EST PATER S T U D E N T EST DEVS SPVS SAT9 EST FILIVS 20 L E S S O N Is Jesus God? Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? In this lesson we re concerned about convincing those who don t believe the Bible to be an authoritative, divinely inspired, document. So, what do you say to them? Is there evidence outside the Bible we can point to? This question is extremely important because the nature of Christ and His resurrection is the central pillar of the Christian faith. Note 1 Corinthians 15:14-19:...if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God. 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 men. That heavy statement deserves our rapt attention. The subject of the deity of Christ and His resurrection are related, but each is so weighty that this lesson has two parts: 1) the deity of Christ, and 2) His resurrection. The most common argument you will encounter goes something like this; Jesus was a good man and a wonderful teacher, but He was not God. That argument is fallacious and illogical. There is a classical argument to refute it. The Latin title for this argument is Aut deus aut homo malus, meaning, Either God or a bad man. The argument maintains that it is impossible that Jesus was a good man but God, and it is based on the following syllogism: 1) Jesus was either God or a bad man. 2) Jesus was not a bad man. 3) Therefore, Jesus was (is) God. Let s start with the second premise, Jesus was not a bad man. We start there because almost everyone will agree with us. Consider, for example, the following quotations from famous people who are well qualified to make judgments about historical figures: Measured by its fruits in the human race, that short life has been the most influential ever lived on this planet. As we have been at pains to point out, the impress of that life, far from fading with the passing centuries, has deepened. Through Him millions of individuals have been transformed and have begun to live the kind of life which He exemplified...gauged by the consequences which have followed, the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus have been the most important events in the history of man. Measured by His influence, Jesus is central in the human story. (19) Those are the words of Kenneth Scott Latourette, the Director of the Department of Religion in Yale Graduate School, and one of the greatest church historians of our time. Consider, further, the following statement by Napoleon: I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between 223
Christ and the founders of empires, and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist...everything in Christ astonishes me. His spirit overawes me, and his will confounds me. Between him and whoever else in the world, there is no possible term of comparison. He is truly a being by Himself. His ideas and sentiments, the truth which he announces, his manner of convincing, are not explained either by human organization or by the nature of things...i search in vain in history to find the similar to Jesus Christ, or anything which can approach the gospel. Neither history, nor humanity, nor the ages, nor nature, offer me anything with which I am able to compare it or to explain it. Here everything is extraordinary. (20) We could fill many pages with similar quotations from keen observers of human nature, but one more statement seems to summarize what most people, Christian or non-christian, would accept. This quotation is from Philip Schaff, an American theologian: Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed and Napoleon; without science and learning, He shed more light on things human and divine, than all the philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of the school, He spoke words of life such as were never spoken before, nor since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; without writing a single line, He has set more pens in motion and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, works of art, learned volumes, and sweet songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times. Born in a manger and crucified as a malefactor, He now controls the destinies of the civilized world, and rules a spiritual empire which embraces one-third of the inhabitants of the globe. (21) These observations and many more like them by other observers support premise #2 in our syllogism; Jesus was not a bad man. But what does this have to do with premise #1, Jesus was either God or a bad man? In answer to that question, think about the claims Jesus made about Himself, as witnessed by historians and his closest followers: 1) He said He lived before Abraham. 2) He said He is Lord over the Law of God. 3) He claimed to be the source of eternal life. 4) In His relationship to the Father, he claimed: to know Him is to know the Father. to see Him is to see the Father. to receive Him is to receive the Father. He and the Father are one. He is the only way to the Father. to hate Him is to hate the Father. to honor Him is to honor the Father. 5) He forgave people s sins, while acknowledging only God can do this. 6) He accepted worship. 7) He had the authority and power to send the Holy Spirit. Now, if the above claims are not true, then Jesus is not a good man. He is a deceiver of the worst kind. Consider the observation of C. S. Lewis, the well-known Christian apologist, writer and teacher. He wrote in Mere Christianity: 224 A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (22) Of course, Jesus could have been lying about who He was. Or could He? Consider the statement of
