This position is open to objection on the follow- ing groiinils. (1) It is based on a view of the rela- tion of faith and liistory — an attempt to make faith independent of historical evidence — which cannot be accepted. Mere historical evidence, indeed, is incompetent of itself to generate true Christian faith ill the Resurrection. Forthis there is needed also an estimate of the moral and religious uniriue- ness of Jesus derived from the impression of His personality, which prepare.s the mind for the proper appreciation of the evidence. Only to those who have received this impression is the Resurrection truly credible. In this sense it is true to say that the belief in the Resurrection is a ' value judgment ' or ' thought of faith' ; and that ' no appearances of the Lord could permanently have convinced them [the disciples] of his life, if they had not possessed in their hearts the impression of his Person ' {Hint, ijf Dogma, i. 86 n.). 15ut this is not to make faith independent of historical evidence. It may be and is involved in a proper estimate of His worth that ' He could not be holden of death,' which means not merely that ' Jesus lives,' as the Ritschlians put it, but tli.at ' He is risen from the dead.' But, if all historical evidence for the fact were either wanting or di.scredited at the bar of criticism, faith would be involved in insoluble contradiction. The Easter faith cannot dispense with the Easter message which is its historical attestation, an attestation which has to be judged by the principles of historical criticism. (2) When we take the posi- tion to the test of the narratives its inadequacy is furtlier established. Harnack holds that the dis- tinction between the Easter faith and the Easter message is one already drawn in the NT. ' The story of Thomas is told for the exclusive purpose of impressing upon us that we must bold the Easter faith even without the Easter message : " Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have lielieved." The disciples on the road to Emmaus were blamed for not believing in the resurrection even though the Easter me.s.sage had not yet reached them. The Lord is a Spirit, says Paul ; and this carries with it the certainty of "his resurrection' {IVkat is Christianity ?'', p. 163 f.). But the sup- port thus found involves a misrepresentation of the facts. The words to Thomas (Jn 20^') are a rebuke to him for distrusting the testimony of his fellow-disciples and refusing to believe the Easter message without the personal verification of it by his own senses. The reproach to the two on the way to Emmaus (Lk 24^'-) is directed against their hesitation to believe the story of the women, confirmed as this was by prophetic prediction, and tlie previous intimations of Jesus Himself.
St. Paul's conviction that the Lord is the Spirit is the direct outcome of the appearance to him of the Risen Christ outside Damascus, which he reckons in the same category as the earlier appearances to the other apostles. The .stress St. Paul lays on the appearances as evidence of the resurrection of Christ (1 Co Ib^'"), combined with his reference to the burial, altogether forbids the attempt to detach his Easter faith, or that of the early Christian com- munity, with which in these matters he knew him- self to be at one, from the Easter message. ' It would have conveyed no meaning to Paul or to any member of the original Christian circle to say that
it was the spirit of Christ whit^h rose into new life, or that He rose again in the faith of His devoted followers, who could not bear the thought that for Him death should end all '(Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, p. 113). The rising of which they speak is relative to the grave and the burial. They did not need to be assured that His spirit survived death. Not one of them doubted that. What they did need to be assure<l of, if their faith in Jesus was to be re-established, was His victory over death and the grave, and nothing but a bodily resurrection would have convinced them of that. It may be, as A. E. (iarvie suggests (Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus, London, 1U07, p. 43!)), ' that Jesus Himself would have esteemed tiie Eri^terfaith, the conviction that His life and work were of such infinite value to God that He must prove the conqueror of death, without the Easter message — the sensible evidences of the reality of His Resurrection — as much more |>recious than this belief which rested on the signs of .sense.' As during His earthly ministry He rated low the faith that rested on His miracles (Jn 4**), so the belief in His resurrection which needed .sensible evidence might be less satisfactory to Him, because showing less spiritual discernment of His worth, than a humble and confident trust in His word. And for us to-day brought up within the Christian Church, the heirs of the past with the evidence of Christ's working through the centuries before us, belief in the Risen Lord may not depend so inmiediately or directly on the historical testi- mony of the empty grave and the appearances. But if one thing is made more plain and certain by the narratives than another it is that the disciples were quite incapable of the belief without the Easter message. Deeply as He had stamped Himself upon them in His earthly intercourse, the disaster of His death paral3-zed their faith in Him, and this was regained and reconstituted only through the Easter message of the empty grave and the subsequent appearances.