.jpg)
So, what do we do with all of this? Having addressed the critical claims against the Christian resurrection narrative of being legendary, failing to satisfy Ockham’s razor, and questioning the trustworthiness of the resurrection sources, the next logical step in the evaluation is to make some determination as to the truthfulness of the Christian account.
Generally, when evaluating historical claims of past events, historians methodically subject the evidence to particular categories to determine how truthful the claim may be. Since we are here considering the “historical” claim of Jesus’s resurrection, we can also follow this evaluation method.
All told the Christian resurrection narrative has a greater explanatory scope than other possible explanations because it accepts all three bedrock facts and speaks to each extensively and individually. The Christian resurrection narrative also has good explanatory power through its engagement with the bedrock facts.
The other resurrection theories that have been presented trail the Christian narrative in that they require acceptance of various sorts of hallucination theories. Remember, the critic Bart Ehrman correctly said, “Either Jesus really appeared to his disciples after the crucifixion, or they were seeing things.” All hallucination theories lack both explanatory scope and power. As we have seen, hallucinations are rare, very rare in multimodalities, and extremely
BY TY B.
KERLEY, DMIN.
rare in multiple communal settings.
The question is, which explanation has the greater explanatory power: theories of hallucinations or the fact that Jesus actually rose from the dead? The evidence shows the Christian account of what happened to Jesus after He died exceeds all others.
In addition, historians also consider the plausibility of a theory; in this instance, how plausible is it that Jesus rose from the dead? This is a tough category. The question is, does the Christian resurrection narrative align with a greater degree and number of accepted truths than any of the other hypotheses?
Issues arise because the Christian narrative implies a supernatural Causal Agent. Even though we are not directly asking if God raised Jesus, but simply if He rose from the dead, the answer yes implies a supernatural Cause. And this is where the elimination of bias is all but impossible. Remember, we are trying to maintain common ground with Michael, the Bible skeptic. But common ground here is challenging to find.
If we presuppose that there is no God, the Christian resurrection model fails miserably, while the naturalistic models excel. If God does exist and He wanted to raise Jesus from the dead, the plausibility of the Christian resurrection story is exceptionally high. The only option is to approach the evidence from a position of neutrality and to stay on common ground, just a bit longer, with Michael: a position that neither excludes nor presupposes God as the Causal Agent of the resurrection.
Yet, if we do that, the first thing we come against is that dead people usually stay dead. Even so, if we do not exclude the possibility of God wanting to raise Jesus, then the plausibility of the resurrection theory goes up.
The power of cumulative case apologetics should be obvious. That is why the historical resurrection argument is positioned here in the cumulative case argument after all other arguments for the existence of God have been presented. We have spent considerable time presenting arguments that say, “Yes, God does exist.” The implication is that if God does exist, then the resurrection is highly probable. If God does not exist, it is all but impossible. By methodically building the case for the existence of God through the series of arguments we have already presented, the resurrection becomes something much more plausible, something expected rather than a mystical legend. Additionally, if we go back to the plausibility of hallucination theories, we find the Christian narrative much more plausible by comparison.
Historians also evaluate a particular claim’s ad hoc (“made-up stuff”) nature when judging if a historical claim is trustworthy. While some argue that since the Christian resurrection story ultimately relies upon a supernatural Cause, it is more ad hoc than the naturalistic theories. However, naturalism generally relies upon a type of faith rooted in belief in evolutionary processes.
This faith in and of itself is metaphysical and requires many ad hoc assumptions. Since the evaluation model is not only a scorecard of pass or fail but also depends upon the distance between competing theories, it is safe to say that both naturalistic and supernatural elements inherent in both approaches contain an aspect of ad hoc assumption; however, the Christian resurrection theory not only passes other theories but does so to a greater degree.
All told, it can be said that based upon the rigors of a good comparative model and the historical evidence presented, we can be assured that the resurrection of Jesus “Very Certainly” happened. That means we can confidently say that “the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is a historically certain fact.”
Based upon the final results of the comparative model, I agree with Ehrman: “Either Jesus really appeared to his disciples after the crucifixion, or they were “seeing things.” From what we have presented here, it seems certainly historical that the disciples were not seeing things,” but that Jesus truly, historically, certainly has been raised from the dead and appeared to them.
Join us next week as we draw ever closer to answering the question, is God dead?
Gloria in excelsis Deo!
Ty B. Kerley, DMin., is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. Dr. Kerley and his wife, Vicki, are members of the Waurika church of Christ and live in Ardmore, OK. You can contact him at [email protected].
