The Resurrection of Christ, and the Continuation of Miracles in the Church
EOF echo done## Article 2 — The Resurrection of Christ
I. The Resurrection of Christ is recorded not only in the four Gospels but throughout the Acts of the Apostles, and St. Paul states explicitly that the Resurrection, as preached by the Apostles, is the strongest of all the motives of credibility. Rationalists and Modernists have proposed, between them, at least four distinct theories to explain the Resurrection away: the theories of fraud, of exaggeration, of hallucination, and of purely spiritual vision.
1° The theory of fraud, first put forward by the Jewish priests themselves and later promulgated by Celsus, holds that the Apostles secretly removed the body of Christ, and were thereafter conscious liars regarding the Resurrection they proclaimed; Reimarus revived this same explanation among the Deists of the eighteenth century.
2° The theory of exaggeration, associated with Weizsäcker and Martineau, holds that the Apostles originally declared only, in some general way, that they had “seen the Lord,” meaning simply that they believed in His continued spiritual existence — a claim later disciples then exaggerated until it hardened into belief in a genuine bodily Resurrection.
3° The theory of hallucination, associated above all with Strauss and Renan, and echoed by Réville, Meyer, and Weizsäcker among others, holds that the Apostles genuinely suffered a collective hallucination.
4° The theory of purely spiritual vision, associated with Keim, Ewald, and Stapfer, asserts that Christ did not really rise bodily at all, but only appeared to the Apostles in a purely spiritual manner. The Modernist E. Le Roy holds a broadly similar theory: after death, he suggests, the soul of Christ simply continued to live on, so that the Apostles, reasoning on essentially pragmatic principles, came to act “as if” Christ had risen bodily, whatever the underlying metaphysical fact. This pragmatist opinion has been formally condemned, together with Loisy’s own related claims — first, that the Resurrection was not, properly speaking, a fact of the ordinary historical order at all, and was for that reason simply not demonstrable by historical means; and second, that the original belief in the Resurrection was never really belief in the bodily fact itself, but only in Christ’s continued immortality.
II. The importance of the Resurrection, according to both Christ’s own declarations and those of the Apostles.
(A) Christ Himself chose this sign as the seal of His miracles and as an irrefragable argument of His own divine mission. When the Pharisees demanded, “Master, we would see a sign from thee,” Our Lord answered: “the Son of man shall be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights” (Matt. 12:40; cf. Luke 11:29); and, speaking to the Jews on another occasion, “destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19; cf. Mark 14:58). To His own disciples He predicted His Resurrection on at least four separate, recorded occasions: (1) after Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi (Matt. 16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22); (2) after His Transfiguration (Matt. 17:22–23; Mark 9:30); (3) after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Matt. 20:19; Mark 10:34; Luke 18:33); and (4) after the Last Supper (Matt. 26:32; Mark 14:28). Further testimony to this prophecy comes, indirectly, from the very blasphemy hurled at Him on the Cross — “thou that destroyest the temple … save thyself: if thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matt. 27:39–40; cf. Mark 15:29–30) — and from the request the chief priests made to Pilate after His death: “Sir, we have remembered, that that seducer said, while he was yet alive: After three days I will rise again. Command therefore the sepulchre to be guarded until the third day: lest perhaps his disciples come, and steal him away, and say to the people, He is risen from the dead: and the last error shall be worse than the first” (Matt. 27:63–64). The Apostles themselves possessed absolute certitude of this great mystery (cf. Acts 3:15; 4:10ff.), worked miracles in its confirmation, and finally shed their own blood in witness of its truth.
(B) The Apostles, in turn, appealed constantly to the Resurrection to confirm the truth of their preaching. Matthias was chosen to replace Judas precisely because he could personally testify to the Resurrection (Acts 1:22); Peter’s very first public sermon appeals directly to this miracle (Acts 2:32–36), and Paul, addressing the Athenians, makes exactly the same appeal (Acts 17:31). Paul writes at length to the Corinthians: “Christ … rose again the third day, according to the scriptures … he was seen by Cephas; and after that by the eleven. Then he was seen by more than five hundred brethren at once … after that, he was seen by James, then by all the apostles. And last of all, he was seen also by me, as by one born out of due time” (1 Cor. 15:3–8); “and if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). Paul argues elsewhere that faith in the risen Christ is the very root of our justification (Rom. 4:25): had He not risen, He would not thereby have removed sin at all. Chrysostom, Theophylact, and other Fathers develop the identical argument. In this last declaration of St. Paul the true importance of the Resurrection appears clearly, together with its intimate connection to the whole body of central Christian mystery: “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23), and so He who invisibly takes away the sin of the world should, fittingly, also visibly take away death, sin’s own consequence, so that we might possess a most certain sign both of His victory over sin and of our own Redemption. Under this higher aspect, the Resurrection of Christ is a mystery belonging intrinsically to Christianity, and a proper object of Faith, even though, considered simply in its exterior aspect, it remains equally a plain fact of history. Thus, when Rationalists object that the Resurrection is impossible for want of sufficient reason, St. Paul has already supplied the supreme reason for this fundamental reality; and when Modernists object that a miracle is too extrinsic a sign to lead men to genuine interior faith, St. Paul shows precisely that the Resurrection is intrinsic to religion, deeply and wonderfully connected with every other Christian mystery.
