Who Raised Up Jesus?

This article will follow the investigation of whether Jesus raised Himself or not. So it is no question that God raised Jesus. The Father (Rom 8:11, Gal 1:1, Eph 1:20), The Holy Spirit (Rom 8:11) both played in the triune economy of Christ's resurrection. The strongest case for Jesus raising Himself, is found in Joh 2:19-20 & John 10:17-18.

The Holy Spirit as agency is not considered here as that would be require an entire new line of evidence (pg. 118 n4).

This was brought to my attention when I came across David Tong's FB posts regarding this matter. Post 1 (2/7/2023): On his reading of Gaffin's book Resurrection and Redemption pg. 63, Post 2 (2/8/2023): Using the latest OpenAI chatbot: ChatGPT which is getting a lot of hypes lately, even from Christian circle. And David's subsequent posts: 4/9/2023, 4/9/2023, 4/10/2023, 4/10/2023, 4/11/2023, 4/14/2023, 4/14/2023, 3/26/2024, 3/26/2024, 3/30/2024, 3/31/2024, 4/1/2024

(Side note: archive.org is really some free online library, they won't let you download but allow you to "borrow" online for limited time period, not mentioning any download hack, which does seem to exist, at this time, I'm just not as invested to deal with this hack as I used to, depending on time and zeal as a collector)

So David posted these:
Gaffin: “The notion that Jesus is active in his resurrection … is not supported elsewhere in Paul.” (Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption, 63).

Geerhadus Vos: “Nowhere is it said of Jesus that He contributed towards his own resurrection, far less that He raised Himself.” (Vos, The Pauline Eschatology, 147n6, quoted in Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption, 64).

If I'm not mistaken, the idea is to suggest that Jesus did not raise himself. As verified in his [David Tong] second post using ChatGPT to confirm the fact that the AI does indeed "think" so.

However, I believe that Both Richard Gaffin Jr. and Vos were referring to Pauline eschatology, not the entire eschatology of the Bible. In other words, David Tong alone, not the others, missed the Johanine eschatology. However, I cannot say if Gaffin or Vos did not have the tendency to make their view to not just be Pauline but representing the entire New Testament as well. Both Gaffin and Vos were obviously focusing on the fact that it was God who raised Christ, God's power, God's authority, God alone, so that we understand that our resurrection likewise rest assuredly in divine hand, but Gaffin also indicated John Murray's stand as if unique "Murray, who wishes to hold open the possibility that there may be a reflection on "Jesus' own agency" in its usage, nevertheless rightly maintains: "To insist, however, that there is reflection upon the agency of Christ in His own resurrection, in such usage as we have now been discussing, is not warranted" ("Who Raised Up Jesus?" p. 116). Pg 64n91. (PS: This pursuit also taught me how to read citations like xxxn.xx = page number footnote #) Neither Vos nor Gaffin made reference to Joh 2:19-20 & John 10:17-18, which is why I assume they were only focusing on Pauline in particular and not the entire NT.

Stephen Tong in his 2022 preaching (復活節崇拜會 基督必要復活), emphasized: 四、 基督的死是主動性的死...因為耶穌的死是主動的，所以耶穌的復活也是主動的。I will add the entire sermon in the comment in case of broken link in the future. Basically, applying the knowledge of Christ's dual natures.

John Murray, a student of Vos, give the best explanation of all this in his WTS journal article: Who Raised Up Jesus? Which was later discussed by Reformed Forum in 2014. Murray basically said Jesus had a hand in raising Himself up, but in the economical triune sense. Which I will explain below in his 4 points.

Two primary Greek words used for resurrection/raised: ἐγείρω and ἀνίστημι (for some reason David Tong interpret it as only "standing up" and thus rejected the application of ἀνίστημι in this discussion).

The key to understand all this is the grammar in Greek: When passive voice is applied to ἐγείρω, one must understand if this is expressed in the passive of the transitive verb "to raise" or intransitive verb "to rise/arise". With transitive then you have God as the subject and Christ as the object.

Here is basically the summary from John Murray and his 4 points in the end:

Active verb implies God raised Jesus (for sure in transitive case) in the passages below:
ἐγείρω - Active verb ἤγειρεν:
- Acts 4:10, Acts 5:30.
ἀνίστημι - Active transitive verb ἀνέστησεν/ἀναστήσας:
- Acts 2:24, Acts 2:32, Acts 13:33, 34; 17:31
- Active intransitive verb ἀναστῆναι/ἀναστῇ/ἀναστήσεται/ἀνέστη:
- Mark 8:31; 9:9, 10, 31; 10:34; Luke 18:33; 24:7, 46; John 20:9; Acts 10:41; 17:3; I Thessalonians 4:14

Which persons of the Trinity are involved?
- Holy Spirit: Romans 8:11
- The Father: Galatians 1:1
- The Father: Ephesians 1:17-20
However, Murray wishes to argue in Romans 6:4, the ἠγέρθη though aorist passive, may be rendered "rose" as well as "was raised".
Thus, there is no doubt that the Father is the agent and Christ is the subject in the resurrection of Christ.

