Minimal Fact Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus

Below is an email I sent to my friend. It is an argument for the Resurrection of Jesus that summarizes what I have just read in The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona. I also have in there other information from other things that I have read. Please feel free to critique or comment on any of this.

I've read the first part of that book that covers Habermas's basic argument for the Resurrection of Jesus. He describes it as the "minimal fact" approach which lays out the facts which the vast majority of scholarship are agreed upon. This way we don't have to get into inspiration doctrines and all that. Let me lay them all out for you and then you can ask me questions about them.

1. Jesus died by crucifixion.

When I listed this one in my email to my father a while back he gave the most profound "duh" answer. He told me that I hardly needed to state this one. Nevertheless, it is important to state. If Jesus didn't die, then he couldn't have risen. This is attested to by the Gospels, Josephus, Tacitus, Lucian, Mara Bar-Serapion and that Talmud. John Dominic Crossan wrote, "That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be."

2. Jesus' disciples believed that he rose and appeared to them.

Remember the acronym POW which means Paul, Oral Testimony, Written Testimony. The more detailed version of this is Paul's testimony about the disciples, the oral tradition passed through the early church, and the written works of the early church. About 20 years after the crucifixion Paul wrote 1st Corinthians in which he recited a creedal statement that he received from the early church. In 15:3-5 he said, "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve." It is uncertain exactly when Paul picked this up from the early church. Many scholars think that it was when he visited Jerusalem three years after his conversion and saw Peter and James. If that's true then he got the creed within five years after the crucifixion and from the disciples themselves. Other scholars think he got it later than that. In any case, he obtained it before he wrote the first letter to the Corinthians in 55 A.D.

Another source that contains oral testimony from the early church is the Book of Acts. In it are sermons that bear the markings of short summaries early church teachings that can be traced to the earliest teachings of the church and possibly to the disciples themselves. Thus, we have stuff contemporaneous with the apostles, attributed to the apostles, and in agreement with Paul's eyewitness testimony that this is what the church was preaching.

There are also the Gospels. Nearly every scholar agrees that they were written in the first century, meaning that at the latest they were written within 70 years of Jesus's death and alleged resurrection.

Next are the apostolic fathers. Clement of Rome (30-100 A.D.) attests to the proclamation of the resurrection by the apostles. Irenaeus and Tertullian later on confirm this. Clement notes that the resurrection was the central teaching of the church. Polycarp also emphasizes the centrality of the resurrection in his writings.

The skeptical New Testament critic who did not believe in the resurrection, Norman Perrin wrote, "The more we study the tradition with regard to the appearances, the firmer the rock begins to appear upon which they are based."

I remember reading an atheist NT scholar who believed in the appearances. By that I mean that he thought that the disciples believed that they saw the risen Christ. People throughout history up to now have believed many false things so this does not show that the appearances were real but that the disciples thought that what they experienced was true.

Not only did they claim this but they believed it. By this I mean that they were willing to suffer to the death for it. A contemporary of the apostles, Clement of Rome attested to this. The book of Acts does as well. So did Polycarp, Ignatius, Tertullian, and Origen.

Thus, we can conclude from this that the disciples regarded their belief as true. Even Bultmann granted this. The atheist New Testament scholar Gerd Ludemann said, "It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ."

3. The church persecutor Saul of Tarsus (later Paul) was suddenly changed.

This is well attested to and I don't think I need to go into great detail about it. Many of the same people I mentioned above attested to this as well as Paul himself. It should be noted though that this is independent of the other disciples since Paul wasn't converted by them but by a vision of the risen Christ. Of all the stuff I've heard disputed, this is not one of them.

4. The skeptic James, the brother of Jesus, was suddenly changed.

The Gospels state that James along with Jesus' other siblings did not believe during his ministry.
That ancient creed (1st Cor. 15:3-7) states, "then He appeared to James"

In Acts as well as Paul's letter to the Galatians, James is identified as a leader of the Jerusalem church.