III. Christ genuinely died. Neither the Jews nor the enemies of Christianity ever seriously doubted the reality of Christ’s death; it was only in the nineteenth century that certain Rationalists — Paulus, Schleiermacher, Hase, Herder — suggested that Christ did not actually die on the cross, but merely swooned, later recovering and showing Himself to His disciples. Huxley, in England, adopted this same “swoon theory.” Other Rationalists reject the suggestion outright as both physically and morally impossible; A. Réville himself writes that this theory of Paulus, briefly fashionable in the previous century, is nothing but a tissue of material and moral improbabilities.
1° The four Evangelists, the writers of the Epistles, and indeed the whole body of early Christians without exception regarded the death of Christ as beyond doubt, and as the very cause of mankind’s Redemption; very many of them, in turn, shed their own blood in testimony of this same belief. 2° Many were, moreover, direct eyewitnesses of the death itself — the Centurion, several of his soldiers, St. John, the Blessed Virgin, and the pious women who stood by. Pilate received formal confirmation of the death from the Centurion himself (Mark 15:44–45); the soldiers, seeing that He was already dead, did not break His legs, but one instead opened His side with a lance, “and immediately there came out blood and water” (John 19:34); and Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea “took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths, with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury” (John 19:40). 3° Survival, in any case, was physically impossible: the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the crucifixion itself, three hours of agony on the cross, and finally the piercing of the side together made any possibility of mere survival simply unthinkable. 4° Any hypothesis of survival, moreover, necessitates either deliberate deception on the part of Christ Himself, or the deception, however unwitting, of His followers into proclaiming — and dying for — a Resurrection that was never in fact real, put forward, absurdly, as the very surest argument for the truth of the whole Christian Faith.
IV. It is historically certain that Christ rose from the dead.
1° The testimony of St. Paul in his Epistles is equal in weight to that of the Gospels themselves. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, written about A.D. 57–58, Paul records the various appearances of the risen Christ, having already informed the Corinthians of the same facts some years earlier, about A.D. 52–54: “I delivered unto you first of all, which I also received: how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures: and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures: and that he was seen by Cephas; and after that by the eleven. Then he was seen by more than five hundred brethren at once: of whom many remain until this present, and some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen by James, then by all the apostles. And last of all, he was seen also by me, as by one born out of due time” (1 Cor. 15:3–8). Paul does not intend here to give an exhaustive list of every appearance, but confines himself chiefly to those the Apostles themselves witnessed. The final appearance he mentions was that granted to himself on the road to Damascus; he calls this appearance “last of all,” a claim that would simply be false if he meant only some further vision of the kind granted, for instance, to Ananias afterward (Acts 9:10) — the appearance to Paul, in other words, closes a distinct and bounded series, not a mere sequence of private visions. Nor does Paul mean, by any of this, simply the continued immortality of Christ’s soul: he speaks again and again of the resurrection of the body, and puts Christ’s own bodily Resurrection forward repeatedly as the very exemplar of our own future bodily resurrection (cf. 1 Thess. 4:14).
2° The testimony of the Evangelists. (A) All four Evangelists affirm that the tomb was found empty. All relate that Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate and asked for the body of Christ, that he wrapped the body himself, and that it was placed in the sepulchre; that Mary Magdalene and the pious women came, on the first day of the week, with spices to anoint the body, and were amazed to find the tomb already empty; that when the women reported the Resurrection to the Apostles, their words seemed to the Apostles “as idle tales; and they did not believe them” (Luke 24:11); that the two disciples travelling to Emmaus had, by their own account, already lost all hope; and that the incredulity of Thomas is a matter of common record. What natural explanation, then, can be given for the empty tomb? Réville suggests that the chief priests themselves had taken the body of Christ, precisely so that it could not become an object of veneration among the disciples; but Stapfer, another Rationalist, replies decisively that nothing whatsoever can be cited in support of this hypothesis — not a single fact, text, or even the faintest allusion supports it — and that it is, on its face, supremely unlikely, since it would have been remarkably foolish for the high priest himself to hand the Apostles a ready-made pretext for proclaiming the very Resurrection he was trying to prevent. Loisy’s own hypothesis, that the body of Christ was simply thrown into a common ditch, is equally without foundation, and stands directly contrary to the united testimony of Peter, Paul, and all four Evangelists alike (cf. 1 Cor. 15:4; Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:12; Acts 2:24–32).
