*Empirical evidence, that is.
To engage with the claim of the resurrection is to enter into a unique kind of intellectual and spiritual "hall of mirrors." For many thoughtful postmoderns— those of us raised on a steady diet of the scientific method, historical-critical analysis, and the healthy skepticism of the Enlightenment— the resurrection often feels like the ultimate "hard stop." It is the moment where the gears of reason seem to grind against the supernatural, and we are told we must choose between our brains and our bibles.
But what if the resurrection is not an invitation to stop thinking, but a challenge to think more deeply about the nature of evidence, history, and the way we know anything at all?
The Epistemic Ghost
The resurrection of Jesus is an epistemically fascinating idea because of a peculiar paradox: if it is true and happened in spacetime, there will, by definition, be no empirical evidence for it. A Risen Jesus means no body remains to inspect to make sure he is risen.
Think about that for a moment. In almost every other historical or scientific inquiry, the "truth" of an event leaves a trail of physical breadcrumbs. If a battle happened, we find arrowheads and rusted armor. If a volcano erupted, we find layers of ash. But the claim of the resurrection is the claim that a physical body— a biological entity composed of carbon, water, and bone— was transformed into a new mode of existence and exited the "closed system" of the tomb, and later transcended into a different dimension of existence altogether. At least, that's what our only witnesses to the resurrection claim in the New Testament.
If the resurrection is false, there should be empirical evidence: a corpse. Somewhere in the dust of first-century Palestine, the skeletal remains of Jeshua ben Joseph would be waiting to be found. But if the resurrection is true, that evidence is deleted from the universe. The "proof" of the event is the absence of the object.
This creates a rare, perhaps unique, category of factual claim. Usually, when we lack evidence, we assume the event didn't happen. Here, the lack of evidence (the missing body) is a necessary condition for the event being true. This flips our usual empirical positivist approach on its head.
The Missing Rulers of History
We often demand "extraordinary evidence" for the resurrection, echoing David Hume’s famous maxim that we should proportion our belief to the evidence, and that extraordinary claims thus require evidence of corresponding impressiveness. Hume argued that since we have a massive, uniform human experience of people staying dead, the probability that a dead man stayed dead is always higher than the probability that he rose.
But before we follow Hume into total skepticism, we have to look at how we treat the rest of history. If the bar for knowing a historical figure existed is the possession of their physical remains, we would have to erase about 95% of our history books. There are very few corpses found from 2000-2500 years ago, and very few of those very few are anyone who we have literary records of.
Where is the body of Alexander the Great? We know he died in Babylon in 323 BCE. His tomb was a famous tourist attraction in antiquity, visited by Roman Emperors, and then... it vanished. We have no body. Where is Julius Caesar? Cremated, his ashes lost to the winds of Rome. Where are Cleopatra, Augustus, or Constantine? For the vast majority of the Greek and Roman rulers who shaped our world, we rely entirely on secondary sources, eyewitness testimony passed through generations, and the "secondary effects" of their lives—the cities they built, the laws they wrote, and the empires they left behind.
If we apply a strictly "empirically positivist" approach— where we only believe in what we can touch and measure right now—w e aren't just being skeptical of Jesus; we are being skeptical of the very existence of most of human history. If we require corpses to believe someone lived, then for all intents and purposes, almost no one lived before a couple of centuries ago. This suggests that the positivist bar is not just high. It is misguided. It’s the wrong tool for the job.
The Humean Challenge and the Weight of Probability
Hume is right that extraordinary claims require serious investigation. But how do you investigate an event whose primary evidence is a lack of evidence?
We have to move from direct empirical observation to the study of "secondary effects." We have to become like detectives looking at the ripples in a pond to figure out what kind of stone was thrown in. In the case of the resurrection, there are two primary "ripples" we can investigate: anecdotal personal experience and eyewitness testimony.
Anecdotal Personal Experience: The first ripple is the claim that the Risen Christ can appear to us today. This is the heart of the mystical tradition—the "Christarchy" of the interior life where we encounter the Lord of Life, Love, and Light in prayer and liturgy.
However, from a purely philosophical standpoint, an individual’s subjective experience is notoriously difficult to use as a universal proof. A skeptic can (and should) argue that any such "appearance" could be wish fulfillment, a hallucination, a chemical imbalance, or even, as Scrooge famously put it, "an undigested bit of beef." While these experiences are transformative for the individual, they remain epistemically private. To build a case for the probability of the resurrection, we need something more "social."
Eyewitness Testimony and the Social Body: The second ripple is the historical record of those who claimed to see him first. Here, the skeptic’s immediate response is: "But only believers claimed to see him! You can’t trust the members of the club to give an unbiased report."
This is a fair point, but it misses a vital sociological reality: to experience the Risen Christ was to become a believer. If the claims of the New Testament are to be believed, it wasn't that a pre-existing "Christian Church" made up a story. It was that the story— the "resurrection" event— created the Church.
