Entries in Resurrection (6)
A Glorious Physical Body: The Goal from the Beginning
Michael Brown
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Whatever happened to the article in the Apostles' Creed, "I believe in the resurrection of the body"? Listening to some evangelicals talk, one can almost get the idea that Christian eschatology is Platonist, that is, when you die, your soul escapes the prison house of the body and flies away to heaven to live in an ethreal existence happily ever after.
But the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) teaches otherwise. God does not save us from being human, he saves us from being sinners and the eternal penalty which that status brings. Redemption is not redemption from creation. In fact, our redemption will not be completely applied to us until our physical bodies are raised from the dead and gloriously transformed to enjoy the glory of the age to come.
But here's the real kicker: a transformed body was the goal for which we were created.
Something worth believing
In 1 Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul says that if Christ has not been raised, then those who call themselves Christians have a faith that is vain and futile. Mataios is the word he uses, which means, “idle, empty, useless.” It is pointless to be a Christian if Christ was not really raised from the dead. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins…If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor 15.17, 19)
Oddly, that is not the way in which many people view Christianity. Many people today would disagree with Paul, such as the pragmatist, the mystic, and the pietist.
Where's the boxtop?
Some of you may have caught the program aired last night on the National Geographic Channel titled, “Unlocking Da Vinci’s Code.” The little bit that I watched revealed yet another example of our culture’s fascination with sensational stories and shoddy scholarship. It is the same every Easter and Christmas. Some author or filmmaker is interviewed (in this case, Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown) who is trying to debunk the facts of historic Christianity in order to advance his theory that the Bible is little more than a good, inspirational myth (or, in Mr. Brown’s case, a contrived set of lies put forth by a conspiring church, all of which has been worked up into a best-selling novel and blockbuster movie, mind you). But whether it is novelist Dan Brown or liberal theologian John Dominic Crossan, what is always evident in these pop-culture interviews is a gross failure to engage the Bible as an organic redemptive-historical drama that proclaims one message from Genesis to Revelation: God redeeming a people for himself through the Person and Work of Jesus Christ.
This is particularly the case with the Bible’s report of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The skeptic takes up his little ax and begins hacking away at the record of Christ’s resurrection in the Gospels, thinking that if he can fell this one tree, than the whole forest must fall. The problem is that his little blows, proof-text by proof-text, will never accomplish his goal. For even if he thinks he has succeeded in chopping down one tree, he has failed to see that every tree in the massive forest proclaims the same thing and the underlying roots are all connected. The death and resurrection of Christ was, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14.3-4, “in accordance with the Scriptures.”
The Key Witness(es)
The empty tomb of Jesus is a powerful witness, but not one which alone establishes the factuality of the resurrection. Even after the women and Peter and John went to the tomb and verified that it was empty, they did not immediately begin to preach that Christ was risen, risking their lives. No, the text tells us that they went back to their homes. They weren’t convinced of anything, they were only grieved even more. Tombs were often robbed in the ancient world, adding insult and injury to a person’s grief.
No Witnesses, No Gospel
Can you think of anything that, if proven, would cause you to renounce the historic Christian faith? Or would you believe the Gospel no matter what?
I can. There are four witnesses that testify of the truth of Christianity that would have to be truly disproved in order for me to consider renouncing the historic Christian faith: 1) the empty tomb of Christ; 2) the testimony of the apostles; 3) the organic biblical-theological nature of Scripture; and 4) the testimony of natural law and common grace in human beings (especially the eschatological hope pressed into human consciences). Without those witnesses, there is no Christianity.
Thinking about the first of the four, we have to ask, what would cause rational and sane people to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ?