Risen Indeed

R. Habermas Gary

Description

A pivotal contribution to the history of apologetics. Gary Habermas has spent a career defending the historicity and truthfulness of the resurrection of Jesus. But his earliest writing on Jesus' resurrection has been unavailable to the broader public, until now. In Risen Indeed: A Historical Investigation Into the Resurrection of Jesus, readers will encounter Gary Habermas' foundational research into the historicity of the resurrection. With a new, extensive, introductory essay on contemporary scholarship regarding the resurrection, Habermas shows how the questions surrounding the historicity of the resurrection and arguments raised by critics are perennially important for Christian faith.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology
• Theology
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Lexham Press
• Date de parution: 03 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781683595502
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

RISEN INDEED
A Historical Investigation into the Resurrection of Jesus
Gary R. Habermas
 
 
Risen Indeed: A Historical Investigation into the Resurrection of Jesus
Copyright 2021 Gary R. Habermas
Originally published as The Resurrection of Jesus: A Rational Inquiry (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1976) .
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Print ISBN 9781683595496
Digital ISBN 9781683595502
Library of Congress Control Number 2021939394
Lexham Editorial: David Bomar, Jesse Myers, Jenny-Lyn de Klerk, Abigail Stocker, Danielle Thevenaz
Cover Design: Joshua Hunt, Brittany Schrock
To DEBBIE
My love, my closest earthly friend and my wife,
whose own love for me was revealed even more by
her diligence in typing this dissertation.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART 1
A PPROACHING THE Q UESTION OF THE R ESURRECTION OF J ESUS
Chapter I
The Present State of the Question
Chapter II
The Possibility of Miracles Today
Chapter III
History and Miracles
Chapter IV
Reason and Faith
PART 2
P OSSIBLE S OLUTIONS TO THE Q UESTION OF THE R ESURRECTION OF J ESUS
Chapter V
Possibility Number One: That the Resurrection Did Not Occur
Chapter VI
Possibility Number One: Other Similar Views
Chapter VII
Possibility Number Two: That the Resurrection Did Occur, But That It Cannot be Demonstrated
Chapter VIII
Possibility Number Two: Other Similar Views
Chapter IX
Possibility Number Three: That the Resurrection Did Occur and That It Can Be Demonstrated
Chapter X
Possibility Number Three: Other Similar Views
PART 3
A N E VALUATION OF THE S OLUTIONS TO THE Q UESTION OF THE R ESURRECTION OF J ESUS
Chapter XI
An Evaluation of Possibility Number One
Chapter XII
An Evaluation of Possibility Number Two
Chapter XIII
An Evaluation of Possibility Number Three
Chapter XIV
A Concluding Demonstration
Bibliography
Index of Subjects and Persons
Index of Scripture
Acknowledgments
S pecial thanks to my PhD students Scott Steven Hyland and Stephen Scott Jordan for their work on the index for this new edition.
Introduction
M y PhD dissertation on the resurrection of Jesus was completed while I was a student at Michigan State University. It was published soon afterward, in 1976, by University Microfilms. 1 I will begin here with some autobiographical comments that provide background to my dissertation. Since then, a remarkable number of volumes, essays, articles, and reviews have appeared addressing the many aspects of the crucially important topic of Jesus’ resurrection. The majority of this introduction consists of extended comments on the recent state of resurrection research, chiefly since 1976.

