Resurrection as the Heart of Christianity

Writer:Shanta Tamang.

Resurrection as the Heart of Christianity

           Did Jesus really raise from the death? What if He wasn't? If Jesus has not been raised from the death then our faith is in vain says Paul in  1 Corinthian 15:14, 17. It is worth noting that Jesus's Resurrection  was focal point in the teaching of New Testament writers[i] and, it was also the creed or part of kerygma of early church and Christians.[ii] Resurrection was and is the central of  Christian faith still. So,  Apologists Sean and Josh McDowell  claim that, “The resurrection of Jesus Christ and Christianity stand or fall together. One cannot be true without the other.”[iii] They are like two sides of same coin. More significantly, Romans 10:9  tells  that we are saved if we believe that God raised Jesus from the death, which demonstrates the theological link between the resurrection and salvation. Gary Habermas rightly says that without the resurrection our message of gospels would be incomplete, there would have been no faith, theology, or church and, Christianity would be groundless and fruitless.[iv]  More importantly, prominent New Testament Scholar N.T. Wright writes, “Take away the stories of Jesus’s birth, and you lose only two chapters of Matthew and two of Luke. Take away the resurrection, and you lose the entire New Testament and most of the second-century fathers as well.”[v] Therefore, Jesus's resurrection is heart of Christianity.

---

[i]     Gary R. Habermas and Michael R.Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of  Jesus  (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications,    2004), PDF e-book, Chap.1.

[ii]    N.T.Wright, Surprised by Hope : Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church  (New York: HarperCollins Publishers ltd., 2009), 42-43; Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (USA:InterVarsity Press, 2010), 234-235; see also chapter 2 of  Sean McDowell, Fate of the Apostles: Examining the Martyrdom accounts of the Closest Followers of Jesus (England: Ashgate publishing limited, 2015), 17-24.

[iii]   Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, Evidence For the Resurrection: What It Means for Your Relationship with God (Venture:Regal from gospel light, 2009), EPUB e-book, Section I, Chap.4.

[iv]   Gary R. Habermas,  The Risen Jesus and Future Hope  (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), xii.

[v]    Wright, Surprised, 43.