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Jude the Obscure
Posted on Thursday, May 11, 2000 - 12:12 am:   Edit PostDelete PostPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

CAN WE PROVE THE RESURRECTION SCIENTIFICALLY?

St. Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 15:17-19 NIV):

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And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all me.î
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In the KJV the final clause is, ìwe are of all men most miserable.î

I would like to take a non-traditional approach to this text. Preachers, teachers and theologians traditionally use this text to prove from Scripture that Jesus Christ has risen physically from the dead. And I have no quarrel, in fact I applaud, that approach. It is good, solid Pauline theology.

But I would still like to take a non-traditional approach. Because when you get right down to it, Paul is actually talking about THIS LIFE and how we live it, isnít he? He is saying that the hope of a resurrection to come has made THIS LIFE more livable. He is saying that the resurrection made THIS LIFE non-miserable. He is saying that because of the resurrection, we are not ìto be pitiedî more than everyone else on the planet.

He is not primarily talking about how we will live our lives after Christ has come in the clouds and resurrects us.

Consider: Christ has come in our hearts by virtue of the Holy Spirit, but not yet in the clouds.

Consider: Paul has been physically ñ notice I didnít say spiritually ñ dead for more than 1,920 years. During this looong time ñ almost 20 centuries ñ Paul has been ìpresent with Christ.î But he has still been physically dead. He has not yet been resurrected.

In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul speaks of the physical, historical resurrection of Christ. And yet his point still concerns the effect of Christís resurrection on this physical life that we are living here and now, and not the physical life to come. In short, the resurrection renders this life less miserable, less pitiable.

As you may know, the historicity of the physical resurrection of Christ has been under attack by the rationalistic intellectual elite for some 200 years. A current example is the Jesus Seminar. (I'm NOT saying that they are bad people.)

More recently, it has come under attack by the ìspiritual elite,î for lack of a better term. To sketch a quick picture, I will caricaturize -- I didnít say characterize ñ them as professors and others with PhDs in art, music and philosophy, as well as professionals, such as physicians and lawyers. They are people who have plenty of money and lovely homes in beautiful, non-polluted areas and who summer in Laguna Niguel or Big Sur and who vacation in Paris and Rome. In short, they have ìheaven now,î so to speak.

But the ersatz ìheaven nowî that they enjoy here and now grossly miss Christís point about the kingdom of heaven being ìwithin youî and ìamong youî (Luke 17:20,21). They assume, at least many of them do, that it may have something to do with ìnew ageî or meditation or even Buddhism.

But whatever it means to them, as far as they are concerned it has little if anything to do with the ìlittle peopleî of the world, people for whom Christ died and was resurrected. People who, more like Paul than like them, would be ìmost miserableî were it not for Christís death and literal resurrection.

This ìelite of this worldî cannot scientifically prove the resurrection. So in the main they donít believe in it. The fact that they canít disprove it either seems to make little impact on their thinking. But it does seem to indicate that they feel it gives them plenty of reason to feel superior, for they misuse it to justify their elite status.

And in so doing they turn Christ's teaching on his head! For no one in the history of the world was more anti-elite of any kind, but especially of the spiritual kind, than Jesus Christ.

But ñ and I hope this startles you ñ the ìChristian fundamentalist eliteî -- are just as bad, if not worse.

For one thing, they come across, to me at least, as even more arrogant than the ìelite of this world.î

Reason: They presume to think that THEY have scientifically and historically proven the Christís physical resurrection, not to mention a six-day creation six thousand years ago, what I term the ìsix by six.î (That canít be proven either.) They are "Tower of Babel" builders. Or, better, "Tower of Babble" builders.

In this trivial pursuit they are wasting their own time and the time of all who hear them.

Worse, they are attacking faith. I recently attended a lecture of one fundamentalist PhD apologist for a scientifically-provable physical-and-historical resurrection of Christ. And he had the guts to say ñ I have kept notes -- that the ìwhole pointî of the lecture was to demonstrate that it takes ìless faithî to believe in the physical historicity of the resurrection than not!

During the question-and-answer period I was the first to raise my hand. If so, I asked him, why do you want to put us (the audience) into the position of arguing for having less faith?

In response he made three points:

(1) It wasnít the QUANTY, but the QUALITY, of faith that was at issue!

(2) It was the OBJECT of faith ñ Jesus Christ ñ that made the quality, rather than the quantity, of faith so important!

(3) My question was irrelevant!

He then went on to praise scriptural examples of people ñ such as Doubting Thomas ñ who had little faith. He totally dismissed by ignoring Christís message: ìBecause you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.î John 20:29 NIV.

He implied that having little faith ñ such as a grain of mustard seed ñ was better than having great faith. And again he totally dismissed by ignoring Christís message: Christ said that the disciples couldnít cast a demon out of a young boy, ìBecause you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, Move from here to thereí and it will move.î Christís point ñ that they didnít even have ìlittle faith,î much less ìgreat faith,î was totally lost on this truly anti-faith lecturer.

What utter arrogance! This is nothing less than a no-holds-barred attack on faith!

For, ìWithout faith it is impossible to please God!î Hebrews 11:6 NIV. Amen and praise God for faith!

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