The Resurrection of Jesus Christ Part I

‘The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death; yet he himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father’s Son, was such as could not die. For this reason, therefore he assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through his indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection.’²

‘Christ has risen from the dead! After two thousand years of the most determined assault upon the evidence that demonstrates it, that fact stands. And so long as it stands Christianity, too, must stand as the one true supernatural religion.’³

‘To understand the resurrection is to understand the meaning of history from its end.’⁴

1. JESUS’ RESURRECTION WAS AN ACT OF GOD, FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT

God’s Signature Super-Miracle and its Message

The texts of the New Testament claim that although Jesus was dead and buried on a Friday afternoon, early the following Sunday morning, roughly 36 hours later, his corpse had revived, and he had physically come to life again in a new unprecedented bodily form. Supporting this is substantial detailed historical evidence, including numerous first-hand eyewitnesses ‘who talked with a person whom they took to be Jesus, and witnesses who saw the empty tomb.’⁵ At face value, this amounts to a dazzling super-miracle, an occurrence of extreme magnitude, a matter of staggering significance with universal meaning at every level, (1) for Christ’s own Person, (2) for all human beings, and (3) for all creation and all creatures.

As we shall see, Christ himself and the authors of the New Testament reckoned that the resurrection gave cast-iron proof of Jesus’ Divine-human person and achievement. The resurrection was ‘God’s authenticating signature’⁶ upon the life and work of Christ, and the ‘foundation-stone’ of faith.⁷ In all the world religions there is simply ‘nothing comparable to this combination of event plus message.’⁸ The resurrection confirmed the truth of Jesus’ teaching, verified his identity, endorsed every aspect and element of his activity, validated the saving value of his death, indicated his rule over the cosmos, guaranteed his second bodily coming at the end of history in glory and judgment, and, by implication, proved beyond a shadow of doubt the truth of the Christian faith. In combination with his death on the cross, Christ’s resurrection from death is history’s most momentous event. Here is Broughton Knox:

‘The resurrection establishes the fact beyond dispute that God is sovereign in the affairs of life. … He is the ruler of everything in his creation and he upholds everything through his will. … The resurrection shows that God is sovereign even over inexorable death, and sin and evil, for the resurrection is the consequence of the crucifixion … It underlines the fact that God has a purpose which he is bringing to completion. There will be a resurrection of us all so we will stand before God’s judgment seat, and God has indicated as much by raising Christ from the dead, who is his appointed judge.’⁹

Anchor Texts

Reports of the resurrection comprise the climax of each of the four Gospels as well as the introduction to the Acts of the Apostles:

Matt 27:45-28:20
Mark 15:33-16:20
Luke 23:44-53
John 19:28-21:21
Acts 1:3-9

In addition to the resurrection narratives themselves, the other apostolic voices are woven through with reflection upon its meaning and implications. ‘The fact is broadly spread upon the surface of the New Testament record.’¹⁰ Among the most significant passages expressing the consequences of Jesus’ resurrection are:

Acts 2:22-32; 17:16-21, 30-32
Rom 6:1-14
1 Cor 15:1-58
2 Cor 4:7-5:10
Phil 2:9-11
Col 1:15-20; 3:1-17
1 Thess 4:13-18
Heb 13:20-21
1 Pet 1:3-9
Rev 1:9-18

Other equally important statements on Jesus’ resurrection include:

John 2:18-22; 10:14-18; 11:1-44
Acts 3:13-15; 4:1-4, 8-12; 10:37-43; 17:3; 23:6-8; 24:15-21; 25:13-22; 26:6-8
Rom 1:3-4; 4:25; 8:11, 34; 10:9; 14:9
2 Cor 5:14-15, 17; Gal 1:1-3
Eph 1:15-23; 2:14-22; 3:14-19; 4:7-11
Phil 3:8-11, 21
1 Thess 1:9-10
1 Tim 3:1
2 Tim 1:8-10; 2:8-13
Heb 6:1-3; 9:24-28; 12:1-2, 22-24; 3:18-22
Rev 1:1-2; 5:6-14; 7:9-17; 11:15-18; 20:4-6; 21:1-7

Jesus was Raised from Death by God the Holy Trinity

In AD 362, at the Council of Alexandria in North Africa, Athanasius the Great summarised biblical teaching about God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, using the phrase ‘One Being, Three Persons.’¹¹ Around the same time, Gregory Nazianzen elaborated the matter this way:

‘To us there is One God, for the Godhead is all One, and all that proceeds from him is referred to One, though we believe in Three Persons. For One is not more and another less God; nor is One before and another after; nor are they divided in will or parted in power; … the Godhead is, to speak concisely, undivided in separate Persons; and there is one mingling of Light, as it were of three suns joined to each other.’¹²

In absolute terms, then, in terms of the being or nature of God, the resurrection was activated by the one Triune God. God is the agent of resurrection and, as repeatedly stated in Scripture, God is precisely he who raised Jesus up from the dead (Acts 2:24; 3:15, 26; 4:10; 5:30; 10:40; 13:30, 33, 37; 17:31; 26:8; Rom 4:17, 24; 8:11; 10:9; 1 Cor 6:14; 15:15; 2 Cor 1:9; 4:14; Gal 1:1; Col 2:12; 1 Thess 1:10; Heb 11:19). Jesus was raised from death by the God the Holy Trinity.

God the Father Decreed Jesus’ Resurrection

This means that all three Divine Persons acted in unison to cause Christ’s resurrection, not the Father only, but also the Son and the Spirit. Yet in relative terms, in terms of Person, God the Father is the chief operator and primary agent in raising all the dead and, therefore, in raising the Son (John 5:21). In Christ’s resurrection, as in all God’s works, the Father has priority (Gal 1:1). Having given himself ‘for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age,’ Christ was raised from the dead according to the order and will of the Father (Gal 1:1, 4). ‘Christ’, we are told, ‘was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father’ (Rom 6:4), and it was ‘the Father of glory’ who gives ‘the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Christ’ who ‘raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places’ (Eph 1:17-20). Through raising Jesus, the Father’s principal authority is revealed, together with his manifest personal approval and ‘acceptance that Jesus did all that was required’ in obedience to the Father’s determination and decision.¹³ By raising the Son, the Father confirmed the value and significance of Christ’s work in life and death. That significance and value is that what God has done in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is set us right with God. No longer holding us in our wilful rebellion and sin guilty before him, but forgiven. Our sin and guilt has been removed by Jesus Christ, so now we are put right with God, and made capable of loving obedience to him. (Refer to Paul’s explanation of this in Romans chapters 3 and 4, especially 3:21-26 and 4:23-25.) Moreover, being a ‘justifying act,’ not holding people guilty but putting them in the right with God, resurrection ‘must be an act of God the Father,’ for it the Father ‘who maintains the violated law and proclaimed the restored law.’¹⁴

God the Son Executed His Own Resurrection

Most importantly, everything that God has and makes him God he has in and from himself (autothēos). This we see in the Son’s role in his own resurrection. Being God in himself, God the Son rose not just by the agency of God the Father, but also on his own account, by his own Almighty personal power and will. Resurrection and life are integral to the Son’s own Divine nature (John 11:25). The Son, being God, possesses life in himself (John 5:26), and he essentially is life in himself (John 1:4; 14:6; 1 John 1:1-2). At least twice, Jesus clearly and defiantly declared absolute Divine prerogative over his own death and resurrection. He claimed to possess power in himself to raise himself: ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’ (John 2:19-21; cf. Matt 26:61; 27:40; Mark 14:58; 15:29); ‘I lay down my life that I may take it up again. … I have authority [exousian, power] to lay it down, and I have authority [exousian, power] to take it up again’ (John 10:17-18). The eternal Son resumed life voluntarily, of his own accord. The resurrection was a direct act of the Son, and as such constitutes proof of Christ’s own absolute Divine power and deity. ‘By the power to take his soul again and to raise the temple up, he declares himself God, and the resurrection his own work: yet he refers all to the authority of His Father’s command.’¹⁵ Whilst preserving the Father’s priority, it was a vindication of Christ’s own personal omnipotence.

The matter may be formulated this way: ‘Christ himself is the cause of his resurrection.’ Although his body and soul were separated at the point of death,

‘both elements remained united to the Divine nature. They were and remained the soul and body of the Son of God. At his resurrection the Divine Person sent forth his soul again from Paradise, the third heaven, and by renewal united it to his body. He thus made his own assumed humanity alive again by his Divine power, so that Christ was not resurrected by the power of another, such as is true of ordinary men. Christ, however, actively and truly arose and was made alive by his own power. The Divine nature resurrected the human nature.’¹⁶

Furthermore, Christ’s human nature, specifically the power of life present in his own perfect human spirit, may also be said (admittedly, exercising some speculation) to have ‘acted on his body to reassume it as his instrument,’ setting his body in motion and causing it rise.¹⁷ With respect to both his Divine and human natures, then, the resurrection was part and parcel of the saving work of God the Son himself. In order to be Saviour and to deliver others from death, he had to triumph over death for himself and not merely be delivered from it by another.¹⁸ ‘This is what most sharply distinguishes Jesus’ resurrection from all others. They have been raised by a power not their own. Jesus was raised by his own power, God’s own power. This is why his resurrection is without analogy.’¹⁹

God the Holy Spirit Empowered Jesus’ Resurrection

The resurrection is also an act of God the Holy Spirit, ‘the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from dead’ (Rom 8:11). We are expressly told that Jesus ‘was made alive in the Spirit’ (1 Pet 3:18), and this chimes in tune with Scripture’s overarching depiction of the work of God’s Spirit giving life to all creatures in every sphere. The Spirit is he who bestows life in both creation and re-creation.

According to the Apostle Paul, the identifying of Jesus of Nazareth as the true ‘Son of God,’ was, literally, ‘according to the Spirit of holiness by a resurrection of dead persons’ (Rom 1:4). The statement conveys a sense of the power of God’s Spirit being displayed in the resurrection, marking out Christ ‘as the powerful Son of God.’²⁰ The Spirit’s special role in Christ’s resurrection may then be identified in terms of the empowerment of Christ’s body in the tomb, continuing his earlier act of working Christ’s conception in the womb of Mary (Luke 1:35). The Spirit may well be viewed as the one whose action reunited Christ’s body and soul, and so caused his resurrection.²¹ As the Spirit’s power generated Christ’s person at the beginning of the Son’s incarnation by uniting the Divine and human natures in the womb of his mother, so the Spirit’s power also quickened Christ’s corpse, reanimated his body, transformed its capacities, perfected its properties, and made it immortal.

In summary, it may be said that the efficient cause of Christ’s resurrection consists in the Father’s determination, the material cause in the Son’s freedom, and the instrumental cause in the Spirit’s power.²²

2. DEATH PRECEDES RESURRECTION

The Appalling Certainty

‘What is to become of us?’ There are two sides to the question. ‘What is to become of us individually?’, and ‘what is to become of us collectively?’, as a human species?²³

The Gospels set forth Christ’s resurrection as the final conclusion of his earthly life and career. Its immediate context and background are, quite obviously and evidently, (1) human dying and death in general, and (2) Jesus’ own dying and death in particular.

Death of course is the great universal certainty, one thing all may be categorically sure of. ‘For we must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground that cannot be gathered up again’ (2 Sam 14:14). Everyone knows where we are headed. Life is a terminal condition. It will end. ‘This cruel and fierce sergeant, death, is strict in his arrest.’²⁴

Not only so, but death’s certainty is matched by its peril. Death is dangerous, absolutely, totally threatening. Why? Because it is almost always unwelcome, yet there is nothing we can do about it. Death destroys relationships, and God has made us to be formed by and enjoy relationships with each other, and him. Death is horrible, but wholly unavoidable and completely unfixable. Also, on a purely human level, death’s outcome is a total unknown. It is impossible, humanly, to discover first-hand what happens after death without dying.

In addition, with death an appalling certainty and a complete unknown is bound up with peerless pain, desperation, dread, loss, separation, brutality, and violence. This hideous combination produces in human life a constant underlying crisis, generally fear, often anxiety, always sorrow, combined with the perpetual risk and menace of it happening.

Whenever death occurs, the experience and event itself is always traumatic, always shocking, usually intensely distressing, frequently terrifying. The loss of loved ones is a terrible grief, whilst the loss of a spouse, a child, parents, close friends, colleagues, or other intimates is agony akin to an amputation. Any vision of human being which fails sufficiently to either acknowledge or satisfactorily deal with death is quite frankly superficial and ultimately superfluous.

Most Contested and Controversial

Death’s horror and wretchedness make both the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of all the dead matters of colossal importance. Death’s cruelty is what also makes the matter of resurrection so contested and controversial. If resurrection is real, God is there, hope is real, everything affected, everything changed, and all in some way lasting and significant. If resurrection is not real, God is dead, all is lost, hope is empty, the ultimate future a false dream, whilst the present life – whether temporarily pleasant or positively unpleasant – existing ‘in magnificent isolation’ and, therefore, ‘magnificently insignificant,’ is plainly absurd.²⁵

Belief in the resurrection of the dead creates pressure and tension. As well death’s sheer evil, the controversy and conflict inbuilt to claiming the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is only heightened by its exclusivity. If Christ in particular was raised from the dead in the manner stated in the New Testament, then that places him in an incomparable category, for the utterly unique nature of Christ’s resurrection, by definition, implies the contradiction, overthrow, falsity, and exclusion of all other alternative and competing philosophical, scientific, and religious claims and convictions. Because it confirms his identity in so absolute and unqualified fashion – as God the Son, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Saviour of the world, and Judge of all the earth – the resurrection of Christ is an inherently incompatible and irreconcilable matter. So much of the controversy and conflict surrounding the particular claim that Christ rose from the dead in the middle of history regards its exclusivism, because Christ’s resurrection is a claim which challenges, undercuts, subsumes, and in that way directly denies every other available possibility and interpretation of reality conceived as apart from him.

Expecting Extinction

According to present statistical projections, it is more than likely that I shall be dead by 2062. By comparison with the lifespan of most human beings ever to have existed, that will be quite an achievement. Between 1543 and 1863, average life expectancy was below forty. In Somalia today, it is fifty-six, and 15 percent of persons living in that nation now die before reaching fourteen. Here is one unflinching and very matter of fact expression of the issue: ‘Though life expectancy has hugely improved in the modern era, death remains inevitable and is, in absolute terms, more common than ever. … Ultimately, not only are we as individuals doomed, but so is the human race itself.’²⁶

The idea that there is nothing after death, that with death all things, including death itself, end for the individual and for humanity as a species, finds expression in both ancient and contemporary thought. In this perspective, death is the ultimate calamity, the supreme personal misfortune, for it is the extinction of individual life, a total irretrievable loss. Cormac McCarthy captures it this way: ‘Your world – the only one that matters – will be gone. And it will never come again. The extinction of all reality is a concept no resignation can encompass. Until annihilation comes. And all grand ideas are seen for what they are.’²⁷

The matter is surely worth pause. Here is one atheist philosopher toward the end of his life, expressing vividly and movingly deep impersonal despair at the prospect of death as an absolute end:

‘[T]he mental night that has descended upon me … promises no awakening after sleep. Formerly, the cruelty, the meanness, the dusty fretful passion of human life seemed to me a little thing, set, like some resolved discord in music, amid the splendour of the stars and the stately procession of geological ages. What if the universe was to end in universal death? It was none the less unruffled and magnificent. But now all this has shrunk to be no more than my own reflection in the windows of the soul through which I look out upon the night of nothingness. The revolutions of nebulae, the birth and death of stars, are no more than convenient fictions in the trivial work of linking together my own sensations, and perhaps those of other men not much better than myself. No dungeon was ever constructed so dark and narrow as that in which the shadow physics of our time imprisons us, for every prisoner has believed that outside his walls a free world existed; but now the prison has become the whole universe. There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendour, no vastness, anywhere; only triviality for a moment, and then nothing. Why live in such a world? Why even die?’²⁸

If this is true, death marks the definite end of earthly human existence and, without horizon beyond, the decisive termination of human hope. For the godless, for atheists, death is elimination and extinction, for it entirely ends and destroys life. To die is to enter forever into darkness, silence, and nothingness.

Anticipations of an Afterlife

But the idea of human death as an absolute end, as the final discontinuation of biological function and complete cancellation of consciousness, is atypical and unusual. Absolute atheism is an anomaly in the architecture of human belief. Most worldviews and religions assume survival of the human self in some form of afterlife following death, however fantastical, vague, or speculative. Aristotle and Hinduism believe that both the world and human beings are eternal. All things have an infinite past as well as an infinite future, and are destined to persist in an endless cycle. The Pythagoreans (6^th century BC) and Nietzsche (19^th century AD) both expected ‘eternal return’ based on infinite chance. While the physical universe will become extinct and the human species will die, nonetheless there is, for them, every probability that both will be endlessly reborn. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all agree that the physical world and human beings have an embodied eternal future, being destined to undergo an ultimate change activated by the Creator at the end of time, following which all individual people will face Divine judgment and continue to exist in a transformed eternal state without reproduction.²⁹ Here, our human future is related to the past and the present, but it will not be like the present or the past; it will be very different.

Death is God’s Judicial Sentence Upon Sin

According to Scripture, death and dying does not lie outside of God’s intention. Death is not something occurring against the will of God. Neither is death considered the certain inevitable outcome of a natural process. Death in the Bible, though inescapable and universal, is essentially unnatural to created human existence. It is the penalty and effect of sin. Death is the consequence of disobedience to God. Because God in his essential goodness is the source of all being, of all life and meaning in the universe, turning our backs on him puts us on the pathway from life to death. Because of sin, death in all its forms – relational, bodily, spiritual, eternal – is elemental to fallen human existence. It was originally decreed and imposed by God himself as the penalty in payment for sin (Gen 2:17; Rom 6:23).

