TRFG - Reason 6 - The reality of the resurrection

In a previous lesson, we discussed how most historians today make the philosophical assumption that miracles simply cannot happen. This makes the Christian claim of the resurrection of Jesus highly problematic. However, if we dismiss the resurrection of Jesus, we have a hard time explaining how the Christian church got started. As Keller says, “Most people think that, when it comes to Jesus’s resurrection, the burden of proof is on believers to give evidence that it happened. That is not completely the case.” In this lesson, we will look at hard questions that need answers if Jesus did not rise from the dead.

The empty tomb and the witnesses

Historically, the first account of the resurrection of Jesus is not from the gospel narratives, but in a letter Paul wrote to the Corinthians some 15-20 years after the death of Christ.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 1 Corinthians 15:3-6

In addition to claiming that Jesus had been raised from the dead, Paul referred to some 500 witnesses to the resurrection. Most of these people were still alive at the time this letter was written. So it would have been relatively easy for a skeptic to find some of these witnesses to inquire further if Paul’s claims were true.

Another point worth mentioning, is that the Bible’s accounts of the resurrection are too problematic to be made-up. In the first-century, women had such a low status in society that their testimony was not valid in court. However, all the gospels report that women were the first witnesses to the resurrection. There would have been tremendous pressure to omit or change this detail. The only reason for keeping it as part of the story is because that is how it really happened.

So, the tomb must have been empty and there must have been eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus.

Resurrection and immortality

But perhaps, the body was stolen and the disciples just thought they saw Jesus. The problem with this argument is that it assumes the people of first-century would have been susceptible to believing in the individual resurrection of Jesus. However, we now know that the way Jesus was explained to have been resurrected contradicted the dominant world-views at the time.

N.T. Wright performed an extensive survey of non-Jewish thought in the first-century. Universally, people considered a bodily resurrection to be inconceivable. In their minds, the body was evil and the spirit of a person was pure. So any concept of a resurrection would only involve the spirit being separated from the body.

While Jews had a conception of a resurrection, it was not the individual resurrection of Jesus that Christianity describes. Contrary to their contemporaries, Jews thought that the material world was good and that death was a tragedy. They believed in the resurrection of all righteous persons when God renewed the entire world.

The disciples’ account of the resurrected Jesus was therefore contrary to all the dominant views of first-century people. The gospels describe the individual, bodily resurrection of Jesus which was inconceivable to the Jews and the Greco-Romans of the time. So it seems highly unlikely that the disciples could have come up with the narrative of the resurrection if it had not really happened.

The explosion of a new worldview

The Christian view of the resurrection was therefore a completely new way of thinking. However, it took root almost immediately after the death of Jesus. Normally it takes several decades for such a cosmic shift in thinking to occur. Christians explained how Jesus could walk through walls and yet eat fish at the same time. This was not merely the spiritual resurrection that the Greeks believed in. Nor was it the full resurrection of all believers that the Jews agreed with. This was something altogether different, and unprecedented.

Further, it is also hard to explain the beginning of the Christian church. How did a group of Jews begin worshipping a man as divine? While surrounding cultures may have tolerated the idea of some human beings containing divinity, Jewish people saw this as blasphemy. How could this have started if Jesus had not been raised from the dead?

It is also worth noting that at that time, there were several messianic pretenders whose lives ended the same way Jesus’s did. However, their followers did not pretend that their leaders were resurrected in order to continue the movement. They either gave up the cause or found a new leader. They knew the risk was too great to suggest that the leader had come back from the dead. That is unless, of course, he had.

Finally, not only did these people believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. They gave up their lives for the message. It is hard to ignore the fact that several people who claimed to be eye-witnesses to the resurrection paid the ultimate price for that belief. Would so many of them have had the courage to face death for a hoax?

The challenge of the resurrection

The message of the resurrection and the subsequent transformation of a culture poses several problems for the skeptic. As N.T. Wright wrote,

The early Christians did not invent the empty tomb and the meetings or sightings of the risen Jesus…. Nobody was expecting this kind of thing; no kind of conversion experience would have invented it, no matter how guilty (or how forgiven) they felt, no matter how many hours they pored over the scriptures. To suggest otherwise is to stop doing history and enter into a fantasy world of our own.

Some may find it difficult to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. I want to encourage you that even some of the disciples, who were eye-witnesses of the resurrected Jesus had trouble believing initially (Matthew 28:16-17). However, they eventually did believe when confronted with the evidence. Will you?

Conclusion

Through this study, we have looked at several arguments for and against Christianity. We have “doubted our doubts”. I hope you have come to see that while there may not be an airtight argument for Christianity, it does provide the best explanation for human existence. As Keller puts it,

I believe that Christianity makes the most sense out of our individual life stories and out of what we see in the world’s history.

However, if the arguments merely stay in your mind and have no impact on your heart, this series will not have reached its full potential. I hope that this series causes you to not only believe, but also trust unreservedly in the God who created you and then died for you. He has given assurance to you that it is all true by raising Jesus from the dead.

The Bible explains how God exists in a Trinity. While this word does not appear in the Bible, the concept of the Trinity is alluded to several times in Scripture. In the Trinity, God exists as three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit all equally God, yet there is one God. Christianity is the only religion that holds to the triune nature of God. As such, the Christian God is inherently relational and he invites you to join him in a relationship. The historian George Marsden summarizes the teaching of Jonathan Edwards on this point

Why would such an infinitely good, perfect, and eternal being create? … Here Edwards drew on the Christian Trinitarian conception of God as essentially interpersonal…. The ultimate reason that God creates, said Edwards, is not to remedy some lack in God, but to extend that perfect internal communication of the triune God’s goodness and love…. God’s joy and happiness and delight in divine perfections is expressed externally by communicating that happiness and delight to created beings…. The universe is an explosion of God’s glory. Perfect goodness, beauty, and love radiate from God and draw creatures to ever increasingly share in the Godhead’s joy and delight…. The ultimate end of creation, then, is union in love between God and loving creatures.

I hope these lessons draw you into a loving relationship with the God who made you.

Questions

Question 1 Kyle contends, “first-century people did not have our scientific view of the world. They believed in magic and the supernatural. They could have easily fallen prey to reports about a risen Jesus because they believed resurrections were possible. The disciples were heartbroken when Jesus was killed. Since they thought he was the Messiah, they may have begun to sense that he was still with them, guiding them, and living on in their hearts. Some may have even felt like they had visions of him. These visions eventually evolved into the resurrection stories that we have in the gospels today.” How would you respond to Kyle?

Question 2 Do you agree with Keller’s conclusion that “Christianity makes the most sense out of our individual life stories and out of what we see in the world’s history”? Explain briefly.

Question 3 Do you have any remaining questions that we did not address in this series?

Question 4 As we conclude this series, summarize one key lesson you will take away from these lessons.