God is the best explanation for Easter
On Easter, we celebrate the defining moment of history: The resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It’s an event the likes of which has never happened before and will not happen again until he returns and makes all things new.
To some, though, it seems like a fanciful tale. Claims of miracles are a dime a dozen. Stories of incredible things happening in ancient times abound. Why should we think of the resurrection any differently?
The answer to this question really matters. Not only is it the defining moment in history, but it’s the defining moment in the life of everyone who identifies as a Christian. Without the resurrection, Christianity makes no sense. Following Jesus would just be like following Plato or Socrates. If Jesus is risen from the dead, however, proving himself superior to death itself, then how could we follow anyone else? How could we give our lives to anyone or anything else?
It’s certainly a tall order to show that the resurrection of Christ is the best explanation for the events we celebrate on Easter. The relevant events happened 2,000 years ago, and all we have to access are written sources. Still, the case to be made is much stronger than one might think. Truthfully, the case for the resurrection is so multifaceted that it’s impossible to do it justice in a short post, so this is an extremely brief treatment of the matter. But it’s the most important matter of all, so it’s more than worth diving into.
The truth and relevance of the resurrection of Christ revolves around these four claims, all of which are controversial and need to be investigated.
#1. Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be the Son of God
C.S. Lewis famously proposed that when it comes to who Jesus is, there are only three options: He was a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. But many propose a fourth option: Legend. They say that Jesus didn’t really claim to be the Son of God. They would say that Jesus’ followers distorted his teachings and added and subtracted selectively from his words in order to suit some overarching agenda.
However, the evidence doesn’t support that idea. You don’t have to believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God or inerrant to acknowledge this, either. Even if we were to grant to the skeptic, for argument’s sake, that Jesus’ teachings weren’t all accurately passed down through the years, we can still get a firm grasp on the overarching themes of Jesus’s ministry and what his life and teaching centered around, including his view of himself.
For example, one of Jesus’ favorite titles for himself was the “Son of Man.” That expression appears 81 times in the Gospels, most of them spoken by Jesus himself. Obviously, “Son of Man” and “Son of God” can mean two different things. But we need to examine what Jesus meant by using that title for himself. That title hearkens back to the Old Testament book of Daniel, in which Daniel describes a vision where:
In my vision in the night I continued to watch, and I saw One like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. And He was given dominion, glory, and kingship, that the people of every nation and language should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13-14)
This “One like a Son of Man” in Daniel’s vision is someone who comes into the presence of God and is given an eternal, indestructible kingdom, and the entire world serves him. Unlike a human being, who might be described as coming up to heaven, this Son of Man is described as coming “with the clouds of heaven.” The Son of Man described in Daniel, then, seems to be a heavenly being, not an earthly one. And it’s clear that Jesus identified himself with this heavenly being, given authority by God to carry out his judgment and execute his kingship on the Earth. Jesus even identified himself to the Jewish high priest at his trial using language from this very passage, saying, “From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64).
There is also the Parable of the Tenants, found in three of the four Gospels (Matthew 21:33-46; Mark 12:1-12; Luke 20:9-19). In this parable, Jesus portrayed God as a landowner and the people of Israel as tenants renting the landowner’s farm. When the landowner sends messengers to the tenants to collect his share of the harvest—representing the prophets God had sent to his people over the centuries—the tenants beat and kill the landowner’s messengers. Finally, the landowner sends his own son, saying, “They will respect my son.” But the tenants say, “This is the heir. Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours,” and they do so. Jesus clearly meant for that final messenger, the son of the landowner, to represent himself. He identified himself as the son of the landowner. And since the landowner represented God, Jesus is therefore identifying himself as God’s Son. He distinguishes himself from all the other messengers (prophets), and identifies himself as the heir of all that belongs to God.
You don’t have to look very closely to see that Jesus plainly identified himself as the Son of God, the Judge of all people, the Ruler of the whole world, and the Heir of everything. You don’t even need to delve into the more direct claims in the Gospel of John to get this picture. These are not things any mere man would claim about himself.
#2. If Jesus rose from the dead, that vindicates his claims to divinity
The fact that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, identifying himself with divinity, doesn’t mean a lot by itself. Countless people throughout history have claimed to be divine. So if we are to believe Jesus’ claims and reject the claims of others, we need some overriding reason to do so. Rising from the dead, demonstrating his superiority over death, would be the most remarkable evidence conceivable. If Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, and then rose from the dead in support of that claim, it’s hard to think of a more convincing reason to believe.
#3. There is good reason to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.
