Here’s my latest article from the June issue of Catholic Insight magazine. Hope you like it!
Debunking the Debunkers
by Cale Clarke
Just as surely as the lillies bloom every spring, each Easter season brings with it some new theories about what really happened at the first Easter. Martin Luther’s dictum describing early Protestantism comes to mind: “There are as many interpretations as there are heads”. Here are a couple of this year’s takes:
First, on Holy Saturday, the National Post ran a piece about a new book by art historian (and amateur theologian) Thomas de Wesselow, The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection. And what, pray tell, is that secret? According to de Wesselow, the shroud really is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ – but get this: he thinks it was the shroud that the Apostles encountered after the death of Christ, not his resurrected body. Huh? So, when “doubting” Thomas stuck his hand in Jesus’ side, was he only wiggling his fingers through a hole in the sheet? Not sure this is the sort of stuff that inspires martyrdom.
And then there’s the perennial publicity hound Simcha Jacobovici (TV’s The Naked Archaeologist), who, along with James Cameron (whenever the latter is not tied up making bad movies about blue people or sinking boats), spends a lot of his time looking for the lost tomb of Jesus. It’s a project that has as much potential as the maiden Titanic voyage.
As real biblical scholar Craig Evans pointed out recently in The Huffington Post, the archaeological community scoffs at the idea that the tomb in the Jerusalem area that Jacobovici shows off in The Jesus Discovery belongs to Jesus of Nazareth. And, if Jesus’ bones are still in a tomb, then how does Jacobovici explain the fact that even the enemies of the early Christian movement say it’s empty? It seems as if The Naked Archaeologist has no clothes.
The fact is that the disciples claimed to have encountered the resurrected Jesus. People who days earlier had denied even knowing Jesus (like Peter) are, post-Easter, quite willing to lay down their lives for their conviction that Jesus lives. Skeptics, even persecutors like Saul the Pharisee (better known now as Paul the Apostle) claim to have had the same experience. After his death and burial, Jesus is said to have appeared to numerous individuals and groups of people over a 40-day period, including 500 people at one time (1 Corinthians 15:6). Forget about mass hallucinations – you can’t catch a hallucination like a common cold. And what these folks claimed was not even that they had seen a “vision” of Jesus – a category well accepted in Jewish circles.
No, what they claimed was not that they had seen a ghost, or even – sorry, Thomas de Wesselow – a shroud. They claimed to have experienced Jesus’ physical body, back from the dead. Transformed, yes, but still him, still sporting the crucifixion wounds as a type of I.D. Able to be touched, able to scarf down some food to make a point of his being corporeal (cf. Luke 24:36-43; Acts 10:41). A resurrection is a lot harder to prove than a vision. A “vision” of Jesus, encouraging the disciples to continue the mission, wouldn’t require an empty tomb. And preaching the resurrection in the very city where Jesus was crucified would have been impossible if the tomb were occupied. This is even more evident when one considers that the location of the tomb was no secret, not waiting thousands of years to be discovered by Cameron and Jacobovici – it belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, the very council which condemned Jesus to death, and a known public figure.
Could the disciples have stolen the body? That was, after all, the explanation proffered by the enemies of the nascent Church as to how the tomb came to be empty. But this view overlooks an important fact: the disciples died for their belief in the resurrection. True, many have died (and continue to do so) for what they believe to be true – suicide bombers, for instance. But no one in their right mind willingly would give their life for what they knew to be false. If the disciples really had Jesus’ body locked in the trunk of a car somewhere, I doubt they’d be in a hurry to get themselves crucified upside-down, or sawed in two.
Whatever one’s theory is about what happened that first Easter, one ought to at least take into account all the known facts of the case. But, unfortunately for a gullible public, the Jacobovicis and de Wesselows of the world have never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Cale Clarke is the Director of The Faith Explained Seminars (TheFaithExplained.com), and the creator of The New Mass app.
