Theology – Page 2 – christianfaithfuls

2. The Resurrection of Jesus (The Historical Evidence)

As we said in the introduction the resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of Christianity without it all of Christianity is a lie in a false religion but unlike most miracle claims Christians claim there is good historical evidence for the resurrection so what is this evidence and how can we

Use it we already went over the basic underlying philosophy in the introduction and pointed out that we already gave natural theology arguments for God’s existence argued the New Testament documents are reliable and established miracles are not impossible however as we noted in the introduction we will not assume the New Testament

Documents are inspired or even accurate in every detail instead we will only argue from facts that are agreed upon by the majority of New Testament scholars and have good evidence to infer they are true this means even if the rest of the New Testament is a fabrication it will

Not show these facts are false since even many skeptical scholars doubt the historicity of the entire New Testament but at least agree these facts are true so now with this as our underlying foundation we can begin to look at the historical evidence and see if it infers a resurrection first two underlying

Facts about the death of Jesus it is almost unanimously agreed that Jesus died by crucifixion just outside of Jerusalem sceptical scholar John Dominic Crossan says this is as sure as anything historical can ever be sceptical scholar EP Sanders lists this as one of the most indisputable facts about Jesus’s life so

There is no question for historians whether or not Jesus died by crucifixion second it is widely agreed that Jesus was buried in nearby tomb the evidence for this is pretty overwhelming we have multiple attestation from early sources like Paul and mark and Josephus agrees crucified victims were allowed to receive a proper burial

Jewish law demanded that even foreigners and criminals had to be buried we have archaeological evidence for this as well the burial count of Jesus also meets the criteria of embarrassment since they had to admit they could not afford their own tomb to bury Jesus but had to you

Kim of a member of the court who had just executed him there are just too many facts would support the burial of Jesus only a few skeptical scholars in the Jesus Seminar deny this but the majority does not and we’ll come back to this later and discuss it more but both

Of these facts could still be true and Jesus would still be dead in the grave the real question is what happened next what caused the events which followed and led to the rise of Christianity from a small backwater province in Rome there have been a wide variety of theories

That have been proposed in order to explain what took place three days after Jesus was buried and this video will cover the four most popular in general theories to see which best fits the data the first theory is the mythic theory this is probably the most popular among

Laymen sceptics it argues that all the events in miracle claims of Jesus were made up at a later time and were not made up by early eyewitnesses the disciples never claimed Jesus rose from the dead and was only made up by later Christians the second is like the mythic

Theory but it is called the conspiracy theory historical evidence that justices probably the earliest competing theory offered to challenge the resurrection account it says that the disciples made up the story of Jesus rising from the dead and simply lied about it all for their own gain third we’ll look at the hallucination

Theory which comes in many variations and it’s probably the most popular among skeptical New Testament scholars it basically says that after Jesus died the disciples were grief-stricken and had hallucinations or visions that Jesus had arisen from the dead and that propelled them to think he was alive again and

Finally we’ll compare these two the resurrection theory which is that Jesus actually did rise from the dead and the disciples believed it because they witnessed it so let’s look at the facts and see if any of these theories can fully explain the data the first piece is something that is accepted by almost

Unanimous scholarship which is that after Jesus died his disciples said he appeared to them again alive there is not a lot of doubt among scholars that the disciples believed this had happened Bart Ehrman says I don’t doubt at all that some disciples claimed this Paul writing about 25 years later indicates

That this is what they claimed and I don’t think he is making it up EP sander says it is an equally secure fact that Jesus disciples saw him in what sense is not certain after his death thereafter his followers saw him the reason for this is because it has multiple attestation in various

Sources including Josephus and there is no way to explain the rise of Christianity if this did not happen something had to happen which compelled the disciples to begin the world’s largest religion with seemingly nothing well people claim may see all sorts of things so why should we take the claims

Of the disciples seriously how do we know their testimony is reliable and they were not simply making the appearances up well in our previous series we’ve already established a new Testament it’s very early and reliable in what it reports so there is plenty of evidence their testimony is reliable but

Putting that aside we should at least evaluate when eyewitness testimony is unreliable for instance when events happen quickly or over a period of a few seconds it is hard to retain memory of an event or when people go out looking for what they want to find people that are desperately

Desiring to find Bigfoot will sometimes fool themselves into thinking they found something or when the participants are all strangers like during a bank robbery it is hard to retain memory when you were around unfamiliar people and last it is hard to retain memory if there was a weapon involved for the simple reason

That everyone is focused on the weapon and not anything else however if we examine the resurrection reports none of these seem to be a factor there is certainly not a weapon involved and it is not with strangers the disciples are familiar with each other and who they are witnessing they believe had risen

The disciples were also not expecting Jesus to rise from the dead all the accounts embarrassingly report that the disciples had misunderstood the Scriptures in what Jesus had claimed and they did not expect him to come back and the reports do not seem to happen quickly but over a period of time where

Jesus would eat and drink with him and engage in conversations or give them instructions even if you could write off the Gospels and acts as later myths we still have preserved for us early creeds and oral sermons handed down which report these as well so the reports on the surface level do

Not match circumstances that create unreliable testimony as EP Sanders admits they definitely experienced something which doesn’t bode well for the conspiracy theory so what if these accounts which is made up at a later date well this seems to be rejected by most scholars since Paul preserved for

Us an early Creed in first Corinthians 15 which is a list of witnesses that Jesus was said to have appeared to they include Peter the rest of the disciples a group of five hundred at once then James and then all the Apostles most scholars believe this list of witnesses

In the Creed goes back to within three years of Pentecost the reasons for this are simply overwhelming it is formed in a mnemonic structure and with parallelism and it is less than fifty words and all this seems to meaning was an early Creed for katha sizing new Christians it was something easy to

Learn and memorize Paul also says of the Corinthians I delivered to you when I received this is a rabbinic statement for a teacher passing on something to his students so it had to have come from the disciples themselves very early on before they could teach it to Paul the

Creed also calls Peter Cephas and not by his name Peter Cephas was an early name for him only later on was he called Peter and it has an independent tradition that is not contingent on the Gospels such as the appearance to James in the independent appearance to Peter Geritol Collins says

That he doesn’t know of any New Testament scholar who dates the Creed after the mid 40s so all the evidence suggested is very early and this means the reports of appearances are very early on as well that rules out the mythic theory what about the hallucination theory well the problem is

The appearances happen in group settings even in the early Crete and group hallucinations are exceptionally rare and because of this there was not a lot of scientific literature to explain them in a private email with scholar Michael Kona psychologist dr. Gary sabzi says I have surveyed the professional literature peer-reviewed journal

Articles and books written by psychologists psychiatrists and other relevant health care professionals during the past two decades and have yet to find a single documented case of a group hallucination an event for which there is more than one person purportedly sharing in a vision or other sensory perceptions

Where there was clearly no referent so there is not a lot of scientific evidence group hallucinations can happen peer-reviewed work on hallucinations also reports that they most often manifests in one sensory mode such as auditory or visual and then multimode hallucinations are exceptionally rare yet the appearances of Jesus contain at

Least both of these elements making the hallucination theory exceptionally improbable for an elucidation to explain the appearances you would have to say that the disciples are all each having a rare multi-mode hallucination that they are all agreeing Jesus is doing certain things like eating and drinking and giving them the exact same instructions

And this would need to have happened multiple times not just once even if you could write off the Gospels and acts as later myths we still have the early Creed preserved in 1st Corinthians 15 in other early sermons preserved in acts which report that Jesus ate and drank

With the disciples CH Dodd notes the speeches and acts seem very early because they lack influence from Pauline theology or vocabulary they contain a high degree of Semitism meaning they were likely originally Aramaic and they lack resemblance to the original written elements of Acts and Luke meaning they

Likely predate acts and seemed to be very early Aramaic speeches so the reports are very early and appear in group settings multi-sensory and over a period of time in hallucinations with these elements are so improvable it would have to be a miracle to cause one let alone several but what about the

Power of suggestion sometimes one person can cause others around them to he’ll loosen eight the same thing through the power of suggestion such as people in a lifeboat where one thinks they see a ship in the distance and they all think they see the same ship in anomalistic psychology a study of extraordinary

Phenomenon behavior and experience authors Lucy and Jones are at some of the very little literature on group hallucinations and theorize that if there is an expectation emotional excitement and people having been informed beforehand that a group hallucination may be possible it is also believed they will vary in what is

There’s a and Jones site an event from 1917 where 70,000 people said they witnessed a public miracle however the reports varied although the children reportedly saw the Virgin the crowd at least many of them witnessed a color phenomenon in which the son in the shape of a fiery disc

Began to move and approached the earth however Zeus nee and Jones also had to conclude with the final answer to these questions has yet to be obtained so they still maintain a scientific explanation has yet to explain collective hallucinations however even if they could it is interesting how their

Criteria doesn’t fit the resurrection appearances expectation and excitement were definitely not present the narratives embarrassingly portray the disciples as cowardly running for their lives after Jesus was crucified they even doubted the report of the women and when they first saw Jesus they were frightened which shows they were not

Excited and didn’t understand what was going on second it is interesting that if the appearances of Jesus were hallucinations then they do not for the criteria of varying drastically between reports all report a bodily resurrection of Jesus where he looks sort of like himself but also slightly different and

His body has new powers that do not have before as William Lane Craig says the fact remains that there is not a single instance in the case books exhibiting the diversity involved and the post-mortem appearances of Jesus but the biggest problem with the hallucination theory is this even if you discount the

Gospels is unreliable one still is to account for the early Christians preaching bodily resurrection and not a spiritual appearance the first Christians were very familiar with visions and claim to actually have some in acts 12 when the servant girl finds Peter at the gate she runs a tell

