Evidence for the Resurrection (Dr. William Lane Craig)

well it's wonderful to be here with you tonight what an encouraging service this has already been this evening and I want to begin by saying thank you to Grace Presbyterian for your rock solid support of our ministry since 1986 30 years now Faithfully every month uh Grace has been supporting our ministry and we're so thankful for that but my roots uh and connection with Grace go back actually a lot further than that when I applied to Wheaten College as a student I was interviewed by Bruce Dunn and uh that positive recommendation helped to get me

into Wheaton and helped them to shape the direction that the Lord set me on and so I'm a Peoria boy it's good to be back in town um I must say unexpectedly though being in familiar sites and familiar haunts uh made me miss my mom and dad uh strange just being back and not having them here and that makes the subject of this evening's talk I think all the more poignant the resurrection of Jesus because it's only the resurrection that gives us hope for personal immortality beyond the grave in the hope of seeing our loved

ones again and so I want to talk tonight about that event because I believe that this is not just wishful thinking or Pie in the Sky hope but is a hope that is firmly grounded in history several years ago I was speaking on a major Canadian University campus on the existence of God and after my talk one slightly irate student wrote on her comment card I was with you until you got to the stuff about Jesus God is is not the Christian God I find that this attitude is all too prevalent today most people are

happy to agree that God exists but in our pluralistic society it's become Politically Incorrect to think that God has decisively revealed himself in Jesus what justification can Christians offer in contrast to H Hindus Jews or Muslims for thinking that the Christian God is real well the answer of the New Testament to that question is clear the resurrection of Jesus the Apostle Paul declared God will judge the World by the man he has appointed he has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead acts 17:31 the resurrection ction is God's Vindication

of Jesus radical personal claims to Divine Authority so how do we know that Jesus is risen from the dead the Easter hyw writer says you ask me how I know he lives he lives within my heart now I think that this answer is perfectly appropriate on a personal level but when Christians engage unbelievers in the Public Square for examples in letters to the editor of the local newspaper or in call-in programs on talk radio or even just in conversation with co-workers then it's crucial that we be able to present objective evidence in support of our

beliefs otherwise our claims have no more credibility than the claims of anyone else who says that he has a private experience of God fortunately Christianity as a religion which is grounded in history can in important measure be investigated historically suppose then that we decide to approach the New Testament not as inspired scripture as the word of God but merely as a collection of ancient Greek documents coming down to us out of the first century without any assumption as to their reliability other than the normal way that we would approach other sources of ancient history you

might be surprised to learn that the majority of historians approaching the New Testament documents in this way have come to accept the fundamental facts undering the resurrection of Jesus and I want to emphasize that I'm not talking about conservative or Evangelical Scholars only but I am talking about the broad spectrum of New Testament critics both Christian and non-Christian who teach at secular universities and non-evangelical seminaries incredible as it may seem most of them have come to regard as historical the basic facts which support the resurrection of Jesus these facts are four in number fact number

one after his crucifixion Jesus was buried in a tomb by a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin named Joseph of ARA this fact is important because it means that the location of Jesus tomb was known in Jerusalem to both Jew and Christian alike New Testament Scholars have established the historicity of this fact on the basis of evidence such as the following number one Jesus burial is attested multiply in early independent sources this is one of the most important criteria that historians use for establishing historical facts if an event or a saying is attested in multiple sources

which are independent of each other and at least one of which is early then it is much more probable to be historical rather than made up and the burial of Jesus is multiply and independently tested in such early sources for example Jesus burial is mentioned in the very old tradition which is quote quoted by Paul in his first letter to the church in Corinth Paul wrote for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received and then he begins to quote this formula 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 caas or Peter then to the 12 Paul here not only uses the typical rabinal technical terms received and delivered with regard to the tradition that he hands on but these verses are a highly stylized forline formula filled with non-pa line characteristics this has convinced all Scholars that Paul is just as he said says quoting from an old tradition which he himself received and in turn passed on to his converts in Corinth

