Where’s the proof of Jesus’ resurrection?
“For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.
If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain . . . If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile”
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. . . . For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; 22 for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” (1 Cor 15:3-4, 7, 15, 22)
As disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are now walking through the sixth week of the Easter Season. Now the major theme of Easter is the bodily, physically-re-embodied resurrection of Christ. Easter Sunday is a day that we give utmost reflection to the fact of the empty tomb. It is the one historical reality by which Christianity exists. As expressed by N.T. Wright, “The question of Jesus’ resurrection lies at the heart of the Christian faith. . . It is woven into the very structure of Christian life.”[1] In response to the question as to “why did Christianity arise, Wright goes on to affirm that there is really only one answer: “we exist because of Jesus’ resurrection.” Christianity was at its very beginning, primarily a “resurrection movement.” For it was the reality of Jesus’ resurrection that “was its central driving force,” by which the Church is empowered throughout all history and the world.”[2] We should appreciate the question, which is inferred in Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 15: “Where is the proof of Jesus’ resurrection?”
We are saved through Christ’s resurrection
“if . . . we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more . . . shall we be saved through his life!” (Romans 5:10)
“as Christ was raised from the dead . . . we also [now] may live a new life.” (Romans 6:4; rough translation)
I would argue that modern Christianity, particularly Evangelical Conservative Christianity, has historically depreciated the explosive ramifications of Christ’s resurrection. It has done so through its past inclination to define the atonement primarily with reference to Good Friday- Christ’s suffering upon the cross. But the fact is that the atonement was not fully completed until the Holy Spirit raised Christ from the dead Rom 1:4; 8:11). As Clark Pinnock points out, “We have placed such emphasis on the legal dimension of the atonement that the resurrection, which does not address that issue as framed, is done away with as saving event.”[3] We have thus drawn this great dichotomy between what we call justification and what we call sanctification. Yet as Pinnock also recalls, what the Scripture says is plain: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor 15:7). This is why in Romans, Paul discussion on the atonement includes a lengthy argument that we are saved by His life! (Rom 5:7).[4] We must thus also appreciate that through the atonement, Christ sought to destroy not only the power of sin over humanity, but also the power of death, which He did through His resurrection from the dead (Rom 1:4; Heb 2:14).[5] Our redemption rests upon both the cross and the resurrection; and consequently, it is Christ’s resurrection that primarily defines the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In just a few weeks hence, we’ll recall how the fullness of Easter is poured out on Pentecost Sunday. The Easter Season is therefore a time of “tarrying;” “until we be endured with power from on high.” Mainline as well as may Evangelical independent churches celebrate Pentecost Sunday as just that: a celebration and remembrance of what happened to the Church on the first day of Pentecost. However, let it be heard that such a focus actually misconstrues and shortchanges the blessing that the Lord desires to give on such a day. Pentecost Sunday should not be primarily approached as a festive remembrance of what happened on the first Pentecost. On the contrary! Pentecost Sunday should rather be set aside as the climatic event to a season of seeking from the Lord, a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It is thus this kind of waiting upon the Lord, which should shape the pattern of our worship throughout the Easter Season.
Now I would like us to reflect on the defining cause for Easter, which is the bodily resurrection of Jesus. To proclaim and celebrate the reality Jesus’ resurrection should indeed perennially define our worship and walk within the Easter season. Over the past century, and up to this present day however, apologetic arguments towards defending presumed empirical evidences for Jesus’ resurrection have dominated the teaching and preaching of Easter, at least within more conservative and Evangelical Christian communities. There has thus been an overwhelming focus upon defending whatever presumed empirical proof can be gathered, established, and argued through premises and methods indicative of modern scientific enquiry, towards the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
The message of Easter has thus been highly presented as something warranting above all else, mental comprehension into the verifiable evidences of Christian belief. Influential forces within Evangelicalism that must be taken to task, has been the ongoing influence of Christian fundamentalism, Reformed Scholasticism, and the “concordance” model of biblical and systematic theology such at that illustrated through Wayne Grudman’s proof-text method of theological reasoning.[6] The ongoing result even now within contemporary Evangelical thought, is the continued apologetic defense of Christianity “through scientifically verifiable proofs, proofs for God’s existence” and, “for Jesus’ resurrection.”[7]
The challenge of postmodernity
Now there is a valid role to exploring and appreciating definitive fruit that has served to substantiate our certainty that the physical resurrection of Jesus belongs is not a myth but a historical reality. There are however, several emerging problems and challenges to Evangelicalism’s historical placement within modernity, both especially relevant to this discussion regarding our approach to Easter and its shaping of our worship throughout the Easter season.
