Having established the historicity of the empty tomb of Christ in our previous article in this series, we now move onto looking at the evidence for the post-mortem appearances of Jesus to people.
Fact 2: The Appearances of the risen Jesus
We need to turn again to Paul's letter to the Corinthians, to see his reporting of public testimony about the resurrection. It is quite extraordinary that in 1 Cor 15:3-8 we hear that Jesus appeared not only to a few people, but more than 500 people on one occasion, these appearances went on for almost six weeks before Jesus left his disciples again for good (Acts 1:9-11). Paul tells us (1 Cor 15:6) that 'most of them are still living'. This statement is very significant indeed as Tim Keller comments:
'Paul's letter was to a church, and therefore it was a public document, written to be read aloud. Paul was inviting anyone who doubted that Jesus had appeared to people after his death to go and talk to the eye-witnesses if they wished.'
The implication is clear, there is no way that Paul could have written this in a public document unless these 500 eye-witnesses really existed. When taken together with the gospel accounts that we looked at with regard to the empty tomb, we have multiple attestations that these appearances were completely genuine.
Even the sceptical New Testament scholar Gerd Ludeman makes this emphatic declaration: 'It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.'
Physical or Spiritual Resurrection?
Some people have tried to imply that these resurrection appearances were not in fact physical ones but a host of spiritual visions by reading the latter part of Paul's letter (1 Cor 15:42-44), where he contrasts the natural body and the spiritual one. Surely this shows that Jesus' resurrection was only spiritual and therefore it was not a bodily resurrection after all?
Well, if we take a closer look at the greek words 'pneumatikos' (which is used to describe 'spiritual' in this context), and 'psychikos' (describing 'natural' ), we find that it is used in the same letter by Paul in 1 Cor 2:14-15. Here Paul is also contrasting the spiritual man with the natural man.
In this context, he is talking about the difference between a Christian ( the spiritual man) and a non-christian (the natural man). Clearly, Paul does not believe that Christians do not have physical bodies, therefore it follows that we should not take this to mean a non-physical resurrection which Paul is describing.
William Lane Craig summarises the point for us:
'Natural man does not mean ''physical man,'' but ''man oriented toward human nature.'' And Spiritual man does not mean ''intangible, invisible man'' but "man oriented toward the Spirit.'' The contrast is the same in 1 Corinthians 15. The present, earthly body will be freed from its slavery to the sinful human nature and become instead fully empowered and directed by God's Spirit. Thus, Paul's doctrine of the resurrection body implies a physical resurrection.'
Were they just hallucinations?
One of the most regular points made by sceptics at this stage is that surely even if the disciples believed that it was a physical resurrection, they could have just imagined and hallucinated the experience.
This argument is really starting to clutch at straws because we are being asked to believe here that every one of the multiple encounters of the risen Jesus was a mere hallucination, including very tangible physical events like Jesus cooking breakfast on the beach (John 21:1-25). Take into account that some of these people included Jesus' own brother James, sceptics like Thomas (John 20:24-29) and that these appearances took place for so many people, over 40 days and we are really being asked to ignore very compelling evidence.
Another point worth making is that this theory provides very narrow explanatory scope, as it does not explain away the empty tomb of Jesus. As N.T. Wright points out even if hallucinations happened, this does not explain why people came to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. In a Jewish world-view, any visions or hallucinations of a dead person did not mean that you believed they were alive, it confirmed even more that they were dead!
Summary
As we take a close look at the evidence, it would seem very clear that Jesus' followers had genuine encounters with the him after death, and that they were bodily in form. It is also very clear that Paul wrote the letter of 1 Corinthians in such a manner that anyone who did not believe could have checked out the evidence by speaking to eye-witnesses very easily.
For links to our other articles on the resurrection click here.
Click here for my recent interview with CCK.
