Jo Vitale [00:00:35] So welcome to the podcast where we invite you to Ask Away.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Ask Away. We're so glad that you can join us this week for one of my favorite times of the year. We're coming up on Easter, and I'm starting to see the signs of it, mainly in the fact that finally the good British chocolate is arriving in the grocery stores here in California. Most of the year we're suffering through Hershey's, but suddenly the Cadbury's cream eggs and mini eggs are populating the shelves once more, and it just brings me great joy. 

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Vince Vitale [00:01:11] You just alienated all of our Pennsylvania listeners. 

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Jo Vitale [00:01:14] I'm not saying anything people don't know. No one is disagreeing with the fact that European chocolate is better than American. Sorry, but it's just true. Anyway, facts. But yeah, it's exciting. It's good to be in this time of year again. And beyond the chocolate, more seriously, Easter is just my favorite time of the year. It has always been my favorite time of a year in the Christian calendar. I love Christmas, but Easter is just central to our faith, isn't it? There's just a profound joy and hope that comes on Easter Sunday that my family have always done a really great job of celebrating. But Vince and I were just chatting as we were approaching today's episode of just how different our perspectives were growing up and coming into that. Because, for me, I've always celebrated Easter as someone who believing in the resurrection hasn't been a struggle for me because I've been a Christian from my childhood. And so this question of like, is Jesus really alive? He's always been alive to me. My faith has always been alive. So I hadn't had to approach the question in the same way that Vince actually did as someone who grew up with all this stuff around the Easter bunny and some kind of cultural Catholicism. But it wasn't something that that he was believing in the same way. And so for him, when he was coming to faith in college, the really central question for you, Vince, well, can I actually believe this is true? Can I believe in the resurrection? 

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[00:02:39] The question of is Jesus alive or dead? Like, is he a historical figure who died a long time ago or is he actually alive today? And so, as we're approaching Easter this season, we just thought for this Ask Away episode, it would be great just to get into a conversation about the resurrection and almost Vince, for you to kind of walk us through what was it that actually compelled you to come to a place of saying, hey, this isn't just history, but actually I really believe that Jesus is alive and there is compelling evidence for that. So that's the topic of today's episode. And I'm going to be interviewing Vince about that because I want him to talk us through part of what that journey was like for him of coming to faith and even how we can go on to talk about it with others in a way that will connect with them as well. So Vince, just get us into it. Like, why are you passionate about this episode? 

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Vince Vitale [00:03:28] Yes, 25 years ago I came to Jesus and a huge part of that journey was looking into the evidence for the resurrection. I was actually just finishing a book on the resurrection when the reality of God and his love for me sort of overwhelmed me. And I found myself on my knees in my dorm room. So this was right there in the intensity of my conversion. And what I want to do today is really just talk you through what, at least I think, anyone who's listening to this podcast should know. If you're a Christian-- and seekers, and those who are in the place that I was as a non-believer, I hope this garners your interest, compels you to seek and say, "I need to know more. I want to hear on this topic again." But if you're Christian and you're listening to this episode, I just think there are certain fundamental things that all of us should be able to share with those who don't yet believe. And when we look to the scriptures, the apostles actually spent a lot of time after Jesus rose. They spent a lot of their time persuading people with good reasons for believing in Jesus. And you see this especially in Acts of the Apostles. And they did so primarily based on two main arguments: fulfilled prophecy and Jesus' resurrection from the dead. And we'll talk about how amazing it is that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament another time. 

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[00:04:53] Today, with Easter approaching, we'll focus on the resurrection. And the Bible puts it so strongly when it says God has provided confirmation for everyone by raising Jesus from the dead. That's Acts 17:31. I can remember reading that as a non-believer and going, is that true? One translation says God has provided proof to all by raising Jesus from the dead. And so many Christians don't even realize this. And I think it's such a miss because this is a core difference between the Christian faith and other faiths. Christianity is centered on a public historical event that we have confirmation of and can share with people, which is exactly what we should expect from a God who is eager to reveal himself to the world. It's not just that as Christians we have a certain subjective internal sense that Jesus is real and someone else may or may not have that same sense. No, our faith is based in objective, public, historical truth that we can share with anyone and everyone. That excites me. I hope that gets you excited. And that should give us confidence as Christians. And I think we're missing such an opportunity if we don't realize that and if we don't prepare ourselves to be ready to share that amazing truth every chance we get. Now, let me qualify that for a second by saying I'm not saying we can argue people into faith. Faith is not a mathematical equation. It's not two plus two equals four. But by God's grace, we can persuade people to take Jesus seriously. And personally, I just think it's so cool that we can do so with the very same arguments that the apostles were making in Athens and other places 2,000 years ago. 

