Questions on the Atonement and the Resurrection Part One

DR. CRAIG: Hello! This is William Lane Craig. Every spring at Reasonable Faith we have a spring campaign to raise funds for the ministry. Your giving to Reasonable Faith helps to support, for example, our Equip project which has just released a new course on doctrine of Scripture. We've also released a new video in our animation series on the attributes of God called “The Eternity of God.” This year I'm especially excited about our spring campaign because we have an extraordinary premium to offer those of you who become strategic donors at the highest level. We have three stages, or levels, of donors: $30 per month, $50 per month, and $100 per month. For those of you who are in the top tier, you will receive – free – a copy of Volume 1 of my newly released Systematic Philosophical Theology. This is a $65 value, and it will be yours free of charge for your sustaining donor membership in Reasonable Faith. If you've already got a copy of Volume 1, as many do, we also will be making available Volume 2A for a premium so that you can choose between Volume 1 or Volume 2, which I don't even have a copy of yet to show to you but will be released in April. We thank you for your interest and your support of Reasonable Faith, and I hope that you'll take advantage of this really wonderful offer this year to become a sustaining strategic donor and to join us in reading the Systematic Philosophical Theology.

KEVIN HARRIS: In honor of the Easter season, here are some questions we've received on the atonement and the resurrection at our website and a couple from Facebook. The first one says,

Hello, Dr. Craig. I'm very thankful for your work which has served to bolster my faith time and time again as well as to provide for me the resources I need to disciple and lead college students and youth students that I mentor into greater confidence for the evidence for their faith. I noticed recently that in your case for the resurrection defense you often refer to 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 as a very, very early formulation of the creed that Christians believe, and that actually it's this creed that holds more weight than even the dating of some of the Gospel accounts which at times is hotly debated. I was intrigued by this particularly because I'm decently familiar with the arguments of the minimal facts approach, but I don't know that much about the facts and implications surrounding this early creed. I was wondering if you could flesh out this point a bit more so that I could add to my understanding how powerful this argument is and how I might use it. I understand that it is connected to a defense against the legendary accretion of the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, but if you could provide a little more context and explanation of how we know the creed can credibly be dated to within six years or possibly less of Jesus’ death.

DR. CRAIG: In the first place, I think it's worth pointing out that this is not a creed. When Paul hands on this tradition to the Corinthians, it's not presented with any sort of confessional formula. I think that Philip has been overly influenced by those who propound the minimal facts approach and sometimes refer to this as a creed. It's rather a summary, or it is an outline, of the apostolic preaching. Paul says in verse 11 of 1 Corinthians 15, "Thus we preached, and thus you believed." And so this is really almost a point by point outline of the early apostolic preaching. Paul says that he received it and then passed it on to the Corinthians when he founded that church. This formula, or tradition, is filled with non-Pauline characteristics which show that Paul is not the author of this formula but rather, just as he says, this is a prior tradition that he received and then passed on. The most likely time that he would have received this formula would be during his visit to Jerusalem in AD 36, if not even earlier in Damascus. It would be unlikely that he would have gotten it later when he was in Antioch because he was himself in charge of the teaching in Antioch and therefore such a formula would have been in his own words – his own composition. So this suggests that Paul got this during his visit to Jerusalem which was within the first five years after Jesus’ crucifixion. So I think you can see then how incredibly early this tradition is that Paul hands on.

KEVIN HARRIS: Second question he says is, “What is the significance of this creed as it connects to arguments about the dating of the Gospels?”

DR. CRAIG: It means that it's incredibly early. When you compare the four lines of this formula, it corresponds to the Gospel passion narratives; namely, the cross, the burial, the discovery of the empty tomb, and the various resurrection appearances. So this four-line formula is like an outline of the passion narratives including death, burial, empty tomb, and resurrection appearances. It shows that what Paul received in his handing on is the same tradition that you have narrated in the Gospels. And if you further compare what Paul says to the apostolic sermons in the book of Acts, such as Acts 13, you have this same four-point outline of those apostolic sermons. This goes to confirm the earliness and the reliability of these traditions that are embodied in the Gospel narratives.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next he says,

I heard you reference this as proof of some of the post-mortem appearances of Christ. Could you also please flesh out the applications of this with regards to claims that Jesus appeared to Cephas, the Twelve, and five hundred brothers?

