Opinion | Why It Matters That Jesus Really Did Rise From the Dead

That would be the triumph of what might be called a Christianity without God.

I am merely attempting to explain why and how I continue to find traditional Christian doctrines and confessions “true,” why I’m willing to confess the creeds, even though I am a critical scholar who knows much of the Bible is not “true” when taken as history or science. This is not an apology but an attempt at explanation and illustration.

The promise of the Resurrection, however, promises much more than justice, as great as that is. In his great essay “On Fairy-Stories,” J. R. R. Tolkien explains why people spend so much money and energy to consume movies, plays, and books that are fairy tales. The audience for what we call “fantasy” literature is vastly larger than that for realist

Atheism and Christianity tell two very different stories. One is a story of ultimate purposelessness – the ‘blind, pitiless indifference’ of Richard Dawkins’ universe. The other is a story of ultimate meaning and hope – hope that there is a reason for our existence, hope that our lives mean something, the hope that death is not the end. A hope that

To hear the good news of salvation, to be converted, is to turn back to the condemned and rejected, acknowledging that there is hope nowhere else.