MY RELIGIOUS DOUBTS
Having published and lectured on my story on perhaps hundreds of occasions, I will write a brief account here. Though I was raised in a Christian home and attended a German Baptist church in the Detroit area, my young faith took a real hit when the closest person in my life, my great-grandmother, died when I was a child. I was plunged into fears and doubts that I did not know existed in the world. What happens to our loved ones when they die? What about us? Years later, I started down the path of rather dogged religious doubt, which did not abate during ten straight years of ardent questioning, followed by another ten years of intermittent uncertainty, lasting even beyond the completion of my dissertation.
Friends came alongside me during the early years to share what they thought were surefire ways to know that Christianity was true. However, after listening to them and then studying each of these suggested options, I concluded that while some of these evidential trails were potentially worthwhile in one way or another, some more than others, it was still the case that none of these paths could bear the promised weight of the Christian faith.
During this time, I visited other religious sites and places of worship in my area and across the country. Countless hours were spent in public and university libraries, acquiring and studying sources that favored the opposing viewpoints. Throughout this process I debated all sorts of religious ideas and persons, Christian and non-Christian alike, in a constant search for any particular religious system that could be acknowledged as being largely true.
For instance, I specifically recall marching into a Christian professor’s office one day and challenging his arguments for the inspiration of Scripture. After disputing at length each of his ideas, probably doing so a little too stridently, I walked out, absolutely convinced that I had easily gotten the best of the argument. A fellow skeptic who had accompanied me into the office readily agreed that there had been no contest. Actually, I was quite bothered that an exceptionally well-trained theologian would have no better basis for his beliefs in the truth of Christianity than what he had presented. After hearing that I had rejected the inspiration of Scripture, another student confronted me in the hallway and told me rather forcefully that I was possessed by seven demons, turned abruptly, and walked away.
At that time, my life consisted largely of sports and incessant personal study related to my doubts. One day while reading, it occurred to me that if Jesus had been raised from the dead—especially based on what even critical scholars acknowledged were the accredited facts—and if a pared down list of Jesus’ central teachings could be established similarly, then this combination could possibly ground the truth of the central teachings of Christianity. But I had no idea if the resurrection could stand the test of potential skeptical assaults. These questions marked the beginning stages of the issues that I later pursued in detail in my dissertation.
At this point, the reader could be forgiven for concluding that this insight on my part regarding the potential for such a resurrection study probably provided the light I needed at the end of the tunnel—and that after I worked out the details concerning the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, all would be right in the world once again! But that would be far from the case. Actually, the mere recognition of such a possible path for the resurrection case did not lead to the final resolution of my resurrection doubts until many years afterward. They were not fully resolved until long after my initial 1,600 note cards on the subject and, later, the dissertation itself!
After much of my initial study, prior to doing my PhD, I concluded that one of the naturalistic theories stubbornly refused to be discarded. While the resurrection could be accepted by faith, it could not be known to be true historically. That halted my resurrection research for the time being. During this interlude, I considered whether there might not be an afterlife. Many years later, a professional Christian philosopher commented to me, somewhat disapprovingly, that he could tell David Hume had made a big impression on me during my studies. I could have added the names of David Strauss and especially Rudolf Bultmann, my constant reading and dialogue partners.
Still, my worst two episodes with doubt were still ahead of me and actually came long after my PhD had been completed. It is the second of these that I have spoken of often: I thought I was close to walking away from Christianity altogether and embracing a scientific version of Buddhism.
Over the years since that time, there was something I wished for more than anything else. I often hoped that someone would come along beside me and explain that not all doubt is created equal. There are definitely different species of uncertainty, and studies indicate that the most common variety is not factual doubt but emotional doubt. The latter is also the most painful kind. 2 To be sure, the vast majority of my doubt at that time was factual, but emotional elements had begun to creep into the picture. Yet there were few publications on these topics to which I could turn, so I felt as if I would simply have to keep working at it on my own.
Fast forward to years later, after my first book on the subject of doubt had been published, when my wife became ill. The diagnosis changed from the flu to the much-dreaded verdict of stomach cancer. Just a few short months later, in August 1995, my wife—the mother of our four children, and my very best friend in the world—died. At that time, I told my closest friends that the worst possible suffering I could ever imagine had indeed come upon me. Having struggled years before past the long time of doubt, I feared that, on top of everything else, her sickness and death would reawaken those issues. That’s a story in itself. 3 Thankfully, the doubts never returned after my wife’s death. It was as if the deaths of the two people who were the closest to me—my great-grandmother and my wife—at those junctions in my early and later life served as bookends to my doubt.

THE MINIMAL FACTS METHODOLOGY IN RESURRECTION RESEARCH
Chiefly due to my previous doubts surrounding the subject of Jesus’ resurrection and my search for a foundation for religious belief, I had learned to depend less on responses that were based chiefly on conservative apologetic answers, since these were frequently unacceptable to more critical researchers. For example, conservatives and some moderates tended to rely much more on eyewitness testimony of the sources and the authors of the Gospels, whereas more skeptical researchers usually would not grant such conclusions. The latter preferred what were judged to be the highly attested epistles of Paul. 4
Of course, I realized that it did not follow that these skeptical obje