RH:50 Some Thoughts on the Resurrection of Jesus

[00:00:08] Welcome to the Reasoned Hope podcast. In this podcast, we explore the intellectual credibility

[00:00:15] of the Christian faith. We seek to show how the central hope found in Jesus Christ is

[00:00:20] not only rational, but that the Christian worldview makes sense of our experience,

[00:00:26] our deepest longings, and our intuitions about the world. Thanks for listening, and

[00:00:31] we hope today's episode is both encouraging and challenging to you, whether you are

[00:00:36] a believer or a skeptic.

[00:00:39] Welcome and thank you for joining me for today's episode of the Reasoned Hope podcast,

[00:00:49] where we investigate the intellectual credibility of the Christian faith.

[00:00:53] In today's episode, I'm just going to be talking about some thoughts about the resurrection of Jesus

[00:00:58] and just looking at one type of objection to the resurrection of Jesus

[00:01:05] and just discussing this in general and looking at why it makes sense to believe in the resurrection of Jesus.

[00:01:13] If you want a more developed case, kind of overall walking through a case for the rationality of belief

[00:01:22] in the resurrection of Jesus, I do have some other episodes where I make this case.

[00:01:28] So those are some earlier episodes if you want to check those out.

[00:01:32] But today, we're just going to be looking at one specific argument against the resurrection and talking about it.

[00:01:38] So before we get into that though, I want to talk about the idea of plausibility structures.

[00:01:44] So plausibility structures and the resurrection of Jesus.

[00:01:49] The concept of a plausibility structure is very important, and it's probably one that you're already familiar with to some degree,

[00:01:58] even if you've never heard those two words used before.

[00:02:03] A plausibility structure, it just has to do with how we evaluate what is reasonable to believe.

[00:02:12] So for instance, if you're told by someone else that one of your coworkers was fired for embezzling money,

[00:02:19] how would you judge the truth of that claim?

[00:02:25] Well, to start with, you're going to judge the truth of this statement on what you know about the character of your coworker,

[00:02:33] as well as the character of the person telling you this.

[00:02:37] Because to say that someone was fired from their job for embezzling money,

[00:02:44] that necessarily raises questions about the person's character because that's a crime.

[00:02:50] It's a moral issue.

[00:02:52] And so one of the first things that may come to your mind is what you know about that person's character.

[00:02:58] And if that accusation actually fits with what you know about the character of your coworker.

[00:03:06] So if you know that your coworker is a respectable person, then you're more likely to doubt this accusation.

[00:03:13] And you're going to suspect that maybe something else is going on.

[00:03:18] So what this example does is it helps us uncover the concept of plausibility.

[00:03:25] Plausibility is just the idea.

[00:03:28] It is the quality of seeming likely to be true or possible to believe.

[00:03:35] And so in that case, to say something is plausible, it just means that it is likely to be true and it's possible to believe.

[00:03:43] It's something that could be the case.

[00:03:45] It's something that seems like it could be true.

[00:03:49] Now a structure, we're talking about a plausibility structure.

[00:03:54] So a structure in this context can best be described as the presuppositions that we have when we approach a claim or a report of something.

[00:04:08] So if you think about a water filter, a water filter, it serves to filter out impurities so that the water is of a better quality than it would be if you didn't have a filter.

[00:04:20] Generally, if you drink tap water, it doesn't taste that great.

[00:04:24] But if you put a water filter and you run the water through it, it's generally going to taste much better than it would if you had not filtered it.

[00:04:34] And of course, the better quality filter you have, the better tasting the water will be and the more impurities that it will be able to filter out.

[00:04:44] So in the same way, our presuppositions, they serve to guide our interpretations of what we consider to be reasonable.

[00:04:57] Now at this point, there's nothing about any of this that's distinctively religious because everyone has a plausibility structure.

[00:05:10] And this is because we as humans by nature are rational and moral agents.

[00:05:17] Now there's certainly more to us than that, but we're definitely not less than this.

[00:05:22] We clearly have a rational capacity to reflect upon things, to evaluate whether things are reasonable or unreasonable, to draw conclusions.

[00:05:31] And we have the ability to recognize moral properties and facts about the world and to identify certain things as moral or immoral.

[00:05:42] So, but even though this notion of a plausibility structure is not distinctively religious, it does have a significant bearing on questions concerning God.

[00:05:54] And this is where we get into the territory of whether it makes sense to believe in God and what God is like.

[00:06:02] And one of these significant questions that relates to the question of God and specifically Christianity is the claim of the resurrection of Jesus.

[00:06:14] That Jesus Christ, 2000 years ago when he was crucified and when he was buried in a tomb three days later, people claimed that he was alive.

[00:06:27] And when you hear a claim like this and when you read about it in the Gospels, the question of the plausibility of this claim is immediately, it comes to the surface.

[00:06:39] And it's something that you have to consider and think about.

