Resurrection is the Keystone of Christianity
There are Christians everywhere. In the two-thousand years since Christ’s mortal ministry, billions have decided to believe what he said. And of all the things he said, there is one that stands out to be the most important; he would come back to life after being killed. He foretold of his own resurrection.
This is incredibly important! Why? There are so many reasons. Chief among those reasons is that if He did, in fact, come back to life, it gives powerful credibility to everything else He said.
Today, on Easter Sunday, I hope to give you reasons to believe by giving your rational mind some peace. As with any other miracle, the resurrection left behind evidence that can be discovered via observation and study. When you can remove the idea that the resurrection might be a myth, you are making room in your heart for the truth, which is that He did resurrect, and that He is who He said He is.
The Rational Approach
As with any question, anyone hoping to approach the quest for an answer must be curious about the facts that will lead him to the truth. This curiosity will not be present in everyone. The reality is that many don’t want to believe in God. They don’t want to believe in Jesus, and they don’t want to believe that the words in the scriptures are true.
Additionally, everyone who wants to deny that Jesus Christ is who He said He was, and is who He says He is, has to contend with the resurrection somehow. C.S. Lewis summed this up in his “Lunatic, Liar, or Lord” argument. In order to say that He didn’t resurrect, you have to either impeach Christ Himself, or you have to impeach some other aspect of the record. Whichever set of beliefs you subscribe to are going to reflect one of those options. Many just choose to dismiss it out of hand without even being curious about the facts at all.
For myself, I am insatiably curious about Jesus Christ. I have either been blessed or cursed with a passion to find out as much as I can about His life and teachings, as well as his post-mortal ministry. I believe the question of his divinity is the most important question that can be asked. If He is who He said He is, then miracles exist. His power is real. Under the right conditions the sick can be healed, the lame will walk, the dead will be raised, and that’s just things in this life. His resurrection means also that there will be an afterlife. This mortality is not the only thing that we will experience. We are immortal and we get to live again after we die and keep discovering amazing things together.
It is from this perspective that I treat the investigation of the resurrection. If my passion is worth anything, it must have an earthly tether. I must be able to see with my own eyes and feel with my own hands the reality of it.
As it happens, I am not the only one who feels this way. There are many before me who have also felt this way and done these kinds of investigations. There is a book called The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. This book lays out an incredibly detailed analysis of the actual data we have about Jesus’ life and claims about resurrection. Habermas and Licona have spent an incredible amount of time engaged with this question and I believe they have made a compelling case. When I read the book I felt like my rational objections to the resurrection had been removed. I would definitely recommend reading it for anyone who has doubts about the resurrection. I would also recommend reading it for those who have doubts about The Church of Jesus Christ. Like many Christians, Habermas and Licona have doubts about The Church as well. I’ll address them here, but I feel like their doubts are very useful to illustrate how doubts work in general. I’ll just note here that the authors’ doubts about The Church did not change my mind about The Church, but I am still grateful for the work they did.
Some Arguments
We Do Have Eyewitness Data
First of all, I want to address the fact that many detractors from the truthfulness of the resurrection will seek to impeach the testimony of Christ’s apostles just because they are Christ’s apostles. They will say things like, “You can’t use data from the Bible to argue for Jesus’ resurrection because the Bible is already a biased source; it’s a circular argument.” I would argue that anyone who makes this argument has not thought it through. The fact is that the testimonies of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are sincere testimonies. The gospels were never intended to be a fairy tale or children’s fables. They wrote what they wrote because they believed it was of paramount importance to share. They believed they had literally seen someone come back from the dead. They wrote it down. This is called eyewitness data. Whether the data itself is credible or not is an entirely different question, but data in the bible can’t just be dismissed out of hand. It is a historical account whether you want to admit it or not. Sooner or later, to one degree or another, everyone will either investigate or dismiss the claims these men made. I think Habermas and Licona said it even better:
The skeptic may respond, “But this is from the Bible, and I don’t believe the Bible,” as though you are using the Bible to prove the Bible. This blanket rejection will not do. We are not assuming inspiration or even the general reliability of the New Testament in our case for Jesus’ resurrection. . . . we are only regarding the New Testament as an ancient volume of literature containing twenty-seven separate books and letters. Then we are entertaining only those data that are well evidenced and accepted by nearly every scholar who studies the subject, even the rather skeptical ones.1
Myth 1: Jesus Wasn’t Really Dead
Not only is the apostles’ testimony of Jesus’ death credible, but it is also corroborated. There are at least three non-christian sources that corroborate what the apostles claim: Josephus2, Tacitus3, and Lucian4. These sources were contemporaries of the apostles, and made the same claims. Josephus also corroborated the resurrection. I would argue and assert that it’s not really intellectually responsible to simply dismiss their claims out of hand given that they had no conflict of interest either.
Myth 2: Someone Moved His Body
This myth is particularly difficult when you approach it the same way you might any other accusation. You’d have to impeach the character of the apostles, and you’d have to find motive for that kind of an action. I think we can agree that most who seek to deceive their fellow man stand to gain something. There are obvious exceptions in the criminally insane, but even if we look to our current court system, we seek to establish means motive and opportunity even among those outliers. Jesus’ disciples endured brutal torture and death and never recanted their claims of Jesus’ resurrection. Even Peter was famously crucified upside down because he didn’t feel worthy to die the same way Jesus did. Where can we find motive among these outcomes? I think I speak for most when I say that I actively avoid painful or torturous scenarios. If someone threatened to torture me if I didn’t renounce my faith, I would like to think I could endure it, but given the fact that I won’t even take cold showers, I don’t think I’m being very realistic with that hope. How then, could we expect these men to endure some of the worst tortures ever conceived for something that they knew to be a lie?
