Answering the Most Common Criticisms of the Cross and Resurrection

Summary

Podcast Summary: White Horse Inn

Episode: Answering the Most Common Criticisms of the Cross and Resurrection

Date: April 5, 2026
Hosts: Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb, Bob Hiller, Walter R. Strickland II

---

Overview of the Episode

This Easter episode of White Horse Inn delves into some of the most prevalent criticisms and misunderstandings of Christianity’s core doctrines: the Cross and the Resurrection. The panel discusses why secular and modern interpretations either sentimentalize or scandalize these ideas, and offers both theological and historical responses to common challenges. Their conversation is designed to help Christians know what they believe—and why.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Radical Nature of the Cross

• Scandal of Substitution:

  • The cross is not just a metaphor or a story about mistakes and debts; it is a scandal because it concerns God’s holiness and justice, and Christ dying for his enemies, not just his friends.
  • Quote (Bob Hiller, 00:36):

    "While we were yet sinners and enemies, Christ died for us... I would die for my kid... for your enemy... the last thing I'm thinking is lay down my life for them ... that's the scandal, that's the craziness, I don't have a category for that."

• Bridging the Gap for Secular Audiences:

  • Using metaphors that resonate with secular audiences—justice, debt, battlefield, exile—can help communicate the cross’s meaning.
  • Quote (Walter Strickland, 05:27):

    "We live in a culture who loves justice, but we don't want that same consistency of justice with God... justice has to be served when his moral law is broken."

• Not 'Divine Child Abuse':

  • Justin Holcomb and Michael Horton reject the critique that penal substitution is “divine child abuse.” Jesus, as God himself, bore the penalty—a self-sacrifice, not paternal cruelty.
  • Quote (Justin Holcomb, 07:34):

    "It's not divine child abuse… it's God's justice demanding an accounting that God himself takes responsibility for."

  • Quote (Michael Horton, 13:28):

    "The Son of God is not the child of the Father... this is not divine child abuse. This is God taking the punishment for his creature's sins."

2. The ‘Grammars’ of Atonement

• Five Biblical ‘Grammars’:

  • Marketplace (ransom), Exile (banished/restored), Battlefield (Jesus conquers), Temple (priestly sacrifice), Law Court (justice). All show Jesus does what we cannot do for ourselves.
  • Quote (Bob Hiller, 08:33):

    "Jesus does for us what we can't do for ourselves. He accomplishes salvation. We don't do anything. He's a substitutionary sacrifice."

• Universality of the Substitution Motif:

  • Even in secular stories (e.g., Harry Potter, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Tale of Two Cities), sacrificial love compels us—pointing to a deep human longing.

3. Justice and Substitution: Can Guilt Be Transferred?

• Covenant Representation:

  • The biblical worldview includes covenant headship—what’s true of Adam (our guilt) or Christ (our righteousness) counts for us; it's not foreign but fundamental to Scripture.
  • Quote (Justin Holcomb, 17:24):

    "If someone else can't pay for someone else's sin, then you can't have Adam's guilt... Paul in Romans 5 talks about two heads of two covenants: Adam and Christ."

• God Absorbs the Debt Himself:

  • The hosts clarify God isn’t arbitrarily punishing an unrelated third party. In Christ, the lawgiver Himself absorbs the penalty owed to Him.
  • Quote (Michael Horton, 21:59):

    "It's not like God is sitting up in heaven and he's like… I'm taking your guilt and I'm adding it over to an innocent party... God is absorbing the debt himself... the offended party cancels the guilt by his own actions."

4. Historical Reliability of the Resurrection

• ‘Big Fish’ Stories vs. Early Proclamation:

  • Unlike myths that grow over time, the maximal claim that "he is risen" arose immediately in the place where Jesus had died, among eyewitnesses.
  • Quote (Justin Holcomb, 25:57):

    "The maximal claim, ‘he is not here, he has risen,’ was made right after the resurrection... the big fish didn't have time to get bigger."

• Creedal Testimony Precedes Gospel Writing:

  • 1 Corinthians 15 contains a creed dated by both Christian and skeptical historians (e.g., Ludemann, Vermes, Dunn) to within a few years of Jesus’ death.
  • Quote (Bob Hiller, 27:34):

    "A skeptical scholar has said within one to three, maybe four years… the creed tradition of 1 Corinthians 15 was from the very beginning."

• Evidence Supporting the Claims:

  • The first witnesses were women (unlikely for a legend), opponents acknowledged the empty tomb, and eyewitnesses were alive to refute false claims.
  • Quote (Walter Strickland, 31:31):

    "You wouldn't make a woman the first eyewitness of the empty tomb... unless it actually happened."

5. The Resurrection and Pagan Parallels

• Dying-and-Rising God Myths Dispelled:

  • Superficial similarities with myths like Osiris or Mithras are overstated; actual Jewish-Christian claim is utterly unique (bodily resurrection for all history).
  • Quote (Bob Hiller, 33:13):

    "Similarity isn't genealogy... the dying and rising god bucket is overstated... this is a Jewish bodily death physical resurrection."

