RESURRECTION OF THE SON OF GOD
Why did Christianity begin, and why did it take the shape it did? To answer this question - which any historian must face - renowned New Testament scholar N.T. Wright focuses on the key points: what precisely happened at Easter? What did the early Christians mean when they said that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead? What can be said today about his belief? This book, third in Wright's series Christian Origins and the Question of God, sketches a map of ancient beliefs about life after death, in both the Greco-Roman and Jewish worlds. It then highlights the fact that the early Christians' belief about the afterlife belonged firmly on the Jewish spectrum, while introducing several new mutations and sharper definitions. This, together with other features of early Christianity, forces the historian to read the Easter narratives in the gospels, not simply as late rationalizations of early Christian spirituality, but as accounts of two actual events: the empty tomb of Jesus and his "appearances." How do we explain these phenomena? The early Christians' answer was that Jesus had indeed been bodily raised from the dead; that was why they hailed him as the messianic "son of God." No modern historian has come up with a more convincing explanation. Facing this question, we are confronted to this day with the most central issues of the Christian worldview and theology.
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- > What are these arguments that are not debunked?...there are none that I know of that have stood the test of time
To say that the classical arguments for God, e.g. Aquinas' five ways, have simply been "debunked" is completely false. I recall reading Dawkin's The God Delusion in early college and being convinced that these arguments were indeed antiquated. However as I began to read book-length treatments on various arguments (beginning, contingency, etc) I realized Dawkins et al oversimplified the entire enterprise. Are there debates about them? Sure and there always will be. But there are many professional philosophers who consider various classical arguments sound (though they often prefer one over the other, a gradient of "soundness").
> What is that evidence? Are you sure you are not playing on words here?
Putting aside the philosophical (see above), the historical arguments for Christianity and especially the mystery resurrection are what specifically convinced me.
tldr
- The gospels are written within a single generation of the apostles. They were likely written because the apostles and early disciples were beginning to die.
- We have documentary evidence of the gospels being faithful to the original documents. We have a vast number of manuscripts, many more than most any other ancient work, and they all are in agreement with one another (ignoring small copyist errors here and there).
- There are embarrassing stories in the gospels (Jesus' baptism, Jesus' rebuke of family, his inability to work miracles in certain places, Jesus' uncertainty as to the time of his return, the apostles total abandonment of him at his passion)
- There is nothing placed in Jesus' mouth that are reflective of later debates in the early Christian communities (e.g. do we still circumcise?), which one would expect if later Christians were as free to make up stories to fit the "needs" or "meanings" in their community.
- The names of people in the gospels correspond exactly to 1st century census data. If you were born in the 90s, you know a lot of Jennifers, yet there are very little baby Jennifers today. Names come and go quickly in cultures (outside of the true constant ones). There have been studies of the many names in the stories of Jesus and they all correspond to the timeframe expected (30ish AD) based on census data.
- What explains the presence of the woman at the empty tomb? Woman held low esteem in ancient society, yet they are the first ones to learn of Jesus' resurrection. If this story was simply made up, why do we not see Peter, James, and John finding the empty tomb and immediately becoming full of faith?
- After the collapse of faith of the apostles and their abandonment of Jesus at his passion, they all come "on board" with his resurrection and all go to their deaths attesting to this.
- What explains the completely novel concept of a pre-resurrection resurrection? Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead, but this was simply a resuscitation. Jesus' resurrection on the other hand is an eschatological resurrection, which means "end of time" resurrection. He is given a glorified, eternal body that is capable of things unknown to us (passing through walls, suddenly appearing, etc). There were some Jews at the time of Christ who believed in an end-of-time resurrection, but nobody believed that a single person would experience this sort of thing before everybody else. This is a completely novel idea in Jewish thought and for it to so suddenly appear and fully formed within a Jewish "sect" is truly remarkable. Greek and Roman sources fail to explain this as well. The concept of an eschatological resurrection of so foreign that even the resurrection stories have an odd tone to them unlike the rest of the gospels, notably containing zero explicit biblical proofs ("here's where the Old Testament said I would rise") and containing remarks about various people doubting, being scared, etc. NT Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God is considered one of the best treatments on this.
- 1 Corinthians 15:14 (and context): "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+1...
Yes, there are recognizably Christian subgroups that disavow all historical claims (and reinterpret Paul accordingly), but mainstream Christianity has always affirmed the bodily resurrection of Jesus and that (per Paul) this is essential to Christianity ... long before Aquinas.
N. T. Wright's "The Resurrection of the Son of God" is a very good read on this.
