Board index ‹ Resurrection of Christ

[Plant Life]

The Christian New Testament claims that Jesus' Resurrection itself justifies your belief in Jesus as the Son of God.

1 Cor. 15:13-14; 16-17: But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. . . . For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins

In his message at Pentecost, Peter taught that the resurrection was God’s vindication of His Son, His message, and His work:

Acts 2:23-24, 32-33, 36: This Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. And God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its powers. . . . This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear. . . . Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ--this Jesus whom you crucified

I contend that historical belief in the resurrection is not sufficient reason to believe in Jesus or any of his claims.

Deuteronomy 13:1-5: If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, 'Let us follow other gods' (gods you have not known) 'and let us worship them,' you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. It is the Lord your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. That prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he preached rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery; he has tried to turn you from the way the Lord your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you

Accurate predictions of future miracles is not sufficient evidence to believe the prophet is a true prophet. We know that he is a false prophet if he demands that the people worship a new deity - "gods you have not known".

Since Jesus preached the novel notion that he was a previously unknown person in God, we Jews have easily concluded that Jesus was a false prophet. Christianity is a false religion.

Belief in Jesus necessitates belief in the Torah. From Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity:

1. Jesus believed that the Old Testament was divinely inspired, the veritable Word of God. He said, ‘The Scripture cannot be broken’ (John 10:35). He referred to Scripture as ‘the commandment of God’ (Matthew 15:3) and as the ‘Word of God’ (Mark 7:13). He also indicated that it was indestructible: ‘Until Heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the law, until all is accomplished’ (Matthew 5:18).

2. When dealing with the people of his day, whether it was with the disciples or religious rulers, Jesus constantly referred to the Old Testament: ‘Have you not read that which was spoken to you by God?’ (Matthew 22:31); ‘Yea; and have you never read, “Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes thou has prepared praise for thyself”?’ (Matthew 21:16, citing Psalm 8:2); and ‘Have you not read what David did?’ (Matthew 12:3). Examples could be multiplied to demonstrate that Jesus was conversant with the Old Testament and its content. He quoted from it often and he trusted it totally.

3. Throughout the Gospels, we find Jesus confirming many of the accounts in the Old Testament, such as the destruction of Sodom and the death of Lot’s wife (Luke 17:29, 32) the murder of Abel by his brother Cain (Luke 11:51), the calling of Moses (Mark 12:26), and the manna given in the wilderness (John 6:31–51).

4. The list of examples goes on, and the evidence is clear: Jesus saw the Old Testament as being God’s Word, and his attitude toward it was nothing less than total trust. Many people want to accept Jesus, yet they reject a large portion of the Old Testament. Either Jesus knew what he was talking about, or he didn’t. If a person believes in Jesus Christ, he should be consistent and believe that the Old Testament and its accounts are correct.

Ironically this makes Christianity a self-defeating theology. Belief in Jesus obligates belief in the Torah which demands rejection of Jesus' claim of prophethood, Messiahship, and divinity. Oops!

[jimwalton]

You're getting your logic and your theology a little bit skewed. Glad to talk.

The resurrection by itself doesn't prove Jesus was God. The proof that Jesus is God lies in being convinced from everything we know about Jesus that he was God incarnate. It includes his birth, his teachings, the signs he performed, his fulfillment of prophecy and his utterances of prophecy, his death, resurrection, and ascension. So you're a bit mistaken in how you are taking the resurrection. What the resurrection is proof of is:

- It proves there is life beyond life and there will be a future resurrection of the body.
- It proves God has power over sin and death.
- It proves we are not still in our sins
- Jesus must rise to be exalted over all things
- It is exhibit #1 of the possibility of miracles

That's what the resurrection does. It doesn't prove Jesus is God because...

- Other people were raised from the dead, and that didn’t prove they were God. Resurrection itself doesn’t connote divinity.
- One cannot mount a historical argument and end up proving God, or proving that Jesus was the incarnation of the One True God by using the resurrection.
- Jesus was God because He was the second person of the trinity, not because He rose from the dead.
- All Christians will be raised as Jesus was raised (1 Cor. 15).

But the resurrection does vindicates his death as the saving act of God (Rom. 4.23-25).

> Since Jesus preached the novel notion that he was a previously unknown person in God, we Jews have easily concluded that Jesus was a false prophet. Christianity is a false religion.

This is a non sequitur. All of the Gospel writers write with clear intent to show that Jesus was the Messiah of Promise, the Israel that Israel never was, the Moses that Moses never was, the David that David never was. They paint their writings with quotes from the Torah to substantiate their points. Paul does likewise. The point is to firmly establish that Jesus is the Messiah of prophecy, not a previously unknown person.

> Belief in Jesus necessitates belief in the Torah

You are absolutely right. Jesus himself said it in Matthew 5.17. Paul said it in Romans 3.31. Ironically, it doesn't make Christianity self-defeating, it makes it the next step of progressive revelation, just as we see progressive revelation from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses. Even Isaiah and Jeremiah speak very clearly that there is more to come.

> Belief in Jesus obligates belief in the Torah which demands rejection of Jesus' claim of prophethood, Messiahship, and divinity.

