(Sand, not snow - White Sands, NM)
In the previous blog entry, I described my Christianity as largely symbolic, meaning that I believe most Christian doctrines point toward deeper truths and are not to be taken literally (although you can certainly take them that way).
This entry concerns the one doctrine I believe must be taken literally. It is the sine qua non (absolute essential) of Christianity:
The Resurrection.
Whatever one may believe about all the various doctrines from Jesus' preexistence to His birth to His ascension to His present role in God's economy, a literal, real-world Resurrection is the one essential.
Paul recognized this:
Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is in vain. Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ only in this life, we are of all people most to be pitied.
1 Corinthians 12-19 (NASB).
You can't put it much more strongly than that.
John Dominic Crossan is a major NT scholar with an emphasis on the historical Jesus. He believes Jesus' body was probably tossed in a ditch and eaten by dogs. One simply can't be a Christian and believe that. You can be a "Jesus admirer," but Christianity hinges on the reality of the Resurrection.
Some people, even some believers, try to make the Resurrection seem more plausible by analogizing it to other, more well-known supernatural events – ghosts, apparitions and visions. Some suggest the disciples were plunged into such despair by Jesus' ignominious death that they were suffering from cognitive dissonance and hallucinated the risen Jesus.
None of this will work. Either the Resurrection was a unique, real-world event or Christianity is simply not true – "worthless," as Paul said.
The Resurrection is the proof that Jesus fulfilled a unique role in God's plan for humanity and accomplished His atoning mission. You can argue about all else – even what the atoning mission was – but it all starts with a real-world Resurrection.
Atheists love to joke that "corpses don't get up and fly away" in an effort to make the Resurrection seem silly. No, corpses don't get up and fly away, and neither did Jesus. The Resurrection was a unique event in human history, the miraculous transformation of Jesus' corpse into a living Resurrection body entirely unlike Lazarus' revived corpse or any ghost, apparition or vision.
Can the Resurrection be viewed in purely symbolic terms? Some New Age theologies speak of a "Christ spirit" that pervades all reality. Even some ostensible Christians likewise focus on a Christ spirit rather than an actual Resurrection. The Resurrection is simply the symbol of our Christian hope.
No, that won't work either. Christianity is about Jesus, not some amorphous Christ spirit. There is simply no way to avoid an actual, real-world Resurrection as a Christian essential. Moreover, as Paul emphasizes in the above passage, if there was no real-world Resurrection than he and the Gospel writers were blatant liars.
There is a huge amount of apologetic scholarship concerning the Resurrection. N. T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God is almost 1,000 pages. Dr. Gary Habermas has recently published two volumes totaling almost 2,000 pages, Evidences and Refutations. There must be at least 25 serious books on Amazon (and I, Resurrection junkie that I am, have read them all with the exception of Habermas' latest!)
Scholarship can perhaps make the Resurrection seem more plausible, but ultimately it's a matter of faith. I really don't think "plausibility" is the point – that's just lowering the Resurrection to the level at which scoffers like to attack it: "Ain't plausible!" "Is too!" Yada yada.
I've always used the Resurrection as my gut-check for whether I'm still a Christian. I simply ask myself every now and then, "Do I think Jesus' body rotted away like any other or do I think the Resurrection is literally true?" No big analysis – just a visceral, intuitive gut-check. So far, my faith has survived the test. If it ever doesn't, I'll leave the ranks of Christians and become a Jesus admirer.
One of my pet areas of interest for decades has been the Shroud of Turin. My faith in the Resurrection certainly doesn't hinge on the Shroud, but the Shroud is a fascinating clue. There is no way on earth that it's a medieval forgery. (If it were, it would still be the most mysterious artifact in history because it has eluded all attempts at explanation. The debunker-type "explanations" at sites like Wikipedia will simply not withstand serious scrutiny, period.)
What has always fascinated me is that the Shroud is such a "high-tech" artifact, almost as though its secrets were intended for a skeptical, high-tech age. The fact that it's essentially a photographic negative wasn't discovered (purely by accident) until 1898. The most astounding properties were discovered in the multi-disciplinary STURP analysis of 1978: https://www.shroudofturin.com/sturp.html.
The Shroud image, which doesn't even penetrate the fibers, is truly mysterious, suggestive of something like a burst of radiation. Is it evidence of the Resurrection? I and many others suspect it is – but again, my faith in the Resurrection doesn't hinge on the Shroud.
The oldest Shroud website, operated by Barrie Schwortz, is an absolute goldmine of information: https://www.shroudofturin.com/sturp.html. A good historical overview as to why the Shroud is almost certainly not a medieval artifact is Ian Wilson's The Shroud: Fresh Light on the 2000 Year Old Mystery. Wilson convincingly traces the Shroud to the famous fourth-century (at least) Image of Edessa and documents its influence on most ancient portrayals of Jesus.
Not to go too far into the weeds, but a related face cloth, the Sudarium of Oviedo, has the same blood type as the Shroud and blood patterns matching the Shroud: The Sudarium of Oviedo: The “Other Shroud” of Jesus.
In short, don't dismiss the Shroud as just another dubious "Catholic" artifact. It's much more than that. (One beauty of Barrie Schwortz' site is that he was the official documenting photographer of the STURP team and is a Jew who is interested in the Shroud solely as a scientific mystery.) It might even enhance your faith in the Resurrection more than 5,000 pages of scholarly apologetics!
