Jesus' Burial And Empty Tomb Outside The Gospels And Acts

It's often suggested that Paul and other early Christians were unaware of, or even contradicted, much of what's said about Jesus in the gospels and Acts. Critics often object to the empty tomb accounts, for example, on the basis that Paul and other New Testament authors don't mention the empty tomb. What I want to do in this post is outline some of the evidence that what the gospels and Acts say about issues related to Jesus' tomb is corroborated elsewhere.

- Belief in a physical resurrection of the body that died implies an empty tomb and interest in it. We've written a lot over the years about the evidence that the early Christians held that view of Jesus' resurrection. See here, here, and here regarding Paul, for example.

- We have a lot of evidence that the earliest Christians and their earliest opponents had the ability and desire to research Jesus' tomb. For example:

Time loop

There are different models of providence. I'll use the metaphor of a roadmap to illustrate the differences:

1. Calvinism

On this view, God is the cartographer, and God has mapped out the entire future. However, the map is invisible looking ahead. The map becomes progressively visible as the traveler moves forward into the future. The map is retrospectively visible, but never prospectively visible. So he's always going where the map directs, but he doesn't know that in advance. The roadmap was always there, in meticulous detail, but it can only be seen with the benefit of hindsight, like a passenger seated facing the rear window. In this sense, the traveler is backing into the future. He seems to be traveling blind, yet his every step was mapped out. 

2. Classical Arminianism

I'm using "classical Arminianism" as a synonym for simple foreknowledge. Like Calvinism, the future has been exhaustively mapped out, for God creates the world that he foresees. But unlike Calvinism, humans are cocartographers with God. 

Because the map is a facsimile of divine foreknowledge, it's as though the human traveler has two lives, back-to-back, only he took an amnesia pill the first time around, so he doesn't remember that he's repeating the exact same journey. His future was mapped out every step of the way, like he's retracing his steps. Stepping into his own footprints. He cannot deviate from the roadmap, since foreknowledge is history ahead of time. Because his future is mapped out, it's like he's reliving the his past. Although the future trajectory of the map is invisible, it's there all along. That's the route the traveler is bound to take. That road and that road only. Once God makes a world that matches what he saw in the crystal ball, it's too late for the future to turn out any other way. 

3. Molinism

In this respect, (3) is like (2). God has many different roadmaps of the future. Some are infeasible. He picks one roadmap to instantiate. Possible persons contributed to the route, but God alone chooses which map to actualize. The map charts a complete world history, so the future was mapped out in advance. It's like deja vu, only human agents drank from the River Lethe at the destination of the journey, so they've forgotten the journey when, in effect, they repeat it. As with (2), it's just like they lived twice, and the second life duplicates the first. Although the  future trajectory of the map is invisible, they have, in effect, been there before–like a time loop. 

4. Open theism

On this view, there is no roadmap. God is a fellow traveler. No one knows what lies around the next bend. No one knows what lies over the next hill. God and his human traveling companions are drawing the map as they go along. Both God and man discover the future as that eventuates, moment by moment. Unsuspected dangers lie ahead. No one knows what to expect. They're venturing into the undiscovered country without a map or compass. Anything could happen. The map is drawn after the fact, at which point it's always too late to use it. 

5. Occamism 

Some freewill theists might take issue with my characterization of (2)-(3). They say humans have counterfactual power over God's past beliefs (or timeless beliefs). If we chose to do something different, then God would have different foreknowledge. So it's not too late to redraw the map, since the ink is never dry. 

But a problem with that deceptively appealing explanation is that it suffers from the same antinomies as time-travel scenarios in which a man steps into the time machine and heads back into the past to alter the future. But that's paradoxical because he thereby erases the future he came from. It's like he never existed in that future timeline, because his past action replaces the original timeline with a new timeline. Although Occamism isn't identical with retrocausation, it generates the same antinomies: 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/#OckhSolu

http://www.andrewmbailey.com/jmf/FFFP.pdf

http://www.andrewmbailey.com/jmf/Truth_Freedom.pdf

http://www.andrewmbailey.com/jmf/Rereading_Pike.pdf

Longing for a better country

So. A Wrinkle in Time just came out. I remember reading and enjoying the book...when I was in elementary school. I'm not sure how the book would hold up as an adult! I presume poorly.

