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The Probability of a Past Event is One

In recent posts (here and here), I considered some of the difficulties inherent in defining what constitutes a miracle or recognizing an event as miraculous. The skeptic usually approaches the issue with the set presupposition that miracles, however defined, are not possible. They typically contend that what the believer concludes is a miracle is in fact explainable naturalistically and that the believer has allowed himself to be misled by limited knowledge, ignorance or wishful thinking. The skeptic, placing unquestioned faith in the power of science, confidently asserts that someday we will see that the miracle we assumed occurred was actually no such thing at all.

This is a difficult topic to tackle in the abstract. If a miracle is defined as a departure from the known laws of nature, then it is easy to assert that with enough additional knowledge, we will be able to see that the event in question wasn’t actually a departure after all.

The problem with abstract discussions is that they sometimes cause us to lose focus on the issue at hand. The issue, as it relates to Christianity, is whether a particular miracle occurred. Did Jesus of Nazareth – the historical figure who most scholars acknowledge lived and was crucified some two thousand years ago – emerge from his tomb in a resurrected and incorruptible body? Countless believers have staked their lives, their eternities, on the answer to that question.

The Problem with Probabilities

The skeptic already has his answer: since a dead man always stays dead, it is exceedingly improbable that this account could be true. The “probabilities” favor some naturalistic explanation: he didn’t die but was only seriously injured; the whole account is myth; the accounts are the product of hallucinations, etc. But approaching the issue in this fashion demonstrates an a priori rejection of the evidence that one is supposed to be considering. In other words, when someone is committed to the belief that a miracle is simply not possible, how much weight will they give to someone’s account of a miraculous event?

Careful thinking will show that relying on probabilities in order to determine whether a past event occurred is generally fallacious. A past event either occurred or it didn’t; the probability of a known past event therefore is one. If it didn’t happen, then the probability is zero.

“the probability of a known past event therefore is one.”

Consider: if I play the lottery, my chances of selecting the correct sequence of numbers are exceedingly small, on the order of one in many millions. The probability of my winning is extremely low. If my lottery ticket corresponds to the posted lottery results, then I have beat the odds. The event has now moved from one in the future, for which probability assessment applies, to one in the past, for which assessing whether it occurred based on probability makes no sense. Once I see that the numbers match, the argument “this can’t have happened because million-to-one shots don’t occur” would be inane.

Yet the skeptic does this all the time. Because resurrections are improbable, we must keep looking for more probable solutions, regardless of what the actual evidence tells us. In fact, many don’t consider the evidence at all, having concluded that improbable events cannot occur. To use the lottery analogy, they never bother to look at the lottery results or their tickets because they are sure that they can never win.

Let’s Not Throw the Probable Baby Out with the Bathwater

A probability assessment of a past event does have some value. First, it may tell us whether an intelligent agent was at work in causing the result. If I keep winning the lottery, it may mean that someone is tipping me off about the numbers or altering their selection. If life on earth is statistically a one in a trillion-trillion-trillion event, it may be that an intelligent source created it and that it did not arise by naturalistic means. And if a man who claims to be God doesn’t stay dead, it may mean that he is who he said he is. However “unlikely” it may be, if the evidence is adequate to support that the event occurred, it wouldn’t be rational to dismiss it as impossible.

Second, probability assessments may allow us to draw inferences about the way people acted. How probable is it that 500 people all experienced the same hallucination of the risen Jesus? How probable is it that dozens of people who knew the truth insisted on falsely claiming that they had experienced the risen Jesus so that they too could be put to death? Assessments as to probable behavior allow us to evaluate the legitimacy and likelihood of the claimed behavior. But probabilities can’t tell us whether a past event actually occurred. For that we need to evaluate the actual evidence, fairly and completely.

The case for the Resurrection is compelling. Perhaps it is the product of wishful thinking, but my study of the facts tells me otherwise. Because of what is at stake, each of us needs to consider the case on its merits. Enough has been written about it that this can easily be done. What we shouldn’t do is close our minds to the possibility without ever having considered the evidence.

Recommended Resources:

Early Evidence for the Resurrection by Dr. Gary Habermas (DVD), (Mp3) and (Mp4)

Why We Know the New Testament Writers Told the Truth by Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3 and Mp4)

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Paperback), and (Sermon) by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek

Can All Religions Be True? mp3 by Frank Turek

Al Serrato earned his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He began his career as an FBI special agent before becoming a prosecutor in California, where he worked for 33 years. An introduction to CS Lewis’ works sparked his interest in Apologetics, which he has pursued for the past three decades. He got his start writing Apologetics with J. Warner Wallace and Pleaseconvinceme.com.

August 21, 2024/by Ty Unknown

Show Us A Sign: The Cross And The Death Of Blind Faith

Theology and Christian Apologetics

Each Easter season, approximately 400,000 churches across the U.S. gather to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus: one story portraying the faith of over two billion people globally. But have we grown ignorant of a driving factor behind the eternally preordained plan? Might we have entirely missed what Jesus cited as making His public execution necessary? The cross has come to manifest the forgiveness of sins, and rightfully so. Notwithstanding, in the time preceding His trial, Jesus made it exceedingly clear the plan was multifaceted . . . and He had skeptics in mind.

Just One Problem

Modern recollections of resurrection Sunday tend to focus solely upon substitutionary atonement. Christians gather to reflect on this distinctive of their faith. The New Testament tells us Jesus, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:6-8).

What good does this do, however, for those who reject the historicity of the New Testament accounts? How can a believer pique the interest of a skeptic with a story of the miraculous when the individual has spent his/her entire life saturated in a culture of naturalism and anti-religiosity? Far too often, well-intentioned believers hope to present the story of the cross in just the right way, at just the right time, with just the right fervor as to convince someone to commit their life to Jesus. There’s just one problem. No matter how beautiful the story, how ardent the presentation, and how well-meaning the speaker, simply explaining the meaning of a story typically won’t communicate that it actually happened. [1]

Was there a real man named Jesus who was the son of a middle eastern carpenter? Is there evidence of His trial under Roman prefect Pontius Pilate circa 30 C.E.? Why shouldn’t these accounts be dismissed alongside hundreds of other religious origin stories that Christians are so quick to label fiction? These are the questions seekers need answered. The effective evangelist must not forego the foundation of historical facts before delivering the story’s ramifications. Examine the words of Jesus leading up to the crucifixion. What were the intentions of the plan He devised from eternity past? He assuredly had to die to bear our sins, but was this His mission’s sole effort? Might there be an angle to the story that we have turned a blind eye to for far too long?

Have We Overlooked Something here?

The public ministry of Jesus is thought to have been between 2-3 years in length. The first year included events that set the foundation for the ministry such as Jesus’s baptism, the calling of the disciples, and the Sermon on the Mount. From that point forward He was adamant about foretelling how His earthly ministry would conclude. Both Matthew and Luke record an occasion in which Jesus heals a man who was both blind and mute (Mt 12:22-42; Lk 11:14-32). Crowds of suspicious onlookers began to gather. Despite bearing witness to this healing, some began requesting additional miracles. How would you respond? Is Jesus obligated to show them another sign just minutes after putting the supernatural on display? He replies with a warning, but a bargain deal, nonetheless. He says,

“An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Mt 12:39-44; )[2].

He will not perform miracles for mere amusement. The greatest miracle of all, however, has just been foretold. Matthew 16:4 records another encounter of the same sort. Immediately after feeding the 4,000, the cynics demand another sign. Jesus does not waver in His response. If they are genuinely seeking the truth, the coming sign of Jonah will suffice.

Later, Jesus gives His disciples yet another sobering forewarning. All three of the synoptic gospel writers see fit to include this prognosis (Mt 16:21, Mk 8:31, Lk 9:22). Jesus clearly states that He must suffer under the elders, priests, and scribes and ultimately be killed, but He doesn’t stop there. He specifies that on the third day He will be raised back to life. A good rule of thumb in biblical interpretation is to pay special attention to repetition. Repetition is emphasis. Jesus has twice referenced the sign of Jonah, therefore communicating His resurrection to come. And now we are given a third instance in which He plainly explains He will be killed and raised on the third day. To the modern Christian’s surprise, these passages are not accompanied by lengthy discourses on substitutionary atonement. Commentary on the forgiveness of sins can be found across the New Testament, but they tend not to be directly partnered with these predictions of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is as if these soon to be fulfilled prophecies have a message of their own . . .

Next, Matthew and Mark describe another form of this prediction. This time, while passing through Galilee, Jesus simply says, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise” (Mt 17:22-23; Mk 9:31). Surely, by now He has sufficiently made the point, right?

Later, while traveling up to Jerusalem, each of the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) corroborates yet another iteration of that prophecy. Jesus says, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise” (Mt 20:18-19, Mk 10:33-34, Lk 18:31-33).

We have yet to mention John’s contribution. John 2:19-22 records Him saying, “‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” Subsequently, John 10:17-18 tells us Jesus has the authority to lay down His life and take it up again, and His Father has given Him charge to do just that.

What’s the Point?

We have seen seven distinct instances of Jesus predicting His own death and resurrection, and there are more passages, not listed here, that do the same. Many of these examples are brief and lack any lengthy theological reflection. What does all this achieve? Why dedicate so much time to constant reiterations of the same foresight? Only one explanation seems fitting: Jesus had skeptics in mind.

Only one explanation seems fitting: Jesus had skeptics in mind.

Some religions (Hinduism, some Eastern beliefs, etc.) present their teachings in mythic stories that aren’t intended to be treated as historical realities. They aren’t supposed to be literal history, but allegories and symbols for deeper truths. These faiths may have their perks, but they are categorically different from beliefs rooted in history – convictions which must answer to the evidence. Other faiths (Islam, Mormonism) proclaim that their preferred holy book itself is the only evidence necessary to validate its claims. Founders of these religions did not claim to personally perform any public miracles to substantiate their claims. Rather, their respective holy books are the best they have to offer when it comes to validating a supernatural origin. For example, the 29^th chapter of the Quran responds to an objection from Jews and Christians who doubt its divine inspiration. It says:

“And they say, ‘Why is it that no signs (miracles) have been sent down to him (Muhammad) from his Lord?’ Say, ‘Signs are only with Allah, and I am only a plain warner.’ Is it not sufficient for them that We have sent down to you the Book that is being recited to them? Surely in it there is mercy and advice for a people who believe.” (Surah 29:50-51, Translated by Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani, Quran.com)

Faiths such as this demand submission solely based on the testimony of the writing itself. There is no tangible demonstration of the supernatural. This is where the cross rises above the rest. The skeptic-turned-believer, Paul, confidently proclaims:

“if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain . . . And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins . . . If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:13-19).

