By Spencer D Gear
Australia has horrific levels of domestic violence. Surveys of women attending general medical practice in Australia reveal varying partner abuse rates of 8.0% (1999) and 28% (1996) in a 12-month period.[1] One study of police figures revealed that women are over eight times more likely to be victims than males.[2]
Family breakdown seems to be happening in epidemic proportions. Other personal and social ills are devastating our land โ sexual abuse, drug and alcohol addiction. These are symptoms of what the first Easter events came to help to address.
Do any of these natural and social disasters have anything to do with the Christ of Easter? What’s the purpose of Easter beyond a 4-day holiday?
Today there are some spicy and conflicting statements made about the reality or myth of the Christian story of Christ’s death and resurrection. Did it happen or is this a Christian invention?
There are doubters galore both inside and outside of the church. They range from an agnostic’s letter to The Fraser Coast Chronicle,[3] which stated, “Whether Christ existed is open to conjecture. Was he the son of God? What God?” to John Cornwell in The Weekend Australian Magazine, “Did Jesus really rise from the dead?”[4](Easter 2005).
His conclusion was that “however compelling the story, however authentic the feel of the evidence, in the final analysis it comes down to a decision to believe or not to believe.”[5] The “feel” of the evidence is radically different from actual evidence. Having faith in the “feel” sounds a bit out in space to me.
Former Anglican bishop of North Sydney, classical historian, and now visiting fellow in ancient history at Macquarie University, Sydney, Dr. Paul Barnett, has examined the evidence carefully over a lifetime of research. He has concluded that “Jesus of Nazareth, the historical Jesus, became through death, bodily resurrection and ascension the Christ of faith.”[6]
This led to the spread of Christianity worldwide, he says: “Jesus the Christ, crucified but risen and glorified, is the engine that drove the missionaries who established churches in Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor and Greece, who in providing for the needs of those churches wrote the documents that came to constitute the New Testament.”[7]
Barnett elsewhere shows how the history of early Christianity and secular history intersect, proving that “the history of early Christianity is, indeed, genuinely historical and not ‘mythical’ in character.”[8]
Apparitions of risen Jesus: Crossan
Yet, John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar (now, there’s a group of doubters!), speaks of “the apparitions of the risen Jesus.” An apparition is a phantom, a ghost. Jesus’ resurrected body was not real flesh according to him but “the resurrection is a matter of Christian faith.”[9] So, in Crossan’s view, the resurrection of Christ was really a spiritual resurrection among believers โ whatever that means!
What actually happened to the body of Jesus and does it matter? Crossan wrote that “Jesus’ burial by his friends was totally fictional and unhistorical. He was buried, if buried at all, by his enemies, and the necessarily shallow grave would have been easy prey for scavenging animals.”[10]
New Testament scholar, Dr. N.T. Wright, disagrees, has debated Crossan, and in 2003 completed an 817-page defence of the authenticity of Christ’s resurrection. He considers that discussion about the resurrection must be seen “as a historical problem.”[11]
Why is there such resistance by both unbelievers and some people in the church to the Easter faith of Christians? Wright believes the underlying cause in the contemporary and ancient world is in what T. F. Torrance regards as “the sheer horror that some people have for the being and action of God himself in space and time.”[12] People are God haters or evaders.
Richard Ostling of Associated Press regards Wright’s work as “the most monumental defense of the Easter heritage in decades. It marches through a clearly organized case that confronts every major doubt about Easter, ancient and modern.”[13]
As for the recent claims in James Cameron’s TV documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” that the bones of Jesus are in the ossuary, the archaeologist who found the tomb said that Cameron’s interpretation was “nonsense.”
Israeli archaeologist, Amos Kloner, who was one of the first to examine the tomb when it was discovered near Jerusalem in 1980, claims that the names on the side of the coffin were common in the first century. He told BBC News, “I don’t accept the news that it was used by Jesus or his family. The documentary filmmakers are using it to sell their film.”[14]
Kloner told the Jerusalem Post that “it makes a great story for a TV film. But it’s completely impossible. It’s nonsense. There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb. They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle class family from the 1st century CE.”[15]
Why all the fuss? Does it matter? If Christ were mere fiction and the Christians throughout the last 2,000 years have based their faith on such a myth, all Christians had better leave the churches and give up on their faith. They are on a foundation of belief that is no more substantial than belief in Mickey Mouse.