Not to mention it sounds like Madeleine L'Engle was a theologically liberal Christian.

Judging by the trailer, the movie seems awful to me. I especially don't like how it looks. Its aesthetics or style. I really don't need to see Oprah try to act either. I don't plan on watching the movie.

That said, some of the first books I ever read in English were written by professing Christians (loosely defined). For example, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, A Wrinkle in Time, Bridge to Terabithia. I don't recall what drew me to these sorts of books. However, I remember being enchanted by them. More than enchanted.

I think a commonality between such books for me was they opened up a reality beyond the reality of what one could see or hear or otherwise sense with the senses. Such books made me consider there might be something beyond the mundane reality of sights and sounds. At least on an emotional level. I hoped it was the case.

I believe these books are classified as fantasy. But sometimes fantasies can point us to a truer reality. Maybe this is a touch too Platonic.

I suppose what I'm feebly attempting to get at is C.S. Lewis' idea of Sehnsucht. As he wrote in Mere Christianity:

Most of us find it very difficult to want 'Heaven' at all - except in so far as 'Heaven' means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognise it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us.

I don't know how reasonable Lewis' Sehnsucht or "joy" would be as a philosophical apologetic. I believe Alvin Plantinga somewhere calls it Lewis' argument from nostalgia, but at the same time notes it's not a well-formed argument. Something along those lines.

Nevertheless, I do think it's emotionally resonant, and in that respect it might be effective on some people to some degree. Perhaps it's more effective on those who already believe and assent, but who haven't trusted Christ and committed themselves to him.

Are the "I am" statements authentic?

Some critics doubt that Jesus could have made the "I am" statements attributed to him in John's Gospel. If, however, Jesus is Yahweh Incarnate, then there's nothing surprising or incongruous about Jesus making those statements. This isn't a theological innovation. Rather, it has OT precedent in the Pentateuch and the prophet Isaiah:

God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you’” (Exod 3:14).

See now that I, even I, am he,

and there is no god beside me (Deut 32:29)

Who has performed and done this,

calling the generations from the beginning?

I, Yahweh, the first,

and with the last; I am he (Isa 41:4)

“You are my witnesses,” Yahweh declares,

“and amy servant whom I have chosen,

that you may know and believe me

and understand that I am he.

Before me no god was formed,

nor shall there be any after me (Isa 43:10)

Also henceforth I am he;

there is none who can deliver from my hand;

I work, and who can turn it back?” (Isa 43:13).

“I, I am he

who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,

and I will not remember your sins (Isa 43:25).

even to your old age I am he,

and to gray hairs I will carry you.

I have made, and I will bear;

I will carry and will save (Isa 46:4)

“Listen to me, O Jacob,

and Israel, whom I called!

I am he; I am the first,

and I am the last (Isa 48:12)

“I, I am he who comforts you;

who are you that you are afraid of man who dies,

of the son of man who is made like grass (Isa 51:12)

6 Therefore my people shall know my name. Therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who speak; here I am (Isa 52:6).

Given that such "I am" statements are an idiomatic self-designation and recurring motif in the OT, it's to be expected that Jesus will make claims about himself that evoke those OT statements. 

And given how that functions as a refrain in Isaiah to distinguish Yahweh from false gods, when Jesus uses the same language, that unmistakably implicates his own deity. 

In addition, this isn't unique to John's Gospel. In Revelation, the First/Last, Alpha/Omega title is applied to Jesus (Rev 1:8,11; 21:6; 22:13), and that's another Yahwistic refrain in the same section of Isaiah (Isa 40-48) that uses the "I am" language. 

