162: Nathan Sutcliffe - The Resurrection As A Foundation Of Our Faith

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   Welcome to Good Christadelphian Talks. I'm Levi. And I'm Chris. And I'm Brian. Thank you for joining us this week. On this podcast, we select one talk a week to help us get the Bible in our daily news feed. We post a new episode at the start of each week, with a short intro beforehand to kind of set the stage for the talk you're about to listen to.

2. 0:33

   And now, let's talk more about this week's talk. Welcome to the Good Christadelphian Talks podcast. This is Brother Brian. This week's talk is a class by Brother Nathan Sutcliffe, which was given at the Living Faith Study Day in 2019 in the United Kingdom. We received this as a recommendation. And from what I can gather, the format appears to be an outreach effort that was based on reasons to believe the Bible narrative and building faith from the ground up.

3. 1:23

   And within that context, Brother Nathan's subject matter and delivery really shine. Now, as Bible students, I think there are countless reasons to believe that what we read is sacred and wholly preserved to be the Word of God. And still, there are many accounts or stories that are so fantastical that they require us to have faith to see how they could have been and how they connect to the rest of Scripture.

4. 1:58

   And Brother Nathan looks at the account of the resurrection of Jesus as an example of something that is indeed beyond our reference of normal circumstances, but one that is in fact critical to the faith of a believer. That, as Paul says, if Christ is not raised, then our faith is in vain. I've heard a number of talks about the resurrection, and there are always more little tidbits to find.

5. 2:32

   And if you could, you could talk about it for three hours if you're allowed to. But what makes this talk great is how much evidence Brother Nathan is able to pack into just 20 minutes, while remaining very eloquent and conversational. So, if you know anyone that is learning the gospel, or if you have a friend, family member, or neighbor that is at least open-minded, then this would be a class to recommend for them.

6. 3:02

   That's the main reason I wanted to feature it on the podcast this week. It's a video that's already on YouTube with a fantastic slideshow for taking notes, and the link to that will be attached. But my hope is just to continue to increase its exposure for the sake of promoting such helpful content in our shared hope.

7. 3:25

   So, as always, we hope this strengthens your faith and brightens your day. Brother Nathan Sutcliffe, the resurrection as a foundation of our faith. Brother Nathan Sutcliffe, the resurrection of Jesus Good morning, everyone. Good morning. So, Jesus and Jesus' resurrection for me, it's the one event in history that changes everything. If Jesus rose from the dead, I can deal with most other things.

8. 3:59

   Jesus' resurrection and the fact that God raised him for me is what founds my faith. It's the rock on which I can build everything else. It's what gives me the foundation for my understanding of God and his story. So, I'm going to do two things this morning. I'm first going to try and share with you why I'm persuaded in the resurrection.

9. 4:24

   Why I believe in the resurrection based on the historical data, the historical sources that we've got. So, that's number one. And number two, briefly towards the end, I'm going to explain why for me, Jesus and his resurrection is the foundation of my faith. It's what it is built on from a theological perspective.

10. 4:48

    So, there we are. So, what are we going to do? There are two claims that I think the resurrection is founded on. And these are these two things. There was an empty tomb. And that people claimed that they saw Jesus after he rose from the dead. I'm going to explain why I think there's good evidence historically for those claims.

11. 5:18

    And then I'm going to explain, well, okay, even if we accepted that people did believe that, why should we accept that now? Why should we think, why should I think, that there actually was a resurrection? So, on the screen, that's the kind of the outline of how we're going to go about that.

12. 5:39

    As I say, I'm going to do that purely on a historical basis, just as we might weigh the claims for the exploits of other people and events in history. And I'm going to take as read that Jesus died through crucifixion in Jerusalem sometime around 30 AD. I appreciate that that is a claim which has been contested, but it's something that I think is so well founded that I'm not even going to bother starting there.

13. 6:09

    If you've got questions on that, I probably don't have brilliant answers, but you can ask me afterwards. Okay, so let's start with the empty tomb. Now, before I start on the empty tomb, I just want to acknowledge that the empty tomb, in the context of historical scholarship in general, doesn't have 100% agreement, for sure.

14. 6:33

    Gary Habermas, who is a New Testament scholar and historian, has claimed that about 75% of relevant scholars accept that there was an empty tomb. I think there was an empty tomb. I'm going to show you why. But I just want to preface it with that comment. Okay, so first thing. We've got a number of early sources which tell us, which claim, that there was an empty tomb.

15. 7:03

    I group them into different layers of sources there. But I think that's important that we do have some early and multiple sources, because I think it tells us that this wasn't a time for myth building. There wasn't a great deal of time for this narrative to develop into something else. They always claimed that there was an empty tomb.

