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Debunking the Debunkers

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.

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My CBC Interview is Now Online

In case you didn’t catch my interview on CBC’s The National on Easter Sunday, the segment on religion and technology has now been posted online here:

I thought the piece was pretty thought-provoking. Different religions obviously have varying takes on the limits of technology in one’s faith journey. I’d love to hear your opinion in the comments box below!

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Catch Me on CBC’s “The National” on Easter Sunday!

I’ll be appearing on CBC’s The National tomorrow, Easter Sunday. I was part of a story by Nahlah Ayed on religion and technology that promises to be very thought-provoking. Nahlah asked me about how – and why – I created The New Mass app for iPhone and Android, the first app for the new English translation of the Mass. We also talked about the proper place of technology in the Catholic life – how it helps, and what its limits might be. Here I am pictured with Nahlah and cameraman Marc Cormier. I’d like to thank the CBC crew for being so gracious and fun to work with – not only Nahlah and Marc, but also Tashauna Reid, who did such a great job of producing. Can’t wait to see how it all turned out!

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The Ultimate Apologetic

After attending the Mass of the Lord’s Supper tonight, commemorating the institution of the Mass that first Holy Thursday, many stayed in a silent vigil with our Eucharistic Lord. While praying before the altar of repose, I reflected on what Jesus taught his Apostles that night. As always, he lived his own teaching, his words matching his deeds exactly. He had told them, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). And that love should be manifested in humble service. Christ demonstrated it by taking on the role reserved for the lowest servant: the Lord of the universe washed his disciples’ feet.

This Easter, what may wind up convincing people of the truth of our faith may not be the impressive array of arguments at our disposal that authenticate the Resurrection of Jesus as a historical event, although we should use them whenever we can. It may in fact be something less intellectual, but no less real: our love and service on behalf of others, in Jesus’ name. Some are “caught” by the head; others, by the heart.

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Authenticating the Resurrection of Jesus: The Empty Tomb

Empty TombIn the last post, we noted powerful evidence for the empty tomb: enemy attestation. The religious authorities of Jerusalem and the early Church both agree: On Easter Sunday, the body of Jesus is not in the tomb. The question is: Why? Christians, of course, affirm the reason is the bodily Resurrection of the Lord. The authorities concocted a different tale: they said the disciples stole the body. Did they? Not a chance.

First, the tomb was guarded, most likely by Roman soldiers. Matthew’s Gospel mentions that the religious authorities bribed the guards to say that while they slept, the disciples pilfered Jesus from the tomb. That Roman soldiers would fall asleep on the job, and somehow not be woken by the commotion of men rolling away the massive stone at the mouth of the tomb, is laughable enough. But even if that were possible, who knows what’s happening while one is asleep, anyway? But there’s an even more convincing reason this argument doesn’t work.

Almost anyone would grant that people are often willing to die for what they believe to be true. Suicide bombers come immediately to mind. But no one dies for something they know to be a lie. And the disciples would certainly know if Jesus had actually risen from the dead and appeared to them, or if they had, in fact, hidden his corpse in a trunk somewhere. But if they had really stolen the body, why would they go and get themselves killed by preaching that Jesus had been resurrected? I mean, it’s not as if they had anything to gain, humanly speaking, by their message. It’s not as if sprawling mansions along the Mediterranean coastline awaited. They could only look forward to beatings. imprisonments, and an almost certain death. The truth is that they proclaimed the Resurrection because they were convinced by the encounters they had with the risen Christ. They proclaimed it because it was true.

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Authenticating the Resurrection of Jesus: the Jerusalem factor

The ResurrectionThe Bible is refreshingly clear about what is at stake if the Resurrection of Jesus didn’t happen: “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith…but Christ has indeed been raised from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:14, 20). Today, Easter Sunday, is the first day of the Octave of Easter (in the Church, it is as if Easter lasts as one continuous day until next Sunday), with the rest of the liturgical season of Easter to follow. So, over the next while, I’ll offer some solid reasons why we can be certain that Jesus indeed rose from the dead. Keep in mind that these facts are accepted by the vast majority of critical scholars, be they believers or not.

Reason 1: The Jerusalem factor. When the Apostles began publicly preaching that Jesus had been physically resurrected from the dead, it is not as if they began by travelling to some faraway land, to tell people who had no means of investigating the veracity of the event. It wasn’t like “Star Wars” – “Let me tell you about something that happenned ‘a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.'” No, the Apostles began proclaiming the Resurrection in Jerusalem – the very city where Christ had been publicly killed. There is simply no way they could have done so if it were not true.

