My annual Easter resurrection post - 2024

It seems like every year around this time, I think a lot about the resurrection of Jesus and resurrection in general. I wonder why.

Anywho, I had several ideas for what I would write about this year, and I've decided to focus specifically on the appearance to the 500 that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 15:6. Here's what he said:

After that He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.

As a Bible-believing Christian who trusts Paul, I believe this event happened. But showing it happened to a person who might be skeptical of Paul or the Bible in general is a different matter. To show it happened, I'd have to make historical arguments without just granting that it's true merely because the Bible says so. There are arguments both for and against this event happening. Here are some of my thoughts on it in no particular order.

1. Paul's letters are the earliest writings in the New Testament. They date closer to the time of Jesus than anything else. 1 Corinthians is widely agreed to have been written around the middle of the 50's CE. This particular passage is also widely agreed to contain oral tradition that dates to within five years of Jesus' death, specifically verses 3-5. I do not think verse 6 is part of the oral tradition for two reasons. First, because Paul doesn't begin the appearance to the five hundred with "that" like he does the rest of the oral tradition. Second, because Paul makes a parenthetical statement about some of the people still being alive and others being dead. Since the appearance to the 500 isn't part of the oral tradition, we can't necessarily date it to within five years of Jesus' death. But we can certainly say that unless Paul made it up on the spot, it predates 1 Corinthians.

2. It seems unlikely that this would be the first time Paul mentioned this appearance to the Corinthians. He begins this section of his letter by saying he wants to remind the Corinthians of the gospel he previously taught them. Then he quotes the oral tradition which ends with the appearance to Cephas and the twelve. Then he cites the rest of the appearances, ending with the appearance to himself. Then he ends the section by saying, "Whether then it was I or they [i.e. the other apostles], so we preach and so you believed" (verse 11). So I get the impression that even though some of these appearances were not part of the oral tradition he quotes at the beginning, they are all part of the reminder of what he preached and what they believed. That means he probably told them about this appearance when he established the church, which would've been in the late 40's probably.

3. Paul says that some of the 500 were still living at the time of his writing 1 Corinthians, but some had fallen asleep (i.e. died). I find this parenthetical comment to be very interesting because it suggests that Paul knew who a lot of these people were. Maybe he even talked to some of them. A lot of apologists think this was Paul's way of saying, "If you don't believe me, you can talk to these people yourselves." The answer skeptics usually give is, "If that were the case, then Paul would've named some of them, but he didn't." I kind of side with the skeptics on that one. Paul isn't inviting anybody to check the claim out by interviewing the witnesses themselves. On the other hand, he is opening himself up to anybody saying, "Really? Well, who are they?" If Paul mentioned this appearance when founding the Corinthian church, it's hard to imagine nobody being curious about who they were, especially if Paul included the comment about some of them still being alive.

4. The parenthetical comment, I think, is the best reason to think this appearance really happened. The fact that we have such an early account of it is the second best reason.

5. One reason many are skeptical that it happened is because it's not mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament. Mark only narrates the appearance to the women at the tomb. He doesn't narrate any appearances to the disciples. He only has an angel telling the women that Jesus will appear to the disciples in Galilee. Mark ends there. There's a longer ending to Mark that is almost universally agreed to be an addition to Mark that wasn't in the original, so that appearance doesn't count. Matthew, Luke, and John all narrate appearances of Jesus to the women, the apostles, and in Luke's case, some unnamed people beyond the 11 apostles, though he doesn't say how many. You would think that if Jesus had appeared to 500 people at once, it would be significant enough for the gospel authors to have mentioned it. Their silence on the matters is often invoked as evidence against it happening. Surely, the argument goes, if it happened, the authors would've known about it, and if they knew about it, they wouldn't have left it out. This is an argument from silence, but as I've said elsewhere, arguments from silence can be sound arguments as long as there is some expectation that if something were so, it would be evident. So this argument from silence isn't fallacious. However, it can be outweighed by the evidence for the event in combination with a reasonable explanation for why the authors of the gospels and Acts might not have mentioned it. One explanation might be that the gospel writers intentionally focused on the appearances to the original apostles because they are the primary witnesses to the resurrection, and being a witness to the resurrection was a prerequisite to being an apostle (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:1). And as I said before, Luke lets us know that Jesus appeared to others beyond the core apostles, but he doesn't say how many. That leaves it open to being a group appearance of any large size. In the case of Acts, Luke says that shortly after Jesus ascended in front of the apostles outside of Jerusalem, they went back to Jerusalem and had a gathering in which Peter spoke to about 120 people. It's possible, though not certain, that these 120 people were with them when Jesus ascended. You'll have to read Acts 1:1-15 and judge for yourself. It's also possible Jesus appeared to 500 people, and only 120 were still hanging around Jerusalem when Peter gave his speech. Luke just doesn't tell us, but the passage leaves the possibility open.

