Do the Resurrection Reports Accredit Divinity?

Abstract

The crucial importance of the resurrection for the early church, as for later trinitarian Christianity, cannot be put more clearly than in the frequently quoted words of St Paul: ‘If Christ was not raised, then our Gospel is null and void, and so is your faith’ (1 Cor. 15.14). Or as a modern writer has put it: ‘Christianity stands or falls with the reality of the raising of Jesus from the dead by God. In the New Testament there is no faith that does not start with the resurrection of Jesus.’¹ Thus, historically, it was the Easter conviction that Jesus is alive, and that his dying and rising again were somehow vital to man’s salvation, that led to the emergence of the church, and, in time, to its full-blooded doctrine of the incarnation. Not surprisingly, B. F. Westcott described it as ‘the historical seal of the Incarnation’.²