The Reality of the Resurrection: The New Testament Witness

Foreword to the English Edition

ix Foreword to the English Edition Readers in the English-speaking world should welcome this translation of Stefan Alkier’s book Die Realität der Auferweckung in, nach und mit den Schriften des Neuen Testaments. This is a thought-provoking work that not only makes a significant contribution to theological debates about the resurrection but also offers fresh perspectives on the relation between biblical studies and theology. Alkier shows that the NT’s understanding of the resurrection of Jesus is inextricably bound together with its discourse about the general eschatological resurrection of the dead. For the New Testament authors, Jesus’ resurrection is not an isolated miracle, but a crucial revelatory disclosure concerning the nature of reality, the identity of God, and the destiny of human beings. For that reason, the interpretation of the resurrection necessarily entails not only historical but also theological and existential dimensions. Alkier’s study insists on keeping these dimensions in play together, as components of a complex interpretative conversation. The structure of Alkier’s book is threefold. The first, and lengthiest, section offers a thorough descriptive exegetical survey of “Die Rede von der Auferweckung in den Schriften des Neuen Testaments” (“Resurrection Discourse in the Scriptures of the New Testament: Exegetical Investigations ”). For the purposes of this analysis, he divides the NT literature into five subsections: the Pauline epistolary literature, the Letter to the x—Foreword to the English Edition Hebrews, the Synoptic Gospels and Acts, the Johannine writings (including the Apocalypse), and the Catholic Epistles. This ordering of the material might suggest an attempt to produce something like a developmental history of early Christian teaching on the resurrection, with the early Pauline material placed first and organized in chronological order of composition (1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon, followed by the Deutero-Pauline and Pastoral Letters) rather than in canonical order. But this would be in fact a slightly misleading impression, for the chief aim of Alkier’s exposition is not to reconstruct a historical line of development, but rather to portray the way in which each of the NT writings proclaims the resurrection of the Cruci- fied One within its own distinctive narrative/theological symbolic world. As Alkier formulates the question, “Wie wird die Rede von der Auferweckung in den Schriften des Neuen Testaments gestaltet und wodurch erhält sie dort ihre Plausibilität?” (“How is resurrection discourse in the New Testament formulated, and how does it maintain its plausibility?”) His consistent attention to this issue gives his descriptive survey a much broader and more balanced perspective than one finds in most strictly historical treatments of the resurrection in the NT; such treatments have tended to focus narrowly on a few passages such as 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, and the resurrection narratives in the Gospels, considered in isolation from the narrative or discursive context in which they occur. By contrast, Alkier offers skillful literary readings of each NT writing that show how the resurrection is woven into the fabric of the entire work. For example, his handling of the material in Luke and Acts demonstrates that in these texts the resurrection is both the decisive ful- fillment of Israel’s scriptures and “der Grundgedanke, den das Lukasevangelium und dann auch die Apostelgeschichte narrativ gestalten” (“the fundamental idea undergirding the narrative form of both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles”). One possible criticism of Alkier’s organization of the material would concern his decision to treat the Apocalypse as part of the Johannine writings . While this grouping of material has a certain traditional justification , almost surely the Apocalypse is not the product of the author of the Gospel of John or the author(s) of the Johannine Epistles; furthermore, its whole theological/symbolic world differs materially from that of the other Johannine writings. Particularly with regard to the resurrection, the Apocalypse is much more strongly stamped by Jewish apocalyptic thought. For all these reasons, it really deserves to be categorized separately from the Gospel and Epistles. But this is a minor criticism that concerns only the Foreword to the English Edition—xi organization of the material. With regard to matters of substance, Alkier’s exposition of the role of resurrection in the Apocalypse is clear, accurate, and powerful—particularly his understanding of “Die kosmische Macht des auferweckten Gekreutzigten als Grund des Hoffens und Ausharrens...