If Christians said, “We celebrate the
myth of Resurrection in seasonal rituals,” then there would be nothing to argue
about. Instead, they say that the Resurrection was a historical event and,
usually, that the rest of us are damned because we do not believe this. This
generates two arguments.
First, was the Resurrection a historical event?
Secondly, is it just or even credible that most human beings are damned because
they have been brought up to believe otherwise or, in some cases, have examined
the evidence for the Resurrection and still believe otherwise?
The apostolic message was that Jesus
rose in fulfillment of scriptural prophecies. His Resurrection was supposed to
have been a recent event, not a meaningful myth. Thus, mythological
Christianity, although more tolerable than literal Christianity, was not the
original message. However, the earliest Petrine and Pauline proclamations of the
Resurrection mentioned neither an empty tomb nor a tangible resurrected body.
Therefore, they might have expressed visionary experiences similar to those
reported in other traditions. If “Jesus has risen” meant not that he had been
re-animated but only that he had been seen in a series of visions, from which it
was inferred that he had risen in a spiritual body, then eye-witness accounts of
an empty tomb or of a tangible body miss the point. A visionary Resurrection is
a psychological, not an historical, event.
Thus, although mythological Christianity
was not the original orthodoxy, visionary Christianity might have been.
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