(B) All the Evangelists, together with St. Paul, agree that the risen Christ appeared repeatedly to the eleven Apostles; twelve distinct appearances are recorded in total: (1) to Mary Magdalene near the sepulchre (Mark 16:9; John 20:11–18); (2) to the women returning from the sepulchre (Matt. 28:9–10); (3) to Simon Peter (Luke 24:34; 1 Cor. 15:5); (4) to two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35); (5) to the Apostles, Thomas being absent (Mark 16:14; Luke 24:36–43; John 20:19–23); (6) to the Apostles, Thomas now present (John 20:24–29); (7) to seven of the Apostles and two disciples by the Sea of Galilee (John 21:1–24); (8) to the eleven Apostles who had gone into Galilee (Matt. 28:16ff.); (9) to more than five hundred brethren at once (1 Cor. 15:6); (10) to James (1 Cor. 15:7); (11) to the eleven Apostles in Jerusalem, on the day of the Ascension itself (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:50–52; Acts 1:1–9); and (12) to St. Paul himself, near Damascus (Acts 9:3ff.; 1 Cor. 15:8). It is recorded, further, that Christ “shewed himself alive after his passion, by many proofs, for forty days appearing to them, and speaking of the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3).
An objection may be raised here: Christ had foretold that “the Son of man shall be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights” — a period that does not, on the face of it, exactly match Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. The answer is that this precise wording was used only once, in Matt. 12:40, whereas on three other, separately recorded occasions Christ foretold simply that He would rise “on the third day” (Matt. 16:21; 17:22–23; 20:19; Mark 8:31; 9:30; 10:33–34; Luke 9:22; 18:33; 1 Cor. 15:4). The phrase “three days and three nights” is itself explained by its deliberate likeness to the sign of the prophet Jonah; as both St. Augustine and St. Thomas note, the part stands here for the whole by simple synecdoche, a natural manner of speech grounded in the likeness between the type and its fulfilment, not a precise chronological claim to be pressed literally.
3° The Evangelists did not suffer from mere hallucination, notwithstanding the claims of Strauss and Renan. Renan himself suggests that the Apostles, unable to accept that Christ had truly been defeated by His enemies, searched the Scriptures, found there apparent prophecies of a resurrection, and, vehemently desiring Christ’s ultimate triumph, allowed their imaginations to be affected until they came, genuinely, to believe in a Resurrection that had never actually occurred; Meyer argues along broadly similar lines. But (A) it is historically certain that the Apostles and disciples did not, in fact, expect any resurrection beforehand: Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea laid the body in the tomb as a final, settled act; Mary Magdalene and the pious women came with spices precisely to anoint a body they fully expected to remain dead, and were amazed, not gratified, to find the tomb empty; the women’s own report seemed to the Apostles mere “idle tales,” and they simply did not believe it (Luke 24:11); the disciples travelling to Emmaus had, by their own account, already abandoned all hope; and the incredulity of Thomas needs no further comment. (B) From a purely psychological point of view, there was accordingly no real room for hallucination at the relevant moment: there was no exaltation of the imagination, no vehement antecedent desire, nothing but disappointment, fear, and despair — the exact opposite of the conditions hallucination theories generally require. Hallucination, moreover, is ordinarily corrected upon sober reflection, whereas the Apostles remained permanently convinced that they had truly seen the Lord in the body, and gladly suffered martyrdom precisely to testify to the sincerity of that unwavering conviction. Is it seriously credible that the entire subsequent spread of the Christian Faith and of Christian morality has rested, at its very root, on nothing more than a mass hallucination sustained, without correction, across forty days and by hundreds of separate witnesses?