Everyone and they tell her the appearance she had with just an angel so the Christians firmly understood what visions and spiritual experiences were yet they never interpreted the appearances of Christ as just spiritual visions they firmly believed it was a bodily appearance and that is what they preached from the beginning as even

Sceptical scholar curlew Daman agrees so since the appearances were in group settings multi-sensory do not vary or were interpreted to be spiritual but always physical there was no expectation or excitement for them the hallucination theory cannot account for these appearances so what about the conspiracy theory well despite the early facts we

Mentioned about how the resurrection appearances do not match factors that make testimony unreliable it would be hard to explain how the Christians could hold together such a radical conspiracy with over 500 people involved before Christ was crucified they couldn’t even keep Judas from betraying them however

If all we have to go on is the appearances themselves and no other piece of data we have to accept that this theory could at least tentatively account for the reports of appearances even though it seems like a stretch so I don’t see any reason why the conspiracy

Theory could not account for this piece of data if especially there was no more data to go over finally the resurrection theory can account for this since if Jesus did rise from the dead reporting his physical appearance makes perfect sense the next piece of data is appearances to skeptics it is almost

Unanimously accepted that James and the brothers of Jesus were not his followers during his crucifixion it is also unanimously accepted that Paul was an enemy of the church originally in a later convert the reason for this is Paul admits it himself and cites an early Creed in Galatians 1 22

To 23 he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy if we add the account and acts we have multiple attestation and it meets the criteria of embarrassment since Paul reports it himself that he was once the enemy and was in the wrong

The same goes for the conversion of James it is clear in the early material Paul the leader of the Jerusalem church was none other than James the brother of Jesus however all the evidence suggests that James did not believe his brother was the Christ during jesus’s ministry the Gospels embarrassingly report that

The Brothers of Jesus were skeptical of him no early Christian would dare attack a prominent leader in the church by claiming he was once jesus’s enemy James was also not listed as one present at the cross and Jesus surrendered his mother over to the Beloved Disciple

But why not his own brothers if they were in the Christian ranks this is why most scholars accept James and his brothers or early skeptics and only converted after the crucifixion so what happened that turned these enemies into believers well the mythic theory is a hard time explaining this since Paul was very

Early on writing and quoting a Creed about his own conversion also mentioning the changes in early skeptic would not have been made up as no Christian would dare to dishonor shame her lie about one of their own leaders in such a terrible way so this fact would not have been

Made up later on yet it is clear James was the early leader of the Jerusalem church as Paul and Josephus record could James and Paul of lied the question must be asked why on earth would they have done that the early church was a small persecuted and

Hated minority with a messiah who is just shamefully crucified as a criminal it was too poor to even afford their own tomb Jesus had dishonored the family and James has already opposed to him why would James suddenly feel the need to make up an appearance of Jesus’s resurrection if there was nothing to

Gain and only shame and dishonor to suddenly reverse but claim his brother was Lord after he had already mocked him openly to do such a thing would make no sense Paul also had no reason to try this he was at the top of his game a prominent leader on the rise and making

A name for himself while he persecuted the church he had everything going for him and suddenly he has an urge to leave all that and join the persecuted minority he had already hated such a sudden conversion he knew to be a lie would take a miracle in itself of nothing else

So what have they both hallucinating well adding more hallucinations to this theory begins to multiply its assumptions and causes it to lack parsimony it is even harder to explain since neither them were grieving that Jesus had died especially Paul who hated the church James may have been in grief

For his brother but he didn’t believe he was the Lord and would never have expected or even considered a physical resurrection says a dying rising Messiah was not part of second temple Judaism beliefs as scholar Michael ocona says James and his brothers would have regarded their dead brother as a heretic

Rather than rushed to Jerusalem and be caught up in the group ecstasy it seems more likely that Jesus’s execution as a criminal on a blasphemer would have supported their continual unbelief rather their conversion the plausibility of Paul having hallucination is even far lower than James since hallucinations usually happened for people who are

Expecting them and grieving over the death of the loved one neither of these would have been the case for Paul nor would a mere vision have caused his sudden conversion as we said earlier the early church knew what visions were and if Paul simply had a

Dream he would have called it a dream and moved on a hallucination would be very improbable as the cause of Paul’s sudden conversion however the Christian theory can easily explain the conversion and appearance to skeptics if Jesus really did rise and appear to them that would be enough to

Cause their miraculous conversion now we have surveyed the appearances but that is only half the battle since we cannot interview them personally today or perform a psychoanalysis but what we can do is look at the surrounding facts that accompany these appearances for us today and see which theory is the most

Plausible for them so now it’s time to fill in the gaps first up the expectation of the gospel to the surrounding world the message of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins may sound loving and warm to us but to the ancient world a culture that thrived

On honor and status such a message would be nothing but disgusting and horrendous Walter bear said the enemies of Christianity always refer to this gracefulness of the death of Jesus with great emphasis and malicious pleasure a God or son of God dying on a cross that

Was enough to put paid to the new religion david de silva knows the same thing in his work christianity was founded on a premise that should have failed from the moment it began the christians preach to the Gentiles to worship a man that was shamefully executed on the cross not only that but

A Jew of all people who the Romans looked down upon but even more than that a Jew who was a carpenter which it was also a position that was looked down upon Cicero said that such an occupation was vulgar and compared to slavery on top of that they preach physical

Resurrection to the Roman world which was detested by most pagans who thought the purpose of death was to escape the evil material universe and make it to the spiritual realm yet the Christians taught the Jewish idea that heaven would be the restoration in eternal Kingdom on earth which was not something

Pagans hoped for but even more the Christians place ethical demands on the new converts that would have shocked most pagans no temple prostitution or even extramarital affairs morality was radically challenged by the Christians that flew in the face of most pagans as they Sylvan knows the message about this

Christ was incompatible with the most deeply rooted religious ideology of the Gentile world as well as with the most recent message propagated in the Roman Imperial ideology this is seen in how the Christian opponents like Kelsey’s attacked Christianity he attacked Christians for worshipping a God who

Could not beat the Romans or even escape from the cross Justin Martyr had to respond to these attacks because pagans were calling the Christians mad for putting a crucified man next to the eternal God the Jews also thought the message of Christ was embarrassing they’re supposed Messiah was shamefully

Crucified and murdered by the Roman enemy the Messiah was expected to be a conqueror who would defeat Rome and restore the Kingdom of Israel Jesus was shamed and disgraced to follow him was to give up on the Jewish idealization of a conquering Messiah and a restored Israel on top of that Jesus

Was from Galilee and Nazareth of all places areas were looked down upon by the Jews his father was not known to them so he had a shady family history which the Jews were not keen to forget everything the Christian stood for was working against them they had better

Have good evidence and truly thought Jesus had been raised because the odds were completely against them on every front as NT Wright says Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was known to be false this being so knowing the expectation the gospel would have no group of conspirators

Would ever have made it their core doctrine if you’re going to make up a message the gain of following you want to make up something that is appealing and will work to your advantage not something that was expected to fail so the conspiracy theory could not explain

Why the Christians would make up such a story neither can the hallucination theory as we said before the crucifixion of Jesus is almost unanimously accepted by scholars as well as the fact that Jesus did it advocate lie ethical loads so unless the entire population of Jerusalem hallucinating Jesus’s crucifixion and message this

Would not be something that Christians were fallen to believing hallucinations also usually happen to grieving people as a psychological way to comfort themselves you would not hallucinate things to believe that would cause you more trouble and grief so the hallucination theory cannot explain what the disciples would preach

An utterly embarrassing message in a way to win converts and again as we’ve already noted the disciples and early church knew what visions were yet they preached the physical resurrection as part of the gospel not a spiritual vindication it would have been easier for their Gentile audience and even

Jewish audience who didn’t expect a resurrection to happen until the end of time to preach a spiritual assumption over a physical return and transformation hallucinations would have inferred this not a reanimation of the body since we know crucifixion was preached early the mythic Theory cannot explain

This either it would also fail for the same reasons the conspiracy theory does but all this fits perfectly with the resurrection theory this is what was preached by Christians because this is how it happened and they preached this embarrassing message because it was true the next factor look at is the low

Status of women in the ancient world it is unanimously accepted that in the ancient world the testimony of women was not to be trusted but let not the testimony of women be admitted on account of the levity and boldness of their sex any evidence which a woman

Gives is not valid to offer let the words of the law be burned rather than given to women there is a whole host of other sources we could look at which shows women were believed to be less trustworthy than men the ancient world was very clear the testimony of women

Was not to be trusted now take that and marvel at the fact that in the Gospels the women are the first and primary witnesses to the empty tomb this fact was utterly embarrassing for the early church first they admit they didn’t even trust the testimony of the women then

All the early sermons found in acts and the epistles always skip over the fact of the women were the first to discover the tomb that doesn’t contradict the Gospels but they tend to stay on this matter in order to make their early case because women were not deemed

To be credible witnesses yet when they write down the accounts of how it happened they cannot leave this fact out because they played such a key role discovering the empty tomb this is a serious claim because as Richard baulkham says in these stories women are given priority by God as recipients of

Revelation and thereby the role of mediators of that revelation to men the Gospels claimed the women were an intricate part of the revelation of God and the first key eyewitnesses to the resurrection thereby making their testimony necessary and telling how the empty tomb was found for an ancient

Writer this was not something you would ever make up Cal says even uses to try to discredit Christianity who claimed the entire argument for the empty tomb rested on the testimony of women NT Wright says as historians we are obliged to comment that if these stories have

Been made up five years later let alone thirty forty or fifty years later they would never have had Mary Magdalene in this role put Mary there is from the point of view of Christian apologists wanting to explain to a skeptical audience that Jesus really did rise from

