Response to ‘unorthodox ideas’ in Easter column

Retired pastor Howard Bess, in his pre-Easter Faith column in the Frontiersman, brings up some unorthodox and perhaps scandalous ideas about Jesus’ post-Crucifixion experience.

First off, the ideas Bess put forward were considered cutting edge 150 years ago. They fall under the title “demythologization,” a fancy word for saying that the New Testament has major historical errors and should be treated as a form of mythology. In the intervening century and a half, serious Bible scholarship has examined these presuppositions and found them lacking.

Consider this from C.S. Lewis, professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Oxford and Cambridge and convert from atheism to Christianity: “Then turn to [the gospel of] John. Read the dialogues ... I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, myths all my life. I know not one of them is like this.”

Interested readers are encouraged to read the works of N.T. Wright, a writer described by The Weekly Standard in this way: “The Christian church owes a great debt to Bishop Wright’s scholarly work on the resurrection of Jesus and the life of Paul. Indeed, it’s hard to name a living academic who has done more to defend the historical integrity of the New Testament.”

Bess might find that seminaries today don’t present these findings with the certainty that they did when he was in school.

Bess insinuates that all pastors know that Christ’s resurrection is a hoax, and that most ministers simply don’t let their congregants in on the fact. This is a disturbing comment, as it essentially besmirches the integrity of Christian pastors by implying they present something as true that did not happen.

Ministers do their best to challenge their congregations to live lives of faith, integrity and charity as disciples of the living Lord Jesus. It is inconceivable that they could issue, week after week and year after year, this sort of exhortation while “knowing” that the Lord they challenge their congregants to emulate was left to be picked apart by stray dogs.

Bess submits that the gospel accounts of the resurrection do not agree with each other, and thus are not trustworthy. Let’s consider a parallel situation.

A few days ago, my four daughters visited the home of some children they had never met before. After their enjoyable visit, one of my girls told me about dress-up clothes; another told me about halibut; a third told me about a two-story tree house; and a fourth, about a dog that plays catch with itself.

Are my daughters untrustworthy witnesses? Worse, are they liars? To both questions of course, the answer is no.

Rather, each of them recalls different aspects of the visit, just as witnesses to a car accident or other major event recall different details of the incident. That the accounts of the resurrection morning do not fall into lockstep conformity is normal if the stories came from eyewitness accounts. This can be cited as evidence of their accuracy, not their falsehood.

Bess says the gospel accounts were committed to paper 50 years after the events described, suggesting that this length of time would allow mistakes to slip into the accounts. Note that Bess is writing about 2,000 years after the events, and would like us to accept as truth a “demythologized” version of what really happened to Jesus.

We can fairly ask the question: Who is in a better position to know what actually took place, the followers of Christ and those whom they communicated with, or seminarians 20 centuries later who read about these things in books?

Note also that all the apostles but John chose death rather than denial of Christ’s bodily resurrection. Now it is true that people can give their lives for false causes. But it is extremely rare that a person gives their life for a cause they know is false.

The early Christians had every opportunity to know that Jesus really was dead and buried. And they had every opportunity to know if he was bodily resurrected. It is not credible that Jesus’ band of apostles would go from huddling behind locked doors for fear of getting killed, to publicly proclaiming Christ’s bodily return from the dead at the risk of torture and death if they knew he was not resurrected.

The logical conclusion, and the conclusion backed by the New Testament record? Jesus did indeed bodily rise on Easter morning.

Finally, it is inconceivable to believe that truth-telling and justice always win out even if Jesus was consumed by dogs and crows on Good Friday. For if the expectation of truth-telling is a hideous death and the dishonorable disposal of remains, then I submit that very few people will step forward to tell the truth. Rather, Christianity revolutionizes lives and cultures because of the assurance, given in Jesus’ resurrection, that even if one loses one’s life in the service of Christ (and that includes service to those whom he calls “the least of his brethren”), then we, too, will rise to bodily glory with him.

Next Easter, may Pastor Bess sing “He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today” with all the gusto he can muster, and for the same reasons Christians from first century Palestine and 21st century China do: because He really did physically rise from the dead, and He lives to transform our lives.

Rudy Poglitsh lives in Wasilla.