Don’t Just Celebrate Easter—Understand It: 10 Books on the Resurrection

In his commentary on Romans, Emil Brunner asserts,

The entire message of the apostle, one might almost say, is the message of the resurrection. … [O]n the resurrection everything else depends.¹

If Jesus’s resurrection happened, everything changes. If not, our faith is, as Paul says, worthless: Our faith doesn’t save (1 Cor 15:17–18) and our lives of faith are a waste (15:19, 30–32). Moreover, we are found to be lying about God, claiming that he raised Jesus when he did not (15:14–16)! But, in fact, Christ has been raised (15:20), meaning our faith saves and our labor for him is not in vain (15:58).

Jesus’s resurrection is more than a mere historical fact. It transforms the believer’s present and future existence. It secures our justification (Rom 4:25). Union with the resurrected Christ grants believers new life, freeing us from slavery to sin (Rom 6). And it forms the basis of our hope (1 Thess 4:13–18), the defeat of the last enemy, death (1 Cor 15:50–57). As commentator David Garland states, “[T]he victory of sin and death is only temporary. God will defeat the last enemy. While graveyards may remind one of the brevity of life, the resurrection ensures the brevity of death.”²

As we approach Easter, maybe you will consider studying the resurrection in more depth. To aid you, what follows is a list of recommended books from our Logos community.

You will generally find two types of books on the resurrection: apologetic cases for its historicity (did it happen?) and biblical–theological treatments on its significance and implications (what does it mean?)—though some books merge the two (notably the titles by N. T. Wright and George Ladd below). For our purposes, we’ll begin with those that focus primarily on apologetics and increasingly work our way down towards those that address theology.

Did it happen? Historical–apologetic defenses

Let’s begin with those books that primarily tackle the historicity of the resurrection.

1. Gary Habermas, On the Resurrection

These volumes, Habermas’s magnum opus, offer perhaps the most exhaustive philosophical and historical defense of the resurrection. He provides a comprehensive look at the historical evidence and engages the full range of scholarly objections.

Rather than resting his defense on theological presuppositions, Habermas builds his case on historical data that even skeptical scholars broadly acknowledge: Jesus’s death, the disciples’ post-resurrection experiences, the earliest gospel proclamation, the disciples’ transformation, etc. The result is a magisterial work demonstrating that the resurrection is not merely a matter of faith assertion but a claim with serious historical warrant.

For scholars, apologists, and pastors seeking the most rigorous grounding for the veracity of the resurrection, these volumes are indispensable.

2. Michael Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach

Before examining the resurrection evidence, Licona devotes substantial attention to historiographical theory. He develops rigorous criteria for evaluating historical hypotheses, and then applies them meticulously to the resurrection. The result is a serious, intellectually honest case that the resurrection is accessible to genuine historical investigation.

The work did generate controversy: Licona’s suggestion that the saints rising from tombs in Matthew 27 may reflect apocalyptic symbolism rather than literal history drew sharp criticism from some quarters. Still, the book remains essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how a trained historian approaches the resurrection.

3. Gary Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus

Where the volumes above are written for scholars, this collaboration between Habermas and Licona is designed for everyone else, believers who want to be able to articulate and defend the resurrection in everyday conversations with skeptics. They also offer practical wisdom about how to actually have these conversations.

For lay readers who want a solid grounding in resurrection apologetics and the tools to share it, this is an excellent place to start.

4. Frank Morison, Who Moved the Stone?

Morison set out to write a paper disproving the resurrection. What he got instead was a changed mind. His book examines the final days of Jesus’s life through Scripture, history, and archaeology, with particular attention to the empty tomb narratives, and concludes—against his own intentions—that there is a profoundly historical basis for the Apostles’ Creed’s claim that Christ rose on the third day.

What makes this book distinctive is its character: a skeptic’s honest investigation.

What does it mean? Biblical–theological treatments

Now let’s move to those books that increasingly concern themselves with the resurrection’s biblical–theological significance.

5. N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God

The most frequently recommended book from our Logos community was N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God.

Arguably, Wright’s book could be placed in the above list, since he provides thorough treatment of the resurrection’s historicity. Yet, for Wright, defense of the resurrection’s historicity is inseparable from its theological significance, since assessing the historical case for the resurrection requires understanding what the resurrection meant to early Christians: their worldview and expectations, their theology and proclamation.

Wright situates the resurrection within its Jewish context. He demonstrates that the early Christians understood it as the vindication of Jesus’s messianic identity, the renewal of Israel, and the dawning of God’s kingdom.