The dead like shooting themselves in the foot but to us as historians this kind of thing is gold dust the early Christians would never never have made this up so the mythic theory or the conspiracy theory lacks any explanatory power with this one as Michael okona says even if the disciples

Had fled Jerusalem Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus may have been better candidates than women for discovering the empty tomb what about the hallucination theory it is difficult to say if the hallucination theory could fit with this one if all we have to go on is this fact I suppose you could say

Someone had a crazy dream and thought women discovered the empty tomb before anyone else but why they weren’t expecting it in multiple sources seem to agree this is how it happened plus it was such an embarrassing fact that everyone involved would have wanted to make sure it actually happened and

That it was not a dream or a subjective vision so will allow this one to pass just to be fair but there was really no reason why one would hallucinate this since it was not comforting or expected to happen but even though it lacks explanatory power will allow to tentatively pass

Until we can evaluate the evidence for the empty tomb and finally the Christian theory has no problem explaining this because the writers were reporting how it happened and of course because God is no respecter of persons and there is neither male nor female for we are all

One in Christ next fact the immediate proclamation in Jerusalem the majority of scholars could not deny that the resurrection was first preached in Jerusalem all the evidence leads to Jerusalem as being the home base and happening very early on such as the development of early Christian Creed’s and how all the sources suggest

Jerusalem is where Christianity began Tacitus mentions off the cuff that Christianity began in Judea and spread from there in one of Paul’s early epistles he mentions off the cuff that the Apostles are still preaching in Jerusalem now why does this matter well when we look at the importance of time

And when you proclaim a miracle that fact can make a serious impact as James siren said the Apostles proclaim the resurrection at Pentecost when Jerusalem expected the spread of the report and endeavored to prevent it well the eyes of their enemies were yet sparkling with rage and madness

While Calvary was yet died with the blood they had spilt there do imposters take such measures would they not have waited till the fury of the Jews had been appeased till judges and public officers had been changed until people had been less attentive to their dispositions if the evidence was not in

Their favor it would have made sense for the early church to go elsewhere as cults often do cult leaders ran up their followers and take them away from civilization or to a different area from the place where you can be disproven even with Mormonism Joseph Smith’s led his people away from New York

But the disciples walked right up to the Sanhedrin and said you crucified your Messiah and he has been raised now these people are either crazy or they are absolutely convinced they are right so the conspiracy theory has no hope of explaining this if you’re an impostor

You go off to Spain or India and proclaim your miracle not in Jerusalem where they have the evidence then motive and the means to debunk you since we know the resurrection was proclaimed early on and it was in Jerusalem it is hard to say that the mythic theory can

Explain this either this was not something we can say with developed later if the created first Corinthians 15 is roughly dated within three years of Pentecost that means there were Christians right there on Jerusalem developing this which set a foundational belief for Christians to be able to

Memorize so there is no reason to think it was developed later on or far off elsewhere so the mythic theory cannot explain this fact either but what about the hallucination theory well if all we have to go on is this fact I suppose a miraculous hallucination could convince

The disciples to preach the resurrection immediately in Jerusalem but it is still doubtful because hallucinations or visions don’t really imply a physical resurrection or do they fit with group hallucinations as we discussed earlier but it is possible if all we have is this fact alone so just in case we miss

Something we’ll allow this one to pass but the resurrection theory explains this with the most ease because if Jesus was resurrected of course the disciples had the boldness to proclaim the resurrection God would have been on their side and all the evidence would have been in their favor

Next fact the voluntary suffering of disciples and witnesses this is an important fact we cannot ignore multiple attestation from Christian and non-christian sources testifies that the early witnesses of the risen Christ were persecuted martyred for their faith Tacitus and Suetonius mention events and Josephus as well who even tells us how

James was martyred in Jerusalem first belief Jesus was the Risen Messiah Paul also admits to intense persecution early on in fact his scholars like NT right note 2nd Corinthians was written as a response to the Corinthians who asked Paul to provide some evidence of good fortune to show God was on his side

Asian people believed like some still today that if you were suffering persecution it was evidence you were being punished by God and needed to turn from your ways Paul responded with the opposite despite the cultural norms and it was meant to challenge their beliefs of how God worked a later Epistle from

Clement of rome talked of how Paul and Peter were martyred in Rome for their faith and axor course how the early witnesses were persecuted and murdered the evidence for this is multiple attested so what some people may say people die for their faith all the time why are the

Christians any different people will and have often died for things that were false but they don’t tend to die for something they know to be false we’re not talking about Christians who were martyred but the founders of Christianity who were murdered these men and women did not die just for faith but

Something they claim to have seen with their own eyes the root meaning of the word martyr is witness over time we’ve expanded the word to mean anyone who dies for their beliefs but originally they referred to someone who was a witness of an event and died for his

Truth the disciples didn’t just die for their beliefs they died for events they claimed had happened and knew very well they were true are made up fliers make lousy martyrs when you have nothing to gain it doesn’t make sense to make up or hold to a theory that is going to get

You nothing and the Apostles were not getting a whole lot out of their new religion they were constantly facing persecution from the Jews and threats of death nor do they become wealthy from what they were doing they were doing it because they were insane than one of the

Cult following they did some things that didn’t make any sense like establishing churches in other regions which it did not have total control over Paul moved from city to city raising up believers and then moving on you’re trying to establish a cult in a controlled group

Of people you do as cults do you gather your followers remove them from society where there’s a threat they’ll be pulled away by reality and you keep them very close to keep them brainwashed the Apostles didn’t do that they stayed in populated cities and left their new

Churches to go start more churches in other cities which leaves your followers vulnerable to corruption and if we read the epistles that is exactly what happened the Apostles had to revisit them and write letters to correct them constantly so it doesn’t seem like there was anything to gain from starting

Christianity unless it was an elaborate plan to be martyred so the conspiracy theory is hopeless in explaining this one the mythic theory doesn’t work either because the voluntary suffering has multiple attestation and even from secular authors and there is nothing that challenges that the disciples were

Persecuted or that many of them died for the events there port it is true if the disciples hallucinate the whole thing that it is possible they would be willing to take it to the grave but it would have to be a wild miraculous hallucination to utterly convince them of it and as we

Have seen such hallucinations are very improbable but it is slightly slightly slightly possible if the resurrection theory is true then this fact makes perfect sense the disciples were willing to suffer because Jesus was resurrected and it was better to deny men than to deny God who they witnessed with their own eyes

Final fact the existence of the empty tomb Gary Habermas has surveyed the material written by scholars on the resurrection and it’s found that 75% of them accept that tomb was found empty on Easter morning for example skeptical scholar Jacob Cramer says by far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the

Biblical statements concerning the empty tomb the evidence for this is simply overwhelming however some scholars like John Dominic Crossan do not think Jesus was buried in a tomb but thrown in a trench for dogs to eat because the Romans who not have a lot of proper burial for criminals but such a theory

Flies in the face of a mountain of evidence first Dale Alison who is skeptical of physical resurrection points out the word in the cretan 1st Corinthians 15 for bury would rarely be used for dumping of criminals in a trench for dogs to eat so the earliest

Account of the burial of Jesus would be incompatible with Crossing’s argument we also have multiple attestation crucified victims were buried and two different sources say Jesus was buried we also have archaeological evidence a crucified victim received a proper burial and there was no reason to think the Romans

Would not have allowed this practice they were certainly okay with allowing other Jewish practices to go on in Jerusalem that’s just temple worship which they detest it because it meant a rejection of Roman gods they allowed to juice a conductor on trials have their own temple guards keep the Sabbath and so forth

There is no reason they would not have allowed this as well and it fits with archaeological and textual evidence Jesus’s burial not only has multiple attestation but it meets the criteria of embarrassment since they say he was buried in the tomb of a Sanhedrin member which would have been dishonouring for

His followers such a group had just their lorry and now they needed the Bama tune for him from one of its own members to the public this would have looked pretty humiliating and the fact that they mentioned he was in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea means the tomb was

Public knowledge and its whereabouts were known so the public at any time would have known about it and could have readily debunked it if the tomb was not empty but the account of the empty tomb is also embarrassing because it was discovered by women and we have already

Discussed this is not something you would have made up Matthew also mentions the competing theory that the disciples stole the body this is odd because why would Matthew want to mention the competing theory which could possibly start up doubt among the people he was trying to convert Justin Martyr writing

Later has to respond to this theory because it was the official story Jews were telling people which is an interesting admission because it says the body could not be found if the Sanhedrin still at the body they could have had Gentiles bring it out for them

And show the tomb was never empty but the Christians never had to respond to this charge so both sides agreed the body was missing finally we have the Nazareth inscription a stone found in the area and it has written on it an imperial decree from around 41 ad which

Says that the penalty for grave robbing was death which is interesting because it is very severe for how Romans punished thieving the Romans would not normally give such a high penalty for stealing something but this will make sense with the rise of Christianity and what Suetonius tells us in Rome there

Were riots among the Jews on accounts of Christus which was a common Roman mispronunciation of Christ and eventually Claudius expelled all the Jews because of it if some Jews in Rome were preaching Christ was resurrected and riots resulted from it and the tomb was not empty there would be no need for

An imperial decree because they could just produce the body but because the only alternative explanation was the body was missing because it was stolen Rome’s only option would be to issue a decree to try to combat the accounts of a missing body if there was a body then

Rome could have just dispelled the riots with the body and not have to indirectly admit the body when missing so it appears to be that from all sides the body was missing away there’s no evidence the empty tomb was just a fabrication and this is why most scholars today accept that tomb was

Found empty all the evidence simply favours it so if the body was stolen who did it would Rome of course not because they would not have cared how about the Jewish leaders why would they they wanted Jesus crucified shamed buried and forgotten the last thing they wanted was

