William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, Ill., 2008)
William Lane Craig is an analytic philosopher, Christian
apologist, and theologian. He is an advocate of the kalam cosmological
argument for the existence of God and argues for the historical plausibility of
the resurrection of Jesus. Reasonable Faith seeks both to educate
Christians concerning various aspects of apologetics and natural theology and
persuade non-believers of the truth of Christian theism. Craig believes that
Christian apologetics can be influential in shaping culture, strengthening
believers, and challenging non-believers to accept the claims of Christianity.
This article will explore in some detail the argument and apologetic of Reasonable
Faith with the hope that it will persuade sceptics that God exists and that
Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
How do I know Christianity is true?
Craig considers the perspectives of several Christian
philosophers and theologians on this subject of the truth of Christianity.
Augustine (354–430), he argues, adopted the position of faith seeking
understanding (fides quaerens intelectum), while also giving
considerable weight to the authority and existence of the Catholic Church. The
witness of the Church to the Apostolic testimony concerning Christ was
considered to be a reasonable argument for believing in the existence of God
and the historical plausibility of the resurrection. Modern critics would not
find such an appeal to authority as persuasive as medieval Christians, for whom
the authority of the Church was paramount. Nonetheless, Augustine believed that
the faith itself gave good reasons for believing.
This is not to say that medieval Christians had no arguments
for the existence of God and person of Christ. St Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), for
example, is widely considered to be one of the most important Western
philosophers. He is well-known for his Quinque Viae or Five Ways. These
are logical arguments for the existence of God based on the idea of a prime
mover, causation, contingency, degree, and final causes or ends. He is equally
well known for his distinction between faith and reason. The Church believes certain
doctrines such as the Trinity and the incarnation on the basis of faith;
whereas other doctrines such as the existence of God may be deduced from
reason. Doctrines such as the Trinity and the incarnation are not contrary to
reason, but they are mysterious and require a commitment of faith based on
divine revelation in Scripture.
During the Enlightenment, two prominent Christian scholars
who made the case for Christianity were John Locke (1632–1704) and Henry
Dodwell (1641–1711). Locke argued for the existence of God on the basis of a
cosmological argument. He insisted that revealed truths in Scripture cannot
contradict reason and made the case for the reasonableness of Christianity. He insisted that Christianity had to be rational. His ideas were largely followed
and pressed to the extreme by Deists who argued for the existence of God but
denied his personal involvement in the world through miracle or providence.
Dodwell by way of contrasts protested against the rational presentation of
Christianity and argued for its subjective basis in Christian experience of the
Holy Spirit. Religion is primarily a matter of the heart. A similar case for
the experiential nature of Christian religion was made by John Wesley (1703–91)
and George Whitefield (1714–70) during the 18th century evangelical
revival. Wesley famously described faith as a warm embrace of the heart.
Contemporary theologians such as Karl Barth and Rudolf
Bultmann have been skeptical of natural theology and apologetics. Barth was
committed to a transcendental conception of God as the ‘wholly other’. Even so, he maintained that God has revealed
himself in a person: Jesus Christ. True religion consists of a personal
encounter with Jesus as revealed in Scripture. ‘He meets us as the One who is
hidden, the One about whom we must admit that we do not know what we are saying
when we try to say who He is’ (cited on p. 36). Like Barth, Bultmann conceives
of God transcendentally and argues that faith is necessary to salvation. This
faith must involve some risk and uncertainty. There are parallels with
existentialist philosophy in this regard – you must choose, take a risk on
Christ Jesus.
Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928–2014), a German Lutheran
theologian, ushered in a new phase in European theology with a rigorously
evidential approach. His concept of
history as a form of revelation focused on the resurrection of Christ.
Christianity must take seriously the findings of historical-critical research. In
the words of William Lane Craig, ‘If the historical foundation for faith were
removed, then Christianity should be abandoned’ (p. 39). By way of contrast to
Pannenberg’s evidentialist approach, Alvin Plantinga (b. 1932) has argued that
Christian belief is warranted without any evidential considerations. In other
words, belief in God is properly basic. In this regard, he follows John
Calvin’s idea of the sensus divinitatis or ‘sense of deity’ implanted in
human beings by the divine being. This testimony to the existence of God in all
human beings, though marred by the fall, is further strengthened in the
Christian by the internal witness of the Holy Spirit. In response to these
views, William Lane Craig rises to the defence of natural theology and
apologetics. He maintains that there is a distinction between knowing that
Christianity is true and showing that it is true. ‘We know Christianity
is true primarily by the self-authenticating witness of God’s Spirit. We show
Christianity is true by presenting good arguments’ (p. 58). These arguments are
considered in the following chapters.
The Absurdity of Life without God
The second chapter considers what might be termed ‘cultural
arguments’ for the truth of Christian theism. These aim to show the absurdity
of life without God. Blaise Pascal was one of the first philosophers to make a
cultural argument for the existence of God. This is his famous wager argument.
