EASTER
SIR.-1 read Mr. Christopher Hollis's article, 'The Easter Enigma' with the more interest because I first began to learn Theology under his father. The subject is of great importance{ but I do not think any com- petent theologian today would follow Mr. Hollis's exegesis. The Gospels are quite clearly not histories, or even, except coincidentally, concerned with his- torical fact as we think of it today. The resurrection appearance to Thomas is a symbolic representation of what the doctrine of resurrection means as opposed to the metaphysical 'concept of 'immortality.' The first written record of a post-resurrection appearance is in Galatians--and -is at least fifty years earlier than the Fourth Gospel. That Saul of Tarsus claimed apostle- / ship by reason of the vision on the Damascus road does throw a flood of light on to the nature of the resurrection 'appearances,' all of which were set down in writing long after Paul had written Galatians. What the writers are trying to do, under the forms of myth or symbolism, is adumbrate the Christian view of eternal life, which ih a transformation' of this world, a ,Irinscendence of human personality over time and space. The Living God is an existential experience. and the experiences of religious people in the past, expressed in different ways, simply testify to the objective nature of the experience. The terms they use are not the important thing, nor can anything be built on them. It is the objective reality to which they ,bear witness which alone matters.—Yours faith- fully,
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