The Torah doesn't demand the rejection you assert. As previously mentioned, the writers of the New Testament carefully charted how Jesus was the prophet spoken of by Moses, the Messiah as predicted by Isaiah and others, and divinity as also prophesied by Isaiah and others.

No "oops" about it.

[Freddy John]

> What the resurrection is proof of is: It proves there is life beyond life and there will be a future resurrection of the body. It proves God has power over sin and death. It proves we are not still in our sins Jesus must rise to be exalted over all things It is exhibit #1 of the possibility of miracles

IF Jesus had been resurrected (as opposed to stories being circulated long after his death) it still wouldn't prove any of these things. You are extrapolating based on your theology there. Say, as one of countless examples, some entity decided to bring him back from the dead that was not the "god" of the Bible. Your statements are pure supposition.

[jimwalton]

You're mistaken if you think that the only stories circulating "long after his death" were opposed to his resurrection. Christianity grew up as a faith system specifically because of stories that he had risen. We must at least admit, if we are being historically fair, that both stories were circulating immediately after and long after his death.

> Say, as one of countless examples, some entity decided to bring him back from the dead that was not the "god" of the Bible.

This is true. I never contended that the resurrection proved him to be the "god" of the Bible. Check back over what I wrote, and you'll see that it's not there. The other side of that coin, though, is that it does substantiate the teachings of the Bible. So though it doesn't prove the God of the Bible, it does play seamlessly into the teachings of the Bible, substantiating (if one believes in the resurrection) the theological stance the Bible takes.

[J Lord]

> It proves there is life beyond life and there will be a future resurrection of the body.

How does Jesus being resurrected prove this?

[jimwalton]

Most views of death and the afterlife in the ancient world were shady at best. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed life just ended. They believed some version of ghosts or disembodied shadows lived on, but the picture was dreary, gloomy, subhuman, without hope, and even the possibility of terror. Egypt may have been the only ancient cultures that believed in some kind of afterlife, but again no allowance for anything like resurrection. Mummification and the Egyptian theology of the dead implied some kind of bodily state after death and soul. Even in Judaism, while some Jews believed in an afterlife, some did not, and ideas about what form it took were murky at best. In other words, Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was considered to be not only false, but impossible. Many believed that the dead were non-existent, Only one sect of Judaism even entertained the possibility of some kind of life after death. I highlight a few significances:

1. When the early Christians spoke of Jesus being raised from the dead, the natural meaning of that statement, throughout the ancient world, was the claim that something impossible had happened to Jesus that had happened to no one else ever. The Greeks and Romans assumed it was impossible and nonsense, and some Jews believed resurrection would happen eventually but not yet. They would never have supposed that Christians were saying Jesus' soul had attained some kind of metaphorical heavenly bless.

2. This was not one way of Christians claiming Jesus was divine. Greek and Roman thought was that perhaps souls could become divine, and that such things didn't require resurrection. It involved the soul, not the body.

3. The language of resurrection in their world was not a return to bodily life on this earth, but of non-bodily life after death.

The specific claim of a bodily resurrection of Jesus to this earth after death, to walk around and converse with people, able to be touched, and able to eat, was to give evidence that there is life beyond life and a future resurrection of the body. This is how the NT teachings, as explicated by Paul, develop the theology of resurrection in the early church.

[Shamrock 5]

No offense, but you don't know any of that. I mean no one was there to film it, you're basing these things on a book that took the span of 100's of years to complete, written by multiple people, over a thousand years ago. You can't say you know any of that.

[jimwalton]

I say it on the basis of the teachings of the Bible, which I have come, through investigation, to trust. If you reject lack of film, you reject all of history before 1839. If you reject writings (or historiography, to be more specific) because it's ancient, you reject almost all of what we know of ancient peoples and cultures. If you reject the Bible because it's a collection of numerous writings from numerous authors, then you also reject Wikipedia.

But I'm sure you don't reject any of that stuff. So the point is not really that there is no video footage, or that it's ancient, or that it's a collection of writings. You reject the Bible because you think it's false, would be my guess.

The point of my answer was to address the original post that "historical belief in the resurrection is not sufficient reason to believe in Jesus or any of his claims." I was addressing his/her misunderstandings about the point in telling the resurrection story. Your objection, however, seems to be on a different theme: we can't trust the Bible because it has proved to be in error. That's a different discussion. I can have that discussion with you, but it's a different direction.

What I was saying in my post is that I can KNOW why the Bible includes the teaching of the resurrection in its pages, what it means by it, and what it hopes to accomplish. In that sense, yes, I can say I know any of that.

[J Lord]

> give evidence that there is life beyond life and a future resurrection of the body.

It would have proof of one instance of this. But not proof that it will ever happen again.

[jimwalton]

Paul certainly interprets it this way (that it is proof that it will happen again) in 1 Thes. 4.13-5.11, Galatians 1.1-5, 2.19-20, 3.10-14, 5.14, and especially 6.7-9 (the resurrection is the inauguration of the promised new age), and mainly 1 Corinthians 15. It's also in Paul's writings in Philippians, Ephesians, and Colossians. Theologically speaking, Paul argues that the resurrection of Jesus is proof that there is life beyond life for all of us, including a future resurrection of the body (1 Cor. 15.20-28, 42-53).