The Proofs of Christ's Resurrection; from a Lawyer's Standpoint

by Charles R. Morrison

And will any one tell us, right here, what better proof Jesus could have given his disciples, of his Resurrection? If the evidence was sufficient for them, it may be sufficient for us, unless we are prepared to say that the miracle shall be repeated whenever it is challenged! Was it essential to a reasonable conviction on their part that the Scribes and Pharisees should also be convinced? (Nicodemus, and Joseph of Arimathea, were convinced.) It must be admitted that the disciples, of all others, were qualified to judge, if any persons could be qualified. What force could the belief of the Sanhedrim have added to the testimony of their own senses?

Assume, as a hypothesis, the reality of Christ’s resurrection, we again ask, What proof of it should have been given his disciples that was not given? They had the same kind of proof, during forty days, that they had before his crucifixion. He walked with them, talked with them, instructed them, ate before them, and with them (Acts. x. 41), called things to their remembrance, opened to them the Scriptures, and gave them their great commission to disciple all nations; and, to preclude all questioning, said, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me have. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.” And to Thomas, eight days after, he said, “Reach hither thy finger and see my hands; and reach thy hand and put it into my side: and be not faithless but believing.”

We do not accept Origen’s[4] view that Jesus after his resurrection and before his ascension “existed in a body intermediate, as it were, between the grossness of that which he had before his suffering and the appearance of a soul uncovered by such a body,” although it now has the support of able writers. The general[5] sentiment of the Church from the beginning has been against it. It is not warranted by the record, and it involves more mysteries and difficulties than it escapes. We fully agree with Judge Waite[6] that, according to the Canonical Gospels, “The very body in which Jesus was crucified, and which was buried by Joseph of Arimathea, is raised from the dead, appears to the disciples, is not only seen but felt, and Jesus himself, in the flesh, as he was before he was crucified, calls for fish to eat to satisfy his disciples that he was not a spirit; that his body was not spiritual, but material and human like theirs;” and also with a very different man (Mr. Barnes), who, with his usual good sense, says: “It was necessary first to establish the proof of his resurrection, and that could be done only by his appearing as he was when he died;” and also with Drs. McClintock and Strong in their invaluable Cyclopedia, that: “According to the Scriptures the disciples were assured by the testimony of their own senses that the body of Christ after his resurrection was the same identical body of human flesh and bones which had been crucified and laid in the sepulchre.” (Vol. VIII., A.D. 1879.) Peter’s testimony (as recorded in Acts x. 41) that Jesus after he was raised up was made manifest, not to all the people, but unto witnesses that were chosen before of God, even to us “who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead,” seems just as decisive as the Canonical Gospels. And so of John’s testimony (1 John i. 1), “that which we beheld, and our hands handled.”

Our Lord was in the tomb less than thirty-six hours, and his flesh “did not see corruption.” His body, apparently, was as human as that of Lazarus after he was raised. The criticism that it is not said that there was blood seems frivolous, for there could be no living flesh or bones without blood-vessels and blood. Although for the time he forbade Mary Magdalene to touch, or rather to detain him, he permitted the other women to take hold of his feet, and directed the Apostles to handle him. Mary Magdalene saw him as a man, and supposed him to be the gardener, until he called her by name. The two disciples conversed with him as a man; and that they did not know him was only because their eyes were “holden.” His sudden disappearance after the repast, and equally sudden appearance in the midst of the Apostles, at most present no greater difficulties than his transfiguration, his walking upon the sea, his passing through his enemies when they were about to throw him down the cliff (all before his crucifixion), or the opening of the prison doors to two of the Apostles. The doors, even if bolted and barred, may have opened as to Peter, or those present may have been so preoccupied that a perfectly natural but silent withdrawal in the one case, and entrance in the other, were simply unnoticed.

As the man Christ Jesus, he rose from the dead, and angels, as porters, having rolled away the stone, he came forth in visible human form, and with the same body that was crucified. He would have been seen by his disciples, if they had been “watching and waiting” for him, and by the guard, if they had not become “as dead men;” perhaps in order that they might not behold him, for he had said, “Yet a little while and the world beholdeth me no more.” (John xiv. 19.)

As the man Christ Jesus, he showed himself to his disciples forty days; and then, with a body, until then, of flesh and blood, as human as that of Elijah, before he was taken up, ascended into the heavens.

Thus, in his rising from the dead, and in the change at his ascension, he typified both the dead who shall be raised, and the living who shall be “changed.”

And any conception of him as less corporeal from his resurrection to his ascension than before, does not conform to the record, and, by so much as it makes him less corporeal and tangible, it impairs the force of the evidence.

Each one of the Apostles had as much evidence that Jesus was alive after his crucifixion, as he had that Peter or John or Thomas was alive, and evidence of just as high a character. And this proof by facts addressed to their own intelligence and bodily senses of sight, and hearing, and feeling, was continued forty days. There is no conflict in the evidence on this point.

Every lawyer knows that omission is not contradiction. Even when witnesses profess to give the whole, it rarely or never happens that some will not state something which others omit, and not unfrequently a witness is called to testify to a part only, and does not undertake to give the whole.