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Sunday, April 12, 2020

The Resurrection and grief hallucinations

1. NT scholar Dale Allison has popularized the idea that the Resurrection appearances of Christ might have their basis in so-called grief hallucinations. I should mention that it's been some years since I read his original argument, and I believe he's continued to debate it, so his current position may be more refined than his original formulation. At this point I might be fuzzy on the details. But with those caveats in mind: 

2. An initial problem is terminology. If we classify the phenomenon as a "hallucination", then, by definition, it's a psychological illusion. So the label is prejudicial. A hallucination is a psychological impression of something outside the observer, but in reality the impression originates in the mind. There is nothing objective to the observer that corresponds to what he perceives.

This is not to deny that some people hallucinate under well-known conditions. But whether all or most reported postmortem apparitions are hallucinatory begs the question. I doubt there's an abstract presumption one way or the other. It helps to have some background info about the reporter.

So I prefer to use the term grief apparition, with the caveat that some, but not all, of these may be hallucinatory. For the record, I think there are genuine postmortem apparitions. 

3. To my knowledge, this explanation isn't offered as an interpretation of the Resurrection accounts as they stand. Indeed, it's inconsistent with the Resurrection accounts as written. Rather, it attempts to go behind the narratives to reconstruct what really happened. The Resurrection accounts have their origin in grief apparitions, but Luke and John have transformed them to read more like physical restoration to life. 

A problem with that explanation is a theory that has to explain away inconvenient evidence which stands at odds with the theory. A theory that's consistent with some of the evidence, but discounts other evidence from the same source that runs counter to the theory. That smacks of special pleading. 

4. In fairness, there are situations where you can justifiably offer an explanation in the teeth of the documentary evidence. For instance, Joseph Smith has a well-earned reputation that impugns his credibility as a witness. Therefore, you are justified or even obliged to present an alternative explanation that disregards the record if there's good reason to believe the record is fraudulent.

But unless we're dealing with dubious sources like that, theories that are several steps removed from the documentary evidence are not to be preferred over theories consistent with the documentary evidence.

5. One problem with appealing to grief apparitions is that I doubt that was the primary emotion which the disciples experienced. To the contrary, the primary emotion was fear. Their leader had just been executed, and they were terrified that they were next on the hit list. They were hiding in fear that the authorities would round them up. That's not conducive to grief. Between the crucifixion and resurrection, I don't think there's an opportunity for them to grieve. Their dominant state of mind would be fear of arrest by the authorities, not bereavement. 

6. As I recall, women (esp. widows) are far more likely to experience grief apparitions than men. But we don't find that gender disparity in the Resurrection accounts. Perhaps the explanation would be that the accounts aren't meant to be accurate in that regard. While grief apparitions are the template, Luke and John creatively manipulate their sources or traditions. If so, that's an explanation that must disregard counterevidence in the record. 

7. A further problem is that post-resurrection appearances cluster around a particular time and place. But if these are grief apparitions, why would they be so close in time and place to Easter and succeeding weeks? Wouldn't we expect them to be more spaced out rather than coordinated? Do grief apparitions normally bunch up that way, where friends and family experience them around the same time and place? 

8. Then there's the problem of mass hallucination. Two observers can report seeing these same tree because there's an external object in their field of vision causing them to perceive the same thing. But if the Resurrection appearances are hallucinatory, then there is no external stimulus to generate the same psychological impression. There is no common cause. 

So even if you deny that the observers saw Jesus in the flesh, these would still be genuine postmortem apparitions rather than hallucinations. They saw the ghost of Jesus. So this interpretation still affirms the afterlife, but falls short of resurrection. As an alternative explanation it creates a dilemma because it's less than then NT requires but more than debunkers want to allow for. 

9. Then there's the question of why observers would confuse a ghost with a physical, embodied agent. Many ancient people, including ancient Jews, believed in ghosts. But they didn't confound that with physical restoration to life. So, once again, the claim would be that Luke and John touched up their sources to make it seem like a bona fide resurrection.  

10. Grief apparitions fail to explain the empty tomb. So a proponent of that alternative explanation must come up with an additional, separate explanation for the empty tomb accounts. 

11. Allison cites a few atypical cases of postmortem apparitions that simulate physicality in this or that particular. But in the case of the Resurretion appearances, that requires postulating a patchwork of different cases, to combined all the necessary features. That's highly artificial and far more anomalous than the already exceptional examples. 

5 comments:

  1. I'd add:

    1. Why grief hallucinations in the first place? Why wouldn't it be more consistent with the data to argue the disciples misinterpreted objective reality rather than experienced hallucinations?

    2. Why preference naturalistic explanations over non-naturalistic explanations? Why not regard both on equal ground at the outset? Is there a bias toward methodological naturalisism?

    3. Why would the disciples (plural) have experienced the same or similar grief hallucination when by definition hallucinations are private and subjective? Not to mention experienced these hallucinations at the same time (e.g. eating breakfast with Jesus after catching fish)?