When the odds that God exists are even, the wise man will gamble that God
exists. ‘If one wagers that God exists and he does, one has gained eternal life
and infinite happiness. If he does not exist, one has lost nothing’ (p. 68).
Those who gain Christ, gain everything. Fyodor Dotoyevsky approaches a cultural
argument from a more pessimistic viewpoint. He was deeply troubled by the
problem of human suffering in the world and tries to comprehend it in his
novels. Positively, God may use suffering to perfect character and bring the
sufferer closer to God – witness the example of Job in the Old Testament for
instance. Negatively, if the existence of God is denied, there is no basis for
evaluating whether an action is moral or immoral. All that remains is moral
relativism and indifference.
Soren Kierkegaard (1813–55), the Danish existentialist
philosopher of the late 19th century, presents a negative apologetic
for the truth of Christianity. He sees life as being lived on three different
stages: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. In the aesthetic stage,
life is pleasure – man lives for his pleasures (sex, art, music, etc.). But
eventually he becomes dissatisfied with the pursuit of pleasure and it leads
ultimately to unhappiness. What then? There is the ethical stage. The
transition to this stage is motivated by dissatisfaction with the aesthetic – a
kind of leap between stages. The ethical stage is concerned with right living
and moral perfection. The problem with this is that moral perfection is unattainable.
We will always fall short of God standard (cf. Romans 3:23). This leads to
guilt and dissatisfaction and drives human beings towards the religious stage.
Man seeks consolation with God – forgiveness for sin. This stage is reached by
a leap of faith, not rational argument. It essentially is a leap into the dark
in Kierkegaard’s view, but it is only by such a choice that man can authentic or
realise himself and alleviate existential despair.
Arguably, Francis Schaeffer (1912–84) is the most well-known
advocate of cultural apologetics. He argues that there is a ‘line of despair’
in the history of the development of the arts, humanities, literature and
philosophy. The closer one approaches postmodernism the more fragmentation one
discovers. He believes the problem began with Hegelian philosophy. Hegel is
famous for the triad: thesis – antithesis – synthesis as the path to truth. The
problem is that this process may be repeated endlessly, never allowing one to
arrive at a place of cognitive rest, resulting in despair. The Theatre of the
Absurd, abstract modern art, the music compositions of John Cage are all modern
indications of despair and absurdity in this regard. Life without God
ultimately leads towards meaninglessness and vanity. Building on Schaeffer’s
approach, Craig makes the argument that life without God tends towards death.
If death is the end of all being, both personal and cosmic, then what it is the
ultimate point of existence? Christianity offers real hope in the resurrection
of Christ. As Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes
in me, though he die, yet shall he live’ (John 11:25).
Arguments for the Existence of God
In the third and fourth chapters of Reasonable Faith,
Craig identifies four main arguments for the existence of God: the ontological
argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the moral
argument.
The ontological argument aims to prove not only that
God exists, but also that he is endowed with all his traditional attributes of
perfection (e.g. omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence etc.). The medieval
theologian Anslem of Canterbury argued that God is the greatest conceivable
being there is. Since it is greater for something to exist in reality than in
the mind, God necessarily exists. This argument was thought to be more of a
curiosity of language than a real argument for the existence of God. People
quipped that you could imagine the greatest possible island to exist or conjure
up unicorns simply by imagining them. However, it has become a serious argument
in contemporary philosophy through the work of Alvin Plantinga. In his version
of the argument, Plantinga conceives of God as a being who is ‘maximally
excellent’ in every possible world. The argument is formulated in the words of
William Lane Craig as follows:
1.
It is possible that a maximally great being
exists.
2.
If it is possible that a maximally great being
exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
3.
If a maximally great being exists in some
possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
4.
If a maximally great being exists in every
possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
5.
If a maximally great being exists in the actual
world, then a maximally great being exists.
6.
Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
The cosmological argument came about through
Christian attempts to deal with Aristotle’s notion of the eternity of the
universe. Christians, by way of contrast, argued that the universe had a
beginning. The argument runs as follows:
1. Everything
that beings to exist has a cause.
2. The
universe began to exist.
3. Therefore,
it has a cause.
This argument has been surprising ratified by contemporary
physics. Modern physics argues that the universe had a beginning. This is known
as the standard model of the Big Bang theory. William Lane Craig delves into
modern physics in ways that most people would consider mind boggling. The point
of the Big Bang theory is that the universe is not eternal as Aristotelian
philosophers had maintained. It had a beginning. In fact, in came into being
out of nothing. This is just what we would expect to be the case if
Christianity were true. Christians have maintained for over 2000 years that God
created the universe out of nothing (ex nihilo). Robert Jastrow, an
American astronomer and planetary physicist, makes the point with some
considerable humour:
For the scientist who has lived
by faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled
the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he
pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who
have been sitting there for centuries.
Another form of this argument is the Leibnizian cosmological
argument based on the principle of sufficient reason. The argument may be
formulated as follows:
1. Everything
which comes into existence has a sufficient explanation of its existence.