It’s instructive to note the response of the religious authorities of Jerusalem to this message: they didn’t say, “Jesus isn’t risen! He’s still in his tomb – and let us show you hs remains and put an end to this foolishness once and for all”. Their response was actually to say, “The disciples stole the body”. In other words, the enemies of the Gospel message admit the reality of the empty tomb. This response is noted in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 28 (vv. 11-15), where it is said that “this story (of the stolen body) is told among the Jews to this day” (v. 15). Saint Justin Martyr, in his “Dialogue with Trypho”, notes that this response was still commonly heard among Jews in the mid-2nd century when he was writing.

In the next post, we’ll examine more evidence that Jesus rose from the dead in his physical body, leaving an empty tomb behind.

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Authenticating the Death and Burial of Jesus

St Joseph of Arimathea buries JesusEven as we prepare to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday, this Holy Saturday is a good time to examine the reality of Jesus’ death and burial. It has become necessary to do this because both events have been denied by skeptics over the years. It is also important because, in order for Christianity to be true, Jesus must have died, for without his death there could not have been a Resurrection. He also must have been buried, because  scripture and the Church have constantly asserted this fact as part of the kerygma.

1. The death of Jesus. Scholar Gary Habermas states that “the death of Jesus is the most recorded event in ancient, non-Christian history” (The Historical Jesus, p. 281). In an earlier post, we looked at Habermas’ use of the Roman historian Tacitus to this effect. Here is another quote from another, non-Christian source, referring to the death of Jesus (there are numerous Christian references to this as well, but I find secular sources are often more convincing to secular people). This one is from the Jewish Talmud, which was compiled between AD 70-200:

“On the eve of the Passover, Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, ‘He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.’ But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of the Passover!”

– Quoted in Habermas, The Historical Jesus, p. 203

2. The burial of Jesus. Affirming this fact is necessary due to theories like that of former Catholic priest John Dominic Crossan, who famously claimed that Jesus’ dead body was likely thrown into a shallow common grave, where it was eaten by dogs. While not denying that at times in late antiquity, the Romans would leave bodies on crosses to be mauled by animals and birds of carrion (as a public deterrent to revolt), there is no chance this happened to Jesus, because it was peacetime. For Pilate to have left Jesus’ body hanging on the cross overnight during Passover would have been a fatal mistake, all but guaranteeing a riot by the myriad Jews gathered in Jerusalem for the feast. The Romans never would have risked offending Jewish sensibilities here, which they respected during times of calm. Leaving Jesus’ body on the cross would have defiled the land (see Deut. 21:22-23), making it impossible for Jews to celebrate the feast in an acceptable manner. No, Jesus did receive a proper burial with the help of Joseph of Arimathea, an undoubtedly historical reference (no early Christian would have invented a story of Jesus receiving a proper burial, not from his followers, but from a member of the very council that condemned him).

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“Seven Stanzas at Easter” by John Updike

I’m not a huge poetry guy, but I’ve always been struck by this one: “Seven Stanzas at Easter”, by John Updike. I made use of it last night as I was giving a talk about the liturgical seasons of Lent and Easter. Updike’s poem emphasizes the bodily, corporeal reality of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This was a real, historical event, not a metaphor. Christ really rose physically from death, leaving an empty tomb behind. As Saint Paul stresses, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, and and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). Or, as Updike puts it:

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

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The Authority of the Pope in the Early Church

Today is the feast of the Chair of Peter, celebrating the enduring office of the Papacy that Jesus entrusted to the Church in Matthew 16, John 21, and elsewhere. Non-Catholics often question the Church’s interpretation of these Scriptures, but there’s no denying the reality of papal primacy in how the early Church actually operated in history. The praxis of the early Church from the beginning is eloquent testimony that the Catholic interpretation of the Petrine ministry is the original one.

A great example of this is an incident that arose during the reign of Pope Victor I, circa 198 AD. Some bishops in the Eastern wing of the Catholic Church had been celebrating Easter on a different date than what had been the norm in the West. Pope Victor threatened to excommunicate these prelates from Asia Minor, unless they fell back in line with the Roman celebration of Easter.

Some questioned aspects of Pope Victor’s decision – the great Saint Irenaeus, author of the apologetic masterwork, Against Heresies, for one. But no one questioned his authority to do such a thing – not even the Eastern bishops themselves. The fact that they didn’t is damaging to the non-Catholic view that the Church’s bishops have no leader among themselves. Just as surely as Peter was the captain of the Apostolic band, his successor, the Pope, has always been the leader of his fellow bishops.

As Irenaeus himself so eloquently put it,

Since, however, it would be very tedious in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions (the apostolic succession of bishops) of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; (we do this) by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also (by indicating) the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops.

For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church (Rome) on account of its preeminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere…

– Against Heresies, 3, 3, 2

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