Jesus has three basic credentials: (1) The impact of His life upon history; (2) Fulfilled prophecy in His life; and (3) His resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus Christ and Christianity stand or fall together. A student at the University of Uruguay said to me: "Professor McDowell, why can't you refute Christianity?" I answered: "For a very simple reason: I am not able to explain away an event in history - the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
THE RESURRECTION ACCOUNT IN MATTHEW 28:1-11 (See also Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20-21)
1 Now late on the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave.
2 And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the LORD descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it.
3 And his appearance was like lightning, and his garment as white as snow;
4 and the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men.
5 And the angel answered and said to the women, "Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified.
6 "He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying.
7 "And go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead; and behold, He is going before you into Galilee, there you will see Him; behold, I have told you."
8 And they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to report it to His disciples.
9 And behold, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him.
10 Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and take word to My brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they shall see Me."
11 Now while they were on their way, behold, some of the guards came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened.
IMPORTANCE OF THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
All but four of the major world religions are based on mere philosophical propositions. Of the four that are based on personalities rather than a philosophical system, only Christianity claims an empty tomb for its founder. Abraham, the father of Judaism, died about 1900 B.C., but not resurrection was ever claimed for him.
Wilbur M. Smith says in Therefore Stand: "The original accounts of Buddha never ascribe to him any such thing as a resurrection; in fact, in the earliest accounts of his death, namely, the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, we read that when Buddha died it was 'with that utter passing away in which nothing whatever remains behind.' "
"Professor Childera says, 'There is no trace in the Pali scriptures or commentaries (or so far as I know in any Pali book) of Sakya Muni having existed after his death or appearing to this disciples.' Mohammed died June 8, 632 A.D., at the age of sixty-one, at Medina, where his tomb is annually visited by thousands of devout Mohammedans. All the millions and millions of Jews, Buddhists, and Mohammedans agree that their founders have never come up out of the dust of the earth in resurrection."
Theodosus Harnack says: "Where you stand with regard to the fact of the Resurrection is in my eyes no longer Christian theology.To me Christianity stands or falls with the Resurrection."
Professor William Milligan states: "While speaking of the positive evidence of the REsurrection of our LORD, it may be further urged that the fact, if true, harmonizes all the other facts of His history."
Wilbur M. Smith concludes: "If our LORD said, frequently, with great definiteness and detail, that after He went up to Jerusalem He would be put to death, but on the third day He would rise again from the grave, and this prediction came to pass, then it has always seemed to me that everything else that our LORD ever said must also be true."
It is further stated by W. J. Sparrow-Simpson:
"If it be asked how the resurrection of Christ is a proof of His being the Son of GOD, it may be answered, first, because He rose by His own power. He had power to lay down His life, and He had power to take it again, John x.18. This is not inconsistent with the fact taught in so many other passages, that He was raised by the power of the FAther, because what the Father does the Son does likewise; creation, and all other external works, are ascribed indifferently to the FAther, Son and Spirit. But in the second place, as Christ had openly declared Himself to be the Son of GOD, His rising from the dead was the seal of GOD to the truth of that declaration. Had He continued under the power of death, GOD would thereby have disallowed His claim to be His Son; but as He raised Him from the dead, He publicly acknowledged Him; saying, 'Thou art My Son, this day have I declared Thee such.' "
Also, Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost is "wholly and entirely founded on the Resurrection. Not merely is the Resurrection its principal theme, but if that doctrine were removed there would be no doctrine left. For the Resurrection is propounded as being (1) the explanation of Jesus' death; (2) prophetically anticipated as the Messianic experience; (3) apostolically witnessed; (4) the cause of the outpouring of the Spirit, and thus accounting for religious phenomena otherwise inexplicable; and (5) certifying the Messianic and Kingly position of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus the whole series of arguments and conclusions depends for stability entirely upon the Resurrection. Without the Resurrection the Messianic and Kingly position of Jesus could not be convincingly established. Without it the new outpouring of the Spirit would continue a mystery unexplained. Without it the substance of the apostolic witness would have disappeared. All that would be left of this instruction would be the Messianic exposition of Psalm xvi.; and that, only as a future experience of a Messiah who had not yet appeared. The Divine Approval of Jesus as certified by His works would also remain; but apparently as an approval extended only to His life; a life ending like that of any other prophet whom the nation refused to tolerate any longer. Thus the first Christian sermon is founded on the position of Jesus as determined by His Resurrection."
