Paul and Jacob - thank you for your interesting responses.

Paul - as regards postmodernism: in the sense that it sits alongside modernism, and cannot exist without it, it is, in essence, a critique of modernism. So in that sense, I am somewhat in harmony with your view that it hasn’t swept all before it. On the other hand, my list of categories in which it is proving influential was deliberate: postmodernism is the world in which the certainties of Newtonian physics have been called into question; likwise the certainties of the great sociological and economic theories (Marxism/global capitalism - viz the protests at the recent G8 meeting); psychological narratives (Freudianism); philosophical certainties (in the light of today’s fragmentation following the great eighteenth and nineteenth century philosphical traditions). The same holds true of religion: modernism loves foundational logic; postmodernism (as a mindset) is suspicious of such proofs, and holds more regard for personal story and experience. Postmodernism finds monolithic ‘truth’ to be distasteful.

But as regards the historicity of the New Testament, and the resurrection of Jesus in particular, the testimony of the NT itself is that the story depends on its factual basis - as far as anything can be proved to have taken place. This emerges in particular in 1 Corinthians 15:13-19, and the preceding verses where Paul is at pains to present those to whom the resurrected Christ had appeared - a key verse being 6. If the 250 mentioned there were still alive, all could have been cross-questioned as to the truthfulness of their claims at the time Paul was writing. There was no possibility of a mythical reconstruction of history here.

The reason the resurrection is important lies in the central distinguishing features of the Christian faith - in which its relation to the material world is of supreme importance. It affirms the goodness of the material world, but also the frustration of its purpose through the disobedience of man, leading to sin and death. It promises a new material world, in which the purposes of creation willl be fulfilled, with humanity as its supreme expression. This new creation begins in Christ, in his resurrection.

One of the best short apologetics for the resurrection is Frank Morison’s ‘Who moved the stone?’. Written at a time when the stripping out of the supernatural from the biblical accounts was at its height, Morison, trained in law, thought he could easily write a book in which the demythologising techniques could be applied to the resurrection. Instead, the historical basis of the resurrection accounts gripped him. So the first chapter of the book is movingly entitled: ‘The book that refused to be written’!

Christian faith is no more ‘truth’ that can be objectively proved than anything else in which proofs are being applied. On the other hand, its operations do somewhat depend on events which require a historical anchoring for their validity. It relates to this world, and our lives; this world’s history, and the place our lives occupy in that history. It is not, in the end, purely a spiritual, existential phenomenon, and by no criteria could that be said to have been the message Jesus came to bring.