Cale,
Seems your articles always attract a response on my part, mostly, I suppose, because of the differences we seem to have concerning the same materials and the different results we come to concerning them. This notion you have concerning all the “facts” surrounding the story of Jesus is an interesting one.
Would you consider it to be a “fact” that no one was an eye-witness to the actual resurrection of Jesus where God brings Jesus back to life after being dead? From the New Testament documents it appears to be the case that no one claimed to be an eye-witness to this so-called event. Would you agree with this? Just wondering. Thanks.
Hi Thom,
Sorry for the slow reply. I’ve been traveling and tied up with a few projects, but no excuses. Regarding the resurrection, you are correct that no one witnessed the actual event of the resurrection itself. The eyewitnesses claim to have seen, touched, and ate with the resurrected Jesus afterwards.
With respect to how I am using the word “fact”, I suppose I would be using it in the same way a historian would be using the term to describe a past event. Specifically, that the event in question happened is beyond reasonable doubt, given the preponderance of evidence in its favor. Another analogous situation would be a jury arriving at a verdict based on circumstantial evidence in court. Actually, concerning Jesus’ resurrection, we have far more evidence for its veracity than we do for other commonly accepted events in late antiquity. In many of these latter cases, there might only be one source testifying to the event’s occurrence. In the case of Easter, we have multiple and even enemy attestation of many aspects of the resurrection event.
There are historians and scholars who are convinced beyond reasonable doubt by the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection that it occurred. An interesting example is Pinchas Lapide, one of the very few Jewish New Testament scholars. He believes that, based on the evidence, the God of Israel raised Jesus from the dead, because it’s the explanation that makes the best sense of the historical data that we have. He does not, however, affirm that Jesus is the Messiah. His case reminds us that there is a difference between the historian’s craft in determining an event happened, and the theologian’s craft in discerning what the events might mean.
Cale,
Thanks for the response to my inquiry. I understand your explanation, but still would take some exception to its particulars. Largely this would surround your apparent understanding of a “fact” to encompass something that seems to be accepted “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The obvious problem this creates concerns the notion of “reasonable” and what might be considered reasonable or not. I don’t believe “facts” should ever be understood or defined in this manner.
I believe “facts” are best left to the category of things that are “indisputable.” After all, an actual fact is something that cannot be disputed, or so it seems to me. You might consider the Resurrection to be something that happened “beyond a reasonable doubt” but that still leaves wiggle room created by the notion of reasonable doubt, and what might be reasonable to someone might still strike someone else as not the case. Facts are not necessarily reasonable beyond a doubt, but they should always be indisputable. To say that something was reasonable beyond a doubt is to only judge it in that manner. Because there are many aspects to the Resurrection Story that can be disputed, I think it must fall short of reaching any meaningful “factual” status. There might be specific aspects that can be proven to be “factual” but the event itself still seems to fall short of certainty. Enter “faith” and the religious life begins. Your approach seems to want to eliminate the need for Faith. If the Resurrection were a fact, you would render Faith obsolete, or so it seems.
As a skeptic of some education and learning, I long ago decided that the real question pertaining to the Resurrection and should someone choose not to believe the story is this: Is there sufficient historical data to lead one to the reasonable conclusion that the Resurrection of Jesus most likely did not happen as believed? To that question the answer appears to be “yes”. If Calvin was right to suggest that Belief was the function of God, then Unbelief must also belong to his dominion. I only hope this is not perceived as rebellion of some kind. After all, I can still wish for my neighbor those same things that I wish for myself, and if he is in need I can stay to the same side of the road where a hand can be extended.
Thanks for your time. Thom
Cale: Thanks very the clear and concise article elucidating the great joy of our faith; the Resurrection of our Lord!
May God continue to bless you in your very important work.
Thom: what “sufficient historical data” is there to suggest that the Resurrection of Jesus most likely did not happen as believed? Does this mean that you believe in the Resurrection, but not in the way it has been believed? Historically, no one has ever risen from the dead before Christ or after Christ. However, does an event have to be repeated in history to be considered fact? Can you prove something as a fact that takes place both within and without the limits of space and time? Can you prove that love exists? Is love a fact or a truth? Or do you have faith that love exists? What is more certain, proof or faith? Fact or truth? Is something true because it is a fact, or is something a fact because it is true?