16. 7:30

    So that's point number one. Point number two. And I guess this is in two parts. First of all, the testimony of women in general, in the first century, was not generally accepted as a public witness. Sure, women could be taken as credible witnesses in certain private settings. But from the data that we've got, it's very clear that in public settings, in the public arena, women were not accepted as credible witnesses in general.

17. 8:08

    And I think that's really important, because when we come to the sources and narratives about the resurrection, the first claim is that it was women that saw Jesus. They were the first ones to claim that Jesus has risen.

18. 8:29

    And it leads us to the question, well, if that wasn't really what happened, why did these gospel writers use women as the first eyewitnesses? The second bit is that when we read the narratives in the gospels about that sort of immediate post-resurrection state, we don't find narratives which quote from the Old Testament and say, well, this is just like Isaiah said would happen, or this is just what David talked about in the Psalms, as they may well have done.

19. 9:09

    And it doesn't say, well, this is what happens, and therefore you've got hope in Jesus. That all comes later. Instead, in the narratives about the empty tomb, it's pretty strictly factual. Just this is what we claim happened. And for me, that increases the reliability of these accounts from a purely historical point of view.

20. 9:32

    Because it tells me, well, why would I find accounts like these if that wasn't really what happened? Next. When we think about where Christianity first kicked off, it was in Jerusalem, exactly where Jesus had been crucified. If Jesus was in a tomb, it was the easiest bit of evidence to produce that there was a body there.

21. 10:01

    So trying to say that Jesus rose from the dead when you could find an empty tomb, particularly handy if you were part of the Jewish community, not accepting the resurrection and Jesus, that's exactly what you'd want. But of course, we've got no evidence to suggest that anyone was able to do that. And connected to that point, we don't find, as we would expect and find with other characters, venerations of the grave, people going to repay their respects to the tomb of Jesus.

22. 10:37

    I think all of that together tell me that there was, on a historical basis, a very good case that there was a tomb without a body in it where Jesus was supposed to be. So that's number one. That's the empty tomb.

23. 11:00

    Number two, the resurrection appearances. So, I've put on the screen some of the sources that we've got about the resurrection appearances. First, and most significant, I think, from a historical point of view, is the one at the top. It's 1 Corinthians chapter 50. Why is that so significant? Well, Paul wrote to the Corinthians circa 50 to 55 AD.

24. 11:24

    And he says, I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. So he's claiming that I'm not just sort of telling you this now. Someone has told me this and I'm passing this on to you. Now, if he's written that 50 to 55 AD, and what he goes on to say is in the form of some established tradition, that Christ died, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

25. 11:51

    This is in the form of established tradition already at 50 to 55 AD. So we're incredibly close to this claimed event of the resurrection. And of course, we've got the gospel narratives that come later. And I think also significant are some of the claims in the Acts. And I think the reason they're significant is because I think we can see within the Acts account from a historical perspective that they are building in tradition that had already been established.

26. 12:27

    The phrasing and the form that they use suggests that this wasn't the account at that point when Luke wrote Acts, sometime probably towards the end of the first century. But baked into it are the form of words and the traditions that had been around for some time. And there's an example at the bottom.

27. 12:48

    This Jesus God raised up and of that we are all witnesses. So, the resurrection. We've got numerous early sources which say people saw Jesus after his death. Okay. Next. in relation to the resurrection appearances the claim about the resurrection appearances is totally consistent. They all claim that Jesus rose from the dead and they give various details about it but there's a very consistent claim right from the start of the Christian community that Jesus was dead and that he was raised.

28. 13:30

    significantly we've got some differences we've got some variations in the accounts particularly I'm referring to some of the gospel accounts. Now what we might choose to be able to do with those differences I'm going to leave to one side just for this case the fact that we have differences as to who came to the tomb first or exactly when did they come to the tomb and so on.

29. 13:56

    I think that's from a historical perspective quite helpful because it tells us that these weren't sources that had colluded together that all we're reading is really one source and it just happens to be now in four or five different places but in fact that these are independent accounts or at least to a significant degree independent accounts.

