Surprised by Hope, by N. T. Wright

Chapter Four

1.  Wright begins with four observations concerning the Easter stories in the four gospels.  First, we note the strange silence of the Bible in the stories; second, the presence of the women as the principal witnesses; third, the portrait of Jesus himself; and fourth, the fact that they never mention the future Christian hope.  He proposes, “It is far, far easier to believe that the stories are essentially very early, pre-Pauline, and have not been substantially altered except for light personal polishing, in subsequent transmission or editing.” 

Why are these four observations and Wright’s conclusion critical to the credibility of the resurrection narratives?  What impact do they have upon the future of the Christian church as we know it in today’s culture?

2.  “The only way we can explain the phenomena we have been examining is by proposing a two-pronged hypothesis: first, Jesus’s tomb really was empty; second, the disciples really did encounter him in ways that convinced them that he was not simply a ghost or hallucination.  Both the meetings and the empty tomb are therefore necessary if we are to explain the rise of the belief and the writing of the stories as we have them. Neither by itself was sufficient; put them together, though, and they provide a complete and coherent explanation for the rise of the early Christian belief.” 

How do you interpret Wright’s explanation here?  Why is this two-prong hypothesis necessary to the validity of the resurrection accounts?

                                                                

3.  “Far and away the best historical explanation is that Jesus of Nazareth, having been thoroughly dead and buried, really was raised to life on the third day with a renewed body (not a mere “resuscitated corpse,” as people sometimes dismissively say), a new kind of physical body, which left an empty tomb behind it because it had used up the material of Jesus’s original body and which possessed new properties that nobody had expected or imagined but that generated significant mutations in the thinking of those who encountered it. If something like this happened, it would perfectly explain why Christianity began and why it took the shape it did.”

How does this statement/position align itself with both the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds?  Why do the Creeds matter to us?

4.  Wright goes on to discuss the various implications of epistemology, “not only of what we know but also of how we know it.”  This discussion illustrates the difficult distinctions between scientific disciplines and those outside of science.  In other words, epistemologies vary.  “What I am suggesting is that faith in Jesus risen from the dead transcends but includes what we call history and what we call science. Faith of this sort is not blind belief, which rejects all history and science. Nor is it simply—which would be much safer!—a belief that inhabits a totally different sphere, discontinuous from either, in a separate watertight compartment. Rather, this kind of faith, which like all modes of knowledge is defined by the nature of its object, is faith in the creator God, the God who promised to put all things to rights at the last, the God who (as the sharp point where those two come together) raised Jesus from the dead within history, leaving evidence that demands an explanation from the scientist as well as anybody else. Insofar as I understand scientific method, when something turns up that doesn’t fit the paradigm you’re working with, one option at least, perhaps when all others have failed, is to change the paradigm—not to exclude everything you’ve known to that point but to include it within a larger whole. That is, if you like, the Thomas challenge.”

How do you experience and confront the Thomas challenge?

5.  “That is why, though the historical arguments for Jesus’s bodily resurrection are truly strong, we must never suppose that they will do more than bring people to the questions faced by Thomas, Paul, and Peter, the questions of faith, hope, and love. We cannot use a supposedly objective historical epistemology as the ultimate ground for the truth of Easter. All knowing is a gift from God, historical and scientific knowing no less than that of faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.

And this is the point where believing in the resurrection of Jesus suddenly ceases to be a matter of inquiring about an odd event in the first century and becomes a matter of rediscovering hope in the twenty-first century. Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word. The same worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that will enable us to transform the world.”

How does this Easter worldview shift allow you to navigate life’s journey with hope?