James was martyred for his belief in Jesus. This is attested by Josephus, Hegesippus, and Clement of Alexandria. I put more weight on the Josephus reference because the the two others were reported by Eusebius who I have some legitimate doubts about. But heck, the fact that Eusebius screwed up on some things doesn't mean that he screwed up here. Anyway, despite some doubts about the martyrdom, I think we have good evidence that he did see the risen Christ, convert, and become a leader in the early church. That alone is good enough.

5. The tomb was empty.

Unlike the other four claims, this one is not agreed upon by nearly all scholars. Habermas did a study on this and found that in our early 21st century period the ratio of scholars who believe this compared with those who reject it is about 3:1.

After the crucifixion and alleged resurrection, the disciples proclaimed the faith first in Jerusalem. If the tomb was not empty all the Jewish priests and Roman authorities would have had to do was to take the body out of the tomb as show it to the people. Skeptics have said that after fifty days (which was when the preaching started) the body would have been unrecognizable due to decomposition. Habermas argues that the dryness and heat of the region would have prevented this. (He cites a medical examiner in Virginia who said that even in Virginia summer weather that level of decomposition would not have happened.) The second problem with this is that the enemies of the faith would still have gotten an advantage out of showing a decayed corpse to the masses. The Christians would have disputed it but it may have caused a mass exodus of believers which would have presumably been mentioned by Justin, Tertullian and Origen later, assuming that none of these also lose (or never gain) faith because of this. Celsus would have wanted to say something about it if this happened as well since it would have given him ammunition.

Not only did Christians believe that the tomb was empty but their enemies did too. In Matthew's gospel the early critics claimed that the disciples stole the body. The presumption of these critics was that the tomb was empty. Justin Martyr and Tertullian also demonstrate this in their writings.

The testimony of the women is also very important since if one were to invent this story back then, they would have had men discover it first since both Jewish and Roman culture of that period ran very much against the reliability of female witnesses.

The acronym JET is a good one to remember about the arguments for the empty tomb. It stands for Jerusalem Factor, Enemy Attested, and Testimony of Women.

The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis

It has been a long time I've posted here. I am going to try and post regularly every weekend from now on (until I run out of books to review). Perhaps I will be able to resurrect this blog.

Like Mere Christianity, this book is based on things he said orally, in this case a lecture. Lewis argued that the danger we face in society is a reductionistic Scientism which ends up turning Man himself into just another object of Nature and thus totally subsumed by it. Basicallly, the paradox is that as humanity increases in technological and scientific knowledge in order to gain mastery over Nature, it also gives up a little bit of its humanity as well until human beings themselves are considered only products of Nature to be shaped at the will of their Molders. He sees a Brave New World-type situation emerging if things don't turn around.

All this stems from reducing objective statements like, "This flower is majestically beautiful," to "He merely gets a happy feeling when he looks at the flower." In other words, it is taking what is an objective statement about the reality of the flower and turning it to just a subjective feeling. This gets worse when applied to moral statements. The Moral Law or the Tao that all societies have known (but of course none has fully followed) is completely denied by the above debunkers of aesthetic statements. Certainly not compeletely denied since the debunkers have values themselves that they believe are exempt from the debunking process. But if reductionism has its way, it will be more difficult for these debunkers to protect the pieces of the Tao that they do believe in from the onslaught.

This is a very short book but a very important one given our current state of conflict between various worldviews.

On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians, by Celsus

This polemical work was produced by a conservative second century pagan named Celsus. It is the only work critical of Christianity to survive from that era. It was preserved mostly intact from the church father Origen who pretty much quoted this entire document in his Contra Celsum. It’s a very short but really elucidates what was going on in the century after the composition of the New Testament.

Paul said that the cross is a stumbling block for Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. After rading this, I can clearly see that he was correct. Celsus complains shrilly that Christianity is an anti-intellectual religion that attracts the most vulgar (by this he means poor) people in society. It is like a virus upon the Roman Empire that can’t be stuffed out. He derides it as a religion of “women, slaves and children.” The fact that Christians were persecuted everywhere to him proves that the Christian God doesn’t care enough to save his own people from danger. To him, religion is about enhancing one’s earthly life. He could not understand why Christians would give up their lives for Christ.