First of all, it has become apparent that within the 20th century, both conservative and liberal Christian traditions became to their own present detriment, deeply ensnared to the modern scientific worldview. Conservative Christians in particular, in spite of all their careful reference to the Bible as “God’s Word,” or the “Word of God,” have unwittingly undermined the authority of the Bible by constantly straining to make its contents wholly conformable to the premises of modern empirical science. What they have actually done is make modernity, and not Scripture, the measure of all truth! Carl Henry for instance, who may well have been the most influential shaper of 20th century Evangelical thinking, argued that, “Revelation in the Bible is essentially a mental conception.”[8] Henry also argued that what sin has most affected within humans is not “reason” per say, but human “will.”[9]
Yet it has since become evident to many thoughtful observers however, that this common Evangelical position has failed to appreciate the extent of sin even upon human reasoning. The historical fallout has of course been the inherent arrogance, which has long lied at the heart of respective yet competing worldviews- of competing meta-narratives within what has now become the global village we today live in. Often therefore, when conservative Christians qualify personally held positions through the phrase, “God’s Word says,” what they are essentially doing is arguing for their own peculiar interpretations shaped by the doctrinal community they have chosen to align themselves with.
I have long heard and read diatribes, such as from scholars such as David Wells about the seeming “collapse of truth” through the emergence of postmodernity.[10] These voices, presenting themselves as prophetic voices for the defense of Christianity, cry “relativism!” “All that’s solid is melting in the air!”[11] Yet what these Christian scholars are really defending is not for classic traditions or positions of faith inherent the Christian orthodoxy, but really, their own denominational or traditions’ peculiarities, which are now being challenged through the collapse of premises long used to substantiate reading of Scripture and of Christian faith within their own interpretive community. I have long surmised that there is no such thing as a purely “Christian worldview.” What do exists are a number of Christianised Western worldviews, Christianised Asian worldviews, and so on. I believe it would be correct to speak of a biblical worldview, meaning how reality is depicted within the biblical story-world. Yet in the world outside the Bible are multiple worldviews arising from varied interpretive communities, which both reflect vestiges of God’s glory yet tragically all the more so, the sinful depravity of human nature. As Paul says, “now we see through a glass, darkly.” Every worldview can nonetheless be potentially and positively shaped and to some extent redeemed, by the biblical story. This is partially the goal and work of Christian discipleship; of discipling the nations. Therefore, we do not preach any worldview, but only the gospel- though how we preach will inevitably reflect the worldviews we have grown and lived within. Yet in the age we live in, postmodernity is something through which God is speaking a prophetic word into modern man’s arrogance, even towards if we are humble enough to concede, a prophetic word to the “Christian modernist arrogance.”[12] And so as N.T. Wright so aptly suggests:
“It has come as “a necessary judgment on the arrogance of modernity, judgment from within. Our task is to reflect on that moment, and reflecting biblically and Christianly, to see our way through the moment of despair and out the other side.”[13]
Second, it is certainly true that the world we are moving into, will not as within the 20th century world, be persuaded to Christ through “internally flawless, logically coherent and evidentially consistent argument.” There is an emerging worldview however that may well appreciate an argued “truth” that is argued rather than through scientific coherency but through a communally “embodied” coherency.[14] In other words, by how well a community’s perception of “truth,” is winsomely and aesthetically embodied and thus “argued,” through their behavour and lifestyle. As we move to the climax of this essay however, I will argue that the good news of the Gospel is that it is through just this kind of witness that Jesus did indeed desire for the Church, and how the early church did indeed testify to the resurrection of Christ. As thus as I shall later discuss, the early Christian testimony of Christ’s resurrection was not primarily defended but preached, through the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Has Easter become an empty form devoid of true “resurrection” power?
Third, with reference back to the Easter Season and how we allow this past season to engage our spiritual health as Christians, our empirical mindset has often served to short-change the real purpose of Easter within the Church, which originally was purposed towards preparing us for the coming of Pentecost. Let’s thus return back to my earlier discussion on fallouts arising from the modern mindset, particularly towards our celebration of Easter. In his book, Ancient-Future Time, Robert Webber provides a timely critique to how this concern has to some extent negatively impacted the very purpose of celebrating Easter within the context of the Christian calendar.[15]
Webber begins by recalling some of the fallouts arising from historical-critical biblical studies of the 19th and early 20th century. Given that some Bible scholars found themselves fully caught up within the application of modern scientific analysis upon biblical studies, they were thus unable to empirically “prove” Jesus’ resurrection as a historical reality. Given their continued faith in all the apparatus which define the modern scientific method of empirical verification, and having little or no room for the existence of “miracle,” within their understanding of the natural universe, many modern people became increasingly vocal in objectively professing, that the resurrection belongs to the category of mythology.
