In my last post I linked to an article by Richard Carrier called “Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection Story,” in which the author argued that the resurrection of Jesus cannot be substantiated by the extant historical data. At the end of the post I asked the question of whether Carrier’s claim really matters all that much, and for the sake of discussion I suggested that he might be right, and that the resurrection might not be something that, like Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon, can be proven from the historical record alone.
Yes, I was deliberately being provocative.
My reason for taking this position, ironically, is apologetic in nature. My attention was drawn to Carrier’s article by a friend of mine who considers himself an agnostic. Now put yourself in my Rainbow sandals for a minute. If I insist, like Carrier’s debate opponent, that the resurrection of Christ meets the highest standards of historical inquiry and investigation (like Caesar and the Rubicon), then I am going to have to deal with the kinds of refutations of that exaggerated rhetoric that Carrier adduces. And if you’ve taken the time to read the piece, you’ll know that’s a tall order.
Perhaps it is a better tactic to say something like this:
“You know what? Of course the resurrection cannot be historically proven by an airtight, knock-down-drag-out argument or piece of evidence, but to expect such a thing is not only to demonstrate a level of skepticism that is unfair and inapplicable across the board (hence there’s a serious bias at work), but such an expectation also misunderstands the nature of Christian doctrines. Christian doctrines like the resurrection or the virgin birth are articles of faith, not articles of science or history (at least not for us since we didn’t witness them ourselves), and faith by its very nature is opposed to sight. In other words, it doesn’t take any faith to believe that waters boils at one-hundred degrees Celsius, but it does take God-given faith to believe that Jesus is God (and rightly so, since the former claim is natural, and the latter is supernatural).”
After all, Jesus said that despite Thomas’s blessing for having believed after seeing, those who would come after him would be further blessed for believing without having seen at all.