SUMMARY:
THE apostle Paul was awaiting execution in a Roman prison when he wrote his final letter to Timothy in about AD 64-68 (from introduction to 2 Timothy ESV).
What do you think would be the last words from one of the greatest church leaders of all time – just before he was killed as a martyr for the faith?
By SPENCER GEAR
Read
2 Timothy 4:1-4:2 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.
For the time will come when men (people *3) will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE YEARS IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE DEATH OF THE APOSTLES?
Was Paul’s warning to Timothy fulfi lled?
Was sound doctrine compromised?
Were there listeners with “itching ears” who “turn[ed] their ears away from the truth and turn[ed] aside to myths”?
Yes, there were and this is some of what happened.
We need to understand that these church leaders were defending the faith against one of the most destructive heresies concerning Christ that developed towards the end of the fi rst century.
A similar kind of heresy is with us today.
Back in the fi rst and second centuries, this false teaching was called Docetism (a form of Gnosticism).
Docetism is based on the Greek verb, dokew, which means, “I seem.”
This heresy taught that: • Jesus only seemed to be human; he was not really human;
• His human body was a ghost; • Christ's suffering and death were only appearances of suffering and death; • They denied His humanity, so there was no bodily resurrection of Christ. But they affi rmed Christ's deity. • We see possibly an early stage of Docetism being addressed in I John 4:2, when John wrote, "Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the fl esh is from God". In 2 John 7, we read, "Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the fl esh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist".
This is why early church theologians and writers after the death of the apostles had to preach against this heresy. Let's examine a few examples of this correction, particularly as it applies to the resurrection of Christ.
Ignatius of Antioch (ca.4 35-107)5
He taught: “For I know and believe that [Jesus] was in the fl esh even after the resurrection. And when He came to Peter and those who were with him, He said to them, ‘Take, handle me and see that I am not a spirit without body’” [Ignatius n.d.6, 6.3].
Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165)
This very early Christian apologist wrote:
Why did He rise in the fl esh in which He suffered, unless to show the resurrection of the fl esh?
And wishing to confi rm this, when His disciples did not know whether to believe He had truly risen in the body, and were looking upon Him and doubting, He said to them, “Ye have not yet faith, see that it is I;” and He let them handle Him, and showed them the prints of the nails in His hands.
And when they were by every kind of proof persuaded that it was Himself, and in the body, they asked Him to eat with them, that they might thus still more accurately ascertain that He had in verity risen bodily. (Martyr, J., n.d., ch. 9).
Why did he have to teach that Jesus rose from the dead in a body of fl esh?
Because there was false doctrine around in the early second century He went straight to the Bible to get the proof.
We have to do the same with new challenges to Christ’s bodily resurrection.
Tertullian (ca. 160-225)
Tertullian wrote a document titled, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, in which he asked: How then did Christ rise again?
In the fl esh, or not?
No doubt, since you are told that He “died according to the Scriptures”, and “that He was buried according to the Scriptures”, no otherwise than in the fl esh, you will also allow that it was in the fl esh that He was raised from the dead. For the very same body which fell in death, and which lay in the sepulcher, did also rise again (n.d., ch. 48).
Irenaeus (ca. 130-200)
This leader wrote one of the most famous teachings against false teaching in the early church, Against Heresies, in which he stated:
In the same manner, therefore, as Christ did rise in the substance of fl esh, and pointed out to His disciples the mark of the nails and the opening in His side (now these are the tokens of that fl esh which rose from the dead) (Irenaeus n.d., 5.7.1).
Origen (ca. 185-254)
In refuting Celsus’s charge that the resurrection appearances of Jesus were those of a ghost, he asked:
How is it possible that a phantom which, as he describes it, fl ew past to deceive the beholders, could produce such effects after it had passed away, and could so turn the hearts of men as to lead them to regulate their actions according to the will of God (Origen n.d., 7.35).
Docetism was one of the major destructive heresies of the church in the fi rst-to-third centuries and these defenders and teachers of the faith had to teach against the false doctrine of a spiritual or phantom resurrection of Christ.
Paul warned that “destructive heresies” would come and that people would have “itching ears” to receive and promote such false teaching.
WHAT DO WE HAVE TODAY?
