See Rebuttal and Cross Examination below
Opening Statement
Marcus sets out his hopes for the debate as a way to deepen our understanding of Easter, to see where there are agreements and disagreements and what is at stake in those points of disagreement.
Prologue- The Nature of the Bible and the Gospels
Are we to see the gospels and the bible as a divine product or as a human product? If you see the Bible as infallible and imbued with the Holy spirit so much so that it is unquestionably historically accurate then the debate needs to be about the nature of the bible. This remark is addressed to the audience and not to Marcus’s debate opponent Bill Cray.
Marcus sees the gospels as a developing tradition, they were written in the last third of the first century. Mark tells us how the story of Easter was being told around the year 70, Mathew and Luke the 80s and John in the 90s. The traditions of Easter are developed from the time of Jesus’s death until the time the gospels are written meaning the stories are told and they are added to as people have more experiences with the risen Christ as well as Christianity moving beyond Judaism and into the broader Mediterranean community. This also means that the gospels have both earlier layers of tradition and later layers of tradition or two voices. One voice is Jesus and the other is the early Christians interpreting their experiences of Jesus.
The gospels combine memory and metaphor. The gospels are a combination of history remembered on one hand and history metaphorized on the other hand. Some of the things in the gospels are historically accurate and actually happened for instance Jesus actually made a final journey to Jerusalem but in Mark’s telling of the story he adds metaphors and additional layers of meaning about being a disciple and following Jesus. Other parts of the gospel are purely metaphorized meaning there isn’t a particular historical incident behind the story but that whole story works metaphorically or symbolically. This creates three categories of gospels 1) history remembered, 2) history metraphorized and 3) purely metaphorical narrative. Metaphor and symbol are still of great value and can be true. Metaphor is the more than literal meaning of language, it is not less and factual but more than literal. According to a Swedish proverb “theology is poetry plus, not science minus” Marcus understands this to mean that theology is more than poetry in that it makes a truth claim but it is not a language that is somehow inferior to science or factual events. To apply this wisdom to this debate; biblical language is poetry plus not somehow inferior to historical reporting. This is important to explain because Marcus sees some of the Easter stories as metaphorical narratives and not as straight forward historical reports but that in no way lessen’s their meaning.
The Historical Ground of Easter-What Do I Think Happened?
The followers of Jesus continued to experience him as a living reality after his death. Marcus takes the New Testament reports of such experiences very seriously. Jesus did not live on merely in the way the Martin Luther King’s legacy and how he continues to inspire people but in that Jesus’s followers continued to experience him in real visions. Visions are not only visual but also often tactile with a feeling of being touched. They continued to experience his presence in the breaking of the bread and they continued to experience his power to heal, transform lives and create community. These experiences continue to this day, many Christians still experience Jesus as a living reality. For these reasons for Marcus it does not matter if the tomb was really empty on Easter. Easter is not about something fantastic happening on a specific day in history but rather about the continuing experience of Jesus after his death.
Marcus does not think of the stories of Easter as describing events that could have been photographed or seen by a disinterested observer that happened to be present. Marcus sees them as metaphorical narratives that describe the emotions of the event or parables of the event.
The Central Truth Claims of Easter
Jesus lives. Jesus is a figure of the present not just of the past, a continuing reality that continues to be known bey Christians.
God has vindicated Jesus. God has said yes to Jesus and no to that which crucified him namely the domination system of his day.
Jesus is lord. God has not only vindicated Jesus but God has exhaled him above everyone and given him the name lord. The risen Jesus is one with God or at God’s right hand and participates in the power and being of God. The affirmation that Jesus is lord has both a political and religious meaning in it’s contemporary context. The other person given that title at the time was Cesar the emperor.
Conclusion
The central truth claims of Easter are that Jesus lives, God has vindicated Jesus and Jesus is Lord. These central truths make Easter really true even if Marcus is skeptical that the tomb was empty or that anything miraculous happened to the corpse of Jesus. The stories of Jesus are really true even if they may not be literally true.
Rebuttal
Marcus first comments on his opponent’s opening statement. Firstly he remarks on Dr. Cray’s use of “the majority of new testament scholars, most of new testament scholars.” Marcus points out that based on what branch of scholarship whether it be conservative or liberal you are interested in you can find that a majority of what you choose to read agrees with your view point. Marcus believes both sides could cite scholars that agree with them at length and not really prove any points. Secondly Dr. Cray seemed to think Marcus had not provided any substantive evidence in favor of his position. Marcus counters that given the time constraints corroborating scholars and evidence are less important than explaining the paradigms through which each views the gospels which is the primary difference between the two viewpoints.
It is very important for the audience to understand that the two views differ both historically and theologically.
Historical Differences
The primary historical difference between the two viewpoints is ‘was the tomb empty?’ Both agree that Jesus appeared to his followers after his death. Marcus poses the question “If you had been there with a camera do you imagine you would have been able to photograph Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene?” When you say Jesus rose bodily from the dead are you implying that it was the kind of event that could have been photographed or videotaped?
Marcus is not arguing that he knows for certain that the tomb was not empty. Marcus has no interest in trying to prove the tomb was not empty. Whether or not the tomb was empty is irrelevant to the truth of Easter. Affirming that Jesus’s corpse was transformed through an intervention of God that has never happened before or since does create problems.
