“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
– C.S Lewis
Para la versión en Español haz click aquí.
First, a question: if Christianity were true, and Jesus Christ was really the only way to heaven, would you follow Him? If the answer is No, then there is no amount of evidence or reasoning that could persuade you, for you have made the decision already without looking at the evidence. However, if the answer is Yes, then we can reason together.
The argument is simple. Jesus of Nazareth is the only prophet or religious leader who ever proclaimed to be God. So, as C.S Lewis put it: Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic or Lord. Additionally, just in the last 100 years or so, a new ‘L’ came up: legend. This one has become quite popular, so we’ll go over that.
Now, I must confess that I was very ignorant of Jesus. I only knew the stories that year after year I would watch on TV as a kid during Easter and celebrate at Christmas. Then, when I left the practice of the faith (basically going to Mass), those remained just that. Stories that you tell children.
In this essay I will present that: 1) a supernatural event such as the resurrection is at least possible; 2) based on extra-biblical sources, Jesus of Nazareth is a historical person; 3) the Gospels are the historical biography of Jesus, as opposed to folklore; 4) the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical fact; and 5) Jesus is God. Additionally, I will discuss some of the more common objections to the resurrection. That’s a lot for a short essay, so I’ll do my best to summarize.
Okay, so what is at stake here? The apostle St. Paul put it very well in his letter to the Corinthians:
“If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain… If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied” (emphasis mine).
1 Cor 15:14,17-19
St Paul makes it clear that since the beginning, Christians knew that their faith stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is no Christianity without the resurrection. Christianity doesn’t teach that Jesus was just a prophet, or an enlightened moral teacher. Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ is God.
The resurrection is not like any other event in history. People knew then, like we know now, that dead people stay dead. For example, the apostles didn’t believe the women who told them they had seen the risen Christ (Lk 24:11), and then St. Thomas said he wouldn’t believe unless he put his hands on His wounds (Jn 20:25). It goes without saying that according to the laws of nature, the resurrection is impossible, unless we are talking about a supernatural event, a miracle.
Is a Miracle Possible?
This is where it helped me to have investigated the existence and nature of God first. If God didn’t exist then that would’ve been the end of it. I wouldn’t have had to spend any more time with religion. But God does exist and that is undeniable.
As I wrote in my first post, I learned that God is ‘existence itself’. God’s nature is God’s existence, meaning that His very nature is ‘to exist’, so it’s impossible for God not to exist. God is not only creator, but also sustainer of everything that exists at every instant (like a musician that “sustains” the music he plays), including the laws and forces of nature.
A supernatural event means that something ‘above’ or ‘beyond’ the laws of nature happened. The only one that exists beyond the laws and forces of nature is God, who created them, sustains them and has power over them. Consequently, He can also suspend such laws and manipulate such forces according to His divine purpose.
Therefore, a miracle is possible. So, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is possible. This is a very important point because many of the biblical scholars are atheists or agnostics, so naturally for them, a supernatural explanation is a priori impossible. That’s why any other explanation of the facts, as improbable as it could be, must be the case.
The question then is: did it happen?
The Historical Jesus of Nazareth
Despite the consensus among scholars that Jesus Christ is a historical person, the claim that Jesus is a myth has become popular among internet skeptics, thanks to a small group of pseudo-scholars, or people like Bill Maher (Religulous movie) and the media. All those “analogies” to Egyptian gods, and that Jesus is just a myth, etcetera, are simply unsubstantiated and false.
The truth is that there are reliable extra-biblical historical accounts of Jesus’ life and of His death. These are from first century Roman, Greek and Jewish sources, such as Cornelius Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Lucian and Flavius Josephus. It’s worth noting that none of these historians were Christians, and therefore, had no interest in promoting Christianity. Many of them even had contempt towards Christians.
Perhaps the strongest evidence comes from: 1) Flavius Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, who wrote the ‘Jewish Antiquities’ where he mentions the execution of James, “the brother of Jesus, who is called Messiah”; and 2) Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman Senator and one of the greatest historians, who wrote ‘Annals’ where he connects Christ to His crucifixion by Pontius Pilate under the reign of Tiberius (as the New Testament does).
Bart Ehrman, a well-respected historian and self-professed agnostic/atheist wrote this:
“Jesus existed and those vocal persons who deny it do so not because they have considered the evidence with the dispassionate eye of the historian, but because they have some other agenda that this denial serves. From a dispassionate point of view, there was a Jesus of Nazareth.“
‘Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth’
He also wrote:
“The crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans is one of the most secure facts we have about his life.”
