Most New Testament scholars, even non-believers and skeptics, acknowledge that Jesus’ followers had experiences of Him being alive following His crucifixion.* But a common skeptical reply to this well-founded fact is that these experiences are best explained as hallucinations on the part of the disciples.** But how reasonable is this claim? In his recent book Can You Believe It’s True: Christian Apologetics in a Modern & Postmodern Era, Dr. John Feinberg offers several reasons the hallucination hypothesis is unconvincing.
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How do nonbelievers answer these claims of seeing Jesus alive? The most commonly heard response is that all of these people were just hallucinating. They thought they saw Jesus, but they really didn’t. But how likely is it that all of these post-resurrection sightings were hallucinations? I think we can make the most knowledgeable response if we see what is most typical of hallucinations. For one thing, hallucinations tend to be linked to a person’s subconscious and its recollection of past experiences. They are also more likely to occur when people are expecting something to happen.
How does this fit with Jesus’ story? Not well. During his earthly ministry, Jesus had surely mentioned his death and resurrection many times, but it is clear from the Gospels that his listeners didn’t understand what he meant. When Jesus died, there is no sign of his followers encouraging one another with the prospects of his forthcoming resurrection. The disciples are portrayed after the crucifixion as disconsolate, depressed, demoralized, and quite scared of what might happen to them. Such a mind-set is not fallow ground for hallucinating that one sees Jesus alive.
In addition, psychologists tell us that hallucinations are very individualistic. It is extremely unlikely that any two people would have the same hallucination, let alone more than five hundred people all at once [see 1 Cor. 15:6]. And, it is dubious that a hallucination would recur again and again in different places and circumstances to different people. Moreover, many who saw Christ not only claimed to have seen him, but they touched him and talked with him. It is surely possible for one having a hallucination to think such things are actually happening, but it is hard to believe that all eleven disciples, for example, would be having that same hallucination at once [see Luke 24:36-43].
So, it is possible that everyone who claimed to see Jesus alive after his death was hallucinating, but that is highly improbable when you consider the number of different people involved, their frame of mind, and the different circumstances in which they claimed to see Jesus, etc.***
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* “Even Gerd Lüdemann, the leading German critic of the resurrection, himself admits, ‘It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ,'” quoted in William Lane Craig, “The Resurrection of Jesus,” http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-resurrection-of-jesus.
** Indeed, this is Gerd Lüdemann’s claim. For a response, see William Lane Craig’s critique, “Visions of Jesus: A Critical Assessment of Gerd Lüdemann’s Hallucination Hypothesis.”
The Tolle Lege (“Take up and read”) series focuses on excerpts from notable books in philosophy, theology, apologetics, and related areas.
What is the origin of the Resurrection stories? Hallucinations, visions, delusions, legends, lies, or reality?
Even most skeptics agree that early Christians came to believe that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead very soon after his crucifixion. The million dollar question is: Why did early Christians come to believe this? For almost two thousand years, Christians have asserted that the most reasonable explanation, based on the evidence, is that it actually happened: a dead man walked out of his grave. A large percentage of Christians today still believe that the resurrection of Jesus is historical reality.
But what is the evidence that makes Christians so sure that this event really did happen? As I see it, this is the evidence:
—The four Gospels are perceived (by Christians) to be eyewitness testimony.
—Christians believe that there are no major discrepancies in the six resurrection stories found in the New Testament.
—The Apostle Paul claims to have seen the resurrected Jesus on the Damascus Road. A Christian-hating/persecuting Jewish Pharisee would not have converted unless he really had seen a resurrected dead man.
—The disciples would not have died for a belief that they knew was a lie.
—We have written record of the statements of a few of the disciples of the original Eleven, such as Polycarp and Papias, who emphasized their belief in a resurrected Jesus.
—The rapid growth of Christianity, under intense persecution and the threat of death, is testimony to the truthfulness of the Christian story.
—A significant percentage of New Testament scholars believe that the empty tomb is historical fact. Since the tomb was guarded by Roman soldiers, there is no other plausible explanation for the empty tomb other than a miraculous resurrection really had occurred.
—Paul says in I Corinthians chapter 15, that someone had given him information that over 500 people saw Jesus at once.
Do you believe that the above is good evidence, even if all the assumptions in the above statements are true (and there are a lot of assumptions in the above statements)? I don’t. And here is why I do not believe that the above evidence is anywhere near sufficient to believe that this supernatural event really did occur:
For any other bizarre event in our world, we do not immediately jump to the conclusion that it had a supernatural cause. In fact, for most of us who live in educated, western societies, a supernatural cause of any daily event (outside of religious experience) is the last explanation we would consider. For instance, imagine that you wake up tomorrow morning and find your car keys missing. What is the likelihood that your first assumption as to the cause of your missing keys is that an invisible being has stolen them? Not likely, right? Even the most unlikely natural cause is considered as a possible cause before you would finally consider that your keys had been stolen by a ghost of goblin, wouldn’t you? Just to illustrate my point: In our experience as human beings, it is more likely that Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, broke into your house last night and stole your keys than that an invisible ghost did it.
So why is it, dear Christians, that when presented with the above (weak) evidence for the early Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus, do you so readily accept a supernatural cause—the reanimation of dead human tissue by an ancient Hebrew god—before considering every other natural possibility??
Below is a list of all the possible reasons for why early Christians came to believe in a Resurrection. All of them, every last one of them, is much, much more likely to be the cause of this early Christian belief than the last choice in the list: that it really did happen.
vision
An experience of seeing someone or something in a dream or trance, or as a supernatural apparition.
hallucination
A sensory impression (sight, touch, sound, smell, or taste) that has no basis in external stimulation. Hallucinations can have psychologic causes, as in mental illness, or they can result from drugs, alcohol, organic illnesses, such as brain tumor or senility, or exhaustion. When hallucinations have a psychologic origin, they usually represent a disguised form of a repressed conflict.
delusion
A false belief or wrong judgment held with conviction despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
legend
A traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but unauthenticated.
lie
A false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
reality
The world or the state of things as they actually exist.
Great article Chris. I do not need a psychologist to tell me
that more than one person will be hallucinogenic but more than two that is a
reach, a mathematical reach. Come on skeptics, you have to do better than that!
Good point, Don. How can 11 or 500 people have the same hallucination?