• Pinchas Lapide’s Jewish Perspective:

  • Noted scholar concluded the resurrection reports were too concrete and immediate to be myth—Greeks valued spiritual immortality, but the New Testament is doggedly physical.

6. Why the Resurrection is Good News (Pastoral Reflection)

• Victory Over Death and Suffering:

  • Resurrection means bodies matter; dignity restored even after pain, loss, and grief.
  • Quote (Walter Strickland, 38:27):

    "There's dignity in your body, I think, is what the resurrection gets at... your suffering is not meaningless. There is going to be a fixing of all this."

• Glorification and Ultimate Hope:

  • The resurrection does not minimize suffering, but maximizes hope—what’s broken will be made new; suffering doesn’t have the last word.
  • Quote (Bob Hiller, 41:34):

    "Suffering, death and anxiety are real… but the Resurrection says... those are real, just like death is real. It's not the last word on your story… are all sad things going to come untrue because of the resurrection? Yes, that's the whole point."

• Assurance Amid Anxiety:

  • The final word isn’t our sin, debt, or brokenness—because Christ’s resurrection is our guarantee.
  • Quote (Walter Strickland, 43:31):

    "Because of the Resurrection… your anxiety, your brokenness, your relationships, your health, scars, the debt you owe is not the last word on you. And that is a fact."

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• The Scandal of Grace:

  "While we were yet sinners and enemies, Christ died for us... that's the scandal, that's the craziness."
  (Bob Hiller, 00:36)

• Penal Substitution is Not Divine Child Abuse:

  "This is not divine child abuse. This is God taking the punishment for his creature's sins."
  (Michael Horton, 13:28)

• Communicating the Cross to Secular Culture:

  "Jesus does for us what we can't do for ourselves. He accomplishes salvation. We don't do anything."
  (Bob Hiller, 08:33)

• Resurrection as the Firstfruits of New Creation:

  "As goes the first fruit, so goes the harvest. As goes the head, so go the members. If Jesus ate fish, I suspect I will, too."
  (Justin Holcomb, 39:41)

• Pastoral Power of Resurrection Hope:

  "Are all sad things going to come untrue because of the resurrection? Yes, that's the whole point."
  (Bob Hiller, 41:34)

---

Important Segments and Timestamps

• Scandal and Substitution of the Cross: 00:36 – 14:23
• Biblical Metaphors for Atonement: 08:33 – 12:11
• Justice and Transfer of Guilt: 16:52 – 24:57
• Historical Reliability of Resurrection: 24:57 – 34:29
• Pagan Parallels and Uniqueness of Resurrection: 32:19 – 34:29
• Pastoral Meaning of the Resurrection: 37:27 – 43:58

---

Conclusion

The panel affirms: the cross and resurrection are not mere moral tales or sentimental inspiration, but the epicenter of historic Christian faith, rooted in deep justice, overwhelming love, and credible historical claim. Far from being arbitrary, these doctrines are the answer to deep human longings and the hope for real, embodied, everlasting redemption.

"He has risen." (43:58–44:02)

Happy Easter from White Horse Inn.

Transcript

[Narrator]

It's common to put our theology in one box and our daily Christian life in another. But the Reformers saw it differently. They taught that sound doctrine and spiritual growth don't just overlap. They need each other. In the Reformation and spiritual formation, Dr. Michael Horton shows how the Reformers understood and approached this relationship, revealing how God provides the means of spiritual growth for both individuals and the community of believers. Download your free digital copy [e-mail] offers.

[Bob Hiller]

Mike was literally reading Romans 5. You know, while we were yet sinners and enemies, Christ died for us. And it's like, I never heard it before. Like, I would die for my kid. We're all dads. We would, in a heartbeat die for our children. Wouldn't even think about it. I know you guys would, like you love your kids in a heartbeat for your enemy. Like, we all have enemies. I want people to think through who has acted like your enemy. And the last thing I'm thinking is lay down my life for them because you already got your pound of flesh out of me. I want justice with my enemy. I don't want mercy. Like, the whole while we're your enemies is just. That's the scandal, that's the craziness, is that I don't have a category for that. Like, I want revenge on my enemies. And that's. That part doesn't translate. Because I look at that, I'm thinking, yeah, it's not just that I'm in debt. It's not just I made a mistake. It's not. Not just the debt. Not just a mistake. Like the offense of His Holiness.

[Narrator]

Applying the riches of the Reformation to the modern church. This is White Horse Sin, a weekly roundtable discussion about theology and culture.

