Nature & Significance Of Christ’s Resurrection

            Resurrection is an act of rising from the dead. Several instances of the resurrection are mentioned in the Bible.

            Christ’s resurrection is much unlike the other resurrections mentioned in the Bible. If Christ was merely raised from the dead, HIS resurrection would have been similar to that of the other resurrections e.g. the resurrection of Lazarus. But Christ’s resurrection was more than a mere rising from the dead. Sean McDowell, Professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, differentiates Christ’s resurrection from the other resurrections mentioned in the Bible:¹

1. Resurrection Is Not Immortality of the Soul. Greek philosophers saw the body as the prison house of the soul. The material world was considered corrupt, fallen, and evil. Thus, the goal of salvation was to escape the physical realm and to be freed from its shackles. But in Hebrew thought, the material world is considered good. The soul without the body is incomplete. A human being is a body and soul in unity.

2. Resurrection Is Not Reincarnation. Eastern religions teach reincarnation, the rebirth of the self (consciousness, soul, mind, etc.) after the death of the body…Depending on the specific tradition, the goal is to escape the cycle of reincarnation and experience nirvana or personal annihilation. In contrast, the biblical view is that human beings live one life, and then are raised to be judged by God (Hebrews 9:27).

3. Resurrection Is Not Resuscitation. …the Bible records many instances of people coming back to life. Elijah raised the widow’s son (1 Kings 17:17-24). Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11:43-44). Peter raised Tabitha (Acts 9:36-42). And Paul raised Eutychus (Acts 20:9-12). But here is the difference between these people and Jesus: They would each die again, but Jesus was raised to immortality and glory.

4. Resurrection Is Not Translation. The Bible records at least two instances where people were taken directly to God without dying. Enoch lived 365 years and then was taken up directly to be with God (Genesis 5:21-24). The prophet Elijah was taken to heaven by a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:1). These are not examples of resurrection because there is no evidence either experienced death.

So, what is resurrection? …it is not a return to the present physical existence with all its limitations. Resurrected bodies are transformed, incorruptible, and eternal (1 Corinthians 15:20-23).

Jesus was not resuscitated, reincarnated, or translated. And his soul did not escape to an immaterial realm. Jesus was resurrected—never to die again. And since Jesus is the firstfruits of those who are yet to come, if we trust in Christ, we too will one day have transformed, resurrected bodies and be able to experience eternity with Christ and the Church in the New Heavens and New Earth (Revelation 21-22). (Emphasis Mine).

            A complexity needs to be resolved when we discuss the Lord’s resurrection. Christ’s resurrection was rather unique in the sense that HE possessed a glorified resurrected body with material properties. (A fully glorified body will not contain any material properties.)

            The post-resurrection appearance of Christ to HIS disciples (more specifically to Thomas) indicates Christ’s possession of a glorified body with material properties. Christ’s disciples embraced HIS feet when HE appeared to them after HIS resurrection (Matthew 28:9). In another instance, Christ appealed to HIS disciples to see and feel the presence of the nail marks and the spear wound in HIS body, “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord…Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”” (John 20:19-20, 24-27, NIV, Emphasis Mine).

            But Christ’s body was not a completely material body after HIS resurrection. It was a glorified body albeit with material properties.

            Christ appeared to HIS disciples while they were behind locked doors. So Christ may have either walked right through the locked door or HE may have walked through the walls of that house. This suggests that Christ possessed a glorified body that transcended the normal laws of physical existence.

            Why was Christ’s body not a fully glorified body even after HIS resurrection? We can resolve this complexity by bearing in mind that Christ’s resurrection and ascension were two separate events. For instance, when we, the believers of Christ, resurrect, our bodies will be transformed into a fully glorified body in one step.

            However, since Christ’s resurrection and ascension were two separate events, it is quite plausible that Christ attained HIS glorified body in a two-step process i.e. a glorified body with material properties after the resurrection and a totally glorified body sans material properties either before or during ascension.

            Christ’s resurrected body was yet to undergo a complete transformation to a glorified body prior to HIS ascension (and become the “spiritual body” that Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 15:44). This was necessary since Christ’s glorified body with material properties helped erase HIS disciples’ doubts as well.

            This may have been a reason as to why Christ’s body was not a fully glorified body prior to HIS ascension. Therefore, to reiterate, Christ would have attained a fully glorified body either before or during HIS ascension.

            It is also quite plausible that Christ’s glorified body had material properties to indicate that Christ’s resurrection was a physical and a bodily resurrection and not a spiritual resurrection as some detractors of Historic Christianity may contend.  

            What is the significance of Christ’s resurrection?

