Happy Easter!

This year, my esteemed blog colleague Sage McLaughlin has written the Easter post at What's Wrong With the World. Having written a fairly substantial Good Friday post at W4, I'm taking it somewhat easy with this post.

The resurrection is the center of the Christian faith because it is the vindication of Jesus Christ. In another sense, one might argue that the cross is the center of Christianity, and far be it from me to say anything against the centrality of the cross of Christ! However, had Jesus died and not risen from the dead, then Jesus' death would have no power to save. This is St. Paul's argument in I Corinthians 15: If Christ is not raised, you are still in your sins.

Over the past eight years or so, as regular readers know, my husband and I (he even more than I) have become increasingly involved in arguing for the historicity of the gospels and Acts as part of the argument that Jesus indeed rose from the dead. Here I am simply going to encourage you, if you have not done so already, to listen to some of Tim's videos and podcasts or to read some posts on this subject. Here is the Apologetics315 page where several of these are helpfully collected. Here is a post of mine on undesigned coincidences in Acts, with links to a series of posts Tim wrote on the intersections between Acts and the Pauline epistles. There is more where that came from, if you are interested.

We have not followed cunningly devised fables. Oh, I know, a resurrection? Miracles? Do we also believe in little green men?

Whether you presently consider yourself a Christian, an agnostic, an atheist, a wavering Christian, or any other variety on the spectrum of belief and unbelief: Christianity offers you an invitation to be a believer without being credulous. Christianity offers you faith founded on fact. Christianity offers you religious propositions so well-supported that, in accepting them, you are not accepting low standards. Christianity does not ask you to become willing to believe just anything. Christianity does not ask you to take its truth on the barest assertion of authority. ("It's in the Bible, so it must be true, and if you don't believe that, your life is meaningless, so believe whatever is in the Bible if you don't want your life to be meaningless.") Christianity offers you the unity of the heart and mind.

Not an easy life, but a hope that endures for all time.

Christ the Lord is risen today. Alleluia!

Now, for some music. The group is Glad, with "Christus Dominus Hodie Resurrexit."



The Gaither Vocal Band, "Because He Lives."



Handel--"Worthy is the Lamb"