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Jo Vitale [00:06:41] Yeah, I'm so glad faith isn't a math equation because that would immediately disqualify me. 

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Vince Vitale [00:06:47] Joe doesn't like math. 

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Jo Vitale [00:06:48] I'm not the math elite in this relationship, that is for sure. 

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Vince Vitale [00:06:52] Makes fun of me all the time because I was on the math team in high school. Okay. There you go, Jo. Now everybody knows. 

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Jo Vitale [00:06:57] Yeah, I just wanted to get that in there. You're welcome. But for those who are scientifically inclined though, isn't that sometimes part of the problem? Before we even get into the resurrection, what about those who would just say, "Well, I can't even go there because I just reject miracles like all together." As soon as you're getting into this territory of this question of something happening that is outside of the realm of science, you're just talking about nonsense things. Like it's ridiculous. 

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Vince Vitale [00:07:24] Yeah, sometimes we have to start here and do some groundwork on this general theme of miracles because so often the assumption is, in a conversation like this, that even before we get started in the conversation the burden of proof is more strongly on Christianity because Christianity makes the crazy miraculous claims; whereas, atheism for example only makes the sober scientific reasonable rational claims. And anyone who's listened to this podcast for a while will know that I don't buy that for a second. You've heard me say many times that those who deny the virgin birth of Jesus may very well wind up believing in a virgin birth of the whole universe. And is that really any less miraculous? The truth is that we all believe some crazy stuff, no matter who you are. No one can get around that. The question is not whether we believe things which might seem crazy; the question is only whether we have good reason to believe them. 

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[00:08:20] And when it comes to believing in miracles, I just want to point out that when I say I believe in miracles, I'm agreeing with the vast, vast majority of people throughout history and still today. So often Christians are sheepish about their belief in miracles. Like almost apologizing for the belief, but hoping that someone might be over generous towards you and give it a chance. That seems totally off to me. The overwhelming majority of great thinkers throughout all of history have believed in miracles. Since the time the question could be considered, belief in miracles has been nearly universal. And so imagine this; imagine that you're on a game show like Who Wants to be a Millionaire? And a lot of money is at stake and you get a question and the answer is not obvious to you. So you decide you're going to poll the audience and 99% of the audience all give the same answer, but nevertheless you decide to go with a different answer. Now you would get blasted online for that irrationalism, right? How could you be arrogant enough to trust your opinion over the consensus opinion of everyone else? 

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[00:09:46] And I would say that rejecting the possibility of miracles out of hand is a lot like that. It goes radically against the consensus of the audience. So while this conversation about miracles is often framed as if Christianity has the uphill battle, I would actually suggest the exact opposite. The person who wants to say the resurrection couldn't have happened because miracles are simply impossible, that's the person who has the uphill battle. They have the much stronger burden of proof because almost everyone both throughout history and still today, disagrees with them. So to rationally reject miracles out of hand, I think you would need some extremely strong evidence to explain to me why you are right and everyone else is wrong. And it's not at all clear to me what that could look like. And just one more footnote here. Remember that even Jesus' enemies in the first century didn't take this route of denying his miracles. Even those who wanted to kill Jesus didn't say his miracles were false. They said that they were from the devil. Which I think is particularly strong evidence of Jesus's miracles because when someone is your enemy and yet still concedes something good or impressive about you, you can be pretty sure they're telling you the truth. Because your enemies they'd much rather criticize you than affirm you, but even Jesus' opponents were forced to admit the reality of his miracles. 

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Jo Vitale [00:11:11] I think that's a good point because if they could have called him a liar, they would have at that point-- like you could just deny it. They're obviously dealing with a situation where it's so undeniable that they have to go a different way. I do find that compelling. But isn't there still a problem there with taking miracles seriously? Even if a lot of people in history have believed in them, isn't there still an issue here that they defy science? 

