We’ve been reading a great book as a family over the last few weeks. It was written quite a while ago, and in the part we’ve just read, the author is defending the Christian belief in the resurrection. I wonder how you would justify believing that Jesus was raised from the dead? I found this section pretty challenging. Partly because it is so completely different from how I would argue that Christ had risen; and partly because I’m not sure these arguments would sound particularly credible on my lips. This is what he had to say:

“Well then, look at the facts of the case. The Saviour is working mightily among us. Everyday He is invisibly persuading numbers of people all over the world to accept His faith and to be obedient to His teaching … Does a dead man prick the consciences of men, so that they throw all the traditions of their fathers to the winds and bow before the teaching of Christ? If He remained dead, how is it that He makes the living to cease from their activities: the adulterer from his adulttery, the murderer from murdering, the unjust from avarice, while the profane and godless man becomes religious? If He did not rise, but is still dead, how is it that He routs and persecutes and overthrows the false gods, whom unbelievers think are alive, and the evil spirits whom they worship? … We are agreed that a dead person can do nothing: yet the Saviour works mightily every day, drawing men to religion, persuading them to virtue, teaching them about immortality, quickening their thirst for heavenly things, revealing the knowledge of the Father, inspiring strength in the face of death, manifesting Himself to each, and displacing the irreligion of idols; while the gods and evil spirits of the unbleievers can do none of these things… By the sign of the cross, all magic is stayed, all sorcery confounded, all the idols are abandoned and deserted, and all senseless pleasure ceases, as the eye of faith looks up from earth to heaven. Shall we call Christ dead who accomplishes all this? Or shall we call death dead? No room for doubt remains therefore, concerning the resurrection of His body.

(Athanasius, De Inc. 5:30-31)

What a compelling series of arguments. Our effectiveness in evangelism, and the destruction of sin in the lives of believers, the courage of the martyrs, the desire for heavenly things, and the self-evident difference between Christianity and other religions… that’s how you know Christ lives amongst us!