The Bible begs to be tested. Paul is begging people to test the claims of Christianity. He employs the same logic Jesus did as He repeatedly publicized the prediction of His death and resurrection. This was not simply retroactively ascribing significance to an otherwise unlikely event. This was just the opposite. Jesus had already demonstrated supernatural abilities over nature, sickness, and demons. The only further proof He could offer was to demonstrate His power over death itself.

Brave the Questions

We owe it to ourselves to accept the challenge the Bible offers. One of two outcomes are to follow. If proven false, we can do away with the bore of manmade religion and traditions of old. If it’s true, however, life is injected with a new purpose – it’s all real. Whichever the outcome, we can rest assured that we were brave enough to pursue the evidence wherever it leads. The God of the Bible does not seek blind faith. He wants commitment to the truth. Christians should immerse themselves in the mission God has set before them while skeptics should eagerly invite the challenge the New Testament offers. If true, the stakes could not be higher. The cross was never intended to appeal to wishful thinkers. It was purposed with skeptics in mind.

References:

[1] Caravaggio, “Reproduction of the Incredulity of St. Thomas” [oil on canvas] (1601), currently held at Potsdam, Germany. Public domain. Accessed 3 April 2024 at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredulity_of_Saint_Thomas_(Caravaggio)#/media/File:Der_ungl%C3%A4ubige_Thomas_-_Michelangelo_Merisi,_named_Caravaggio.jpg

[2] All verse references are to the English Standard Version (ESV) unless otherwise noted.

The Resurrection of Jesus: The Evidential Contribution of Luke-Acts

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

Any discussion of the evidence for the resurrection must first ascertain what the original apostolic witnesses claimed and whether those claims are best explained by the resurrection, or by some alternative hypothesis. The contemporary discussion of the case for the resurrection has largely focused around 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, a text believed by many scholars to represent an ancient creedal tradition that Paul had received from the Jerusalem apostles and which he passed on to the believers in Corinth.[i] Paul’s words in verse 11 (“Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed”) also suggest that the message Paul presented to the Corinthians is the same as that proclaimed by the Jerusalem apostles. A popular criticism of this line of argument is that Paul makes no qualitative distinction between his own experience of the risen Jesus and those of the other apostles, using the Greek word ὤφθη to describe both. [ii]Acts 9:1-9 indicates that Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus, which took place after the ascension, did not involve the sort of physical interactions we read of the apostles having with Jesus following His death in the gospel accounts. On what basis, then, can we be confident that Paul understands the apostles to have had the sort of experiences with Jesus following His resurrection that we read of in the gospels? If we are not able to determine the nature of the claimed experiences of the risen Jesus, it is very difficult to evaluate the rationality of the disciples’ belief that Jesus had risen from the dead. I am not optimistic that this case can be robustly made from the Pauline corpus alone.

It is undeniable that Luke represents the post-resurrection encounters as involving multiple sensory modes. Jesus appears to multiple individuals at once, and those encounters are not merely visual but are also auditory. Jesus engages the disciples in group conversation. The encounters are close-up and involve physical contact. Moreover, Acts indicates that the appearances were spread out over a forty-day time period – thus, the resurrection encounters were not one brief and confusing episode. If, then, it can be shown that Luke was indeed a travelling companion of Paul, it would be quite surprising if his understanding of the apostolic claim concerning the resurrection differed essentially from that of Paul.

There is an additional reason why Luke’s being a travelling companion of Paul is significant in our investigation of the resurrection, and that is that Luke claims to have been present with Paul during Paul’s visit to the Jerusalem church in Acts 21 when “all the elders [including James] were present” (Acts 21:18). Luke was present with Paul during his imprisonment in Caesarea Maritima (for at least two years), during which time he would undoubtedly have had ample access to the many living witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection, since Caesarea is only approximately 120 kilometres from Jerusalem (where many of the witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection resided). Luke’s acquaintance with the Jerusalem apostles thus puts him in a position to know what was being proclaimed concerning the nature and variety of the post-resurrection encounters with Jesus. Luke’s demonstrated care and meticulousness as an historian also provides some reason (though, as we shall see, not our only reason) to think that Luke is sincerely representing what he believes the apostles experienced.

Was Luke a Travelling Companion of Paul?

There are too many lines of evidence for Luke being a travelling companion of Paul to discuss in any detail in the present paper. However, I will list a few examples. First, there are the famous “we” passages, beginning in Acts 16, which are best understood as indicating the author’s presence in the scenes he narrates. Craig Keener observes that the “we” pronouns trail off when Paul travels through Philippi, only to reappear in Acts 20 when Paul passes once again through Philippi. This is suggestive that the author had remained behind in Philippi and subsequently re-joined Paul when Paul returned through Philippi. [iii]

Second, the reliability of the book of Acts is spectacularly well supported by extrabiblical secular sources, and its author demonstrates a knowledge of the world that is best explained by him being a travelling companion of Paul. Perhaps the most convincing category of this sort of evidence are those cases when the book of Acts is accidentally confirmed – that is, a natural question raised by Acts is illuminated in an incidental way by an extrabiblical secular account. To take one example, consider Acts 23:1-5, when Paul, having been apprehended and brought before the Jewish council, was struck on the mouth at the behest of Ananias the high priest. Paul responds by pointing out the hypocrisy of Ananias. To this, those who were standing by said, “Would you revile God’s high priest?” Paul’s response is somewhat odd: “I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest, for it is written, ‘You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.’” This raises a natural question – why is it that Paul did not realize who the high priest was? This Ananias was the son of Nebedinus (Antiquities 20.5.3), who occupied the office of high priest when Quadratus (Felix’s predecessor) was president of Syria. Josephus reports that he was sent bound to Rome by Quadratus in order to give an account of his actions to Claudius Caesar (Antiquities 20.6.2). As a result of the intercession on their behalf by Agrippa, they were dismissed and returned to Jerusalem. However, Ananias was not restored to his former office of high priest. Ananias was succeeded by Jonathan, as is indicated by the fact that Josephus refers to one called Jonathan occupying the office of high priest during the government of Felix, which would imply that Ananias’ high priesthood was interrupted (Antiquities 20.8.5). Jonathan himself was assassinated inside the temple (Antiquities 20.8.5).

Following Jonathan’s death, the office of the high priest was not occupied until Ismael, the son of Fabi, was appointed by King Agrippa (Antiquities 20.8.8). The events that are recorded in Acts 23 took place precisely in this interval. Ananias was in Jerusalem and the office of the high priesthood lay vacant. It seems, then, that Ananias acted, by his own authority, in the assumed capacity of the high priest. This, then, illuminates Paul’s words in Acts 23:5: “I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest.” Luke doesn’t even take the time to explain the historical backstory in his account of this event. The sources interlock in a way that points to the truth of the narrative we find in Acts.

Another category of evidence, first discovered by William Paley [iv]and more recently developed by Lydia McGrew, [v]is the phenomenon of undesigned coincidences between Acts and the letters of Paul – that is, interlockings between the sources that are best explained by the truth of the narrative in Acts. Consider Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, which was written around 52-53 A.D from Ephesus in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). We know Paul wrote 1 Corinthians from Ephesus because Paul sends greetings from Aquilla and Priscilla in 1 Corinthians 16:19, whom Paul had met in Corinth (Acts 18:1), and who travelled with Paul as far as Ephesus (Acts 18:26). Paul also makes an allusion to his intention to “stay in Ephesus until Pentecost” (1 Cor 16:8). Corinth, the capital city of Achaia, on the other hand, was across the Aegean sea from Ephesus. Now, consider the following two texts from 1 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians 4:17 we read: “That is why I sent you Timothy…” And in 1 Corinthians 16:10, we read, “When Timothy comes…” From those two incidental texts, it is evident that Timothy had already been dispatched by the time of Paul’s writing, but nonetheless that Paul expected his letter to arrive before Timothy got to Corinth. Given that Ephesus is directly across the Aegean Sea from Achaia (where Corinth is), presumably Paul would have sent his letter directly by boat from Ephesus to Corinth. We therefore can infer that Timothy must have taken some indirect route to Corinth, through Troas and Macedonia. When we turn over to Acts 19:21-22, which concerns Paul’s stay in Ephesus, we read that Timothy (accompanied by Erastus) did in fact take such an indirect overland route to Corinth from Ephesus. This artless dovetailing is best explained by the historical reliability of Acts on this detail. Even if, as I have suggested above, Luke was not present with Paul at this time, this sort of evidence indicates that Luke had reliable access to information concerning Paul’s travels, which suggests he was personally acquainted with Paul.

Of particular interest for our purposes here, a cluster of confirming evidences bear on Luke’s presence with Paul at the Jerusalem church in Acts 21. [vi] If it can be reliably shown that Luke accompanied Paul on his shipwrecked voyage from Caesarea Maritima to Rome in Acts 27, it follows that Luke was almost certainly present with Paul in Jerusalem (where he was arrested) in Acts 21. The report of that voyage notes that they “…sailed along Crete, close to the shore. But soon a tempestuous wind, called the northeaster, struck down from the land.” In confirmation of Luke’s report, there is indeed a well confirmed wind that rides over Crete from the Northeast and which is strongest at this exact time near Passover. [vii] Acts 27:16 describes how the ship was blown off course towards a small island called Cauda. What’s impressive is that the island of Cauda is more than 20 miles west-southwest of where the storm likely struck the travelers in the Bay of Messara. This is precisely where the trajectory of a northeaster should have carried them, and it is not the sort of information someone would have inferred without having been blown there. Ancients found it nearly impossible to properly locate islands this far out. Colin Hemer notes that “In the places where we can compare, Luke fares much better than the encyclopaedist Pliny, who might be regarded as the foremost first-century example of such a source. Pliny places Cauda (Gaudos) opposite Hierapytna, some ninety miles too far east (NH 4.12.61). Even Ptolemy, who offers a reckoning of latitude and longitude, makes a serious dislocation to the northwest, putting Cauda too near the western end of Crete, in a position which would not suit the unstudied narrative of our text (Ptol. Geog. 3.15.8).” [viii]

Given Luke’s presence with Paul in Jerusalem in Acts 21 (and thus his demonstrated interaction with the Jerusalem apostles), we can conclude that Luke was in a position to know what was being claimed by the Jerusalem apostles in regard to the nature of the encounters with the risen Jesus. The next question we must address in our investigation is whether Luke faithfully records what those Jerusalem apostles were teaching concerning the resurrection.

Does Luke Accurately Report the Claimed Experiences of the Apostles?