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Vince Vitale [00:11:37] Right. And this is important because in affirming miracles, I don't want to give people the impression that they should be anti-science. And so it so I get it depends on what we mean here by defy. And it's true that miracles are not explained by science; they go beyond science. But let's remember that that's true of many things. Science can't prove historical claims, it can't prove that morality is objective, it can't proof that I'm not dreaming right now, or even that there is an external world outside of my own consciousness. Science can't even prove that my wife loves me. What good is science then? Science proves many wonderful things. It's awesome, but it's not the be all end all when it comes to the deepest questions of life. So it shouldn't bother us at all that miracles go beyond science. Tons of important stuff goes beyond science. Science is awesome, but it's not that be all end all when it comes to all the fundamental questions of the universe. 

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[00:12:39] Plus, I'd say miracles don't defy science because they actually rely on science. They rely on the scientific regularity which is right at the heart of the scientific method. The only reason God can reveal something spiritually unique to us through a virgin birth or a resurrection is precisely because virgins usually don't give birth and dead people usually don' rise. So the significance of miracles actually relies on science. I think of science as the God ordained backdrop against which he can break in and paint. Some theologically significant and unique things. So again, science and miracles are not at odds with one another. You can think of them much more like two wings of faith 

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Jo Vitale [00:13:32] But even if you can get to the place where we say, "All right, I'm open to the miraculous; maybe it's possible, maybe that could be a way that God could work," it's obviously still true that resurrections are rare events. And so, wouldn't it always be more reasonable to just assume that there is some other explanation? The simplest explanation is the most likely one. And so, in this case, that just doesn't seem probable with the resurrection. Like, what you do with that? 

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Vince Vitale [00:14:06] Right. This is a really interesting thought. Let me make a comment on this and then we'll get to just the core positive evidence for the resurrection that I think everyone should know. But on this point, sometimes people think there could never be evidence for such a thing as a resurrection because resurrections are just so improbable. They don't happen most days. And so we should just always go with, well, it must be something else. But remember the whole claim is that Jesus is absolutely unique as God incarnate, as God come to earth, and therefore that God was trying to do something utterly unique as a stamp of approval on who Jesus was, on who Jesus is. So here's an analogy the philosopher Stephen Davis gives. Relevant example. He says, imagine if I go to a car dealership to buy a car, and you're a person who, let's say, likes to be unique. So you go to the car dealership, and there's only one red car at the dealership. Well, even if the red car is only one in 1,000 cars at the dealer ship; if you're that person that really likes being unique, the probability of you buying the red one may be much higher than one in 1,000 because you have some additional reason that is particular to you for buying the red one. You might choose to buy it particularly because of its uniqueness? 

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[00:15:36] Well, Davis says that if God wanted to vindicate Jesus' identity as the Messiah, God may have chosen to raise him from the dead precisely because resurrections are so rare and striking. Thus, the very infrequency of resurrections may actually increase the probability of the resurrection of Jesus. The fact that resurrections don't usually happen is not clearly evidence against the resurrection of Jesus because an unusual event is exactly what we should expect if Jesus is who we claim to be. The whole point is that only a rare event could confirm that Jesus is utterly unique; and so the likelihood of God using an improbable event for that particular purpose is actually very probable. 

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Jo Vitale [00:16:24] Yeah, that makes sense. But the reason I'm laughing is I'm like, I think, as a philosopher, he needs a different color example. Because there are a lot of red cars in California. And I know this because our boys like to play the red car game at the moment. All the time in the car where every time they see a red car they just scream red car, and it's so often it just drives me absolutely insane. But maybe if you said a purple car, I could like grapple with that. 

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Vince Vitale [00:16:47] The distinction between my response to that argument and Jo's tells you everything you need to know about us.

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Jo Vitale [00:16:53] Red car is not unique enough for this analogy. 

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Vince Vitale [00:16:56] About the way that our minds work. 

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Jo Vitale [00:16:57] Yeah, I said it all, didn't it? Just hearing their little voices shrieking in my head. But, okay, yeah, the uniqueness of the resurrection may actually be a case for exactly why God would have chosen to do it that way. That is tracking with me. So, obviously for you, Vince, there was something here, there was something to this that led you to the point of saying like, hey, I actually think of all the things that could have been going on, the resurrection is actually the most probable reason, the most probably account for what actually happened in history. Something led you to drop to your knees and say, oh my goodness, this really happened. And give your life to God. So when you find yourself now in conversations with other people who are trying to figure out what do they or don't they believe about Jesus, and if you have an opportunity to share why you believe in a resurrection, and as is often the case with most of us, maybe you don't have a very long opportunity, it's just a quick conversation. You don't know how long the person's going to stick around. You have limited time to make your case. Where do you go in those conversations? What do you focus on that is going to be compelling in that conversation, but also is going be concise and clear? 

