Jesus’ Resurrection and the Logic of Miracles
Two Very Brief Arguments
From a letter written to the church at Corinth in Greece about 21 to 25 years after Jesus’ death, the apostle Paul said some 500 people at one time saw Jesus alive after his death and that most of these people were still alive (1 Corinthians 15.6). This memorized doctrinal statement (vs 3–7) likely originated within a few years of Jesus’ death.1 Paul was making it quite clear that anyone who would want to question these witnesses could easily do so. Travel between Judea and Greece was not uncommon. Diaspora Jews especially, both Christian and non-Christian, would often travel to Jerusalem for annual religious festivals. Because the claim could so easily be falsified if it were false, we have good evidence that these 500 actually did see Jesus alive after his death.
Modern research has found no documented cases of mass hallucinations: multiple, simultaneous, non-veridical perceptions of the same phenomenon.2 The most reasonable explanation is that Jesus rose bodily from the dead.
Paul was making it quite clear that anyone who would want to question these witnesses could easily do so.
That’s the shortest possible argument I can come up with for Jesus’ resurrection. Before we leave this subject, however, we should also consider the logic of miracles, why we think a miracle like the resurrection of Jesus would provide evidence for religious claims. I think the logic would be something like the following. Here I’ll use the resurrection as an example.
Suppose you were to actually witness Jesus come back from the dead and you had previously heard him tell you that he would do so. You would then have reason to believe that a greater than normal human power or intelligence was involved in such an event. I think that would be pretty certain. This would be an event which would be far too unlikely to have occurred by chance without such intervention. But secondly, if he said he would rise from the dead by the power of God and he spoke of this God as the one described in the Hebrew scripture, then I think we would also have reason to believe what he said about this God. Now the first conclusion (that a greater than normal human intelligence and/or power was involved) is far more certain than the second (that we should trust what he says about this God and that this God raised Jesus from the dead). This second claim follows more from how we trust in people. For example, if an acquaintance, A, were to tell me that he saw B downtown the other day, I would normally believe him. Even if I had no experience of how trustworthy A is, because this is not an exceptional claim and not much hinges on my believing it, I would not need a lot to feel justified in believing it. But still I’m trusting in a person’s words; it is not absolutely certain. But if Jesus were to say that he would come back from the dead because the One who created everything exists who will do this, and he does come back from the dead, then his claim fits the magnitude of the miracle, coming back from the dead.
If he could predict his resurrection, then it is very possible he had access to the knowledge he claims, that this God exists; so it could very well be true. The display of power and intelligence would not be unexpected of such a powerful and intelligent God, the kind of God he had described. One would have good reason to believe this but it would not be absolutely certain, it would not be unquestionable.
We trust a person’s normal claims in normal circumstances without full proof of their statements but only with minimal indication of their truthfulness. Likewise we should trust one’s religious claims so long as a similar yet proportionately greater indication of their truthfulness is given by the miracle. Because the religious claim requires more verification than a normal claim, we need a display of power or intelligence, or both, as would be expected were the religious claims true.
Obviously, much more could and should be said about both of these topics. For a more complete argument for Jesus’ resurrection, I would recommend The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2004). Concerning the logic of miracles, I have given my argument in a little more detail in “The Logic of Miracles,” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 33 (September, 1981): 145–53. (This journal is currently entitled Perspective on Science and Christian Faith.)
One other very strong line of historical evidence that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah can be found in the articles Daniel Prophesies When Messiah Will Appear and the more detailed article Daniel’s Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks. The first argues that Daniel prophesied within a seven year cycle of years when the Messiah will appear and that Jesus fulfilled this prophecy. The second, with more but not unreasonable assumptions, argues that the Messiah would appear to the day when Jesus triumphantly entered Jerusalem in fulfillment of Zechariah 9.9.
1. Michael Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 223–35.
2. Psychologist Gary Sibcy said he found no such cases in 20 years of research. Licona, Resurrection, 484.
Dennis Jensen, 2021