I have previously noted that Luke’s demonstrated meticulousness and care as an historian already provide some reason to think that Luke has given an accurate report of what the Jerusalem apostles claimed concerning the resurrection of Jesus. Are there any other reasons? One relevant evidence here is the fact that Luke, like the other three gospels, reports that women were the chief discoverers of the empty tomb. Given that the testimony of women was not highly esteemed in the patriarchal society that was ancient Palestine, this fact is more probable on the hypothesis that Luke is reporting what he really believed happened than on the falsehood of that hypothesis. Josephus writes, “But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex,” (Antiquities 4.8.15). It therefore may be taken as evidence confirmatory of the hypothesis that Luke is telling us what he really believed happened. N.T. Wright concludes, “As historians we are obliged to comment that if these stories had been made up five years later, let alone thirty, forty, or fifty years later, they would never have had Mary Magdalene in this role. To put Mary there is, from the point of view of Christian apologists wanting to explain to a skeptical audience that Jesus really did rise from the dead, like shooting themselves in the foot. But to us as historians this kind of thing is gold dust. The early Christians would never, never have made this up.” [ix]

Caution, however, is warranted here, since there is a tendency among apologists to overstate the evidential significance of this fact. One can reasonably posit alternative explanations for why the gospels report the discovery of the empty tomb by women. Bart Ehrman, for example, points out that “women were particularly well represented in early Christian communities”, and it is therefore somewhat plausible that they invented the oral traditions involving the discovery of the empty tomb. [x]Furthermore, Ehrman notes, “Preparing bodies for burial was commonly the work of women, not men. And so why wouldn’t the stories tell of women who went to prepare the body? Moreover, if, in the stories, they are the ones who went to the tomb to anoint the body, naturally they would be the ones who found the tomb empty.” [xi] Furthermore, women could provide legal testimony under Jewish law if no male witnesses were available. In fact, Josephus appeals to women as his only witnesses of what took place inside Masada or at the battle at Gamala (Jewish War 7.389 and 4.81), though that may likewise be taken as an indication of Josephus reporting truthfully. Another important consideration is the fact that we are told of the woman whom Jesus spoke with at the well of Samaria that “Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me all that I ever did,’” (Jn 4:39).

Thus, the fact that the gospels have women as the primary witnesses to the empty tomb does not prove the tomb was empty and care should be taken not to overstate the case. Nevertheless, the reports of the women being the chief discoverers of the empty tomb is antecedently more likely on the assumption that what the gospels report is based in historical fact than on the assumption the authors made it up. Thus, while the testimony of the women may not be sufficient to demonstrate the veracity of the empty tomb reports, it does offer evidence to that effect.

An important point here, often overlooked, is that the accounts in the four gospels of the women discovering the empty tomb are in fact independent. Luke 24:10 says, “Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles…” It is often suggested that John 20:1, which reports only Mary Magdalene’s discovery of the empty tomb, conflicts with Luke’s account. However, in John 20:2, we read, “So she [Mary] ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him” [emphasis added]. Mary’s word-choice, in particular the use of οὐκ οἴδαμεν (“we do not know”) indicates, quite incidentally, that there were in fact other women, and John’s report of these words reveals that he also is aware of this fact even though it is not mentioned explicitly. Thus, Luke’s and John’s account of the women discovering the empty tomb appear to be independent of each other.

Matthew and Mark also appear to be independent of Luke when it comes to the women’s discovery of the empty tomb. [xii] Luke indicates in Luke 8:1-3 that some women followed Jesus from Galilee, including Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager. This detail is confirmed by an undesigned coincidence with Matthew 14:1, since it illuminates how the author of Matthew’s gospel might know what Herod had said to his servants, presumably in the privacy of his palace. The names given in Luke’s list are Mary, Joanna, and Susanna, as well as “many others,” (Lk 8:2-3). Mark, describing the women who were “looking on from a distance” at the crucifixion, lists “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome,” (Mk 14:40). These names overlap only partially with those given in Luke 8. There is no mention in Mark of Joanna or Susanna, and Luke does not mention Mary the mother of James or Salome. It does not appear that Luke added the passage in chapter 8 in order to “put” the women in place earlier in Jesus’ ministry and thus fit his narrative together with Matthew and Mark concerning the women at the cross, because the names are only partially the same. Luke would have presumably included Mary the mother of James, and Salome, and probably left out Susanna if he had fictionalized the verses in chapter 8 on the basis of Mark’s mention of the women at the cross. Luke himself mentions the women who came from Galilee at the cross and burial (23:49, 55) but doesn’t even name any of them there. Both accounts, therefore, confirm apparently independently that there was a group of women who had begun following Jesus in Galilee and who continued to do so and who helped Jesus in concrete ways (“ministering” or “providing”). In Luke 24:6-10, the angels tell the women at the empty tomb, “Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee” (v. 6). This makes it clear that these women really were personally with Jesus in Galilee and heard what He said there. When Luke names various women who brought the disciples news of the empty tomb and the message of the angel (24:10), he names Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Joanna (and says there were other women as well). Once again, he doesn’t seem to be trying to reproduce his own list from chapter 8, for Mary the mother of James was not in that list, and Susanna isn’t mentioned in 24:10. Nor is he reproducing Mark’s list of women at the cross nor Mark’s list of women who came to the tomb (Mk 16:1), since Salome isn’t included in Luke’s list, and Joanna (who is unique to Luke) is not included in Mark’s list. Luke seems to be listing women whom he really knows were present for the events on Easter morning. Evidently, he is not sure about Susanna’s presence or just does not bother to mention her, and he knows that Mary the mother of James was there on Easter morning even though she is not listed in his chapter 8. Thus, this is also an undesigned coincidence internal to Luke, a way in which fairly distant parts of Luke’s own narrative fit together in an apparently casual and non-deliberate way: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and various other women were with Jesus in Galilee and heard there Jesus’ own prediction of his crucifixion and resurrection. They subsequently went with him to Jerusalem and were present at the cross, burial, and empty tomb.

Another category of evidence bearing on the case for the resurrection is the phenomenon of reconcilable variations, so-named by the nineteenth century Anglican scholar Thomas Rawson Birks. [xiii] A reconcilable variation refers to when there exist two accounts of the same event, or at least two accounts that appear to cross over the same territory at some point, and at first blush they seem so divergent that it is almost awkward; but then, on further thought, they turn out to be reconcilable in some natural fashion after all. When two accounts appear at first so divergent that one is not sure they can be reconciled, that is significant evidence for their independence. When they turn out, upon closer inspection or upon learning more information, to be reconcilable without forcing after all, one has almost certainly independent accounts that dovetail.

Multiple instances of reconcilable variation pertain to the resurrection accounts. For example, it is popularly observed that Luke 24:36-49 reports Jesus as having appeared to “the eleven” who were all present together at the time (see vs. 33). This, so the argument goes, does not allow for Thomas’ absence from the group at the time of the appearance (as in John), nor a subsequent appearance to the disciples with Thomas present. Furthermore, John tells us that the appearance to the eleven with Thomas present occurred eight days later, whereas Luke seems to indicate that the ascension took place immediately after the appearance to the eleven. Luke 24:50-51 tell us, “Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.” One possible reply is that “the eleven” is being used as a figure of speech, much as “the twelve” is used in that way by Paul (see 1 Cor 15:5). I do not, however, find this approach to be the most convincing, since it seems to be rather ad hoc, and there is no independent evidence that Luke used the term “the eleven” in this way. It also would not explain the apparent immediacy of Jesus’ ascension following the appearance to the eleven, allowing apparently no time for a subsequent appearance to the disciples with Thomas present. In response to this objection, it may be pointed out that, at the end of Luke, there is clear haste and a lack of specificity about time. Indeed, Luke 24:29 states that the men on the road to Emmaus pressed Jesus to stay with them for dinner because it was already evening and the day was “far spent.” We do not know what that means exactly, but it hardly meant three in the afternoon. Jesus then goes in with them; dinner is prepared, however long that took, and they sit down to eat. They recognize him as he breaks bread, and he disappears. They then immediately go back to Jerusalem, a distance of 60 stadia (Lk 24:13), which looks like it was about 10-12 km – that is, about 6 to 7 miles. This walk would take well over an hour, perhaps as long as two hours. They then chat with the disciples for a while and tell their story (vs. 35). Then Jesus appears and shows himself. They give him some food (vs. 42). Only after this does Jesus begin talking to them about the Scriptures, giving them some sort of sermon about how his death was foretold in the Scriptures (vss. 45ff). How long did that take? Jesus then leads them out to Bethany, a mile or two walk (c.f. Jn 11:18). If one tries to put this all on the same evening, it really looks like it would already be dark by that time, making it difficult for them even to witness the ascension into heaven (vs. 51). So even in Luke 24 alone, it does not look like all of this happened in one day. Evidently, Luke is either running out of scroll or in a hurry at that point, and he doesn’t appear to have full knowledge yet of exactly how long Jesus was on earth. Thus, he simply leaves it non-specific and clarifies in Acts 1.

It is also popularly alleged that Matthew has Jesus appear to the disciples only in Galilee (not in Judea), and the gospel of Luke and Acts have Jesus appear to his disciples only in Judea (not in Galilee). I would argue, however, that it is entirely plausible that Jesus’ instruction to remain in Jerusalem (Acts 1:4) was said to the disciples after they had returned to the Jerusalem area from Galilee during the 40 days on which Jesus remained on the earth, perhaps shortly or even immediately prior to the ascension. By all accounts, the ascension occurred from the region of the Mount of Olives near Bethany, so evidently, they went to Galilee and then came back.

Yet a further line of evidence for Luke’s honest reporting of the apostles’ claims concerning the resurrection comes from the principle of restraint. Not one of the gospels provides any details concerning the appearance of Jesus individually to Peter or to his brother James, despite the fact that Paul mentions both in 1 Corinthians 15:5,7. Luke is certainly aware at least of the appearance individually to Peter because he alludes briefly to it in passing in Luke 24:33-34. Why, then, does he not include an account of this appearance? This can be explained if Peter and James had both made it known that they had had an encounter with the risen Lord following the resurrection, but, for whatever reason, neither had made an account of this private meeting available for publication. Indeed, “if the Gospel writers were trying truthfully to record only what they either knew directly or had reliable sources to tell them about, they would have very little to say about such meetings, exactly as we find. But if they felt free to invent dialogue and scenes in order to fill in where information was otherwise missing, why would they not have done so here? Their restraint points to the conclusion that they are truthful, reliable recorders.” [xiv]

Thus, from the aforementioned lines of evidence, taken cumulatively, we can be confident that not only was Luke in a position to know what was being claimed by the apostles concerning the resurrection of Jesus, but Luke accurately records what they reported. What, though, best explains the apostles’ claims to have had encounters with the risen Jesus? It is to this question that I now turn.

What Best Explains the Apostles’ Claim?

