The Foundation Beneath Christian Faith, Unanswered Questions, and Every Argument About God
Christianity does not stand because Christians have won every argument.
It does not stand because we have discovered a philosophical proof of God that no atheist can answer. It does not stand because Christians can explain every instance of suffering, resolve every biblical difficulty, defend every event in church history, or reproduce every spiritual experience that first brought us into the faith.
Christianity stands or falls upon one central claim:
God raised Jesus from the dead.
Paul states the matter without qualification:
“If the Messiah has not been raised, then our proclamation is empty, and your faith is empty. We are even exposed as false witnesses about God because we testified that God raised the Messiah. If the Messiah has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.”
Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians 15.14 to 15.17, c. A.D. 54 to 55.
Paul does not say that Christian faith becomes empty if the fine-tuning argument fails.
He does not say that faith becomes empty if Christians cannot explain why God permits suffering.
He does not say that faith becomes empty if our original religious experience fades, if the Bible becomes more complicated than we were taught, or if a Christian institution fails us.
He says that if Christ has not been raised, Christian proclamation is empty and Christian faith is futile.
That is the foundation to which every Christian question must eventually return.
This post will not attempt to prove that Jesus rose from the dead. That investigation will require several future posts. The purpose here is more basic. Before we examine the evidence, we need to understand why the resurrection is the central question.
If Jesus was not raised, no other argument can save Christianity.
If Jesus was raised, then no other unanswered question can simply be permitted to make the resurrection disappear.
Every Christian Enters Through a Door
Every Christian enters the faith through a door.
For some, the door is experience. Christ becomes real during a worship service, at a Christian camp, in recovery, through answered prayer, or during a season of suffering. Something happens that the person interprets as an encounter with Christ, and that experience changes the direction of life.
That is part of my own story. When I was eighteen years old, I had an experience at a Christian camp that moved me toward Christianity. I did not begin with a historical investigation of the resurrection or a philosophical argument for God. I began with something that happened to me and with the conviction that Christ was somehow present within it.
For others, the door is inheritance. Christianity is received through parents, grandparents, a congregation, and a community in which prayer, Scripture, and worship are already part of life. There may never be one radical emotional conversion. Christianity is simply the faith in which the person learned to live.
That is closer to my wife’s story. She grew up in a Christian home without the kind of dramatic emotional conversion that I experienced. She did not suddenly move from atheism to Christianity. Christian faith was given to her through her family and reinforced by the community surrounding her.
Both doors can lead someone authentically into faith. Neither should be despised.
A religious experience can be an authentic encounter through which someone is brought to Christ. Growing up within a Christian family can also be an authentic work of grace. A person does not need a dramatic conversion story for inherited Christianity to be real.
But the door through which we entered the Christian life is not necessarily the foundation upon which our faith must eventually stand.
Experiences fade. Cultures change. Families disappoint us. Churches fail. Questions arrive that nobody prepared us to answer.
Eventually, every house is tested by weather.
When that happens, the Christian does not merely need another emotional experience or a stronger attachment to the culture that first provided faith. The Christian needs to know what lies beneath the house.
Beneath our experience, inheritance, theology, and tradition lies the original Christian claim:
God raised Jesus from the dead.
The Christian Life Contains More Than One Conversion
We often speak about conversion as though it were one event. A person was once outside Christianity, experienced conversion, and then remained essentially unchanged except for gradually learning more about the faith.
The lives of Christians are usually more complicated.
There may be a conversion of belonging, when Christianity is received through family and community. There may be a conversion of experience, when Christ becomes personally real. There may later be a conversion of the mind, when inherited or experienced faith must become examined faith. There may also be a conversion of the will, when what someone believes begins to reorder ambition, money, sexuality, relationships, vocation, and the use of power.
These conversions do not always occur in the same order. They may overlap, and some may need to happen repeatedly. A Christian may experience new conversions through suffering, repentance, intellectual crisis, moral failure, unexpected vocation, or the recognition that an earlier understanding of faith can no longer carry the weight being placed upon it.
