The Supernatural in the New Testament, Possible, Credible, and Historical / Or, An Examination of the Validity of Some Recent Objections Against Christianity as a Divine Revelation

by C. A. Row

It is impossible to read this passage without feeling that it is conclusive of the question before us: the whole community to whom it was addressed must have accepted the Resurrection as a fact, and that acceptance must have been contemporary with the very commencement of their Christianity. A portion of the baptismal rite to which they had all submitted was viewed by them as symbolical of their Master's death: the other portion, of His Resurrection. His death and resurrection were considered by them as setting forth their cessation from their old habits, principles and character, in which they had lived as Jews or Pagans; and their entrance into that new moral life into which they were brought by Christianity. The Apostle directly appeals to the recollection of those whom he is addressing, to say whether it was not a certain fact that their entire Christianity, including all its moral influence, centered in this truth. His words [pg 439] therefore carry this belief up to the first origin of this Church. They go, moreover, a step further, and involve the belief and testimony of those by whom its first members had been converted.

But further: the Apostle, throughout this chapter, speaks of the Resurrection of Christ as being the great moral and spiritual power of Christianity. The members of the Church had entered on a new moral and religious life. They had died to their former sinful habits and practices. They were living to God, and were reaping the fruits of holiness instead of receiving the wages of sin. That these facts were true, the Apostle appeals to their consciousness to witness. Was this a fact or was it not? It would have been impossible for St. Paul to write in this manner unless he had been assured that those to whom he wrote thought so. This power had for its centre the belief in the Resurrection of Christ. It was caused by their connection with Him as a living person to whom all their regards were due.

It is impossible to have stronger historical evidence that this belief was esteemed by the Church to be fundamental to Christianity when this letter was written. I shall therefore only quote two more passages as showing the purely incidental character of the allusions:—

“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom. viii. 38, &c.) Again: “He that regardeth the day regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to [pg 440] the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks. For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord.... For to this end Christ both died and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and living.” It is impossible that any words could make it clearer than these do that the belief in the Resurrection formed the centre of the daily life of Christians at the time when the Apostle was writing. The Christian was a man who was consecrated to the service of Christ as to a living person, who had a right to his supreme regard.

It is therefore established beyond the possibility of a doubt that the belief in the Resurrection of Christ was universal in the Church when St. Paul wrote these letters, i.e. within less than thirty years after the event. At this period of time the traditional recollection of it, according to the principles laid down by Sir G. C. Lewis, would have formed the best material for history. All the other writings of the New Testament, whatever be their supposed date, give a uniform testimony in complete agreement with this. One of them demands a special notice—the book of Revelation.

Unbelievers do not dispute that this is a contemporaneous document, the work of the Apostle John, and freely use it to support their own theories as to the intensity of the opposition between the Jewish Apostles and St. Paul. I am quite sensible that a book which is professedly an apocalypse must be used with caution as an historical document, or we may fall into numerous errors in drawing inferences from obscure allusions contained in visions. But if there is one point more than another which this book makes clear, it is the [pg 441] strength of the author's belief in the Resurrection of Jesus. The frequent allusions to it, and to Jesus as being the Christ, put this beyond all dispute. We have here the testimony of a book which unbelievers concur in considering to have been composed not later than a year after the death of Nero, and allow it to be the one solitary writing in the New Testament composed by one of the twelve Apostles.

According to the opinions of the opponents of the historical character of the Gospels, St. John was the most Judaizing of the original apostles of Christ. Of this they think that they discern very distinct traces in the book of Revelation. His opposition to St. Paul was in their opinion extreme; and they think that he is actually referred to in the second and third chapters as teaching the Jewish Christians to apostatize. To discuss the truth or falsehood of these opinions can form no portion of the present work; but it is plain that in either case we cannot have a more unexceptionable witness. If these views are correct, the Apostle may be considered as the spokesman of the Jewish Christians. At any rate he was one of the original followers of Jesus. Now there is no book in the New Testament which testifies more strongly to the completeness of the belief in the Resurrection of Christ, and of His continued Messianic life in the heavenly world. The writer had conversed with Him before His crucifixion. The vision is to a considerable extent a description of His resurrection life.

This testimony alone carries with it the belief of the primitive Church at Jerusalem, and proves that on this point at least they and St. Paul were at one. This his Epistles place beyond the possibility of question. The parties in opposition were beyond all doubt Judaizing Christians. According to those [pg 442] against whom I am reasoning, they represented the opinions and claimed to act under the authority of St. James and the Church at Jerusalem. But as these Judaizing teachers were at one with Paul about the fact of the Resurrection, it follows that the leaders of that Church concurred with him in opinion also. If their opposition was as strenuous as has been attested, if there had been any difference between St. Paul and the twelve on so fundamental a point, it is impossible that they could have avoided adducing it to the Apostle's prejudice.

The strength of St. Paul's assurance, that there was no diversity of opinion in the Church respecting this fact is remarkably illustrated by a passage in 1 Cor. xv. Had it not been so, his reasoning would have been simply absurd. There were persons in that Church who denied the fact of a future Resurrection. Yet they must have admitted the truth of the Resurrection of Christ. This is clear from the following words:—“If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen.” The reply to this argument is so obvious that it could not have escaped the dullest apprehension; if those who denied the reality of a future resurrection of the dead had entertained the smallest doubt as to the Resurrection of Christ, they would have had nothing to do but to affirm that the fact was doubtful, and the whole argument would fall to pieces. On the contrary, however, St. Paul thought that they were so fully persuaded of the truth of Christ's Resurrection, that he could safely use the fact to prove the possibility of that future resurrection which they denied. It is clear, that unless the belief was of the firmest character, no logical position could be more dangerous than this line of argument.

The Epistle to the Romans establishes the same [pg 443] conclusion. The belief of this Church in the Resurrection as the fundamental fact of Christianity can be traced up, as I have already observed, not only to the commencement of their own Christianity, which was palpably of many years' standing, but even to the birth of Christianity itself. Of this, one brief incidental allusion offers decisive proof: “Salute,” says St. Paul, “Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners, who were of note among the Apostles, who were also in Christ before me.”