Points of Evidence for the Resurrection (Pt2)
- MHBPC Admin
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Having examined (1) Jesus’ Death and Burial and (2) The Empty Tomb, we continue this week to look at the next two “minimal facts” of the historical case for Resurrection Jesus Christ: (3) The Belief of the Apostles, and (4) The Conversion of Paul.1
Once again, may this reading equip you to share the gospel with greater confidence, and strengthen your conviction of our resurrection hope in Christ!
Pastor Luwin Wong
3. The Belief of the Apostles
Third, the followers of Jesus claimed to have seen him alive after he had been executed. They did not claim to have seen him only once or for a short time; they claimed to have seen him repeatedly over an extended period of several weeks. They also did not merely claim to have had a vision of him but said that they touched him, talked to him and ate with him.18 These experiences were not limited to one or two individuals but included large groups of people, including five hundred at one time.19 What are we to make of these claims?
It is nearly universally accepted by historians that the disciples genuinely believed they had encountered the resurrected Jesus, even if they were mistaken in their belief. For instance, Gerd Lüdemann, who denies the historicity of the resurrection, nonetheless states, “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”20 The reason for this consensus is the persecution endured by the apostles for their belief in the resurrection. The apostles were repeatedly beaten and imprisoned. We have good historical evidence that James, Peter and Paul were all executed for their faith, and church tradition maintains that as many as eleven of the twelve apostles were eventually martyred.21 Given the suffering that the apostles faced, it is difficult to maintain that they knew the resurrection to be a hoax. What would their motivation have been if they knew for certain that they had invented the resurrection stories?
As a parallel, it’s reasonable to infer that the terrorists who destroyed the Twin Towers on 9/11 were sincere. If they were certain that Islam was false, why were they willing to kill themselves and thousands of others? What would they have had to gain? Likewise, we can infer that the apostles were sincere. Like the terrorists on 9/11, they would have had little to gain and a great deal to lose by acting upon a known falsehood. But unlike the terrorists, the apostles were in a position to know with complete certainty whether their claims were true. They were claiming to have seen, touched and conversed with a man who had been executed just days earlier. If they had intentionally invented that claim, they would have known for certain that it was not worth dying for.
Muslim author Reza Aslan, who argues that it’s “impossible to know” exactly what happened after Jesus’s death, nonetheless recognises the significance of these considerations. He writes:
One could simply . . . dismiss the resurrection as a lie, and declare belief in the risen Jesus to be the product of a deludable mind. However, there is this nagging fact to consider: one after another of those who claimed to have witnessed the risen Jesus went to their own gruesome deaths refusing to recant their testimony. That is not, in itself, unusual. Many zealous Jews died horribly for refusing to deny their beliefs. But these first followers of Jesus were not being asked to reject matters of faith based on events that took place centuries, if not millennia, before. They were being asked to deny something they themselves personally, directly encountered.22
When they began to face persecution and even death, why would they continue to affirm what they knew to be a lie? The best explanation is that they truly believed they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, whether or not their belief was correct.
4. The Conversion of Paul
Fourth, the conversion of Paul is an important datum reported in the book of Acts and by Paul himself in several of his New Testament letters. He had originally been a vehement opponent of the church and had even consented to the stoning of the first Christian martyr, Stephen. While traveling to Damascus to continue his persecution of the early church, Paul suddenly became a Christian, claiming he had encountered Jesus on the road. Unlike the other apostles, Paul had not been a follower of Jesus during his ministry and was clearly no friend to the early church. Thus, his testimony can be regarded as that of a “hostile witness,” someone who had no incentive to accept Christian testimony about the resurrection unless he himself had an experience that he could unambiguously interpret as confirmation that Jesus was alive.23
The weight of this piece of evidence is significant. First, Paul’s conversion put him at immediate odds with the Jewish religious leaders in every city to which he travelled. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul recounts how he was whipped, beaten, stoned, and shipwrecked as a result of his faith (2 Cor. 11:24–25). Moreover, the physical consequences of his conversion are perhaps even less significant than its spiritual implications. Like many Pharisees, Paul regarded the claims of Jesus’s followers — that their Master was the divine Messiah — to be not only false but utterly blasphemous (see Acts 22:2–5; 1 Tim. 1:13). However, Paul underwent a complete religious transformation in a matter of days. He went from regarding Jesus as a false prophet to believing that Jesus was the unique Son of God, who alone offered salvation to all humanity.
This event is psychologically surprising. It would have been as unexpected as Richard Dawkins, the vocal Oxford atheist, suddenly announcing that Jesus appeared to him in his study and that he was now a Christian. While we might think he was crazy, it would be hard to deny that something extraordinary had taken place to bring about such a complete reversal. In fact, the conversion of Paul is even more surprising than the hypothetical conversion of Dawkins, given that Paul embraced not a world religion with billions of followers but a despised, persecuted religious sect with no power and few adherents. Therefore, anyone who doubts the resurrection must provide a plausible account of why Paul underwent such a dramatic conversion in such a short period of time.
1 Shenvi, Neil, (2023, Mar 31). 4 Points of Evidence for the Resurrection. Crossway
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