The Case For Christ

to rely on the reference to the five hundred to make the case for
the Resurrection. Usually I don't even use it."
Habermas's answer carried some logic. Still, there was another
aspect of the creed that weighed on me: it says Jesus appeared
first to Peter, whereas John said he appeared first to Mary
Magdalene. In fact, the creed doesn't mention any women, even
though they're prominently featured in the gospel accounts.
"Don't these contradictions hurt its credibility?" I asked. "Ah,
no," came the reply. "First of all, look at the creed carefully:
it doesn't say Jesus appeared first to Peter. All it does is put
Peter's name first on the list. And since women were not
considered competent as witnesses in first-century Jewish
culture, it's not surprising that they're not mentioned here. In
the first-century scheme of things, their testimony wouldn't
carry any weight. So placing Peter first could indicate logical
priority rather than temporal priority.
Again," he concluded, "the creed's credibility remains intact.
You've raised some questions, but wouldn't you concede that they
don't undermine the persuasive evidence that the creed is early,
that it's free from legendary contamination, that it's
unambiguous and specific, and that it's ultimately rooted in
eyewitness accounts?"
All in all, I was forced to agree that he was right. The weight
of the evidence clearly and convincingly supports the creed as
being powerful evidence for Jesus' post-Resurrection appearances.
So powerful that William Lane Craig, the Resurrection expert I
interviewed in the previous chapter, said that Wolfhart
Parmenberg, perhaps the greatest living systematic theologian in
the world, "has rocked modern, skeptical German theology by
building his entire theology precisely on the historical
evidence for the resurrection of Jesus as supplied in Paul's list
of appearances.
Having satisfied myself about the essential reliability of the I
Corinthians 15 creed, it was time to begin looking at the four
gospels, which recount the various appearances by the resurrected
Jesus in more detail.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE GOSPELS
I started this line of inquiry by asking Habermas to describe the
post Resurrection appearances in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
"There are several different appearances to a lot of different