Updike's poem might have been written explicitly for those who ask what advantage there is in a literal, bodily resurrection. This is the second in a series of four Easter readings on that topic.

It might seem that Acts 1:7-8 is just an ad hoc attempt by the early Christians to avoid the embarrassing fact that Jesus didn't set up an earthly kingdom. But these verses are part of a larger pattern of Jesus' personality, both before and after his resurrection, drawn from all four Gospels. Jesus is often cryptic, unwilling to answer questions in the way his listeners would prefer, and even sharp in his speech. The disconcerting resurrection Jesus is the same person as the disconcerting Jesus of the earlier ministry. Yet at the same time, Jesus loves his followers and uses different approaches for their benefit, to teach and to comfort.

Certain opponents of intelligent design in the area of biology insist that God works in obvious ways (as opposed to working through what appear to be merely natural events) only during periods of "salvation history" involving particular religious contexts.  Here I explain how such a dogmatic view would create a problem with getting a religious context off the ground. How could anyone be justified in the first place in believing that God was performing a miracle, if the immediate past events appeared to be ordinary? If Moses accepted this view, how could he be justified in believing that the burning bush was real? After all, just before he saw the burning bush, everything seemed to be going along naturally, and he had little or no independent reason to believe that he, personally, was going to be a central figure in "salvation history."   The article by Meredith that I mention in the video is here:  https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/02/looking-for-god-in-all-the-wrong-places

Can we be justified in believing that God is "behind" some event when we're not even sure that it was a miracle? What would that mean? Why are obvious miracles important epistemologically?   Here is the testimony of Andrew Klavan that I refer to in the video:  https://youtu.be/KgT43ppxpzY Thumbnail is a picture of baseball player Gary Carter from Wikipedia.