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Hillside O’Malley SDA Church

David Shin

Reflections on the Resurrection

On the screen I have a picture of the theologian and New Testament scholar, Rudolf Boltzmann.

He lived in the early 1900s and was instrumental in framing liberal Christianity and liberal thought.

And he was so seminal in his thinking that when I took historical theology in my graduate studies, 1 of the individuals that I had to study extensively was Rudolf Boltzmann.

What Rudolf Boltzmann was struggling with was the tension between scripture and science, and this quotation that I have on the screen exemplifies the core tenet of Rudolf Bultmann's teaching.

We cannot use electric lights and radios and in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means, and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder of the world of the New Testament.

What Rudolf Biltman is essentially saying is we can't enjoy all of these modern technological advances and technology and read the New Testament the same way.

And so Rudolf Bultmann went through this process of reinterpreting scripture through a different lens.

And every miracle such as the resurrection or the virgin birth would be reinterpreted from not a legendary standpoint, or I should say, would be reinterpreted as a legendary story rather than an historical 1.

He was an existentialist, which means that he viewed, especially in this case, scripture through the lens of experience, and so the resurrection was reinterpreted not as a real physical manifestation, but something to reveal the experience of us arising to a new life, and this was a process that he called demytholization.

And I've summarized for us on this screen the core tenets of what Rudolf Bultmann believed in respect to the resurrection.

The physical resurrection did not happen.

Modern man cannot be reasonably asked to believe in the miracle of the resurrection before becoming a Christian, and the resurrection is merely a symbolic restatement of the message of the cross and essentially adds nothing to it.

The resurrection must be demytholized to reveal the true Christian message." Now for the record, so there's no misunderstanding here, I respectfully disagree with Rudolf Boltzmann.

However, we must acknowledge that there is a struggle to grapple with the relationship between science and scripture.

How do we deal with the historicity of the resurrection?

And here, Rudolph Boltzmann approached it in this way of approaching scripture from an existential standpoint.

Let's go to the Scriptures and see whether the historicity of the resurrection is essential for the Christian message.

This is a part of our scripture reading, or the same chapter from our scripture reading, and 1 Corinthians 15, verses 14 through 19, the same chapter as our scripture reading, 1 Corinthians 15, verses 14 through 19, and if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is what?

And your faith is also empty, Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ, whom he did not raise up if in fact the dead do not rise.

For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen.

And if Christ is not risen, then your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we of all men are most pitiable.

I have another translation here on the screen that really encapsulate the way that Paul is portraying the historicity of the resurrection for me, and it says, and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is worthless, and so is your faith.

In that case, we are also exposed as false witnesses about God.

What Paul is establishing here in 1 Corinthians 15 is that if the physical, literal resurrection of Jesus did not happen, then the whole Christian faith is a fallacy.

The historicity of the resurrection is essential for the Christian faith to be a viable intellectual concept with integrity.

The historicity of the resurrection is something that all of the early apostles believed and in fact were willing to give their lives for.

Now I want to very quickly this morning go through 3 points of evidence for me that has given me some foundation for understanding the resurrection from an intellectual standpoint of view.

Here it is very quickly, evidence for the resurrection.

If the tomb had been occupied, it would not have been convincing in the least to preach the resurrection of Jesus.

Now, Mind you, both Jews and Romans were aware of the location of the tomb.

And it would have been very easy as the first century Christians are going around saying Jesus is not dead, he is risen, for the religious leaders who were trying to stop Christianity to simply point out, look, just go to Jesus's tomb, it is not empty, it is occupied with the body of Jesus.

This would have been a very easy response or polemic to the Christian message of the resurrection that was being preached in the book of Acts.

Matter of fact, the earliest polemic against Christianity is found in Matthew chapter 28 verse 11 and 15 and you'll notice that this polemic presupposes the empty tomb this is the religious leaders speaking to the Roman soldiers you are to say his disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.

And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.

In other words, they are trying to explain the phenomena of the empty tomb.