[00:06:42] So today I just want to look at this a little bit more, look at some details about the resurrection of Jesus,

[00:06:49] and look at one line of argument against the claim of the resurrection that I think many people, even though they find it persuasive,

[00:06:59] that ultimately it's just not a good reason to disbelieve in the resurrection of Jesus.

[00:07:07] So in light of our discussion of plausibility structures, I want to show why the particular skeptical line of argument that I'm going to look at,

[00:07:17] why that actually fails as an argument against the resurrection,

[00:07:23] but I also want to look at some good reasons to believe in the resurrection of Jesus.

[00:07:30] So before we get into that, I just want to look at why this claim of the resurrection of Jesus is so important to the Christian faith.

[00:07:43] The reality is that when you think about Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus is the central claim of the Christian faith.

[00:07:51] Because Christianity, the core person at the center of it, is Jesus Christ.

[00:07:57] Jesus Christ is the one who spoke of himself in such a way that he centered everyone's response to him as having implications for their eternity

[00:08:09] and their relationship with God, and whether or not they have life, real life,

[00:08:15] whether or not they have forgiveness for sin, and all of these things.

[00:08:19] And he talked about his resurrection from the dead multiple times to his disciples,

[00:08:26] and he spoke of it in such a way that it was the central culminating miracle of his ministry.

[00:08:35] And so without a physical resurrection, without a bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead,

[00:08:43] if this was not an event in space-time history, then Christianity itself falls apart because the resurrection is the central claim.

[00:08:55] And this is exactly what we see with Paul's discussion of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.

[00:09:02] And he says this in that passage.

[00:09:05] He says, Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?

[00:09:13] If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

[00:09:19] And if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and so is your faith.

[00:09:27] Moreover, we are found to be false witnesses about God because we have testified wrongly about God

[00:09:34] that he raised up Christ whom he did not raise up, if in fact the dead are not raised.

[00:09:40] For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

[00:09:44] And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins.

[00:09:51] Those then who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished.

[00:09:56] If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.

[00:10:04] So that's Paul's discussion of this in 1 Corinthians 15 verses 12 through 19.

[00:10:11] So clearly, Paul left no room for thinking about the resurrection just in mythical terms or some sort of hallucination.

[00:10:21] He's saying if Jesus Christ was not bodily raised from the dead,

[00:10:26] then the whole basis for the hope of the gospel, the hope of forgiveness of sins and eternal life, all that is worthless.

[00:10:37] And he says if your only hope related to Jesus is for your earthly life, if that's it,

[00:10:44] then he said we should be pitied more than anyone

[00:10:48] because he's essentially saying you have placed your faith in someone that it wasn't right to place your faith in.

[00:10:56] That you didn't ultimately, this hope you profess in Jesus comes to nothing if he wasn't raised from the dead.

[00:11:03] So that is how Paul understood and the early Christians understood the centrality of the resurrection to Christianity.

[00:11:15] So it's important that in 2024, that as we're thinking about this or whenever you happen to be listening to this,

[00:11:25] thousands of years after the fact, it's important that we learn how to think rightly about the resurrection.

[00:11:31] And so if you come to a place where you understand that this is a core claim of Christianity

[00:11:37] and then without it Christianity falls apart and you believe in Christianity,

[00:11:43] then you owe it to yourself to examine why it makes sense to believe in it and why this is actually so important.

[00:11:50] And if you're someone who is convinced by skeptical arguments against the resurrection,

[00:11:54] you better be pretty sure that those arguments are sound because if Jesus actually did rise from the dead,

[00:12:02] then this has enormous implications for every person alive because of everything else that Jesus taught about himself.

[00:12:11] So I just want to move into now looking at one skeptical argument against the resurrection.

[00:12:17] And this argument that I want to look at today is not complicated,

[00:12:21] but many people seem to think that it renders belief in Jesus' resurrection irrational.

[00:12:28] And it's not primarily a philosophical argument,

[00:12:32] but it's an attack on the reliability of the accounts of the resurrection that we have in the four Gospels found in the New Testament.

[00:12:41] So the argument is this.

[00:12:44] The earliest followers of Jesus were predisposed to believe in miracles and the supernatural,

[00:12:52] and thus it is easy to understand why they would claim he had risen from the dead.

[00:12:59] And the accounts that we have in the four Gospels are biased sources

[00:13:04] that cannot be trusted to give an accurate picture of what occurred.

[00:13:09] So notice there's sort of two claims in this line of thinking.

[00:13:15] You have a claim about the earliest followers of Jesus that in some way they lived in a time or a culture

[00:13:23] where they were predisposed to believe that miracles and supernatural things happen.

[00:13:29] And so given that assumption, of course it makes sense that they're going to believe that Jesus rose from the dead

[00:13:36] because they're already wired by their culture and their environment to believe in this sort of thing.

[00:13:43] But for a modern person 2,000 years later reading the Gospel accounts

[00:13:48] that speak about such an extravagant supernatural event, it seems a lot less plausible that something like that could occur.