We see this most clearly in the writings of Paul, specifically in 1 Corinthians 15. This letter was written in the early 50s CE, barely 20 years after the events it describes. Paul lists the witnesses: Peter, the Twelve, five hundred people at once, James, and finally Paul himself. This is not a legend that evolved over centuries of "telephone game" whispering. This is a claim made within the lifetime of the people involved, in a cultural context where you could still go and ask the people on that list if it was true.
We also have other slightly later witnesses to the resurrection event. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were all written within the lifetimes of the early Apostles, probably between 60-80 CE, with John being perhaps as late as the early 90's. They all include overlapping but diverse accountings of the resurrection events: Jesus appears first to female disciples, and then later to male disciples in different groups. During these appearances, he suddenly arrives and suddenly leaves, allowing himself to be seen and heard and touched by the disciples. He even cooks breakfast for them. Like most events reported from multiple perspectives, there is not consistent agreement on who exactly was in the room and when. But the overall shape of their experience of the Risen Jesus is clear.
The Character of the Witnesses
If we cannot have the body, we must evaluate the integrity of the witnesses. This is where theology meets ethics. We look for character traits which indicate reliability, such as the virtues of Integrity, Perseverance, and Openness. When we apply these lenses to the early Apostles, the "hallucination" or "lie" theories begin to crumble.
First, let’s look at the "Lie Hypothesis." This is the idea that the Apostles stole the body and made up the story to start a religion. But why? People generally lie to gain power, sex, or money. The early Apostles gained none of these. They lived in intentional poverty, faced intense social ostracization, and were subjected to physical torture and many were eventually martyred for their faith.
There is a profound difference between someone who is mistaken and someone who is a liar. People will die for a lie they believe is true (we see this in cults today). But people do not die for a lie they know they made up. If the Apostles stole the body, they knew the resurrection was a prank. And yet, not one of them "cracked" under the pressure of the Roman and Jewish authorities.
Furthermore, if it were a lie, the authorities had a very simple way to end the movement: produce the body. The Jewish and Roman leaders were highly motivated to stop this "superstition." They had the resources of an empire and a religious establishment. If the body was in a shallow grave or hidden in a cellar, they would have found it, carted it through the streets of Jerusalem, and Christianity would have been a footnote in a history book about failed messianic movements. But they couldn't find it. There seems to be no body to find.
The Problem of Group Hallucination
The "Hallucination Hypothesis" suggests the disciples were so grief-stricken that they all imagined seeing Jesus. But hallucinations are like dreams—they are internal, subjective, and individual. There is no such thing as a "group hallucination" where hundreds of people see the same complex, interactive entity at the same time and in different locations over a period of forty days.
Moreover, the people who wrote the New Testament do not demonstrate the "marks" of serious mental illness. When we read the letters of Paul or the Gospels, we see a consistency of witness, a cogency of thought, and a depth of compassion that is incongruent with sustained, collective psychosis. They were building communities based on empathy, peacemaking, and service. They were organized, strategic, and ethically rigorous. This is the behavior of people who have been grounded by a reality, not untethered by a fantasy.
Faith as the Choice of Probability
So, where does this leave us? We are left with a series of probabilities. Is it probable that a group of cowards suddenly became world-changing heroes because of a lie they knew they made up? No. Is it probable that hundreds of people had the exact same hallucination that led to a sophisticated ethical and philosophical system? Not really. Is it probable that the most powerful empire in the world couldn't find a corpse that was supposedly hidden by a few fishermen? Again, no.
If we eliminate the improbable, we are left with the "epistemically interesting" possibility: that something actually happened in spacetime that transformed the very nature of matter and spirit. This is where faith comes in. Faith, in this light, is not "believing in things you know aren't true." Faith is the choice to trust the most probable explanation of the facts, even when that explanation challenges our narrow, positivist worldview. As C.S. Lewis often argued, the "Christian myth" is the one myth that happened to be a fact.
Participating in the Resurrection
If the resurrection is the most probable explanation for the "secondary effects" of the first century, then it demands more than just intellectual assent. It demands a response.
If Christ is risen, then the universe is not a cold, dead machine heading toward heat-death. It is a living laboratory of Love where the Lord of Life is actively reconciling all things. The resurrection is the "Tikkun Olam"— the restoration of the world— made manifest in a single person. It is the promise that eventually, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, because the gravity of grace is stronger than the gravity of the grave.
We see this "humanity fully alive"—as St. Irenaeus called it—not in a museum or a reliquary, but in the "social body" of Christ. We see it when we practice the virtues of Empathy and Integrity. We see it when we work for a society that is Liberating and Sacramental. The resurrection might delete its own empirical evidence, but it leaves behind a much more powerful testimony: A community of "little christs" who, despite their flaws, continue to reflect the Light of Christ in a world hungry for wholeness.
We do not have a corpse to examine. We have a life to participate in. And in the end, perhaps that is the most "extraordinary evidence" of all. As we navigate our own doubts and the complexities of our modern world, may we have the courage to follow the ripples back to the Source. May we trust that the one who drew the Apostles out of their fear is drawing us, even now, into his Divine Light.
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