Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? and The Books That Changed My Life

Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?  By Carl E. Olson, Ignatius Press, 2016.

 

The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians, and Other Remarkable People.  By Bethanne Patrick, Regan Arts, 2016.

 

People may not believe everything they read, but what they read may have a deep and lasting effect on their mindsets and beliefs.  The two books discussed in this review, Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? and The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians, and Other Remarkable People both discuss how reading material affects people’s thoughts on all aspects of life.  Olson’s book focuses mainly on how works of Christian (and anti-Christian) apologetics may shape the minds and faith of those who read such books, whereas Patrick’s work explores how all kinds of books change the lives of people from all walks of life.  C.S. Lewis said that “a young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”  Comparatively, people of any ideological persuasion may be affected by their reading material, and these two books illustrate just how what one reads affects how one may think.

 

If a Christian were to reads only one book of apologetics about the resurrection of Jesus, whichever book is chosen may have an immense impact on the direction of that person’s belief system.  In his introductory chapters, Olsen summarizes books on Jesus’s resurrection from a wide variety of perspectives, from an Episcopalian who dismisses the supernatural, to New Age figures who believe that they have a deeper understanding of the “true nature” of Jesus than members of the Catholic clergy, to atheists who attack all aspects of belief and religious history.  Olson’s book targets each of these viewpoints in turn, arguing that none of them is as convincing or as close to the historical truth as what the Catholic Church officially teaches.

 

Olson writes in his introduction:

 

“From the start, the proclamation of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead has been met with a wide range of emotions and responses: fear, amazement, joy, perplexity, astonishment– and disbelief.  In the succinct account at the end of the Gospel of Mark, the three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, who go to anoint Jesus’s body with spices were amazed to find a young man in white robes, an angel, sitting in an otherwise empty tomb.  “Do not be amazed,” he told them, “you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him” (Mk 16:6).  The women fled the tomb, trembling and astonished, “and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.” (Mk 16:8).

 

So afraid, we read, that they said nothing to anyone.  Who would believe them?  Why would anyone believe them?  And, sure enough, when Mary Magdalene told the grieving disciples that Jesus had appeared to her the following morning, “they would not believe it” (Mk 16:11).  In the words of Luke, the account given “seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (Lk 24:11).  “For the early Christians,” writes noted New Testament scholar Craig S. Keener, “neither the empty tomb nor the testimony of the women was adequate evidence by itself (cf. Lk 24:22-24); they also depended on the testimony of the men for the public forum (cf. 1 Cor 15:5-8).” The disbelief of the male disciples is, by any measure, both understandable and embarrassing, and Keener states that the “criterion of embarrassment indicates that no one had apologetic reason to invent the testimony of these women.”

 

Throughout his books, Olson argues that the early Christians had no reason to make up a story about Jesus’s resurrection, and that accusations that the early Church was less than honest are unfounded.  In an early chapter, Olson addresses the theologian Gerhard Lohfink, and notes that the Church needs to make its teachings– what it believes happened and why– absolutely clear, because people have a habit of selecting what they like to think is most reasonable, rather than what might actually have happened.  

 

Olson describes Lohfink’s position, writing that:

 

“Lohfink says that amid such confusion “it is the church’s urgent and even essential duty to make clear what is specifically Christian.”  Such a task is difficult, in part because the Enlightenment project has aided an even promoted a dismissal of religious belief and has also encouraged a reactionary syncretism in which an often irrational stew of religion and spirituality is set up against the rather cold and rational forces of scientism and technocracy.  Thus, to put it simply, Christianity has been attacked from one side as superstitious and anti-reason and from the other as too exclusive and dogmatic, and thus fundamentalist.  Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, in a remarkable homily given at the Mass prior to the papal conclave in which he was elected pope, asked, “How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking?”

