Of Christianity’s two biggest holidays,
Christians state Jesus is alive. In a body. A human body. An extraordinary body; apparently his new body can do things our current bodies can’t. But alive in a way people recognize as fully alive. Not some walking-dead zombie, nor some phantom. Jesus physically interacted with his students, family, and followers, for nearly a month and a half before
That, pagans struggle with. ’Cause they don’t believe in resurrection. Resuscitation, sure;
But that’s the deal we Christians proclaim on Easter: Christ is risen indeed.
It’s not the central belief of Christianity;
No I’m not being hyperbolic. This is precisely what the apostles taught.
1 Corinthians 15.12-19 NRSVue 12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised,14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain.15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised.17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.18 Then those also who have died in Christ have perished.19 If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
No resurrection, no kingdom, no Christianity. Period.
Resurrection in the Old Testament.
Originally the Hebrew religion had no afterlife.
Yeah, this fact’s hard to imagine for a lot of Christians: We tend to assume the ancient Hebrews believed the same as we. We forget the L
Christians regularly try to insert the idea of an afterlife into the ancient Hebrews’ belief system. We take the Hebrew word
This is why the scriptures have such statements as these:
Ecclesiastes 3.18-22 NRSVue 18 I said to myself with regard to humans that God is testinge them to show that they are but animals.19 For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals, for all is vanity.20 All go to one place, all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.21 Who knows whether the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth?22 So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot; who can bring them to see what will be after them?
Christians read
Yes, God finally did clue people in. The first suggestion we get of resurrection is in Ezekiel, when the L
Ezekiel 37.1-14 NRSVue 1 The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.3 He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD , you know.”4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD .5 Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.6 I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD .”7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded, and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them.9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD : Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.11 Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: Thus says the Lord GOD : I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.13 And you shall know that I am the LORD when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people.14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD , have spoken and will act, says the LORD .”
You likely know of this passage from the occasional preacher
It’s a big interpretative stretch. The only reason we don’t wholly reject the idea of an End Times resurrection derived from it… is ’cause Jesus also accepted this idea. He defended the idea of resurrection against naysayers.
Resurrection is not a pagan idea.
Nowadays the average person has no idea what the ancients believed. Most of the time we assume the ancients were morons. After all, we figure (sometimes fairly, sometimes not) our parents, or grandparents, or great-grandparents, are morons. People back then didn’t have science and technology. Didn’t have educations and commonsense. They were superstitious fools who’d believe all sorts of things. So of course they’d believe in resurrection.
Thing is, outside the Jews, the ancients believed in no such thing.
Yeah, there were stories about how gods died and came back to life. Like Hadád,
When the Egyptians, Norse, Mayans, and other pagan religions talked about living again, they always meant living again in the netherworld. The Norse imagined their netherworld on another planet; the Greeks on some garden island in the Atlantic or underground caves at Cumae; the Egyptians on the far side of the earth.
When the Hindus spoke of living again, they meant reincarnation: The universe granted you another life as a whole other person. Wasn’t the same life, continued. Buddhists taught they could escape the reincarnation cycle altogether, and become one with the universe.
The Chinese, Greeks, Romans, and many American Indians believed the afterlife was a spiritual existence. Pure spirit, no bodies. The bodies were dead and gone, and who’d want to live in a decaying, rotting carcass?
And some religions believed, same as the ancient Hebrews, same as
I know; people like to point out Zoroastrians believe in resurrection. And I point right back: They didn’t adopt this idea till the 9th century. Likely they got it from Islam—which itself started in the 7th century, and got its belief in resurrection from us Christians. This idea any of the ancients believed in, or accepted, the idea of resurrection? That’s the myth.
Not even all Jews believed in resurrection. The Sadducees still believed once you died, you were gone.
Jesus taught resurrection, same as Pharisees.
- Jesus himself, far in advance of everyone else—“the first of a great harvest of all who died.”
1Co 15.20 - At Jesus’s second coming, he’s gonna resurrect all the Christians.
1Th 4.16-17, Rv 20.4-5 - On Judgment Day, everybody else gets raised—and judged.
Rv 20.13
Some Christians believe in even further instances. I’ll get to them.
Jesus’s resurrection.
Despite the many times Jesus warned his students he was gonna die (but later rise again), this idea hadn’t really sunk into them. Yeah, they believed in resurrection. But they’d grown up Pharisee, and expected he’d rise as Pharisees taught: At the end of the world. On the last day.
Just like Martha said:
John 11.23-27 NRSVue 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
Nobody—not Martha, not the apostles, not Jesus’s own family, not anyone—expected any human being to rise from the dead before the End. When Jesus said “Your brother will rise again,” Martha immediately assumed Jesus meant Judgment Day—not within the hour. Anything else simply wasn’t in their worldview. And anytime Jesus talked about raising the dead, or rising again, his students either figured Jesus was teaching about the End, or
Faced with the raw reality of Jesus’s gory death, the students couldn’t imagine anybody recovering from that. Jesus was absolutely dead. Between the blood loss from flogging, the asphyxiation from crucifixion, getting stabbed in the heart by the Roman solder looking for proof of death, and Joseph and Nicodemus wrapping him in 33 kilos of spices, Jesus was so dead.