2. If
the universe had an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3. The
universe exists
4. Therefore,
the universe had an explanation of its existence.
5. Therefore,
God exists.
The cosmological argument answers one of the deepest
questions posed by philosophers: why is there something rather than nothing?
The answer is that reality (‘something’) has an explanation, namely the Creator
who called ‘something’ into existence out of nothing.
One of the most popular arguments for the existence of God
is the teleological argument or the argument from design. This argument
considers the complexity of the cosmos to be evidence for an Intelligent Designer. Perhaps,
the most famous advocate of the argument from design was William Paley (1743–1805).
Paley argued that human objects such as a watch are products of intelligent
design. Likewise, the universe shows evidence of design. Consider for example
the complexity of a living organism or of the human cell. This would suggest
that the universe itself is a product of intelligent design in the same way
that a watch is the product of a designer. However, the universe is vastly more
complex and infinitely larger than a watch. Therefore, there is probably a
vastly powerfully and intelligent being who created the universe. And this is
what we would expect to be the case if Christianity were true.
It is often said that Charles Darwin put an end to the
argument from design by showing that biological life had evolved and adapted to
changing environments over time. It could however be argued that evolution
simply adds to the complexity of the design process by which God created the
world – this perspective is known as theistic evolution or evolutionary
creationism. However, William Lane Craig does not take this approach in his
book. Rather, he invites the reader to consider what is known in the scientific
world as cosmic fine-tuning. There are several universal constants according to
physics (the fine structure constant, gravitation, the weak force, the strong
force) as well as the ratio between the mass of a proton and the mass of an
electron. If these constants were changed even by a tiny amount, life and the
universe as we know it would be impossible. This strongly suggests that the
universe is a product of design rather than chance.
The final argument for the existence of God is the moral argument.
This attempts to show from the objectivity of moral values and duties the
existence of God considered as a divine lawgiver. William Lane Craig formulates
the argument as follows:
1.
If God does not exist, objective moral values
and duties do not exist.
2.
Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3.
Therefore, God exists.
A common objection to the moral argument is the Euthyphro
dilemma, named after a dialogue by Plato. Is something good because God wills
it? Or does God will something because it is good? The first implies that moral
commands are arbitrary. The latter implies that the is some standard to which
even God is beholden. In response to this dilemma, William Lane Craig shows
that God’s commands are an expression of his just and loving nature. God
himself is our highest good and the standard of goodness itself. It is
important to stress that this argument is not saying that atheists and
agnostics are immoral. It is merely pointing out that they have no objective
basis for evaluating moral values and duties. Humanists live on borrowed
capital.
The Problem of Historical Knowledge
As Christianity is a religion revealed in history, it is
important for Christian apologists to familiarise themselves with method in
history. William Lane Craig takes aim at postmodern and relativistic views of
history in this chapter. He argues that medieval theologians did not really
consider the problem of history in relation to Christianity. They accepted
truths on the authority of the Catholic church. St Augustine famously said, ‘I
would not believe in the Gospel, if the authority of the Catholic church did
not bid me to do so’. Christianity was accepted on this basis of ecclesiastical
witness to the Apostolic testimony. The emergence of an historical consciousness
came with the Renaissance and progressed into the early modern period.
Renaissance writers emphasised the importance of going back to the original
sources of antiquity. Their slogan ad fontes (‘to the sources’)
encapsulates this idea. This became an important feature of historical
consciousness in modern society – going back to the original sources for
evidence, rather than merely accepting something on the authority of the
Church. The Protestant Reformers were deeply influenced by these ideas and
emphasised going back to the Scriptures as the principal source for
understanding the history of Israel, Jesus Christ, and the Apostolic Church.
They summarised this approach in their slogan Sola Scriptura (‘scripture
alone’).
The turn towards relativism emerged with modern commitments
to historicism and postmodernism. The historian was seen as hopelessly biased
by his own worldview and had no direct access to events of the past. There was
simply no way of doing history without it being relativized by one’s own
perspective and biases. The problem with postmodernism and relativism is that
they are self-refuting. Postmodernism claims that there is no absolute truth
and expresses incredulity towards metanarratives. The problem with this is that
claiming ‘there is no absolute truth’ is itself an attempt to formulate an
absolute truth. In other words, the claim refutes itself. William Lane Craig suggests that it is
possible to do history scientifically. This is not to say that historians can
reach a neutral perspective of unbiased observation. This would be impossible.
It is a more modest claim that historians can put forward hypothesis and test
them against the evidences of history (written documents, coins, weapons,
pottery, works of art etc.). This is similar to how scientists test hypothesis
in evolutionary biology or geology. They have no direct access to the past as
it has already happened (sometimes millions of years ago), but they are able to
test their hypothesis against the residue evidence of the past in the fossil or
geological record. Historians do the same with their sources.
William Lane Craig suggests six ways that the historian can
mitigate a lack of neutrality:
1.