Theological Differences
How much does that matter? Bill Cray says if the tomb wasn’t empty then Christianity is a delusion. It matters very much to Bill Cray’s analysis whether or not the tomb was empty. For Marcus it really doesn’t matter. Quoting Paul in saying “if Christ has not been raised from the dead then our preaching is in vain and our faith is in vain” does not support an empty tomb because in that same chapter Paul speaks of his own experience of the risen Christ which was clearly a vision and puts it in a list with others implying that others had similar experiences to his own. Later when asked with what kind of body are the dead raised, Paul explicitly denies that it is the physical flesh and blood body but speaks instead of the spiritual body. Paul unambiguously affirms that Jesus was resurrected with a spiritual body.
Bill has also said that Marcus’s understanding of metaphor doesn’t really work. Metaphor is about something. The risen Christ isn’t a metaphor but the Easter stories are metaphorical narratives and what they are about is the affirmation that Jesus is a living spiritual figure of the present not the past.
Marcus reminds his listeners of the Emmaus road story in which two followers of Jesus are making a 7 mile journey on which they are joined by a stranger. The readers know the stranger to be the risen Christ but the travelers don’t know that and they walk together for several hours in which they talk about their hopes for Jesus Christ but now he’s been crucified, they talk about scripture together. The travelers still do not recognize the stranger when they arrive inn Emmaus it’s getting late and dark, the stranger is about to leave them and they ask the stranger to stay with them, they sit down with a meal, the stranger takes bread blesses it and breaks it and then we are told that their eyes were opened and they recognize him as Jesus in the breaking of the bread and then he vanishes from their sight. Marcus poses the question ‘if you had been there do you think you could have photographed the three of them, recorded their conversation?’ You only have to pose that question to begin to wonder, maybe it’s not that kind of story. Maybe it’s a metaphorical narrative, a symbolic story. The truth of that story is; the risen Christ journeys with us whether we know it or not, believe it or not, realize it or not and yet there are those moments of recognition. Those moments of recognition sometimes come through scripture or communion or and they come in other ways as well. The risen Christ is a figure of the present who continues to be known to this day.
Q&A Cross Examination
The first question asks about how each side deals with the understanding that Jesus died and that the Gospels were written in the 70s, 80s and 90s, well after the event they are recording, leaving much time for embellishment and adding metaphors after which that embellishment stops. Some scholars suggest Mark may have used sources dating to within 7 years of Jesus’s death, Marcus counters that claiming such a source at this point would be highly speculative. Yes, different people both present and intimately involved in a say a courtship will recall different events and place different importance on different instances, that does not make that the courtship happened more or less true. Marcus believes that the resurrection happened but thinks that the empty tomb is a metaphor or parable for that occurrence. If you want to explain that Jesus is a figure of the present not the past that he lives among us, how better to explain it than to tell a story about going to his tomb and finding it empty. In Mark’s gospel the angel (in biblical stories the angel’s function is usually to tell you what’s going on in the narrative) says “he is not here he is risen.” That is what the story in Mark as a parable of the resurrection would mean. You won’t find Jesus in the land of the dead he is a figure of the present. Marcus again underlines that the major historical difference of opinion between his opinion and those he is arguing against is whether it is crucial that the tomb was empty or not.
Marcus asks his opponents a two part question. Firstly in what state do you think the body of Jesus exists would you say it’s a physical body would you say it’s transformed physicality, second do you think he still exists in that same state? His opponent believes when you die you have a transformed body that still has an element of physicality in it this is why it matters what happens to your body here on earth. Jesus has a physical body when he enters this world but doesn’t need a body when he doesn’t appear to us.
A question of what roles and purpose do the women discovering the empty tomb have if this narrative is a parable is asked. Marcus thinks that this may indicate that the risen Christ first appeared to some of his women followers.
A member of the audience asks, if Jesus did not bodily rise from the dead but instead spiritually rose from the dead, how does that make the claims of Christianity different from the claims of Islam where all you have is a spiritual manifestation? Marcus gives his definition of Christianity. Christians are people who find the decisive revelation of God in Jesus. Muslims are people who find the decisive revelation of God in the Koran. What differentiates Christians is where they see the decisive revelation of God. Marcus does not see one tradition as manifestly superior to another, God the sacred is known in all of the enduring religious traditions of the world.
Conclusion
Marcus begins by refuting what one of the other speakers had said about his beliefs. Marcus does not believe that the post Easter Jesus is the product of Christian imagination. The post Easter Jesus is the product of Christian experience and the developing Christian tradition. People continue to experience Jesus to this day.
Jesus is lord because the domination system is not. Religiously the risen Christ is rightly the object of Christian prayer and worship. It is the political meaning of lord that might be less familiar to the audience.
Marcus quotes a novel P.D. James’s “Death in Holy Orders” One of the subplots of the book that takes place in a monastery. In the monastery there is an ancient papyrus that is allegedly a letter from Pilate ordering the removal of Jesus’s body from the tomb. The main character a detective asks one of the oldest monks there if it would matter to him if that letter were genuine and that the reason the tomb was empty was because Pilate had ordered the body removed. The monk’s response was “my son, for one who every hour of his life has the assurance of the living presence of Christ why should I worry about what happened to his earthly bones”. To argue that the Christian faith depends upon the historicity of the empty tomb is an enormous distraction. It risks turning Christian faith into believing in the past happenedness of spectacular event rather than Christian faith being about having a relationship with Christ in the present, that’s what matters.
Marcus recalls being in a dialogue with another conservative scholar a couple of years ago. He climaxed his argument by saying that in addition to all that the reason I know for sure that Jesus has been raised from the dead is that I walk with Jesus every day. Marcus responded, I accept absolutely the truth of your statement that you walk with Jesus every day but I don’t for a moment imagine that if I followed you around with a camera there would be a time when I could get a photograph of the two of you then he concluded by saying I think your statement is really true but I don’t for a moment think it is literally true.