A hard look at the Resurrection.

The Resurrection of God Incarnate. Richard Swinburne. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]45.00. 224 pages. ISBN 0-19-925745-0.

This earnest, powerful, and rather austere book on the Resurrection of Christ is offered not only for theologians and philosophers but for 'all those trying to discover the truth about the Christian religion'. It might be fair to suggest that the seekers after truth will be best served if they are inclined towards a rather philosophical kind of theology. They will also need a grounding in the Gospel narratives and Pauline testimony if they are to follow the use made of them by Richard Swinburne (former Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford) in the philosophical context of his argument. It moves from the existence and then the nature of God to the logic of an incarnational intervention in history and the evidence of it in the life and teaching of Jesus.

There may also be moments when even Christian readers may reach back in their Bibles to Psalm 169: 'Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too high to grasp, too great to understand'. The most difficult of such interludes in the book come in the philosophical and logical arguments for theism which precede the discussion of Christ's teaching, Passion, and Resurrection and also in an appendix concerned with probability calculus and interspersed with mathematical formulae. The book is neither easy reading nor, at first encounter, of a kind to create the emotional glow which warms a cold Easter, but it is worth the perseverance it demands on the way to the conclusion. It is that if there is a God prepared to intervene in history, 'then the total evidence makes it very probable that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead'.

However, Professor Swinburne's argument develops, especially when it discusses the historical evidence, into a compelling commentary on the New Testament, its writers or compilers, and their experiences. It ranges then from the importance and reliability of Paul's emphasis on the Resurrection to the untidy ending of Mark's Gospel and the arguments, not only for reinstating John as author or inspirer of the Gospel bearing his name, but for regarding it as a vital historical source as well as a theological and philosophical reflection. There is also a very conservative view of Jesus' intention to be founder of a Church and therefore of the new Israel.

Those accustomed to simpler but often unsatisfactory examinations of the Gospel evidence--whether inspired by faith, doubts, or disbelief--will still find some familiar themes. Rival theories about the empty tomb are aired but dismissed: that there were body-snatchers at work (whether from criminal or politico-religious motives); that Jesus was taken down from the Cross alive; even that the excited witnesses had gone to the wrong grave. Necessary attention is paid to the way in which the unexpected Resurrection of the rejected Christ transformed the lives of the dejected disciples and led them to martyrdom. Perhaps there could have been more discussion of the reaction of James, the Lord's brother, and the rest of the family which may have had mixed opinions about Jesus' itinerant ministry. There is also less about Thomas, with whom so many Christians readily identify, than might have been expected in the circumstances.