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Vince Vitale [00:18:10] Yeah, and what I find so exciting about this is that I think you can focus on something which is, I think, compelling and clear, but also really simple and really simple to share with someone. So, there are a number of reasons that I could focus on here. I'm just going to pick one of them, which focuses on this passage in 1st Corinthians 15 written by the Apostle Paul. Of course, Paul actually a persecutor of Christians initially, literally going around and under his authority they're being killed. But he became a Christian a year or two after Jesus's death because he became so convinced that Jesus had truly risen from the dead. And so now here's what Paul writes in his letter to Corinth, chapter 15, starting in verse three. He says, "For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance." And then he says, "That Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep," which is such a significant parenthetical there, almost as if to say, if you don't believe me, go out and ask them yourself. "Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, he appears to me also." 

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[00:19:36] You can just open up to that paragraph as a starting point with your friends, with your family members, and then share with them that a common scholarly estimate of when this book, 1 Corinthians, is written by Paul is about 55 AD. So Jesus died in the early 30s. That already makes this text a very early claim of Jesus's resurrection, placing it as established and widespread within two decades of Jesus' death. But it's actually earlier than that because scholars, and I'm not talking here about just Christian scholars, but the critical scholarship generally has approached a consensus that the core of this passage is an early creed that predates the composition of 1st Corinthians. They think that for a whole slew of reasons it has poetic meter, it uses several key words and phrases that Paul doesn't use elsewhere in his writing. It refers to Peter by his Aramaic name, Cephas, suggesting that it may have first been an Aramaic creed before being translated into Greek. 

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[00:20:39] Also in the first line, which introduces that creed, there are these technical terms which in ancient Israel were used for the handing on of official tradition. And so that's where it says, "For what I received, I then passed on to you." So this creed is older than the letter itself. How much older? When did Paul receive it? Very likely no later than three years after Paul's conversion. Because in another of his letters, in Galatians chapter one, Paul says, "After three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and I stayed with him for 15 days." So Paul had his conversion one to two years after Jesus's crucifixion, and he tells us that three years later he went and he spent 15 days hanging out with Peter, one of the people who was closest to Jesus when Jesus was alive. What did Paul do with Peter during those 15 days? I like how one scholar said, "It's safe to presume they did not spend all of their time talking about the weather." 

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Jo Vitale [00:21:42] They weren't British enough; were they? 

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Vince Vitale [00:21:43] They weren't British enough for that. No, the first thing that Paul would have asked Peter about when he saw him was the resurrection. When did it happen? Who saw it? Where did they see it? In fact, the passage implies this when it says that he went up to get acquainted with Peter. The Greek word there is historia, where we get the English word history from. So Paul is literally saying that he went to gain a historical account from Peter. It's very likely that this is when Paul received the 1st Corinthians Creed from Peter, or at least the core of it, no more than five years after Jesus' death. And that means that even before that, there needed to be time for the beliefs expressed in the Creed to become established and to be formulated into a Creed which could be passed on. So here's the amazing result of just looking at this one paragraph, in 1st Corinthians 15, and realizing what the critical scholarship says about it. It has become the consensus that the core beliefs of this Creed go back incredibly close to the actual events. And even though there's some variation in views about how much of the details in this Creed were there right at the outset of it, almost everyone agrees that the earliest version included the fact that Jesus had been raised and that he had appeared. 

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[00:23:07] So what can account for this? What can bridge the gap between the history of Christianity part one, the apostles having deserted Jesus when he was arrested, dejected and defeated after the man they had hoped would be the Messiah, the long-awaited redeemer who was supposed to become a powerful king and rescue the Jewish people from the heavy hand of Rome and reign forever, died. Movement over. That should have been the end of it. When the women went to the tomb on Sunday, they did so to prepare the body for burial. They expected Jesus to stay dead and so did everyone else. And then the history of Christianity part three, which saw these very same disciples and countless others worship Jesus as God, insist that they had seen him after his death and give up their lives rather than deny him. And this gap in history is confirmed not only by the Bible, but by other early non-Christian sources such as those by Tertullian and Josephus and Suetonius and a variety of others, which don't give all the details that are given in 1 Corinthians 15, nor would we expect them to given that they're non-Christian sources. But they corroborate this historical gap that I'm highlighting here, that Jesus was a leader with a following thought to be the Messiah, which the Jewish people conceived of as a king who would reign forever, and then he was killed. 