Many are resistant to this claim, not because of the historical evidence, but because resurrection is a supernatural act. For some, because they’ve already decided that the supernatural is just for fairy tales, any natural explanation, no matter how implausible, should be preferred to any supernatural explanation. But if God exists, then it’s easy to believe that he could raise someone from the dead. There’s nothing that makes supernatural explanations inherently less plausible than natural explanations except one’s preconceived decision that God does not exist or that miracles do not occur. If the facts of a case are better explained by a supernatural phenomenon than a natural one, then we are justified in believing the supernatural explanation.
So to start, let’s look at the historical facts:
#3A. The historical record is clear that Jesus of Nazareth existed, and that he was crucified and buried in a tomb. Multiple independent historical sources, both biblical and secular, attest to this.
#3B. On the third day after his crucifixion, his tomb was empty. There are multiple good reasons to believe this is true. For one, we can see through the endings of the Gospels and Acts how the Jewish authorities reacted to the apostles’ claims of Jesus’ resurrection. In Matthew 28, we see that the Jewish authorities conspired with the Roman guards to claim that Jesus’ disciples had stolen his body. We also see that at no point do the authorities attempt to produce the body of Jesus. It would have been very easy for someone to do so, and it’s extremely implausible to believe that everyone who knew the location of Jesus’ tomb conspired to lie for no benefit to themselves, and managed to keep the true location a secret from everyone else.
Finally, the Gospels unanimously attest that the first witnesses to the resurrected Jesus were women. Any first-century reader would be shocked by this admission, because women’s testimony was considered to be inherently unreliable. If you were trying to make up a convincing story about an empty tomb, the last people you would claim as initial witnesses would be women. You would only do that if the story were true and you felt obligated to report it accurately. All these together are convincing reasons to believe the tomb was empty.
#3C. Jesus’ followers had radically life-altering experiences with whom they believed to be the resurrected Christ. Their experiences completely changed the way they thought about God, the way they thought about their own culture and heritage, and their way of life. Suddenly, these young men who had abandoned Jesus at his trial became bold proclaimers of his resurrection. They were willing to suffer persecution, imprisonment, and death, all for refusing to deny that Jesus was the resurrected Son of God.
Their experiences even radically altered the way they thought about their most treasured cultural values. Many first-century Jews believed in a promised Messiah, or “Anointed One,” (Christos in Greek), who would be the savior of the Jewish nation. But they believed the Messiah would be a sort of general-king who would drive out the enemies of the Jewish nation and establish a kingdom like that of David. The idea that this Messiah would die and rise from the dead was unthinkable. And that the Messiah would be God become human? That was considered downright blasphemous for any self-respecting, God-fearing Jew. Yet Jesus’ followers, devout Jewish men deeply entrenched in this culture, readily adopted these very beliefs. Only a radical, unparalleled life-changing experience could prompt such a radical, unthinkable change in the worldview and manner of life of Jesus’ followers.
So what is the best explanation of these facts? Is it that Jesus really rose from the dead, or is there some natural explanation? Some have come up with options: Some have claimed that Jesus didn’t really die, but only lost consciousness and later revived in the tomb (the “swoon” theory). Others have claimed that Jesus’ followers lost track of the tomb Jesus was buried in and went to an empty one by mistake. Theories like this are quickly dismissed by virtually everyone today, as they are extremely implausible. If Jesus revived in the tomb, he would not have been in any shape to stand, much less convince his followers he was risen. It’s also unimaginable that Jesus’ followers, many of whom saw him buried, could all forget where the tomb of their revered teacher was.
But there are other, more plausible-sounding alternatives. Some would say that after 2,000 years, we just can’t trust the writings of the Bible enough to piece together an accurate account. Some say the apostles made the whole thing up. Others say that the apostles had a hallucinatory or visionary experience they misinterpret as real. And there are a few conspiracy theorists who claim that later Christians altered and embellished the story. Let’s examine each of these alternatives briefly.
Are these alternative explanations better?
Did Jesus’ followers hallucinate? A phenomenon of mass hallucination on the scale described in Scripture is unprecedented and implausible. Paul mentions in his letter to the Corinthians no less than six separate post-resurrection appearances of Christ. We can read about several of them in the Gospels (Matthew 28:8-9; Matthew 28:16-20; Luke 24:13-35; Luke 24:36-52; John 20:14-16; John 20:19-24; John 20:26-29; John 21:1-23; Acts 1:3-11). That even one or two individuals would have such a hallucinatory experience with whom they perceived to be the risen Jesus is remarkable; that this many people would have such a hallucinatory experience on several different occasions is implausible. There are far better explanations.