Even if someone else moved the body, these men claimed to have seen the resurrected Lord. In either scenario, the Lord appeared to them and many others, identified himself, and spent time with them. The body being moved elsewhere would simply mean that he resurrected in that other place instead of the tomb.
Myth 3: The Apostles were Hallucinating or otherwise Deluded
This is probably the most common complaint among critics I have heard. It’s nice and convenient because the critic doesn’t have to become familiar with any of the documents. He can simply wave his hand and say, “They must have been on mushrooms,” or “Lots of people believe crazy things.” It’s actually not a bad point. There are lots of people that believe in things that are false and are willing to suffer if they believe they are true. I would argue, however, that the degree of suffering of these individuals would rule out that kind of delusion, at least.
As far as the hallucination goes, I think most would agree that group-hallucination is not plausible. Groups of people who go on drug-induced “trips” do not have the same experiences. These hallucinations and visions are individualized because they take place in individual minds. This is, in fact, the basis of scientific agreement. We seek to be able to reproduce the results from one scientist to another so we can ferret out this exact problem. We often judge reality based on agreement.
Even with that said, let’s just assume, for the moment, that the apostles were hallucinating or otherwise deluded. It does not explain the experience of Saul of Tarsus, James the skeptic5, or the empty tomb. Anyone who makes this claim would also have to claim that these independent experiences were similarly subject to the same kinds of impeaching accusations. Skeptics will have to provide explanations for their experiences too, and to simply assert that they also were hallucinating or deluded is fraught with the same burdens.
Conclusion from The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus
These authors did a fantastic job on their research. I have only cited a few of their evidences. I would whole-heartedly recommend reading their book and coming to your own conclusions. They have dozens and dozens of other examples of evidence that is very compelling. It is written for an evangelical audience, however, so keep that in mind. They see the world through that lens. As that is the case there may be some conclusions you don’t agree with because you see the world through a different lens.
The Authors’ Logical Fallacies when it Comes to Mormonism
These authors are evangelical Christians. In my own anecdotal experience, I have found that most, if not all, evangelical denominations like to take stabs at The Church of Jesus Christ. Habermas and Licona are no exception to this. They went out of their way to assert that the evidence which can be used to add credibility to the testimony of Christ’s apostles cannot be the standard for which we would attribute credibility to the Book of Mormon witnesses.
There are some parallels we can draw between Jesus and His apostles, and Joseph Smith and his witnesses.
| Christ’s Apostles | Joseph Smith witnesses |
|---|---|
| Suffered and died for their beliefs | Suffered and some died, some left church |
| Saw Jesus Resurrected | Saw angel |
| Never denied what they saw | Never denied what they saw |
There are probably more parallels, but let’s just work with these.
These parallels use the exact same logic that Habermas and Licona use to argue for evidence of the resurrection of Christ. However, in the book, Habermas and Licona argue that because some of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon authenticity eventually left The Church, this somehow impeaches the credibility of their testimony. This is nothing more than a “no true Scotsman argument.” When they are describing their argument for the apostles’ dedication to their message, they argue that even under pain of torture and death the apostles didn’t recant their belief in what they saw. When it comes to the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, the exact same thing is true. Some died for their beliefs. Others took it to the end of their natural lives. In all cases, no one ever recanted what they saw. This meets the same standard that the authors set forth when referring to early apostles. However, they move the goalpost when they assert that no true witness would leave The Church if what he saw was true. This is also a non-sequitur. If someone leaves The Church, it doesn’t logically follow that they are recanting their testimonies, nor that their testimony wasn’t true in the first place. There are many reasons someone might leave The Church and if the authors bothered to check the historical documents, they would find that not one of these witnesses left The Church because of problems their witness-testimony.
Habermas and Licona also concede that the witnesses might have been telling the truth about having seen and handled the plates, then assert that the presence of plates do not say anything about the content of the plates. Additionally they claim that no archaeological evidence has been found to corroborate any historicity of the Book of Mormon.
While I agree that the presence of plates and the content of the plates are separate issues, the concession here undercuts their original assertion that anyone who leaves The Church can’t be a credible witness. Additionally, just asserting that they are separate issues does not mean you can just assume the content is false. As far as the content itself goes, I will always argue that anyone who reads the content who is genuinely seeking to find Jesus in its pages will succeed. Those who read with the intent to disprove or otherwise create calumny against it will only confuse themselves and secrete themselves in to close-mindedeness.
Lastly, there is a mountain of archaeological evidence of the Book of Mormon. Book of Mormon Evidence is a great resource to start with. Anyone really seeking to find evidence that this book actually has historical roots only has to have an open mind.
Conclusion
Whether or not you believe that the resurrection actually happened is actually not a question of whether it’s rational. I have just presented a few of Habermas and Licona’s arguments. They are rational, and any discerning and intelligent person could consider himself intellectually and scientifically honest to seriously consider the resurrection to be historical fact. No, the decision to believe in it rests in your heart. If you decide to believe it, it has implications on how you live your life. It changes the way you see yourself, your loved ones, and the earth itself. Once you decide to believe such a fantastic story, the implications of that new truth are infinite in all directions. If you haven’t already, I invite you to consider it. Let that change happen and see what a difference it makes.