Book Plunge: Can Christians Prove The Resurrection?

[Adam]

Who created Hell?
Who sends human beings there?

I believe that we are fundamentally spiritual beings who existed elsewhere before the creation of humans on Earth. We failed there and were sent to Hell. Here.
(By whom? I suppose by our former spiritual kindred who wanted separation from any of us in future.)

[Rushing Jaws]

Will you agree to this consensus statement?


Skeptics, such as myself, believe that the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus is a very improbable explanation for the early Christian belief in a Resurrection, so improbable as to be practically absurd, yet we are willing to admit its possibility. Christians believe that a natural explanation for the early Christian resurrection belief is very improbable, so improbable as to be practically absurd, yet are willing to admit its possibility.

IMHO, it is not possible or probable at all. Dead bodies do not rise - they can't. The everyday fact of the irreversibility of death is taken for granted - the Resurrection is totally impossible. It cannot happen. What makes it so astounding, is that it did happen. And it happened, because the One Who is Raised, is not - as with all the rest of the dead - a mere man: He is God Incarnate. So it would have been astounding if He had not been Raised. He is Raised because of Who He is - the natural world is not in any way a cause of the Resurrection - it is a beneficiary of it.

And by being Raised from a death He shared with all the dead, He has "deconstructed" death, "abolished death", and restored life in its place for all those who are His. Natural explanation has no place in this at all. Once one stops thinking of the Resurrection as in any way humanly possible or naturally causable, the difficulties vanish. If we look upon the Resurrection as a "conjuring trick with bones", or as a purely human event, then it looks ridiculous - but although it is a true event, it is the doing, not of men, but of God. To see it as in any way human in origin, is to see it as what it is not.

So - thanks for offering that statement, but I for one can't agree with it :)

[Gary]

Gary, you complained that I had not responded to you within two hours. It never occurred to you that I might be in church? Well I was, singing in the choir.
The people not good enough Christians to go straight to Heaven (and, after all, there are Christian saints) get recycled to whatever new life best suits their punishment and opportunity for new development. I suppose we get sent back to be the very type of people we hate most. Rehabilitation.

I wasn't complaining, just giving my reasoning for answering my own question.

:)

[Gary]

I believe that we are fundamentally spiritual beings who existed elsewhere before the creation of humans on Earth. We failed there and were sent to Hell. Here.
(By whom? I suppose by our former spiritual kindred who wanted separation from any of us in future.)

Interesting. You have concocted quite a concept of Hell, my Christian friend.

And you are not alone. I find that many modern Christians have constructed their own individual, very elaborate, concepts regarding Hell or whatever happens in the afterlife to non-Christians who refuse to bend the knee to Jesus. To me this is evidence that even Christians find the teachings of the Bible and those of the ancient Christian Church on this subject too horrifying and immoral to stomach.

[Rushing Jaws]

Who created Hell?
Who sends human beings there?

IMHO, people "go to Hell" because Hell is in them first - by their own choice. People send themselves there. They are not helpless victims, who are getting a raw deal from a cruel God. Not at all ! We shape what we become, by the use of the faculties given us; and one of the things we can become, if we so choose, is a damned soul. We can damn ourselves - we cannot save ourselves.

What is Hell ? Heaven without God would be Hell. God has created us so that we should find no lasting satisfaction in anything created - He has created us so that we might find lasting, full, complete, final, and uncloying satisfaction only in God. Hell is the deliberate and self-willed frustration of the longing for Him, a frustration that is free, culpable, and irreversible. The misery of Hell can be measured only by the Heaven of which Hell is a refusal. And it is the Presence of God that makes Heaven Heavenly.

[Gary]

IMHO, it is not possible or probable at all. Dead bodies do not rise - they can't. The everyday fact of the irreversibility of death is taken for granted - the Resurrection is totally impossible. It cannot happen. What makes it so astounding, is that it did happen. And it happened, because the One Who is Raised, is not - as with all the rest of the dead - a mere man: He is God Incarnate. So it would have been astounding if He had not been Raised. He is Raised because of Who He is - the natural world is not in any way a cause of the Resurrection - it is a beneficiary of it.

And by being Raised from a death He shared with all the dead, He has "deconstructed" death, "abolished death", and restored life in its place for all those who are His. Natural explanation has no place in this at all. Once one stops thinking of the Resurrection as in any way humanly possible or naturally causable, the difficulties vanish. If we look upon the Resurrection as a "conjuring trick with bones", or as a purely human event, then it looks ridiculous - but although it is a true event, it is the doing, not of men, but of God. To see it as in any way human in origin, is to see it as what it is not.

So - thanks for offering that statement, but I for one can't agree with it :)

So your belief in the historicity of the Resurrection is based on your belief that Jesus is God the Creator. The problem is, that you have no evidence to prove that Jesus is the All-Powerful Creator God without the Resurrection.

So you are begging the question, assuming that something is true based on your assumption that it is true, a logical fallacy that many Christians unfortunately make when trying to defend their supernatural-based belief system.

[Gary]

IMHO, people "go to Hell" because Hell is in them first - by their own choice. People send themselves there. They are not helpless victims, who are getting a raw deal from a cruel God. Not at all ! We shape what we become, by the use of the faculties given us; and one of the things we can become, if we so choose, is a damned soul. We can damn ourselves - we cannot save ourselves.