Therefore, the historical evidence for the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and His death by crucifixion, is undeniable to anyone who seeks the information. Jesus died crucified and that’s a historical fact.
Extra-biblical Facts About Jesus Christ
I will list some current and historical facts (extra-biblical first) that we can all agree on, so that we can find common ground before addressing the critical question of the resurrection.
- Christians exist and they must have come from somewhere. I mean, the existence of Christianity deserves an explanation. The word Christian means follower of Christ, or Messiah in Hebrew, which means the ‘Anointed One’.
- In Judaism the Messiah is understood by many as the anointed king of Israel (a political and military leader), who one day will bring about the political and spiritual redemption of the Jewish people.
- The Christian movement sprang forth from Judaism in first-century Palestine, and its leader was Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ (Messiah) who died crucified around 30 AD.
- The Roman historian Tacitus wrote the following :
“Christus, from whom the name [Christians] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus repressed (or checked) for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome” (emphasis mine).
Annals XVI.44.3
Based on Tacitus’ account, the Christian movement (for him an evil superstition) was repressed after Christ’s crucifixion (which was the extreme penalty). This makes sense (see #2 above), since a crucified and dead Christ is no ‘Anointed King’ at all. But then, Tacitus says that the Christian movement broke out again in Judea, then in Rome, and then, as we know, in the rest of the world. Other Messiah claimants such as Bar Kokhba or Shabbatai Tzvi were rejected after their death. The question is: why not Jesus? What got Christianity off the ground after the death of their Messiah?
Let’s bring up the Bible for a moment. According to the Gospels, Jesus died alone, without followers except the three Marys and St John. So, Tacitus’ account coincides with that of the Gospels.
The New Testament does tell the whole story, but even though the New Testament is historical, many scholars say that it is folklore and biased (I’ll get into that further down). For now, let’s go back to Tacitus: why did the Messianic movement break out again if their Messiah was dead? This needs an explanation.
The Eyewitnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Imagine that you have three alleged witnesses of a certain event you are investigating and you want to know what happened. Who would be the most credible witness?
- A witness that has everything to gain and nothing to lose.
- A witness that has nothing to gain and nothing to lose.
- A witness that has nothing to gain and everything to lose.
If you were a trial lawyer, who would you want? Obviously witness #3. Even if witness #1 is telling the truth, someone could doubt his motives. But in the case of witness #3, the truth must be so great and important that he would be willing to lose everything for the truth.
The first Christians were witnesses #3. They were Jews who suffered excommunication from the synagogues, persecution and death, for proclaiming what they witnessed. Notice here that they didn’t die for what they believed (like many have done in history), but they died for what they saw. What could’ve been so important? This is as far as extra-biblical evidence can take us.
To summarize, we have two critical and unanswered questions:
1) why did the Messianic movement break out again after the death of their Messiah?
2) what could they have seen that was so powerful that they sacrificed their lives for it?
We could just leave it there and pretend nothing happened. However, the answer could be, as C.S Lewis put it, of infinite importance.
We need to look at the New Testament, particularly the Gospels, to answer that.
The New Testament (NT): can we trust it?
First, we must answer the following: 1) are the copies of the NT we have today reliable representation of what the authors originally wrote, or has it been corrupted, like some people think? 2) are the alleged authors really the authors, or are the documents anonymous? 3) are the Gospels historical biographies of Jesus, or are they fabricated folklore or fables? I can’t cover it all here, so I highly recommend the book ‘The Case for Jesus‘ by Brant Pitre.
- Accuracy and authenticity
There is no original document from Antiquity (4000 BC – 476 AD) that survives today, all we have are copies. Through ‘textual criticism’ of these copies we can establish the original. The more copies there are for comparison, the more accurate and reliable representation of the original. No ancient work has more copies than the NT, currently reaching more than 5600 in the original Greek. Homer’s Iliad follows with 1800 copies. The rest of ancient works have less than 350 copies. For example, we only have around 50 copies of Aristotle’s works.
