen Lord, but not from the side of Christ himself. These episodes do not 
occur at a certain time and place in his risen life. His glorified existence 
is not localizable and datable for the historian. Against this Pannenberg 
argues that precisely because the risen Christ became known at a quite 
definite time, in a limited number of events and to a particular number of 
men we should call the resurrection an historical event.’ Yet surely we 
could make a rather similar point about the encounters with Yahweh 
recorded in the Old Testament? God is described as entering dramatically 
at certain times into the lives of a particular set of men-Abraham, 
Moses, Isaiah and others. But such encounters do not make God’s 
existence historical. Likewise the appearances of the risen Jesus are not 
historical from his side, even if they do form part of the history of Peter, 
Paul and the other witnesses of the risen Lord. History concerns the 
resurrection in other ways too, for example, from the side of the historical 
Jesus. Without his life and death we would not have the resurrection. 
Even if the resurrection is not reducible to history, it would not have 
happened without the prior historical existence of the one raised from the 
dead. 
To conclude. Even if historical investigation has a certain relevance, it 
seems inapproriate to describe the resurrection as an historical event. A 
great deal has not even been mentioned in this paper, for example, the 
question of the empty tomba2 But I hope enough has been said to 
‘If we were here to renounce the concept of an historical event, then it could not at 
all be maintained any longer that the raising of Christ or the appearances of the risen 
Lord have really happened at a definite time in this world of ours’ (Grundzuge der 
Christologie, p. 96). Over this issue Klappert writes similarly: ‘The resurrection of 
Jesus Christ . . . is an actual event in history, insofar as the risen Lord has made himself 
known at a quite definite time, in a limited number of events and in relation to a quite 
definite set of people’ (Diskussion urn Kreuz und Auferstehung, p. 13). 
Obviously historical inquiry is relevant to the resurrection in that the empty tomb 
can be the object of investigation by the historian. The absence of the corpse is veri- 
fiable in principle; its transformation to a glorified mode of existence is not. I disagree 
with Grobel’s admission that, if the resurrection involved an empty tomb, the resur- 
rection would qualify as a spatial event (Theology as History, p. 175; cf. J. B. Cobb’s 
comments, ibid., pp. 204 ff.). Pannenberg, who unlike Grobel accepts the empty tomb, 
agrees that, ‘presupposing the tradition of the empty tomb, the relationship of the 
resurrection to space is already given’. He continues: ‘The event of the resurrection of 
Jesus. . . has to do with the transition from our earthly reality to that resurrection- 
reality which is no longer locatable in space. Thus at least its initial point must be sought 
in the historical Jesus which was located in space, and thus far at least it is itself related 
to space. If it really took place, it took place in Palestine and not for instance in America’ 
IS T H E RESURRECTION A N ‘HISTORICAL’ E V E N T ? 387 
recommend the position of those who want to accept the resurrection as 
a real, bodily event, but would hesitate to call it historical. At the same 
time, as I have said, my argument has developed from the position that 
the resurrection was a real, bodily event involving the person of Jesus of 
Nazareth. 
(ibid., p. 265, n. 76). It seems odd, however, to speak of a transition ‘out of’ space, 
viz. to a reality not locatable in space, taking place in space, viz. in Palestine. For even 
if ‘the initial point’ of this transition were located in space, this would not justify us in 
concluding that the transition ‘took place’ in space. Besides it seems preferable to talk 
of the tomb containing the body of the historical Jesus not as ‘the initial point’ of the 
transition, but as being the last place where Jesus in the normal historical sense was 
locatable. The tomb specifies the last place of Jesus’ pre-risen existence. While the 
empty tomb of a Lazarus can indicate a raising from the dead that would be a spatial 
event, the resurrection of Christ does not; his resurrection is no mere resuscitation 
of a corpse.