A proper historical method.
2.
Public acknowledgement of one’s horizon and
methodology.
3.
Peer pressure and review by the community of
historians.
4.
Submitting hypothesis to experts who disagree
with you.
5.
The presence of certain minimal facts agreed on
by all historians.
6.
A serious effort at detachment from one’s own
biases.
It has sometimes been suggested that there are no facts in
history, only interpretations. There is something sinister about this view of
history. Imagine telling a Holocaust survivor that there are no facts about
WWII, only interpretations. That would do serious injustices to her experiences
of the Holocaust which she knows to be a fact from experience. While it is true
that all facts must be interpreted, it does not stand to reason to say there
are no facts at all. The historian actually needs data to interpret. He must
work with facts all the time. And while he cannot avoid brining his own biases
to the interpretation process, he is nonetheless able to mitigate against his
own biases through the methods suggested above.
The Problem of Miracles
It is sometimes suggested by atheists that Christians are
returning to a pre-critical view of the world by believing in the miracles of
Christ and his Apostles. This they argue is no different to believing in
fairies, ghosts, and unicorns. These arguments first emerged during the
Enlightenment. On the basis of Newtonian physics, Deist philosophers argued
that God had created the universe much like a clockmaker makes a clock. He
fashioned all the various parts, wound up the clock, and left it ticking. He
did not intervene through miracle or providence. Benedict Spinoza (1632–77) – a
pantheist philosopher – argued that miracles violate the unchangeable order of
nature and are insufficient to prove God’s existence.
David Hume (1711–76) made similar arguments against the
miraculous. Even if we admit that a particular miracle amounts to full proof
for the existence of God, we are under no obligation to identify the event as a
miracle. Why? Because against this perspective is the evidence of the
unchanging laws of nature which do not allow for miracles to occur. William
Lane Craig suggests that Hume makes four points against the miraculous:
1.
No miracle in history had been attested to by a
significant number of educated and honest men.
2.
People crave the miraculous and will believe the
most absurd stories.
3.
Miracles occur only among barbarous people.
4.
Miracles occur in all religions and thereby
cancel each other out, since they support contradictory doctrines.
Several philosophers and apologists responded the arguments
of Spinoza and Hume. Against Spinoza, Jean Le Clerc, Samuel Clarke, Jacob
Vernet, and Claude Francois made their voices heard. Against Hume, Thomas
Sherlock, Gottfried Less, and William Paley put forward arguments in defence of
Christian theism. Christians argued, given God’s omnipotence, that miracles are
possible. If God created the world, does he not also have the power to give
sight to the blind and life to the dead? God conserves the world in being and
may freely act according to his sovereignty as he wills. The course of nature
is simply the regular pattern of God will. It is subject to God’s freedom to
alter it as he wills. It may even
‘include within itself the capacity for miraculous events’ (p. 258). Miracles
could be willed from eternity so that there is no change in God’s decrees or
natural law since this is established by God in the first place. Contra Deism,
miracles prove the action and involvement of God personally in the world. If
the existence of God is presupposed, miracles are just as possible as any other
event. Moreover, miracles are matters of sense perception just like any other
event and are therefore capable of being supported by historical testimony. John emphasises the empirical nature of the resurrected
Christ in his first epistle. He refers to Jesus as ‘that which was from the
beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have
looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life’
(1 John 1:1).
Some argued that there was no way of knowing whether the
miraculous was a product of divine or demonic intervention. Christian
theologians responded by arguing that the doctrinal context in which the
miracle was preformed allowed one to determine if the miracle was divine. The
context of the Christian Gospels plainly shows Christ to be working miracles by
the power of God the Holy Spirit. The same is true of His followers in the Acts
of the Apostles. It was the Pharisees who argued that Christ preformed his
miraculous exorcisms by the power of the devil. Jesus responded by arguing that
if he were to cast out devils by demonic power, the kingdom of Satan would be
divided against itself and therefore could not stand. He warned the pharisees
that they were in danger of committing the unforgiveable sin of blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit. This leads us to the question of who exactly Christ
considered himself to be.
The Self-Understanding of Jesus
Craig explores the scholarly research that has been
undertaken throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries.
This has involved the so-called quest for the historical Jesus. There have been
exactly three such quests – all coming to similar dead ends. The problem as
Craig identifies it with the quest for the historical Jesus is the tendency of
scholars to separate the Christ of faith from the Christ of history. It is
taken for granted that the Christ who preforms miracles, heals the sick, and
raises the dead cannot be an historical Christ. But why should this be the
case? If you presuppose from the outset that miracles cannot happen, then you
will find that miracles do not happen in your conclusions. What if the Christ
of history is the Christ of miracles? This leads to the question of
Christ’s identity. Who did Jesus consider himself to be? Craig explores several
Christological titles and themes in the New Testament to answer this question.
