We often use the phrase ‘seeing is believing’ when we have doubts about the validity of an event or occurrence that someone tells us about. The definition of the phrase from the Cambridge Dictionary is “said to mean that if you see something yourself, you will believe it to exist or be true, despite the fact that it is extremely unusual or unexpected”.
This is exactly the scenario we see in the Gospel of John when the resurrected Jesus appears to his disciples where they are meeting in a locked room because they fear persecution from the Jewish religious authorities. The apostle Thomas is not present when this takes place, and when the other disciples tell him, “We have seen the Lord,” Thomas replies, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
Of course we know from the Gospel of John that Jesus subsequently appears to the disciples a week later when Thomas is with them, and seeing Jesus with his own eyes, he believes that Jesus has risen from the dead. Jesus reportedly then says to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Critics of the Gospels will often say that stories contained in them relating to Jesus can’t be relied upon as being factual or accurate because they are not eyewitness accounts. They are at best secondhand accounts given to the authors of the Gospels by people who were eyewitnesses, or worse, they are stories that have been passed down through several pairs of hands as it were and, like ‘Chinese whispers’, have been embellished or altered from the original source.
How is this any different from most of the recorded history of the world, especially ancient history? More often than not, many of the events that have been recorded in ancient history were documented decades or hundreds of years after the events supposedly took place. They were clearly not based on eyewitness accounts and, like the claims made by critics of the Gospels in relation to stories regarding Jesus, they were probably passed down through several sets of hands as well before finally being recorded. So why is it that people are happy to accept as true events that are recorded in ancient history, but they are not prepared to accept as true stories in the Gospels relating to Jesus, especially those concerning his resurrection?
Perhaps this comes down to the believability or plausibleness of the claim being made. And this is where the phrase ‘seeing is believing’ comes into play. Because there are no records of anyone being raised from the dead in the two thousand plus years since the time of Jesus, apart from the New Testament stories of the raising of Dorcas and Eutychus by the Apostles Peter and Paul respectively, people are therefore sceptical of Jesus having been raised from the dead. In the modern world, where we rely so much on physical proof in order for something to be believed, there is always going to be scepticism of the Christian belief that Jesus was raised from the dead.
One of the earliest arguments to be made against the Resurrection, was that of the Jewish religious leaders who claimed that the disciples of Jesus had themselves removed the body of Jesus from the tomb. What I find interesting about this claim is that nobody was actually disputing that the tomb was empty. The body of Jesus was placed in the tomb after his death on Good Friday, but then his body was no longer there on Easter Day. There is no argument that the tomb was empty.
The question then becomes, “what happened to the body of Jesus?” Given that the disciples of Jesus deserted him in fear at the time of his arrest, trial and crucifixion, and were still hiding in fear on the evening of the day when he had supposedly been resurrected, how likely is it that they would have gone to the tomb earlier that day, or the night before, and removed his body as part of some preconceived master plan to claim that he had been raised from the dead? And how was it, that these same disciples who had deserted Jesus in fear, and were still hiding in fear, would several weeks later be publicly proclaiming Jesus in the very city where he had been executed?
Something significant had to have occurred to give them the courage and strength to start proclaiming Jesus at the very risk of their own lives. Could this have been that they did in fact personally see the risen Jesus? After all, as we know, seeing is believing.