4° Christ appeared to the Apostles not merely spiritually but genuinely bodily. When Christ appeared to the Eleven on the day of His Resurrection, the Apostles, “being troubled and frightened, supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them: Why are you troubled … see my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle, and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have. And when he had said this, he shewed them his hands and feet. But while they yet believed not … he said: Have you any thing to eat? … and they offered him a piece of a broiled fish, and a honeycomb. And when he had eaten before them, taking the remains, he gave to them” (Luke 24:37–43). Not Thomas alone, then, but the other Apostles as well, actually touched the risen body of Our Lord. Had that body, moreover, not been genuinely reanimated, the sepulchre could hardly have been found empty at all, and St. Paul’s own argument for our future bodily resurrection — an argument resting explicitly on the bodily Resurrection of Christ as its exemplar — would simply collapse. On the road to Damascus, in the same way, Paul saw the risen Christ in genuinely bodily form. Christ, further, manifested the special glory of His risen body to His disciples in two complementary ways: by entering a room while the doors remained shut (Luke 24:36; John 20:19, 26), and by vanishing suddenly, just as unexpectedly, from their sight (Luke 24:31).
5° The reality of the bodily Resurrection is further confirmed by its transforming influence on St. Paul’s own conversion. In the case of the Apostles generally, there is a striking change from uncertainty, timidity, and despair to wisdom, fearlessness, and settled constancy. Peter tells the assembled princes, elders, and scribes plainly: “we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard … we ought to obey God, rather than men” (Acts 4:20; 5:29), and the Apostles “went from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus” (Acts 5:41). The sudden conversion of St. Paul, and his lifelong enthusiasm for labour and suffering in the cause of Christ thereafter, were both due directly to the genuinely bodily appearance of his risen Lord.
One obvious difficulty remains: how could the Resurrection have been, for the Apostles themselves, an article of supernatural Faith at all, given that they had actually seen the risen Christ with their own eyes? The answer is that the Resurrection of Christ was not merely a miracle known by certain natural signs — the visible wounds, for instance — but a genuine mystery of Faith in its own right. That mystery consists not simply in the reanimation of a dead body, but in Christ’s raising Himself to life by His own divine power — the power proper to the Son of God — a fact that binds the Resurrection intrinsically to the further mysteries of the Redemption and of our own future glory, an aspect that transcends unaided reason altogether, and is believed only on the authority of God Himself revealing it. St. Thomas writes memorably of the Apostle Thomas in this connection: “he saw one thing, and believed another; he saw the wounds, and believed Him to be God” (Summa, III, q. 55, a. 5, ad 3). Faith is said to be, in such a case, “faith of the eye” (fides oculata) when some external circumstance of the mystery in question is itself directly visible. The mystery of the Resurrection is thus, at once, historically certain with a genuine moral certitude, and supernaturally certain on the further, infallible testimony of the Church.
Article 3 — Miracles Still Take Place in the Catholic Church, and in the Catholic Church Alone
I. Christ promised that miracles would continue within His Church. “Amen, amen I say to you, he that believeth in me, the works that I do, he also shall do; and greater than these shall he do” (John 14:12). When Christ told His Apostles, “go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” He added: “in my name they shall cast out devils: they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them: they shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover. But they going forth preached every where: the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed” (Mark 16:17–18, 20).
II. Miracles have, in fact, occurred, and continue to occur, in the Catholic Church. Instances of miraculous healing are recorded already in Acts and in the Epistles of St. Paul (Acts 5:12–16; Rom. 15:18–19; 1 Cor. 12:28). The Apostolic Fathers — Sts. Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Polycarp — record miracles on behalf of the second century; Sts. Irenaeus, Justin, Cyprian, Origen, and Tertullian witness for the third; Eusebius and Sts. Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine testify for the fourth. The writings of Ruinart and of the Bollandists together reveal the continuing reality of heroic sanctity and of miraculous power in every subsequent age of the Church’s history, and the Congregation of Rites, to this day, institutes a searching formal inquiry into every miracle proposed in support of a cause for canonization. The miracles reported at Lourdes, similarly, have been examined by a formal medical commission; Bertrin records that cures of purely nervous disorders account for only about one-thirteenth of the whole (180 cases out of 2,600 examined), with 571 cures of tubercular disease, 394 of diseases of the digestive system, 68 of the circulatory system, 99 of the respiratory organs, 383 of disorders of the brain, 95 of diseased bones, 15 of cancer, 27 of severe wounds, 34 cures of blindness, and 28 of deaf-mutism, among many others (cf. Histoire critique des événements de Lourdes, Paris, 1905).
III. In every other form of religion, by contrast, the miraculous element is conspicuously absent. Both Luther and Calvin explicitly disclaimed any miraculous power for themselves or their movement. Luther wrote plainly: “from us, who deny free will, miracles cannot be expected” (De Servo Arbitrio); Calvin, in his own letter to the King of France, likewise declared it unreasonable for anyone to demand miracles of the Reformers. Much the same may be said of the Greek Church.
IV. By these continuing miracles, the divine origin of the Catholic Church is further manifested. As already shown, miracles are so many distinct divine testimonies to the truth of Catholic teaching.