Testing Alternate Resurrection Theories Against the Minimal Facts

Filed under: Apologetics — Barry Carey at 8:29 pm on Saturday, April 21, 2007

Mary Jo, at Confident Christianity, puts competing theories of the resurrection to the test against the minimal facts which are granted by even the most liberal biblical scholars. The swoon theory, the hallucination theory, the myth theory, and the legend theory are all found wanting when compared to the only theory which adequately accounts for all the minimal facts: Jesus of Nazareth was actually resurrected! She does a great job in her explanation.

I presented a series of posts on the minimal facts of the resurrection here.

3 Comments »

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Comment by Steven Carr

April 22, 2007 @ 9:20 am

The minimal facts are that early converts to Jesus-worship scoffed at the idea of God raising corpses, and Paul tells them that Jesus became a spirit, implying that all Christians will be resurrected in the same manner, and become spirits.

I am currently having two debates on the resurrection at Debate 1 and Debate 2

Anybody can register and try to help these Christians out.

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Comment by Barry Carey

April 22, 2007 @ 11:00 am

Steven,

A “spiritual” resurrection does not fit the minimal facts. Your assertion that early Christians would have scoffed at the idea of a bodily resurrection is in error. I would highly recommend New Testament Scholar N. T. Wright’s book “The Resurrection of the Son of God” in which he states: “the idea of a non-bodily resurrection would have been as much an oxymoron to (Paul) as it would to both Jews and pagans of his day; whether you believed in resurrection or not, the word meant bodies”. (p 372)

Paul did imply that Christians would be resurrected in the same manner: Bodily!

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Comment by Steven Carr

May 4, 2007 @ 7:36 am

‘Your assertion that early Christians would have scoffed at the idea of a bodily resurrection is in error.’

What? The Jesus-worshippers in Corinth believed in bodily resurrections???

What is this?

And Paul states flat-out that Jesus became a spirit, regardless of what Wright claims Paul said.

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