* All through, however, we must bear in mind that it is not the anomalousness of the resurrection of Christ which is the significant matter. ‘It is quite possible that our Lord’s resur- rection may be found hereafter to be no miracle at all in the scientific sense. It foreshadows and begins the general resur- rection ; and when that general resurrection comes we may find that it was, after all, the natural issue of physical laws always at work’ (Temple, Bampton Lectures, p. 196).
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rather sacramental sigus of His grace than proofs that He had the power to bestow it. But it was otherwise with the resurrection on the first Easter Day. This was a credential to which the Church continuaily appealed (Ro 14 424, 1 P 12°), although it, too, wos a σημεῖον of spiritual truth. And the evidence for this is not confined to the Gospels. It is presupposed in all the apostolic Epistles, as it is the burden of the apostolic sermons recorded in the Acts (cf. Ac 282 316 10 1334 173-31 2628) ; and not only is this the case, but the whole history shows that be‘lef in the resurrection was the one source of the continued faith of believers after their hopes had been shattered by the crucifixion, and was, as a matter of fact, the foundation on which the edifice of the Christian Church was raised. Ex- amine the evidence of the four ‘undisputed’ Epistles of St. Paul. These were all written before the year 58, i.e. about a quarter of a cen- tury after the crucifixion. St. Paul bears direct testimony to the fact of the resurrection, as be- lieved in by all Christians of the day. ‘To this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living’ (Ro 149) ; ‘I delivered unto you . . . that which also I received . . . how that he hath been raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas; then to the Twelve; then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now... ; then he appeared to James ; then to all the apostles’ (1 Co 1557). For circumstantiality, it would be difficult to surpass this last statement (cf. also Ro 14 8%, 2 Co 5, 1 Th 414). Again, St. Paul is so confident of the fact of the resurrection of Christ that he uses it as a proof that we too shall live after death: ‘if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been raised’ (1 Co 151%) ; he does not consider it necessary to add anything to this reductio ad absurdum. And, finally, the fact is so familiar that it is repeatedly appealed to in its symbolic and spiritual significance: ‘that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness Of life’ (Ro 64; ef. Ph 31, Col 31).
8. This was the confident belief of St. Paul and of his correspondents years before the Gospels assumed their present forms, and (although we cannot here enter fully into the question) all attempted ‘naturalistic’ explanations of that belief are entirely inadequate. This is good evidence; it is quite different in degree from the evidence which might be brought for any of the Lord’s miracles of healing, taken singly ; indeed it is not too much to say that had not the evidence been entirely satisfactory to those who had the best means of judging, the Christian Church would not have lived for a year after the crucifixion. Thus it is the Church itself that is the abiding witness to the resurrection ; otherwise we should have to believe a more ‘in- credible’ thing than any ‘miracle,’ viz. that the greatest and most blessed institution in this world is based on the delusions of a few credulous and superstitious fanatics. The question to be answered is, not, Is the evidence of the Gospels for the miracles
of the ministry sufficient by itself to inspire belief — |
not, Is the documentary evidence for the resurrec- tion of Jesus provided in the Gospels and Epistles sufficient by itself to command our acceptance of it — but, How are we to account for the origin of the Christian Church on the basis of belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, supposing that belief to have bad no foundation in fact ? And to that question there is no satisfactory answer. We
are driven back on the hypothesis that the belief |
grew out of the fact, and with that hypothesis all the existing evidence is in entire agreement.
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Leslie in his once famous tract, A Short Method with the Deists, may have laid too much stress on the evidence viewed in a purely juristic aspect, but there is real force in his argument that the four tests which may be applied to the testimony to the fact of the resurrection of Christ are tests which would satisfy a reasonable court of inquiry. The alleged fact was (1) one which could be judged of by men’s senses ; (2) it was public; (3) it was verified by a monument set up in observance of it, i.e. the Christian Church ; and (4) this was set up immediately after the event.