There was a fascinating response to my last article, on miracles. “You have asked what evidence atheists like myself would accept for the existence of God and I have been honest and told you that I don’t know,” wrote one person. “I do know it would have to miraculous on a level that challenges everything that I think I know or understand.” Step forward the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
At the Edinburgh book festival in 2010 Christopher Hitchens debated John Lennox. In concluding his speech, John Lennox mentioned the fact of the resurrection of Jesus. The moderator, John Humphreys, asked Christopher Hitchens to respond, indicating that he had five minutes. Hitchens barked: ‘I won’t need five minutes to respond to someone who believes in the resurrection.”
This is a standard tactic – equate people who believe in the resurrection with people who believe in a flat earth, Santa Claus and Scotland winning the World Cup, and you then don’t need to even think about, never mind examine the evidence.
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The main objection to the resurrection is simple. Resurrections just don’t happen. But you need to stop there. We agree. Totally. That is the point. Resurrections don’t happen. If they did then the resurrection of Jesus would be no big deal. It would be a bit like me saying, Jesus is the Son of God because he recovered from illness.
Getting better is common. Getting resurrected is not. In the normal course of events resurrections do not happen. But the Bible is claiming that this is not the normal course of events. It is the ultimate extraordinary event. So instead of dismissing it we need to ask, what happened and what proof is there, before then going on to consider the implications. For complete article, here
