Tehillah Generation Chapel
Daily Manna
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Topic: The empty tomb 61
Reading: Matthew 27:57-66, 28:1-15
Scripture: He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee. (Luke 24:6)
Note: Pinchas Lapide, a Christian apologist scholar rejected the hallucination theory. After examining the various claims within the spectrum of the various vision theories regarding the resurrection of Christ from the dead, he wrote, “If the defeated and depressed group of disciples overnight could change into a victorious movement of faith, based only on autosuggestion or self-deception, without a fundamental faith experience, this would be a much greater miracle than the resurrection itself.”
The allusion to autosuggestion implies the process by which a person induces self-acceptance of an opinion, belief, one’s own attitudes, behaviour, plan of action or physical condition by mental processes other than conscious thought. The suggestion by the vision theorists of the ability to bring about such a positive influence among the disciples without the literal bodily resurrection appearances of Jesus to them is what Pinchas Lapide termed as the most incredible miracle ever to have occurred.
The opponents of the resurrection appearances of Jesus obviously have more to contend with regarding the sudden transformation of the disciples than the “easier miracle of the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus.”
In trying to explain their rejection of the resurrection appearances of Jesus as narrated in the Gospels, these vision theory philosophers ended up being saddled with a monster on their hands, that would be more difficult to explain than the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus they are trying to grapple with.
Food for thought: In trying to prove the mastery of their philosophical sophistry and wisdom, the enemies of the resurrection of Jesus ended up advertising their own foolishness.
Declaration: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. (1Cor.1:27)
©Author: Rev Fred Aboe
