Can We Cross-Examine the Resurrection?

Kevin Harris: There's a cross-examination tool for lawyers that is showing up on apologetics and philosophy platforms. Both Christians and skeptics are using the tool to either strengthen or undermine the case for the resurrection of Jesus. It's known as BICC, which stands for bias, interest, contradiction, and credibility. Lawyers often use some form of this method to cross-examine a witness. I'd like you to apply this to your case for the resurrection and see how it holds up. First, I think it's interesting how a study of law can greatly inform theology and apologetics. For example, you found a wealth of legal material helpful when you were researching your work on the atonement and writing the book.

Dr. Craig: Yes, and I think that's because justice motifs in the Bible are so prominent with respect to our reconciliation with God. The theory of punishment is relevant to the doctrine of the atonement, and the field of philosophy that deals most with the theory of punishment is philosophy of law. However, I'm skeptical about its utility here. We're not talking about the philosophy of law but about legal cross-examination skills. The study of history is not like cross-examining a witness. In fact, historians very often make the point that we cannot cross-examine the witnesses of the past, and therefore there's a huge disanalogy here.

Kevin Harris: Some of that might come from Simon Greenleaf's book. He was a legal expert, and you see a lot of comparisons there, but we'll get into that in just a moment. Here's the first term in the acrostic: “bias.” Does the witness have any motive, relationship, prejudice, or self-interest that might influence their testimony? For example, “Aren’t you the plaintiff's brother?” The goal is to undermine credibility by showing the witness has a reason to shade the truth. So, do the original witnesses to the resurrection show any signs of bias which would make them twist the truth as far as we can tell?

Dr. Craig: Well, sure. They were all followers of Jesus during his lifetime, so naturally they would be biased in favor of his cause. I think that's why the cases of James and Paul are so interesting, because they lay outside the Christian movement and yet came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus and his messiahship on the basis of a resurrection appearance.

Kevin Harris: The next term is “interest.” Does the witness have a stake in the outcome of the case? This is similar to bias, but there are distinctions. For example, “You stand to gain financially if the jury believes your version, right?” The goal is to expose any personal benefit that might color their testimony. So, I guess we could ask: Did the original disciples have any opportunity for financial or social gain by concocting the resurrection account?

Dr. Craig: No. One of the motifs in classical apologetics is that the original disciples had nothing to gain by proclaiming a message for which they ensured their persecution and even martyrdom. This is, in fact, one of the heavy stones that sank the old conspiracy theory of 17th and 18th-century deism.

Kevin Harris: I'm sure all the lawyers out there listening are enjoying this. The next is “contradiction.” Can you impeach the witness with prior inconsistent statements or conflicting evidence? The goal is to highlight inconsistencies to cast doubt on reliability. I suppose that this is most often applied to the Gospels and the various discrepancies in the resurrection accounts.

Dr. Craig: I suppose it would be. But in a law court, the cross-examiner is trying to get the witness to contradict himself. In this score, the historian expects to find inconsistencies between independent witnesses. It's not a matter of the witness himself giving inconsistent testimony; it's that you have independent witnesses testifying concerning the crime, and their inconsistencies are to be expected and often do exist. Now, in the Gospels, what's interesting is that the inconsistencies are all in the circumstantial, secondary details of the narratives. The core of the burial and empty tomb accounts is remarkably consistent.

Kevin Harris: Finally, there's “credibility” — that’s the “C” in BICC. Can you attack the witness's ability to perceive, recall, or relate events accurately, or their overall honesty? For example, “You were 50 yards away and it was dark. How could you see that?” or “You were having a grief hallucination.” The goal is to show that the witness either could not know what they claim or is not trustworthy. Do we have anything in the data that attacks the original disciples’ credibility, Bill?

Dr. Craig: Not that I can think of. The original disciples were certainly in a position to know what they saw. Rather, it seems to me that the best hope for the skeptic is to show that the evangelists were not themselves eyewitnesses, but were sufficiently removed from the original events that legend and embellishment could creep into the story and extinguish the original authentic memories. The difficulty with that was pointed out by the classical Greco-Roman historian A. N. Sherwin-White in his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. Sherwin-White points out that it takes a considerable degree of time for legendary tendencies to prevail over the historical memory of what actually happened. He turns to the classic historian Herodotus as a test case. Herodotus writes a history that is respected but nevertheless is riddled with unhistorical stories. According to Sherwin-White, the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to prevail over the hard historic core of oral tradition.

Yes, there can be embellishment, legend, or false rumors, but within two generations, he says, these will not prevail or serve to extinguish the hard historical core of oral tradition. That's very much what we find in the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion, burial, and empty tomb of Jesus. There is diversity and variation in the circumstantial details, but the historical core of the story is, as I say, remarkably consistent.

Kevin Harris: It just occurred to me how many legal maneuvers there are in the book of Acts with Paul before Agrippa, and then Festus when he pulls a legal trump card on him and says, “I’m a Roman citizen.” They literally jumped back. The book of Acts has a lot of legal interest too, doesn’t it?

Dr. Craig: It really does. That has been of interest to me lately because I was looking for examples of how cases were handled in first-century Jewish society. These typically consisted of an accuser and a defendant. Sometimes the accuser could hire an attorney, and we have an example in the book of Acts where the Jewish authorities hired an attorney to prosecute the case against Paul. Then the judge would decide which claimant had the better case and would make his decision. There are a number of trials in the New Testament. Of course, you have the trial of Jesus and then the release of Barabbas, and then you've got these trials of Paul—both Jewish and Roman trials. So, the law does play a big role in the New Testament.

Kevin Harris: As we sum it up today, Bill, there are, as you pointed out earlier, differences between legal maneuvers in the courtroom and historical methodology. In many ways, BICC doesn't apply to an examination of the ancient world. So how do we differentiate the two when defending the Christian faith?

Dr. Craig: I personally don't think that these legal analogies to historical inquiry are all that helpful. Rather, there are standard criteria that historians use for assessing competing historical hypotheses, such as Behan McCullagh has laid out—things like explanatory scope, explanatory power, plausibility, degree of ad hocness, and so forth. I think these are the ways in which we should assess and defend a historical hypothesis rather than appealing to these legal analogies.

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