The Resurrection of Jesus Christ

With the resurrection of Jesus Christ rests the rise and the fall of Christianity itself, unlike
any other religion. The resurrection, if true, not merely answers the question, “Is there a
god?” but it also answers the question, “What sort of a God is he?”1

There have been several theories as to prove the resurrection of Jesus Christ as hoax. The
Swoon Theory accounts that Jesus didn’t actually die, but rather fainted and regained
consciousness in the tomb. Replacement Theory says that Jesus wasn’t crucified but
someone was put in His place. Another theory known as the Hallucination Theory says that
the resurrection appearances were hallucinations.2 Other ideas include that His disciples stole
the body and that women went to the wrong tomb, etc. All of these ideas have been rightly
discarded by vast majority of the contemporary scholars. The most popular scholarly
alternative today is that the resurrection is the product of a later mythologizing process of an
original tradition that did not include a supernatural return from the dead.3

Not only do the alternatives to Jesus’ bodily resurrection fail to convince, but six additional
arguments also provide strong evidence in favour of its historicity. Firstly, I Corinthians
contains Paul own testimony of Jesus’ appearance to Him, disproving all alternative theories.
In addition, there are more than a dozen other references to Christ’s resurrection in the
indisputably Pauline epistles written no later than the 50s (Rom. 4:24, 25; 6:4, 9; 8:11, 34;
10:9; I Cor. 6:14; II Cor. 4:14; 5:15; Gal. 1:1; I Thess. 1:10, etc. Secondly, no other
explanation adequately accounts for why the first Jewish Christians altered their day of
worship from Saturday to Sunday, especially when their Law made Saturday (Sabbath)
worship one of the inviolable Ten Commandments. (Exod. 20:8-11). Something objective,
astonishingly significant, and a datable to one particular Sunday must have generated the
change. Thirdly, in a culture in which women’s testimonies was often inadmissible in a law
court, ho would have invented a foundational ‘myth’ in which all the first witnesses to a hard-
to-believe event were women? Fourthly, the restrained accounts of the New Testament differ
dramatically from the bizarre apocryphal descriptions of resurrection invented in the second
century and beyond. Fifth, in the earliest centuries of Christianity, no tomb was ever
venerated, separating Christian response to the death of their founder from virtually all other
religions in the history of humanity. Finally, what would have led the first Jewish Christians
to reject the interpretation bequeathed to them from Deuteronomy 21:23 that a crucified
Messiah, by the very nature of his death, demonstrated that he was cursed by God? Once
again, it is easier to believe and admittedly supernatural event than to try to explain away all
these strange facts by any other logic.4

1
Charles Joseph, “The Resurrection: Heart of the Christian faith”
2
Ibid.
3
Craig L. Blomberg, Making Sense of the New Testament: Three Crucial Questions (Leicester: Inter-
Varsity Press, 2003), 68-69.
4
Ibid, 69-70.
Trinity

Trinity simply means ‘triunity’. God is not a simple unity; there is plurality in His unity. This
doctrine is one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith. The Trinity is at the heart of
orthodox Christianity. The basis for the Trinity is this: (i) There is one God and (ii) There are
three distinct persons who are God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God has one essence and
three persons. By this, we mean, He has one “What” and the “Whos.” The three Whos share
the same What (essence). So, God is a unity of essence with a plurality of persons. Each
person is different, yet they share a common nature.5

Each of them relates to the other Two in certain ways. These are somewhat analogous to
human relationships. The Bible’s description of YHWH as Father and Jesus as Son says
something of how the Son relates to the Father. Also, the Father sends the Spirit as a
Messenger, and the Spirit is a Witness of the Son (Jn. 14:26). These Descriptions helps us
understand the functions within the unity of the Godhead. Each is fully God, and each has
their own work and inter-relational theme with the other two. But the three share the same
essence, so that they unify as one Being.6

There are many critics – the Muslims in particular – who contend that it is incoherent and
contradictory. Perhaps no Christian concept draws so violent a reaction among the Muslims
than that of Jesus as the “only begotten Son of God.” This raises red flags immediately. It is
often misconstrued in a fleshly, carnal sense of someone who literally begets children through
sexual intercourse. A few cults, notably the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), approach this view
of “begetting”. Further, for the Islam, begetting is creating and for them, “God cannot create
another God.” This reveals the degree to which the biblical concept of Christ’s Sonship is
misunderstood by Muslim scholars. For no orthodox Christian equates the King James
Version translation of “begat” with “made” or “create”. Arianism taught that and was
strenuously fought wherever it has appeared in the Church history. Its primary adherents
today belong to the cult, Jehovah’s witnesses. 7

Many Islamic scholars also claim that Jesus denied being God when he rebuked the rich
young ruler, saying “Why do you call me good? No one is good – except God alone.” (Mk.
20:18). A careful look at this text in its context reveals that Jesus was not rejecting his deity
but was rather warning the young man to consider the implications of his careless appellation.
Another misunderstanding again, is Jesus’ assertion of “My Father is greater than I” (Jn.
14:28). It is taken out of its actual context to mean that the Father is greater nature, but Jesus
meant only that the Father is greater in office.8