Even Adolf Harnack, who rejects the Church's belief in the resurrection, admits: "The firm confidence of the disciples in Jesus was rooted in the belief that He did not abide in death, but was raised by GOD. That Christ was risen was, in virtue of what they had experienced in Him, certainly only after they had seen Him, just as sure as the fact of His death, and became the main article of their preaching about Him" (History of Dogma, Chapter II).
H. P. Liddon says: "Faith in the resurrection is the very keystone of the arch of Christian faith, and, when it is removed, all must inevitable crumble into ruin."
The resurrection of Christ has always been categorically the central tenet of the Church. As Wilbur Smith puts it:
"From the first day of its divinely bestowed life, the Christian church has unitedly borne testimony to its faith in the Resurrection of Christ. It is what we may call one of the great fundamental doctrines and convictions of the church, and so penetrates the literature of the New Testament, that if you lifted out every passage in which a reference is made to the Resurrection, you would have a collection of writings so mutilated that what remained could not be understood. The Resurrection entered intimately into the life of the earliest Christians; the fact of it appears on their tombs, and in the drawings found on the walls of the catacombs; it entered deeply into Christian hymnology; it became one of the most vital themes of the great apologetic writings of the first four centuries; it was the theme constantly dwelt upon in the preaching of the ante-Nicene and post-Nicene period. It entered at once into the creedal formulae of the church; it is in our Apostles' Creed; it is in all the great creeds that followed.
"All evidence of the New Testament goes to show that the burden of the good news or gospel was not 'Follow this Teacher and do your best,' but, 'Jesus and the Resurrection.' You cannot take that away from Christianity without radically altering its character and destroying its very identity."
Professor Milligan says: "It thus appears that from the dawn of her history the Christian Church not only believed in the Resurrection of her LORD, but that her belief upon the point was interwoven with her whole existence."
W. Robertson Nicoll quotes Pressense as saying: "The empty tomb of Christ has been the cradle of the Church..."
W. J. Sparrow-Simpson says: "If the Resurrection is not historic fact, then the power of death remains unbroken, and with it the effect of sin; and the significance of Christ's Death remains uncertified, and accordingly believers are yet in their sins, precisely where they were before they heard of Jesus' name."
R. M'Cheyne Edgar, in his work, The Gospel of a Risen Saviour, has said:
"Here is a teacher of religion and He calmly professes to stake His entire claims upon His ability, after having been done to death, to rise again from the grave. We may safely assume that there never was, before or since, such a proposal made. To talk of this extraordinary test being invented by mystic students of the prophecies, and inserted in the way it has been into the gospel narratives, is to lay too great a burden on our credulity. He who was ready to stake everything on His ability to come back from the tomb stands before us as the most original of all teachers, one who shines in His own self-evidencing life!"
The following is found in the Dictionary of the Apostolic Church:
"D. F. Strauss, e.g., the most trenchant and remorseless of her critics in dealing with the Resurrection, acknowledges that it is the 'touchstone not of lives of Jesus only, but of Christianity itself,' that it 'touches all Christianity to the quick,' and is 'decisive for the whole view of Christianity' (New Life of Jesus, Eng. tr., 2 vols., London, 1865, i. 41,397). If this goes, all that is vital and essential in Christianity goes; it this remains, all else remains. And so through the centuries, from Celsus onwards, the Resurrection has been the storm centre of the attack upon the Christian faith."
"Christ Himself," as B. B. Warfield puts it, "deliberately staked His whole claim to the credit of men upon His resurrection. When asked for a sign He pointed to this sign as His single and sufficient credential."
Ernest Devan says of the famous Swiss theologian, Frederick Godet: "In his Lectures in Defense of the Christian Faith [1883, p. 41], [he] speaks of the importance of the resurrection of Christ, and points out that it was this miracle, and this alone, to which Christ referred s the attestation of His claims and authority."
Michael Green makes the point well: "Christianity does not hold the resurrection to be one among many tenets of belief. Without faith in the resurrection there would be no Christianity at all. The Christian church would never have begun; the Jesus-movement would have fizzled out like a damp squib with His execution. Christianity stands or falls with the truth of the resurrection. Once disprove it, and you have disposed of Christianity.
