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The Fact of the Resurrection
Place your cursor over the reference to see the passage. (1) 2 Tim. 2:8 1 Cor. 15:4 (Many other passages.) First Proposition: Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. The Resurrection of Christ is in many respects the most important fact of Christian history. It is the Gibraltar of Christian Evidences, the Waterloo of Infidelity and Rationalism. If the scriptural assertions of Christ’s Resurrection can be established as historic certainties, the claims and doctrines of Christianity rest upon an impregnable foundation. There are three lines of argument for the truthfulness of the Biblical statements: First.—The external proofs of the authenticity and truthfulness of the gospel narratives. Into this argument we need not enter at this time. The others are perfectly sufficient without it. Second.—The internal proofs of truthfulness. We have four accounts of the Resurrection. Suppose we bad no external means of knowing by whom they were written; that we had nothing but the accounts themselves from which to decide as to their truthfulness or untruthfulness. (a) By a careful comparison of the four accounts we see that they are four separate and independent accounts. This is evident from the apparent discrepancies in the four accounts. There is a real harmony between the accounts, but it can be discovered only by minute and careful study. On the surface there is discrepancy and apparent contradiction. It is just such a harmony p 167 as would not exist in four accounts prepared in collusion. In that case, on the surface there would appear agreement. Whatever contradiction there might be would be discovered only by careful study. But the fact is that the discrepancy is on the surface; the real harmony has only been discovered by careful and prolonged study. It is just such a harmony as would exist between four independent, honest witnesses, each relating the events from his own point of view. The four accounts supplement one another, a third account sometimes reconciling apparent discrepancies of two. These four accounts must be either true or fabrications. If fabrications they must have been made up either independently or in collusion. They cannot have been made up independently; the agreements are too marked and too many. They cannot have been made up in collusion; the apparent discrepancies are too numerous and too noticeable. They were, therefore, not made up at all. They are a true relation of facts. (b) The next thing we notice about these accounts is that they bear striking indications of having been written or spoken by eye-witnesses. The account of an eye-witness is readily distinguished from that of one who is merely retailing what others have told him. Any careful student of the Gospel records of the Resurrection will readily detect many marks of the eye-witness. (c) The third thing we note is their artlessness, straightforwardness and simplicity. It sometimes happens, when a witness is on the stand, that the story he tells is so artless, straightforward, simple and natural; there is such an utter absence of any attempt at coloring or effect; that it carries conviction independently of any knowledge we may have of the witness. As we listen to this witness we say at once, "This man is telling the truth." The weight of this kind of evidence is greatly increased, and reaches practical certainty, if we have several independent witnesses of this sort, all bearing testimony to the same essential facts, but with varieties of detail, one omitting what another tells. This is the exact case with the four Gospel narrators of the Resurrection. While the stories have to do with the supernatural, the stories themselves are most natural. The Gospel authors do not seem to have reflected at all upon the meaning or bearing of many of the facts they relate. They simply tell right out what they saw in all simplicity and straightforwardness, leaving p 168 the philosophizing to others. Furness, the Unitarian scholar (quoted in Abbot on Matt., p. 331, and also Furness, "The Power of the Spirit"), says: "Nothing can exceed in artlessness and simplicity the four accounts of the first appearance of Jesus after his crucifixion. If these qualities are not discernible here we must despair of ever being able to discern them anywhere." Suppose we had four accounts of the battle of Monmouth, and upon examination we found that they were manifestly independent accounts—we found striking indications that they were from eye-witnesses; we found them all marked by that artlessness, simplicity and straightforwardness that carry conviction; we found that they agreed substantially in their account of the battle—even though we had no knowledge of the authorship or date of these accounts, would we not, in the absence of any other account, say, "Here is a true account of the battle of Monmouth?" (d) The unintentional evidence of words, phrases and accidental details. It often happens when a witness is on the stand that the unintentional evidence he bears by words, phrases and accidental details is more effective than his direct testimony, because it is not the testimony of the witness, but the testimony of the truth to itself. The Gospel stories abound in this sort of evidence. Here and elsewhere we are told that Jesus was not recognized at once by His disciples when He appeared to them after His resurrection. There was no point to be gained by their telling the story in this way. They give no satisfactory explanation of the fact. We are left to study it out for ourselves. Why, then, do they tell it this way? Because this is the way it occurred and they are not making up a story, but telling what