The termination of fellowship with God and others, the breakdown of the body and its separation from the soul, combined with the cessation of contact with all good, is the natural [more exactly, ontological] and legal consequence of rebellion against God. According to Scripture, the devastation, mystery, and terror of human death resides here, not merely in its vile and aberrant nature, but because it is a Divine judgment upon human wrongdoing. The reality of death as God’s judicial sentence upon sin is that final fearsome prospect before which every sinful person, without exception, proves humiliated and helpless. It is death as punishment and penalty and separation, specified by God for morally reprehensible conduct, that accounts for its accompanying misery, pain, and destructive force.

Jesus’ Death Was Quite Deliberate

From one angle, the crucifixion and death of Christ revealed the depth and violence of human sin and corruption. From another angle, the crucifixion and death of Christ also revealed the intensity, violence, and justice of God’s judgment upon human sin and corruption. But in both respects, the death of Christ was, from God’s perspective, quite deliberate. It was in line with his counsel, ‘predestined to take place’ (Acts 4:28). It was to deal with sin, and to deal with death as sin’s Divinely appointed consequence, that Jesus was destined and determined to die ‘according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God’ (Acts 2:24).

Jesus’ Resurrection Was Clearly Foretold

On several occasions, Jesus foretold that his death by monstrous violence would be followed by his being raised from the dead (Matt 12:39-40; 16:21; 17:9, 22-23; 20:19; 26:32; John 2:19; 10:17-18). These repeated predictions occurred after Peter’s confession that he was the Christ (Mark 8:31), at his transfiguration (Mark 9:9), and as he further repeated and reinforced the fact that his appointed course involved betrayal, beating, and public execution (Mark 9:31; 10:34). According to his human nature, Christ’s awareness and anticipation of his own individual resurrection kept him from despair.³⁰ He clearly expected to be vindicated by resurrection from the dead. It was the joy set before him (Heb 12:2), the expectation of being raised by God, that enabled him to endure the personal prospect and experience of an extremely violent demise and death by crucifixion. Knowing that he would be raised kept Christ calmly confident in complete obedience to the Father’s will (Luke 22:42).

Jesus’ Resurrection Reveals the Meaning and Effect of His Death

Before digging into matters more fully and deeply, we make two brief observations, about why Christ’s death had to be so, and about the light Christ’s resurrection throws upon the meaning and effects of his death.

(1) The predictions of his resurrection were set by Jesus himself in the context of his death being a sacrifice to atone for sin. Christ’s resurrection, then, demonstrated, firstly and fundamentally, that his dying as a sacrifice of atonement for sin was accepted by God. The resurrection of Christ confirms that the death of Christ – in suffering ‘the same death that other men naturally die’³¹ – had achieved its chief objective, namely, fulfilling and satisfying the obligations of God’s law by serving the judicial penalty and sentence for sin, as specified by God. Jesus’ resurrection reveals his death to be an atoning death, that is, it reconciles us back to God and God to us. We have been moved from being God’s enemies, those who despise him, to once again made his beloved sons and daughters who trust and love him. ‘The very essence of the saving effect of Christ,’ wrote Warfield, resides ‘in the power of his resurrection. It is through the power exerted by his resurrection that his saving work takes effect on men.’³²

Jesus’ Resurrection Reveals that the Resurrection of All People is Certain

(2) Jesus’ predictions regarding his own resurrection fall also within the context of his own broader teaching, and of other related prophetic expectation, that all people are destined to be raised from the dead. Christ’s resurrection, then, demonstrates, secondly and accordingly, that resurrection itself is actual, real, and certain. Because he was raised and came to life again, it is crystal clear that a general resurrection at the end of time, with all people being raised either to eternal life or to eternal judgment, is not only practicable and possible, but assured and inevitable. It happened to him. Eventually, it will happen to each of us. The resurrection of the dead is a metaphysical reality, transcendentally fixed in the universe, shaping and determining ultimate reality. Christ’s resurrection is the original template and prototype, and, in that way, the guarantee.³³ His resurrection and ours are bound up with one another. Indeed, the resurrection of Christ introduces the resurrection of all the dead.

3. THE PRIORITY OF JESUS’ RESURRECTION

A Matter of First Importance

The dominance and importance of Jesus’ resurrection in biblical thought cannot be overstated. It is not quite the case that his resurrection is Christianity’s single most characteristic or critical claim. (That would be something like ‘Jesus is Lord,’ which occurs in various forms more than 100 times in the writings of the New Testament.) But the supremacy of Christ is most clearly expressed, more than in any other manner, by his resurrection. Of all ‘the great things’ to be said about the Saviour, that he was raised from death is ‘the central one’.³⁴ It simply dominates apostolic teaching. Along with Christ’s death ‘for our sins,’ that Jesus was ‘raised on the third day,’ subsequently appeared to large numbers of his disciples, and ultimately ‘to all the apostles,’ is the core substance of the preached gospel and, therefore, a matter ‘of first importance’ (1 Cor 15:1-8). Witnessing Christ’s resurrection transformed his followers and empowered witness to him and proclamation of him (Acts 1:22; 2:32; 4:33; 10:41; 17:18). It is completely essential and integral to the substance and truth of the gospel (Rom 1:1-4; 1 Cor 15:1, 12, 14-15; 2 Tim 2:8).

Taken together, Christ’s death and resurrection are the central and essential truths of biblical teaching and, of the two, resurrection is most pivotal. Everything hangs and turns on Christ’s literal-physical-bodily resurrection. It is the hinge event and fact on which all depends. It is Christianity’s linchpin assertion, integral to the faith’s keystone content. Without it, the faith of the New Testament may openly be admitted as less than useless, misleading, empty, futile, hopeless, to be pitied, beneath contempt. The truth or falsehood of the entire Christian faith rests on the reality or fantasy of Christ’s resurrection (1 Cor 15:14-18). The experience and testimony of Jesus’ early disciples confirm it as historical reality.

The bodily resurrection of Christ is critical to the reality and truth of the Christian faith, more than any other historical event, because of its obvious incomparability. It is extraordinary and incomparable in two senses, generally and particularly.

Blending Historical Fact and Supernatural Power

(1) The resurrection’s high-degree blend of historical fact with supernatural power certainly makes it matchless in a general sense. Although the world’s religions, paganism, and contemporary atheism each deride and disparage Christ’s literal bodily resurrection as delusional and absurd, we shall see that it was an historical occurrence with an historical footprint for which there is comprehensive detailed historical evidence. It was an historical event which may be historically certified and verified as highly likely to have occurred. It occurred in space-time history, coordinated with the flow of other historical occurrences and markers, and plotted in relation to them. But of course, it was no ordinary historical happening. Christ’s resurrection is an event which, if true, cannot be explained or accounted for in purely human, historical, or natural terms, but only in supernatural, eternal, and Divine terms. If it can be established as fact, the resurrection ‘supplies an indisputable demonstration of the supernatural origin of Christianity, of the validity of Christ’s claim to be the Son of God, and of the trustworthiness of his teaching as a Messenger from God to man.’³⁵

Of Saving Significance

(2) Christ’s resurrection is, however, also unequalled and unparalleled in a much more particular sense, distinguishing Christian teaching from all other teachings, whether religious, philosophical, scientific, or spiritual. Its most precise uniqueness is that ‘there is no direct parallel in the history of religions of a founder whose bodily resurrection from the dead confirms and ratifies his life and teaching and enables followers to enter into eternal life.’³⁶ It is not merely its supernatural but its saving significance which singles the resurrection out. It is the pivotal and fundamental historical claim concerning Jesus Christ because it constitutes the basis of all the other claims comprising Christian teaching in general, and its claims about the nature of salvation in particular.

The Fact Upon Which Everything Else Depends

But that is to jump ahead of ourselves. To return to the more basic point, in terms of the structure of New Testament teaching, Jesus’ resurrection is the event upon which all the other elements of the gospel story converge and depend. It is the foundation and kernel of the biblical message concerning Christ, and as such the premise and point of departure for Christian proclamation. Denying or disproving the resurrection cuts the nerve of the New Testament’s entire narrative and empties its message of any significant content. The resurrection of Christ is all-important, because if Christ himself was not raised then neither are the dead in general raised. Moreover, if Christ remained dead and is not now alive, then Christian teaching is and always has been untruthful, for it gives a false account of God and of humanity in relation to God (1 Cor 15:12-17). This was well understood by the Apostles: ‘If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins’ (1 Cor 15:17).

We have already remarked that as well as being the concluding feature of the Gospel accounts, Christ’s resurrection was totally dominant in apostolic preaching (Acts 1:22; 2:24-36; 3:13-15, 21-26; 4:2, 10-11; 5:30-32; 10:37-40; 13:30—37; 17:18, 30-32; 23:6-10; 24:15, 21; 26:8, 12-18). For the apostles, the resurrection of Christ was the most thrilling and impactful claim to make about Christ. It was the claim with which to break into the hearts and minds of believers and unbelievers alike. So integral and pivotal was the resurrection for the preaching of the apostles that, when they speak and write, it is as if ‘the whole Christian community, teachers and taught alike, are suspending Christianity on the resurrection of Christ as its fundamental fact.’³⁷ In apostolic speech and writing, Christ’s resurrection is indispensable ‘to the very existence of Christianity.’³⁸ It is its founding event because it places Christ’s Divine identity and action beyond doubt. Jesus himself ‘deliberately staked his whole claim upon his resurrection. When asked for a sign, he repeatedly pointed to this sign as his single and sufficient credential’³⁹ (Matt 12:39-40; John 2:18-19). The truth of the resurrection is what gives substance to trust in Christ.

‘Before his crucifixion and death the Lord Jesus Christ did not appear to be God either to the Jews or even to the disciples. For they were offended by human things, as when they saw him eating and drinking and sleeping and urinating, and not even his miracles made them change their minds. … But after he rose from the dead … all those who believed recognized that he was God and the only begotten Son of God.’⁴⁰

The resurrection, then, established Christ – who he is, what he said, what he did, what he is doing, what he will do – as the incomparable individual in universal world history. It is an event of such staggering power as to remove ambiguity, eliminate hesitation, provide certainty, and establish clear, plain, cast-iron confidence regarding Christ and all his benefits. It confirmed his humanity and revealed his Divinity (Rom 1:3-4). It set Christ’s birth, life, death, and destiny apart from all others. The resurrection cannot be removed from biblical faith, for it manifests the incarnate person of Christ and completes the incarnate work of Christ in a completely decisive manner.

God’s Definitive Word About Jesus

The resurrection is God’s definitive Word about Jesus. Without the resurrection, if it did not occur, if it were shown to be false, Christianity would dissolve, evaporate, and melt into thin air. Deleting Christ’s resurrection would be to delete all, for it underpins and underlies the whole sum and substance of biblical belief. It is an indispensable and non-negotiable article of faith. It is a defining doctrine, a hallmark teaching. It is most distinctive, most astonishing, most influential, most impactful, and most controversial. Everything rests on it. This is because the core message of the gospel, its astonishing breaking news, the fundamental Divine revelation, concerns the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation to God and peace with God, through Christ’s atoning death for our sins and for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2). It was Christ’s resurrection which designated who Jesus is – ‘the Son of God’ (Rom 1:4) – and demonstrated and declared the value and effect of Christ’s suffering and death for us in our place.

The Gospel of the Resurrection

From a strictly historical perspective, the origins of Christian faith were altogether bound up with belief in Christ’s resurrection. Not only so, but in first generation Christianity both Christ’s literal resurrection in datable history and a general future resurrection of all the dead at the end of history, very quickly became universal convictions.

This was quite unique. In early first-century Rabbinic Judaism, belief in the resurrection of the dead was peripheral. There was a range of opinion in both first century Judaism and paganism. But in first-century Christian belief, there was no range of opinion whatsoever, for resurrection was critical. It was a core element of faith, its very ‘foundation-stone.’⁴¹ To be Christian meant, by definition, to believe that God had raised Christ from the dead and, by consequence would, at the last day, raise all.

In the sermons contained in the Book of Acts, it is most interesting to notice the distinct emphases and the points of contact or conflict between Christian teaching when directed at different audiences, either of Jews or of Gentiles. On the one hand, the Jews (excluding the Sadducees) accepted the resurrection of the dead and a final Divine judgment, but they rejected a crucified or dying Messiah. So, when the apostles and their associates proclaimed Christ to Jewish audiences, their great emphasis was on the significance of the Messiah’s crucifixion, and how it had to be that to fulfil his God-given mission as Saviour the Messiah must suffer and die (Acts 2:23, 36; 3:15; 5:30; 7:52). It was not the raising of the dead which the Jews rejected, but that the God of their fathers had raised Jesus, he whom had been ‘killed by hanging on a tree’ (Acts 5:30). Addressing Jews, it was not the resurrection from the dead that was itself in principle at issue, but the resurrection of the dead ‘in Jesus’ (Acts 4:2). On the other hand, Gentiles rejected out of hand as thoroughly fantastical notions of bodily resurrection and final judgment. So, when Paul addressed audiences in a Greco-Roman context his great stress was precisely on Christ’s resurrection as grounds for his appointment as Divine Judge and Saviour (Acts 17:30-32; 23:6; 24:15, 21; 25:19; 26:6, 8, 22-23).

Moreover, in all apostolic preaching of the gospel – the breaking news about Christ – it is equally interesting to note that it was teaching about Jesus’ resurrection that constantly provided the cutting edge and climax (Acts 2:32; 13:30-37). Sometimes the resurrection itself is the central substance of the apostle’s message about Christ, without even mention of or direct reflection upon the meaning of Christ’s crucifixion and death (Acts 17:31-32). A study of sermons in Acts demonstrates not merely that Christ’s resurrection is altogether essential and integral to Christianity. It is in fact the resurrection which comprised the leading edge, the critical point of confrontation and engagement when proclaiming Christ and commending the message of the gospel.

In addition, stimulating faith in the truth and fact of Christ’s resurrection was a primary goal and objective in apostolic evangelism and preaching, for personal belief in Jesus’ resurrection is a fundamental issue of salvation. To be saved, it is necessary to ‘believe in your heart that God raised him [Christ] from the dead’ (Rom 10:9). The kind of personal commitment to Christ which saves is unambiguous belief in ‘the power of his resurrection’ (Phil 3:19). ‘The resurrection of the dead,’ taught Tertullian in the same vein, ‘is the Christian’s trust. By it we are believers. To the belief of this (article of the faith) truth compels us – that truth which God reveals, but the crowd derides, which supposes that nothing will survive after death.’⁴²

Crucifixion and Resurrection

Now, it is of course true that salvation from sin was accomplished through the whole sequence of Christ’s life and work, with heavy concentration on his death at the cross. This is because of its cost. When Christ was crucified and died as ‘the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the sins of the world’ (1 John 2:2), there was displayed the value and expense and glory of God’s sacrificial and redemptive love. To show the special quality and kind of God’s love, God’s Son had to suffer, had to die, in our place. The death of Christ shows that God loves at extreme expense to himself.

Yet, nevertheless, the great emphasis on the value and significance of Christ’s death – ‘I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (1 Cor 2:2) – is coupled with an equally strong declaration of Christ’s resurrection ‘on the third day’ as being ‘of first importance’ (1 Cor 15:3-4). The full implication and importance of Christ’s resurrection is, after all, described in very extensive detail (1 Cor 15:1-58) at the conclusion of the very same letter which commits to knowing nothing except Christ crucified.

Focus on Christ’s atoning death does not play down his resurrection, somehow allowing it to fade from view. Forgiveness and right relations with God are secured by Christ alone but not by Christ’s death alone. Justification occurs by virtue of both the cross and the resurrection of Jesus (Rom 4:25). The two are inseparable and, in terms of their saving import, a single complex event. Proportionate proclamation of the cross recognizes that it is the resurrection which sheds most light upon its glory and magnificence. Confession of Christ’s cross rests upon knowledge of the resurrection. His death displays love, his resurrection life. His death merited and accomplished salvation for people, his resurrection began the process of distributing and applying it to people.⁴³ Here is Calvin:

‘[L]et us remember that whenever mention is made of his death alone, we are to understand at the same time what belongs to his resurrection. Also, the same synecdoche⁴⁴ applies to the word “resurrection”: whenever it is mentioned separately from death, we are to understand it as including what has to do especially with his death. But because by rising again he obtained the victor’s prize – that there might be resurrection and life – Paul rightly contends that “faith is annulled and the gospel empty and deceiving if Christ’s resurrection is not fixed in our hearts” [1 Cor 15:17 p.]. Accordingly, in another passage – after glorying in the death of Christ against the terrors of damnation – he adds by way of emphasis: surely “he who was dead has risen, and appears before God as our mediator” [Rom 8:34 p.].’⁴⁵

Knowing nothing other than a crucified Christ (1 Cor 2:2) does not, then, mean proclaiming Christ’s crucifixion to the exclusion or neglect of his resurrection or, indeed, proclaiming Christ’s crucifixion to the exclusion or neglect of any other aspect of Christ’s career or teaching. It means proclaiming only and exclusively the Messiah, Saviour, Leader, and Lord who was crucified to bear the penalty for our sins. No other Christ than the crucified (and risen) Christ exists as Saviour. Indeed, the Messiah’s resurrection is that through which God demonstrates and declares the full saving substance and significance of the Messiah’s death on a cross. Note that this entails a gospel of resurrection through suffering and death, and it involves astonishing news of resurrection and salvation only by way of wrath and judgment which has paid for and overcome the dreadful consequences of our rebellion and sin.

4. BACKGROUND BIBLICAL EXPECTATIONS OF RESURRECTION

Resurrection Was Foreseen, Implied, and Necessary

Jesus explained that his suffering and subsequent entry into glory was clearly implied and ‘necessary’ in ‘Moses and all the prophets … and all the Scriptures’ (Luke 24:26-27). In his Pentecost sermon, the apostle Peter declared that King David’s prophetic expectation included foreseeing and speaking ‘about the resurrection of the Christ’ (Acts 2:31). Peter took the following statement as a direct prophecy: ‘For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let you Holy One see corruption’ (Psa 16:10). ‘This Jesus,’ Peter declared, ‘God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses’ (Acts 2:32). The apostle Paul taught that, following his death ‘for our sins,’ Christ was ‘raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures’ (1 Cor 15:4). In his sermon at Antioch in Pisidia, Paul identified three Old Testament prophecies of Jesus’ resurrection being a fulfilment of God’s messianic promises to the fathers (Acts 13:32-33) – Psalm 2:7 (Acts 13:33); Isaiah 55:3 (Acts 13:34); and Psalm 16:10 (Acts 13:35). In other words, although they may not have been generally understood or recognized, according to Jesus and the Apostles, the Old Testament Scriptures contained statements showing two clear expectations: (1) a general resurrection, and (2) the resurrection of the Messiah.

