A Nonconformist's Guide to Christianity: Beyond Physical Resurrection

What makes someone a Christian? For most mainstream Christians in America, the answer is,

'You recognize you're a sinner who cannot save yourself. Because you can't save yourself and God is loving and merciful, He (always a 'he') sent his son Jesus. Jesus was born of a virgin, lived the perfect life you can't, and died on the cross so you could be forgiven. After 3 days Jesus was raised from the dead, and if you turn from your sin and put your faith in Jesus you'll be 'saved.'

Saved = Christian.

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Here’s the thing: I have many issues with that ‘gospel presentation.’ What I have found is that most people who would give a hearty “Amen” to that presentation don’t believe I’m a Christian because I don’t think Jesus physically rose from the dead. When I say I don’t believe in a physical resurrection, people get mad—like, real mad. Amid their anger, these are the five questions I’m usually asked:

Several passages in the New Testament mention Jesus sitting at the right hand of God. If Jesus wasn’t physically raised from the dead, where is he?

I do believe Jesus is currently in God’s presence. When the Bible refers to Jesus being at God’s right hand, it uses royal language as a metaphor. What the metaphor means, I believe, is that Jesus is in a place of honor in God’s presence.

I do not believe Jesus is physically (as in flesh and blood human like you and me) in God’s presence. What state is Jesus in, then, if not physical? I don’t presume to know nor see where the Bible explains it. Though I believe Jesus was not physically resurrected back to an embodied human form and ascended to heaven in that form, I do very much believe Jesus is in the presence of God.

You say you don’t believe in a physical resurrection because this view did not exist until Luke separated the resurrection from Christ’s ascension. How do you explain the appearance of Jesus post-resurrection in the other three gospels?

I’ll start by discussing Mark, the oldest gospel. Mark’s more extended ending was not part of the original letter but is a well-documented, much later-dated addition. Everything after Mark 16:8 is a later addition by the church in an attempt to have Mark end with a more explicit resurrection narrative. Based on the original ending, Mark ends with three women at Jesus’s tomb, confronted by an angel. They are told Jesus is not there, to tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus is heading to Galilee. Interestingly, the women disobey the angel, say nothing to anyone, and leave in terror and amazement.

It’s telling that this is the oldest and first gospel and that it uses the word ‘raised’ in Mark 16:6. This is important because the word is a passive verb. Based on my understanding, what happened to Jesus is God raised him from the dead. What that looks like specifically, I have no idea. In places like Philippians 2 and 1 Corinthians 15, Paul uses ‘raised’ as a passive verb. This means that in a single act, God raised Jesus from death to the heavenly realm, where he is seated at the right hand of God (which I understand as Jesus being in the very presence of God). It wasn’t until the church ran with Luke’s parsing resurrection and ascension as two separate acts that we began to advocate Jesus raising himself physically. God was the one who exalted Jesus into heaven via the ascension. My position is that the resurrection/ascension is a single act where Jesus was passive in being raised and ascending to heaven non-physically.

I believe that with Matthew and John’s accounts of Jesus, what you call post-resurrection encounters, I see them as post-ascension encounters. It’s evident in the descriptions, such as when Jesus appeared and disappeared, he went through doors and walls, etc. None of these phenomena are realities of embodied humans. Maybe what is being described is the Spirit of Christ, I don’t know, but it is clear this is not the same physical Jesus the disciples knew during his ministry on earth. In my view, I believe the descriptions of Jesus in Matthew and John are more compelling in describing a post-ascension Jesus than a post-resurrection embodied Jesus.

In John 3:12, Jesus asks Nicodemus, ‘If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?’ Don’t you think you are using logic and intellect to reason away a spiritual reality?

It’s ironic that this question references John 3 and Jesus’s interaction with Nicodemus. Nicodemus’s problem was that he took everything Jesus was saying literally.

I’m advocating for more Christians to consider the deeper context and meaning behind the Bible’s words. The easy understanding is the literal interpretation that Jesus must have risen physically. I believe there is ample Biblical evidence that a physical resurrection is not what is being referred to in the New Testament.

My position takes the spiritual side of Jesus’s resurrection far more seriously than a physical/literal argument does.

I struggle to see how not believing in Jesus’ physical resurrection can be sustained without doing some severe ignoring or distortion of Scripture. How do you understand explicit texts about the resurrection, such as 1 Corinthians 15?

