Christian Clark, BC ‘09 and Harvard Law ‘16, returned to Boston College on March 31 to present a talk entitled “Evidence of Jesus’ Resurrection: A Lawyer’s Analysis.” Held in the McGuinn 121 auditorium, the event was sponsored by the Sons of St. Patrick, BC’s Catholic men’s group, and consisted of Clark’s argument followed by an opportunity for questions.
“I don’t think there’s a more important question in human existence,” began Clark. “Did Jesus rise from the dead or not? As some other apologists have said it, ‘was he God or was he nuts?’ ”
Clark, now a lawyer in Manhattan, then put forth a legal foundation for his audience to preface his approach to the question of the Resurrection. He explained the two types of cases in the U.S legal system, criminal cases with their “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of proof and civil cases with their standard of “preponderance of the evidence … more likely than not, 51%.” Clark explained that he would focus on the preponderance standard to make his case for the Resurrection.
“Why talk about the Resurrection?” Clark proposed in making his opening statement. “It’s the spearhead of the Christian message, both theologically and historically.”
“As sublime as Jesus’ moral teaching was … that’s not actually what got people around the Mediterranean up from their seats and risking their lives telling about what they saw – it was this conviction that a man that they saw die, they saw him raised.”
However, Clark recognized, some people would object immediately to his project of presenting evidence for the Resurrection.
“I’ve heard a pious objection,” Clark said. “Why would you attempt to prove some piece of the faith when faith is a gift?” Further, there is a “skeptical objection to a project like this … you obviously can’t prove something like this in a scientific or mathematical way, so don’t waste our time.”
Clark then rooted his project by quoting British scholar N.T. Wright’s words: “Historical argument alone cannot force anyone to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, but historical argument is remarkably good at clearing away the undergrowth behind which skepticisms of various sorts have been hiding.”
Moving on to the evidence, Clark laid out three key facts.
“[T]he first fact: Jesus lived, died, and crucified in the early decades of the first century,” Clark stated. In doing so he cited historians Tacitus, Lucian, and Josephus, each a “non-Christian source, not relying on the Gospels … a secular historian situating Jesus in that time and place.”
Clark then formulated the second fact: “The apostles had a sincere belief that Jesus was raised bodily and appeared to them.” Clark first referenced the story of Paul, who “has a complete 180 … goes from persecuting Christians and has this experience [of encountering the Risen Jesus], and then all of a sudden he is the foremost leader of the Christian movement.”
Clark also mentioned James, part of the group of Jesus’ family that was “skeptical of him [Jesus] … Later on James must have had a turnabout because he becomes the leader of the Jerusalem church along with Peter, and then from again a source completely outside the bible, we know from Josephus that James, the brother of the Lord, was stoned to death by the Sanhedrin.”
“These people sincerely believed they saw Jesus risen to them, otherwise you can’t explain those transitions,” Clark affirmed.
Clark then turned to 1 Corinthians, a letter accepted by both believing and unbelieving scholars to be actually written by Paul himself.
There’s “widespread agreement that it’s written around 50 AD, 55 AD … Paul is pressure-testing his experience of Jesus against Peter’s,” said Clark, inferring what Paul must have done in his visits to Jerusalem. “He [Paul] says elsewhere that once he was preaching, that Peter and James approved of Paul’s message. And so we know that they’re all on the same page, and we know that from authentic letters of Paul.”
Continuing to his final fact, Clark bluntly described it: “The empty tomb.”
He called to mind the circumstantial evidence of “a really interesting line in Matthew’s gospel, it’s kind of a throw-away, and he says that there’s a rumor circulating among those who have remained Jewish and have not joined the Christian message that the disciples stole the body of Jesus … What does that presuppose?”
“Why on earth would he [Matthew] actually include that unless that’s actually a rumor that’s circulating, he’d have to be gratuitously including something that undermines his own case [for Jesus’s resurrection].”
Next came another piece of the Gospels: “The four Gospels aren’t always unanimous on every last thing, but they’re unanimous on this: that the empty tomb was discovered by women.”
“Josephus tells us that women couldn’t testify in court … women were viewed as being inherently unreliable,” Clark said. “If you’re concocting some fable, and you’re trying to start a new following, the most insane thing you could possibly do in the culture of year 33 in the Near East is to pin the most important claim on a bunch of women … scholars call that the principle of embarrassment, that people don’t tend to include embarrassing details unless they’re true.”
Proceeding to his closing argument, Clark addressed alternative theories about the Resurrection.
Responding to the theory that the Resurrection is a conspiracy cooked up by the Apostles, Clark reasoned “You end up with a kind of miraculous conspiracy don’t you? You end up with a conspiracy that is unlike anything anyone has ever seen in the world for the last 10,000 years … you might as well believe in the Resurrection at that point.”
If the Resurrection is just the untruth found at the end of a “game of telephone … the gap between Jesus and the first generation, and then the following generations, it’s simply too tight for legend to grow up,” Clark explained, citing recent studies in the dating of New Testament texts, such as the oral tradition found in 1 Corinthians which New Testament scholar Gary Habermas dates to the 30s AD.
“I think everyone in the world should hear the evidence for the Resurrection,” Clark concluded. “I think it’s an easy preponderance case to win in court.”
Thomas is a student in BC’s Carroll School of Management, who fittingly serves as the current Business Manager of The Torch in addition to his position as Campus News Editor. Thomas can be found around campus singing at Masses with the Liturgy Arts Group, tabling for the BC Pro-Life Club, deep in conversation while enjoying BC Dining cuisine, or gazing in awe at Gasson Hall and its Collegiate Gothic style architectural neighbors.
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