Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/881

 RESURRECTION

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RESURRECTION

tolic work, the life of the powerful wonderworker would have ended in ignoble solitude and inglorious obscurity, and His vaunted sinlessness would have changed into His silent approval of a he as the foun- dation stone of His Church. No wonder that later critics of the Resurrection, like Strauss, have heaped contempt on the old theorj- of a swoon.

(2) Impositioit Theory. — The disciples, it is said, stole the body of Jesus from the grave, and then proclaimed to men that their Lord had risen. This theory was anticipated b}- the Jews who "gave a great sum of money to the soldiers, saj-ing: Say you, His disciples came by night, and stole him away when we were asleep" (Matt., xvs'iii, 12 sq.). The same was urged by Celsus (Orig., "Contra Cels.", II, 56) with some difference of detail. But to assume that the Apostles with a burden of this kind upon their consciences could have preached a kingdom of truth and righteousness as the one great effort of their lives, and that for the sake of that kingdom they could have suffered even unto death, is to as- sume one of those moral impossibilities which may pass for a moment in the heat of controversy, but must be dismissed without delay in the hour of cool reflection.

(3) Vision Theory. — This theorj' as generally un- derstood by its advocates does not allow visions caused by a Divine intervention, but only such as are the product of human agencies. For if a Divine inter- vention be admitted, we may as well believe, as far as principles are concerned, that God raised Jesus from the dead. But where in the present instance are the human agencies which might cause these visions? The idea of a resurrection from the grave was familiar to the disciples from their Jewish faith; they had also vague intimations in the prophecies of the Old Testa- ment; finally, Jesus Himself had alwaj-s associated His Resurrection with the predictions of His death. On the other hand, the disciples' state of mind was one of great excitement; they treasured the memory of Christ with a fondness which made it almost impossible for them to believe that He was gone. In short, their whole mental condition was such as needed only the application of a spark to kindle the flame. The spark was applied by Mary Magdalen, and the flame at once spread with the rapidity and force of a conflagration. What she believed that she had seen, others imme- diately believed that they must see. Their expecta- tions were fulfilled, and the conviction seized the mem- bers of the early Church that the Lord had really risen from the dead.

Such is the \Tsion theorj- commonly defended by recent critics of the Resurrection. But however in- geniously it may be de\Tsed, it is quite impossible from an historical point of view, (a) It is incompatible with the state of mind of the Apostles; the theory presupposes faith and expectancy on the part of the Apostles, while in point of fact the disciples' faith and expectancy followed their vision of the risen Christ, (b) It is inconsistent with the nature of Christ's manifestations; they ought to have been con- nected with heavenly glorj", or they should have con- tinued the former intimate relations of Jesus with His disciples, while actually and consistently they pre- sented quite a new phase that could not have been expected, (c) It does not agree with the conditions of the early Christian community: after the first excitement of Easter Sunday, the disciples as a body are noted for their cool deliberation rather than the exalted enthusiasm of a community of visionaries, (d) It is incompatible with the length of time during which the apparitions lasted; visions such as the critics suppose have never been known to last long, while some of Christ's manifestations lasted a con- siderable period, (e) It is not consistent with the fact that the manifestations were made to numbers at the same instant, (f) It does not agree with the place

where most of the manifestations were made; vision- ary appearances would have been expected in Galilee, while most apparitions of Jesus occurred in Judea. (g) It is inconsistent with the fact that the visions came to a sudden end on the day of the Ascension.

Keim admits that enthusiasm, nervousness, and mental excitement on the part of the disciples do not supply a rational explanation of the facts as related in the Gospels. According to him, the visions were directly granted by God and the glo-ified Christ; they may even include a "corporeal appearance" for those who fear that without this they would lose all. But Keim's theon,- satisfies neither the Church, since it abandons all the proofs of a bodily resurrection of Jesus, nor the enemies of the Church, since it admits many of the Church's dogmas; nor again is it con- sistent with itself, since it grants God's special inter- vention in proof of the Church's faith, though it starts with the denial of the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, which is one of the principal objects of that faith.

(4) Modernist View. — The Holy Office describes and condemns, in the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh propositions of the Decree "Lamentabili", the views advocated by a fourth class of opponents of the Resurrection. The former of these propositions reads: "The Resurrection of our Saviour is not properly a fact of the historical order, but a fact of the purely supernatural order neither proved nor provable, which Christian consciousness has little by little inferred from other facts." This statement agrees with, and is further explained bv the words of Loisv ("Autourd'un petit U\Te", p. viii, 120-121, 169; "L'Evangile et I'Eglise", pp. 74-78; 120-121; 171). According to Loisy, firstly, the entrance into hfe immortal of one risen from the dead is not subject to obser\'ation; it is a supernatural, hTi-per-historical fact, not capable of historical proof. The proofs alleged for the Resur- rection of Jesus Christ are inadequate; the empty sepulchre is only an indirect argument, while the apparitions of the risen Christ are open to suspicion on a priori grounds, being sensible impressions of a supernatural reality; and they are doubtful evidence from a critical point of view, on account of the dis- crepancies in the various Scriptural narratives, and the mixed character of the detail connected with the apparitions. Secondly, if one prescinds from the faith of the Apostles, the testimony of the New Testament does not furnish a certain argument for the fact of the Resurrection. This faith of the .Apostles is concerned not so much with the Resurrection of Jesus Clirist as with His immortal life; being based on the appari- tions, which are unsatisfactory evidence from an his- torical point of vifivr, its force is appreciated only by faith itself; being a development of the idea of an immortal Messias, it is an evolution of Christian con- sciousness, though it is at the same time a corrective of the scandal of the Cross. The Holy Office rejects this view of the Resurrection when it condemns the thirty-seventh proposition in the Decree " Lamen- tabili": "The faith in the Resurrection of Christ pointed at the beginning not so much to the fact of the Resurrection, as to the immortal life of Christ with God."

Besides the authoritative rejection of the foregoing view, we may submit the following three considera- tions which render it untenable: First, the contention that the Resurrection of Christ cannot be proved historically is not in accord with science. Science does not know enough about the limitations and the prop- erties of a body raised from the dead to immortal life to warrant the assertion that such a body cannot be perceived by the senses; again, in the case of Christ, the empty sepulchre with all its concrete circumstances cannot be explained except by a mirac- ulous Divine intervention as supernatural in its char- acter as the Resurrection of Jesus. Secondly, history