A Fool’s Errand? Knowing the Resurrection Is True

The question of the resurrection is the question of which faith will you believe in? Will you believe in the one that's well attested, certain, can provide you with a view of the world that's livable, that gives hope and purpose and meaning and life and most importantly brings glory to God? Or will you believe in the materialist fables that are actual myths, modern myths, that are every bit as unbelievable as what we read in ancient Greek mythology? It can be easy as a Christian to fall for the lie that atheists have science on their side. But as we'll see, it takes a lot of faith to believe in a world without God and without the resurrection.

Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham and thank you for joining us today for Renewing Your Mind. This week we've been considering the resurrection of Christ, an event that has so much evidence to support it inside the Bible and outside of it. So as Gabe Fluhrer continues his series Alive, he'll consider the ways that atheists and theological liberals seek to explain away the resurrection of Christ. And as we'll see, it takes quite a lot of faith to do so.

Here's Gabe Fluhrer. A few years ago, Alex Rosenberg, who is the R. Taylor Cole professor of philosophy at Duke University and also serves in the philosophy of science department at Duke University, which is at this time one of the most difficult institutions to gain undergraduates admission to in this country, wrote a book called The Atheist's Guide to Reality. And in this book, he makes a very simple argument and actually really enjoyed reading this book because unlike so many of the so-called new atheists, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Professor Rosenberg has the courage of conviction.

And so his argument was simple. If you believe that science is the only way to truth, then certain logical outcomes follow inextricably. And so in the beginning of the book, he has a series, a couple of pages, pages three and four of questions. And the first one is, you know, is there a God? And his answer is no. What happens when you die?

Pretty much everything goes on before except you. And then there was this one question that said, he asked this. Does history have any meaning or purpose? And then citing the Bard, citing Shakespeare, he answered, it's full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing. And so his his take on everything Rosenberg's take is this. There's no meaning.

There's no purpose. There's no hope. Make the best of it. And his prescription at the end of the book, by the way, is if you if you get to this point of you realize how despairing reality is, he says, take two of whatever neuropharmacology prescribes.

If that doesn't work, try something else in a few weeks. And this reminds us, doesn't it, that again, here's a man teaching at one of the most prominent universities in the world. And this is his world view. And as we think about the resurrection of Christ, here's the question we want to ask with this in mind that that many people share.

Professor Rosenberg's world view. Can we know historical facts for sure? For certain. Or is he right when he says it's full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing? Now, of course, the scriptures challenge that on every page and say the purpose of history is the glorification of Jesus through his people that he's redeemed. But let's again zero in on this question.

Can we know that the resurrection really happened? And that's what we'll spend our next few lectures together thinking about. As we launch into that, I want to to begin by thinking about the faith of doubt. And I put it intentionally because we live in a skeptical time that almost assumes that we should doubt anything that we haven't come to on our own.

What I mean by that is this. We we assume we are our own authority or we'll listen to another authority. But we need to be skeptical about any authority like what God claims for himself in the Bible. And then the question becomes, well, you're arguing, Gabe, that that this the resurrection of Jesus is obvious, that it's it's historically certain. And therefore, why do people still doubt?

Why don't they believe? Well, before we launch into some philosophical reasons for that, let's listen to the most important reason from the scriptures. Second Corinthians four in verse four. In their case, speaking of unbelievers, Paul says, The God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. And so Paul tells us that the reason why people don't see the obvious is first and foremost, not intellectual, not because of a lack of evidence, but because of spiritual blindness, because there's a real devil. He is really bad and he works in ways that are so often counterintuitive. We have this image of the devil is this kind of either, you know, red and pointy horns and, you know, this tail and run around the pitchfork or the Hollywood version where he makes people's heads spin and crazy voices.

Often he is much more subtle, my friends. Why spin someone's head and give them a crazy voice when you can give them enough skepticism to never believe anything? Like we see in the case of Rosenberg and when it comes particularly to the resurrection to blind the minds of unbelievers. Now, when we think about the faith of doubt, we have to recognize at the outset that every one of us is a philosopher.