Influenced furthermore, by 19th century existentialism, some Bible scholars, such as Adolf Harnack, thus began arguing that the real validity of Christian faith is not whether or not Jesus actually physically rose from the dead, but that we have had an existential encounter with the “resurrected Christ of faith.” Rudolf Bultmann of course, became the most well known of these “Christian existentialists,” who effectively popularised the idea of demythologising Scripture, at least within liberal circles, that the power of Easter originates not from whether or not Jesus actually did physically rise from the dead, but that the resurrected Christ lives within the professing believer.
Now note Webber’s assessment on the fallout of these trends upon Evangelical Christianity. For in response to these projects over the past century towards shaping the Christian story through the paradigms of 19th century existentialism and Bultmann’s demythologisation project, conservative Christians and churches have responded up to this day, by translating the message of Easter within the categories of empirical proof; to defend presumed empirical evidences of Jesus’ resurrection from dead. At the cost however, of giving greater or not even equal attention to leading believers into a fresh encounter with the resurrected Christ, now available through the presence pf the Holy Spirit. What Webber meant by emphasising that the resurrection should be an “existential” experience, is that the classic idea of Christian spiritual formation, namely, restoration into Christ’s image through the His resurrected life in us.[16]
Webber of course was not a Pentecostal; not even Charismatic. Though I suspect he may have been at times sympathetic albeit skeptical to both Charismatics and Pentecostals. What he too often found within charismatic and Evangelical groups is worship that has become degenerated by the entertainment driven mindset of so many Evangelical congregations.[17] Obviously, there were misperceptions Webber had made for he was not able to ever fully comprehend the reality of Pentecost; but that’s a topic beyond the scope of this discussion. But Webber shares how he desired so much more from the expressions of Easter within his own tradition, yet found it wanting through “worship that is constantly explained. . . ‘We are gong to do such and such. . . . do you see and understand the connection?’” Webber calls this again, “the impact of the Enlightenment;” that “the only aspect of humanity that is capable of perception . . . is the mind. So everything done in worship is [must be] explained” and “verbalized.”[18]
More illuminated is the effect on this had in Webber’s own words, on his own spiritual thirst and want, and upon he believed, the spiritual health of modern Evangelicalism. For Webber wondered that in all their earnestness to defend the resurrection fact, if Evangelicals have unwittingly “so intellectualised the resurrection that it has [now] become fact and not faith.”[19]
“The Enlightenment taught that only that which could be proven could be believed. We evangelicals have been greatly influenced by the modern demand for proof,” as if we believe that “faith is born by evidence.”
“Have we Evangelicals so thoroughly defended the “Easter fact that we have lost the power and significance of the Easter faith? Are we missing the meaning of the resurrection in our own lives? . . . Do we no longer experience resurrections to occur in our own lives?“[20]
“I was so focused on defending the fact that Jesus had truly and historically risen from the dead that I never consciously thought about my own need to follow the pattern of Jesus . . . to be raised in him to the resurrection life of the Spirit. . . . the resurrection of Jesus happened in a particular place and time in history, but also that the resurrection must happen in me.”[21]
Today’s proof for Jesus’ resurrection is not the empty tomb!
“Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:13-14)
“Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” (2 Cor 1:21-22)
Now with reflection upon Webber’s own observations into both the mainline and Evangelical practice of worship during the Easter season, and worship in general, I will draw this discussion to a closure, by returning to the original question: Where is the proof of Jesus’ resurrection? But in doing so, I’m going to question a few “sacred cows” commonly cherished amongst many believers today. Now before I do this, lest there be any misunderstanding, let me again stress that the essential message of the Christian gospel is Christ’s resurrection, which as we should realise, thus embraces virtually everything that rightly belongs to the “good news” of Jesus Christ. What we find in fact in the book of Acts is that what was consistently emphasised in the early church preaching of the Gospel was that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead (Acts 2:23-24, 31-32; 3:15; 4:10; 5:30; 10:39-40; 13:29-30; 17:32; 23:6; Acts 24:21, 26:23-24).
