More legal inquiries into the resurrection evidence by leading legal men,

Lord Caldecote, Lord Chief Justice of England, observed that an “overwhelming case for the
Resurrection could be made merely as a matter of strict evidence”21 and that “His Resurrection has
led me as often as I have tried to examine the evidence to believe it as a fact beyond dispute....”22
(cf., Thomas Sherlock’s Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which places the
Resurrection in a legally argued forum and in the words of lawyer Irwin Linton, “will give anyone so
reading it the comfortable assurance that he knows the utmost that can be said against the proof of
the central fact of our faith and also how utterly every such attack can be met and answered.”23 At
the end of the legal battle one understands why, “The jury returned a verdict in favor of the
testimony establishing the fact of Christ’s resurrection.”24)

Irwin H. Linton was a Washington, D.C. lawyer who argued cases before the U.S. Supreme
Court. In A Lawyer Examines the Bible, he challenges his fellow lawyers “by every acid test known
to the law...to examine the case for the Bible just as they would any important matter submitted to
their professional attention by a client... .”11 He believes that the evidence for Christianity is
“overwhelming” and that at least “three independent and converging lines of proof,” each of which
“is conclusive in itself,” establish the truth of the Christian faith.12 Linton observed that “the logical,
historical... proofs of... Christianity are so indisputable that I have found them to arrest the surprised
attention of just about every man to whom I have presented them....”13 He further argues the
Resurrection “is not only so established that the greatest lawyers have declared it to be the best
proved fact of all history, but it is so supported that it is difficult to conceive of any method or line of
proof that it lacks which would make [it] more certain.”14 And that, even among lawyers, “he who
does not accept wholeheartedly the evangelical, conservative belief in Christ and the Scriptures has
never read, has forgotten, or never been able to weigh—and certainly is utterly unable to refute—
the irresistible force of the cumulative evidence upon which such faith rests....”15
He concluded the claims of Christian faith are so well established by such a variety of
independent and converging proofs that “it has been said again and again by great lawyers that
they cannot but be regarded as proved under the strictest rules of evidence used in the highest
American and English courts.”16

J. N. D. Anderson, in the words of Armand Nicholi of the Harvard Medical School (Christianity
Today, March 29, 1968), is a scholar of international repute, eminently qualified to deal with the
subject of evidence. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on Muslim law, Dean of the Faculty
of Law at the University of London, Chairman of the Department of Oriental Law at the School of
Oriental and African Studies, and Director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the
University of London.7 In Anderson’s text, Christianity: The Witness of History, he supplies the
standard evidences for the Resurrection and asks, “How, then, can the fact of the resurrection be
denied?”8 Anderson further emphasizes, “Lastly, it can be asserted with confidence that men and
women disbelieve the Easter story not because of the evidence but in spite of it.”9


John Singleton Copley (Lord Lyndhurst, 1772–1863) is recognized as one of the greatest legal
minds in British history. He was Solicitor General of the British government, Attorney General of
Great Britain, three times the High Chancellor of England and elected High Steward of the
University of Cambridge. He challenges, “I know pretty well what evidence is; and I tell you, such
evidence as that for the Resurrection has never broken down yet.”5
Hugo Grotius was a noted “jurist and scholar whose works are of fundamental importance in
international law,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. He wrote Latin elegies at the age of
eight and entered Leiden University at eleven.6 Considered “the father of international law,” he
wrote The Truth of the Christian Religion (1627) in which he legally defended the historical fact of
the Resurrection.

Last edited by Thunderstick; 07/03/19.