Glimpses of Life Beyond Death and the Grave

The prospect of human life and existence beyond death was glimpsed and conceived in various ways in the Old Testament Scriptures. In one sense, death was reckoned the end of life, returning human beings to dust (Gen 3:19; Psa 90:3). But to begin with the creation of humanity in the image and likeness of God, together with humanity’s unique role as God’s image-bearer and representative on earth, carried with it certain assumptions.

Death is Unnatural and Cannot Prevent God’s action

Among these was the clear awareness that death itself was unnatural, and that the conditions of Sheol/Hades – the place of deep shadow, populated by the dead, the land of forgetfulness and gloom, lacking order, a dark underworld, inhabited by ghosts, an obscure state, devoid of hope, goodness, and relationships – were very much less than human (Gen 37:35; Job 7:9; 10:20-22; Psa 6:5; 88:10; Hab 2:5). Some texts worry that Sheol lies outside Yahweh’s dominion: ‘Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your wonders in the land of forgetfulness?’ (Psa 88:10-12). ‘For Sheol does not thank you; death does not praise you; those who go down to the pit do not hope for your faithfulness’ (Isa 38:10). But despite this, in the long run even Sheol does not exclude or prevent God’s action, purpose, and presence, for he is said to be there, somehow (Job 14:13; Psa 139:8; Amos 9:2). Sometimes the issue is framed as a puzzling question, ‘But a man dies and is laid low; man breathes his last, and where is he? … If a man dies, shall he live again?’ (Job 14:10, 14). But the conundrum remains, for despite death’s finality and Sheol’s awful prospect, this cannot be accepted as the last word. The hope and expectation were that, although Sheol was dreadful and frightful, God will not forget but remember those hidden there shrouded in sleep (Job 14:12-13). ‘All the days of my service, I would wait,’ Job declared, ‘till my renewal should come’ (14:14).

God’s Presence, Power, and Purposes Despite Death

More broadly, despite death and beyond it, a tangible experience of the presence of God was plainly expected as ultimate human destiny (Psa 23:4; 39:4-7; 49:13-15; 73:24; 139:7-8). Indeed, at an early stage of biblical history, the death of Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, and Jacob was expressed as being ‘gathered to their people’ (Gen 25:8, 17; 35:29; 49:29, 33). Hannah’s song expressed confidence in God’s power over life and death: ‘The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up’ (1 Sam 2:6).

Two individuals – Enoch and Elijah – are translated at God’s initiative from earthly life and transported into God’s eternal presence without death (Gen 5:24; 2 Ki 2:11). The implications are not spelled out, but the assumption was that being ‘taken up’ from the earth by God in this manner (Heb 11:5) meant entry into eternal life. Three individuals die – the widow of Zarephath’s son, the Shumanite’s son, and the dead Moabite man thrown into Elisha’s grave – only to be revived and return to life again (1 Ki 17:17-22; 2 Ki 4:18-37; 2 Ki 13:20-21). These cases are analogous to resurrection, anticipating and prefiguring it. They indicate God’s presence in death, evidence God’s power over death, and express God’s purposes beyond death. Not only so, but similar elements of the miraculous activity of Elijah and Elisha – raising the dead, healing the leprous, preaching good news, and feeding the poor (2 Ki 4:1-5:15) – paves the way for the miraculous ministry of Christ (Matt 11:5). In addition, the resuscitation miracles of Elijah and Elisha envision and signal the final fate of the dead in general resurrection.⁴⁶

Some have seen types in the Old Testament ‘which in some way are congruent with the resurrection of Christ and which can be applied to it.’⁴⁷ (A ‘type’ is a person or event that acts as an example or foreshadowing of an ideal or ultimate state of affairs.) These types include persons who experienced deliverance from death, such as Isaac (Heb 11:3), Joseph (Gen 41), Samson (Judg 16), or Daniel and his friends (Dan 3 & 6). They may also include animals (the scapegoat, Lev 16; the two birds, Lev 14:4-7) and objects (the rod of Aaron, Num 17) which symbolize life out of death or despite it.

Unending Fellowship with God

There is also in the Old Testament an expectation of ultimate victory after failure, suffering, and death (Psa 22). Anticipation of an afterlife is based on the insistent conviction that Yahweh the Creator, Deliverer, Redeemer, and Saviour would remain faithful to his covenant promises to Israel, and also to his whole creation, remaking the world and recreating his people. There is confidence that Divine-human fellowship would persist somehow, unbroken by death, for that is why God created and delivered his people. Those who are devoted to God during this life may presume upon God’s unbounded and everlasting presence (Psa 139:7-12, 24). The vision of God in creation and covenant, his power, love, and faithfulness would overcome ‘all opposing forces, including finally death itself.’⁴⁸ God was understood to have ‘bound up his people with himself in the same bundle of life, so that his covenant faithfulness undergirds and supports them beyond anything they are capable of in themselves in life and death.’⁴⁹ Against a background of covenant faithfulness in the restoration and return of God’s people from exile, rescue from Sheol and anticipation of individual bodily resurrection, personal revival, immortality, and unending fellowship with the Living God was understood to precede final judgment regarding either ‘everlasting life’ or ‘everlasting contempt’ (Dan 12:2; then Job 19:25-27; Psa 16:9-11; 49:15; Isa 25:6-8; 26:14, 18-19; Ezek 37:1-14; Hos 6:1-2).

Ultimate Deliverance – National Restoration and Individual Resurrection

We may be sure that two passages in Hosea and Isaiah certainly teach the resurrection of persons for, in the conclusion of his great discourse on the topic, Paul cites them both (1 Cor 15:54-55). ‘I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol; I shall redeem them from Death. O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting?’ (Hos 13:14). ‘He will swallow up death forever’ (Isa 25:8). Although they may include Israel’s national vindication, the reach of statements as radical and expectant as these are not limited to a this-worldly promise to Israel of corporate restoration. These passages and others (Isa 26:19; Ezek 37:11) voice vibrant hope of national preservation, Israel’s return from exile and corporate restoration and reconstitution is pictured in terms of resurrection, but they do not exclude a counterpart promise of individual afterlife and bodily resurrection. In fact, they visualize the physical resurrection of individual persons in very explicit and vivid terms: ‘Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! … the earth will give birth to the dead’ (Isa 26:19).

The relevance is both individual and collective. The faithfulness of God would counter every kind of catastrophe, personal or national. Similarly, the strongest, most explicit, and unambiguous statement contained in the whole Old Testament concerning the double resurrection of the dead – to life with God or to condemnation at the judgment – expresses and reinforces the desire for this-worldly justice from God, but it is not confined to that.⁵⁰

‘At that time … your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever’ (Dan 12:1-3).

To this we may add the expectation that God would redeem his covenant people (Pss 19:14; 25:22; 31:5; 34:22, 103:4), ultimately even from death. Under extreme pressure to expect the opposite, Job looked forward, following death, to personal vindication in a future bodily state in the direct presence of God: ‘I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold’ (Job 19:25-27).

Overall, the bigger picture in the Old Testament is that death simply cannot undo the reality of communion with God, and death cannot break the promise to God’s people of life in God’s presence. The staggering might and competency of God is enough: ‘The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up’ (1 Sam 2:6). How this may be possible, how it will be achieved is unknown, but luminous confidence that it will be so is persuasive and sure because it depends on nothing besides the omnipotent Creator’s goodness, wisdom, ability, and palpably superior power over death and despite it. Death marks the ‘return’ of the human spirit to an ‘eternal home’ with God (Eccl 12:5, 7).

According to the Hebrew Scriptures, then, faithful defiance and hope in the face of death rests on the fundamental conviction that God can intervene and deliver his people whatever happens. When one looks at what the above texts say, and takes their meaning and significance as determined in light of the whole biblical canon, they clearly and powerfully articulate vivid and obvious expectation of future personal bodily resurrection.

Enoch, Abraham, and Elijah – Raising and Rapture

The New Testament indicates that, at least as early as Abraham, God’s people had grasped the fact that God possessed both the ability and (probably) the intention to raise the dead (Heb 11:19). Of the patriarchs, Luther reckoned,

‘The doctrine of the resurrection was implanted in their hearts, because they endure not only in death but also beyond and after death. … Thus faith in the resurrection of the dead shone forth also in the Old Testament, although less copiously than in the New. Christ says, “God is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Matt. 22:32). Therefore, all the fathers who hoped in God undoubtedly also believed in the resurrection of the dead.’⁵¹

If Enoch’s case of not experiencing physical death is viewed with sufficient seriousness (Gen 5:24), it was understood earlier even than Abraham, that walking by faith with God was pleasing to God and could result in being somehow removed by God, bodily, from the earth to be with him. ‘By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him’ (Heb 11:5). It is quite legitimate to translate the term used for ‘took him’ (lāqah) in Gen 5:24 (of Enoch) and 2 Kings 2:3, 5 (of Elijah) as ‘to rapture,’ that is, ‘being seized and carried off.’.⁵² This being so, Enoch and Elijah were physically transported by God into immediate bliss.

The Servant of the Lord

Hope of ultimate deliverance into life in God’s presence beyond suffering and death is personally embodied by the Servant of the Lord (Isa 53:9-12). The Servant gathers the promises of a Saviour-Prophet like Moses who would spearhead a new Exodus (Deut 18:15), and a Shepherd Leader similar to King David (Ezek 34:23-24; 37:24-25). He incorporates them into his own person as the ultimate Servant, who will be restored from anguish, grief, and sin-bearing death to full life, satisfaction, and prosperity with God. Following his soul (nepeš) making a guilt-offering, the Servant’s resurrection is predicted: ‘he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days’ (Isa 53:10). The expression to ‘lengthen/prolong one’s days’ appears in various forms more than 20 times in the Old Testament, always speaking of ‘the prolongation of earthly life’ (Deut 4:40 etc). Only here (and possibly in Psalm 23:6) does it refer to a person who died, and so tell of the Servant’s life continuing after death ‘in reality and effectiveness.’⁵³

Ultimate Justice Outlasts Death

A further perspective emerges in relation to justice. Bruce Waltke points out that whilst we are assured that justice will be done (Prov 3:31-35; 16:4-5), given the death of the innocent (Prov 1:10-19) for this to be so there must be salvation from death and deliverance from the grave ‘in a future that lies beyond their clinical deaths.’ Ultimately, justice demands future blessing (for the godly and righteous) and future punishment (for the ungodly and wicked) that outlasts death.⁵⁴ Final, lasting, justice lies ‘in some realm beyond the evidence of human experience.’ ‘Humanity’s intuitive notion of justice demands the doctrine’⁵⁵ that a life lived for and ruled by God results in personal immortality. ‘The path of the righteous is life, and in its pathway there is no death’ (Prov 12:28). ‘But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me’ (Psa 49:15). Death cannot speak the final word, for ‘then death is god and swallows up the path of life. But the Bible teaches that death will be swallowed up by life from the dead (cf. Gen 4:24; 2 Ki 2:1; Psa 49:15; 73:23; Isa 14:13-15).’⁵⁶

‘In Proverbs 12:28 the righteous are rewarded with “immortality” (al māwet). Proverbs 14:32 says, “Even in death the righteous seek a refuge in God”, and 23:17-18 asserts that their future hope will not be disappointed, in contrast to the wicked who have no future hope (Prov 11:17a; 12:28; 24-19-20). Proverbs teaches immortality, not resurrection, unlike Job 19:25-27; Psa 49:15 (cf. 49:8); 73:23-24; Isa 14:13-15; and Daniel 12:2 … But Proverbs 15:24 implies an ascending upward from the grave below. Taken at face value, the movement from “below,” which is used in connection with the grave (š ^{e )}ôl) to its antithesis “upward,” fits the teaching that the godly terminate their journey in the presence of God himself … Salvation from the grave is more than being spared an untimely death; otherwise “the path of life” is finally swallowed up by death. Death is not God and does not have the last word in … the Bible.’⁵⁷

The reward of godliness is a quality and quantity of life, health, prosperity, and social acclaim under God’s blessing and in his presence of a kind that death cannot spoil. ‘Ultimate justice demands that outcome.’⁵⁸

By the Time of Jesus, Individual Resurrection was Widely Anticipated

Although it is true that Judaism did not anticipate any resurrection in history, and that there is ‘nothing comparable to the resurrection of Jesus anywhere in Jewish literature,’⁵⁹ by the time of Jesus most Jews envisaged a general resurrection of all people ‘on the last day’ (John 5:29; 11:24), i.e., at the end of history. Whilst the Sadducees denied it, the Pharisees, for all their faults, upheld ‘the hope and the resurrection of the dead’ (Acts 23:6-8). In disagreement with the Sadducees’ cynicism, Jesus expressed his own surety concerning the resurrection of the dead by the power of God:

‘When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong’ (Mark 12:25-27, citing Exod 3:6).

Luke’s account (20:34-35) reports Jesus’ expression of an individual afterlife by contrasting people ‘of this age’ with ‘those considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection of the dead.’ Jesus assumed that a person’s everlasting future is bound into the nature of their relation to God, ‘for all live to him’ (Luke 20:38). He ‘argued for immortality from experience of God and assumed this involved resurrection.’⁶⁰ Moreover, Jesus’ conversation with the young man of wealth (Matt 19:16; Mark 10:17, 30; and Luke 18:18) about entering ‘eternal life’ similarly assumes both a quality of life equal to the kingdom of God and a quantity and length of life after death.

Resurrection to judgment is assumed in Jesus’ warnings about hell (‘Gehenna,’ Matt 10:28; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5), in his teaching about ultimate rewards and final punishments (Matt 12:35-37; 13:24-30, 36-43; 24:40-51; 25:30-46; Luke 12:41-46; 17:34-37), and in his words about the great reversal ‘at the resurrection of the righteous’ (Luke 14:7-14). The parable of the rich man and Lazarus likewise rests on resurrection themes (Luke 16:19-31).

The Astonishing Circumstances of Jesus’ Teaching About Resurrection

Christ’s teaching about resurrection took place in a broader context of his other teachings and astonishing actions which gave it great credibility. The circumstances were these:

(1) His many and varied stupendous public acts of power, i.e., widespread healings, deliverance from demons, and miracles of nature (changing the weather, feeding vast crowds).

(2) His power over life and death being such as to cause several dead persons (including at least one child) to immediately return to life (Jairus’ daughter, Mark 5:21-43; a widow’s son, Luke 7:11-17; Lazarus, John 11:1-44).

These two elements were summarised by Christ himself as he replied to messengers sent by John the Baptiser enquiring about his messiahship: ‘Jesus answered them, “Go tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them’ (Matt 11:5). The point is that Christ’s miraculous acts of power upon the human body

‘prove the fact of its resurrection. “The same power that could say, Arise, take up your bed and walk, could say to the dead body, Come forth. If on earth Christ healed the sickness of the flesh and made the body whole, much more will he do this is in the resurrection, so that the flesh shall rise perfect and entire.”’⁶¹

(3) Jesus’ teaching about the general resurrection of all people was accompanied and reinforced by direct predictions of vindication by his own personal resurrection from the dead ‘after three days’ (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; cf. Hos 6:2 and Gen 22:4; 42:17-18; Isa 2:16; Jon 2:1).

(4) Jesus’ transfiguration into stunning heavenly glory on the mountaintop was explicitly linked to resurrection by the appearance of Moses and Elijah, two persons who had died at different points many hundreds of years previously (Matt 17:1-13). It is significant also that at the time of his transfiguration Jesus foretells his resurrection as he forbade his disciples’ speaking of it ‘until the Son of Man has risen from the dead’ (Mark 9:9).

(5) Jesus’ exaltation (Mark 12:10-11) in the kingdom of God (Mark 14:25) as well as his ‘coming in clouds with great power’ (Mark 13:26; 14:62) likewise assume his resurrection, as does his explicit prediction ‘after I have arisen I will go before you into Galilee’ (Mark 14:28).

To summarize: all of Jesus’ teaching and miracles in advance of his resurrection fall ‘within the orbit of [his actual] resurrection … belonging to the creative and recreative activity of God,’ and pointing directly to his resurrection by way of anticipation beforehand.⁶²

5. THE NATURE OF JESUS’ RESURRECTION

A New Kind of Historical Event

The resurrection of Jesus is not an abstract idea or theory, but a real, bodily, historical, datable event. At the time that it occurred its reality was, as we shall see, widely witnessed, publicly visible, and objectively verifiable (1 Cor 15:5-8, 21). But the historicity of the resurrection is unique as it connects and integrates supernatural faith with definite datable history. That is not to suggest that we can with certainty name the date of Christ’s resurrection, though some have tried. (Gerald Bray, for example, proposes a probable date as Sunday, 5^th April, A.D. 33.⁶³) But the point is that Christ’s resurrection is in principle datable by reference to the whole complex of other historical events within which it occurred and in relation to the whole range of other historical individuals with whom its occurrence was connected and coordinated.⁶⁴

This does not mean that the resurrection of Jesus is merely a fact belonging only to the historical past. It is unique, a singularity that determines and now reshapes all of creation. Although it happened as an event completed in time, because it bears a relation to the ongoing eternal future, resurrection releases a new reality that ‘cannot, by its nature, cease to be.’⁶⁵ The resurrection of Christ was hardly an ordinary historical occurrence, but it was

‘a new kind of historical happening which instead of tumbling down into the grave and oblivion rises out of the death of what is past into continuing being and reality. … He is not dead but alive, more real than any of us. … He lives on in the present as real live continuous happening, encountering us here and now in the present and waiting for us in the future.’⁶⁶

A comparison with the other resurrections we have observed from the Biblical text points to its singular character. The people whom Jesus had raised from the dead, like Lazarus, eventually died. But this was not so with Jesus Christ himself, who ascended to heaven and now at the right of the Father continues to be our mediator, and prays for us (Heb 7:25). The risen Christ has a continuing living presence, and a permanent universal future. The risen Jesus in fact dwells alive in his people by his Spirit (Rom 8:11). Christ’s resurrection ‘is the only historical event that does not suffer from decay and is not threatened by annihilation and illusion.’⁶⁷

Firstborn in Every Possible Regard

By virtue of being the ‘first to rise from the dead’ (Acts 26:23) and the ‘firstborn of the dead’ (Rev 1:5), Jesus Christ is reckoned ‘the firstborn’ in every possible regard, ‘among many brothers,’ and ‘of all creation,’ (Rom 8:29; Col 1:15; cf. 1 Cor 15:20; Col 1:18). But regarding resurrection, Christ is firstborn in two specific senses: (1) in terms of his priority in time, and (2) in terms of his pre-eminence, being first in privilege and rank, as the one who has personally defeated death.⁶⁸

Christ’s priority in the resurrection of the dead is directly linked with his unchallenged position as ‘ruler of the kings of the earth’ (Rev 1:5). Christ is both the first in history to be raised from the dead and the first in power, privilege, rank, and sovereignty, with authority and influence more than sufficient to subjugate death forever. Not only so, but having died and been raised, Christ lives forevermore holding ‘the keys of death and Hades’ (Rev 1:18). He lives for all eternity, and he lives as Lord for all eternity exactly as the God-man, i.e., the one and only Person in whom full unqualified true Divinity and full bodily humanity are forever united.

