The central focus of Christianity is Jesus Christ—it really is all in the name. And one of its central claims about Jesus is his death and resurrection. This is not to say the rest of what Jesus did and thought and what is believed about him is unimportant – rather none of it is worth a hill of beans if Jesus didn’t live and die and rise again. The apostle Paul makes this point most poignantly,

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied (1 Cor 15:17-19).

Ultimately the true believer in a dead Jesus isn’t a threat but a tragedy. She’s the protagonist in a movie where we’ve seen the end, we know she loses, her energy spent, her efforts futile, slumped against a wall. She’s dead, her life poured out for nothing.

But if the resurrection is true, the scene changes dramatically. Suddenly our heroine is not merely a failed lump of decaying flesh. No, she is a victor, her sacrifice not merely tragic, but worthwhile. We see in that moment a heavenly glow, and with a glimpse of foresight, a blinding flash. Then a shudder shakes the slumped frame, and with lithe spring, she leaps erect, shoulders squared, eyes on fire, awash with power and the glory of self-sacrifice.

Nice story, huh? But is it true?

That is the question we’ll be looking at here, what is the evidence for this story, particularly of the original resurrection, that of Jesus.

However, you might already have found a flaw in this gem, a crack even before we look at the history! Why think one resurrection has any bearing on the other? Even if Jesus rose from the dead, what bearing would that have on anything else Christians or the Bible has to say? Ought we not evaluate each claim, each proposition, independently of each other?

If this is right we’d have to put the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus in one box and evaluate it. Then we’d have to put the evidence for the general resurrection, the resurrection of people in the last days, in a different box and evaluate it independently. Is this this the right course? Do we ask “Is this proposition true?” independently for every proposition?

The answer in a word is…  no. And the answer is no not just for the resurrection, or the Bible, or religious questions, but universally. It is a bad principle to follow because it doesn’t reliably lead towards knowing truth; it is poor epistemology.

More on this next time