IF CHRIST HAS NOT BEEN RAISED
The gospels say that a miracle healing man called Jesus Christ lived. They say
he died by crucifixion and three days later he rose again. The tomb he was
placed in was found wide open with the stone that had been across the entrance
moved back and the tomb was mysteriously empty. His body was gone. Certain
witnesses claimed that Jesus appeared to them as a resurrected being.
The first writer about the resurrection was St Paul. His writings have full
apostolic authority for Christians. They are considered to be co-authored by God
and therefore without error.
Paul devoted 1 Corinthians 15 to showing that Jesus really rose from the dead to
refute the Christian heretics who were saying that resurrections don’t happen.
The Bible contains the teachings of the apostles who were reportedly inspired by
God to convey divine truth to the world. The Bible claims not only to record the
teaching received from God but to itself be the book that God wrote. There is no
point in getting divine revelation second-hand. The book that records it needs
to be divinely revealed too.
Paul writes that Jesus made a number of appearances and
appeared to him last as if he were an ektroma an aborted fetus or a miscarriage.
That is best understood as Paul saying that the others had the best experiences
while his own as wonderful as it was was a pittance in comparison. The book of
Acts says that when Paul saw Jesus he only saw a light and heard a voice.
This means that the only eyewitness account we have fails to be evidence that
Jesus rose.
Paul the apostle wrote in the Bible “If Christ hasn’t been raised from the dead
then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. Then those who
have died in Christ are lost. If we only have hope in Christ for this life then
we are to be pitied above all men” (1 Corinthians 15:17-19). The problem was
that the believers in Corinth were denying or doubting that the story that Jesus
rose from the dead is true.
Some think that he is saying that if Jesus hasn’t risen that he implies that
Christianity must make things harder for people and have a standard of goodness
that is dependant not on commonsense but on revelation and which must be very
painful to follow. Otherwise they would not be the stupidest people alive.
The context is about sin and being lost from God forever and that we are to be
pitied if we only enjoy our faith in this life. That interpretation is wrong
though Paul would agree that Christians are sad if they are deluded for it is
one tough demanding faith.
In Paul’s thought, if the faith is wrong you are better off without the standard
of morality revealed by Christ in spite of the joy of being a Christian. Paul
rejects the heretical view of the modern Church that if Christianity is wrong we
are still better off having followed it for it made us good and happy. This
shows that the pleasure-loving Jesus of the gospels who offered all humanity a
light burden that would be good for them is rejected as inauthentic. He is a
fiction.
Paul implies that even if you love God with all your heart as a result of faith
in Christ this is awful if Christ is a fraud or if the resurrection of Christ is
a fiction.
He said that if Jesus is not alive now then Christians are to be pitied above
all people (v19). But if Jesus is dead and Christians are inspired to be caring
and are happy thinking he is alive then how could Paul say that? How could Paul
say that if Jesus is not the risen Son of God then all is lost and we are still
in our sins and should despair?
1 One answer is that the Christians had all been staking everything on expecting
the risen Jesus to soon come back for them so if this is wrong their suffering
and sacrifice would be proven fruitless. In 1 Corinthians 7 Paul certainly made
it clear that lives must be turned upside down in preparation for his coming.
Paul must have claimed that he had a revelation that Jesus was on his way for he
could not have them go that far over speculation. When that revelation was wrong
what about the one when he saw Jesus on the way to Damascus in a flash of light
from Heaven?
Some say, "The answer ignores the fact that Paul says we are still in our sins
if Jesus has not risen. There is no reason to link it to the second coming."
But what if the reason for worrying about sin is that it will mean we are not
ready when Jesus returns.
It is said, that the Christians in Corinth despite their sacrifices were happy
so answer one can be dismissed. They were not happy. Paul had a lot
of trouble looking after their spiritual health. Happiness if they had it
came at a big price so Paul makes sense.
Christianity is a false religion if the resurrection was
promoted for this reason for Jesus has not come back. He would have to
return within a decade or two after Paul wrote that. The resurrection and
a rapid return of Jesus are too tied together.
2 Another answer that could be added to this one or taken alone is that Paul
believed that human beings were worthless and their works futile unless God had
cleansed them from their sins and saved them so if Jesus has not risen there is
no forgiveness. We know Paul taught that humans were totally useless without the
work of God’s grace to make them good and forgive them.