[Michael Horton]

Every Easter, Christians of all stripes receive a familiar compliment. Jesus was a great moral teacher. The Sermon on the Mount is stirring and humane. The ethic of love is admirable. But the center of the Christian faith has never been a moral philosophy. It is the Cross and the Resurrection. And those claims are far more difficult to domesticate. Why do modern people so often reinterpret the Crucifixion as a metaphor, a tragedy, or worse, a barbaric relic of primitive religion? Why does the Resurrection become a symbol of personal renewal rather than a claim about history? And why, in the therapeutic age, do we instinctively turn Easter into inspiration instead of the inauguration of the Kingdom of God? In this episode of White Horse Inn, we will explore the most common criticisms and misunderstandings of the Cross and Resurrection and do our best to answer them. And we're Going to do that with the common cast of characters here today. Walter Strickland, Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb. And I am Bob Hiller. Happy Easter, everyone. We're here today to talk about some of the great conversations that go on around this time of year. I love turning on the History Channel or the Food Network and seeing all sorts of interesting takes on why Jesus isn't actually risen from the dead. So we're going to talk about some of that here today.

[Bob Hiller]

And every bozo. I mean, you said Food Network, and it's true. People are like, I read some new book. You're like, oh, cool. You stood in the grocery line and saw.

[Walter Strickland]

Exactly.

[Michael Horton]

Time magazine with this shocking new discovery.

[Bob Hiller]

Oh, that's new. Haven't heard that for about 1500 years.

[Michael Horton]

Well, we're going to try and actually address some of those questions, some pretty big questions that come up around the cross, an empty tomb today. And so I'm going to start us off here and let you guys just dive in. How would you explain the cross to someone who doesn't really know the biblical story? Someone who has no categories for things like curse or Paul's language in Galatians about Christ becoming a curse for us? How do you explain the meaning of the cross to someone who's only really working with secular categories, doesn't have the same Christian background or framework that we do?

[Justin Holcomb]

I think one way of doing it is especially prisoners are really good at understanding the cross. To use penal language that you're supposed to run away from this, but actually helps people understand exactly what it is that someone took my place before God's judgment. And because of that, I am adopted into God's family and justified, declared righteous, because his righteousness is credited to me. All of that language is Bible language that actually makes more sense than a lot of attempts to sort of be relevant.

[Bob Hiller]

I like using the language of as if I just run with it. I'm like, Jesus was treated as if he needed rescue, as if he did wrong things. And we're treated as if. Just make it super accessible. The. As if ness is good. Go for it, Walter.

[Walter Strickland]

Yeah, I mean, I would start with creation itself. General revelation. You know, like there's, there's. There's a creator that created all of this. You know, like the heavens declare the glory of God. You know, if you look as we look at creation, I mean, there is. There's an ordering principle behind it. I mean, of course, I believe that's God. And then, you know, we understand that God, his character is like interwoven in that creation. It's like God put himself into this world and then the character of God is one that's just. It's right, it's good. And, and so any punishment that comes is because there has been a breaking of the law, the moral law of this creator who is good. And now that punishment has a tab that has to be paid, and that is the cross. And so I try to, I mean, I do it in much slower fashion than that, but start with creation through general revelation. And then I begin to work into the character of God, one who is just. And I think a place where I've really began to put my flag down is that we live in a culture who loves justice, but we don't want that same consistency of justice with God. We are so quick to crowd a miscarriage of justice, but like, hey, God actually is the fountainhead that is in his character. And so justice has to be served when his moral law is broken, the law of the universe.

[Michael Horton]

Well, I think there's, there's certain categories that we do work with, Walter. I think it's really insightful. Like, we do live in a society that demands justice of everyone constantly. I also noticed this. Like, if you've got people, like, if you're a CEO of a company and there's people in your company who are committing a crime, like, the CEO will at times take the fall for his employees. Like, this is a category people can work with. They're going to understand this is not this big esoteric, crazy thing, a representative who takes a fall on behalf of others. This is language that can make sense to people. I don't think it's too foreign of a, too foreign of a concept.

[Justin Holcomb]

I think too, when people have, they talk about vicarious substitution, this penal theory of the atonement, it sounds like divine child abuse is actually the opposite. Because what you're saying, you're getting away from this idea of God the Father beating up this guy Jesus in our place, taking out his anger on him instead of on us. You get out of that and you get to. Justice has to be served. God wouldn't be God if he were not just. And so God cannot, because of his character, God cannot just overlook sin. So he's found a way to be just and the justifier of the ungodly. And that is love. That's not divine child abuse. That is God's justice demanding an accounting that God himself takes responsibility for.

[Bob Hiller]