6. It isn't that crazy to think Jesus might've appeared to 500 people at once even if you don't necessarily think Jesus rose from the dead. After all, Mary appeared to many people at Fatima. I just did a quick google search, and it said 70,000 people saw some solar event, but I couldn't find out how many people claimed to have actually seen Mary. However, I'm sure there were a lot. The group appearances of Jesus are often compared to Marian apparitions or sightings of Elvis. There are some major differences, though, that make me skeptical that they were the same kind of appearance. First, Mary seems to only appear in Catholic contexts, and Catholics don't believe Mary died. She was just assumed into heaven. Nobody seemed to think Mary had risen from the dead as a result of seeing her. I'm not sure whether they even thought she was physical. Second, there have been ten appearances of Mary that the Catholic church officially recognizes as being legitimate, ranging from the 1500's to the 1900's, and no reason to think there won't be more. In Jesus' case, there were a series of appearances that happened over a short period of time, then stopped. Luke says Jesus appeared multiple times over a period of only 40 days. Paul said all the appearances he listed happened before the appearance to him. He said the appearance to him was "untimely," which is probably an indication that it happened much later than everybody else's. It was probably also untimely in the fact that it happened after the ascension. In either case, the appearance to Paul was unusual, and it was the last. While we might be able to dismiss Marian apparitions as group hysteria or something along those lines, that seems an unlikely explanation for the group appearances of Jesus. Otherwise, we should not expect the appearances of Jesus to have been limited to such a short period of time after his death.

7. It's not that hard to imagine that many random people here and there might've claimed to see Jesus even if they didn't. Having seen the risen Jesus would surely give somebody bragging rights, so it would be more of a surprise if nobody made false claims of having seen him. I don't think that is a good explanation of the appearance to the 500 hundred, though, because Paul doesn't just say Jesus appeared to 500 people. He said he appeared to them at one time. Since Paul probably knew at least some of these people, it's likely he heard the story from more than one perspective. I wish he had said more about that. But having heard from probably multiple people, he had to have known whether it was a group appearance or not. It's possible, though I think unlikely, that after hearing a lot of random people all claiming to have seen the risen Jesus that Paul either assumed it happened in one big group, or he just said that to simplify the story. That seems unlikely because he didn't have to say "at one time." He could've just said he appeared to 500 people.

