Second, resurrection is not reincarnation. The doctrine of reincarnation is found in certain Eastern religions. Reincarnation is considered a curse, not a blessing. The evil that one experiences in this life is the punishment for his soul’s behavior in a previous life. If one does not act properly in this life, his soul is sentenced to live yet another life after this one. The goal is actually to escape reincarnation so that the soul returns to the World Soul like a drop of water to the ocean. Thus, the real goal is personal annihilation. By contrast, the biblical view is that a man lives only one lifetime and then is raised from the dead and judged by God. Thus, resurrection stands diametrically opposed to reincarnation.
Third, resurrection is not resuscitation. The mere bringing back of a corpse to life is not a resurrection. For a person who has resuscitated returns only to this earthly life and will die again. By contrast, resurrection is to eternal life, and a person raised from the dead is immortal.
Finally, resurrection is not translation. The Jews had a view called translation, which was the immediate assumption of a man directly into heaven. Death was not a condition for translation; a living man might be taken directly into heaven. By contrast, resurrection is not a direct assumption of someone into heaven; rather it is the raising up of the dead man in the space-time universe. Death is always a precondition, and the resurrected man is still part of the created world.
The biblical view of immortality is that at history’s end, when God brings about the end of the world, He will raise up all those who have died and so reconstitute them as whole men of body and soul in union. Then they will be judged, and their eternal destiny determined.
Now the question is, Which, if any of these views of life and death is correct? If we could wait until history’s end, then we could see if the biblical view of resurrection is indeed true. But by then it would be too late. Fortunately, in this case, however, we have a very peculiar circumstance that allows us to determine now the truth of the biblical doctrine of resurrection; namely, the biblical conviction that a man has been raised from the dead by God in advance as the basis and pattern for our future resurrection. That man was, of course, Jesus of Nazareth. If the historical evidence is sufficient to indicate that He did in fact rise from the dead, then we have sufficient grounds for affirming the truth of the biblical view.
Thus, the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus becomes of paramount importance to modern man. If it is true, then the Cosmic Orphan has found his home; for the resurrection of Jesus gives him both God and immortality at once. If it is not true, then he lapses back into his lonely search. Therefore, the paramount question that we must now address is: Did Jesus of Nazareth really rise from the dead?
NOTES
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., Propaedia, s.v. “The cosmic orphan,” by Loren Eiseley.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Stewart C. Easton, The Western Heritage, 2d ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966), p. 878.
5. See Wolfhart Pannenberg, Was ist der Mensch? Die Anthropologie der Gegenwart im Lichte der Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962), pp. 6-11, 31-33.
6. Easton, Heritage, p. 877.
7. Ibid., p. 878.
8. David C. K. Watson, My God Is Real (New York: Seabury, 1970), p. 41.
9. Easton, Heritage, p. 878.
10. A story related by Watson, God, p. 80.
2
Some Blind Alleys
Ever since the disciples began to proclaim that Jesus was risen from the dead, some have denied the historical resurrection and have tried to come up with ways of explaining away the evidence through alternative theories. Most of these alternative explanations have proved to be blind alleys and have been unanimously rejected by contemporary scholarship.
Nevertheless, a review of some of these theories of the past is useful, primarily for two reasons. First, the average person today, Christian or non-Christian, is largely unaware that they are in fact blind alleys. Many non-Christians still reject or at least claim to reject Jesus’ resurrection because of arguments that have been decisively refuted time and again and which no modern scholar would support. And Christians often produce arguments for the resurrection that are aimed at eighteenth-century opponents and cannot therefore really come to grips with modern skepticism. It is important therefore to discover exactly what these dead ends are so that we need not be unnecessarily sidetracked by them in the future. Second, an examination of now passé theories and the grounds for rejecting them will help to clear the ground for our discussion in the upcoming chapters. We will be able to focus our attention on the evidence for the resurrection and deal with the real issues of modern criticism. Therefore, it is very important indeed to see what issues are now obsolete and what issues are important today.
THE CONSPIRACY THEORY
We find the very first alternative explanation to Jesus’ resurrection in the pages of the New Testament itself: the conspiracy theory. In Matthew’s gospel we discover that the Jews used this theory to explain away the resurrection. The chief priests bribed the guards who were at Jesus’ tomb, instructing them: “You are to say ‘His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’ . . . And they took the money and did as they had been instructed; and this story was widely spread among the Jews, and is to this day” (Matthew 28:13, 15). This rumor must have been fairly current among the Jews at that time, or Matthew would not have felt obligated to expose it. The conspiracy theory was thus the first alternative to the resurrection of Jesus and held basically that the resurrection was a hoax: the disciples stole the body and then lied about Jesus’ appearances to them afterwards.
The conspiracy theory was refuted by the early church historian Eusebius of Caesarea in his Demonstratio evangelica (314-18).1 Eusebius argues that it would be inconsistent to hold that the disciples were on one hand followers of Jesus with His high moral teaching and yet on the other hand such base liars as to invent all these miraculous stories about Jesus. It makes no sense to say that the men who learned and then taught the ethics of Jesus would themselves be deceivers.
Not only that, Eusebius continues, but it is inconceivable that such a conspiracy could ever be formed or hold together. Eusebius composes a wonderfully satirical speech, which he imagines to have been delivered when the disciples first joined together in this conspiracy.
“Let us band together,” the speaker proclaims, “to invent all the miracles and resurrection appearances which we never saw and let us carry the sham even to death! Why not die for nothing? Why dislike torture and whipping inflicted for no good reason? Let us go out to all nations and overthrow their institutions and denounce their gods! And even if we don’t convince anybody, at least we’ll have the satisfaction of drawing down on ourselves the punishment for our own deceit.”
Through this satire, Eusebius wants to show how ridiculous it is to imagine that the disciples invented the whole thing. But even if they had, he continues, the plot would never have held together. How could so many persons agree unanimously to lie about these things? Could such an enterprise engineered by liars ever endure? Eusebius points out that these men went to their deaths testifying to the truth of what they believed. It is unbelievable that they would suffer and die for nothing. And how could the testimonies of all these deceivers agree? The disciples gave up family, worldly pleasures, and money to go out into foreign lands to preach what they believed. They could not have been liars. Eusebius, himself a great historian, emphasizes that if we distrust these men, then we must distrust all writers of history and records. If we accept the testimony of secular historians, then we must by the same standard also accept the reliability of the disciples’ testimony to the resurrection.