Likewise, the "I am" statement in Mt 14:27 is arguably theophanic. Cf. R. Bauckham, Is "High Human Christology" Sufficient? A Critical Response to J. R. Daniel Kirk's A Man Attested by God, Bulletin for Biblical Research 27.4 (2017) 503-525.

Trendy transgenderism

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-teenagers-are-becoming-trans-curious/

The text and canon of the NT

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/course/early-christianity-new-testament-canon/#course-introduction

Ipsissima verba

For some time now, evangelical scholars have drawn a distinction between the ipsissima verba and ipsissima vox of Jesus in the Gospels. I don't know when that category originated, although it goes back at least to Ned Stonehouse's Origins of the Synoptic Gospels (1963). Here's one definition:

Latin phrases meaning "the very words" and "the very voice" respectively, often used in the context of the quest for the historical Jesus. Ipsissima verba Jesu refers to the words or sayings that Jesus actually spoke in contradistinction to those merely attributed to him by subsequent tradition. Since Jesus probably spoke Aramaic and the NT is written in Greek, we probably do not have the ipsissima verba Jesu of Jesus apart from a very few exceptions (abba, ephphatha). Ipsissima vox makes a lesser claim: it designates words or sayings that give the sense but not the exact linguistic form of Jesus' speech. Soulen & Soulen, Handbook of Biblical Criticism (WJK, 3rd. ed., 2001), 88. 

Here's how a major evangelical scholar unpacks the distinction:

In examining the wording of Jesus' teaching in the Gospels, we must distinguish between the ipsissima verba ("his very words") and the ipsissima vox ("his very voice," i.e. the presence of his teaching summarized). One universally recognized reality makes assessing the presence of the exact words of Jesus difficult and argues for the distinction between verba and vox. In is that Jesus probably gave most of his teaching in Aramaic…[so] most of Jesus' teaching in the Gospels is already in translation.

A second factor also argues for this distinction. Most accounts of Jesus' remarks are a few sentences long. In fact, even his longest speeches as recorded in the Gospels take only a few minutes to read (e.g. the Sermon on the Mount or the Olivet Discourse). Yet we know that Jesus kept his audiences for hours at a time (e.g. Mk 6:34-36). It is clear that the writers give us a reduced and summarized presentation of what Jesus said and did.

Third, the distinction between verba and vox is valuable when we look at the way the Bible cites itself, i.e. the way the NT uses the OT. NT citations of the OT are not word for word, even when taking into account translation from Hebrew to Greek…If the Bible can summarize a citation of itself in this way, then to see the same technique in its handling of the word of Jesus should come as no surprise. 

One can present history accurately whether one quotes or summarizes teaching or even mixes the two together. To have accurate summaries of Jesus' teaching is just as historical as to have his actual words; they are just two different perspectives to give us the same thing. All that is required is that the summaries be trustworthy… D. Bock, "The Words of Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or Memorex," M. Wilkins & J. Moreland, eds. Jesus Under Fire (Zondervan 1995), 77-78,88.

In a later essay, Bock draws a distinction between "accuracy" and "precision", as well as "the principle of variation and gist". “Precision and Accuracy: Making Distinctions in the Cultural Context That Give Us Pause in Pitting the Gospels against Each Other,” in Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith? J. Hoffmeier & D. Magary, eds. (Crossway 2012), 367,71.

Up to a point, these are valid distinctions. There are, however, some additional assumptions that often drive that distinction. 

1. One apologetic method is to bracket the doctrine of verbal inspiration and simply treat the Gospels (and Acts) as historical primary sources. 

2. However, for some NT scholars, that's not just an apologetic strategy. Even in principle, they really don't make allowance for verbal inspiration. They consider that theological rather than historical. For them, Mark is based on oral tradition, fallible memory, while Matthew and Luke, where they parallel Mark, are dependent on Mark. Likewise, they think Matthew, Luke, and John uses other sources and oral traditions. At best, the Gospels are based on fallible memories. On this view, even the ipsissima vox may well be several steps removed from what was available to the Gospel writers. 