this tradition probably goes back at least to Paul's fact finding visit to Jerusalem in ad. 36 when he spent two weeks with Peter Jesus Chief disciple and with James Jesus younger brother according to Paul's letter to the a ations now when you recall that Jesus was crucified in ad30 that means that this tradition goes back to within the first five years after Jesus death so short a time span and such personal contact with the eyewitnesses make it idle to speak of Legend in this case not only that but the burial story is also part of

very old Source material used by Mark in writing his gospel when you read the gospels you find that they tend to consist of brief snapshots of Jesus life which are Loosely connected and not always chronologically arranged but when we come to the story of Jesus passion that is to say the final week of Jesus life his suffering and death then we do have one smooth continuously running narrative this suggests that the passion story was one of Mark's sources that he used in writing his gospel now most Scholars think that Mark is already the earliest of

the four gospels and Mark's source for Jesus passion then is of course even older comparison of the Nar narratives of the four gospels with one another shows that their accounts do not diverge from one another until after the burial story that implies that the burial account was part of that Premarin passion story so we have independent attestation of the burial of Jesus by Joseph of artha from two of the earliest sources concerning Jesus of Nazareth the prea line formula quoted in 1 Corinthians and the Premarin passion story behind The Gospel of Mark number two as

a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin that is the Jewish court that condemned Jesus Joseph of ARA is unlikely to be a Christian invention there was a very strong resent resentment in the early Christian Community toward the Jewish leadership for their role in the condemnation of Jesus in in Christian eyes they had basically engineered a Judicial murder of Jesus and therefore it's highly improbable that Christians would invent a member of the court that condemned Jesus who then honors Jesus by giving him a proper burial instead of allowing him to be dispatched like a common criminal number

three no other competing burial story exists if the burial by Joseph of ARA were fictitious then we would expect to find either some historical trace of what actually happened to Jesus corpse or at least some competing Legends but all of our sources are unanimous on on Jesus honorable interment by Joseph for these and other reasons the majority of New Testament Scholars concurred that Jesus of Nazareth was in fact buried in a tomb by Joseph of artha according to John at Robinson of Cambridge University the burial of Jesus in the Tomb isn't I quote one of

the earliest and best attested facts about Jesus fact number two on the Sunday morning following the crucifixion Jesus tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers among the reasons which have led most Scholars to this conclusion are the following Five Points number one the historicity of the burial account supports the empty tomb now you ask how is it that the history icity of the burial account would show that the tomb was empty well very simply if the burial sight of Jesus were known in Jerusalem then it would be impossible for a movement

founded on belief in the resurrection of the dead man to arise and flourish in Jerusalem in the face of a tomb containing his corpse by the time the disciples began to preach the resurrection in Jerusalem that tomb had to have been empty number two the empty tomb story is also multiple ATT tested in early independent sources for example the empty tomb story is also part of the Premarin passion Source um used by Mark the passion Source used by Mark did not end in defeat and death with the burial rather it ends with with the empty

tomb story which is grammatically one piece with the burial story they're really one story moreover the old tradition cited by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians implies the fact of the empty tomb for any first century Jew to say as Paul does that he was buried and that he was raised would imply that a vacant grave was left by behind moreover the expression on the third day he was raised on the third day probably derives from the women's visit to the tomb on the third day in Jewish Reckoning after the crucifixion the four-line

tradition that is cited by Paul summarizes both the gospel accounts on the one hand and the preaching in the book of Acts on the other and significantly the third line of Paul's formula he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures corresponds in both cases to the empty tomb number three Mark's story of the empty tomb is simple and lacks signs of legendary embellishment all you have to do to appreciate this point is to compare Mark's account with the wild legendary stories found in the so-called apocryphal gospels these are forgeries which arose

during the centuries following Jesus death after the apostles had died off for example in the so-called Gospel according to Peter which arose in the second half of the 2 Century after Christ the tomb is guard Ed not only by Roman soldiers but also by all of the chief priests and Pharisees as well as a large crowd from the surrounding Countryside who have come to watch the tomb suddenly during the night a voice rings out from Heaven and the stone over the door of the Tomb rolls back by itself then two men are seen descending out