30. 14:24

    So because of those because of those points amongst others this is what Gerd Leuwen who is a German New Testament scholar and historian says it may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ. Paula Frederiksen she was a US historian at Boston University she says the disciples conviction that they had seen the risen Christ is part of historical bedrock fact known past doubting I think those are quite remarkable claims from historians and notice they say that the disciples claimed that Jesus rose from the dead they're not saying that he definitely did they're saying that the claim that Jesus rose from the dead is very clear it's historically certain okay so let's just recap we've got the empty tomb and I think we've got some pretty good data for that and we've got the post resurrection appearances of Jesus and I think there's some really solid data for that but if I was running around Jerusalem in first century and someone said well yeah there's an empty tomb yeah we know his body was there and now it's not and yeah I've seen Jesus after both before and after he died do you know I think I'd still have some questions I'd probably still think really what's in it for you is this all kind of a big setup like what are you getting me into here but I think there's some factors that we can build into the resurrection that help us there that can take those claims about an empty tomb and about people seeing Jesus afterwards

31. 16:21

    and solidify that quite a lot more and it's those things that we've got on the screen and I'm very briefly going to run through those so we've got two conversions number one we've got Saul of Tarsus we've got really good evidence that he was a persecutor of the Christians we've got Luke describing it in the book of Acts and we've got the testimony of Paul himself in great embarrassment to him that he persecuted the Christians and yet he turns wholeheartedly to accept the resurrection and ultimately dies for his belief so Saul of Tarsus number one he converts in some circumstance to accept that Jesus rose James brother of Jesus so he didn't believe in Jesus during his ministry and again I think we've got some pretty good data to say that he didn't believe in Jesus during his ministry like the rest of his family and yet we find that he turns to accept Jesus and leads the early church and ultimately he dies for his belief now the fact that people die for their beliefs well people do that people do that today but they do that based on secondhand testimony or worse or more distant these people died for their beliefs based on what they claimed they saw personally and I think that makes their testimony and their witness to us today far stronger they died based on what they claimed they saw there and then so we've got two conversions and I think those are really significant we've got some pretty significant cultural changes which come completely out of the blue I've put some of them on the screen cultural changes happen

32. 18:26

    sure over time over decades we find that people change how they go about things they change how the community is set up but something happens which means that overnight people go from circumcision to baptism from saying only Jews can be part of our community to saying we're happy to accept everyone so there's some pretty significant cultural changes that happen we've also got the general cultural change in the first century about a massive and rapid growth in Christianity and finally when we sort of sit here in the 21st century one of the claims that's made is that Jesus' resurrection was purely spiritual that it wasn't a real bodily resurrection and it's claimed that that's what the earliest Christians believed well again I think we've got really solid evidence that says no resurrection in the first century means what resurrection means today it's about bodies coming back to life it wasn't in the Jewish psyche that you would have one man coming back to life yes they had some expectations of resurrection but that was about resurrection right at the end of times what we find in Jesus' resurrection is something that was unexpected one man rising from the dead so the nature of resurrection that they claimed I think we can be really clear on was an actual bodily resurrection so personally I find that there's sufficient evidence for me in faith to say Jesus rose from the dead now if you don't believe in God or if you don't accept the possibility of God then anything is more likely than the resurrection sure but if I take that as a starting point and I do

33. 20:47

    for other reasons then the claim about Jesus' resurrection historically for me stands up and in faith I can accept that so if that's the foundation of my faith from an evidential point of view I've got to go on and find out well what did Jesus and his followers say how should my faith then build on that well I'm going to put a few quotes on the screen to conclude Romans 4 righteousness we reckon to us who believe in him in God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification our justification in the sight of God being seen as as part of his purpose is founded on our belief in the resurrection we touched on Corinthians earlier Paul says I handed to you as of first importance what in turn I had received that Christ died and rose again and he goes on to say if there was no resurrection you can probably give up today guys if there was a resurrection then we've got hope in Romans 10 if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you'll be saved this is the claim that I think the New Testament makes over and over that your justification your faith is built on Jesus and his resurrection and so I conclude with this this is in the context of some division that Paul writes about to the Corinthian ecclesia he says no one can lay a foundation other than that which he's laid Jesus Christ so Jesus Christ

34. 22:56

    he represents the foundation to my faith from an evidential point of view and he represents the foundation to my faith theologically he's the start of the gospel he's the start he's the center and that is why I follow him if you want to kind of follow up on some of this stuff I've put some resources on the screen those are some resources that I found really helpful in thinking about resurrection

35. 23:39

    thank you for listening to the good Christadelphian talks podcast we hope this talk helped you in your walk if you would like to hear more please subscribe for new episodes and leave a review in apple podcast or whichever service you are using to help more people find the show when they search for it if you enjoyed this particular talk please share it with someone who you think might enjoy it as well for show notes on the talk you just listened to visit our show page at anchor.fm slash gct or check the show notes section of your podcast player please share your thoughts on the talk from this week on our facebook or instagram pages where we are at good Christadelphian talks on twitter where we are at gct underscore podcast or leave a comment on our youtube channel where these talks are posted as well if you know of a great talk we want to

36. 24:35

    thank you for listening god bless and talk to you next week