The First Stage of Christ’s Obvious Exaltation

Jesus’s death was the conclusion of his descent by which he ‘came down from heaven’ (John 6:41, 51, 58), taking a series of steps through incarnation, birth, ministry, death, and burial. Following his death Jesus’ commenced his ascent to the Father (John 20:17), proceeding by steps to take up his rightful position of ultimate exaltation, honour, and authority as Messiah at the right hand of God (Psa 110:1; Mark 12:36; Acts 2:34; Heb 1:13; 1 Pet 3:22). In complete and total terms, the state of Christ’s exaltation involves (1) his resurrection from the dead, (2) his ascension into heaven, (3) his enthronement and heavenly reign at the right hand of the Father, (4) his outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon his people, (5) his continual intercessory prayer to the Father on our behalf, and (6) his second coming in glory.

Regarding Christ’s humiliation and exaltation, a distinction may be drawn between Christ’s Divine and human natures. Here is Wilhelmus á Brakel:

‘Since Christ, being a Divine Person, did not suffer according to his Divine nature, exaltation as such did not occur according to his Divine nature. In this nature he remained the Most High, the most glorious One, and the unchangeable One. The Divine nature, however, which was generally concealed in the state of his humiliation, manifested itself very clearly in his exaltation. He is nevertheless exalted according to his human nature.’⁶⁹

It is true that, seen through the eye of faith, Christ’s earthly career displayed a somewhat mixed character, one of side-by-side ‘exaltation in humiliation,’⁷⁰ and it is also true that similar servant-hearted sacrificial humility continues to characterise Christ’s ongoing eternal state of total authority and power over the whole cosmos (John 1:14; 12:23-33; Rev 5:5-6). His crucifixion was a type of exaltation in which the Son of Man was ‘lifted up’ (Jn 3:14; 8:28; 12:32-33). Christ triumphed in his humiliation and by his humiliation. The eternal kingdom of God is, after all, established through the atonement of Christ, and self-giving costly service of and responsibility for others in love is permanently characteristic of God’s everlasting authority and power. Calvin’s comment on Colossians 2:16 captures the matter well:

‘For although in the cross there is nothing but curse, it was, nevertheless, swallowed up by the power of God in such a way, that it has put on, as it were a new nature. For there is no tribunal so magnificent, no throne so stately, no show of triumph so distinguished, no chariot so elevated, as is the gibbet on which Christ has subdued death and the devil, the prince of death; nay more, has utterly trodden them under his feet.’⁷¹

His death was victorious, but the victory was a hidden victory. So, nevertheless, the resurrection of Christ from the dead marks the first stage of his manifest state of cosmic exaltation and is, therefore, the transition point from his obvious humiliation in substitutionary suffering and death to his unmistakable elevation in heavenly glory.

‘Perhaps it is a transition from exalted humiliation to humble exaltation, but it is a transition nonetheless. The resurrected Christ is no longer “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3), will never offer himself as a sacrifice again (Heb 9:26), and his majesty is no longer veiled (Rev 1:10-18). The eternal Son of God who is also the Lamb slain before creation will forever be worshipped as the slain Lamb reigning with God over the new creation.’⁷²

Resurrection, then, began the process of Christ’s exaltation as the God-man, his going ‘into heaven and [sitting] at the right hand of God with angels, authorities and powers having been subjected to him’ (1 Pet 3:21-22). This is what the resurrection meant for the person of Jesus. Having died and being risen meant that he would never die again but would remain obviously and everlastingly alive, openly acknowledged as Son of God, Messiah, and Saviour, dwelling and reigning among God’s people as Prince and King of God’s kingdom forever (Ezek 37:25; John 12:34). It marked ‘the entrance to an entirely new state of life, the beginning of an ever-progressive exaltation’⁷³ for the one and only Person, God the Son, in whom Divine and human natures are forever united.

The Quickening of Christ’s Corpse by God’s Almighty Power

The mechanics of Christ’s resurrection are not described or explained. The reports focus on the fact and circumstances rather than the method. But because his grave was empty the resurrection event itself evidently involved the reviving and enlivening of his dead body. The identical original body that stopped working on the cross and had been committed to the grave was quickened, creatively renewed, regenerated, and reanimated. His corpse was vivified. New life came into it, and he arose from the tomb.

The relevant New Testament vocabulary suggests the nature of the occurrence in the following terms: anabiōskomai, anazaō, come to life again, return to life; anastasis, exanastasis, resurrection; anhistēmi, to make to stand up again, raise, awaken, rouse from lying down or from sleep; egeirō, wake, rouse, raise up, stimulate, stir up, get up, stand up; egersis, awakening, resurrection. The two most important words are anhistēmi and egeiro, and ‘both mean to lift or raise up.’⁷⁴

Christ’s resurrection was accompanied by a great earthquake and the descent of an angel who rolled away the tombstone and sat on it (Matt 28:1-2). The earthquake may have indicated both Christ’s deity and God’s wrath against those who had rejected him. The practical involvement of an angel indicated the magnitude, holiness, joy, and triumph of the occurrence.⁷⁵ Certainly, the terrified reaction of those guarding the tomb captures the sense of overwhelming Divine force (Matt 28:4). But these monumental things did not accomplish his resurrection, and his resurrection did not depend upon them. The earthquake and removal of the stone, rather, took place to reveal that Christ’s body was no longer inside in the tomb. These interventions were designed to draw attention to Christ’s departure from the grave and to encourage belief that this was really the case. The goal of angel and earthquake was that the women (and the guards) who witnessed these happenings ‘might be thoroughly aroused and awakened to the resurrection.’⁷⁶ Earthquake and angel indicated above all the direct intervention of God and the victorious power of God to overcome any obstacle. The earthquake marking Christ’s resurrection also ‘establishes continuity with the crucifixion’ (Matt 27:51).⁷⁷ To the question, ‘how was Jesus raised from death?,’ comes the simple and straightforward answer, ‘according to the working of his great might’ (Eph 1:20), by the boundless power of God (Phil 3:10, 21). ‘God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it’ (Acts 22:4). The performance of power in the resurrection of Christ from the grave is sheer omnipotent energy deployed against opposing enemy powers, namely death, decay, and the devil (Heb 2:14). As such the resurrection of Jesus was an unparalleled act of God.

The Reversal of Human Death and the Perfection of Human Life

With the resurrection of Jesus, the nature of resurrection itself was clarified. Raised from the dead, Jesus entered the real but (to us) invisible realm that is immediately present to God and the angels. This was unprecedented. Moses and Elijah’s glorified presence together at the transfiguration of Christ anticipated and expressed it (Matt 17:3-4), but the resurrection of Christ began to spell out in detail a new glorified and perfected state of human being. With the resurrection, a new immortal and eternal type of physical human life is established, and its precise nature and condition begins to be exhibited in and through the state and substance of the risen Son of God.

(It is worth mention here, even briefly, that the nature of the perfection of human life in Christ is communion, a loving fellowship of prayer and service to God the Father on behalf of Christ’s brothers and sisters, the family of God. We are, moreover, drawn up into that recreative communion in our union with Christ and consequent, associated, loving fellowship of service to and for each other. That is what it is to be truly and perfectly human.)

The Gospels and Acts present Jesus’ risen physical form as resurrected, not resuscitated. Jesus did not (as Jairus’ daughter, Lazarus, and others) return to bodily life that remained mortal, still subject to death and decay. Dead persons revived by Christ during his public ministry, those brought back from death by Elijah and Elisha, those raised at the moment of Jesus’ death (Matt 27:52-53), as well as those raised by prayers of apostles (Tabitha, Acts 9:36-43; Eutychus, Acts 20:7-12), ‘were not raised up for glory and immortality, but only for another death.’⁷⁸ Those individuals died twice. Their restoration was temporary. They returned to this life in an unchanged state. Lazarus and the others returned to regular corruptible bodily life, subject like everyone else (once again) to temptation, sin, suffering, ill-health, aging, physical debilitation, mental deterioration, bewilderment, pain, distress, the gradual loss of grip upon reality and, finally, death. They were raised to eventually die again.

When he rose, however, Christ did not resume his previous condition of life. He did not return to life to take up again the same type of existence that he known prior to death. He returned to life in a profoundly changed form. In fact, there is a text that suggests that Christ’s resurrected body could appear in different forms or, literally, at least ‘another form’ (etera morphē) (Mark 16:12). ‘Jesus was raised in a real body that had new, spiritual qualities.’⁷⁹

Resuscitation (as the case of Lazarus and the others showed) involves a single process, the reversal of death. It was a ‘temporary revitalization of a single individual, yet that one would be destined to die again.’⁸⁰ It prefigured and pointed to resurrection, although it was not itself resurrection. Resurrection was that which would occur at the end, introducing an endless kind of living, a situation beyond the reach of death, continuing onward into an eternal future.

Resurrection, then, involves two processes: the defeat of death and the giving of new life. To resurrect a person is, firstly, to undo their death and, secondly, to override it by revising and transforming the fundamental nature of their whole bodily-spiritual life. To resurrect a person is to produce a new version of them, to launch a new edition of them, to release a whole new model of them. Resurrection ‘is the healing, lifting up and projection of human being into a new order of things in which its existence before God is finally made good.’⁸¹

A Permanent Reunion of Body and Soul

Bodily resurrection and spiritual resurrection are bound up with one another, for human beings are what they are as living embodied souls (the traditional translation of nepeš, Gen 2:7), that is, souls and bodies. ‘Everything depends on the resurrection of the body, otherwise all we have is a Ghost for a Saviour.’⁸² Spiritual resurrection alone, then, ‘would be only half of a victory – that is, no victory at all, but a defeat,’⁸³ for the vital physical aspect of the human person would have remained dead. If the human body was permanently done away with by death, then half the human person would have been permanently destroyed, and ‘Satan would have remained conqueror in a large area.’⁸⁴

The bodily and physical nature of Christ’s resurrection from the dead displayed his power over sin and put on public view ‘his spiritual power in the world of matter.’⁸⁵ The resurrection of Christ’s body (the material element of his human person) provides evidence for the continuation of Christ’s human soul (the non-material element of his human person). It was ‘the visible restoration of that outward unity of body and soul.’⁸⁶ In fact, we could not have any sense of spiritual resurrection – ‘the resurrection of an invisible soul’ – other than by the bodily resurrection.⁸⁷ ‘[A]ccording to our estimate of the truth, those examples of dead persons who were raised by the Lord were indeed a proof of the resurrection both of the flesh and of the soul – a proof, in fact, that this gift was to be denied to neither substance.’⁸⁸ Christ’s resurrection involved the permanent restoration and reunion of ‘the organic bond between [his] body and soul.’⁸⁹ It was the physical substance of a material resurrection which made spiritual resurrection visible and tangible.

In ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, although the human soul was believed to be eternal, there was no expectation for the continuation of human bodily existence after death. Drawing from the Old Testament Scriptures, the New Testament accounts develop a view of individual resurrection as a bodily, physical, and spiritual reality. The bodily resurrection of Christ, then, promises and represents the complete salvation and deliverance from sin, death, and judgment, of a human individual as a whole person, body and soul. Resurrection entails a thorough-going adaptation and redevelopment of a person’s entire constitution. It is the comprehensive perfection of a person’s entire physical and spiritual nature, soul and body.⁹⁰

Death itself is the final tearing apart of soul and body, but in a world of sin and wrath the process of death is at work in both body and soul long before death’s final act. By resurrection, death’s abolition involves then, firstly, a perfecting of the human soul, wherein all traces of sin and every flaw and weakness is taken away, so that from the deepest level of a person’s being they may ‘live to God in the fullest sense of the word.’⁹¹ Secondly, the abolition of death consists in the perfecting of the human body, wherein every tendency to disintegration or dissolution is absent together with all proneness to disturbance, pain, anguish, or discord, and in which everything functions harmoniously and to its highest capacity and potential.

The detailed nature of the resurrection body is described four ways, being said to be imperishable, glorious, powerful, and spiritual (1 Cor 15:42-44). On this basis, the post-resurrection body may be characterised in terms of plasticity (completely subject to the Spirit, 1 Cor 15:44), agility (overflowing in energy and movement, 1 Cor 15:43), impassibility (incapable of pain and suffering, 1 Cor 15:42, 52), and luminosity (shining like the sun, Matt 13:43).⁹² These elements of resurrection – the simultaneous perfection of soul and body – amount to the re-creation of the person in the emergence of ‘a new creature, for whom everything old is past and a new law of life is begun.⁹³

The Creative Renewal of Christ’s Own Original Body

Jesus’ resurrection was his full restoration to material bodily human life. His enlivening in the tomb entailed the creative renewal of his own original body. Once resurrected, the life Christ began to live, now lives, and always will live in heaven at the right of God, resulted from the recreation, the creative transformation, of his own original body. Based on the resurrected nature of Jesus, resurrection came to be understood, essentially and necessarily, as a physical, material, and bodily kind of existence. It was Christ’s actual flesh that was resurrected, and his resurrection body was made up of flesh, albeit a form of flesh which had been extensively upgraded from the original version.⁹⁴ The presentation of the risen Christ’s bodily capacities contained in the Gospel accounts support a consummate and total physical transformation.

Resurrection is to ‘enliven anew.’⁹⁵ It is to overhaul and upgrade the physical aspect of human life to hyperphysical and superphysical dimensions. This is essentially the Apostle Paul’s point about the change-over from a ‘natural body’ (sōma psychikon) to a ‘spiritual body’ (sōma pneumatikon) (1 Cor 15:35-50). That the resurrected body is ‘spiritual’ does not mean that it is not composed of created matter, as are our present bodies. Paul is not saying that our resurrected bodies are a refined form of ghost-like existence. In 1 Cor 15:35-50, by ‘spiritual’ Paul means ‘immortal’, ‘incorruptible’. That is, our bodies will no longer be subject to decay, deterioration, let alone sinful desires that make us enemies of God and each other.⁹⁶ ‘An immaterial body is a contradiction in terms; a spiritual body is a possible concept.’⁹⁷ It is not physicality or bodility that is at issue here, for ‘natural’ and ‘spiritual’ human conditions are both physical and bodily. But one is under the condition of sin and is superseded by the other which is not.

Three Features of Christ’s Resurrection Body

So, what kind of body was the resurrection body of Jesus? Whilst his body was clearly his, recognizable and capable of being touched, felt, examined, held, and even clasped (Matt 28:9; John 20:27), clearly ‘Christ left a very different impression upon people after his resurrection than he did before. Those who saw him were startled and afraid, and threw themselves down before him, and worshipped him. He appeared in another form than that which he had before manifested (Mark 16:12).’⁹⁸ He was not always recognizable, he appeared and disappeared, moved considerable distances, even passing through locked doors (Luke 24:31, 36; John 20:15, 19; 21:7).

Christ’s resurrected body exhibited three main features.

(1) Immortality

At his resurrection, Christ was made physically alive again in a way which was deathless and undying. His ‘old sinless nature, nevertheless ravaged by the consequences of sin in which death had hitherto reign, is replaced by a nature in which immortal life reigns.’⁹⁹ Once raised from death, Jesus was physically and bodily alive in an immortal and physically incorruptible manner. He now had a new non-dying variety of bodily life and existence. For him to be resurrected meant that he would and could ‘no more … return to corruption’ (Acts 13:34). ‘Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him (Rom 6:9; cf. 8:34).

In this way, the resurrection of Christ was a definitive reversal of his death, for it involved the transformation of his whole human nature – body and spirit, outward and inward, despite death and after death – into an indestructible state of human life (Heb 7:16), immune from death, and established alive for all eternity. ‘That he who has died has been raised again and ever lives in the completeness of his humanity is the fundamental fact in the revelation of the Christian doctrine of immortality.’¹⁰⁰ Only God possesses immortality (athanasia) – deathlessness, indestructibility, incorruptibility – in himself (1 Tim 6:16) The same word, however, appears in 1 Corinthians 15:53-54, describing the resurrected bodies of believers. Resurrection is therefore to reconstruct following death an individual person’s nature, substance, and capacities, and to recondition them so drastically and comprehensively, as to place that person entirely beyond the reach of death and dying.

(2) Superpowers

At this resurrection, Christ received vastly enhanced bodily abilities. Now, the risen Christ could be seen, touched, felt, heard, and talked to. He had flesh and bones, hands and feet, skin, teeth, tongue, ears, arms, hands, chest, legs, eyes, nose, neck, head, appetite, intellect, and will (Luke 24:39-43).¹⁰¹ His personal interaction with others was normal in the sense that it was genuinely material, acting, speaking, eating, drinking, cooking, fire-making, walking, sitting, breakfasting. The risen Christ conducted genuine personal fellowship.

