Basic Christianity - Chapter 4 "The Resurrection of Christ" Part 2

III. The Lord Was Seen. Everyone who reads the Gospels knows that they contain some unusual stories of how Christ appeared to His disciples following His miraculous resurrection from the dead. We are told that He appeared to:

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-- Mary Magdalene (John 20:18; Mark 16:9)
-- Peter (Luke 24:34; 1 Corinthians 15:5)
-- two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-15; Mark 6:12-13)
-- the ten gathered in the upper room (John 20:19-23; Mark 16:14-35)
-- the eleven (including Thomas) a week later (Mark 16:14; Luke 24:13-35)
-- more than five hundred brethren at one time, probably on the mountainside in Galilee (Matthew 28:16-20)
-- some disciples including Nathaniel, Peter, Thomas, James, and John by the Galilee lakeside (John 21:1-4; Matthew 28:16)
-- many on the Mount of Olives near Betheny at the time of the ascension (Acts 1:9-12; Luke 24:50-53; Mark 16:19-20)
-- Paul on the Damascus Road (Acts 9:4-5)

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And as Luke states at the beginning of the Acts that Christ 'presented Himself alive after His passion by many proofs, appearing to them (the apostles) during forty days', there may well have been other appearances, of which we have no surviving record.

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We cannot flippantly throw out this collection of living testimony to the resurrection of Jesus. An explanation must be found for these narratives. Only three seem possible...

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Explanation 1: were they inventions?
Stott says there is no need to devote much space to the refutation of this suggestion. "That the resurrection appearence stories are not deliberate inventions is as plain as could be." For one thing, the narratives are sober and unembelished. For another thing, they are vibrant, and enlivened by the in depth touches which sound like the work of an eye-witness. The accounts of the race to the sepulchre and of the walk to Emmaus are too striking and real to have simply been made up.

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"Besides," Stott continues, "no one could call them good inventions. If we had wanted to invent the resurrection, we might have done much better ourselves. We should have been careful to avoid the complicated jigsaw puzzle of events which the four Gospels together produce. We should have eliminated, or at least watered down, the doubts and fears of the apostles. We should probably have included a dramatic account of the resurrection itself (as do the fantastic apocryphal Gospels), describing the power and glory of the Son of God as He broke the bonds of death and burst from the tomb in triumph. But no one saw it happen, so we have no description of it. Again, we should scarcely have chosen Mary Magdalene as the first witness, if only to avoid Renan's sneer that 'la passion d'une hallucinee donne au monde un dieu ressusite'."

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An even greater objection to the invention theory is the fact that the apostles, and therefore the evangelists and the early church, were sublimely persuaded that Jesus Christ had risen. The entire New Testament, Stott reminds us, "breathes an atmosphere of certainty and conquest." Those who wrote it may have been misled, if you like; but they were certainly not intentionally misleading.

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Explanation 2: were the appearances themselves hallucinations?
This is a widely-held opinion, and of course, hallucinations are not an uncommon phenomenon. Hallucinations are most commonly associated with someone who is at least neurotic, if not in fact psychotic. It is impossible to say that the apostles were this sort of deranged and unbalanced people. Mary Magdalene might have been, but hardly brash Peter and doubting Thomas.

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Hallucinations have also been known to occur in perfectly normal people, and in such instances, two characteristics may frequently be detected. First, they occur as the high point to a period of inflated wishful thinking. Second, the conditions of time, place and mood are favorable. "There must be a strong inward desire and the predisposing outward setting," says Stott. When we go to the Gospel resurrection narratives, however, both these factors are absent...

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Far from wishful thinking, it was just the opposite. "When the women first found the tomb empty, they fled in 'trembling and astonishment' and were 'afraid'. When Mary Magdalene and the other women reported that Jesus was alive, the apostles 'would not believe it', and their words 'seemed to them an idle tale'. When Jesus Himself came and stood in their midst 'they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit', so that Jesus 'upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart'." Thomas obstinately declared that he would not believe unless he could actually see and feel the nail-marks for himself. When Jesus met the eleven and others by appointment in Galilee, 'they worshipped Him; but some doubted'. We do not have wishful thinking or naivete here. The disciples weren't blind, gullible fools, but instead, cautious, skeptical and 'slow of heart to believe'. And strange visions alone wouldn't have satisfied them. Their faith was built on the hard facts of verifiable reality.