occurred. If they had been making up a story, they would never have made it up this way. Here, as everywhere else, Jesus is represented as appearing only to His disciples, with the single exception of His brother. Why is it so represented? Because it so happened. If a story had been made up years after, Jesus would certainly have been represented as appearing to and confounding some, at least, of His enemies. There is no explanation of these words "touch me not." It has been the puzzle of centuries for the commentators to explain them. Why is it told this way? Because this is the way it occurred. Why is this told? Modern physiologists tell us that the physical explanation of this is that Jesus suffered from extravasation of the blood, or, in popular language, "a broken heart," and that other facts recorded (as e. g., the dying cry) prove the same thing. But John knew nothing of modern physiology. Why does he insert a detail that it takes centuries to explain? Because he is recording events as they occurred and as he saw them. This is most true to life. It is in perfect harmony with what is told of Thomas elsewhere, but to make it up would require a literary art that immeasurably exceeded the possibilities of the author. This is again in striking keeping with what we know of the men. John, the younger, outruns Peter, but hesitatingly, reverently, stops outside and first looks in. But impetuous, older Peter, lumbers on as best he can behind, but when once he reaches the tomb, never waits a moment outside, but plunges in. Who was the literary artist who had the skill to make this up, if it did not happen just so? Here, again, we have the unmistakable marks of truth. John, the man of quick perception, is the first to recognize his Lord. Peter, the man of impetuous and unthinking devotion, so soon as he is told who it is, tumbles into the water and swims ashore to meet him. Was this made up? Here is surely a touch that surpasses the art of any man of that day or any day. Mary, with a woman’s love, forgets a woman’s weakness and cries, "Tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away." Of course she lacked the strength to do it, but woman’s love never stops at impossibilities. Was this made up? "And Peter." Why "And Peter"? No explanation is vouchsafed, but reflection shows it was the utterance of love toward a despondent and despairing disciple who had thrice denied his Lord and would not think himself included in a general invitation. Was this made up? The action of Thomas here is too natural and the rebuke of Jesus too characteristic to be attributed to the art of some master of fiction. This, too, is a characteristic rebuke on Jesus’ part. Jesus never answered questions of speculative curiosity but always pointed the questioner to his own immediate duty. There is no explanation of why Jesus asked three times or why Peter was grieved because Jesus did ask three times. We must read this in the light of the thrice-repeated, threefold denial to understand it. But the author does not tell us so. He surely would if he had been making this up with this fact in view. He is simply reporting what actually occurred. (15) Appropriateness of the way in which Jesus revealed Himself to different persons after His resurrection— What a delicate touch of nature! Up to this point Mary had not recognized her Lord, but in that one word, "Mary," uttered as no other but He had ever uttered it, she knew Him and fell at His feet and tried to clasp them, crying "Rabboni." Was that made up? p 172 Knew Him in the breaking of bread. Why? The evangelist ventures no explanation. But we easily read between the lines that there was a something so characteristic in the way he returned thanks at meals, so real and so different from the way in which they had ever seen any other do it, that they knew Him at once by that. Is that made up? To Thomas, the man of sense, He makes Himself known by sensible proof. To John and Peter as at the first by a miraculous draught of fishes. How strange that this little detail is added to the story with absolutely no attempt of saying why. But how deeply significant this little unexplained detail is. In that supreme moment when the breath of God passes over and through that cold and p 173 silent clay, and Jesus rises triumphant over death and Satan, there is no excitement upon His part, but with that same majestic self-composure and serenity that marked His whole life, absolutely without human haste or flurry or disorder, He even rolls up the napkin that was about His head and lays it away in an orderly manner by itself. Was that made up? These are little things, but it is from that very fact that they gain much of their significance. It is in just such little things that a fiction would disclose itself. Fiction betrays its difference from fact in the minute. But the more microscopically we examine the Gospel Narrative the more we become impressed with its truthfulness. The artlessness and naturalness of the narrative surpass all art. There are certain unquestionable facts of history that demand the Resurrection of Christ to account for them. (1) Beyond a question the foundation truth preached in the early years of the Church’s history was the Resurrection. (a) Why should the Apostles use this as the corner-stone of their creed if not well attested and firmly believed? (b) If Jesus had not risen there would have been some evidence He had not. But the Apostles went up and down the very city where He had been crucified, and proclaimed right to the face of His slayers that He had been raised and no one could produce evidence to the contrary. The best they could do was to say that the guards went to sleep and the disciples stole the body. But