On the other hand, these ancient copies were all written long after the original, i.e. they have a large temporal gap. The smaller the gap, the lower the probability that it was corrupted in time. Interestingly, the work that has the smallest temporal gap of all ancient works is the NT, which most ancient copy (John, manuscript P52) is from 130 AD. That is, a temporal gap of around 50 years. And the earliest copy of the entire NT is from 350 AD (gap less than 300 years). Now, compare to the ones that follow, such as The Iliad or The History of Rome (Livy), both which have a gap of 400 years. Plato’s works, for example, have a temporal gap of 1300 years. Therefore, the work that has the smallest probability of having been corrupted is the NT. Take a look at this link to compare to other documents.
The bottom line is that the New Testament we have today is far more accurate and reliable than any other ancient historical document.
- Authorship
Historian Bart Ehrman states that the four Gospels are the writings of anonymous storytellers that were not eyewitnesses to the life of Christ, and that the names (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were added in the late second century AD. But as Brant Pitre demonstrates in his book, no anonymous copies of the Gospels have ever been found. They don’t exist, not even one. On the contrary, there is absolute uniformity in the authors to whom each Gospel is attributed to, even in the earliest copies.
Moreover, as Pitre points out, even if one Gospel had been truly anonymous and circulated among Christians, how on earth, did they consistently and uniformly attribute the multiple copies to the same author a century later? Keep in mind that by that time Christians were dispersed throughout Rome, Syria and Africa, so the copies of the Gospels and other Scriptures were in the different churches through out that territory. How did they coordinate and communicate with each other to achieve that uniformity in an era with precarious communications and close to 90% illiteracy? It seems improbable.
On the other hand, compare that to the Letter to the Hebrews – the only anonymous book in the Bible. Guess what happens when you have a real anonymous book? The copies either, remain anonymous or some end up with different authors, as it is the case with Hebrews.
Therefore, we have that: 1) the New Testament is accurate and reliable; and 2) the Gospels were written by the authors they are attributed to. Okay good, but is it historical? That’s the next question.
- The genre of the Gospels: biography of Jesus or folklore?
People not familiar with the Bible (like I was) may not know that the books in the Bible belong to different literary genres (law, history, prophecy, wisdom, Gospels, letters, etc), and they are grouped by genre. This is important in order to understand their content. For example, we wouldn’t read Sherlock Holmes as a historical character, or the Civil War as fictional story.
When compared to other ancient writings, the literary genre of the Gospels is most consistent with Greco-Roman biographies (bios) because they focus on the life and death of a particular person. These types of biographies usually begin with ancestry, are not necessarily written in chronological order and don’t tell absolutely everything the person did or said.
Additionally, unlike modern biographers, ancient biographers were not as concerned with exactitude. This is seen not only in the biography of Jesus, but in the biographies of Alexander the Great, Josephus, Caesar Augustus, Demonax and others. None of these other biographies are considered unhistorical by scholars.
Therefore, we can absolutely trust the New Testament. The literary evidence indicates that the Gospels are a historical biography of Jesus Christ. And as I’ve discussed above, the authenticity and reliability of the Gospels are unmatched by any other ancient historical document.
If despite all this evidence (biblical and extra-biblical), historical context and reasoning we still want to disregard the historicity of Jesus, then we would have to throw away Socrates, Aristotle and pretty much all the ancient history that built Western Civilization.
So, now we can answer the previous two questions: why did the Messianic movement break out again after the death of their Messiah? And why did these Jewish Christians sacrifice their lives to follow Jesus Christ after he was dead? The answers have to do not only with what the witnesses saw but with what Jesus said about Himself, i.e. His identity.
The Identity of Jesus Christ
From the evidence we can conclude that Jesus was a historical person and not a legend. Now the big question is, who is Jesus? Actually, He asked that same question: “He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” (Mt 16:15)”.
The Gospels show that Jesus reveals His divinity as the Son of God, being one with God the Father. Not only He does this explicitly in the Gospel of St John, but also in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). through feats that only God could do. Even though many Bible scholars argue that Jesus never claimed to be God, a study of the Bible in it’s first century Jewish context says otherwise, as Pitre demonstrates in ‘The Case for Jesus’.
Think about it. What would we think of someone that goes around claiming to be God? What would be our reaction? Obviously we would think that this man is crazy. Like I said at the beginning, C.S Lewis words are precise: “Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic or Lord”. Here it is worth mentioning that Jesus of Nazareth is the only human being in history that was pre-announced, and whose life was the fulfilment of the prophecies of the Sacred Scriptures. It is estimated that Jesus fulfilled around 300 prophecies, and Brant Pitre goes over the some of the most significative in ‘The Case for Jesus’. These prophecies would be analogous to his “I.D card”, so that people would recognize Him when He comes.