8. Five hundred people is a pretty specific number, too. There are degrees of specificity, of course. 511 is more specific than 500, which is more specific than "more than 500," which is more specific than "a few hundred," which is more specific than "a large crowd." If Paul just heard from a whole lot of people in a whole lot of places that they all saw Jesus, there would be no reason to attach such a specific number to it. I do think five hundred is a round number, though. Paul said, "more than five hundred people." Actually, Paul says, "500 brothers." Some translations say, "brothers and sisters," but "sisters" isn't in the Greek. The translators put it in italics because they think it clarifies Paul's thought. He was talking about people, not just brothers. I suspect he meant brothers, though. Since it's unlikely there would've been 500 brothers all in one place with no women around, the real number of people might have been a thousand or more. There were probably children, too. I'm speculating, of course. It would be interesting to know how Paul came up with 500 brothers. Is that his own estimate after hearing from a lot of people, or did everybody he talk to tell him there were 500 brothers? What if the various people he talked to each gave him a different estimate? Maybe some said, "There looked to be 400 men," and some said, "There were probably a thousand men and women there," and Paul just figured about 500 brothers. Who knows? Paul's use of a specific number, even if a round number, adds credence to the notion that there really was a large group appearance rather than random isolated people claiming to see Jesus. After all, Paul most likely got this information from talking to multiple people, and it seems more likely that the 500 number came from some of these accounts than that he just pulled it out of thin air or made a wild guess.

9. Besides, if there were random people claiming to have seen the risen Jesus just because it gave them bragging rights, then again, there would be no reason for these alleged appearances to have stopped after such a short period of time. Just as in the case of Marion apparitions, you'd expect people to continue claiming to see the risen Jesus for centuries. You might think the ability to claim you saw Jesus would be limited by the fact that he ascended to heaven after 40 days, but if that were the case, then Paul would not have been accepted as an apostle. Anybody who accepted Paul as an apostle had to believe it was possible for Jesus to make an appearance after the ascension, and there would be nothing to stop them from claiming to have seen Jesus themselves. Yet apparently nobody did. It doesn't look like people were just randomly claiming to see the risen Jesus for the sake of status, ego, power, or bragging rights.

Since I believe Jesus appeared to the 500 because of my belief in the authority of the Bible and the apostle Paul, it is hard for me to be objective when looking at the historical evidence apart from my these presuppositions. But to the extent that I am able to be objective, I think the historical reasoning I've explained above is sound and that historically, it's more likely than not that Jesus appeared to a large group of people that one would not be unreasonable in thinking numbered in the hundreds had they been there. I also think the appearance of Jesus was qualitatively different than Marian apparitions or Elvis sightings. Otherwise, it would not have been interpreted as a resurrection appearance by seemingly everybody who was there.

With that said, happy Easter! He is risen! And he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And I am very thankful for that.

Here are my posts from previous years:

Easter post from 2023
Easter post from 2022
Easter post from 2021
Easter post from 2020.
A post that's relevant to this one because it talks about the oft-repeated slogan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

That Christ died for our sins

With the exception of Romans, Paul wrote all of his general epistles to churches that he had established in various towns--Corinth, Phillipi, Galatia, Thesalonica, etc. When you read these letters, you have to read them with that in mind. Paul isn't writing these letters to introduce these churches to Christianity. They've already been taught the basics of Christianity. What he is doing is answering questions that have since come up, addressing issues that have come up, or reminding the churches of what they were previously taught. All of these letters are written against a background that his audience is already familiar with.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul wants to remind them of the gospel he preached to them when he first organized their church. This is the central message of Christianity. It's the kerygma (i.e. proclaimation) of the gospel in a nutshell. He says:

Now I make known to you, brothers, the gospel which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also received. . .

That Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and
That he was buried, and
That he was was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and
That he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

That first line, "That Christ died for our sins," codifies a mountain of theological content. I want to unpack some, but not all of it, in this post.

First, the term, "Christ," comes from the Greek word, christos, meaning "annointed," or "one who is annointed." It's equivalent to the Hebrew for messiah, and to make a long story short, it's a way of saying that Jesus is the promised king of Israel who was prophecied by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other Old Testament prophets to usher in God's kingdom on earth.

