The
Resurrection of Jesus, Science, Faith, and History
Text: Matthew 28:1-17 I. INTRODUCTION: CHRISTIANITY AND FAITH
A. The only explanation for the empty tomb that withstands careful historical investigation is the Christian explanation that Jesus rose again from the dead. B. Belief in the empty tomb and resurrection of Jesus is not blind faith. C. Common misunderstandings about faith:
4. “We may define ‘faith’ as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of ‘faith.’ We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.” (Bertrand Russell) Historical investigation, I propose, brings us to the point where we must say that the tomb previously housing a thoroughly dead Jesus was empty, and that his followers saw and met someone they were convinced was this same Jesus, bodily alive though in a new, transformed fashion. The empty tomb on the one hand and the convincing appearances of Jesus on the other are the two conclusions the historian must draw. I do not think that history can force us to draw any particular further deductions beyond these two phenomena; the conclusion the disciples drew is there for the taking, but it is open to us, as it was to them, to remain cautious. Thomas waited a week before believing what he had been told. On Matthew’s mountain, some had their doubts…. But, as far as I am concerned, the historian may and must say that all other explanations for why Christianity arose, and why it took the shape it did, are far less convincing as historical explanations than the one the early Christians themselves offer: that Jesus really did rise from the dead on Easter morning, leaving an empty tomb behind him. N.T. Wright, “Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins” D. Atheists sometimes argue that Christianity is unfalsifiable, meaning that no evidence could possibly count against it. Two of the most fundamental tenants of Christianity are falsifiable: 1. Jesus died on the cross. 2. The tomb of Jesus was empty in the third day. II. THE BIBLE AND
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A. The Bible is not a bunch of fables or fantasy or man-made stories but an historical account of God’s redemptive work. B. Many Christians are adamant that the Bible be taught alongside of science, but we’ve dropped the ball when it comes to the Bible and history. The origins of the universe and the origins of man are not, strictly speaking, scientific questions. They are historical questions. C. It is well known that the Bible is an accurate book of history. Archaeology is an element of history and some archaeologists and historians have used the Bible as a kind of ancient “textbook”. 1. “There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of the OT tradition” (W.F. Albright; Archaeology and Religion of Israel p.176). |
“…Darwin introduced historicity
into science. Evolutionary biology,
in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science – the
evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already
taken place. Laws and experiments
are inappropriate techniques for the explication of such events and
processes. Instead one constructs a
historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the
particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain” (Ernst
Mayr “Darwin’s Influence on Modern Thought” Scientific American in The
Best American Science Writing 2001 p.135). |
2. “It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible” (Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert: A History of the Negev, p.31)
3. “There are countless historical facts in the Bible which have been endorsed by archaeological research that serve to demonstrate the substantial historicity of this Book, the greatest historical textbook the world has ever known” (Clifford A. Wilson, “Does Archaeology Prove the Bible?”).
There are countless historical facts in the Bible which have been endorsed by archaeological research that serve to demonstrate the substantial historicity of this Book, the greatest historical textbook the world has ever known. Thus the Moabite Stone endorses the Moabite rebellion recorded at II Kings 3 and the Taylor Prism gives us further light on the Assyrian King Sennacherib’s unsuccessful besieging of the city of Jerusalem in the days of Isaiah (Isaiah 36 and 37). The assassination of the same King Sennacherib by his sons, recorded at II Kings 19 and Isaiah 37, is endorsed by the records of Sennacherib’s son Esarhaddon. The very date of Nebuchadnezzar’s capture of Jerusalem is recorded on tablets from Babylon and the fact of captive peoples being allowed to return to their own lands (Ezra I) is endorsed by the Cyrus Cylinder. These are but a few of the many specific incidents in the Bible which have been confirmed by the records from archaeology. (Clifford A. Wilson, “Does Archaeology Prove the Bible?”).
NOTE: Many archaeologists of the late 20th and early 21st century are not as confident as Albright, Glueck and Wilson were in the middle of the 20th century about the historicity of the Old Testament. This is due in part to (1) misunderstandings about “science.” The assumption is that since the Bible does not record history “scientifically” then it is “scientifically unreliable”; (2) questions about events like the Exodus and Joshua’s conquest and; (3) an increased army of specialists used to interpret excavations (see Joel Drinkard, “The Position of Biblical Archaeology within Biblical Studies” Review and Expositor Fall 1989). There is now a greater emphasis upon the literary nature of the Bible sometimes to the exclusion of its historicity. However, instead of ignoring either history or the literary aspect of the Bible, both need to be studied and integrated.[1]
At the heart of the literary nature of the Bible is covenant. At the core of covenant is history. Covenant is an historic enactment. What could be more “historical” than the emphasis upon seed, marriage and genealogy in Genesis? And yet we need to remember that even the genealogical histories of the Bible are recorded literarily. Does the recording of history in a literary fashion make it untrue? Of course not. Even the chronicles of history in the 21st century are literary! Just because the redemptive history of the Bible was recorded in a different literary manner than history is recorded in the 21st century does not make it invalid or justify our ignoring it.
D. The Christian faith is historic. Our faith is rooted in the events of history. The bodily resurrection of Jesus was an historic event.
