Basic Christianity - Chapter 4 "The Resurrection of Christ" Part 1

In the last couple Basic Christianity posts, we've been examining the evidence that Jesus Christ was the sinless, perfect Son of God. This evidence, you will remember, consists in three things: the Claims of Christ; the Character of Christ; and the Resurrection of Christ. Again, it must be understood that no one argument is final or decisive; combined, however, these three arguments unfailingly direct us to the same conclusion. 

~

Therefore, having already examined the first two pieces of evidence, we will proceed to examine Evidence # 3: The Resurrection of Christ. We will divide this piece of evidence into four points: the Body Had Gone; the Graveclothes Were Undisturbed; the Lord Was Seen; and the Disciples Were Changed. Before we embark on these, however, here are a few things to bear in mind:

• If true, the resurrection has great significance. John Stott says, "If Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, then He was beyond dispute a unique figure. It is not a question of His spiritual survival, nor of His physical resuscitation, but of His conquest of death and His resurrection to a new plane of existence altogether. We do not know of anyone else who has had this experience."
• We are not arguing that the resurrection of Christ establishes His divine nature, but rather, that it is consistent with it. "It is only to be expected that a supernatural person should come and leave the earth in a supernatural way. This is in fact what the New Testament teaches and what, in consequence, the church has always believed."
• Christ never predicted His death on the cross without adding that He would rise once more.  Furthermore, Christ spoke of His coming resurrection as a 'sign'. Paul says that Jesus was "declared to be the Son of God with power... by the resurrection from the dead". Also, Stott points out that "the earliest sermons of the apostles recorded in Acts repeatedly assert that by the resurrection God has reversed man's sentence and vindicated His Son".
• Concerning the resurrection, Luke, who is known to have a detailed and very accurate historian, declares there are 'many proofs'. Thomas Arnold called Christ's resurrection "the best attested fact in history", and Stott says, "... many impartial students have judged the evidence to be extremely good."

Those points considered, we will move on...

~

 I. The Body Had Gone. You will remember that the resurrection narratives of the four Gospels commence with certain women visiting Jesus' tomb early on the morning of Easter Sunday. When they arrived, they were astounded to find that the body of the Lord had vanished. A few days later, the apostles started preaching that Jesus Christ was no longer dead, but had risen. It was the central theme of their message. But they could not have expected men to believe them if the body of Jesus was in fact still lying cold, still, and untouched in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb! No. The body was gone. There can be no disputing this fact. Rather, the question is how to explain it.

