3.27.2005 | He is risen, indeed

A joyous day; our Lord has conquered death and risen from the tomb. This, the core of our Christian faith, is hard for nonbelievers to accept, and skeptics and critics have been hammering away at the resurrection for 2,000 years. Recall doubting Thomas (John 20:27); it was hard for believers to accept, let alone gentiles. Yet believe it we must, for it is truth.

N.T. Wright wrote a profound exposition of what Jesus' resurrection tells us as an historical event and as the formitive event of our faith. Titled "Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins", it is well worth a read this Easter. Most especially in the context of first century beliefs. N.T. Wright's concludes:

as far as I am concerned, the historian may and must say that all other explanations for why Christianity arose, and why it took the shape it did, are far less convincing as historical explanations than the one the early Christians themselves offer: that Jesus really did rise from the dead on Easter morning, leaving an empty tomb behind him. The origins of Christianity, the reason why this new movement came into being and took the unexpected form it did, and particularly the strange mutations it produced within the Jewish hope for resurrection and the Jewish hope for a Messiah, are best explained by saying that something happened, two or three days after Jesus’ death, for which the accounts in the four gospels are the least inadequate expression we have.

To say that Scripture says it is so, therefore I believe it, does not answer our critics. Even if it is the truth. Here is an intellectually-based argument for our faith, from a man of great faith himself.

| technorati tag | Christianity|