Bible versus Jesus Resurrection?

I saw a dear brother shared this in an online group that led to a lot of conversations about an apologetics ministry that talked about the relationship between the Bible and Jesus’ resurrection that pit more the Bible against Jesus’ resurrection.

Many of you know I hold to Presuppositional Apologetics’ methodology. And I’m a Presuppositionalist who loves history and historical apologetics! So this is my reply done as much as possible in a gracious attitude.

Wow this is awesome to see some really good responses on here from members! The pastoral side of me gets excited to see others give good responses.To pit Scripture against history is itself problematic and of course Presuppositionalists aren’t denying the historicity of the Christian faith. We affirm both God’s Word and the historicity of Jesus. We also NEED to affirm the proper place of both including the authority of Scripture EVEN WHEN discussing the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus and its apologetics dimension and implications of the resurrection of Jesus. Here’s my response paragraph by paragraph.

1. While it is true that “the resurrection preceded the reports of it” including New Testament documents, yet the Bible with the Old Testment appears before Jesus’ resurrection. And the Old Testament has things to say concerning the Messiah, the Messiah’s person and works including the death and resurrection of Jesus. So technically God’s report of the resurrection was before the event and we should give the Bible its priority in light of the OP’s own reasoning.

2. It is true the authors of the New Testament knew about the resurrection before writing the New Testament yet their experience of witnessing Jesus resurrection wasn’t done in a vaccum. All evidences are interpreted through a philosophy of evidence and for the writers of the New Testament that philosophy of evidence include the Old Testament. To say it in a way evidentialist would understand: Evidence demands…a philosophy of evidence that interpret the evidence. And the New Testament numerous citation of Messianic prophecies, types and motif concerning Jesus’ life and works including the resurrection shows that the Bible versus “historical facts” is a false dichotomy. In fact its Jesus’ resurrection in light of what the Old Testament has to say about the Messiah is what gave the disciples and witnesses hope instead of thinking this is a strange one time freak of nature random event that happened or something that couldn’t have happened and awaiting an alternative explanation to dismiss their encounter of the resurrected Jesus.

3. There are some language that can be better worded in the third paragraph in my opinion. I don’t think the resurrection gave us the New Testament writers, I think that’s God who gave us the human New Testament writers. He does note there is a certain priority of the resurrection before the New Testament but he’s unclear and equivocating what that priority is specifically. Of course the New Testament was humanly written after the resurrection so one can say there is a temporal priority of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and then the New Testament follows. But the OP seems to forget that the Bible also consists of the Old Testament that was prior to the resurrection. It seems an ongoing theme that the OP forgets the Old Testament is a major part of the Bible (in fact the Old Testament is larger than the New Testament in terms of amount of books and words!). Also the New Testament following the resurrection temporally doesn’t mean that the resurrection is more important than the New Testament for it also shows a historical fact like the resurrection can’t be understood only by itself, and the bare fact of a historical event we should not draw implications of it without God’s explanation of HIS interpretation and HIS implications of the resurrection both BEFORE and AFTER. the resurrection. Furthermore a temporal priority of the resurrection shouldn’t be equivocated with other priorities such as epistemically which is of first importance. It seems from 1 John 1, 1 Corinthians 15, etc, the NT writers themselves place Scripture in the highest epistemic priority than even the human experiences of knowing the resurrection, transfiguration, etc (this should not be extapoloated to mean empirical experience is not important, but that we shouldn’t be reductionistic to think empirical experience should be uninformed by Scripture).

As much as I hear evidentialists say we need both evidences and Scripture I think posts from evidentialists like the ones above show that’s not always true their true priority of having both being what they are themselves (especially Scripture= Scripture). I think a Van Tillian apologetics with a presuppositionalists approach towards historicity that is conscious of philosophy of evidence and the worldview shaping one’s philosphy of evidence is the way to go.