Did the apostles make up the resurrection? Some claim that the apostles simply made up the story for some reason: perhaps to gain power or money or fame. But such a view is based on an anachronistic view of what the Christian church was in the first century. There was no political or monetary benefit to being the leader of a sect that was small, powerless, and despised by Jewish and Roman authorities alike. The early Christians were in many cases shunned by their families, denied jobs and housing, and often ended up imprisoned or killed by the authorities. Most of the early Christians, including the apostles, paid a considerable cost for their steadfast faithfulness to the resurrection of Christ. Paul especially details the persecution he suffered as a result of his missionary work. It is probable that Peter and Paul were both killed by the emperor Nero for their faith. There was nothing whatsoever to be gained by preaching such an unpopular message and refusing to deny it even in the face of death. It has been aptly pointed out: People may die for something they mistakenly believe to be true. But people don’t die, especially on such a massive scale, for something they know to be a lie. This is a very poor explanation.
Can we still trust accounts from so long ago? Did later Christians embellish the story? This is one of the most popular perspectives: That surely such ancient accounts underwent some legendary embellishment over such a long period of time, and obviously the writers of the Bible had a religious agenda. Can we really trust that they and those who came after them didn’t alter the facts or embellish the story?
As we consider this, keep in mind that the only reason we know anything about ancient history is through the ancient manuscripts passed down to us. We rely on the writings of ancient historians to put together a picture of what the world was like 2,000 years ago, and we can do a pretty good job of that. If we can trust the ancient writings that tell us the history of Ancient Greece and Rome, we can trust the Bible at least to the same degree.
Did the writers of the Bible have a specific theological and philosophical agenda in their writing? Of course they did. But so did every historical writer. So does every modern writer, for that matter. I would challenge anyone who thinks the religious nature of the Bible is a reason to doubt its accounts to find any writer who doesn’t have a political or philosophical or theological agenda in their writing. You won’t. If you dig deep enough, you can flesh out the agenda behind the writings of any historian, philosopher, poet, playwright, or other writer. So the Bible cannot be dismissed or given less credibility just because it’s religious literature. This is especially true in the ancient world where, because events were believed to be centered around the activity of the gods, just about everything was in a sense religious literature.
You don’t have to believe the Bible is the word of God to investigate it as a historical document. Indeed, it’s better than a historical document. It’s a collection of independent or partially independent historical documents that are all in remarkable agreement on the outline of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ministry, message, and divine nature. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul all convey some independent information on Jesus’ resurrection and his post-resurrection appearances. You can point out disparities on the details, or you can claim parts of them are embellished, but if you’re looking at five independent streams of narrative all in agreement on the core truth that Jesus’ followers had multiple, independent, varying experiences of Jesus risen from the dead, there is very strong reason to believe they are speaking of the real experiences of real people, even if you still believe those people misinterpreted their experiences.
At the very least, it is evident that Jesus’ first followers had profound, extraordinary experiences, backed up by the discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb, that led them to change their entire worldview, and boldly proclaim this radical new message, often at the cost of their livelihoods and lives.
#4. Therefore, the best explanation is that Jesus is the Son of God, risen from the dead.
Of course, you can come up with any number of competing explanations. Many of them have been addressed already in this post. But it’s not enough to just have a competing explanation. It needs to be shown why a competing explanation is superior to the resurrection hypothesis. It is not enough to say that the mere fact that a resurrection is a supernatural occurrence makes it less plausible as an explanation. If God exists, it’s not at all implausible to believe he could raise someone from the dead.
If God did raise Jesus from the dead, then Jesus’ claims about himself are vindicated. And if Jesus’ claims about himself are true, then that means he not only died and rose again, but his words are completely trustworthy. And if we listen to his words, then we find that he came so that we might be born again (John 3:3-5), set free from our sins (John 8:36), and so that by believing in him we might have eternal life. He offers us all the chance to be born again, spiritually regenerated, and given new life, an eternal life that begins right now with knowing God. As Jesus said, Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:3)
Ultimately, the question of the resurrection is not going to be answered by historical evidence alone. While I think this evidence is sufficient to prompt us to view the resurrection as the best explanation for the historical evidence, that’s not the ultimate goal. Ultimately, we need to have our own experience with the risen Jesus. We need to meet him and get to know him for ourselves. And if we surrender our lives to him, giving up everything, turning from our sins, and putting our trust in him, then we can get to know him. And our experiences with the resurrected Jesus, as we experience him transforming our hearts and minds, and as we walk with him day by day, will be a real and living and experiential demonstration of the reality of Jesus’ resurrection.
He is risen!
