We can say that the story of the Resurrection means simply that the teachings of Jesus are immortal like the plays of Shakespeare or the music of Beethoven and that their wisdom and truth will live on forever. Or we can say that the Resurrection means that the spirit of Jesus is undying, that he himself lives on among us, the way that Socrates does, for instance, in the good that he left behind him, in the lives of all who follow his great example. Or we can say that the language in which the Gospels describe the Resurrection of Jesus is the language of poetry and that, as such, it is not to be taken literally but as pointing to a truth more profound than the literal. Very often, I think, this is the way that the Bible is written, and I would point to some of the stories about the birth of Jesus, for instance, as examples; but in the case of the Resurrection, this simply does not apply because there really is no story about the Resurrection in the New Testament. Except in the most fragmentary way, it is not described at all. There is no poetry about it. Instead, it is simply proclaimed as a fact. Christ is risen! In fact, the very existence of the New Testament itself proclaims it. Unless something very real indeed took place on that strange, confused morning, there would be no New Testament, no Church, no Christianity.

Yet we try to reduce it to poetry anyway: the coming of spring with the return of life to the dead earth, the rebirth of hope in the despairing soul. We try to suggest that these are the miracles that the Resurrection is all about, but they are not. In their way they are all miracles, but they are not this miracle, this central one to which the whole Christian faith points.

Unlike the chief priests and the Pharisees, who tried with soldiers and a great stone to make themselves as secure as they could against the terrible possibility of Christ’s really rising again from the dead, we are considerably more subtle. We tend in our age to say, “Of course, it was bound to happen. Nothing could stop it.” But when we are pressed to say what it was that actually did happen, what we are apt to come out with is something pretty meager: this “miracle” of truth that never dies, the “miracle” of a life so beautiful that two thousand years have left the memory of it undimmed, the “miracle” of doubt turning into faith, fear into hope. If I believed that this or something like this was all that the Resurrection meant, then I would turn in my certificate of ordination and take up some other profession. Or at least I hope that I would have the courage to.

–Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace (New York: Seabury Press, 1970)

Everyone is welcome to attend ‘Alleluia! Christ is Risen: An Easter Carol Service’, taking place 28 April.

📅28 April 2024, 17:00. No booking required.

📷: Martin Cook pic.twitter.com/7nQM5a7JSO

— Salisbury Cathedral (@SalisburyCath) April 25, 2024

If there’s anything Catholics in the United States should have learned over the past two decades, it’s that order—in the world, the republic, and the Church—is a fragile thing. And by “order,” I don’t mean the same old same old. Rather, I mean the dynamic development of world politics, our national life, and the Church within stable reference points that guide us into the future.

Many of those reference points seem to have come unstuck, and that’s why we’re experiencing an unusual amount of air turbulence these days….Those who don’t remember the two decades immediately after Vatican II and haven’t taken the trouble to learn that history are understandably upset by the fragility of order in the Church today. But they should also understand that this is not 1968, or 1978, or even 1988, and that a lot of ballast was put into the Barque of Peter during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. For all the challenges it faces, and despite the determination of some to revisit what they regard as the glorious Seventies, the Church in the U.S. is in far, far better condition to withstand the air turbulence of the moment than it was forty years ago. And that’s because truth, spoken winsomely and in charity, but without fudging, has proven a powerful instrument of evangelization and spiritual growth in a culture wallowing in various confusions.

At the bottom of the bottom line is the Resurrection. It’s entirely possible to hold fast to the truth that Jesus of Nazareth was raised by God to a new form of bodily life after his crucifixion and be deeply concerned about the state of the Church today. But it’s not possible to know the Risen Lord and to indulge in despair. Despair died on the cross and unshakeable hope was born at Easter. That’s why Easter faith is the surest anchor for all of us in turbulent times.

Read it all.

Our picture of the month for March is 'Noli me Tangere' by Titian. It captures the moment on Easter morning when Mary Magdalene meets the risen Christ. Find out more here: https://t.co/jgUxvEaCWG pic.twitter.com/3n23UTGoT5

— National Gallery (@NationalGallery) March 2, 2018

I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the first Easter Sunday. And I do not see that as any sort of parable or metaphor. This is, frankly, the very heart of my faith. Also, I do not believe that we can or should reduce the great mystery of the resurrection to an experience that occurred within the community. This is what some contemporary theologians have posited: that Christ “rose” within the community. Theological approaches differ, but, in essence, some theologians offer the story of how, as the disciples came to reflect on the life and death of Jesus Christ, he became “present” to them in a new way, through the Spirit. This, in turn, empowered them to proclaim the good news of his Gospel. Some theologians offer this as a more credible or contemporary way of understanding the “resurrection.”

But there is a problem with this idea of the resurrection as the after-effects of a “shared memory.” Certainly, after the resurrection and the ascension the disciples would have “remembered” Jesus, and certainly they may have had powerful Spirit-filled experiences as they did so, often as they gathered in community. But, to my mind, only something as vivid, dramatic and, in a word, real as the multiple appearances by the risen Christ could have moved the disciples from abject fear (cowering behind closed doors) to being willing to give their lives for Jesus. Nothing else can credibly account for the transformation of terrified disciples into willing martyrs.