Second, "Christ died," is a reference to the crucifixion. Most of us these days do not recognize what a startling claim that is because we have 2000 years of Christian history to get used to the idea. But as Paul said earlier in the same letter, "Christ crucified" was a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23). It's a stumbling block to Jews because the messiah was the person who was supposed to usher in an era of peace and prosperity in Israel, and to free the Jews from foreign oppression, not to die at the hands of the oppressors in apparent failure. In the case of every other messianic movement in the first century, the death of the messianic candidate ended the movement immediately because it proved that the person wasn't really the messiah. The claim that "The Romans crucified Israel's eschatological king," would have sounded like complete nonense to a Jew who looked forward to the messianic age. "Christ died" would have sounded like a contradiction in terms. That is why it was a stumbling block to Jews. Yet the Christians, many of whom were Jews (and originally, all were Jews), proclaimed this fact right in the core of their message. A lot can be said about that, but I want to go on to the next part.

Third, the mountain of theological content I alluded to earlier is embedded in the phrase, "for our sins." Sin is an offense or wrong committed against another person. In this context, it's a violation of God's standard of moral goodness. Essentially, to sin is to violate the moral law. James put it this way: "Anyone who knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it sins" (James 4:17). John put it this way: "Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3:4). If you know the good you should do, but you don't do it, or if you know the bad you should avoid, but you do it anyway, you have sinned. Sin and immorality are essentially the same thing.

Just as violating the civil law incurs a penalty, violating the moral law also incurs a penalty. Both the Old and New Testaments make reference to a time at the end of the age when God will judge mankind for their sins. It is said that he will pour out his wrath against sin at this time. It is hard to say what will literally happen since the Bible often resorts to metaphor to describe it, but it is sometimes contrasted with eternal life. For example, Daniel and Matthew put it like this:

Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but others to disgrace and everlasting contempt. ~ Daniel 12:2

These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. ~ Matthew 25:46

Since everybody does sin, we are all subject to the wrath of God. To say that Jesus died for our sins means that the punishment we had coming to us was poured out on him. He is our substitute. Our sins were imputed to him on the cross. He paid the penalty for our sins.

At the same time, Jesus' righteousness is imputed to those of us who have put their trust in him as our savior. When we stand before God on judgment day, we will stand before him clothed in the righteousness of Christ because we cannot stand before God on our own merits. We would be destroyed if we did. It is in this way that Jesus saves his people. The righteousness we have because of what Jesus did on the cross is what opens the door to eternal life for those who believe in him. What it boils down to is that our faith in Christ is counted by God as righteousness. By shedding his blood on the cross, Jesus made peace between us and God. We no longer stand condemned, and we are no longer under the wrath of God because of our sins. We are saved.

As I was writing this, it occurred to me that I could pepper the whole thing with scriptural references and discuss each one, but if I did so, this would end up being a book-long discussion. In fact, volumes have been written on this subject. Christians don't even agree on all the details. There are different theories of atonement--the question of how exactly Jesus' death on the cross accomplished salvation for sinners. I did list some of the scriptural references in my post on Christian universalism if you want to check that out.

This post probably raises the question of why "Christ crucified" isn't a stumbling block to Christians. After all, the messiah has allegedly come, yet the world is still a mess. The age of peace and prosperity hasn't come. How can Jesus be the messiah if he was killed by the very people the messiah should have prevailed against--Israel's occupiers, the Romans?

While the Old Testament tells us that the coming of the messiah would be accompanied by the fulfillment of all the lofty promises God made to Israel, Jesus' death on the cross explains how it would happen. As I explained in "Judaism vs Christianity," sin is the reason the Jews were exiled instead of living peacefully in the land God promised them forever through Abraham. Sin was the reason the Temple was destroyed and Israel lost its king along with their sovereignty. Yet God promised to restore all of these things. Only by dealing permanently with sin can these promises be guaranteed forever. Without a final solution to sin--a once for all sacrifice that does not need to be repeated--there cannot be a permanent era of peace and prosperity because there would be no reason for why sin wouldn't result in history repeating itself. What Jesus accomplished on the cross was the final solution to the problem of sin which makes the fulfillment of God's promises possible (see Hebrews 10 for more on this). The crucifixion of Christ is the mechanism by which Christ is able to usher in the kingdom of God on earth along with the fulfillment of God's promises for eternal life, eternal peace, and eternal prosperity.

