Socrates' divinely authorised philosophical mission, authorised by the Oracle at Delphi, ended with his unjust, but legal, execution at the hands of his fellow Athenians. While awaiting execution he refused an offer of escape and flight to another Greek city-state. Socrates freely choose death rather than dishonour the laws of the Athens which had nurtured him and to which he was a loyal citizen. Plato's Phaedo describes Socrates last day on Earth where he debates with his friends on the possibility of a life after death. The Phaedo is set many years after Socrates' death. It is a dialogue between two Pythagoreans, a religious as well as a philosophical community, in which the older member tells a tale of the great Socrates. Socrates' philosophical mission survives his death so, in a very real sense, Socrates is victorious over death. Just as Jesus was? Perhaps.
Anglican theologians Anthony Hanson and Richard Hanson describe three possibilities regarding the Resurrection of Jesus. First is what they call the 'reductionist' model, much as the story of Socrates above. His followers, even though Jesus was lost to them, were driven by the memory of his life and mission, to continue the work regardless. A second model was the 'veridical vision' model. While the stories of the empty tomb were metaphorical the presence of the risen Jesus was genuinely experienced by his friends. Imagine a disciple trying to convince a doubting Thomas that Jesus, though dead, had really been among them. "It was so real, Thomas, it really was! So real that it was as if one could have put one’s hands in his wounds." And Thomas later learned that this was a valid metaphor when he himself experienced the risen Jesus. The Hansons described a third possibility - the veridical vision combined with the empty tomb; the story of the empty tomb being a literal rather than metaphorical truth.
A wise man once said that the opposite to a falsehood is not the truth but the complementary falsehood. I am at the moment reading a book on the Reformation in England*. The traditional view is that the free distribution of the vernacular form of the Scriptures created a free Christian Church. The corrupt Roman Church insisted that the scriptures could only be validly interpreted by an appropriately educated clergy who would in turn inform the faithful of the 'true' meaning of scripture. However the reformers held, also wrongly, that scripture always had one and only one simple and obvious meaning. While the Bible itself may well be the infallible Word of God any human interpretation must, of necessity, be fallible and tentative. One of the most important 20th century philosophers was Ludwig Wittgenstein who is renowned for his groundbreaking work in the analysis of language. His more important 'language game' model describes the difference between the 'surface grammar' of a text and its 'depth grammar'. That a piece of literature, such as a work of sacred scripture, may have multiple meanings is likely. However there can be no definitive interpretation of a passage of scripture. Learning and scholarship enhances a persons' understanding of scripture but does not produce a definitive or 'correct' interpretation. Scripture, or indeed any other form of language, does not work that way.
The Biblical accounts of the Resurrection do not in any way contraindicate any of the Hanson's possibilities. And comparisons with the Phaedo are extremely thought provoking.
Let us suppose a 19th century person had the experience of being touched by God through reading a particular passage from the Bible. Her reading and interpretation is valid, rather than correct or incorrect, by definition - 'meaning as use' to use Wittgenstein's phrase. Subsequent learning, say involving customs in Biblical times, might reveal that her reading was naive but what of it. It is her encounter with God that matters and not how highly developed her background knowledge of the Bible is. Perhaps God allows for such limitations in each of us? Any person who reads the Bible does so, must do so, from a particular cultural context, part of which is unique to that individual. When someone approaches scripture in good faith no cultural background is more valid than another, not fundamentally so. Expertise is to be shared. It does not give one a superior spiritual life. The mistake many reformers made was to insist, not just that there was only one meaning to scripture, but that this meaning was immediately obvious to the elect. The level of anxiety associated with Bible reading became extreme. The response to this problem should be the recognition of the tentative nature of any interpretation.
Until Arthur Evans' excavations of the Labyrinth of Knossos in Crete it was thought that the legend of Theseus who slew the Minotaur was pure myth. The Cretans had a more advanced civilisation due to the wealth derived from the selective breeding of cattle and accordingly the bull was an important symbol. The more primitive mainland Grecians were forced by mighty Crete to supply people as tribute to engage in dangerous bull vaulting ceremonies. Similarly the tale of Jason and the Argonauts tells of how early Mediterranean civilisations, whose wealth came in part from panning gold from streams, became much wealthier when sea farers travelled to the Black Sea and learned how a streams' bounty could be increased tenfold using a technology involving immersing a sheepskin into a stream. Recent anthropology tells of how, once the transition from hunter-gatherer society to agricultural societies occurred, tillage farming societies developed polytheistic religions while the more socially simple pastoral farming societies, tending flocks and herds, became monotheistic. And Cain slew Able.
Scholarship is a side issue to a spiritual life centred on an or involving the Bible. However that such scholarship exists and occurs on an ongoing and progressing basis is a fact. It is the duty of the believer to take such developments on board when reading scripture. As such our understanding of the meaning of scripture is, on an ongoing basis, continually reformed.

*Burning to Read by James Simpson, Harvard University Press.

Brendan Burke MA(Phil)
Cork Unitarian Church 10 November 2009