I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (48 page)

Early in the morning, as the Sabbath dawned, there came a large crowd from Jerusalem and the surrounding areas to see the sealed tomb. But during the night before the Lord’s day dawned, as the soldiers were keeping guard two by two in every watch, there came a great sound in the sky, and they saw the heavens opened and two men descend shining with a great light, and they drew near to the tomb. The stone which had been set on the door rolled away by itself and moved to one side, and the tomb was opened and both of the young men went in.

Now when these soldiers saw that, they woke up the centurion and the elders (for they also were there keeping watch).While they were yet telling them the things which they had seen, they saw three men come out of the tomb, two of them sustaining the other one, and a cross following after them. The heads of the two they saw had heads that reached up to heaven, but the head of him that was led by them went beyond heaven. And they heard a voice out of the heavens saying, “Have you preached unto them that sleep?” The answer that was heard from the cross was, “Yes!”
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Wow! Now that’s how I would have written it if I were making up or embellishing the Resurrection story! We see large crowds, moving stones, heads of men stretching to heaven and beyond. And we even see a walking and talking cross. How exciting! How embellished.

The New Testament resurrection accounts contain nothing like this. The Gospels give matter-of-fact, almost bland descriptions of the Resurrection.

Mark
describes what the women saw this way:

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid (Mark 16:4-8).

Luke’s
description is almost as stark:

They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” Then they remembered his words (Luke 24:2-8).

John’s
Gospel briefly mentions Mary Magdalene discovering the empty tomb, adds the experience of Peter and John, and then returns to Mary outside the tomb. Again, nothing appears embellished or extravagant in this account:

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot (John 20:1-12).

John’s account then describes Jesus’ appearance to Mary.

Matthew’s
account of the women’s experience is more dramatic, but contains nothing as bizarre as the long heads or the walking and talking cross found in the legendary account of the
Gospel of Peter:
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There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you (Matt. 28:2-7).

The Resurrection is the central event in Christianity. As Paul wrote, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). If the Resurrection were a made-up story designed to convince skeptics, then the New Testament writers certainly would have made their accounts longer with more detail. Moreover, they probably would have said that they witnessed Jesus physically rising from the dead. Instead, they get to the tomb after he has risen, and they make no attempt to dress up their discovery with verbose descriptions or car-toonish talking crosses. Matthew, Mark, and Luke don’t even say anything about the dramatic theological implications of the Resurrection, and John reports those implications in just one sentence (John 20:31).

This point about the theological restraint of the Gospel writers deserves amplification. It indicates that the Gospel writers were concerned about getting the history correct, not inventing some new kind of theology. New Testament scholar N. T. Wright makes the astute observation that “neither ‘going to heaven when you die’, ‘life after death’, ‘eternal life’, nor even ‘the resurrection of all Christ’s people’, is so much as mentioned in the four canonical resurrection stories. If Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wanted to tell stories whose import was ‘Jesus is risen, therefore you will be too’, they have done a remarkably bad job of it.”
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This is almost shocking when you think about it. If you go to most evangelical church services today, the constant emphasis is “come to Jesus to get saved.” That is certainly taught in the whole of the New Testament, but it’s hardly mentioned in the Gospels. Why? Because the Gospel writers were writing history, not mere theology. Of course New Testament history has dramatic implications on theology, but those implications are drawn out in other New Testament writings, namely the Epistles (letters). It would have been easy for the Gospel writers to interject the theological implications of every historical event, but they didn’t. They were eyewitnesses who were writing history, not fiction writers or proselytizing theologians.

Their level-headedness is also on display with the other miracles they record. The thirty-five other miracles attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are described as if from reporters, not wild-eyed preachers. The Gospel writers don’t offer flamboyant descriptions or fire and brimstone commentary—just the facts.

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The New Testament writers don’t just say that Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead—they actually back up that testimony with dramatic action. First, virtually overnight they abandon many of their long-held sacred beliefs and practices. Among the 1,500-year-old-plus institutions they give up are the following:

The animal sacrifice system—they replace it forever by the one perfect sacrifice of Christ.

The binding supremacy of the Law of Moses—they say it’s powerless because of the sinless life of Christ.

Strict monotheism—they now worship Jesus, the God-man, despite the fact that 1) their most cherished belief has been, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4); and 2) man-worship has always been considered blasphemy and punishable by death.

The Sabbath—they no longer observe it even though they’ve always believed that breaking the Sabbath was punishable by death (Ex. 31:14).

Belief in a conquering Messiah—Jesus is the opposite of a conquering Messiah. He’s a sacrificial lamb (at least on his first visit!).