The later conversion does not necessarily prove that the earlier one was false. Each may be authentic while preparing the Christian for something deeper.
The life of Basil of Caesarea offers a striking ancient example.
Basil Awakened Within the Faith He Had Inherited
Basil was not raised outside Christianity. He grew up in one of the most remarkable Christian families of the fourth century. His grandmother, Macrina the Elder, had endured persecution. His parents were Christians. His sister Macrina and his brother Gregory of Nyssa would eventually be remembered as saints.
Christianity belonged to Basil’s family, history, and identity.
Basil then received an elite education. He studied rhetoric and classical literature and prepared himself for a successful public career. When he returned home, he had not necessarily renounced Christianity, but Christianity had not yet reordered the direction of his life.
Gregory of Nyssa describes his brother’s condition with the frankness that can sometimes exist only within a family:
“Basil returned after his long education, already trained in rhetoric. He was puffed up beyond measure with pride in his speaking ability, and he looked down on the local dignitaries as though he were superior to the leading men of the province.”
Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina, c. A.D. 380 to 383.
Basil possessed Christian inheritance, education, ability, and ambition. Gregory does not say that Basil had become an atheist. He says that Basil had become impressed with himself.
Then Macrina confronted the direction of his life:
“Macrina took him in hand, and with remarkable speed she drew him toward the goal of philosophy. He abandoned worldly glory, rejected the reputation gained through public speaking, and chose the demanding life of discipline.”
Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina, c. A.D. 380 to 383.
By “philosophy,” Gregory means the disciplined Christian life. Basil turned away from the pursuit of status and toward prayer, Scripture, renunciation, charity, manual labor, and service.
Basil later described this period as an awakening:
“I had spent a great deal of time pursuing empty things and had wasted nearly all my youth acquiring the wisdom that God has made foolish. Then, like someone awakened from a deep sleep, I turned my eyes toward the wonderful light of the truth of the Gospel. I recognized the uselessness of the wisdom of the rulers of this age, who are passing away. I wept many tears over my miserable life and prayed that I might be given guidance into the teachings of true religion.”
Basil of Caesarea, Letter 223.2, c. A.D. 375.
Basil does not describe himself as hearing about Christianity for the first time. He describes himself as awakening to the truth of the Gospel that had surrounded him throughout his upbringing.
His Christian childhood was not necessarily fraudulent. It gave him the Scriptures, language, examples, and relationships through which his later awakening became possible. Nevertheless, the Christianity he inherited could not remain merely an inherited identity. It had to become a reorientation of his own life.
Basil had entered through the door of Christian inheritance. Macrina helped him discover that entering the house was not the end of conversion.
He needed another conversion.
The same may be true for Christians whose inherited or experienced faith is now being challenged. The questions do not necessarily mean that the first conversion was false. They may be inviting us into another conversion, one in which our faith is no longer supported primarily by culture or emotion but is driven downward toward its foundation.
That foundation is the resurrection.
Suppose the Atheist Has the Better Argument
Christians sometimes act as though faith depends upon winning every philosophical argument for the existence of God.
It does not.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the atheist has the stronger case against the cosmological argument. Suppose the atheist offers a more convincing account of morality, consciousness, evolution, or the apparent order of the universe. Suppose the Christian cannot answer every objection.
Would that establish that Jesus remained dead?
It would not.
It might weaken one philosophical route toward belief in God. It might expose weaknesses in a popular form of Christian apologetics. It might force Christians to abandon arguments they once found persuasive.
It would not tell us what happened after Jesus was crucified.
Consider fine-tuning.
The Christian looks at the conditions that permit life and sees the careful work of a designer. The atheist looks at the same universe and sees something very different: a vast, cold, and overwhelmingly lifeless expanse in which almost everything is hostile to life.
From that perspective, the universe does not resemble a piece of fine art carefully arranged for us. It looks like the result of impersonal physical laws, enormous stretches of time, and chance. Life emerged in one tiny corner because, given enough time and opportunity, it eventually could.