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[00:24:44] Again, that should have been the end of the movement. But then even these non-Christian sources corroborate that shortly after Jesus's death his followers became so convinced of his deity that they were willing to suffer and even die for their belief in Jesus. Plenty of the [inaudible] this is a Roman governor in what's now northwest Turkey writing around 110 A.D. Says, "I asked them if they are Christians and if they admit it; I repeat the question a second and a third time with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution." So just think this through in your head. Those who walked this earth with Jesus went from mourning that their leader had been defeated and being too scared to even be present at his crucifixion, to then accepting their own deaths by torture and execution, rather than denying that Jesus is God. And it seems like all they had to do was deny him in word to say, fine, I'm not a Christian, and then go home and continue to worship Jesus in private. But even for their lives, they would not deny him. This is how convinced they were that Jesus was the God he claimed to be. How could these common fishermen and tax collectors transform from cowardly and defeated to overflowing with courage and conviction? How could they become so utterly convinced that this dead man, Jesus, on a cross was worth dying for? And it wasn't even just his friends, his enemies like Paul, even his brother, James-- which I feel like is so significant, because think about your brother, what would it take for you to come to believe that your brother was God? 

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Jo Vitale [00:26:21] A lot. 

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Vince Vitale [00:26:22] Right? Sorry, Ed. You're great. And James becomes the leader of the church in Jerusalem and writes one of the books of the New Testament. It doesn't add up. There is a gaping Grand Canyon sized hole in history. Something happened. The bare facts of history demand it. And every person must now ask themselves, why is the greatest movement of all time based on homeless man who died on a cross. And the Christian response is the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ. If that is not your answer, and this is the crucial point, then the gap remains. Simply rejecting the resurrection will not fill the enormous historical gap between what should have been the movement ending death of Jesus and then the absolute eruption of Christianity. The bare minimum facts of agreed upon history demand that something extraordinary happened in the lives of the Apostles. If it wasn't the resurrection, what was it? Could it really be that despite 2,000 years of historical scholarship and speculation, there's not a single other even remotely plausible explanation for the origin of the greatest movement of all time? Could it have erupted out of nowhere? That, I would say, is the alternative. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, Christianity did. And so, in short, I would say only the resurrection explains why Christianity didn't die on the cross with Jesus. 

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Jo Vitale [00:27:56] That's so great. There are a number of things I find super helpful about the approach you just gave. One is that I think it's really useful to highlight that historic gap, because I think often people just think, well, I can just stay disengaged from this question and not engage with it. But I think framing it that way, there's actually a part one and a part two and it needs to be accounted for somehow, it makes the question a live question for people to say, actually, you're right. The historical facts do demand something there. So I think that's really helpful. The other thing I like about what you're saying, Vince, is there's something about making a case based on one passage in scripture, which is so great to be able just to sit down and open your Bible with somebody and actually walk someone through the text because they can see it with their own eyes. And suddenly things don't seem so theoretical, but you're actually working through a text right in front of you. And I think that's really useful. 

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[00:28:45] But also I remember at first looking at that Corinthians passage and walking through all those dates and realizing just how staggeringly early all of that evidence actually is that you just gave about how early that creed is. And it really struck me because I remember even when I was in college and people used to talk about the resurrection, I would hear it thrown around all the time. This case of, well, it must just be legendary development. It just must be the case that over a long period of time, people came to believe that Jesus was God a couple of generations later, but they didn't believe it at the time. But that, what you've just said, absolutely demolishes that argument that people used to make even when I was first studying this stuff in college. 

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Vince Vitale [00:29:25] And if you're not sure exactly what Jo means by legendary development, the idea is that through incremental changes in an oral tradition over multiple generations, you could have things change. Like that kid's game where one person says something into the next person's ear, and they say it into the next person's year, and you go all the way around the room. And the first person says, "Johnny bakes really good bread," and then by the time you get to the end it comes out as, "Jesus rose from the dead." And yes, this 1st Corinthians 15 passage just completely dismisses that sort of argument because you need several generations to have any significant legendary development occur in a text. And here you have even the critical scholarship, not just Christians, but non-Christians, saying the core of these beliefs were there within almost no time. Many say within months or the first couple of years right after Jesus's death. So it's simply not a credible option anymore. And 100 years ago, like in 1920, people would have said that's a significant option. Now we realize that some of these creeds in the New Testament are so early, and even just that the books of the New Testament themselves are so early as well. Philippians 2 is another example of a creed in the New Testament, which predates the letter. It's so early and speaks to the deity of Jesus at such an early stage. 

