This is one of the books I chose to read over the summer for my class at church. It was a decent read and I wrote up some thoughts on it...
Does the historical evidence support the resurrection of Jesus Christ? This is both the subtitle of the book and probably one of the most important questions that you can ask over the course of a person’s life. If historical evidence is in support of Jesus Christ resurrection then that should speak volumes to all with respect to His claims to being God. Much like ‘The Case for Christ’ by Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell was determined to do his due diligence in researching Christianity. By validating the claims that the New Testament made regarding the resurrection he “removes the question, ‘Is Christianity valid?’ from the realm of philosophy and forces it to be an issue of history.” But why is the distinction in this question so important? Why would we care to move it from one classification to another?
Philosophy is “Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods”. In other words, what you can rationalize or think to be true…is your truth. If someone can convince you to think their way…that is your new truth. Philosophy believes that you can figure out everything…including God…by using logic. And from this branch of thinking and reasoning we get the great questions that supposedly stump us like, “Can God make a stone big enough that even He can’t lift it?”…questions that prove that man can completely mix ourselves up into thinking we are smarter than we are. However, if we move The Resurrection and the basis of Christianity into a historical question, we change how people have to engage the reality of God in our world. It is no longer a question of can you rationalize God. It is a question of did it happen, and, if it did happen, what does that mean? Those are concrete questions that demand explicit answers and proof that exists outside of someone’s mind.
Christ died on the cross. He rose on the 3rd day and defeated death. There were prophecies that it would happen…Jesus himself said it would happen…and we have written documents from eye witnesses that said it did happen. If He really did defeat death, what would that mean to you?
McDowell writes of the many other kinds of evidence that can support this as truth as well. The circumstantial evidence provides incremental proof outside of accepted and documented facts and the eye witness testimonies and further, even the archaeological evidence has only supported the facts as described by the witness testimonies. McDowell even discusses the alternate theories that have been provided and why the holes in those show that they are trying to fill the gaps for that which only the supernatural reality of God being in our midst truly fills.
“If all the evidence is weighed carefully and fairly, it is indeed justifiable, according to the canons of historical research, to conclude that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was actually empty on the morning of the first Easter. And no shred of evidence has yet been discovered in literary sources, epigraphy, or archaeology that would disprove this statement.” If accurate, and the book goes to great detail to show that it is so, then The Resurrection truly is a fact of history and, as such, has immeasurable consequence…not only two thousand years ago, but to today and for all eternity. God came as a person to this earth, died and rose again and called us to believe in Him and that historical sacrifice so that we too could conquer death. So, we don’t need to rationalize God’s existence…but assuming you are still someone that feels that urge than I suppose you could go with Pascal’s wager…you will still realize that it is in your best interest to believe in God.
No comments:
Post a Comment