Ah, the resurrection.
Even skeptics agree with the apostle Paul’s assertion that if the resurrection were disproved, then the entire Christian faith would collapse into irrelevancy. Consequently, opponents are constantly minting fresh objections to undermine this central tenet of Christianity. In recent years, for example, agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman and others have advanced new efforts to cast doubt on whether Jesus died and escaped his grave alive.
I said to J. Warner Wallace: “Even if we concede the gospel accounts are rooted in eyewitness testimony, we’re still faced with the issue of whether a miracle the magnitude of the resurrection makes sense. Let me challenge you with some of the most potent objections to Jesus rising from the dead.”
“Shoot,” he said, quickly catching himself with a chuckle. “Maybe that’s not the best terminology for a cop. Anyway, yes, go ahead.”
After becoming a Christian in 1996, Wallace earned a master’s degree in theological studies from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, served as a youth pastor, and planted a church. Currently, he is an adjunct professor of apologetics at Biola University, is a senior fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and teaches at Summit Ministries in Colorado.
Prior to becoming a Christian, Wallace was a decorated cold-case homicide investigator and a self-described skeptic. At the age of thirty-five, he subjected the gospels to months of painstaking analysis through various investigative techniques. The answers ended up convincing him that Jesus, in time and space, did conquer his tomb and thereby provide convincing evidence of his divinity.
“It seems to me the two relevant issues are, first, whether Jesus was actually dead from crucifixion, and, second, whether he was encountered alive afterward, necessitating an empty tomb,” I said.
Wallace folded his arms. “Agreed,” he replied.
“So how do we know he was really dead? Is it reasonable that he would succumb that soon? The thieves on either side of him were still alive.”
“But the path to the cross for Jesus was dramatically different than the path for the thieves,” he said.
“How so?”
“Pilate didn’t want to crucify Jesus, as the crowd was demanding, so he kind of makes an offer. He says, in effect, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do—I’ll beat him to within an inch of his life. Will that satisfy you?’ Consequently, Jesus was given an especially horrific flogging. That didn’t satisfy the crowds, and he was crucified. But he was already in such extremely bad shape that he couldn’t even carry his cross.”
“But these soldiers weren’t medical doctors,” I said. “Maybe they thought Jesus had died when he hadn’t.”
“That objection usually comes from people who’ve never been around dead bodies. As a cop, I’ve witnessed a lot of autopsies. Let me tell you, dead people aren’t like corpses in movies. They look different. They feel different. They get cold, they get rigid, their blood pools. These soldiers knew what death looked like; in fact, they were motivated to make sure he was deceased because they would be executed if a prisoner escaped alive. Plus, the apostle John unwittingly gave us a major clue.”
“What’s that?”
“He says that when Jesus was stabbed with a spear to make sure he was dead, water and blood came out. In those days, nobody understood that. Some early church leaders thought this was a metaphor for baptism or something. Today, we know this is consistent with what we would expect, because the torture would have caused fluid to collect around his heart and lungs. So without even realizing it, John was giving us a corroborating detail.”
I reached into my briefcase and removed a copy of the Qur’an, which I placed on the table between us. “Yet,” I said, “there are more than a billion Muslims who don’t believe Jesus was crucified. Many of them believe God substituted Judas for Jesus on the cross.”
Wallace picked up the Qur’an and paged through it. “Here’s the problem,” he said, handing it back to me. “This was written six hundred years after Jesus lived. Compare that to the first-century sources that are uniform in reporting Jesus was dead. Not only do we have the gospel accounts, but we also have five ancient sources outside the Bible.”
“Still, how can you disprove the claim that God supernaturally switched people on the cross?” I asked.
“That would mean Jesus was being deceptive when he appeared to people afterward. No, that would contradict what we know about his character. And how would you explain him showing the nail holes in his hands and the wound in his side to Thomas?”
“You have no doubt, then, that he was dead.”
“No, I don’t. When scholars Gary Habermas and Michael Licona surveyed all the scholarly literature on the resurrection going back thirty years, Jesus’ death was among the facts that were virtually unanimously accepted,” he said.
“Besides,” he added, “crucifixion was humiliating—it’s not something the early church would have invented. And we have no record of anyone ever surviving a full Roman crucifixion.”
—Lee Strobel
Adapted from Seeing the Supernatural: Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near-Death Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World by Lee Strobel.