Let’s consider that no other religious leader or prophet has ever claimed the things that Jesus claims for Himself. That’s why I believe that no one has said it better than C.S Lewis:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
‘Mere Christianity’
The key question then is: is Jesus really who He claims to be?
The Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
As I stated at the beginning, and as St. Paul says, Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection of Christ. So, to summarize, thus far we have that: 1) the resurrection is possible; 2) Jesus of Nazareth is a historical person who died crucified in Judea; 3) the Gospel is the biography of Jesus Christ, it is authentic and reliable; and 4) Jesus claims to be God in accordance with Sacred Scripture.
However, let us remember that, as the Gospel says, and the historian Cornelius Tacitus confirms, his followers fled and abandoned him on the cross, and the messianic movement died out. Logically, for any Jewish follower of Jesus, the capture and crucifixion of their Christ would’ve been more than enough to crush any belief or hope that Jesus was the Messiah, let alone the Son of God.
So back to the critical questions: What caused the messianic movement to take off again after the death of its Messiah? And why did these Jews sacrifice their lives to follow Jesus Christ after his death? What could be so big and important?
The Gospels give us the answer: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But this is impossible! There has to be another explanation, right? Unless Jesus Christ really is God. It is true that there are other hypotheses or objections that skeptics propose and that I will address further down. Mainly: 1) the followers hallucinated the resurrected Christ; 2) it was a conspiracy by the followers; 3) there are many discrepancies between the different accounts of the resurrection therefore it did not happen; and 4) the power of the Catholic Church.
Let’s go to the evidence. First of all, the tomb where Jesus Christ was buried was empty (Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20). It should be noted that neither the Romans nor the Jewish elders denied the empty tomb – they simply tried to explain the fact (example: that the disciples had taken the body).
Second, there were many appearances of the resurrected Jesus Christ at different times, even appearing to 500 of his followers at the same time. And he also appeared to the apostle Saint Paul, who before that was called Saul of Tarsus, a tenacious persecutor of Christians. Moreover, the conversion of Saint Paul on his way to Damascus is one of the most important arguments. This can be read in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20 and 21, 1 Corinthians 15. And keep in mind that Matthew and John were eyewitnesses. I mention this because there are skeptics who say there is no documentation from eyewitnesses.
Objections to the Resurrection
The resurrection is understandably hard to believe, especially if the question hasn’t been studied thoroughly. However, there are many Bible scholars who deny the resurrection. This is because many of them are either atheists or agnostic, and if you have a vision of the world where the only thing that exists is material, it is logical that events such as the resurrection of Christ, His virgin birth and many other supernatural events described in the Bible are inconceivable. Therefore, they conclude there has to be some other explanation.
There are also many who, although they believe in God, have the wrong concept of God. They believe in a very small and limited god, but not in God who is existence itself, almighty, creator and sustainer of everything that exists. Like the carpenter analogy that I wrote earlier, and explained in more detail in my first essay on this blog. There are even some Christians who mistakenly believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was only his spirit and not flesh and blood. That is why without a good understanding of who God is, it is difficult to understand reality. Let’s analyze the objections then:
- His followers had hallucinations or visions of Jesus
The first problem is that according to scientific evidence, hallucinations are not a collective phenomenon. They are phenomena of the mind of a single individual. It really would be “a miracle” that so many people have hallucinated at the same time, and also at different times. If we value science and do not believe in miracles, we cannot believe this hypothesis. Someone else suggested that only one disciple could’ve had the vision (which is possible in circumstances of immense emotional stress) and that others believed that one. Well to begin with, those who saw Jesus Christ first were women, and no one believed them until they saw the empty tomb themselves or touched Jesus’ wounds.
- It was a conspiracy, a lie.
That is what the Romans and Jewish elders believed; that the disciples took the body and hid it, in order to make believe that the resurrection that Jesus Christ had announced had taken place. My question is: to what end? The idea of the Messiah and Son of God was already crumbling when Saint Peter denied Jesus three times and everyone else fled for their lives. The messianic movement died with the death of Christ. Why create a conspiracy that would only bring them persecution and death? They had nothing to gain and everything to lose. Take into account that none of the eyewitnesses broke down and told another version under torture. On the other hand, if they planned a conspiracy, they could have invented a more credible one perhaps. For example, don’t pick women as your first witnesses since women had no credibility in the culture of that time. Furthermore, Mark and Luke were not eyewitnesses. They could have assigned these Gospels to any of the other apostles. Given all this, this hypothesis isn’t credible.
