Perfect Septem

Graham Greene, Catholicism and the Race to the Tomb

The celebrated novelist Graham Greene once said that a small detail in John's account of the Resurrection helped keep him from losing his faith. Why did the beloved disciple racing Peter to the tomb strike him as eyewitness testimony?

What could convince a celebrated novelist that the Gospel of John might preserve the recollection of an eyewitness?

For Graham Greene, it was not a long theological argument or an elaborate description of a miracle. It was a seemingly insignificant detail in the account of Jesus' Resurrection: one disciple ran faster than Peter and reached the tomb first.

Greene was one of the most influential English novelists of the twentieth century. He was also a Catholic whose relationship with faith was complicated, marked by periods of doubt and uncertainty. Yet, towards the end of his life, he identified a particular passage in John's Gospel as one of the things that kept him from abandoning his faith altogether.

The passage was about two disciples running to an empty tomb.

The race to Jesus' tomb

The account appears in John 20, after Mary Magdalene discovers that the stone has been removed from Jesus' tomb. She runs to tell Simon Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved that the Lord has been taken away.

The two disciples set off towards the tomb.

John records:

“The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.”

— John 20:4 (NRSVA)

The beloved disciple bends down, sees the linen wrappings lying there, and waits for Peter. Peter enters the tomb first, followed by the other disciple.

John then records that the other disciple entered, saw and believed (John 20:5-8).

It is a remarkably ordinary detail within an extraordinary event.

The Gospel does not need to tell us which disciple was faster. The speed of their running does not, by itself, establish that Jesus rose from the dead. Yet the writer includes it anyway.

Why?

For Greene, that small detail had the feel of a real memory.

Graham Greene and his Catholic faith

Greene's own life did not always reflect the moral ideals of the Catholic faith he professed. He experienced periods of religious uncertainty and, in a late interview, described himself as a “Catholic agnostic”.

Yet he did not simply dismiss Christianity.

In a 1989 interview with The Tablet, Greene explained that two things had helped prevent him from losing his faith altogether. One was his encounter with Padre Pio. The other was the account of the Resurrection in John's Gospel.

The detail that mattered to him was the race between Peter and the beloved disciple.

“It seems to be first-hand reportage”

Greene explained why this small detail had stayed with him. As quoted in Tom Hiney's essay The New Agnosticism, Greene said of the passage:

“It just seems to me to be first-hand reportage, and I can't help believing it.”

Greene was struck by the fact that the writer did not simply report that two disciples went to the tomb. He described one running ahead of the other.

It is the sort of detail a person might remember from a real event. It is specific, almost incidental, and does not seem necessary to the central claim that Jesus had risen.

Greene also reflected on the possibility that John's Gospel preserved the memories of an old man who did not identify himself by name, but nevertheless recalled this almost amusing race.

The detail impressed him because it felt less like a story constructed to make a theological point and more like a recollection of something that had actually happened.

This was not the only thing sustaining Greene's faith, and he did not claim that the passage resolved every doubt he had. But it was enough to keep drawing him back to the Gospel.

Why would such a small detail matter?

At first glance, the fact that one disciple outran Peter might seem irrelevant. If the purpose of the Gospel were simply to announce that Jesus had risen, why include it?

The detail does not directly prove the Resurrection. A writer could invent an incidental detail, and genuine eyewitness accounts can omit many things. We should not treat the mere presence of an ordinary detail as automatic proof of historical accuracy.

Nevertheless, Greene's reaction raises a worthwhile question: What kind of writing are we reading when we encounter the Gospels?

John's account contains names, movements, conversations and physical details. The disciples run to a particular place. One arrives first and looks inside. Another enters. They see the linen wrappings. The beloved disciple then believes.

The narrative does not read like a bare statement of doctrine. It presents people responding to an event, each acting in a particular way.

The race is a small detail, but it places the reader inside the unfolding scene.

For Greene, that quality of the narrative mattered. He saw in it the texture of remembered experience.

A novelist's eye for the real

Perhaps Greene noticed the race because he was a novelist himself.

A novelist pays attention to how people behave: the things they say, the movements they make, the details they remember and the apparently unimportant observations that give a scene its realism.

In fiction, such details can make invented events feel real. In historical writing, they can also preserve the texture of lived experience.

Further Reading