What is Hell ? Heaven without God would be Hell. God has created us so that we should find no lasting satisfaction in anything created - He has created us so that we might find lasting, full, complete, final, and uncloying satisfaction only in God. Hell is the deliberate and self-willed frustration of the longing for Him, a frustration that is free, culpable, and irreversible. The misery of Hell can be measured only by the Heaven of which Hell is a refusal. And it is the Presence of God that makes Heaven Heavenly.

Why would anyone choose eternal pain, physical or psychological? Do you have proof that non-believers make this conscious choice?

[Adam]

Interesting. You have concocted quite a concept of Hell, my Christian friend.
And you are not alone. I find that many modern Christians have constructed their own individual, very elaborate, concepts regarding Hell or whatever happens in the afterlife to non-Christians who refuse to bend the knee to Jesus. To me this is evidence that even Christians find the teachings of the Bible and those of the ancient Christian Church on this subject too horrifying and immoral to stomach.

That all of us are in Hell already? Yes, I admit the Bible is not too clear on that, unless you take the Fall of Adam to mean that. Yeah, why not?
As for what others believe the Bible firmly teaches, consider how many (particularly Restorationists) believe in annihilation of sinful souls. No lasting Hell. Even farther afield, and going back at least to Origen, many Christians are Universalists. Eventually everyone goes to Heaven, maybe even Satan.
John 3:16 is often warped to claim that anyone who disbelieves in Jesus goes to Hell. This is heresy. True Christians believe Jesus is God the Son, directly in charge of all humans whether Christians or not. Jesus is not a cult prophet as most Christians implicitly believe.

[Gary]

That all of us are in Hell already? Yes, I admit the Bible is not too clear on that, unless you take the Fall of Adam to mean that. Yeah, why not?
As for what others believe the Bible firmly teaches, consider how many (particularly Restorationists) believe in annihilation of sinful souls. No lasting Hell. Even farther afield, and going back at least to Origen, many Christians are Universalists. Eventually everyone goes to Heaven, maybe even Satan.
John 3:16 is often warped to claim that anyone who disbelieves in Jesus goes to Hell. This is heresy. True Christians believe Jesus is God the Son, directly in charge of all humans whether Christians or not. Jesus is not a cult prophet as most Christians implicitly believe.

Interesting. But I will bet you that if you ask ten different TW Christians regarding Hell/the afterlife, you will get ten different answers. I realize that some early Christians did not share the concept of Hell that the orthodox came to declare as dogma.

[psstein]

So isn't possible that the author of John heard the stories in the Gospel of Mark in church and used them as a core for his story, without any other sources?

No. Scholars have identified at least three other sources behind John, regardless of whether or not he used Mark or not.

Those sources are:

1. The Book of Signs (which is behind John 1-11)
2. The Book of Glory (John 12-20)
3. The Discourses source (the speeches that appear throughout)
4 (possible source): a redactor in John 21.

[psstein]

The consensus among the overwhelming majority of scholars is that John was written near the end of the first century. You have no way of knowing for sure if he had sources other than Mark, Matthew, and Luke. It is very possible that all the stories and details in John for which there is no correlation in the Synoptics are his own theological inventions.

I have very good reasons to think that John is independent and using sources that don't appear in the Synoptic tradition. My reasons are largely a) I read scholarly works and b) I evaluate their claims.

[psstein]

No, The basics of the Gospel of John were written before Mark as we know it was written, perhaps far away in Rome.
John seems to share the Passion Narrative with the Synoptics, but its other sources are independent of the Synoptics. But John 18 to 20 is precisely the part leading up to and involving the Resurrection, so this common source is relevant.

There are certainly sources behind John.... I don't know if the passion narrative is shared. It very well could be.

[Gary]

No. Scholars have identified at least three other sources behind John, regardless of whether or not he used Mark or not.

Those sources are:

1. The Book of Signs (which is behind John 1-11)
2. The Book of Glory (John 12-20)
3. The Discourses source (the speeches that appear throughout)
4 (possible source): a redactor in John 21.

Is there proof that these sources are someone other than the author of the Gospel of John? In other words, is it possible that the material in the Gospel of John that is not found in the three Synoptics comes from the author of the Gospel of John himself and no one else?

[Gary]

I have very good reasons to think that John is independent and using sources that don't appear in the Synoptic tradition. My reasons are largely a) I read scholarly works and b) I evaluate their claims.

But how do you know that the material in John which is not found in the Synoptics is nothing other than the theological inventions of the author of John? I am not contesting the possibility that multiple authors contributed in writing the book which we today call the Gospel of John, but what proof do we have that any of these authors based their "non-Synoptic" material on earlier sources and not their own theological imaginations?

[Adam]

The best scholarly work on sources within the Gospel of John is Howard M. Teeple's 1974 The Literary Origin of the Gospel of John. It's hard to find and little known. Its problem was that it was early on discounted by reviewers, yet these same reviewers later retracted their negative views. But too late.

Yes, he is a hyper-critic, but the basic view is sound, that there is an underlying Discourse Source, Signs Source and Passion Narrative (he does not differentiate the later two). Suitably reduced in scope, what he proposes as the Editor's work could be what I see as the work of the Apostle John himself, based on the Muratorian Canon.