Faith or Fact?

18 April 2004

Generally speaking, my children get on quite well with each other. There is never too much fighting, or arguing. Of course, much depends on us as parents learning avoidance tactics: as long as no two of them have the same colour of shirt, or the same make of mobile phone, or the same brand of aftershave, things usually go quite smoothly.

On holiday recently, however, a mega-argument arose between our young lady and our number two son. Like an eastern hurricane, it seemed to appear out of nowhere before assuming force 9 proportions. After battening the hatches and checking that our own lives were not in danger, I ventured to listen in.

Of course, the cause of the flare-up was something so trite as to be quite unmemorable, but what amused me was the way in which the argument was concluded. After a round of argument and response, volley and counter-retort, number two son said, 'you can't prove I'm wrong if you are wrong yourself!'.

Well, there is no answer to that, is there? The debate fell on its face, and normal service was resumed. But I was more than amused -- the line was actually brilliant. As a philosophical position, it is impossible to falsify a theory if your own position is wrong. Begin with a false premise yourself, and you can neither defend nor deny the validity of another position.

It was a line I recalled while reading a newspaper review recently. The writer was reviewing some previous television programmes, among which was Tom Wright's programme 'Resurrection', broadcast on Channel 4 on Easter Monday. Wright is an accomplished New Testament scholar, not all of whose conclusions I would endorse, but whose scholarship I greatly admire.

Wright is now Bishop of Durham, succeeding a famous occupier of that post who, not that long ago, took on both Margaret Thatcher and the idea of the literal, physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was twenty years ago, in 1984, that David Jenkins was appointed Bishop of Durham, with his views on the resurrection becoming the occasion of much debate between traditionalists and revisionists. If Jenkins could not believe that the New Testament account of Christ's resurrection was literal fact, how could he undertake the office of Bishop?

That he did is now a matter of historical record (or is it??). It is gratifying, to say the least, to find a successor in his office now appearing on television arguing that a literal resurrection from the dead is a necessary plank of Christian faith and theology. Tom Wright's argument is beguilingly simple. Resurrection from the dead is no part of any of the ancient wisdoms current in the first century: no part of Greek belief, Roman belief, or Jewish belief. The only reason why the apostles might proclaim such a doctrine is because it actually happened.

Actually, the third point of his apologetic is questionable. Is there no doctrine of resurrection in the Old Testament? Whatever the rabbinic scholars made of the concept of death in the inter-testamental period, it is impossible to read passages like Job 19, Psalm 16 or Ezekiel 37 without seeing in them an idea of resurrection.

But Wright's argument is still valid on its own terms. Why would anyone go around preaching that a dead man had risen if a dead man had not risen? The core message of the early apostles could easily be discredited if the tomb of Jesus still contained a body. The authorities sealed the grave precisely because they were afraid that the followers of Jesus could steal the body and concoct a story on the basis of an empty tomb. Every effort was made to ensure the body stayed where it was. The fact that it did not -- that the grave was emptied from the inside -- was the one indisputable, verifiable fact of history that brought a new doctrine to light.

Yet in reviewing Wright's programme, the newspaper writer said that Christianity was a matter of faith, not fact, and no less respectable for it. Which brings me back to the wisdom distilled from the domestic tiff I wrote about earlier. A position cannot be falsified by someone starting from the wrong position.

For it is evidently not the case that Christianity is a matter of faith rather than fact. The Christian faith is grounded in history; if there is no historical basis for it, then no amount of believing can be justified. As Paul puts it so cogently, if Christ is not risen, our faith is in vain. The core truths of the Christian gospel are not grounded in a non-historical faith, but in the deeds of God in the history of the world.

It is precisely because of the empty tomb that I remain a Christian. The empirical evidence is overwhelming. The historical fact is incontrovertible. Tom Wright is, indeed, right: where could the idea of resurrection have come from if not from the victory of the Son of God ( to borrow the title of one of Wright's books)?

And, at last, resurrection is what connects me to the ancient documents we call the New Testament. The Word of God is living and powerful, valid and authoritative, abiding and relevant, precisely because the central figure of its pages is the living Christ. That is a matter both of fact AND faith.