I hope you don’t get angry with me for mentioning names of people who teach false doctrine. I am following the example of the apostle Paul who, in Galatians 2:11, condemned the apostle Peter, and named him. Peter had been eating with the Gentiles, but when certain Jews came from James, Peter drew back and separated from the Gentiles.
Paul named Peter as a hypocrite and we have had it in writing for 2,000 years.
Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:14, “Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm.
The Lord will repay him for what he has done.” We have had this also on record for 2,000 years.
When people are preaching false doctrine in the church or anywhere, when people are harming the church and God’s people, we need to name them, correct them, and proclaim the accurate biblical message.
In regard to the bodily resurrection of Christ, what false teaching do we have today? New Zealand Presbyterian minister, Lloyd Geering
He defended the view “that the Christian is free to say that the bones of Jesus lie somewhere in Palestine, and until the Christian feels free to say that, he hasn’t understood what the Resurrection is about” (in Kohn 2001).
Geering continues, “The Resurrection was not a resuscitation, it was not a return to this life of a physical body.
It was in fact something quite different. It was in fact the rise of Easter faith in the disciples” (in Kohn 2001).
In other words, the resurrection of Jesus was not a risen body in the fl esh, but it was a spiritual experience for Christ’s disciples.
Geering also is a member of the Jesus Seminar and a participant in the liberal alternative to the Alpha Course, “Living the Questions.”
The Lutheran, Rudolph Bultmann
This “demythologiser” of the Scriptures wrote that “the resurrection itself is not an event of past history” (in Mann 1993).
Neo-orthodox theologian, Karl Barth He wrote that “Christians do not believe in the empty tomb but in the living Christ.
Is the empty tomb just a legend? What matter?
It cannot but demand assent, even as legend.” (from Church Dogmatics III, 2, p.454).
Enter the former Episcopalian bishop of Newark, NJ (USA)...
John Shelby Spong:
Spong, who has done great damage to the Christian faith, wrote:
The probable fate of the crucifi ed Jesus was to be thrown with other victims into a common, unmarked grave.
The general consensus of New Testament scholars is that whatever the Easter experience was, it dawned fi rst in the minds of the disciples who had fl ed to Galilee for safety, driving us to the conclusion that the burial story in the gospels is . . . legendary (Spong 2004).
John Dominic Crossan
He’s the co-founder of the Jesus Seminar and a former Roman Catholic priest. He writes of “the apparitions of the risen Jesus”.
What’s an apparition?
A phantom, a ghost. Jesus’ resurrected body was not real fl esh.
He says that “the resurrection is a matter of Christian faith” (1995, p. 189).
Jesus “was buried, if buried at all, by his enemies, and the necessarily shallow grave would have been easy prey for scavenging animals” (Crossan 1994, p. 160).
For him, the resurrection of Christ is really a spiritual resurrection among believers – whatever that means!
Where I live in Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia, a Uniting Church minister attacked the resurrection of Christ.
Rev. David Kidd
At Easter time 1999, David Kidd wrote an article in The Bugle newspaper that was titled, “The Resurrection of Jesus” (Kidd 1999, p. 19), in which he wrote: “The resurrection of Jesus.7
It’s impossible.
Even our brain dies after a few minutes of death. It’s just not possible.’” *8
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?
It is very easy to show from the Scriptures that Christ rose from the dead in a physical body. Let’s look at the evidence (with help from Geisler 1999, pp. 667-668):
People touched him with their hands Jesus’ challenge to Thomas in John 20:27 was:
“Put your fi nger here; see my hands.
Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” How did Thomas respond? “My Lord and My God” (20:28). When Jesus appeared to his disciples, what did He say?
Luke 24:39, “Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost (spirit 9) does not have fl esh and bones, as you see I have.”
Do we need any further evidence that Jesus had real human fl esh after His resurrection? Jesus’ resurrection body had real fl esh and bones
The verse that we have just looked at gives some of the most powerful evidence of his bodily resurrection: “Touch me and see; a [spirit] does not have fl esh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39).
Then what did He do to prove that He did have a real body of fl esh and bones? This is another piece of evidence in support of the bodily resurrection of Christ:
Jesus ate real food
According to Luke 24:41-42, Jesus “asked them, ‘Do you have anything here to eat?’
They gave him a piece of broiled fi sh.”
Spirits or spiritual bodies do not eat fi sh.