But there is discontinuity and difference, too, for Christ’s physical body was not just revived, but also transformed and perfected in preparation for his ascension. The resurrected Christ was recognizably ‘the same person (continuity of identity), but different in form (contrast)’¹⁰² It seems that Christ’s resurrected body could instantly appear and immediately vanish (Matt 28:9; Luke 24:31, 36). Sometimes his physical appearance was such that for a time he was not recognized by those who knew him well (Luke 24:16; John 20:14). Clearly, his material bodily presence operated on another level, for he had the capacity to pass through locked doors (John 20:19). Christ’s resurrected ‘spiritual body’ was not a body composed of spirit (whatever that might mean!), but a genuinely physical body enjoying new spiritually supercharged physical capacities and powers. His resurrected body belonged ‘to the earth no longer, but to heaven.’¹⁰³

Resurrection is more than reconstitution and repair of the damaged original physical body. Resurrection is a thoroughgoing change of the individual’s organic, material, physical structure, making the whole human organism suitable for life in the eternal Kingdom of God. The person’s body continues but is changed and improved in manners hard to imagine (1 Cor 15:51-52). The resurrected version of a person possesses massively superior bodily capabilities and competencies, fully animated, enlivened, and empowered by God’s Spirit. At various points of Scripture, the hyperphysical potential of supercharged human bodily life is powerfully expressed. Jesus and Peter, for instance, walked across the surface of a lake (Matt 14:29). Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego withstood the heat of a furnace unhurt and even unsinged (Dan 3). Elijah ran faster than Ahab rode in a chariot (1 Ki 18:46). Moses went without food and water for six weeks (Exo 34:28). Resurrection means assuming a super-powered physical and bodily class specifically adapted, suited, and made serviceable to the eternal age of God’s new creation.

(3) Unique Personal Identity

At his resurrection, Christ retained his own identity as a unique individual person. The changes to his body which took place at his resurrection are mind-boggling, yet his resurrected body – immortal and enhanced – remained identified with his exact same original body and person. The resurrection body of Christ was certainly very different, but not altogether different. There was clear and obvious continuity, for it was the same person, Jesus Christ himself, who rose from the grave and presented himself to his followers. Although his resurrected state is not entirely identical with the old, his personal and physical identity is preserved. The old is present in the new, for there was a obvious ‘thread of identity … It is a re-creation of the old, not a destruction of it.’¹⁰⁴ He rose with the same body with which he died, but with the same body in a new form.

That it was him and that it really was his body is reinforced by the fact that his resurrection body still carried within it the physical signs and wounds of his crucifixion. The accounts point out that Christ deliberately showed the injuries on his hands and feet and side to prove beyond doubt that it was really him: ‘it is I myself’ (Luke 24:39-40; John 20:20, 27). Grudem makes an interesting remark about this: ‘In fact, the evidences of the severe beating and disfigurement that Jesus suffered before his crucifixion were probably all healed and only the scars in his hands, feet, and side remained as testimony to his death for us: Jesus was raised “in glory” … not in horrible disfigurement just barely brought back to life.’¹⁰⁵ But the main point is that Christ’s exaltation in his resurrection involved ‘having the very same body in which he suffered, with the essential properties thereof (but without mortality, and other common infirmities belonging to this life), really united to his soul.’¹⁰⁶ The resurrected Christ ‘received immortality in the same flesh that, in the mortal state, he had taken upon himself.’¹⁰⁷ It was ‘the same body Jesus received from Mary [that] was raised, glorified, and transformed.’¹⁰⁸

The preservation of Christ’s unique individual personal identity underscores the goodness and value in God’s creation of individual persons, each unique and unrepeatable instances of bodily human nature and life made in the Divine likeness and image, i.e., after the pattern of unique singular identity exhibited by the Three Divine Persons themselves, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

‘Prior to his resurrection, Christ possessed that same psychical body and in it, moreover, carried around the seed of death, by which it thus received a certain likeness with the fleshly body. In contrast, after his resurrection his human nature shared in the full enlivening of the Spirit, and that not as a bestowed benefit but as its own possession; the Spirit was given to him fully and dwelt in him. Related to that, his body too received an imperturbable, incorruptible life. It was suffused with the power of the Spirit, and thereby the material from which it consisted received a higher quality, so that it can not [sic] longer be called flesh and blood, while not ceasing to be material.’¹⁰⁹

6. RESURRECTION DEPENDS ON OMNIPOTENCE

The Resurrection of Jesus Occupies the Centre of Saving Truth About Him

The resurrection of Christ is an essential matter of faith. Together with his death, Jesus’ resurrection (and, by immediate implication, the death and resurrection of all people) is at the very heart and essence of biblical faith in God, of individual belief and trust in him. Without it, Christian teaching loses its identity and meaning. Proclaiming Christ without his bodily resurrection and the hope of ours that is consequent on it is to evacuate the faith of its essential substance (1 Cor 15:12-13). Following the same pattern of logic as the argument that the sin and death of all human beings results from the sin and death of Adam (1 Cor 15:17-23, 47-9), the gospel of Christ is the gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection as directly linked to the resurrection of the whole human race. The resurrection of Jesus occupies its critical position in biblical teaching not only because of its central place in the structure of truth about him, but because individual confession of and assent to Christ’s resurrection is a basic condition of a person’s own actual salvation (Rom 10:9).

Difficulties with Belief in the Resurrection of Christ and of the Dead

This is not to suggest that the belief that Christ’s maimed and mutilated corpse returned to life again is a belief easily accepted. Nor is it to propose that the related belief that our bodies, having died and decomposed, and then having been destroyed, dissolved, and obliterated, will return to life again, is at one level anything other than difficult for us to comprehend. It is hard to accept partly because it is so far outside routine experience and partly because from our place in history it happened very long ago. Certainly, none of us were there when Jesus’ resurrection took place and regards to the general resurrection of the dead at the end of history, equally certainly, none of us has gotten there yet. The consequence of Christ’s resurrection is hard to overplay, yet it is that very point at which teaching about Jesus is most often opposed and thought ridiculous (Acts 17:18, 30-32).

But the difficulty of believing in Christ’s and in our own individual bodily resurrection stems also from the obvious power of death over every person and (as far as we know) every other material thing existing in space and time. Death appears to us so obviously inexorable (impossible to prevent) and irreparable (impossible to repair). Out of our own resources, there is nothing we can do to ultimately stop it, and nothing can be done to reverse it. The bodily resurrection of individual persons seems to contradict concrete reality so clearly. The process of physical death is extremely grievous, painful, and traumatic, and the decay and disintegration of the body following death is so distressing, disturbing, and repulsive, that the suggestion that the dispersal and disappearance of a corpse may be reversed, restored, and replaced with something much better seems frankly fantastical. ‘Our eyes see that all the world is swept away by death.’¹¹⁰

It is not that expectation and hope of an afterlife is uncommon. Most religions (ancient and contemporary) do expect afterlife in some form, but those religions usually assume the immortality of our non-material self, conceiving resurrection as a disembodied/unbodily continuance of our souls or spirits. The ancient Greeks, for instance, understood immortality to involve the human spirit’s release from the body. Only Judaism, Christianity, and Islam uphold immortality as physical resurrection, the deliverance of the body from sin and corruption.

‘Modern people may prefer immortality of the soul rather than resurrection of the body, not realizing what the traditional resurrection emphasis conserves: the permanence not merely of abstract personality and values but of the individual, with consciousness, relationships, memories, and love, against theories of absorption (“a drop in the eternal ocean of being”), generic survival (“continuing to contribute to ongoing humanity”), or sentimental immortality (“to live in the hearts of those we love is not to die”).’¹¹¹

The distinctively Christian claim concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ is exclusively defined by Christ’s reembodied life after death. But this bodily resurrection of Christ is denied by every worldview other than the Christian one. A general resurrection of the dead is confessed in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but Judaism and Islam deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This means that Christianity’s insistence upon the physical resurrection of Christ for its identity is highly conflictual. Moreover, teaching about the resurrection of all people based on the resurrection of Christ directly contradicts every other philosophical, scientific, and religious perspective. Undoubtedly, teaching about the resurrection of the body conflicts with the most culturally plausible and prestigious beliefs of today and of any day.

Christ’s resurrection is therefore a matter of the most radical distinction and difference. Its substance contradicts ancient and contemporary philosophy and culture, all other world religions, scientific naturalism, and, by definition, it contradicts common experience. The resurrection of Christ as a literal fact is a fundamentally abnormal proposal. It has some claim to be the unique distinguishing conviction of Christianity, yet it is a conviction that sets itself in sure opposition to every other belief system in every single era.

Belief in the Resurrection of Christ Relies Upon Faith in God

Belief in the resurrection of Christ is not, however, a personal and private matter of individual preference. It occurred in the public realm of space and time and matter and history, and the facts comprising its evidence may be established and verified through regular critical procedures and processes of study, investigation, and research. The evidence is (as we shall see) extensive and impressive, but belief in Christ’s resurrection requires a set of broader and more basic convictions about the existence of God and the nature of reality. The issue is this:

‘Our judgment regarding the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus depends not only on examining the individual data (and the related reconstruction of the event) but also on our understanding of reality, of what we regard as possible or impossible prior to any evaluation of the details. In this regard Paul is right that if we do not think the dead can rise in any circumstances, then we cannot regard the resurrection of Jesus as a fact (1 Cor. 15:13), no matter how strong the evidence may be that supports it.’¹¹²

Belief in the resurrection, then, operates according to worldview. Yet faith in the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead is trust in a real event so irregular, so completely without parallel, so momentous, determinative, and far-reaching (particularly regards the general resurrection of all the dead, and a future final Divine judgment) that belief in its truth logically rests upon the more properly basic belief in the infinite power, might, and competency of God as Creator. It requires, in brief, faith in God, and, more particularly, trust in his promises. Mere argument, however strongly evidenced, cannot produce belief in resurrection. Rather, ‘faith is that which completes our argument.’¹¹³

God’s All-Powerful Relation to the World in Action and Revelation

According to Calvin, belief in Jesus’ physical resurrection rests on two ‘helps’: (1) the reality of Christ’s resurrection appearances, and (2) the omnipotence of God.¹¹⁴ Later, we shall consider the resurrection appearances and the broader historicity of the resurrection itself. Here we simply note that the resurrection of Christ could have no natural explanation or human cause. It is inexplicable without relation to God. God is the only one who could raise Christ from the dead. God alone could achieve it, and the omnipotence of God is that reality against which the resurrection of Christ is rightly set and upon which it depends.

God’s relationship to the world that he created is one of action and revelation. In fact, the Creator continually acts to sustain, preserve, direct, govern, and provide for the good of all creatures. Acting this way toward his creation, God shows humanity ‘his eternal power and Divine nature’ and does so generally and universally (Rom 1:19-20). The entire world is the domain of Divine action and revelation. The earth is not at all closed off from its Creator, or beyond the reach of his activity. The world is completely open to God’s intervention, and its regular processes (laws of nature) are adaptable to the Creator’s direct and immediate action whenever he determines. ‘For by him [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and earth … and in him [Christ] all things hold together’ (Col 1:17).

Miracles and Signatures

The Bible reports many extraordinary acts of God in history that interrupt and set aside for a time the laws of nature, laws which God as Creator previously set in place. It refers to these as miracles. The resurrection of Jesus was very obviously a miraculous act of God, and a miraculous act of God without parallel. Its cause was plainly beyond and outside of the normal laws and processes. It was a highly decisive and obvious Divine intervention, a definitive display of the Creator’s unchallenged authority and power. The resurrection exhibited the very essence of miracle. It was a mega-miracle, a super-miracle. Like other miracles reported in Scripture, Christ’s resurrection indicated clearly and vividly that God is active in the world which he created, executing salvation and judgment. More specifically, the resurrection was as strong and unambiguous an endorsement as might be imagined regarding the full unqualified Deity of Christ’s identity and person. The resurrection was ‘God’s authenticating signature’ upon the life and work of Jesus Christ.¹¹⁵

The Infinite Power of God Means That He Can Do Whatever He Likes

Jesus said that doubt about or denial of any resurrection results from ignorance about God’s revelation and omnipotence. He told detractors of the resurrection that ‘the reason you are wrong [is] because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God’ (Mark 12:24).

Only an Almighty and omnipotent God could possibly possess competency, energy, and resources adequate to accomplish such a thing as raising the dead. Omnipotence itself is God’s infinite power, placing him in a position of unchallenged and supreme influence toward creation. Omnipotence means that God is perfectly able to do whatever he wants to do, i.e., to achieve that which is consistent with his character and purpose. He can execute his will without difficulty or inability of any kind. Omnipotence means that God knows no limits, brooks no opponents, fears no threats, suffers no frustrations.

In contrast to the relative impotence of human beings, God’s power is exercised decisively at all points of history. Whatever is required can be achieved. Nothing is too hard for God (Gen 18:14; Jer 32:17). Everything that is logically possible is possible for God. Nothing that is logically possible and that accords with God’s character and nature is impossible for God (Matt 19:26). His plans are never at risk. His purposes will, of necessity, be accomplished. The omnipotence of God means that he definitely has what it takes. He possesses all the power and influence to make an impact and cause things to happen so that whatever he wills and wishes is duly accomplished. In terms of potency, energy, force, and ability, the Lord God Almighty operates without external restrictions, and has the capacity to achieve ‘whatever pleases him’ (Psa 115:3).

Laws of nature are – from God’s perspective – not ultimates but contingents. Everything that exists does so by virtue of God’s ‘causal power.’¹¹⁶ Regularities may be overridden by the One who instituted and regulated them in the first place. What does happen and what can happen is determined by an Almighty Creator. Here is Jeremiah: ‘Ah, LORD God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you’ (Jer 32:17). Behind the visible landscape of the cosmos, beneath its surface, lies ‘the full force of Divine omnipotence,’ and ‘the full force of Divine omnipotence resides in the eternal and infinite nature of God.’¹¹⁷ The reality is that God’s power is infinite. He is Almighty, all-powerful. His power is without limit besides himself. He is, as an early hymn phrased it, ‘the Father of an infinite majesty.’¹¹⁸

Not only is God’s power such that he has the capacity to create all things out of nothing, God’s power is also totally independent of creation. It is not tied to or dependent on anything outside of or other than himself. God’s character, nature, and decisions are the only limits. Because the power of God is independent of his creation, what God has made and that which he owns places no curbs or restrictions upon what he can do should he decide to.

In addition, God does nothing by his power which violates his nature, flies in the face of his character, or contradicts any other quality of his nature. God’s power operates only in a fashion that complements the other attributes of his character and that is consistent with the broader substance of his perfections.¹¹⁹ God is good, and, in his actions and intentions and relationships, is good all the time. Usually, in those actions the things that occur follow a given pattern. But occasionally and extraordinarily the Creator may elect to ‘put his signature’ on something directly and unmistakably.¹²⁰

Creation and Resurrection Are Similarly Viable for God

In Scripture, resurrection and the creation of the universe out of nothing are linked. God ‘gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist’ (Rom 4:17). Resurrection and creation, that is, are signature events. Both are inexplicable without the action of God. They are comparable in the sense that only God could bring about such things – creation out nothing and recreation following death. Here is Edwards:

‘a resurrection must be God’s own work and his only … no creature can bring body and soul from nothing again. Therefore whatever may be supposed of other miracles, of the possibility of their being performed by creatures, we know of this that it cannot. I can think of no other miracle whatever that would be so full an evidence and manifestation of the finger of God.’¹²¹

Regarding resurrection’s reality, the issue is then like this: can we conceive of and consider a God sufficiently powerful and competent as to produce the world and entire universe as we know it and everything living in it wholly from nothing? If we can, and deem it thinkable for God to generate the cosmos and its inhabitants from absolutely nothing, if we reckon that it lies within the bounds of possibility for God to bring things which do not exist into being by deciding to do so, then there is no sufficient reason not to believe and every reason to believe that God possesses power and ability of such magnitude as to outdo death itself. Creation and resurrection are comparatively feasible, similarly likely, equally probable and viable. ‘Resurrection is no less possible than creation. … When compared to the miracle of creation, resurrection does not look so implausible. … Both … are finally a matter of God speaking a word.’¹²²

Belief in God with power to become maker of heaven and earth entails belief in God with power over death. The Apostle Peter drew this connection, announcing that it was ‘the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead’ (Acts 3:16). A direct line between creation and resurrection is drawn also in a passage where the Apostle Paul identifies the Son as (1) ‘the firstborn of all creation’, the one by whom ‘all things were created,’ he in whom ‘all things hold together, and also (2) ‘the beginning, the firstborn from the dead’ (Col 1:15-18).

The broader point is that the Creator’s omnipotence operates beyond the expectations of creatures. ‘They have but a poor knowledge of God,’ reckoned Tertullian, ‘who suppose Him to be only capable of doing what comes within the compass of their own thoughts.’¹²³ He is ‘able to do far more abundantly’ than we can conceive (Eph 3:20).