3. BTW, there's a distinction between oral tradition and oral history. In oral history, you get a report straight from the lips of an eyewitness, whereas an oral tradition is more mediated. 

4. In addition, here's how a couple of dictionaries define "paraphrase":

to state something written or spoken in different words, esp. in a shorter and simpler form to make the meaning clearer.

a restatement of a text or passage giving the meaning in another form, as for clearness; rewording.

i) There can be different reasons to paraphrase what a speaker said. Sometimes to cut the dead wood. It isn't always necessary to reproduce an entire speech to convey the basic idea. 

Or it may be to forestall misunderstanding. We need to distinguish between the initial audience for something Jesus said and the readers of the Gospels. A reader may lack the full context. So a Gospel author might incorporate an editorial qualification, consistent with what Jesus intended. 

ii) The spoken word is more redundant than the written word. So Jesus had occasion to paraphrase himself. Say the same thing in different words. 

iii) One problem with the ipsissima verba/vox distinction is when that's applied to pithy phrases or sentences like the baptismal formula (Mt 28:19) or the "I am" statements in John's Gospel. There's no need to summarize what Jesus said on those occasions because these are already very simple statements. A pithy phrase or short sentence. How hard is it to remember "I'm the light of the world" or "Baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit"? That doesn't overtax human memory. 

So what some scholars claim is not that sayings attributed to Jesus are the gist of what he said, but editorial elaborations. An explanatory gloss. That's not reductive but expansive. That, however, is a different principle. It moves in the opposite direction. And it doesn't convey the same idea in different words.  

iv) Most listeners don't have verbatim recollection of long sayings. It's implausible to claim that the narrator is giving the gist of what Jesus said in Jn 13-17 if all the narrator has to rely on is fallible memory. I don't see how we're going to preserve historicity without reintroducing verbal inspiration. 

Licona on the "I am" statements in John

http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2018/03/transcript-and-commentary-i-am.html

More Evidence Of Non-Christian Corroboration Of The Empty Tomb

Section 108 of Justin Martyr's Dialogue With Trypho is one of the most significant passages in the patristic literature in the context of apologetics, but it doesn't get much attention. I've discussed the passage in other posts over the years, and you can read the post I just linked to get the background to this one. What I'll be doing here is expanding upon what I said earlier. The focus of this post will be on reading section 108 of Justin's Dialogue in light of what he says in section 17.

I've consulted several English translations of the Dialogue, including:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.i.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=YCRLAQAAMAAJ
Michael Slusser, ed., Dialogue With Trypho (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2003)

What I'll be discussing below is consistent with all three of those translations. I'm not just getting these conclusions from one translation of the text.

In the relevant portion of section 108, Justin prefaces some of his remarks with "as I said before". What is he referring to? Probably his comments in section 17. Here are the two sections, with some quotation marks added to section 108 for a reason I'll explain later:

Salvific masculinity and ordinary heroes

https://godawa.com/70973-2/#more-70973

Iconic films

There are certain iconic movies and TV dramas that have a unifying force in pop culture, both because so many people have seen them and because they become a source of popular tropes, viz. the Star Wars franchise, Star Trek franchise, The Wizard of Oz. On a related note are iconic characters like Batman, Superman, Spiderman, vampires, and zombies. At a literary as well as cinematic level, The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia enjoy that distinction.

In addition, there are movies like The Matrix, The Terminator, Groundhog Day, and The Butterfly Effect which not only achieve iconic status in the pop culture, but popularize certain philosophical ideas. These movies provide fans with an interpretive lens. Fans interpret the world using these films as a prismatic analogy. And the more people who've seen them and use them that way, they become a common frame of reference. In that regard, they share both an interpretive and unifying significance in the pop culture. In casual conversation, a stranger will allude to one of these movies or TV dramas to comment on some event while the listener will recognize the allusion and appreciate the comparison. 

Fans sometimes argue with each other about the best Star Wars/Star Trek movies and TV series. Fans sometimes argue about the correct interpretation of movie, TV show, or episode thereof. Yet even when they disagree, there's an underlying unity inasmuch as they're familiar with the same stories, same characters, same mythos, and they use that in common to frame discussions. 