[00:13:56] But given the time and the place and the culture of the earliest followers of Jesus,

[00:14:02] sure it makes sense why they would find it easy to believe something like this

[00:14:06] and why they would go around spreading that this actually happened.

[00:14:10] So the first part of this line of argument is making that sort of claim about the earliest followers

[00:14:17] of Jesus. And the second part of it, of course, is that, well, these were followers of Jesus

[00:14:24] and they wrote the Gospel accounts that we have, that we read today,

[00:14:28] and they wanted him to be risen from the dead.

[00:14:32] They wanted to see something great happen with the man that they had followed for three years

[00:14:38] and the man that they had grown to love and whose teachings they found compelling.

[00:14:44] So of course, it makes sense. They're biased sources and they're going to write things about Jesus

[00:14:51] that are theologically compelling coming from their perspective.

[00:14:57] But they're not really accurate sources of history.

[00:15:01] And so some people are going to say these are biased sources. They're biased theologically.

[00:15:06] They're not historical sources.

[00:15:08] So if we want to know what happened historically surrounding this whole claim of the resurrection of Jesus,

[00:15:15] well, the Gospels, they don't really give us an accurate picture of what happened.

[00:15:19] So two different sort of claims packaged together in one line of thinking.

[00:15:26] Now why would such an argument like this be compelling to many people?

[00:15:32] Maybe for you, this sounds compelling.

[00:15:35] And there may be a lot of reasons why this line of thinking might be compelling for people from many different sources.

[00:15:42] But I think at least two of them we can talk about here.

[00:15:47] So first, I think many people in the Western world have absorbed a metaphysical perspective

[00:15:55] that denies the supernatural is possible or even real.

[00:16:01] And when I say metaphysical perspective, I'm just talking about a view of how reality is.

[00:16:07] When you think about the possibility, going back to our possibility and our discussion of plausibility structures,

[00:16:16] if you have a vision of the world, if you think reality is all physical stuff and there's no spiritual, there's no God,

[00:16:25] then of course you're going to question when claims of this sort of thing come up.

[00:16:32] And so many people in the Western world have bought into the idea that the natural world, physical stuff, that's the only real thing.

[00:16:44] Metaphysics is just a branch of philosophy that looks at what is ultimately real.

[00:16:49] So if you have a metaphysical perspective of naturalism that denies the supernatural is real,

[00:16:56] that the only ultimately real things are physical, then of course that's going to be a presupposition

[00:17:05] that makes it irrational to believe in supernatural events like a resurrection.

[00:17:11] So this sort of argument against the resurrection appeals to the intellectual sensibilities of many people right from the start.

[00:17:19] It appeals to an unquestioned presuppositions that they already hold.

[00:17:25] Now another reason why I think this argument may be compelling to many people is that it assumes that people in biblical times

[00:17:34] were at worst gullible or at best just ignorant when it came to believing that a miracle had actually occurred.

[00:17:45] And to many modern people today, this assumption about people in the ancient world seems correct,

[00:17:52] especially when compared to modern scientific advancements and how modern science has increased our ability to understand the natural world.

[00:18:03] So the scientific revolution, when you kind of look at the history of that,

[00:18:09] when the scientific method took off, when people started approaching the natural world through inductive reasoning,

[00:18:16] and you had this explosion of scientific discovery,

[00:18:20] that really seems to contrast with the time that came before it, all those years that came before the scientific revolution.

[00:18:29] And especially in the ancient world, where it seems like people were much more gullible

[00:18:36] and they were willing to believe in supernatural claims without really questioning them.

[00:18:44] So I think that's a second reason.

[00:18:46] It's an assumption about people in the ancient world that is extended to the earliest followers of Jesus.

[00:18:53] And third, I think a third reason here why this argument seems compelling is that many people just hear the claim,

[00:19:02] oh, well, that's a biased source. You can't trust it.

[00:19:05] And they just grant this without reflecting on it.

[00:19:09] So when many people hear the idea, oh, yeah, well, the four Gospels, they were written by the earliest followers of Jesus.

[00:19:17] They're going to say, well, yeah, it's no surprise that they would conclude that Jesus rose from the dead

[00:19:23] because they already believed in him and they wanted this sort of thing to happen.

[00:19:27] So that is largely unquestioned as well.

[00:19:31] You have this skepticism towards sources that are deemed biased.

[00:19:36] It's just granted. It's not really questioned.

[00:19:39] So there may be more reasons why this skeptical line of argument against the resurrection is compelling to people,

[00:19:46] but those are, I think, some of the main ones that we can talk about here.

[00:19:51] Now, like any argument against Christianity or any argument in general,

[00:19:57] it doesn't have to be against Christianity or religion.

[00:20:00] If you want to be a critical thinker, if you want to be someone who thinks rationally

[00:20:06] and reflects upon claims that you hear or that you're given instead of just accepting them,

[00:20:13] then you need to evaluate the arguments that you're given.

