57 Cullmann, Confessions, pp. 72–73.
58 Hans von Campenhausen, “The Events of Easter and the Empty Tomb,” in Tradition and Life in the Church(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968), p. 44, as quoted by Ladd, I Believe, p.105.
59 Hunter, Jesus, p. 100.
60 Cullmann, The Early Church, p. 64; Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, p. 96; Pannenberg, Jesus, p. 90; Dodd, Apostolic Preaching, p. 17.
61 Dodd, Apostolic Preaching, p. 16.
62 Bultmann, Theology, vol. 1, p. 295; Neufeld, Confessions, pp. 66–67, 146.
63 Cullmann, Earliest Confessions, p. 32; Wolfhart Pannenberg, “A Dialogue on Christ’s Resurrection,” in Christianity Today, 12/14, April 12, 1968, pp. 9–11.
64 Weber, The Cross, p. 58; Hengel, The Atonement, p. 37.
eyewitness testimony for the resurrection or for the other most important tenets of Christianity, for this creed provides just such evidential data concerning the facts of the gospel, which are the very center of the Christian faith. It links the events themselves with those who actually participated in time and space. As such this creed yields a strong factual basis for Christianity through the early and eyewitness reports of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, as will be shown in more detail in the next section of this chapter.
We said earlier that the naturalistic theories fail to account for this data. Additionally, the evidence demonstrates that these witnesses actually did see the risen Jesus, as they claimed. The Known Historical Facts
Because of the testimony of these early Christian creeds, as well as other data, even contemporary critical scholars recognize a certain amount of historical facts surrounding the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. In other words, even treating the New Testament as nothing more than a book of ancient literature, critics have deduced numerous historical facts concerning Jesus’ life. In particular, 1 Corinthians 15:3ff. has played a significant part in this reconstruction.
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