Suspicion of him coming back to life of course the Sanhedrin claimed it was the disciples but that is unlikely their rabbi had just been crucified and a movement was dispersed in shamed they were in fear the Jewish authorities would come after them as well there is

No reason to think they would have been in the position to steal a body and create a mass hoax second if they had stolen the body there is little reason to think they would have reported the theory that Jewish leaders were spreading if it was true the last thing

They would have wanted would help spread the rumor they had stolen the body and if they had stolen the body they would not have reported to their shame and dishonor that they had not believed the reports of the women when they found the empty tomb nor would they have

Embarrassingly reported that they had not understood that Jesus had predicted his rise these were very embarrassing and shameful things to report later Christians would not have made this up and attack the honor and authority of their leaders nor would have the disciples unless they wanted to shame

Themselves and most of all where would they have taken the body a common overlooked fact is that this was Passover and the city was flooded with pilgrims they would have been seen and they would have been caught it would have been very hard to pull off especially getting the body out of the

Sanhedrin section of town so for the conspiracy theory to work you need to deposit the disciples were in fear for their lives yet somehow decided to steal the body and faked a resurrection even though none of them were expecting that then they managed to get the body out of

The Sanhedrin section of town where the tombs were and hide it in an overcrowded City the entire theory becomes overwhelmingly unlikely the hallucination theory doesn’t work either did the entire population of Jerusalem hallucinate so the theory it was not really discovered empty fails as well what about the mythic theory so I’ve

Tried to claim the empty tomb was made up later because it is not specifically mentioned in the Creed Paul gives us in first Corinthians well this just ignores the amount of evidence we already gave and that the empty tomb and physical resurrection are both mentioned in the early passion

Narrative found in mark but most of all it overlooks what the Korean first Corinthians says it says that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures he was buried and raised it is pretty obvious that what was buried

Is what was raised and therefore the tomb would have been empty as NT Wright says the fact that the empty tomb itself so prominent the Gospel accounts does not appear to be specifically mentioned in this passage is not significant the mention here of buried and raised no

More need to be amplified in that way then one would need to amplify the statement I walk down the street with the qualification on my feet so the mythic theory fails here as well but there is one theory they can’t account for all the data it is the theory that

Jesus was raised and vindicated by God no other Theory out there can account for all the data the mythic theory fails because we only argued from facts that we know are early and could not have been made up the conspiracy theory could not account for the quality of the

Testimonies of the disciples the empty tomb herwise skeptics would join a small persecuted minority the hallucination theory could only work if you posit some pretty miraculous hallucinations to cause the disciples to change their idea skeptics to convert and posit crazy ideas no one was expecting or looking

For it has to posit such a wild hallucination it would take a miracle itself only the theory that was reported can account for all the data because of that it has explanatory scope because they can explain all the data with the least amount of effort it has explanatory power it provides

Illumination as well which means it can explain other areas of history like the rise of Christianity and the belief in physical resurrection in fact this means three pieces of the criteria are filled that historians use when judging an historical hypothesis behan mccullough who has outlined the criterion for weighing historical theories accepts the

Resurrection hypothesis meets these three things better than any other hypothesis but claims it fails the other two pieces of criteria this Christian hypothesis is of greater explanatory scope and power than other hypotheses which try to account for the relevant evidence but it is less plausible and more ad hoc than

They are so McCullough accepts the resurrection meets three out of five of the criteria for historical investigation but fails the other two however there have been replies to challenge this dr. Travis Campbell has why is the resurrection theory ad-hoc to be ad hoc according to McCullough means a number

Of new suppositions are made by hypothesis that are not already implied in existing knowledge so the hypothesis adds extra assumptions in order to explain the data that is not already present but dr. Campbell points out the resurrection theory only adds one extra assumption not multiple it is difficult

To see why the resurrection hypothesis is extraordinarily ad hoc it requires only one new supposition that God exists surely rival hypotheses require many new suppositions the hallucination theory requires we say group hallucinations plus multi-sensory experiences happened on multiple occasions and that they were so powerful that the disciples took it

To their death preaching something that only brought in poverty and turmoil as well as a crazy Mass City hallucination that there was an empty tomb the conspiracy theory wants us to believe a bunch of frightened followers of Jesus stole a body in secret in an overcrowded

City to makeup up the story they were not expecting or was not in line with Jewish messianic expectations in order to get themselves murdered and that some of the skeptics decided to join their poor persecuted movement for no reason at all the mythic theory expects us to believe an extra assumption for each

Fact that it was actually made up later in spite of hard evidence these facts were very early and unlikely made up the resurrection theory only wants us to add the assumption that God exists which is not @ha if we combine the resurrection argument with other arguments we’ve already presented which infer theism

Since we’ve already argued for theism the resurrection hypothesis would hardly be ad hoc as dr. Campbell says moreover for the person who is already a theist the resurrection hypothesis does not even introduced a new supposition of God’s existence since that is already implied by existing knowledge so the resurrection hypothesis cannot be said

To be ad ha simply by a virtue of the number of suppositions it introduces what about plausibility a historical theory is plausible if other areas are known with confidence and suggests the same theory yours is suggesting so if other things suggests the same conclusion is your theory that would make your theory

Plausible and in line with other beliefs but as we’ve already suggested why would the resurrection theory not be plausible if we have other arguments to infer theism as William Lane Craig says only if the naturalist has good reasons to think that God’s existence is implausible or is intervention in the

World implausible could he justifiably regard the resurrection hypothesis as implausible so if one insists on assuming naturalism is true and leaves no reason for theism as a possibility then they can say the resurrection theory is implausible but that is arguing from a presupposition and not being open to evidence regardless of how

One feels about it and we can say that in conjunction with other arguments the resurrection hypothesis is not ad hoc nor is it implausible has already been shown God exists thus we can see why Anthony flue was bold enough to say the resurrection has more evidence than any

Other miracle claim the resurrection is the only theory that can explain all the data and it can do it while not being at hawk or implausible the evidence infers that God has acted in the world to raise Jesus from the dead as Paulo Frederickson admitted they must have

Seen something in all the evidence favors that what they saw was the risen Savior

#Resurrection #Jesus #Historical #Evidence

Two Natures of Christ – Fulton Sheen Timeless Wisdom

Christ has two natures one human one divine they are both united in the person of God after we can make this clear if you will take a pencil in your hand now that pencil has a nature as is not in other words is the nature of the

Thing that right do you notice that there are before you two nature’s one the nature of the pencil the other the nature of your hand how are they unite in your one person so it is possible to have the union of two natures in one person returning now to our pencil the

Pencil oven by yourself cannot write you put it down on a chair or table before you that pencil cannot write Kenny a pensioners like man you cannot bear the daddy-o now put your hand in the air bring it down that pencil here you have a union

The nature of the hand which is united with your person and the nature of a pencil now the pencil can do something which by itself it could not do so the hand your personality coming down to that pencil represents the person of God and the divine nature coming down to

Human nature and when God comes down and takes upon himself a human nature United with his divine nature and divine person and now just as that pencil could do something which happened by itself it could not do so Yuma nature United with the person of God can now begin to do

Something which of and by itself it could not do before once God took upon himself our you you can act in our day every one of the actions of that human nature would have an infinitely notice I a word a tear a step that human nature was inseparable from the person that is

Why one breath of God made man would have been enough to obedient why then God suffer so much he took upon himself argument nature love knows no limits then the only way to prove perfect love is by the surrender of all open one hands and so God took upon

Himself our union nature and he said he loved the Sun to the end and if you were the only person in the world who ever did you would have come down the desert that just for you alone that is how much you have You

#Natures #Christ #Fulton #Sheen #Timeless #Wisdom

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The Problem of Evil (Aquinas 101)

What is evil, and why does God permit it in his creation? St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that in a general sense, evil is an absence or lack of what should be there. Technically speaking, we call this a privation, so evil is not a being or in nature. It’s the absence of something.

Suppose I say I’m going to draw a circle, and then I don’t finish it. You might say, “Hey, that’s a bad circle. Part of it’s missing.” You’re pointing out a privation. Notice though that I haven’t directly caused something that is bad in itself. The circle is good as far as it goes.

It just doesn’t go all the way. But wouldn’t it have been better if I had caused the whole circle to exist? Well, in general, yes, but perhaps there was a good reason why I didn’t. Maybe I was trying to illustrate what a privation is.

In that case, this defective circle would be an essential part of some larger project, some higher good–like bringing you to understand the problem of evil. This is how Aquinas approaches the problem of evil. God has created a changeable world of material things, and in order for such a world to exist,

It’s necessary that things grow, die, and decay. Aquinas calls these things natural evils. Gazelles eat grass, and lions eat gazelles. He sets this idea of natural evil in a larger context. It’s a necessary feature of the good of the whole ecosystem of the whole universe.

Now when Aquinas talks about the evil that human beings experience, he no longer speaks of natural evil. Rather, there are two unique types of evil that pertain to rational and free creatures. The evil of poena in Latin that’s translated typically as the evil of pain or penalty or

Punishment, and the evil of culpa in Latin translated as the evil of fault or of guilt. So, an example: Suppose Billy the Kid wakes up late for work. He doesn’t have a horse, so he steals his neighbor’s.

This is bad, of course, for his neighbor, but even more for Billy who has willfully refused to do what right reason tells him and has committed a serious injustice, an act unworthy of a human person.

This is what Aquinas calls the evil of fault or of guilt, and it is a kind of moral suicide. Arrested by the sheriff, Billy is sentenced to prison. This too is an evil for him because he’s now deprived of his freedom of movement.