As we read the Gospels, it becomes increasingly clear that
Christ considered himself to be the Messiah. This is what the title Christos
actually means. It is so familiar in the New Testament documents that it
actually becomes something of a surname for Jesus. Famously, Jesus put the
question to his disciples: who do you say that I am? And Peter answers, ‘You
are the Messiah, the Son of the living God’ (Matthew 16:16). Jesus ratifies his
statement by saying, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For this was not
revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven’ (v.17). Jesus
clearly understood himself to fulfil the necessary conditions for being called
both ‘the Christ’ and ‘the Son of God’.
When John the Baptist has some doubts from his condition in
prison, he sends some of his followers to Jesus with the question, ‘Are you the
one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’ (Matthew 11:3). Jesus responds
by saying, ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive
sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are
raised, and good news is preached to the poor’ (Matthew 11:4). In other words,
the signs of the Messiah that were predicted under the Old Covenant are now
being fulfilled in the ministry of Christ. However, his kingdom is not
political or revolutionary, but peaceful. Not only does Christ fulfil the role
of the Messiah, he is also the Suffering Servant represented in the book of
Isaiah. This is something Jesus tried to explain to his disciples before the
events of the crucifixion: ‘The Son of Man must suffer many things and be
rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the teachers of the law, and he
must be killed and on the third day raised to life’ (Luke 9:22). This is
something no-one expected of the Messiah, but it says much about Christ’s
self-understanding as the sacrificial lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world (cf. John 1:29).
Craig explores three texts in which Jesus presents himself
as the Son of God. Firstly, he considers the parable of the wicked tenants
(Mark 12:1–9) in which the owner (God) ultimately sends his son (Jesus) to the
wicked tenants (Pharisees and Sadducees) who put him to death (crucifixion).
Clearly Jesus sees himself as the climatic aspect of this parable in which the
owner sends his own beloved son. It would be difficult to claim that this
parable was tampered with by the early Church as without this aspect the
parable would lack any climax and purpose. Jesus’ self-understanding becomes
particularly clear in Matthew 11:27: ‘All things have been delivered to me by
my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the
Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’
(Matthew 11:27; cf. Luke 10:22). According to Craig, this text tells us that
Jesus considered himself to be the Son of God and the one who reveals God the
Father (p. 312). The final text Craig considers in which Jesus refers to himself
as the Son of God is Mark 13:32: ‘But of that day or that hour no one knows,
not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father’. This text is
interesting in that it refers to Jesus in relation to the Father as the Son of
God, but it also ascribes ignorance to Christ which would have been potentially
embarrassing to the early Church. The fact that it is retained in the Gospel of
Mark is an indication of its authenticity.
Jesus also understood himself to be the Son of Man which
occurs over eighty times in the Gospels. It is important to note that Jesus did
not consider himself to be ‘a son of man’, but ‘the Son of Man’ with the
definite article (ho huios tou anthropou). In other words, Jesus
considered himself to be the Son of Man as described in the book of Daniel:
I saw in the night visions, and
behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came
to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given
dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should
serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom on that shall not be destroyed’ (Daniel 7:13–14).
Jesus considers himself to fulfil this passage of profound
eschatological significance. Daniel describes one who is both human (‘a son of
man’) and yet charged with a dominion and a glory that is God-like and divine.
It anticipates the Church’s teaching of hypostatic union – that Jesus is both
fully God and fully man in one remarkable person.
All three of the titles considered above come together at
Jesus’ trial. In the words of Mark’s Gospel:
And the high priest stood up in
the midst, and asked Jesus, ‘Have you no answer to make? What is it that these
men testify against you?’ But he was silent and made no answer. Again the high
priest asked him, ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ And Jesus said,
‘I am; and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and
coming with the clouds of heaven’. And the high priest tore his mantle and
said, ‘Why do we still need witnesses? You have heard this blasphemy. What is
your decision?’ And they all condemned him as deserving death (Mark 14:60–64).
Here Jesus refers to himself as the Son of the Blessed
(God), the Son of Man who will sit at God’s right hand, and the eschatological
figure of Daniel who will come with the clouds of heaven. These claims were
blasphemous to Jewish ears and demanded the death penalty. Jesus was claiming
not only to be the Messiah, but also God himself in the flesh. Craig also
argues that there is an implicit Christology in the ministry of Christ. His
preaching of the Kingdom, his authority, his miracles, his prayer life, and his
status as the arbiter of people’s eternal destiny all serve to authenticate his divinity and messianic claims.
The Resurrection of Jesus
William Lane Craig begins with an assessment of the
historical background to apologetics for Christ’s resurrection particularly as
it found expression during the Deist controversy of the eighteenth century.
Christians argued that the Gospels are authentic witnesses to Christ and his
resurrection, that the Gospel texts are themselves pure, and that the Gospels
are historically reliable. Craig suggests that this approach is flawed in the
light of modern Biblical criticism and requires a more careful apologetic for
the resurrection on the part of the Christian. This is not to say that their arguments
are worthless, only that modern Biblical criticism has raised new questions
that need to be answered. Here are the traditional arguments for the
resurrection as argued against Deism:
The Gospels are Authentic – Internal Evidence
1.