His main criticism of Christianity is a criticism of the character of Jesus himself. The fact that he died on a Roman cross, was poor, born in the boonies, and lived a relatively obscure life proves to Celsus that Jesus couldn’t be who he said he was. He contrasts the story of Jesus to the Greek myths of Hercules and other noble heroic figures who fight for what they want and conquer their enemies. That Jesus would willingly die in such a humiliating way does not comport with Celsus’ idea of divinity.

Being very Platonic in thinking Celsus is fast to compare the saying of Christ with those of Plato, concluding that Plato is much more high-minded and intellectual. Of Christian worship, Celsus said, “The religion of the Christians is not directed at an idea, but at the crucified Jesus, and this is surely no better than dog or goat worship at its worst.” The Platonic belief in a metaphysical realm of Ideas or Forms makes them inclined to think that the physical world is bad compared to the metaphysical realm.

What’s fascinating is that Celsus many times mistakes Gnostic beliefs as Christian. Back then the Gnostic heresy was very pervasive. He knew both Gnostic sources as well as the New Testament documents. He not only takes aim at Jesus but at Paul as well who he claims nullified the Law of Moses by claiming that God changed His mind. Also, he was quite offended at the saying, “The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God.” Since Celsus believed strongly in a mix of pagan religious ideas and secular philosophies of the age, he saw this as an attack on the foundation of his own worldview.

I recommend this book to those interested in ancient history and the beginnings of Christianity. This work is another example that Christianity was born out of strife and conflict. Jesus didn’t come to bring peace to the Earth but a sword.

Book Review: Confessions, by Saint Augustine

Summer is almost over and I’ll thus be reading a lot less, at least when it comes to leisure reading. In any case, this is a famous Christian work by what many believe to be the greatest theologian in Christian history. To be quite honest, this was a very tough read for me, especially near the end. When Augustine was speaking about his life experiences, the book was great but when he started getting deep into philosophy, I lost interest. As the footnotes in my version make clear (Henry Chadwick was the translator) Augustine was very much influenced by Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy. His whole thought world was very different then our own. His philosophical musings were elaborate but eloquently irrelevant to me personally.

His entire outlook on his past sins, the virtues of his mother and the all pervasiveness of God’s grace were what gripped me the most about this work. Despite all his faults, God’s forgiveness brought by His grace touched Augustine profoundly. In one story from Augustine’s childhood he stole peaches from a neighbors tree just for the thrill of doing something wrong. He agonizes over this sin that most people would not have mentioned. Sin isn’t just about the wrongness of the crime itself but the state of one’s whole heart in committing particular sins. Jesus was correct when he spoke about an evil treasure coming out of an evil heart. Sin is a privation, a twisting distortion, something that is unnervingly banal, while living in the Spirit is truly living in the light of true goodness, beauty and life.

Augustine had a very metaphorical interpretation of Genesis that would rub a both young Earth and old Earth creationists the wrong way. Reading that reaffirmed by belief that Genesis and the Bible as a whole aren’t meant to be a science textbook but is the gift of God’s revelation to us. One does not have to take any type of literal reading of Genesis to be a Christian.

Overall, I recommend reading the biographical parts of this book and skipping most of it, unless of course you are a big ancient philosophy buff.

Humble Apologetics, by John G. Stackhouse

This was recommended to me by a friend and I found it to be excellent. The book generally got better as I turned the pages. At first Stackhouse had a habit of saying things about pluralism, postmodernism and consumerism that I already knew but when I reached the second and third parts of the book where he speaks of conversion and communicating apologetically, I was hooked. I found myself whispering “yes” out loud in those parts of the book as he clearly articulated many points that I’ve thought in my reflections on the proper use of apologetics in evangelism as well as the nature of conversion. Reading this book was like emerging from forty days in the proverbial desert of conservative evangelical thought on this aspect of Christianity.