He ate real food on at least three occasions, eating both bread and fi sh, (Luke 24:30, 41-43; John 21:12-13).
Acts 10:41 states that Jesus met with witnesses “who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”
Take a look at the wounds in his body
This is proof beyond reasonable doubt.
He still had the wounds in his body from when he was killed. John 20:27, “Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your fi nger here; see my hands
. Reach out your hand and put it into my side.
Stop doubting and believe.’”
Jesus could be seen and heard
Matthew 28:17 says that “when they saw [horao] him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.”
On the road to Emmaus, of the disciples who were eating together, Luke 24:31 states, “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.”
The Greek term “to recognize” (epiginosko) means “to know, to understand, or to recognize”.
These are the normal Greek words “for ‘seeing’ (horao, theoreo) and ‘recognizing’ (eipiginosko) physical objects” (Geisler 1999, pp 667-668).
The Greek word, soma, always means physical body
When used of an individual human being, the word “body” (soma) always means a physical body in the New Testament.
There are no exceptions to this usage in the New Testament.
Paul uses soma of the resurrection body of Christ (and of the resurrected bodies of people – yet to come — I Corinthians 15:42-44), thus indicating his belief that it was a physical body” (Geisler 1999, p. 668).
In that magnifi cent passage in I Corinthians 15 about the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of people in the last days, why is Paul insisting that the soma must be a physical body?
It is because the physical body is central in Paul’s teaching on salvation.
Jesus’ body came out from among the dead
There’s a prepositional phrase that is used in the NT to describe resurrection “from (ek) the dead” (cf. Mark 9:9; Luke 24:46; John 2:22; Acts 3:15; Romans 4:24; I Corinthians 15:12). That sounds like something of no consequence in English – “from the dead”.
This is not so in the Greek.
This Greek word ek means Jesus was resurrected “out from among” the dead bodies, that is, from the grave where corpses are buried (Acts 13:29-30).
These same words are used to describe Lazarus being raised “from the dead” (John 12:1).
In this case there is no doubt that he came out of the grave in the same body in which he was buried. Thus, resurrection was of a physical corpse out of a tomb or graveyard (Geisler 1999, p. 668).
He appeared to over 500 people at the one time
Paul to the Corinthians wrote that Christ, appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than fi ve hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me [Paul] also, as to one untimely born (I Corinthians 15:5-8).
You could not believe the discussion and controversy one little verb has caused among theologians and Bible teachers. Christ “appeared” to whom?
Here, Paul says that Christ appeared to Peter, the twelve disciples, over 500 other Christians, James, all the apostles, and to Paul “as to one untimely born”.
The main controversy has been over whether this was some supernatural revelation called an “appearance” or was it actually “seeing” his physical being?
These are the objective facts: Christ became fl esh, He died in the fl esh, He was raised in the fl esh and He appeared to these hundreds of people in the fl esh.
People living at that time could have checked it out with these eyewitnesses personally if there were doubts.
The resurrection of Jesus from the dead was not a form of “spiritual” existence.
Just as he was truly dead and buried, so he was truly raised from the dead bodily and seen by a large number of witnesses on a variety of occasions (Fee 1987, p. 728).
No wonder the Book of Acts can begin with:
After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive.
He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3).
WE NEED TO LOOK BRIEFLY AT A FEW OBJECTIONS TO CHRIST’S BODILY RESURRECTION
One of the objections
sometimes raised is that Christ’s body after the resurrection had some unusual supernatural features and that this means it was not a real physical body.
This view is prompted by the fact that:
Christ would just appear and disappear Take a verse like Luke 24:34, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.”
Then go to Acts 9:17, “Then Ananias went to the house and entered it.
Placing his hands on Saul, he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be fi lled with the Holy Spirit.’”
In these two examples the word “appeared” is used.
One of Jesus to Peter shortly after Christ’s resurrection and the other of Jesus appearing to Paul, many years after Christ’s ascension.
Both of these are in the passive voice (Greek), so it means that Christ “let Himself be seen. . . Jesus took the initiative to make himself visible at His resurrection appearances.”
The word, “appeared,” means that “he could be seen by human eyes, the appearances were not just visions” (Geisler 1999, p. 659).
The NT speaks of sudden appearances by Jesus, like to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
It is stated: “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight” (Luke 24:31).