Bob, the question had how do you communicate this to secular folks who don't have the categories and Keller has a whole thing he does on the did on the grammars of atonement. And he's looking at the Bible and a lot of them just translate over. I mean, I love the fact that Mike was like, well, let's go to penal like, which is kind of the main whole point about penal substitution, atonement. But he talks about the language of battlefield that Christ fights the powers of sin and death that conquer us. The grammar of the marketplace where the ransom is paid, a purchase price given, and he buys us out of our indebtedness and enslavement. The language of exile, that Christ was exiled and cast out of the community so we could be not banished, but brought home and adopted. Another category that's very biblical. And Mike brought up language of temple, that there's a sacrifice and a priest who makes a sacrifice, and then the language of a law court where there's a judge and justice. And so he goes through and says, okay, Jesus fights the powers, pays the price, bears the exile, makes the sacrifice, bears the punishment in our place for us, on our behalf. And what's at the heart of all of them is that Jesus does for us what we can't do for ourselves. That's the big idea. And so there's a lot of different ways to communicate that. And there's five grammars there. But Jesus does for us what we can't do for ourselves. He accomplishes salvation. We don't do anything. And he's a substitutionary sacrifice. And that's the heart of all of them that he's doing this. And people can get to the substitution idea. It's only people who've read too much Christus Victor and think that that's different than substitution. Or people who go, like, divine child abuse. But most people, they hear, like, a substitution story and they're like, that's the most compelling thing. Like, this is what happened with Harry Potter. Like, J.K. rowling couldn't think how to end seven, eight movies and a whole series without sacrifice to end the ultimate drama, Saving Private Ryan. And there's a whole. There's a thing, the Lincoln substitute. There's a gravestone and his name is J. Summerfield Staples. And on his gravestone it says, you know, Abraham Lincoln substitute. Like, he went to the battlefield and died in Lincoln's place. The Tale of Two Cities. I mean, classic literature. The lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. There's so many, like, Lord of the Rings. Like, the compelling stories are ones of like, I love you so much. I'm going to take Your situation as if it was mine, and give you my situation as if it was yours. And that's a great exchange, the sweet exchange, the wonderful exchange. So you can get to that pretty easily. Secular people will get that category. There's something in them that's compelling about the idea and the beauty of self sacrifice for someone else.

[Walter Strickland]

Yeah, I agree. And there's an idea in this that we're not just off track. We are legally and morally bankrupt. We're not just simply off by a degree. We are incapable of paying this debt that we have, which because of that, we're under this curse. Which is why the idea of union with Christ is so helpful. I mean, this is a covenantal reality that we're entering into, you know, with God. And because of that, all that he is is ours. This is, you know, with, with marriage and so forth. That's. That's kind of the idea there too.

[Justin Holcomb]

And it's also, you know, we can get into debt and it can kind of sound like, you know, I mean, there are a lot of circumstances why people get into debt and they can't pay and so on and so forth, really. While we were enemies, Christ died for us. I love Calvin's line where he says it was not at the cross when God the Father started to love us. He so loved us, he sent his only begotten son. And that's such an important point. It's not like God hated us one day and then he got his pound of flesh and his anger out, and the next day he really got along with people again. It's that this whole movement was from all eternity was love. And that's what moved him to. And it's what moved Jesus too. Jesus being God, not just another human being, but the God man. It's God bearing the guilt of God's law. And he so loved the world that he came.

[Michael Horton]

And it's that point that gets rid of the divine child abuse idea that Christ is fully God. Because I've actually heard this from Catholics who are not big fans of the penal substitutionary atonement. And they'll say, how could a father do such horrifying things to his child? Well, the Son of God is not the child of the Father. It's co. Equal with eternal God. It's one God who's three persons. So this is not divine child abuse. This is God taking the punishment for his creature's sins.

[Justin Holcomb]

We're the children.

[Michael Horton]

Yeah, we're the children here.

[Justin Holcomb]

And he's not abusing us. Correct. He's saving Us.

[Bob Hiller]

Exactly.

[Walter Strickland]

That's a very primitive critique that comes from sort of pagan practices that. Because humans kill a victim to appease this sort of distant, angry God. But scripture is very clear that this is in a. In the best possible sense, like self sacrifice.

[Michael Horton]

Yeah.

[Walter Strickland]

Christ is both judge. He's. He's priest and sacrifice, you know, but he's also like the judge. I mean, the one who created the law, that it's being appeased. And so all those things don't map over all the ways that we think about sacrifice. Those parallels anthropomorphically don't map on to what's going on with. With God.

[Bob Hiller]

I just want to. I just want to. I know you're going to move on. I just want to enjoy something that Mike was literally reading. Romans 5, you know, while we were yet sinners and enemies, Christ died for us. And it's like I never heard it before. Like, I would die for my kid. We're all dads. We would in a heartbeat die for our children. Wouldn't even think. Think about it. I know you guys, like, you love your kids. In a heartbeat for your enemy. Like, yeah, we all have enemies. I want people to think through, like, who has been, who has acted like your enemy. And the last thing I'm thinking is lay down my life for them because they already got you. Already got your pound of flesh out of me. I want justice with my enemy. I don't want mercy. But like the whole what were your enemies Is just. That's the scandal. That's the craziness is that I don't have a category for that. Like, I want revenge on my enemies. And that's. That's. That part doesn't translate because I look at that, I'm thinking, yeah, it's not just that I'm in debt. It's not just I made a mistake. That's, you know, thank you, Walter. It's not just a debt, not just a mistake. Like the offense of his holiness.

[Justin Holcomb]

Intentional, deliberate, lifelong disobedience.

[Bob Hiller]

Y. Yeah.

[Michael Horton]

Yep.

[Bob Hiller]

So.