[00:20:17] So that's what we're going to do here.

[00:20:19] I think the first thing that we can look at is, is the assumption of naturalism correct?

[00:20:26] Like I said before, if it is, then of course it would make no sense to believe in a resurrection from the dead,

[00:20:33] whether you're talking about Jesus or anyone else.

[00:20:36] A ton could be said about this question, but I'll just make a few points here.

[00:20:41] I think the first problem here is that this begs the question.

[00:20:45] That's a fallacy I've talked about in many other episodes,

[00:20:48] but in case you're not familiar with what it is, to beg the question is a logical fallacy

[00:20:54] where when you are presenting an argument for something,

[00:20:57] you actually assume your conclusion in one of your premises, and that's what's going on here.

[00:21:07] So it assumes from the outset that a resurrection is not possible because you assume naturalism.

[00:21:17] You assume a worldview that excludes the possibility of the miraculous,

[00:21:23] and then you come to the claim about the resurrection of Jesus,

[00:21:27] and you reject the gospel accounts about Jesus' resurrection

[00:21:32] because it doesn't fit into your preconceived philosophical understanding.

[00:21:37] Now this is just one way that some people might argue against the resurrection.

[00:21:43] It's certainly not the only way, but often this error does happen

[00:21:49] where people think they have offered an argument against the rationality of the resurrection

[00:21:55] where all they've done is just assumed naturalism.

[00:22:00] And so if that is what is going on when someone is arguing against the resurrection,

[00:22:06] well this is a logical fallacy.

[00:22:08] They're begging the question, so it doesn't go through.

[00:22:13] The second problem here is that there are good reasons to doubt naturalism as a worldview.

[00:22:19] Again, plenty of other podcast episodes that talk about this,

[00:22:24] but just for example, when it comes to the question of miracles,

[00:22:29] a lot of skeptics are going to appeal to the arguments of David Hume,

[00:22:33] who was a Scottish philosopher,

[00:22:35] and he wrote an essay in which he critiqued the idea and the rationality of belief in miracles,

[00:22:43] called Of Miracles.

[00:22:45] But it's interesting, over the course of time,

[00:22:47] these traditional arguments that have been advanced against miracles

[00:22:52] have actually been subject to devastating critiques by many philosophers and even secular ones.

[00:22:59] So you have a weakening of these traditional arguments against miracles,

[00:23:04] and then in addition, there are many other evidences that would make a strong case

[00:23:11] that when we think about what is ultimately real in the world,

[00:23:16] this is not just limited to physical matter.

[00:23:21] So we have evidence from the nature of morality.

[00:23:24] I've got a whole episode on that,

[00:23:27] how morality itself is evidence for the existence of God,

[00:23:31] that morality in the end is not something that you can reduce to physical matter.

[00:23:37] And if you can't reduce morality to just physical stuff,

[00:23:41] well then you have something that is more than the physical.

[00:23:46] And if you have even one thing that is more than the physical, that is real,

[00:23:51] then naturalism is false.

[00:23:53] You also have evidence from the origin of the universe

[00:23:56] that all space-time everything came into existence at a point in time, long ago.

[00:24:05] And then you have to start thinking about what could cause everything to come into existence,

[00:24:10] and nothing physical can explain that.

[00:24:13] So unless you're willing to say that nothing caused everything, which makes no sense,

[00:24:19] then it seems whether this is God or something else,

[00:24:23] that there needs to be some sort of immaterial cause for the physical universe.

[00:24:29] And if that is true, here you have another example where naturalism fails as a worldview,

[00:24:35] because the entire natural world was brought into existence by something non-natural,

[00:24:42] by something I would argue supernatural.

[00:24:44] So the nature of morality is not physical, the origin of the universe not physical.

[00:24:50] Then you have the phenomenon of consciousness.

[00:24:52] How is it that consciousness is something that is a real thing in the world?

[00:24:59] We as human beings are conscious, we're aware, and animals have consciousness.

[00:25:05] We obviously, there's a difference between a human being and a dog and a rock.

[00:25:12] A rock is not self-aware.

[00:25:14] A rock has no self-awareness, it's an inanimate object.

[00:25:17] But animals and humans, we have conscious awareness.

[00:25:23] And of course that's on different levels with animals and humans.

[00:25:27] But the point is that consciousness is something you have to explain.

[00:25:30] And it's a very difficult task to try to make sense of consciousness as something physical.

[00:25:36] And so again, all these can be entire podcast episodes,

[00:25:42] and so much has been discussed about each one of these.

[00:25:45] But the point I'm making here is that I'm looking at individual things in the world

[00:25:49] and showing this is something immaterial.

[00:25:52] This is something immaterial.

[00:25:54] And if you have even one thing that is immaterial, that's real, then naturalism is false.

[00:26:01] And so consciousness is another one of these points.

[00:26:04] And I would also suggest religious experience.