"Christianity is a historical religion. It claims that GOD has taken the risk of involving Himself in human history, and the facts are there for you to examine with the utmost rigour. They will stand any amount of critical investigation..."
John Locke, the famous British philosopher, said concerning Christ's resurrection: "Our Saviour's resurrection...is truly of great importance in Christianity; so great that His being or not being the Messiah stands or falls with it: so that these two important articles are inseparable and in effect make one. For since that time, believe one and you believe both; deny one of them, and you can believe neither."
As Philip Schaff, the church historian, concludes: "The resurrection of Christ is therefore emphatically a test question upon which depends the truth or falsehood of the Christian religion. It is either the greatest miracle or the greatest delusion which history records."
Wilbur M. Smith, noted scholar and teacher, says: "No weapon has ever been forged, and...noe ever will be, to destroy rational confidence in the historical records of this epochal and predicted event. The resurrection of Christ is the very citadel of the Christian faith. This is the doctrine that turned the world upside down in the first century, that lifted Christianity preeminently above Judaism and the pagan religions of the Mediterranean world. If this goes, so must almost everything else that is vital and unique in the Gospel of the LORD Jesus Christ: 'If Christ be not risen, then is your faith vain' " (I Cor. 15:17).
THE CLAIMS OF CHRIST THAT HE WOULD BE RAISED FROM THE DEAD
The Importance of the Claims
Wilbur M. Smith asserts:
"It was this same Jesus, the Christ who, among many other remarkable things, said and repeated something which, proceeding from any other being would have condemned him at once as either a bloated egotist or a dangerously unbalanced person. That Jesus aid He was going up to Jerusalem to dies is not so remarkable, though all the details He gave about that death, weeks and months before He died, are together a prophetic phenomenon. But when He said that He himself would rise again from the dead, the third day after He was crucified, He said something that only a fool would dare say, if he expected longer the devotion of any disciples, unless - He was sure He was going to rise. No founder of any world religion known to men ever dared say a thing like that!"
Christ predicted His resurrection in an unmistakable and straightforward manner. While His disciples simply couldn't understand it, the Jews took His assertions quite seriously.
Concerning the above point, J. N. D. Anderson makes the following observation:
"Not so very long ago there was in England a young man barrister, or what you would call a trial lawyer, by the name of Frank Morison. He was an unbeliever. For years he promised himself that one day he would write a book to disprove the resurrection finally and forever. At last he got the leisure. He was an honest man and he did the necessary study.
Eventually [after accepting Christ] he wrote a book that you can buy as a paperback, Who MOved the Stone? Starting from the most critical possible approach to the New Testament documents he concludes inter alia that you can explain the trial and the conviction of Jesus only on the basis that He Himself had foretold His death and resurrection."
Smith says further: "If you or I should say to any group of friends that we expected to die, either by violence or naturally, at a certain time, but that, three days after death, we would rise again, we would be quietly taken away by friends, and confined to an institution, until our minds became clear and sound again. This would be right, for only a foolish man would go around talking about rising from the dead on the third day, only a foolish man, unless he knew that this was going to take place, and no one in the world has ever known that about himself except One Christ, the Son of GOD."
Bernard Ramm remarks: "Taking the Gospel record as faithful history there can be no doubt that Christ Himself anticipated His death and resurrection, and plainly declared it to His disciples...The gospel writers are quite frank to admit that such predictions really did not penetrate their minds till the resurrection was a fact (John 20:9). But the evidence is there from the mouth of our LORD that He would be put to death violently, through the cause of hatred, and would rise the third day. All this came to pass."
John R. W. Stott writes:
"Jesus Himself never predicted His death without adding that He would rise, and described His coming resurrection as a 'sign'. Paul, at the beginning of his letter to the Romans, wrote that Jesus was 'designated Son of GOD in power...by His resurrection from the dead,' and the earliest sermons of the apostles recorded in the Acts repeatedly assert that by the resurrection GOD has reversed man's sentence and vindicated His Son."
The Claims as Given by Jesus:
Jesus not only predicted His resurrection but also emphasized His rising from the dead would be the "sign" to authenticate His claims to be the Messiah (Matthew 12; John 2).
