The Apostles and the Resurrection
“The Apostles were either deceived or deceivers [if Jesus didn’t really rise]. Either supposition is difficult, for it is not possible to imagine that a man has risen from the dead.
While Jesus was with them he could sustain them, but afterwards, if he did not appear to them, who did make them act?”
~Blaise Pascal
“If the apostles imagined the Resurrection, they were either the most stupid men in history, unable to distinguish a corpse from a triumphant, resurrected Lord of life and death; or else their hallucination behaved very differently from any hallucination in history, appearing many times, to many people (Paul mentions five hundred in 1 Corinthians 15:6 and challenges his readers to interview them by noting that ‘many of them are still alive’), eating real fish (Luke 24:26-43), remaining forty days (Acts 1:3), and -as Pascal points out in the last sentence- transforming them from a rabble as scared as rabbits, running away at the crucifixion, denying their Lord (Luke 22:54-62), cowering behind locked doors (John 20:19) –transforming them into a force that conquered the world, softening hard Roman hearts and hardening martyrs’ resolve, going to lions and crosses with hymns of joy on their lips. If Jesus did not really rise from the dead, then an even greater miracle happened to them, without a cause: they and thousands of others gave up worldly pleasures, acceptance, security, prestige, power, wealth and very often life itself for nothing and from nothing. No one has ever answered Pascal’s simple question at the end: ‘Who did make them act?’”
~Peter Kreeft
While Jesus was with them he could sustain them, but afterwards, if he did not appear to them, who did make them act?”
~Blaise Pascal
“If the apostles imagined the Resurrection, they were either the most stupid men in history, unable to distinguish a corpse from a triumphant, resurrected Lord of life and death; or else their hallucination behaved very differently from any hallucination in history, appearing many times, to many people (Paul mentions five hundred in 1 Corinthians 15:6 and challenges his readers to interview them by noting that ‘many of them are still alive’), eating real fish (Luke 24:26-43), remaining forty days (Acts 1:3), and -as Pascal points out in the last sentence- transforming them from a rabble as scared as rabbits, running away at the crucifixion, denying their Lord (Luke 22:54-62), cowering behind locked doors (John 20:19) –transforming them into a force that conquered the world, softening hard Roman hearts and hardening martyrs’ resolve, going to lions and crosses with hymns of joy on their lips. If Jesus did not really rise from the dead, then an even greater miracle happened to them, without a cause: they and thousands of others gave up worldly pleasures, acceptance, security, prestige, power, wealth and very often life itself for nothing and from nothing. No one has ever answered Pascal’s simple question at the end: ‘Who did make them act?’”
~Peter Kreeft
Comments