of heaven and entering into the tomb then two gigantic figures come forth from the tomb their heads reaching to the clouds then a third figure emerges from the tomb even greater his head overpassing the clouds then a cross comes out of the Tomb and a voice from Heaven asks hast thou preached to them that sleep and the cross answers yay now these are how real Legends look they are colored by all all sorts of theological and apologetical motifs motifs which are conspicuously lacking from Mark's account which is Stark in its Simplicity by comparison number four

the fact that women's testimony was less trustworthy than men's in first century Israel counts in favor of the women's role in discovering the empty tomb according to the first century Jewish historian Josephus the testimony of women was regarded as so unreliable that it should not even be admitted into a Jewish court of law how remarkable it is then that it is women who are the discoverers and principal witnesses to the fact of Jesus empty tomb any later legendary account would certainly have made male disciples say Peter and John discover the empty tomb the fact that

it is women whose testimony was worthless who are the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb is best explained by the fact that they were the discoverers of the empty tomb and the gospel writers Faithfully record what for them at least was a rather awkward and embarrassing fact number five the earliest Jewish allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus body shows that the body was in fact missing from the tomb what was the earliest Jewish response to the disciples Proclamation he is risen from the dead that these men are full of new wine

that Jesus corpse still lay in the Tomb there in the garden no they said the disciples came and stole away his body now think about that for a minute the disciples came and stole away his body the earliest Jewish response to the proclamation of the Resurrection was itself an attempt to explain why the body was missing and thus we have evidence for the empty tomb which is Absolut Ely top drawer because it comes not from the early Christians but from the very opponents of the early Christian Movement themselves now I could go on but I

think enough has been said to indicate why in the words of yakob Kramer an Austrian specialist in the resurrection and I quote by far most Scholars hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements concerning the empty tomb fact number three on multiple occasions and under various circumstances different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death this is a fact which so far as I know is universally acknowledged among New Testament Scholars today for the following three reasons number one the list of eyewitnesses to Jesus resurrection appearance which is quoted

by Paul in First Corinthians guarantees that such appearances occurred these included appearances to Peter or Kos to the 12 to the 500 Brethren and to James Jesus younger brother number two the appearance traditions in the gospels provide multiple and independent at a station of these appearances for example the appearance to Peter is independently attested by Luke and the appearance to the 12 by both Luke and John we also have independent witness to Galilean appearances in Mark Matthew and John as well as to the women in Matthew and John number three certain appearances have earmarks of

historicity for example we have good evidence from the gospels that neither James nor any of Jesus younger brothers believed in him during his lifetime there's no reason to think that the early church would generate fictitious stories about the unbelief of Jesus family if they had been faithful followers of Jesus all along but it is indisputable that James and his brothers did become active Christian Believers following Jesus death James was considered an apostle and eventually Rose to the position of the sole leadership of the Jerusalem Church according to the first century historian Josephus James was martyred

for his faith in the mid ad60 during a lapse in the civil government he was stoned to death now most of us have brothers what would it take to convince you that your brother is the Lord so that you would be willing to die for the truth of that belief can there be any doubt that this remarkable transformation in Jesus younger brother took place because in Paul's words then he appeared to James even G ludeman who was the leading German New Testament critic of the Resurrection himself admits and I quote it may be taken as

historically certain those are his words not mine historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus death in which Jesus appeared to them as the Risen Christ fact number four the original disciples believed that Jesus was risen from the dead despite having every predisposition to the contrary think of the situation the disciples faced following Jesus crucifixion number one their leader was dead and Jews had no expectation of a defeated and dying Messiah Messiah when he came was supposed to throw off the Yoke of Israel's enemies and in this case that meant Rome and

reestablished David's throne in Jerusalem where he would command the respect of Jew and Gentile alike he was not supposed to suffer defeat at the hands of his enemies and die the ignominious death of a criminal two according to je Jewish law Jesus execution as a criminal showed him out to be a heretic a man literally Under The Curse Of God according to Deuteronomy 21:23 the catastrophe of the crucifixion for the disciples was not simply that their beloved master was gone but rather that the crucifixion showed in effect that the Jewish leadership had been right all