They do not say that Jesus' body is in the tomb.

They say, look, they're trying to explain why the tomb is empty, and they say, you are to say that the disciples came and stole the body away.

Jesus is the most notable figure in human history, and yet, there is no body.

Muhammad's tomb occupied, Jesus' tomb is empty.

Now another thing that scholars have done in looking at the literature, specifically in reference to the resurrection, is that the story lacks legendary embellishment.

In other words, if you're going to make up a story, you're going to make it up in the most embellished, or should I say, the most convincing manner possible.

You're not going to leave in things that are not going to give it credence or viability.

For example, the empty tomb was discovered by women.

Now, we need to understand that in the first century, women were not considered to be a credible witness.

So if you're going to tell a story that is false, that is going to be convincing, you're not going to have women that are going to find the empty tomb.

Now here are a few resources that tell us the mindset of the first century.

Let not the testimony of women be admitted on the account of their levity and boldness of their sex.

This was the daily prayer of every Jewish man included in the benediction was, blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who has not created me a woman.

And William Lane Craig makes this comment, if the empty tomb story was a legend, then it was most likely that the female disciples would not have been made the first to discover the empty tomb.

Van De Han says this, it is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds.

Those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.

Now the prominent rebuttal to the empty tomb for those that cannot get around the historicity of this fact is the Jewish polemic, that the disciples came during the night and stole away the body.

Now, even if that was possible, because remember it was sealed with a Roman seal under the penalty of death and they had Roman soldiers around it.

Now, let's say the disciples were able to break in and take the body away.

We need to recognize that all of the disciples except for the apostle John died a martyr's death.

Peter, according to history, was baptized, not baptized, was crucified upside down.

Now the plausibility of these men being willing to die a martyr's death all the while knowing that all of the claims in reference to the Messiah was based on a lie because they had indeed stolen the body, does not seem plausible.

It seems more like an ad hoc response to the phenomena of the empty tomb.

And we read this in our scripture reading, and I want to invite you to turn with me there again.

Let's go to 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 through 8, and here Paul is establishing to the New Testament church eyewitness accounts of those that have actually seen firsthand the appearance of Jesus post-mortem.

First Corinthians chapter 15, verses 3 through 8, for I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.

And then he goes through a list of individuals that have seen Jesus.

And he was seen by Cephas, that is Peter, then by the 12.

After that, he was seen by over 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part remained to the present, but some have fallen asleep.

Paul says he was seen by the Apostles, he was seen by Peter and by the 12, and then this is the only place in the Bible that indicates the number 500.

500 people had seen Jesus after the resurrection alive.

And Paul says that they are alive with us to this day.

Some of them are, but some have fallen asleep.

Now, the critics of this account have put forth the hypothesis that, yes, the disciples believed that Jesus was raised from the dead, but they were all hallucinating.

Now, for me, it seems plausible that maybe 1 or 2 or maybe 10 people were hallucinating but 500?

That's like saying for the individuals that witnessed the falling of the Twin Towers, eye witnesses were all hallucinating.

But then Paul goes on, and this is very interesting in verse 7, after that he was seen by James, then by all the apostles." This individual James is a notable figure because the Bible indicates that this is not James the brother of John.

He is included in the previous account of the Apostles.

We can see references to this in Galatians 1 verse 19.

Later on, James would become a prominent figure.

In Acts chapter 15, James ran the Jerusalem council, and we know that this was not the James the brother of John because James the brother of John was beheaded by Herod Earlier on he was the first Christian martyr James the brother of Jesus and the Bible points out in Mark chapter 3 and John chapter 7 that Jesus's brothers did not believe in him.

Would you believe your brother, same brother you went to elementary school and played in the sandbox with, Perhaps you saw him in diapers, depending on your age difference.

You see this brother, you go all the way through high school and suddenly he becomes 30 years of age and he goes around saying, I am the son of God.

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Reflections on the Resurrection

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