Letter to A Christian Nation 6 Did Jesus rise from the dead?

Posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 10:00 pm

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Did Jesus rise from the dead?

This is the most important question in all of Christianity.  If Jesus did not rise from the dead, and by rise I mean a bodily resurrection, then, as the apostle Paul tells us, our hope in our own resurrection is in vain.  Several opening observations should be placed on the table.

First, this is a huge topic.  Many books have been and will continue to be written about the resurrection.  I will point you to one of the best and most recent defenses of the resurrection and one of the most recent attacks on the resurrection.  Again, if Christianity is true, we should not be afraid to face our critics and show them why they are wrong. 

The first book is written by N.T. Wright, one of the finest Jesus scholars of our day and this book is perhaps the finest defense of the resurrection ever written.  On the other side of the coin is a book of collected essays by a number of skeptics.  Some of these skeptics are gracious and deal with the issue like gentlemen.  Others seem to think that this is little more than a sixth grade “I know you are but what am Iâ€? and while they have some decent arguments, it is difficult to get past the snide comments and flippant personal attacks.  A lesson for Christian debaters from whom this kind of activity is all too common.

A second observation that one should keep in mind has to do with the question of worldviews.  If you are a naturalist, who refuses to believe that God either could or would break into the world and intervene in nature with what we would call a miracle, then the argument is over.  Your presupposition has decided the question for you with no appeal to the evidence, historical documents, or even the text itself.  The score has been decided before the first batter steps up to the plate.  It matters not what actually happens in the game because team X can’t win; they don’t win these kinds of games.  They can’t win these kinds of games, so there is really no point in even playing.

With all of that behind us, what evidence do we have that Christ actually rose from the dead?  I will lay out a number of arguments that can be followed up by looking in Wright’s book and following up the bibliographic material that is found there.

The foundational question has to do with the trustworthiness of the gospel writers.  Were the writers eye-witnesses?  Did they write the truth in the sense that we think of truth today?  Can the books be trusted, given the fact that they have been handed down over thousands of years of hand copied manuscripts?  In short I believe that the answer is yes.  But don’t just take my word for it.  A fine new book, just off the press from Eerdmans argues very strongly that the Gospels were written by eye-witnesses and thus can indeed be trusted.

One of the reasons for believing in the trustworthiness of the gospels has to do with what scholars call the criterion of “embarrassment.â€?  That is the writings include things that are embarrassing to the main characters (the disciples) in the story.  In this case the disciples run away and the women are the first people to show up at the tomb.  This is bad for at least two reasons.  First, women were very rarely allowed to give testimony in a court of law and secondly it shows the cowardliness of the disciples.  They had run away and the women came to collect the body.  It goes without saying that if one were making up a story, these are not the kind of details that would jump to mind if a disciple were making up a story about the risen Lord.  These events have the ring of truth and the embarrassing ring of truth at that.

A second, and often overlooked passage, which is outside of the gospels, is in I Corinthians 15 where Paul says that Jesus was seen by Peter, by the twelve, by Paul and by over 500 witnesses, many of whom are still alive until this day.  This passage is important for a couple of reasons: it is early, around 55 A.D., much earlier than the dates most give for the Synoptics; second Paul says confidently that there are hundreds of witnesses and that many of them are still alive.  He means by this that they can be produced if need be.

There are many other arguments that you can track down for yourself from any good book on apologetics (I will list a few at the end of this blog) but at the end of the day the Lord of Glory must change the persons heart and draw them to himself.  One of the tools that he can use to do that is argument, but it is not the only, or even the most effective tool.  Sometimes just being kind and showing those around us that Christians are not all afraid to be nice to someone can go a long way.  You can all do that.  You may not be able to go through these arguments, and that is OK.  You can show them the love of Christ, the grace of our Lord, the peace that comes only through Him, and a life that is different.  That is an apologetic that is extremely powerful.  That was my mother’s apologetic and someday I’ll blog about how effective it was.  For now, think about these things.  I’ll see you next time
Dr. SamLam