DR. CRAIG: Paul in the fourth line of the formula says, "Then he appeared to Cephas [or Peter]." This appearance to Peter is attested, first of all, in this very early tradition that Paul received and passed on. It is attested or vouchsafed by Paul himself who spent two weeks with Peter during his visit to Jerusalem in AD 36. And it is also referred to in another bit of tradition in Luke 24:34. When the Emmaus disciples return to Jerusalem, they meet the Twelve gathered in the upper room, and before a word comes out of their mouth the Twelve say to them, "The Lord is risen indeed and has appeared to Simon." So this is a multiply attested appearance in some of the very earliest material embodied in the New Testament. As for the appearance to the twelve disciples, this is the best attested resurrection appearance of Jesus. It is first of all attested here in the early formula handed on by Paul. It's vouchsafed by Paul himself who visited with Peter and James in his visit to Jerusalem in AD 36. And then we have independent narratives of this appearance in both the Gospel of Luke and in the Gospel of John. So this is a multiply attested appearance which is again found in some of the earliest material in the New Testament. As for the appearance to the five hundred brethren, this is really an enigma. We have no story of this event. There is not even a mention of this event, at least explicitly, elsewhere in the New Testament materials. So you wonder who were these people? Did this really happen? I think one of the most interesting features of this appearance is this parenthetical comment that Paul introduces into the tradition when he says, "Most of whom are still alive though some have fallen asleep." This shows that Paul was personally acquainted with the people who were at this resurrection appearance of Jesus, and he was aware that some had died in the interim but others were still about who could be questioned concerning this appearance if you wanted to ask them. This is the method of ancient historians of listing the witnesses to an event so that one could verify the truth of the story. A very intriguing possibility concerning this event is that it could have been the mountaintop appearance in Galilee narrated by Matthew. An appearance to five hundred people would have to be out of doors, and it was in Galilee where you remember Jesus preached to thousands of people as they gathered on the hillsides to hear him. In Matthew's appearance story, it is not at all clear that only the twelve disciples were present. On the contrary, the angel says to the women, “He is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him as he promised.” So the women may have been part of this group. And Matthew says that some who were at this appearance doubted that this was really an appearance of Jesus. So it could well have been that this Matthean narrative of the appearance by Jesus in Galilee was this appearance to the five hundred brethren. Oh! One more thing about this. This is the only appearance in the New Testament that was by appointment. All of the other appearances were unexpected, spontaneous. They were a surprise. But in this Matthean mountaintop appearance it says that the disciples went to the mountain to which Jesus had appointed them. He made a rendezvous with them in Galilee to meet them at this specific time and place. Therefore, it's not at all improbable that there would have gathered other followers of Jesus in Galilee to meet with the twelve disciples and wait to see if the Lord did, in fact, appear at that time. So it may well be that this appearance to the five hundred is this Matthean mountaintop appearance.

KEVIN HARRIS: The final thing he asked is:

Could you please explain any other deep implications of the accurate dating of this creed pertaining to mere Christianity? Even if we were to throw out the Gospels as unreliable sources, if they are connected.

DR. CRAIG: Again, I think Philip has been overly influenced by this minimal facts approach. It would be foolish to throw out the Gospels. They, too, are based on incredibly early traditional material like the pre-Marcan passion story which included the story of the discovery of the empty tomb. So let's not have any sort of artificial divisions here. We have here the coalescence like a network of extremely early and independent attestation to the facts of Jesus' death, burial, empty tomb, and resurrection appearances which makes for a very powerful case for the facticity of these events, and, I should say, a case that has persuaded the vast majority of New Testament critics who have written on this subject.

KEVIN HARRIS: Thank you, Philip, for that question. Here's the next one.

