The Significance of the Resurrection

The author starts by stating that of all the four major world religions that are based on personalities, only Christianity claims an empty tomb for its founder.

This is a quibble, not material evidence. Each religion has something unique to claim about itself and trivial distinctions between religions prove nothing that is of relevance in examining the truthfulness of their claims.

He then quotes Wilbur Smith (he does not bother to tell us why what Wilbur Smith says is important) who says that the original descriptions of Buddha never ascribe to him any such thing as resurrection. This is an irrelevant issue.

Then he quotes Professor Childers who says that Sakya Muni is not said to have existed after his death [Shakyamuni or Sakya Muni (Siddartha Gautama), who lived between 563-480 BC in Northern India was the founder of Buddhism]. He says Mohammed died in 632 A.D. Whether Mohammed or Sai Baba, or Sakya Muni died is, of course, not evidence of Christ’s resurrection and hence is irrelevant.

He quotes William Lane Craig:

“Without the belief in the resurrection the Christian faith could not have come into being…The origin of Christianity therefore hinges on the belief of the early disciples that God has raised Jesus from the dead”

The underpinning role of the resurrection on Christian faith is not in question. What is in question is its veracity. This is irrelevant.

He then quotes Theodosus Harnack:

“…To me, Christianity stands or falls with the resurrection”

Whether Christianity falls or stands with the resurrection is not evidence for the factuality of the resurrection.

Then he quotes William Milligan:

“While speaking of the positive evidence of the Resurrection of our Lord, it may be further argued that the fact, if true, harmonizes all the other facts of his history.”

In this statement, the phrase “the fact, if true” is a tautology and is presumptuous. Facts, by definition are true and the statement betrays the casual and biased manner in which the author is approaching the question of the resurrection. His irrelevant conclusion that the resurrection (if true) will harmonize other facts of history is a form of special pleading and is vague. Which facts of history will it harmonize? The author has committed a logical fallacy of missing arguments. There are no  historical virgin births, and historical people who die stay dead. This is a fallacious idea and is also prima facie false. In any case, even if an idea harmonizes with history, that is not evidence of its truthfulness.

Then he quotes Wilbur M Smith:

“If our Lord said, frequently, with great definitiveness 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”

This quotation underlined W. Smith’s criteria for assessing the truthfulness of what Jesus said, NOT what happened. It’s possible that Jesus did not say that he would rise on the third day; maybe the story was an adaptation from the story of Jonah, who came out from a living tomb (whale’s belly) after three days (Jonah 1:17). Perhaps it had a symbolic meaning. It is very possible it was an ethereal or “heavenly” resurrection. Earl Doherty, in The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin With a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus argues that Jesus’ death and resurrection did NOT have to entail Jesus becoming “flesh and blood”. He offers the analogy of the Sumerian worship of Ishtar, better known in the bible as Ashera, Astarte or Ashtoreth, which had evolved into Jesus’ day into the goddess Cybele. To use the analogy as “proof of concept”, Earl Doherty relates from Sumerian tablets (from Michael Kramer’s History Begins at Sumer) that the goddess Innana descended from heaven, past earth, down into hell, crossing seven gates there. Eventually, she was killed by a demon in hell. After being dead for three days and three nights, she is then resurrected  by her father giving her the “food of life” and “the water of life”, ,then she ascended back into heaven, sending another god (her lover) to die in her place: the shepherd Dumuzi (aka Tammuz, a forerunner of Attis). Doherty argues that Christianity began like this: where all action takes place beyond the realms of the earth. That Ishtar (Innana) was still flesh and could be killed, even crucified, and resurrected, and then ascend back to heaven, but she was never “on earth”.

Leaving that probability aside, Wilbur M. Smith was not a material witness to Jesus’ resurrection and his belief that Jesus indeed rose from the dead is not useful as evidence of Jesus’ resurrection because it’s hearsay. The objective here is to examine the veracity of that hearsay, not what conclusions can be drawn from the resurrection, if it is true.

Then W.J. Sparrow Simpson is quoted by McDowell as saying that the resurrection of Christ is his proof of being God’s son.

Whether or not Jesus is the son of God is irrelevant but even so, this criteria (for arriving at Jesus’ heritage) is unfounded. It is said that Jesus rose people from the dead [Lazarus (John 11), Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5)], this in itself does not mean that those people were Jesus’ sons. Moses and Elijah were also resurrected (as the transfiguration indicates) but they were not literal God’s sons.

McDowell then quotes Adolf Harnack, a supposed skeptic:

 “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…his death became the main article of their preaching about him”

“His death” becoming the main article of their preaching about him does not prove he resurrected.

The rest of the section is a continuation of quotes from apologetics affirming the importance of the Resurrection of Christ. The author continues to lengthen his parade of Biblical and extra-Biblical scholars with quotes and more quotes. Unfortunately, what they are quoting is not evidence but opinions on issues that have no evidentiary value to the resurrection.

 

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