• First Theory: the women went to the wrong tomb. After all, it was still dark, and they were yet grieving over the death of their Lord. They could've easily, it is claimed, made a mistake.
• Answer: While this theory may appear plausible on the surface, Stott says it hardly bears examination. "To begin with, it cannot have been completely dark. It is true that John says the women came 'while it was still dark'. But in Matthew 28:1 it is 'toward dawn', while Luke says it was 'at early dawn', and Mark distinctly states that 'the sun had risen'." Furthermore, Stott points out, these women weren't fools. At least two of them had witnessed where Joseph and Nicodemus had laid the corpse of Jesus. They had even watched the entire process of the burial, 'sitting opposite the sepulchre'. The same two women (Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus) returned again at dawn, this time bringing with them Salome, Joanna, and 'the other women', so that even if one had mistaken the path or the tomb, she would probably have been corrected by the others. "Besides, no mere sentiment brought them so early to the tomb. They were on a practical mission. They had bought spices and were going to complete the annointing of the Lord's body, since the approach of the sabbath had made the work so hasty two days previously. These devoted and businesslike women were not the kind to be easily decieved or to give up the task they had come to do." Also, even if they had made a mistake about the tomb, would the same mistake have been made by Peter and John, who ran to verify the story? And what about the others who undoubtedly came later, including Joseph and Nicodemus themselves?
• Second Theory: the swoon theory. Those who maintain this view say that Jesus didn't really die on the cross, but only fainted. He then revived in the tomb, left it, and reappeared to His disciples.
• Answer: This explanation is full of problems. The evidence thoroughly contradicts it. Pilate, though surprised at how quickly Jesus died, was sufficiently convinced by the centurion's assurance to allow Joseph to remove the body from the cross. The centurion was certain, because he must have been there when 'one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water' (John 19:34). So Joseph and Nicodemus took down the body, wrapped it in graveclothes, and buried it in Joseph's tomb. Stott says, "Are we then seriously to believe that Jesus was all the time only in a swoon? That after the rigours and pains of trail, mockery, flogging, and crucifixion He could survive thirty-six hours in a stone sepulchre with neither warmth nor food nor medical care? That He could then rally sufficiently to perform the superhuman feat of shifting the boulder which secured the mouth of the tomb, and this without disturbing the Roman guard? That then, weak and sickly and hungry, he could appear to His disciples in such a way as to give them the impression that He had vanquished death? That He could go on to claim that He had died and risen, could send them into all the world and promise to be with them unto the end of time? That He could live somewhere in hiding for forty days, making occasional surprise appearences, and then finally disappear without any explaination? Such credulity is more incredible than Thomas' unbelief."
• Third Theory: thieves stole the body.
• Answer: What possible motive would they have had for doing so? How could they have hoodwinked the Roman guard? Why would the thieves steal the body and leave the graveclothes behind?
• Fourth Theory: the disciples removed the body. Matthew tells us that this is the very sort of rumour which was spread by the Jews from the earliest days. After the death and burial of Jesus, the chief priests and Pharisees came to Pilate and asked for a guard to be placed over the tomb, lest 'His disciples go and steal Him away' (Matthew 27:62-65). Pilate consents to their request. A heavy stone is rolled over the mouth of the tomb and a guard is set. Matthew goes on to describe how such precautions could not prevent the resurrection. Shortly thereafter, the guards returned to the city to report what had happened. After a consultation amongst themselves, the chief priests and Pharisees bribed the soldiers, and commanded them to spread the story that Jesus' disciples had come by night while they were asleep and stolen His body (Matthew 28:11-15).
• Answer: This story doesn't hold water. First of all, is it likely that a picked guard, whether Roman or Jewish, would all sleep on duty when strictly ordered to watch? Not very. "And even supposing the disciples could have suceeded in removing the Lord's body," Stott points out, " there is a psychological consideration which is enough to discredit the whole theory. We learn from the first part of the Acts that in their early preaching the apostles concentrated on the resurrection. 'You killed him, but God raised Him, and we are witnesses', they kept saying (Acts 2:23-24). Are we then to believe that they were proclaiming what they knew to be a deliberate lie? If they had themselves taken the body of Jesus, to preach His resurrection was to spread a known, planned falsehood. They not only preached it; they suffered for it. They were prepared to go to prison, to the flogging post and to death for a fairy-tale.  This simply does not ring true. It is so unlikely as to be impossible... They may have been decieved if you like, but they were not deceivers. Hypocrites and marytrs are not made of the same stuff." 
• Theory Five: the Roman or Jewish authorities took Jesus' body into their own custody. It is certain they would have had motive enough to do so. They had heard Jesus proclaim that He would rise again, and so, to forestall any trickery, they took the precaution of confiscating the body.
• Answer: When this explaination is carefully considered, however, it falls to pieces. We see that within a few weeks of Jesus' death the Christians were boldly declaring His resurrection. The news spread quickly. The new movement threatened to undermine the bulwarks of Judaism and to disrupt the peace of Jerusalem. "The Jews feared conversions; the Romans feared riots." All the authorities had to do was produce the body and state what they had done. But they didn't. They were silent. Instead they resorted to violent methods of supressing the new movement. They arrested, flogged, imprisoned and killed. But all this was unnecessary if they had the body of Jesus in their possession. "The church was founded on the resurrection. Disprove the resurrection, and the church would have collapsed. But they could not; the body was not in their possession. The authorities' silence is as eloquent a proof of the resurrection as they apostles' witness."

