Let the issue be quite plain from the start: all that we believe — if we claim to be Christians — is staked upon the truth of Christ’s resurrection. Either it is true that the body which hung upon the cross was pierced by the soldier’s spear and placed in a tomb, came out of that tomb with the marks of its suffering still upon it, and was seen and touched truly and physically before ascending to heaven — or Christianity is a delusion. There may be protest against this today: some may urge that Jesus was no less a great teacher of mankind if he decayed in the tomb and was lost, and others will contend that there may have been a kind of “spiritual” resurrection of Jesus without the need for a bodily presence among his disciples which, for some reason, is distasteful.
If Jesus did not Rise …
As to the first of these protests, …