This book clearly refuted the evangelistic methods of Ray Comfort in my mind. (If you don’t know who Ray Comfort is consider yourself fortunate.) Ray separates evangelism and apologetics in his mind, embracing a crude caricature of the former while completely discounting the latter. In reality, apologetics and evangelism go together because one has to put on the evangelist’s hat to communicate the good news of the gospel and use apologetics when one is challenged about the veracity or goodness of that news. Apologetics, meaning the art of defending the faith and advancing the faith intellectually to others, needs to be conducted with humility always in mind, since God incarnated himself here on Earth in humility. Also, the current challenges of postmodernism and pluralism to the Christian message can’t be dealt with if we are puffed up with pride. The apostle Paul had this principle in mind when he spoke to the Corinthians not in “lofty words” but in “fear and trembling.” Intellectual honesty was also stressed in this book. When engaging our non-Christian peers we must remember that the whole of Christianity does not depend just on our efforts or our words. We shouldn’t try to bring people to a “crisis point” where they either choose to accept or reject Christianity. Instead we must remember that most will not change their whole worldview just because someone presents a good argument. Engaging the evangelism and apologetics is a team effort and we are only called to play a part. In actuality, real change in that unbeliever’s life can only come through the providence of the Holy Spirit.

This book has successfully inspired me to actually engage with my neighbors on these matters. I think that was the main strength of the book. One doesn’t have to have all the answers, but can focus on nudging others towards the faith without being overly pushy. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. We are just clay vessels called to be co-workers of Christ in this venture. I heartily recommend this book for anyone who is struggling with how one ought to go about engaging in apologetic discussions with non-believers. I also think this applies to believers as well who need encouragement and care to proceed along the path of sanctification in the faith.

Book Review: Simply Christian, by N.T. Wright

I have to say that I was disappointed by this book. The book is broken up into three sections. The first focused on the echoes of God’s voice in our desire for justice, morality, beauty and truth. The second focused on the story of God through Israel culminating in Jesus Christ. The third was about Christian life and practice. I think that Wright was aiming to write a Mere Christianity type book a la Lewis style. When it came to presenting the story of God’s work in Israel and the person of Christ, I think Wright did an excellent job far surpassing Lewis. I think my disappointment probably was due to listening too many of Wright’s lectures before I read this book so I already anticipated pretty much everything he said. I would loan this book to interested non-Christians although I am leery of some details of this book.

Firstly on page 72 Wright makes a move that is common to Christians who are historians of the first century. I admire him for honestly saying that he is telling the story of Israel from the point of view of a first-century Jew. Thus he side-steps the modern debate about whether the Old Testament events of Moses, the exodus and all that other stuff really happened or not. Since Wright has a whole chapter on the story of Israel, this raises a lot of doubts in ones mind right off the bat. If the story of Israel is fundamentally legend then doesn’t that have serious implications for Jesus and the veracity of Christianity? I don’t think just saying that a “first century Jewish” perspective is enough. Wright ought to have at least dealt with the issue rather than avoiding it. Avoiding the issue opens up a serious hole right in the beginning of Wright’s argument.

Also, while Wright does mention contemporary moral problems such as U.S. imperialism, world peace and whatnot, he doesn’t mention abortion at all. Mentioning contemporary issues in being a Christian without mentioning abortion is more than a little disingenuous. The doctrine of hell is also absent. Besides a few brief comments in a few of his lectures, hell does not come up at all. The only thing he says in his lectures is that we have a medieval conception of hell that is a heritage gained more through Dante more than Christ. Otherwise, there is no talk of hell at all in this book. Since I am struggling with this very issue in my faith right now, I find Wright’s avoidance of this doctrine very troubling.

For these reasons this book was an annoying read. Wright spoke of the desire of justice being a universal basic want of all people but I don’t think he does justice to the issue of OT historicity, abortion or hell. Such topics need to be discussed, not avoided.

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Let me say up front that there will be no spoilers in this brief review, just my general comments about this book and the end of the Potter series. Overall I think this book was good. I found it better than the fifth or sixth book but not as good as the first four (which in my opinion were the best in the series.) For me, fiction has to be very economical with words since long drawn out stories (think Fellowship of the Ring) are tiring and unnecessary. The Christian symbolism in this story was well done and I commend Rowling crafting such a good series with a powerful Christian subtext. I would say more but I’d rather just encourage everyone to read this book/series for themselves. Don’t rely on the movies alone since they (as typical for movies) don’t do justice to Rowling’s books.