The resurrection of Jesus is therefore the best explanation for the origin of the Christian faith.
But suppose the disciples were not just “left to themselves.” Suppose certain events led them to think that Jesus was risen from the dead. Let us assume, for example, that shock at finding Jesus’ tomb empty caused them to see hallucinations of Jesus alive from the dead. Could not that lead them to conclude that Jesus had been resurrected? Of course, you will probably think at this point, “But those hypotheses have already been extensively refuted and shown to be worthless.” But let us be generous and overlook all that we have said before. The question is, If that happened, would the disciples have proclaimed that Jesus was risen from the dead?
The answer is no, since hallucinations, as projections of the mind, can contain nothing new. But Jesus’ resurrection involved at least two radically new aspects not found in Jewish belief: it was a resurrection in history, not at the end of history, and it was the resurrection of an isolated individual, not of the whole people. Even if it were possible, therefore, that the disciples under the influence of the empty tomb projected hallucinatory visions of Jesus, they would never have projected Him as literally risen from the dead. They would have had a vision of Jesus in glory in Abraham’s bosom. That is where, in Jewish belief, the souls of the righteous go to await the final resurrection. If the disciples were to have visions, then they would have seen Jesus there in glory.
They never would have come to the idea that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead. Even finding the empty tomb, the disciples would have concluded only that Jesus had been “translated” or “taken up” directly to heaven. In the Old Testament both Enoch (Genesis 5:24; Hebrews 11:5) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:11-18) were supposed to have been translated to heaven. Stories of persons being translated to heaven are also found in Jewish writings outside the Bible (for example, Testament of Job 40, where the bodies of two children killed in the collapse of a house are not found, but later the children are seen glorified in heaven). It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that, for the Jew, a translation and a resurrection are two entirely different things. A translation is the taking up of a person directly into heaven. A resurrection is the physical and bodily raising up of the dead man in the tomb to new life. Therefore, if the disciples did see hallucinatory visions of Jesus, then even with the empty tomb, they would never have concluded that He had been raised from the dead, an idea that ran contrary to Jewish concepts of the resurrection; rather they would have concluded that God had translated Him into heaven, from where He appeared to them, and therefore the tomb was empty. The fact that the disciples proclaimed not the translation of Jesus, as with Enoch and Elijah, but—contrary to all Jewish concepts—the resurrection of Jesus, proves that the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection cannot be explained as their conclusion from the empty tomb and visions.
Therefore, even apart from the improbabilities of those hypotheses, it is clear that the empty tomb/hallucination explanation of the origin of the belief in Jesus’ resurrection is untenable. There is no way to explain the origin of the disciples’ belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead apart from the fact that He really was raised.
In summary, we have seen that the origin of the Christian faith owes itself to the belief of the earliest disciples that Jesus had been raised from the dead. But the origin of that belief itself cannot be explained either in terms of Christian or Jewish influences. Moreover, even if we grant for the sake of argument the hypotheses already refuted in themselves that the empty tomb was the result of theft and the appearances were hallucinations, the origin of the belief in Jesus’ resurrection still cannot be explained, for such phenomena would have led the disciples to conclude only that Jesus had been translated, not resurrected. Therefore, the origin of the belief in Jesus’ resurrection and thereby the origin of the Christian faith itself can only be plausibly explained if in fact Jesus actually rose from the dead.
Now we are ready to draw the conclusion that we have so long postponed. First, we have seen that ten lines of historical evidence support the fact that Jesus’ tomb was found empty. We further saw that no natural explanation has been offered that can plausibly account for the empty tomb. Second, we have also seen that four lines of historical evidence support the fact that on numerous occasions and in different places Jesus appeared bodily and physically alive from the dead to different witnesses. We found that no natural explanation, either in terms of hallucinations or veridical visions, could plausibly account for those appearances. Finally, we have seen that the very origin of the Christian faith depends on the belief in Jesus’ resurrection and that this belief cannot be plausibly explained in terms of natural causes. Each of these three great facts—the empty tomb, the appearances, the origin of the Christian faith—is independently established. Together they point with unwavering conviction to the same unavoidable and marvelous conclusion: Jesus actually rose from the dead.
NOTES
1. Rudolph Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” in Kerygma and Myth, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch, trans. R. H. Fuller, 2 vols. (London: SPCK, 1953), 1:42.
2. Gerhard Koch, Die Auferstehung Jesu Christi, Beiträge zur historischen Theologie (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1959), p. 25.
3. R. H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (London: SPCK, 1972), p. 2.
4. Joachim Jeremias, “Die älteste Schicht der Osterüberlieferung,” in Resurrexit, ed. Édouard Dhanis (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1974), p. 194.
5. Ulrich Wilckens, Auferstehung, Themen der Theologie 4 (Stuttgart and Berlin: Kreuz Verlag, 1970), p. 131.
6. C. F. D. Moule and Don Cupitt, “The Resurrection: A Disagreement,” Theology 75 (1972): 507-19.
7. C. F. D. Moule, The Phenomenon of the New Testament, Studies in Biblical Theology 2/1 (London: SCM, 1967), pp. 3, 13.
6
Finding Resurrection Life
“There ain’t gonna be no Easter this year,” a student friend remarked to me.
“Why not?” I asked incredulously.
“They found the body.”
Despite his irreverent humor, my friend displayed a measure of insight often not shared by modern theologians. His joke correctly perceived that without the resurrection Christianity is worthless.
The earliest Christians would certainly have agreed with my friend. The apostle Paul put it straight and simple: “If Christ was not raised then neither our preaching nor your faith has any meaning at all. . . . If Christ did not rise your faith is futile and your sins have never been forgiven” (1 Corinthians 15:14, 17, Phillips). For the earliest Christians, Jesus’ resurrection was a historical fact, every bit as real as His death on the cross. Without the resurrection, Christianity would have been simply false. Jesus would have been just another prophet who had met His unfortunate fate at the hands of the Jews. Faith in Him as Lord, Messiah, or Son of God would have been stupid. There would be no use in trying to save the situation by interpreting the resurrection as some sort of symbol. The cold, hard facts of reality would remain: Jesus was dead and anything He started died with him.
David C. K. Watson tells the true story of another man who understood this, with tragic consequences.1 The man was a retired clergyman who in his spare time began to study the thought of certain modern theologians on the resurrection. He read books on the resurrection and watched television talk shows on the subject. In his old age, he felt sure that the highly educated professors and writers knew far more than he did and that they were surely right when they said Jesus had not literally risen from the dead. He understood clearly what that meant for him: his whole life and ministry had been based on a bundle of lies. He committed suicide.