Apologetics Guided Reading: George Park Fisher “Manual of Christian Evidences” Chapter 10

Source for image: http://divinity-adhoc.library.yale.edu/Exhibits/YDSMilestones.htm

I am leading a guided reading of the Manual of Christian Evidences by George Park Fisher. It is freely available online and will serve as a base for discussing Christian apologetics throughout this series. The chapters are short and readable. I encourage you to join in by reading the chapters and commenting with your thoughts. When I discuss the book, I will be citing page numbers from the edition linked above

Chapter 10

Fisher here builds upon his arguments from chapter 8 and chapter 9 regarding the trustworthiness of the Gospels and the apostles, building a case for the resurrection once we have found the Gospels to be trustworthy.

First, Fisher notes that the detail that Jesus actually died needs little defense. The idea that Jesus could have survived crucifixion seems impossible. Moreover, that Jesus began appearing on the third day doesn’t give enough time for expectations or development of theology to occur such that the disciples could have imagined fulfillment for it. The most powerful evidence, argues Fisher, for the resurrection of Jesus comes from the appearances to the apostles and their accounting of them. These show that Jesus was physically present and unexpected.

Study Questions

1. What kind of things occurred during crucifixion? Could someone have survived them? What kind of responsibility did Roman guards have for those whose executions they were guarding?

2. Write down aspects of Jesus’s appearance to the apostles found in the Gospels. What things do we know about Jesus from these accounts? Include physical details.

Links

Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!

Apologetics Read-Through: Historical Apologetics Read-Along– Here are links for the collected posts in this series and other read-throughs of apologetics books (forthcoming).

Dead Apologists Society– A page for Christians interested in the works of historical apologetics. There is also a Facebook group for it.

SDG.

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