“Our Hands Have Handled”: Ensuring the Reassuring Doctrine of the Resurrection in the Lucan and Johannine Writings

The Lucan and Johannine writings emphasize the literalness and physicality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This emphasis does not represent an emerging Christology from an earlier, inchoate conception of Jesus and the meaning of his life. Rather, it reflects an effort to defend the doctrine of the resurrection—of Christ and humanity—against the increasing cultural and intellectual pressures of middle Platonism. Nephi’s vision of the tree of life, which included seeing a “great and abominable church” and its formation among “the nations of the Gentiles” (1 Nephi 13:4–9) matches well with late first- and second-century apostate movements that “made war” with the saints and “overcame” many of them (Revelation 13:7). A conspicuous feature of some movements at that time is the denial of the literal, physically resurrected Jesus Christ and the resurrection of all humanity from the dead. The widespread distortion of Christ’s resurrection and opposition to the concept of bodily resurrection continues to the present.