No resurrection, no fuss?
In fact, if Christ’s resurrection did not take place, the apostle Paul told the Corinthian church that “your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” They might as well eat, drink and be merry if Christ’s death and resurrection did not happen in real time and history.
But the apostle Paul was confident: “Christ has been raised from the dead.” This was not some ethereal, mystical event. The physical resurrection of Jesus was proven by an empty tomb and Jesus’ appearing to the 12 apostles and over 500 believers at one time.
It is further demonstrated by the explosive spread of Christianity across the first century Roman Empire and then around the world. Today there are about 6 billion people in the world made up of 24,000 different people groups.
Christianity Now and Then
The United States Center for World Mission estimates that there are 800 million people “who have been born again into a relationship with Jesus Christ.” Another 1.37 billion consider themselves Christian because they come from a Christian culture.[16]
In A.D. 100, it was estimated that only one in every 360 people was an active Christian believer. In the year 2000, it was 1 in 9.3. Because of the propagation of a myth? Hardly![17]
It’s not just the presence of Christians around the world that makes a difference in addressing some of the social and welfare needs (see Matthew ch. 25), but the truth that the living Christ changes people. Slave owners such as John Newton (author of “Amazing Grace”?) were changed from the inside out. Lawyer, Watergate hatchet-man and criminal, Chuck Colson, has been so revolutionised by the living Christ that he and his team have a world-wide ministry to prisoners.
Imagine what would happen to the epidemic of family violence and drug and alcohol abuse, if the living Jesus were taken seriously all year round by the majority of us!
Louis M. Lepeaux, French politician and bitter opponent of Christ at the time of the French Revolution, once started a religion that he hoped would improve on Christianity. He discussed the dismal situation with his friend, Talleyrand. “There is one plan you might like to try,” said his friend. “Why not be crucified and then rise again on the third day?”[18]
For a challenge to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, see the “โWilliam Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman debate: Is there historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus?โ”
Endnotes:
[1] Kelsey Hegarty, Elizabeth D Hindmarsh and Marisa T Gille 2000, “Domestic violence in Australia: definition, prevalence and nature of presentation in clinical practice,” Medical Journal of Australia, 173, pp. 363-367, available from: http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/173_07_021000/hegarty/hegarty.html#refbody12[Accessed 31 March 2007]..
[3] John A. Neve 2007, “Search for Salvation”, Letters to the Editor, The Fraser Coast Chronicle, March 28, p. 6.
[4] John Cornwell 2005, “Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? The Case of the Empty Tomb,” The Weekend Australian Magazine, March 26-27, pp. 24-32.
[6] Paul Barnett 1999, Jesus & the Rise of Early Christianity, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove Illinois, p.41, p. 20.
[8] Paul W. Barnett 1997, Jesus and the Logic of History, Apollos, Leicester, England, p. 120.
[9] John Dominic Crossan 1995, Who Killed Jesus? HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 189.
[10] John Dominic Crossan 1994, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 160.
[11] N. T. Wright 2003, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, p. 14.
[13] In Wright, 2003, introduction; also available from Richard N. Ostling, Book Review, Associated Press, Courier Post Online, Saturday, 19 April 2003, at: http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/resurrection/wright_resurrection.htm [Accessed 2 January 2010].
[14] “Jesus tomb found, says film-maker,” BBC News, 26 February 2007, available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6397373.stm [Accessed 31 March 2007].
[15] David Horovitz 2007, “Kloner: A Great Story but Nonsense,” The Jerusalem Post, 27 February, Available at: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1171894527185&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull [Accessed 2 January 2010].
[16] Ralph D. Winter, et. al. n.d. (ca. A.D. 2000), “The Amazing Countdown Facts,” United States Center for World Mission, [Accessed 2 January 2010].
[18] Cited in David Holloway 1999, “The Good News at Athens: Acts 27,” a sermon preached at Jesmond Parish Church, 28 March 1999, available at: http://www.church.org.uk/resources/sermondetailpf.asp?serId=341 [Accessed 2 January 2010].
Copyright ยฉ 2010 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 13 October 2015.
