My understanding of Christian theology is that Jesus accomplished his goals in his lifetime - he spread his message, taught the followers who would carry on his mission after he was gone, and redeemed humanity by his sacrifice of being crucified. All we have to do now is to have faith and believe in what he told us.
So what point did the resurrection serve? Jesus had already said he was the Son of God. Why did he need to rise from the dead to prove it? Shouldn’t the apostles have had sufficient faith in his word to believe he was the Messiah and was up in Heaven with God? Wouldn’t it have been better if they had accepted his divine nature on faith without having to see a demonstration? After all, the rest of us are supposed to accept his divinity on faith in the absense of any direct proof. Why did his closest followers need something extra?
I think that it must be one of two reasons. Either he was just showing off, or it really was the gardener pretending to be Jesus come back to life as has been speculated in another thread.
In Christian theology, the Resurrection was necessary because salvation is not only spiritual, but encompasses all of Creation, spiritual & material. Thus, Jesus not only conquers spiritual death (whether it be extinction or existence in an afterlife alienated from God) but also physical death.
As to why the disciples had to witness it as an actual physical event & couldn’t just take it on faith like we have to, whenever God launched a covenant with His people in the Bible, He did a material eye-witness demonstration of His power to those people He made the covenant with directly, and their descendants had to take that on Faith. For example, the Exodus was (according to the Bible) one obvious miracle after the other to get the Israelites out of Egypt, into the Mosaic Law Covenant, & into the Promised Land- and then generations would pass without any miracles until things got so bad God had to send an Elijah or someone to jumpstart their faith again.
True. But saying that God was capable of raising the dead doesn’t make it a requirement. Humanity was saved at the moment when Jesus died not three days later when he was resurrected.
In theory, if the sacrifice of Jesus was all that was required then there was no need for anyone to witness the crucifixion much less the resurrection. God would have known the sacrifice had occurred and that would have been sufficient.
The general counter-argument is that the sacrifice alone was not sufficient. The sacrifice created an opportunity for redemption but people still have to accept that opportunity by believing in God’s message. So the crucifixion had to be a public event.
But that brings us back to my original question. If faith is a necessary ingredient to salvation then why perform a miracle? A miracle is proof of divine power. And having proof of divine power destroys the possibility of taking it on faith.
That’s an unusual argument. If miracles are sent for those for whom faith is not sufficient, then why aren’t miracles more common? There are plenty of people alive today who don’t accept Christianity on faith alone but would presumedly do so if they witnessed a miracle. How does God decide which people get a miracle and which don’t?
Except that there are plenty of miracles in the book of Joshua, and those alive then were not alive at the time of the escape from Egypt. (Manna is a pretty low grade miracle.)
I also wonder why those who had been in the presence of Jesus needed more convincing than those who weren’t. Do you accept the supposed miracles that went along with the Resurrection more publicly?
By contrast, the Gnostics, in keeping with their general denigration of the material body, believed that resurrection would not be into a physical body.
Paul is quoted as saying that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead then their faith was in vain.
If Genesis is correct then the punishment for sin was death,(no mention of loss of a soul or eternal punishment) the fact that people still died even after what is believed to be Jesus’s ressurection, then I think people decided it meant that they would live on as a spirit; a way to explain why people still died.
But I think it’s clear Paul meant rising from the dead in the sense of an afterlife. After all, most people don’t physically return to life like Jesus did so his experience isn’t relevant to anyone else.
Paul puts the importance of Christ being raised here:
So it is a major cornerstone, if not there would invalidate everything Jesus taught - as it would be no different then any other man’s teachings. It proves that what He taught works, that Jesus is the way.
He meant Jesus’s physical resurrection. Chirst’s defeat of death is the last miracle and if he hadn’t resurrected, he is not Christ, just another good guy,.
Actually He performed many miracles after His resurrection as well, such as John 21:6, leading to His Ascension, then other appearances such as appearing to Saul in the Damascus Rd, and to St. John in Revelation.
But what does Adamic sin involve? It is the separation between God and man. Adam’s sin was the beginning of man departing from God’s way, and a way that man can not get back to on his own.
But Christian teaching is that people will physically return to life, in the manner of Christ, when Christ returns. Precisely when and how many is a subject of great disagreement, but nearly everyone agrees that the resurrection will be into a physical body. It’s in the Apostle’s Creed, after all.
Though it eludes me what either the death or ressurection of Jesus has to do with anybody getting back to God. Oh well, this stuff was never intended to be logical. <sigh>
But why? And, to repeat the OP question, why was the resurrection necessary?
Symbolically, the sacrifice makes sense. But part of sacrifice involves actually giving up something. God - and Jesus - gave up nothing. A lamb sacrificed to God, and then eaten by the supposed sacrificer is not much of a sacrifice.
The supposed resurrection was a particularly good magical trick/miracle, granted. But Jesus supposedly did lots of miracles. He had already shown a mastery over death. So why was this special and needed?
I’m asking you because raindog has already admitted he doesn’t understand.