This could have been a miraculous act of power, a sign that He was both human and divine.
We must get this one correct. It is as Norman Geisler puts it:
The text nowhere states that Jesus became non-physical when the disciples could no longer see him.
Just because he was out of their sight does not mean he was out of his physical body.
God has the power to miraculously transport persons in their pre-resurrection physical bodies from one place to another (1999, p. 659).
Remember when Philip the evangelist was with the Ethiopian eunuch?
Acts 8:39 states, “The Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing.”
Here was Philip, a real human being, whisked away by the Spirit of God.
So for both Jesus and Philip, the text does not say that either one became non-physical beings for this to happen.
A second objection is:
Jesus didn’t die but swooned in the grave H. J. Schonfi eld made this popular in a book, The Passover Plot (1965).
But this view is as old as Celsus in the second century.
The view was that Mary Magdalene nursed Jesus back to health.
“Forty days later his wounds got the better of him, and he died and was buried secretly” (Green 1990, p. 186).
This is fairy story stuff.
There is not one piece of evidence to support it and it doesn’t understand “the brutal Roman method of execution” (Green 1990, p. 186).
I found Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, terribly violent but I think that it did give a realistic picture of how deadly fi nal Roman execution really was.
Some want to object that . . .
The disciples stole the body
If the Jews and Romans wanted to silence the facts about the bodily resurrection of Jesus, all they would have had to do was to produce the body of Jesus.
They didn’t.
It does not make sense to claim that the disciples stole the body of Jesus, went forth proclaiming the death and resurrection of Jesus, and then, They were willing to be imprisoned for this faith, torn limb from limb, thrown to the lions, or turned into human torches in the Emperor Nero’s gardens for this conviction that Jesus was alive.
Would they have endured all that for a claim they knew was [a fake]? (Green 1990, p. 190)
Why did some of the Bible teachers after the death of the apostles teach Docetism, that Jesus did not have a physical body and could not have risen with a physical body – he only seemed to be physical?
They could be the same reasons for such teaching today:
• They don't believe the authoritative Bible is the infallible Word of God. OR
• They don't believe in the supernatural. They are naturalists who believe that "the 'natural' universe, the universe of matter and energy, is all that there really is.
This rules out God, so naturalism is atheistic" (MacDonald 1984, p. 750).
This is like David Kidd, formerly of the Bundaberg Uniting Church, who said that the resurrection of Christ is "impossible.
Even our brain dies after a few minutes of death. It’s just not possible” (Kidd 1999, p. 19). That’s naturalism.
• Even though deniers of Christ’s bodily resurrection may be in the church and paid by the church, they really are rebels against God and don’t want to understand the resurrection of Jesus as God told us. In reality, they are atheistic concerning the supernatural God of the Bible. They serve another god.
• Paul warned that these false teachers would attract people “to suit their own passions” (2 Timothy 4:3 ESV).
• Satan, the enemy of our souls, loves to dress up false doctrine to make it look like the real thing.
WHY IS THE BODILY RESURRECTION OF JESUS IMPORTANT?
We must understand how serious it is to deny the bodily resurrection. Paul told the Corinthians: If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith (1 Corinthians 15:13-14).
According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, “Christians now number 2 billion ... in 238 countries, and use 7,100 languages” (Jubilee 2000). If there is no bodily resurrection, we might as well announce it to the world and tell all Christians they are living a lie and ought to go and practise some other religion.
We have to be careful with these fi gures because “Christian” is used broadly and not just for born-again believers.
British Anglican evangelist, Michael Green, summarised the main issues about the bodily resurrection of Christ:
The supreme miracle of Christianity is the resurrection. . . It is the crux of Christianity, the heart of the matter.
If it is true, then there is a future for mankind; and death and suffering have to be viewed in a totally new light.
If it is not true, Christianity collapses into mythology. In that case we are, as Saul of Tarsus conceded, of all men most to be pitied (Green 1990, p.184).
The bodily resurrection is absolutely essential for the following reasons:
Belief in the resurrection of Christ is absolutely necessary for salvation
Romans 10:9 states: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Salvation means that you are saved from God’s wrath because of the resurrection of Christ. You are saved from hell.
