The Resurrection Series #18

Isn’t Peter Important?

Like the post-Pauline epistles most believe that the Petrine epistles were not actually written by Peter. What is likely is that they come from a community or source that was particularly affiliated with Peter and his ministry. Since these epistles cannot give us direct access to Peter’s own thoughts and autobiographical narrative they have little weight historically speaking compared to Paul, but these epistles are still valuable works within the New Testament structure, and should not be seen as limited simply because they were not written by Peter himself.

While it is interesting that we cannot put too much weight on these epistles for historical information, it is also interesting is what is not historically significant for these epistles. While we cannot view these letters as reflecting the character or internal states of Jesus’ head disciple, what we can be interested in is how other communities felt entitled to attribute these epistles to Peter, nonetheless. So while we may not be able to say that Peter definitely believed this or that because it is in the epistles with his namesake. We can take note that others had no issue with attributing his namesake to what is written inside these epistles, and since this is apart of our Biblical heritage, we as Christians should take it seriously, too.

The author says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you” (1:3-4). Elsewhere he says, “Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and soy our faith and hope are in God” (21). And he says how baptism saves us in being a symbol of the resurrection (3:21). In all these the Petrine tradition offers no account of any physical or historical testimony for the resurrection. We do not see these epistles giving an account of how Peter witnessed the risen Lord, nor do we find any teaching on how Jesus was seen by witnesses as all. In fact, it appears that the same formula we see in the rest of the New Testament is what we see in the Petrine epistles as well, and that is that Christ died and was immediately taken to heaven.

It should be noted that there is one major place where such an insertion should be expected. At one point the author says, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, your love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1:6-9). This would be the perfect place to add testimony to the fact that Jesus has been seen, or revealed to a few, like we see in 1 Corinthians 15, but there is nothing of the sort. For all intents and purposes this pericope reveals to us that no one has actually seen Jesus since he died, for what this reveals to us is that a lack of physical evidence actually increases faith and saves our souls.

2 Peter is an interesting book. It may be the last book to be written in the NT canon. It is certainly one of the last. It contains references to Gospel stories, which is interesting, because this author makes no specific claim for physical regeneration as an eschatological belief. In fact, the author speaks of his body being simply a “tent”, and this is mixed with the claim how they were eyewitnesses of Jesus’ majesty (1:14-16). Thus, there is no dissimilarity in thiw authors mind of establishing how our bodies will be regenerated after the resurrection as it was with Christ, because it is most likely that this author had no belief that bodies need be physically regenerated. And, this author makes no claim for the resurrection in order to allude to Christ’s majesty. He says that the divine affirmation at baptism and the transfiguration experience were the only eyewitness attestations that they Petrine tradition can make (17-18).

James makes no mention of the resurrection. He hardly mentions Jesus. And Jude only makes reference to Jesus being the source of eternal life (21).Thus, we are left with Hebrews. Hebrews begins with the exaltation model of resurrection where Jesus is taken to heaven after death with no mention of intermediary activity on earth. “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven (1:4). Hebrews makes some other casual references. It simply affirms the resurrection as a simple belief for spiritual infants (6:2). It says that Jesus has an indestructible life (7:16), that he will live forever (24), and that he is exalted (27).

In the eighth chapter of Hebrews the author begins by describing Jesus heavenly ministry. This is an interesting shift or speculation, because it almost nullifies any claim for a post-death appearance of Jesus here on earth. If you follow the argument Jesus is needed in heaven to continue to make intercession for us and forgive us our sins. So any intermediary time between Jesus’ death and his time in heaven where Jesus walked around and talked to people would only be seen as time wasted from Jesus’ true heavenly ministry (8:4). It is further emphasized in the next chapter how Christ’s heavenly existence has nothing to do with corporeality, and is instead something that must be spiritual, because he is serving a spiritual ministry. Christ is not a part of this creation. His body according to the Hebrews is spiritual (9:11). Now this does not exclude the possibility for a physical resurrection, but it does not necessitate it, nor does it hint at a preferential distinction between physical regeneration and resubstantiation.

In another sense the author of Hebrews makes the point that for Christ to still have a physical body would imply that he did not actually make a sacrifice for our sins. The perfect sacrifice in Hebrews is the physical body of a sinless person. To keep a physical body, or to regenerate it would be in a sense to take back that sacrifice. This is why the priest who offered the perfect sacrifice (himself) went to sit at the right hand of God. He was immediately exalted into heaven without any intermediary period of spending time on earth (10:12). At the very end of this epistle the author confirms once again that Jesus was brought back from the dead (13:20).

1 John begins with what might be a promising note for the resurrection. It mentions eyewitnesses and appearances, but it lacks the persuasive force to make an argument that these events describe appearances of a post-death Jesus. The beginning of 1 John however does affirm that eternal life is found in Jesus which can serve as a basis for resurrection belief, but the eyewitnesses are not directly linked to Jesus (1:1-4). The author of 1 John also seems to think that our future existence with God has not yet been made known, meaning that he is unaware of any post-death appearances of physical regeneration. This author believes that we will be like Christ, but that the specifics of this future reality is unknown, which means that there exists no knowledge of what Christ was like while he walked on earth before the ascension and after the Empty Tomb (3:2). Two other times the author of 1 John makes mention of eternal life being found in Jesus (5:11, 20).

For this author Jesus’ after-death existence is to be the source of eternal life. He makes no appeal to eyewitness testimony for this, except to claim that eternal life has appeared, and not Jesus himself. In fact, the author goes to lengths to say that no one knows what Jesus looks like now suggesting that there was no after-death appearance. For this author the only sufficient requirement needed in order to make the claim that in Jesus exists eternal life is that he be identified as the Son of God (5:1). And we identify one from God, because he does the will of God (2:17). So this author is making the argument that we know Jesus is from God, not because of any supernatural intervention, but simply because he was a man who did the will of God par excellence. 2 John makes no reference to a resurrection of Jesus. And 3 John makes no reference to a resurrection of Jesus.

This concludes our look into the NT epistles which give us the most accurate historical picture of what early Christians believed about Jesus, and in this entire scope of literature, I must confess that we have no found a single confession of what the Gospels proclaim, namely that Jesus’ body was physically regenerated, glorified, and walked around for a period of time before ascending into heaven. So in order to establish the historical model of the resurrection as being more likely then the spiritual model we have to put all our weight on the Gospels. Considering that the best sources we have support a spiritual resurrection model the Gospels must overcome a serious deficiency. It is unlikely that they could do so.