[Michael Horton]

So, Justin, you recommended the. The Keller writing on this. Two other books I'd recommend one. J O PR Just Words. It's just. It offers you a multitude of metaphors or metaphors language that the scripture uses to describe what's going on on the cross. The other one, Speaking the Gospel Today by Robert Colb. I don't know if that one's still. That better still be published. It's great book, but it. But just different. Different ways of speaking about the cross. So that when you are Having this conversation with people, you can start to listen to them. You listen to their concerns, their fears, their anxieties, their sins. And you start to realize, hey, the cross actually does speak to that. And what Christ is doing is. Is for this very thing.

[Justin Holcomb]

I would also recommend Leon Morris's the Apostolic Preaching of the Cross.

[Michael Horton]

Tremendous book. Tremendous book, yes. Oh, all right. So let's talk about this, though. We just talked about Christ taking our place, substitutionary role. But how does that stand up to justice? How can we speak of guilt and sin legitimately being transferred from one person to another? Is that actual justice? Because I hear this pushback a lot as well, that someone else can't pay for your sins. How might we respond to something like that?

[Justin Holcomb]

Well, first of all, then you also have to get rid of original sin because someone else can't pay for someone else's sin. Then you can't have Adam's guilt. And a lot of people are perfectly happy to jettison original sin along with that. But here's the problem that we live in a very unique society. Modernity is a society unlike any pre modern culture, where you have one person, one vote. Everybody gets to decide for himself or herself what they are, who they'll be, who they'll marry, what they'll do. We're very far from the worldview, not just of the Bible, but of the whole ancient world, where if Achan sins, the whole camp of Israel receives God's judgment. There is a covenantal kind of inclusion here that you're not just, you know, Paul in Romans 5 talks about the two heads of these two covenants. Adam the head of the covenant in creation and Christ the second. Adam as the head of the covenant of grace. And you get two different things. You get original sin from one and you get righteousness from another also just for terminological reasons. It's important for people to understand because sometimes even critics who are scholars make this mistake. I won't mention names. See the righteousness of God as well. It can't pass like a gas from one person to another. Well, that's not what we're saying. We're not saying that it gets transferred like in one of those money vault trucks. What we're saying is it's not the righteousness of God that God is that is transferred to us as if God's not righteous any longer, we are. It is Christ's life of active obedience to the law that undoes first of all, the Adamic disobedience of our whole race. And my own participation in that so I really am righteous. This whole thing of justification being a legal fiction, people don't understand the doctrine, then we are righteous, truly righteous, because Christ's fulfillment of the law has been credited to us. Is crediting just in banking? Is it a completely outlandish idea? No, crediting happens in everyday life. So that's not an inherently unreasonable position. What's unreasonable to us and offensive to us is that we were that badly off that we needed a rescue operation this big.

[Narrator]

This is a production of Sola Media. This podcast is made possible by generous listeners like you. If you enjoy the show and want to help us continue this work, consider giving [e-mail] donate.

[Bob Hiller]

The Prodigal Son like, we're off slopping with pigs and we get a feast without doing penance and we get robes and we get a feast that we don't deserve. And just real quick, because I've traveled with Mike before, this is the beauty is because he's the man is always up for an experience. We were in India one time and he handed some guy in some alley 20 bucks to mail some tea. And I was like, first of all, I think it probably cost like 200 bucks to mail that box of tea and the tea. I'm like, what are you doing? Sending. What are you doing? And the man's up for an experience. And that tea showed up and he rubbed it in my face and was like, yeah, see, here we go. So I mean, I love the fact that he ran out of money when he was 20 year old, because he ran out of money when he's a 50 year old and 60 year old too.

[Justin Holcomb]

At least I'm consistent.

[Bob Hiller]

But it's fun. The best thing to do is ever travel with Mike and you will have a good time.

[Michael Horton]

So the other thing to think about here is it's not like. And I think Mike, that illustration is actually incredibly helpful. It's not like God is sitting up in heaven and he's like, I'm taking your guilt and I'm adding it over to an innocent party and they're going to suffer and you're going to be set free. God is absorbing the debt himself. He's the one who's been. His justice is the one that's been violated. He's the one who the debt is owed to and he's the one absorbing the debt. He's the one taking the punishment. So if any, if guilt is being transferred, it's onto the offended party. And he's the one saying, I'm going to Cancel the guilt by my own actions. And I'm going to do it in a manner that is utterly just, by still serving the time, still paying the penalty. So God is the offended party. And so God has the right in that situation. If we're going to play the justice game, God has the right to say, I'm going to decide how this penalty is going to be paid and I'll pay it myself so that justice is still served and my judgment is satisfied. He's not. Again, it's the same thing with the divine child abuse argument. He's not just finding this poor, innocent little Jesus who never did anything wrong and now he's going to get beat up because you were a bad guy. This is God who is offended by us, who is offended by our sin, taking it upon himself to suffer and die so that we would be set free.

[Bob Hiller]

He's not arbitrary.

[Michael Horton]

Yeah, it's not arbitrary at all.

