The Post-Resurrection Experiences of the Disciples (Part 2)
In my last post I was dealing with the second of the six minimal facts regarding the resurrection of Jesus Christ which, according to Gary Habermas, are granted by almost all contemporary scholars. I gave several supporting arguments for the fact that the disciples had experiences that they thougth were actual appearances of Christ. Note, it is not necessary at this point to argue that it actually was Christ, only that they thought it was Christ. The cumulative power of all six of these facts will provide an adequate reason for accepting that this was actually the resurrected Christ that they saw. Today, I will continue with a few more supporting arguments for the experience of the disciples.
Next, scholars acknowledge that James, the brother of Jesus, was an unbeliever and probably a skeptic during the public ministry of Jesus ( John 7:5; Mark 3:21). Later, he is the leader of the Jerusalem Church (Gal 1:18-19; Acts 15:13-21). According to the aforementioned creedal statement of I Corinthians 15 (v7), something happened between these two conditions: James saw the resurrected Jesus. This is the majority position among even skeptical scholars. The skeptical scholar John Shelby Spong stated:
…we can be certain of the fact that the brothers of Jesus were not impressed, were not followers of Jesus during his lifetime. They were scoffers, cynics, suspicious of Jesus’ sanity. But something happened…Look at James before Easter. Look at James after Easter. What caused a change this dramatic?
Next, besides I Corinthians 15, there are other creedal passages in the New Testament that also report Jesus’ post resurrection appearances. Many of these are from sermons in the book of Acts. These are considered very early evidence for these appearances.
In summation, The death of Jesus and the disciples’ experiences of the resurrected Jesus are perhaps the two most widely accepted facts in the New Testament. Next, the case is further built by a discussion of the third minimal fact: The transformation of the disciples.