The Resurrection is indeed a truth proved not by historical or scientific fact, but a truth known by faith, which makes it a fact of history. Faith is more certain than all the historical and scientific facts. However, faith and reason correlate. If one is given the gift of faith in Christ, then believing in the Resurrection is a logical consequence of that faith. Faith in Christ corresponds to the human understanding of the facts surrounding the Resurrection. If Christ is God, then He can do anything, including rise from the dead. Of course, one must first believe in God before one can believe that God actually became one us, and then died, rose from the dead, and then ascended into heaven. Faith in Christ the God-man, confirms human reason that the Resurrection historically occurred. The Resurrection, therefore, is a matter of faith and reason, a matter of truth and fact. Human reason can prove a fact beyond a reasonable doubt, but faith can know a truth is certain.
Why does unbelief need to be a “function of God”? Believing is only possible by God’s grace (i.e., supernatural gift of God). Belief is a gift from God. The human person has the natural capacity, the free will, to accept or reject God’s gift of belief. The human act of believing is cooperating with God’s grace, whereas the human act of not believing is rejecting God’s grace. Of course, there is degrees to which one believes and does not believe (i.e., degrees by which one accepts God’s grace and rejects God’s grace).
Take care and God bless,
Matt
Matt,
I won’t respond to every question you asked. Eleven questions in three short paragraphs is simply overloading the exchange. I will, however, make two comments regarding your post, which I have enjoyed reading.
When you say that, “Belief is a gift from God,” it immediately seems to suggest my claim that Unbelief is, in fact, a function of God. To the unbeliever the gift has not been extended. If you include Grace into the conversation it makes it possible to argue that Calvin was correct, that God’s Grace is irresistible and the absence of Belief is the absence of Grace. To hold the unbeliever in some way responsible for the theological point that Unbelief means that God’s Grace has not been extended to that person is more than a little unreasonable. You want the unbeliever to be responsible and accountable, but the gift of Belief has not been given to that person. It seems that God should not be so selective in his bestowing of this gift. To suggest that a person is responsible for not being given a gift makes little sense either theologically or logically. You seem to want Unbelief to be the result of rebellion, but it is actually the absence of Grace from God, or so it seems from your post. You miss your own theological logic if you believe that Unbelief is simply an act of rebellion or rejection.
With regard to your question concerning the historical “data” to suggest that the Resurrection of Jesus did not happen as believed, I will offer the following taken from the pages of the New Testament documents themselves. I will restrain myself from exhaustive explanations concerning this “data” and what it ultimately might mean and the direct effect it has on the other historical data and belief. These are “facts” not included in the Apologist’s Digest concerning the Resurrection. I will not here present all of them, but simply a few for you to think about.
Facts Concerning the Resurrection of Jesus:
1–No one was an eyewitness to God bringing Jesus back to life from the dead;
2–No one preached that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead prior to Pentecost which occurs some 40 days after the event of his crucifixion;
3–By the time that the disciples began preaching that God had raised Jesus from the dead, no one could produce a body, either of the resurrected living Jesus to prove the claim or of a dead Jesus to disprove the claim.
By no means is this a complete list of the actual historical “data” that argues against the claim of Resurrection. I only offer these as a response to your question regarding this “data”. The question seem to suggest a somewhat skeptical position on your part concerning what this “data” might be, if there was any. I offer the “data” to suggest that Unbelief like Belief can be established on similar historical groundwork or, at least, a similar historical approach where “facts” or “data” are used to arrive at a position. To call this simply a rejection of God’s Grace is to miss the position entirely as well as to undermine the power of God’s Grace, if one believes in such.
Best of everything,
Thom
Hi Thom
Thank you very much for your kind and thoughtful response. I do apologize for all the questions in my last post. I guess I got a little carried away. Nevertheless, I will try to respond to your most recent comments as best I can.
