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Dear Friends,

I praised the authors of The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus last time for addressing so many objections/challenges to the orthodox view of the Resurrection. Well, as you’ll see in today’s blog post, they’ve done it again!

Part 4 addresses even more objections to the Christian resurrection story, and I want to talk about some of them today, specifically the ones in chapter 9. Note, I don’t plan to address chapters 10 or 13 in this series of blog posts, just because they’re too tangential for my current purposes, but if you’re curious about them, leave a comment and I’ll tell ya more! For now, I will just tell you that chapter 10 is called “Who did Jesus think He was?” and chapter 13 is called “People Skills: The Art of Sharing”.

More arguments against the Resurrection

• About those texts used to deny a bodily resurrection
  • “Mark 16:7 could say that Jesus’ spirit will meet the disciples.”
  • “Matthew 28:16-17 indicates that there were doubts.”
  • “John 21:12 hints that the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus.”
  • “Galatians 1:16 seems to say Paul’s experience was not physical.”
  • “First Corinthians 15:37-50 contrasts the natural physical body with the spiritual.”
  • “First Peter 3:18 seems to say Jesus’ spirit was made alive, not his body.”
• Naturalistic arguments
  • “If atheism is true, then Jesus did not rise”
  • “The Resurrection doesn’t prove God’s existence”
  • “Jesus never died, so there was no resurrection”
  • “Reports of Jesus’ appearances differ little from the reports of the angel’s appearance to Joseph Smith”
  • “Reports of the Resurrection are no more believable than today’s reports of Elvis and alien sightings”
  • “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”

He is risen…ish??

Today, God willing, I plan to address only the first main bullet (and first three sub-bullets). We’ll consider whether the gospels are unified in presenting a Jesus whose physical body literally resurrected, or if some passages present a Jesus who only appeared in spiritual form after death. Some professing Christians (1) actually argue for a spiritual rather than physical resurrection based on Paul’s writings (more on that later). I actually had not heard of this view until I read the Habermas book, but, in any case, it seems like an odd position to take. Wouldn’t such a discord between the various resurrection-related passages undermine them all, and logically lead to a renunciation of Christianity altogether?

So, what do the gospels actually tell us they saw?

The low-hanging fruit

I’m starting with what seems to me to be the weakest of the gospel-related challenges: “Mark 16:7 could say that Jesus’ spirit will meet the disciples.”

Here’s the verse, with two prior verses for context.

[Mar 16:5-7 KJV] 5 And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. 6 And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. 7 But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you.

The spiritual-resurrection interpretation apparently rests on the possibility of translating proagō (“goeth before you” in the King James Version) as “leading” instead. The idea is that Jesus’s spirit was going to lead them to Galilee, and there they would experience a vision of Jesus.

I’ll simply recap some of the authors’ rebuttal because I think it neatly addresses the challenge.

1. The majority of translators do not render proagō as “leading” in this verse
2. This is not merely a question of single-word Greek translation anyway; the context is clear
   1. The immediate context, i.e., the preceding verse, has an angel telling the women in the tomb that “he is not here: behold the place where they laid him”
   2. Why on earth would the angel say that if His body is still lying there? And if you want to claim his body was stolen away, you are back to the problem of combining theories, which I addressed in the previous post

Doubting and (not) dursting

We now move on to the other two gospel-related challenges; these were more thought-provoking for me.

First let’s quote the passages:

[Mat 28:16-17 KJV] 16 Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. 17 And when they saw him, they worshipped him: BUT SOME DOUBTED.

[Jhn 21:12 KJV] 12 Jesus saith unto them, Come [and] dine. And NONE OF THE DISCIPLES DURST ASK HIM, WHO ART THOU? knowing that it was the Lord.

Then, let’s provide the context. Matthew 28 recounts a meeting between Jesus and the disciples on a mountain near Galilee. John 21 recounts Jesus’s third resurrection appearance to the disciples, which occurs on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

The skeptical argument here seems to be that the explicit doubt in the Matthew passage, and the implied doubt in the John passage, are best explained by a spiritual resurrection. A spiritually resurrected Christ might be harder to recognize, and thus prompt doubt in the minds of the apostles.

In part of the authors’ rebuttal, they mention that “there is reason to believe that there were some differences in the way Jesus looked, since he also claims that Jesus’ body was now immortal.” I suppose they might be referring to John 20:17, but it didn’t seem like a very strong rebuttal. I wanted to go a little deeper…

A Maybe or a Definitely Not?

If all I had to look at was the two passages above, I guess I could see the plausibility (but not the necessity) of the spiritual-resurrection theory. The passages don’t actually say anything about a spiritual resurrection, but I could still call it a Maybe. However, you don’t have to look far to realize (if we’re trying to reasonably interpret the gospels) that this is a Definitely Not:

[Jhn 20:25-27 KJV] 25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I WILL NOT BELIEVE. 26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: [then] came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace [be] unto you. 27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and THRUST [IT] INTO MY SIDE: and be not faithless, but believing.

So, in the chapter just prior to the John passage we’ve been discussing, we have Jesus telling Thomas to thrust his hand into Jesus’s side. Spiritual-resurrection theory goes from a Maybe to a Definitely Not.

In like manner, let’s poke around the vicinity of the aforementioned Matthew passage and see what we can see:

[Mat 28:9 KJV] 9 And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him.

This is the same chapter as the other Matthew passage! And the women are holding his feet. Once again, spiritual-resurrection theory goes from a Maybe to a Definitely Not.

It seems to me that you need a prior commitment to spiritual-resurrection theory in order to even attempt to use John 21:12 and Matthew 28:16-17 as part of your case. This is eisegesis if I’ve ever seen it.

OK, so what actually happened then?

It’s never ideal to refute an interpretation without trying to supply a better one.

So, if I’m not buying the spiritual-resurrection interpretation of Matthew 28:16-17 and John 21:12, what interpretation would I propose?

Well, I don’t think this one is too hard if you’re willing to accept the consistent testimony, across all 4 gospels, of the disciples’ persistent unbelief. I welcome you to search the gospels for “unbelief”, “believed not”, etc., to see what I mean.

Luke 24:36-43 is a perfect example, because it has the disciples’ unbelief, as well as Jesus directly addressing the spirit question and eating a broiled fish and a honeycomb 🙂

I’ll also give you an example from John and one from Matthew, since they contain the supposed spiritual-resurrection passages we’ve been focusing on.

For the example from John, we’ll simply bring Thomas back out onto the stage. He is rebuked by Jesus, in John 20:27, for not believing the unanimous, eyewitness resurrection-testimony from the other disciples. This is despite all the miracles Jesus had already performed (like, you know, resurrections), and Jesus’s own explicit prediction of His resurrection (see Matthew 16:21, or, for further reading, post #6 linked in the series outline above).

So, why does John 21:12 imply that some of them were tempted to ask Him who He was? Because of unbelief.

For the example from Matthew, we’ll consider the passage where the disciples fail to cast out a demon:

[Mat 17:16-20 KJV] 16 And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. 17 Then Jesus answered and said, O FAITHLESS and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. 18 And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour. 19 Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? 20 And Jesus said unto them, Because of YOUR UNBELIEF: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

So, why are some of the disciples still doubting in Matthew 28:17? Because of unbelief.

Are we clear on what kind of resurrection the gospels are teaching?

I hope I have made it clear that the gospels consistently teach the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ! If not, please let me know.

HE IS RISEN!

TFOTF

Links:

(1) The New York Times on Reginald H. Fuller