[00:26:08] That when you start looking at religious experience,

[00:26:10] it's not as easy to explain away as people think that it is.

[00:26:17] So I would submit religious experience is also one of these other evidences

[00:26:22] that there's something more to reality than just the physical.

[00:26:27] And more could be said about that.

[00:26:30] But the overall point I'm trying to make here is that

[00:26:33] skeptical arguments against miracles have not held sway like people thought they would over time.

[00:26:41] So there's good arguments for miracles,

[00:26:44] there's good arguments against the skeptical arguments against miracles.

[00:26:49] And you have evidence that naturalism is false.

[00:26:52] And so if all that is true, then you have good reasons to doubt naturalism as a worldview.

[00:26:58] If you have good reason to doubt naturalism as a worldview,

[00:27:01] then that assumption cannot be an argument against the resurrection of Jesus.

[00:27:10] Now third here, if a person does accept naturalism as a worldview,

[00:27:15] then the only viable explanation for the resurrection of Jesus is of course it's going to be a naturalistic one.

[00:27:22] Because given naturalism, the resurrection cannot be a supernatural event.

[00:27:28] It would have to be explained naturalistically.

[00:27:32] But the problem with this is that every single naturalistic explanation faces serious problems

[00:27:39] in accounting for the facts surrounding the resurrection accounts.

[00:27:45] A lot could be said on that.

[00:27:47] I've got a whole episode in this podcast devoted to the naturalistic explanations for the resurrection and why they fail.

[00:27:56] So if you're interested in that, that's part of the series in this podcast called A Case for the Resurrection of Jesus.

[00:28:05] So I think those are reasons to question and doubt this assumption of naturalism that many people have when the claim of the resurrection comes up.

[00:28:16] The second part of this argument had to do with making a claim about the gullibility of people in biblical times when it came to believing in miracles,

[00:28:27] that they were predisposed.

[00:28:29] So is it true that people in biblical times were gullible or perhaps predisposed to believing in miracles?

[00:28:37] Now I think it's certainly true that many in that time probably were.

[00:28:43] But this is no different than today.

[00:28:46] It's no different than modern times.

[00:28:48] There are gullible people today who are predisposed to believing in every sort of miracle claim that they hear.

[00:28:56] There are gullible people today who are predisposed to not believing in miracles at all.

[00:29:04] So gullibility is an intellectual stance that people take.

[00:29:12] And so it's not like that, oh well, people who believe in the supernatural are gullible, but people who don't believe in the supernatural aren't gullible.

[00:29:21] You can have gullible people on both sides of this because the central question here that matters is what your belief or disbelief is actually based on.

[00:29:33] Is your belief in miracles grounded in anything solid?

[00:29:38] Is your disbelief in miracles grounded in anything solid?

[00:29:43] So regardless of what side you're on, when it comes to the plausibility of believing in miracle claims, you can be gullible.

[00:29:53] And it doesn't matter what time period that you're living in, you can be both gullible and predisposed to believing in miracles or not believing in miracles.

[00:30:05] So just a mere claim of gullibility doesn't really do very much.

[00:30:09] But what we can say, I think in the case of Jesus disciples, is that they were not gullible nor were they predisposed to believing in Jesus' resurrection from the dead, even though I think they should have been.

[00:30:24] And to see this, I think it's helpful to actually look at one of the Gospel accounts that talks about the resurrection of Jesus.

[00:30:31] So I'm just going to be looking at the account from Luke chapter 24.

[00:30:35] And the first place I'm going to read from is verses 1 through 12 of Luke 24.

[00:30:41] So that passage says this,

[00:30:43] On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices they had prepared.

[00:30:50] They found the stone rolled away from the tomb.

[00:30:53] They went in but did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

[00:30:58] While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men stood by them in dazzling clothes.

[00:31:05] So the women were terrified and bowed down to the ground.

[00:31:09] Why are you looking for the living among the dead?

[00:31:12] Asked the men.

[00:31:13] He is not here, but he has risen.

[00:31:16] Remember how we spoke to you when he was still in Galilee saying,

[00:31:20] And they remembered his words.

[00:31:23] Returning from the tomb, they reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.

[00:31:29] Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James, and the other women with them were telling the apostles these things.

[00:31:38] But these women were not the only ones who were telling the apostles these things.

[00:31:43] Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb.

[00:31:46] When he stooped to look in, he saw only the linen cloths.

[00:31:51] So he went away amazed at what had happened.

[00:31:55] So that's the first portion of how Luke reports about the women.

[00:32:01] He says,

[00:32:02] And they were all in the tomb.

[00:32:04] Peter was not there.

[00:32:07] So that's the first portion of how Luke reports the account of Jesus' resurrection from the dead.

[00:32:16] And what it was like for the earliest followers of Jesus when they began to understand that he had risen from the dead.

[00:32:26] And there's a lot of significant points from that passage that we could pull out, but I'm just going to look at three of them here.