[Bob Hiller]

It's not arbitrary. The question assumes that it has this kind of arbitrary nature. There's some innocent victim over there and it's not transferred arbitrarily. It's not like a third party thing. This is why the Incarnation matters. It says God unites himself to us in Christ. The second person of the Trinity takes on human nature. Therefore it takes on our as our representative, as fully human. And so that's the whole point, is that only a human is responsible for the debt. And so he said, watch this, I'm doing it, and then takes our judgment and does what Adam didn't do and obeys as a fully human, fully divine, but fully human. And so it's not arbitrary, it was intentional. It's the opposite of arbitrary.

[Walter Strickland]

Yeah, the identity of the substitute matters. And it's the Lawgiver himself who's rectifying the situation. So this is not a random act, but something else I think that gets that sort of grates against our contemporary sensibilities is that we've been given a representative, but we haven't been able to choose that representative because our representative is Adam. Yeah, but then. But by God's grace, there's a possibility of being redeemed by Jesus Christ. And so. But that's, that's the good news. But people are, because they don't understand the identity of the substitute is the Lawgiver himself. They're not open to the possibility of Christ rectifying the situation with the Incarnation, death, resurrection.

[Michael Horton]

Great. All right, let's go, let's pivot here and let's start talking some arguments about the resurrection. There are Some who would suggest that the initial teachings of Jesus were just kind of good Sermon on the Mount, moral kind of teachings. He was kind of radical, good little rabbi, but then the myth developed around him. Some people suggest that the Gospel of Mark is the earliest of the Gospels. That's probably debatable, but the Gospels are written within 30 to 40 years of Jesus is dying. And so that gives us plenty of time for these resurrection myths to kind of pop up as it's an oral culture. And one day Jesus was dead, and then the next day his tomb was empty. And the next thing you know, he's eating fish with. And then the next thing you know, the fish are bigger and bigger. What do we say to such arguments? How do we know that what we have is reliable documentation here of the resurrection? And why not just appeal to some other claim, like it's a legend or a mistake or an embellishment or something like that?

[Justin Holcomb]

Well, I think that the big fish story that started with Hume and long before that with others, but it's pretty good, It's a pretty, pretty good theory about how most religions get started. You know, you first of all have something that in the locality where an event happens, it's just a natural but kind of extraordinary event. And then the further it gets in time and distance from that locale, the fish gets bigger and bigger. The only problem with Christianity at this point is that the maximal claim, he is not here, he has risen, was made right after the resurrection happened, in the very vicinity where it happened. So the fish didn't get bigger, it didn't have time to get bigger. Gerd Ludemann, for example, who is not a Christian at all, but he's a skeptic. A skeptic. In fact, he says, Gezavermes, who is a Jewish scholar, these historians say that the Apostle Paul's summary creed in 1 Corinthians 15 about Jesus, death, burial and resurrection and his being seen by witnesses, that that goes back to something. Because Paul says that which I received, that it goes back to within two or three years of the crucifixion of Jesus. So there's just not time for the fish to grow.

[Bob Hiller]

This is huge. A skeptical scholar has said within one to three, maybe four years. So that is, it's cherry picking. When people say, oh well, 30, 40 years later, it's like, well, yeah, that was Mark. But the Creedal tradition of First Corinthians 15 was from the very beginning and it never had, like, I love it. It never had a chance to grow because you Already needed the bigger boat. The F was too big already.

[Walter Strickland]

Yeah, well, I mean, if we're talking about 30 or 40 years, I mean, that's an incredibly small window. I know in the contemporary moment. I know people have been making this argument for a long time, but today that does seem like an extraordinarily long time because of social media and the speed that news travels. But the reality was, if you're within 30 or 40 years, there's still eyewitnesses of the event that are alive. And so again, the fish cannot get bigger. So those eyewitnesses would have come out and shamed the gospel witnesses because they are, you know, trying to put out. Put a myth out so soon after his death.

[Justin Holcomb]

Instead, what Jews and Romans said was that the disciples stole the body or they Jesus was a sorcerer. All of that just gives light of the fact that they were acknowledging he wasn't in the tomb and all they had to do was produce a body. It's that simple. And the disciples stole the body. Doesn't really pan out because there were two guards, a Roman guard and a Jewish guard. And these guys had already kind of shown themselves to be pretty cowardly. So it's not like they're gonna come up with this seal team idea and steal Jesus body.

[Bob Hiller]

Yeah, historically, everyone is like, okay, the tomb's empty. Like, we have to start with that and figure that out. The tomb being empty is obvious for numerous reasons. James Dunn also, along with Ludemann, also puts that within a year or two or three. If you want to read more on this grab, Gary Habermas has a bunch of work on the resurrection historicity. Extra canonical, non canonical, just evidence, that kind of thing. It's a boogeyman to say, oh, 30, 40 years later when the creedal tradition that Paul received and handed on was from the very beginning.

[Justin Holcomb]

Well, and you also have to account for the fact that it was well known that there was a huge controversy in Jewish circles that spread all the way to Rome. Isn't it Pliny? No, it's not Pliny. It's Suetonius. I don't know. Roman historian who said. Who's contemporary of the events. He said around 60 AD, a great controversy broke out in the Jewish synagogue in Rome over a certain Chrestus.