But this second evil–being in prison–is not the same kind as the first. It’s an evil Billy suffers in response to an evil that he committed, and it’s called a penalty or punishment. How should we compare these two evils?

Well, the evil of fault is worse. By sinning Billy has freely chosen to make himself a bad man. By contrast, Billy’s punishment, while an evil for him in one sense is good and just, and it can even help Billy become good.

Especially if he accepts it and offers it in reparation for his fault. God never wills the evil of sin or of fault. Sin is our fault, not God’s. We choose some partial good contrary to the order of right reason, not caring about the

Damage that will result, and God permits us to do this, but he in no way is its cause. But God does will the punishment that follows from this moral evil both in order to restore the right ordering of justice and also to correct the wrongdoer,

Much like a judge and other honest citizens rightly desire a thief to be arrested and given a just punishment. Just like Billy can offer up his punishment in reparation for the evil he did, so we too can offer up all the evils we suffer in reparation for the sins we and others have

Committed. Let’s pose a harder question. Why does God permit the suffering of the innocent? We’re entering deep waters here, and we can only sketch a very brief answer. Human suffering, bodily death, undergoing persecution and injustice– these are very real and terrible evils, and they were not part of God’s original plan for us.

He created our first parents in grace with the special privilege of being free from illness, suffering, and death. Those evils only entered the world because of the sin of our first parents and we inherit the terrible consequences of this original sin: suffering, death, and even an inclination to sin.

It’s a lot like a baby born to a mother who’s a heroin addict. That baby inherits the terrible consequences of the mother’s addiction. In those who suffer them, they are the evils of pain or penalty. They can be the occasion for great moral nobility and goodness, like when a person offers his

Life to God in the midst of illness or when someone perseveres in the truth and even forgives an unjust persecutor. The hardest question is why does sin exist? Because every sin involves a privation, a lack of what should be there, we’re dealing with non-being and non-being is strictly speaking unintelligible.

So we can explain how a sin is possible. The creature focuses its attention and directs its will to some limited good disregarding the defect or disorder that that choice will cause, but we cannot explain why the creature does this. Because evil is incoherent in itself. It’s always stupid and self-defeating.

Why then does God permit it? Some have answered this question by using the so-called free will defense, saying that if there’s freedom, it’s impossible for God to prevent evil. This is not Aquinas’s answer, and he thinks it has serious philosophical problems. As we explained in the video on predestination and freedom,

God as our creator is the origin of our freedom and implants in us our desires for good, and so he can act within our will, moving it to good. So in any particular case, God could move us to freely choose the right thing. Why then doesn’t he always do so?

Here we’ve reached a mystery too deep for our minds, why God has created this world and not another. Aquinas doesn’t think we can say much more than this, but he does offer two quasi explanations that help us glimpse the deep wisdom of God’s providence.

First, we can be sure that God only permits evil for the sake of some much better and higher good, including not only our individual good, but the good of the whole creation. This is very mysterious, because we can’t see this whole, and we can’t conceive how permitting sin might lead to good.

But we know it’s true. God is infinitely powerful and infinitely good. Able to bring an even greater good out of every evil. We also know that we are very limited, especially in our understanding of the whole.

We’re kind of like a baby with a soiled diaper who screams because his father makes him take a bath. He doesn’t understand the good that his father is accomplishing for him through what seems to the baby like pointless suffering, but in reality, it’s for the baby’s good.

Finally, Aquinas says that God allows the defect of sin so that he can manifest his goodness in an even greater way as our savior. This is a beautiful and high truth, and it reaches its pinnacle in the cross.

There God himself takes upon his human shoulders the whole weight of our sins and bears them through terrible suffering, even unto death. He does this precisely so that his redeeming mercy and love for us sinners would shine out more clearly. So that we might be brought from sin unto forgiveness and eternal life.

For readings, podcasts, and more videos like this, go to Aquinas101.com. While you’re there, be sure to sign up for one of our free video courses on Aquinas. And don’t forget to like and share with your friends, because it matters what you think!

#Problem #Evil #Aquinas

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R.C. Sproul: The Resurrection of Christ

That will be glory when we see him in the power of the resurrection. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, as we consider now the mighty work that you performed by the power of the Spirit to raise Him from the tomb.

That certain sign that you have given by which the whole world is judged. We pray that we may see the full import of that moment in history when you raised Him from the grave. For we ask it in Jesus’ name – Amen.

Just a couple of days ago I was reading an article in the newspaper about the recently discovered bones of Jesus, which I refer to as the journalistic phase and sensational phase of theology. To get the press’ attention in religion the more bizarre the proposition is, the more attention they give it.

I was somewhat surprised at the beginning of the article than the writer indicated that this recent assertion had be responded to by scholarly archeologists with a certain amount of scorn, revealing it for the absurdity that it was.

So I was beginning to warm up to this journalist, thinking “wow, finally we find one that fights for the angels.” Then he went on to give the results of the most recent poll in which he said 78 % of Americans (and that is how we determine truth you know – by counting noses.)

Believe in the resurrection of Jesus. The author inserted a little extra phrase there. He said “78% of Americans believe in the myth of the resurrection of Jesus.” He just couldn’t hold it back. He had to get it in there. The myth of resurrection.

One of the oldest questions if not the oldest question of theology was the one asked by Job “if a man dies shall he live again?” And before we get to the New Testament answer to that question as set forth by the greatest

Apologist of the Christian church, the apostle Paul, I want to spend a little bit of time in background to refer your attention to two watershed events that radically changed the world in the decade of the 70’s. But I am not thinking of the 1970’s. I am not even thinking of the 1870’s.

But I am thinking of the 1770’s where most Americans believe the most important watershed event took place in that decade when some disgruntled colonists on this side of the ocean rose in protest against certain illegal procedures by parliament by declaring their independence, and inaugurating this country’s birth as an independent nation.

But I believe that something else happened in that same decade in Europe that had even far greater ramifications then the American Declaration of Independence. It was the work of a single man in Prussia who was a professor whose chief at the University of Cornisburg was the field of Astrophysics.

And he had contributed significantly by way of essays in the 18th century to the discipline of astro-physics. But his real claim to fame that catapulted him into international significance, this name who never traveled more than a hundred miles from his birth place and who was know

To take a walk every afternoon at exactly the same time, and was so punctual, indeed punctilious, was he that the villagers would check their timepieces by the afternoon stroll of this gentleman whose name ironically was Emmanuel, which hardly meant God with us, but came to mean “God unknown to us.”

This man was Emmanuel Kant who in the decade of the 70’s of the 18th century wrote the most definitive and comprehensive critique of the classical arguments for the existence of God in his book that was titled The Critique of Pure Reason, in which Emanuel Kant set

The bar for the centuries to follow for religious agnosticism. As a scientist he argued that we can not move from the visible world to the invisible world as the apostle Paul declares that not only can, but do in the first chapter of Romans.

He said we can’t move from the physical to the metaphysical, from the phenomenal world, as he called it, to the pneumenal world, which was the residence of God, the self, and the thing in itself. And so this critique of the classical arguments for the existence of God, given by Kant in

An effort not to save theology but to save science from the skepticism of David Hume, was as I say a watershed moment in western history because thereafter there was a seemingly un-breechable rift between science and theology.

But though Kant is known for ushering God out of the front door of the house, he ran around to the kitchen and opened the back door and tried to let God in through that entrance by the route not of metaphysical pursuit, but by reason of practical thinking.

Kant was very much concerned about morality and ethics. By the way when he considered his skeptical stance on the knowing of God, the one argument that he felt was most impressive was the argument to design. It was that which he could not explain.

But he was concerned with the study of man, that it would seem that in the heart of every human being there was this universally present sense of duty, or sense of “oughtness.” For which, he is famous for identifying as the categorical imperative.

It was Kant’s Germanic version of the golden rule if you will. But then he asks this question from a practical view point. Thinking transcendentally, what would the necessary conditions be to make this sense of oughtness, this sense of duty which provokes the pangs of conscience in human beings; what

Would be transcendentally necessary for this sense of duty to be meaningful? That is, he asked the question: What would have to be for ethics to be meaningful? And his concern, as I say, was practical. Because what he was concerned about was the survival of civilization.

And he understood that without some sense of ethics civilization can not survive for very long, as some of the other speakers have already addressed. And so, as he pondered that question: What would be necessary for ethics to be meaningful? He said the first thing is that there would have to be justice.

Because if there is no justice, then in the final analysis the person who acts according to this sense of ethic, this sense of duty would be involved in a fool’s errand in an exercise of meaninglessness. So, for ethics to be meaningful there must be justice.

And so then he looked around and he says that in the phenomenal world in which I live I notice that justice does not always prevail. And people were asking then as the Old Testament sages were asking “Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer?”

And Kant said for justice to be true we must survive the grave. And not only must we survive the grave, in order for justice to prevail, but there must be beyond the grave to ensure justice a judge who would meet out and dispense pure justice.

And he went on to say: Well, what would the necessary conditions be for such a judge to ensure the distribution of justice? And he said, well first of all that judge would have to perfectly righteous and above reproach.

Because if the judge on the other side were an unjust judge then we would have no guarantee of the victory of justice and therefore no foundation for a meaningful ethic. Then he went on to say that judge would not only have to be righteous but we would also have to be omniscient.

Because for a judge to execute perfect justice, he would not only have to be just himself, but he would have to be free from being misinformed. A just judge could be responsible for a miscarriage of justice if he erred in his understanding of the case.

Then he went on the say that even if you say that you had a perfectly righteous omniscient judge, those two conditions would not guarantee the triumph of justice, because it would be possible that that perfect, just, and omniscient judge could give the correct sentence, but be powerless to carry it out.

