Just finished watching the 20/20 special on the Resurrection a few minutes ago. Many remember the specials ABC has done in the past, with Peter Jennings wisely explaining in his grandfatherly style how scholars have long discarded the idea that the Bible was true, and questioning the existence of Jesus and practically every fact about His life. I think that this show was a response, in some ways, to that outcry; they interviewed practically nobody who “came out” and said that the Resurrection totally did not happen.
No, they were much more subtle this time. After discussing the venue and a few of the facts (whatever you can jam into about 38 minutes of presentation, with various contrasts of Easter worship in Catholic and more culturally attuned churches thrown in as filler), they get down to the nitty gritty, giving a period of time to those who apparently believe in a literal, bodily resurrection first. Lee Strobel and Paul Maier both gave a good showing here, and to be fair, there were a few times when they could have cut what Strobel said differently and really butchered the presentation, but it looks like they were pretty good about it. They alternated with a couple of Catholic priests who also sounded, at first, like they took the Resurrection literally. I was pretty surprised at how well they were handling it.
But then we talk to a couple of professors (including a woman from Harvard Divinity School) who insist that Jesus was buried in a criminal’s grave, or that the fact that Paul uses the aorist ophthe[1] indicates that the appearance of the Lord was in a vision and not in reality. This is the segue into the final group of scholars, punctuated by John Shelby Spong, who indicate that the Resurrection was a spiritual experience and not a physical one.
No doubt Disney and ABC consider this a major concession to the fundamentalists and religious community; “hey, we’re not saying you’re wrong this time, we’re admitting that there is a spiritual aspect here.” But in fact this is worse than denying the Resurrection; this is suggesting that our faith can have meaning without those nasty tangibility issues like believing that Christ really rose from the dead.
What does the Word of God say, however?
Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.—1 Cor. 15:12-19
Don’t miss that: the foundation of our hope, the reason for our faith, is the real resurrection of the dead. Without that truth, those believers who have died (the meaning of “fallen asleep in Christ”) are truly dead and gone, and we who live still have our sins, and have been saved from nothing. The “wise” scholars who opined about the Jewish first-century view of what “resurrection” meant should have known that a resurrection that was not bodily, tangible, physical, and real in every human sense of the word, would have neither satisfied Jews looking for a fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy of resurrection, nor offended the sensibilities of Greeks in the way that Paul’s speech on the Areopagus did in Acts 17 (particular vv. 30-32). Paul knew that the resurrection was real, physical and spiritual both.
At the end at least one of the Catholics who seemed to be on the conservative side of the debate allowed for the fact that, if you took a photograph of the risen Lord, you would not have seen Him in the picture that developed. This is, of course, in keeping with the Catholic view of Scripture since Vatican II, the view that has been ably perpetuated by the current and preceding popes in their Papal and pre-Papal careers. And we are left with, in Disney/ABC’s presentation, the kooks (Strobel and Maier and maybe Father Murphy-O’Connor and William Lane Craig, who is conservative, but people familiar with the predestination debate may recognize him as being an advocate of Molinism or middle knowledge), and then you have the rest of the interviewees who got more than five seconds of airtime, all of whom advocated either no miracle or something spiritual rather than physical as having happened.
Don’t kid yourself; he who is not for Jesus is against Him. And that includes Disney, and certainly those Areopagites who run ABC News and 20/20.
Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. —1 Cor. 1:20-25
1 It is true that the majority of times ophthe, the passive aorist indicative of horao, is almost always used of visions, in both the New Testament and the Septuagint. However, we should consider that aorist indicates something that happens at a definite moment in time, once and not as an ongoing action, and the passive of horao (to see) would suggest that this is something that is seen, at this point in time, and therefore is more of a sudden thing. There are exceptions to the rule that this is a visionary verb only; in Acts 7:26 Stephen tells us that Moses “appeared” to two of his countrymen, and this was certainly not a vision of Moses that appeared. In addition, in Song 2:12 in the Septuagint we are told that the flowers “appeared,” and this is not a vision but in fact a sudden appearance of spring in context. This is not a visionary verb, but a sudden and perhaps unexpected appearance. There are other arguable instances in the early part of Genesis in the LXX as well.
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