Moreover, for the disciples to have somehow found a body in the tomb would indeed mean that Jesus did not rise from the dead, which would negate the message of Easter. The tomb, as the Easter narratives recount, was empty—something that initially filled the disciples with fear and confusion.

Read it all.

Alleluia – Christ is Risen pic.twitter.com/d8zVc3fAMZ

— Rochester Cathedral (@RochesterCathed) March 31, 2024

…particularly when we look at the disciples, the watered-down resurrection doesn’t seem credible at all. Remember that the Gospel of John (whose author had little to gain by making the disciples, future leaders of the early church, look bad) notes that the disciples were so frightened that they barricaded themselves behind locked doors after Jesus’s death. They had good reason to be. “If the authorities dealt that way with Jesus, who had so many people supporting him,” they must have thought, “what will they do to us?” Even before the crucifixion Peter shrank in fear from being identified as a follower of Jesus. Imagine how their fear would have intensified after witnessing the Romans’ brutal execution of their master.

With one exception, all of Jesus’s male followers were so terrified that they shrank from standing at the foot of the cross, unable to accompany Jesus during his final hours. Their reluctance may have stemmed from an inability to watch the agonizing death of their friend, but much was out of fear of being identified as a follower of an enemy of Rome. (The women, showed no such fear, though the situation may have posed less danger for them.)

The disciples were terrified. So does it seem credible that something as simple as sitting around and remembering Jesus would snap them out of their abject fear? Not to me. Something incontrovertible, something undeniable, something visible, something tangible, was necessary to transform them from fearful to fearless.

This is one of the most compelling “proofs” of the Resurrection.

Read it all.

Doubting Thomas places his fingers in Christ's wound.

BnF MS 1186; Psalter of St Louis & Blanche de Castille; 13th century; f.26r @GallicaBnF pic.twitter.com/sFUramB7Ol

— Ennius (@red_loeb) April 7, 2024

This remarkable and deliberate recording of the first Christians’ incomprehension of what they insisted was the irreducible bottom line of their faith teaches us two things. First, it tells us that the early Christians were confident enough about what they called the Resurrection that (to borrow from Prof. Wright) they were prepared to say something like, “I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s what happened.” And the second thing it tells us is that it took time for the first Christians to figure out what the events of Easter meant—not only for Jesus but for themselves. As they worked that out, their thinking about a lot of things changed profoundly, as Prof. Wright and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI help us to understand in their biblical commentaries.

The way they thought about time and history changed. During Jesus’ public ministry, many of his followers shared in the Jewish messianic expectations of the time: God would soon work something grand for his people in Israel, liberating them from their oppressors and bringing about a new age in which (as Isaiah had prophesied) the nations would stream to the mountain of the Lord and history would end. The early Christians came to understand that the cataclysmic, world-redeeming act that God had promised had taken place at Easter. God’s Kingdom had come not at the end of time but within time—and that had changed the texture of both time and history. History continued, but those shaped by the Easter Effect became the people who knew how history was going to turn out. Because of that, they could live differently. The Easter Effect impelled them to bring a new standard of equality into the world and to embrace death as martyrs if necessary—because they knew, now, that death did not have the final word in the human story.

The way they thought about “resurrection” changed. Pious Jews taught by the reforming Pharisees of Jesus’ time believed in the resurrection of the dead. Easter taught the first Christians, who were all pious Jews, that this resurrection was not the resuscitation of a corpse, nor did it involve the decomposition of a corpse. Jesus’ tomb was empty, but the Risen Lord appeared to his disciples in a transformed body. Those who first experienced the Easter Effect would not have put it in these terms, but as their understanding of what had happened to Jesus and to themselves grew, they grasped that (as Benedict XVI put it in “Jesus of Nazareth–Holy Week”) there had been an “evolutionary leap” in the human condition. A new way of being had been encountered in the manifestly human but utterly different life of the one they met as the Risen Lord. That insight radically changed all those who embraced it.

Read it all.

"Alleluia, alleluia. Christ is risen, who made all things; he has shown mercy on all people. Alleluia, alleluia."

The Resurrection, by Piero della Francesca. pic.twitter.com/6d4oO3WiXb

— Christian Culture (@Christian8Pics) April 14, 2018

Jesus of Nazareth was certainly dead by the Friday evening; Roman soldiers were professional killers and wouldn’t have allowed a not-quite-dead rebel leader to stay that way for long. When the first Christians told the story of what happened next, they were not saying: “I think he’s still with us in a spiritual sense” or “I think he’s gone to heaven”. All these have been suggested by people who have lost their historical and theological nerve.

