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Background

I’m currently blogging about the first chapter of Part 2 of The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona.

This chapter is numbered as Chapter 3, is titled “A Quintet of Facts (4+1)”, and is subtitled The First Two.

As a refresher, “minimal facts” are facts that:

• Are agreed on by nearly all scholars
• Are strongly supported by the evidence
• Collectively build a strong case for the bodily resurrection of Jesus

You are here

We covered the first minimal fact (“Jesus died by crucifixion”) previously…see post #10 in hyperlinked series outline above.

There is a quite a bit of material regarding the 2nd minimal fact (“Jesus’s disciples believed that He rose and appeared to them“), and this is our fourth post about it. The authors break this fact into two sub-facts:

1. They claimed it
2. They believed it

We haven’t even made it to the 2nd sub-fact yet! The authors present so much interesting information about the Scriptures and the scholarly consensus thereon. God willing, I’m going to continue talking about the first sub-fact today: They claimed it.

Like I’ve been doing throughout this series, I’m generally using Wikipedia to verify the authors’ assertions (though the authors cite plenty of sources). When I see the Christian scholars and Wikipedia agreeing on something, it seems difficult to refute, because Wikipedia is a mainstream, secular source.

Clement of Rome

Moving on from the last post’s discussion of the gospels themselves, we discuss today the testimony of the apostolic fathers.

As in last week’s post, we’re trying to see what evidence there is that the apostles really did claim Jesus’s resurrection. So, testimony from those who personally knew the apostles is of great interest to us.

First, let’s look at the evidence that Clement of Rome knew the apostles:

“This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing, and their traditions before his eyes.”

That is a comment about Clement, quoted by Habermas and Licona, originally spoken by Irenaeus in a book called Against Heresies. Irenaeus was a Greek bishop, and, according to Wikipedia, his most important surviving work is Against Heresies (1). In the same vein, Habermas and Licona quote Tertullian on Clement as well; I plan to say more about Tertullian in a later post.

So, given the evidence that Clement did in fact personally know the apostles, we’re interested in whether he can confirm that they proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus. But first, do we even have Clement’s writings to look at, in 2022? Apparently, we do:

“Clement’s only genuine extant writing is his letter to the church at Corinth (1 Clement) in response to a dispute in which certain presbyters of the Corinthian church had been deposed.” (2)

OK, so what did Clement say??

“For the Apoftles receiving their Commands, having a full confidence through the refurrection of our Lord Jefus Chrift, and faith in the Word of God, with an affurance of the Holy Spirit, went forth publifhing the Gofpel of the Kingdom of God which fhould come.” (3)

Notice, he doesn’t say the apostles had confidence through news of the resurrection; rather they had confidence through the resurrection itself. This verbiage is more consistent with the idea that apostles claimed to be eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus than that they claimed to have received the information secondhand.

So, we have further evidence that the apostles themselves, Jesus’s closest inner circle, really did claim to see Him in His resurrected form. But wait, there’s more! But I’m out of time.

God bless, thanks for reading!

Links:

1. Irenaeus
2. Clement of Rome
3. https://archive.org/details/ClementTheBlessedPaulsFellow-labourerInTheGospelHisFirstEpistleTo/page/n37/mode/2up