The Reality of the Resurrection: The New Testament Witness by Stefan Alkier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Does Belief Inhibit Judgment?

I put comments about theological books on GR only when they seem to me to be of general cultural significance, and when they are likely to be comprehensible by any educated person. This is one of those, recommended to me by a close friend in an attempt to gather me up into the Christian fold. It’s effect has not been as my friend expected.

To be a Christian believer is to be a follower, not of Christ, but of Paul of Tarsus, a self-proclaimed Apostle of Jesus who had never met him and who, by his own admission, learned nothing about Jesus from those who did know him. It is from Paul that most of the doctrinal content of Christianity originates. Therefore the credibility of Christianity depends largely on whether one perceives Paul as divinely inspired or merely religiously imaginative.

Paul’s surviving writings, his letters to congregations he founded, are the oldest Christian scriptures, probably by several decades. It is they that announce the ‘good news’ of what would become known as Christianity, - particularly the resurrection from the dead of the man Jesus, and the imminent end of the world during which those who accept this as true will be united with him forever.

Alkier, a believer in the announcement of Paul, traces the development and expansion of Paul’s message through the rest of Christian Scriptures. His intention is to re-invigorate the meaning of Paul by stripping away the metaphysical and cosmological presumptions of the Pauline world. Alkier wants to understand Paul’s relevance to the modern mind. He presents a serious but very ‘accessible’ analysis of the New Testament with academic rigor but also with readable aplomb.

The problem from the point of view of belief, however, is that Alkier’s textual analysis demonstrates not just the arbitrariness of Paul’s doctrinal pronouncements but also the complete absence of reasons to accept this arbitrariness. What Alkier presents therefore is an excellent summary for the rejection of Christian belief by those who take it most seriously.

If neither Jesus nor his close associates taught Paul his message, who did? One presumes that Paul’s experience was informed by his cultural inheritance, which was Greek as well as Hebrew. But as Alkier concludes decisively, Paul’s

“... word of the cross satisfies the Jewish demands for proof of its validity as little as it satisfies the criteria Greek philosophy would employ to validate truth claims. Thus it fulfills neither the Jewish conditions for a sign of the powerful activity of God, nor those of Greek epistemology.”

Paul never mentions an empty tomb, nor does he cite anyone else who does. He was never a witness nor does he find it necessary to suggest there are witnesses who might corroborate his account of the fate of Jesus. His statements exist without context or any connection to the cultural reality of the times. His account of Jesus is entirely self-contained. This is a reasonable definition of a myth, that is, a narrative that is internally consistent but which describes emotions, hopes, and desires rather than facts.

To the extent these emotions, hopes, and desires corresponded to something in his audiences in the Roman Empire, they will have had an effect. But judging by the experience of modern-day Christian sects - Mormons, Baptists, Adventists - the appeal of Paul’s message was not so much the doctrinal content as the social organisation of the proto-Christian congregations. Christianity spread because it provided a particular kind of community, not because it preached a truth that anyone could understand. It is unlikely that anyone understood what Paul was saying. Things haven’t changed much since.

Of course Paul is not the only ‘witness’ in the New Testament, but he is pivotal for all the rest. And Paul didn’t actually witness anything except his own inflamed imagination. In our age of increasing evangelical involvement in politics, Alkier provides an insider’s perspective that has importance for those of us who are outsiders. Belief is being used around the world to justify prejudice of all sorts as religious faith. It is arguable that Paul is the inventor of modern religion generally with its conceptions of doctrinal conformance and univocal interpretation of spiritual insight.

If so, Alkier shows Paul and those who take him as a substitute for moral thought have much to answer for. The reality of the resurrection hardly seems more than the resourceful creation of a religious entrepreneur.

For more on Paul, see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

View all my reviews