Matthew 12:38-40; 16:21; 17:9; 17:22,23; 20:18,19; 26:32; 27:63
Mark 8:31-9:1; 9:10; 9:31; 10:32-34; 14:28,58
Luke 9:22-27
John 2:18-22; 12:34; Chps. 14-16
Matthew 16:21 - "From that time Jesus Christ began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day."
Matthew 17:9 - "And as they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, 'Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.' "
Matthew 17:22,23 - "And while they were gathering together in Galilee, Jesus said to them, 'The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men; and they will kill Him, and He will be raised again on the third day.' And they were deeply grieved."
Matthew 20:18,19 - "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered up to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and will deliver Him up to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up."
Matthew 26:32 - "But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee."
Mark 9:10 - "And they seized upon that statement, discussing with one another what rising from the dead might mean."
Luke 9:22-27 - "...The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day.' And He was saying to them all, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lost it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. But I tell you truly, there are some of those standing here who shall not taste of death until they see the kingdom of GOD.' "
John 2:18-22 - "The Jews therefore answered and said to Him, 'What sign do You show to us, seeing that You do these things?' Jesus answered and said to them, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.' The Jews therefore said, 'It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?' But He was speaking of the temple of His body. When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture, and the word which Jesus had spoken."
THE HISTORICAL APPROACH
The Resurrection of Christ as a Time-Space Dimension Event in History
The resurrection of Christ is an event in history wherein GOD acted in a definite time-space dimension. Concerning this, Wilbur Smith says, "The meaning of the resurrection is a theological matter, but the fact of the resurrection is a historical matter; the nature of the resurrection body of Jesus may be a mystery, but the fact that the body disappeared from the tomb is a matter to be decided upon by historical evidence.
"The place is of geographical definiteness, the man who owned the tomb was a man living in the first half of the first century; that tomb was made out of rock in a hillside near Jerusalem, and was not composed of some mythological gossamer, or cloud-dust, but is something which has geographical significance. The guards put before that tomb were not aerial beings from Mt. Olympus; the Sanhedrin was a body of men meeting frequently in Jerusalem. As a vast mass of literature tells us, this person, Jesus, was a living person, a man among men, whatever else He was, and the disciples who went out to preach the risen LORD were men among men, men who ate, drank, slept, suffered, worked, died. What is there 'doctrinal' about this? This is a historical problem."
Ignatius (ca. 50-115 A.D.), Bishop of Antioch, a native of Syria, a pupil of the apostle John, is said to have "been thrown to the wild beasts in the colosseum at Rome. His Epistles were written during his journey from Antioch to his martyrdom." At a time when he would undoubtedly have been very sober of mind, he says of Christ: "He was crucified and died under Pontius Pilate. He really, and not merely in appearance, as crucified, and died, in the sight of beings in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth.
"He also rose again in three days...On the day of the preparation, then, at the third hour, He received the sentence from Pilate, the Father permitting that to happen; at the sixth hour He was crucified; at the ninth hour He gave up the ghost; and before sunset He was buried. During the Sabbath He continued under the earth in the tomb in which Joseph of Arimathaea had laid Him.
"He was carried in the womb, even as we are, for the usual period of time; and was really born, as we also are; and was in reality nourished with milk, and partook of common meat and drink, even as we do. And when He had lived among men for thirty years, He was baptized by John, really and not in appearance; and when He ahd preached the gospel three years, and done signs and wonders, He who was Himself the Judge was judged by the Jews, falsely so called, and by Pilate the governor; was scourged, was smitten on the cheek, was spit upon; He wore a crown of thorns and a purple robe; He was condemned: He was crucified in reality, and not in appearance, not in imagination, not in deceit. He really died, and was buried, and rose from the dead..."
The brilliant historian Alfred Edersheim speaks of the particular time of Christ's death and resurrection:
"The brief spring-day was verging towards the 'evening of the Sabbath.' In general, the Law ordered that the body of a criminal should not be left hanging unburied over night. Perhaps in ordinary circumstances the Jews might not have appealed so confidently to Pilate as actually to ask him to shorten the sufferings of those on the Cross, since the punishment of crucifixion often lasted not only for hours but days, ere death ensured. But here was a special occasion. The Sabbath about to open was a 'high-day' - it was both a Sabbath and the second Paschal Day, which was regarded as in every respect equally sacred with the first - nay, more so, since the so-called Wavesheaf was then offered to the LORD."
