Posts

Showing posts from April, 2019

A Theory Without a Ghost of a Chance

Image
Resurrection of Christ  by  Noël Coypel , 1700,  using a  hovering depiction  of Jesus The "no Body" theory says that Jesus' resurrection  was non-bodily; he didn't leave an empty tomb but just appeared to people as a spirit. This view is much prized by a certain segment of theological liberalism. Some liberals can't bring themselves to buck naturalism (I on the other hand am a  liberal of a different sort). This view was Championed by   Hans Grass's classic  Ostergeschehen and Osterberichte.   [1]  The answer, of course, is that Paul's belief was the same as the Jewish belief of the day, that Messiah was to raise all of fallen Israel at the end of times. This was to be a bodily resurrection. Paul sees Jesus as the "first fruits" or the hearld of this mass resurrection in the end. But why would he speak of a bodily resurrection for us (which clearly he does, as we see in the quotation at the top from 1 Cor. 15) and not for Jesus hi

My testamoney,

Image
It was Easter 1979--born again experience http://www.doxa.ws/Theology/Testamony.html Early Days of Atheism. I was born in Dallas Texas, in the mid 1950's, and raised in a clean, white, southern middle class setting, complete with old civil war sentimentality and country values. Our family had been staunch members of a certain fundamentalist sect, as far as I can tell, from before the civil war. They were probably in on the founding of the group and may have been based in Barton W. Stone's Kaine Ridge Revival, in the Kentucky of that period known as "The Second Great Awakening." It was a very exclucivistic group called "the Church of Christ." They were almost cult-like in that they believed they were the only true Church, and all others were going to hell, (even the baptists and Catholics-- especially the Catholics). They were so self-righteous they didn't even use instrumental music because they thought that made them more holy. In the 1960s

good source for Resurrection.

Image
Here is a good You Tube Video arguing for Res It does a good job, this is my bit for Easter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0iDNLxmWVM

Story of Empty Tomb Dated to Mid First Century )

Image
Helmutt Koester (1926-2016) This is my contribution to a book Called  Defending the Resurrection  edited by J.P. Holiding. I urge the reader to buy it as there are many fine arguments made in it. Not all of this article was used. This is its original form it was changed substantially in several ways, such are the needs of editors. Introduction Skeptical machinations are endless, anytime the tide turns toward the apologist the skeptic will take a further step back and seek to change the ground rules in a fundamental way. So it is with the perennial resurrection debate since the tide was shifted by McDowell and then by Craig, years ago. One of the major tactics used by skeptics to change the ground rules has been to uproot all points of the compass so the apologist can’t get his/her bearings as to what events are actually historical and thus defensible. To accomplish this, the skeptic has partly pulled off a resurrection of his own, by resurrecting old ninetiet