Episode 126: Year C | Easter Sunday
In today’s episode, we focus on the readings for this upcoming Resurrection of the Lord, Year C. I’d like to focus on the details in the first reading, taken from Acts 10:34a, 37-43, and the Gospel reading, taken from John 20:1-9, that relate to alternative theories to the literal-bodily resurrection of Jesus. The theories that will come to the fore are the Conspiracy theory, the Grave Robbery theory, and the Hallucination theory. There is also a detail in the first reading that relates to the historical credibility of Luke’s reporting.
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Hey everyone,
Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.
I’m Dr. Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.
In today’s episode, we’re going to focus on the readings for this upcoming Resurrection of the Lord, Year C. I’d like to focus on the details in the first reading, taken from Acts 10:34a, 37-43, and the Gospel reading, taken from John 20:1-9, that relate to alternative theories to the literal-bodily resurrection of Jesus. The theories that will come to the fore are the Conspiracy theory, the Grave Robbery theory, and the Hallucination theory. There is also a detail in the first reading that relates to the historical credibility of Luke’s reporting.
The first reading for this upcoming Easter Sunday is Acts 10:34a, 37-43. Now, we’ve already covered this reading for Easter Sunday, Year B in episode 71. The detail that we focused on was Peter’s testimony that they have witnessed the ministry of Jesus and his resurrection, which provides evidence against the charge that Christian faith is blind faith. For the details on that sort of apologetical discussion, check out episode 71 of the Sunday Catholic Word.
There are two details, however, that we didn’t cover in that episode that I’d like to focus on here. The first is Peter’s statement, “They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.” This is a reference to Jesus’ death by crucifixion.
The apologetical significance is that this detail is confirmed by ancient non-Christian sources and is attested to by those who aren’t sympathetic to Christianity. For example, first century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities 18.64, writes,
When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified.
The early second century Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus concurs, writing in his Annals 15.44 (A.D. 115),
Nero fastened the guilt [of the burning of Rome] and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.
We also have attestation to Jesus’ death by crucifixion in the writings of the mid-second century Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata (120-192 A.D.). In his The Death of Peregrine, 11-13, he writes,
The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day-the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account.
So, Luke’s record of Jesus’ death by crucifixion is confirmed by not only ancient extra biblical sources, but ancient non-Christian sources. This provides grounds to accept Luke’s account of Jesus’ death and resurrection as historically reliable.
The second detail in this first reading is Peter’s affirmation that he and the other disciples were “witnesses” of the resurrected Jesus. Without reading the entire passage, Peter is speaking to the newly converted Cornelius and his Gentile friends, giving them a summary of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. And he claims that he and the other apostles were “witnesses of all that [Jesus] did,” including being witnesses of the resurrected Jesus. Peter says in verses 40-41,
This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible,
not to all the people, but to us,
the witnesses chosen by God in advance,
who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
Now, some skeptics propose the idea that perhaps this claim to have seen the resurrected Jesus is a lie. And to avoid the body from being exposed they stole the body and hid it. This is called the Conspiracy Theory. I’d like to take some time offering a couple lines of response so you can be prepared if you ever encounter objection.
One reason we have to reject this idea is that Peter and the early disciples were willing to die for this claim with nothing to gain and everything to lose. This kind of jeopardy makes for the most credible witness, and St. Paul understood this.
Paul uses this fact to argue for the credibility of the early Christian testimony and presents his argument in the form of a two-horned dilemma in 1 Corinthians 15:
[I]f Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised (1 Cor. 15:14-15).
St. Paul presents the second horn in verse 19 and then expounds on it in verses 30-32:
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied . . . Why am I in peril every hour? I protest, brethren, by my pride in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
Notice in the first horn St. Paul argues that if he and the witnesses believed in God, then they would be bearing false witness in their proclamation of Jesus’ Resurrection—“we are even found to be misrepresenting God.” What would the early Christians have to gain from a lie while still believing in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Damnation! Is it reasonable to think the early Christians believed their eternal salvation was worth risking for such a lie?
In the second horn St. Paul seems to consider what they might gain from the lie if they were unbelievers and didn’t believe in God or the Resurrection. Notice in verse 19 he writes, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ” and then in verse 32 “What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus.” Paul’s argument is that nothing except persecution and death is to be gained from such a lie. For Paul, if this is the reward, then we might as well “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
So, I think we can follow St. Paul’s argument here and reasonably conclude that the Conspiracy theory is false.