The historian must explain why Christianity got going in the first place, why it hailed Jesus as Messiah despite His execution (He hadn’t defeated the pagans, or rebuilt the Temple, or brought justice and peace to the world, all of which a Messiah should have done), and why the early Christian movement took the shape that it did. The only explanation that will fit the evidence is the one the early Christians insisted upon – He really had been raised from the dead. His body was not just reanimated. It was transformed, so that it was no longer subject to sickness and death.

Let’s be clear: the stories are not about someone coming back into the present mode of life. They are about someone going on into a new sort of existence, still emphatically bodily, if anything, more so. When St Paul speaks of a “spiritual” resurrection body, he doesn’t mean “non-material”, like a ghost. “Spiritual” is the sort of Greek word that tells you,not what something is made of, but what is animating it. The risen Jesus had a physical body animated by God’s life-giving Spirit. Yes, says St Paul, that same Spirit is at work in us, and will have the same effect – and in the whole world.

Read it all.

The resurrection of Christ, year 1700 by Noël Coypel University of Oxford, Ashmolean Museum The resurrection of Jesus is the central tenet of Christian faith and theology and part of the Nicene Creed: "On the third day he was raised according to the Scriptures." #art @lbchicago17 pic.twitter.com/l2pCrWDmWi

— Miguel Calabria (@MiguelCalabria3) April 17, 2022

“The compelling evidence for me is the unanimous testimony of all the apostles and even a former persecutor like St. Paul,” said Brant Pitre, assistant professor of theology at Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans. “There was no debate in the first century over whether Jesus was resurrected or not.”

Scholars say that the witnesses to Christ’s resurrection are compelling for a variety of reasons.

“People will seldom die even for what they know to be true. Twelve men don’t give up their lives for a lie,” said Ray, who recently returned from France, where he was filming his “Footprints of God” series at the amphitheater in Lyon, the site of a persecution in A.D. 177. “The martyrs of Lyon underwent two days of torture and all they would say is, ‘I am a Christian.’ They knew the resurrection was true and didn’t question it.”

Barber also highlighted the diversity of sources and how they include different details as well as passages that do not paint the disciples in the best light.

“In the Road to Emmaus story, they write that they didn’t recognize him,” said Barber. “Our Biblical accounts are our best evidence.”

Several of the scholars pointed to 1 Corinthians, where Paul states that Christ appeared to 500 people.

“Some want to shy away from the Gospels because they say they were written later,” explained Barber. “If you want to believe that they were written later, then why wouldn’t the Gospels have made use of this piece of evidence from 1 Corinthians?” asked Barber.

Read it all.

Raphael, The Resurrection of Christhttps://t.co/CfS6v2PBIV
Raphael vs. Michelangelo
“Raphael obeys all of the ‘rules’ with perfection. By contrast Michelangelo is the eccentric genius.”

Who was Raphael

The Resurrection is the only work of Raphael in the Southern Hemisphere,… pic.twitter.com/Me3xjjaWGd

— Karim Emile Bitar (@karimbitar) March 31, 2024

We believe Christ’s resurrection can be proved with at least as much certainty as any universally believed and well-documented event in ancient history. To prove this, we do not need to presuppose anything controversial (e.g. that miracles happen). But the skeptic must also not presuppose anything (e.g. that they do not). We do not need to presuppose that the New Testament is infallible, or divinely inspired or even true. We do not need to presuppose that there really was an empty tomb or post-resurrection appearances, as recorded. We need to presuppose only two things, both of which are hard data, empirical data, which no one denies: The existence of the New Testament texts as we have them, and the existence (but not necessarily the truth) of the Christian religion as we find it today.

The question is this: Which theory about what really happened in Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday can account for the data?

There are five possible theories: Christianity, hallucination, myth, conspiracy and swoon.

1. Jesus died. Jesus rose. [ Christianity ]

2. Jesus died. Jesus didn’t rise—apostles deceived. [Hallucination]

3. Jesus died. Jesus didn’t rise—apostles myth-makers [ Myth ]

4. Jesus died. Jesus didn’t rise—apostles deceivers [ Conspiracy ]

5. Jesus didn’t die. [ Swoon ]

Read it all.

A joyous #Easter! He is risen. “Resurrection of Christ” by Caravaggio, 1620 pic.twitter.com/BuFU53pOcX

— Justine Brown's Bookshelf (@brown_bookshelf) March 31, 2024

In the events of the first Easter – the question was the same. Everyone knew that Jesus lived a remarkable life and was cruelly executed. But could they trust what they were being told – that he had risen from the dead?

There was no live streaming, no social media influencers. But there were eyewitnesses. The Bible tells the events of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Hundreds of people saw the risen Jesus, spoke to him, and even ate with him.

Two thousand years after the first Easter we are still faced with the question – is Jesus alive and can we trust him with our lives? His offer of forgiveness and new life is worthless if we can’t and priceless if it is true.

Read it all.

