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The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is hard to swallow for many folks.  Some believe that is used to be easier to believe – especially for those living in the first century.  But anyone who knows the New Testament – or ancient pagan literature – knows that isn’t true.  People back then found it hard to accept too, and for many of the same reasons we do.

Common sense says it just isn’t possible.  The reanimation of dead matter seems like a Frankenstein fantasy.  Even those ancient people could see that the process of decay begins almost immediately after death.

Further, science has confirmed that death is a necessary part of the natural order.  Death nourishes the life of successive generations.  Without it nature would quickly exhaust the resources needed to sustain life. 

Resurrection seems impossible in such a world.  Not only that – it seems positively dangerous.

That’s it then – open and shut case – nothing more to say, right? 

Well no, I have two things to say. 

First, those who reject the bodily resurrection of Jesus because they think nature as we have known it is all there is, or ever will be, should come clean and admit that they think death will finally swallow everything in the end. 

If they are right the universe will eventually wink out.  Everything will wind down and nothing more than rocks and gas will exist drifting ever farther apart in the cold and dark of an eternal night.

Consequently meaning itself will also die, for in a godless universe meaning can only live on in the minds of those who are alive to see and know and remember. 

You may protest – but that won’t be for ages and ages! 

But what is an age when compared to eternity?  Finite time – whether ten thousand years or ten trillion in length – will disappear in the end.  Whether it is this generation or another, there will be a last generation.   

How about happiness, surely that’s worth something? 

Who is it being added up for?  Whether this is the last generation or another – it matters not at all – for those yet unborn have nothing to lose.

But I haven’t made a positive case for the resurrection, have I?  I’ve just identified the necessary end of the material universe if there is no resurrection. Although it may be unpleasant, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

Well, the arguments for the resurrection generally don’t fall into the province of philosophy.  They tend to be either religious, in the form of prophesy, or legal, in the form of eye witness accounts. 

Reason can help to work these out but reason isn’t the starting point for either.

What reason can tell us is that our universe cannot explain itself on its own terms. 

For a universe to have an end it must have a beginning – and that is what the scientific evidence asserts.  Unless we concede that the beginning of our universe is an absurdity – something outside the universe is responsible for getting it started.   

If there is something outside this universe that brought it into being – why should we protest to the possibility that this something may recreate it, with different laws that exclude death, and even in the process resurrect the dead? 

Such a being would have to be immensely powerful and intelligent, just the sort of being who could make the universe in which we currently reside. 

While that is not a guarantee that such a being would do such a thing, I, for the life of me, cannot see why he could not do so if he chose to.