[00:32:32] So the first one is that in verses seven through eight, these verses show that Jesus had predicted his death and resurrection to his disciples multiple times before it actually happened.

[00:32:48] His disciples were with him for three years during his ministry.

[00:32:54] And if you read through the Gospels, you'll see that several times, many times, and probably more than that because not everything Jesus said was actually written down.

[00:33:05] But Jesus had spoken about his death and resurrection many times to his disciples before it ever happened.

[00:33:13] And so they should have remembered this, and this really shouldn't have been a surprise to them.

[00:33:19] But in verses seven through eight here, you see that the angels at the tomb actually have to remind the women that came to the tomb about this.

[00:33:31] That Jesus said, It is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and rise on the third day.

[00:33:40] And it says, And then they remembered his words.

[00:33:43] So that's really significant.

[00:33:45] This event of the resurrection was something that Jesus had already spoken about.

[00:33:50] His disciples should have been expecting it.

[00:33:53] Now, the second thing here is that it's very interesting that verse 11 says that when the the 11 apostles had when they heard the report of the women who went to the tomb

[00:34:08] and the women who saw the angels and the angel told them that Jesus was alive and they come back to the 11 disciples, the men there.

[00:34:19] It says these words seemed like nonsense to them and they did not believe the women.

[00:34:26] So the first reaction here to many of his disciples is that they didn't believe it at all.

[00:34:33] They considered it to be nonsense.

[00:34:36] And that really cuts against that.

[00:34:39] That alone right there cuts against the claim that the earliest followers of Jesus were just these gullible people predisposed to believe in any sort of miraculous claim that they heard.

[00:34:51] So it doesn't look like at all that they were gullible here.

[00:34:57] They didn't believe the report of Jesus resurrection,

[00:35:02] even though Jesus himself multiple times had told them that this was going to happen.

[00:35:08] And in verse 12, it says that Peter got up and ran to the tomb where Jesus was buried.

[00:35:16] And it says that when he stooped to look in, he saw only the linen cloths.

[00:35:20] So he went away amazed at what had happened.

[00:35:23] So Peter hears the claim.

[00:35:25] He doesn't really believe it, but he does actually go to the tomb to check it out for himself.

[00:35:30] And he sees the burial cloths there in the tomb, sees the tomb is empty.

[00:35:36] But he stopped short of concluding that Jesus was risen.

[00:35:40] It says that he was just amazed at what had happened.

[00:35:43] It doesn't tell you that he believed, that he saw and believed.

[00:35:48] So very significant points, even just from these first 12 verses from Luke 24 talking about the resurrection.

[00:35:55] And these already indicate that on a face value reading of the gospels themselves,

[00:36:02] these eyewitness accounts of what happened,

[00:36:05] that the charge that they were just gullible people ready to believe in anything they heard really doesn't go through at all.

[00:36:14] Now the second passage I want to look at is also from Luke 24, but it's verses 36-49.

[00:36:22] And this is when Jesus actually appears to his disciples.

[00:36:28] So they've heard that he's risen from the dead,

[00:36:31] but this is an account where he actually appears to them after he was killed.

[00:36:37] It says this, as they were saying these things, he himself, that is Jesus, stood in their midst.

[00:36:43] He said to them, Peace to you.

[00:36:46] But they were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost.

[00:36:51] Why are you troubled? He asked them. And why do doubts arise in your hearts?

[00:36:56] Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.

[00:36:59] Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.

[00:37:07] Having said this, he showed them his hands and feet.

[00:37:10] But while they were still amazed and in disbelief because of their joy,

[00:37:16] he asked them, Do you have anything here to eat?

[00:37:20] So they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.

[00:37:26] He told them, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,

[00:37:31] that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

[00:37:37] Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

[00:37:42] He also said to them, This is what is written,

[00:37:45] The Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead the third day,

[00:37:49] and repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name

[00:37:54] to all the nations beginning at Jerusalem.

[00:37:57] You are witnesses of these things.

[00:38:01] And look, I am sending you what my father promised.

[00:38:04] As for you, stay in the city until you are empowered from on high.

[00:38:09] So some significant points from this passage is that the disciples,

[00:38:15] they encounter the risen Jesus.

[00:38:17] So now it's not just that they've heard the claim that he's risen from the dead.

[00:38:21] Now they actually have encountered him alive.

[00:38:25] They've encountered the resurrected Jesus, but they interpret this as seeing a ghost.

[00:38:31] That's what it says in verse 37 here.

[00:38:34] And they also doubt what they're seeing.

[00:38:37] And this is very significant because they've been told again that Jesus had risen.

[00:38:43] So the background to their travels with Jesus during his ministry

[00:38:48] has included all of these miracles that Jesus has done.

[00:38:52] They've even seen Jesus himself raise people from the dead.

[00:38:57] And then Jesus predicts his own death and resurrection multiple times to them.

[00:39:02] And then they actually hear from the women that went to the tomb that he is risen.

