I’m sure you don’t believe everything you read. I don’t either. But just as it would be foolish to believe everything we read, it would also be foolish to disbelieve everything we read. We have to use sound judgment to get by in life. Therefore, when we make a decision about believing or not believing something we’re reading, we need reason to guide us.
To believe that Jesus was raised from the dead according to the New Testament does not require that you first believe that the New Testament is the word of God. Nor does it even require that you first believe that God exists. All it requires is that you apply the same standards to the New Testament writings you would apply to any other human writings. By that, I mean that you read them and decide what’s credible and what’s not. As anyone could read The Federalist Papers 2,000 years from now and come to the conclusion that a new nation called the United States of America had arisen in the late 18th century, so anyone can read the New Testament today and come to the conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth had arisen from the dead in the 1st century.
The Testimony of Men
I believe Jesus of Nazareth is alive because I cannot figure out any way that the human writings that are called the New Testament could have been falsified. That is, what we read is what was written, and it was written by the people to whom the writings are attributed – for all the same reasons we normally accept writings and writers. And what is written in the New Testament texts is not just plausible, it’s compelling. For example, I know I have a problem with sin, and this set of writings is unique in the world because no other writing or set of writings so adequately describes this problem…and its solution. And in many other ways as well, these texts corroborate the fundamental realities of our lives. Therefore, I have to accept the central theme of these writings: that Jesus was raised from the dead…because to reject it would be to deny all reason and conscience.
Learning from the New Testament is no different from learning from any other book. You bring your own mind to the book and interact with the things it says – whether the books be ancient or modern. Of course, the New Testament wasn’t written as a book – it is a collection of a variety of writings by a variety of authors. It is the variety that makes the collection all the more persuasive. It’s actually not that hard – if someone will stop long enough to think about it – to believe what the New Testament says. On the contrary, it takes more mental effort to disbelieve it than it takes to believe it. That’s why so many people just ignore it.
I accept the reality of Jesus’ resurrection without having had to first wrestle with the question of whether or not God exists. But as a result of having accepted that Jesus was raised from the dead, there can be no denying God’s existence, for it has been emphatically established by Jesus’ resurrection. More than proving God’s existence, Jesus’ resurrection, given that God had prophesied it in the Hebrew Scriptures, proves that God speaks. If God speaks, it goes without saying that He exists. Therefore, let me now be more specific about how Jesus’ resurrection proves that God speaks.
The Many Old Testament Prophecies of Messiah
When the apostles began spreading the news of Jesus’ resurrection, they did not talk about it as an isolated phenomenon. Rather, they presented it as having occurred according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4), according to the prophets (Luke 24:25-26), and according to the promises of God (Romans 1:1-4) – all three amounting to the same thing. The descendants of Abraham – called Jews by this time – had long claimed that God had spoken through prophets and made promises to them. The message of the apostles was along the lines of “What God promised our forefathers is being fulfilled in Jesus – his resurrection from the dead being one of the most notable, but by no means the only, aspects of that fulfillment.”
The message of the apostles was not just that an itinerant Jewish teacher had been raised from the dead, and that this had been promised by God, but also that this resurrection of Messiah had occurred as a central element of God’s long-standing and well-documented plan. That documentation existed in what we today call the Old Testament, though the apostles would use terms like “the Scriptures,” “the Law and the Prophets,” and so on (because “Old Testament” was a name applied by later generations).
Whether we’re talking about Old Testament “prophecies” or “promises,” we’re talking about the same thing – the hopes God raised for the future…by speaking. Although God’s words to His chosen people raised their hopes, those words were spoken often in mysterious and seemingly conflicting ways. They were like riddles. Only when the promises were fulfilled – as they were when Jesus was crucified and then raised from the dead three days later – did it become apparent what God had had in mind.
Indeed, God Has Spoken
In raising Jesus from the dead, God makes clear that Israel’s prophets had indeed been speaking on His behalf all those years before. Without the resurrection, no one could be 100% sure those promises were actually spoken by God to the prophets; but with the resurrection, there could be no denying that the prophets had been faithfully passing on what God had said to them (Isaiah 54:17). So, yes, the word of God is a thing.
Since God speaks, then there is not only such a thing as the testimony of men, there is also such a thing as the testimony of God. And if the testimony of God is anything at all, it is greater than the testimony of men. Therefore, if we accept the testimony of men – and we do – then how much more we ought to accept the testimony of God.
Related essays:
Defining Christianity (2 min)
All Bible Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled in Christ (4 min)
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