Did the witnesses lie?
If the witnesses to the resurrected Christ weren’t mistaken, perhaps they were lying. Maybe they just flat made the story up.I’ve written before that the resurrection is a story no one in that period would make up, but let’s take the accusation seriously for the time being.
Why would someone lie about the resurrection of Jesus?
For personal gain
Various people have suggested that the apostles would have had good reason to make up a religion around a resurrected Christ – it would have made them money and given them loyal followers.
The problem with that explanation is that they were poor. Oh, there were certainly more affluent Christians, and they did reportedly share their possessions with the poor – presumably with the apostles, too, if need be – but there is nothing in any record that would suggest that the apostles got wealthy at the expense of their followers.
Given Paul’s emphasis on his not letting people support him as other apostles did, and his repeated mention of taking care of the poor, you would expect some mention of the apostles living a life of ease at someone else’s expense. There is no evidence; this is fantasy and slander.
The second problem with the notion that they would lie for personal gain is that they suffered for their preaching.
Truth be told, we don’t have much historical support for the idea that the apostles were martyred for the faith. There is no particular reason to doubt the church traditions regarding the apostle’s deaths, but the evidence isn’t very strong.
What we do have, though, is a trustworthy, relatively contemporaneous record of the persecution that the first generation of the church faced shortly after its birth. On at least four occasions – after the arrest and flogging of the apostles (Acts 5:17-42), the stoning of Stephen (7:54-60) and the resulting persecution (8:1-3), and the death of James (12:1-4) – it is reasonable to expect liars to stop and ask if they really wanted to continue a charade that was likely to cost them their lives.
For the mission
But maybe the apostles were willing to suffer for a lie because they believed in their mission. Maybe the whole story was designed to help them spread a message of peace and love that would change the world – something worth giving your life for.
There are two problems with that theory.
First, do you teach an ethical system based on a lie? The ethical system they taught was pretty demanding. And everything we have about them, limited though it is, suggests that they were truly sold out to that ethical system. They were the real deal. And they based it all on a fraud? That’s very hard to believe.
Of course, the second, and greater, problem with this theory is that they didn’t teach a message of “peace and love.” They taught a radical reliance upon and allegiance to Jesus. Yes, they taught about love and reconciliation and holy living, but it was always in the context of responding to and being empowered by the Spirit of the God who raised Christ from the dead. That’s why I think this “theory” is based on a misunderstanding – or rather the popular mischaracterization – of the teaching of Christ and the apostles.
One last thing
Last of all, if the apostles were lying, there was still that darn body. Whatever questions there may be, one thing we do know with some certainty is that the Christians became unpopular with both the Jews and Romans fairly quickly. Anyone basing their preaching on a risen Christ whose body was still in the ground would be found out pretty quickly.
What if the resurrection they preached didn’t involve an empty tomb, though? Maybe they were preaching a spiritual or metaphorical resurrection. We’ll look at that next time.
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Related:
Do We Have Evidence?
Does Christianity Argue from Silence?
13 comments:
First, do you teach an ethical system based on a lie?
Surely an example of the tail wagging the dog...
History shows us that there are many ethical systems based on very flimsy evidence. The idea of the Christian resurrection is most probably one of these.
Are you of the position that your belief in an actual resurrection is based on overwhelming evidence. I'd put it to you that your position is one of faith and not one of rational inference from abundant evidence.
Your faith requires that this is true, but your actual evidence is very flimsy.
My personal belief that the Ressurection of Christ a myth formed from the same template as previous resurection myths.
The idea of a god who became man, who was killed and then rose from the dead was not an original idea, even in the year zero.
"History shows us that there are many ethical systems based on very flimsy evidence."
Different topic. I'm talking about basing you ethical system on an unethical act. A rather demanding ethical system at that.
"My personal belief that the Ressurection of Christ a myth formed from the same template as previous resurection myths."
Many of the other resurrection myths cannot be shown to predate Christianity (not necessarily the whole religion, just the resurrection). Of the remaining, they bear little resemblance to Christianity. Then there are those parts of the Hebrew scriptures which seem to be describing a resurrected Messiah (e.g., Isaiah 53).
What if it’s not an ethical system based on a lie but a lie told in support of an ethical system in which the apostles truly believed? The apostles had personally experienced a truly extraordinary person and believed his teachings. They sincerely believed in the ethical system that he taught and the crucifixion did not change the significance of those teachings for them. However, the crucifixion did change everyone else’s perception of Jesus. For those who had not encountered this amazing individual personally, the crucifixion demonstrated that he was nobody.
The apostles had to convince people that Jesus’ teachings transcended his death as they truly believed they had. So they started telling people that Jesus himself had transcended his death. At first, they may have simply spoken in a fuzzy way about how they continued to feel the presence of his spirit which probably would have been completely true. However, they quickly found that when they added content and details to Jesus’ continued presence, people were much more receptive to listening to Jesus’ ethical teachings. So they continued to expand those details because they believed the ends justified the means. They may even have convinced themselves of the appearances.
This is what mythology is all about; people embracing stories for their ability to communicate deeper truths rather than their ability to communicate accurate factual information. The men who spread the story that Pat Tillman died at the hands of the enemy rather than in a friendly fire incident probably did not see themselves as disseminating untruths. They no doubt believed that their version of events more accurately captured Tillman’s heroism as well as the courage of the men he fought with. They also probably knew that his character was in no way diminished by the fact that he died in an unfortunate accident, but that was harder to communicate. Nevertheless they told the story in the way that best communicated the truths that they believed to be most important.
