The apostles were deeply skeptical about reports of a resurrection, and the Bible tells us that Christ had to appear before them several times before these doubts were dispelled. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:6 that Christ “appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.” Paul here appeals to direct historical evidence: the testimony of multiple witnesses who actually saw Jesus alive after his execution. Of this group, Paul says that some are dead but most are alive; in other words, many were in a position to confirm or refute him. In the history of hallucinations, is there a single instance in which five hundred people all saw the same person and were all equally mistaken?
Still, we must ask whether these early Christians were serious about Christ’s resurrection, whether they were being truthful about what they saw, and whether it mattered to them. These questions are not difficult to answer. The disciples became soconvinced of what they had seen that their dirges of lamentation were replaced with cries of joy. Proclaiming Christ crucified and Christ risen, they launched the greatest wave of religious conversion in history. The number of Christians increased from around one hundred at the time of Christ’s death to around thirty million by the early fourth century, when the Roman emperor Constantine himself converted to Christianity. These conversions occurred in the teeth of fierce opposition and the persecution of the greatest empire in the ancient world, the empire of Rome. The early Christians did not hesitate to identify themselves with a man who had been branded a traitor and a criminal. They endured impris- onment, torture, exile, and death rather than renounce their commitment to a resurrected Christ. Even from a secular point of view, the evidence for the resurrection is surprisingly strong. Indeed, coming from so many witnesses with so much to lose, it might even be sufficient to convince an impartial jury in a court of law.
A third reason Christ continues to play a central role in our culture is that he makes claims on our lives that we can reject but not ignore. Christ is the most divisive figure who has ever lived. This is strange because he was a man who never hurt anyone, who lived a blameless life, and whose teachings about love and peace are universally praised. Yet whenever I write about Christ, I receive hate mail. Some of it is directed to me, but most of it seems to be provoked by antagonism toward my subject. If you doubt this, start talking at your next picnic or dinner party in a serious way about Christ. The reaction you get will either be gushingly enthusiastic or coldly hostile. Christ’s teachings are so challenging that if we accept them they change our lives. If we reject them, they provoke in us either seething animosity or a willful desire to exclude Christ from our lives, or at least to amend him so that he doesn’t make us feel uncomfortable.
Throughout history, people have tried to twist and trim Christ’s words to suit their predispositions. This strategy of evasion and sly revisionism is quite common today. We hear from the Jesus Seminar and other sources that Christ didn’t concern himself with the afterlife, when in reality he concerned himself with that as much as with anything else. We hear from milque-toast Christians and many others that Christ spoke only about divine love, when in reality he also frequently spoke about divine condemnation. (Hell is mentioned at least three times in the Sermon on the Mount.) We hear from those who wish to avoid conflict at all costs that Christ was a peacemaker, but he said in Matthew 10:34, “I come not to bring peace but the sword.”
