Did the Apostle's Invent the Resurrection? Part 4:

In considering the evidence for Jesus’s resurrection, we have so far addressed three questions:

Question 1: Did later pagan influence add a resurrection story to the Jesus tradition?

Question 2: Did Jesus’s disciples in Palestine invent a false resurrection story?

Question 3: What happened to Jesus’s body?

These investigations explored alternative theories that have been put forward to explain how the narrative of Jesus’s resurrection could have arisen. It is now time to consider the strength of the Christian claim that this belief is based on the fact that Jesus did indeed rise after death, leaving no body in the tomb.

At first glance, the claim that a dead person can live again seems totally unreasonable because it contradicts familiar natural laws. But what does logical analysis suggest? In this last investigation of the series, we will use objective criteria to test the resurrection claim as a hypothesis: “Jesus rose physically from death.”

Does the resurrection claim meet any criteria for a credible hypothesis?

In his work Justifying Historical Descriptions, historian C. Behan McCullagh explains that a given hypothesis is likely to be true if:

• it has greater explanatory scope and power than alternative hypotheses

• it requires few additional assumptions

• it has plausibility.

Does the resurrection claim meet any of these criteria?

Explanatory Scope and Power

For a hypothesis to be considered credible, it should have explanatory scope (explain a variety of facts) and explanatory power (make the facts seem more likely to happen).

The claim that Jesus was physically resurrected from his tomb not only explains a wide range of undisputed facts but also makes these unusual events more probable. For example: the despised Roman cross was swiftly transformed from a brutal instrument of oppression to an inspiring symbol of faith; an increasing number of Jews shifted their worship from the anciently venerated Saturday Sabbath to Sunday – the “Lord’s Day” on which Jesus rose; former Torah-observant Jews such as Paul now passionately taught that salvation no longer required obedience to Mosaic law because Jesus’s death and resurrection had atoned for all transgressions. Profound alterations such as these are very difficult to explain if Jesus was merely an executed teacher.

In addition, Jesus’s disciples experienced a dramatic conversion from terror to defiant courage. After Jesus’s arrest his disciples abandoned him and fled into hiding, and a fearful Peter three times denied even knowing him, yet within a very short time these same men and women were prepared to publicly preach a risen Christ in the face of bitter and violent hostility from Roman authorities and fellow Jews. As mentioned earlier in this series, Jewish theologian Pinchas Lapide was deeply impressed by the fact that: “these peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their master and failed him so miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before.”

What could possibly have happened to transform the disciples’ grief into joyful enthusiasm and their reverence of Jesus into a level of worship that was considered blasphemous in their culture? While retaining his Jewish faith, Lapide reached this conclusion from the evidence:

“I accept the resurrection of Easter Sunday not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as a historical event” (Resurrection, 125, 131).

Overall, there are more unexplained facts if Jesus was not resurrected than if he was. As an objective historian, McCullagh has concluded that the resurrection hypothesis does indeed have greater explanatory scope and power than any alternative hypothesis that has been proposed (Justifying Historical Descriptions, 21).

Few Additional Assumptions

A credible hypothesis should not require too many additional assumptions. The resurrection claim certainly does lean very heavily on two enormous assumptions—that God does exist and that he can reverse physical processes. However, each alternative hypothesis that we have investigated also involves at least one highly improbable assumption: for example, that a man could survive Roman crucifixion and appear soon afterward in perfect health; that different people can experience the same hallucination at different times over an extended period; that not one of Jesus’s supporters or opponents could find where his body lay; that a group of people would have deliberately perpetrated and defended a bizarre hoax that brought them no benefit and instead threatened their personal security, and so on.

Which of these required assumptions are more credible than others? This judgment depends more on one’s preferred worldview than on any objective criteria.

Plausibility

A hypothesis is considered to be plausible if it is implied by some accepted truths and contradicted by very few. This is a tricky criterion in the case of the resurrection because if Jesus did rise, this would be a unique event in history with no preexisting “accepted truth” to support its plausibility. As C. S. Lewis pointed out, “If the story is true, then a wholly new mode of being has arisen in the universe” (Miracles, 240). James Dunn explains it this way:

“The historical method inevitably works with some application of the principle of analogy. The resurrection of Jesus as ‘understood’ in the beginning, however, broke through the analogies . . . The interpretation that God had raised Jesus from the dead became itself paradigmatic, that which defines rather than that which is defined” (Jesus Remembered, 877, emphasis added).

Our judgment about the resurrection is therefore strongly linked to our preconceptions: if we allow the existence of a Divine Creator to be an “accepted truth,” then we are considering the work of an omnipotent Being who can bring an entire universe into existence out of nothingness. In that case, it is more logical that He could and would raise His Son than that He would not, and the hypothesis of Jesus being raised from death becomes totally plausible. And as biblical scholar Michael Licona points out, a rational attitude that adamantly rejects any possibility of the supra-natural is as much a chosen viewpoint as theism (Resurrection, 604). Licona undertook an objective review of the evidence in a wide range of early Christian and non-Christian sources, applying historical methodology to six alternative hypotheses about the resurrection, and this is his conclusion from the analysis:

“If one brackets the question of worldview, neither presupposing nor a priori excluding supernaturalism, and examines the data, the historical conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead follows” (Resurrection, 604).

Conclusion

The Christian Church claims that Jesus was resurrected after death, leaving no body in the tomb. This teaching might be difficult to accept because it defies the everyday application of natural laws. However, compared to alternative hypotheses, it has far greater power to explain the undisputed historical events that followed soon after Jesus’s execution. And as historian Behan MuCullagh clearly states:

“If the scope and strength of an explanation are very great, so that it explains a large number and variety of facts, many more than any competing explanation, then it is likely to be true” (Justifying Historical Descriptions, 26, emphasis added).

Belief in Jesus’s resurrection therefore withstands intellectual scrutiny. John Polkinghorne, an internationally respected physicist and Christian, calls for an objective assessment of the evidence for the resurrection:

“We know the physical world is very surprising, and we cannot guess beforehand what it is going to be like. Who would have guessed quantum theory beforehand? The answer is nobody! Similarly, in our encounter with God, we must expect surprises. In a search for motivated belief, we ask: What is the evidence? What are the things that might make us think this was the case?”(Serious Talk, 2–3).

He writes:

“My conclusions are that a belief in the raising of Jesus that first Easter Day, and an adherence to a modified form of kenotic Christology as a means of affirming the meeting of the divine and the human in him, are tenable beliefs in a scientific age” (Faith of a Physicist, 2).

In short, there are many sound reasons for accepting that Jesus rose from death – incredible though that might be – and there is only one reason to deny it: our personal judgement of what we consider to be possible in this world. Should we put our faith in the evidence or in what makes us feel comfortable?