Re: Minority believe in resurrection

At 04:01 PM 4/9/2006, Michael Roberts wrote:

>Oh well, that's OK as I don't believe in a
>physical resurrection and shall preach that at Easter.
>
>But I am in good company ~ Michael

@
<http://www.tektonics.org/guest/wildvis.html>Hallucinations
and the Risen Jesus http://www.tektonics.org/guest/wildvis.html

"..there remains no rational reason to reject the
historicity of the resurrection of Jesus."

....The naturalist, however, might say,
"...Regardless of how improbable, or even
impossible, naturalistic explanations may seem,
dead people do not rise. It is a proven
scientific fact that dead cells do not
spontaneously regenerate…" Viewing this statement
through the lens of naturalism, I'm in perfect
agreement with it. Regardless of how improbable
naturalistic explanations for the resurrection
data may be, it remains clear that dead people do
not rise. It is thus still better to hold to
naturalistic hypotheses than to assert what we
know for certain is scientifically impossible.
However, this counter-assertion carries with it
the assumption either that 1) supernatural agents
do not exist, or 2) if supernatural agents do
exist, they cannot intervene in the physical
universe. If though supernatural agents do exist,
and they are free to intervene in the physical
universe, the naturalist's counter loses
conviction, for there would be in this case no
reason why Jesus could not have been resurrected
by a supernatural agent, namely God in this case,
overriding the natural laws. And, the context
would seem to be perfect for a resurrection, if
indeed God exists and is capable of intervening
in the physical universe. Let us say,
hypothetically, that some obscure banker in India
that never made any religious claims was said to
be resurrected. Regardless of whatever data might
support it, we are left without what would seem
to be the proper context for a supernatural
explanation of the data. In other words, we are
left wondering why God would have raised this man
from the dead. On the other hand, we have with
Jesus someone in which the data indicates not
only claimed to be Israel's long-awaited Messiah,
but also
<http://www.tektonics.org/jesusclaims/jesusclaimshub.html>claimed
to be divine, performed a host of
<http://www.christian-thinktank.com/mqx.html>remarkable
miracles, fulfilled a host of
<http://www.tektonics.org/guest/antianti.html>Messianic
prophecies, and even predicted that his death
would have great eschatological significance, and
that vindication awaited him after his suffering
and death. Ultimately then the question comes
down to whether or not we can be confident in
maintaining a purely naturalistic worldview as
opposed to one that allows the possibility of
supernatural occurrences. More to the point, it
seems that the question revolves around whether
or not God exists and whether or not He is
capable of intervening in the physical universe.
..... there remains a distinct possibility that
God does exist and is capable of intervention in
space and time, there remains no rational reason
to reject the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. .."

"....VII. Conclusion: Putting it all Together

We've covered quite a bit of ground in this
essay. Below is a summary of our findings:

1. While the appearance to Paul may have
contained visionary elements, it is very clear
that it also contained extra-mental correlates.

2. Attempts to explain Paul's experience as a
result of conversion disorder fail for several reasons.

3. The data is insufficient to make the
appearance to Paul (and John on Patmos)
paradigmatic for that of the earlier ones to the disciples.

4. In fact, Luke is our only source of
information indicating the visionary nature of
Paul's experience, but in an earlier work he
describes the appearances to the disciples in
quite mundane and very physical terms.

5. The New Testament documents themselves clearly
differentiate the appearances of Jesus from the
later visions experienced by the church
(including those later visions that the apostles
themselves (such as Peter and Paul) experienced).

6. Paul, as evidenced by his background as a
Pharasaic Jew, and by his writings on the
resurrection body, clearly believed that the resurrection was physical.

7. The gospels clearly depict Jesus'
post-resurrection body as physical, albeit with
supernatural properties, thereby corroborating
the description we find by Paul in I Cor. 15.

8. Based on the typical dating of the gospels,
there was not enough time for legendary accrual
to supplant the historical core of truth regarding the resurrection narratives.

9. Given that a good argument can be posited that
the Synoptics were written as early as between
about 40-60 A.D., legendary accrual becomes that
much more unlikely if such was the case.

10. The probability of either traditional gospel
authorship or at least that the true authors had
direct access to the earliest apostolic testimony
gives us a high degree of confidence in the
substantial historicity of the narratives.

11. Studies of the reliability of oral tradition
and data suggesting the probability that the
followers of Jesus actually made written notes
shortly after Jesus words and deeds took place
would serve as a substantial check to legendary accrual.

12. The controlling presence of eyewitnesses and
the authoritative control of the apostles would
have provided a further check to legendary accrual.

13. As elaborated by N.T. Wright, the general
scarcity of references to the OT, the general
absence of personal hope, the strange portrait of
Jesus, and the prominence of women in the
post-resurrection narratives combine to
emphatically suggest that the narratives
contained within the gospels reflect very primitive tradition.

