When we repeat a particular idea often enough that it becomes part of the air we breathe for years, or even generations on end, it accumulates a gravitas, an authority, that soon goes unexamined. It’s easy for us to see other cultures or communities doing this; it’s difficult to see ourselves doing it. That’s why I’ve sought to expose numerous unquestioned mantras (such as: Jesus’ ministry lasted 3 years, judge not, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, forgetting what lies behind, and Jesus never broke a bruised reed) that have become unassailably axiomatic in evangelical Protestant circles. I am deeply grateful when others show me that what I’ve always heard and assumed isn’t actually supported by the text of Scripture.

So with all due respect to commentator D.A. Carson and the countless others who have always believed Jesus walked through walls, I raised the question last week: Do John 20:19 and John 20:26 truly claim that Jesus walked through walls? Is the matter as obvious as we typically assert?

The Testimony of the Ancients

John Calvin would disagree, and with flair:

And while the doors were shut. … We ought, therefore, to believe that Christ did not enter without a miracle, in order to give a demonstration of his Divinity, by which he might stimulate the attention of his disciples; and yet I am far from admitting the truth of what the Papists assert, that the body of Christ passed through the shut doors. Their reason for maintaining this is, for the purpose of proving not only that the glorious body of Christ resembled a spirit, but that it was infinite, and could not be confined to any one place. But the words convey no such meaning; for the Evangelist does not say that he entered through the shut doors, but that he suddenly stood in the midst of his disciples, though the doors had been shut, and had not been opened to him by the hand of man. We know that Peter (Acts 10:10) [sic Acts 12:10] went out of a prison which was locked; and must we, therefore, say that he passed through the midst of the iron and of the planks? Away, then, with that childish trifling, which contains nothing solid, and brings along with it many absurdities! Let us be satisfied with knowing that Christ intended, by a remarkable miracle, to confirm his disciples in their belief of his resurrection.

Calvin, J., & Pringle, W. (2010). Commentary on the Gospel according to John (Vol. 2, p. 264). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.

Augustine read the text to say that Christ “appeared” within the room, without speculating on how exactly he got there:

When he appeared with all the members of his body and used their functions, he also displayed the places of his wounds. I have always taken these as scars, not as actual wounds, and saw them as the result of his power, not of some necessity. He revealed the ease of this power, especially when he either showed himself in another form or appeared as his real self to the disciples gathered in the house when the doors were closed.

Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Vol. IVb, Elowsky, J. C. (Ed.). (2007). John 11–21 (p. 356). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Gregory of Nyssa reads the text similarly:

After his resurrection he showed himself whenever he wanted to his disciples. When he wished to be present with them, he was in their midst without being seen, needing no entrance through open doors.… All of these occurrences, and whatever other similar facts we know about his life, require no further argument to show that they are signs of deity and of a sublime and supreme power.

Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Vol. IVb, Elowsky, J. C. (Ed.). (2007). John 11–21 (p. 357). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Regarding the grave-clothes left in the empty tomb (John 20:6-8), Chrysostom seems to think they were simply stripped off and laid aside:

They see the linen clothes lying there, which was a sign of the resurrection. For if they had removed the body, they would not have stripped it first, nor, if any had stolen it, would they have taken the trouble to remove the napkin and roll it up and lay it in a place by itself apart from the linens. They would have taken the body as it was.

Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Vol. IVb, Elowsky, J. C. (Ed.). (2007). John 11–21 (pp. 340–341). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Eusebius of Caesarea hears the text saying the grave-clothes were simply left lying:

The cloths lying within seem to me at once to furnish also a proof that the body had not been taken away by people, as Mary supposed. For no one taking away the body would leave the linens, nor would the thief ever have stayed until he had undone the linens and so be caught.

Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Vol. IVb, Elowsky, J. C. (Ed.). (2007). John 11–21 (p. 341). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Now my point is not to say we must agree with whatever the commentators write. That would go against a fundamental principle of this blog.

Rather, my point is that the notion of Jesus’ resurrected body passing through solid objects is by no means required of the text. Many Bible readers, in cultures and times different than ours, saw nothing of the sort. Or at least, if they did, not many saw reason to say so.

Eyes Back On the Text

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

John 20:19

What is plain is that the disciples were in a room with the doors locked. And John’s explicit reason for mentioning the locked doors is to highlight not Jesus’ miraculous entry but the disciples’ great fear of the Jews. And then at some point, Jesus came and stood among them. He may have entered the room in a miraculous way (which would be consistent with the views of the older commentators quoted above), but again, John doesn’t say so outright.

John doesn’t want us to focus on how exactly Jesus got into the room, though it may have been miraculous. And there is no reason to believe John wants us to think Jesus could pass through solid objects (but as I stated last week: It’s possible he could have!).

John wants us simply to see the risen Christ, in the flesh, offering peace to his fearful followers and sending them to bear witness to these things (John 20:20-23). Those are the facts of which we can be certain, and they ought to be the focus of our attention as we strive to understand and teach John’s message in this text.

Jesus accused the Pharisees of holding to traditions which had been added to the Word of God. We may accuse those outside our tribe of doing the same today. But could there be extra-biblical traditions to which we hold steadfastly within our own circles? Oral traditions repeated often enough to now appear nearly self-evident?

