Resurrection: Fact or Fiction?

This guide is for the moment after the evidence has been laid out and the conversation stalls. Michael Licona’s case for the resurrection asks which explanation best accounts for a short list of facts that most historians, including skeptics, accept. That is a reasoning test. Its fairness depends on two things: the rival explanations are scored by the same standard, and everyone admits the assumptions they bring. When a conversation with a skeptic goes nowhere, the cause is often a premise nobody stated, such as the belief that miracles cannot happen. It is less often a fact.

You can work through this guide alone in about an hour. A group can spread it over two sessions. You will map Licona’s argument, score competing explanations against it, find the premise underneath the disagreement, and practice saying all of this out loud to another person. Bring paper. Most of the work here is done with a pencil.

What kind of claim is being made

Begin by getting the claim right, because a lot of disagreement comes from arguing past it. Licona, a professor at Houston Baptist University (now Houston Christian University) and founder of the Risen Jesus ministry, does not say history can prove the resurrection the way a lab proves boiling points. He says plainly that “no historian can get into a time machine” to check. Instead, historians “talk in degrees of probability.”

That changes the burden on both sides. If the claim is probabilistic, the question is not whether someone can imagine an alternative. Someone almost always can. The question is whether the alternative explains the evidence as well as the resurrection does, or better.

Licona adds a second starting point: “everyone, no matter who you are, everyone is biased.” He does not respond by pretending to be neutral. He starts from facts that historians across the spectrum already grant. He names four. Jesus died by crucifixion. Shortly afterward his disciples had experiences they perceived as the risen Jesus appearing to them. Some of these experiences happened to groups. And Paul, a persecutor of the church, had an experience he understood the same way, and it turned him into an advocate.

Then comes the test: “the question then for the historian is, what’s the best explanation for these?” Licona’s own answer is that “the resurrection hypothesis explains all four of these facts far better than any other explanation.”

Notice one honest qualification. Licona says virtually all scholars accept the first, second and fourth facts. He estimates that probably 75 to 85 percent accept the group appearances. Those percentages are his estimates, not figures from a cited survey. Keep that in mind. Any argument that leans heavily on the group appearances rests on the least secure fact of the four.

Observation: read the earliest list

Open to 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. Paul writes that he passed on what he had received, “how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). He then lists appearances to Cephas, to the twelve, to more than five hundred at once, to James, to all the apostles, and finally to himself.

Read it slowly and mark two things. First, which of Licona’s four facts can you see in the passage? Second, what kind of writing is this? It is a summary handed on as tradition, and Paul is not trying to persuade a skeptic. In verse 6 he notes that most of the five hundred were still alive when he wrote. Many readers take that as an implied invitation to go and ask them. That is a reasonable reading, but it is an inference, so hold it as one.

Scoring the explanations

The skill this guide most wants to build is fair comparison. Here is a simple map you can draw.

1. Write the four facts down the left side of a page.
2. Across the top, write the explanations you want to test. Use the resurrection, hallucination, the copycat myth, the theft of the body, and any other theory you have heard.
3. In each box, mark one of three things. Mark it explains if the theory accounts for the fact as it stands. Mark it explains at a cost if it only works by adding a new, unsupported claim. Mark it does not explain if it has nothing to say.
4. Under each column, write down every extra claim the theory needed to fill its boxes.

Three criteria are at work in this exercise. Licona uses all three in the conversation, though he does not label them. The first is scope: does the theory cover all four facts or only a convenient one? On hallucination, Licona argues that grief can produce private experiences but cannot account for group appearances, and cannot account for Paul, who was hostile rather than grieving. The second is fit with what we know from other fields. Licona leans on psychology for his claim that hallucinations happen inside a single mind. The third is cost. When Licona criticizes the view that Jesus never existed, he faults it for needing unbridled speculation and ad hoc constructions without evidence. A theory that survives only by inventing its own support has paid a price, and the map should show that price.

Be strict with your own column too. Does the resurrection hypothesis need an extra claim? It does. It needs God to exist and to be able to act. Write that down. A fair map counts the Christian’s assumptions as well as the skeptic’s.

Watch where the argument moves

When a theory starts losing boxes, its defenders usually move to a different claim. On the hallucination theory, Licona notes that all the reports say every disciple saw Jesus, so “you either have to say that the reports are lying” or give up the hallucination explanation. A skeptic may well take the first option. That is a legitimate move. But it changes the argument. The claim is no longer that hallucination explains the facts. The claim is now that the sources are false, and that new claim needs its own evidence.

The copycat theory runs into the same thing. Licona’s first response is a question: “who do you have in mind?” His second is “what evidence is there for it?” Those two questions make the theory produce its sources. Asking them is not hostile. It is the same thing you would ask of any historical claim.

The premise under the table

Now for the part this guide cares most about. Suppose you have drawn the map honestly and the resurrection column looks strongest. Your friend agrees with the facts and grants the problems with the rivals, and still says no. What happened?

Often the disagreement was never about the four facts. It sits in an earlier premise: dead people do not rise, because miracles do not happen. If that premise is held as certain, the conclusion is settled before any evidence arrives. Every naturalistic explanation, however weak, wins by default, because the only rival has been ruled out in advance.

