Künneth was a German theologian who lived during the interwar period and his Theology of the Resurrection to my mind is one of the most decisive works on the resurrection. I read it a couple of years ago and have not moved much from it since, it is surprising how relatively unknown his work is. I have therefore decided to scan the book and make it available for a wider audience. Künneths Theology of the Resurrection is an engagement with Bultmanns claims that we must mythologise the resurrection and the miracles of the Bible. What is interesting about Künneth is that he doesnt exactly side with the empiricists either who insist upon the resurrection as a pure historical fact. Künneth argues that if the resurrection was a purely historical fact, then it would be subject to the methods and premises of the historical method, and quite ironically cease to be miraculous. After all the swoon theory (that Jesus didnt really die but merely fainted and was later revived) is precisely an attempt to completely determine the meaning of the resurrection as a historical fact and to completely historise the Bible. The problem of course is that history is essentially an empirical science and as such, uses empirical reasoning and analogies to the ordinary world to make its arguments. These are not applicable to the resurrection which is precisely a unique divine event transcending the usual empirical world. At some point history must fall silent and we must make the theological move to say, And God raised him from the dead. History can investigate *around* the resurrection, but it investigate the empirical and historical circumstances of the events around it, but it can never penetrate its core to get to its essential divine meaning and kerygma. Eventually at some point, historical activity must cease and we must have the theological meaning. Furthermore, the methods of history are probabilistic and relative, and while important to establish credibility and as an important stepping stone to faith, it ultimately is still insufficient as he puts it, If the resurrection is an event on the plane of history, then it also participates in all that determines the nature of history. The resurrection event is then a relative fact in the context of the phenomena and life of history, stands in continuity with a multitude of other known and unknown factors belonging to this world, is an element in historical existence and as such possesses no absolute validity but is subject to conditions and thus to the uncertainties and probabilities of all history. To insist upon the historic character of the resurrection has the result of objectifying it, ... that means... that the assertion of its historicality leads to an irresistible process of dissolution, which ominously threatens the reality of the resurrection itself. If Künneth doesnt wholeheartedly accept the idea of the pure historical fact of the resurrection, neither does he side with Bultmann to treat the resurrection as a myth. He points out, and very rightly, the correct intuition behind the defence of the historicity of the resurrection is the truth that the resurrection is an *objective event* anterior to human subjectivity and which precedes the human will and reception. If God raised him from the dead confounds every other empirical or historical attempts to explain the resurrection event, then it also confounds every Bultmannian attempt to make the resurrection purely a matter of human creation, consciousness, idealisation, etc, it is *God*, not man, who raised Christ from the dead. This is simply an application of Luthers External Word whereby the resurrection is Gods external action upon us, anterior to human subjectivity and upon which our subjective faith assents and rests upon. It is truly a great book and the pity is that it is not more widely known or read.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 23:22:53 +0000
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