14. There are numerous features within several of
the individual stories indicative of authenticity.

15. The power and content of the disciples'
convictions mitigate against the claim that what
they experienced were mere subjective visions.

16. Even if we assume legendary accrual occurred
within the post-resurrection narratives, it is
improbable that it would have developed in the way that it did.

17. Given that hallucinations are by definition
projections of a single individual's mind, it is
highly improbable (though perhaps not impossible)
for a group of individuals to have
hallucinations, each being similar enough in
content to be harmonized by the group into a single phenomenon.

18. The appeal by critics to historical parallels
of such group phenomena bear the burden of
evidence to demonstrate that such are on the same
level of historicity of those found within the
NT. In any event, without sound scientific
evidence of the possibility of mass
hallucinations, such parallels only serve to
complicate their case against supernaturalism rather than alleviate it.

19. For mass hallucinations to occur, such
prerequisites as expectation, emotional
excitement, and even being informed beforehand
should be present, none of which was initially
present in the case of the disciples.

20. Although the above point could be overturned
by suggesting that the appearance to Peter and
his subsequent retelling of the event to the
disciples served to create the above-needed
prerequisites, we are still at a loss to explain
the appearance to the women and the disciples on
their way to Emmaus. Furthermore, explaining the
appearance to Peter as the result of a "guilt complex" is tenuous.

21. The subjective visions/hallucination
hypothesis is greatly strained by the diversity
of the appearances and the short amount of time
in which they occurred. Even if the prerequisites
are satisfied, it is difficult to imagine several
mass hallucinations taking place (including one
to a group of more than 500 people) within such a
short span of time (40 days according to Luke).
Also, given that individuals like James and
Thomas were skeptical, a different mechanism
other than "contagion" would have to be proposed
to account for the appearances of Jesus to them.
To hold on to this theory we'd have to posit that
a series of numerous improbabilities occurred
within a very short period of time.

22. The content of several of the
post-resurrection narratives is way too detailed
to suggest that a group of people could
experience simultaneous visions being similar
enough in content for them to harmonize the event
into a single appearance of Jesus to the whole group.

23. A separate, independent theory would have to
be espoused to account for the empty tomb, which
adds to the "series of improbabilities" alluded
to above that would have to be satisfied in order to account for the data.

24. Even after all of that, however, we remain at
a loss to explain why the disciples would have
preached that Jesus had been resurrected as
opposed to having undergone a direct ascension or
vindication/exaltation under the hallucinations paradigm.

When we consider all of the data as a whole, a
clear picture emerges. We have surveyed numerous
data points in this article. While much of our
treatment has been to argue for the essential
historicity of the gospel narratives of the
post-resurrection appearances through such routes
as the reliability of oral tradition, the
eyewitness testimony underlying the gospels, the
date of the gospels and the lack of time for
significant legendary accrual, etc., some other
factors we've considered provide indirect
confirmation of these narratives' historicity.
One example is the fact that the New Testament
itself differentiates the post-resurrection
encounters of Jesus to the disciples from the
later visions experienced by the early church
(including those visions experienced by the
apostles themselves-section IIIb). Given this
differentiation, the relatively mundane
appearance stories we find in the gospels are
something like what we'd expect to find.
Furthermore, we noted that the more the
experiences of the disciples resembled the types
of spiritual experiences and visions so common in
the ancient world, the less likely it would be
that such experiences would have transformed them
from being a group marked by failure, despair,
and dashed Messianic hopes to one that preached
Jesus' resurrection boldly in the face of
persecution and potential martyrdom, while at the
same time attaching to this event the exuberant
implications that they did (see above section
IIIg). Similarly, in section V we argued that the
disciples' proclamation that Jesus had been
resurrected, being as it was an individual
occurrence in the "middle of time", was alien to
the Jewish belief system of the day. Other such
historical/scriptural precedents such as
translation or vindication/exaltation, as argued
by Dunn, would have been much more likely
candidates for appropriation by the early church
in describing what happened to Jesus if what they
experienced were mere visions. On the other hand,
if something like what we find in the gospels is
what actually occurred to the disciples, leaving
what would appear to be undeniable proof of
Jesus' resurrection, and occurring in essentially
mundane, every-day contexts, this is the kind of
thing we'd expect might lead the disciples to
draw the conclusions that they did, and to remain
steadfast in their convictions despite whatever
obstacles were placed before them.

Thus, at the end of the day, that Jesus was
resurrected from the dead remains clearly the
best historical option. Naturalistic theories
such as the one examined simply fall well short
of the mark in explaining the available data
[20]. ...." Continue: http://www.tektonics.org/guest/wildvis.html

~ Janice
Received on Mon Apr 10 01:48:08 2006