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Jo Vitale [00:30:50] Yeah, I remember reading I think they say it takes three generations for the legendary development to be a viable solution. But to your point, this very text says, hey, 500 of them saw Jesus and some of them are still alive, so go ask them yourself. So it's at the point where it's just not possible. So I find that really fascinating. But having said that, obviously a lot of people don't accept the resurrection of Jesus. So taking a step back, you would think, well, then, okay, people who study this stuff, other historians, New Testament scholars, those who don't believe in the resurrection, they must then have other historical theories about how to explain this historical gap that you're talking about. Like naturalistic or non-miraculous theories that can stand in place as an alternative to the resurrection. So can you tell us, what are the alternatives? 

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Vince Vitale [00:31:44] I was never so confirmed in my belief in the resurrection as when I began to look into the alternatives. Nothing was more encouraging to me. And when I found myself struggling to find plausible alternatives for explaining the birth of Christianity, this was in college, I arranged meetings with two non-Christian professors in the Princeton religion department for exactly that reason. I thought they study this stuff. Both of them had something of a focus in the New Testament era. And I asked them, well, how do you explain this? What do you put as part two? How do you explained this gaping historical gap between what should have been the movement ending death of Jesus and then the eruption of Christianity? One of those professors told me that as a historian, he simply wasn't interested in the question. And there seems to be this assumption that as soon as we begin to explore the miraculous we're no longer talking about history. But I've never understood why he thought he could just make that assumption at the outset rather than following the evidence wherever it led. And then the other professor glanced vaguely in the direction of a mass hallucination theory, but without any conviction and without any details. 

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[00:32:56] And maybe I'll start there because it is a theory that's riddled with problems. The hallucination explanation, it did become popular in the 19th century, carried over into the first half of the 20th century. The big problem here is that people don't see the same hallucination. No more than different people dream the same dream. And the Bible is filled with records of not just one, but a great variety of resurrection appearances. Jesus appeared to both individuals and groups, at various times, in different places, indoors and outdoors, in different regions, over a period of 40 days, to both friends and enemies, as we've seen. And all the appearance records are in agreement that this was a real bodily, literal, physical resurrection. So hallucination theory can't come anywhere close to accounting for such a variety of evidence. Plus, even if hallucination theory could somehow account for people seeming to see Jesus after his death, it would still leave the well-attested fact of the empty tomb completely unexplained. And the evidence for the empty tomb is very strong. People give lots of reasons, probably close to a couple dozen reasons for that. But just three, one, the empty tomb it's discovered by women. 

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[00:34:08] Which in that time given the lack of credibility that women were afforded as witnesses, if you were making up the story that is the last thing you would do- make them your primary witnesses. And I love the way Jesus affirms women through doing so. The first response to the empty tomb, secondly, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, was to say that the disciples stole the body, which only makes sense if the tomb was actually empty. And moreover, if the two was not empty, then the religious leaders would have just produced the body. Jesus was not buried in some hard-to-find tomb in the middle of nowhere. He's buried in Jerusalem, in the tomb of a prominent person who's well-known and we still have his name today, Joseph of Arimathea. 

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[00:34:55] And one last point about hallucination theory, if the disciples had only experienced hallucinations, this would not come close to explaining why they would all be so utterly convinced by these hallucinations that they would be willing to die for them. Generally, hallucinations do not transform lives. Even those who hallucinate often dismiss the experience when others who are present don't see the same thing. But Jesus's disciples were so consistently transformed even to the point of being ready to die for their faith. There's not a single early text reporting that any one of them ever recanted their belief that Jesus had risen from the dead. So for all these reasons, hallucination theory kind of sounds nice to just kind of throw it out there, but it just doesn't hold up logically. 

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Jo Vitale [00:35:41] Okay, so what about if somebody said, okay, yeah, maybe hallucinations don't work as a very compelling theory, but what if it was just a lie? What if it was an elaborate conspiracy or hoax? You mentioned the claim that disciples stole the body. Well, what if they did? What if they stole the body and then they lied about it? 