            Christianity is relevant only because Christ resurrected. Christ’s resurrection was so significant that had Christ not resurrected, Christianity would be irrelevant. Apostle Paul emphasized that Christianity would be useless if Christ did not resurrect, “…if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” (1 Corinthians 15:14, NIV).

            Christ’s resurrection is very important because it symbolized a total victory over death. Since the wages of sin is death (Romans 6: 23), overcoming death through resurrection or death’s inability to hold Christ signified a complete annihilation of death and the forces of evil.

            Christ resurrected to judge the living and the dead. Christ’s resurrection is not merely significant to Christians, but it is of utmost significance to the non-Christians as well. Judgment of everyone who’s been in existence is intricately linked with Christ’s resurrection.

            Christ was raised from the dead to judge the living and the dead, “For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:31, NIV cf. 2 Timothy 4:1).

            Those who believe in Christ have the incomparably great power. Christ’s resurrection ensures that we, who believe in Christ, have this incomparably great power that God used to raise Christ from death (Ephesians 1:19-20). This new resurrection power is for us to gain greater victories over sin and the forces of evil so that our ministry in HIS vineyard is according to HIS will and power.  

            Since Christ was raised from the dead, we too shall be raised from the dead. So may we continue doing the Lord’s work in faith that we and those whom we, by the grace of God, bring into God’s Kingdom will be raised from the dead to live with HIM forever.

            The Lord’s risen and HE is risen indeed! Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household (Acts 16:31, RSV).

Endnotes:

¹http://seanmcdowell.org/blog/4-misconceptions-about-resurrection-and-the-truth, last accessed on 31^st March 2018. 

Why Do Scientists Believe In Christ’s Resurrection?

            Historic Christianity is predicated on Christ’s resurrection. If Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile (1 Corinthians 15: 12-17, NIV).

            Those who invigorate a war between Science and Christianity (e.g. scientists subscribing to atheism and skepticism) claim that Christ did not resurrect. Richard Dawkins - a professor at Oxford University until 2008 - is one among those who reject Christ’s resurrection, “Presumably what happened to Jesus was what happens to all of us when we die. We decompose. Accounts of Jesus's resurrection and ascension are about as well-documented as Jack and the Beanstalk.”¹

            But Christian scientists believe in Christ’s resurrection! Ian Hutchinson is one among them, “I’m a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, and I believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. So do dozens of my colleagues. How can this be?...We really believe in the bodily resurrection of the first century Jew known as Jesus of Nazareth. My Christian colleagues at MIT – and millions of other scientists worldwide – somehow think that a literal miracle like the resurrection of Jesus is possible…The founders of the scientific revolution and many of the greatest scientists of the intervening centuries were serious Christian believers. For Robert Boyle (of the ideal gas law, co-founder in 1660 of the Royal Society) the resurrection was a fact. For James Clerk Maxwell (whose Maxwell equations of 1862 govern electromagnetism) a deep philosophical analysis undergirded his belief in the resurrection. And for William Phillips (Nobel prize-winner in 1997 for methods to trap atoms with laser light) the resurrection is not discredited by science.”²

            Dr. John Lennox, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, cites famous contemporary Christian scientists who believe in Christ’s resurrection, “…there are eminent, scientists, like Professor William Phillips (Physics Nobel Prizewinner, 1998), Professor Sir John Polkinghorne FRS (Quantum Physicist, Cambridge) and, in the United States, the current Director of the National Institute of Health and former Director of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins (to name just three) who…affirm their belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which they regard as the supreme evidence for the truth of the Christian worldview.”³

            Why and how do Christian scientists believe in Christ’s resurrection or the miraculous?

            Christian scientists know that science can investigate the miraculous, but science cannot prove or disprove the miraculous, “…while science can’t logically rule miracles in or out of consideration, it can be a helpful tool for investigating contemporary miraculous claims. It may be able to reveal self-deception, trickery, or misperception. If someone has been seen levitating on a supposed flying carpet in their living room, then the discovery of powerful electromagnets in their basement might well render such claims implausible…Science functions by reproducible experiments and observations. Miracles are, by definition, abnormal and non-reproducible, so they cannot be proved by science’s methods.”⁴

            Moreover, Christian scientists reject the reasons offered by non-Christian scientists. The argument employed by atheists and skeptics to reject the miraculous is grossly invalid.

            Miracles are rejected on the premise that they go against the laws of nature. But this argument, as Dr. John Lennox explains, is invalid, “Hume denies the miraculous, because miracle would go against the uniform laws of nature. And yet elsewhere he denies the uniformity of nature. He famously argues that, just because the sun has been observed to rise in the morning for thousands of years, it does not mean that we can be sure that it will rise tomorrow. This is an example of the Problem of Induction: on the basis of past experience you cannot predict the future, says Hume. But if that were true, let us see what follows.