So having then here is the “sacred cow” that must be confronted: In spite of all thus said, it was not the factual reality of Jesus’ resurrection, which effectively motivated, or more importantly- empower to preach the gospel and become eventually transformed into a worldwide community of faith. Yes indeed: the historical reality of Jesus’ resurrection comprised the heart of the gospel message; the Church witnessed to the resurrection of Jesus. But: the reality of the empty tomb did not itself neither motivate nor empower the church to preach the gospel or witness to Jesus’ resurrection! Furthermore, Jesus Himself told the church not to even attempt a witness to His resurrection- until one other event first transpire in their lives. For He had said,
“Wait until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49)
Pentecost is the proof of Jesus’ resurrection
So again, here is the truth: It was not the empty tomb but the experience of having been baptised in the Holy Spirit by the resurrected Christ, which effectively empowered the early church towards its transformation into a global witness of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead! Reflecting on the meaning of baptism, St Leo the Great (early church father) taught:
“All that the Son of God did and taught for the reconciliation of the world is not simply known to us through the historical record of the past; we also experience it through the power of his present works.”
By “present works” St Leo means a personal, existential experience of Christ’s resurrection within one’s own life.[22] Incidentally, the immediate empirical evidence of Jesus’ resurrection was actually the phenomena of speaking in other tongues! (Acts 2:11; 10:46; 19:5). Tongues for the uninitiated has always functioned rather cryptic, as something of a divine riddle of the Holy Spirit. The truth is that when properly understood, and in the right spirit and posture of the worshipping community, tongues inevitably becomes transformed into prophesy. Which is why Paul taught that, “Tongues then are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers . . . But if all prophesy, an unbeliever or outsider who enters is reproved by all and . . . after the secrets of the unbeliever’s heart are disclosed, that person will bow down before God and worship him, declaring, “God is really among you!” (1 Cor 14:22, 23, 35)
So according to the early church preaching, it was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit which preeminently and perennially “proved” that “God raised up” Jesus from the dead. For as Peter preached on the first Pentecost, the Lord Jesus- “being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear” (Acts 2:32, 33). Now Pentecost was not a one-time event; on the contrary, the biblical record reveals a succession of Pentecostal outpourings of the Spirit, coinciding with every new challenge faced by the Church. NonPentecostals prefer to argue that these few successive “Pentecost” events simply marked the historical geographical movement of the church away from Jerusalem and into the Gentile world. But what the biblical record more truly signifies is that the fresh Pentecostal outpourings- whether upon a whole community or only individuals, were rather consonant with fresh challenges faced by the Church- whether those challenges be geographical (Acts 1:8), confrontational (Acts 4:31), cultural (Acts 8:15; 10:44-45), or theological (Acts 19:6), or otherwise.
“The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you.” (Romans 8:11)
Furthermore, if were deeply sensitive and honest enough to the historical experience of the early church, we’d have to conclude that the experience of these outpourings of the Spirit gave the most original comprehension of the first believers, into the later realisation that the Holy Spirit was indwelling within them. For them, the baptism in the Holy Spirit therefore perennially gave proof to the realisation that the resurrected Christ, who was raised from the dead, now dwelt amongst His people through the Holy Spirit. In other words, in contrast to our present reading of the entire New Testament, the conviction that the Spirit was “in” them, was something initially deduced from the experience of the Spirit coming “upon” them through the infilling of the Spirit. It is thus through the experience of Pentecost, that we who are “in Christ,” have received the proof of Jesus’ resurrection.
The experience of Pentecost, is thus the one decisive proof that Christ has rose from the dead. And, the experience of Pentecost is the Church’s proof to the world of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, as it lives through the power of the resurrected Christ.
“The proof of the resurrection is not in rational argument but in the community of the resurrected people. . . . The church is called to be the embodied reality of a resurrected people who live out the reality of the resurrection.”[23]
The Easter season is a time to seek the fullness of Pentecost
The biblical precedence for approaching Easter as a season lies in the Lord’s continued bodily presence amongst the disciples for 40 days after His resurrection (Acts 1:3). Ten days later, the disciples experienced their first Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit upon the church at Jerusalem (Acts 2:1-17f). It was thus shortly after the post-resurrection period, that the early Church already began celebrating Easter as a seven week season, always climaxing with Pentecost Sunday.[24] Like God’s people in the Old Testament however, the Church has historically resisted the Holy Sprit’s presence. The history of the church is the continuation of the Old Testament Story; that God remains faithful to His elect in spite of their resistance to His Holy Spirit. Consequently, what Pentecost has historically become for the vast majority of believers, is a day celebrating what God has done on the first Pentecost. The common reasoning often runs something like this: “Hooray! The Holy Spirit has been poured out on the Church! Let’s thank God for pouring out upon the Church the Holy Spirit.” Many free churches, Pentecostals and Charismatics of course, have long lost any knowledge of Pentecost Sunday, for having left the mainline traditions, they in their smugness, “freed” themselves from what they presumed was an empty formality of observing the Easter Season and its climax on Pentecost Sunday.