Answer two just means that you are totally sinful and need a saviour to take
away your sins and pay the price to God for them. But if the saviour wasn’t
Jesus why can’t one hope it was somebody else? God would provide a saviour if
necessary.
There could have been a saviour who saved the world and who rose but who never
appeared to anybody or who is perhaps appearing in India.
One wonders how Paul could teach that if Jesus was not the saviour then nobody
could be the saviour. Christians say that he meant there was nobody as holy and
powerful with miracle working as Jesus so nobody could be his match or do
better. And so if Jesus was a fraud there will be no saviour. Paul gave no
indication of reasoning this way at all.
The reasoning is absurd. Somebody more powerful could come along. The reasoning
is arrogant.
Human uselessness and the need for a saviour and for one who comes back from the
dead could all be true even if Jesus was a fraud. In that light, Paul was going
too far in painting a hellish picture should Jesus turn out to have been a
fraud. It could follow that maybe some unknown person is the saviour. Paul was
really trying to scare people into accepting Jesus and to make them suffer
despair if they fail to.
3 Another answer in the same category is that Paul was just being silly. When
Paul could not handle a serious heresy adequately despite his expertise as an
evangelist it shows that his converts were gullible and that he had no concern
for the purity of the truth and was not an apostle and was too unsuitable so
Jesus did not choose him on the way to Damascus which was a hallucination.
If Jesus died for sinners as he said then sin is dealt with and Jesus doesn’t
have to rise until the end of the world if he wants to. Why is it so vital that
Jesus must have risen before Paul’s ministry? The timing is interesting. It
implies that there can be no salvation for anybody until Jesus rises first. Paul
believed that some by special revelation in the Old Testament were saved. The
resurrection must have happened in ancient times!
The correct answer is probably that Paul was saying that he couldn’t be wrong
about the resurrection and was so sure that if Jesus wasn’t the saviour nobody
was because Paul cannot be wrong! It was then not faith in the resurrection at
all that Paul wanted. It was really faith in Paul. This shows that Paul had to
base the religion on his own personality and not on Jesus either because Jesus
wasn’t interesting when he was a man or nobody knew anything about him as a man
for he lived centuries before.
If Jesus did miracles and proved he was the Son of God before his crucifixion
and was still dead there would still be hope of a return. Christians say there
wouldn’t be if Jesus had promised to rise on the third day and failed to. Even
if he did rise later the failed promise would prove he was not the saviour or
Son of God after all. They say Paul knew that and had that at the back of his
mind. But had Paul meant that he would have said so. But if Jesus promised to
rise in three days and didn’t there is the possibility that the apostles who
would have heard of this promise had they lived with him were mistaken or
tricked by Satan. He will actually rise later in the future. We can reject what
the Christians would say.
However, if Jesus had done miracles when alive even that would prove that there
is a supernatural power and make it possible that somebody else could die for us
and save us by the miracle of rising again. All would not be lost and we could
hope for somebody else. The way Paul makes it a total catastrophe if Jesus
hasn’t risen suggests that this thinking is wrong. Therefore the resurrection
was the first known miracle of Jesus. The gospels lied when they said Jesus did
miracles before his crucifixion.
When Paul had to remind the heretics that Adam was made from clay and so raising
the dead from dust was possible they were not experts in theology or
exceptionally well-instructed in religion. He meant something simple – something
they could understand. He meant therefore that to say that all was lost if Jesus
is dead at face value. It was a dogma.
Paul said that even if you sincerely but wrongly believe Jesus rose you are to
be pitied and you are still in your sins. In saying that, Paul eliminates
sincerity as sufficient for salvation so even the resurrection is useless
without appearances in which Jesus will convey the gospel. You need to know the
gospel to be saved. Orthodoxy is necessary. When Paul says that all is lost if
Jesus has not been raised he means that the resurrection is necessary for the
appearances and appearances for the gospel to be taught and the gospel is the
only way to salvation so if there is no resurrection there is no salvation.
He meant that the resurrection alone would have been a claim to fame for Jesus.