The same universe is therefore used to support opposite conclusions. The Christian points to the narrow conditions that permit life and says, “This looks designed.” The atheist points to the universe’s vast lifelessness and says, “This looks random.”
Perhaps the atheist interpretation makes more sense to someone. Perhaps the Christian cannot supply a convincing response.
The historical question still remains:
Did God raise Jesus from the dead?
If God raised Jesus, then God’s existence is no longer merely something inferred from the appearance of the universe. God has acted in history.
The resurrection does not require us to look at the stars and work our way upward through an uncertain chain of reasoning toward an unidentified creator. It claims that God has acted within human history and identified Jesus by raising him from the dead.
This does not mean that Christianity has no place for reason or evidence. Investigating the resurrection will require careful reasoning. We will need to compare sources, weigh testimony, consider alternative explanations, acknowledge limitations, and resist the temptation to claim more than the evidence allows.
We are not abandoning reason. We are refusing to make Christianity depend upon winning an argument that does not lead us to Jesus.
An atheist may win an argument about fine-tuning without proving that Jesus remained dead.
A Christian may lose an argument without losing Christ.
Return to the resurrection.
Suppose We Cannot Answer the Problem of Suffering
For many Christians, the greatest challenge is not a manuscript variant, a scientific discovery, or an argument about the origin of the universe.
It is suffering.
The problem of suffering is not a gentle rain against the windows. For many people, it is the storm that shakes the entire house.
Why did the child die?
Why was the prayer unanswered?
Why did God allow the abuse?
Why did the faithful person develop cancer while the cruel person continued to prosper?
Why do earthquakes, diseases, wars, famine, and apparently meaningless tragedies destroy people who did nothing to deserve them?
Christians have proposed many answers. Some emphasize human freedom. Some emphasize the regularity of the natural world. Some argue that suffering can form character or produce goods that would otherwise be impossible. Some appeal to humanity’s alienation from God, the limits of human understanding, or the promise that God will finally restore creation.
These answers may help in particular situations, but none of them explains every instance of suffering. Some suffering appears so severe and unnecessary that attempts to explain it can sound less like compassion and more like an effort to protect a theological system.
A Christian should be able to say, “I do not know why this happened.”
Bart Ehrman has repeatedly explained that he did not leave Christianity because his biblical scholarship made Christian faith impossible. He remained a Christian for years after abandoning his earlier belief in biblical inerrancy. He says that the decisive issue was suffering:
“The problem of suffering became for me the problem of faith.”
Bart D. Ehrman, “Human Suffering and the Christian Faith,” December 6, 2020.
Ehrman did not reach that conclusion casually. He describes years of struggle and dissatisfaction with both simple and sophisticated Christian explanations. His testimony deserves to be heard rather than dismissed.
It also brings us to the precise question facing the Christian who is struggling to remain in the faith:
Does my inability to explain suffering give me sufficient reason to conclude that God did not raise Jesus from the dead?
The existence of suffering is evidence that Christians must take seriously. It creates an enormous challenge to belief in a good and powerful God.
But an unanswered question is not automatically a refutation.
“I cannot explain why this happened” is not the same conclusion as “Jesus was not raised.”
If the resurrection testimony is credible, then suffering and resurrection must both be weighed. We cannot allow suffering to make the resurrection disappear any more than we should use the resurrection to make suffering appear unimportant.
The resurrection does not explain why every tragedy occurs. It identifies God with the man who was betrayed, abandoned, tortured, humiliated, and executed. Christianity does not present God as explaining suffering from a safe distance. It claims that God entered human suffering in Christ.
The resurrection then declares that suffering and death do not receive the final word.
This may not tell us why a particular child died, why a prayer was unanswered, or why a terrible event was permitted. It gives Christians a reason to believe that what appears final to us is not final to God.
Paul did not write about resurrection from a life protected against suffering:
“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry the death of Jesus in our bodies so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our bodies.”
