Then He Appeared To James

The resurrection appearance to James (1 Corinthians 15:7) doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should. That's probably largely because we're not given much information about it, including no narrative of the event. Still, more ought to be said about it.

Easter Resources 2025

For an overview of which evidence for Jesus' resurrection to focus on most, see my post here. Steve Hays wrote a lengthier post on how to make a case for the resurrection.

Here are some of the Easter issues we've addressed over the years, with many more in the archives:

The Weaknesses Of The Zeitoun Marian Apparitions

I've written about my overall view of the Zeitoun case elsewhere, such as here and here. What I want to do in this post is expand upon an aspect of the case I've previously addressed more briefly. The apparitions exhibited some weaknesses that make more sense coming from a source of a lower nature than God or Mary.

To what end is all this?

"The love of God and the love of the world are like the scales of a balance: as one falls the other rises. When our natural inclinations prosper, religion is faint and languishes. But when earthly objects wither away and lose their beauty, then the soul begins to cool and flag in its pursuit of them, the seeds of grace take root, and the divine life begins to flourish and prevail. It is therefore of great importance that we should convince ourselves of the emptiness and vanity of creature enjoyments, and persuade our hearts to relinquish our love for them. Let us seriously consider all that our reason, faith, experience, and observation of others can suggest to this end. Let us ponder these matters over and over and fix our thoughts on this truth till we become really persuaded of it. Amidst all our pursuits and designs, let us stop and ask ourselves: To what end is all this? What am I aiming for? Can the flagrant and garish pleasures of sense, or the esteem and affection of silly creatures like myself, satisfy an immortal soul? Have I not tried these things already? Will they taste better and yield me more contentment tomorrow than they did yesterday?" (Henry Scougal, in Robin Taylor, ed., The Life Of God In The Soul Of Man [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2022], approximate Kindle location 815)

The Broader Implications Of 2 Thessalonians 3:10

It's popular to apply the passage to something like a situation in which a man refuses to look for a job and wants to live off of government assistance instead. But the principle in 2 Thessalonians also has a broader application that tells us a lot about why the world is in the state it's in.

The Gospel That Would Go Throughout The World

Tertullian acknowledged that people were justified apart from baptism during Jesus' public ministry. But in response to critics of baptismal regeneration, he wrote, "in days gone by, there was salvation by means of bare faith, before the passion and resurrection of the Lord", whereas now "the law of baptizing has been imposed" (On Baptism 13).

A Reminder Of The Importance Of Josephus' Comments On Baptism

Josephus is an important source on some baptismal issues, but he often gets overlooked or underestimated. He refers to how John the Baptist's baptism wasn't meant to be a means of obtaining justification. Dismissing Josephus as a non-Christian isn't an adequate objection, since the significance of his earliness and his knowledge of recent Jewish history don't depend on his being a Christian. You can be a non-Christian, but still be right about something. And if the advocate of baptismal regeneration wants to acknowledge that John's baptism wasn't justificatory, then he needs to address some implications that follow. John's baptism is discussed and practiced alongside the earliest form of baptism administered by Jesus and his disciples (John 3:22-4:2), and that overlap between the two makes more sense if there was more rather than less continuity between the two. In all likelihood, both John's baptism and the earliest baptism administered by Jesus and his disciples were non-justificatory. So, that gives us a double precedent for non-justificatory baptism. That's another problem the advocate of baptismal regeneration has to address. Furthermore, Peter uses language about baptism similar to the language used by Josephus, which adds further evidence for the conclusion that Peter rejected baptismal regeneration. See here for further discussion of that issue. So, Josephus' comments are relevant to multiple baptismal issues and provide multiple lines of evidence against baptismal regeneration.

Problems With Citing 2 Thessalonians 2:15 Against Sola Scriptura

When 2 Thessalonians 2:15 comes up in discussions related to the Christian rule of faith, we can begin by going several verses earlier and asking whether the oral teaching Paul refers to in 2 Thessalonians 2:6 has been preserved. It's a disputed passage that different people have interpreted in different ways.

Beyond the specifics of 2:6, 2 Thessalonians in general is in large part about eschatology. When we look at the early oral eschatological traditions, such as the ones found in Papias and Irenaeus, they're largely premillennial, even though the most prominent modern critics of sola scriptura reject premillennialism. Centuries after Papias, Jerome referred to "a very large multitude" of orthodox Christians who were premillennialists in his day (in Thomas Scheck, trans., St. Jerome: Commentary On Isaiah [Mahwah, New Jersey: The Newman Press, 2015], pp. 820-21, section 18:1 in the commentary). Augustine was a premillennialist early in his Christian life. Wasn't the church infallibly maintaining the oral eschatological traditions Paul had given the Thessalonians?

And, aside from the teachings in 2 Thessalonians and its surrounding context, such as eschatology, we could ask about oral information in general. The Thessalonians knew a lot about Paul: what he looked like, what his handwriting looked like (3:17), what sort of work he did when he was among them (3:8), etc. Biographers of Paul and many other people would like to have that information. So, why don't these critics of sola scriptura produce it? Or has so much oral information across so many contexts been lost over time, to the point where critics of sola scriptura have to admit that they've lost a large amount of oral information that was part of the original context of 2 Thessalonians?

These considerations don't prove sola scriptura, and an advocate of something other than sola scriptura could avoid an appeal to 2 Thessalonians 2:15 or supplement it with whatever else. But factors like what I've mentioned above make it evident that appealing to 2 Thessalonians 2:15 alone isn't enough to make a case against sola scriptura, and 2 Thessalonians as a whole poses some difficulties for the most common alternatives to sola scriptura.

