You Ask Me How I Know He Lives?
How do we know the
Resurrection really happened? I mean, what is your answer to others when
they ask how you know Jesus really came back to life? My Pastor’s sermon Easter
Sunday got me thinking about this. I think the answer to this question has
changed through the years. In fact, it may be changing again. Here’s how I see the shape of that answer
over the years:
1. PRE-MODERN: Of course He lives, we
all know that!
For most of history,
Christendom answered the question simply and forthrightly—“we all know the
resurrection happened so it happened.” Sure, there are a few
“infidels” who refuse to believe, but virtually everyone believes the
resurrection occurred without a question. We admit that some who believe it
live their life with many vices and few virtues, but even they believe the
Resurrection happened—we take that for granted. Everyone in this town—in fact
our whole country—believes it.
2. MODERN: He lives because the evidence proves he lives.
For more than 1500 years, the
pre-modern answer prevailed in Christendom—the resurrection happened because we
all say it happened. In the 14th through 17th century
the renaissance brought a new era of modernity which came to prevail by the
industrial age of the 1800’s. Darwin’s Origin
of Species and Lyells Principles of Geology supplied new answers to
questions of humankind’s origins and the nature of life. The scientific method which had existed for hundreds of years, became the
arbiter of truth. Nothing was to be taken as truth
without testing and proving. Resurrections don’t happen—that’s a fact. Many
Christians responded to modernity by adopting the tools of modernity to “test”
the claims of the resurrection. Some
concluded that the resurrection never happened in actuality (after all, it has
never been replicated in a good scientific study) and proposed other
explanations—a spiritual resurrection or “the resurrection stories were
concocted to tell us something about the importance of Jesus’ life.” These “modernists” adjusted the claims of
religion to fit the claims of science. However, others responded by using the
tools of science to assemble the resurrection evidence that demands a
verdict concluding that
scientifically they could show the resurrection was a real event in history.
3. ANTI-MODERN: He lives because he lives within my heart.
The church of my youth was
neither pre-modern nor modern, but anti-modern. The "modernists”
were the bad guys who placed science as the arbiter of truth and thus rejected
the resurrection. We Christians rejected evolution, old earth theories or any
other scientific theory that was contrary to the Bible
as we understood it. And we even rejected the tools of
science as the arbiters of the Bible’s truth.
We testified to the truth of the resurrection because the
resurrection had happened in our own lives. We knew Jesus was alive because He
lived within our hearts—he walks with me, and talks with me and tells me I
am His own. I think we were beyond the pre-modern answer because we
accepted scientific explanations when they were not contrary to the Bible.. we believed in the scientific
explanations for germs, thunder, lightning, and hurricanes, but we rejected
science when it made claims contrary to what we believed the Bible explicitly
taught. Science said resurrections don’t happen and the Bible said they did. We
chose the Bible over science. Still others took a different route to the same
destination. They said faith matters were off the table of science since faith
was in a different realm than “hard science” –a realm that was not
subject to the laws of science. Religion was in the “spiritual’ realm and
science could neither prove nor disprove it. Both of these groups were
essentially anti-modern. We knew the resurrection happened because we had experienced
our own personal resurrection and thus it was true.
4. POST-MODERN: He lives because I believe He lives.
The current era is only a
baby step from the anti-modern answer. I believe it is the
era we are now entering, or are already in. You ask me how I know he lives? “I believe He lives and I have a right to
believe it without you forcing me to prove it. Post-modern faith claims
that science has its own presuppositions just like
religion and scientific creeds and assumptions are no better than religious
creeds and assumptions. Both have meta-narratives that explain life that are constructed on their own assumptions. Each of us has the
inherent right to choose which set of assumptions we believe. More, nobody else
has the right to challenge my faith by appealing to their
own sacred assumptions. Calvinists see
such faith coming as a gift of God so those who are destined to believe simply
believe. Arminians tend to see this faith as more of a choice made when we
decide to believe “the Christian story” (which includes the bodily resurrection
of Jesus Christ). In a postmodern world, the Christian story gets a place at
the table just like the scientific approach to truth (or any other approach)
since we all have assumptions and presuppositions and no one arbiter of truth
is superior to another. In the postmodern world one
can believe in the resurrection because they believe it, not because it
has been proved.
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I know… I didn’t do a very
good job describing all this. However, I’ve done enough to supply some points
for discussion following Easter Sunday. I’m asking you. How do you know
he lives? What is your answer? What are the weaknesses and strengths of
each of these answers and which do you prefer? Or do
you have another answer yet? I ask you… how do you know he lives?
So, what do you think?
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Keith Drury
Keith Drury is Associate
Professor of Religion at