The apostles’ willingness to die for their faith may have had nothing to do with the resurrection and everything to do with the message they had heard first-hand from Jesus. As far as the pesky body goes, the empty tomb could have been something that Mark invented because he believed that it communicated some important spiritual truth.
Vinny, the problem with your theory is that the apostles didn't teach a wonderful ethical system as the teaching of Jesus. They presented is as the result of Jesus' death and resurrection and as impossible to achieve apart from believing what they taught about him. They didn't teach, first and foremost, that we should love one another. They taught that if you didn't believe Jesus rose from the dead you would go to hell.
"What if it’s not an ethical system based on a lie but a lie told in support of an ethical system in which the apostles truly believed?"
The ethical system they taught is pretty darn demanding and puts lying in the same category as adultery. Perhaps they were capable of that kind of self-deception, but the only evidence we have suggests otherwise. The record suggests they were honest even about embarassing things -- things they could have kept to themselves without harm.
"The apostles had to convince people that Jesus’ teachings transcended his death ..."
A lovely theory that is not supported by one shred of evidence -- even 10th hand accounts of impossible stories.
You continue to ignore the possibility that the stories changed and evolved between the time of Jesus death and the time the gospels were written.
If you are going to assume that the gospels are accurate accounts of everything that happened, what is the point of apologetics? How can you argue that you have the best explanation for what happened if the possibility of the story changing is ruled out from the start?
"You continue to ignore the possibility that the stories changed and evolved between the time of Jesus death and the time the gospels were written."
No, I'm just waiting for some evidence.
No, I'm just waiting for some evidence.Just compare Paul's writings to the gospels.
You mean because Paul doesn't go into the detail the gospels do?
Can you say argument from silence?
Sure. Your argument that the stories did not change because we don't have a record of those changes is an argument from silence.
Of course, arguments from silence are not inherently fallacious. The question is whether it is reasonable to expect that there would be a record of the thing about which the record is silent.
I think that we could reasonably expect Paul to reference the empty tomb when explaining the physicality of the resurrection to the Corinthians had it been a part of the tradition at that point.
On the other hand, I would not expect to find any record of changes that occurred in the stories about Jesus prior to those stories being written down.
"Your argument that the stories did not change because we don't have a record of those changes is an argument from silence."
No, it's standard practice to take the historical record at face value unless there is justification not to do so. Do you have a good reason to question them?
"I think that we could reasonably expect Paul to reference the empty tomb when explaining the physicality of the resurrection to the Corinthians had it been a part of the tradition at that point."
As I put in my latest post, I think the empty tomb is implicit in the creed quoted in 1Cor 15, but I wouldn't expect a specific reference if it was the standard belief, especially since what was in question was not Christ's resurrection but theirs.
What's happening in that passage was:
You know what you were taught -- that Christ died, was buried, was raised, and was seen by witnesses. If that's not true, we're screwed, but you know it was true. Since Christ was raised, we will be also.As for the part about the "spiritual" resurrection body, if you compare that to references earlier in the book, you see that he's referring to its moral state, not its physicality.
No, it's standard practice to take the historical record at face value unless there is justification not to do so.It is difficult for me to believe that anyone who has read any history would make such a statement. In my experience, historians never take anything at face value. They pick over everything and try to figure out all the possible ways in which their sources might be wrong even if they have first person contemporaneous accounts. I cannot imagine any competent historian taking at face value an account of unknown origin recorded three or more decades after the events.
"In my experience, historians never take anything at face value."
Of course people look for anachronisms, contradictions, and inconsistencies, but beyond that you cannot just throw the historical record out because you don't like what it does or doesn't say.
What you object to is the supernatural elements of the gospels. Fine. Feel free. But you cannot rule them out on historical grounds. You'll have to stick with your a priori objections.
It is true that I do not believe in the supernatural, but I do believe in crazy stuff that I can’t explain. My world view fully allows for the possibility of well documented events for which I cannot think of any natural explanation. If you were to document a case of a person recovering from illness or injury in defiance of all medical science, I would probably be reluctant to believe that it was in fact a miracle of God in response to prayer. I would still think that there was a natural explanation. On the other hand, I would not have a problem saying “That sure is a good one for your side. That’s some crazy stuff.”
That’s all a miracle is; just some crazy stuff that a theist cannot explain naturally. Even though a Christian may believe in a God who caused water to flow from a rock in the wilderness, he never considers the possibility of the supernatural when the diet Mountain Dew pops out of the vending machine. He assumes that it was the money he deposited that caused the can to drop even though God’s supernatural suspension of the laws of nature would fully explain the event as well. The difference between me and the theist is that when I encounter the crazy stuff, I limit myself to saying that the thing is unexplained. I do not declare it to be inexplicable thereby requiring resort to supernatural causes.
I reject the supernatural elements of the gospels for the same reason that Christians reject the supernatural elements in stories everywhere outside the Bible. The natural explanations are satisfactory. If I were unable to see plausible natural explanations for the gospels, I have no a priori objections that would prevent me from acknowledging it.
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