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Vince Vitale [00:36:02] Right. Again, it's the sort of thing where it is easy to sort of throw it out there as an option, but you have to then think it through. What kind of sense would that make? People lie when they are getting something out of it. But remember the Christians who made these claims in the first century were getting killed for it. We know that Peter, Paul, and James were all martyred. Probably others, too. Tradition has it maybe even all or almost all-- maybe not John, but almost all of the apostles in any case they're willing to suffer for their belief in Jesus and the gospel. And these were the very people who were making the claim of resurrection in the first place. So if it wasn't true, they knew it. And then what were they getting out of it? They were getting killed for it. They weren't getting paid for it. They weren’t being honored for it. I love the way Chuck Colson puts this. He was once asked why he believes in the resurrection. This is what he said. He said, "Watergate proved it to me." How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead When they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one of them was beaten, tortured, stoned, and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world and they couldn't keep alive for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep alive for 40 years? Absolutely impossible. I love that. 

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[00:37:28] And Pascal put it much more succinctly. He just said, "I believe those witnesses that get their throats cut." It's true that people are even willing to die for things sometimes, but only when they really believe them to be true. And if the apostles were the ones who are making up the lie about the resurrection, they would have known that it wasn't true. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose by lying. And maybe this is just the most important point on this. If you're questioning that alternative, read the Gospels. Read the books that were written by these people who would supposedly be the liars and just ask yourself the question as you read, "Are these people liars, irrational liars who are lying even though they have nothing to gain from it or are they people with deep integrity who are intent on communicating the truth?" 

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Jo Vitale [00:38:22] Yeah, that's an interesting thought to me because the first thing that comes to my mind is the Gospel of Mark and just how embarrassing the portrayal is of Peter. Like just the way he's depicted through that gospel. You're like, wow, if this guy was a liar, he could have definitely rewritten some of this to tell a better story about himself if power and reputation was what he was after. I don't think he would have let it be written that way. Okay, so say it's not hallucination and the disciples aren't lying, are there any other theories that we should consider? What else is out there?

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Vince Vitale [00:38:55] You've already mentioned legendary development. Honestly, after we get past legendary development, hallucination theories, disciples made it up theories, you really have to start straining to find any other good options. The only other one that I might mention is swoon theory, also known sometimes as the apparent death theory or the Passover plot. And I mentioned this just because of its historical value. It's popular in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and notably embraced by Frederick Schleiermacher. The idea here is that in some way or another, Jesus faked his death. So the reason that he appeared alive three days later is because contrary to appearances, he didn't really die in the first place. But for this explanation to even get off the ground, we would need to be convinced that Jesus could have survived the torture and crucifixion he suffered. Even medically, this is an incredible claim in and of itself. And even more so considering that the soldiers who were executing Jesus made doubly sure that he was dead by thrusting a spear into his side. Most significantly, even if Jesus somehow found a way to fake his death, to continue breathing through the linen cloth in which he was wrapped for burial, to escape from his wrappings, to roll away the large stone enclosing his tomb, to slip past the guards undetected, (we're talking trained Roman guards who would have been protecting the body at the cost of their life) this swoon theory hypothesis is still completely unable to explain how Jesus would be able to appear to the disciples three days later without showing signs of injury. 

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[00:40:29] Even if Jesus somehow pulled off all of that, faked his death, he would have been utterly beaten, his ankles would have broken, I mean he hardly would have been appearing in a state that would have induced worshiping him as Lord. And lastly in order to accept this swoon hypothesis, we would need to accept that Jesus was willing to deceive his closest friends and not only that but to be willing to save his own life while conning his best friends into sacrificing theirs for a lie. He would have been lying to his closest friends in a way that he knew would likely get them persecuted or even killed. And again, just open the New Testament and read through the Gospels asking yourself, is this Jesus the most malicious of liars or a man of deepest honesty and integrity? And so, in summary, I would just say the alternatives to the resurrection are majorly lacking. In fact, I will say it's fair to say that no other hypothesis has earned any degree of credibility in the scholarly literature. Those of you who listen to the podcast will know that a phrase that's important to me is that criticism without alternative is empty. And when I was on my search for truth, many people were happy to tell me that belief in the resurrection was crazy, but no one was able to give me any even remotely plausible alternative. And that actually drove me to take the possibility of the resurrection very seriously. 

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Jo Vitale [00:42:09] Which I'm very grateful for. I don't think we would be here today. But Vince, when I listen to you, I do find it so incredibly compelling of a case. But it also really needs to be right, because as a Christian you're staking your whole life on the fact that the resurrection is true. And so, when you think about levels of confidence, how confident can we be in the resurrection given the evidence that we have? Does it give us a hundred percent certainty? You were talking about proof earlier; you proved it by being raised from the dead. Is it 100, is it 90%? what would you say to people who are saying like I just really need to be sure. And what do you think is important? What do we need to able to say here? 

