Journal: Michigan Theological Journal
Volume: MTJ 03:2 (Fall 1992)
Article: The Early Christian Belief In The Resurrection Of Jesus:
Author: Gary R. Habermas

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MTJ 3:2 (Fall 1992) p. 105

The Early Christian Belief In The Resurrection Of Jesus:

By Gary R. Habermas

A Response To Thomas Sheehan

In the introductory issue of the new journal Faith Works, Thomas Sheehan provided an outlined summary of his thesis that Jesus was not literally raised from the dead in any sense. Because an important portion of his article was largely aimed at my published works on the resurrection of Jesus, the journal invited me to respond in the second issue. My initial response was to ignore the opportunity. However, I later decided to reply, not so much to “defend my honor,” but in order to attempt to show that those who accept the literal resurrection appearances of Jesus have an excellent and early basis for so doing. However, I was later told by an editor that the journal had been discontinued and no further issues or articles would be forthcoming. Therefore, this present article is, in large part, the content of my original rejoinder to Professor Sheehan which was never published.

In brief, Sheehan holds “that the Easter victory of Jesus was not a historical event — it did not take place in space and time — and that the appearances of Jesus did not entail anyone visually sighting Jesus’ risen body in either a physical or a spiritual “form.”1 Sheehan’s chief argument is that those who hold that Jesus literally rose from the dead ignore the development of the early Christian belief in the resurrection. Sheehan holds that this

MTJ 3:2 (Fall 1992) p. 106

belief rose in a layered fashion, with the first proclamation being that Jesus was exalted. Only later does the “gradually developed position” arise that Jesus literally rose and appeared to his disciples.

However, purposely highlighted in Sheehan’s agenda is a secondary contention: A not so carefully concealed disgust for conservative research. This does not deserve to be treated as a separate critique, so I will mention it only here. Sheehan’s disdain for conservative scholarship which takes the Bible literally is manifest in well over a dozen comments. I am referred to (tongue in cheek) as “the doyen sans pareille of Fundamentalist apologists of the resurrection.”2 Some literalists “insist on riding Balaam’s ass to their scripture classes.”3 In spite of his view of the “resurrection,” Sheehan responds (Ibid., p. 12) to fundamentalist research as follows: “If this were done intentionally, we would call it blasphemy.”(!)

Sheehan refers to literalists and their work as “naive and misleading,” “pse...

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