The question posed starts with the standard of proof. A civil verdict requires only a preponderance of the evidence, a fraction over half. However, the test I applied in my book, Resurrection on Trial, is explanatory adequacy, used by historians and forensic investigators for events long past. Does the Christian claim of the Resurrection explain the full record more completely and coherently than every rival explanation, and does it resist displacement by them? That is a higher bar.
An account does not clear this higher bar by merely edging out the competition. It must leave the fewest questions unexplained. It does not require absolute certainty, which no claim about antiquity can meet. We do not demand it of Alexander, Caesar, or Socrates. So, let’s legally test the claim of the Resurrection.
The Direct Examination
The Gospels come in first. Their adequacy as historical documents rests on ordinary evidentiary grounds, not any claim of inspiration. They were composed within the lifespan of eyewitnesses, their authorship is uniformly attested with no competing attributions, and they were transmitted within a culture trained in controlled memorization. Their central claims converge across independent accounts while peripheral variations differ as genuinely independent testimony does. That does not prove the Resurrection. It establishes admissibility.
All four canonical Gospels report that women discovered the empty tomb, a detail no first-century forger would invent, since ancient courts gave a woman’s word little standing; Josephus wrote that women should not be permitted to testify on account of “the levity and boldness of their sex” (Antiquities 4.8.15). The witnesses then behaved in ways that make no sense for men protecting a fiction. Peter, who denied Jesus three times, weeks later declared, “This Jesus, God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses” (Acts 2:32). Thomas, who refused to take anyone’s word for it, said upon seeing the wounds, “My Lord and my God” (Jn. 20:28). Men who had scattered in fear proclaimed a risen Christ within weeks, in the city that had crucified him, and suffered torture and death rather than recant.
Now the Cross-Examination
Opposing counsel asks:
Isn’t the Resurrection based only on the gospels that made it into the Bible, while other gospels disagree? No. This assumes a competition the record does not show. Gnostic texts such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Mary date from the mid-to-late second century or later, generations after the events and after the four Gospels were in public use. The Muratorian Canon (c. AD 170-200) records the four as writings read in churches, reflecting what was already received, not a committee’s decision. Those texts do not contest the empty tomb or offer a rival account of the body. They rest on a philosophy that denies the goodness of the flesh, which is why they held little interest in a bodily Resurrection. There was no suppressed counter-testimony, only a later genre answering a different question.
Isn’t it obvious that they stole the body? No. This was the first counter-story, and Matthew records it circulating from the beginning (Mt. 28:13-15). Justin Martyr complains in the Dialogue with Trypho that agents were sent abroad to spread this story, and Tertullian was still answering it in North Africa at the end of the second century. Notice what that establishes. For 150 years, the standing objection was never that the tomb was full; it was an argument about who emptied it. Opponents with every motive to produce a body spent generations explaining its absence, a strong hostile-source concession. The theory asks us to believe that men who scattered and denied Jesus under questioning overpowered a guard, then were beaten, imprisoned, and executed for a claim they knew to be false. People die for what they wrongly believe true. They do not die for what they know is a lie, one after another, with no one breaking.
Didn’t Jesus simply survive the crucifixion? No. This “swoon theory” appeals to some because it requires no miracle. For it to be true, a man scourged nearly to death and pierced with a spear that drew what John describes as blood and water (Jn. 19:34), a detail modern medicine associates with cardiac collapse, would have to regain consciousness unaided, free himself from burial wrappings, move a sealed stone from inside, evade a guard, walk miles on ruined feet, then persuade his followers he had conquered death rather than barely survived. Roman crucifixion was designed to end in death. It did.
Weren’t the appearances hallucinations? No. This is a strong modern objection, and it fails on three fronts. First, hallucinations are private events. They do not occur to groups, and Paul reports an appearance to more than five hundred at once (1 Cor. 15:6). Second, hallucinations do not empty tombs. Third, they do not explain witnesses who had every reason to resist: James, who had doubted Jesus, and Paul, who was persecuting the Church. Even Gerd Lüdemann, an atheist scholar, grants that the earliest disciples genuinely believed the risen Jesus appeared to them. The dispute is not whether they believed it, but what explains why.
Isn’t this all just legend that grew with retelling? No. Legends need time, and here there is none to spare. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians transmits a formula older than the letter itself, one he says he “received,” naming Peter, the Twelve, James, and the five hundred, most of them still alive and available to be asked. That creed predates the letter by years, placing it within the first decade of the Resurrection itself, testimony offered while it could still be checked.
Isn’t it true that miracles would violate natural law and thus cannot happen? No. This treats the laws of nature as prescriptive commands rather than descriptive observations. They summarize what ordinarily happens; they do not forbid what is rare. The Creator stands above and outside of nature. Additionally, unprecedented does not mean impossible; the Big Bang has not happened twice. Hume’s argument that miracles are always the least likely explanation makes the error a good lawyer spots at once: he did not weigh the evidence, he excluded it, letting his premise dictate his conclusion. That is not evaluative; it is announcing the outcome before any evidence is heard.
Based on the standard governing claims about the ancient world, the Resurrection explains the most and leaves the least unexplained. Each objection may nick a single strand. None displaces the whole, because they conflict and leave untouched what others cannot explain.
Many Catholics were taught their faith need not face such scrutiny, leaving them unprepared for serious objections. But the Church has never treated faith and reason as rivals. The East proclaims the Resurrection in Paschal homilies and before empty tomb icons; the West argued it through Augustine, Aquinas, and Newman. Pope St. John Paul II issued the encyclical Fides et Ratio, calling faith and reason “like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” Both wings carry us toward the same truth.
The next time someone asks why you believe in the Resurrection, do not change the subject. Examine the record together. It has been surviving cross-examination for two thousand years.
Editor’s Note: For a disciplined, methodologically rigorous inquiry into the validity of the Resurrection, read Peter D. Martino’s upcoming release, Resurrection on Trial: A Judicial Inquiry into the Christian Claim of the Resurrection of Jesus, available for preorder from Sophia Institute Press.
Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash
