The Empty Tomb .sx BY THE REVEREND W. J. SPARROW SIMPSON , D.D. , ILFORD .sx AMONG recent utterances on our Lord's Resurrection a prominent place may be assigned , owing to their peculiar character , to the Sermons of the late Dr. Charles , published in 1929 , on the Resurrection of Man .sx His theory is that , according to the Pauline doctrine , man possesses a psychical body here , and will possess a spiritual body hereafter .sx The psychical body is material , the spiritual body is not .sx ` Between the two bodies there is no real continuity or likeness , except in the fact that they are successive experiences of the same spirit , though in different spheres of being .sx ' But ` it is the same living principle that organizes the two bodies , first the material or psychical body for life on this earth , and next the spiritual body for life in the spiritual worlds that follow .sx ' Dr. Charles maintained that ` the so-called Resurrection of the present material body ' belongs to the class which consists of ` unintelligible wonders .sx ' On the basis of these ideas about the Resurrection of Man , Dr. Charles approached the subject of the Resurrection of Christ .sx The principal statements on our Lord's Resurrection include the following :sx ` Neither in His ( Christ's ) case , nor in that of the faithful , is there room or occasion for the gross conception of the Empty Tomb .sx ' ` So far as a man lives in Christ here on earth,he is living the resurrection life in a real , though limited , measure .sx ' ` But if the faithful , as our Lord and S. Paul taught , have already risen more or less in their complete personalities , then a further conclusion follows , and this is , that Christ had no further relation with His physical body after His death on the Cross .sx His personality was not mutilated for a moment .sx The mere physical body had , as the narratives of the Resurrection show , when tested critically , scientifically , and historically , no essential relation , nor indeed a relation of any kind with the spirit after death .sx ' people to believe in Christ's Resurrection and in His full spiritual life immediately after His death on the Cross .sx ' There are some forcible criticisms on these statements in the April number of Theology for the present year , from the pen of Dean Selwyn .sx The fact is that Dr. Charles's account of our Lord's Resurrection was determined by his presuppositions .sx He approached the subject dominated by the theory that there is an essential incompatibility between the material and the spiritual .sx The material body is gross .sx The material can be nothing more than a temporary organ of the spirit .sx Consequently there can be no connexion whatever between the body here and the body hereafter .sx Controlled by this theory Dr. Charles interpreted St. Paul's doctrine of the Resurrection .sx The psychical body is material .sx The spiritual body is not .sx But as a fact St. Paul says nothing of the kind .sx ` S. Paul's antithesis between the psychical and the spiritual has nothing to do with the popular antithesis between spirit and matter .sx ' As Dr. Rawlinson says :sx ` No doubt S. Paul expected the spiritual body to be different from the present psychic body ; but he does not say that he expected it to be any less material ' ( A. E. J. Rawlinson , Dogma Fact and Experience , p. 79) .sx A spiritual body does not mean a body composed of spirit .sx Nor did Dr. Charles make any attempt to explain precisely what the term represented .sx Moreover , Dr. Charles started from the resurrection of Christians , and based on that his idea of the Resurrection of Christ .sx He accepted nothing as true concerning the bodily Resurrection of Christ which is not equally true concerning the bodily resurrection of Christians .sx Since in their case there is no such thing as an empty grave , neither would he allow such a thing to be admissible in the case of Christ .sx That the grave in Joseph's Garden was empty on Easter Day is characterized as a misconception .sx Thus the Resurrection of Christ , instead of being original and determinative of all other resurrections , is reduced to the level of a sample and an illustration of the common human experience .sx But it was certainly not so regarded by St. Paul .sx The Apostolic valuation is reversed .sx The reader of these sermons on the resurrection of man can hardly escape the reflection How extraordinarily indifferent the writer was to history !sx The evidence for the empty grave is not discussed :sx it is simply dismissed unheard .sx It is disallowed , ruled out of court , on the ground of previously determined theories .sx It is pronounced to be a misconception due to the subjective inability ofthe Apostles to realize that the Resurrection took place already on Good Friday night , and was not deferred to Easter Day .sx To which pronouncement the curious additional reason for dismissing the evidence is given , that to connect Christ's Resurrection with such a gross physical miracle as the Empty Tomb would make it impossible for thoughtful people at the present day to believe that He rose .sx This notion that the reality of the Empty Grave and the bodily Resurrection would neutralize the reality of the Resurrection Appearances is passing strange .sx Moreover , did it not occur to the preacher that the primary object of the evidences of Christ's Resurrection was not to convince thoughtful people at the present day , but to render belief possible for the thoughtful people at the time when it happened ?sx Whether the Empty Grave was what created the original belief , or was an indispensable contributory to that belief , is entirely overlooked .sx It is clear that in such treatment of the Gospels the critic's presuppositions control the evidence .sx There is a painful disregard of history .sx What elements in the evidence are admitted is deter-mined by the theories and assumptions with which it is approached .sx Surely it is not too much to say that such treatment of the evidence is historically unjustifiable , because it violates the sources , and rewrites what is contrary to the critic's views .sx II .sx In striking contrast to the theoretical treatment of the Resurrection evidence by Dr. Charles is the more recent treatment of the subject by Professor Kittel of Tbingen in the English essay contributed by him to the volume entitled Mysterium Christi .sx He maintains that the Christian religion is essentially historical .sx It is bound up indissolubly with the incidents of a particular personality , place , and time .sx Thus St. Paul ` roundly states that the fact of the Resurrection can be authenticated simply by going and asking the eye-witnesses .sx ' ` He enumerates witnesses whom he has selected and judged critically .sx ' But this historical character of Christianity involves it in the problems inseparable from history .sx ` Christianity is thereby invested with all the uncertainty and relativity which attaches to all historical knowledge .sx Christianity is bound to that which is open to doubt .sx ' ` In our particular field of historical investigation there is , for example , no simple logion of Jesus , no single recorded action of His , which is not open to doubt .sx ' Yet ` a matter is not unhistorical because it is open to doubt .sx ' ` If the competent historian is very seldom able to .sx pronounce a logion or an action certainly genuine , it is also true that he is very seldom able to pronounce it certainly spurious .sx Isolated features do not bear the marks of credibility in themselves .sx They bear the marks of credibility as parts of a whole picture .sx " It has been rightly pointed out that the experience of Easter Day controls the whole narrative of the life of Jesus in the Gospels .sx No early Christian wrote a sentence about Jesus which did not proceed from the conviction that He had risen from the dead and was present in their midst .sx As far as the early Christians were concerned , if it were only a matter of knowing Christ after the flesh , He could be left to perish , in spite of His heroism and in spite of the tragedy of His life .sx If there were nothing more , they were of all men most pitiable .sx When this is understood , not only does the historical picture gain life and content , but it becomes real and true .sx ' The conclusion is that the mere historian is unable to give the final interpretation to the Gospel story .sx We pass into the province of religious faith .sx Kittel's distinction between the sphere of the historic and that of the religious was put even more clearly years ago by Loofs in his book , What is the Truth about Jesus Christ ?sx The subject was to be considered first historically , then theologically .sx History is limited to the sphere of natural human experience .sx ` Everything that is impossible according to all our experience is to be put aside as being unhistorical .sx ' ` From this it follows that historical science , when investigating the life of Jesus , must take into consideration the supposition that it was a purely human life , and that nothing happened in it which falls outside the sphere of human experience .sx ' Loofs's final conclusion was that historical science is not able to do full justice to Jesus .sx The solution lies in Divine revelation through history .sx III .sx At this point Pastor Hermann Sasse's essay in Mysterium Christi may be introduced .sx Of course , as he says , ` Revelation is a category recognized neither by the psychologist nor the historian :sx it belongs entirely and solely to theology .sx ' Meantime , consider the historical facts .sx The New Testament reports about Christ's Resurrection fall into two groups .sx The one group is represented by the account of the Empty Tomb , and can be traced back to the simple story in Mark 16 .sx The other group concerns the appearances of the Risen Master .sx Sasse asserts that ` the empty tomb only became a proof of the resurrection to a generationwhich , after the death of eye-witnesses , no longer knew from personal recollection the compelling power of these experiences .sx ' Accordingly he lays the stress on the Appearances .sx These were , in his opinion , more than visions .sx The disciples ` might well have attained to the certainty that Jesus continued to live with God without that over-powering Easter experience which shook the whole of their lives .sx ' What the primitive Christians meant by Resurrection is clear from the opposition to it at Athens and at Corinth .sx ` It was the conception of the reconstitution of the body which , because it did not correspond with the Greek doctrine of the immortality of the soul , would excite opposition as being an unphilosophical and materialistic conception .sx ' It is well to contrast this weighty sentence with the theories of Dr. Charles .sx Pastor Sasse adds :sx ` We modern people , for those whose world-view the conception of the resurrection is likewise somewhat incongruous , can only be very thankful that the writers of the New Testament were in this instance forced to develop more fully what seemed to them to be a self-evident conception .sx ' But what made the Christian doctrine of our Lord's Resurrection unbearable to the Greek mind was that it was presented as an actual historic event .sx The Resurrection of Christ as an ideal , like that of Osiris , a parable figurative of eternal truths , would have been tolerated by the Greeks .sx But resurrection as a concrete fact , was what the men of Athens resented and resisted .sx ` It is at this point,' says Pastor Sasse , ` that the division is more profound between the two world-views :sx the religious worlds of the Christian and the Greek .sx It is at this point that we learn to understand the essential character of the resurrection .sx ' Sasse's own conception is that ` the resurrection is the summoning of the whole man , soul and body , from death to life in the spirit .sx ' IV .sx The whole discussion converges inevitably on' the question of the Empty Grave .sx Neither Kittel nor Sasse is prepared to assent to it .sx Kittel , perhaps more definitely of the two , rejects it .sx Sasse appears to hold judgment in suspense .sx They would neither of them agree with the theories which caused the late Dr. Charles to repudiate in such emphatic terms the Empty Grave .sx None the less , this doctrine forms no part of their belief .sx Pastor Sasse , as has been already seen , asserts that the Empty Tomb only became a proof of Christ's Resurrection to a later generation .sx