Although I'm citing fictional examples, a mythos can be factual. Real people and real events can attain iconic status as role models and illustrations. The Bible performs a similar interpretive and unifying function within the Christian community, except that Scripture is authoritative in a way that iconic movies and TV dramas are not. 

Catholic apologists criticize sola scripture because it leads to interpretive pluralism while atheists criticize Scripture as an inefficient mode of divine communication because God could simply beam the message into everyone's mind. What those objections overlook is the unifying force of having one book that all Christians use as a common frame of reference. We know the same stories, and those stories generate a mythos that we use as a filter to interpret the world. Even hermeneutical disagreements bear witness to a deeper unity, because they still share a common frame of reference. That sets the agenda. Debates occur within that paradigm. You can talk to any Bible-believing Christian, you can walk into any Bible-believing church, and even though you're strangers, there's preexisting code of shared background assumptions, because the same book channels the outlook. 

Reformed Scholasticism

Reformed theology is supposed to be grounded in exegetical theology. Only revealed truths merit the status of articles of faith. That includes correct interpretations of revealed truths as well as valid inferences from revealed truths. That's based on the sola scripture principle. 

Even at that level, Reformed interpretations must remain open to exegetical scrutiny. We need to be able to defend our interpretations.

Reformed theology is quite stable. However, it's necessary to distinguish between Reformed theology and philosophical schools of thought that are deployed to expound and defend Reformed theology. 

The problem is when Reformed theology becomes aligned with a particular philosophical paradigm, like Thomism, so that affirming Reformed theology becomes inseparable from affirming the philosophical tradition that sponsors it. 

Thomism should never be elevated to an article of faith. That idolizes philosophy. Philosophical theology must remain subject to rational scrutiny, insofar as philosophical theology relies on natural reason in the first place. 

Philosophical theology ought to be more eclectic and discriminating. Not form an exclusive alliance with any particular philosopher or philosophical school of thought. 

The Significance Of Not Having Sources On Jesus During His Lifetime

A common objection to Christianity that's highly relevant to the Easter season is that we don't have any records of Jesus' life that were written before he died. I've addressed that objection at length in another post. What I want to do here is cite a comment Richard Burridge made last year that's relevant to the topic. Burridge is one of the foremost scholars in the world on the genre of the gospels. During the June 17, 2017 Unbelievable? radio program, he commented (around one and a half minutes into the second hour) that ancient biographies were written after the figure died, since only then could a final analysis of the person's life be given. When the gospels and other early documents were written after Jesus' death, they were following common (though not universal) practice. For other reasons why the post-death timing of the early sources on Jesus isn't as problematic as critics suggest, see my post linked above.

Perspectives on Calvinism

There are different perspectives on Calvinism. Different ways of approaching Calvinism. Differences of emphasis or orientation:

1. Soteriological

This orientation stresses doctrines like unconditional election, reprobation, special redemption, spiritual inability, sola gratia, monergistic regeneration, perseverance. 

It has special reference to the human situation. This is typically the focus of Reformed pastors, preachers, and evangelists. 

2. Theological 

This orientation stresses doctrines like absolute predestination and meticulous providence. It operates at a more cosmic level. It lays more emphasis on God's relation to the world in general rather than God's relation to mankind in particular. 

There are people who incline to (1), but distance themselves from (2). 

3. Philosophical 

This orientation piggybacks on (2). If (2) is true, then everything happens for a reason. There are no random, aimless events. No brute facts. No fortuitous accidents. Everything serves a purpose in a part/whole, means/ends relation. God leaves nothing to chance. Everything unfolds according to his master plan for world history. 

This dovetails with the principle of sufficient reason. There are no inherently inexplicable truths. And that's a condition of intelligibility. In principle, there's a rational explanation for everything, although many things may be inscrutable to humans, given our epistemic limitations. 