Today is Good Friday--the day we Christians recognize Jesus' death on the cross. I was inspired by that and a post I read this morning by Wintery Knight to write this post.

Won't eternal life get mind-numbingly boring after trillions and trillions of years?

I think most people in history have found the idea of eternal life to be appealing. The alternative is that we die at some point or at least cease to exist, which is unappealing to most people.

The idea of living a long time is appealing as long as we imagine that we're in good health, never get old, and things are going our way. We expect that in God's kingdom when we've received imperishable resurrection bodies, and there's no more sickness, pain, death, sadness, etc., that we'll be pretty happy. But it's hard to imagine that we'd be happy in the long term. I mean really long term because if we're talking about never-ending life, then it will go on for trillions and trillions and trillions and . . . of years.

While many people might find a very long life of health and prosperity to be appealing, the idea of eternal life, no matter how wonderful conditions might be, is frightening. It will become a hell merely becasue of the length of it.

I remember when I was younger I used to answer this objection by imagining that there's no end to God's creativity in keeping us entertained and happy forever. A God who is all knowing and all powerful will never fail to keep life fresh and interesting. But even if there were a theoretical limit to the kinds of things and situations God could create to keep us amused, he could simply use his omnipotence to zap us with contentment, and he could do this continuously throughout eternity. In that case, our joy wouldn't even require external stimuli.

Some people answer this objection by pointing to the timelessness of heaaven. If time doesn't even exist, then there's no way to ever get bored over a long period of time. First of all, I doubt it's true that there's no time in heaven. Second, and more importantly, I believe in a physical resurrection, and that certainly entails a temporal existence.

These days, however, I see our joy as consisting more in experiencing and apprehending God himself than in God zapping us with joy or constantly creating new good experiences for us to have. Imagine something you've seen that was magical and wonderful, like a total eclipse, a scene from _Life of Pie_, a magnificent work of art, a mountain, a lightening storm, the Milkyway Galaxy on a dark night away from the city. Or imagine things you would like to see in real life that have been drempt up in fiction, like a million fairies all simultaneously taking flight in the dark, or whatever. There are many exquisite things that have been seen or imagined that would be a wonder to behold, and that's just visual perception. We're also moved by stories, music, physical touch, love, friendships, and donuts.

Any of these things, no matter how wonderful we can imagine them to be, would probably become boring after trillions and trillions of years. But I don't think God would be. God is not only the most beautiful, wonderful, holy, sublime, and great being that exists, but he's the most glorious being that could exist. I don't think we have the capacity to fully imagine what such a being is like. He exhausts even our capacity to appreciate him.

What I suspect is that God is so layered and so multi-faceted that there is no end to the glory that we might experience and apprehend when we are in his presence. I suspect that God's glory (everything that is true and wonderful about him) is inexhaustible. I don't think we have words to describe him fully or concepts to imagine him fully. We have a tiny glimps of him through what he has revealed to us by way of Scripture, reason, and intuition. I think eternal life will be never-ending joy because of being in the presence of God. It is God himself, the worship of him, and the enjoying him forever that will wipe out any possibility of eternal life becoming tiresome or boring. We will never exhaust the glory of God.

I suspect this may be hard for some people to believe because you're trying to imagine the unimaginable. If you can't even imagine a being so wonderful and glorious that merely being in his presence would be sufficient to make etneral life a never-ending joy, then it's hard to imagine that it's even possible.

I think it's not only possible, but it's the reality we live in. The answer to questions like, "What is the meaning/purpose of life?" can be found in Yahweh - the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus. Everything exists for him and because of him, and in him all things hold together. He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. It's all about him. It makes sense that Paul would say, "Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatewver you do, do all things for the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). That's what it's all about. Even Christians, myself included, get distracted and fail to live up to the lofty goal of allowing our desire for the glory of God to be the motive behind everything we do, but I think ultimately that is where we will find our greatest joy in eternity.