Raising the dead may, moreover, be a smaller matter than creating the cosmos. Some have argued thus: ‘Resurrection, though miraculous, is not the creation of a body ex nihilo [out of nothing].’¹²⁴ ‘Respecting the probability of a resurrection of the body … it is no more strange that the human body should exist a second time than that it has existed the first time. … The omnipotence that originated the body can of course reoriginate it.’¹²⁵ Here again, brilliantly, is Tertullian:

‘For if God produced all things whatever out of nothing, he will be able to draw forth from nothing even the flesh which had fallen into nothing; or if he moulded other things out of matter, he will be able to call forth the flesh too from something else, into whatever abyss it may have been engulfed. And surely he is most competent to re-create who created, inasmuch as it is a far greater work to have produced than reproduced, to have imparted a beginning, than to have maintained a continuance. On this principle, you may be sure that the restoration of the flesh is easier than the first formation.’¹²⁶

Resurrection is According to the Almighty Power of God

Continuing the theme of God’s limitless power, Scripture deals in considerable detail with the nature of Christ’s resurrection body and its relation to the bodies with which the faithful dead will rise (1 Cor 15:35-53). The question is posed by Paul, ‘With what kind of body do they come?’ (v. 35). His response is that there is not just one type but many types of physical nature, for ‘not all flesh is the same’ (v. 39). The physical properties of each element in the material creation are especially suited to their own particular environment. At the resurrection, the bodies of believers ‘shall all be changed’ (1 Cor 15:51), i.e., adapted, redesigned, modified, adjusted, reconstructed, and made fit for purpose within the new conditions of creation. Without any loss of personal identity, the ‘natural body’ is left behind in favour of an upgraded new counterpart, a ‘spiritual body’ (1 Cor 15:44), ideally fashioned to meet the requirements of life with God in the perfect world. So, firstly, there is a relatively straightforward assertion that the bodies of resurrected believers will be like the glorified body of Christ after his resurrection, and secondly, there is the question of mechanics, i.e., how this is to be achieved. The text suggests, quite simply, that the means of bodily resurrection is the omnipotent power of God. In another place, the Apostle Paul links these things together in a tremendous summary, saying that ‘the Lord Jesus Christ … will transform our lowly body [literally, ‘the body of our humiliation’] to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself’ (Phil 3:20-21).

Resurrection is No Problem for Him Who Renewed Nature

Gregory of Nyssa analysed this matter in a fairly speculative but nonetheless fascinating discussion about how, in the resurrection of the dead at the end of history, each individual soul will recognize its own particular body. Gregory believed that God has designed each human soul in such a way that it bears an imprint and impression of its human body which remains even after death. In other words, God has given each soul and body an appearance which is mutually attractive to one another, and which remains in play through death and the ‘dissolution of the body into its components.’¹²⁷ At the resurrection of the dead, Gregory thought, a person’s soul and body will be re-united at God’s command, and the body’s dispersed particles and elements will re-integrate and come back together like quicksilver [mercury].

The point is that if Almighty God wants to bring the souls of believers back into contact with all the scattered parts of their original bodies, to make souls and bodies live again united forever, and if God chooses to do this in each individual person’s own case, then that is no problem, for in this matter (as in any matter in accordance with wisdom and goodness) God is without any obstruction.

Everything rests on the given power of God. We need not measure the capacity of God’s power ‘by the compass of our own.’ Simply because something ‘is beyond our capacity’ does not mean that it is impossible for God.¹²⁸ Everything hangs on the Creator’s purpose and power. Everything logically possible, sensible, and beneficial, God can do. Nothing logically possible, that conforms with God’s perfect goodness, will, and purpose, is impossible for God. God is infinitely able, i.e., omnipotent, ‘he can do anything the description of which is not self-contradictory.’¹²⁹ Bodily resurrection, Gregory reminds us, ‘will present no difficulty for him who renewed nature.’¹³⁰ ‘Essentially, Christians believe,’ because it is what Scripture teaches, ‘that he who called humans into being and into fellowship with himself can sustain all persons under eternal conditions, in complete and enriched humanity, in such bodily requirements as eternal life requires.’¹³¹ That is, our resurrected bodies will perfectly serve our life of love and fellowship with each other and our God. We will look and behold in each other the good work of God, and as brothers and sisters of the Last Adam and children of God, love each other, but no longer with envy, hatred, or lust.

7. THE REALITY OF JESUS’ RESURRECTION

Extensive Detailed Historical Evidence

Part of the importance of history is that the future is determined by things that have happened. Based upon what has taken place in the past it is possible to know about the future state of the world and human life. According to Scripture, there are things which God has done in history, in time and space, that ensure the eventual outcome of our lives and destinies. This is what makes the historical reality of Christ’s resurrection a matter of the first order. The resurrection’s historicity is crucial because it is only significant if it really occurred and only real if it actually happened. To detach the resurrection from historical fact would be ‘to dismiss Christianity out of the realm of fact. … These historical facts constitute its substance.’¹³²

Having said this, the resurrection of Jesus was an historical event that surpassed ordinary history and nature. In it, Almighty God acted from above and from outside in ways which broke with regular patterns of nature and history. So, Christ’s resurrection was an historical occurrence which transcends our usual understanding of the created world through rationality and science. It was a literal historical happening, yet one that makes full sense only on its own ground in God’s saving interaction with his creation.¹³³

‘“Christianity” is not a mere synonym of “religion,” but is a specific form of religion determined in its peculiarity by the great series of historical occurrences which constitute the redemptive work of God in this sinful world, among which occurrences the resurrection of Christ holds a substantial and in some respects the key position.’¹³⁴

With the resurrection of Jesus, there is then an unprecedented blending of theological and historical components. There is a great deal of empirical evidence for the concrete historical reality of an event that cannot be explained empirically and naturally but can only be explained theologically and supernaturally. But whilst the resurrection of Christ from the dead was a transcendent Divine act, it was not an isolated event. Christ’s resurrection was an act of God within history and nature that was directly and obviously coordinated with the flow of other surrounding historical events. The resurrection engaged in and synchronized with the wider sequence of history. Because of this it is an event whose reality and truth may be rationally and scientifically investigated. The resurrection of Jesus left a pattern of detailed evidence within history, and the various elements of this evidence may be objectively verified as matters of historical fact in a fashion like the verification of any other real happening for which there is significant detailed historical evidence.

The Best Explanation of the Known Facts

The resurrection of Jesus is a colossal claim, but even from a strictly historical point of view there are very good reasons for believing it to have happened as the New Testament records claim that it did. In fact, the historical case for the credibility of Christ’s resurrection is so strong that it represents the majority opinion of current mainstream New Testament scholarship. This is Oden:

‘No aspect of Jesus’ ministry was more minutely recorded than his resurrection. Due to the pivotal importance of his resurrection, the evidence for it appears to have been assiduously collected, transmitted, and embedded in the essential proclamation of salvation attested by the earliest Christian communities. The Gospel narratives seem to be saying to us that if we cannot credit the last validating episode of his life, we are not likely to grasp anything else about him.’¹³⁵

Whether the resurrection can be proven depends upon one’s definition of proof. There is a sense in which it is unprovable, for ‘it is without analogy to any event since or before; it is utterly unique in that it is entirely a work of God and not a work of man.’¹³⁶ Having said this, as a happening in history it may be convincingly argued for, recollected, proclaimed, and received. It was an event for which strong, precise, detailed, and direct eyewitness testimony was widely available at the time. The cumulative weight of documents, eyewitnesses, and corroborative evidence place it beyond reasonable doubt. There is adequate historical evidence to make the resurrection of Christ probable and actually most probable.¹³⁷ The resurrection’s real and concrete historicity is quite simply the best explanation of the known facts.¹³⁸ The evidence is so substantial and strong that the resurrection of Christ has the highest possible historical probability and is ‘nearly historically certain.’¹³⁹ Here is Swinburne:

‘[I]f there is a modest prior probability that there is a God … we don’t need too much witness testimony to make it probable that Jesus rose from the dead. There are a lot of witnesses of the empty tomb and of conversations between Jesus and several other people of some length, whom … there is good reason to regard as trustworthy witnesses. I conclude that there is significant historical evidence of a kind which it is quite probable we would have if Jesus rose from the dead (and very improbable we would have if he did not rise from the dead), and so significant evidence of the occurrence of an event which would constitute God’s signature on the work of Jesus and so God’s endorsement of the teaching of Jesus.’¹⁴⁰

The case for the physical resurrection of Christ may also be argued for based on the implausibility of alternative explanations and their failure to do justice to certain established facts. Opposing theories, for instance, that we do not know and cannot know for certain whether Jesus rose from the dead, or that his resurrection is merely a religious experience, an invention, lie or legendary, or that the appearances were in fact projections, ‘hallucination, delusions, wishful thinking,’¹⁴¹ or that Jesus did not really die on the cross (the swoon theory, promoted by the Koran), or that his body was stolen – have been firmly and repeatedly debunked.¹⁴² They stretch credulity to breaking point. Rather, the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the necessary condition for the known facts; ‘in other words … no other explanation could or would do. All the efforts to find alternative explanations fail, and they were bound to do so.’¹⁴³

Four Complementary Accounts

The New Testament contains four accounts of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. The various authors of the Gospels made no attempt to conform to some official party line regards any aspect of Christ’s career. Their reporting of events surrounding his resurrection are distinct, though not logically contradictory. As would be expected from reliable independent testimony, the accounts are complementary. No one Gospel provides a total summary of events, and there is no common pattern in the precise order of detailed circumstances. Yet, critics who dismiss the resurrection’s material reality usually overstate discrepancies in the Gospel narratives and underplay their similarities.¹⁴⁴ Variations are ‘due to the fact that each Evangelist was selecting from numerous testimonies, traditions, and recollections available to him that would correspond to his purpose with his own audience.’¹⁴⁵ But all the Gospels present the resurrection as an objective historical event, and all the Gospels understand it as a real, literal, factual, physical occurrence that took place at a particular point in time and space. Furthermore, all the Gospels agree that (1) Christ’s tomb was empty, (2) the resurrection was first announced to women, and (3) there were various meetings between the risen Christ and his disciples.

Four Undisputed Facts

Much of the evidence for the resurrection’s historicity is virtually undisputed. There are several minimal facts ‘strongly supported by the historical data’ that are accepted by almost unanimous consensus of ‘scholars who have studied the subject.’¹⁴⁶ ‘These facts form the historical bedrock, facts past doubting, on which all hypotheses should be built.’¹⁴⁷ They are:

(1) that Jesus died by crucifixion

(2) that Jesus was buried and the tomb was very soon discovered to be empty

(3) that very soon after his death Jesus was seen by many of his disciples, who ‘had experiences that led them to believe and proclaim that Jesus had been resurrected and had appeared to them.’¹⁴⁸

(4) several years after Jesus’ death, Saul of Tarsus ‘converted after experiencing what he interpreted as a post resurrection appearance of Jesus to him.’¹⁴⁹

The first two facts ‘are recognized as historical by far the majority of critical scholars.’¹⁵⁰ These two facts do not even depend on the New Testament being a historically reliable document. So, Jesus’ death and burial, the disciples’ despair, the empty tomb, the disciples’ surprising sea change, and the conversion of Saul/Paul from violent unbelief to convinced personal certainty that Jesus had risen, are considered firm historical facts by most historians, including scholars who are sceptics concerning Christ’s resurrection.

The Fuller Body of Evidence

Having said this, the fuller body of evidence is comprised of a larger number of independently demonstrable facts.

(1) Jesus’s death

(2) Jesus’ burial

(3) the empty tomb

(4) the post-death appearances

(5) convinced eyewitness testimony to (1), (2), (3), and (4)

(6) the transformation of Jesus’ disciples

(7) the conversion of decided unbelievers (especially Paul the Apostle)

(8) the universal Christian custom of Sunday observance

(9) the rapid rise and spread of Christian faith

(10) the failure of ancient and contemporary sceptics to prove the resurrection to be false

(11) the unlikelihood of alternative theories

Given that each of these may be established independently of one another, the cumulative case for the high historical likelihood of Christ’s resurrection is very real, strong and, to the open-minded investigator, probable, plausible, and persuasive.¹⁵¹ The combined weight of evidence is so considerable that alternative reconstructions appear more incredible than the biblical accounts. The alternative explanations are so complicated and improbable that they are arguably much less credible and far more implausible than the resurrection claims themselves.¹⁵² ‘Finally, historical judgment must fall on one side or the other: either the remembering community brought to life the deceptive story of a risen Christ or a living Christ brought to life the remembering community. There is no middle way.’¹⁵³

(1) The Empty Tomb

All the Gospel accounts of Christ’s resurrection begin with the claim that Christ’s tomb was discovered to be empty. It was found empty, first, by women who said that they had encountered angels telling them that Christ was risen and, second, by those guarding the tomb (Matt 28:11-15).

The claim that Christ’s tomb was empty is, taken alone, a relatively ordinary claim. The subsequent claim, however, that Jesus rose from the dead, is totally extraordinary. Ordinarily, of course, dead people remain dead, and tombs stay occupied. Yet, if Jesus was not raised by God and did remain dead, there is then the question of what happened to his body. Those who deny Christ’s resurrection have a major issue to resolve here. Certainly, the corpse was never produced. It disappeared and remained absent.

Jesus Definitely Died

The thought that Jesus did not really die (the teaching of the Koran) really cannot be sustained. That Jesus was definitely dead – not merely appearing or seeming to be dead – is reinforced and double-underlined by the carefully constructed narratives which elaborate the detailed circumstances surrounding his burial. Pilate himself verified Jesus’ death with the centurion who had overseen the crucifixion and saw Jesus ‘breathe his last’ (Mark 15:39, 44-45). Mark’s report (15:45) is unique in using the term ptōma, ‘corpse,’ and by concentrated repetition of language (‘body of Jesus,’ ‘died,’ ‘dead’ twice, and ‘corpse’, 15:43-45) places especial emphasis on the fact of Jesus’ death. Jesus did not just die. Jesus’ dead body was buried because he had died.

According to Athanasius, Christ’s resurrection did not occur instantly or sooner, but was deferred until the third day (approximately 36 hours after his burial), so that the genuine reality of his death itself could not be reasonably doubted. ‘His body was really dead.’¹⁵⁴ If he had risen sooner, people may not have been ‘fully convinced that he had truly died.’¹⁵⁵ One the other hand, if Christ were to have been resurrected after a period considerably longer than three days, then in the interval those who witnessed his death may have gone their separate ways and people would have ‘grown doubtful whether it were in truth the same body.’¹⁵⁶ The timing of Christ’s resurrection was designed to have maximum impact. ‘While the affair was still ringing in their ears and their eyes were still straining and their minds in turmoil, and while those who had put him to death were still on the spot and themselves witnessing to the fact of it, the Son of God after three days showed his once dead body immortal and incorruptible.’¹⁵⁷

Jesus was Definitely Buried

That he was buried is confirmed by the fact that all the accounts of his resurrection contain reports about what was done with his body after it was brought down from the cross and taken away by Joseph of Arimathea (Matt 27:57-61; Mark 15:42-47; Luke 23:50-56; John 20:38-42). Burial of the dead (including those convicted of serious crimes) was extremely important to Jews of the time.¹⁵⁸ The preparation of the body for interment was a complex undertaking (John 19:39-40), and the burial itself was carried out with special care and at considerable expense, for the price of a rock tomb close to Jerusalem would have been costly. Not only was Jesus’ body buried, but the burial was carried out in public by agreement between Joseph (a follower of Christ’s with wealth and influence) and Pilate (the governor).

The Tomb was Secured by Military Force

The tomb itself was closed in the usual way, as Joseph ‘rolled a big stone to the door of the tomb.’ We do not know how many soldiers were detailed to guard the tomb, but we do know that the tomb itself was sealed, and that the site of the tomb was then secured by military force, at Pilate’s command, ‘until the third day.’ Every precaution was taken to ensure that his body could not be taken from its grave – the tomb was sealed and an armed guard set (Matt 27:62-66). As emphasised repeatedly, to guard against any eventuality, the burial site was made as secure as it humanly could be by Christ’s own opponents. It is therefore highly ironic that the Jewish leaders, having taken such great measures to guard against the theft of Christ’s body, were then themselves the ones who, when the body could not be found, bribed the Roman guards to spread a story that Christ’s disciples took the body from the tomb overnight while the guards were asleep at their post (Matt 28:11-15). In this respect it may rightly be claimed that the resurrection ‘was confirmed by the very testimony of his enemies.’¹⁵⁹

The Sight Inside the Empty Tomb

The Fourth Gospel relates how the sight inside the empty tomb, without the body but with the linen and burial cloth used to wrap Christ’s head folded by itself retaining the pattern in which the body would have been lain, was so remarkable, as if the body had passed right through them, that the Beloved Disciple ‘saw and believed’ instantly (John 20:8). A thief would not have taken the care to assemble the grave cloths neatly.

Evidence for Christ’s tomb being discovered empty may be summarised:

‘1. The historical reliability of the story of Jesus’ burial supports the empty tomb.

2. The story of Jesus’ empty tomb is independently reported in very early sources. …

3. The tomb was discovered empty by women.

4. The earliest Jewish response to the disciples presupposes the empty tomb.’¹⁶⁰

The empty tomb is not in and of itself decisive proof, but nonetheless it is immensely important. After all, ‘it is hard to imagine a belief in a risen Jesus getting very far if one could easily point to the grave in which he was still present.’¹⁶¹ Were the authorities to have produced Christ’s body in the face of claims that he had risen, the falsity of those claims would quickly have been plain.

The Alternatives are Implausible

Alternative theories proposed to explain the empty tomb – that he did not really die, or that his disciples looked in the wrong place and mistook another empty tomb for his, or that his body was stolen by enemies or graverobbers or taken by his disciples – are implausible on two counts. Either (1) they fail to take into adequate consideration the extensive, detailed, and independently reported ‘appearances’ of the previously dead Jesus, or (2) they suppose wholescale deceit such that the early disciples were prepared to die for what they knew to be a lie. The latter theory, that Jesus’s followers lied about the empty tomb, cannot be sustained, for a deliberate and fraudulent conspiracy would most certainly have been exposed by ensuing pressure and persecution. Sane, competent people are not willing to suffer persecution and death voluntarily for what they know to be lies. The apostles’ willingness to die for their conviction that Jesus’ resurrection was objective and real is a strong argument for its historical truth.¹⁶²

(2) Post-Death Appearances

In and of itself, the empty tomb admittedly does not conclusively demonstrate Christ’s resurrection. Mary Magdalene’s initial reaction was that Jesus’ body had been stolen (John 20:13). For Mary, it was his personal appearance to her that set Jesus’ resurrection beyond ambiguity (John 20:14-18).

