The Case For Christ

EXHIBIT 5: THE EMERGENCE OF THE CHURCH
Moreland prefaced this final point by saying, "When a major
cultural shift takes place, historians always look for events
that can explain it." "Yes, that makes sense," I said.
"OK, then let's think about the start of the Christian church.
There's no question it began shortly after the death of Jesus and
spread so rapidly that within a period of maybe twenty years it
had even reached Caesar's palace in Rome. Not only that, but this
movement triumphed over a number of competing ideologies and
eventually overwhelmed the entire Roman empire.
Now, if you were a Martian looking down on the first century,
would you think Christianity or the Roman Empire would survive?
You probably wouldn't put money on a ragtag group of people whose
primary message was that a crucified carpenter from an obscure
village had triumphed over the grave. Yet it was so successful
that today we name our children Peter and Paul and our dogs
Caesar and Nero! "I like the way C. F. D. Moule, the Cambridge
New Testament scholar, put it: 'If the coming into existence of
the Nazarenes, a phenomenon undeniably attested by the New
Testament, rips a great hole in history, a hole the size and
shape of Resurrection, what does the secular historian propose to
stop it up with?'"
While this wasn't Moreland's strongest point, since other
religious movements have popped up and spread too,
circumstantial evidence doesn't rely solely on the strength of
one fact. Rather it's the cumulative weight of several facts that
together tip the scales toward a conclusion. And to Moreland, the
conclusion is clear.
"Look," he said, "if someone wants to consider this
circumstantial evidence and reach the verdict that Jesus did not
rise from the dead-fair enough. But they've got to offer an
alternative explanation that is plausible for all five of these
facts.
"Remember, there's no doubt these facts are true; what's in
question is how to explain them. And I've never seen a better
explanation than the Resurrection."
I mentally played back the tape of the circumstantial evidence:
the willingness of the disciples to die for what they
experienced; the revolutionized lives of skeptics like James and
Saul; the radical changes in social structures cherished by Jews
for centuries; the sudden appearance of Communion and baptism;