The Resurrection of Christ, by Italian painter Tintoretto (1519–1594). This composition was originally shaped as an octagon but was altered in the 1600s. It was intended to hand high, possibly in a corner of a carved and gilded wooden ceiling. #Easter #EasterSunday pic.twitter.com/lBd1QgYzlM

— Ashmolean Museum (@AshmoleanMuseum) April 21, 2019

Found courtesy of Alan Jacobs there:

What inclines even me to believe in Christ’s Resurrection? It is as though I play with the thought. — If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like any other man. He is dead and decomposed. In that case he is a teacher like any other and can no longer help; and once more we are orphaned and alone. So we have to content ourselves with wisdom and speculation. We are in a sort of hell where we can do nothing but dream, roofed in, as it were, and cut off from heaven. But if I am to be REALLY saved, — what I need is certainty — not wisdom, dreams of speculation — and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what is needed by my heart, my soul, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind. Perhaps we can say: Only love can believe the Resurrection. Or: It is love that believes the Resurrection. We might say: Redeeming love believes even in the Resurrection; holds fast even to the Resurrection. What combats doubt is, as it were, redemption.

Happy Easter from Lovers of Jesus church in Ghana 🇬🇭 where we danced and we danced and we danced 🕺🏿💃🏿 #Easter2024 pic.twitter.com/8QmZCWFC8j

— Mike Royal (@_mikeroyal) April 1, 2024

Professor Alister McGrath is one of the foremost theologians of his generation and also a very considerable scientist. Latterly, he has devoted much of his immense wisdom and energy to apologetics, having been President of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics from 2006 until 2013. This book is essentially a considerably reworked edition of lectures given to student audiences during that time.

Not only is the author extremely erudite: he also has an exceptional gift for clear communication, which makes him a brilliant apologist. His accessible style, evident throughout this volume, makes the book an ideal introduction to Christian apologetics. It succeeds, with flying colours, in the aim articulated in the title.

One very unfortunate problem about apologetics is that many intelligent Christians would not even know what it was. With characteristic clarity, the author explains that apologetics aims “to establish the plausibility of the proclamation of the salvation of Christ”, clearing the ground for evangelism.

Read it all.

In the books section this week, @BishopWorcester reviews Christian Apologetics: An introduction by Alister E. McGrath https://t.co/tnNahIgYsG

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 23, 2024

..[Jesus of Nazareth] was not a kind of demon pretending to be human; he was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be “like God”–he was God.

Now, this is not just a pious commonplace: it is not a commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death he [God] had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.

—Creed or Chaos? (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,1949), page 4 (with special thanks to blog reader and friend WW)

Today's pick: Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn: The Holy Family with Angels https://t.co/nLizVvCuFK pic.twitter.com/Ii15mIg8gN

— Art and the Bible (@artbible) January 1, 2024

One is very often asked at present whether we could not have a Christianity stripped, or, as people who asked it say, ‘freed’ from its miraculous elements, a Christianity with the miraculous elements suppressed. Now, it seems to me that precisely the one religion in the world, or, at least the only one I know, with which you could not do that is Christianity. In a religion like Buddhism, if you took away the miracles attributed to Gautama Buddha in some very late sources, there would be no loss; in fact, the religion would get on very much better without them because in that case the miracles largely contradict the teaching. Or even in the case of a religion like Mohammedanism, nothing essential would be altered if you took away the miracles. You could have a great prophet preaching his dogmas without bringing in any miracles; they are only in the nature of a digression, or illuminated capitals. But you cannot possibly do that with Christianity, because the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there nothing specifically Christian left. There may be many admirable human things which Christianity shares with all other systems in the world, but there would be nothing specifically Christian. Conversely, once you have accepted that, then you will see that all other well-established Christian miracles–because, of course, there are ill-established Christian miracles; there are Christian legends just as much as there are heathen legends, or modern journalistic legends–you will see that all the well-established Christian miracles are part of it, that they all either prepare for, or exhibit, or result from the Incarnation. Just as every natural event exhibits the total character of the natural universe at a particular point and space of time; so every miracle exhibits the character of the Incarnation. Now, if one asks whether that central grand miracle in Christianity is itself probable or improbable, of course, quite clearly you cannot be applying Hume’s kind of probability. You cannot mean a probability based on statistics according to which the more often a thing has happened, the more likely it is to happen again (the more often you get indigestion from eating a certain food, the more probable it is, if you eat it again, that you again have indigestion). Certainly the Incarnation cannot be probable in that sense. It is of its very nature to have happened only once. But then it is of the very nature of the history of this world to have happened only once; and if the Incarnation happened at all, it is the central chapter of that history. It is improbable in the same way in which the whole of nature is improbable, because it is only there once, and will happen only once.

–C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Today's art: The Adoration of the Shepherds – Hugo van der Goes https://t.co/4qNPRSKb3d pic.twitter.com/zCZyQGHwZn

— Art and the Bible (@artbible) December 28, 2022

Nor do the young readers realise how much they are being taught about Christianity, for God and Jesus are never mentioned, yet the books are suffused with Lewis’s theology; and Aslan, the Lion, is an alternative incarnation which teaches more about the incarnation than a lifetime of Sunday-school lessons.