Christ’s initial appearances occurred on the day that his tomb was found to be empty, close by in the garden where his body had been laid. Subsequent encounters with his followers are set out at length and in detail (Matt 28:1-20; Mark 16:9-19; Luke 24:1-53; John 20:19-21:25; Acts 1:3-9), firstly, in Jerusalem and its immediate vicinity and, secondly, soon after in Galilee (Mark 16:7). Luke condensed matters this way: ‘He [Jesus] presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during a period of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God’ (Acts 1:2-3). Paul summarised: ‘God raised him [Jesus] from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people’ (Acts 13:30). These post-resurrection meetings with Christ were direct, visible, physical, and tangible, displaying, as it were, ‘the living image of the resurrection.’¹⁶³

At Least Fourteen Different Occasions

Although there may have been additional appearances that went unrecorded, the New Testament identifies 11 such occasions prior to Christ’s ascension and 3 following it.

Appearance 1: To Mary Magdalene (Matt 28:1; Mark 6:19; John 20:11-18)
Appearance 2: To the women returning from the grave (Matt 28:2, 8-10)
Appearance 3: To Peter (Luke 24:34; 1 Cor 15:5)
Appearance 4: To two companions travelling to Emmaus (Mark 16:12-13; Luke 24:13-31)
Appearance 5: To the disciples, without Thomas (Luke 24:36-43; John 20:19-23)
Appearance 6: To the disciples, including Thomas (Mark 16:14; John 20:26-29)
Appearance 7: To the seven disciples (Simon Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, John, and two others) fishing the Sea of Tiberias (John 21:1-23)
Appearance 8: To the eleven disciples on the Galilean Mountain (Matt 28:16)
Appearance 9: ‘To more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive’ (1 Cor 15:6)
Appearance 10: To James (1 Cor 15:7)
Appearance 11: To the witnesses of his ascension (Matt 28:18-20; Mark 16:19; Acts 1:3-12)
Appearance 12: To Stephen at his martyrdom (Acts 7:55)
Appearance 13: To Paul at his conversion (Acts 9:17; 1 Cor 15:8)
Appearance 14: To John on the island of Patmos (Rev 1:9-12)¹⁶⁴

What Was the Nature of These Experiences?

So, what was the true nature of the eyewitnesses’ original experiences of Jesus’ post-death appearances, and how should they be interpreted? Several options are possible:

(1) Their real objective nature cannot be known with certainty. All that can be known for sure is how the disciples understood and reported them.

(2) They may be believed to have occurred as the disciples understood and reported them, i.e., they may be taken on faith, but this cannot be objectively verified.

(3) Some aspects may be historically investigated and verified (e.g., the empty tomb), but other aspects cannot be established as facts beyond doubt by historical enquiry (e.g., the literal truth of Jesus’ bodily resurrection, and the spoken content of his teaching as reported to have been communicated during his resurrection appearances).

(4) There is sufficient detailed publicly verifiable historical evidence, including the empty tomb and Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances, to establish their reality as plausible, probable, beyond reasonable doubt, and highly likely to have occurred as the Gospel accounts suggest.

An examination of the evidence indicates that the fourth interpretation is the most plausible.

The Apostles Were Prepared to Bet Their Lives on it

Were it not for the reports of miracles contained in the Gospels, most historians ‘would be very happy to treat their accounts as generally historically reliable.’¹⁶⁵ Having said this, the historical authenticity of the resurrection accounts is suggested in various ways. Here are four sets of reasons to regard the reports as accurate and genuine.

(1) The apostles’ willingness to die for their conviction that Jesus’ resurrection was objective and real is a strong argument for its historical truth. The sincere conviction that the risen Jesus truly appeared to them was what motivated the apostles to endure persecution and martyrdom. Martyrdom is of course not unique to Christianity. What is unique to Christianity, as McDowell explains, is that ‘the apostles died for what they saw firsthand. … Their convictions were not based on secondhand testimony, but personal experience with the risen Jesus, whom they truly believed was the risen Messiah, banking their lives on it.’¹⁶⁶ McDowell continues,

‘The apostles died … for the belief that they had actually seen the risen Christ … [They] really believed that Jesus had risen from the grave. The apostles could have been mistaken, but their willingness to die as martyrs establishes their unmistakable sincerity. The apostles were not liars; rather, they believed that they had seen the risen Jesus, they were willing to die for this claim, and many actually did die for it.’¹⁶⁷

‘No evidence exists that any wavered in their faith or commitment. Of course, this does not mean they were necessarily right, but it does mean they really thought Jesus had risen from the grave, and they bet their lives on it.’¹⁶⁸

The Number and Variety of Reported Appearances

(2) At face value, the sheer number and variety of claims to have encountered the risen Christ in combination with the empty tomb constitutes strong evidence of the resurrection’s literal historical truth and reality.

As remarked earlier, the Gospel accounts present their material quite differently, but that compatibility is no major problem. That the Gospels ‘provide multiple, independent reports of post-mortem appearances of Jesus’¹⁶⁹ is actually an arguable indication of their authenticity. They are recording the claims of diverse witnesses concerning the appearances of the risen Jesus. Here is a splendid expression of the variation in Jesus’ reported appearances:

‘The resurrected Jesus is recorded as appearing in Judaea and in Galilee, in town and countryside, indoors and outdoors, in the morning and in the evening, by prior appointment and without prior appointment, close and distant, on a hill and by a lake, to groups of men and groups of women, to individuals and groups of up to a five hundred, sitting, standing, walking, eating, and always talking. Many are explicitly close-up encounters involving conversations. It is hard to imagine this pattern of appearances in the Gospels and early Christian letters without there having been multiple individuals who claimed to have seen Jesus risen from the dead.’¹⁷⁰

Taken together, then, the biblical accounts include lists of eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen Jesus alive, first in Jerusalem and then in Galilee, on at least 11 separate occasions (summarized in 1 Cor 15:5-8). The eyewitnesses ranged from individuals to small groups and fairly large gatherings. It was reported that on one occasion he appeared to more than five hundred persons together at once (1 Cor 15:6). It may be argued that ‘Paul’s list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances guarantees that such appearances occurred.’¹⁷¹

That the mixture of resurrection appearances combine individual and collective experiences is extremely significant. Collective experiences – small to large groups of people – cannot have been mistaken subjective visions or delusional hallucinations, for the following reasons. Firstly, that would be to assume that the disciples expected Christ to rise from the dead, when by contrast the Gospels depict their despair and reluctance to believe its real occurrence when told it was so.¹⁷² Secondly, it is highly unlikely that so many accounts from so many differing sources, many of whom remained alive at the time of writing, were coordinated by so many different people who all shared the deliberate and malign intention to deceive and mislead. Thirdly, it is even more unlikely that there was a coordinated attempt to promote a collective illusion as fact based on numerous people being jointly deceived by shared flights of imagination or wish-fulfilment.

The First Eyewitnesses Were Female

(3) Although first-hand personal meeting with the risen Jesus was an apostolic qualification (Acts 1:22), the two first and earliest eyewitnesses were women both of whom were named Mary (Matt 27:61; 28:1). To begin with, the testimony of the two Marys and (according to Luke 24:11) Joanna to Jesus’ disciples was met with sheer disbelief combined with misunderstanding, fear, and astonishment (Mark 16:3-4, 8). Further objective encounters with the risen Christ were what produced faith among his contemporaries (Luke 24:31, 36). Nonetheless, it is historically extremely significant that all the Gospels make much of Jesus’ first post-death appearances being to women, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James (Matt 28:1; Mark 16:1; Luke 23:55-24:1; John 20:1, 11). These women are repeatedly said to have witnessed Christ’s crucifixion and burial as well as the empty tomb (Mark 15:40, 47; Luke 23:55; 24:3).

That females were reported to be primary witnesses supports the historical accuracy and reliability of the resurrection accounts, for a first century fabrication would never conceivably have included women as first witnesses. This is because neither Jews nor Greeks of that time accepted women as legally admissible or reliable (which is probably why the list of Jesus’ appearances in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 omits mention of the appearances to women). Female witness (as well as the witness of slaves) was, according to Josephus, not counted credible ‘due to the levity and temerity of their sex.’¹⁷³ Yet, nonetheless, the Bible runs against the grain of its surrounding culture in the matter of reporting eyewitness evidence to Christ’s resurrection, where the testimony of women preceded the apostles (who were all men). Matthew and John in particular (being Jews) would not have included women as valid witnesses ‘unless they were convinced that that is what happened.’¹⁷⁴

Furthermore, it has long been thought theologically (as well as historically) significant that eyewitnesses to the resurrection included both genders. Some early commentators reckoned that the inclusion of women as eyewitnesses symbolizes and conveys the witness of the whole church to Christ’s resurrection.¹⁷⁵

The Appearances Were Fully Personal

(4) The fully personal nature and manner of Christ’s appearances further verifies the truth his resurrection (1 Cor 15:5-8, 11). The resurrection appearances were visible, audible, and sensory (including touch). They were bodily and physical in the fullest sense. As well as physically seeing him, the eyewitnesses claimed, (1) to have spoken to him, (2) to have heard him speaking to them, (3) to have eaten food and drunk with him at least four times, (4) to have physically touched him at least twice, and on one occasion (5) to have walked several miles with him whilst engaged in extended conversation. Without exception, Christ’s post-death appearances involved already established personal relationships, articulated speech, complex spoken communication, detailed explanation, and instruction.

The accounts, then, depict the resurrected Jesus as physical (he ate and could be touched), relational (he interacted appropriately and personally with individuals, greeting, talking, answering questions), intellectual (he taught and imparted understanding, particularly of Scripture, sometimes at great length), and unequivocally Divine (working a miraculous catch of fish, and ascending into heaven as the apostles looked on).¹⁷⁶

‘If someone is committed to a materialist atheist position on miracles, then no amount of evidence will be able to disturb this belief. He or she will encounter the lines of evidence presented … and find alternative explanations. … these alternative explanations will be complex, involving appeals to numerous scenarios normally judged to be improbable, whereas accepting the historical reliability of the Gospels will be simple. … One can seek to explain away each phenomenon individually, but a single and simple explanation can make sense of all the facts.’¹⁷⁷

The intellectual component of the appearances is worthy of pause. The appearances were actually revelations, occasions in which ‘Jesus again revealed himself to his disciples’ (John 21:1, 14). As revelations, the appearances were verbal and meaningful. They imparted understanding. (This may be part of the reason why the risen Christ appeared only to his chosen followers and witnesses, but ‘not to all the people’ (Acts 10:41), and especially not to his opponents, Pilate, Caiaphas, and others, as if to prove himself to them and to prove them wrong).

Doubting Thomas and His Successors

Jesus’ second reported appearance to his closest disciples elicited one of the clearest and most unrestrained acclamations of Christ’s Divinity contained in the New Testament. Thomas’ confession is addressed directly to him: ‘My Lord [kyrios] and my God [theos]!’ (John 20:28). Note that it was by recognizing Christ’s resurrection that Thomas came to recognize who Christ is, honouring the Son with an honour equivalent to the Father’s (John 5:23). The critical conviction concerning Jesus’ true identity came within an instant of meeting him resurrected.

Having been absent from Jesus’ first resurrected appearance to the Ten disciples (John 20:19-24), Thomas demanded first-hand experience, evidence that was exact and specific, tangible, direct, visible, and physical proof (John 20:25). Jesus’ response to this challenge (John 20:27, 29) suggests (1) his omnipresence and omniscience, in that he had heard and knew what Thomas had said without being physically present, (2) that he was willing to enable belief and counteract pessimistic unbelief by providing conditions sufficient to support Thomas’ total concrete certainty that he was indeed alive, and (3) that the conditions of evidence adequate to support certain belief would change over time. Thomas’ route to faith – his coming to believe – was appropriate to his personal situation in history in relation to Christ. The vast majority come to believe in the risen Christ’s present reality without seeing or touching him. Being ‘blessed’ in believing the resurrection of Christ without the experience of seeing him is appropriate to the personal situation in history of most in relation to Christ. By far the most people both in the New Testament and in subsequent history are summoned to faith through the apostolic witness in spoken or written biblical form. ‘[L]ater believers come to faith through the testimony of earlier believers,’¹⁷⁸ as they hear the Scriptures being preached and read the Scriptures for themselves (John 20:30-31).

(3) Sunday Observance

In a practice that almost certainly originated with the Twelve Apostles themselves, Sunday very quickly came to be universally known as ‘the Lord’s day’ (Rev 1:10). This matter is often overlooked but it is a huge piece of evidence for the resurrection. All early Christian communities of which there is record ‘gathered together to break bread’ on ‘the first day of the week’ (Acts 20:7). This sharing of a common meal by the gathered assembly of believers ‘every week’ on Sunday (1 Cor 16:2), directly corresponds to the discovery of the empty tomb on ‘the first day of the week’ (Matt 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1, 19).

That Sunday rather than some other day had become the natural day upon which the believers assembled is extremely unusual given the Jewish context of early Christian faith. There is no known instance of Sunday being considered a sacred day each week other than in Christianity. This Sunday custom accompanied discovery of the empty tomb on a Sunday and the first appearances of the risen Jesus occurring on that same Sunday. ‘The eucharist was celebrated on a Sunday (and Sunday had theological significance) from the first years of Christianity because Christians believed that the central Christian event of the Resurrection occurred on a Sunday.’¹⁷⁹

Sunday became the day of distinctively Christian note only and exactly because the first believers were convinced that Jesus was raised on the Sunday – referred to as ‘the third day’ (Matt 16:21; 17:23; 20:19; 27:64), or ‘after three days’ (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; 14:58; 15:29) counted inclusively, following his crucifixion the previous Friday. According to Jewish calculation, parts of days and whole days were both counted as days. So, Christ remained dead and buried for three successive days, i.e., part of two days (Friday 14^th and Sunday 16^th Nisan), and the whole day of the Passover Sabbath in between (Saturday 15^th Nisan).¹⁸⁰

Against a possible background in the wave offering signalling acceptance ‘before the LORD’ at the feast of firstfruits (Lev 23:9-14), the theme of restoration ‘on the third day’ originally derived from Hosea 6:2 and was interpreted in terms of resurrection ‘on the third day’ by Christ on several occasions, both prior to and following the event itself (Matt 16:21 etc.; Luke 24:45-46). ‘How the disciples came unanimously to put the resurrection on the third day if it did not take place is hard to say. Merely attributing this to Old Testament predictions or to mythology fails the test of plausibility. Something must have happened on that third day for the disciples to situate it unanimously on that day.’¹⁸¹ The point is that any and every given Sunday, not only Easter Sunday, is the Lord’s Day and Resurrection Day. Sunday observance is testimony to the resurrection’s reality and truth.

(4) The Rise of Christianity

The matter of Sunday assembly and corporate worship forms part of a much bigger issue regarding the origin of Christian faith and practice. It is a matter of historical record that the origin of the entire Christian faith rests on the universal belief by the earliest disciples that God has raised Jesus from the dead. The whole of apostolic faith and life is based upon this belief (e.g., Acts 2:23-26), and there is no better and more plausible explanation for the emergence of Christianity.

It was belief in the resurrection of Christ that led to the preaching of the apostles generally and the preaching of the gospel particularly. This happened very quickly, in fact almost immediately following the actual events. That proclamation of Christ’s resurrection occurred in the direct aftermath of Christ’s crucifixion, strongly supports the likelihood that it was based (as the Gospels and Acts record) on factually rich first-hand eyewitness accounts, not fairy-tales, or mythological, or legendary reflections dreamed up over a later, longer, process of time.

The impact and spread of the message about Christ depends on the resurrection. Without the resurrection the apostles would have had no message, and faith in Christ would be an empty shell. It would never have gotten off the ground. For Christianity, the truth about God, the solution to sin, and real hope beyond death are all based upon the resurrection of Jesus. Without it, as the Apostle clearly understood, Christianity’s ‘core convictions’ have no substance (1 Cor 15:12-19).¹⁸² The appearance and development of Christianity is most comprehensible when based on the resurrection.

From Fearful and Confused, to Fearless and Certain

In this regard, it is again important to grasp that the resurrection of Jesus was unexpected by his own followers and contemporaries. Despite all that he had said, Jesus’ disciples did not anticipate it. They were not prepared for any sequel to his death. When it happened, they were all in hiding behind locked doors for fear of their lives (John 20:19). When it was discovered to have happened, his followers were confused. All the accounts in the Gospels makes plain their surprise, perplexity, unbelief, misunderstanding, and astonishment (Luke 24:11-41).

Although the beloved disciple displayed natural faith (John 20:8-9), to begin with, most of the disciples were difficult to persuade. When Mary Magdalene first told them that Christ ‘was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it’ (Mark 16:11). When her story was backed up by other women, including Joanna and Mary the mother of James, still the apostles could not believe it and passed their testimony off as delusional nonsense (Luke 24:10-11). Other disciples, too, took a lot of convincing (Luke 24:25). Thomas’ refusal was blunt and emphatic: ‘Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe’ (John 20:25). The Gospels report that prior to meeting the resurrected Jesus personally, for themselves, the overall impression of his followers was sceptical, fearful, grief-stricken, and regretful (John 20:11, 19, 25). What was the cause of the disciples’ radical transformation?

When Jesus was arrested, his disciples ‘all left him and fled’ (Mark 14:50). Under pressure, Peter denied knowing him (Mark 14:66-71). Until personally confronted by Christ (Acts 9:3-7), Paul had been hostile and violent toward the Christian message (Acts 8:1, 3; 9:1-2). But in a short period of time, the risen Christ lifted the vision and accelerated the morale of his followers to a remarkable and virtually unrecognisable degree. The resurrection triggered a massive transformation of the disciples, from fearful to fearless. With their trust in Christ revived, the content of apostolic preaching was in only the space of a few days dominated by the claim that God had raised Jesus (Acts 2:31-32). His resurrection animated the ministry of the apostles to such an extent that their preaching could result in the instantaneous conversion of thousands (Acts 2:41). Certainty that Jesus was risen caused his disciples to revise their estimation of his entire life, death, and teaching.