None of these theories is a satisfactory explaination for the emptiness of the tomb and the disappearence of the body. There is no evidence to back any of them up. Therefore, for lack of "any alternative explanation, perhaps we may be forgiven if we prefer the simple and sober narrative of the Gospels, describing the events of the first Easter Day. The body of Jesus was not removed by men; it was raised by God". 

~

II. The Graveclothes Were Undisturbed. "It is a remarkable fact," continues Stott, "that the narratives which say that the body of Jesus was gone also tell us that the graveclothes had not gone." John particularly lays emphasis on this fact, as it was he who accompanied Peter on the early morning race to the tomb. The account he gives of the incident (John 20:1-10) has the definite marks of personal experience.  He outdistanced Peter, but when he arrived at the tomb, he only looked in, until Peter came and entered it. 'Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed' (John 20:8). We then ask: What did he see which made him believe? "The story suggests that it was not just the absence of the body, but the presence of the graveclothes and, in particular, their undisturbed position."

~

We will now attempt to reconstruct the story. John tells us (John 19:38-42) that Joseph asked Pilate for the body of Jesus; meanwhile, Nicodemus 'came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds' weight''. Together, they then 'took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews'. They wound the linen "bandages" around His body, sprinkling the powdered spices into the folds. A seperate cloth would have been used for the head. Thus they wrapped His body and head, leaving His face and neck uncovered, according to oriental practice. This done, they laid His body on a slab of stone which had been cut out of the side of the cave-sepulchre.

~

"Now supposing we had been present in the sepulchre  when the resurrection of Jesus actually took place. What should we have seen? Should we have seen Jesus begin to move, and then yawn and stretch and get up? No. We do not believe that He returned to this life. He did not recover from a swoon. He had died, and He rose again. His was a resurrection, not a resuscitation. We believe that he passed miraculously from death into an altogether new sphere of existence." What then should we have seen? Stott contends, "We should suddenly have noticed that the body had disappeared. It would have 'vaporized', being transmuted into something new and different and wonderful. It would have passed through the graveclothes, as it was later to pass through closed doors, leaving them quite untouched and almost undisturbed. Almost, but not quite. For the body cloths, under the weight of 100 lbs. of spices, once the support of the body had been removed, would have subsided or collapsed, and would now be lying flat. A gap would have appeared between the body cloths and the head napkin, where His face and neck had been. And the napkin itself, because of the complicated criss-cross pattern of the bandages, might well have retained its concave shape, a crumbled turban, but with no head inside it." A careful look at the text of John's narrative (John 20:6-7) suggests that it is just these three characteristics of the discarded graveclothes which he noticed. 

~

It is not difficult to imagine the scene which the disciples came upon when they reached the tomb: the stone slab, the collapsed graveclothes, the empty shell of the head napkin and the gap between the two. It is no wonder they 'saw and believed'. One look at the graveclothes was proof of the reality, and indicative of the nature, of Christ's resurrection. They hadn't been folded or manipulated by the hand of any human being. "They were like a discarded chrysalis from which the butterfly has emerged."

~

Stott adds, "That the state of the graveclothes was intended to be visible, corrobarative evidence for the resurrection is further suggested by the fact that Mary Magdalene (who had returned to the tomb after bringing the news to Peter and John) 'stooped to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet' (John 20:11-12) Presumably this means that they sat on the stone slab with the graveclothes between them. Both Matthew and Mark add that one of them said, 'He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where He lay' (Matthew 28:6; Mark 16:6)...these allusions to the place where Jesus' had lain, emphasized by both the position and the words of the angels, at least confirms what the understanding of the evangelists was: the position of the clothes and the absence of the body were concurrent witnesses to His resurrection."

To be continued...

* * *

Persevero,

Scribe