[00:39:08] And yet when they finally see him for themselves,

[00:39:11] they think they're seeing a ghost and they doubt what they're seeing.

[00:39:15] And so they've had plenty of reason up to this point

[00:39:20] to believe the truth of the resurrection.

[00:39:24] Another significant point here is that Jesus demonstrates that he is risen with empirical evidence.

[00:39:30] He addresses their doubts head on, and he reveals they have no basis for skepticism.

[00:39:36] This is really him.

[00:39:38] He questions and he addresses their doubts.

[00:39:41] He says, Why do doubts arise in your hearts?

[00:39:44] Look at my hands and my feet that it is I myself.

[00:39:47] Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.

[00:39:54] And then he eats something. He eats a piece of fish.

[00:39:57] And so all this shows that it's the real Jesus.

[00:40:01] That he's got the wounds, he's got the scars in his hands and in his side

[00:40:07] where the nails and the spear was when he was crucified.

[00:40:10] That he's actually eating a piece of fish in their presence.

[00:40:14] And so Jesus is showing them, I'm really here.

[00:40:19] This is really me.

[00:40:20] I told you this was going to happen and I'm presenting myself in front of you now

[00:40:25] and I'm demonstrating to you that this is me.

[00:40:29] And even after seeing the risen Jesus,

[00:40:32] it says that the disciples were still amazed and in disbelief because of their joy.

[00:40:37] So they're understandably in this state of joy,

[00:40:42] but it's a joyful shock mixed with disbelief.

[00:40:46] And this helps you understand the psychological condition of the disciples.

[00:40:53] After Jesus was crucified and dead,

[00:40:56] they were not in any sort of psychological condition to expect a resurrection.

[00:41:02] And they certainly weren't in a psychological condition to hallucinate a resurrection of Jesus.

[00:41:10] And this is especially so when you read in John,

[00:41:15] the report from the Gospel of John that the disciples were hiding

[00:41:19] and they had locked the doors for fear of the Jews.

[00:41:23] So after Jesus was killed and buried,

[00:41:26] the disciples went into hiding and they locked themselves in

[00:41:30] because they didn't want the same thing to happen to them.

[00:41:32] They thought the Jews may come after them next.

[00:41:35] So they were in a state of devastation, fear,

[00:41:38] and they were not in any sort of condition to expect a resurrection of Jesus from a psychological standpoint.

[00:41:47] And in verse 44 in this passage here,

[00:41:51] Jesus begins to speak to them about how the Jewish Scriptures had predicted

[00:41:57] that he, the Messiah, would rise from the dead

[00:42:01] and that all the predictions about him must be fulfilled.

[00:42:05] And here you get the sense that, again,

[00:42:09] Jesus had been telling them about these kinds of things all throughout his time with them.

[00:42:15] He says,

[00:42:16] These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,

[00:42:19] that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

[00:42:25] Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

[00:42:29] And he also said to them,

[00:42:30] This is what is written.

[00:42:32] The Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead the third day.

[00:42:35] And repentance for forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed in his name

[00:42:40] to all the nations beginning at Jerusalem.

[00:42:42] And you are witnesses of these things.

[00:42:44] So none of this was to be unexpected

[00:42:50] in terms of the things Jesus had taught them about who he was as the Messiah

[00:42:55] and the things that the disciples had already known from the Jewish Scriptures.

[00:43:00] So it's just really important to understand that there was an entire background of experience

[00:43:06] and teaching that the disciples had with Jesus himself

[00:43:10] that should have prepared them to expect a resurrection.

[00:43:15] But, of course, from a psychological standpoint, everything they had experienced,

[00:43:20] they were not in a position to hallucinate anything like this.

[00:43:25] So, wrapping this up, what are some overall points that we can consider here?

[00:43:30] Of course, Jesus' disciples, they didn't live in a world where modern science had developed.

[00:43:35] But nevertheless, they knew that dead people stayed dead.

[00:43:40] And we see this in their skepticism towards the claim that Jesus himself had risen.

[00:43:46] They heard the report of the women and Luke says they thought it was nonsense.

[00:43:51] But at the same time, talk of the gullibility of the disciples is overblown

[00:43:57] and it's not supported by an actual reading of the Gospels.

[00:44:03] And this kind of perspective also reeks of something called chronological snobbery

[00:44:08] that C.S. Lewis talked about.

[00:44:11] Basically, when people in the current time think that they know better than people in the past time,

[00:44:17] that they're more enlightened, that they're more rational,

[00:44:21] and that everything they think is correct and then reflecting upon people in the past,

[00:44:25] just kind of downplaying or delegitimizing the things that they claimed.

[00:44:30] Not a very good way to look at history, not a very good way to think about these important issues.

[00:44:37] Another thing is that, like we just said, Jesus' disciples had every reason to believe in the claim of his resurrection

[00:44:44] when they first heard it.

[00:44:46] They traveled with him for three years, they'd seen him do many miracles, including raising the dead.