Perhaps Lewis’s single greatest legacy is to be found at the very end of the seventh of the Narnia books, The Last Battle. Like no one else, he was able to write about heaven in a way that fills the reader with longing and a conviction that, yes, the unimaginable splendour must be something like this:

“And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and so beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.

“But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now, at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Read it all.

'My Dear Lucy, I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start… pic.twitter.com/TouRLEwJ8i

— Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk) November 29, 2023

Pascal was fascinated by our capacity to distract ourselves from the bigger questions of life and death. Is there a God? Who am I? Which religion is true, if any of them? What happens after our brief lives are over? If we are a tiny speck of life on a tiny insignificant planet within the vast expanses of space that were beginning to be discovered at the time, what possible significance can we have? How do you explain the monstrous contradiction of human beings who have the capacity for compassion, understanding and greatness and yet also for cruelty, bestiality and shame?

These are all big questions on which our eternal destiny depends, and so should occupy our minds day and night, and yet we have a remarkable capacity to distract ourselves from thinking about them. Silence and inactivity are unbearable to us and so we fill our time with (in his day) hunting, cards, conversation, tennis. As he put it, “the sole cause of a man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” He would have marvelled at our age with Twitter, TikTok, 24-hour TV and the myriad ways we find to divert ourselves during the most fantastically distracted age there has ever been.

And so Pascal tries to unsettle his reader, trying to stir up the instinct to consider deeper questions. Yet he still knows that even when we do start thinking about these things, we get muddled. Is there a God? Religious people say Yes; Atheists say No. Pascal knows enough of science to know that it is not capable of adjudicating on such questions, that evidence of miracles or biblical prophecies are ambiguous, and certainty is impossible to find. So what do you do when you’re intrigued by religion but there isn’t enough evidence to push you across the line to be a Christian? When one moment you’re convinced God is real, but the next you doubt the whole thing?

Maybe you give up on it – get back to scrolling through TikTok videos, watching the football on TV, musing over Harry and Meghan? Yet Pascal says you can’t just do that.

Read it all.

Today would have been the 400th birthday of the genius that was Blaise Pascal. Here is my take on why you need to read him and how he helps us locate happiness. https://t.co/HjcCMEBpbe

— Graham Tomlin (@gtomlin) June 19, 2023

A second paradox: Keller was a popular pastor who was allergic to the celebrity he attracted. His books, such as “The Prodigal God” and “The Meaning of Marriage,” among many others, have sold millions of copies. But he was enigmatic and avoided the spotlight. An editor of the Christian magazine World once quipped that he could organize an interview with Keller “as easily as I can set one up with Vladimir Putin.”

Keller “was not that great showman preacher,” says Collin Hansen, editor of the Gospel Coalition, a network of Presbyterian and Reformed churches. He was introverted and cerebral in a way that Billy Graham, for all his strengths, never was. But Keller’s “sense of irony,” his “professorial approach,” appealed to New Yorkers.

Keller insisted that Christian evangelism be winsome, which made him polarizing—perhaps the third paradox. “I fear that anxious evangelicals hope that if they can just be grace-centered enough” and “serve the community, and make clear that they are not Republicans, then unbelievers will turn to Christ,” Kevin DeYoung, a fellow Reformed pastor, recently wrote of Keller’s bent.

It’s a fair point. Keller warned that Christians shouldn’t be politically monolithic. He worried about American evangelicalism’s association with the political right. But there is also the risk, which Keller realized, that Christian believers become entangled with the obsessions of the political left: sexual identity, racial grievance, Marxian redistributionism and so on. Progressive Christianity is the mirror image of the moral majoritarianism of the 1980s, and it will end no better for the church’s public witness.

Read it all.

Timothy J. Keller, pastor, theologian, student of beauty. A valedictory for the single most formative influence of my early adult life. https://t.co/oeYnzIYT9S

— Kate Bachelder Odell (@katebachwsj) May 24, 2023

Timothy Keller, an evangelical minister who started a thriving church in New York City and cultivated a national following with a theology that separated faith from party politics and centered his vision of conservative Christianity in the hubbub of modern life, died May 19 at his home in New York. He was 72.

His death was announced in an email by Redeemer Churches and Ministries, a network of organizations established by Dr. Keller. He was diagnosed in 2020 with pancreatic cancer and had previously been treated for thyroid cancer.

Dr. Keller spent nearly three decades as pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, a congregation he founded in 1989.

Unlike the leaders of many evangelical megachurches, he did not employ Jumbotrons or pop music in his services. He adhered to traditional liturgy and music while peppering his sermons with references to Saint Augustine and ancient Greek, Flannery O’Connor and Woody Allen, J.R.R. Tolkien and “Star Wars.”

Read it all.

Timothy Keller, an evangelical minister who cultivated a national following with a theology that separated faith from party politics and centered his vision of conservative Christianity in the hubbub of modern life, died May 19 in New York. He was 72.https://t.co/3V1q5gtPfi

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 19, 2023

I’m a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, and I believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. So do dozens of my colleagues. How can this be?….

