ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 37 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> I suspect that you are probably familiar with Lee Strobel's "The Case For Christ" in which an entire section is devoted to the veracity of the resurrection account. I'm not going to ask you for a comment directly on this book. But its presence in the marketplace along with other books such as McDowell's "Evidence That Demands a Verdict," it has me curious. It all suggests that people want proof that Christ rose from the dead. Can the resurrection of Jesus be proven? Is this an important issue? >> DR. DAVID SCAER: The issue of the historicalness of the resurrection of Jesus is very important. Because if there is not any firm conviction about his being raised from the dead, something which happened within the domain of history, then we cannot go on to discuss what is the meaning of this resurrection in Christian life. In Germany or in Europe at least from the 18th Century up until now, Christianity has been offered in which there has been no certainty about the resurrection at all. And maybe we'll get into that discussion on whether -- on the historical character of the person of Jesus later on in this discussion. But let's just concentrate on this one question. Concerning all historical data, there is only a degree of probability. You cannot apply scientific investigation to that which is past. Let's take the example of a trial in court. A trial in court concerning the crime cannot come to a question of absolute certainty. Even with DNA evidence, there's the possibility one, that somebody else put the DNA evidence there. Or two, that maybe it's not beyond the realm of possibility. That maybe two people have the same DNA. We just don't know these things. Now, concerning the resurrection of Jesus -- because by the way, whenever Jesus is proclaimed, he's always proclaimed as the resurrected one. He's not simply a rabbi. If he was simply a rabbi or a human being, no religion would have started out around him. And before we mentioned that some people claimed they had to invent the resurrection, invent God, in order for Christianity to survive and to succeed. There is more evidence concerning the resurrection of Jesus than there is for any other event in the ancient world. When we deal with the writings of Plato and Cicero and Julius Ceasar, there is not a huge amount of evidence about these things at all. There are -- there are manuscripts that come a thousand years later after, after the events happen. Now, concerning Jesus, they'll say, "Well, the only evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is the Bible." But then on the other hand, the same scholars will say, "Well, look at all of these writings in the Bible. They don't agree with one another. They come from different places." Well, you can't have it both ways. Either the Bible is a unified group or it is diversified. The Bible is diversified. They are written by different people in different places. That is the New Testament, which speaks of the resurrection of Jesus. And they all have this account. And they tell the account in different ways. Now, I would be -- as a teacher you're always suspicious when two papers come in and they look identical. You say, "Is this" -- oh, here again, the possibility both could have thought the same way. Of course we know they could have all gone to the same Internet web site. There are all kinds of excuses for these things. But isn't it amazing that the resurrection of Jesus in the four gospels is told in different ways? Which speaks to the authenticity that it really happened. Now, let's just think about is the resurrection an ordinary historical fact? Well, yes and no. Yes, we know it happened in our time. But it's not open to the same kind of investigation that we would do our facts. Because Jesus went into a different type of existence. Maybe when we get to discuss the virgin birth and the resurrection, I would like to discuss those both together, that Matthew in particular is extremely apologetic and defensive that these things really happened. He more than the other writers make a point of it. And so we'll leave that question until a little later. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***