Your new birth is guaranteed by the resurrection. I Peter 1:3 states “In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” The spiritual power within every Christian happens because of the resurrection. Paul assured the Ephesians of Christ’s “incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 1:19-20). You can’t have spiritual power in your life without the resurrected Christ.
In one passage, Paul links our justification through faith to the resurrection – he associates directly our being declared righteous, our being not guilty before God, with Christ’s resurrection.
Romans 4:25 states that Jesus “was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justifi cation.”
Salvation, regeneration, justifi cation, and your having spiritual power in the Christian life depend on your faith in Christ, including His resurrection from the dead.
Not any old resurrection will do.
Jesus’ body after the resurrection was not a spirit or phantom.
It was a real, physical body. If you don’t believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ, on the basis of these verses, you can’t be saved.
Christ’s resurrection proves that He is God
From very early in His ministry, Jesus’ predicted His resurrection.
The Jews asked Him for a sign. According to John 2:19-21, “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days’ ... But the temple he had spoken of was his body.”
Did you get that?
Jesus predicted that He, being God, would have His body destroyed and three days later, He would raise this body.
Jesus continued to predict His resurrection: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fi sh, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).
See also Mark 8:31; 14:58; Matthew 27:63. Christ’s bodily resurrection is core Christianity because:
Life after death is guaranteed
Remember what Jesus taught his disciples in John 14:19, “Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me.
Because I live, you also will live.”
If you truly have saving faith in Christ His resurrection makes life after death a certainty and without it there is no certainty.
Christ’s bodily resurrection guarantees that believers will receive resurrection bodies as well
After you die and Christ comes again, the New Testament connects Christ’s resurrection with our fi nal bodily resurrection. I Corinthians 6:14, “By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.”
In the most extensive discussion of the New Testament on the connection between Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection, Paul states that Christ is “the fi rstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (I Cor. 15:20).
What are “fi rstfruits”?
It’s an agricultural metaphor indicating the fi rst taste of the ripening crop, showing that the full harvest is coming.
This shows what believers’ resurrection bodies, the full harvest, will be like.
Do you see how critically important it is to have a biblical understanding of the nature of Christ’s resurrection — His bodily resurrection?
In spite of so many in the liberal church establishment denying the bodily resurrection of Christ or dismissing it totally, there are those who stand fi rm on the bodily resurrection.
THOSE SUPPORTING THE BODILY RESURRECTION
Eminent British theologian and Anglican Bishop of Durham, Dr. N. T. Wright said:
I simply cannot explain why Christianity began without it [i.e. the resurrection of Christ]. . .
If Jesus had died and stayed dead, [his disciples] would either have given up the movement or they would have found another messiah.
Something extraordinary happened which convinced them that Jesus was the Messiah (Jennings 2000, p. 51).
Wright concludes:
The proposal that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead possesses unrivalled power to explain the historical data at the heart of early Christianity (Wright 2003, p. 718).
WHAT’S THE REMEDY WHEN THE BODILY RESURRECTION OF CHRIST IS DENIED?
It is the same for us as Paul’s last words to Timothy: “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage— with great patience and careful instruction” (2 Timothy 4:2).
I have great concern that the churches today are becoming vulnerable to rampant false teaching. Why?
• We don't take seriously Paul's command to “preach the Word.” Preaching about the Word, preaching my own ideas, is not preaching the Word.
I do not know how to preach the Word other than to systematically preach through the Bible, or to focus on certain biblical topics as I am doing in this article. Truth is the best antidote for error.
We must preach the Word – the Scriptures. • When should we do this?
When it's appropriate and when it seems inappropriate.
Paul's words were: “Be prepared in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2). • This preaching of the Word must include correction, rebuking and encouragement.
My task in this article has been to correct false doctrine, based on the Scriptures. • It is not too late to make a change. False doctrine will increase and the need for correction, rebuking and encouragement will always be urgently needed.
Paul says that we must do this “with great patience and careful instruction” (2 Timothy 4:2), but do we really care about false teaching. • Will we take seriously this command from Paul, so that we will not become a victim of false teachings?
All of us must be vigilant.
We cannot know what is false without knowing the truth of the Word of God. We must preach the Word.
APPENDIX: 1. Theologian and apologist, Norman Geisler “Those who try to get around the resurrection walk against the gale-force winds of the full evidence. The facts are that Jesus of Nazareth really died . . . and actually came back from the dead in the same physical body” (1999, p. 656).
