Reasons For Our Believing

Reasons For Our Believing

By: Colin O’Connor

The highest Holy Day of the Christian year, Easter or Pascha as they called it in the earliest centuries of the Church and what it is still called in Eastern traditions to this day, is swiftly approaching. This is the Holy Day on which we celebrate and remember our Lord’s resurrection from the dead. For us Christians, the truth of this event is the foundational article of our faith, without which, Christianity would not be worth believing at all.

Blessed St. Paul says as much in his first epistle to the Corinthians: “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” As for St. Paul, so for us, 2000 years removed: if Christ was not raised, there is no reason for us to get up on Sunday morning and make it to mass. Just sleep in… do not set your alarm.

For many in our country, Easter is indeed just another day. Non-Christian families may use the day as an occasion to gather with their families and enjoy each other’s company. They may color eggs or send out their children adorned in pastel colors, running about the yard, hunting for plastic eggs filled with candies or trinkets, all the while giving no thought to the true meaning of the day.

Some non-Christians, however, do recognize the event that we Christians commemorate on Easter, but simply do not believe it to be grounded in reality or historical fact. Even many of us Christians, born and brought up in the church, may understand what we are celebrating on Easter, but would have a difficult time portraying the reasons WHY we believe that Christ rose from the dead. And there are those who want to believe that Christ rose from the dead, but struggle with nagging doubts as to whether or not He actually did. It is to these brothers and sisters that this is addressed.

So, on to the question then, without any further delay: do Christians have reasons for our belief that Christ was, in fact, raised bodily from the death on that first Easter morning? Now, the following will be undoubtedly narrow in scope as full tomes exceeding a thousand pages have been written on the subject. What I want to provide in this short work is a selection of what I deem to be the most important historical facts that bolster the case for the historicity of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

Let’s begin:

1) Jesus died by crucifixion

You can’t have a resurrection without a death. You might be confused as to why we are starting with this. But if we are going to be answering the question as to whether or not a person came back to life, that person would need to be dead (like all the way dead).

Now before I introduce everyone to a common refutation that atheists like to posit when considering the fact of Christ’s actual death by crucifixion, I want to note that virtually all historians and scholars accept that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified under Roman authority in the early 30’s AD. In fact, even the agnostic-leaning-atheist historian, Bart Ehrman has said that “one of the most certain facts of history is that Jesus was crucified on orders of the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate” (Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium, 1999).

One way in which atheist scholars have tried to bring Christ’s death into doubt is through the idea that Jesus did not, in fact, die on the cross; they state that he merely swooned. However, when considering the historical record of the expertise of the Romans at the dark art of crucifying humans, this refutation attempt doesn’t even rise to the level of the laughable.

Dr. Craig Evans of Houston Baptist University describes the torture expertise of the Romans in the following way: “crucifixion was the Roman empire’s signature punishment, executed with chilling efficiency. They mastered the balance between death and display, leaving bodies on crosses for days to rot, a testament to their control over life and dignity.” (Jesus and His World: The Archaeological Evidence, 2012). Put short, the Romans didn’t mess around. Crucifixion was a death sentence and an excruciating one at that. We only have one account that has come down to us from antiquity of anyone ever surviving crucifixion, and he was taken down early (The Life of Flavius Josephus, 99 CE).

2) Jesus’s disciples believed he appeared to them after His death

The closest followers of Jesus Christ, his disciples, all believed and proclaimed that they physically witnessed Jesus very much alive after witnessing him very much dead. St. Paul, in what has been confirmed by scholars to be early creedal formation (within months or a few years of the death and resurrection of Jesus) states in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.”

We learn from the Gospels that Christ’s followers were hiding behind locked doors “for fear of the Jews” after the Pharisees handed Christ over to the Romans to be crucified. Then we read of the amazing accounts of Christ’s appearances to his disciples (minus Thomas at first). Jesus had risen from the dead, but his body still held a few mementos of his agonizing death, namely the holes in his hands (or wrists), feet, and the piercing in his side. His disciples, terrified, thought they were looking at a specter, so Jesus asked them for something to eat (ghosts don’t eat). The resurrected Jesus was given a piece of broiled fish, and he consumed it right in front of his awe-struck friends. St. Thomas was not present when the resurrected Jesus first appeared to the disciples. When beckoned to place his hands on Christ’s crucifixion wounds, he fell to his knees and proclaimed, “My Lord and My God!”

Jesus spent the next forty days with his disciples before ascending to the Father. What’s more is the disciples of Jesus could not help but begin to spread the miraculous news that Christ Jesus had risen from the dead. And they did so in the face of heavy persecution and even martyrdom. There is more than sufficient historical evidence that nearly all the apostles were martyred for proclaiming their belief that Jesus rose from the dead and welcomed all to place their faith in Christ.

The apocryphal Acts of Peter (64-68 AD) describes how Peter requested to be crucified upside down because he felt unworthy to die in the same manner as his Lord. Early historian of the church Eusebius relays to us tradition that St. Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross in Patras, Greece (tradition from the Acts of Andrew). In the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 12, we read that James (one of the sons of Zebedee) was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I around 44 AD (this is the only apostle’s death described in the actual pages of Scripture and was later corroborated in the writings of Clement of Alexandria). St. Thomas was pierced with a spear in Mylapore, India around 72 AD. The St. Thomas Basilica was erected over the site, and the account is supported by local oral tradition. Tradition substantiated by The Martyrdom of Bartholomew and corroborated by Eusebius claims the saint was skinned alive and then beheaded. These are the martyrdom accounts that we have the strongest historical data for.

What you will not find in ANY of the accounts of the martyrdoms of the apostles is evidence that any of them recanted their firm conviction that Jesus rose from the dead. Nobody goes to a violent demise for something they don’t believe, nobody gets martyred defending a lie. The apostles believed so firmly that Christ had risen from the dead, they each signed their oaths in their own blood.

