The Resurrection of Jesus: Reflecting on the Evidence (Conclusion)

Here is a very long quote from How Jesus Became God. I want to share it with you to show something of a summary of how skeptical scholars, specifically here Bart Ehrman, can view Christian arguments pointed at the resurrection. 

"...more than anyone else, thinkers among [dedicated Christian] groups are committed to 'objective truth'... But the reality is that modern Christian apologists stress the importance of objectivity and champion it more than anyone--much more than most other educated people in our world. University intellectuals almost never speak of 'objectivity' any more, unless they happen to live on the margins of intellectual life.

"...This is a standard weapon in the apologetic arsenal: you can look at all the evidence for the resurrection, objectively, and conclude, on the basis of overwhelming proof, that God really did raise Jesus from the dead. No other explanation can account for the objectively established historical data--for example, that Jesus's tomb was empty and that his disciples claimed to see him afterward. And so apologists proceed by taking these two data as 'facts' and showing that no other explanation is plausible (that the disciples stole the body, that they went to the wrong tomb, that they were hallucinating, and so on).

"If one wants to play the objectivity game (it is a game; there is nothing objectively that makes objectivity objectively true), it is relatively easy to poke holes in this apologetic ploy... For one thing, as I've already argued, there are very serious reasons to doubt that Jesus was buried decently and that his tomb was discovered to be empty. Moreover, as I've argued, any other scenario---no matter how unlikely--is more likely than the one in which a great miracle occurred, since the miracle defies all probability (or else we wouldn't call it a miracle).

"But apart from whether it makes sense to wrangle over the 'objectively' best explanation for the data, there is the bigger problem--namely, that faith in a miracle is a matter of faith, not of objectively established knowledge. That is why some historians believe that Jesus was raised and other equally good historians do not believe he was. Both sets of historians have the same historical data available to them, but it is not the historical data that makes a person a believer. Faith is not historical knowledge, and historical knowledge is not faith." (1)

Is it really true that historians who prove a historical event (say, that the Roman empire fell) do not have faith? I don't believe so. They didn't witness it. Instead, they use historical evidence to draw a conclusion (in this case I'm sure there is a plethora of indications). But still, someone could propose, no matter how unreasonable, an alternate explanation. 

And that's using an example which surely has lots of proof from archeology and written history. What about other things historians claim to know, like that the Disciples fled and fell out of faith in Jesus? This is based on strong evidence, yes, but I proved it only by surveying written examples in the Gospels.

Only by defining faith as believing in something which is not proven to be, objectively, the reasonable conclusion, can one say that historians don't have faith. This is arguably not the best definition. Lay people often talk about "having faith" in someone they "trust," because they know them and this makes the expectation that their word word will be kept most justified. It is possible that the person was lying, but that would fly in the face of everything known about them. So if Christians can prove from other proven historical data that concluding Jesus really came back to life after crucifixion -- as is explicitly recorded in history -- is the only reasonable scenario, then Jesus's resurrection is right on par with everything else.

I don't know exactly what the whole part about "objectivity" was supposed to mean. Is doubting the empty tomb supposed to be justified beyond anyone's opinion? Isn't historical evidence that both Christian and non-Christian scholars have before them really supported to be facts? What is this, some type of postmodernism? The claim that objectivity is not real, meaning that everything is a matter of opinion, means that any claims are just matters of opinion. When this is brought up, an advocate could try to escape by smiling and saying, "Yes. You don't have to believe me." But it doesn't matter that objectivity wasn't explicitly acknowledged even then. It's obvious that there still is the underlying fact of people objectively being able to dismiss the claim that there is only opinions.

Now that fancy wordplay and such has been settled, I can move onto the more important part.

How confident can I be on the resurrection from historical data? This wasn't an event in near history. On the contrary, Jesus walked the Earth in ancient history, two millennium ago. But still, every piece of historical knowledge comes from evidence. In reference to 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, one scholar pointed out the early, eyewitness material was "the sort of data that historians of antiquity drool over." (2) Cambridge New Testament scholar C. F. D. Moule mentioned the power of the evidence for Jesus in a quote which has stricken me to look smug. If Moule was being so, he was at least justified intellectually: "If the coming into existence of the Nazarenes, a phenomenon undeniably attested by the New Testament, rips a great hole in history, a hole of the size and shape of Resurrection, what does the secular historian propose to stop it up with?" (3)

Of course, what about the fact that a miracle is not a normal event, which skeptics take as incapable of being demonstrated? Well, I already referenced the post all about that back in the introduction(4). Here I will point out how I believe consciousness and intelligence (being able to use the laws of logic), an undeniable experience for all humans, are only justified by the existence of God(5). The Bible says about Jesus that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1) The Greek expression for Word is logos, which can also be translated as "intelligence," "consciousness," "rationality." John spoke of Jesus as the Divine Mind. Later on Jesus called Himself "the Truth" in 14:6. In Acts 17:28, Paul quoted the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, "For in Him we live and move and have our being." 