When evaluating any claim, three broad categories of explanation must be considered. Those are, (1) the claimant is deliberately deceiving; (2) the claimant is sincerely mistaken; and (3) the claimant is accurately reporting what happened. Those broad explanatory categories are mutually exhaustive (though one can envision scenarios where they are applicable in combination). The various lines of evidence adduced in the previous section of this paper may be brought to bear not only in confirming Luke as a faithful reporter of what the apostles claimed concerning the resurrection, but also in eliminating the first of those hypotheses stated above. Additional lines of evidence may, however, be adduced to further strengthen our case against the first hypothesis. It is beyond doubt that the “apostles passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct.” [xv] The book of Acts itself speaks of the intense persecution endured by the early Christians, including the martyrdom of James the son of Zebedee (Acts 12:2), the imprisonment of Peter (Acts 12:3-5), the beating of Peter and John (Acts 5:40), and the many sufferings of the apostle Paul for the name of Christ. Since the apostles’ willingness to suffer persecution and even martyrdom is more probable given the sincerity of their belief than otherwise, this may be taken as evidence disconfirming the first hypothesis, that they were deliberately setting out to deceive.

A further line of evidence against the first hypothesis is no known sect of Judaism was expecting the Messiah to be raised from the dead. [xvi] The Sadducees had no belief in the resurrection of the dead and the Pharisees believed only in a general resurrection at the end of time, but had no concept of one man rising to glory and immortality in the middle of history. There was therefore no obvious apologetic motivation for positing that Jesus had been raised from the dead. The crucifixion of Jesus was seen by many Jews, in light of Deuteronomy 21:23, as indicating Jesus’ failure to be the awaited Messiah, and Jews were hardly given to glorifying failed Messiahs. After the failed rebellion of Simon Bar Kochba against Rome (132-135 A.D.), nobody proclaimed that he had risen from the dead.

Other factors that argue against any hypothesis of conspiracy include the speed at which a conspiracy would have needed to get off the ground, as well as the number and variety of individuals who would have needed, against their own interests, to be involved in such a conspiracy. [xvii] This included the eleven, the apostle Paul, at least five or six women, Cleopas and his companion, James the brother of Jesus, Matthias and Barsabbas called Justus (who are both named in Acts 1:23 as fulfilling the requirements of an apostle, i.e. having been witnesses to the resurrection). Being conservative, therefore, and including only those individuals who are specifically named, there would have needed to be at least 23 individuals involved in the conspiracy. It is extremely improbable that all of those individuals had something to gain by asserting that Jesus had risen from the dead and that none of them would have reneged.

What, then, of the second hypothesis, namely, that the apostles were sincerely mistaken? I have already discussed how the multisensory nature of the claimed resurrection experiences is not something about which one might plausibly be honestly mistaken. There exists yet another line of evidence against that hypothesis. Jesus’ resurrection is said in all of the earliest sources to have taken place on the Sunday morning following His death at Passover. This is indicated in all four gospels as well as Paul, who indicates that Christ “was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:4). The evidence from the early church writings as well as the Roman writer Pliny the Younger (10.96.7), the book of Revelation (1:10), the book of Acts (20:7) and Paul (1 Corinthians 16:2) all indicate that early Christian worship took place not on the Sabbath day but on Sunday instead. This almost certainly reflects the apostolic claim that Jesus rose again on the Sunday. But why does Paul indicate that the Christ “was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (this is also indicated in Lk 24:7). The point at which Paul, I would suggest, is driving is that Christ represents the first man to be raised to glory and immortality, similar to the first fruits of the harvest that guarantees that the remainder of the harvest will come (c.f. 1 Corinthians 15:20). Indeed, the feast of first fruits was to be celebrated the day following the first Sabbath following the Passover – that is, the Sunday following Passover (Lev 23:11). Although the Pharisees and Sadducees disagreed over whether the Sabbath in question was the Day of Passover itself or the Sabbath following the Passover, the Sadducees (who took the latter view) were in charge of the temple in the first century and thus that was the view that prevailed in first century Jewish practice. It is quite the coincidence then that the earliest sources consistently indicate that Jesus rose from the dead on the day of first fruits, given its theological import. This sort of coincidence points to design, and thus away from the hypothesis of the apostles being honestly mistaken.

Conclusion

Having argued strongly against the first two explanatory categories, this leaves as the best explanation of the evidence discussed in this paper the one the angels themselves gave the disciples in Luke 24:5-6: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”

Footnotes:

[i] Michael Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus – A New Historiographical Approach (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2010), 318-343.

[ii] Gerd Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry (New York: Prometheus, 2004), 43-44.

[iii] Craig Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, Vol. 1 (Michigan: Baker Academic, 2012), 431.

[iv] William Paley, Horae Paulinae or, the Truth of the Scripture History of St. Paul Evinced (In The Works of William Paley, Vol. 2 [London; Oxford; Cambridge; Liverpool: Longman and Co., 1838].

[v] Lydia McGrew, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts (Tampa, FL: Deward Publishing Company, Ltd, 2017).

[vi] James Smith, The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul: With Dissertations on the Life and Writings of St. Luke, and the Ships and Navigation of the Ancients, Fourth Edition, Revised and Corrected (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1880). See also Craig Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, Vol. 4 (Michigan: Baker Academic, 2015), 3555-3660.

[vii] R.W. White. “A Meteorological Appraisal of Acts 27:5-26.” The Expository Times 113, no. 12 (September 2002), 403-407.

[viii] Colin Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 331.

[ix] Tom Wright, “Appendix B”, in Anthony Flew, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (2007) with Roy Abraham Varghese (San Francisco: Harper One), 207.

[x] Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014), kindle.

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Lydia McGrew, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices (Tampa, FL: Deward Publishing Company, Ltd, 2019), 272-282.

[xiii] Thomas Rawson Birks, Horae Evangelicae, or The Internal Evidence of the Gospel History (London: Seeleys, 1852). See also Lydia McGrew, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices (Tampa, FL: Deward Publishing Company, Ltd, 2019), 316–321.

[xiv] Lydia McGrew, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts (Ohio: DeWard Publishing Company, 2017), chap. 4, Kindle.

[xv] William Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity: Volume 1, Reissue Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 15.

[xvi] Tom Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis, Augsburg Fortress, 2003).

[xvii] Lydia McGrew, “Independence, conspiracy, and the resurrection”, Extra Thoughts, August 24th, 2020. http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/independence-conspiracy-and-resurrection.html

4 New Arguments for the Resurrection of Jesus

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Brian G. Chilton

For nearly ten years, I have been honored to bring you reasons for believing in the resurrection of Jesus. I now find myself at the end of a terminal degree in theological and apologetic studies.[1] For some, advanced education tends to cause one to doubt one’s position over time. However, that has not been the case for me and the resurrection of Jesus. Over the last few years, I have found five new compelling reasons for believing that the resurrection of Jesus was a legitimate historical event. These five arguments may or may not be new to the reader, but they became new to me through my research and are newer than some of the previous arguments given about the resurrection in previous articles. Without further ado, consider the following five new arguments for the resurrection of Jesus.

Unexpected Nature of the Resurrection

The first argument is one of the best pieces of evidence for the resurrection that I had never before considered. That is, no one in Jesus’s day expected the Messiah to rise from the dead. In Matthew’s Gospel, the Jewish leaders argue that the disciples stole the body of Jesus (Matt. 28:11–15). Of all the alternate theories of the resurrection, this is by far the most compelling. Regardless of whether one holds that the disciples stole the body of Jesus, invented the story, or feigned Jesus’s death, there is one aspect that skeptics fail to consider. No one in the first century anticipated the imminent resurrection of Jesus. This is evident in Jesus’s encounter with Martha at Lazarus’s tomb. Recall that when Jesus asked Mary if she believed that Lazarus would rise from the dead, she said, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (Jn. 11:24). Martha’s response represented the typical position of the Pharisees and the Essenes. Josephus notes that the vast majority of the population in first-century Israel were Pharisees.[2]

N.T. Wright provides two reasons why the resurrection was unexpected in the first century. On the one hand, believers living in the times of Second Temple Judaism anticipated that the resurrection would bring about the “restoration of Israel … [and] the newly embodied life of all YHWH’s people.”[3] On the other hand, no one in the period connected the Messiah with resurrection.[4] The concept of the Messiah resurrecting on the third day, though it may be reflected in the OT texts to a degree, was not in any way expected by believers at this time. Thus, the lack of anticipation for a resurrection delivers a fatal blow to any theory that projects the early Christians as being those who staged such an experience. Why stage something that they did not believe would happen in the first place?

Multiple Independent Sources

When it comes to any event of history, it is important for one to possess multiple source attestation. The more eyes one has on an event, the more accurate the truth can be preserved. When it comes to the resurrection, we have multiple sources pointing to the resurrection of Jesus being a historical event. First, we have the four independent sources found in the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all provide unique accounts of Jesus’s resurrection appearances. Matthew reports Jesus’s post-resurrection meeting with the disciples in Galilee. Mark reports the women at the tomb and their mysterious encounter with the angels at the tomb. Luke provides multiple accounts that are not preserved in the other Gospels, including the two disciples’ encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Lk. 24:13–35). John affords multiple stories not included in the other Gospels, including Thomas’s encounter with Jesus (Jn. 20:24–29), Jesus’s encounter with the disciples on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus’s reinstatement of Peter (Jn. 21:15–19), and Peter asking Jesus about John’s ministry (Jn. 21:20–23).

In addition to the Gospels, a fifth source is found in the early creed of 1 Corinthians 15:3–9. The early creed provides additional information concerning the resurrection appearances of Jesus. It tells of Peter’s meeting with the risen Jesus (1 Cor. 15:5), the meeting between Jesus and James (1 Cor. 15:7), and his appearance to over 500 (1 Cor. 15:6). A sixth source is found in the sermon summaries of Peter in the book of Acts (Acts 2:14–41 and 3:12–26). A seventh source is found in the sermon summary of Stephen (especially in Acts 7:52 and 7:59–60). Finally, an eighth source is found in the sermon summaries of Paul. In the first sermon summary of Paul, he even speaks of Jesus’s empty tomb (Acts 13:29). Max Wilcox has convincingly found numerous Semitisms within the sermon summaries in Acts 1–15 that are largely not found in the remainder of the book.[5] Thus, the sermons of these chapters stem from earlier summaries that predate the composition of the book of Acts. Since a good estimate of the dating of Acts is the mid-60s, then it can be said that these summaries are much earlier. The fact that they speak of the resurrection of Jesus provides one more reason to adopt it as a genuine event of history.

