Sir, Your correspondent, Rev Dominic Johnson OSB, has been at it again (May 30th), insisting that the Resurrection (of the body) is a historical fact.
It is no such thing.
Apart from the general and well recognised unreliability of the Gospels as records of fact, written as they were, some 30 to 60 years after the death of Christ and relying heavily on word of mouth, there is no direct evidence of the Resurrection, no one in the whole New Testament claims to have been a witness to it and nowhere is it described.
Hans Kung who deals specifically and authoritatively with this question in his On being a Christian writes. "Raising up as a historical event? Since according to New Testament faith the rising up is an act of God within God's dimensions, it can not be a historical event in the strict sense it is not an event which can be verified by historical science with the aid of historical methods."
One respects Fr Johnson's own beliefs but I am afraid his main argument is flawed and his case unconvincing.
The subject may be closed as far as he is concerned but this is a controversy with which the church has never been at ease and probably never will precisely because it is not "a historical fact" Yours, etc., Castle Gardens, Kilkenny.