The style of writing in the Gospels is what we
would expect from the traditionally accepted authors – a simple and lively
style pervades the synoptic Gospels, rather than anything fantastical or
legendary.
2.
Luke was written before the Acts of the Apostles
and must therefore have an early date of composition.
3.
The Gospels show an intimate knowledge of
Jerusalem before its destruction in 70 AD. Jesus’ prophecies of this event must
have been written prior to Jerusalem’s fall. This implies that the Gospels must
have been written before 70AD as Jesus foretells the destruction of the temple
and the fall of Jerusalem.
4.
The Gospels are full of proper names, dates,
cultural details, historical events, and customs and opinions of that time.
5.
The stories of Jesus’ human weaknesses and of
the disciples’ faults also reveal their authenticity.
6.
The Gospels do no try to supress apparent
discrepancies which indicates that they are genuine accounts, rather than
harmonised fabrications.
7.
The style of each particular Gospel is
appropriate to what we know of their authorship. Luke for example reveals the
meticulous method appropriate to his profession as a physician.
8.
The Gospels do not contain anachronisms.
9.
The Hebraic and Syriac idioms that mark the
Gospels are appropriate to their authorship.
The Gospels are Authentic – External Evidence
1.
The Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament
are themselves evidence for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
2.
The Gospels and Acts are cited by several
authors beginning with those contemporary with the Apostles themselves and
continuing with the early Church Fathers. William Paley, for instance, traces
testimonies from the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle of Clement, and the
Shepherd of Hermas up to Eusebius in 315 AD.
3.
The Gospels and Epistles were cited as being
Scripture by the Church Fathers or as actually having canonical authority on a
par with the Old Testament.
4.
These New Testament Scriptures were collected
into a distinct volume of writings within the Patristic community.
5.
These writings were given titles of respect by
the Church Fathers. They were referred to as the Scriptures and divine
writings.
6.
Extensive commentaries and harmonies were
written on the books of the New Testament showing that they – and they alone –
were considered to be Scriptures by the early Church.
7.
The
Scriptures were also accepted as canonical and authoritative by heretical
groups and opponents of the Church Fathers.
8.
The opponents of Christianity regarded the
Gospels as containing the authoritative accounts upon which the religion was
founded.
9.
Catalogues of authentic Scriptures were
published by the Church Fathers which always contained the Gospels and the Acts
of the Apostles.
10.
The so-called apocryphal books of the New
Testament were never treated with the same kind of respect and authority as the
canonical New Testament.
11.
Even if the names traditionally ascribed to the
Gospels are mistaken, their accounts must nevertheless be regarded as genuine
based on all the considerations given above.
The Text of the Gospels is
Pure
1.
The text of the Gospels we have today is the
same as the original autographs.
2.
The manuscripts of the New Testament were copied
many times over which allowed for the original text to be preserved.
3.
As William Lane Craig points out, ‘no other
ancient work is available in so many copies and languages, and yet all of these
versions agree in content’ (p. 337).
4.
The differences that do exist are relatively
minor and have no theological implications.
5.
The text of the New Testament is just as well
preserved as the texts of classical antiquity, if not better.
6.
The quotations from the New Testament books and
the early Church Fathers coincide – meaning there has been no textual
corruption over time.
The Gospels are Reliable
If the account of Jesus’ life,
death, and resurrection is false, then the Apostles must either have been
deceived or were themselves deceivers. Since both of these alternatives are
implausible, it follows that the Gospel accounts are historically reliable. The
witnesses to the resurrection had ‘personal knowledge of the facts of an
extended period of forty days’ (p. 337). It seems highly unlikely that so many
witnesses could be deceived over such a length of time. It is therefore
unreasonable to ascribe their experiences to imagination, dreaming, or
hallucinations. In response to the claim that the experiences of Jesus’
resurrection were hallucinations or the product of religious enthusiasm,
William Paley argues that more than one person saw Christ appear – in fact
there were several hundred witnesses. Could they all be the subject of
hallucinations? It seems unlikely to say the least. They saw him not as
individuals but together – at the same time. They saw him appear on multiple
occasions. They touched him, conversed with him, ate with him. The tomb was
empty. It would have been impossible for Jesus’ disciples to have believed in
his resurrection if someone could have produced a body or if the corpse was still
in the tomb. The Jewish authorities who were opposed to Jesus would have
produced a corpse with haste – but they could not. All they could do was to
claim the disciples had stolen the body. If they had stolen the body, how did
they get past the armed guard which was put in place by the Romans and
Herodians? It seems unlikely therefore that the disciples had been able to
overcome armed Roman soldiers and a sealed tomb.
Were the disciples deceivers?
