Today is Palm Sunday, designated to memorialize a particular day almost 2,000 years ago (specific date unknown) that an itinerant, 33-year-old, rabble-rousing, street rabbi from Nazareth rode a donkey into the city of Jerusalem.
We often hear the phrase "according to Christians" or "according to Christian tradition" grafted onto the beginning of articles which go on to state that during the fifth through seventh days after his arrival in Jerusalem, this street rabbi was arrested, sentenced to death, killed by crucifixion, then rose from the dead... and that he then proceeded to spend 40 days walking around, sermonizing to people and instructing his disciples to become apostles by spending the rest of their lives teaching the world about him... and that after those 40 days were up, he departed Earth not by dying but by ascending (being supernaturally teleported, if you will) into Heaven... and that although he was fully human on Earth, he was also God Himself, having chosen to become flesh and bone and to enter the material world in order to engage in a supreme act of spiritual warfare that transcended the material world and reverberated through the supernatural one.
We cannot blame people for using "according to" language when discussing this account. It is not the kind of account that even sounds possible, much less plausible, at first blush -- especially in our modern age here in the Western world.
Even among believers, many (most?) Christians accept the resurrection account with a faith that is divorced from historical evidence. It is fair for critics to refer to such faith as "blind."
But what if there is historical evidence? (There is.)
And what if the evidence is so strong that an overwhelming majority of historians, including those who are atheists and skeptics, concede to it? (It is.)
* * * * *
There are six things about which experts in ancient history agree. I hate to sound like a broken record, but I am going to re-emphasize what I said just one paragraph above: Even the experts who are atheists and skeptics agree on the six things, and they do so in overwhelming numbers. The six things are as follows:
One: Jesus was an actual person.
Two: Jesus died by crucifixion during the governance of Pontius Pilate.
Three: Jesus's body was buried in a tomb.
Four: After his body was buried, both friends and enemies of Jesus claimed to have seen him alive again in the flesh... and their belief about what they saw was so strong and sincere that their behavior was radically and permanently changed, and there is no record of a single one of them ever recanting despite being violently persecuted and some of them even being put to death for their claims.
Five: Resurrection claims were made extraordinarily soon after Jesus's death and were opposed by the entire power structure of Jerusalem, both Roman and Jewish.
Six: Despite that resistance by the power structure, Jesus's corpse was never removed from the tomb and presented as evidence that he had not risen, although that should have been exceedingly easy to do. (In other words, the tomb was empty.)
I hope you don't mind hearing my broken record skip yet again, but now I'm going to repeat that these six things are agreed upon even by atheists and skeptics who are experts in the field of ancient history. They are accepted as being true even by professionals who doubt the overall accuracy of the Bible.
Of course this does not prove that Jesus rose from the dead, not in the conventional sense that to "prove" something means to confirm it with absolute, one hundred percent certainty. But then again, nothing can be proved to that degree of certainty.
People earnestly and fairly disagree about whether or not Jesus was resurrected, and it's not like there are no reasons to question it. Dead bodies are known to stay dead, after all. But in my humble opinion, if anybody wants to engage in a serious and objective discussion about this topic, he must should acknowledge and account for all six of the above points. I find it noteworthy that after 2,000 years of discussion, debate, disagreement, scholarship, scientific advances, technological advances, archaeological research, and so on, literally no theory other than resurrection has been offered that can account for all six.
* * * * *
The lack of "sufficient alternative" theories is certainly not for lack of trying.
Plenty of alternate theories have been proposed, including the swoon theory, hallucination theory, and stolen body theory, to give just three examples. But while all of the alternates account for some of the six points mentioned above, none of them account for all six. The resurrection theory stands alone.
Resurrection alone accounts for all of the accepted historical evidence. Resurrection alone does so without simply rejecting other theories out of hand. Resurrection alone does so without the luxury of merely ignoring alternate theories.
It's easy to blame Western culture in general, and American culture specifically, for the fact that so few people are aware that the case for the resurrection is based on evidence and logic rather than gullibility and superstition, and it is not inaccurate to cast such blame. However, we must blame the church -- i.e., ourselves -- for the fact that Western and American culture has come to this pass.