Paul, Second Letter to the Corinthians 4.8 to 4.10, c. A.D. 54 to 56.
Paul says that he was perplexed.
Christian faith did not mean that he understood everything happening to him. He experienced affliction, persecution, and circumstances that left him without clear answers.
But perplexity did not have to become despair.
Paul interpreted his suffering through the death and resurrection of Jesus. He did not claim to know why every painful event occurred. He believed that the God who raised Jesus could bring life through circumstances that appeared to contain only death.
The Christian confession does not have to be, “I understand everything God permits.”
It can be:
“I do not understand this. I may never understand it. But I have good reason to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. Therefore, I will continue to follow the crucified and risen Christ while I carry my unanswered questions with me.”
We may remain perplexed without being driven to despair.
Return to the resurrection.
Suppose the Bible Is More Complicated Than We Were Taught
Some Christians were taught that their faith depends upon the Bible being free from every historical difficulty, tension, textual variant, or disagreement among its authors.
When they discover that the Bible is more complicated, they fear that Christianity must collapse with their earlier theory of Scripture.
But the Bible cannot be the first assumption in an investigation of Christianity.
Why should these particular books be regarded as Scripture? Who wrote them? How were they transmitted? How was the canon formed? What should Christians do with differences among manuscripts, tensions between accounts, or centuries of disagreement over interpretation?
These questions matter. They do not make the Bible worthless or spiritually irrelevant. They mean that Christians should not be required to settle every question about inspiration, inerrancy, authorship, transmission, and canon before examining the foundation of Christianity.
We can begin more modestly. We can examine the earliest Christian writings as ancient historical documents before reaching conclusions about their inspiration.
We do not initially have to say, “Paul must be correct because his letters are in the Bible.” We can begin by asking what Paul’s authentic letters tell us about the movement in which he participated and the message he says he received.
A Christian may conclude that a biblical author shaped a narrative, that manuscripts contain variants, or that two accounts are difficult to reconcile. Those conclusions do not establish that Jesus remained dead.
A theory about the Bible can be challenged without the resurrection being disproved.
The collapse of one answer is not necessarily the collapse of the foundation.
Return to the resurrection.
Suppose the Church Fails Us
The church has preserved Scripture, developed theology, worshiped across centuries, cared for the suffering, built institutions, and carried the Christian message throughout the world.
The church has also experienced division, corruption, political manipulation, abuse, and moral failure.
If a congregation fails us, that failure can be devastating. If a Christian leader abuses power, the damage can last for decades. If an institution protects itself rather than the vulnerable, Christians should not excuse the injustice in order to protect the institution.
But the failure of people who claim to follow Jesus is not evidence that Jesus remained dead.
The church cannot be the earliest foundation because the church itself is something that must be explained.
Before there were councils, creeds, denominations, cathedrals, monasteries, seminaries, or a completed New Testament, there was a movement proclaiming that Jesus had been raised from the dead.
The church did not exist first and then invent the resurrection as a doctrine to support itself. The proclamation of the resurrection produced the movement that became the church.
A church failure may force us to reconsider what Christian faithfulness should look like. It may force us to leave a particular congregation, reject corrupt leadership, or admit that Christians have acted in ways completely opposed to Christ.
It does not tell us what happened after Jesus was crucified.
Return to the resurrection.
Where the Investigation Can Begin
If we do not begin by assuming that Christians have won every philosophical argument, solved the problem of suffering, resolved every biblical difficulty, or defended every Christian institution, where can we begin?
We can begin with the seven letters of Paul that scholars across the religious spectrum broadly accept as authentic: Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, First Thessalonians, and Philemon.
Bart Ehrman is an atheist and agnostic New Testament scholar who does not believe that God bodily raised Jesus from the dead. He nevertheless describes the consensus concerning these letters:
“Just about every New Testament scholar on the planet agrees that Paul wrote these seven.”
Bart D. Ehrman, “Pauline Forgeries: 2 Thessalonians as a Test Case,” December 16, 2014.