Again, this seems deeply unlikely. They were willing to give their lives and
suffer martyrdom for the resurrected Jesus. Why would someone give his life for
something he knows to be a lie? It is very clear that Christians gave their
life for the miraculous account of Jesus’ resurrection. All the early Church
Fathers refer to Christ’s miracles and resurrection. It is clear that those who
suffered and died in the early Church because of their testimony as Christians
were doing so because they believed Christ had risen from the dead. Why would
they die for a lie? The disciples were not cunning men or Machiavellian masters
of political intrigue. They were common men of unquestioned moral integrity.
Why would they risk their lives and reputation for a hoax they had conceived?
It would be a pretty stupid hoax that led to one’s own death. Their lives were
dramatically changed by the resurrection. They went from a place of grief and
utter despair to a place of hope and joyful certainty and bravely suffered for
their witness. Would these uneducated disciples have been able to persuade the
world of Jesus’ resurrection had not their story been true? How would one
explain the origin of the Church if Christ had not risen from the dead?
The Rise of Biblical Criticism
Craig considers the rise of Biblical criticism during the 19th
century and the impact this had on traditional arguments for the resurrection. This
criticism took the form of Rationalism – a sort of half-way house between
Christianity and Deism. Critics charged that the disciples stole the body and invented
the stories of a resurrection to turn Jesus into a spiritual Messiah. Others
made distinctions between the Word of God and the Scriptures to allow
Christianity in by the back door. The Scriptures were subject to doubt and
criticism as fallible historical documents, but the Word of God was the domain
of faith and holy practice. Jesus’ teachings were seen as the key to his
ministry, not his death and resurrection. For the Rationalists, belief in a
literal resurrection was not essential to being a Christian.
David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74) argued that the miracles
of Christ and the resurrection were the work of religious imagination. The
disciples simply could not bear to lose their master, therefore they revived
him in myth and legend. The resurrection was simply an inner state of mind on
the part of the disciple. The disciples did not deceive neither were they deceived.
The fact that the resurrection was ahistorical did not rob it of religious
significance. ‘A spiritual truth may be revealed within the husk of a delusion’
(p. 346). The disciples found the dying and glorified Christ in the Scriptures
of the Old Testament. Hallucinations of the risen Christ appeared to them and
confirmed what they had found in the Old Testament – Jesus must be alive. Jesus
was neither liar, lunatic, nor Lord; he was legend.
During the 20th century, Karl Barth famously
championed the theology of the resurrection, but denied that it was a literal
event of history. In his commentary on the book of Romans he said, ‘The
resurrection touches history as a tangent touches a circle – that is, without
really touching it’. Bultmann argued that the miraculous elements of the Gospel
must be demythologised if they are to have any meaning for modern readers. The
true Christian message is the call to authentic existence in the light of the
cross. However, a significant change occurred during the late 20th
century towards views more accepting of the resurrection of Christ and
testimony of an empty tomb. The most significant theologian in this regard is
Wolfhart Pannenberg who establishes his entire theology on the historical ministry
and resurrection of Christ.
Arguments for the Resurrection
N. T. Wright (b. 1948) in his landmark study The Resurrection
of the Son of God (2003) argues that early Christians (the apostles and
disciples of Christ) believed in a physical, bodily resurrection. The best
explanation for this belief is the disciples’ discovery of an empty tomb and
the subsequent appearances of the risen Christ to many witnesses. This hypothesis
has the explanatory power to account for the belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Rival
hypotheses such as dreams about Jesus, hallucinations, the body being stolen
lack the explanatory power to account for that belief among early Christians.
By way of conclusion, the best explanation for the empty tomb and the post-mortem
appearances of Christ is that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead. Craig
faults N. T. Wright for not taking the step of committing Christ’s resurrection
to an act of history. This is presumably because miracles are off limits to the
historian. But why should this be the case? Physicists, for example, work with
entities to which they have no direct access such as stings, higher dimensional
membranes, quarks, and even parallel universes. Why should the historian not be
able to account for the resurrection on the basis of the historical evidence
for an empty tomb and the post-mortem resurrection appearances of Christ?
According to William Lane Craig, the hypothesis ‘God raised
Jesus from the dead’ is the best explanation of the historical data available. He
puts forward three main arguments for the resurrection:
1)
The tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his
women followers on the first day of the week following his crucifixion (and we
might add that this was later confirmed by the Apostles themselves).
2)
Various individuals and groups thereafter experienced
on different occasions and under varying circumstances appearances of Jesus alive.
3)
The first disciples came to sincerely believe in
Jesus’ resurrection in the absence of sufficient antecedent historical
influences from either Judaism or pagan religions.
The event of the resurrection is not merely a brute fact of
history, it is a fact charged with meaning. ‘The significance of this event is
then to be found in the religio-historical context in which it occurred,
namely, as the vindication of Jesus’ own unparalleled claim to divine authority’
(p. 360). William Lane Craig points to these three facts as evidence of Jesus’ resurrection:
the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian
religion.
