Is there any evidence for the resurrection?
Jesus dying on the cross and coming back to life are foundational to the whole Christian faith. If these things literally and physically happened, we must take Jesus seriously. If they did not, we might still conclude he was a good moral teacher, but nothing more.
HHJ Graeme Smith shares why he’s concluded Jesus really did rise again.
Historians generally agree that Jesus was crucified. But what happened next? A satisfactory explanation must deal with three issues:
The empty tomb;
The reports of people seeing Jesus alive after his death;
The explosive growth of the church.
Within days of the alleged resurrection, and right up to this day, people have come up with all kinds of theories. While some of them might offer a plausible explanation of one or even two of these issues, none of them satisfactorily address all three.
Some have suggested grave robbers or Jesus’ own followers stole the body. Others say Jesus was never buried in a tomb, but rather in a mass grave. These potentially address issue 1, but not 2 and 3. And if Jesus’ body was still lying in a tomb or mass grave, the Jewish and the Roman leaders could simply have pointed to the body: ‘Look, it’s here! Show’s over.’
Others posit Jesus’ followers simply hallucinated seeing him after his death. This is a weak argument from a medical perspective, but even if it were true, it still doesn’t account for the empty tomb.
The only explanation that satisfactorily addresses all three issues is that Jesus really did rise again.
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Dr. Sunil Raheja, Psychiatrist
From a psychiatric perspective, the idea that Jesus’ followers simply hallucinated seeing him after his death has limits. People who are grieving can sometimes see, hear, or sense someone who has died, and this does not necessarily mean they have a mental illness. However, hallucinations are usually individual experiences, not something several people share in exactly the same way at the same time. So while grief-related experiences could explain some reports, they do not easily explain repeated accounts involving different people and groups. This does not prove that the resurrection happened, but it does mean that “they were hallucinating” is an extremely unlikely medical explanation.