Then Abraham said,
'If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded
if someone should rise from the dead.'"
Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.
'In the first book, Theophilus, I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught."
With two groups of adults here at Mount Saint Francis, I have been reading Luke's Gospel and Acts of the Apostles, and I see how careful he was to present a reliable "narrative of the events" that occurred in Galilee and Jerusalem. If he was not as scrupulous as some historians might be today, he was also less affected by the cynicism which dismisses God as an actor in human affairs. He interviewed eyewitnesses, studied documents, and reported what they had heard, and seen, and touched with their hands.
The facts as Saint Luke reports them are as reliable as their witnesses, and the fact that history does not recall a resuscitation of any other human being proves only that we know of no other similar incident. (We suppose the sun will rise tomorrow because it always has, but suppositions about the future are not the same as knowledge of the past.)
The Lord's resurrection and its reporters met with much skepticism at the time, as all the evangelists agree. Even when they saw the Risen Lord "they thought they were seeing a ghost." The sages of Athens scoffed at Saint Paul's account of the resurrection because, they said, it can't happen.
But it did happen. Or, at least, there is no reason to believe it didn't happen except for one's refusal to believe those who saw, heard, and touched him. Critics might argue it can't happen, or piously believe that God should not mess with our minds that way; but that resort to the subjunctive neither proves nor disproves anything.
In Jesus's parable, when Abraham tells Dives that his brothers will not "be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead," the Evangelist and his congregations know that's precisely what happened. Many refused to believe it although it happened. They'll make the same decision and face the same consequences as the unfortunate soul in "the netherworld, where he was in torment."
Two millennia later there are even more who refuse to believe what we have seen and heard. They neither accept our testimony nor attest to our integrity as witnesses because they don't want to. They'll often point to our mistakes, failings, and sins to buttress their obstinacy; but those excuses will not serve them when the Lord appears again as Judge to settle matters once and for all. They have not repented although someone from the dead came to them.