Extremely Early Testimony

The study into the early creeds of the NT is gaining steam. Though he may claim otherwise, NT scholar and self-professed atheist-leaning-agnostic Bart Ehrman wrote that Paul received the creeds (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:3–9) while in Jerusalem in AD 35 or 36.[6] He goes on to say that “the traditions [Paul] inherited, of course, were older than that and so must date to just a couple of years or so after Jesus’s death.”[7] Since the early creeds wholeheartedly affirm Jesus’s literal bodily resurrection, then this provides firm evidence that the earliest disciples believed that Jesus had risen from the dead. Paul’s sermon summary also affirmed the belief that the tomb of Jesus was empty, as noted previously. With many, if not the majority, of the early creeds, we are talking about them circulating just a few months to a few years after Jesus’s crucifixion.[8] The creeds found in the Pauline epistles stemmed from the information Paul obtained from his interaction with the Jerusalem Church a couple of years after his conversion (Gal. 1:18). He spent two weeks with Peter and James learning about the teachings and doctrines of Christ. As C. H. Dodd notes, “we may presume they did not spend all the time talking about the weather.”[9] Thus, the proclamation that Jesus had risen from the dead came very early from the place where Jesus had been crucified. The details from the early sermon summaries of Acts and the creeds in Paul’s epistles make for a full and compelling case for the early preaching of the resurrection. When pieced with the first argument, it is difficult to find any other explanation outside of the fact that Jesus literally rose from the dead.

Unique Early Eschatological Christology

Finally, it has been observed that the earliest Christology is the highest Christology.[10] Additionally, early Jesus traditions endorse the idea that Jesus spoke of an eschatological figure who would usher in the kingdom of God. This eschatological figure is known as the Son of Man. The Son of Man arguably constructs the Christological core of Q—a theoretical Gospel that precedes the canonical Gospels.[11] Part of this early tradition includes Jesus’s comment that as “Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights” (Matt. 12:40).[12] The Son of Man figure is almost exclusively found in the teachings of Jesus. Thus, this was a unique teaching of Jesus. Not only does the Son of Man figure connect with Jesus being God’s regent who brings God’s kingdom to earth, but it also speaks of his glorification which relates to his resurrection. Therefore, early Jesus preaching of the resurrection was remembered and preserved by the early disciples because of Jesus’s literal fulfillment of this unique and unexpected promise.

Conclusion

Some of these arguments may be new to you and some may not. Some of these aspects will be further fleshed out in my pending dissertation. Nonetheless, the unique and unexpected nature of the resurrection, the early preaching of the resurrection, multiple sources, and Jesus’s early eschatological identification with the resurrection all speak strongly to the probability that Jesus literally rose from the dead on the first Easter Sunday. My hope is that these arguments for the resurrection of Jesus, in addition to the classic arguments, strengthen your faith and offer you hope that there is a life beyond this mere mortal existence.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Early Evidence for the Resurrection by Dr. Gary Habermas (DVD), (Mp3) and (Mp4)

Jesus, You and the Essentials of Christianity by Frank Turek (INSTRUCTOR Study Guide), (STUDENT Study Guide), and (DVD)

Notes

[1] That is, providing I successfully defend my dissertation.

[2] Josephus contends that the Pharisees were so loved, and the Sadducees were so despised that the Sadducees would adopt certain notions from the Pharisees to find favor with the populace. Josephus, Antiq. 18.15–17.

[3] N. T. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2003), 205.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Max Wilcox, The Semitisms of Acts (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1965), 171.

[6] Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2012), 131.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, 2^nd ed (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 266.

[9] C. H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments, 2^nd ed (London, UK: Hodder and Stoughton, 1944), 16.

[10] Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), x, 235.

[11] For a full discussion of the issues concerning this topic, see John S. Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2000), 388–395.

[12] Unless otherwise noted, all quoted Scriptures come from the Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman, 2020).

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Brian G. Chilton is the founder of BellatorChristi.com and is the host of The Bellator Christi Podcast. He received his Master of Divinity in Theology from Liberty University (with high distinction); his Bachelor of Science in Religious Studies and Philosophy from Gardner-Webb University (with honors); and received certification in Christian Apologetics from Biola University. Brian is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Theology and Apologetics at Liberty University. Brian has been in the ministry for over 15 years and serves as a pastor in northwestern North Carolina.

Original blog: https://bit.ly/3Mwb6bS

April 27, 2022/by Guest

Why Good Friday offers 'the best news ever' for Easter and always

Why Good Friday is the Best News Ever

Culture CrossExamined, Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Frank Turek

Despite intense personal and political division, we all agree on one thing: something is terribly wrong with this world. Pain, suffering, injustice, and death affect us all at some point because we live in a broken world. And we live in a broken world because we are all personally broken.

Who hasn’t committed any moral wrongs? (If you claim you haven’t, you just committed a moral wrong—lying!) The truth is we are all fallen. While we hate the evil done by others, we rarely notice the evil we do. We may call our political opponents hypocrites, but we don’t even live up to our own standards much less God’s. None of us are perfect. We are all guilty of something.

It’s only when we admit our guilt can we fathom the liberating and eternal implications of Good Friday. That’s when the innocent and perfect God-man took the punishment you and I deserve on Himself so we could be forgiven of our moral wrongs and reconciled to God.

“Why do we need to be forgiven and reconciled to God?” you ask. “Can’t God just grade on a curve?”

No, because God is an infinitely just Being. If He didn’t punish moral wrongs, then He wouldn’t be the infinite standard of justice. We know this standard of justice exists because without it we couldn’t even recognize any of the injustice we complain about—anything wrong in our society or any evil that has been done to us personally. Injustice can’t exist unless justice exists, but justice can’t exist unless God exists. Without God as the moral standard every behavior would just be a matter of opinion—even murder, rape and child abuse!

Thankfully, God is also the infinite standard of love which compels Him to find a way to allow unjust people like you and me to go unpunished. He does that by punishing Jesus of Nazareth—who volunteers for the mission—in our place.

“The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His live as ransom for many,” Jesus revealed (Mk. 10:45). Just before he went to the cross, Jesus also declared that there’s no greater love than “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).

On the original Good Friday 1,989 years ago, Jesus suffered and died not to turn us into nice people but forgiven people. Jesus isn’t merely a moral example like other religious leaders; Jesus is our substitute. Since we’ve already committed moral crimes, we can’t work our way to God by being a “good person”. Jesus was that perfectly good person in our place. He’s done all the work for us and offers His life for ours as a gift. When you accept His gift, you are not only forgiven but given the righteousness of Christ. You are a new creation adopted into the family of God by grace, apart from works (2 Cor. 5:17-21, Eph. 2:8).

Without grace we will each get justice. If you think about your life and every hidden thing you’ve ever done, do you really want justice from God? Justice is getting what you deserve. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve. The only way to avoid justice is to accept the grace Jesus provides by putting your trust in Him.

Accepting the sacrifice Jesus made on Good Friday liberates you from your past, present and future wrongs by making forgiveness and eternal life possible (John 3:16). That’s why Good Friday is truly “Good”. In fact, it’s the best news ever.

5 Reasons the Resurrection of Jesus is NOT a Copy of Ancient Pagan Myths

3. Are Miracles Possible?, CrossExamined, Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Alisa Childers

We are coming up on a time of year when the resurrection of a virgin-born child whose followers called the “Good Shepherd” and “Messiah” is celebrated. He had twelve disciples, performed miracles, and sacrificed himself for the peace of the world. He was buried in a tomb only to rise from the dead three days later. His followers went on to celebrate his resurrection every year, and this celebration eventually became what we call “Easter.

Think I’m talking about Jesus?

Nope. I’m talking about Mithras.

This is a common claim that is made by skeptics all over popular media, the internet, and even in some universities. The only problem—it’s simply not true. According to Mithraic tradition, Mithras was born out of solid rock (I guess it counts if the rock was a virgin?) His birth was celebrated on December 25th, but Christians already knew that wasn’t the real date of Christ’s birth. There is no evidence that he had twelve disciples, sacrificed himself for world peace, or that he was called “Good Shepherd” or “Messiah.” Many mythological characters were thought to be miracle workers (so maybe they can have that one), but there is no evidence he ever even died—which makes his “resurrection” a wee bit of a dilemma.

Church Father Tertullian wrote about Mithraic believers acting out resurrection stories, but this was well after the time of the New Testament. So, if there are a couple of similarities between Jesus and Mithras, it could be that Mithraic believers copied the Christians….rather than the other way around.

Mithras isn’t the only pagan myth that Christians are accused of copying. Although most scholars are agreed that no such “dying and rising gods” existed before Christ,[1] here are 5 reasons the resurrection of Jesus could NOT be a copycat. (These 5 points are my summary of this 5 part video series by Dr. Michael Licona.)

1. Ancient myths about dying and rising gods were usually tied to agricultural cycles.

When I was a little girl I remember asking someone why there are thunder and lightning. I was jokingly told thunder meant either that God was clapping his hands or maybe the angels were bowling in heaven. In the ancient world, people would describe things like the change of seasons, drought, and rain in a similar way…to their children.

Imagine an ancient Egyptian little boy asking his mom why it hadn’t rained in a while. The mom might tell him the story of the storm god Ba’al who was swallowed by his brother Mot, the god of death and the underworld. When the mother of the two gods was able to convince Mot to let his brother go, it would rain again—thus explaining the cycle of rain.

Unlike pagan myths, which were annual events going back to the distant past, the resurrection of Jesus was a one-time occurrence. It was reported as a recent event that happened within the lifetimes of the people who claimed to witness it—and it was not connected to agricultural cycles.

2. The earliest Christians were devout Jews who were highly sensitive to Jewish law and traditions.

First century Christians were constantly debating things related to the law. Should Jewish men maintain the temple purification rites? Should Gentile men be circumcised? Should Christians eat meat sacrificed to idols? These are the types of problems they took very seriously and went to great lengths to solve.

Bottom line—it’s absurd to conclude that people who were pious Jews, debating things as particular as whether or not Jewish and Gentile believers should even eat together—would borrow from pagan myths to create their own.

3. Correlation doesn’t equal causation.

During the course of human history, similarities in stories and parallels in experience are not going to be hard to find. For example, we are all familiar with a plane that took off from Massachusetts one morning and flew into one of the tallest skyscrapers in New York City between the 78th and 80th floors, killing everyone on the plane. You are probably thinking of the horrifying terrorist attack of 911 that forever changed our country. However, I’m actually referring to the B-52 that flew into the Empire State Building in 1945.

Although these two tragedies share some eerie similarities, there is no causal connection between them. Likewise, no causal connection has been shown between the resurrection of Jesus and pagan myths.

4. The comparisons are just not that impressive.

Much like the Mithras example given above, most of the pagan parallels are not that persuasive, once we get past the rhetoric and actually examine the evidence. The most comparable pagan myth that preceded the life of Jesus might be the story of a demi-god named Asclepius. Even so, the only thing that is really similar is that he, like Jesus, was known to be a healer, and according to the myth, raised someone from the dead.