To borrow the title from R.C. 's book and change it slightly, Dr. Sproul's book, everyone's a theologian. Well, everyone's a philosopher as well. And the reigning philosophy, the predominant philosophy, whether or not people have ever even thought about philosophy, that most people take on today, that most people believe today is the philosophy of naturalism, the view that nature is all there is. And this is reinforced in almost every institution. It's so important for us to see just how pervasive this philosophy is. From academia to politics, from children's schools to churches, so many believe that nature is all there is. And I believe this philosophy was captured perfectly about 20 or so years ago in a New York Times book review by a man called Richard Lewontin.

Brilliant, brilliant scientist. And he was reviewing a book by a fellow atheist, Carl Sagan. And he was speaking about how the book was argued. And then at the end, he said something that was so telling. Some of his fellow atheists were pretty upset with the way he put it. He said this. Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural.

Paul's right there. Science on one side, supernatural on the other. He says there's a willingness to accept claims that are against common sense. What would one of those claims be? Well, right before he died, the great physicist Stephen Hawking argued in his book The Grand Design that the way physics has gone, it's getting more difficult to believe there's actually an extra mental world. What he means by that is a world outside of our minds. That if you believe this this lectern is hard or you're sitting on a chair, that's just because you're naive and don't understand particle physics.

So that is a claim that would be against our common sense everyday experience. And Lewontin is saying our willingness to accept those claims is the key to understanding this struggle. Continuing, he says this, quote, We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just so stories. Pause right there again. Hear what he's saying? We take the side of science in spite of all of these difficulties.

Unsubstantiated just so stories? What would those be? Well, lots of scientific claims, he's saying. We take the side of science in spite of all of these difficulties. Why? Here's his answer. Quote, Because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. Pause again.

Hear what he's saying? Why do we believe these things, even though it's counterintuitive? Because we have a prior commitment.

Let me put that in simple terms. We have faith in materialism, not the supernatural. Then he continues.

This is just astonishing. Listen to what he says. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the world. Pause again. Hear what he says?

Everybody says this today, right? If you study science long enough, you'll lose your faith, right? If you understand really how science works, then you're not going to believe in silly just so stories like the resurrection.

And here's what he's saying. It's not that the methods and institutions compel us to accept the material explanation. It's not as if it's the best explanation. It's not as if science says this is the only explanation. In other words, we don't believe this because of science. Rather, he says. On the contrary, quote, we are forced by our a priori, that means beforehand, adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. Close quote.

Let's translate that paragraph briefly. We believe not because science says so, but because we begin with the assumption without evidence, without studying the evidence that the world is totally material. Why? Because we don't want God in this universe. We don't want him in our world view.

Isn't that astonishing? Because today we're told so often, look, it's all objective, right? If you get science, if you understand it, you won't believe in silly things like a man coming back from the dead. And Lewontin, one of the nation's most accomplished scientists says, that's not it at all. We start with the faith of materialism, the faith of doubt. Now, as an aside, if you believe this about the world, what Lewontin said and what Rosenberg said, then a couple of things at least follow. First of all, there's no such thing as truth. If all we are are molecules in motion that were kicked up by space, time and chance, then there's no such thing as a concept of truth. Molecules do what molecules do.

They're predetermined physically to do that. What sense does it make to try to write books to convince people that that is true? One might note. And then of course, the other problem that follows is there's no such thing as right or wrong. So why tell the truth in your scientific investigations? Why care about the truth at all in scientific results? As a matter of fact, this is starting to become more consistent in the scientific community. I'm working my way through a book right now called Science Fictions in which this researcher demonstrates again and again, falsehood after falsehood in every area of major academic research from pharmacology to biology to sociology. It's terrifying. And Lewontin kind of pulls the curtain back for us and says, don't think for a minute that we all kind of independently investigated the evidence for the resurrection, made up our minds and then said, hey, I reject this. I don't think it's scientific. He said, we started off this way.