Christian apologists Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, in the Handbook of Christian Apologetics: If...Jesus was a liar, then he had to have been the most clever, cunning, Machiavellian, blasphemously wicked, satanic deceiver the world has ever known, successfully seducing billions into giving up their eternal souls into His hands. If orthodox Christianity is a lie, it is by far the biggest and baddest lie ever told and Jesus is the biggest and baddest liar....we have never known anyone who thought Jesus was a deliberate liar. That would be more bizarre than calling Mother Teresa a party animal. (23) This argument is compelling. It places an unbeliever in the dilemma of either taking the position that Jesus is a bad man, or admitting that He is God. If a bad man, how does one account for the fact that His teachings are recognized around the world as having the highest of moral and ethical standards? People familiar with debate and logic, when faced with a dilemma of this sort, will seek to escape between the horns of the dilemma. That is, they will avoid selecting either of the two alternatives by suggesting a third possibility. Perhaps Jesus was not a liar, but was honestly deceived into thinking He was God. This is sometimes expressed as; Liar, Lunatic, or Lord of all? But is it rational to consider someone like Jesus a lunatic? Seriously, how could an insane person accomplish what Jesus accomplished? His wisdom amazed the greatest minds of the time, and He displayed superb balance in His personality. There is such a thing as a divinity complex, but the profile of such a personality is totally opposite of Jesus. And lunatics just do not produce the kind of results that Jesus did. But the possibilities are still not exhausted. Maybe Jesus never said any of these things. What if all of it was just a myth that developed after He died and the story was promoted as truth by Bible writers? Now the question becomes, was Jesus Lord, liar, lunatic, or myth? Lesson 21 delves into the question of whether the Bible is a reliable record of what really happened, so let s hold that question until then. Suffice it to say here that all the witnesses who wrote about Jesus agreed on what He claimed about Himself and on the nature of His personality. Then nearly all of these witnesses died a martyr s death without changing their statements. That s a pretty strong indication that their testimony is true. One more possible escape route for the unbeliever Maybe the record is true, but what Jesus meant was that He is God in the same way all of us are God. Jesus was a New Age Pantheist, or Guru. No one who knows Jewish doctrine would believe that for a moment. Jesus was a Jew, and the Jews just don t believe in that kind of nonsense. If this was what Jesus meant, He contradicted Himself repeatedly when talking about the nature of God as a person separate from His creation. Besides, the scribes and Pharisees would have picked up on that very quickly and said something about it. Instead, they sought to stone Him because...he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God (John 5:18). They knew exactly what He meant! There are only five possible alternatives. Review them and practice your answer for each. Come to the next class session prepared to give a brief answer to each of these theories: 1) Jesus never claimed deity.............................myth THEORY 2) Jesus claimed deity and a. He meant it mystically.............................guru THEORY b. He meant it literally and 1) He knew it was false...........................liar THEORY 2) He didn t know it was false.....................lunatic THEORY 3) It is true.....................................he IS LORD! (Above chart modified from Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli, The Handbook of Christian Apologetics, InterVarsity Press, 1994, p. 171) 225
The strongest argument of all for Jesus deity is His resurrection. But did it really happen? That s the subject of the second part of this lesson. Did Jesus Really Rise From the Dead? The question of Jesus resurrection is central to our Christian faith. He is risen! was the flag of the primitive church, and the message they carried to the world. As we saw in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, the entire structure of our faith collapses. The word gospel means, literally, good news. The good news the early church and the apostles and evangelists proclaimed was the fact that Jesus rose from the dead (Acts 17:18; 1 Cor. 15:3-4). So, did it really happen? Those who deny it have some heavy explaining to do. There are several questions they must answer: 1) How do you explain the origin of the church, which spread rapidly across the empire, if the central message they proclaimed was not true? After all, these were contemporaries to the event. 2) How do you explain the willingness of the witnesses (the apostles) to suffer a martyr s death for the truth of their message? It seems, if it were not true, that at least one of them would have flinched! 3) Why did hardened skeptics (the Apostle Paul, for example) do such a sudden reversal of their belief about the resurrection? Skeptics will usually resort to one or more of four different theories to try to explain the resurrection away. The four theories are listed below. Think about them this week, and write a sentence beside each one telling how you would respond to that argument. Be prepared to share your thoughts with your class. 1) The Hallucination theory. This theory maintains that Jesus didn t actually rise from the dead, but His disciples wanted this to happen so badly that they hallucinated. They actually thought He rose from the dead, but He didn t. 2) The Myth Theory. Jesus didn t actually rise from the dead, but with the passing of time the myth of His resurrection grew and finally was incorporated into the writings we call the Gospels. 3) The Conspiracy Theory. The disciples stole Jesus body and claimed He had risen. 226
4) The Swoon Theory. Jesus wasn t actually dead at the time of His burial. The coolness of the tomb allowed Him to regain consciousness. He then exited the tomb, much to the astonishment of everyone who thought He had risen from the dead. These are about the only possible options other than simply accepting the fact of His resurrection. To accept the resurrection of Jesus is to affirm His deity and the validity of everything He taught. It is also the foundation of all our hope for eternity and our relationship with God today. No other single issue is as important as this! 227