So that judge in the next world would also have to have all power and authority within himself to guarantee justice. You see where Kant is going? He’s saying though on the basis of theoretical thought we can’t affirm the existence of God,

Metaphysically, never the less on the basis of practical considerations for a meaningful ethic we must assume the existence of God. Otherwise life is meaningless. And so we must live as if there were a God. Now that as it were, was the dyke that held back the full torrents of skepticism for a

Few years at the end of the enlightenment. But there were cracks in that dyke that soon gave way. And a metaphysical and ethical Katrina happened in western theoretical thought. Now, that is by way of introduction. Now, I’d like to show some parallel thinking that goes on between Kant and the apostle

Paul by looking at the fifteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Hear the word of God, in chapter fifteen, verse twelve. And I don’t know which is going to come to an end first, my message or my voice. So far the voice is losing. But we read in the text.

“Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?” That’s the question. If Christ has proclaimed that God has raised Him from the dead, how is it that some of

You (and he is writing to people in the church who were trying to have a Christianity without resurrection.) say that there is no resurrection from the dead. Now, what follows is a particular kind of argument. It is a particular form of debate common to ancient philosophers and one that was used

Regularly by the apostle Paul as an apologist. It is called the “ad hominum” form of argumentation. Now, be careful. Some of you studied logic in college or in high school perhaps. And you learned to identify certain fallacies of reasoning, both formal and informal.

And one of the most frequent informal fallacies is the fallacy of reasoning called “ad hominum abusive.” That is where if you can’t attack the cogency of a man’s argument, you attack the man. You say how can you believe what this speaker says when he is an adulterer.

Well, even adulterers who do not live the truth can from time to time argue cogently. And so the man’s character does not vitiate the man’s argument. But we do that all the time, particularly in the criminalization of politics as we witness everyday in Washington D.C.

So there is a fallacious form of argument that is called “ad hominum abusive.” And frequently to save breath and time, there is a kind of short hand that refers to that fallacy by simply calling it the “ad hominum” fallacy without qualifying it by the term “abusive.”

Now, I mention all this for this reason. There is another form of “ad hominum” reasoning that is a sound form and that is a form that has been in use by philosophers from time immemorial. And that is simply arguing to the man.

And that means that I step into the shoes of my opponent. We stipulate at the beginning agreement on certain premises, and now I take my opponent’s premise and I say “I grant you, your premise. But let’s see where this premise goes out of logical necessity.”

And so I take my opponents argument to its logical conclusion showing that if his premise is sound and true his conclusion will be absurd. Again going back to Zeno the ancient philosopher; this form of argument was called “reduxio ad absurdum” – arguing from the opponents premise, taking it to its logical conclusion

And showing by a resistless logic that the conclusion would be absurd. That is exactly what the apostle Paul is doing here with these folks in Corinth who are denying the resurrection. And they say there is no resurrection of the dead. That is a universal negative. That means it admits to no exceptions.

It is universal in the sense that it encompasses everybody because no on escapes it. It is called a universal negative because it is articulated in the negative form. If, let’s go now, there is no resurrection of the dead. That is premise A – no resurrection of the dead.

If that is true, then what else would be true? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised, obviously. We get that from the laws of necessary inference. If there is a universal negative, there can not be one positive.

So if there is no resurrection, than that means Christ can not have been raised. So, let’s see where that leads us. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. So let’s face facts the apostle is saying.

Let’s not live like Alice in Wonderland in some kind of religious dream world. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is an exercise in futility. I’m wasting my breath. I’m wasting my time. We’re all here wasting our time at a conference like this, if Christ has not been raised.

And not only is my preaching an exercise in meaninglessness, my faith is useless and worthless as is yours. Your faith is in vain, because you’ve invested your trust and your hope and your faith in a man whose man have just been dug up along with Mary Magdalene’s so recently.

Not only that but we are found, he says, to be misrepresenting God. Because we’ve said and testified that it is God who has raised Him from the dead. And if He has not been raised from the dead, then we ought to change the name of our church

To Jehovah’s False Witnesses because we have been attributing the power of this resurrection of Jesus to God. And that attribution is a false one. ”We have testified about God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.”

He has to keep rubbing our noses in the consequences there. “For if the dead are not raised,” if you missed it the first time and the second time, not even Christ has been raised. “And if Christ has not been raised your faith is futile. And you are still in your sins.”

You are still in it. You are contained in sin. You are still enmeshed in sin. You are still in jail to sin without bail; because our justification does not end with the cross, but Jesus was raised for our justification. The resurrection is God’s apologia, certifying to the world that He accepted atonement that

Jesus made on the cross. But if He is not raised from the dead you’re still in your sins. You see, you look at the world religions today, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism; the thing that they don’t have is an atonement and because they don’t have an atonement.

You can’t expect them to have a resurrection either. It wouldn’t cause any crisis of faith for any Muslim to dig up the bones of Muhammad. Muhammad is dead. Buddha is dead. Confucius is dead. But Christianity stands or falls with a resurrected Jesus. And that is what Paul is saying here.

If he is not raised, your faith is nonsense and you are still in your sins. Not only that, those also who have fallen asleep in Christ, (let’s face it) our beloved ones, our husbands, our wives, our children, our parents, our friends who have died in the faith have perished.

That’s the grim reality if there is no resurrection from the dead. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ we of all people, are the most to be pitied. I say to the enemies of the Christian faith; if you don’t like what we preach; if you don’t

Like what we teach, don’t be mad at us. Pity us. Because if we are preaching a false doctrine of resurrection, if we are conjuring up a hope with no real foundation for it, then we forfeit much of the fun, supposedly, of this world, where you only go around once.

And you might as well go around and get all the gusto you can because you are on a fast pace to oblivion, to perishing without hope. It is a pitiable condition to be in. That is why the Bible says without Christ you are without hope.

So, I am just going to stop for a second and consider what Paul has just done here. Paul has drawn for us a ghastly picture of the consequences of no resurrection, no life after death. He is saying that if there is no resurrection then life itself under the sun is meaningless.

As Kant understood, your ethic, your sense of duty, your conscience is meaningless and without ethics of our society, civilization can not last. You are doomed ultimately to barbarianism, which our nation right now is rushing toward with such a velocity one wonders if anything other than the direct intervention of God

Will ever restrain it and stop it. Dostoevsky understood what Kant was arguing for in his practical reasoning that if there is no God, all things are permitted. The post-modernist understands that if there is not God and since there is no God and since

There is no resurrection from the dead, then what is left are personal preferences. Which can only be maintained if enough of you can exercise power for your complete liberty, you will make is right by your might. For you know of know other recourse.

What Kant was saying was this, since the alternative to life after death is so grim, since the alternative to life after death would make ethics impossible except for the fool. And since life without ethics is meaningless, we must live as if there is a God.

Talk about a justification for using religion as a bromide or as a crutch against facing meaninglessness. Here it is with a vengeance. Didn’t I say this put up a dyke that only lasted a little bit of time in western civilization?

A guy like Nietzsche comes along, and says: hey, let’s quit playing Alice in Wonderland. I’m not going to affirm the existence of God or the existence of life after death simply because the alternatives are grim and unbearable. Why don’t we just face it? There is not God. There is no afterlife.

There is no meaning. We are left with the nothingness, the nihil, the abyss of absurdity. This motion was seconded by Jean Paul Sartre, particularly in his little monograph, which title gave to the world his final evaluation of human existence: Nausea. That’s the end of human existence: Nausea.

Albert Camus said the only serious question left for philosophers left to examine is the question of suicide, because we are overwhelmed with the pressing and oppressing reality of the absence of God and the absence of hope. So you see Kant’s arguments didn’t stand up for the next generation.

They said “Kant gird up your loins like a man, face the inevitable. Quit trying to argue for the practical necessity of believing in God. And some can look at what Paul is doing here as the same thing.

Where he is saying if there is no resurrection your faith is in vain, your false witnesses, you preaching is an exercise in futility. But Paul does not argue for the resurrection on the basis of the hopelessness of life without it.

Yes, in the section I just read he agrees with Kant that without it life is hopeless, but that is not the foundation for his assertion that Christ is risen. He goes on to talk about the analogy that exists in nature with animals and plants and grass and human beings.

That you put a seed in the ground and before the life can come out of the ground there is a sense in which, at least metaphorically, that seed must die. It must rot to such a point that it releases and germinates the essence of life within it.

And in like manner, when our bones go into the ground, they await their final metamorphosis where God takes that which was mortal, sewn in mortality, is raised in immortality, sewn in corruption, raised in incorruption. And this analogy that the apostle uses in this same chapter closely resembles the argument

That Plato had used centuries before in arguing for life after death based upon analogies drawn from nature. When you think of the almost infinite varieties of life forms on this planet, it is hard to imagine that our life form, as high as it is, is the zenith of all life in the universe.

It could be, but what are the odds. But again Paul does not rest his case on analogies drawn from the butterfly or the seed. But why does assert the reality of the resurrection? At the beginning of the chapter, he reminds his readers of something.

He says “I would remind you brothers of the gospel. I want to remind you of the gospel that I preached to you which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved.

If you hold fast to the word I preach to you unless you believed in vain, for I delivered to you as a first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” Now that was a compelling this to the Jew of the first century.

And it ought to be compelling to us. I said yesterday, or the day before that the two major tasks of apologetics is the defense of the existence of God, and secondly the defense of the scriptures as the word of God. And Paul now appeals to the scriptures.

“Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures.” So, Paul’s first line of apologetics is an appeal to sacred scripture. He is saying I believe in the first instance, in the resurrection of Christ because the

Word of God proclaims it. That is why I said it is so vital that we address this question of the veracity and authenticity and trustworthiness of the scriptures, because if you have that, the rest is easy. “That He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.”