Why? 2 Corinthians 4, 4. Blinded the minds of unbelievers. So there's the faith of doubt. But then when we come to the resurrection of Christ and look at it over church history, we also see that people have imagined fanciful alternatives.

And I just want to highlight two. There are two alternatives and many more that people have come up with to explain, rather try to explain away, the fact that the tomb was empty and there's so much historical evidence and most importantly, biblical evidence to show us that Jesus rose from the dead. The first theory, the alternative theory is known as the swoon theory.

This was popular in the 19th century, largely discarded today. But the swoon theory taught that Jesus really didn't die on the cross. He merely swooned and was revived in the cool of the tomb and somehow came back to life, rolled away the stone and convinced his followers that he was alive.

Let's just walk through why that's ridiculous. First, Jesus wasn't just crucified, my friends. The scriptures tell us that Pilate had him flogged. Many people in the ancient world who underwent flogging didn't even make it to the crucifixion.

Because flogging entailed a whip with bits of bone and bits of metal that were lashed across the back of a victim until it lacerated him up. And then, of course, we read that Jesus carried the cross beam. He probably didn't carry the cross itself like we imagine a cross today. He probably just carried the cross beam, which would have weighed a lot, very heavy, and he is dehydrated, bloody, almost dead, and then crucified. And the whole purpose of crucifixion, my friends, the reason why it was done publicly with the victims naked was to impress upon everyone in the Roman Empire, we rule you, do not mess with us. Crucifixion was a billboard for Rome's supremacy. And therefore, they wanted to make very sure the victims suffered a lot until they died.

And they left the corpses there at a main point in the towns where they happened so that pastor buys would say, I'm pretty sure I don't want to commit crimes against Rome. And so this theory would ask us to believe that Jesus survived flogging, survived crucifixion, and then managed to roll away a thousand pound stone, get past the ancient equivalent of a Navy SEAL team, all while convincing his followers, hey look, I'm okay. Now, why would somebody come up with a ridiculous explanation like that?

Well, it goes back to what we just read and just heard from Lewington and Rosenberg. Because they start with the faith of materialism, so you have to explain things naturalistically. And once you accept that naturalistic faith, you have to fit everything into the naturalistic box.

And my question would be, why that box? Why not get rid of the box that makes you come up with ridiculous theories like the swimming theory? Now, far more popular today is what's called the hallucination theory. And this would be that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, but that his followers, because of psychological conditioning and other factors, really believed they'd seen him rise from the dead, but it was simply a hallucination.

Now, the problem with this theory, of course, is that the scriptures tell us in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus appeared to over 500 people, never mind his disciples. And hallucinations are manifestly private events, my friends. If I'm hallucinating right now that there's pink elephants running across the campus here, you guys aren't seeing pink elephants and you call somebody and say, we need to watch this guy. Hallucinations are private events. We don't read about mass hallucinations.

And moreover, once again, notice that the reason why we come up with something like the hallucination theory is because we've already had this commitment to naturalism. Now, believe it or not, there's theologians who buy into this. And one of the most prominent modern theologians, he's very old now, but when I was growing up, I can remember seeing him on the news. He was the Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey, John Shelby Spong, who is probably the most published prolific liberal theologian of the past 50 years. And Spong wrote a book on the resurrection and he himself is a materialist who still claims to be a Christian. And he wrote many books.

One of his books was Why Christianity Must Change or Die. And we hear that all the time. We've heard it all throughout church history. Christianity is going to go away if we don't adapt it to the world in which it finds itself, instead of challenging the godless world in which it finds itself.

The argument is always the same. And in this book on the resurrection, he makes this argument that, well, actually Peter, Peter was so distraught after Jesus's death that he decided to go fishing. And on a hunch, he says, he threw out his net and caught a miraculous catch of fish and that led him to believe that Jesus was alive.

Not actually alive, but that's what led Peter to think that. And so that's where Spong's coming from. Notice again, naturalism.

How do we explain the catch of fish? Well, it was a hunch. Strange things happen after all. But then he goes on to write this. And I think it's so important for us to recognize this kind of argument is made by theologians mostly, but by philosophers also on why we shouldn't believe the resurrection. He says this, quote, if the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the gospels.

