Is doubting the Resurrection “good for Christians”?

n a recent arti­cle in the Wash­ing­ton Post, Jacob Lupfer argues that “doubt­ing the Bible is good for Chris­tians.” Since the arti­cle was pub­lished on Good Fri­day, I sus­pect­ed that the oblig­a­tory year­ly scoff­ing at the Res­ur­rec­tion was afoot. Lupfer did not dis­ap­point. The sec­u­lar media is always busy at its charism of instruct­ing Chris­tians on how the Bible should real­ly be read. It is not as though we inquire with the Church or any­thing like that; instead, we look to our prophets in the media.

Mr. Lupfer begins:

As a pro­fes­sion­al observ­er of Amer­i­can reli­gion, I am fas­ci­nat­ed by how peo­ple decide which bib­li­cal sto­ries must be under­stood as lit­er­al accounts of his­tor­i­cal events and which may be inter­pret­ed as myth­ic, metaphor­i­cal or exag­ger­at­ed.

Now one thing that fas­ci­nates me about this is that it has noth­ing at all to do—as Mr. Lupfer­’s title proclaims—with doubt­ing the Bible, mere­ly with the right inter­pre­ta­tion of it. I can think the Book of Job is fic­tion with­out doubt­ing it. It only requires say­ing Job was nev­er meant to be under­stood as his­tor­i­cal in the first place.

A sec­ond thing that fas­ci­nates me is the unstat­ed assump­tion behind Mr. Lupfer­’s obser­va­tion; name­ly, that the dif­fer­ence between what Chris­tians view as myth and what they view as his­to­ry is a mere­ly arbi­trary one. Mr. Lupfer does not tell us why he enter­tains such an assump­tion, but look at what it leads to:

[P]lenty of Chris­tians inter­pret at least some bib­li­cal mate­r­i­al non-lit­er­al­ly. Maybe Jesus did not actu­al­ly walk on water. Maybe the sto­ry of Jon­ah liv­ing in a fish’s bel­ly for three days is a myth. Maybe Job was not a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure.

If these sto­ries are myth­i­cal, Mr. Lupfer­’s “log­ic” goes, per­haps the Res­ur­rec­tion is myth­i­cal as well.

Once you accept the his­toric­i­ty of the res­ur­rec­tion, you already hold the con­di­tions for believ­ing that Jesus walked on water, that he lit­er­al­ly fed 5,000 peo­ple with only a few loaves and fish­es. And per­haps, when this hap­pens, believ­ers stop think­ing crit­i­cal­ly about the Bible and miss out on a lot of the lessons buried beneath the lit­er­al sto­ries.

Now, the main prob­lem with all that is that it is a non sequitur. It sim­ply does not fol­low that if one thing in the Bible is to be under­stood his­tor­i­cal­ly, some­thing else may not be under­stood myth­i­cal­ly; or vice ver­sa. The Bible is a col­lec­tion of texts writ­ten in dif­fer­ent cul­tures over a peri­od of sev­er­al thou­sand years, and as such is com­prised of many dif­fer­ent lit­er­ary gen­res. This is such a com­mon­place, such an obvi­ous point for any­one who both­ers to look through the table of con­tents, that it sur­pris­es me I have to men­tion it at all.

For exam­ple, since Mr. Lupfer brings it up, let us look at how the Book of Job opens:

There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blame­less and upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil. 2There were born to him sev­en sons and three daugh­ters. He had sev­en thou­sand sheep, three thou­sand camels, five hun­dred yoke of oxen, and five hun­dred she-ass­es, and very many ser­vants; so that this man was the great­est of all the peo­ple of the east. His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each on his day; and they would send and invite their three sis­ters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and sanc­ti­fy them, and he would rise ear­ly in the morn­ing and offer burnt offer­ings accord­ing to the num­ber of them all; for Job said, “It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did con­tin­u­al­ly. (Job 1:1–5)

“There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job”: This reads like the stan­dard open­ing of a lit­er­ary tale. It is a once-upon-a-time begin­ning. By con­trast, look at how the Gospel of Luke begins:

Inas­much as many have under­tak­en to com­pile a nar­ra­tive of the things which have been accom­plished among us, just as they were deliv­ered to us by those who from the begin­ning were eye­wit­ness­es and min­is­ters of the word, it seemed good to me also, hav­ing fol­lowed all things closely[a] for some time past, to write an order­ly account for you, most excel­lent Theophilus, that you may know the truth con­cern­ing the things of which you have been informed. (Luke 1:1–4)

Luke presents his gospel as an his­tor­i­cal account, based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of eye­wit­ness­es. It is a very dif­fer­ent type of text than the Book of Job. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Gospel of Matthew begins with a geneal­o­gy, and that sig­nals to us that it is root­ed in the his­tor­i­cal record. The Gospels are writ­ten as eye­wit­ness accounts.