“Undisputed” does not mean that no person anywhere has ever questioned their authenticity. It means that these seven letters provide the broadest shared documentary foundation for examining the earliest Christian movement.
This does not require us to begin by declaring that Paul was inerrant. It does not require us to accept the traditional authorship of every biblical book or resolve every question about the canon.
We can first ask what these letters establish as historical documents written by a participant in the earliest Christian movement.
That investigation brings us directly to the resurrection.
What Paul Says Was of First Importance
Paul wrote First Corinthians around A.D. 54 to 55. He reminded the Corinthian church of a proclamation he had already delivered when he first established the community:
“I handed on to you, as of first importance, what I also received: that the Messiah died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time. Most of them are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, he appeared also to me.”
Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians 15.3 to 15.8, c. A.D. 54 to 55.
This passage does not yet prove that Jesus rose from the dead.
Later posts will need to investigate what Paul means, how early the tradition is, what kind of appearances were claimed, how Paul’s experience relates to the other appearances, and whether alternative explanations can account for the evidence.
For now, Paul establishes why the resurrection must be investigated first.
He calls this proclamation a matter “of first importance.” He also says that he received it and then handed it on. The message therefore existed before Paul wrote First Corinthians and before he first preached in Corinth.
The resurrection was not a late doctrine created after the church had already developed. It belonged to the proclamation through which the earliest churches came into existence.
That does not tell us whether the proclamation was true.
It tells us that this is the claim upon which the movement was built.
Paul Makes the Faith Stand or Fall Here
Paul tells the Corinthians what would remain of Christianity if Jesus had not been raised:
“If the Messiah has not been raised, then our proclamation is empty, and your faith is empty. We are even exposed as false witnesses about God because we testified that God raised the Messiah. If the Messiah has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.”
Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians 15.14 to 15.17, c. A.D. 54 to 55.
Paul does not say that Christian faith becomes empty if the fine-tuning argument fails.
He does not say that faith becomes empty if Christians cannot resolve every difficulty in the Bible.
He does not say that faith becomes empty when an emotional experience fades, when Christian culture changes, or when a church fails.
He does not say that faith becomes empty because Christians cannot explain every instance of suffering.
He says that if Christ has not been raised, Christian proclamation is empty and Christian faith is futile.
Paul does not retreat into symbolism. He does not argue that the resurrection remains spiritually true as long as Christians find inspiration in it. He says that if God did not raise Jesus, then the witnesses have misrepresented God and the entire proclamation has lost its foundation.
Christianity does not stand because Christians have won every argument.
Christianity stands if Christ is risen.
An Atheist Historian Recognizes the Turning Point
Ehrman does not accept Paul’s conclusion that God raised Jesus. He distinguishes between the resurrection itself and belief in the resurrection.
Nevertheless, he recognizes what made Jesus different from other Jewish preachers executed by political power:
“Belief in Jesus’ resurrection changed absolutely everything.”
Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 2014, p. 131.
Paul and Ehrman disagree about the cause.
Paul says that resurrection belief arose because God raised Jesus and Jesus appeared to people.
Ehrman argues that followers of Jesus had experiences they interpreted as appearances of the risen Jesus.
But they agree about the historical structure. Without belief in the resurrection, there is no Christianity to explain.
If Jesus had been crucified and his followers had simply returned home, he might have been remembered as another Jewish teacher executed by Rome. The movement continued because his followers became convinced that the crucifixion was not God’s rejection of Jesus. They believed that God had reversed Rome’s judgment by raising him from the dead.
That does not prove they were correct.
It identifies the claim that must be examined.
The Resurrection Is Not a Last Resort
When I say that Christians must return to the resurrection, I do not mean that the resurrection is an emergency exit we use after losing every other argument.
The resurrection is not our last resort.
It is our first question.
Christianity did not begin with fine-tuning and eventually arrive at Jesus. It began with people proclaiming that the man Rome had crucified was alive.