[Bob Hiller]

Yep.

[Justin Holcomb]

And there is plenty of eyewitness testimony. Look at Josephus, for example. To the people mentioned, including James Jesus, Brother Josephus, the Jewish historian, writes about his funeral. So there are a lot of people right there who could have disproved all of this. They just didn't know what to do with it. And so the very fact that they gave some kind of interpretation of the empty tomb means they knew it was empty, right?

[Bob Hiller]

It was both. By the way I looked at my resurrection notes from my lectures, it was both, not one or the other. Mike, well done.

[Walter Strickland]

Oh, wow.

[Bob Hiller]

Wow.

[Walter Strickland]

So as we're talking about these accounts, these are just two basic responses that you might be able to articulate. You know, as we're talking about the resurrection accounts, especially during that time in the first century, you wouldn't make a woman the first eyewitness of the empty tomb.

[Michael Horton]

Right.

[Walter Strickland]

Why in the world would you incorporate that into a legend? Especially if you're trying to make it more historically viable? Unless it actually happened.

[Michael Horton]

Right.

[Justin Holcomb]

They had no legal standing.

[Walter Strickland]

Yeah, exactly. And then also another very simple one that's out there is that if. If the disciples knew that this was a lie, they wouldn't be martyred for it.

[Michael Horton]

The other one is you got a bunch of Jewish guys worshiping a man on Sundays all of a sudden. I mean, that seems. That seems shocking. Like, why would that start happening? Right?

[Walter Strickland]

Yeah.

[Michael Horton]

But now here's what you guys. This is all interesting and well and good, but you guys are clearly ignorant of something, and that is the dying and rising of God myth has been in all kinds of religions prior to this. This is clearly just the disciples ripping off Osiris and Dionysius and Mithras and, I don't know, all of them. Like, don't you know that this is all just pagan hooey and nonsense and that really it's just an excuse to have Easter eggs and bunnies and all that kind of stuff. So what do you say to that unassailable argument?

[Justin Holcomb]

I am with CS Lewis. It should be all the worse if it didn't. If there weren't adumbrations of dying and rising gods. Of course, that actually adds to its truth that this is the one that really happened.

[Bob Hiller]

Yeah, big idea here is similarity isn't genealogy doesn't mean that there's similarity. Therefore it borrowed dying and rising God bucket is overstated because those are cyclical myths. And even the Mithras one is a bull slaying creation motif, not a passion resurrection storyline.

[Justin Holcomb]

And Dionysus is nothing close to Jesus. Yeah, right.

[Bob Hiller]

This is a Jewish bodily death physical resurrection. And so you have to make up some of the parallels. And so the timeless myth of renewal, not a bodily for all event in history, all stuff Mike just said, we just talked about. If you want more research on this, you Want places to go. Ronald Nash has a book called the Gospel and the Greeks just completely undermines this. There's also the same thing with the incarnation. You know, there's a bunch of gods were born by virgin mothers. You're like, not really. And then Horus ruins Christmas from the Lutheran satire. And is it Ishtar ruins Easter?

[Michael Horton]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bob Hiller]

So make sure you just go to Lutheran Satire YouTube channel, and they take care of it for you pretty easily in about six minutes with cartoons.

[Justin Holcomb]

Yeah, those are good suggestions. Also, Pinchas lapid, in the 1980s, was a Jewish scholar, first of the first rank, with a lot of friends, of course, in the academy. And he really ruined their Easter because most of them were liberal Protestants, because he wrote a book called the Resurrection of A Jewish Perspective. And in that book, he says through his research, he came to believe with certainty, at least moral certainty. He said that Jesus rose from the dead. He said, far from being the story that gets bigger and bigger when it starts going into the Greek world and then it becomes part of these dying and rising myths and everything. Resurrection never meant spiritual. It was always bodily resurrection, something the Greeks hated the very idea of. He says the disciples actually stumbled over each other, competing to try to pour in the most concrete physical facts, supporting the physical character of this resurrection. He said a spiritual resurrection would have made all kinds of sense to the Greeks, but not to Jews. And when he published this, the liberals who actually are Greeks in their thinking about the resurrection, it's all spiritual. They were mortified. But he said those who wrote the New Testament were believing in Jesus in a thoroughly Jewish way. They I believe he rose from the dead in order to draw Gentiles into the faith of Israel. But I don't believe he's the Messiah because not all the dead were raised. That's interesting, but let's not tackle that one. Let's just focus on his point that the way the apostles narrate what happened and their own cowardice, it's like, I think it was Tom Wright who said, it's not just people in the 20th century who believe that when people are dead, they stay dead. That was true of the disciples. Look how long it took them to believe the report of the women at the empty tomb. And even Thomas. I won't believe until I can put my hand in your side. He's seeing him physically, standing in front of him, seeing him eat fish, but I've got to put my hand in your side. These folks were not credulous people. They weren't just, ooh, wow, let's found a new religion. They were trying to figure out what their next move was to get the heck out of Jerusalem without being crucified themselves.