The uniqueness and scandal of the Christian religion rests in the mediation of revelation through historical events. The Hebrew-Christian faith stands apart from the religions of its environment because it is an historical faith, whereas they were religions rooted in mythology or the cycle of nature. The God of Israel was the God of history, or the geschichtsgott, as German theologians so vividly put it. The Hebrew-Christian faith did not grow out of lofty philosophical speculation or profound mystical experiences. It arose out of the historical experiences of Israel, old and new, in which God made Himself known. This fact imparts to the Christian faith a specific content and objectivity which set it apart from others....
The Bible is not primarily a collection of the religious ideas of a series of great thinkers. It is not first of all a system of theological concepts, much less of philosophical speculations....
The recital of God's historical acts is the substance of Christian proclamation. (George Eldon Ladd. “The Knowledge of God: The Saving Acts of God” in ed., Carl F. H. Henry, Basic Christian Doctrines [New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962], 7-13).
A Gospel which cares only for the apostolic proclamation and denies that it either can or should be tested for its historical antecedents, is really only a thinly veiled gnosticism or Docetism and, however much it may continue to move by a borrowed momentum, will prove ultimately to be no Gospel (C.F.D. Moule, quoted in N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God p.23).
III. HISTORIC EVIDENCE FOR THE BODILY
RESURRECTION OF JESUS
A. The Gospels record 10 resurrection appearances of Jesus to His disciples. Paul also mentions in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time (1 Cor.15:6).
B. How do unbelievers give an account for what the disciples saw?
1. Were the disciples hallucinating or having visions of some sort? The clear answer is no:
a. “To these He also presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days” (Acts 1:3).
b. “See My
hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does
not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” (Luke 24:38-43)
What was
from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what
we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life—
and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you
the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us— (1 John 1:1-2)
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2. The disciples were gullible and lived in a pre-scientific and pre-modern world. But they didn’t live in a pre-historical world! a. Are we in the 21st century more intellectually sophisticated than the disciples? i. Athletes can be a very superstitious lot. ii. Airlines and hotels are sometimes superstitious. b. The early Christians weren’t as gullible and pre-scientific as some people make them out to be. i. “When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful” (Matthew 28:17; cf. Mark 16:11,13,14). ii. “But these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them” (Luke 24:10-11,41). iii. “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25) |
“The fact that dead people do not ordinarily rise is itself part of early Christian belief, not an objection to it…The challenge for any historian, when faced with the question of the rise of Christianity, is much more sharply focused than is often supposed. It is not simply a matter of whether one believes in ‘miracles’, or in the supernatural, in general, in which case (it is supposed) the resurrection will be no problem. If anyone ever reaches the stage where the resurrection is in that sense no problem, we can be sure that they have made a mistake somewhere…” (N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God p.712). |
QUESTIONS FOR
SABBATH DISCUSSION & MEDITATION
Pray that God would enable you and give you the desire to
be conformed to His Word as read and preached today.
Why do you agree or disagree with Richard Dawkins,
“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate
evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of
evidence.”
Why is it important to understand that the events of
the Old Testament were rooted in actual history?
Why have Christians tended to emphasize the “science” of
the Bible to the neglect of its history?
Why is evolutionary biology a form of history?
How do we know that the Bible is an accurate book of
history?
How do we know that some of the disciples of Jesus
weren’t gullible?
ADDITIONAL
QUOTES:
“The empty tomb and the ‘meetings’
with Jesus, when combined, present us with not only a sufficient condition for the rise of early Christian belief, but
also, it seems, a necessary one. Nothing else historians have been able to
come up with has the power to explain the phenomena before us.
“This remains, of course, unprovable
in logical or mathematical terms. The
historian is never in a position to do what Pythagoras did: not content with
drawing more and more right-angled triangles and demonstrating that the square
on the hypotenuse always does in fact equal the sum of the squares on the
other two sides, he constructed a theorem to prove that this must always be the case. With history it is not like that. Almost nothing is ever ruled out
absolutely; history, after all, is mostly the study of the unusual and
unrepeatable…In terms of the kind of proof which historians normally accept,
the case we have presented, that the tomb-plus-appearances combination is
what generated early Christian belief, is as watertight as one is likely to
find” (N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of
the Son of God pp.706,707).
“We
are left with the secure historical conclusion: the tomb was empty, and
various ‘meetings’ took place not only between Jesus and his followers
(including at least one initial sceptic [sic]) but also, in at least one case
(that of Paul; possibly, too, that of James), between Jesus and people who
had not been among his followers. I
regard this conclusion as coming in the same sort of category, of historical
probability so high as to be virtually certain, as the death of Augustus in
AD 14 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70” (N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God p.710).
"If
I were to insist that the American Declaration of Independence took place in
1789, despite all the evidence which unequivocally points to the year 1776, I
could expect no commendations for maintaining my intellectual freedom or
personal integrity; nor could I expect to receive tolerance from my fellow
historians. The much-vaunted virtue of academic 'openness' would be rendered
ridiculous were it to allow me to be taken seriously. I would simply be
obstinately and stubbornly wrong, incapable of responding to evidence which
demanded a truthful decision."
--
Alister McGrath, A Passion for Truth:
The Intellectual Coherence of Evangelism (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 1996), p. 191.