2. Theologian Wayne Grudem Concerning Jesus’ resurrection body, the texts . . . show that Jesus clearly had a physical body with ‘fl esh and bones’ (Luke 24:39), which could eat and drink, break bread, prepare breakfast and be touched. ... These texts are not capable of an alternative explanation that denies Jesus’ physical body ... Jesus was clearly teaching them that his resurrection body was a physical body (1994, p. 612).
REFERENCES:
Cairns, E. E. 1981, Christianity through the Centuries, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Crossan, J.D. 1994, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco.
Crossan, J.D. 1995, Who Killed Jesus? HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco.
Fee, G.D. 1987, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (gen. ed. F. F. Bruce, The New International Commentary on the New Testament), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Geisler, N.L. 1999, Resurrection, Evidence for, in Norman L. Geisler 1999, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Green, M. 1990, Evangelism through the local Church, Hodder & Stoughton, London.
Grudem, W. 1994, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England. Ignatius n.d., The Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, Early Church Writings, available from: http://www.earlychristianwritings. com/srawley/smyrnaeans.html [19 July 2005].
Irenaeus n.d., Against Heresies, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, available from: http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01- 63.htm#P89672580595
Jennings P. 2000, Peter Jennings Reporting, ABC television (USA), aired on Monday, June 26 2000. This quote is from Christian Research Institute 2000, “Point-by-point Response to ‘Peter Jennings Reporting: The Search for Jesus,’ available from: http://www.equip.org/free/DJ036.pdf [31 May 2005]. Jubilee 2000: 17.5% of World Is Catholic After 2000 Years, available from: http://www.cin.org/archives/ cinjub/200104/0033.html [26 July 2005]. Kidd, D. 1999, Bundaberg Uniting Church, The Resurrection of Jesus, The Bugle (Bundaberg), March 19, 1999, p. 19. In my fi ling system at 180B>2325 #8.
Kohn, R. 2001, The Spirit of Things (radio program), Tomorrow’s God, with Lloyd Geering, Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), 4 March 2001, available from: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/spirit/stories/s253975.htm [19 July 2005].
Mann, J. 1993, Justification, available from: http://www. fountain.btinternet.co.uk/theology/justific.html [19 July 2005]. MacDonald, M.H. 1984, Naturalism, in W.A. Elwell (ed.), Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, pp. 750-751.
Martyr, J. n.d., Fragments of the Lost Work of Justin on the Resurrection, Early Church Writings, available from: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyrresurrection. html
Origen n.d., Contra Celsus, Early Christian Writings, available at: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/origen167.html. Schonfi eld, H.J. 1965, The Passover Plot: New Light on the History of Jesus, Bantam Books, New York.
Spong, J.S. 2004, Review, The Passion of the Christ — Mel Gibson’s Film and Biblical Scholarship – Part 4, available from Arianna Online Forum at: http://www.ariannaonline. com/forums/showthread.php?t=1025 [19 July 2005].
Tertullian n.d., On the Resurrection of the Flesh, Early Church Writings, available from: http://www.earlychristianwritings. com/text/tertullian16.html [19 July 2005].
Wright, N. T. 2003, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Fortress Press, Minneapolis.
Footnotes:
2. Unless otherwise indicated, all Bible quotations are from The New International Version of the Bible (NIV).
3. The original said, “Men,” but the ESV rightly translates as “people” as it refers to all human beings.
4. ca. is Latin for circa, meaning, “about”
5. Earle E. Cairns considers that his “seven letters must have been written about 110” (1981, p. 74).
6. n.d. means “no date”; used in all research literature (eg Harvard Style Manual) when there is no publication date.
*7. “The Resurrection of Jesus” was the title of the article and the fi rst sentence began with, “It’s impossible.
Even our brain dies . . .,” so I am left to conclude that the article’s title was the introduction to the fi rst sentence.
*8.The original article had closing inverted commas here, but there were no introductory inverted commas.
9. The NIV reads, “ghost,” but the ESV translates as “spirit.” The Greek is pneuma = spirit.
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Appeared in Issue 36 CETF 12.2 NR June 2006
"...contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints" -- Jude v3
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-Last revised-
Monday, October 09, 2006