if they had stolen the body they would have known it, and the great moral transformation in the disciples would remain unaccounted for. (2) The change in the day of rest. Changed by no express decree but by general consent. In the Bible days we find the disciples meeting on the first day. (3) The change in the disciples. From blank and utter despair to a courage nothing could shake. (e. g., Peter. Acts 4:19, 20; 5:29. James the Lord’s brother.) Such a sudden and radical change demands an explanation. Nothing short of the fact of the Resurrection will explain it. These unquestionable facts are so impressive and so conclusive that infidel and Jewish scholars admit that the Apostles believed that Jesus rose from the dead. Baur admits this. Even Strauss says: "Only this much need be acknowledged—that the Apostles firmly believed that Jesus had arisen." Schenkel says: "It is an indisputable fact that in the early morning of the first day of the week following the crucifixion, the grave of Jesus was found empty. * * * It is a second fact that the disciples and other members of the apostolic communion were convinced that Jesus was seen after the crucifixion." These admissions are fatal to the rationalists who make them. The question at once arises, Whence this conviction and belief? Renan attempts an answer by saying: "The passion of a hallucinated woman (Mary) gives to the world a resurrected God." (Renan, "Life of Jesus," p. 357.) But we answer: "The passion of a hallucinated woman" is not equal to this task. There was a Matthew and Thomas in the apostolic company to be convinced, and a Paul outside to be converted. It takes more than the passionate hallucination of a woman to convince a Jew taxgatherer, a stubborn unbeliever, and a fierce and conscientious enemy. Strauss tries to account for it by inquiring whether the appearances may not have been visionary. We answer: "There was no subjective starting-point for such visions in the Apostles, and furthermore eleven men do not have the same visions at the same time, much less five hundred." (1 Cor. 15:6.) A third attempt at an explanation is that Jesus was not really dead. To sustain this view appeal is made to the short time He hung on the cross, and that history tells of one in the time of Josephus taken down from the cross and nursed back to life. In reply, we say: First—Remember the events that preceded the crucifixion and the physical condition in which they left Jesus. Remember, too, the water and the blood—the broken heart. Second—His enemies would and did take All necessary p 175 precautions. (John 19:34.) Third—If Jesus had been merely resuscitated he would have been so weak, such an utter physical wreck—as was the man cited in proof—that His reappearance would have been measured at its real value. Fourth—The Apostles would have known how they brought Him back to life, and the main fact to account for, the change in them, would remain unaccounted for. Fifth—Still, the moral difficulty is greatest of all. If it was merely a case of resuscitation, then Jesus tried to palm himself off as one risen from the dead when He knew He was nothing of the sort. He was an arch impostor, and the whole Christian system rests on a fraud. It is impossible to believe that such a system of religion as that of Jesus Christ, embodying such exalted precepts and principles of truth, purity and love "originated in a deliberately planned fraud." No one whose own heart is not cankered by fraud and trickery can believe Jesus an impostor and His religion founded upon fraud. We have eliminated all other possible suppositions; we have but one left: Jesus really was raised from the dead the third day. The desperate straits to which those who attempt to deny it are driven are in themselves proof of the fact. Furthermore, if the Apostles really, firmly believed, as is admitted, that Jesus arose from the dead, they had some facts upon which they founded their belief. These are the facts they would have related in recounting the story and not have made up a story out of imaginary incidents. But, if the facts were as recounted in the Gospels, there is no possible escaping the conclusion that Jesus actually arose. We have, then, several independent lines of argument pointing to the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Taken separately they satisfactorily prove the fact. Taken together they constitute an argument that makes doubt of the resurrection of Christ impossible to a candid man. There is really but one weighty objection to the doctrine that Christ arose from the dead—i. e., "That there is no conclusive evidence that any other ever arose." To this a sufficient answer would be: Even if it were certain that no other ever arose, the life of Jesus was unique, His nature was unique, His mission was unique, His history was unique, and it is not to be wondered at, but to be expected, that the issue of His life should also be unique.
Central to Christian faith is the bodily resurrection of
Jesus. By recording the resurrection appearances, the New Testament leaves no
doubt about this event.
• In or around
Jerusalem
To Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-18)
To the other women (Matt. 28:8-10)
To Peter (Luke 24:34)
To ten disciples (Luke 24:36-43; John 20:19-25)
To the Eleven, including Thomas (John 20:26-29)
At His ascension (Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:4-12)
• To the disciples on the
Emmaus road (Luke 24:13-35)
• In Galilee (Matt. 28:16-20;
John 21:1-24)
• To five hundred people (1
Cor. 15:6)
• To James and the apostles
(1 Cor. 15:6)
• To Paul on the road to
Damascus (Acts 9:1-6; 18:9,10; 22:1-8; 23:11; 26:12-18; 1 Cor. 15:8)
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