 

Olson fills his short volume with reasoned arguments, and one of his most interesting and compelling sections is a “question and answer” chapter where he explains the reasoning for Catholic teachings on Jesus’s resurrection and why Christians need to believe in it as a real event, not just a metaphor or a legend used to make for a better story or to inject mysticism into a more prosaic story.  Describing the reasons his own approach, Olson writes:

 

“In short, Christianity without a risen Christ– truly alive and with a real, glorified body– is an essentially empty, even false belief system.  “If Jesus didn’t literally rise from the dead,” argues philosopher David Baggett, “then at most we would have to settle for a demythologized and deflationary analysis of Christianity.  The fact is, classical Christianity would be false and Jesus usually a philosopher at best or a madman at worst.  If Jesus did bodily rise from the grave, what could be more important as a clue to the meaning of life?  The resurrection matters.”  The stakes, in other words, are high; it really is an all-or-nothing proposition.”

 

Olson covers a wide swath of recent literature about religious apologetics, and explains that not all books are created equal.  Many books seem convincing because they never challenge their central theses within the context of their volumes, which is why someone can set down a book completely unaware that the arguments that sounded so unassailable on the page have been thoroughly rebutted by other researchers.  Olson sets up his book to be a counter-argument to all of the bestsellers and prominent voices he cites in his work.  He knows that books can be incredibly formative influences, and seeks to make his book a counter-force, discrediting those other works.

 

While Olson criticizes other books on the grounds of bad logic, poor theology, and twisted history, Patrick celebrates all books rather than taking a stand on whether or not some books are better than others.  Patrick asked scores of writers, actors, politicians, doctors, and other notable people if there was a book that served as a transformative influence in their lives.  Patrick describes her project, writing that:

 

“One of the parts of this project that makes me happiest is that although no one interviewed was given a list from which to choose and although none of them were told others’ choices in advance, there is only one duplicate title on the list.  That doesn’t mean all the books spoken about meet any parameters.  There are children’s books, poetry collections, biographies, classic novels, modern favorites, and even a comic book included.  What this says to me, and I hope to you, is that life-changing books don’t come with “Read Here” labels attached.  They have as much to do with the reader’s perspective as with the author’s voice.”

 

The essays in Patrick’s book are a very mixed bag.  Some are shallow and self-serving, while other essays are virtue-signaling “aren’t I clever and/or empathetic” puff pieces.  Still, throughout the book, there are some genuinely moving or inspiring pieces, and a handful of them are genuinely spiritual pieces, focusing on the religious aspects of literature.  Most of the essays are only two or three pages, with a few lengthier exceptions.  One of the best passages is by Patrick herself, as she writes about the novel Silence by Shusaku Endo:

 

“[I]n the late winter of 1988, someone in the group selected a novel by a Japanese author I’d never heard of: Silenceby Shusaku Endo.  First published in 1966, a winner of the Tanizaki Prize, and considered by many to be one of the best novels of the twentieth century, Silence is the story of a Portugese missionary to seventeenth-century Japan whose fidelity to Roman Catholic dogma is challenged by armed persecutors of local Christians in hiding.

 

No, Silence did not effect my conversion.  However, I was then, and remain, a seriously spiritual person, and I’d never before encountered a book that was both a testament to faith and a work of art.  It doesn’t matter, when you read Endo, whether you are a devout Christian or a committed atheist.  Although his material is more overtly religious than, say, a fellow Catholic like Flannery O’Connor’s, like O’Connor, Endo uses his beliefs to explore the moral center that unites the greatest works of literature in all world cultures.  His fiction wastes no time on proselytizing.  It focuses on character, conflict, and truth.”

 

Both of these books provide a compelling case that “you are what you read.”  The power of the printed word can shape opinions of religion, politics, and aesthetic taste, among other possibilities.  Olson argues that no book exists in a vacuum, and Patrick puts special stress on the relationship between a book and its reader.  Patrick writes and edits from a largely secular love a books, whereas Olson is arguing about the truth of one of the major events in world history, and writes as a religious man who believes the veracity of what he argues.  Both books pay special attention as to how the written word is often a transformative influence to a reader’s mind and soul. 

 

 

–Chris Chan