A second reason to think the early Christians were not making up the Resurrection story is that they included women as the first witnesses.
One of the many criteria historians use to test historicity is the criterion of embarrassment. This refers to any action or saying the early Christians would have found embarrassing and apologetically unappealing. No Gospel writer would want to include such information, because it would undermine the Gospel’s purpose. Having women as the first witnesses of the Resurrection fits the bill for such a criterion.
In first-century Judaism, the testimony of women was inadmissible in a court of law: “But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex” (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 4.8.15).
If a woman’s testimony was not considered credible in a court of law, it would seem that the apostles would not use the testimony of women to convince their hearers about the truth of the empty tomb and the appearances of the resurrected Christ. It is more reasonable to conclude, if the Gospel writers were fabricating this story, that they would have chosen men to be the first witnesses—perhaps Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.
So, we have at least two good reasons to reject the Conspiracy theory: 1) the early disciples were willing to die for the claim that Jesus rose from the dead with nothing to gain and everything to lose, and 2) the Gospel writers include women as the first witnesses of the resurrected Jesus.
Now, when it comes to the second reading—Colossians 3:1-4, and even the optional second reading—1 Corinthians 5:6-8, you want to check out episode 71 of the Sunday Catholic Word where I highlight the details that relate to the nature of justification and the Real Presence of Jesus’ flesh in the Eucharist. I’m not going to repeat those reflections here.
That leaves us with the Gospel reading, which, again, is taken from John 20:1-9. This was the Gospel reading for last year’s Resurrection of the Lord, and I commented on the details that are alleged to be in contradiction with reports from the Synoptics, showing that no such contradiction exists.
For this episode, I want to focus on a few other details in the Gospel reading that I didn’t cover before. The first is the presence of the burial cloths and the head covering in the tomb. John records,
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Why is this significant?
Consider that some skeptics suggest that perhaps the tomb was empty due to grave robbery. Such a theory provides a seemingly reasonable alternative to the Christian hypothesis that Jesus rose from the dead. But the presence of the linens, and the way they are left behind, makes this theory limp drastically.
First, as W. Leonard points out in his commentary on this text in A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (p.1015), it’s highly unlikely that the alleged body snatchers would have taken the time to carefully divest the body of its linen bands before taking it away. Why increase the likelihood of getting caught by taking the time to unwrap the body in the tomb? The more reasonable thing to do for grave robbery would have been to take the wrapped body and immediately escape into the darkness to secretly dispose of the body.
Second, not only were the linens left behind, but the head covering was “rolled up” in a separate place. The implication seems to be it was carefully placed. That’s doesn’t have the markings of a grave robbery.
Another reason why this theory limps is because it ignores the Gospels’ account that guards were put at the tomb precisely for the reason to ensure that no one stole the body. Must we posit that the body snatchers overpowered the guards? Or, perhaps, they paid them off! Why pile up more ad hoc explanations when we have one: Jesus rose from the dead.
The next detail that’s significant is the initial lack of expectation that Jesus would rise from the dead on the part of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John. Notice that when Mary saw the empty tomb, she didn’t conclude that Jesus rose. She thought someone took the body. Furthermore, when Peter and John were told by Mary that the body was missing they also didn’t conclude that Jesus rose.
Why is this lack of expectation for a resurrection important? Well, it militates against the Hallucination theory. Some skeptics try to explain the alleged postmortem sightings of Jesus as mere hallucinations. But hallucinations are projections of something onto reality that come from within the person. How could the early disciples project onto reality a resurrected Jesus if that’s not something that was in their minds as a hope or expectation? The Hallucination theory, therefore, doesn’t fit the details.
Furthermore, as N.T. Wright has pointed out in his great work The Resurrection of the Son of God, the idea of a resurrected Messiah was not something that would have been in the minds of the apostles. Yet, the apostles proclaimed their Messiah, Jesus, was risen. The hallucination theory fails yet again to explain where the resurrection idea and desire would have come from to be in their mind to project onto reality.
So, our Gospel reading for the Resurrection of the Lord provides us reasons to reject the grave robbery theory and the hallucination theory.
Conclusion
Well, my friends, that does it for this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. The readings for this upcoming Easter Sunday, Year C, provide us with quite a bit of material for doing apologetics. Whenever we have readings that deal with the resurrection of Jesus, that’s always going to make for a treasure trove of nuggets for apologetics.
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I hope you have a blessed Easter Sunday, Year C. Until next time, God Bless.