Was it all a Hallucination?
| Teachings |
Was it all a Hallucination?
Thousands of people suffer from hallucinations. It is possible to `see` all kinds of things that don't exist in reality. Is it not possible that Christ was not really raised from the dead, but that the resurrection appearances were just hallucinations?
But there are a number of facts that this sort of theory just doesn't come to terms with.
1) There were simply too many witnesses. Hallucinations are private, individual, subjective. However, Jesus appeared to a huge number of people, even to 500 at once (1 Cor 15v3-8). This is as public an experience as you can possibly have. How could so many people have seen Christ at the same time? Paul says in this passage that most of the five hundred are still alive, inviting any reader to check the truth of the story by questioning the eyewitnesses - he couldn't have done this and got away with it, given the power and resources of his enemies, if it were not true.
2) Hallucinations usually last a few seconds or minutes; rarely hours. This one hung around for forty days (Acts 1:3). Equally, most hallucinations usually happen only once - this one returned many times to ordinary and straightforward people (Jn 20v19-21v14, Acts 1v3).
3) The accounts just don't read like they are hallucinations. The disciples didn't believe it was Jesus at first - fearing it might be a ghost. Jesus had to eat something and allow them to physically touch Him in order to prove otherwise. (Lk 24:36-43, Jn 21v1-14, Mt 28:9; Lk 24:39; Jn 20:27). They spoke to Jesus and he spoke back. Hallucinations are visual and cannot hold profound, extended conversations with you, unless you have the kind of mental disorder that isolates you. Jesus, however, conversed with at least eleven people at once over a forty day period. (Acts 1v3)
4) The hallucination theory completely fails to account for the empty tomb. This theory is an attempt to naturalistically explain away the appearances - but does not address the issue of the empty tomb. How can this be explained? This is where this theory needs another theory to support it - either the disciples stole the body, Christ's enemies did or grave robbers did. The trouble is once you start adding more theories to the hallucination theory is becomes increasingly complex and increasingly unlikely. It is also likely to fall foul of Occam's Razor.
5) If the apostles had hallucinated and then spread their hallucinogenic story, the Jews would have stopped it by producing the body -- unless the disciples had stolen it, in which case we are back with the conspiracy theory and all its difficulties.