The evidence is in: Christ was crucified and rose from the dead

MADISON  How do we know that Jesus actually died by crucifixion and three days later rose from the dead? We have faith in Christ as the Savior of the world but also can infer that the Resurrection actually took place from a preponderance of the evidence, drawn from proof both old and new, Christian J. Clark, a Harvard Law School graduate and faithful Catholic, last week asserted in a presentation.

Similar to a scene in a courtroom from the TV show “Law and Order,” Clark made a legal argument for the validity of the Resur­rection during his presentation, “Evidence of the Resur­rection: A Lawyer’s Analysis,” April 27 in the Evangelization Center at St. Paul Inside the Walls here. During the in-person event, he examined accounts of the Resur­rection from Scripture, ancient writers, and history — along with illuminating discoveries from modern scholarship — with a lawyer’s critical eye. He argued that together, all of these accounts corroborate that the Resurrection of Christ happened.

“The Resurrection is dismissed early in the trial before discovery,” said Clark, a lawyer in private practice in Manhattan. Discovery, he said, is the exchange of legal information and known facts by all sides in a civil case so they can decide on their best option going forward. “But evidence of the Resurrection deserves discovery and to be explored. Share this information with other people. Ask them, ‘What do you think happened?’ Something happened,” he said.

Clark spoke to 75 people in St. Paul’s main classroom, including judges, fellow lawyers, local Catholics, and Bishop Emeritus Arthur J. Serratelli, a Scripture scholar, who visited the evangelization center that he founded, for the presentation. Among those in the audience were members of Advocati Christi, St. Paul’s outreach to Catholic members of the legal profession, which sponsored the event. Clark cited scholars, such as Simon Greenleaf, a 19th century Harvard Law professor, who analyzed the Gospels as an evidence scholar, Christian apologist, author, and theologian.

At the start of the talk, Clark asked audience members, “Why focus on the Resurrection?” He answered because in his First Letter to the Corinthians; St. Paul writes that it is essential to the Christian faith.

“If there is no Resurrection, your faith is in vain,” Paul says, according to Clark, who added that St. Peter wrote, ‘Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for the reason for your hope.’ Be an apologist and confident in faith so you can explain it to others,” said Clark, who earned a bachelor’s degree in history, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Boston College in 2009 and his law degree from Harvard in 2016. “Why do this now? Because the ‘nones’ [people, who are unaffiliated with organized religion] are growing with each passing generation. People genuinely lack knowledge about the basic facts of Christi­anity. It is, on the one hand, depressing but it’s also an opportunity [to evangelize them]. The ‘nones’ are a clean slate,” he said.

If an actual trial took place, we would learn in discovery that Jesus lived and was crucified around 30 A.D. We would not need to rely on Christian writers for these facts, but can rely on ancient historians and writers such as Tacitus and Josephus, who were not Christians and were writing secular history. Within a century of Christ’s death, Tacitus names Christ as the “founder” of Christian groups whom Nero blamed for starting the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. And, Josephus corroborates that Pilate condemned Jesus to the cross, Clark said.

In Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, also written in the decades after Christ’s Resurrection, St. Paul tells the story of visiting St. Peter and most likely “pressure testing” their experiences with Jesus to ensure a more accurate account of his life, death, and Resurrection. The early Apostolic Fathers, such as Ignatius of Antioch, wrote about the Resurrection and some of them, such as Polycarp, knew the Apostles personally, said Clark, who was a novice in the Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits, where he spent time discerning the priesthood.

Thanks to modern research methods and discoveries, some biblical scholars argue that the Gospels might have been written earlier than previously thought. It was thought that Mark’s, the first Gospel, was written around 70 A.D. but it might have been written as early as in the 50s A.D. This makes their accounts more credible, because they are closer to the actual events in Jesus’ life and the actual — more reliable — eyewitnesses, Clark said.

With the help of some of the scholars he cited, Clark debunked some alternative theories that try to dismiss the validity of the Resurrection. Some skeptics have said that Jesus did not die on the Cross and that he “came to” later and appeared to his followers. But this is unlikely, because modern medical scholars in a 1986 Journal of American Medicine article demonstrated how unlikely it would be that Christ survived his crucifixion, Clark argued.

A parishioner of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Ridgewood, Clark first started delving into this subject while a theology teacher and Theo­logy Department chairman at Don Bosco Prep in Ramsey, his alma mater. He put together a talk in support of evidence of the Resurrection and first presented it at a meeting of the Guild of Catho­lic Lawyers of New York. Clark and his wife, Katherine, are parents of three young children.

In introducing Clark, Father Paul Manning, diocesan vicar for evangelization, led the audience in asking God “to bless our presenter and his mind and his words and bless our ears that receive them. Help us grow in our conviction that Jesus is risen as he said and that he is our life.”

One of the lawyers, who attended Clark’s talk, was Rich Williams, a civil trial attorney for McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter, LLP and a founding member of Advocati Christi.

“Christian did an outstanding job. He made complex facts that might be difficult to understand easy to understand and follow,” said Williams, a parishioner of Resurrection in Randolph. “He made a compelling legal argument, based on a preponderance of the evidence. He gave people more information to answer difficult questions [of faith], including ‘Why do you believe in the Resurrection?’ ” he said.