On Resurrections.

“So she [Mary] ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the One whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tom, and we do not know where they have laid them.” John 20:2

I like how honest the Bible is about the humanity of the characters involved.

Mary Magdalene was a resurrection skeptic just like many people today. Granted, people may have different reasons for being skeptical but they are still skeptics nonetheless. Today, in our post-Englightenment 21st century Western world we have our own doubts about a truth claim that a man in the first-century Near East would be publicly killed and then rise again three days later.

There are reasons for modern skepticism. If someone want to research resurrections they could go to a graveyard every day for a whole year and just watch to see if any resurrections happen. After a full year of data and (most likely) no resurrections on record, the researcher could safely concluded that resurrections are im-

probable. 

That is as far as the research can take you.

One cannot say they are impossible unless you had every record for every death ever in history. The truth is that history does have accounts of a resurrection after death that must be taken into consideration as part of this study. The gospels in the New Testament all say that Jesus was killed by crucifixion and raised three days later. This kind of thing didn’t happen back then either.

In fact, the first Christians were so skeptical about people rising from the dead that they had to back it up with evidence (the story of Thomas, the Acts sermons and 1 Corinthians 15:4-8 come to mind). I’ve considered the evidence and have concluded that it is more rational to believe that God did raise his Son Jesus Christ from the dead rather than any of the alternative explanations (and there have been many from the very day it happened).

The Christian story of resurrection tells me that no matter how improbable a bodily resurrection is, it is certainly not impossible.