The Importance
of the Physical Resurrection
From the title of this section, the author is sidetracking
and is foraying to irrelevant areas. The importance of the issue in question
should be clear to all and dedicating five pages to explain the importance of
the resurrection is quite outrageous; it is comparable to a defense attorney
explaining the importance of what he will prove, instead of making his case.
But let’s take a look at this section anyway.
The
author asserts that Jesus himself pointed to the physical nature of his
resurrected body and that the truth of Christianity is dependent on the bodily
resurrection of Christ. He does not bother to specify whether Jesus did so
pre-resurrection (thus a prophecy) or post-resurrection and this ambiguity
makes it impossible to weigh the impact and relevance of Jesus having mentioned
that. In addition, Jesus did not specifically say that he would bodily
resurrect.
In fact,
contrary to what McDowell says, Jesus taught that the resurrected body was not
physical. When asked by the Sadducees about who will be the husband after
resurrection of the widow who married seven brothers in sequence as they died,
Jesus answered them in Mat 22:30: “For
in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in
marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” This meant
there would be no physical resurrection and the resurrected being would be
pneumatic (spiritual) like angels. Mark 12:25: “when the dead rise, they will
neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in
heaven”. Luke 20:36: “and they can
no longer die; for they are like angels”.
Even Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15: 50 says: “Now this
I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God
neither doth corruption inherit incorruption”. But an apologist will object to
this and say that the body will be transformed and then for support, quote 1 Corinthians 15:51-53:
“51 Behold,
I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet
shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be
changed.53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this
mortal must put on immortality.”
But this argument fails because
a transformed body is similar in all respects to a living body. For example
Lazarus (in John 11) and Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:35-43) both resurrected and
after that, led normal lives. We have no reason to believe; for example, that
Jairus’ daughter did not lead a normal life after resurrecting: get married and
have children etc. We find that all the accounts of the resurrection show that
the person rose physically in the same body. Numerous times they were told to
eat proving it was a physical resurrection and that the body needed immediate
nourishment. For example, immediately after raising Jairus’ daughter, in Mark
5:43: “He (Jesus) gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and
told them to give her something to eat”. So the “transformation” is not
observable and cannot therefore stand as an argument. This Biblical
contradiction and similar ones are addressed later in this critique.
He then
quotes Dr. Norman Geisler:
“…The resurrection cannot verify Jesus’ claim to be God
unless he was resurrected in the body in which he was crucified…Unless Jesus
rose from a material body, there is no way to verify his resurrection. It loses
its historically persuasive value”
This
quote is a form of special pleading: that we should accept Jesus’ bodily
resurrection because it’s the only way the resurrection cannot be verified.
Special pleadings have no place in rigorous examinations of evidence.
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