William Lane Craig

Q&A with Dr. William Lane Craig

How to engage an agnostic? Have a list of arguments memorized:

• God is the best explanation of why anything at all exists, rather than nothing
• God is the best explanation for the beginning of the universe
  1. Whatever has a beginning has a cause
  2. The universe has a beginning
  3. Therefore the universe has a cause
  4. This shows we don’t live in a isolated system and there is a transcendent cause, beyond space and time, beyond the universe that make the universe come into existence.
• God is the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life
• God is the best explanation for the existence of moral values and duties in the world
• God is the best explanation for the historical facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth
• God can be personally known and experienced

What to do with people with no spiritual interest? Those who are apathetic/don’t care about religious or spirituality:

• Draw upon insights of atheistic existentialist writer themselves to show that if God doesn’t exist life is ultimately absurd, no ultimate meaning, no ultimate value, and no ultimate purpose.
• This view is filled with despair and impossible to live consistently with this worldview and be happy.
• If the atheist lived according to their beliefs, they would be in despair with filled with depression.
• If they are happy, is only because they do not carry out their beliefs to their logical conclusion.

Evidence for the Resurrection

The fundamental facts that support the resurrection of Jesus:

1. After his crucifixion, Jesus was buried in a tomb by a member of the Sanhedrin named Joseph of Arimatheia.
   1. This fact is important because it means that the location of Jesus’ tomb was known in Jerusalem to both Jews and Christians
   2. Scholars have established the historicity of this fact on the basis of evidence such as:
      1. Jesus burial is attested multiply in early independent sources
         1. One of the most important criteria historians use to establish historical facts: If an event or saying is attested in multiple sources which are independent of each other and at least one of them is early. Then, it is much more probable that it is historical than made up.
         2. Jesus’ burial is attested in the very old tradition quoted by Paul in his first letter to the Church of Corinth.
         3. St Paul uses a very technical and rabbinical style of text when talking about a tradition that he receives and this tradition deviates from Paul’s writing style. This has convinced virtually all scholars that Paul is, as he says, quoting a tradition that he received.
         4. This tradition goes back at least to 36 AD, when Paul went to Jerusalem in his fact-finding mission, when he spent two weeks with St Peter and St James.
         5. Considering that Jesus died in 30 AD, this means that this tradition dates to up to 5 years of Jesus crucifixion. This so short of a timeframe and personal contact with eyewitnesses allows us to discard the possibility of a legend development.
         6. The gospel of Mark consist of brief snapshots of the life Jesus, loosely connected and not always in chronological order. But when we get to the final week of Jesus life, we have a smooth continuously running narrative, suggesting that the Passion story was one of Mark’s sources.
         7. When we take into account that most scholars think that Mark is the earliest gospel, we reach that the pre-Markan Passion story is even older. Analysis of the four gospels shows that their passion stories do not diverge until after the resurrection, which is evidence that Jesus’ burial was part of this pre-Markan Passion story.
         8. Thus, we have the two earliest independent sources attesting to Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimatheia: the pre-Pauline formula quoted in 1st Corinthians and the pre-Markan Passion story quoted in the gospel of Mark.
      2. As a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, the jewish court that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimatheia is unlikely to be a christian invention.
         1. There was strong resentment by the early christians against the jewish leadership that, in their mind, engineered a murder of their leader. It is unlikely that they would invent that a member of the court that condemned Jesus would give him a proper burial instead of having his body dispatched as a common criminal.
      3. No other competing burial story exists.
         1. If the burial by Joseph of Arimatheia was fictitious, we would expect some trace of historical evidence of what actually happened with Jesus’ corpse or some competing legends. But all of our sources are unanimous in attesting the honorable burial by Joseph of Arimatheia.
      4. Because of this and other reasons, the majority of New Testament scholars concur that Jesus of Nazareth was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimatheia.
2. On the Sunday morning following the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers.
   1. The historicity of the burial account supports the empty tomb
      1. If the burial site of Jesus was known in Jerusalem, then it would be impossible for a movement founded on the belief of the resurrection of a dead man to arise and flourish in Jerusalem in the face of a tomb containing his corpse.
      2. By the disciples started preaching the resurrection in Jerusalem that tomb had to be empty.
   2. The empty tomb is also multiply attested in early independent sources.
      1. Also cited in the pre-Markan Passion story.
      2. The tradition cited by Paul says that “he was buried and that he was raised on the third day” implies a vacant grave was left behind.
      3. “he was raised on the third day” agrees with the gospels’ story that the women followers visited Jesus’ tomb on the third day and found them empty.
   3. Mark’s empty tomb story is simple and lacks signs of legendary embezzlement:
      1. Compare Mark’s account with the accounts contained in the apocryphal gospels. The apocryphal gospels are gospels written in the centuries after the start of the christian movement and after the death of the apostles.
      2. In the so-called “Gospel according to Peter” that appeared in the second-half of the second-century after Christ, this is the story of the empty tomb, which is how real legends are created, full of legendary, theological and apologetical motifs:
         • But the scribes and Pharisees and elders gathered one with another, for they had heard that all the people were murmuring and beating their breasts, saying: If these very great signs have come to pass at his death, behold how righteous he was. And the elders were afraid and came unto Pilate, entreating him and saying: Give us soldiers that we may watch his sepulchre for three days, lest his disciples come and steal him away and the people suppose that he is risen from the dead, and do us hurt. And Pilate gave them Petronius the centurion with soldiers to watch the sepulchre; and the elders and scribes came with them unto the tomb, and when they had rolled a great stone to keep out the centurion and the soldiers, then all that were there together set it upon the door of the tomb; and plastered thereon seven seals; and they pitched a tent there and kept watch.
         • And early in the morning as the Sabbath dawned, there came a multitude from Jerusalem and the region roundabout to see the sepulchre that had been sealed.
         • Now in the night whereon the Lord’s day dawned, as the soldiers were keeping guard two by two in every watch, there came a great sound in the heaven, and they saw the heavens opened and two men descend thence, shining with a great light, and drawing near unto the sepulchre. And that stone which had been set on the door rolled away of itself and went back to the side, and the sepulchre was opened and both of the young men entered in. When therefore those soldiers saw that, they waked up the centurion and the elders (for they also were there keeping watch); and while they were yet telling them the things which they had seen, they saw again three men come out of the sepulchre, and two of them sustaining the other, and a cross following after them. And of the two they saw that their heads reached unto heaven, but of him that was led by them that it overpassed the heavens. And they heard a voice out of the heavens saying: Hast thou preached unto them that sleep? And an answer was heard from the cross, saying: Yea.
         • Source: http://www.gnosis.org/library/gospete.htm
   4. Women’s testimony being regarded as less trustworthy than men’s in first-century Israel counts in favor of the women’s role in discovering the empty tomb.
      1. According to the first-century jewish historian Josephus, women’s testimony was regarded as so unreliable that it should not even be admitted into a jewish court of law.
      2. Any later legendary would make male disciples such as Peter and John discover the empty tomb to make the story sound trustworthy.
      3. The fact that women are the chief witnesses to the empty tomb is best explained by the fact that they found the empty tomb.
   5. The earliest jewish allegation that the disciples stole Jesus’ body shows that the body was in fact missing from the tomb.
      1. The earliest response to the resurrection claim was in fact an attempt to explain the empty tomb, that the body was missing. An evidence coming not from the early christians, but the earliest opponents of the christian movement.
3. On multiple occasions and under varied circumstances, different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death.
   1. This is a fact universally agreed by virtually all New Testament scholars.
   2. The list of eyewitnesses