Furthermore, there are two primary heresies from which the Trinity is to be distinguished:
modalism and tritheism. The heresy of modalism also called Sabellianism, denies there are
three distinct eternal persons in the Godhead. It believes that the so-called “persons” of the

5
Norman Geisler, “Trinity,” Baker Encyclopaedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker
Books, 1999), t-31, 34.
6
Ibid., t-36.
7
Ibid., t-36.
8
Ibid., t-38.
Trinity are modes of God substance, not distinct persons. Like water with its three state
(liquid, solid and gas), the Trinity is said to be only three different modes of the same
essence. Unlike modalists, Trinitarians believe there are three distinct persons (not just
modes) in the one substance of God.9

Muslims rather misconstrue the Christian view of God as tritheism rather than as
monotheism, which affirms the existence of three separate gods. For them, Allah has unity
and singularity. But these factors are not the same. It is possible to have unity without
singularity, for there could be plurality within the unity. For example, a human mind,
thoughts and words have a unity, but they are not a singularity, since they are all different.
Likewise, Christ can express the same nature as God without being the same person as the
Father. Unlike the tritheists, Trinitarians do not affirm a God with three different substances;
they confess that God is three distinct persons in one substance (Deut. 6:4; Mk. 12:29; I Cor.
8:4, 6).10

C S Lewis aptly puts it, “If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we
could make it easier. But it’s not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are
inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with fact. Of course anyone can be
simple if he has no facts to bother about.”11

The Problem of Evil

The problem of evil is a serious challenge to the defence of Christianity. If God is absolutely
good, then why is there evil? Although every worldview has to deal with the problem of evil,
it is an especially acute problem for theism. Of the three major worldviews, Atheism affirms
the reality of evil and denies the existence of God. Pantheism affirms the reality of God but
denies the reality of evil. Theism affirms the reality of both God and evil. Herein lies the
problem: how can an absolutely good Being (God) be compatible with evil, the opposite of
good? As compared to the other worldviews that affirms both God and evil, theism would
seem to be in a more disadvantageous position. Finite godism, for example, can claim that
God desires to destroy evil but he is unable to because he is limited in power. Deism,
likewise, can distance God from evil by stressing that God is not immanent in the world. for
panentheism evil is a necessary part of the ongoing progress of the interaction of God and the
world (his body).

The problem for theism is that it not only believes God is all-powerful and could destroy evil,
but he is all-loving and should destroy it. Further, the theistic God is all-knowing and created
this world fully aware of what would happen. It is in the context of this kind of theistic God
that we approach problems of evil.12

9
Norman Geisler, “Trinity,” Baker Encyclopaedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker
Books, 1999), t-39.
10
Ibid., t-39.
11
Ibid., t-40.
12
Norman Geisler, “Evil, Problem of,” Baker Encyclopaedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids:
Baker Books, 1999), e-22, 23.
According to St. Augustine, all that God created was good, but evil was not a substance. He
said, “What is evil? Perhaps you will reply. Corruption... But corruption exists not in itself,
but in some substance which it corrupts; for corruption itself is not a substance... to be
corrupted, then does not imply absence of good; for in corruption it can be derived of good,
which could not be there if there was the absence of good.” (On the Morals of the
Manichaens, 5.7). We can deny that evil is a thing, or substance, without saying that it isn’t
real. It is a lack of things. When good that should be there is missing from something, that is
evil.13

As for the answer to why evil is not stopped or destroyed, we see two answers. First, evil
cannot be destroyed without destroying freedom. Free beings are the cause of evil and
freedom was given to us so that we could love. Love is the greatest good for all free creatures
(Matt. 22:36-37), but love is impossible without freedom. So if freedom is destroyed, which
is the only way to end evil, that would be evil in itself, because it would deprive free
creatures of their greatest good. Hence, to destroy evil would actually be evil. Secondly, just
because evil is not destroyed right now does not mean that it never will be. The argument
implies that if God hasn’t done anything as of today, it won’t ever happen; assuming that the
person making the argument has some insight information about the future. If we restate the
argument to correct this oversight in temporal perspective, it turns out to be an argument that
vindicates God.14

Another problem is the purpose of evil. Why so much evil? Firstly, we need to make a clear
distinction between our knowing the purpose for evil and God having a purpose for it. Just
because we do not know God’s purpose for evil, does not mean He has a good reason for it.
Pain also keeps one from self-destruction. A good example is of the lepers, who lose feeling
of the affected areas, as such, they hang on to something until it inflicts pain on them;
touching a hot pan, for example.

Why would God allow His own Son to suffer and die a cruel and violent death as a criminal
when he had done nothing wrong and, by nature, had no need to die? This injustice is very
hard to explain unless there is some greater good accomplished by Christ’s death which
overshadows the evil of it. Jesus’ own explanation was that he had come “to give his life as a
ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45) and saying “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay
down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15:13). Hebrews 12:2 states the purpose of Jesus meaning
that the reconciliation of sinners was worth the suffering. The higher purpose of and greater
good derived from Christ’s death as our substitute for the penalty of our sins is more
important that the evil inherent in the process.15

C.S. Lewis said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in
our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”16

13
Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks, When Skeptics Ask (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1990),
41.
14
Ibid, 41-44.
15
Ibid., 45-47.
16
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 93.