The announcement [of Jesus’s resurrection] meant the inauguration of the new covenant. Jesus’ followers really did believe that Israel was being renewed through Jesus, and that his resurrection, marking him out as Messiah, was a call to Israel to find a new identity in following him and establishing his kingdom.³

The announcement of Jesus’s resurrection carried with it the claim that the God of Israel had acted decisively in history through this man. Creation itself was being renewed.

6. George Eldon Ladd, I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus

Ladd serves in some ways as a predecessor to Wright’s work, dealing with the historicity of the resurrection in view of its theological significance. According to Ladd, the resurrection transcends normal historical categories, because Jesus’s resurrection body belonged to the age to come. It was no longer subject to the natural laws of time and space. Thus, no historian can trace a prior historical cause for it. The only adequate explanation is theological, a belief in the God who acts in history.

Ladd concludes that the best explanation for the historical evidence is that God actually raised Jesus bodily, and that Jesus appeared to his disciples. Yet history alone cannot explain the resurrection—only the theological premise of a God who intervenes in history can. Thus, in the end, Ladd’s acceptance of the resurrection rests on faith in the God who acts in history rather than faith in history itself.

Christianity is a religion of miracles, in other words. Yet God’s resurrection of Christ is the miracle that gives final meaning to the rest.

7. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul’s Soteriology

Working through Paul’s letters with exegetical precision, Gaffin contends that Paul’s entire soteriological framework is governed by a redemptive–historical perspective in which the resurrection inaugurates the new age. Justification, adoption, sanctification, glorification—these are not separate acts in a sequence but different facets of a single reality: being united to the resurrected Christ. Paul’s language of being “raised with Christ,” then, functions not as a metaphor but as a definite theological description of Christian existence. Christ’s resurrection is not an epilogue to Paul’s doctrine of salvation but its very center.

For anyone who has thought of the resurrection mostly as the validation of Christ’s successful sacrifice, this book serves to expand your soteriology.

8. G. K. Beale, Union with the Resurrected Christ: Eschatological New Creation and New Testament Biblical Theology

Like Gaffin before him, Beale argues that Christ’s death and resurrection by the Spirit launched the fulfillment of an inaugurated eschatological new creation, and believers enter that new creation through union with the resurrected Christ. Christ achieved consummate righteousness at his resurrection, so those who trust him come to be identified with the resurrected Christ’s righteousness. Yet believers don’t merely receive forensic benefits from Christ’s resurrection. They participate in his transformed, Spirit-empowered existence. At Christ’s resurrection, the Spirit so transformed him that he became identified with the Spirit’s life-giving function.

What makes the book distinctive is how comprehensively Beale unpacks what that union means. Rather than treating the resurrection as one doctrine among others, Beale shows how each major Christian doctrine—justification, sanctification, reconciliation, the indwelling of the Spirit, the temple—represents a distinct facet of that single resurrection reality. For those who want to understand how the resurrection functions as the hinge of the entire New Testament storyline, Beale provides a rich and rewarding study.

9. Athanasius, On the Incarnation

As the title suggests, Athanasius takes as his subject the incarnation. Yet for Athanasius, the incarnation reaches its terminus in the resurrection. Athanasius argues that through Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection, he conquers death and restores human nature, achieving incorruptible life for all united to him. The resurrection functions as the decisive demonstration that death—humanity’s fundamental problem—has been overcome.

For Athanasius, salvation is less about forensic pardon than about ontological transformation: Humanity faced the irreversible consequence of corruptibility and death following transgression. Yet the Son of God took on human nature so that humanity might participate in Christ’s divine life.

Athanasius’s work remains a classic that every Christian should read.

10. Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline Of Evangelical Ethics

What does the resurrection mean for how we live? O’Donovan contends that the resurrection is the foundation of Christian ethics.

O’Donovan’s aim is to overcome the longstanding tension between “creation ethics” and “kingdom ethics.” The resurrection is not merely the validation of Jesus’s individual identity: It is God’s public and cosmic vindication of the moral order he built into creation. By raising Christ, God publicly vindicated the moral order built into creation and inaugurated his kingdom at the same moment.

For readers who want to understand the resurrection’s broader implications, O’Donovan opens territory that few other books on this list explore.

Share your thoughts

What books might you add to this list? Join us in Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

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1. Emil Brunner, The Letter to the Romans (James Clarke, 2025), 126.
2. David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2003), 681.
3. N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2003), 727.