[00:44:51] And they had heard Jesus predict his own death and resurrection many times.

[00:44:56] So it wasn't like they just had no basis for believing this and it just came out of thin air.

[00:45:01] There was an entire context behind this.

[00:45:05] And again, the disciples were in no psychological condition to hallucinate a resurrection of Jesus.

[00:45:14] As we talked about, they were devastated and their spirits were crushed in light of his death.

[00:45:20] They were at a point where they didn't know what was going to happen.

[00:45:24] All their hopes had been pinned on Jesus and then it seemed like everything was lost.

[00:45:30] But also, the very concept of resurrection from a Jewish perspective was a resurrection of all people at the end of the age.

[00:45:42] So that was going to be a time when every person who would ever live would be resurrected to be judged by God.

[00:45:51] And that was supposed to happen way at the end of history.

[00:45:54] But it was not a resurrection of a single man in time before the end of the age.

[00:46:02] And that's very important. Jesus' disciples were Jews.

[00:46:07] And so their whole understanding about resurrection was informed by their understanding of the Jewish Scriptures of when the resurrection was going to happen.

[00:46:18] This was going to be an event at the end of the age.

[00:46:21] And so for Jesus himself, one man, to be resurrected in time before the end of the age, that was not an expectation that they were prepared for at all.

[00:46:31] At least coming from their understanding of the Jewish Scriptures.

[00:46:37] And hallucination, sometimes people try to explain away the claim of the resurrection by saying that the disciples just simply hallucinated or they had some sort of vision of Jesus.

[00:46:49] But it's important to see that hallucinations are not experienced by groups of people at different locations and at different times and different settings and in different ways.

[00:47:00] A hallucination is also not something you can physically touch or interact with, as Jesus' disciples did with him.

[00:47:08] More could be said about all this, but those are just some overall points to consider.

[00:47:14] And maybe the final point to consider is that when people try to cast doubt upon the accuracy of the Gospel accounts by saying that they're biased sources,

[00:47:27] that really doesn't do the kind of work that people think that it does.

[00:47:31] Because oftentimes a biased source, in many ways, every source you read is a biased source.

[00:47:38] Because every person that's writing something is coming from a certain perspective.

[00:47:43] So if a biased source in general is a problem, then it's a problem for everything that's ever been written.

[00:47:50] Now of course, just because someone has a bias, that doesn't mean they can't tell the truth.

[00:47:55] And I think that's one thing that we can say about this.

[00:47:59] Of course the Gospels were written by followers of Jesus.

[00:48:03] And they're very clear that they wrote their Gospels for specific purposes.

[00:48:07] That they do want people to see that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God.

[00:48:12] But why should that mean that they're not telling the truth?

[00:48:15] So you can't really know if what the disciples are saying is true just by claiming that they're biased,

[00:48:26] just by claiming that they were followers of Jesus.

[00:48:31] Because then you start to get into motives or ascribing motives to the Gospel writers

[00:48:38] that unless they tell you, we really don't have any way to know what their motives were.

[00:48:45] And they have told us some things about their motives, which is what I just said.

[00:48:49] But the main point with that is just that simply claiming they're biased sources

[00:48:54] doesn't really tell you whether or not the claims in the sources are true.

[00:48:58] That's something you actually have to investigate.

[00:49:00] Were they in a position to be able to know that these things were true about Jesus?

[00:49:05] Were they really eyewitnesses to the events surrounding Jesus' life?

[00:49:09] Are there indications in the Gospels that they're actually telling the truth?

[00:49:12] And all those things are very important to look at.

[00:49:17] And overall, I think when you do an investigation like that of the Gospels,

[00:49:22] what you come out with is people who had their lives changed by real events that happened

[00:49:29] with the person of Jesus, both in his teaching and in his miracles,

[00:49:33] that put them in a position where they wanted other people to know the truth about what happened with him.

[00:49:38] And so if you have any questions surrounding that or want to go further on it,

[00:49:43] I recommend looking into the reasons to think that the Gospels are reliable accounts

[00:49:49] of the life and ministry of Jesus, and there's a good case to be made for that.

[00:49:54] But in the scope of this episode, I just wanted to offer some thoughts about the resurrection of Jesus

[00:50:00] and to look at this one line of argument against it

[00:50:04] and just to think about why the resurrection is plausible to believe.

[00:50:09] That when we step back, we think about the idea of a plausibility structure

[00:50:14] and we start understanding some assumptions that are made in this sort of argument against the resurrection.

[00:50:21] We see that it really doesn't hold up the way that many think it does.

[00:50:25] So I hope that this episode has been helpful for you and given you some things to think about.

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[00:50:49] Let them know about the podcast as well so they can listen.

[00:50:53] ReasonHopePodcast.com is the website and ReasonHopePodcast.gmail.com is the contact email address

[00:51:02] if you have any questions or comments for me.

[00:51:06] Otherwise, thank you for listening and remember that there is reason for hope in Jesus Christ.