A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Alan Reynolds is pastor of University Hill United and Presbyterian joint congregation in Vancouver.
Did Jesus Christ really rise from the dead?
Sisters and brothers, I appeal to your sense of reason.
There is no proof, of course – but we do have quite a bit of evidence. And in the face of the evidence, it seems to me that belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not as unreasonable as some would think.
Not that we can explain it. But when we look at the evidence of history, Scripture, and of our own hearts, I suggest that belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is an entirely reasonable belief.
I. The Witness of History
There is first of all the witness of history.
Someone has said that if there was as much evidence that Julius Caesar had visited America, we would not doubt it We accept the works of Tacitus and Josephus, historians of the same general period. Why should we not accept the works of those who witnessed the event itself, and those who were their close followers?
Indeed, we regard Tacitus as completely reliable, and he wrote some fifty years after the fact, and the earliest manuscripts of his works were not found for 1,000 years. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke were written thirty or forty years after the event, and we have manuscripts dating back to 150 AD.
In the second chapter of the book of Acts we read Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost. It is given as though quoting Peter, for no doubt it had been told and retold hundreds of times. In fact, it is regarded as a prototype of the message the early church took into the world. And central to that message was the reality of the resurrection.
This was their gospel – the “Good News” that Jesus who had been crucified was raised from the dead. Peter repeats it three times – “This Jesus whom you crucified, God has raised!” This was the central note of the message. There was now therefore a new hope, a new life, a new age!
The style of the witness is itself so simple and straightforward that it commands confidence. There is no evidence of sophistry or any intent to deceive. It seems quite evident that the writers themselves believed implicitly what they wrote – why else would they have endured hardship, persecution, suffering and death?
Simon Greenleaf was head of Harvard Law School near the middle of the 19th century. Turning his legal mind to the New Testament witness to the resurrection, he wrote a treatise entitled An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Court of Justice, (1846). He wrote,
Propagating this new faith, even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner, they could expect nothing but contempt, stripes, imprisonments, torments and cruel death… They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted… It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact.
From the witness of history, think of one other point. For the first 300 years of its young life, Christian faith was fiercely persecuted and attacked. Christians commonly had to suffer for their faith, even die for their belief. Every official attempt was made to blot out this young religion, to stamp it from the face of the earth.
During these years, Christian believers and evangelists went about the whole of the Roman Empire telling the story of Jesus’ resurrection wherever they went. Those who opposed them would merely have had to prove that their witness was founded on false evidence to end the whole thing. Christianity would have collapsed.
Surely people so determined to deny the truth of Christian faith (of which the resurrection of Christ was the central affirmation and core) would have, if they could have, denied the historical validity of the message. But there isn’t a scrap of evidence that Christian faith was seriously challenged on this score. It would appear quite certain that the people of the time accepted the fact that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead! The interpretation and implication they might reject, the fact they could not.
II. The Witness of Scripture
Second, there is the witness of Scripture.
At one point in my faith development and theological training, I found it very difficult to accept the resurrection as historical fact. I tended to believe that it was the result of some kind of mass hysteria.
And yet the more I studied the Scriptures, the more I found myself overpowered by the evidence there. The more I questioned the scriptural witness, the more difficulty I found denying its validity. Two things stood out.
For one thing, the resurrection was not expected.
Remember Thomas – “doubting Thomas?” – “If I could see the prints of the nails in his hands and thrust my hand into his side, I still wouldn’t believe it!” It was going to take a lot to convince Thomas! (John 20:24f.).
From the very first, it’s evident that Jesus’ followers were not expecting it! The women going to the tomb in the early morning following the sabbath, finding the stone rolled away, didn’t immediately start to jump up and down shouting, “Hallelujah! Christ is risen!” Even when the angel said to them, “He is not here. He is risen!” they were still perplexed and couldn’t understand.
They went back and told the others, the men who only scoffed at them. “Their words seemed to them as idle tales and they didn’t believe them!” (Luke 24:11). Just a bunch of silly women!
When Peter and John ran to the tomb and saw the stone rolled away and the bandages which had wrapped the body lying there, they still didn’t know what to make of it, and went away wondering whether thieves had broken into the tomb and stolen the body – or for some reason the authorities had the soldiers come and take the body away (John 20:1-10).
Remember Mary in the garden? After the other women had left, Mary evidently stayed in the garden, perhaps looking for where the body might have been hidden. She came upon someone she took to be the gardener and said to him, “Sir, if you have taken him away, please tell me where you have laid him.” It was only when Jesus called her by name that she knew him. “Mary!” he said. “Rabboni!” she cried. “Master!” (John 20:11f.).