Active verb being appears to be uniformly used transitively (raise), with the exception of the present active imperative ἤγειρε [no example, must be a rare case]. Active voice: Jesus is the object and not the subject of the verb, except in John 2:19-20.

ἐγείρω

Passive verb ἐγείρονται/ἐγήγερται/ἐγείρεται/ἐγερθήσονται get complicated:
transitive = to raise: Matthew 11:5, Luke 7:22, Luke 20:37, 1Cor 15:15,16,29,32,35,42,43,44,52
Verses that appear transitive but could also be less awkward to be intransitive = to rise, to arise: ἠγέρθη/ἐγερθέντι/ἐγερθείς/ἐγήγερται/ἐγείρονται: Rom 4:25, 6:4,9; 7:4; 8:34; 1Cor 15:4,12,13,14,16,17,20.

Intransitive use of the verb but non-resurrection references ἠγέρθη/ἐγήγερται/ἐγέρθητι : Matthew 8:15, 9:25, 14:2; Mark 6:14,16; Luke 9:7, Luke 7:14
Thus, Murray promotes (though insisting such use is not warranted for the resurrection of others who could not have been resurrected by the exercise of their own agency or power prevents such insistence) the use of Passive Intransitive as Jesus' own activity in His resurrection in these ἐγείρομαι/Ἠγέρθη/ἐγερθῆναί/ἐγερθείς/ἐγερθέντι/ἐγηγερμένον: Matthew 27:63,64; 28:6,7; Mark 14:28; 16:6; Luke 24:6,34; John 21:14; 2Cor 5:15; 2Tim 2:8.

ἀνίστημι

As listed above with examples of its Active transitive & intransitive verses. When it is transitive, God is the agent and Christ the subject of the resurrection, Christ is the object of the verb; In instances (with Mark 9:10 as exception) of intransitive use, Jesus is the subject of the clause.

However, ἀναστήσας (active verb) in Acts 3:26 is not treated by Murray as resurrection. And some would argue that ἀναστήσας in Acts 13:32[-33] was referring to incarnation instead, but Acts 13:34 is explicit enough to conclude that verse 32[-33] is referring to the resurrection instead of incarnation. (pg. 117n2)

Also from terms other than ἐγείρω & ἀνίστημι consider Christ's resurrection in Romans 14:9 ἔζησεν/ζάω (active verb) & I Peter 3:18 ζῳοποιηθείς/ζῳοποιέω (passive verb), though not determinative. (pg. 118 n3)

Therefore, though insistence on activity of Jesus as agent of His resurrection is impossible (proven by the fact that such verb is used in the case of the resurrection of others who could not have risen by their own agency or power i.e. Mark 5:42; Luke 16:31; John 11:23,24; Acts 9:40 ἀνάστηθι; Ephesians 5:14 ἀνάστα; I Thessalonians 4:16 ἀναστήσονται), Murray seriously contemplated the possibility of Jesus' own agency in His resurrection.

So there is no conclusive evidence that there is allusion to the activity of Jesus in these cases of the use of either of these two verbs, despite there being possibility of that in the intransitive use of the passive of ἐγείρω and in the intransitive use of ἀνίστημι.

Now, possibility aside, here comes the Johannine proof of the affirmative justification that Jesus was active in His own resurrection. John 2:19-22 [a promise is more of an act rather than potentiality when spoken by Christ] & John 10:17-18 [though one such as David Tong would argue for potentiality instead of actual act here]. Even though other passages were inconclusive. To be continued - pg. 119

Conclusion:

The fun part for this entry was hours of labor finding resources cited in these works. For example, it was almost impossible but I did find Gaffin's footnote reference (page 64 n.90) that with Vos, the reason I wasted hours and couldn't find the quote Gaffin took from Vos: Nowhere is it said of Jesus that He contributed towards his own resurrection, far less that He raised Himself. (Vos, The Pauline Eschatology, 147n6, quoted in Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption, 64) was because the version I downloaded of Vos' Eschatology had no footnotes in it, and 147n6 just happens to be at page 147, footnote #6 of the complete edition - now why would those making these public downloads remove footnotes or think these footnotes aren't important? Apparently Vos had written almost as much material in his footnotes than his main content of the book, mostly. I was almost convinced that Gaffin was mistaken in his citation. The other was from the same citation, referring to D. H. Van Daalen's article on "The Resurrection of the Body and Justification by Grace". This one is more of a challenge for finding rare resources on the internet. And while using the English part (Studia Evangelica Vol III) of the search did not get any result, I was able to get the entire article from Google Books using German/Dutch keywords: Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur Volume 88 1964. I managed make my own archive of all these except for Gaffin's book as well as Vos' COMPLETE Pauline Eschatology edition (with footnotes), I shall just virtually "borrow" these when necessary, for now. I've archived Van Daalen's article next to John Murray's article in the same folder on my drive.