Joe Nickell's Death

I disagreed with him on a lot of issues, but, as with anybody who does the sort of work he did, there's a lot to agree with him about and appreciate as well. Since there's so much that's false and fraudulent in religion and the paranormal, anybody who gives so much of his life to opposing that sort of thing is going to do some good in the process.

One of my memories of him is an appearance he made on "The Sally Jessy Raphael Show" in the 1980s. He was part of a panel with Ed and Lorraine Warren, Ed sitting next to Joe. You can watch it on YouTube. Go here for a segment in which Joe commented, "I've not met a house that I thought was haunted. I think the Warrens have never met a house that they didn't think was haunted." That's hyperbolic as far as the Warrens are concerned, of course, but it's a memorable way of expressing something that's true. Ed and Joe both went too far, in opposite directions.

You can read my response to Joe on the Enfield Poltergeist here. He called the magician Milbourne Christopher "one of the greatest influences on my early career as a magician turned paranormal investigator". Christopher visited the house where most of the events of the Enfield case occurred, and he probably witnessed some paranormal events while he was there. Some of those experiences were recorded on audio tape. You can read about Christopher's visit to the house and his involvement in the case more broadly here. It's a lengthy article, but you can go to the shorter section focused on Christopher to read the most relevant material.

Nickell's prominence in skeptical circles is reflected in some comments Robert Price made fifteen years ago:

"In appealing to the universal facts of human experience, Hume is being neither deductive nor circular. He is merely appealing to what everyone knows: the frequent reports of the extraordinary we hear from UFO abductees, Loch Ness Monster fans, people who see ghosts or who claim psychic powers, always seem to turn out to be bunk upon examination. Ask Joe Nickell. Ask James Randi. Ask the evangelical stage magician Andre Kole, who exposed Filipino 'psychic surgeons.'" (John Loftus, ed., The Christian Delusion [Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2010], 277)

Nickell, Randi, and Kole are all dead now. There was already good evidence for the supernatural before any of them were born. There's more evidence for the paranormal now than there was then. (See, for example, here and here.) Looking to such people to debunk the paranormal as a whole has always been a false hope.

When Protestants Handle Debates Poorly

I'm not just referring to formal debates, though they're part of the problem. The bigger problem is how Protestants in general handle certain debates in general, whether formal or informal ones.

Bede On Opponents Of Mary's Perpetual Virginity

I've written before about how opposition to the perpetual virginity of Mary persisted beyond the earliest centuries, into the late patristic and early medieval eras. Bede, writing in the eighth century, uses the present tense to refer to opponents of the perpetual virginity of Mary:

There's Not Much Apostolic Disunity In The Gospels

Critics of Christianity often allege that there was widespread disunity among the early Christians: Paul disagreeing with the Twelve, a Petrine community opposing a Johannine community, and so on. There's a large amount of evidence against such claims. I've written about the evidence for apostolic unity in 1 Corinthians 15:11, in the earliest patristic documents, and elsewhere. I've been struck lately, though, by how much material there is against these claims about disunity in the gospels. In John 13:10-11, for example, why would the author have Jesus commenting on how all of his rivals (or rival communities, etc.) are "clean"? Or think of the sitting on twelve thrones in passages like Matthew 19:28. That isn't just an expression of unity, but even unity in an eschatological context, which rules out a future falling away. (Judas is explicitly and repeatedly referred to as not being included in such comments in one way or another, whereas nothing comparable is said of any other apostle. The authors were capable of communicating that they had exceptions in mind if they wanted to, as their comments on Judas demonstrate.)

Look Beyond Your Contemporaries

A common mistake in the Christian life is to get overly focused on our contemporaries. Neglect of God is the most significant form that takes, but it's also relevant in other contexts. How we live affects past generations (e.g., preserving and advancing their work). It also impacts future generations. The psalmist referred to how he was writing "that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord" (102:18). Neither the people yet to be created nor the Lord are the contemporaries we're so often too focused upon. We're even told to be concerned about angels (Hebrews 13:2). And I see no reason to think that the only rational beings other than God are angels and humans. When you think of life more expansively like this, it heightens your view of life in general and provides more motivation to persevere in the face of opposition from your contemporaries.

Even as far as your contemporaries are concerned, you frequently don't know much about how you're influencing them. If you benefit, say, a hundred people in a certain context, you could easily only notice the benefit in a few of their lives or only be thanked by a couple of them, if any. That's the nature of this life, because of sin and other factors. But my main point here is that before we even get to these factors regarding how to evaluate our influence on our contemporaries, there are many other people and issues to take into account. In fact, our contemporaries are outnumbered by the others involved.

Another Reason To Reject The Baptismal Regeneration Interpretation Of John 3:5

In other posts, I've discussed some of the problems with taking John 3:5 as a reference to baptismal regeneration. The exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus is set in an Old Testament context, and baptismal regeneration isn't taught in the Old Testament. Even advocates of baptismal regeneration frequently admit that it wasn't in effect at the time when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus (thus explaining why so many people are justified apart from baptism in the gospels while nobody in the gospels is justified at the time of baptism). The claim that everybody agreed with the baptismal regeneration interpretation of John 3:5 prior to the Reformation is far from true. And so on. You can go here to find links to some of the relevant posts in our archives. What I want to do in this post is focus on another line of evidence.

The terminology of being born again is also used in 1 Peter. I've written elsewhere about how 1 Peter contradicts baptismal regeneration, including in 3:21. 1 Peter 1:23-25 tells us that people are born again in the context of preaching, which is distinct from the later context of baptism (1 Corinthians 1:17). I've discussed the importance of distinguishing between the preaching context and the baptismal context at length elsewhere, like here. So, not only is John 3:5 poorly explained by a baptismal regeneration interpretation in its own context, but such an interpretation also poorly explains the other New Testament passage that uses the language of being born again.