What are we to make of this amazing story? We can, it seems, do one of two things with it. We can accept the testimony of Jesus' contemporaries, and let the startling fact work the same transformation in our lives that it did in theirs. Or, we can refuse to accept it, insisting that "dead people stay dead." We can say that the Biblical claim is so world-shaking that it couldn't possibly be true, that it is a bit of pious fiction, or a shabby invention by a group of deluded men who couldn't face the awful reality that their leader had been destroyed.
Both those options treat the Christian claim with something like the respect it ought to have. Both understand that this is a stupendous claim, not to be treated lightly or accepted glibly. Both understand that this claim is either the most significant truth of all time or the most barefaced nonsense ever perpetrated on the human race.
The thing which we are not entitled to do with this story is to try to eliminate it from the Christian account, to suggest that the disciples didn't really believe it, or that it was tacked onto their ideas by some later group of people. That is tampering with the facts in an illegitimate way. One who says that the resurrection faith is a delusion must have the honesty to grant that the first Christians were so deluded, and that it is this delusion which is the foundation of the Christian religion.
It's either delusion or sober fact. You can't steer a middle course in between.
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