3) The conversion of Paul

What would transform the man who once stood and “held the coats” of those who were stoning St. Stephen into the early church’s most ardent proclaimer of Christ’s resurrection and Lordship?

Born Saul of Tarsus, he was a devout adherent to Judaism and, more specifically, a Pharisee. Saul studied under the great Gamaliel in Jerusalem, and he came to hold the view that followers of Jesus posed a severe threat to Judaism and opposed it vehemently, going so far as to even participate in the arrests of early Christians.

Believing that the early Christians were blasphemers, Saul feared that more adherents to Judaism would begin following this Jesus, the man crucified for being the ultimate blasphemer (in the eyes of the chief priests and Pharisees). When on one such arrest mission, Saul experienced a vivid meeting with the risen Jesus. The encounter is detailed in the Acts of the Apostles:

“And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem. And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus” (Acts 9:1-8).

From that moment on, everything in Saul’s life changed, even his name (to Paul). Paul endured incredible amounts of suffering for the sake of Christ and was eventually martyred in Rome around 64-67 AD. Paul, once a persecutor of Christ’s church, was transformed into its most famous proclaimer of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. This stark 180-degree shift is only possible if Paul had a life altering experience. This experience was a meeting with a resurrected man.

4) The conversion of James, the brother of Jesus

During the ministry of Jesus, many people had doubts concerning the claims that Jesus made about his identity and the relationship between him and the one he called His Father. Among those with reservations were members of Jesus’s own family. In the Gospel of Mark we see this mentioned:

“Now Jesus went home, and a crowd gathered so that they were not able to eat. When his family heard this they went out to restrain him, for they said, “He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:20-21).

This passage coupled with what we read in John’s Gospel, that not even his own brothers believed in Him (John 7:5), provides us with the scriptural basis for the idea that James, the brother of Jesus, did not believe his brother was who He claimed to be.

Fast forward past the resurrection of Christ and we happen upon a shocking revelation in the writings of Josephus Flavius, the first-century Jewish historian: “Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he [Ananus, the high priest] assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others… and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned” (Antiquities of the Jews, 93-94 AD).

What could have caused such a shift in James – from skeptical and doubting the sanity of his brother Jesus to being stoned for being one of his adherents? Early Christian writings also reveal to us something important about James, the brother of Jesus, and his connection to the church in Jerusalem. Eusebius quotes a second-century Christian chronicler Hegesippus: “James, the brother of the Lord, succeeded to the government of the Church in conjunction with the apostles. He has been called the Just by all from the time of our Saviour to the present day…” (Ecclesiastical History, Book 2, Chapter 23).

What sort of event could have occurred to bring about such a seismic shift in James? It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that the encounter with his resurrected brother (1 Corinthians 15:7) resulted in such a transformation.

5) The witness of the women and the empty tomb

There are many criteria employed by biblical historians and scholars who specialize in the study of the historical Jesus. One of these tools in the historian’s toolbelt is called the criterion of embarrassment. The basic gist of this criterion is the principle that people are less likely to make up stories that would be embarrassing or damaging to their own reputations. This criterion, when applied to the account of the women who discovered the empty tomb, bolsters the claim that Christ’s tomb was empty, just as the women reported it.

But what is embarrassing about this account? It’s not the substance of the report that is embarrassing, but rather the fact that it was women who first heralded the news that Christ’s tomb was empty. Why is this so? In first-century Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures, women were not considered reliable witnesses in legal matters. If the disciples of Jesus were fabricating the story of Christ’s rising from the dead, they would never have thought of making women the first witnesses – it would have made a lot more sense to make one of Christ’s closest followers the first herald of the resurrected Christ, like Peter or John.

The tradition of the women being the first to the tomb on that first Easter morning is early and attested in each of the four Gospels. Though there are variations as to which women and how many women went to the tomb, the accounts can easily be synthesized. Mary Magdalene is listed in all four Gospels. Mary, the mother of James, is mentioned in Mark and Luke, and she is probably the “other Mary” in Matthew’s list. Luke’s list includes “other women,” and these were probably Salome and Joanna.

The differences in the lists of women and the slight variations in the accounts serve as proof that these accounts are not simply copied from each other but are independent traditions. The essence of the report of these women is the real crux of the matter. Women were the first to report the empty tomb and the message of Christ’s rising from the dead to his disciples. This would have been an embarrassing detail to include in a fictitious account.

Much more can be said about the events of the first Easter morning. The previous five facts serve as the bedrock for the historical case that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. These five were picked specifically because they are the facts that are most agreed upon by scholars from all persuasions, even skeptical liberal scholars.

Will this short essay answer every question one may have when considering the veracity of the historical account of Christ’s resurrection from the grave? Probably not. What I hoped to do is to provide some things to mentally chew on and consider.

The greatest hope for Christians is not to “go to heaven when they die.” This may come as a shock for some. According to Scripture, humanity’s primary plight and problem is death itself. Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is the answer to our problem. The ultimate hope for the Christian is not disembodied bliss, but rather bodily resurrection.

As Christ rose from the dead, so we who place our faith in the resurrected One may rise in the same way. Christ is the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1:18), and if he is the first, we may also be raised in the same way.

I hope this serves to edify you, my brother or sister in Christ. Holy Week is swiftly approaching, and the light and hope of Christ’s defeat of death is the crescendo of this most holy week. Dare we believe that death is not the end? Dare we believe that Love could not be held in the grave, that death could not hold the One who is Life Himself?

May the Lord give us the grace to trust these things to be true. Christ Jesus rose from the dead. On that great day, by His grace and at his calling, so will you.