If there is no Resurrection – you’re following a Dead Christ
by David Robertson, theweeflea:
It had all been going so well for Paul. He had got the attention of the philosophers and the religious leaders. He had spoken about their idols and the God who created the universe. He cited their poets, argued for Gods sovereignty and called on them to repent…and then he went and screwed it up by mentioning the resurrection “he has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31b). And the sneering began – although some wanted to hear more. A few people became Christians.
Fast forward to progressive, cool, 21st Century Britain and you would think that the mention of the resurrection would be automatically dismissed. After all we have progressed as a society. At the Edinburgh book festival in 2010 Christopher Hitchens was asked by John Humphreys, to respond to John Lennox, indicating that he had five minutes. Hitchens barked ‘I won’t need five minutes to respond to someone who believes in the resurrection”. This is a standard tactic – equate people who believe in the resurrection with people who believe in a flat earth, Santa Claus and Scotland winning the World Cup, and you then don’t need to even think about, never mind examine the evidence.
But a survey conducted by the BBC suggests that maybe things are not as simple as we might think and that the reactions of 21st Century Brits might be even more open to the idea of resurrection that 1st Century Greeks. I am always sceptical of surveys but the notion that 17% of people in Britain believe in the literal biblical account of the bible is for me quite astonishing…and encouraging. The fact that one in ten non-religious people believe the Easter story in some form is interesting – to say the least. But perhaps the most fascinating and saddest statistic is that 25% of those who identify as Christians do not believe in the resurrection and only 31% believe in the literal biblical story. What is going on?
Read also: Unbelieving the resurrection by Campbell Markham, MercatorNet
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