Confounded by the Resurrection

When asked about the resurrection, clinical psychologist and sudden internet celebrity, Jordan Peterson responded, “I need to think about that for about three more years before I would even venture an answer.” Lisa Miller, religion editor for Newsweek, is another matter.

Miller doesn’t “buy” the resurrection of Jesus, or of anyone else for that matter. A while back Miller, a self-described skeptic, recounted an interview with a Jewish scholar (who happens to believe in the resurrection of the dead). In the course of their discussion, Miller asked the scholar how God does it. It’s the same question Michael Shermer, editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine, put to a Christian physician in a 2004 television special.

The question presupposes that for the resurrection to be credible, it must be explicable in terms of known physical processes that are medically possible. Yet, if it were, it would be nothing but a slick manipulation of nature by someone who has acquired the knack. Either way, naturalism wins, confirming the presuppositions of the skeptic.

So it is no surprise, then, that when her interviewee answered that the resurrection is a supernatural act of God, Miller’s disbelief remained undisturbed. As to what she does believe, the religion editor opined, “Thanks to the growth here of Eastern religions, reincarnation—the belief that after death a soul returns to earth in another body—is gaining adherents.”

Of course, one wonders why the ability of an unintelligent karmic force to transmogrify a human being into a beetle, buffalo, or rose bud is any more credible than the ability of a super-intelligent Being to raise a decayed corpse into a reconstructed body.

What’s more, even among Christians, belief in a bodily resurrection is giving way to belief in a symbolic resurrection—a “rising” representative of spiritual awakening, re-birth, or renewal, either personal or corporate. It is a belief that is against the currents of scripture and the creeds of the Church. Continue reading here.