Dear Dr. Craig, I deeply respect and appreciate your work in theology, philosophy, and apologetics, and especially in the resurrection of Jesus. Whenever I see a debate of yours, I always note how preparedly, persuasively, concisely you argue for the resurrection. In particular, the evidence you cite in support of the empty tomb is abundant and compelling. Largely due to your presentation of the case for the resurrection, no objection I've come across has significantly dissuaded me or led me to doubt the historicity of such a well-established fact as the resurrection. However, there is one objection that I find particularly thought-provoking. It targets the popular apologetical argument from women at the empty tomb. According to this argument, if the Gospel authors were inventing an empty tomb story they would never have portrayed women as the chief discoverers and witnesses of the empty tomb. This is because women had very low social status in ancient Jewish culture and their testimony was considered near worthless. Therefore, because the Gospel authors did portray women as such, we have reason to believe that women really did find the empty tomb. In response to this, some skeptics note that it was custom in ancient Jewish culture for women to anoint the bodies of the buried with spices. This was probably to honor the deceased and to alleviate the odor of decaying corpses. So if people were inventing an empty tomb story, the natural thing to do would be to say that women (the ones who would already be at the tomb for innocent reasons) discovered the empty tomb, and this is exactly what the Gospel authors did. Mark and Luke he cites. It would have been suspicious and questionable to assert that men were the discoverers of the empty tomb. What is your response? Nahoa, United States

DR. CRAIG: In the first place, this is not merely a popular apologetical argument. If there is one consideration that has convinced the majority of New Testament critics of every stripe of the historicity of the discovery of the empty tomb, it is this fact – that it is women who are the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb rather than men. Any reason that one might have for using women in the story would be better served by having male witnesses. In fact, to my understanding there is no evidence at all from the first century that anointing of corpses was done only by women. This could be done by anyone. So this is just based on a false assumption. But notice, suppose it were true that anointing of the dead was done only by women. Well, then a different argument for the empty tomb would present itself; namely, the very similitude of the account! It would be giving an accurate portrayal of first century burial practices, and therefore this would actually redound to the credibility of the story. So either way it seems to me that the role of the women in the story is supportive of the fact of the empty tomb.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Dear Brother Craig, I thank God for your ministry, and I sincerely appreciate all that you do. I am studying the atonement. The major materials of my study is your Defenders class and your book entitled Atonement and the Death of Christ. My question: instead of Christ merely dying for our individual sins, could it be that Christ took on himself the very essence or nature of man's sin? The idea being that all of our sins (excluding blasphemy of the Holy Spirit) are derivative sins, so to speak. Scriptures say that he became sin for us in 2 Corinthians. Sin in this passage seems to be singular. Hebrews 9:14 indicates that the atonement was offered “through the eternal Spirit.” It seems to make sense to me that Jesus taking on himself the very essence of sin (and death, for that matter) and dying as a sacrifice for these would cover all sins, past, present, and future. I think future sins are only potential sins, but when they become actual it's easy under this idea to understand how they, too, are covered – because they are derivative and his sacrifice was made through the eternal Spirit. I apologize if my question is poorly worded. I trust you can see through that. Your instruction on this matter is deeply appreciated. Tim, Canada

DR. CRAIG: What I would remind Tim about is that the atoning death of Jesus is the fulfillment and on the model of the Old Testament animal sacrifices. And these Old Testament Levitical sacrifices were to atone by blood for individual sins committed by the people. It wasn't just for some sort of collective sin or mass sin. It was individual sins for which sacrifices had to be offered. Similarly, in the New Testament, we read that Christ died for our sins (plural) – 1 Corinthians 15:3. When you think about it, every individual act of sin must receive its just desert if God's justice is not to be compromised. If God is absolutely holy and perfectly just then every individual sin needs to be punished. I'm not really even sure what Tim means when he wants to talk about this sort of general sense of sin that Christ might have died for that didn't involve dying for individual acts of wrongdoing and the punishment that they deserve.^[1]