FACES AND PLACES: The Resurrection story revisited (04/04/99)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

The Resurrection story revisited

Every year during Lent I try to read something that will strengthen my faith in Jesus Christ.

Although I'm a believer, I must admit that, like so many other people, I am influenced by the mass media which, in the United States at least, is not just areligious, but anti-religious. Attacks on the Catholic Church and the religious right are examples of this journalistic mind-set, which has adopted the position that religion is backward, medieval, embarrassing and irrelevant.

In his book "The Culture of Disbelief," Stephen Carter, professor at Yale, an African American, confirms what many of us have observed: the American elite - the chattering classes of academics, the art crowd, social activists and their fellow travelers, the liberal American judiciary - are hostile to religion, especially if it is introduced into the public square. In their view, religious convictions are fine, as long as they remain in the closet.

Especially troubling to those who would marginalize Christianity is Christ's Resurrection. If Christ rose from the dead, then He is the son of God and we are beholden to Him. If he didn't rise from the dead, then there is no after-life, no universal truths, no accountability, no sin. Billions of Christians have been misled for 2,000 years. Christ is no more than a smiling guidance counselor who distributes warm fuzzies to the afflicted. In the words of Protagoras, "man is the measure of all things."

Paradoxically, some of the leaders of the Jesus-the-guru group are biblical scholars who established the so-called "Jesus Seminar" in 1985. They have been convening regularly to vote on the "authenticity" (determined by feeling rather than evidence) of the Gospels. Their approach is to question whether Jesus could have said what he said and when he said it. Their activities, which attracted much media attention about three years ago, are usually good copy around Eastertime. For example, see "The Death of Jesus" (Newsweek, April 4, 1994), "In Search of Jesus" (U.S. News and World Report, April 8, 1996), "The Search for Jesus" (Time, April 8, 1996) and "Rethinking the Resurrection" (Newsweek, April 8, 1996). Most biblical scholars disagree with the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar. The Rev. John Meier of Catholic University, author of a book on Jesus titled "A Marginal Jew," described the seminar's deliberations as "the religious equivalent of the O.J. Simpson trial."

According to John Dominic Crossan, a former Catholic priest, professor of biblical studies at DePaul University, author of many books on the historical Jesus, and co-chair of the Jesus Seminar, the stories of the Resurrection are fanciful. Jesus' body, he argues, was left to rot and was eventually eaten by scavenging dogs. Mr. Crossan can often be found speaking on college campuses, where he popularizes the notion that there are two Jesuses: the historical (real) Jesus and the Jesus of faith.

Adding to Christian revisionism is the so-called Q document, ancient writing which some biblical scholars argue was the source for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In a December 1996 Atlantic Monthly article titled "The Search for a No-Frills Jesus," Charlotte Allen writes that these reconstructionists believe that the authors of the Q document "esteemed Jesus as simply a roving sage who preached a life of possessionless wandering and full acceptance of one's fellow human beings, no matter how disreputable or marginal. In that respect, they say, he was a Jesus for the America of the third millennium, a Jesus with little supernatural baggage but much respect for cultural diversity."

The book that enriched my understanding this year was "The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus" by Lee Strobel, a lawyer and longtime investigative police reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Approaching the task as a skeptical analyst, Mr. Strobel initiated his two-year quest for hard facts about Jesus soon after his wife became a Christian. His cogent conclusions are very persuasive, especially his review of the evidence regarding the Resurrection. I can't possibly do justice to all the facts Mr. Strobel has marshalled to rebut the revisionists, but the questions and arguments below should give the reader some idea of his approach.

Did Jesus really die on the cross? Was His body really absent from the tomb? Was the tomb secure? Were guards really present? Can eyewitnesses be trusted? Can apparent discrepancies and contradictions in the Gospel accounts be reconciled? Why did women visit the tomb if it was secured and guarded? Why didn't Christ's followers mention the open tomb to non-believers? These and other questions are answered factually and precisely.

Was Jesus' death a sham and His Resurrection a hoax? One story is that Jesus never really died on the cross. He was taken down half-alive, tended to and healed of his wounds in order to reappear to his disciples. Scrupulously reviewing the medical evidence, Mr. Strobel concludes that Jesus was already half-dead following His scourging (he was in hypovolemic shock following massive blood loss) and that His death on the cross was inevitable.

Six reasons are offered to authenticate the open tomb: 1) the oldest and most reliable source of historical information, I Corinthians 15, corroborates what Jesus' followers knew within two years of his Resurrection. By then they had already "formulated a doctrine of the atonement, were convinced that he had been raised from the dead in bodily form, associated Jesus with God, and found support for all these convictions in the Old Testament." 2) Christ's disciples, even skeptics like Paul and James, went to their deaths proclaiming Christ's Resurrection. Nobody knowingly and willingly dies for a lie. 3) The site of Jesus' tomb was known to Christians and Jews alike. The Jews never denied the empty tomb. If Christ was a faker, it would be impossible for Christianity to have been born in the same city where everyone would be aware of the fraud. 4) In contrast to the flowery and apocryphal second century accounts of the Resurrection, Mark's empty tomb story is simple and stark. 5) The fact that the empty tomb was discovered by women, second-class citizens in ancient Israel, and not by the apostles, adds to the authenticity of the account. If all was legend, there would have been a more positive spin regarding a male presence.

The skeptics are wrong. The historical Christ and the Christ of faith are one and the same. It was always thus.

Khrystos Voskres! Christ is risen!

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: [email protected]

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