Minimal Facts and the Resurrection

In just a couple of months, church attendance will skyrocket across the nation. It’s an anomaly that happens on one Sunday every spring. People who haven’t attended a service in years will walk into a church. Others, who have never darkened a church door, will attend a service for the first time. But why? The answer seems obvious, of course it will be Easter Sunday, but the real reason for attending on Easter runs much deeper than tradition, egg hunts, pretty dresses, and new suits.

The real reason people are so intrigued by Easter is because it is the crux of Christianity. If the resurrection is true, then everything is different. If true, we have hope. If true, Jesus was really the Messiah. It is the hope that is embedded in the grand narrative of the Bible that culminates in the Easter message that draws people to church.

However, many people are hesitant to believe something without evidence. I believe that is fair. As Christians, we are never asked to check our brains in at the door as we enter a church. In fact, Jesus was never afraid of a question. He welcomed questions. The apostles encouraged believers to constantly examine their faith. Christianity and the resurrection must be grounded in historically verifiable truth.

The Christian faith is not a guide or a metaphor of how to live your life so you get to heaven, it is the story of how God has redeemed mankind through His son’s sacrifice on the cross of Calvary. The resurrection is critical because the gospels do not begin with, “Once upon a time.”. They make the claim that these events really happened and these events change everything for humanity. The resurrection either really happened or it’s worthless.

If the resurrection is indeed this important, how can we prove that it is true? Theologians over the centuries have developed numerous ways to demonstrate the historical accuracy of the resurrection, but perhaps the simplest way to demonstrate the truth of the resurrection is through the minimal facts approach. This approach was developed and popularized by one of my favorite apologists, Dr. Gary Habermas.

Dr. Habermas developed this approach by looking at the most vital historical facts regarding the resurrection. The facts he uses are even affirmed by skeptics and atheists. Dr. Habermas explains the criteria for the facts used by saying, “It has two requirements for the historical facts that are used: each must be confirmed by several strong and independent arguments, plus the vast majority of even critical scholars must recognize the occurrence’s historical nature.  The critical scholars can be liberal, skeptical, agnostic, or even atheist, as long as they are specialists in a relevant field of study, such as New Testament.”[1]

Each fact individually doesn’t prove that the resurrection actually occurred, but together these facts make a cumulative airtight case for Easter. Dr. Habermas list of facts are as follows, “1) that Jesus died by crucifixion; 2) that very soon afterwards, his followers had real experiences that they thought were actual appearances of the risen Jesus; 3) that their lives were transformed as a result, even to the point of being willing to die specifically for their faith in the resurrection message; 4) that these things were taught very early, soon after the crucifixion; 5) that James, Jesus’ unbelieving brother, became a Christian due to his own experience that he thought was the resurrected Christ; and 6) that the Christian persecutor Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus) also became a believer after a similar experience.”[2]

The culmination of these facts changes everything. God has written Himself into the story, our story. The implications of the resurrection are cosmic. The resurrection gives us hope. Hope for a future, hope that death will not win, hope that we can be reconciled with our Creator, hope that justice has been served and it wasn’t served on us, despite all of our faults. The truth of the resurrection can do more than transform the lives of the apostles, it can transform your life too. Go live in light of that good news!

[1] Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004), 46–47.

[2] Ibid, 48–77.