In an earlier article in this series, we considered three kinds of doubt: skeptical doubt, willful doubt and honest doubt.
Skeptical and willful doubt elevate human reason as the final ARBITER of truth.
When we visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home, we saw in his bedroom a Bible with many of its pages shredded like Swiss cheese. To Jefferson, the quintessential modern rationalist, his human reason is the final arbiter of all truth. Thus, he cut out every verse that spoke of supernatural–miracles, healing or resurrection–all things his reason could not accept.
Now, some of us use mental scissors rather than real ones but the result is the same. Our human reason judges which parts of the Bible we accept as an authentic word from God and which parts (various explicit commands about human sexuality, for example) are outdated and can be tossed aside.
Some Christians (including many evangelicals) draw the opposite conclusion that human reason is the ENEMY of truth.
This approach basically says: “Don’t think about it. Just believe it.” This position has done great damage, for it both portrays Christians as (and also encourages us to become) anti-intellectual. I believe jettisoning reason because it asks uncomfortable questions has done far greater damage to evangelical faith than asking questions ever did!
Moreover, I’ve personally observed that those who say “Don’t think—just believe” often don’t actually know the Bible very well themselves. Instead, they often only know a certain (often narrow) view promoted by their favorite pastor, TV preacher or author. Ironically, they’ve returned to the Middles Ages! They invest their authority in what some other person says about the Bible (Pope or priest) rather than authority of the Scriptures themselves.
This is why the Reformation happened—to elevate Scripture itself (Sola Scriptura!) to the position of highest authority, far above any human interpreter!
Calvin and Luther championed biblical authority but used their reason to understand that authority.
They both saw human reason as a great gift of God. Because they believed “all truth is God’s truth,” they saw reason as their ally in seeking the truth. Both wrote commentaries on every book in the Bible that are still studied today.
They needed their reason (and so do we) to understand the historical context of the words of Scripture and interpret Scripture correctly. They saw faith and reason involved in a dance with many nuances, with faith as ultimately the leading partner.
John Calvin and Martin Luther championed a middle way between the two extremes of Thomas Jefferson’s “I’ll only believe what my reason can accept” and the opposite extreme of “Don’t think about it—just believe it.”
- The first extreme exalts our humanity so that, using our reason, we actually become our own gods.
- The second extreme denies our humanity, for God created us as intelligent beings for a purpose.
Honest Doubt: A Pathway to Honest Faith
Honest doubt begins by being willing to consider evidence.
First, if the gospel writers were 1st century spin-doctors fabricating the resurrection to prove Jesus was the long- awaited Jewish Messiah (they wouldn’t have cared about Gentiles), the last people they would choose for eyewitnesses are Jewish women. Women were not even allowed to give testimony in Jewish law courts. Yet the encounter of the women with the empty tomb is the only episode all four gospel accounts of the resurrection have in common. What of their witness that the tomb was empty?
The record shows that even Jesus’ enemies admitted the tomb was empty. Matt. 28 records that when the Roman soldiers guarding the tomb came to the Jewish priests with their story of angels rolling away the stone and an empty tomb, the priests bribed the soldiers to say Jesus’ disciples stole his body.
Ever since, some have claimed Jesus’ disciples stole away his body and then perpetuated this myth of a resurrection. But would these same disciples allow themselves to repeatedly be beaten, imprisoned and die horrible deaths when all they had to do is admit they made the whole thing up? It’s a historical fact that despairing, defeated, fearful men were transformed into men who defied all the political and spiritual powers in their world and continued preaching the resurrection until it cost each of them their lives.
But even the biblical accounts show that the empty tomb by itself did not confirm the resurrection. In Mark’s gospel, the women leave in fearful silence. In the other gospels, the disciples who hear about the empty tomb from the women do not at first believe either. Only seeing Jesus alive convinced them.
But is that adequate proof, if only Jesus’ closest friends saw his resurrected body? Even if Peter or Andrew had taken photos when the risen Jesus appeared, would that offer indisputable proof? The answer is no.
If Jesus wanted to offer the world indisputable proof of his resurrection, he could have shown himself to the Chief Priests in the temple, or asked Pontius Pilate to put his fingers in the nail holes in his hand instead of his disciple Thomas. But Jesus never offered his skeptics indisputable proof.
As we see throughout the gospels, again and again skeptics ask, “Do something amazing and then we’ll believe” and again and again Jesus refuses. Jesus is 100% consistent throughout the gospels—he is always inviting people to trust him, not offering proof.
From single individuals, to a crowd of more than 500, Jesus was seen alive in a wide variety of situations—near the garden tomb, in a locked room, on a road, by the Sea of Galilee, on a mountaintop. Might these appearances just be wishful thinking–wanting it to be true so much that some started believing it? No, first century Jews would never have expected their Messiah to be crucified, let alone resurrected.
And, if all these appearances were simply invented, how do we account for the many discrepancies between them? Even after 2000 years of study, scholars cannot harmonize the resurrection accounts into one flowing narrative, which is just what one might expect if these are indeed eyewitness accounts that differ in detail but agree on the main point—they all saw Jesus alive again!
The final evidence that Jesus rose from the tomb on Easter morning is that he is a real vibrant living presence in so many human lives today. How else can we explain over 2 billion people who claim to have experienced Jesus in every culture across the face of the earth? This in itself might prompt us to stop and think.
Does this evidence prove the historical reality of Jesus’ resurrection? No. Human reason can never muster enough evidence to prove it or disprove it.
But reason, honestly used, offers many pathways forward toward an encounter with Jesus which then offers us personal proof. The resurrected Jesus meets us and we meet him.
Next week in the final article in this series we’ll look at reason and trust.
