Last week we noted that the validity of the Bible stands or falls on the validity of its testimony regarding the resurrection of Jesus. N. T. Wright (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church) argues that the only credible historical approach to the New Testament texts is that the disciples had overwhelming evidence that Jesus was raised from the dead. Wright offers four arguments that he believes would make sense to a historian. In my mind they place Christian faith in the resurrection on solid historical ground.

First, the gospel writers never mention the Bible in their accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. Elsewhere in the gospels, there are multiple quotations and allusions from the Old Testament. In the resurrection stories of the gospels there are none, even though Paul always associates the resurrection with "according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor 15:3-4). The Fourth Gospel even tells us that the disciples did not know the OT prophecies about the resurrection (John 20:9). The resurrection of Jesus was a surprise. Only later did they study the Scriptures to understand the meaning of the resurrection. Their study of the Bible did not lead them to expect the resurrection of Jesus. The best explanation of that story is that they fully believed it had actually happened.

Second, the presence of women as the primary witnesses to the resurrection is striking. Women were not regarded as credible witnesses in the ancient world. Paul completely ignores the role of the women in the story (1 Cor 15:4-8). No one in the ancient world would fabricate a story in which women were the primary evidence the story was true. The best explanation of the women in the gospel stories is that those stories recall actual events that didn’t follow the expected script.

Third, someone fabricating the story of a resurrection would embellish the appearance of the resurrected one in the attempt to make their belief credible and convincing. Instead, the resurrected Jesus is quite ordinary in the gospels. He is not some shining superstar. He is easily mistaken for a gardener or a fellow traveler along the road. The best explanation for the low-key element in these stories is that they actually happened.

Fourth and finally, the gospel stories about the resurrection never connect it with the hope of the Second Coming. Elsewhere in the NT the resurrection of Jesus is always connected with the Christian’s future hope (see 1 Cor 15: 20-23, for example). But in the gospel stories of Jesus’ resurrection there is no mention of the Second Coming, life after death, or the resurrection of the righteous. The best explanation of this is that the gospel stories were not manufactured at the end of the first century on the basis of Christian theology, rather they reflect the actual circumstances that created Christian faith in the first place. The gospels stories are not the product of faith, they are the origin of it. The stories are very early, before the time of Paul and have not been substantially altered in the process of transmission and reflection.

Wright concludes that the compelling power of early Christian faith lay in the conviction that something unique had happened among them, something not even imagined before (Jewish faith anticipated an end-time resurrection of the righteous as a whole, but not an individual resurrection within history, the Gentiles anticipated nothing of either sort). In the midst of history, God Himself came down in the form of a man and by dying and rising in a tangible body, completely reshaped the world view of those who experienced him. If God Himself had broken into this world, something fundamental has changed in terms of life, death and history; a new creation has come. This is the unique and decisive testimony of biblical faith.