The Resurrection

[systemstrike_7]

Well, that refutation has been neatly folded and put away in the "wrong" section. Any more?

[Godsloft]

The resurrection from the dead is one of those elementary principals of Christ that you need to understand for salvation.

Hebrews 6

1 not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,

2 of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.

Going to Heaven only happens in Life not death.

We learned this from Enoch, Elijah, and Christ who came back to life to ascend into heaven.

Not quite.

Enoch and Elijah were already ascended. Then revealed.

I did not say that Elijah and Enoch died and were resurrected. I said that Going to Heaven happens in Life not death. Everyone who has gone to heaven was alive not dead when they went. Christ was dead and came back to life and then ascended up into heaven.

well yea...but was it reported by a secular media source?

Because we all know that only a secular media source can be trusted...

(sarcasm)

I'll bet if Fox News was around, they'd have reported it.

Wayne B.

Did you live in California in the seventies?

Edited May 4, 2007 by Godsloft

[Tubal-Cain]

Regarding the historicity of the resurrection I recommend NT Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God. His argument can be summarized as follows:

1) Second-Temple Jews were familiar with the concept of resurrection. But "the striking and consistent Christian mutations within Jewish resurrection belief rule out any possibility that the belief could have generated spontaneously from within its Jewish context" (p. 686). So we have to ask where Christians got their ideas from. The early Christians say that they found the tomb empty and met the resurrected Jesus.

2) The resurrection belief would not have developed unless the tomb was empty and Jesus appeared to them. If the tomb was empty but there were no appearances the disciples would be puzzled. If Jesus appeared to them but the tomb still had his body then those appearances would be called visions but not a resurrection which involves a physical body.

3) However, an empty tomb and post-resurrection appearances would have presented a powerful reason to believe in the resurrection.

4) "The meaning of resurrection within second-Temple Judaism makes it impossible to conceive of this reshaped resurrection belief emerging without it being known that a body had disappeared, and that the person had been discovered to be thoroughly alive again" (p. 686).

5) "The other explanations sometimes offered for the emergence of the belief do not possess the same explanatory power" (p. 686).

6) "It is therefore historically highly probable that Jesus' tomb was indeed empty on the third day after his execution, and that the disciples did indeed encounter him giving every appearance of being well and truly alive" (p. 687).

[Leonard]

Well, SOMETHING truly astonishing happened. Remember the passage that says when Christ died 'many of the righteous dead rose from their graves and entered the holy city, and were seen of many....'? Well, that specific event is also recorded in the Talmud.

As a matter of fact, by the normal standards historians use to decide whether an event really took place, the Resurrection of Christ is THE best attested event of the ancient world. You might reject it, but to be intellectually honest, you also have to reject every other event we think we have knowledge of up to, I believe, the 6th century of our era. You have to deny that Hannibal crossed the Alps, that Caesar conquered Gaul, that the Library at Alexandria was destroyed.....etc, etc, etc.

HOWEVER, it does NOT logically follow that all the other claims of Christianity are true. The Resurrection of Christ is an historical event, but an atheist can believe it occured. They might disagree completely with the MEANING Christians attach to that event, however. They might argue that the event, in and of itself, has no more MEANING than saying "Joe ate a hotdog at the barbeque last Saturday!"

The heart of Christianity lies in the event itself; the LIFE is in the meaning we attach to the event.