These three factors—the insufficient time, the controlling presence of living eyewitnesses, and the authoritative control of the apostles—preclude the significant rise and accumulation of legend, and thus go to establish the fundamental, historical reliability of the gospel accounts of the resurrection.
3. The resurrection appearances were physical, bodily appearances. Most New Testament critics are prepared to admit that the disciples did see appearances of Jesus, but many assert that those appearances were visions, not physical appearances. I now wish to examine the evidence specifically for the physical, bodily nature of the appearances.
a) Paul implies that the appearances were physical. Critics who wish to reduce the resurrection appearances to mere visions usually try to drive a wedge between Paul and the gospels. They admit that the appearances in the gospel stories are plainly physical, but they assert that Paul thought the appearances were only visionary. Because those critics inevitably date the gospels after A.D. 70, they say Paul is more reliable, since his letters are earlier.
We have already established that the crucial assumption of that reasoning, namely, that the gospels were written after A.D. 70, is wrong. Since a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, the argument fails. But let us be gracious and overlook that for now. What is the evidence that Paul thought Jesus’ appearances were visionary? The critics usually give two arguments: the appearance to Paul was visionary, so the others must have been so as well; and Paul did not believe that Jesus rose from the dead with a physical body, but with a spiritual body. Let us examine each argument in greater detail.
(1) It is certainly true that as Luke describes it, the appearance to Paul had visionary elements. For Jesus appeared as a light and voice from heaven, not as a man walking along the road. But we must be very careful not to reduce Paul’s experience to just a vision. For what is a vision? A vision is a projection of the mind of the beholder; there is nothing “out there” in the real world that corresponds to what he “sees.” A person may be caused to see a vision by either internal or external causes, but in either case what he sees is, so to speak, “all in his mind” and has no counterpart in reality. But it is clear that Paul’s experience was not just a vision. For as Luke describes it, the appearance was certainly “out there,” not all in Paul’s mind. Paul’s traveling companions also experienced the light and the voice, though for them these were not the means of an encounter with Jesus, as they were for Paul. It is interesting to compare Stephen’s vision of Christ (Acts 7:54-58) with Jesus’ appearance to Paul. Stephen saw a vision of Christ at the right hand of God, but no one around him saw anything. That was a true vision. But on the Damascus road the light and the voice were really “out there” in the real world, and Paul’s fellow travelers experienced them, too. If Luke’s information about Paul’s experience lacked the objective elements, then we would have had a story similar to that of Stephen’s vision.
But in any case, even if Paul’s experience were visionary, what ground is there for asserting that all the other appearances were just like it? Here the critics do not have a leg to stand on. All they can say is that Paul adds his experience to the list of appearances in 1 Corinthians 15, so they must have all been alike. But this reasoning is very weak. In adding himself to the list, Paul is not, so to speak, trying to bring the other appearances down to the level of his own; rather he is trying to raise the appearance to him up to the level of objectivity and reality of the others. Paul’s experience occurred about three years after the other appearances, and we know from Paul’s letters that some people were suspicious about whether Paul was a true apostle. Therefore, in adding himself to the list, Paul is saying, “Look, my experience was just as much a real appearance of Jesus as those of the other apostles.” Thus, in no way does he imply that all the appearances were visions.
According to Luke, the appearance to Paul was in fact different from the others because Paul’s was a post-ascension encounter. That is to say, after appearing to His disciples and others for some forty days, Jesus physically left this universe or dimension. He will come again at the end of history. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit acts in His place. Therefore, the appearance to Paul could not have been physical like the others; it had to be in some sense visionary. But it was not merely visionary, for it had real manifestations in the world “out there,” namely, the light and the voice. Paul in his letters gives us no reason to doubt that this is a fair account of the matter. Paul also thought the appearance to him was unusual, and he was concerned to raise it up to the objectivity of the others.
(2) Many theologians have thoroughly misunderstood Paul’s teaching on the spiritual resurrection body (1 Corinthians 15:35-57). According to Paul, there are four essential differences between the present body and the future resurrection body:
Present Body
Resurrection Body
mortal
immortal
dishonorable
glorious
weak
powerful
physical
spiritual
The last contrast, physical/spiritual, makes it appear that whereas the present body is physical and tangible, the resurrection body will be immaterial and intangible. This, however, is a misunderstanding of the words used by Paul. The word translated “physical” literally means “soul-ish.” Now obviously, in saying the present body is soul-ish, Paul does not mean our bodies are made of soul. What then does he mean? Well, elsewhere in the New Testament, the word soul-ish always has a negative ring to it and means “pertaining to human nature in contrast to God.” It does not mean physical; rather it means natural, or belonging to human nature and self.
In a similar way, when Paul says the resurrection body will be spiritual, he does not mean a body made out of spirit. That would really be a contradiction in terms, for a spirit is precisely the absence of body. Rather, biblical commentators agree that Paul means “pertaining to God’s Spirit.” It does not mean spiritual in the sense of “nonphysical”; rather it means spiritual in the sense that we say, “Paul was a spiritual man,” or “The Bible is a spiritual book.” Being spiritual in this sense in no way implies being nonphysical or intangible.
That this is so is quite clear from Paul’s use of these same terms in 1 Corinthians 2:14-15 (RSV): “The natural [soul-ish] man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God; for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.” Now obviously by “natural man” Paul does not mean “physical man,” nor by “spiritual man” does he mean “immaterial, intangible man.” The spiritual man is every bit as material and tangible as the natural man. The difference is not in their physical substance, but in their life-orientation. The natural man is dominated and directed by the sinful human self, whereas the spiritual man is directed and empowered by God’s Spirit.
Similarly, the resurrection body does not differ from the present body in that it is immaterial and intangible, but in that it is completely freed from the effects of sin (such as disease, death, and decay) and is fully in tune with the direction and power of God’s Spirit. Thus, the translation of the word in question as “spiritual” is bound to create more misunderstandings than it is worth. Since the word is used as the opposite of “natural body,” I would agree with the French commentator Jean Héring and translate it “supernatural body.”19 The legitimacy of this translation is shown by the fact that the Revised Standard Version translators so render this word in 1 Corinthians 10:3-4 in describing the miraculous manna and water that God supplied the Israelites in the Sinai desert: they “all ate the same supernatural food and all drank the same supernatural drink.” Obviously, the word once again does not mean “immaterial, intangible bread and water.” So I think “supernatural body” is less apt to create misunderstanding and better conveys Paul’s thought than “spiritual body,” which sounds like a contradiction in terms.