Thom, you appear to imply that I have a Calvinist view of grace. As a Catholic, I cannot adhere to the Calvinist understanding of grace and predestination (i.e., double predestination; God chooses who gets grace and goes to heaven and who does not get grace and goes to hell before the beginning of the universe, before the commencement of time and space). God certainly knows all things, including those who will be saved (i.e., the elect who will commune with God forever; heaven) and those who will not be saved (i.e., those who will be separated from God forever; hell).
God’s foreknowledge does not destroy but rather includes the gift of human free will. God wants all to be saved, for God is Love. Indeed, God’s very life is love. Therefore, God can do nothing more than love. God gives and gives more and keeps on giving. However, the human person can reject God. Love by its very nature does not force itself on another, but must be received by the other. God’s own life is a loving relationship of divine persons freely giving and freely receiving love. Giving and receiving love is the very nature of God. This is the life of the Trinity.
God gives life to each human person and sustains the very being of each human person out of love for the human person. God gives love so intensely and so unyieldingly to the human person that God actually gives all the way to the point of giving into the most precious gift ever offered to the human person to aid him or her in completely receiving God’s love forever. God gives by becoming the greatest gift of love; God becomes The Gift of Love for all humanity. God gives as the Incarnation of Love, as Jesus Christ, the God-man who gives Himself totally and eternally on the cross only to love humanity forever. In fact, the crucified and risen Christ continues to give Himself in the same way as the Eucharistic Gift in the Catholic Mass, the real continuation and extension of the Incarnation of Love in the present, in the here and now of space and time.
God became man in the person of Jesus Christ. He suffered and died on the cross to redeem humankind out of total and everlasting love for humankind. Christ destroyed human sin and everlasting death with His love, with the life of God, and He gives this perfect love to each and every human to be saved. The human person exercises his or her free will and so either accepts or rejects God’s saving gift of grace. The human person who freely receives grace is saved, but one can in time reject grace and fall into sin, even mortal sin which cuts one off from grace, from communion with the Trinitarian life of love. Not everyone who is initially saved will automatically persevere in grace, but those who do persevere are indeed God’s elect.
The human person can always reject God in this phase of life, and so there is no absolute guarantee that one will persevere to the end, and thus attain everlasting communion with God. The human person can have confidence that he will be saved, but there is no guarantee. Indeed, one must work out his salvation with the help of God throughout his or her life; one must cooperate with God’s gift of grace.
In sum, one must receive Love to the end. When death does come knocking, the human person in communion with the living God will remain in Love, which is life everlasting.
I hope this helps. I will try to respond to your interesting ideas regarding the Resurrection very soon.
Take care,
Matt
Matt,
I think we might have diverted far away from the intial point I was making regarding the Resurrection of Jesus, wherein I was and remain somewhat skeptical regarding certain “facts” claimed about the event or so-called event.
There seems to be a selective nature to these “facts” that line up with the apologist’s point of view or belief regarding the matter. Another “fact” to consider, although certainly not the last that I could present along with those already presented that might argue against the hypothesis when considered as a group, is the beginning of the story. Seemingly every belief or movement has a champion or leader who promotes the movement, giving it life, direction, and sustaining power. It appears from the New Testament documents (I Cor 15:4 and Luke 24:34) that Peter was the first who proclaimed that the Risen Jesus had appeared to him. Would you agree with this “fact”? Paul makes no mention of the appearances to the women. Whether he simply refused to acknowledge them or was not aware of them, we can leave untouched. Even so, it appears that the women made no claim or proclamation to others that Jesus had appeared to them. Peter would have been the first to engage in this activity. Would you agree? It seems a simple matter, however, it carries substantial weight in the overall development of the story, I think.
