Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
1 Corinthians 15:1-8 NRSV
THE EARLIEST information we have about Jesus being raised from the dead is in the letters of Paul which, clearly, also indicate that Paul taught the earliest Christian converts he convinced those things before he felt it necessary to repeat that in letters to them. And he indicates that he was also taught that, almost certainly when he met with Cephas (Peter) and James, almost certainly the brother of Jesus and to other people he knew and, by his testimony, through his own encounter with Jesus raised from the dead. No doubt Peter and James and the others who had known Jesus before his execution taught him many other things that he didn't otherwise know.
It's not out of the question that the earliest witnesses to the Resurrection, Mary Magdalene, the other Marys mentioned in the Gospels, Salome, Joanna, etc. might have talked about that with Paul but he doesn't say, maybe he didn't trust the women's testimony or maybe he figured he shouldn't bother to mention them because the people he wrote to wouldn't figure that their testimony was trustworthy.
Just what the Resurrection that is mentioned means is a mystery. The accounts of even Paul with the risen Jesus are clearly not like you'd encounter someone else, it's in this world but not described as being like something you'd expect in this world. If that makes it more or less believable to anyone is as it is but one thing it means is that, as described, naturalistic, materialist-scientistic deductions won't dismiss it on any other than a choice to not believe what's said. The ol' Second Law of Thermodynamics ploy that I got pulled on me when I said that - probably most of those pulling it couldn't tell you why they might believe that would apply - doesn't suffice to answer the claims.
You're free not to believe it, if you pressed me on exactly what it means I will freely tell you I can't tell you because I don't know. Catholics are, maybe, more comfortable with admitting that there is a lot about life which is mysterious at its least mysterious and this is something that is entirely mysterious, not even the skeptics agree on the basic terms of what's being argued. I don't think naturalistic arguments are all that good at really explaining much of anything, not even the observable motions of the simplest and most safely generalized movements of physical objects - even the definition of what physical objects are is problematic when you try to get to absolute knowledge, not to mention their actions and what causes those actions.
We live in a more complex reality than fits the rules the mockers want to insist we play by. And even they don't want to play by those rules, themselves as they pretend they do.
"Liberal Christians" is a term that has about as much use as "conservative Christians," which is not much. You have to define your terms. Which "liberals" and which "conservatives" do you mean? As in political ideology, the problem with "liberal" is whether you mean those who try to approximate the radical justice economics of the Sinai tradition of the Prophets or the even more radical economics of love to the point of abandon and trust that Jesus taught or do you mean the materialist "liberalism" of 18th century and later scientism? I believe in the earlier form of liberalism, I am entirely skeptical about the second one. Science should be a. kept within what its methods can legitimately tell you about, b. always be admitted to, by design, exclude morality and its consequences and so is useless to do what you must accept moral laws in order to achieve, a good and decent life on the basis of equality and common good. Science might get you some products but it will never produce the common good.
Abandon and trust out of love, what Jesus taught was not easy to take, it certainly isn't for the affluent, not even in the relative affluence of the American middle-class. It's what got him killed, it's the motive behind 18th century "liberal" rejection of religion, the wealthy didn't want to get nagged about having to give away their hoarded wealth in church. That's also what's behind the pseudo-Christian heresy of the prosperity-gospel which is one of the most dangerous lies you can hear from pseudo-Christians from FOX and the Republican-fascist party, the worldly clerics of the Catholic Church to Putin and the incumbent Patriarch of Moscow as he follows the Czarist trappings of state nationalism which are rampant there.
Do you have to believe in the Resurrection to have that? I don't know, it sometimes seems that those who profess that belief less are better at putting some of that into practice. You have to believe the teaching authority that asserts that pretty strongly to put it into practice and it's clear even those who proclaim the Resurrection the loudest don't believe it enough to even try. I doubt that we're going to see the billionaire and millionaire backers of pseudo-Christianity sell all they have, give the money to the poor and take up their cross. If there's one thing you can say about the alleged religion of such "christians" on the basis of authoritative definition, it is "by their fruits you will know them." The man they claim to believe is God gave that rule, though they have no intention to live by it.
Do I believe in the Resurrection of Jesus? Do I believe in the theology of that developed by Paul, especially in Romans, and the other writers of the New Testament and the earliest Christian theologians that Jesus is the first and we will follow to eternal life? I certainly hope it's true, especially if the universalists are right that all will be saved. I reject it's known to not be true or possibly true as those under the influence of the musty, cobweb encrusted positivism will insist, and reject as an irrational insistence that any questioning of their framing is "meaningless." That's a trick no one should fall for because it's just bullying, not a matter of logical consistency or necessity.
Rather than belief, I can give a definite answer that I have a hope that it's true because the possibility of that looks like a way of life and not a way of death. I hope that hope is enough, if it isn't I hope for definite belief. If you want to reject that as a choice and not an argument, everything anyone is ever going to have on this - short of an experience like Mary Magdalene's or Peter's James', etc, or Paul's - is a matter of choice because there is nothing else to put that off on to.
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