[Michael Horton]

Yeah, interestingly enough, I think we can. We'll have one more question here, and I'm going to tie it into that. That comment of the general resurrection. Paul, when you read him in the book of Acts, seems to be arguing that he's only in trouble because he's preaching the resurrection. Like Jesus has begun the resurrection of the dead. He's the first one to do it. And he lays this out beautifully in First Corinthians 15, that the, the resurrection of Christ is the first fruits of really the resurrection for all of us that is to come. But I want to just ask you guys this question kind of pastorally, beyond just like evidence of the resurrection and the reality of the resurrection, why is the resurrection good news? How does it benefit me or the people in my congregation who are going through hard times, suffering, We've got death, anxiety, all kinds of anxieties around us right now. Why do we celebrate the resurrection of Christ? Why do we worship the Christ who had risen? Why is his resurrection good news for us?

[Walter Strickland]

Yeah, I think when Paul says that our faith is futile without it, I mean, he's not just being dramatic. I mean, he's being very logical. There. There's dignity in the restoration of your physical body. There's dignity in your body, I think, is what the resurrection gets at. And so as you're dealing with either chronic pain, you know, you have people who are shut ins that you're ministering to, people who are aging, people who feels like their bodies are betraying them, people who are just working through the aches and pains of this life. I mean, the resurrection is the way to say that God is actually going to do something about this. Your state right now is not what is going to be forever. And so your suffering is not meaningless. There is going to be a fixing of all this. In the tradition I come from, there has been a lean towards agnosticism that leaves the body unengaged by the gospel. And I think this is, you know, when you start to get to, you know, 1 Corinthians 15, that you really can't get beyond that. And that's, you know, get through that text without addressing these things, which, when we work through 1 Corinthians, really the whole book, there's a lot of help for people in that exegesis.

[Justin Holcomb]

As goes the first fruit, so goes the harvest.

[Bob Hiller]

Right.

[Justin Holcomb]

As goes the head, so go the members. So if Jesus ate fish, I suspect I will, too. If Jesus not just restored, but resurrected and glorified, then I'll be restored and resurrected and glorified. And that's what's so great. It's not just we're going to walk out and start living, picking up life where we left off. Oh, I got to go to Albertsons and get my meds. It's that we're going to be glorified in body and soul. We're going to be supremely happy in the Lord and desirous of his beauty and his wonder, and we're going to share in his glory. We'll be glorified, too. This weight of glory that Paul says is not even worthy of being compared to the suffering that we endure right now. And so just as his resurrection was historical and bodily, so ours will be as well. And that's a lot better than saying, you know, the sun setting is as beautiful as its rising. What? I saw that in a rest home where my dad was dying on a tapestry up on the wall. Are you serious? Are you going to insult by intelligence and my emotions that much by telling, really dying is as beautiful as welcoming a new child into the world? No, it's not. Christians can face death like Jesus did at Lazarus Tomb, wailing because we know it doesn't have the last word.

[Walter Strickland]

Yeah,

[Bob Hiller]

suffering, death and anxiety are real common parts of everyone's story. But the Resurrection says, if you're in Christ, those are real, just like death is real. It's not the last words on your story, so you don't have to deny it. But it also doesn't have the last word because something else does. Which, I mean, just the. Again, going back to, like the Lord of the Rings type of example, are all sad things going to come untrue because of the resurrection? Yes, that's the whole point. All sad things, like, they're really sad. It's not the way it's supposed to be, but they're coming untrue. This is why Romans 8, that I consider the sufferings of this world, of this present time not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to us. That's not minimizing suffering, death and anxiety. It's maximizing glory. It's not saying it's a pat on the head. I mean, Paul's not doing that to these persecuted people. Hey, don't worry about no big deal. You got heaven. He's like, no, no, no, this is horrible. But he knew. Can you imagine how wonderful the glory is? That's going to come. And it makes me think of Brothers Karamazov, the line, the brutal reality of suffering. And he says, I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up. For that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, and that it will make it not only possible to forgive, but to justify all that has happened. You write like that if you've read Revelation 21. Like the empty tomb shouts in the middle of darkness. And so the darkness is really dark. But he will wipe away every tear from their eye. Death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. For the former things have passed away. Behold, I'm making all things new. That's why the resurrection matters for reals.

[Walter Strickland]

Because of the Resurrection, you can look at somebody in the eye who struggles with anxiety, which is really the fact that you fear that you can't control the future. And you can say because of the resurrection, you know, you have assurance, you have confidence that your anxiety, that your. Yet your brokenness, your relationships, your health, scars, your. The debt that you owe is not the last word on you. And that is a fact.

[Michael Horton]

Well, he has risen.

[Justin Holcomb]

He has risen.

[Bob Hiller]

He has risen indeed.

[Michael Horton]

Hallelujah. Happy Easter.

[Narrator]

Thanks for listening to this production of Sola Media. If you enjoyed this episode, would you share it with someone you think would benefit from it? Your support helps us spread the riches of the Reformation and apply historic Christian theology to every area of life.