Pause right there real quick. Here's a man who is a bishop who describes the gospels as fantastic descriptions. And let's all just take a sobering aside here and recognize that any time you read in the scriptures, somebody questioning the scriptures, it doesn't end well. And whatever else we might wrestle with in philosophy and evidences and everything else, the bottom line is, if you claim to be a follower of Jesus and you don't have his view of the Bible, then you're not a follower of Jesus.

That's how simple he makes it. And he makes it clear to us on every occasion that he speaks about the Bible, that it's totally authoritative. And he's the one in one sense we could say who wrote it, and he's saying, I'm appealing to the scriptures. So here's a man professing to be a bishop who says, if the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the gospels, then, quote, Christianity is doomed. For that view of the resurrection, the scriptural view as an aside, is not believable. If that were the requirement for belief as a Christian, then I would sadly leave my house of faith.

With me in that exodus would be every ranking New Testament scholar in the world. Let me just real quick, I love that last line because it reminds me of, I remember I really, really wanted to go to this concert growing up. I was a drummer, and I was this band I wanted to see, and thankfully my parents were like, that's not good for you to see. But I was really wanting to go, and I did it, and my kids do this now. But mom, everybody's going.

And what do you think she said? Well, son, if everybody's running off a cliff, would you run off a cliff? That's Spong's argument. We could call it your mother's favorite fallacy. And what Spong's argument is in a nutshell is, you can't believe the Bible descriptions of the resurrection. And if that's what we're saying is true, then Christianity is doomed, and I would leave it.

And with me would come every ranking New Testament. That's called the argument from a false authority. Because what we could easily do is produce just as many ranking New Testament scholars who do believe the resurrection, who are equally credentialed, equally decorated. No, no, don't fall for that argument. That everybody believes it, and you don't want to be some silly person on the wrong side of history. As one of, a professor I heard once say, who cares if you're on the wrong side of history as long as you're on the right side of eternity?

And that's Spong's argument. You don't want to be one of those silly, foolish, gullible people. No, you want to be with the ranking New Testament scholars, and we need to see that argument for what it is.

A false appeal to authority that's undone by mom's flawless reasoning. So then, the question for us, my friends, is not the majority of scholars, but what is true? And when we ask that question, we have to come back and look at our assumptions about reality. And the Scriptures give us such a wonderful alternative, true alternative, to the reigning philosophy of our day, expressed so eloquently by Lewontin and Rosenberg, that there's nothing beyond nature. And what we need to realize is, so often, people don't get to that belief by looking at the facts and looking at the evidence.

They start there. So the question of the resurrection is the question of which faith will you believe in? Will you believe in the one that's well attested, certain, can provide you with a view of the world that's livable, that gives hope and purpose and meaning and life, and most importantly brings glory to God?

Or will you believe in the materialist fables that are actual myths, modern myths, that are every bit as unbelievable as what we read in ancient Greek mythology? That's the choice before us. That's the choice God asks all of us to make. That's the choice that all of us have to come to at some point. And when you think about that, come back to this fact. On one side is a faith that's completely unbelievable, and on the other side is the only viable option in human history to explain human history, namely the resurrection of Christ and the worldview that underwrites that resurrection.

That is a choice that each one of us must face. That was Gabe Fleur from his series Alive, How the Resurrection of Christ Changes Everything. This series not only lays out the evidence for the resurrection, which is a wonderful comfort and encouragement for us as Christians, but Dr. Fleur also looks at the practical implications, how the resurrection of Christ not only gives us certainty that we too will be raised, but how it impacts our everyday life. We'd love to send you a copy of this series. It's eight messages in full, and we'll send it to you for your donation of any amount. You can give your gift at renewingyourmind.org, or by calling us at 800 435 4343. Not only will we send you this DVD, but you'll have digital access both to the messages and to the study guide. So give your gift today at renewingyourmind.org. We heard today how atheists try and dismiss the resurrection of Christ. So what is the evidence for the resurrection? That's what we'll learn tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. .