As Wilbur Smith put it: "Let it simply be said that we know more about the details of the hours immediately before and the actual death of Jesus, in and near Jerusalem, than we know about the death of any other one man in all the ancient world."
"Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165) philosopher, martyr, apologist...Being an eager seeker for truth, knocked successively at the doors of Stoicism, Aristotelianism, Pythagoreanism and Platonism, but hated Epicureanism...This zealous Platonist became a believing Christian. He said, 'I found this philosophy alone to be safe and profitable.' "
Indeed, Justin Martyr came to realize that while the philosophical systems of the world offered intellectual propositions, Christianity alone offered GOD Himself intervening in time and space through Jesus Christ. In a very straight-forward manner he asserts: "...Christ was born one hundred and fifty years ago under Cyrenius, and subsequently, in the time of Pontius Pilate..."
Tertullian (ca. 160-220) of Carthage, North Africa, says: "But the Jews were so exasperated by His teaching, by which their rulers and chiefs were convicted of the truth, chiefly because so many turned aside to Him, that at last they brought Him before Pontius Pilate, at the time Roman governor of Syria, and, by the violence of their outcries against Him, extorted a sentence giving Him up to them to be crucified."
Of Christ' ascension Tertullian asserts: It is "a fact more certain far than the assertions of your Proculi concerning Romulus" (Proculus was a Roman senator, who affirmed that Romulus had appeared to him after his death).
All these things Pilate did to Christ: and now "in fact a Christian in his own convictions, he sent word of Him to the reigning Caesar, who was at the time Tiberius. Yes, and the Caesars too would have believed on Christ, if either the Caesars had not been necessary for the world, or if Christians could have been Caesars. His disciples also spreading over the world, did as their Divine Master bade them; and after suffering greatly themselves from the persecutions of the Jews, and with no unwilling heart, as having faith undoubting in the truth, at last by Nero's cruel sword sowed the seed of Christian blood at Rome."
Josephus, a Jewish historian, writing at the end of the first century A.D., has this fascinating passage in Antiquities, 18:2:2: "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many Jews, and also many of the Greeks. This man was the Christ. And when Pilate had condemned him to the cross, upon his impeachment by the principal man among us, those who had loved from the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive on the third day, the divine prophets having spoken these and thousands of other wonderful things about him. And even now, the race of Christians, so named from him, has not died out."
Attempts have been made to show that Josephus could not have written this. However, "this passage," writes Michael Green in Man Alive, "was in the text of Josephus used by Eusebius in the fourth century." Also, it is "reiterated by the most recent Loeb edition of his works. And it is all the more remarkable when we remember that, so far from being sympathetic to Christians, Josephus was a Jew writing to please the Romans. This tory would not have pleased them in the slightest. He would hardly have included it if it were not true."
Professor Leaney says concerning the historical nature of the faith of the early Church: "The New Testament itself allows absolutely no escape fro putting the matter as follows: Jesus was crucified and buried. His followers were utterly dejected. A very short time afterwards they were extremely elated and showed such reassurance as carried them by a sustained life of devotion through to a martyr's death. If we ask them through the proxy of writings dependent upon them, what caused this change, they do not answer, 'the gradual conviction that we were marked out by death but the crucified and buried one was alive' but 'Jesus who was dead appeared to some of us alive after his death and the rest of us believed their witness.' It may be worth noting that this way of putting the matter is a historical statement, like the historical statement, 'The LORD is risen indeed,' which has influenced men and women toward belief."
Speaking of the forensic nature of the New Testament narratives, Bernard Ramm says: "In Acts 1, Luke tells us that Jesus showed Himself alive by many infallible proofs (en pollois tekmeriois), an expression indicating the strongest type of legal evidence."
Clark Pinnock also states: "The certainty of the apostles was founded on their experiences in the factual realm. To them Jesus showed Himself alive 'by many infallible proofs' (Acts 1:3). The term Luke uses is tekmerion, which indicates a demonstrable proof. The disciples came to their Easter faith through inescapable empirical evidence available to them, and available to us through their written testimony. It is important for us, in an age that calls for evidence to sustain the Christian claim, to answer the call with appropriate historical considerations. For the resurrection stands within the realm of historical factuality, and constitutes excellent motivation for a person to trust Christ as Saviour."