Yet the truth is that our celebration of Christmas and Easter is incomplete without acknowledging Pentecost Sunday. After all, what the first Pentecostal sermon stressed was that God exalted Jesus for the very purpose of pouring out the Spirit upon who would call upon His name! (Acts 2:32-33) Both Christmas and Easter are incomplete without Pentecost; for it is the experience of Pentecost that ultimately signifies the reality of Christmas and Easter: that through Jesus’ resurrection as the Baptiser in the Spirit, the promised age of the Spirit has now come upon the Church. It’s through the outpouring of the Spirit, that the resurrected Christ becomes
Now if we are thus faithful to full implications of Easter, we would thus recognise that Pentecost Sunday is to not so much be approached as a celebrative remembrance of what God has done in the past. But rather, Pentecost Sunday is day which reminds us that the promise of a fresh outpouring of the Spirit still stands; a perpetual promise of a new Pentecost for every new challenge that engages both the individual believer and the Church as a whole.
Pentecost Sunday should thus be approached within the Easter season as a call towards the Spirit’s desire “indwell the Church through a “perpetual Pentecost.”[25] This means that the Easter season is best approached as a season of waiting, of tarrying before the Lord for a fresh Pentecost upon the Church. It is thus only through the promise of a fresh Pentecost that we can truly bridge the challenges of postmodernity:
“In our postmodern world, people are searching not for a convincing argument for the divinity of Christ but for a life that convinces them the experience of salvation is real.”[26]
Through every fresh outpouring of the Spirit, ours is “an apologetic [that] is found not in intricacy of argument so that the mind is won over to Christ, but in integrity of life so that the Spirit can use our witness to cause postmodern hearts to look at the purpose for which we live,” as a resurrection movement.[27] What the experience of Pentecost gives us then is an “apologetic” that is embodied through the anointing of God’s Spirit upon us. For it is that anointing which proves through us to the world, that Christ is risen indeed from the dead.
[1] N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic; Intervarsity Press, 1999), 126-127.
[2] Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 133.
[3]Clark H. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996) 99.
[4]Pinnock, Flame of Love, 99.
[5]Pinnock, Flame of Love, 99.
[6]Grenz and John R. Franke. Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 13-14; Renewing the Center, 108.
[7]Grenz, Renewing the Center, 108; see also Robert E. Webber, The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books; Baker Book House, 2002), 97.
[8] Carl F.H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, III, (Waco, TX: Word, 1979), 248; quoted in Terry Cross, “A Proposal to Break the Ice: What Can Pentecostal Theology Offer Evangelical Theology.” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 10, No. 2 (April 2002): 44-73 (55).
[9] Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, Part I, 226-227; quoted in Stanley J. Grenz, Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic; BridgePoint Books, 2000), 94.
[10] David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994).
[11]Roland Chia, “All That is Solid Melts into Air: Some Reflections on Postmodernism, the Church and Theology” Trinity Theological Journal 6 (1997): 5-14 (9); “Revisioning Our Christian Past: Scripture, Tradition & Theological Truth in the Culture of Interpretation,” Trinity Theological Journal 7 (1998): 5-34.
[12] Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 169.
[13] Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 154.
[14]Webber, The Younger Evangelicals, 102-104.
[15][15] Webber, Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spiritual through the Christian Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004).
[16]Webber, Ancient-Future, 142-143, 146f.
[17]Webber, Ancient-Future, 150-152.
[18]Webber, Ancient-Future, 151.
[19]Webber, Ancient-Future, 143.
[20]Webber, Ancient-Future, 143.
[21]Webber, Ancient-Future, 143.
[22]Leo the Great, quoted in Webber, Ancient-Future, 147; Webber sources the quote from Adrian Nocent, The Liturgical Year: The Easter Season(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1977), 233.
[23]Webber, Ancient-Future, 150.
[24]Webber, Ancient-Future, 142.
[25]Pinnock, Flame of Love, 114.
[26] Terry L. Cross, “A Proposal to Break the Ice: What Can Pentecostal Theology Offer Evangelical Theology?” Journal of Pentecostal Studies 10, No. 2 (2002): 44-73 (54).
[27] Cross, “A Proposal to Break the Ice,” 60.
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