Finally Jesus himself appeared among the twelve where they were shut and locked in an upper room with windows and doors shut and barred. He stood before them and said, “It’s not a spirit Handle me and see. It is I!” And then comes what I think must be one of the most priceless verses in all Scripture – “They believed not yet for joy!” (Luke 24:41). They still thought it was too good to be true!
Second, if you go back and read the New Testament witness again, you will realize another surprising thing – not only was Jesus not expected, he was also not welcomed! He was hardly wanted.
The disciples were not overjoyed by his appearing. At least, not at first. They were overawed! They were disturbed, profoundly disturbed. All four Gospels use words like “terrified,” and “dumb-founded.”
The disciples had already begun to adjust to his death, to accept it, to make their own plans for the future. It had been a great dream, quite an experience really – the crowds, the excitement, the healings. They had thought he might be the Messiah, the One who should deliver Israel. But after all, they weren’t the first to be mistaken, to be disappointed. Now they had to get back to reality and settle down to what they knew best. They had families to think about. “I’m going fishing,” said Simon Peter.
But then they were suddenly jolted into a new and terrifying existence, and their lives could never, never be the same again. They were witnesses of the resurrection! Now ahead of them lay new paths, unknown destinations, journeyings into far countries they had never dreamed of. Ahead of them were threats and persecution, suffering and probable death. No wonder they didn’t welcome him with open arms!
My conclusion was then and is now that, with all the contradictions of details, there is a central core of reality in the witness of the New Testament which cannot be denied!
III. The Witness of His Spirit in our Lives!
The third area of evidence to the reality of the resurrection is more esoteric, and yet the most real of all. It is the witness of the Spirit of God in our hearts, the living presence of Christ.
There is something in us, in our hearts and minds and in our very bones, that says “Yes!” to the good news of God’s Love, something that affirms the goodness of the Creator, something that wants to believe that God is gracious! There is something in us that recognizes the reality of that life-giving, healing, saving Spirit to which we turn in our need almost automatically, on whom we call in prayer.
Willard Brewing once said,
There has always been a good deal of controversy over the resurrection of Jesus. There has been little over the fact of his being alive in the world. It is as though two men should meet at noonday and begin to argue whether the sun had risen that morning, and after exhausting a great deal of dialectic and rhetoric, one of them suddenly should look up and say, “Why there it is!” (“The Ever-rising Christ,” in Faith For These Times, p. 133)
True. And yet I believe that many people hold back today from professing faith in Christ precisely because they feel they lack the sense of the reality of his living Presence. They hear others talk about being “born again,” and a new “personal relationship with Jesus,” and they feel excluded because they can profess nothing so dramatic, so vivid.
Beware that you do not equate the Spirit of God with a feeling of God’s presence, especially a good feeling, an exalted feeling, but a feeling divorced from the reality of the suffering and death of Jesus our Lord. As Bishop Gore said, “The Spirit is not a substitute in the absence of Jesus, but the vehicle of his presence” (quoted by Reginald Fuller in Interpretation, April, 1978, p. 183 where he warns against a “Unitarianism of the Third Person” of the Trinity.)
When I speak of the witness of the Spirit in our hearts and lives, I mean it in the sense of Paul in Romans 8,
When we cry, “Abba, Father! ” it is the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:16-17)
In other words, when something within us affirms the ultimate righteousness of life, that at the centre of the universe beats the heart of a loving Father, we may know that it is God’s Spirit within us affirming the truth of the living, loving God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Dr. Sid Gilchrist was a medical missionary in Angola, Africa, earlier in this century. He tells of the response of the African when he first heard the gospel, the proclamation that God is like a loving father. Said Dr. Gilchrist, he would jump up and down in great excitement, exclaiming in delight and happiness,
Yes, that’s what God is like!” That’s what God must be like! I knew it all the time.
Something in him prompted him to say, “Yes!”
Something in me, something in us, prompts us to respond “Yes!” “Yes, that’s what God is like! That’s what God must be like!”
You will not leave me in the grave,
Nor abandon your faithful one to corruption.
You will show me the path of life,
for in Your presence is fullness of joy,
and in Your right hand is the happiness that endures!
(Acts 2:27-28, quoting Psalm 16)
Therefore we cry, “Abba!”
“This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses!” (Acts 2:32).