The location of Jesus’ tomb was public knowledge to both
Christians and Jews. He was buried in the expensive tomb of Joseph of Arimathea,
a leading member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. If Jesus had not really died and been
buried, the Jewish authorities would have been able to procure the body as
evidence against the Apostles’ claims. Moreover, the fact of the empty tomb is
attested in early independent sources. Paul quotes from a very early tradition
in 1 Corinthians 15: 3–5 that refers to Jesus’ burial and resurrection. When
the tradition says that Christ was buried and then was raised from the dead, it
implies that an empty tomb was left behind. According to William Lane Craig,
there are some six independent sources which can be traced in the New Testament
manuscripts for the empty tomb.
According to the Markan account, the empty tomb was discovered
on ‘the first day of the week’ – another indication of its authenticity. The
Markan story itself is simple and lacks legendary embellishments. The tomb was discovered
by women. Interestingly, women were not regarded as credible witnesses in
Jewish society and were considered to be second class citizens. This only adds
to credibility for the modern reader. Anyone seeking to fabricate the account
would have made sure that men were the first witnesses of the empty tomb. It
stands to reason therefore that the account of the women finding the tomb empty
is thoroughly genuine. The Jewish leaders charged the disciples with sneaking past
the guards and stealing the body, but this line of argument simply presupposes
that the body was missing. The early Christian community responded by saying
that the chief priests had bribed the guards to say this.
Some take the argument that Jesus never really died on the
cross. This seems an incredible point of view given that Christ had been beaten
half to death, nailed to a cross, and stabbed in his side with a Roman spear,
out of which the pericardial fluid was said to flow. On top of this, how could
a man who was half-dead move the stone, fight away the Roman guards, and present
himself as a glorious risen Saviour to his disciples? It seems too incredible
to believe. Craig comments, ‘Roman executioners could be relied upon to ensure
that their victims were dead’ (p. 373–74). That the mortally wounded Jesus
could then have gone about proclaiming himself as the risen Lord is sheer
fantasy.
One of the earliest testimonies to the resurrection of
Christ is found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:
For I delivered to you as of
first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in
accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised
on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas,
then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one
time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he
appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely
born, he appeared also to me (1 Corinthians 15: 3–8).
Paul testifies that the risen Christ appeared to multiple
witnesses at different times and in different places. He appeared to Peter, the
Twelve, James (his half-brother), then to all the Apostles again, and last of
all to Paul. The conversion testimony of Paul is highly significant. Paul was a
Jewish Rabbi, highly educated and profoundly gifted. He fiercely opposed
Christianity to the extent of persecuting Christians and arranging their executions.
Then he met with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and his life was
changed forever. He became one of the most astute advocates of the Christian
faith and the first Christian theologian. In the words of William Lane Craig:
He left his position as a
respected Jewish leader and became a Christian missionary: he entered a life of
poverty, labour, and suffering. He was whipped, beaten, stoned and left for
dead, shipwrecked three times, in constant danger, deprivation and anxiety.
Finally, he made the ultimate sacrifice and was martyred for his faith at Rome.
And it was all because on that day outside Damascus, he saw ‘Jesus our Lord’ (1
Corinthians 9:1).
The final point William Lane Craig makes concerns the
emergence of the Church. Scholars have searched in vain for a pagan origin of
Christian mythology. There is simply no parallel between the resurrection of
Christ and the myths of Greece and Rome. In terms of Judaism, there was an
expectation of resurrection, but this was believed to come at the end of
history. It was thoroughly eschatological in nature. Nobody expected Jesus to
rise from the dead. C. F. D Moule puts it like this:
If the coming into existence of
the Nazarenes, a phenomenon undeniably attested by the New Testament, rips a
great hole in history, a hole the size and the shape of the Resurrection, what
does the secular historian propose to stop it up with? … The birth and rapid
rise of the Christian Church … remain an unsolved enigma for any historian who
refuses to take seriously the only explanation offered by the Church itself.
In the final analysis, we must all seriously face this
question: what are we going to do with Jesus Christ? The Christian Church
affirms that he is risen from the dead, that his tomb is empty, and that he
lives in the power of an endless life. He claims to be both Lord and Saviour.
He calls for you to submit to him in repentance and faith. Those who gain
Christ, gain everything – the resurrection of the body and the glorious life of
the world to come.
Conclusion
William Lane Craig’s account of Christian apologetics is a
stellar example of Christian scholarship at its finest. It makes the case for
God and the resurrection of Christ in innovative ways that respond to the
questions of contemporary scholarship. It also has an historical dimension
which answers questions from some of the greatest philosophers and theologians.
For Craig, Christians know Christ experientially through the internal witness
of the Holy Spirit. The arguments for the existence of God and the resurrection
of Christ are supplementary to the internal witness. For the non-believer, Reasonable
Faith sparks the important question of how we respond to Jesus. He claims
to be the Messiah, the Son of God, and the Saviour of the world. What are we
going to do with him?