The Fair Haven

by Samuel Butler

“Strauss believes that Christ died, and says (New Life of Jesus, Vol. I., p. 411) that ‘the account of the Evangelists of the death of Jesus is clear, unanimous, and connected.’ If this means that the Evangelists would certainly know whether Christ died or not, we demur to it at once. Strauss would himself admit that not one of the writers who have recorded the facts connected with the Crucifixion was an eyewitness of that event, and he must also be aware that the very utmost which any of these writers can have known, was that Christ was believed to have been dead. It is strange to see Strauss so suddenly struck with the clearness, unanimity, and connectedness of the Evangelists. In the very next sentence he goes on to say, ‘Equally fragmentary, full of contradiction and obscurity, is all that they tell us of the opportunities of observing him which his adherents are supposed to have had after his resurrection.’ Now, this seems very unfair, for, after all, the gospel writers are quite as unanimous in asserting the main fact that Christ reappeared, as they are in asserting that he died; they would seem to be just as ‘clear, unanimous, and connected,’ about the former event as the latter (for the accounts of the Crucifixion vary not a little), and they must have had infinitely better means of knowing whether Christ reappeared than whether he had actually died. There is not the same scope for variation in the bare assertion that a man died, as there is in the narration of his sayings and doings upon the several occasions of his reappearance. Besides, in support of the reappearances, we have the evidence of Paul, who, though not an eye-witness, was well acquainted with those who were; whereas no man can make more out of the facts recorded concerning the death of Jesus, than that he was believed to be dead under circumstances in which mistake might easily arise, that there is no reason to think that any organic function of the body had been destroyed at the time that it was delivered over to friends, and that none of those who testified to Christ’s death appear to have verified their statement by personal inspection of the body. On these points the Evangelists do indeed appear to be ‘clear, unanimous, and connected.’

“Later on Strauss is even more unsatisfactory, for on the page which follows the one above quoted from, he writes: ‘Besides which, it is quite evident that this (the natural) view of the resurrection of Jesus, apart from the difficulties in which it is involved, does not even solve the problem which is here under consideration: the origin, that is, of the Christian Church by faith in the miraculous resurrection of the Messiah. It is impossible that a being who had stolen half-dead out of a sepulchre, who crept about weak and ill, wanting medical treatment, who required bandaging, strengthening, and indulgence, and who still, at last, yielded to his sufferings, could have given to the disciples the impression that he was a conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of Life, an impression which lay at the bottom of their future ministry. Such a resuscitation could only have weakened the impression which he had made upon them in life and in death; at the most could only have given it an elegiac voice, but could by no possibility have changed their sorrow into enthusiasm, have elevated their reverence into worship.’

“Now, the fallacy in the above is obvious; it assumes that Christ was in such a state as to be compelled to creep about, weak and ill, &c., and ultimately to die from the effects of his sufferings; whereas there is not a word of evidence in support of all this. He may have been weak and ill when he forbade Mary to touch him, on the first occasion of his being seen alive; but it would be hard to prove even this, and on no subsequent occasion does he shew any sign of weakness. The supposition that he died of the effects of his sufferings is quite gratuitous; one would like to know where Strauss got it from. He may have done so, or he may have been assassinated by some one commissioned by the Jewish Sanhedrim, or he may have felt that his work was done, and that any further interference upon his part would only mar it, and therefore resolved upon withdrawing himself from Palestine for ever, or Joseph of Arimathæa may have feared the revolution which he saw approaching—or twenty things besides might account for Christ’s final disappearance. The only thing, however, which we can say with any certainty is that he disappeared, and that there is no reason to believe that he died of his wounds. All over and above this is guesswork.

“Again, if Christ on reappearing had continued in daily intercourse with his disciples, it might have been impossible that they should not find out that he was in all respects like themselves. But he seems to have been careful to avoid seeing them much. Paul only mentions five reappearances, only one of which was to any considerable number of people. According also to the gospel writers, the reappearances were few; they were without preparation, and nothing seems to have been known of where he resided between each visit; this rarity and mysteriousness of the reappearances of Christ (whether dictated by fear of his enemies or by policy) would heighten their effect, and prevent the Apostles from knowing much more about their master than the simple fact that he was indisputably alive. They saw enough to assure them of this, but they did not see enough to prevent their being able to regard their master as a conqueror over death and the grave, even though it could be shewn (which certainly cannot be done) that he continued in infirm health, and ultimately died of his wounds.