Matthew is the only Gospel that mentions guards at the tomb. John’s Gospel says nothing about guards. If John was an eyewitness, as Christians claim, isn’t that a pretty important detail to leave out of your story? The missing Roman guards in the Book of John raises an important issue. Christians often contend that it would have been impossible for anyone to have surreptitiously removed Jesus’ corpse from the tomb because there were guards posted at the tomb who would have prevented such an occurrence. Therefore, they argue, without any possibility for the body to have been quietly whisked away, the only other logical conclusion is that Jesus must have truly arisen from the dead. A stolen body hypothesis is impossible.
This argument completely collapses in John’s account, however, because according to the fourth Gospel, this is precisely what Mary thought had occurred! Mary clearly didn’t feel as though the scenario of Jesus’ body being removed was unlikely. In fact, according to John, that was her only logical conclusion. Clearly, Matthew’s guards didn’t dissuade John’s Mary from concluding that someone had taken Jesus’ body because Roman guards do not exist in John’s story.
To further compound the problem of the conflicting resurrection accounts, John’s Gospel continues to unfold with Mary returning to the tomb a second time, only to find two angels sitting inside the tomb. Mary is still unaware of any resurrection as she complains to the angels that someone had removed Jesus’ corpse. As far as John’s Mary is concerned, the only explanation for the missing body was that someone must have removed it, and she was determined to locate it.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying12 , one at the head and the other at the feet. 13They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”
(John 20:11-13)
Although in Matthew’s account the angel emphatically tells Mary about the resurrection (Matthew 28:5-7), in John’s Gospel the angels do not mention that anyone rose from the dead. The angels only ask Mary, “Woman, why are you weeping?” Mary responds by inquiring whether the angels removed Jesus’ body. Then, Mary turns and sees Jesus standing before her, but mistakes him for the gardener. Mary is still completely unaware of any resurrection, and therefore asks the “gardener” if he was the one who carried away Jesus’ body. It is only then that Mary realizes that she was speaking to the resurrected Jesus.
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” which means Teacher.
(John 20:14-16)
It is at this final juncture of the narrative that the accounts of Matthew and John become hopelessly irreconcilable. The question every Christian must answer is the following: When Mary met Jesus for the first time after the resurrection, had the angel(s) already informed her that Jesus had arisen from the dead? According to Matthew, the angels did inform Mary of the resurrection, but in John’s account they did not. As we survey the divergent New Testament accounts of the resurrection, we see that we are not just looking at contradictory versions, we are reading two entirely different stories!
Happy Easter to you and your family as well. I pray your Easter weneked was a good one.I saw your weather logo in the bottom and it made me think of our weather here this weneked…we hit 87 degrees yesterday!! It was SO warm I hardly wanted to cook. I couldn’t believe it was so warm.Blessings,Jen
Our Easter Sac. Mtg was pretty cniveotnonal. A High Councilman spoke about Jesus Christ’s ministry. He even went so far as to say he chooses to not remember Christ with a symbol of His death like Christians do and that there really is no good symbol for the Living Christ except to look to the Church. Since I work professionally closely with Evangelicals that difference is a pretty big celebratory divide between Mormons and Christians.As for me, I don’t understand why Mormons, on average, are so hesitant to reflect on the sacrificial details of such a sacrifice. I think there is beauty, love and life found in confronting mortality, even in reflecting upon the mortality of Jesus. The story can get a little tame through retelling because we all know how the story turns out. (Hey kids, He was dead but he’s not really dead!) Celebrating as dark as that word choice sounds the journey, in addition to the outcome, just makes the story more powerful to me.Any Mormon who thinks Christians are just being too macabre ought to go experience a really well done cantata or Passion play. Such can really be majestic. They celebrate the Living Christ as much as the Dying Christ because you can’t do the former without the latter.Cheers! I feel positively Gothic.
Kirsten,Thanks for commenting – sorry it took me so long to renposd. This year, our ward’s Easter service was one of the best, most Atonement-centered church services I have ever encountered, Mormon or not. It was wonderful.As for that meeting in Lima: well, the Sacrament speakers talked about the temple, but since the bishop cleared his throat when they got too near Atonement-related themes, the talks were pretty content-free.Ah, well.