The Resurrection of Jesus : John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue

This book is a product of the inaugural Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum held in Leavell Chapel of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary on March 11, 2005. The Forum is a five year pilot project to provide an arena for an evangelical scholar and a non-evangelical scholar to dialogue on an issue of religious or cultural significance. The book duplicates the format of the evening which provided an opening statement by each participant, followed by a dialogue betweeen them.

N T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, Church of England, who previously taught at Cambridge, McGill and Oxford Universities, offered highlights from his book The Resurrection of the Son of God, which was published several years ago. His perspective on the resurrection of Jesus is formed by seeing it as a mutation of first-century Jewish resurrection belief. This leads him to state that all the early Jewish-Christians believed that "Jesus really had been bodily raised from the dead." He is convinced that the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus are literally true and the condition for the rise of the Christian faith. It is because Jesus has been raised from the dead that "he was Messiah and Lord, the true King of the Jews and true Lord of this world." He stresses that the resurrection stories "do not say Jesus is raised, therefore we are going to heaven or therefore we are going to be raised. They say Jesus is raised, "therefore God's new creation has begun and we've got a job to do." He believes there is a bridge between himself and Crossan in understanding the resurrection of Jesus as a "politically revolutionary doctrine" which leads us to work for the kingdom of the earth to submit to the kingdom of God."

John Dominic Crossan is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. His presentation is a "talking through" of a paper, "Mode and Meaning in Bodily Resurrection Faith," which had been given to Wright and other conference speakers; it is printed as an Appendix of the book. By mode Crossan means "the difference between something which is literal and something which is metaphorical." "By meaning, which applies to both the literal and the metaphorical" [he means] "What are the implications of this for your life? What are they? What does this do for your life or for the world?"

Crossan emphasizes that he is not interested in debating either the empty tomb or the appearances of Jesus. He takes the resurrection of Jesus metaphorically. But he stresses that whether one takes the resurrection literally or metaphorically, there is the question of meaning. He states that "something else is absolutely needed to make the leap of faith, if you will." It is that the historical Jesus said "that the kingdom of God was not just future, nor even imminent, but had already started." He writes that when the kingdom of God has already started, "We're talking about cosmic transformation of this world from a world of evil and injustice and impurity and violence into a world of justice and peace and purity and holiness."

He is emphatic that the resurrection of Jesus must be taken "programmatically". In the context of the first-century the question is not "Do you think Jesus is Lord? It is Do you think Caesar or Jesus is Lord? And when you say Jesus is Lord you have just committed high treason." If Caesar is Lord, the Roman program would be embraced. 'First victory, then peace. Or piety, then war, then victory, then peace. If Jesus is Lord the program would be, 'First justice, then peace.'"

He suggests that those who take the resurrection of Jesus literally and those who take it metaphorically "might overlap tremendously in the field of meaning, where we will not agree at all in the field of mode." What is important is to think about the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus in the present. He concludes his presentation, writing, "I want really to know how we are going to take back God's world from the thugs. Thank you."

Then follows a vigorous dialogue between the two speakers focusing on their agreements and disagreements. Wright concludes the exchange by stating that "with Easter something happened to the cosmos. Now if it actually happened, then a door has been opened through which we can go towards that Kingdom of God which is over against the Kingdom of Caesar."

The next day featured a series of eight papers related to the general topic of the resurrection and the work of Wright and Crossan. The presenters represented the disciplines of New Testament studies, philosophy and theology. Following the presentation of each paper, Wright and Crossan responded and often posed questions to the presenters. In the Appendix, which Crossan had distributed to the presenters prior to the conference, he concludes, "Finally, to the extent that we Christians do not display an eschatological life of justice-as-the-body of love and love-as-the soul of justice we lose the right to speak of Christ's earthly resurrection and have at best a right to speak of his heavenly exaltation."