And then listen to this, “and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all as to one untimely

Born, He appeared also to me.” When Peter wrote to the church he says “My brethren we declare to you not cleverly conceived myths and fables. What we declare to you is what we have seen with our eyes, and heard with our ears.”

We are not declaring to you, an unsubstantiated theory or even a religious proposition that we learned in Sunday School. We are declaring something of which we had an empirical experience. We saw it. We heard it. We beheld His glory on the plain of history. And this is what Paul is recounting here.

He is saying that He appeared to Cephas – that is to Peter, then to the twelve. He appeared. Again it is not like the disciples in the story of the resurrection, and the disciples ran to the tomb on Sunday morning and the stone was rolled away and they ran inside

The tomb and they found the grave cloths still in such beautiful arrangement. But there was no Jesus. There was no body – nobody. NO BODY there. There was nobody home. And then they came back and they scratched their heads. And they said “what happened to the body? We found an empty tomb.

What could that possibly mean?” And they figured it out. “Oh it must mean that He is risen so let’s go tell everybody that He is risen and let’s start celebrating Easter Sunday based on an inference drawn from an empty tomb.” No.

It is not the empty tomb that created the faith of the early church. It was the appearance of the risen Christ. He appeared to Peter, then to the twelve. Well, these two could have cooked this up among themselves. But Paul says “wait a minute.

He appeared to more than five hundred at one time, most of whom are still alive. Go and ask them.” That’s their story and they are sticking to it. Eye witnesses, five hundred of them. We have more witnesses from history to the resurrection of Christ than we had to the life of Plato.

Then He appeared to James and to all the apostles, but what I am writing to you my dear friends in Corinth is not something that I believe on the basis of hearsay. It is good hearsay. These are good witnesses who told me this. I trust James. I trust Peter.

I trust the twelve, and you understand my credentials that I was the number one enemy of this new Christian sect that was running around proclaiming that Christ was raised from the dead. I was dragging them from prison, breathing out fire.

But last as all, “as one born out of due time, He appeared unto me.” See, the text that I just read to you was written by an eye witness to the resurrection. You are going to have to decide whether this is a credible witness or not.

Now, the one reason why the newspaper reporter says that this is a myth is not because he thinks that Paul was an idiot and fell out of the stupid tree and hit head on every branch along the way, or that he was just an uneducated fanatic from the first century.

They understand that Paul was the most educated man in Palestine when he wrote this apologia for the resurrection of Christ. His scholarly credentials were impeccable. The reason why the newspaper reporter would say it is a myth is because judging from our

Twenty first century understanding of biology, if there is anything we know now that primitive pre-scientific people in the first century didn’t know is that when people die they stay dead. And that it is impossible for the dead to rise.

Given that it is impossible for the dead to rise, then obviously the New Testament story of the resurrection of Jesus has to be a myth. What else could it possibly be? And calling it a myth is being kind, it could be an outright lie; if it’s impossible for the dead to rise.

What a different view of reality and of life we find in the New Testament, where there the impossibility according to the New Testament writers was for Him not to rise. The impossibility the premise in the New Testament is that it was impossible for death to hold Him.

And it is true that if there is any universal finding of experimental empiricism it is that when people die, they stay dead. But if there is anything more universally in our experience it is that when those people who died and stay dead, are people who are sinful people.

Now what happens if you get a people who is not sinful? Now what happens to the premise? Biblically, morality, “thanatos” death itself is inseparably tied to sin. It is the soul who sins that dies. So that if the New Testament testimony is true, that there was in Christ no sin, why

Would anyone expect Him to die. I can’t even believe – the real thing that is hard to believe is that He would die at all on the cross. And He couldn’t even die on the cross if it weren’t first that He took upon Himself the imputation of our sin.

Having taken our sin, then He met the necessary condition for human mortality. Apart from that the second Adam would never have died. But having paid that price, and finished that work, the Father raised Him from the tomb for our justification.

I can’t remember which speaker said what in this conference there were so many wonderful things said. But, this was God’s proof of the person of Jesus. Paul debated with the philosophers in Athens at the Areopagus, and I mentioned that when

He debated with the stoics and the epicureans he called attention to their monument to an unknown god. The philosophers were hedging their bets just in case they missed one. Paul said “What you worship in ignorance I proclaim to you in power.

For the God who made the world and everything in it being Lord of heaven and earth does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands as if He needed anything since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”

If you stumble at the resurrection, the recovery of life from the death let me take you back earlier. How about the beginning of Jesus’ life? How about the beginning of your life? How about the beginning of anybody’s life? How about life itself? Why is there life at all in this universe?

When we understand as Ravi so eloquently pointed out the necessary conditions for life can not be found in us. You did not create your own life. There was a time when you were not. There was a time when all of us were not.

But the only one who has the power of life in and of Himself eternally, the power of being in and of Himself eternally, the power of motion in and of Himself eternally, is the eternal self-existent living God who is the author of life, and the author of death.

He has the keys of life and death in His hands. And if the one who creates life in the first place in His Son can call a rotting corpse like Lazarus out of the tomb, so the same author of life can call His Son who touching

His humanity is now dead and bring Him back to life. What is so hard about that to believe? It is the opposite that is impossible. If there is such a thing as life in this universe, how can you attribute to the source of life

The fountain of life, the essence of life, the impossibility of bringing Jesus back to life and bringing you back to life? Paul goes on to say in Athens. “We ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

The times of ignorance God overlooked, the former days.” Let me just stop here and insert something. A few minutes ago I said that the assumption of the newspaper writer is that the story of the resurrection must be a myth because resurrection is impossible.

And we know that by our sophisticated postmodern understanding of biology. And those poor people in the first century, pre-scientific, unsophisticated, people living in Palestine had no problem with the resurrection of Jesus because they saw resurrections all the time.

Every week they could go out to the cemetery and see somebody or other getting up out of a tomb. Let me tell you what folks. It was as foreign to the experience of first century man that a dead man would come out of the tomb, as it is today.

That’s why Thomas said “I’m not going to believe it just because you guys think you saw something. I’m not going to believe it unless I see the wounds, and unless I can put my finger in His hands.” And when that man showed up before Thomas and said “Here Thomas, put your fingers

In my hand. Touch me.” You know the Bible doesn’t say whether Thomas ever did. I don’t think he did. He didn’t have time to. He was on his knees. And he was saying “my Lord and my God.” No apologist was ever more sophisticated than the one who wrote “Sometimes it causes me

To tremble, were you there? Were you there when He rose up from the grave?” Sometimes it makes me shout “Glory, Glory.” You better believe glory. That’s why we’re here today folks. I hate to tell Al that it is Saturday and not Friday.

Would you believe an apologist that doesn’t even know what day it is? Somebody said it was impossible for us to make mistakes. But, here is the final point that I want you to get, the former times of ignorance God has overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent.

Because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed and of this He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead. There is no other sign that will be given to you except the sign of Jonah.

And if you don’t believe that sign you are in trouble because God has already set the day to judge the world. And His patience is not infinite. God as an evangelist never ever issues an invitation. That is something we do. God never invites people to receive Jesus. He commands them.

He commands all men everywhere to repent and to come to Jesus because He has proven that Jesus is the one through whom He will judge the world. How has God proven that? By raising Him from the dead. Well you say “I wasn’t there, so I can’t holler glory.

Other people God, but unless I see I’m not going to believe it. You’re going to have to send Jesus back again into my neighborhood, put Him to death again, and then raise Him for me to see. ” Too late. Too bad, He does it once for all.

And if that is not enough for you, you are in trouble. God is going to judge you by that historical act of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We believe in the resurrection, not because the alternative is grim. We believe the resurrection because of the Biblical testimony of it’s reality in time and space.

Paul ends this section by saying “Therefore” Here is the conclusion. “Be steadfast. Be steadfast. Immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord for now you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” Your preaching is not in vain. Your faith is not in vain.

Your labor is not in vain because God has raised Him from the dead. And George Frederick Handel knew the only appropriate response to that was to say what? Hallelujah. Let’s pray. Father how we thank you for the testimony of scripture to the reality of resurrection

That transcends all levels of mythology and in which we find our hope and our justification. Amen

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Since Jesus was born of “the substance” of the Virgin Mary, how was He without original sin?

SPROUL: Now, when we talk about Jesus receiving what you call “the substance” from His mother, the Virgin Mary, of course we’re talking about His human nature. And because we’re talking about His deriving His human nature from His mother, you would

Think that that human nature would pass along, as it is the case with every other human being, all of the ramifications of original sin. Now, that raises all kinds of theological questions that touch upon it. One of the oldest theological questions is the question of how the soul, for example,

Is transmitted from parents to their children. And the two schools of thought of that are called “creationism” and “traducianism.” Traducianism says that the whole person, body and soul, is transmitted from the parents to their progeny through the natural process of birth.

Others argue, which is called “creationism,” that every time a human being is born, that person is a brand new creation by the immediate and direct power of God’s creativity. And so it’s not a matter of transmitting human nature by natural processes.

Now the reason I say that this question you’ve raised touches on the dispute over creationism and traducianism is that if you’re a creationist, you have no problem with having a human nature coming from the mother of Jesus, yet at the same time being born without original sin

If it’s a direct and immediate act of divine creation. If you’re a traducianist, on the other hand, where you see the body and soul being transmitted through the natural process, then the question that you raise becomes a more difficult problem. However, others have argued, and particularly historically in the Roman Catholic Church

That the reason for the virgin birth and to bypass the male was not because they believe that original sin was transmitted by the male rather than the female, but rather that the miraculous dimension of Jesus’ birth being a virgin birth was partly designed by God

To interrupt the normal transmission of human nature from parents to their children in order to make it possible for a human being post-Adam to be born without original sin. Now in the mystery of the incarnation, we don’t know exactly what process God used to make that so in the birth of Jesus.

