God could simultaneously vindicate both Jesus and the Gospel Jesus preached by both raising Jesus and seeing to it that Jesus appeared to the apostles.
This page analyzes 4 arguments:
This helps suggest that God would have reason to raise Jesus from death because we stipulated that Jesus was God's sinless envoy, and before Jesus's death he had just been preaching the so-called “bad news” (for us) of God's impending judgment on sinners for their sins, and the “good news” (for us) of one way God will offer forgiveness and cleansing to the repentant (i.e. the “Gospel”). God would plausibly want to vindicate Jesus and this gospel to core evangelists so they could spread it through evangelism. (There are philosophical/theological reasons for why God would want the Gospel to spread this way.)
The Old Testament both explicitly and implicitly teaches that God plans on raising all his righteous remnant (Israel) to eternal life.
This page analyzes 7 arguments:
This is relevant because, as theologians often point out, God made Jesus an ideal "type" of Israel (which we will argue for on another page). This means Jesus both recapitulates and foreshadows Israel's journey and succeeds as a faithful servant in ways old covenant Israel failed. (And this isn't some odd and surprising observation, God has had good reason to make Jesus a type of Israel.)
God wants the sinless to live forever, and so plausibly (and reportedly) set up righteous humanity originally to either be invincible or to regenerate when facing any fatal circumstances. His purpose for introducing irreversible death (plausibly and reportedly [Genesis 3:19]) is to limit and punish wicked sinners.
This full page analyzes 2 reasons to agree:
This purpose of ultimate/irreversible death (for sinners) factors into the discussion because Jesus was sinless (we stipulated). That means death as an irreversible/final state would hold no relevance for him. If humanity was originally immune to death (e.g. through natural regeneration), then this is how we might expect Jesus to be in virtue of his sinlessness.
All throughout human history people have been dying, and these dead people always stay dead. This is relevant because if God lacked sufficient reason to raise virtually everyone else from death, we can assume (by extrapolative inference) that God almost certainly would lack sufficient reason to raise Jesus from death. It is obviously not the kind of thing he chooses to do.
But no…
So? Plausibly…
If God really would raise Jesus from the dead, then God would have also followed through with things and ensured that Jesus appear to everyone or in a more comprehensive way.
This page analyzes 3 arguments:
This is relevant because instead only a few (at best) saw the allegedly risen Jesus.