I propose one such tradition is the notion that Jesus walked through a wall. If we can suspend our familiarity with the tradition and observe the text carefully, we’ll find the tradition far from evident.

The Text

We find the tradition’s source in John 20:19 and John 20:26:

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’

Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’

Examples of the Tradition

D.A. Carson’s commentary on John’s gospel is a masterpiece, which I am happy to recommend. But no-one is perfect, and in his comments on these verses, Carson reflects the tradition:

But the function of the locked doors in John’s narrative, both here [v.19] and in v.26, is to stress the miraculous nature of Jesus’ appearance amongst his followers. As his resurrection body passed through the grave-clothes (v.6-8), so it passed through the locked doors and simply ‘materialized.’

Carson, The Gospel According to John, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991, p.646.

Carson simply asserts that Jesus’ body “passed through locked doors and simply ‘materialized'” as he did with the grave-clothes. So I turn to his comments on the grave-clothes for further textual evidence of the phenomenon:

The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Clearly John perceives these details to be important, but their exact meaning is disputed. Some have thought that the burial cloth still retained the shape of Jesus’ head, and was separated from the strips of linen by a distance equivalent to the length of Jesus’ neck. Others have suggested that, owing to the mix of spices separating the layers, even the strips of linen retained the shape they had when Jesus’ body filled them out. Both of these suggestions say more than the text requires. What seems clearest is the contrast with the resurrection of Lazarus (11:44). Lazarus came from the tomb wearing his grave-clothes, the additional burial cloth still wrapped around his head. Jesus’ resurrection body apparently passed through his grave-clothes, spices and all, in much the same way that he later appeared in a locked room (vv. 19, 26). The description of the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head does not suggest that it still retained the shape of the corpse, but that it had been neatly rolled up and set to one side by the one who no longer had any use for it.

Carson, p.637

So we see Carson first exposing a few baseless traditions (that the grave cloths were shaped liked a hollow mummy) because they “say more than the text requires.” This standard for evaluating traditions is eminently reasonable. However, Carson goes on to link the grave-clothes with the entering of the locked room. And he says more himself than the text requires by suggesting that Jesus’ body must have “passed through” solid objects.

C.S. Lewis offers another way one can grasp the tradition of Jesus walking through walls. In his novel Perelandra, as well as in The Great Divorce, he grapples with the idea that heaven is in fact more real than earth. The heavenly grass pokes at the sensitive feet of spiritual tourists, and heavenly rain drops threaten to crush those who lack substance. Lewis challenges the standard tradition in that he wants us not to see Jesus’ resurrection body as less “real,” or more “ghostly” than ours. He wants us to see Jesus’ body as more real and ourselves as the ghosts.

Both Carson and Lewis have important points to make on this topic, but both require us to look more closely at the text: Did Jesus walk through those walls? Did his body pass through the grave-cloths?

Observe the Text

I’ll start with the grave-cloths:

[Simon Peter] saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.

John 20:6b-7

John tells us that Peter saw the grave-cloths “lying there.” He does not say they were shaped like a hollow mummy. And he does not say they looked as though the body had Disapparated and the cloths had fallen flat without being unwrapped. He says they were “lying there,” but he says nothing about the condition in which they were lying (except for the face cloth being folded).

They could have been ripped off like one of The Incredible Hulk’s shredded garments. They could have been removed and tossed aside like dirty laundry. They could have been rolled or folded neatly. John says the face cloth was “folded up in a place by itself,” so with confidence we can declare that piece of cloth as folded. But the rest? John simply doesn’t tell us. He doesn’t say nearly enough to require us to conclude the body must have passed through the garments.

Now look again at the locked room:

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’

Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’

john 20:19, 26

We know the doors were locked, with the disciples inside. We know the disciples were afraid of the Jews. We know that Jesus then stood among them within the room and spoke to them. But John doesn’t tell us how Jesus got from outside the room to inside the room.

Perhaps he walked through the walls. Perhaps. Or perhaps he knocked on the locked door until they heard his voice, opened up, and let him in. Or perhaps he spoke by the word of his power and made a section of the wall collapse. Or perhaps he found some others to open a hole in the roof and let him down on a pallet. Or perhaps he teleported from one location to another. I intend no irreverence whatsoever; I only wish to highlight that which we simply don’t know.

Please note: I am not saying that Jesus could not have walked through the walls or passed through the grave-cloths. He certainly could have. He is the Lord.

I am saying only that it is not self-evident, from John’s narrative, that he must have walked through walls. John is not nearly as clear about metaphysical post-resurrection ontology as we might wish him to be.

Conclusion

Why does it matter whether Jesus walked through a wall or not? What is at stake here?

Simply the fact that traditions snowball over time, with the end result of making void the Word of God (Mark 7:13). In this case, the tradition has led many to speculate on the physical properties of either the resurrection body or the new heavens and the new earth. This can lead many to make too sharp a division between the “natural” and the “spiritual”—and then we use those adjectives more like Plato than like Paul, which promotes unbiblical asceticism (Col 2:20-23), among other things.

May our thinking and our doctrine be increasingly rooted in vigilant observation of the God-inspired text, that we might be complete, equipped for every good work.