    4. Grief hallucinations typically occur on the backdrop of certain prerequisite psychological, emotional, and other relevant criteria. What these criteria are is open to debate to varying degrees, but let's take the DSM-5 as a starting point. Psychiatrists argue grief hallucinations typically occur in the context of persistent complex bereavement disorder (or what used to be called complicated grief disorder). Do the disciples fit the criteria for bereavement disorder?

    5. The symptoms experienced by the individual in bereavement disorder are symptoms normally associated with depth of grief rather than joy. Take symptoms such as: intense feelings of emptiness or loneliness; recurrent thoughts that life is meaningless or unfair without the deceased alive; a frequent urge to join the deceased in death rather than continue living without the deceased; anger or bitterness about the death of the deceased; trouble trusting or caring about others. By contrast, the disciples were overjoyed when they saw Jesus. So overjoyed they told others about him and kept telling others about him for the rest of their lives so that they too might come to know and love Jesus and know and love one another.

    6. Let's take a step or two back. Why wouldn't the disciples simply have been grieving? Yet there are significant distinctions between normal grief and bereavement disorder. How would Allison distinguish between normal grief and bereavement disorder in the disciples? If the disciples had simply been grieving, then there's arguably less likelihood they would have been predisposed to seeing grief hallucination in contrast to if they had been experiencing bereavement disorder.

    7. Related, there are certain risk factors for experiencing grief hallucinations. For example, females more likely than males (as Steve mentions in his post). Likewise the elderly. Likewise caregivers. Likewise caregivers with little social support. Likewise those with a more melancholy disposition by nature. And so on. How would the disciples fit into these criteria and risk factors?

    8. What's more, grief tends to last for months if not years. The disciples' "bereavement" (and all it entailed) lasted days or weeks at most. Their grief didn't persist for months or years.

    9. Take the experience of negative symptoms. That is, the absence of characteristics that normal people have. Such as a flat affect, lack of motivation, lack of pleasure, lack of speech, social withdrawal. Yet, again, when the disciples allegedly hallucinated about Jesus, it had a positive impact, not a negative one. Their hearts burned within them, they were motivated to share this good news, they were brimming with joy, they went forth to carry this news to others, etc.

    10. By contrast, take the case of a Japanese woman who claimed to have seen her deceased husband for 15 months after his death. That's more typical of grief or bereavement disorder.

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  2. Grief hallucinations would be bad at explaining the appearances to Paul, his travel companions on the road to Damascus, James, and one or more of the other brothers of Jesus for those who think one or more of them experienced a resurrection appearance as well.

    Matthew's material has multiple witnesses touching Jesus' feet, and the reference is so brief and made so much in passing that people frequently overlook it (28:9). It's harder, accordingly, to argue that Matthew or his source was making it up.

    The same Luke who supposedly made up resurrection details in his gospel or relied on sources who did so gives us an appearance to Paul in Acts that's highly unlikely to be fabricated. I discussed the reasons why here. And see here regarding the physicality of the appearance to Paul. Why fabricate an account in which Paul's travel companions don't see Jesus, don't hear all that Jesus said, and don't convert, Jesus' resurrection body has a glorious appearance that it lacked in the appearances in Luke's gospel, and the physical nature of the appearance is communicated so subtly?

    Even in Luke's gospel, there's so much that could have been included that wasn't (the appearance to the more than five hundred, the appearance to James, etc.). As I've argued elsewhere, the gospel accounts are more restrained than we'd expect under the scenarios critics have proposed.

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    1. Allison dismisses the Gospel physical details almost en toto. His argument is chiefly directed against minimal facts. He assumes that higher critical attacks on the Gospel resurrection accounts are successful and more or less dares apologists to respond, assuming that they can't. Allison is Exhibit A of the need for a more forward position in defending the resurrection. (In other words, eschewing the straining to base everything on facts acknowledged by "scholarly consensus across the ideological spectrum.")

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  3. So, according to the theory of grief hallucinations, most or all of the New Testament writers got together and decided to write accounts that would include references and descriptions of a resurrection. A resurrection that they knew was false and based on accounts of people who had hallucinations. They wrote this down and decided to spend the rest of their lives convincing others to believe in it even though this meant giving up decent if not lucrative jobs & positions and subjecting themselves to physical hardship, legal punishment and, in many if not most cases, martyrdom. Add to this that they were able to convince a person who was basically a 1st century Jewish rock star and he threw it all away to become a crazy homeless man. In addition, the authorities never bothered to document any type of proof or indication that showed this was all just make-believe. And, finally, there was no incentive of gaining power because Christians were powerless until at least the 3rd century. Oh yeah, it all makes perfect sense! (I know this is rather snarky but I am very tired of sceptics demanding that Christians accept their wildest speculations without a shred of proof while declaiming that there is no proof for Christianity. Lord save me from the lunacy)

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  4. Of course some non-Christians chalk it up to pyschoactive/psychotropic drugs (e.g. "Magic Mushrooms"). But there's no positive evidence that the early disciples used them, or that later Christians continuing to use them in the first century. Non-Christians want to posit anything so as to avoid the actual resurrection of Christ.

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