qaz: " Berserk, it sounds like you’ve made a case for not believing the resurrection story. In light of the reasons you’ve given for questioning it, what are your reasons FOR believing in the resurrection of Christ? Can you recommend any persuasive books?"
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A theology professor who got saved and went forward to respond to a church altar call told me that he now rejects the Gospel resurrection narratives because of its internal contradictions. These difficulties can’t be dismissed on the simplistic grounds that different witnesses have different perspectives that produce small inconsistences in conflicting reports. I should probably start a new thread in which my OP outlines the apparent inconsistencies and challenges the readers to produce a sequence of events that harmonizes these problems in a coherent sequence of events from the dawn of Easter Sunday to the end of the resurrection narratives in a way that can be reconciled with Paul’s own list of resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, As a believer in Jesus’ resurrection, I would of course eventually provide my own rationale for reconciling all the apparent inconsistences.
Paul’s list of resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 is the earliest and most evidential report of resurrection appearances. Paul introduces these appearances with the tradition formula, “I hand down what I received,” thus raising the question, “Received from whom?” The most logical answer is that he received this list of resurrection appearances during his 2 trips to Jerusalem where his Gospel message was checked out and confirmed by Peter, James (Jesus’ brother), and John, among others (see Galatians ).19-19: 2:1-10).
In an very general way, Paul of course twice refers to his own encounters with the risen Jesus (1 Corinthians 9:1; Galatians 1:12-14). But in Luke’s 2 more detailed accounts of Jesus’ appearance to Paul on the Damascus road (Acts 9:1-9; cp. 22:6-11) Paul’s companions hear the heavenly voice, but see no one in 9:7 and, on the contrary, see the light but don’t hear the heavenly voice in 22:9.
The bottom line is that many intelligent people are grateful for the evidence from ADCs and NDEs in favor of postmortem survival and indirectly in support of the possibility that the Gospel resurrection reports may involve more than mere hallucinations fueled by wishful thinking. In the final analysis, we all embrace our beliefs by faith rather than by proof.