Here’s a great post by Amy of Stand to Reason. She focuses on TWO passages to make a case for Acts teaching a physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Excerpt:

The first is the words of Peter’s evangelistic sermon in Acts 2:22-36:

[Y]ou nailed [Jesus] to the cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power. For David says of Him, “…You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.”

In case they missed the fact that Jesus’ body did not decay, Peter continues:

Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. And so, because he was a prophet…, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay. This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.

In other words, Peter argues that David couldn’t have been speaking of himself when he wrote those words of Scripture because David’s body decayed in a tomb. He then contrasts David’s death with Jesus’ death and physical resurrection to show that the words of the Psalm are describing Jesus, and therefore Jesus is the Messiah they’ve been waiting for.

This is good, because the early sermon by Peter in Acts 2 is super early. So even if a bad guy argues that Paul’s view of the resurrection in 1 Cor 15:3-7 is non-physical, you can fall back on Acts 2 and the early eyewitness testimony of Peter. But as Amy mentions, there are other arguments as well.

Further study

The top 10 links to help you along with your learning.

1. How every Christian can learn to explain the resurrection of Jesus to others
2. The earliest source for the minimal facts about the resurrection
3. The earliest sources for the empty tomb narrative
4. Who were the first witnesses to the empty tomb?
5. Did the divinity of Jesus emerge slowly after many years of embellishments?
6. What about all those other books that the Church left out the Bible?
7. Assessing Bart Ehrman’s case against the resurrection of Jesus
8. William Lane Craig debates radical skeptics on the resurrection of Jesus
9. Did Christianity copy from Buddhism, Mithraism or the myth of Osiris?
10. Quick overview of N.T. Wright’s case for the resurrection

Debates are a fun way to learn

Three debates where you can see this play out:

• Craig Evans and Bart Ehrman
• Mike Licona and Bart Ehrman
• William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman (transcript here)

Or you can listen to my favorite debate on the resurrection.

• James Crossley and William Lane Craig

Extra stuff

A lecture on Bart Ehrman by William Lane Craig.