along that for three years they had been following a heretic a man literally Under The Curse Of God number three Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone's rising from the dead to glory and immortality before the general Resurrection at the end of the world confronted with Jesus crucifixion all the disciples could have done was simply to preserve their Master's tomb as a shrine where his bones could reside until that day when they and all of the righteous dead of Israel would be reunited by God in glory but despite every predisposition to the contrary the original

disciples believed in and were willing to go to their deaths for the fact of Jesus resurrection Luke Johnson a new testament scholar from Emory University Muses some sort of powerful transformative experiences required to generate the sort of movement earliest Christianity was and NT Wright an eminent British scholar concludes that is why as a historian I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again leaving an empty tomb behind him in summary then there are four facts agreed upon by the majority of New Testament Scholars who have written on these subjects which any adequate

historical hypothesis must account for Jesus honorable burial by Joseph of ARA the discovery of his empty tomb his postm morm appearances and the Very origin of the disciples belief in his resurrection now the question is what is the best explanation of those four facts this is where the disagreement arises most Scholars probably choose to Simply remain agnostic about this question but the Christian can maintain that the hypothesis that best explains these facts is the one that the original disciples gave God raised Jesus from the dead in his book justifying historical descriptions the historian CB McCulla

lists six tests which historians use in determining what is the best explanation for a given body of historical facts and the hypothesis empis God raised Jesus from the dead passes all six of these tests number one it has great explanatory scope it explains why the tomb was found empty why the disciples saw postmortem appearances of Jesus and why the Christian faith came into being two it has great explanatory power it explains why why the body of Jesus was gone why people repeatedly saw Jesus alive despite his earlier public execution and so on number three it

is plausible given the historical context of Jesus own unparalleled life and claims the resurrection serves as Divine confirmation of those radical claims number four it is not ad hot or contrived it requires only one additional hypothesis that God exists and even that needn't be an additional hypothesis if one already believes that God exists five it is in accord with accepted beliefs the hypothesis God raised Jesus from the dead doesn't in any way conflict with the accepted belief that people don't rise naturally from the dead the Christian accepts that belief as wholeheartedly as he accepts the

hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead and finally number six it far outstrips any of its rival hypotheses in meeting conditions one to five down through history various alternative explanations of The Facts of been been offered for example the conspiracy hypothesis the apparent death hypothesis the hallucination hypothesis and so forth such hypotheses have been almost universally rejected by contemporary scholarship none of these naturalistic hypothesis succeeds in meeting those five conditions as well as the resurrection hypothesis now this puts the skeptical critic in a rather awkward situation for example I had a debate a few

years ago with a professor at the University of California Irvine on the resurrection of Jesus now this man had written his doctrinal dissertation on the evidence for the resurrection and he was thoroughly familiar with the facts he could not deny the facts of Jesus burial in in the Tomb the discovery of his empty tomb his postmortem appearances or the origin of the disciples belief in his resurrection and so his only recourse was to come up with some alternative explanation of those four facts and so he argued that Jesus of Nazareth must have had an unknown

identical twin brother who was separated ated from him just after birth grew up independently somewhere came back to Jerusalem just at the time of the crucifixion stole his brother's body out of the Tomb and presented himself to the disciples who mistakenly thought it was Jesus risen from the dead now I'm not going to go into how I went about refuting this hypothesis but I think that the example is instructive because it shows to what desperate lengths skepticism must go in order to explain away the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus in fact did you know

that one of the world's leading Jewish theologians Jewish theologians the late Pinkus laped who taught at Hebrew University in Israel declared himself convinced on the basis of the evidence that the god of Israel raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead now if this is right then it has profound implications the significance of the resurrection of Jesus lies in the fact that it's not just any old Joe Blow that has been raised from the dead but it is Jesus of Nazareth whose crucifixion was instigated by the Jewish leadership because of his Blasphemous claims to Divine Authority

if this man has been raised from the dead then God whom he allegedly blasphemed has clearly Vindicated those claims the resurrection of Jesus is God's Divine imprator on the claims of Jesus that he was who he claimed to be and thus in an age of religious relativism and pluralism the resurrection of Jesus stands as a solid rock on which Christians can take their stand for God's decisive self-revelation in Jesus the rational man can now be hardly blamed if he believes that on that first Easter morning a Divine Miracle occurred Brian pray us [Applause] out