Today’s widespread materialist view that events contrary to the laws of science just can’t happen is a metaphysical doctrine, not a scientific fact. What’s more, the doctrine that the laws of nature are “inviolable” is not necessary for science to function. Science offers natural explanations of natural events. It has no power or need to assert that only natural events happen.

So if science is not able to adjudicate whether Jesus’ resurrection happened or not, are we completely unable to assess the plausibility of the claim? No. Contrary to increasingly popular opinion, science is not our only means for accessing truth. In the case of Jesus’ resurrection, we must consider the historical evidence, and the historical evidence for the resurrection is as good as for almost any event of ancient history. The extraordinary character of the event, and its significance, provide a unique context, and ancient history is necessarily hard to establish. But a bare presumption that science has shown the resurrection to be impossible is an intellectual cop-out. Science shows no such thing.

Hypothesis 3: I was brainwashed as a child. If you’ve read this far and you are still wondering how an MIT professor could seriously believe in the resurrection, you might guess I was brainwashed to believe it as a child. But no, I did not grow up in a home where I was taught to believe in the resurrection. I came to faith in Jesus when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge University and was baptized in the chapel of Kings College on my 20th birthday. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are as compelling to me now as then.

Read it all.

In a state of alarm and fright,they thought they were seeing a ghost.But he said,’Why are you so agitated,and why are these doubts rising in your hearts?Look at my hands and feet;yes,it is I indeed.Touch me and see for yourselves;a ghost has no flesh& bones as you can see I have. pic.twitter.com/fQrnw2yJPj

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 25, 2019

We believe Christ’s resurrection can be proved with at least as much certainty as any universally believed and well-documented event in ancient history. To prove this, we do not need to presuppose anything controversial (e.g. that miracles happen). But the skeptic must also not presuppose anything (e.g. that they do not). We do not need to presuppose that the New Testament is infallible, or divinely inspired or even true. We do not need to presuppose that there really was an empty tomb or post-resurrection appearances, as recorded. We need to presuppose only two things, both of which are hard data, empirical data, which no one denies: The existence of the New Testament texts as we have them, and the existence (but not necessarily the truth) of the Christian religion as we find it today.

The question is this: Which theory about what really happened in Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday can account for the data?

There are five possible theories: Christianity, hallucination, myth, conspiracy and swoon.

1. Jesus died. Jesus rose. [ Christianity ]

2. Jesus died. Jesus didn’t rise—apostles deceived. [Hallucination]

3. Jesus died. Jesus didn’t rise—apostles myth-makers [ Myth ]

4. Jesus died. Jesus didn’t rise—apostles deceivers [ Conspiracy ]

5. Jesus didn’t die. [ Swoon ]

Read it all.

THE SUPPER AT EMMAUS, Caravaggio, 1601 – National Gallery, London
The wine is not mentioned in The Bible, probaby because Christ’s blessing of the bread was enough for the disciples to recognise him. The risen Christ once again performs the Eucharist before the Emmaus pilgrims. pic.twitter.com/bbId6mRSmu

— The Virtual Wine Museum – Le Musée Virtuel du Vin (@VIRTWINEMUSEUM) April 17, 2022

“The compelling evidence for me is the unanimous testimony of all the apostles and even a former persecutor like St. Paul,” said Brant Pitre, assistant professor of theology at Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans. “There was no debate in the first century over whether Jesus was resurrected or not.”

Scholars say that the witnesses to Christ’s resurrection are compelling for a variety of reasons.

“People will seldom die even for what they know to be true. Twelve men don’t give up their lives for a lie,” said Ray, who recently returned from France, where he was filming his “Footprints of God” series at the amphitheater in Lyon, the site of a persecution in A.D. 177. “The martyrs of Lyon underwent two days of torture and all they would say is, ‘I am a Christian.’ They knew the resurrection was true and didn’t question it.”

Barber also highlighted the diversity of sources and how they include different details as well as passages that do not paint the disciples in the best light.

“In the Road to Emmaus story, they write that they didn’t recognize him,” said Barber. “Our Biblical accounts are our best evidence.”

Several of the scholars pointed to 1 Corinthians, where Paul states that Christ appeared to 500 people.

“Some want to shy away from the Gospels because they say they were written later,” explained Barber. “If you want to believe that they were written later, then why wouldn’t the Gospels have made use of this piece of evidence from 1 Corinthians?” asked Barber.

Read it all.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
***
Rubens, ‘The Resurrection of Christ’ (1611-12) pic.twitter.com/QWwPhA23uU

— Bernard T. Joy (@bernardtjoy) April 9, 2023

After a six-year hiatus, Mere Anglicanism returned to Charleston, January 26–28, 2023. The conference theme, “Telling a More Beautiful Story: Lessons from C.S. Lewis on Reaching a
Fractured World,” was addressed by world-class theologians and Lewis scholars who presented in person for the conference.

