The Son Rises: Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus

EXPLAINING THE RESURRECTION APPEARANCES

As a historical fact, that Jesus appeared alive after His death is firmly established. But how is that remarkable fact to be explained if not by the resurrection? Usually those who deny the resurrection state that the disciples experienced hallucinations of Jesus after His death and that those hallucinations caused them to mistakenly believe that He had risen from the dead. But such a hypothesis is quite inadequate:

1. The hypothesis shatters on points 2, 3, and 4, just discussed. The hypothesis cannot explain how in so short a time hallucinatory experiences could be completely transformed into the gospel appearance stories; nor why the eyewitnesses to those experiences should have had absolutely no control on the development of the accounts of what had really happened; nor why the apostles should have quietly allowed such extravagant fictions to arise and replace the true stories. The theory cannot account for the early believers’ distinguishing precisely between a mere vision and an actual appearance of Jesus; nor can it explain why or how the physicalism of the gospels could have evolved out of hallucinations; nor why the gospels should unanimously agree on this fact with no trace of the original, true experiences. Finally, the theory is broken by the evidence for the historicity of particular appearances, such as to the Twelve, which were clearly not hallucinations. All the considerations together combine to bury the hallucination hypothesis.

2. The number and various circumstances of the appearances make hallucinations an improbable explanation. From Paul’s list of witnesses alone, we know that different individuals and groups on different occasions and no doubt in different places saw appearances of Jesus. But it is unlikely that hallucinations could be experienced by so many various people under so many varied circumstances. The suggestion that there was a chain reaction of hallucinations among believers in Jesus does not alleviate the difficulty because neither James nor Paul stood in the chain. It has been suggested that Paul had a hallucination because of an inner, personal, religious struggle. But there is no evidence of such a struggle, at least with Christianity, for Paul hated the Christian heresy as a threat to Judaism. And any inner struggle he may have had in Judaism in terms of guilt under the law of Moses (although Paul himself says confidently that he was blameless under the law), cannot explain why he would turn to the Christian heresy to alleviate that guilt. The fact is that the hypothesis of hallucinations cannot account for the variety and number of Jesus’ appearances.

3. The disciples were not psychologically disposed to produce hallucinations. Visions require either a special state of mind or artificial stimulus through medicines in order to occur. But the disciples after Jesus’ crucifixion were utterly crushed and in no frame of mind to hallucinate. In no way did they expect Jesus to come back to life. As far as they were concerned, the last act of the tragedy had been played, and the show was over. The great weakness of the hallucination hypothesis is that it does not take seriously either Jesus’ death nor the crisis it caused for the disciples.

4. Hallucinations would never have led to the conclusion that Jesus had been raised from the dead. We shall develop this point in the next chapter. For now I shall simply note that in a hallucination, a person experiences nothing new. That is because the hallucination is a projection of his own mind. Hence, hallucinations cannot exceed the content of a person’s mind. But as we shall see, the resurrection of Jesus involved ideas utterly foreign to the disciples’ minds. They could not of their own, therefore, have projected hallucinations of Jesus alive from the dead.

5. The hallucination hypothesis fails to account for the full scope of the evidence. The hallucination hypothesis seeks to account only for part of the evidence, namely, the appearances. But it does nothing to account for the empty tomb. In order to explain the empty tomb, one must come up with another theory and join it with the hallucination hypothesis. One of the greatest weaknesses of alternative explanations to the resurrection is their incompleteness: they fail to provide a comprehensive, overarching explanation of all the data. By contrast, the resurrection furnishes one, simple, comprehensive explanation of all the facts without distorting them. Therefore, it is the better explanation.

A second alternative to the resurrection as an explanation for the appearances of Jesus is that they were parapsychological phenomena. Michael Perry, an archdeacon of the Church of England, maintains that the appearances of Jesus could have been veridical visions of the dead.24 What is a veridical vision? It is a hallucination produced by a person’s mind when he receives a message by telepathy. Such visions are experienced by persons who have seen an individual, when really that individual was dead or dying miles away. Usually only loved ones or close friends experience such visions. Unlike ordinary hallucinations, these visions require no special emotional mood on the part of the persons receiving them. Michael Perry’s theory is that Jesus died and rose in a “spiritual body.” But He sent a telepathic message to His disciples that caused them to project hallucinations of Jesus physically raised from the dead. In that way the idea of Jesus’ physical resurrection arose.