“If the Apostles had been highly educated English or German Professors, it might be hard to believe them capable of making any mistake; but they were nothing of the kind; they were ignorant Eastern peasants, living in the very thick of every conceivable kind of delusive influence. Strauss himself supposes their minds to have been so weak and unhinged that they became easy victims to hallucination. But if this was the case, they would be liable to other kinds of credulity, and it seems strange that one who would bring them down so low, should be here so suddenly jealous for their intelligence. There is no reason to suppose that Christ was weak and ill after the first day or two, any more than there is for believing that he died of his wounds. This being so, is it not more simple and natural to believe that the Apostles were really misled by a solid substratum of strange events—a substratum which seems to be supported by all the evidence which we can get—than that the whole story of the appearances of Christ after the Crucifixion should be due to baseless dreams and fancies? At any rate, if the Apostles could be misled by hallucination, much more might they be misled by a natural reappearance, which looked not unlike a supernatural one.

“The belief in the miraculous character of the Resurrection is the central point of the whole Christian system. Let this be once believed, and considering the times, which, it must always be remembered, were in respect of credulity widely different from our own, considering the previous hopes and expectations of the Apostles, considering their education, Oriental modes of thought and speech, familiarity with the ideas of miracle and demonology, and unfamiliarity with the ideas of accuracy and science, and considering also the unquestionable beauty and wisdom of much which is recorded as having been taught by Christ, and the really remarkable circumstances of the case—we say, once let the Resurrection be believed to be miraculous, and the rest is clear; there is no further mystery about the origin of the Christian religion.

“So the matter has now come to this pass, that we are to jeopardise our faith in all human experience, if we are unable to see our way clearly out of a few words about a spear wound, recorded as having been inflicted in a distant country nearly two thousand years ago, by a writer concerning whom we are entirely ignorant, and whose connection with any eye-witness of the events which he records is a matter of pure conjecture. We will see about this hereafter; all that is necessary now is to make sure that we do not jeopardise it, if we do see a way of escape, and this assuredly exists.”

I will not pain either the reader or myself by a recapitulation of the arguments which have led our opponents as well as the Dean of Canterbury, and I may add, with due apology, myself, to conclude that nothing is known as to the severity or purpose of the spear wound. The case, therefore, of our adversaries will rest thus:—that there is not only no sufficient reason for believing that Christ died upon the cross, but that there are the strongest conceivable reasons for believing that He did not die; that the shortness of time during which He remained upon the cross, the immediate delivery of the body to friends, and, above all, the subsequent reappearance alive, are ample grounds for arriving at such a conclusion. They add further that it would seem a monstrous supposition to believe that a good and merciful God should have designed to redeem the world by the infliction of such awful misery upon His own Son, and yet determined to condemn every one who did not believe in this design, in spite of such a deficiency of evidence that disbelief would appear to be a moral obligation. No good God, they say, would have left a matter of such unutterable importance in a state of such miserable uncertainty, when the addition of a very small amount of testimony would have been sufficient to establish it.

In the two following chapters I shall show the futility and irrelevancy of the above reasoning—if, indeed, that can be called reasoning which is from first to last essentially unreasonable. Plausible as, in parts, it may have appeared, I have little doubt that the reader will have already detected the greater number of the fallacies which underlie it. But before I can allow myself to enter upon the welcome task of refutation, a few more words from our opponents will yet be necessary. However strongly I disapprove of their views, I trust they will admit that I have throughout expressed them as one who thoroughly understands them. I am convinced that the course I have taken is the only one which can lead to their being brought into the way of truth, and I mean to persevere in it until I have explained the views which they take concerning our Lord’s Ascension, with no less clearness than I shewed forth their opinions concerning the Resurrection.

“In St. Matthew’s Gospel,” they will say, “we find no trace whatever of any story concerning the Ascension. The writer had either never heard anything about the matter at all, or did not consider it of sufficient importance to deserve notice.