The Case For Christ

"When I was young, I was reading a book by C. S. Lewis, who wrote
that the New Testament says nothing about the Resurrection. I
wrote a real big 'No!' in the margin. Then I realized what he was
saying: nobody was sitting inside the tomb and saw the body
start to vibrate, stand up, take the linen wrappings off, fold
them, roll back the stone, wow the guards, and leave.
That, it seemed to me, might pose some problems. "Doesn't this
hurt your efforts to establish that the Resurrection is a
historical event?" I asked.
Habermas pushed back his chair to get more comfortable. "No, this
doesn't hurt our case one iota, because science is all about
causes and effects. We don't see dinosaurs; we study the fossils.
We may not know how a disease originates, but we study its
symptoms. Maybe nobody witnesses a crime, but police piece
together the evidence after the fact.
So," he continued, "here's how I look at the evidence for the
Resurrection: First, did Jesus die on the cross? And second, did
he appear later to people? If you can establish those two things,
you've made your case, because dead people don't normally do
that." Historians agree there's plenty of evidence that Jesus was
crucified, and Dr. Alexander Metherell demonstrated in an
earlier chapter that Jesus could not have survived the rigors of
that execution. That leaves the second part of the issue: did
Jesus really appear later? "What evidence is there that people
saw him?" I asked.
"I'll start with evidence that virtually all critical scholars
will admit," he said, opening the Bible in front of him. "Nobody
questions that Paul wrote I Corinthians, and we have him
affirming in two places that he personally encountered the
resurrected Christ. He says in 1 Corinthians 9: 1, 'Am I not an
apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?' And he says in 1
Corinthians 15:8, 'Last of all he appeared to me also.'"
I recognized that last quote as being attached to the early
church creed that Craig Blomberg and I have already discussed. As
William Lane Craig indicated, the first part of the creed (verses
3-4) refers to Jesus' execution, burial, and resurrection.
The final part of the creed (verses 5-8) deals with his post-
Resurrection appearances: "[Christ] appeared to Peter, and then
to the
Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the
brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though