These session presenters generously shared their knowledge and
insights:

• The Rev. Dr. Alister McGrath,Andreas Idreos Professor of Science & Religion, University of Oxford

• The Rev. Dr. Michael Ward, Member of the Faculty of Theology & Religion, University of Oxford

• Dr. Philip Ryken, President of Wheaton College

• Dr. Simon Horobin, Professor, Magdalen College Oxford

• Dr. Amy Orr-Ewing, Director, Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics

• Dr. Peter Kreeft, Professor Emeritus, Boston College

• Dr. Jerry Root, Professor Emeritus, Wheaton College

Read it all (page 9).

Mere Anglicanism: The Holy Eucharist ~ January 27, 2023https://t.co/83vGVj8j1M pic.twitter.com/aC4IGxlvIC

— . (@anglican_net) February 1, 2023

Ultimately, it’s Jesus who makes me happy. But also chocolate and coffee, and being outdoors.
I love being outside and away from man-made noise; so my favourite sounds are the breeze, and birds singing, and of the natural world.
Jesus gives me hope for the future, especially as we look in disbelief at the recent earthquake. Jesus promises to be with us, even if our worst nightmares come true. Even though this world is so broken, he has overcome the sources of evil on the cross. We live with the presence of all those things, but one day everything will be made new — the new heaven and the new earth — an existence every bit physical as it is spiritual.
I pray most for more of God’s Kingdom to come to earth, at home, at church, in our city, and across the UK. We have a part to play in that: seeing God’s work done on earth, helping people in distress, and developing technologies that prevent or alleviate suffering, such as vaccines and medical treatment.
Economics and politics also play a part, for example, in the fight for human rights, an inherently Judaeo-Christian concept. We have things to do now that point to that future.

Read it all.

'Every time a tragedy strikes, we are reminded that intellectual answers alone are not enough'

Interview with @SharonDirckx, author of Broken Planet: If There's a God, Then Why Are There Natural Disasters and Diseases? ➡️https://t.co/208LJcGR5s

— IVP Books UK (@IVPbookcentre) February 20, 2023

When Tim Keller arrived in New York City in 1989 to plant Redeemer Presbyterian Church, about 30 percent of Manhattan residents claimed no religion.

In 2023, about 26 percent of people in Indiana identify with no particular religion. The numbers are around the same or higher in states across the US—Nevada and New York, Colorado and Wisconsin.

The country’s disaffiliation and apathy to faith underscores the urgent need for cultural apologetics, according to Collin Hansen, editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition (TGC) and executive director of its new initiative named for TGC cofounder Tim Keller.

The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, which launched last week, isn’t out to replicate the 72-year-old pastor but to equip leaders to also think deeply about how to present the gospel to the post-Christian context they find themselves in.

“This is not about teaching everyone to think what Tim Keller thinks, but this is about helping people to think the way he learned to think about his culture and applying that to our own day,” said Hansen.

Read it all.

CT spoke with executive director @collinhansen about moral credibility in apologetics and how the new Keller Center can strengthen the witness of the church.https://t.co/YKfZEnOi3F

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) February 15, 2023

You may read more all about it there.

Peter Kreeft presenting this morning at Mere Anglicanism on C.S. Lewis as prophet. He lists Lewis’ Abolition of Man as one of the greatest books of the 20th Century, appealing to moral choice. #anglican pic.twitter.com/rR5MuiYzRy

— Jeff Walton (@jeffreyhwalton) January 27, 2023

One is very often asked at present whether we could not have a Christianity stripped, or, as people who asked it say, ‘freed’ from its miraculous elements, a Christianity with the miraculous elements suppressed. Now, it seems to me that precisely the one religion in the world, or, at least the only one I know, with which you could not do that is Christianity. In a religion like Buddhism, if you took away the miracles attributed to Gautama Buddha in some very late sources, there would be no loss; in fact, the religion would get on very much better without them because in that case the miracles largely contradict the teaching. Or even in the case of a religion like Mohammedanism, nothing essential would be altered if you took away the miracles. You could have a great prophet preaching his dogmas without bringing in any miracles; they are only in the nature of a digression, or illuminated capitals. But you cannot possibly do that with Christianity, because the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there nothing specifically Christian left. There may be many admirable human things which Christianity shares with all other systems in the world, but there would be nothing specifically Christian. Conversely, once you have accepted that, then you will see that all other well-established Christian miracles–because, of course, there are ill-established Christian miracles; there are Christian legends just as much as there are heathen legends, or modern journalistic legends–you will see that all the well-established Christian miracles are part of it, that they all either prepare for, or exhibit, or result from the Incarnation. Just as every natural event exhibits the total character of the natural universe at a particular point and space of time; so every miracle exhibits the character of the Incarnation. Now, if one asks whether that central grand miracle in Christianity is itself probable or improbable, of course, quite clearly you cannot be applying Hume’s kind of probability. You cannot mean a probability based on statistics according to which the more often a thing has happened, the more likely it is to happen again (the more often you get indigestion from eating a certain food, the more probable it is, if you eat it again, that you again have indigestion). Certainly the Incarnation cannot be probable in that sense. It is of its very nature to have happened only once. But then it is of the very nature of the history of this world to have happened only once; and if the Incarnation happened at all, it is the central chapter of that history. It is improbable in the same way in which the whole of nature is improbable, because it is only there once, and will happen only once.