From my perspective, the gospels (with maybe the exception of Luke) and Paul’s accounts of seeing the post-crucifixion Christ advocates for them having experienced the ascended Jesus, not a literal-physical (embodied human like you and I) resurrected Jesus. For a contemporary analogy, as a Christian, I believe I experience and walk with Christ daily. However, you could never ever record Jesus and I taking a stroll together. I’m referring to metaphorical and spiritual language in saying I walk with Jesus. I believe the Biblical authors do the same thing when describing their experiences with the ascended Christ.

Regarding Paul, nowhere does Paul teach a physical bodily resurrection of Jesus. Even 1 Corinthians 15 does not explicitly say Jesus was raised bodily. I’ve mentioned this above, but Paul uses the word ‘raised’ (like Mark’s use in 16:6) as a passive verb. For a first-century Jew, this entailed a resurrection/ascension into heaven with God, not a bodily return to life.

In the ancient world, especially within Judaism, the idea of resurrection was always seen in corporate terms. This is why Matthew mentions tombs being emptied tombs in Matt. 27:51-52. There was no concept in Judaism of a single individual being resurrected. To them, that isn’t a resurrection but resuscitation. For example, when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he didn’t resurrect him but resuscitated him. Lazarus was not a new creation but the same person who had his life restored; this isn’t what happened with Jesus post-crucifixion.

Even Paul talks about flesh and blood being unable to enter heaven in 1 Cor. 15:50-58. He makes explicit a mystery that what is corruptible in our physical selves will cease to exist and be replaced with something incorruptible. This isn’t a reanimating of our current state but something entirely new and different.

What difference does it make if Jesus rose physically from the dead before his ascension? For most Christians, three implications require a physical resurrection. 1. Jesus’ resurrection is proof that God accepted his death as payment for sin. 2. Jesus’ resurrection is proof of who Jesus is. 3. The authority of Scripture. How can you uphold these three without believing Jesus was physically raised from the dead?

Allow me to start by being candid. I do not worry about upholding the three implications you mention because these are not my views. I do not adhere to any substitutionary atonement view for the first point. I especially do not hold to a penal substitutionary view that makes God the great child abuser in the sky, but it’s justified because punishing his child means my sin is forgiven.

With the second implication, I think Jesus’s life and teachings verify who he is far more than his death and post-life. We sell Jesus short by saying we know he was the embodiment of the divine by the way he died and came back. This line of reasoning is often used to justify not following the life and teachings of Christ and instead makes Christianity only concerned with what happens after death.

Finally, when people talk about the authority of Scripture, they view the Bible as a divine product, meaning it is not merely the word of God but the literal words of God. I do not hold to this view; I believe the Bible is a human product.

This difference is especially significant because those who see the Bible as a divine product read the text, assuming “this is exactly what was said and how things happened historically.” I do not believe this to be the case, especially with the four gospels and Acts. It is beyond clear that there are many contradictions between each gospel; there is taking stories from one gospel and adding or changing them in another gospel, and there is a clear agenda regarding what each gospel author is communicating. Mark creates a narrative of a battle between good and evil; Matthew shows Jesus as a new Moses, Luke shows Jesus in the prophetic tradition and as a new Elijah, while John shows Jesus as embodying the eternal wisdom of God. Within each author’s writing, they shape their narrative not to reflect history but to reinforce their viewpoint. For those using Scripture to argue for a literal truth, I do not see literal/historical truth but metaphorical truth at the heart of what the Bible is trying to communicate.

What makes someone a Christian? I’ve been wrestling with that question for years now. If I’m being honest, I regularly ask myself, am I a Christian?

For everything I shared in this article, as well as many other reasons that I’ve written whole other articles discussing, I cannot in good conscience hold to a physical resurrection of Jesus. Does this mean there’s no room for people like me within the Christian umbrella? What I believe didn’t originate with me. My views can be found throughout the last two millennia, which we call church history. Despite the historical precedent of my beliefs, the truth is mainstream Christianity does not accept them. The reality, though, is that I am not alone.

Millions of Americans who make up the largest religious group in America (Religious Nones) cannot in good conscience believe much of what mainstream Christianity is selling. I’m seeking to show that modern scholarship and Christian faith can not only coexist but also bring out the best in one another. They also show that the options of believing the Bible literally or being a non-believer are false dichotomies. There is more than a single narrow way to be a Christian.

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