            Suppose Hume is right, and no dead man has ever risen up from the grave through the whole of earth's history so far; by his own argument he still cannot be sure that a dead man will not rise up tomorrow. That being so, he cannot rule out miracle. What has become now of Hume's insistence on the laws of nature, and its uniformity? He has destroyed the very basis on which he tries to deny the possibility of miracles.

            In any case, if according to Hume we can infer no regularities, it would be impossible even to speak of laws of nature, let alone the uniformity of nature with respect to those laws. And if nature is not uniform, then using the uniformity of nature as an argument against miracles is simply absurd.”⁵

            Dr. Lennox posits God’s intervention into nature as a reason for the miraculous, “…from the theistic perspective, the laws of nature predict what is bound to happen if God does not intervene; though, of course, it is no act of theft, if the Creator intervenes in his own creation. It is incorrect to argue that the laws of nature make it impossible for us to believe in the existence of God and the possibility of his intervention in the universe. That would be like claiming that an understanding of the laws of the internal combustion engine makes it impossible to believe that the designer of a motor-car, or one of his mechanics, could or would intervene and remove the cylinder head. Of course they could intervene. Moreover, this intervention would not destroy those laws. The very same laws, that explained why the engine worked with the cylinder head on, would now explain why it does not work with the head removed.

            It is, therefore, inaccurate and misleading to say with Hume that miracles "violate" the laws of nature. We could, of course, say that it is a law of nature that human beings do not rise again from the dead by some natural mechanism. But Christians do not claim that Christ rose from the dead by such a mechanism. They claim that he rose from the dead by supernatural power. By themselves, the laws of nature cannot rule out that possibility.

            When a miracle takes place, it is the laws of nature that alert us to the fact that it is a miracle. It is important to grasp that Christians do not deny the laws of nature, as Hume implies they do. It is an essential part of the Christian position to believe in the laws of nature as descriptions of those regularities and cause-effect relationships built into the universe by its Creator and according to which it normally operates. If we did not know them, we should never recognise a miracle if we saw one…

            …To suppose, then, that Christianity was born in a pre-scientific, credulous and ignorant world is simply false to the facts. The ancient world knew the law of nature as well as we do, that dead bodies do not get up out of graves. Christianity won its way by dint of the sheer weight of evidence that one man had actually risen from the dead.”⁶

            Therefore, the reasons offered by the non-Christian scientists to reject miracles are weak and invalid.

            There are, however, compelling evidences that persuade Christian scientists to believe in Christ\s resurrection, “Most of our evidence comes from the New Testament and it may surprise many that, in comparison with many other ancient works of literature, the New Testament is by far the best-attested document from the ancient world…It is the constant and unvarying testimony of the Gospels that the tomb was found to be empty when the Christian women came early in the morning of the first day of the week, to complete the task of encasing the body of Jesus in spices. And when the apostles went to investigate the women's report, they likewise found the tomb empty…But it was the way in which the grave-cloths were lying that convinced St. John of a miracle. So, could someone have taken the body and rewound the cloths deliberately to give the impression that a miracle had happened? But who could this have been? It was morally impossible for the followers of Christ to have done it. It was also psychologically impossible, since they were not expecting a resurrection. And it was practically impossible, because of the guards. It would be absurd to think of the authorities doing anything remotely suggestive of a resurrection. After all, it was they who had ensured that the tomb was guarded, to avoid anything like that!

            The early Christians did not simply assert that the tomb was empty. Far more important for them was the fact that subsequently they had met the risen Christ, intermittently over a period of forty days. According to Paul's list in 1 Corinthians 15, there were originally well over five hundred people who at different times saw the risen Christ during that period…To anyone who knows anything about the ancient laws regarding legal testimony, it is very striking that the first reports mentioned in the Gospels of appearances of the Risen Christ were made by women. In first-century Jewish culture, women were not normally considered to be competent witnesses. At that time, therefore, anyone who wanted to invent a resurrection story would never have thought of commencing it in this way. The only value of including such a story would be if it were both true and easy to verify. Its very inclusion, therefore, is a clear mark of historical authenticity.

            The evidence of the empty tomb, the character of the witnesses, the explosion of Christianity out of Judaism and the testimony of millions today are inexplicable without the resurrection. As Holmes said to Watson: "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"” (Emphasis Mine).⁷

Endnotes:

¹http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/richard-dawkins-you-ask-the-questions-special-427003.html

²http://www.veritas.org/can-scientist-believe-resurrection-three-hypotheses/

³http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/04/16/3986403.htm

⁴http://www.veritas.org/can-scientist-believe-resurrection-three-hypotheses/

⁵http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/04/16/3986403.htm

⁶http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/04/16/3986403.htm

⁷Ibid.

Websites cited were last accessed on 25^th November 2017.