Most of the pagan comparisons rely on taking bits and pieces from different ancient myths and figures that pre-dated Jesus and combine them with some real people who post-dated Him. The lengths one must go to in order to piece together a composite figure of Jesus is a bit of a stretch, and frankly, just not that impressive.

5. The abundance of myths doesn’t cancel out the evidence for the real resurrection of Jesus.

If you go to Barnes & Noble and take a look at the section for romance fiction, you will find cover after cover of helpless women trying to solve the biggest problem in their lives: which handsome and gallant hero will they choose? It’s a tired formula that borders on the ridiculous—but just because tons of romance fiction is out there—it doesn’t negate the idea that real romantic love exists.

The truth is that there are so many silly romantic novels because romance seems to be an insatiable desire of the human condition.

Life in the Roman Empire was brutal, with most people living in poverty, and given such a society, people were naturally looking for hope. They wanted to know that evil would be punished and goodness would be rewarded and that there would be life after death where justice would be done. Like the impetus behind modern romance fiction, this is a common desire of the human condition.

We should expect that stories would emerge that would satisfy this hope for immortality. This doesn’t mean that Jesus actually rising from the dead is fictitious or impossible. If we have good evidence for the resurrection of Jesus (which we do), there’s no reason to reject it simply because there may be some similarities in fictional stories.

This Easter, we don’t celebrate Mithras or some other impotent figure of an ancient fairy tale. We celebrate the true and living Savior who conquered death and the grave to save us and reconcile us to God. I pray this post helps you confidently agree with the angel at Jesus’ tomb by saying: He is risen!

Notes:

[1] Lund University Professor and Biblical Scholar T. N. D. Mettinger wrote, “The consensus among modern scholars—nearly universal—is that there were no dying and rising gods that preceded Christianity. They all post-dated the first century.” (Cited in Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007, 160-61.)

Overcoming Apathy and the Straw Man Argument

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Al Serrato

As Christians, we are told to always be ready to give an answer for our faith. But for many of us, the opportunity seldom arises. In fact, by and large, it seems we are faced with apathy and indifference. Struggling to get past this with someone – to get them to actually think about the Christian message – requires the apologist to first deal with the source of the apathy.

One common source, in my experience, is what can be called the Santa Factor. This is the belief that Christians are simply deluding themselves when they believe in a God who will “deliver presents” to them when they die. Talking to skeptics about the rewards God has in store for those who place their trust in Him has little impact. It seems as real to them as the prospect of Santa leaving presents under their tree.

I had this confirmed recently in a conversation with an unbeliever. Seeing her indifference, I told her I felt like I was trying to talk to her about what presents she was hoping for from Santa, while she was just hanging back, secretly laughing at the absurdity of the whole concept. “It’s like I’m trying to list the reasons that there is a North Pole and flying reindeer,” I said, “and you are just politely nodding and wondering why so many people believe this … nonsense.” I asked her whether that was close to what she thought, and her reply was a candid “yes.” She thought the analogy to Santa was a perfect one, she said, one that captured her feelings in a very precise way.

Once this mindset is made clear, it’s easy to understand why my arguments gain no traction. Despite the soundness of the logic used in building my case for Christianity, to the unbeliever, I might as well be trying to explain how elves could conceivably build toys or how reindeer might possess gravity-altering organs. Since there are many reasons to believe that there is no Santa, and no reasons to believe the contrary, that conversation ends before it begins.

I have, as yet, found no sure-fire way to overcome this Santa Factor. I’d be interested to hear from any apologists who have. I do believe there is a necessary first step, however, and that is to show the skeptic that the Santa Factor is actually a variant of the “straw man” fallacy. Setting up a straw man involves defining the other side’s argument in an unfair or misleading way, and then concluding that you have the better argument when you knock down this “straw man.” When skeptics think of Christianity, they often picture a combination of strange images – Father Time with his flowing white beard, angels dancing on the heads of pins, virgin births, cannibalism, and strange “miracles.” A jumble of such images leaves the skeptic feeling comfortable rejecting the whole of Christianity as based on primitive superstitions and beliefs. Like the Santa myth, these beliefs might bring some comfort, and they’re great for tradition and ritual, but they are not really true. It’s all just a myth, based largely on “faith,” which translates roughly in their view to “wishful thinking.”

So, with that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the analogy. Santa, of course, is the supposed source of the gifts found under Christmas trees every Christmas morning. This explanation works for small children – giving them a wonderful period of anticipation and their parents a lever for a bit of behavior modification as kids struggle to remain on the “nice” list – but a moment’s reflection as a child matures would reveal that no one person could possibly build and deliver an endless stream of worldwide gifts. Not to mention keeping straight who gets what.

But considering the issue more critically, discovering that there is no Santa is not cause for concluding that there are no gifts under the tree, or that they appeared on their own. No, logic dictates that someone put the gifts there, someone with knowledge of the child, access to the home, and knowledge of the child’s wish list.

We too have “presents under our tree” that cry out for explanation. After all, we live in a universe, and on a planet, that are fine-tuned to support life. Life emerged on this planet at some point in the past and some of that life became conscious and intelligent. With that consciousness and intelligence, we can perceive and appreciate beauty and can argue about right and wrong, assuming as we do that there is a thing called morality that exists and should guide us. All these things need to be explained, and blithely concluding that God can’t be that explanation is not a rational move. Instead, the skeptic should embark upon an examination of the possible alternatives available through the use of thought and reason. Which worldview has a better explanation for all of this? Atheistic naturalism may have made sense in Darwin’s day when the universe was thought to be infinite in duration and DNA was not even suspected as the reason life displays such ordered variation. But today? Is it really plausible to assume that all the magnificence we see around us just happened on its own, with no guiding hand?

Consider: astrophysicists tell us that the universe arose from nothing 14 billion years ago. This means the universe, and time itself began to exist. But since all things that come into being require an adequate source, logic supports the conclusion that an intelligent, powerful, and transcendent being set it all in motion. Biologists today seek to make sense of the tremendous body of information that is encoded in DNA. The billions of lines of what is akin to computer code direct the construction of all life on this planet and understanding how to work with it has brought remarkable benefits to humanity. But wherever we find information, we must, of course, conclude that an intelligent source is at work. There are countless other questions that need an answer: how can the atheist explain the origin of life? If even the simplest form of cellular life contains millions of lines of DNA code, believing that it magically assembled itself from inert matter is, well, just as difficult to swallow as Santa making it down the chimney. The list of questions continues: from where does human intelligence come? How is it that inert matter became conscious and self-aware? Why do we have free will? If the universe determines all outcomes, as the secularist believes, then the free will we all intuitively recognize we possess is simply an illusion.

In the end, it really does take more blind – uncritical -faith to accept the secular view. The Christian worldview, by contrast, holds that an infinite, personal, and loving God created this universe, and us, for a purpose, and then revealed Himself to us in history. He did this in a way that provided evidence, both from the study of nature and from the personal testimony of witnesses who were so sure of what they saw and experienced – the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth – that they suffered martyrdom rather than deny it. (Contrasting the two worldviews in detail is beyond the scope of this post, but the case is well made here and here.)

Will this overcome the Santa Factor? It should if the skeptic really gives it a fair hearing. But that of course depends on the skeptic and how open he is to seeing through his little game of make-believe.

The Resurrection Is A Historical Fact

4. Is the NT True?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Bob Perry

Jesus of Nazareth died on a Roman cross, then resurrected from the dead three days later. It’s not just a fairy tale. Christians believe that the Resurrection is a historical fact. It’s what sets Christianity apart from every other world religion. It is the foundation of the Christian faith. If it’s not true the New Testament is fiction, Jesus is a fraud, and Christianity is a false religion. Anyone would be a fool to believe in it. This isn’t just my opinion. It’s the Apostle Paul’s:

1 Corinthians 15:12-19 — “… if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile … [and you] are to be pitied more than all men.”

None of us wants to be foolish or pitied for our faith. And no one wants to follow, or encourage others to follow, a false religion. So what reasons do we have to believe this story? It turns out there are several.

Impact Events

Just outside the cockpit door of every commercial airliner, there is a telephone handset that allows the flight attendants to talk to the pilots. And inside the cockpit of every commercial airliner is a “Door Unlock” switch on the center console that allows the pilots to open the cockpit door without getting out of their seats.

If a flight attendant had knocked on my cockpit door at 8:45AM on September 11, 2001, and asked me if she could come up front, I would have unlocked the door while I was still on the phone with her. I wouldn’t have hesitated for a second. But by 9:15AM that same morning, the passengers of United Flight 93 had already figured out that was a bad idea. They were storming the cockpit of their Boeing 757 over southern Pennsylvania for that very reason.

What changed during those thirty minutes?

We all know what changed. The collective mindset of the entire world changed. It’s called an “Impact Event” — an incident so shocking it has the power to change not just what we think, but the way we think … about everything.

Resurrection – The Cultural Backdrop

In the first century A.D., there were several different kinds of beliefs about life-after-death in the Egyptian and Greco-Roman worlds that surrounded Israel. The Egyptians mummified people with their stuff so they could use it in the afterlife. The Greeks and Romans believed in various forms of an underworld destination. But no one anywhere believed in the idea of a bodily resurrection occurring after a person died.

The Jews weren’t any different. Their views varied by theological sub-group. The Essenes’ views were similar to their neighboring pagan cultures. They believed in a single-stage disembodied immortality — a “soul” that continued on into an “afterlife.” Their view didn’t include any kind of bodily resurrection. The Sadducees did not believe in any kind of life-after-death at all. The Pharisees did believe in one form of a “resurrection.” But theirs was a group event that they thought would occur for all God’s people. The righteous would rise bodily together at the end of time.

Not Even In Myth

In other words, there were plenty of different ideas about what happened to people after they died. But the Jews and their pagan contemporaries agreed about one thing — that the idea of a bodily resurrection was complete rubbish.

“This basic tenet of human existence and experience is accepted as axiomatic throughout the ancient world; once people have gone by the road of death, they do not return. When the ancient classical world spoke of (and denied) resurrection, there should be no controversy about what the word and its cognates referred to … ‘Resurrection’ was not one way of describing what death consisted of. It was a way of describing something everyone knew did not happen: the idea that death could be reversed, undone, could work backward. Not even in myth was it permitted.”

~ N. T. Wright, The Resurrection Of The Son Of God

The New Paradigm

Then, suddenly, everything changed. Despite every commonly-held belief to the contrary, one group of people began believing in a bodily resurrection. They were the first-generation Christians. For some reason, a large group of these people turned on a dime. They started saying that a person could be resurrected. In fact, they claimed that someone had done just that. And they described a resurrected person as having some kind of weirdly transformed physical body. These Christians started using the term “resurrection” in ways they had never used the term before. They talked about it in the present tense.