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The outward circumstances were anything but favorable. "If the appearances," Stott points out, "had all taken place in one or two particularly sacred places, which had been hallowed by memories of Jesus, and their mood had been expectant, our suspicions might well be aroused. If we had only the story of the appearances in the upper room, we should have cause to doubt or question. If the eleven had been gathered in that special place where Jesus had spent with them some of His last earthly hours, and they had kept His place vacant, and were sentimentalizing over the magic days of the past, and had remembered His promises to return, and had begun to wonder if He might return and to hope that He would, until the ardour of their expectation was consummated by His sudden appearance, we might indeed fear that they had been mocked by a cruel delusion. However, we can easily see this was not the case. Indeed, an investigation of the... appearances reveals an almost studied variety in the circumstances of person, place and mood in which they occured."  

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It is not at all possible for us to simply dismiss these manifestations of the divine Lord as mere hallucinations of unstable minds. Therefore, if they weren't made-up stories or hallucinations, they only remaining alternative is that they actually happened. Christ, the risen Lord, was seen.

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IV. The Disciples Were Changed. It may be that the change of Christ's disciples is the greatest evidence of all for the resurrection, because it is completely sincere and artless. They do not bid us to look at themselves, as they bid us to look at the vacant sepulchre and the undisturbed graveclothes and the Lord whom they had seen. Yet we can discern the transformation without being told to look. The men who figure in the pages of the Gospels are new and different men in the pages of the Acts. Their Master's death on the cross left them feeling hopeless, disillusioned and utterly dejected. But in the Acts, they come forth fearless and bold men, ready to hazard their lives for the name of Christ and turn the world upside down. Stott asks, "What has made change? What acounts for their new faith and power, joy and love? Partly, no doubt, Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit; but then the Holy Spirit came only when Jesus had risen and ascended. It is as if the resurrection let loose mighty moral and spiritual forces. Two examples stand out..."

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The first is Simon Peter. During the passion of his Lord, he suffered a tragic eclipse, denying Christ three times. He cursed and swore as if he had never known the restraining influence of Jesus in his life and went out into the night, weeping bitterly. After the death of his Master, he joined the others hiding in the upper room, behind doors that were barred and bolted, fearful of retaliation from the Jews. "But when we turn one or two pages in the Bible, we see him standing... [and] preaching so boldly and so powerfully to a vast crowd that three thousand people believe in Christ and are baptized. We turn on to the next chapters of the Acts and we watch him defying the very Sanhedrin who condemned Jesus to death, rejoicing that he is counted worthy to suffer shame for His name, and later sleeping in his cell on the night before his expected execution. Simon Peter is a new man. The shifting sands have been blown away now; true to his nickname, he is a real rock now." 

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Or take James, who later became a leader in the Jerusalem church. He was one of "brethren of the Lord", who are represented throughout the Gospels as men who did not believe in Jesus (John 7:5). When we reach the opening chapters of the Acts, however, "the list which Luke gives of the assembled disciples concludes with the words 'and...His brothers'. James is evidently a believer now."

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These are the proofs of the resurrection of Jesus. The body had vanished. The graveclothes remained undisturbed. The Lord was seen. And the disciples were changed. "There is no other adequate explanation for these phenomena other than the great Christian affirmation 'the Lord is risen indeed'."

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In conclusion, Stott adds, "We have been occupied for three chapters in a critical investigation of the most absorbing personality of history, a modest carpenter from Nazareth who became a peasant preacher and died a criminal's death. His claims were stupendous. He seems to have been morally perfect. He rose from the dead. The cumulative weight of this evidence is all but conclusive. It makes eminently reasonable that last step of faith which brings us to our knees before Him and puts on our lips the mighty confession of doubting Thomas: 'My Lord and my God'."

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Persevero,

Scribe