This would implying Jesus lived an ordinary life or that nobody knows what kind
of life he had. According to Paul, if Jesus has not risen and appeared there is
no saviour and we are lost. He never actually says that it is because the end of
the world is coming soon according to the Old Testament prophets and the signs
of the times. Some say that to Paul, if Jesus were not the saviour nobody was
for no one would come now to save us for time was running out.
For Paul, if Jesus is still dead there is no reason to hope that he will rise
and be the saviour meaning Paul saw nothing unusual or interesting, or perhaps
that could be known, about Jesus’ historical life.
Paul wrote that the dead are lost forever if Jesus never rose from the dead -
which is an illogical argument. It is also religious emotional blackmail.
There is no moral compass with anybody who does this. Can you imagine how much
pain and suffering a lot of his disciples in Corinth endured when their loved
ones got sick and died and were slain by robbers in those shocking times? Paul's
blackmail led to the harassment and abuse of those who decided that after
dallying with the religion and committing to it left it. There is a clear
attempt to make them feel utter despair.
Paul's saying the dead are lost if Jesus did not rise is like saying, “My wife will come back to me because I don’t want to be old and alone”. What you want or need isn’t going to make any difference. It is trying to blackmail his hearers to believe. You only use fear as a weapon in this way when you suspect your visions are hallucinations or when you are lying. The apostles in Jerusalem must have been as bad as him. They all pulled together when it came to defending the alleged resurrection. The rest of the Church and its heads Peter, John and James must be assumed to have approved of this stance as well. It shows the early Church was a cult.
Some say that the standard doctrine was that everybody would rise one day and Jesus is part of that resurrection but just happened to be done first. So Jesus was a part of the general final resurrection meaning that if he did not rise the dead will not rise in general. This is not logical. And also, exceptions proving the rule is nonsense. The exception is not an exception but a rule in conflict with the general rule. An individual case and that is not of general reference is just an individual case. Being individual has nothing to do with it being an exception.
Jesus might not rise but that does not refute a general
resurrection. He might rise with everybody else. Paul is more
interested in the when of Jesus rising not the rising. This is about his
and the apostles using the miracle story to make themselves look important.
In his next letter to the Church at Corinth, Paul wrote "If someone comes to you
and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a
different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the
one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough" (2 Corinthians 11:4). Paul
said very little about Jesus and talked all the time as if only the death of
Jesus and his resurrection mattered. It is likely then that the other Jesus was
the Jesus of those who did not believe that Jesus rose from the dead. This is
the best assumption because we have some evidence for it. We know that in
Corinth some who claimed to be in the Church were denying that Jesus rose. "If
it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you
say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of
the dead, then not even Christ has been raised" (1 Corinthians 15:12,13). The
claim that they believed in Christ's resurrection only is absurd. He makes it
plain they were denying that anybody rises including Jesus. He bases the
evidence for the resurrection on preaching. He says that is enough to justify
believing in it. Had they believed in the resurrection of Jesus he would have
written, "If [you hold] that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some
of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?"
Paul said we are to be pitied and the shame of the
whole world if we are wrong that Jesus rose because Jesus' victory over evil
and death needs to be real to have meaning and value. An implication is that
it can give the happiness and courage that we need in order to live a holy
moral life. Some fantasists argue that it is solely about how unhappy and
demotivated we would be upon learning that Jesus did not rise. This does not
fit Paul’s doctrine that life is about God and loving him and if we do that
we may happen to be happy. His message is about how the truth MAY lead us to
be happy. Happiness is a happy outcome but not what faith is about. Plus the
warnings to expect hatred and persecution show the fantasists are guilty of
distortion. And it would be narcissistic to argue, “If Jesus has not being
raised it’s a disaster”, if all you are worried about is your feelings. The
fantasists are guilty of the bigotry of low expectations: people are too
weak and too stupid so they need sweet sounding lies. Paul worried
about how deluded we would be if Jesus is dead. Surely if it is about
feelings that delusion would be a good thing!
Conclusion
Paul's treatment of the case for the resurrection of Jesus shows he was on
thin ice theologically and historically. There are alleged miracles outside
of Christianity that have better evidence than that.
Conspiracies and the Cross, Timothy Paul Jones, Front Line, A Strang
Company, Florida, 2008
The Jesus Inquest, Charles Foster, Monarch Books, Oxford, 2006
