The Burden of Disproving the Resurrection

Unbelievers assume that Christians bear a burden of proof for their claim that Christ rose from the dead. The dead usually stay dead, and anyone who claims that in one particular case an exception occurred has an uphill battle, if he wants to be taken seriously. The disciples of Christ knew this and accepted the burden by basing Christianity on the resurrection at a time when it could have been disproved quite easily. The fact that the early Christians could not be silenced transfers the burden of proof to skeptics. Tim Keller observes:

It is not enough to simply believe that Jesus did not rise from the dead. You must then come up with a historically feasible alternate explanation for the birth of the church (Reason for God, 202).

The tomb must have been empty or the authorities would have produced the body when Peter was preaching the resurrection in Jerusalem forty days later. The authorities told the soldiers guarding his tomb to publicly humiliate themselves by saying that the disciples stole the body on their watch. The disciples proved that they weren't pulling a practical joke, when they accepted execution rather than deny their preaching. Can you imagine the disciples about to face some terrible torture that would end in their death, asking themselves if they should keep it going? Peter Kreeft pointed out that if the disciples engineered the resurrection they would have to be very stupid because they lost everything and gained nothing.

Pascal said: "I believe those witnesses that get their throats cut" (Keller, 210). 

Now some, like Christopher Hitchens, say that there were no eyewitnesses and that everyone was illiterate anyway. But he is conveniently ignoring Saul of Tarsus who provided the earliest written witness to the resurrection fifteen to twenty years after the event. Paul claimed that the risen Christ appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, "he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living" (I Cor. 15). Keller points out that all of Paul's letters were public documents delivered during the Pax Romana when communication, travel, and commerce along Roman roads made fact checking much easier. Paul message was compellingly exoteric and public: "If Christ be not raised your faith is in vain ... we are of all men to be most pitied ... Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die" (I cor 15). Paul and the apostles challenged their world to disprove them and kill Christianity in the womb. They offered something that could be disproved. Paul appealed to common knowledge when he told Govenor Felix: "These things were not done in a corner." There can be no easy "dis-believism" in the face of such witnesses.