Theology of the Body: Apologize: The Resurrection

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Apologize: The Resurrection

.. because if He did not really get up from the dead, we are of all people the most miserable. ( I Cor 15)

From good old Lee Strobel:

1) No body could have survived Roman flogging, crucifixion, and a spear thrust into the heart and side. Jesus DIED on the Cross and was buried.

2) The I Corinthians 15 Creed is really early. Everyone knows this. Within a few years of Jesus' death, thousands of people believed the following:

3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8and last of all he appeared to me also...

3) Everyone agreeed that the Tomb was empty. The Roman authorities did not argue with this fact.. they simply tried to interpret it as "body theft." If a well-known tomb were NOT empty, then it would have been impossible for a belief founded solely the Resurrection to have come into existence in the same city where hundreds had seen Jesus die, and where the only testators of His resurrection were legally incredible women.

4) If the Disciples and hundreds of claimed eyewitnesses of the Resurrected Jesus were only talking about an urban legend, where did the body go?

5) None of the early Christians thought that this story was another fun "dying/rising" god myth... they believed it was history. And it would certainly have taken something as dramatic as a Resurrection to prompt zealous first-century Jews to abandon both the traditional Sabbath and Torah and the other option of the Roman pantheon.