I’ve been doing some research on the argument for the historicity of the resurrection as it developed prior to the Habermas-Craig-Licona tradition. The contemporary starting point is, of course, with the work of Wolfhart Panennberg in the 1950s and 1960s. A 1971 article by Alan Richardson, “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” which appeared in the journal Theology, provides some insight into this phase of the development of the argument.

The contemporary historical argument developed out of, and in reaction against, the work of Rudolf Bultmann. As Richardson relates the story, Bultmann “tells us that the Jesus whom the Gospels preach is not an historical figure but a present message, a kerygma which challenges us to existential decision in the here and now.” I’ve read one of Bultmann’s books, and personally I found his version of Christianity somewhat baffling and unappealing. He dismisses the question of the historical reality of the resurrection of Jesus as irrelevant to, and perhaps damaging for, Christian faith. He argues that acceptance of the message of Jesus should rest upon some sort of existential decision of acceptance.

Offering a full critique of Bultmann’s position would require considerable additional research, but according to Richardson, a significant portion of Bultmann’s own disciples apparently found his position ultimately unsatisfying.  One group developed what was called “the new hermeneutics,” drawing from the work of Martin Heidegger to conclude that one should “seek to discover what the biblical words meant to the original authors in the circumstances of their own day.” This group, Richardson seems to imply, did not really follow through on the full implications of their viewpoint.  Further developments happened in the hands of “the Pannenberg group,” which concluded that “Before there can be any interpreting words, however, there must be some definite, objective thing or event to interpret. Words, if they are to have meaning, must be about something which is prior to them. This something is, of course, history, events which have actually happened and which are then interpreted or explained by the words of the prophet who sees a meaning in them.”

Richardson points out that “Pannenberg’s new emphasis upon history as the locus of revelation” may seem new within its context, but there was already a tradition within Britain of theologians arguing about revelation occurring within history, and he cites the work of Westcott and Hort as an example. Richardson does not discuss it, but in the late nineteenth century Brooke Foss Westcott published a book called The Gospel of the Resurrection: Thoughts on its Relation to Reason and History, which presents a historical defense of the resurrection that seems to parallel many of the contemporary augments. It’s a book that I will have to examine more closely in the future.

Regarding the Pannenberg group, Richardson does not go into much detail about the specifics of their arguments, but he does state that Pannenberg “quotes Althaus with approval to the effect that the preaching that Jesus had been raised from the dead could not have been maintained for a single day in Jerusalem if it had been known to the authorities that the tomb was not empty. St Matthew’s Gospel provides evidence that years later the Jewish anti-Christian polemic had to invent the charge that the disciples of Jesus had stolen the body, because they could not deny that the tomb had been found empty.” Here we see obvious parallels with some of the central arguments that William Lane Craig uses about the empty tomb and the “Jewish polemic.”

Richardson’s conclusions include the comment that “The question of the resurrection of Jesus is still today, as it has been for 200 years, the point at which the nature of historical enquiry is decisively focused both for secular and religious historians.”

Reference:

Richardson, Alan. “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Theology 74, no. 610 (1971): 146-154.