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Vince Vitale [00:42:58] Right. Interestingly, some people do actually put percentages on it just for the sake of argument. One of them is perhaps the most influential British, Jo British, philosopher of religion of the last half century. His name is Richard Swinburne. And before retiring, we knew him well. And he held the head post in Oxford for many years. In 2003, he published a book called The Resurrection of God Incarnate. And in that book, he suggests that on the available evidence today, it is 97% probable that Jesus truly and physically rose from the dead. Now, Swinburne, he likes to work with probability theory, so he plugs in rough numbers at each point in the argument. But he recognizes we can't take the exact percentage too seriously. It's only meant as a rough estimation. But still I think it's significant that the fact that someone as of his intellectual credibility can make that claim in print, have it be published by Oxford University Press and then ably defend that claim at top academic conferences all around the world as I’ve seen him do. And it just symbolizes just how strong the intellectual case for the resurrection of Jesus is. 

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[00:44:12] But now Let's say Swinburne is way off with his 97% estimation. Here's the question I would ask of someone who doesn't yet believe. What percentage would it take for you to open your heart and mind to the possibility of the resurrected Jesus. If there was a 1% chance of finding a billion dollar treasure in the room next door to where you're sitting right now, would you just go about your day without checking? Not a chance. You would jump out of your seat right now and run to check. Well, what if there is just a one percent chance that you were chosen before the foundation of the world by a God who loves you so much that he was willing to give his life for you, a God who understands everything about you, everything you've been through because he's lived it too, a God that never gets distracted when you're talking to him, a God says at the end of time he will wipe every tear from your eyes because he is inviting you into eternity with him, who says I want come and live within you and transform you from the inside out, what if that is true? Is that not far beyond a billion dollar treasure? We don't need to argue people into certainty about God. That's not how God set things up. He intentionally left room for relationship and faith. Pascal, again, put it so well. He said something like there's enough evidence to believe in God rationally, but not so much for us to believe in God based on reason alone. So God has left us far more evidence than we need to believe him rationally. And once that door is cracked, even if someone is still just in the 1% range, we can encourage them to take those steps of seeking Jesus for themselves. 

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Jo Vitale [00:46:10] If someone's listening to the podcast now and they're thinking, hey, okay, even if there is a 1% chance that there's a treasure in the room next door, I want to know about that. Or maybe there are people who are listening who are having some of these conversations with their friends around this Easter time and their friends are showing curiosity about the possibility of whether this is true. If you want to encourage somebody like that to seek Jesus for themselves, what would that actually look like? Where do you begin with that? 

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Vince Vitale [00:46:44] I'd say the way you begin to explore any relationship is by talking with someone. Merely observing someone from a distance won't do it. You have to begin to engage relationally, take that risk. And for me personally, that began with an agnostic’s prayer. I can remember just starting to pray by saying, God, I don't know if I'm talking to anyone, but if I am, I would really like to know about it. And I believe that God really honored that prayer in my life and I've invited hundreds or thousands of people to pray that prayer since and I've seen him honor that prayer in the lives of so many others. So as Christians, we should have incredible confidence in the case for the resurrection, not only because the evidence is so robust, that's a starting point, but also because the evidence has not meant to be the full case. All we need to do is get someone to the point where they're saying, huh, that's interesting. Like they said to Paul when he was sharing about the resurrection in Athens. They said, "We'd like to hear you again on this subject.". 

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[00:47:52] As soon as somebody gets to that point, then we can trust that Jesus himself will meet with people personally and reveal himself to them when they seek him with their whole hearts. Because, ultimately, when we talk about Jesus rising from the dead, we're not just talking about something that he did 2,000 years ago. I mean that was a foreshadowing of the transformative work that he wants to do in each of our lives. We don't just read about the changed lives of the disciples and in old dusty books. We are invited into that story to see it and to live it and to invite others into it. It is available to every one of us and we should have such confidence as Christians in sharing it with others this Easter all year because truly God has provided confirmation for all by raising Jesus from the dead. 

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Jo Vitale [00:48:39] Thank you, Vince, and thank you everybody for listening. We hope that you have a really wonderful, worshipful Easter, and we'll be praying that you do have opportunities to share with friends and loved ones in your life some of these amazing truths that we've been talking about. We’re so glad you joined us for Ask Away.

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