A popular theory is the cold tomb somehow woke Jesus up. Somehow a man barely alive managed to struggle out of his straitjacket-like wrappings, shove the huge rock off the entrance, crawl past a group of sleepy temple cops, and escape… only to pitifully die later. It’s kinda stupid on the face of it. The widespread theory Jesus’s students swiped his corpse
But these theories aren’t consistent with any of the other recorded events which followed: More than 500 people saw Jesus alive.
The first reports came back from the women who went to the tomb to embalm Jesus further. They met an angel—or two; their stories aren’t straight—who told them Jesus is alive. Then at some point they saw him. Mary the Magdalene definitely saw him. Quite naturally Jesus’s Eleven didn’t believe them—and to be fair, who would? It’s not that these weren’t trustworthy women; it’s that they just saw Jesus die horribly and gruesomely, and if anyone told ’em Jesus was still alive after that, they couldn’t buy it. Jesus’s student Thomas gets a lot of crap from many preachers for doubting it, but Thomas had sense, and held out till he personally saw Jesus.
In contrast the 500 who saw Jesus stopped doubting. James, Jesus’s brother, who’d never followed him before, followed him the rest of his life, and went to his death proclaiming him. The rest of Jesus’s family became devout Christians. The students, who originally fled when Jesus was arrested, likewise went to their deaths—sometimes deaths as horrible as Jesus’s—insisting he’s alive and they saw him personally. And from time to time they stated they still saw him.
If Jesus wasn’t really raised, his apostles had to be seriously delusional. Because every last one of them embraced nasty punishments and deaths. Every last one of them tried (and succeeded!) to perform miracles
Fact is, Christianity simply doesn’t work without a resurrected Christ. It’s the belief by which the rest stands or falls. Either Jesus is alive, is our Master and God, has conquered sin and death, and his new life verifies everything he taught. Or it’s all rubbish, wishful thinking, and dumb luck.
I admit I’m biased: I can’t conceive of a world where two billion individual schizophrenic delusions, based on the egomaniacal ravings of a madman, fit together so well. That’s gotta be the dumbest of all dumb luck ever. Even if it were dumb luck, you’d think some kind of evil genius would have to work behind the scenes to manipulate everything neatly into place. But let’s not go down that trail. It doesn’t get us anywhere good.
Christians who don’t believe in resurrection.
Yeah, despite everything I just wrote, there actually are Christians who don’t believe Jesus was resurrected. They come in two sorts:
- UNBELIEVERS. Those who believe Jesus’s resurrection is pure fiction from start to finish, and think the real point of Christianity is to be big fans of Jesus and his teachings. As for resurrection and God’s kingdom: Wishful thinking. Not for them.
- IMMATERIALISTS. Those who believe Jesus’s resurrection is “spiritual.” By which they mean he didn’t physically rise from death. Instead Jesus’s ghost appears to people.
For the most part unbelievers are actually
But I run into immaterialists all the time. They’re kinda everywhere. They figure when we die, we go to heaven, get ghostly bodies, and that’s resurrection.
When Paul and Sosthenes tried to describe resurrection, I gotta admit their explanation is a bit vague and mysterious in parts.
1 Corinthians 15.35-50 NRSVue 35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”36 Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.37 And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen and to each kind of seed its own body.39 Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.40 There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another.41 There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.44 It is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.45 Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”;Ge 2.7 the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the physical and then the spiritual.47 The first man was from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven.48 As one of dust, so are those who are of the dust, and as one of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.49 Just as we have borne the image of the one of dust, we will also bear the image of the one of heaven.50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
How immaterialists spin this passage, is to point out our resurrected bodies aren’t flesh and blood—’cause “flesh and blood aren’t able to inherit God’s kingdom.”
They figure we only live in these bodies in heaven. They’re not meant for earth. Jesus using his spiritual body to visit earth was a fluke. And no, he’s not coming back to earth to set up his kingdom here; the “kingdom of heaven” will only exist in heaven. The righteous go there when we die, and we get immediately “resurrected” into these heavenly bodies. We stay in heaven forever, and Jesus reigns over us. Therefore nobody literally rises from the grave. Not even Jesus did. (So where’d his physical body go? Well, they’re not sure. Somewhere.)
This purely-spiritual “resurrection” idea is based on ancient Greek philosophy. To the ancient Greeks, material things are temporary, decaying, and icky. The human body is just a cage for the immortal soul. Once you die, you finally bust out of your prison, become pure spirit, and leave this old, decaying, trashed world behind.
Once the Greeks became Christian, they brought this idea with ’em. It’s leaked into a lot of churches. It’s become a big part of
Whereas Jesus made it plain he’s not a ghost;
True, Jesus seems to have the ability to vanish and reappear.
Part of the reason people claim Jesus is only “spiritually” alive is because they find a dead Jesus far more convenient. A living Jesus makes Christianity a little too real. Implies he might want us to change our current lives, instead of putting off all our lifestyle changes till the afterlife. Much easier for us to deal with a religion where all the serious stuff happens in some imaginary spiritual never-neverland. This way it never interferes with our material reality. This way, Jesus is far far away, ruling heaven; not here, instructing, empowering, or correcting us.
Yeah, heresy leads us into warped behaviors. It’s why we need to correct it whenever we see it. Jesus is alive. And once he returns, we Christians will be resurrected to life, living the same way he is. I don’t know exactly what that’ll be like. Neither did the apostles, which is why Paul and Sosthenes were so vague in