The reason millions of people, including millions of believers, are clueless about the strong case for the resurrection is that they have never heard it. And the reason they've never heard it is that churches don't teach it to their own congregations.
This is not merely shameful, it is scandalous. It results in people being told from youth to "believe in Jesus" but never being educated as to why they should believe. And so, when they inevitably have questions or doubts and when they inevitably encounter atheist arguments and competing religious claims, their faith often crumbles. They have been set up to fail, sent into battle without armor, tossed into the ocean without a lifejacket, or any other long-odds analogy you want to use.
Why should parents who fail to educate their own children about this topic turn around and criticize "America" for "removing God from the schools"? Why should pastors who fail to educate their own parishioners about this topic turn around and criticize "the culture" for not understanding Christianity or not respecting it?
If you choose to spend the night naked in the snow, you should not be surprised to find yourself with hypothermia come dawn.
* * * * *
The week that begins today is called Holy Week. Good Friday is on the horizon and Easter is just beyond, ready to send up its rays next Sunday morning.
I think those of us who believe in God -- and especially those of us who believe Jesus rose from the dead twenty centuries ago -- should treat this week as a call to carry ourselves with confidence and without timidity, but also without arrogance.
Like clockwork, Holy Week brings an abundance of documentaries and magazines that superficially acknowledge Easter while unsubtly casting doubt on whether it commemorates an actual event. Christians often respond to these "mainstream media" provocations with irritation or defensiveness, or by withdrawing from the "secular" conversation. But we should not. Instead we should relish these provocations and relish this week, for they present us with a golden opportunity to explain the rational foundations of our faith.
We should take this opportunity and offer an explanation respectfully and cheerfully. It's an almost ironclad guarantee that any explanation other than "I feel it in my heart" will fall upon ears that have never heard it before; and thus it will be heard by people who currently have no idea there is any evidence-based reason for believing in Christianity.
At the end of the day, when people reject the historicity of Jesus's resurrection, their logical reasoning usually hinges solely on the pre-supposition that nothing supernatural can be real. But if that one pre-supposition gets removed and a person admits that "supernatural" does not equal "impossible," the philosophical ground on which he stands will, by definition, shift beneath his feet. That is a game-changer because it means the historical evidence for the resurrection must be dealt with in order to continue any investigation -- and the historical evidence itself is an aggregate doozy of a game-changer.
At all times, however, we believers need to remember that very few human beings are wired to remain calm, cool, collected, and accepting when game-changers arrive on the scene and challenge their worldview. If we mention something and somebody reacts negatively, we need to remember that we would probably react the same way if the roles were reversed.
* * * * *
There are of course other questions non-believers can raise about Christianity. Why does evil exist? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do children sometimes get cancer? Why do natural disasters occur?
Such questions are valid. Believers have them too, and they are troublesome. But they all fall under a single category that C.S. Lewis dubbed "the problem of pain," and they have nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not God is real, whether or not God is Yahweh as identified in the Bible, whether or not Jesus rose from the dead, et al.
The problem of pain is a serious one, but it happens to be the only one that believers must wrestle with in the great question of theism versus atheism -- as indicated by the fact that even atheists like Richard Dawkins have recently been reduced to uttering phrases like "the universe has the appearance of design" when they are confronted with evidence. (emphasis mine)
And the problem of pain happens to be one that every religion must grapple with.
Christianity is unique in that it builds its foundation on the singular event of Jesus rising from the dead... and has built its foundation on that event since the early days when it could have been easily disproved... and yet it grew into the world's largest and most far-reaching religion, and remains so to this day.
As Holy Week unfolds we should be gracious, and should not be in anyone's face, but at the same time we should be transparent and unafraid and unashamed.
We must not allow anyone to get away with suggesting that we are playing with a weak hand, for nothing could be further from the truth.
Note: For the sake of time and space, I did not use this post to specifically tackle each alternate theory that has been offered to address "the six points." Instead I simply (and correctly) stated that none of them explain all six points. If you want to learn more about the alternate theories and why they don't suffice, good resources include writings and/or lectures by Michael Licona, Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, J. Warner Wallace, Nabeel Qureshi, and many others. This one by Peter Kreeft is especially good for being both succinct and thorough.
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