Finally, Antony Flew said, "Certainly given some beliefs about God, the occurrence of the resurrection does become enormously more likely." (6) I take this to heart. My experience of having a conscious intelligence leaves me more confident that the resurrection of Jesus Christ happened than, for instance, George Washington was the first president or Abraham Lincoln was an anti-racist.

What do you think about the historical argument for the resurrection? Way back in the introduction post I said I would prove that Jesus really rose from the dead. Did I succeed? Why or why not? I also mentioned somewhere along the line how Christian arguments can be categorized as "preaching to the choir," which means that it is appealing for those who want to be convinced but not persuasive for others. On the contrary, they are intellectually justified to remain unbelievers. This can be a hard-hitting claim because really it is exactly the other question I just asked. How can my argument, if this is possible, reasonably persuade unbelievers? 

If you see some reason to doubt a part of my argument, feel free to comment on the original post, and then reference it here. Also, if you belong to the choir/church/God, please feel welcome and that it is safe to respond. No one can say that because you are a Christian how you look at the evidence was necessarily distorted. 

Why did Jesus die and come back to life?

By now you have probably realized it is completely inevitable to have the resurrection without why Jesus matters. I'll try to explain what Jesus was thinking when He suffered and died, and then canceled its effects on His physical body.

Who even is Jesus anyway? Jesus is the Divine Son of God. John 5:18 says Jesus "called God His own Father, making Himself equal to God." But no one but God can be equal to God (Isaiah 42:8, 45:5;  Exodus 20:4-5, 34:14; Deuteronomy 5:8-9, 6:4-5). So Jesus existed before the universe and created the universe. Jesus is God along with His Father, who is also the one and only God. When He came down to Earth is called the Incarnation, because Jesus is God incarnate. How two beings can both be the same God is ultimately beyond human understanding. 

Romans 3:23 says that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The Bible is clear that all people have done wrong things, and so deserve to be separated from the love of God forever. 

1 Corinthians 15:3 says that "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures[.]" When Jesus died on the cross, He took the punishment that every other human being (i.e. those that aren't God) deserved. By dying as a ransom in our place, Jesus made a way for us to go to Heaven. 

John 3:16 says that anyone who "believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life." Ephesians 2:8,9, Galatians 5:4 and Romans 3:19-24 also make clear that no one will ever be saved by works but rather faith in Jesus. If anyone wants to know if they have their sins forgiven, they need to believe that Jesus is who He says He is and that He died on the cross to take the punishment for their sins. We need to believe in Who Jesus is and what He did. 

God also said that anyone who believes in Jesus cannot lose their salvation. In John 10:28-29 (cf. Romans 8:38-39), Jesus said "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand." 

While one is only saved by their faith in Jesus (Ephesians 2:8,9), every believer needs to be in frequent contact with God. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says "pray continuously." Any new believer should tell God that they believe in Him and want to be forgiven. A common prayer goes like this:

"Dear God, I know that I have done wrong things and can't save myself on my own. Thank you for sending your Son Jesus to die on the cross for me to take the punishment for my sins. Please forgive me of my sins and come into my heart and help me live for you. In Jesus's name I pray, amen." 

Remember that no one needs to do works to be saved, but when a person believes in Jesus, the Holy Spirit (the third member of the Trinity, also God along with the Son and the Father) comes to live in their heart (1 Corinthians 2:9-16). God can, wants to, and as long as they comply, will help others live the way He wants them to live.

I pray that God will use this blog to lead people to Him. As always, thanks for reading! I feel it fitting to quote the message I wrote way back in January, at the end of my little handout argument which is sort-of a very condensed summary of all this:

Jesus loves you and came back from the dead for you!!!!!

Citations:

1. Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (HarperOne: 2014), 172-73.

2. The scholar was Dean John Rodgers of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. Quoted in Richard N. Ostling, "Who was Jesus?" Time Magazine, 15 August 1988, 41. Cited in Gary R. Habermas and Micheal R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Kregel Publications: Grand Rapids, MI. 2004), 53.

3. C. F. D. Moule, The Phenomenon of the New Testament (London: SCM, 1967), p. 3. Cited in J.P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Baker Book: Grand Rapids, MI. 1987), 181.

4. The Possibility of Miracles?

5. The post with the most defense, which I commonly cite, is Should Atheism be in Modern Education?

6. Gary Habermas and Antony G. N. Flew, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, edited by Terry L. Miethe (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), 39. Habermas cited a personal correspondence with Terry L. Miethe which took place on April 1, 1985.