For the apostles, the resurrection of Christ was the foundation of hope and the leading edge and substance of their proclamation. The first-generation church understood its calling in terms of proclaiming and promoting the reality of Christ’s resurrection. The resurrection of Christ was what determined and drove Christian preaching. It was the reason for the apostolic message. Witness to the risen Lord Jesus occurred by Word, ordinances of baptism¹⁸³ and the Lord’s Supper, fellowship, behaviour and ethics. Individuals spearheading the spread of faith in Christ were prepared to put their lives in danger, braving mistreatment, vilification, and martyrdom. This vast variation in the disciples’ behaviour, from pre-resurrection to post-resurrection, becoming ‘men who risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Acts 15:26) had to have been caused by something.

Violent Opposition from the Authorities

In the first generation many claimed to have directly seen the risen Christ personally and up close. Their witness was no casual matter. Everybody’s skin was in the game, their blood heavily invested. They frequently faced hostility and persecution convinced that Christ had been raised from death. To risk suffering and death would be pointless were the resurrection known to be a myth. The idea ‘of the bodily resurrection of one person in advance of others’¹⁸⁴ was unheard of in Judaism of Jesus’ time, so it is most improbable that Jesus’ disciples would have fabricated it to popularize a manufactured message about him. To persist in claiming that Christ was alive to the point of imprisonment, torture, execution, and other serious physical harm or deprivation is very unlikely unless they were certain it was true and highly implausible if they knew it never happened. Conviction of the resurrection’s reality ‘could not have exercised the power that it did in the lives of the disciples if it were not rooted in an actual occurrence immediately attested.’¹⁸⁵

The resurrection claim was made first in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem, close to where Jesus had been killed and buried. But based on belief in his resurrection, as well as rapid numerical growth, there was a very rapid geographical spread of Christianity. This upending of the world (Acts 17:6) proceeded despite sustained opposition from the religious, political, and military authorities. So remarkable was the rise of Christianity that quite independently of the biblical text, the Jewish historian Josephus (A.D. 37 – c. 100), claimed that Jesus appeared to his disciples after being crucified and restored to life.¹⁸⁶

Christianity’s Objective Historical Cause

So it is that whilst ‘the Gospels do not explain the resurrection. The resurrection alone is what can explain the Gospels.’¹⁸⁷ ‘There would have been no community to remember the cross, had there not been those whose lives were transformed by their meeting with the risen Lord.’¹⁸⁸ The emergence of the Christian community and the content and features of early Christian teaching are inexplicable without Christ’s resurrection as described in the Gospels and Acts. The dramatic rise of Christianity across the first three centuries, often amidst severe persecution, is best accounted for by the claims of Christ’s resurrection being well-founded in fact. ‘The actual historical effect is inconceivable without the resurrection of Jesus as its objective historical cause.’¹⁸⁹

—

1
Acts 26:8.
2
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 9; translated and edited by a Religious of C.S.M.V. with an introduction by C. S. Lewis (St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1953), 35.
3
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, ‘Resurrection: A Fundamental Doctrine,’ in Selected Shorter Writings (Presbyterian & Reformed, 1970), 1:198; slightly amended.
4
Thomas C. Oden, Systematic Theology. Volume Two. The Word of Life (Hendrickson, 2008 [Orig. 1987]), 2:452.
5
Richard Swinburne, Was Jesus God? (Oxford University Press, 2008), 114.
6
Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 123.
7
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, ‘The Risen Christ,’ in The Person and Work of Christ, ed. Samuel G. Craig (Presbyterian & Reformed, 1950), 539.
8
Garry R. Habermas, The Uniqueness of Jesus Christ Among the Major World Religions, 44. This work may be downloaded freely from www.garyhabermas.com/evidence2.
9
D. Broughton Knox, Selected Works (Matthias Media, 2006), 3:173.
10
Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, 537.
11
Athanasius, Ad Antiochenos, 6; cf. Ad Serapionem, 1, 2, 10; cited in Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God (T&T Clark, 1996), 112 n. 1.
12
Gregory Nazianzen, Orations, 31.14; The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff [hereafter, NPNF], 2.7:322.
13
Mark Jones, Knowing Christ (The Banner of Truth Trust, 2016), 164.
14
Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics: A System of Christian Doctrine, 3.5.53; Single-Volume Edition, trans. and ed. Richard B Gaffin Jr (Lexham Press, 2020), 592.
15
Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity, 9.12; NPNF 2.9:159.
16
Wilhelmus á Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service. Volume 1. God, Man, and Christ, trans. Bartel Elshout, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Reformation Heritage Books, 1992), 628; italics are in the original.
17
Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3.5.49; Single-Volume Edition, 592.
18
Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 629.
19
Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:470.
20
Leon Morris, Romans (IVP, 1988), 46.
21
Jones, Knowing Christ, 164.
22
Adapting Calvin’s trinitarian formulation of salvation (Institutes, 3.14.21; 787). Calvin here deploys principles of causal distinction likely drawn from Aristotle [reference to be provided].
23
Peter van Inwagen, ‘Human Destiny,’ in William E. Mann ed., The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion (Blackwell, 2005), 245.
24
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2; paraphrase.
25
These phrases are coined by Professor Brian Cox, in various television programmes. E.g., The Human Universe: Are We Alone?, 14:17 [2014]; Human Universe: A Place in Space and Time, 59:43 [2014]; Human Universe: What is Our Future?, 58:02 [2014]. See also: https://twitter.com/ProfBrianCox/status/352535011427221505?s=20&t=FsUrWKIQCVtMep2x9lCjLA [accessed 220214].
26
Niall Fergusson, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (Allen Lane, 2021), Contents, Chapter 1, ‘The Meaning of Death.’
27
Cormac McCarthy, The Counselor: A Screenplay. Movie Tie-in Edition (Vintage International, 2013), 160.
28
Bertrand Russell, Autobiography (Routledge, 2010 [Orig. 1975]), 374.
29
Van Inwagen, ‘Human Destiny,’ 246-47.
30
Jones, Knowing Christ, 162.
31
Calvin, Institutes, 2.14.13; 522.
32
Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, 538; slightly amended.
33
Calvin, Institutes, 3.24.3; 989.
34
Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, 536.
35
Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, 543; slightly amended.
36
Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:464.
37
Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings, 1:196.
38
Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings, 1:196.
39
Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings, 1:195.
40
Theodoret of Cyr, Interpretation of the Letter to the Romans, 1:4; Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. New Testament VI. Romans, ed. Gerald Bray (IVP Academic, 1998), 11.
41
Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, 539.
42
Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 1; in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff [hereafter ANF], 3:545.
43
Adapting Brakel’s point about Christ’s exaltation, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 1:625.
44
‘A figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa,’ macOS Catalina Dictionary.
45
Calvin, Institutes, 2.14.13; 521.
46
Bruce Waltke, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach (Zondervan, 2007), 967.
47
Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 1:631.
48
N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (SPCK, 2003), 127.
49
Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection (T&T Clark, 1976), 28.
50
Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 968.
51
Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis Chapters 38-44 [40:12-15], in Luther’s Works. Volume 7, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Concordia, 1965), 116.
52
Bruce Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan, 2001), 115.
53
Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah (IVP, 1993), 440.
54
Bruce Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 1-15 (Eerdmans, 2004), 108.
55
Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 910.
56
Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 229.
57
Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 910; idem, Proverbs, Chapters 1-15, 582.
58
Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 968.
59
Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology, Volume One, The Proclamation of Jesus, trans. John Bowden (SCM Press, 1971), 309.
60
R. E. O. White, ‘Resurrection of the Dead,’ in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Third edition, eds. Daniel Treier and Walter Elwell (Baker, 2017), 745.
61
William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology. Third edition, ed. Alan W. Gomez (P&R, 2003), 868; paraphrasing Justin Martyr, On the Resurrection, Fragments, 4, ANF 1:295.
62
Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 33.
63
Gerald Bray, God is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology (Crossway, 2012), 593.
64
Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 87-88.
65
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/2, The Doctrine of the Word of God, eds. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (T&T Clark, 1956), 115.
66
Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 88-89.
67
Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 95.
68
Thomas Schreiner, New Testament Theology (Baker, 2008), 427.
69
Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 1:625.
70
Jeremy R. Treat, The Crucified King: Atonement and Kingdom in Biblical and Systematic Theology (Zondervan, 2014).
71
John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians (The Calvin Translation Society, 1843), 191.
72
Jeremy Treat, ‘States of Jesus Christ,’ in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Third edition, eds. Daniel Treier and Walter Elwell (Baker, 2017), 842.
73
Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, trans. Henry Zylstra(Eerdmans, 1956), 369.
74
Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 32.
75
Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 1:627.
76
John Chrysostom, The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 89.2, in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. New Testament Ib. Matthew 14-28, ed. Manlio Simonetti (IVP Academic, 2002), 306.
77
G. R. Osborne, ‘Resurrection,’ in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, eds. Joel B. Green and Scot McKnight (IVP, 1992), 679-80.
78
Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 38; ANF, 3:573.
79
Gary R. Habermas, ‘Resurrection of Christ,’ in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Third edition, eds. Daniel Treier and Walter Elwell (Baker, 2017), 743.
80
Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:459.
81
Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 86.
82
Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 87.
83
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 368.
84
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 368.
85
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 368.
86
Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3.5.48; Single Volume Edition, 582.
87
Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 38; ANF, 3:573.
88
Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 38; ANF, 3:573.
89
Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3.5.49; Single-Volume Edition, 587.
90
Augustine’s exposition of resurrection is worthy of mention here, as he does this in the vicissitudes and uncertainties of (ancient) life, i.e., it is pastorally oriented. Refer to the discussion in Robert C. Doyle, Eschatology and the Shape of Christian Belief, chapter 4, 90-97, esp. 93-97.
91
Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3.5.49; Single-Volume Edition, 586.
92
Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:481-82.
93
Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3.5.49; Single-Volume Edition, 587.
94
Tertullian elaborates this matter at length, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 1-63; ANF, 3:545-94.
95
Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3.5.48; Single-Volume Edition, 583; slightly amended.
96
Doyle, Eschatology and the Shape of Christian Belief, 48.
97
Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3.5.50; Single-Volume Edition, 588.
98
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 367.
99
Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3.5.48; Single-Volume Edition, 583.
100
Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, 544.
101
The point is spelled out by Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ, 5; ANF, 3:525-26.
102
Anthony Thiselton, Systematic Theology (Eerdmans, 2015), 394.
103
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 367, 371.
104
Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3.5.52; Single-Volume Edition, 591.
105
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, 2^nd edition (IVP, 2020), 757 n. 11.
106
Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 52.
107
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (The Westminster Press, 1960), 2.14.13; 522.
108
Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:268.
109
Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 3.5.50; Single-Volume Edition, 588.
110
Martin Luther, Sermon on John 20:1 [1529]; as cited in Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:493.
111
White, ‘Resurrection of the Dead,’ 746.
112
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (T&T Clark, 1994), 2:362.
113
Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 29.21 [The Third Theological Oration. On the Son]; NPNF 2.7:309.
114
Calvin, Institutes, 3.25.3-4; 990, 993-94.
115
Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 123.
116
Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Baker Books, 2019), 193.
117
Barrett, None Greater, 190.
118
Taken from the text of the early hymn ‘You, O God, we praise’ [Latin, Te Deum laudamus], dating from the fourth century or earlier, with authorship variously ascribed to Ambrose, Augustine, or Hilary of Poitiers.
119
See Anselm’s discussion, ‘How [God] is omnipotent although he cannot do many things,’ Proslogion, 7; eds. Davies and Evans, 90.
120
Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 123.
121
Jonathan Edwards, The ‘Miscellanies’: (Entry Nos. a-z, aa-zz, 1-500) (Works of Jonathan Edwards Online Vol. 13), ed. Harry Stout (Yale University Press), 394; slightly amended.
122
Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:493.
123
Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 38; ANF, 3:573.
124
Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 481-82.
125
Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 868.
126
Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 11; ANF, 3:553 (slightly amended).
127
Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, 26.1, NPNF, 2.5:417.
128
Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, 26.1, NPNF, 2.5:417.
129
Richard Swinburne, ‘Why Does God Allow Human Suffering and Wrongdoing?,’ available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VUPFlcSmgo&t=2720s [accessed 12/05/2021].
130
Gregory Nyssa, On the Making of Man, 27.6, NPNF, 418-419.
131
White, ‘Resurrection of the Dead,’ 746.
132
Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, 541-42.
133
See Richard Swinburne, The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Clarendon, 2003), parts 1 and 2.
134
Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, 541-42.
135
Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:495.
136
Robert C. Doyle, Eschatology and the Shape of Christian Belief (2008 edition [Orig. Paternoster, 1999]), 47; following Barth and Pannenberg.
137
Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 126.
138
Matthew Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (IVP Academic, 2010), 618-619, summarising chapter 5.
139
McDowell, The Fate of the Apostles, 4-5.
140
Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 127. An apologetic case for the historicity of Christ’s resurrection draws on a wealth of resources. Various excellent materials are available at www.garyhabermas.com, and likely for some considerable years the definitive treatment of historical, theological, and philosophical issues concerning the death and resurrection of Jesus will be the multi-volume work by Gary R. Habermas, On the Resurrection (B&H, 2024-). Fine introductory presentations of historical evidence for Christ’s resurrection include David Baggett ed., Did the Resurrection Happen? A Conversation with Gary Habermas and Anthony Flew (IVP, 2012); William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. Third edition (Crossway, 2008), 333-404; idem, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (David Cook, 2010), 219-264; Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (IVP Academic/Apollos, 2011), 527-566; David Gooding and John Lennox, Christianity: Opium or Truth? (Myrtlefield, 2014), 105-137; Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Thomas Nelson, 2017), chapter 10; and Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 114-127. More developed and detailed book-length treatments include Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus; Swinburne, The Resurrection of God Incarnate; and Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God. An excellent advanced-level analytical philosophical approach is Timothy McGrew and Lydia McGrew, ‘The Argument from Miracles: A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth,’ in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, eds. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland (Blackwell, 2009), 593-662.
141
Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, 619.
142
In the modern period, various theories including fabrication, delusion, deception, and myth-making were proposed by figures such as Herman Samuel Reimarus, H. E. G. Paulus, David Friedrich Strauss, Albert Schweitzer, Rudolph Bultmann, Kirsopp Lake, and Hugh Schonfeld. A contemporary counterpart to these sceptics is Bart Ehrman. Notable orthodox responses to historical scepticism regards the resurrection of Christ include Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/2, §47, 437-454; William L. Craig, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus (Edwin Mellen Press, 1989); Gary R. Habermas, The Resurrection of Jesus: An Apologetic (Baker Book House, 1980); idem, The Risen Jesus and Future Hope (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003);idem, Evidence for the Historical Jesus: Is the Jesus of History the Christ of Faith? (Christian Publishing House, 2020); Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Kregel, 2004), 81-152; Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, 133-198; Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:484-89; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man, trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe (SCM Press, 1968), chapter 3; Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 685-718. The most recently published major scholarly work on the issue of historical inquiry into Christ’s resurrection is Dale C. Allison, The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (T&T Clark, 2021).
143
Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 717.
144
Doyle, Eschatology, 47.
145
Oden, Systematic Theology, 492.
146
Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, 617, summarising chapter 4.
147
Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, 617, summarising chapter 4.
148
Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, 617, summarising chapter 4; see also Peter J. Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels? (Crossway, 2018), 133.
149
Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, 617, summarising chapter 4.
150
Habermas, The Uniqueness of Jesus Christ, 44.
151
Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 710-718. Dale Allison Jr exposes various weaknesses and problems in both apologetic and sceptical arguments (see The Resurrection of Jesus, 304-335).
152
Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 122-23. See Allison’s examination of some tenuous sceptical arguments (The Resurrection of Jesus, 323-335).
153
Oden, Systematic Theology, 485.
154
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 26; ed. St. Vladimir’s, 56.
155
Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 627.
156
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 26; ed. St. Vladimir’s, 56.
157
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 26; ed. St. Vladimir’s, 56-57.
158
Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 133.
159
The Scotch Confession of Faith (A.D. 1560), 10; ed. Schaff, Creeds, 3:448.
160
Craig, On Guard, 263; slightly amended.
161
Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 133-34.
162
An extended scholarly argument on this point is Sean McDowell, The Fate of the Apostles: Examining the Martyrdom Accounts of the Closest Followers of Jesus (Ashgate, 2015).
163
Calvin, Institutes, 3.25.3; 991.
164
This paragraph combines lists in Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:483 and Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 1:626.
165
Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 133.
166
McDowell, The Fate of the Apostles, 261, 265.
167
McDowell, The Fate of the Apostles, 3.
168
McDowell, The Fate of the Apostles, 259.
169
Craig, On Guard, 263.
170
Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 134-35.
171
Craig, On Guard, 263.
172
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 456.
173
Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Books 1-4, 4.219 [15]; trans. H. St. J. Thackeray (William Heineman/Harvard University Press, 1961), 581.
174
Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 114.
175
For example, Peter Chrysologus, Sermons 75.3; Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. New Testament Ib.Matthew 14-28, ed. Manlio Simonetti (IVP Academic, 2002), 305.
176
Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:489; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 3, Q55.6.; CCEL ed., 3423 [available at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.html].
177
Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 133, 136.
178
D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (IVP, 1992), 660.
179
Swinburne, Was Jesus God?, 120.
180
Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:464-65; Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 1:627.
181
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 455. See D. A. Carson ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical and Theological Investigation (Paternoster/Zondervan, 1982).
182
Graham Cole, God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom (IVP, 2009), 151.
183
‘Resurrection is why baptism is a suitable sign of salvation’ (Doyle, Eschatology, 27).
184
Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 135.
185
Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:492.
186
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 18.3.63-64.
187
Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:451
188
Oden, Systematic Theology, 2:491.
189
J. I. Packer, Growing in Christ (Crossway Books, 1994), 60.

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The Resurrection of Jesus Christ Part I

by Benjamin Dean

Contents Outline

—

Know the Scriptures

© Great Truths 2025. All rights reserved.

Great Truths is the operating name of Great Truths Trust (CIO). Established 2024.
Registered in England and Wales with charity no. 1207079.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ Part I

by Benjamin Dean

Contents Outline

—

Know the Scriptures

© Great Truths 2025. All rights reserved.

Great Truths is the operating name of Great Truths Trust (CIO). Established 2024. Registered in England and Wales with charity no. 1207079.

Sign-up

Great Truths is the operating name of Great Truths Trust (CIO). Established 2024.
Registered in England and Wales with charity no. 1207079.