–C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Today's art: The Adoration of the Shepherds – Hugo van der Goes https://t.co/4qNPRSKb3d pic.twitter.com/zCZyQGHwZn

— Art and the Bible (@artbible) December 28, 2022

Incarnate God, who didst grant the grace of eloquence unto thy servant Dorothy to defend thy truth unto a distressed church, and to proclaim the importance of Christian principles for the world; grant unto us thy same grace that, aided by her prayers and example, we too may have the passionate conviction to teach right doctrine and to teach doctrine rightly; We ask this in thy name, who livest and reignest with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever.

"It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness."— Dorothy Sayers

Why is it that so many Catholic, including quite a few priests and bishops, don't understand and believe in 2022 what an Anglican lay woman understood and explained so well in 1938? https://t.co/k728wYZGun pic.twitter.com/j0Ri0HsrHs

— Carl E. Olson (@carleolson) November 11, 2022

I once found myself working closely, in a cathedral fundraising campaign, with a local millionaire. He was a self-made man. When I met him he was in his 60s, at the top of his game as a businessman, and was chairing our Board of Trustees. To me, coming from the academic world, he was a nightmare to work with.

He never thought in (what seemed to me) straight lines; he would leap from one conversation to another; he would suddenly break into a discussion and ask what seemed a totally unrelated question. But after a while I learned to say to myself: Well, it must work, or he wouldn’t be where he is. And that was right. We raised the money. We probably wouldn’t have done it if I’d been running the Trust my own way.

I have something of the same feeling on re-reading C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. I owe Lewis a great debt. In my late teens and early twenties I read everything of his I could get my hands on, and read some of his paperbacks and essays several times over. There are sentences, and some whole passages, I know pretty much by heart.

Millions around the world have been introduced to, and nurtured within, the Christian faith through his work where their own preachers and teachers were not giving them what they needed. That was certainly true of me.

Read it all.

On this day November 22nd in 1963 one of the most inspiring writers that has shaped the way I view the world passed away

I remember him on this day#CSLewis pic.twitter.com/Puopbd59nX

— Darren Redmond (@RedmondsRoom) November 22, 2022

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

–C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (Harcourt Brace, 1956), p.228

For CS Lewis:
O God of searing truth and surpassing beauty, we give thee thanks for Clive Staples Lewis whose sanctified imagination lighteth fires of faith in young and old alike; Surprise us also with thy joy and draw us into that new and abundant life… pic.twitter.com/0l5fifLFgE

— Dave Langille (@cdnusboy) November 22, 2022

O God of searing truth and surpassing beauty, we give thee thanks for Clive Staples Lewis whose sanctified imagination lighteth fires of faith in young and old alike; Surprise us also with thy joy and draw us into that new and abundant life which is ours in Christ Jesus, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

22 November 1963: Author and academic, Clive Staples (CS) Lewis, died. (aged 64). He’s best known for his works of fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy. pic.twitter.com/fvcwpHIHV4

— Prof. Frank McDonough (@FXMC1957) November 22, 2022

“The compelling evidence for me is the unanimous testimony of all the apostles and even a former persecutor like St. Paul,” said Brant Pitre, assistant professor of theology at Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans. “There was no debate in the first century over whether Jesus was resurrected or not.”

Scholars say that the witnesses to Christ’s resurrection are compelling for a variety of reasons.

“People will seldom die even for what they know to be true. Twelve men don’t give up their lives for a lie,” said Ray, who recently returned from France, where he was filming his “Footprints of God” series at the amphitheater in Lyon, the site of a persecution in A.D. 177. “The martyrs of Lyon underwent two days of torture and all they would say is, ‘I am a Christian.’ They knew the resurrection was true and didn’t question it.”

Barber also highlighted the diversity of sources and how they include different details as well as passages that do not paint the disciples in the best light.

“In the Road to Emmaus story, they write that they didn’t recognize him,” said Barber. “Our Biblical accounts are our best evidence.”

Several of the scholars pointed to 1 Corinthians, where Paul states that Christ appeared to 500 people.

“Some want to shy away from the Gospels because they say they were written later,” explained Barber. “If you want to believe that they were written later, then why wouldn’t the Gospels have made use of this piece of evidence from 1 Corinthians?” asked Barber.

Read it all.

Resurrection of Christ, 1612.
by Peter Paul Reubens.#christ #resurrectionsunday #christisrisen https://t.co/wUmDWekn4C pic.twitter.com/0tc3ECdu1i

— Sudha Blanc 📚🎨🍍 (@sudha_vja) April 1, 2018