Christianity did not begin with a completed Bible and then derive the resurrection from its pages. The resurrection proclamation existed before the New Testament was assembled.
Christianity did not begin with a powerful church enforcing belief in the resurrection. The church came into existence because people believed the resurrection had occurred.
The resurrection is not where Christians retreat when everything else fails. It is the foundation from which every other Christian conviction must be examined.
If the atheist has the stronger philosophical argument, return to the resurrection.
If suffering remains unexplained, return to the resurrection.
If the Bible becomes more complicated, return to the resurrection.
If the church disappoints or betrays us, return to the resurrection.
Not because the resurrection makes those problems disappear. It does not.
We return because none of those problems can answer the resurrection question for us.
Did God raise Jesus from the dead?
The Next Conversion of Christian Faith
My experience at eighteen may explain how I entered Christianity. I do not need to reject that experience or pretend that it was false. But the truth of Christianity cannot depend upon my ability to reproduce an emotion from years ago.
A Christian upbringing may explain how someone inherited the faith. That inheritance should not be despised. It may have provided Scripture, prayer, moral formation, and a community of love. But Christianity cannot be true merely because sincere parents taught it to their children.
The weakening of an earlier understanding does not necessarily mean that faith is ending. It may mean that another conversion is beginning.
The next conversion may be the movement from inherited faith or experienced faith into examined faith.
This does not require us to manufacture another religious experience. It does not require us to retreat into a Christian culture that no longer provides certainty. It does not require us to suppress difficult questions or pretend that weak answers are convincing.
It requires us to examine the claim from which Christianity arose.
If the resurrection testimony is not credible, then Christians should know that. Paul himself gives us permission to reach the conclusion that Christian faith is empty if Christ was not raised.
But if the resurrection testimony is credible, then Christians have a foundation strong enough to carry questions that remain unanswered.
We can worship Christ without understanding every mystery.
We can follow him while remaining perplexed.
We can reject shallow answers to suffering without rejecting the God who entered suffering and raised Jesus from the dead.
We can acknowledge the failures of Christians without concluding that Christ has failed.
We can admit that we lost an argument without concluding that Jesus remained dead.
The next conversion is not from questioning back into unquestioning certainty. It is from a faith that depends upon having every answer into a faith that knows the foundation upon which it stands.
Conclusion
The door through which you entered Christianity may no longer be able to carry the full weight of your faith. That does not mean you never entered. It may mean that you are being invited to discover what has been beneath you all along.
Your experience mattered. Your inheritance mattered. The questions now troubling you also matter. But none of them is the foundation. The foundation is the claim that a crucified man did not remain dead.
An atheist may offer a better explanation of the vast and lifeless universe than the Christian arguments you have heard.
Return to the resurrection.
You may be unable to explain why God permitted the suffering that has shaken your life.
Return to the resurrection.
The Bible may be more complicated than you were taught, and the history of the church may be more confused and painful than you expected.
Return to the resurrection.
Not because returning to the resurrection makes the universe appear less cold, explains every tragedy, resolves every biblical difficulty, or excuses the failures of the church.
Return because Christianity stands or falls there.
The resurrection is not an answer sheet that makes every other question disappear. It is the foundation from which Christians can continue asking those questions without believing that uncertainty requires abandonment. Christianity does not ask us to pretend that we possess explanations we do not have. It asks whether we have sufficient reason to trust the one whom God raised.
If God did not raise Jesus, Paul tells us that Christian proclamation is empty and Christian faith is futile.
If God raised Jesus, then the house can remain standing even while some rooms are dark, some windows are broken, and the storm outside has not yet passed.
We may remain perplexed without being driven to despair. We may worship without understanding everything. We may carry unanswered questions while continuing to follow the crucified and risen Christ.
Christianity does not stand because Christians have won every argument. Christianity stands if Christ is risen.
Did God raise Jesus from the dead?
That is where Christianity began. That is where our investigation must begin. For Christians whose first conversion can no longer carry all their questions, that is where another conversion can begin.
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