The most unconvincing aspects of Perry’s theory are the religious or supernatural ones. For example, we have seen that his understanding of Paul’s term “spiritual body” as an intangible, immaterial substance is completely mistaken. And in order to explain the empty tomb, Perry is reduced to the hypothesis that God annihilated Jesus’ body, a completely pointless exercise since Perry thinks the new “spiritual body” is entirely unrelated to and distinct from the body in the tomb. Perhaps worst of all, Perry makes God and Jesus responsible for the disastrous error on the part of Christianity in believing Jesus rose from the dead physically. One can only shudder when Perry pronounces: God deceived the disciples so that from evil, good might come.25 As a religious explanation the theory is very unconvincing.

It would be better to take the hypothesis as a purely natural alternative to the resurrection: the disciples saw veridical visions of the dead Jesus—extraordinary, but not unique or supernatural. They mistakenly believed that He had risen from the dead. But as a purely natural explanation the theory cannot succeed:

1. There is no comparable case to Jesus’ resurrection appearances. As Perry admits, in order to find parallels to the resurrection appearances, one must ransack the casebooks of parapsychology and build up a composite picture of striking aspects from many different cases. The fact is, no single case is fully analogous to a resurrection appearance, and even the similarities are not identical.

2. The number of occasions on which Jesus was seen over so long a time is unparalleled in the casebooks. Usually veridical visions occur once, at a person’s death, to a loved one far away. But Jesus’ appearances were many and occurred over a span of time. Perry cannot explain either the repetition of Jesus’ appearances nor the time span over which He appeared.

3. Veridical visions cannot explain the physical, bodily nature of Jesus’ appearances. Veridical visions are mental projections. They are not physical appearances nor do they leave physical effects. The resurrection appearances, however, were physical and bodily, as we have seen. A veridical vision only looks real—it cannot break bread or be grasped by the feet or eat food, such as occurred in Jesus’ appearances. After a veridical vision is past, everything remains undisturbed as it was before. Hence, the disciples could not have mistaken a veridical vision for a real appearance of Jesus. It is interesting to note that during Jesus’ time, the Jews distinguished between a vision and an appearance of an angel precisely on this basis: if the food seen to be eaten by the angel was left undisturbed, then the angel was just a vision; but if the food had been consumed, then the angel had actually appeared. With that in mind, we can see that the disciples could not have mistakenly taken a vision of Jesus for an appearance, for the basis of discriminating between a vision and an appearance was their physical reality. At any rate, the physicalism of Jesus’ appearances is well established and thus precludes their being mere veridical visions.

4. Veridical visions of dead persons only occur to individuals who are unaware of the person’s death. The casebooks show, that people who have veridical visions are not aware that the person seen has died. That consideration seems to be decisive against this theory. For the disciples not only knew of Jesus’ death; they were shattered by it. Therefore, they could not have been subject to a veridical vision.

5. The hypothesis fails to account for all the evidence. Again we find a familiar problem: the theory seeks to explain part of the evidence, but leaves other important aspects unexplained. Many additional theories would need to be added in order to account for the full range of the data. The empty tomb would have to be accounted for by some unrelated hypothesis. The appearance to the five hundred would have to be explained as a mere hallucination, not a veridical vision, Perry admits, since too many people were involved. The appearance to Paul would also have to be explained as a coincidental hallucination, not a veridical vision, Perry acknowledges, presumably because Paul lacked the intimate contact with Jesus necessary for a veridical vision. Thus, multiple hypotheses, against which weighty objections could be lodged, are necessary to account for the evidence that the single, overarching hypothesis of the resurrection plausibly explains. Historically, therefore, the explanation that Jesus rose from the dead is to be preferred.

In summary, we have examined in detail four lines of historical evidence concerning the appearances of Jesus after His death. Those demonstrate that Jesus on several occasions and in different places appeared physically and bodily alive from the dead to His followers, to His brother, and to Paul. Neither hallucinations nor veridical visions provide an adequate explanation of those appearances. On this basis alone, we would be justified in concluding that Jesus rose from the dead, as the disciples proclaimed. But all the evidence for the resurrection is not yet in: we still have to consider the evidence for the origin of the Christian faith. So before we draw any final conclusion, let us turn to the next chapter to consider the question, How is the origin of the Christian faith to be explained?