The meaning of life according to atheism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAUmgE3WyM

Mysterious evil

In his recent interview with Reformed philosopher Guillaume Bignon, apostate Dale Tuggy sensed a "mystery appeal" in Bignon's theodicy. For Dale, that's a bad thing. A few quick points:

i) Bignon doesn't resort to mystery in defending Reformed determinism. He responds to objections head-on.

ii) Dale's aversion to mystery is bound up with his antipathy towards orthodox Christian theology. Because Christian theologians appeal to mystery or paradox when defending the Trinity and Incarnation, Dale bristles whenever the mystery card is played. 

I'd note that there's a difference between mystery and paradox. While a paradox is mysterious, a mystery isn't necessarily paradoxical. 

iii) There's nothing uniquely Calvinistic about appealing to mystery regarding the problem of evil. Consider what two leading freewill theists have to say about that in a recent book on the problem of evil. Molinist W. L. Craig says:

A person who lacks middle knowledge will be unable to assess the long-term consequences of the events that he permits to happen and so cannot have reasons for permitting them that are indiscernible from the standpoint of the present…Evils that appear pointless or unnecessary to us within our limited framework might be seen to have been justly permitted within God's wider framework. The brutal murder of an innocent man or a child's dying of leukemia could send a ripple effect through history such that God's morally sufficient reason for permitting it might not emerge until centuries later or perhaps in another country. Being limited in space and time, in intelligence and insight, we are simply in no epistemic position to make probability judgments to the effect that "God probably does not have a morally sufficient reason for permitting this event to occur" with any sort of confidence…What James Clerk Maxwell called "singular points" makes it impossible to predict the outcome of present, visible causes…Similarly, in the developing filed of chaos theory…One only has to think of innumerable, incalculable contingencies involved in arriving at a single historical event, say, the Allied victory at D-day. C. Meister & J. Dew, eds., God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views (IVP 2017), 45-45.  

And Dale's fellow open theist, William Hasker, says:

In view of the many and severe evils with which the world is afflicted, shouldn't God be doing better? We are inclined to think there must be something more that a powerful and loving God would and should be doing to make the world a better place. As regards the possibility of a better overall plan of creation, it is important to realize that this possibility, if it exists at all, is one of which we have no cognitive grasp whatsoever. Our failure to grasp such a thing is not a matter of mere ignorance, comparable to our lack of information about some as-yet-undiscovered species of insect. This is a fundamental ignorance, and one of the reasons it is so can be found in the phenomenon known as "fine-tuning"…But couldn't God do more in preventing particular instances of evil? Perhaps he could, though we have little insight into what the consequences of more frequent divine intervention might be. The fact is that very often we just do not know why certain sorts of evils are permitted by God; that this is so can be a test of faith–sometimes a severe test of faith–for a believer. Ibid., 74-76. 

Alpha males

https://bnonn.com/was-jesus-an-alpha-male-1/

Jumping from a skyscraper

Apostate Dale Tuggy recently conducted a two-part interview with Reformed philosopher Guillaume Bignon.

http://trinities.org/blog/podcast-216-bignons-defense-of-calvinism-part-1/

http://trinities.org/blog/podcast-217-bignons-defense-of-calvinism-part-2/

In part 2, Tuggy raised some objections to Bignon's position. That's fine. Calvinism is fair game. Bignon fielded the objections with great aplomb. But I'll comment on Dale's objections as well. 

Easter Resources 2018

This is my annual collection of resources for the Easter season. Here are the previous years' posts:

2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017

Here are some representative examples of the issues we've addressed:

