Source: Neue Zuercher Zeitung
Nina Streek

Original article in German:
http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/hintergrund/wissenschaft/zweifeln-an-der-auferstehung_1.16334490.htm

(please bear with us: Google tanslation):

The Easter faith was announced before the empty grave was spoken about.

The message sounds more awkward than ever: Jesus Christ is risen. Anyone who believes this, seems to be a marker of childhood wishful thinking and maintains an angle in the center where reason has no access. We certainly know that the dead are not alive again. For Christians, the resurrection is at the heart of their faith. Even Paul preached: “If Christ be not raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15, 14.). But apparently only those who answered yes to one breaking the laws of nature can believe in it.

Incredible Worthy: This verdict had to fight the New Testament witness to the already first preachers of the resurrection. After a few women the grave of Jesus was found empty and they brought two angels, the message of the resurrection of their Master had, she told them her companions. “But the apostles were all nonsense and did not believe them” (Luke 24, 11), the Evangelist Luke.

The high priests planted a rumor that the disciples stole the body of Jesus from the grave to put the lie to the world of resurrection (Mt 28, 11-15) – an idea that the Bible critics Reimarus in the 18th Century took up, so he turned to his disciples fraud. The faith, the Enlightenment Impetus should be tried before the tribunal of reason. Miracle – and as such saw the resurrection of Enlightenment – could not exist there. Did not consider deliberate fraud, but for the series of visions of the distraught disciples in the 19th Century philosopher and theologian David Friedrich Strauss, the Easter faith. The followers of Jesus had so mastered the death of their Lord. Have occurred only slightly in the souls of the grieving disciples.

The idea was popular – and took in the 1990s, again representing a fierce debate, as the Göttingen theologian Gerd Lüdemann a deep psychological relined version of the thesis. “The grave of Jesus was not empty but full,” he noted, “and that his body has not escaped, but decays.” Ludemann said goodbye very soon from the faith. Four years later he wrote, appealing directly to Jesus, the “humbug of your resurrection,” so “religiously [should] be an end to both of us.”

His interpretation explains how it could happen that the disciples of the resurrection of Jesus told: You were so shocked that she hallucinated. They later sold their visions as facts. The theory fits well in a scientific world view. But it is Christian? What remains of the Easter faith, if he is reduced to an illusion confused Jesus-worshipers?

For Pope Benedict XVI. too little. He responded in the second volume of his work, “Jesus of Nazareth” again on Lüdemann theses: The grave was empty, Jesus Christ was resurrected bodily, resurrection is an “event in history” – one, however, goes beyond the story. The Pope is of great concern to the faith in all its awkwardness to keep alive. He fears it could weaken him to come to the modern world and their thinking to close. He prefers to remain poorly understood. Both, as Lüdemann Benedict share an assumption: the resurrection of Jesus must be a historical event, detectable with the methods of historical research. Can not prove what happened to the body of Jesus, we must not understand the resurrection in its literal sense, Luedemann says. For the Pope, the Bible gives evidence enough. But the reports are credible?

The Synoptic Gospels Mark, Matthew and Luke contradict each other. They disagree, who was first at the grave, if the stone lay against it or who else was staying there. The stories are embellished legendary, partly true but also in agreement: First, women were at the grave, they came on the morning of the first day, and they informed the disciples. The thesis of the empty grave is still shaky. Paul mentions in his letters, the grave is not – and they are older than the Gospels. The Easter faith was preached before the empty grave was mentioned. Paul, it was enough to recount the appearances of Jesus. Perhaps there are later inventions to the faith should give greater weight? It can only speculate. If the grave was empty, is beyond the historical research. We know that Jesus died on the cross. We also know that the disciples proclaimed his resurrection. What happened in between is unknown. The resurrection itself is not portrayed in the Bible. Turn on the way to the plausibility of the resurrection to remain hopeless. Unless we evaluated the reports of the different appearances of Jesus. The Munich theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg would not disclose the historical method, but neither wants to be the “dogma of a secular understanding of reality” subject, “the work of a divine principle excludes”. The disciples are told of the resurrection of Jesus, what Pannenberg holds for a sufficiently strong indication that they actually took place. But what does it mean to say: Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, “as Christians confess in the Creed?

For Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) was behind the publication reports a mythological worldview that has fallen apart by now. The question of what at the time was playing just does not interest him. On the other hand, the message is what counts – and it still moves people to change their lives and their existence radically new understanding. Jesus Christ is “the resurrection kerygma,” in the proclamation, in which he remains alive and the people in the decision calls – a different concept of resurrection.

Bultmann thus leaves the problem of having to prove the resurrection historically. Only those who qualify it as a historical event, answer must also, as it is conceivable within our world. That God has a body back to life, is a haunting idea – which was never, not even in the New Testament represent. There, the question of how Jesus enters a room, despite locked doors (John 20, 26). Although it bears the stigmata of the crucified Christ (John 20, 24-28), but his body is different, transformed. He does not return to earthly life, but is included in a new, everlasting life with God. Also, such an idea is hard to digest for people today.

If, however, no historical event is described, things look different. Who is approached with the methods of a historian to a phenomenon that gets a historic response. It also happens to the scientist. Is he trying to classify the resurrection of Jesus in a modern world view is, his answer from science. But what if these sciences to the problem does not in their hands? Do we want to know why a novel is exciting, we will instruct anyone to analyze the amount of ink used and their arrangement on the pages. Anyone interested in the beauty of a picture, do not ask whether the laws of nature are broken. Why should historians and scientists ask, if we want to know about the resurrection? Only give us information about how we can understand ourselves and our world?

Anyone who thinks that has made a preliminary decision, we must exclude God, if we are to meet the scientific thinking and represent our beliefs in today’s world rationally. This preliminary decision can be taken – and thus set limits itself to come to the Christian belief in the resurrection on the track. For the Christian begins the interesting questions at first, when he allows that they talk about God