Separate two versions of that premise, because they lead to very different conversations.

• Miracles are improbable. This is a judgment about likelihood. It can be weighed. Strong enough evidence could, at least in principle, overcome it. A person who holds this view is still in the conversation.
• Miracles are impossible. This is a claim about what reality allows. No historical evidence can count against it, because it decides in advance what the evidence is allowed to mean. A person who holds this view needs a different conversation, about whether the premise itself is justified.

Licona mentions a common form of the objection: “miracles just don’t occur today. We don’t see them today.” His reply is that “that objection just flies in the face of some really good evidence to the contrary,” and he points to people in the developing world and in the United States who report miracles. Ask what that reply does logically. It does not prove any particular modern miracle, and in this conversation he does not examine specific cases. What it challenges is the universal claim. If miracles never happen, then every such report must be false. That is a large claim. It is usually assumed rather than shown.

Here is the logical point that matters. Saying I have never seen a miracle does not establish miracles cannot happen. The first is a report about experience. The second is a claim about what is possible. Moving from one to the other without an argument is the hidden step to look for.

The same question, asked long ago

Read Acts 26:1-8. Paul is on trial before King Agrippa, and he names this exact issue: “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?” (Acts 26:8). Look at how the sentence is built. Paul does not ask whether resurrection is normal. Everyone in the room knew dead people stay dead. He asks why it should be incredible that God should do it. He moves the question from what nature usually does to what God is able to do.

Be careful about how far this goes. Acts 26 records a defense speech. It describes what Paul said and does not lay out a general method for apologetics. Still, it shows that the real question has always included a prior one. Is there a God who could raise the dead? If a person firmly answers no, the historical facts will not move them. If the answer is open, the facts can do real work.

That also points to an unresolved issue you should name honestly. Licona’s historical case is strongest for someone who thinks God’s existence is at least possible. He says himself that he thinks there is enough evidence to show that God exists. That is a separate argument from the resurrection case. Sometimes the useful next step with a friend is to set the resurrection aside for a while and talk about whether God exists.

Turn the test on yourself

Fairness runs both ways. Licona describes his own fear in plain terms: “What my fear was, is that my own biases would keep me from embracing truth, even if I saw it.” He says he debated leading skeptics because, in his words, “I wanna know the truth no matter where it leads,” and that “the more I became convinced that actually occurred because of the weakness of their arguments.”

That suggests a hard exercise. Write one sentence that answers this: What evidence, if it existed, would lower my confidence that Jesus rose? Paul gives a direct answer in the same chapter you read earlier: “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). The early Christian claim was open to falsification in principle. Discovering Jesus’s remains would have counted against it. If you can name nothing that would count against your belief, ask whether you hold it as a conclusion or as a premise.

Lisa Fields pressed Licona with a version of this challenge: “if the three days was figurative, why should we take the resurrection literal?” It is a good model. She took one point he had conceded and asked whether it weakened the larger claim. Licona answered from the evidence. He pointed out that Paul ties forgiveness to a real event and that early critics responded with counter-explanations such as a stolen body. Practice asking yourself questions like hers before someone else does.

Practice: three questions for a real conversation

Pair up, or if you are alone, write both sides. One person plays a thoughtful skeptic. The other uses only these three moves, in order. Then switch roles.

1. Find the shared ground. Ask which of the four facts your partner accepts. Write down the ones they do not, and leave them alone for now.
2. Compare explanations on the accepted facts. Ask your partner which explanation covers those facts best, and what extra claims it needs. Use the map from earlier.
3. Surface the premise. Ask, in your own words, something like: If the evidence pointed to a resurrection, would you be open to that conclusion, or is it ruled out before we start? Then listen. Do not argue with the answer yet.

Afterward, the person who played the skeptic says where the conversation actually stuck. Was it on a fact, on how to weigh an explanation, or on the prior premise? Most groups find that naming the location is the real gain. You will often find that the disagreement was never where you thought it was.

For whoever leads a group: keep the role-play short and stop each round after the third move. Make sure the person playing the skeptic gives the strongest version of the view, not a cartoon. If someone in the group actually holds skeptical views, let them choose whether to speak from their own position. Never assign them the skeptic role.

Discussion questions

1. Licona begins with facts most historians accept, and he leaves aside claims about inspiration. What does that starting point gain, and what does it give up?
2. On your map, which rival explanation needed the most extra claims? Which needed the fewest? Was the result what you expected?
3. Licona estimates that agreement on the group appearances is lower than on the other three facts. How should that affect the weight you put on arguments that depend on them?
4. What is the difference between “miracles are improbable” and “miracles are impossible”? Which conversation have you actually been having with the skeptics you know?
5. Paul asks Agrippa why it should be incredible that God raises the dead. When is it wise to set the historical question aside and talk about God’s existence first?
6. What would lower your confidence in the resurrection? If your answer is “nothing,” what does that tell you about how you hold the belief?
7. Licona says, “If Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true, period.” How might that change which questions you chase in a conversation, and which ones you set aside for later?

Something to carry into the week

Keep your map. The next time the resurrection comes up, notice before you answer whether you are being asked about a fact, about how to weigh an explanation, or about the premise beneath both. Each one needs a different reply. Picking the right one is often what keeps the conversation going.