How To Make A Case For The Resurrection
Independent, Converging Lines Of Evidence For Jesus' Resurrection
Resurrection Evidence Outside The New Testament
Easter Prophecy Fulfillment
Fifty Agreements Among The Resurrection Accounts
The Consistencies Among The Resurrection Accounts In 1 Corinthians 15, The Gospels, And Acts
The Restrained Nature Of The Resurrection Accounts
Evidence For The Shroud Of Turin
The 1982 Carbon Dating Of The Shroud Of Turin
The Context In Which The Gospels Were Composed
How Early The Synoptics Were Written
The Authorship Of Matthew
The Authorship Of Mark
The Authorship Of Luke And Acts
The Authorship Of John
The Authorship Of The Pauline Letters (see the comments section)
The Historicity Of Acts
Evidence For The Empty Tomb
Why It's Significant That The Earliest Sources Don't Narrate The Resurrection Appearance To James
Evidence That Saul Of Tarsus Saw Jesus Risen From The Dead
The Spiritual Body Of 1 Corinthians 15
Why Didn't The Risen Jesus Appear To More And Different People?
Why Doesn't Jesus Appear To Everybody?
Matthew 27:52-53
How The Apostles Died
Miracles In The Modern World
Reviews Of Debates On Jesus' Resurrection

On the sidebar on the right side of the screen, you can access some e-books we've written that address issues relevant to Easter.

After the 2017 Easter resources post linked above, Steve Hays wrote about 1 Corinthians 15:14 and the question of whether we would believe in Christianity or the resurrection if the evidence suggested that it's false. He also responded to Larry Shapiro on a couple of issues related to the resurrection. Steve interacted with Shapiro's response to Mike Licona concerning how Shapiro would react to a modern resurrection. Steve also replied to Shapiro's argument against the resurrection based on the rarity of miracles. Patrick Chan quoted some comments from Craig Blomberg and Ben Witherington on the genre of the gospels. I wrote a list of fifty examples of agreements among the New Testament resurrection accounts. Later, I wrote about how the resurrection appearances mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15 dovetail with what we find in the gospels and Acts. Steve responded to a tendency of some apologists to be overly focused on the resurrection. I addressed the restrained nature of the resurrection accounts. And Steve wrote about the spiritual body Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 15. He also addressed how a popular liberal interpretation of the passage has implications those liberals don't want. I posted a collection of resources on prophecy fulfillment related to the Easter season. And Steve linked an article by Craig Evans on how studying history helps us understand Easter. Steve and Patrick linked some videos of Easter music: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Steve provided an overview of how he'd make a case for Jesus' resurrection. He also wrote about the nature of the resurrection body, in response to Dale Allison. And here's something he wrote about passages in the resurrection narratives that are sometimes taken as Jesus materializing or dematerializing. He also addressed the relationship between the soul and the body and the significance of the resurrection in that context. He later wrote about the relationship between information and the resurrection body. I wrote about the evidence that 1 Timothy 5:18 cites Luke's gospel as scripture and the significance of that fact for Easter issues. Steve wrote about the number of angels at Jesus' tomb and the possibility of the use of idiomatic expressions.. He also wrote about evidence for the deity of Isaiah's Suffering Servant. Another post by Steve discusses whether prophecy fulfillment, like Jesus' fulfillment of the Suffering Servant passage, could be staged. I linked an article that discusses some evidence for the deity of Isaiah's Servant figure and the connections between the Servant passages and others in Isaiah. Steve and I addressed the objection that Jesus should make an appearance to every individual or every Christian, much as he made an appearance to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. Here's Steve's response. And here's mine. Steve wrote about the issues involved in harmonizing the resurrection accounts, using the analogy of four people reporting on what happened during a high school reunion. He also wrote a response to Bart Ehrman, part of which addresses resurrection issues. And a later post responding to Richard Carrier is partly about the resurrection.

Aquinas reconsidered

I'm going to comment on some statements by Muller in his review of Oliphint's critique of Thomism.

http://www.reformation21.org/articles/aquinas-reconsidered.php

http://www.reformation21.org/articles/aquinas-reconsidered-part-2-1.php

http://www.reformation21.org/featured/aquinas-reconsidered-part-3.php

One preliminary observation: a theologian is not an end in himself. We shouldn't devote the same attention to exegeting a theologian that we devote to exegeting Scripture. Christianity is a revealed religion. Biblical revelation is the primatial source of Christian theology. Interpreting Aquinas is secondary to interpreting biblical revelation.