Professor Ernest Kevan further establishes the evidential quality of these witnesses:
"The Book of the Acts of the Apostles was written by Luke sometime between A.D. 63 and the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. He explains in the preface to his Gospel that he gathered his information from eye-witnesses, and this, it may be concluded, was also the way in which he prepared the Book of the Acts. Further as certain sections in the history show, by the use of the pronoun 'we,' Luke was himself a participator in some of the events which he narrates. He was in the midst of the early preaching, and took a share in the great happenings of the early days. Luke is, therefore, a contemporary and first-hand witness. ...It is impossible to suppose that the Early Church did not know its own history; and the very fact of the acceptance by the Church of this book is evidence of its accuracy."
quoting a noted Christian scholar, Kevan points out: "As the Church is too holy for a foundation of rottenness, so she is too real for a foundation of myth."
"For the establishment of an alleged historical fact no documents are esteemed to be more valuable than contemporary letters."
Professor Kevan says of the epistles of the New Testament, "...There is the unimpeachable evidence of the contemporary letters of Paul the Apostle. These epistles constitute historical evidence of the highest kind. The letters addressed to the Galatians, the Corinthians, and the Romans, about the authenticity and date of which there is very little dispute, belong to the time of Paul's missionary journeys, and may be dated in the period A.D. 55-58. This brings the evidence of the resurrection of Christ still nearer to the event: the interval is the short span of twenty-five years. Since Paul himself makes it plain that the subject of his letter was the same as that about which he had spoken to them when he was with them, this really brings back the evidence to a still earlier time."
Bernard Ramm says that even "the most cursory reading of the Gospels reveals the fact that the Gospels deal with the death and resurrection of Christ in far greater detail than any other part of the ministry of Christ. The details of the resurrection must not be artificially severed from the passion account."
Christ made many appearances after His resurrection. These appearances occurred at specific times in the lives of individuals and were further restricted to specific places.
Wolfhart Pannenberg, "professor of systematic theology at the University of Munich, Germany, studied under Barth and Jaspers, and has been concerned primarily with questions of the relation between faith and history. With a small group of dynamic theologians at Heidelberg, he has been forging a theology that considers its primary task the scrutiny of the historical data of the origins of Christianity."
The brilliant scholar says, "Whether the resurrection of Jesus took place or not is a historical question, and the historical question at this point is inescapable. And so the question has to be decided on the level of historical argument."
The New Testament scholar, C. H. Dodd, writes, "The resurrection remains an event within history..."
J. N. D. Anderson, citing Cambridge professor C. F. D. Moule, asserts, "From the very first the conviction that Jesus had been raised from death has been that by which their very existence has stood or fallen. There was no other motive to account for them, to explain them....At no point within the New Testament is there any evidence that the Christians stood for an original philosophy of life or an original ethic. Their sole function is to bear witness to what they claim as an event - the raising of Jesus from among the dead...The one really distinctive thing for which the Christians stood was their declaration that Jesus had been raised from the dead according to GOD's design, and the consequent estimate of Him as in a unique sense Son of GOD and representative man, and the resulting conception of the way to reconciliation."
W. J. Sparrow-Simpson says: "The Resurrection of Christ is the foundation of Apostolic Christianity, and this for dogmatic just as truly as for evidential reasons...Their consciousness of its basal character is shown in the position it occupies in their witness. An Apostle is ordained to be a witness of the Resurrection (Acts 1:22). The content of St. Paul's Christianity is though at Athens to be 'Jesus and the resurrection' (17:18). The early sections in the Acts reiterate the statement, 'This Jesus hath GOD raised up, whereof we all are witnesses' (2:32).
"As a historic fact, it has been His Resurrection which has enabled men to believe in His official exaltation over humanity. It is not a mere question of the moral influence of His character, example, and teaching. It is that their present surrender to Him as their Redeemer has been promoted by this belief, and could not be justified without it. Indeed, those who deny His Resurrection consistently deny as a rule His Divinity and His redemptive work in any sense that St. Paul would have acknowledged."
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