The New Church

The idea of a resurrection had been a tangential doctrinal variant for the Jews. But, for some of them, it morphed overnight into the central tenet of their faith. Opinions about life after death had been all over the map. But suddenly Christians were remarkably unanimous about one thing: The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

And that changed everything else.

Their Jewish religious and Temple worship rites weren’t exempt. They went from practicing animal sacrifice to preaching on Christ’s sacrifice. They claimed that the binding Law of Moses had been fulfilled. That baptism and communion had replaced circumcision as the symbol of their faith. They even changed their weekly day of worship from Saturday to Sunday.

It was like the world had experienced some kind of cataclysmic Impact Event.

Because it had.

The Resurrection is History

These rapid, sweeping changes in thinking and habits are documented history. And that is what makes Christianity so unique. It’s not just a “faith system” or a list of rules for healthy living. And it’s not a self-help program based on having a friendly relationship with God. Christianity is based on an epic story. But the story is true. It’s historically verifiable. And the central event in the story is the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

The truth of Christianity lives or dies (pun intended) on the Resurrection. If you want to falsify the Christian story, just prove that Jesus never rose from the dead. That is the point the Apostle Paul was making in 1 Corinthians 15. If the Resurrection of Jesus was not an actual, historical event, you can dismiss us Christians as fools.

But if it was, you should bend your knee to the risen Messiah.

As I’ve discussed many times, the definition of truth is “correspondence to reality.” Does what we believe about something match the way the world really is? If it does, that belief is true. And that means that if we believe the Resurrection is true we should have solid historical evidence for it from the real world. Is there any?

You bet there is.

Evidence Please

The evidence doesn’t depend on your religious point of view. It’s the same kind of evidence mainstream historians use to evaluate any kind of historic event. You take the evidence you have and look for an explanation that takes all of it into account.

The first bit of evidence is the New Testament itself. If you evaluate it in the same way you would evaluate any set of ancient documents, the conclusion is simple. The New Testament documents are historically reliable. This really isn’t even debatable. The evidence is overwhelming. But think about the origins of these documents. Who wrote them, and why?

The answer to both those questions is so obvious it blows my mind that I, as a confessing Christian, missed it for decades.

The New Testament was written by people whose lives were turned upside down by the Resurrection of Christ. Their writings weren’t just fanciful musings. The authors wrote down what they saw. And they wrote those things down because of the Resurrection,

The Resurrection came first. It’s why we have a New Testament.

So, we have highly reliable historical documents. And those documents record an Impact Event unlike any other. Billions of people have died throughout history. But the world has only reset its entire calendar system in honor of one life. That’s the ultimate kind of Impact Event. And it’s powerful evidence for the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus.

The Minimal Facts Approach

The New Testament writers experienced the Impact Event and wrote about what they saw. But they weren’t the only ones. Other historians witnessed the effects of the Resurrection too. And their accounts corroborate the New Testament authors’ stories. For that reason, there are several elements of the story that even its critics admit are undeniable. These are mainstream historians who overwhelmingly agree to the veracity of five facts tied to the Resurrection. Dr. Gary Habermas, a world-class PhD Bible scholar, calls these the “Minimal Facts.” And he has popularized an argument based on them.

Here are the five central elements of the Resurrection account that even Christianity’s opponents admit are historically accurate:

Jesus of Nazareth died by crucifixion on a Roman cross.
Jesus’ disciples believed that he appeared to them after he had died.
Paul, the church persecutor and sworn enemy of Christianity, was suddenly changed into its greatest advocate.
James, the brother of Jesus, suddenly dropped his skepticism and became the leaderof the Jerusalem church.
The tomb where they buried Jesus on Friday was empty on Sunday.

Since there is overwhelming agreement to these, Habermas’ “Minimal Facts Approach” simply says that the conclusion we draw about the Resurrection must be based on an “inference to the best explanation” for all these facts.

I’m not going to get into the details of each right now, but here’s the point: The only all-encompassing explanation for all five of these facts is that that Resurrection actually occurred.

A Reason To Believe

The New Testament writers penned their manuscripts for a reason. They believed that something cataclysmic had happened. And it doesn’t make sense to say they conspired to concoct the story. Every single one of them went to his grave without recanting the story they shared. Most of them were executed for that very reason. It strains credulity to say they were willing to suffer and die in defense of a story they knew they had made up.

Taking all this into account, it is perfectly reasonable to say the Resurrection is a historical fact. If you can say that about any historical event, you can say it about this one.

And yes, that means a miracle occurred. So, those who deny that miracles are possible can’t just dismiss the Resurrection as being “religious.” Of course it’s religious. But it’s also historical. The evidence is clear. They can doubt all historical claims. Or they can be reasonable and rethink the presuppositions that led them to reject miracles in the first place.

Here is a short summary of some of the “Minimal Facts” about the resurrection:

… and there is plenty of evidence to support each one of these facts:

Learn To Make a Maximal Case For The Resurrection

4. Is the NT True?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Erik Manning

I used to love sharing the minimal facts with unbelievers. It’s easy to present in a few minutes and sounds rhetorically powerful. When I tell my friends that the facts I’m sharing are universally acknowledged by scholars, even those who are skeptical, it seems like I am not coming at them with something that only conservative evangelicals believe. And on the surface, taking an end-run around the Gospels seemed helpful because unbelievers tend to view them as dubious sources.

However, I ran into a couple of issues. One was practical. Let’s say I got the skeptic to hear me out. Does it really make sense to say: “OK, I granted for the sake of argument that the Gospels are a hot mess of contradictions and historical gaffes. I now wanna take that back and argue that they’re much more reliable than that. You should accept orthodox Christian doctrine” The skeptic might ask “um… if that were true, why’d you start out granting so much for the sake of argument?” This feels like bait and switch.

WHY MAXIMAL DATA?

Plus, once an objection like grief hallucinations or mass delusions came up, I’d eventually have to back up and present other facts that skeptical and liberal scholars didn’t acknowledge. Any imagined rhetorical advantage evaporated. This approach didn’t really save time. If I wanted to defend the bodily appearances, the empty tomb, or the early persecution of the Twelve, I couldn’t “do it all with Paul.” I’d have to learn to defend the reliability of the Gospels and Acts. There are no shortcuts.

The good news is that this can be both rewarding and faith-building. You won’t be lost for words when you’ll hear a scholarly critic like Bart Ehrman lay out a list of complaints about the Gospels. You’ll no longer have to console yourself with “well, I’m not sure how to answer that, but at least the core facts are true.” You can read the Gospels and not wonder “is this part really defensibly historical?” Learning this approach kills cognitive dissonance.

OBJECTIONS TO MAXIMAL DATA

The only drawback is that you’ll be told you hold fringy views. But again, saying that there is evidence that the tomb was empty or the resurrection appearances were physical is already considered fringy to the scholarly consensus anyway. And importantly, scholarly politics can’t trump the force of objective evidence. It doesn’t mean that something is weakly supported by non-question-begging evidence because it isn’t granted by skeptical and liberal scholars. Nor does it mean we’re making a “for the Bible tells me so” argument.

When the skeptic asks, “what about all the contradictions?” you can offer to revisit them later and continue to make your positive case, rather than conceding them for the sake of argument. And by the way, the robust reliability argument can also be made in a way that’s just as quick and easy to share as minimal facts. It goes like this:

Either the disciples were deceivers, deceived, or they were telling the truth.
They were not deceivers. (They had good reasons not to lie considering they’d be ostracized and persecuted)
They were not merely mistaken or deceived. (We can tell this by the accounts they gave of seeing, touching, and talking with Jesus over a long period of time after the resurrection)
Therefore, they were telling the truth.

There! That’s not so hard now, is it? You could make that argument on an elevator. You just need to be prepared to back it up with additional evidence. So with this in mind, I’m going to tell you about 3 modern books you can pick up for around $50 total. And then I’m going to give you three older, public domain books that you can get off the Google Play store that won’t cost you a dime.

Resource #1: The Case For Jesus – Brant Pitre

This book helps answer a whole host of questions: Were the four Gospels really anonymous? Aren’t they written far too late to be considered reliable? Aren’t the Gospels folklore? What about the lost Gospels, like the Gospel of Judas or the Gospel of Peter? Is Jesus only divine in the Gospel of John and not the Synoptics?

Pitre offers some neglected evidence from the early church fathers and ancient manuscripts to demonstrate that the Gospels are not anonymous, as skeptics like to assert. Furthermore, he puts Jesus of Nazareth’s divine claims in an ancient Jewish context in a way that blew my mind. You won’t look at the phrases Son of Man and Kingdom of God in the same way.

Resource #2: Can We Trust the Gospels? – Peter J. Williams

This is a super accessible book and only 140 pages. The whole thing is great, but chapter 3 is worth the price of the book alone. Skeptics often claim that the Gospels were written decades later by people unfamiliar with 1st-century Palestine. If that’s true, we’d expect to find all kinds of errors regarding Palestinian geography, names, and customs, but Williams demonstrates time and time again that the Gospel writers get these details right, including many difficult types of details. Based on the data, Williams concludes that “The resulting Gospels are not what we would expect from people who made up stories at a geographical distance.” This serves as evidence that the evangelists were well-informed, consistently trustworthy, and close up to the facts.

Resource #3: Hidden in Plain View – Lydia McGrew

Having been largely neglected for over a century, Lydia McGrew revives an argument for the reliability of the NT called undesigned coincidences. In a nutshell, an undesigned coincidence is an apparently casual, yet puzzle-like fit between two or more texts, and its best explanation is that the authors knew the truth about the events they describe or allude to. These connections are among passages in the Gospels, as well as between Acts and Paul’s epistles. These lend credence to the idea that these documents were written by eyewitnesses who knew what they were talking about. This is relevant to developing a case for the resurrection. For if the gospels can be shown to be rooted in credible eyewitness testimony, you have to take seriously the reported nature and variety of the post-resurrection encounters with the risen Jesus as coming from the original eyewitnesses.

Seeing examples of this in action is the easiest way to understand it. You can find plenty of interviews and lectures on YouTube where Dr. McGrew shares this argument.

I’d also highly recommend her other two books if you are interested in learning more about the Gospels’ reliability. Those are The Eye of the Beholder (which is a defense of John’s Gospel) and The Mirror and the Mask, which argues against claims made by evangelical scholars that the Gospel authors felt free to present events in one way even though they knew that the reality was different. These are a little more technical than her first book, and a great place to start if you want to go deeper into the issues.