- Discrepancies between the Gospels.
This one is quite popular and often surprises Christians who may not be very familiar with the Bible. It is true that there are discrepancies in secondary details of the resurrection. However, it is important to note that the literary genre of the Gospel is historical biography (bios). As I said before, these kinds of discrepancies are also found in other biographies or historical accounts of the time. For example, Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio differ in where Nero was during the great fire of Rome, but this does not mean that Nero was not present. Similarly, the fact that there are discrepancies in the accounts of the survivors of the Titanic does not mean that the Titanic did not sink. Furthermore, discrepancies in secondary details between witnesses of a certain event is what one would expect, according to J. Warner Wallace who is a cold case homicide detective and an ex-atheist (he wrote ‘Cold Case Christianity’), since witnesses have different perspectives. Otherwise, if accounts are identical, it makes it suspicious.
- The power of the Catholic Church
Many skeptics, ignoring the evidence I have presented here, argue that Christianity only managed to spread after the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, after declaring Christianity the official religion of the empire. And that thanks to him, the Church acquired power and took charge of extinguishing any vestige of pagan religions. This is the version that European intellectuals of the 18th and 19th centuries, apparently motivated by anti-Christianity and especially anti-Catholicism, took it upon themselves to propagate. This is demonstrated by Rodney Stark (“The Rise of Christianity,” The Triumph of Christianity “and” Bearing False Witness “), who is a sociologist of religion at Baylor University.
Based on Stark’s findings, when Constantine assumed power in 312AD, there were already some 9 million Christians, constituting 15% of the Roman population. This number increased to 30% in 337 when Constantine died. However, this large increase was not due to the power of the Catholic Church or the persecution of pagans. Stark documents that Constantine was a great promoter of religious pluralism, allowing the coexistence of Christians and pagans, which lasted for another century or two. Many of those he put in charge of his government were pagans, and even the currency of the empire continued to bear the image of the sun god. The conclusion he reaches is that the conversion of the empire to Christianity occurred due to sociological and doctrinal aspects that go beyond the scope of this essay. Although, as Christians know, it always is the work of the Holy Spirit, as it was in my case.
The Triumph of Jesus Christ
The small sect that broke away from Judaism has become the largest religion with 2 billion followers throughout the world. People like me continue to convert to Jesus Christ even 2000 years later, especially in the Middle East where Christians continue to convert to the Lord despite the fact that it leads them to persecution and death.
It is true that there are other religions that have reached large numbers. However, all other religions took off and spread when their leaders or prophets were alive. For example, Muhammad preached for more than 20 years and Buddha for more than 40 years. Jesus Christ only preached for 3 years and his movement died out after his death and then took off and spread after his resurrection.
Jesus not only predicted his resurrection but also the conversion of nations and the growth of his kingdom. According to the Gospel, when the Pharisees asked for a sign, Jesus replied that they would only be given “the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Mt 12: 38-41). He was referring to the Book of Jonah: 1) the death of Jonah for 3 days inside the whale and his subsequent resurrection; and 2) as a consequence, the repentance and conversion of the Gentiles (non-Jews) of Nineveh. To this Jesus added: “Behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”
Notice that Jesus pointed to the death and resurrection of the prophet Jonah as a sign of his own resurrection. The second aspect of this prophecy is even more relevant to us today, because a far greater conversion of people occurred. Not only was a city converted (as in the case of Jonah), but the Roman Empire and people from different nations of the world to this day.
Conclusion
The birth and expansion of Christianity deserve an explanation. The only explanation that satisfies the extra-biblical evidence, fulfills the Old Testament prophecies, corresponds to what is documented in the New Testament, and fulfills Jesus’ prophecy on the conversion of nations is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
With all this evidence, all I had left to do was answer His question: “Who do you say I am? (Mt 16:15)”
Given what I found, it was impossible for me to turn around and go on with my life as if nothing had happened. Jesus does not force us to follow him, He invites us:
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”
Rev 3:20
This was an offer that I couldn’t refuse. Who am I to say no to God? Thus, in November 2015, I swallowed my pride and decided to change my life to follow Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.
I sincerely hope that this summary of how I came to be convinced of the truth has been helpful to everyone who has read it.
As the Bible says:
“Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you.”
1 Peter 3:15
