Easter and the War between the Rationalist and Empiricist
We are less than a month away from Easter and you might already be struggling to keep up your lenten chocolate or cake fast. But I wonder, as you so diligently deprive yourself, whether you have taken the time to stop and ask if its is all true. Ever since that first Easter the cross and resurrection of Jesus has laid at the world's feet a monumental claim. A claim that goes against everything we know about the natural order of things. It is the claim that a human being, despite torture and death, can rise from the dead alive in a new physical body. If Easter is not true or perhaps only metaphorical then as the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:19, '...we are of all people most to be pitied'. Frankly, if Easter is not true then I can think of a 100 better things to do with my Sunday mornings. These might include, spending more time with my wife and children, improving my surfing, filling myself with more chocolate, cake, coffee or TV, and (O Joy!) not wearing impractical clerical robes. But if Easter is true, then what we have is nothing less than the most significant event in the history of the universe. What could be more significant than a death and life encounter with the creator of the universe in human flesh?
But how could we ever know if it is true? How do we know if anything is true? Influential enlightenment philosophy has traditionally been divided into two camps: empiricists and rationalists. A strict rationalist might approach the Easter stories with reason: the claims of the empty tomb; the multiple eye witness accounts of the risen Jesus; the reliability and early compilation date of the four gospels; the miraculous transformation in Jesus closest follows who were so quick to abandon him at his death yet would go on to give their lives in their pursuit to spread this good news; the unprecedented growth of the early church; the ultimate legacy of a poor carpenters son who died an early and humiliating death who just happened to be the person we decided to base our whole western calender on.
'Yes' the rationalist would say there is reasonable evidence. But here the rationalist hits a wall because the conclusion reached is utterly irrational. It defies all human reason: people do not rise from the dead. At this point, either the rationalist must step off a cliff in faith or reject his/her own reason, which might in fact mean rejecting the very cliff he/ she stands on.
A strict empiricist, on the other hand, would approach the Easter stories from an experiential perspective. In other words, he or she would ask 'what did actually happen on that first Easter Sunday?' Here the empiricist would have to reject the Easter claim, as people don't rise from the dead. But he or she would also have to conclude that something significant did happen. What is often ventured is what has become known as 'the big fish story'. Perhaps Jesus' first followers were emotionally carried along by the sacrificial example set by Jesus. Then, in order to convince a more sceptical later audience the stories themselves and Jesus' identity would have had to be embellished. Finally, by the time the stories are written down the result is a great big elaborate fish caught by some very puffed up fisherman.
But here the empiricist must hit a wall because a 'great big elaborate fish' is precisely what we don't have in the gospel accounts of Easter. Between the four accounts, Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20, there is both consistency and confusion. First, there seems to be agreement about the day, the time, the empty tomb and that women were the first eyewitnesses. But there is discrepancy about the number of eyewitnesses, who was at the tomb, whether the women immediately kept the story to themselves or went onto tell the rest of the disciples. Second (this point has been made many times), if in ancient times one were constructing a 'big fish story', one would have to be extremely naïve to base its validity on the testimony of a few women. It is well known that at that time women were not considered reliable witnesses in court. Third, when compared to the rest of the gospels, there is a notable lack of 'theologizing'. These stories are simple. They do not draw on Old Testament scripture as in the case of the material leading up to the crucifixion. Moreover, they do not immediately elaborate upon any future Christian hope. They are simply preoccupied with the present circumstances, of which they struggle to describe (See Wright, 'The Resurrection of the Son of God', pg 600). And so what we have is something more a kin to a small bewildered fish with a fin and tail slightly out of place. Of course, lets not also forget that if we read beyond the gospels about the acts of the early church, we also have quite a few dead or dying fisherman (eg. Stephen, James, Peter, Paul).
Present day philosophy would conclude that in reality our knowledge is made up of a combination of rationalistic and empirical factors. What is interesting about the Easter stories is that they look precisely like the sort of stories a group of frightened people would tell who were trying to come to terms with something that was far too big for both the rational and empirical sides of their brains.
Therefore, if I were a betting man, I would say, 'Easter is true!', but even as I say that I find myself gasping at the enormity of that statement, gasping at the life and death implications of the statement and gasping at the astounding love of my creator. Whether you have been going to church for 50 years or have never stepped foot in one, if Easter doesn't make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up then you need to read the stories again and be inspired!
Happy Easter
Mark Barrett.