If Mr. Lupfer wants to know “how peo­ple decide which bib­li­cal sto­ries must be under­stood as lit­er­al accounts of his­tor­i­cal events and which may be inter­pret­ed as myth­ic, metaphor­i­cal or exag­ger­at­ed,” this is one way you do it: by dis­cern­ing the genre of writ­ing you are deal­ing with. It is not, of course, the only way; but it is an impor­tant one.

Anoth­er way we can know, with respect to the Res­ur­rec­tion, that we are to under­stand it lit­er­al­ly, is that St. Paul in his first let­ter to the Corinthi­ans tells us that Chris­tian­i­ty itself depends upon the Res­ur­rec­tion. “If Christ has not been raised,” he says, “your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthi­ans 15:17). It mat­ters; there is none of this doubt-is-a-good-thing busi­ness from Paul. Chris­tian­i­ty, as an his­tor­i­cal faith which arose at a par­tic­u­lar his­tor­i­cal time, depend­ed on an his­tor­i­cal event: the Res­ur­rec­tion. If the Res­ur­rec­tion is no more than a myth, then Chris­tian­i­ty is no more than a myth.

The prob­lem is that Mr. Lupfer has roman­ti­cized his doubt to the point that it has become his reli­gion. He does not believe in Christ so much as he belives in his own doubt. With­out doubt, he tells us, a per­son can not “think crit­i­cal­ly” about the Bible. I am not sure why. Mr. Lupfer con­fus­es crit­i­cal think­ing with doubt; they are not the same.

“I would pre­fer a faith,” he says, “that can with­stand the most strin­gent intel­lec­tu­al scruti­ny.” Of course Chris­tian­i­ty can—as it has been advo­cat­ed by intel­lects much more pro­found than either Lupfer­’s or my own—but you will have a dif­fi­cult time at such scruti­ny if doubt is your default posi­tion. When doubt is your default posi­tion, you always set the bar unrea­son­ably high. Even if you were Thomas and put your fin­ger inside of Christ’s wounds, you could always retreat to a hal­lu­ci­na­tion the­o­ry. You shut out any room for faith when you demand that doubt become impos­si­ble as a con­di­tion for belief.

Thomas was the first to demand the impos­si­bil­i­ty of doubt regard­ing the Res­ur­rec­tion of Christ. When Christ then said to him, “Put your fin­ger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faith­less, but believ­ing,” Thomas fell down and said, “My Lord and my God.” And Christ replied, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20:24–29).

Mr. Lupfer insists that only when he stops wor­ry­ing about the his­toric­i­ty of the Res­ur­rec­tion can he “think seri­ous­ly about what it would mean to fol­low in Christ’s foot­steps.” But if Christ’s words to Thomas are to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, walk­ing in His foot­steps requires faith–and specif­i­cal­ly faith in the Res­ur­rec­tion even with­out hav­ing seen it. For with­out the Res­ur­rec­tion, we are still in our sins and our faith is vain.

Doubt as a default posi­tion can always set the bar for belief so high it can not be met. No one can prove the res­ur­rec­tion; but you can dis­prove it: Just show me a body. For 2000 years, no one has ever pro­duced a body. It is not faith that needs to be proven, but doubt.

Mr. Lupfer con­cludes:

But I will find my way to some church on East­er morn­ing, less as a jour­nal­ist or schol­ar and more as a once-and-maybe-future wor­shiper. I will find my voice exclaim­ing, “He is risen indeed. Alleluia!” Will I final­ly believe? Maybe not, but I will silent­ly con­cede that the res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus Christ is not the cra­zi­est thing I ever thought about believ­ing in.

He seems to long for faith so much, even in the midst of all his insis­tence on the impor­tance of doubt. Such incon­gru­ence can only be solved when a per­son stops hav­ing faith in his doubts. Blessed are those who have not seen and have still believed.

He is risen indeed. Hal­lelu­jah.

 
Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at Catholic Stand, March 28, 2016