FREE RESOURCES

Now, for the free resources: JJ Blunt’s book Undesigned Coincidencesand William Paley’s Horae Paulinaeare the non-updated versions of Lydia McGrew’s Hidden in Plain View. I still recommend you get Lydia’s book, because she picks the “best of” these undesigned coincidences, and she has discovered several more that are not in these older books. If you’re on a budget, these are great additions to your library. And if you’re not on a budget, get them anyway. Both of these books are still worth reading even after reading Hidden in Plain View.

Finally, get A View of the Evidences of Christianity by William Paley. I cannot recommend this book enough. Paley debunks Hume’s anti-miracle argument. He examines all the evidence that the original witnesses of Christianity were willing to undergo labors, dangers, and suffering in order to spread the gospel of the resurrection.

He goes into great detail regarding the authorship and early use of the Gospels, which includes the unanimous testimony of the early church and even some heretics. Paley takes us into the unity of the character of Christ in all four Gospels. This answers some of the “why’s John’s Jesus so different?” objections. Paley also demonstrates 41 instances where the Gospel writers make incidental allusions to history that can be confirmed outside the NT, even down to minor details. These illustrate the evangelists’ familiarity with the setting and their accuracy in recounting details. He discusses alleged discrepancies in the Gospels, prophecy, and so much more. I can’t do this book justice in a short video. Just get it. Sure, his style of writing is from the 18th-century and his arguments could use a little updating. However, this book has mostly stood the test of time and should not be forgotten.

Just search the Google Play store for these three public domain books and you can find free versions. There are many other books I could recommend, but these are meant to get you started. I just want to assure you that this isn’t a very difficult method to learn. It took time to learn the minimal facts approach, and you can take the time to learn this. There may be extra details, but we’ve seen that extra details are needed anyway to make a strong case. We can all find less time for Twitter, Instagram, or reading the latest political news, or binge-watching Netflix. You just have to set priorities.

Skeptics have poked apart the minimalist approaches to the resurrection for far too long. We need an army of Christian apologists who can make a more robust case. You can do this.

Resurrection Defense Series: How the Resurrection Impacts Theology

3. Are Miracles Possible?, Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Brian Chilton

In September of 1993, my grandmother, Eva Chilton, passed away from a long battle with congestive heart failure. She was the first of my grandparents to pass. My grandmother was a kind, loving woman who used to play board games with us grandchildren. Her smile was illuminating, and her laughter was infectious. Having grown up in church, my young ears heard numerous stories about the afterlife and divine promises. However, being the ever so skeptically minded person as I am, I wanted to know if those promises were true. How could I know that my grandmother was okay?

Previously, I had read a story in Guideposts magazine about a person who prayed that God would send a sign after their loved one’s passing to confirm that the loved one was okay. The article noted that God sent a lightning bolt to verify that the loved one was okay. My mind began to ponder that if the prayer worked for that person, surely it would also work for me. Thus, a few days before my grandmother’s passing, I asked the Lord to do the same for me. I asked for God to send a lightning bolt to assure me that my grandmother was okay when she passed. It was in late September which was not as conducive for lightning storms in the foothills of northwestern North Carolina, as opposed to the balmy, humid months of July and August. That is not to say that lightning storms never happen in late September, just that they are not as likely.

The day came when my grandmother passed. The family met in my grandparent’s home. It was an old house built in the early 1900s. The shutters were filled with asbestos insulation, fine as long as you do not perturb it. An old closet had been transformed into a bathroom, replacing the former outhouse used years before the home’s indoor plumbing was installed. The front of the home led into a large living room which was closed during the colder months due to the wood stove being on the other side of the home. A door led to a bedroom to the left. Across the living room was a door that led into a family room/bedroom. To the left of the family room was the kitchen which led out the back door. The kitchen and family room normally received the most traffic.

On this evening, I found myself in the quiet confines of the living room and peering outdoors into the empty darkness of the sorrowful September night. Everything seemed much darker on that evening because my grandmother was gone. However, the darkness would soon be replaced with brilliant colors of white and blue as two lightning bolts struck on either side of the house. A bolt hit near to where I was sitting, while another bolt hit on the other side of the home where my grandfather and Reverend Gilmer Denny, a pastor friend of the family, were sitting. Outside of losing power for a few brief seconds, nothing in the home was damaged. After a few minutes of initial shock, the Spirit of God reminded me of the prayer that had been previously appealed. At least to my teenage mind, the sign confirmed that my grandmother was just fine. She was in her heavenly home.

Even though this story is told 28 years after it occurred, the memory still vividly resonates in my mind because of the impact it made on me. In like manner, the resurrection of Christ impacts our theological framework. The apostle Paul taught that if the resurrection were not true, then people would be most pitied, the Christian message would be untrue, and Christian teachers would be found to be liars (1 Cor. 15:12-19). But if the resurrection is true, then, everything changes. Paul notes, “But as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:20-22).[1] The resurrection’s veracity impacts the totality of a person’s theological worldview. Much could be said of this issue, but to constrain the article’s scope, only three theological areas of impact will be described.

The Resurrection Impacts the Theological Views of the Afterlife and Eternity

If the resurrection is true, then one has firsthand evidence that life exists beyond the grave. 1 Corinthians 15:20 holds that Jesus’s resurrection serves as the firstfruits for those who have already passed. The aspect of firstfruits refers to the Jewish practice of taking the first and best portion of a harvest and giving it to God.[2] The people were to bring the first sheaf of the harvest to the priest for him to wave the sheaf before God (Lev. 23:10-14). Figuratively, Jews understood that this taught them to place God first in all that they said and did. In the NT, it was understood that Jesus represented the best of us all. In like manner, just as Jesus had risen from the dead, so shall others be raised from the dead. Life exists beyond the scope of this world. The proof of the afterlife is found in an empty tomb and by the transformed lives who have encountered the One who defeated death.

The Resurrection Impacts the Theological Views of Purpose and Value

If there is a resurrection and an afterlife, then that must indicate that people have an innate purpose and value. God’s creation is important. Even more, the human race bears the divine imprint—otherwise known as the imagio Dei. As such, no life is a mistake. No person is without value and purpose. This writer spoke at a church on one occasion where a mother and father were in attendance, along with their numerous foster children. The mother said that because she was unable to bear children, she wanted to share her love with children who did not have parents. The message was on Jeremiah chapter one. The point was made that God foreknows each person before the person is born, just as was the case with the prophet Jeremiah. The point continued to note that because of God’s foreknowledge and calling, no one is worthless and without value. Furthermore, every life has a purpose. One of the children began crying as she looked at her mother. The mother wrapped her arm around the child. After the service, the mother expressed her appreciation to me for the message. She said that the child’s biological mother had told her that she was a mistake and was worthless. However, the mother emphasized that God had given her a purpose in this life and that her life was highly valued.

The resurrection of Christ confirms the value and worth of each person. If the resurrection is true, then, retrospectively, the atoning sacrifice of the cross is confirmed, and the mission of Christ is validated. The resurrection is God’s stamp of approval for the mission of Christ. The mission of Christ is evidence of God’s benevolent love and compassion for all of humanity. For Christ was not sent to condemn the world, but rather that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17)—emphasis again on the world, not just the frozen chosen.

The Resurrection Impacts the Theological Views of Ethics and Virtue

If the resurrection confirms that there is an afterlife and that human beings hold purpose and value, then, practically, the resurrection impacts ethics and value. If the resurrection is true, then how people treat one another matters. Why? Because the resurrection confirms the message of Jesus. Ben Witherington notes that “Jesus expected his audience to respond to his works in faith and with repentance. This suggests that his duty was more than just performing acts of compassion. Rather, he was calling God’s people back to their source in view of the inbreaking dominion of God … the power of God must be used to help people.”[3] Jesus commanded his disciples to love others and to even pray for those with whom they differ (Matt. 5:44). Doing good for others is not only commanded and exhibited by Jesus, but it also illustrates the kingdom of God to those in need and compels others to enter this domain.

This article comes on the heels of seven months spent in clinical chaplaincy ministry. Quite honestly, God’s power has been exhibited more in these past seven months than was personally experienced in the past 20 years of pastoral ministry. Prayers have been answered in remarkable ways; people have expressed their deepest appreciation for the work being done; people have had encounters with God; and souls have come to know the Lord. Those things occur in pastoral ministry, but not to the level that has been witnessed in chaplaincy ministry. Why is that? Perhaps it is because chaplains find themselves on the front lines of ministry. Rather than sitting in an office, quarantined from the quagmire of human experience, the chaplain finds oneself in the trenches with those most in need. Chaplaincy has taught the value of Jesus’s teaching, firsthand, that when a cup of water, or a good deed, is given to one who thirsts, it is also given to Jesus (Mark 9:41). This is not to discredit pastoral ministry in the least. I have many fond memories of the pastorate. Who knows? God may use me there again in the future. Nonetheless, the point simply advocates that to demonstrate the love of God, believers must be willing to serve those most in need without judgment. In other words, believers must be willing to get their hands dirty. Christ died and defeated death to give life to humanity. That means that every person is worth saving. That also means that every person is of dignity, worth, and value. The book of Revelation portrays a scene where individuals from every tribe, nation, and tongue surround the throne of God while giving him praise (Rev. 7:9). If true, then the resurrection allows no room for racism or favoritism based on socioeconomic standards. The resurrection demands a superior ethical and moral code to be held by each believer.

Conclusion

The article began with a story of a lightning bolt that fixated my attention heavenward. Later in life, two other lightning bolt experiences transformed my life. The final experience will be shared another day. Insofar as this article goes, the second lightning bolt experience occurred when the resurrection of Jesus was understood to be a historical fact. My life has been transformed just as has the lives of countless others. The resurrection not only serves as the linchpin for the Christian worldview, but it also validates the entire theological framework upon which the biblical worldview is built. Christians may differ on modes of baptism, Bible translations, and styles of singing. However, a Christian cannot deny the historical resurrection of Christ. If the resurrection is denied, then the entire foundation for the Christian worldview collapses, and the walls come tumbling down. Paul verifies that very line of thought in 1 Corinthians 15. Yet if the resurrection did occur, then everything changes. A person may find it revolutionary to acknowledge that Jesus’s resurrection is not some comic book tale told on framed color-filled pages. Jesus’s resurrection is a historical fact that validates the afterlife, ethical values, and human purpose. The world’s woes will not be solved by political pundits and legislation. Rather, the solution is found in an empty tomb and on an occupied throne at the right hand of God the Father. But one day, the throne will be unoccupied as numerous other tombs are left emptied. That is all because the resurrection is true.

Notes:

[1] Unless otherwise noted, all quoted Scripture comes from the Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman, 2017).

[2] A. Boyd Luter, “Firstfruits,” The Lexham Bible Dictionary, John D. Barry, ed, et al (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

[3] Ben Witherington, III, The Christology of Jesus (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1990), 176.

Tag Archive for: Resurrection

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