We do know, as the Scriptures teach us, that He was made like us in every respect except one, namely without sin and without original sin. Some have argued against that saying if Jesus didn’t have original sin, He wasn’t truly human.

But of course, the problem with that is this, that Adam before the fall was truly human, and we in our glorified state in heaven without sin then will still be human. So that original sin is not an inherent necessity for humanness.

So we know theologically that God could have this child born through the virgin birth from His mother and bypassing the normal process of original sin. WEBB: R.C., I’m just curious, did some of the earliest church councils wrestle with that question? SPROUL: Well yes, they did.

And of course, early on there was a debate and a dispute over from whence Jesus’ divine nature came? And Mary was called “theotokos”, the mother of God, but not in the sense that Jesus derived His divine nature from His mother, but only to point out that the One that she bore and

That she nurtured as His mother was God incarnate.

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Jesus Christ: True God and True Man (Aquinas 101)

The Christian faith professes that Jesus Christ is true God and true man. That is, that the eternal Son of God, the Word of the Father, entered into time and assumed a complete human nature to himself, thus truly becoming man for us and for our salvation. This is the central claim of Christianity.

It’s a truth that’s at once beautiful, high and mysterious. St. Thomas Aquinas meditated deeply on it. In the third part of his Summa Theologiae, he sought to show its deep intelligibility and its coherence. Now, Aquinas always takes his starting point from the divine Revelation about Christ contained

In Sacred Scripture as understood according to the Church’s apostolic Tradition, including the great church councils that excluded false interpretations of what Scripture teaches about Christ. It helps to start by reviewing these early errors about Jesus so that we can better understand the mystery of the Incarnation.

In the early centuries of the Christian age, everyone agreed that God can neither change nor suffer, but this raises a big question. How can we affirm this while also saying that the Son of God became man and suffered on the cross?

One erroneous response to this was offered by the heresy called docetism, which comes from the Greek word meaning to appear or to seem. On this view, Jesus only seemed to be a man and therefore he only appeared to suffer.

This early heresy was ruled out very quickly by the Church as undermining what Scripture teaches, that Jesus really was human, he really did suffer and die on the cross for our sins, and he really rose from the dead in his human body on the third day. Another early error was adoptionism.

It claimed that Jesus was a man adopted by God the Father. Some thought this happened when he was baptized in the Jordan River, and that from that point onward, he comes to be called the Son of God. The Church rejected this too.

The Son of God did not assume a man who was already existing, rather the Son of God pre-existed in eternity with the Father and then became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary in time. Arius and the Arian heresy erred in a different

Direction by saying that the Son of God was not truly God, but was rather a creature. A high creature, but still a creature. The church condemned this at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, where it professed that

The Son of God is, ” … true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.” That is, of the same being or substance as the Father. After this, the error of Nestorianism arose. Although there’s dispute today about what Nestorius actually taught, the Nestorian heresy

Seeks to insulate the eternal Son from change and suffering by distinguishing the man Jesus Christ from the divine Word. Nestorianism claimed that the Word dwells within the man Jesus according to grace, but that we can’t necessarily attribute to the Word all of the things that we say about Jesus.

For example, that he was born of Mary or that he suffered on the cross. The church condemned this at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD; and two decades later, the Council of Chalcedon formulated a definitive statement of the Church’s belief in Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is one person who is true God and true man. To put this more precisely, the eternal Son of God is a divine person who assumes a complete human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary body and soul, having a human mind and a human will.

From that point forward then, he subsists in two natures, the divine nature and an individual human nature. These two natures are united in the subsisting person of the Son, and this is called the hypostatic union, which comes from the Greek word hypostatis, which means a subsisting individual. Aquinas studied these early church councils

Carefully, and he provides an insightful synthesis of their teaching. The key points that he makes can be summarized like this. First, when we say that this man Jesus Christ really is God, we’re making a metaphysical claim about being.

Its foundation is the hypostatic union; that is, that the two natures of Christ are truly united in his person. In fact, Aquinas says that person is a metaphysical term. It means a subsisting individual of a rational nature.

So the union of man and God in Christ is not simply by indwelling or by habitual grace, rather the divine person of the Word now subsists in, or according to, a complete human nature in addition to the divine nature. Second, the union of the divinity and humanity

In Christ doesn’t change either of these natures. The Son is and remains fully and truly divine, eternal and unchanging as God. Likewise, the humanity of Christ is not absorbed into the divinity, it remains human, which means it’s in time, it can change, and it can and does suffer.

Next, this union is completely unique. It’s not an accidental union like the way a quality exists in a substance, and it’s not like a human person who puts on new clothes. Aquinas actually uses an analogy to what we would today call an organ transplant. Suppose you received a transplant of a third arm.

Now this arm left to itself won’t continue to exist for very long on its own disconnected from a body; but once it’s joined to your body, it begins to exist by your existence or the subsistence of your soul.

That is, your soul is the principle of your body’s life, and now it is animating this new addition to your body, this transplanted arm. Aquinas doesn’t think this is a perfect analogy, especially because an individual human nature is the sort of thing that normally does exist

On its own, and that’s what the Son is assuming. But this analogy does help us understand that in Christ the eternal Son doesn’t change in his divinity; rather, he joins an individual human nature to himself so that from its first

Moment, that human reality subsists according to the very being of the person of the Son. The man Jesus is the Son in person. St. Thomas follows the Church Fathers in saying that because of the hypostatic union, the humanity of Christ is like an instrument joined to the person of the Word.

Think of a saw in the hand of a carpenter. The saw provides something important. Because it’s iron, it can be sharpened and can cut wood. That’s something that the carpenter’s hand by itself can’t do. But the saw isn’t able to cut wood without the activity of the carpenter.

So by being taken up into the carpenter’s activity, the saw now shares in what the carpenter does. The carpenter is making a bench. This is also what happens in the Incarnation. The eternal Word of God takes up a human nature; and now it’s not a separated instrument like

A saw is separated from your hand, but rather an instrument that is conjoined in the person of the Son himself. In his divine nature as a pure spirit, the Word of God cannot be seen by human eyes. He can’t walk on the shores of Galilee. He can’t lay hands on a blind man.

Above all, in his divine nature, he cannot suffer and die. But by the hypostatic union, the Son assumes a human nature as his instrument, and he uses that humanity so that he himself acting in person can do all those things as man. This is a wonderful truth of the Christian faith.

The Word of God is not only present in the world as God, but joins a creature to himself in the most intimate of all unions. In doing this, he raises up our fallen humanity and creates it anew. Indeed, he lifts it unsurpassingly high to the very divinity itself.

As St. Thomas says following Pope St. Leo the Great, “This is a marvelous exchange. He humbled himself to share in our humanity so that we might be raised up to share in his divinity.” For readings, podcasts and more videos like this, go to Aquinas101.com.

While you’re there, be sure to sign up for one of our free video courses on Aquinas. And don’t forget to like and share with your friends, because it matters what you think.

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The Virgin Birth: Ultimately with R.C. Sproul

SPROUL: The New Testament is not suggesting that a virgin walks down the street and on her own strength and her own power suddenly conceives a child Of all of the miracles in the New Testament—the miracles of Jesus walking on the water, turning

Water into wine, feeding five thousand people, raising people from the dead, and so on—there’s one miracle story that seems to have been singled out for particular controversy, and that being His virgin birth. I mean, there have been furious debates, particularly in our

Day, over the credibility of the New Testament documents at the very beginning of Jesus’ life, because the New Testament presumes to teach that Jesus was born of a virgin. Now, some have tried to argue that the text doesn’t really teach it,

But that seems to be an act of despair to support it. But others just say, “Well, this is part of the mythical surroundings of the New Testament documents that no scientific, educated, sophisticated person in the twentieth century could ever believe.” Because if there’s

Anything that we know through our research and our understanding of the biological process, the system of reproduction, it’s this: that virgins don’t have babies. That it takes two people, male and a female. It takes the egg to be fertilized by the sperm in order for a baby

To be conceived—in vitro or ex vitro, doesn’t matter. It still takes both sides. A virgin, in and of herself, cannot conceive and have a baby. That is an inflexible, unbreakable natural law. And so anyone who would argue to the contrary must be involved in fantasy, legend, or myth.

But dear friends, let me say in the first instance that the New Testament is not suggesting that Jesus is born “”de”” like Athena out of the head of Zeus—that a virgin walks down the street and on her own strength and her own

Power suddenly conceives a child, and this child then is born and becomes the Messiah. No, it’s not as if we have a biological wonder that seeks to produce something out of nothing, that we can have the process of birth and the advent of life from no cause,

No power. But rather, the New Testament is saying, “Yes, indeed. There is a normal power, a normal facility, by which the race is propagated and the species replenished that we call the reproductive system. And there is a power unleashed through the reproductive process.”

The New Testament’s saying is that that power that we have in normal categories of nature has been set in motion and injected into this planet by a superpower that we call God, whose power stands behind all of creation, all of life.

Without the power of God, there can be no egg, there can be no sperm, there can be no life at all. The great miracle comes from the naturalist today who tells us that the world popped into existence on its own power. That’s the virgin birth of the

Whole universe. They deny the virgin birth that God Himself brings about by this power, this virgin birth, a very small thing for the Lord of heaven and earth to accomplish, indeed. And those who deny it put in its place the virgin birth of the universe. It’s incredible

That we have this kind of thinking going on, but it’s there and we have to confront it every day. But the point I want to make is this, that the New Testament says power stood behind the birth of Christ, but it was not the potency

Of Joseph that generated this child, but the potency of God the Father.”

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