The Son Rises

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, this is going to be a great series of podcasts. We’ve chosen five of your books to revisit. These books span and represent your career and ministry up to now. We’ve discussed these books in past podcasts but we would like to hear more about the background and the process that went into writing each one so be thinking of some anecdotes, your thought processes, inspirations, reactions to the books, and things like that you can share with us as we go through each podcast. Let's go way back. Let's start with The Son Rises. Give us a brief overview of the book and when it was published.

DR. CRAIG: This book flowed out of my doctrinal research on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus which I pursued at the University of Munich under Wolfhart Pannenberg. It's a popularization of the work that went into my doctoral thesis on the historicity of the resurrection. I wrote it, to the best of my recollection after all these decades, during 1979 in our apartment complex in Munich in the lounge up on the top floor. I would go up there every day. I wrote this book by hand – we didn't have computers back then – and then delivered the manuscript to Jan, and she typed it on our IBM Selectric typewriter. The book was then submitted to Moody Press and published in 1981 after we returned from Germany to the United States to begin teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1980.

KEVIN HARRIS: I'm curious. I've heard many stories of Christian students who pursue high level education and are shaken up when they encounter more liberal professors in scholarship. Their world is rocked, in fact. Did you go through anything like that? Were you prepared for your encounters with Hick and Pannenberg? I think Hick thought that you were a fire-breathing fundamentalist.

DR. CRAIG: It was very interesting working with both of these gentlemen. When I arrived in Birmingham to begin my doctoral work on the cosmological argument under Professor John Hick, he said to me, “Are you sure you really want to do this topic? Isn't the cosmological argument sort of beating a dead horse?” And I said, “Oh, I really want to do this.” So I wrote then on the kalam cosmological argument and produced this defense of it. And after it was all done, I said to Professor Hick, “Do you still think that the cosmological argument is beating a dead horse?” And he said, “Oh, no! Not at all.” So he was very congenial. Even though he didn't agree with me, he was a wonderful supervisor. When I got to Munich and worked under Pannenberg, it was quite different. He was very aloof, very Germanic and professorial. But as I studied the historicity of the resurrection and read what we could call liberal New Testament critics have to say about that event, actually, far from shaking my faith, I was shocked at the weakness of the objections that were brought against the resurrection of Jesus. There's a word in German – quatsch – which just means sort of garbage, and as I would read these leftist critiques of the resurrection I just thought it's the same old quatsch over and over again. I could just predict what the objections would be, and they were so superficial and easily refuted. What I was surprised to discover, and did not realize when I went to Munich, is that the facts undergirding the inference to the resurrection of Jesus are accepted by the wide majority of New Testament critics today, whether they be liberal or conservative. And these facts are principally three in number. Number one is that the tomb of Jesus was discovered to be empty by a group of his female followers on the Sunday morning following his crucifixion. Number two: thereafter, various individuals and groups suddenly experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death. And then, number three, the original disciples sincerely believed that Jesus had been raised by God from the dead despite every predisposition to the contrary. Those are the facts that are widely accepted. So the only question was: How do you best explain these facts? I could think of no better explanation than the one that the original disciples gave – that God raised Jesus from the dead. So both my studies in Birmingham on the kalam cosmological argument and on the historicity of the resurrection in Munich were tremendously confirmatory to my Christian faith.

KEVIN HARRIS: You dedicated this book to Bill and Joan Hartseil and, “all the brothers and sisters whose love and prayers were our constant resource throughout the course of this research.” Talk about that dedication.

DR. CRAIG: Bill and Joan Hartseil were a semi-retired couple that lived in my hometown of East Peoria. They lived on the edge of town in a somewhat rural area, and on their property was an old barn which they renovated and turned into a place for Christian youth meetings. They would have music – concerts and contemporary music – and then preaching. These were the heady days of the Jesus Movement, and Bill and Joan were very much involved in reaching out to teens and young people with the Gospel in their area. I got to know them in high school and then in college and introduced Jan to them when we married. They and the brothers and sisters at the barn prayed for us regularly when we were in Germany doing this research under Pannenberg. So I wanted to dedicate the book to them.

KEVIN HARRIS: Why did you want to study under Wolfhart Pannenberg?

DR. CRAIG: I had, as a result of my work under John Hick at the University of Birmingham, an argument for God's existence that I felt was cogent and persuasive. But in order to get from theism to Christian theism you need some reason to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was God's decisive self-revelation in human history. I was aware that a popular apologist like Josh McDowell had argued for the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead as God's divine vindication of the allegedly blasphemous personal claims that Jesus of Nazareth made, and so it seemed to me to be logical to look into the historical credibility of the resurrection of Jesus. Wolfhart Pannenberg was famous in German theology for his defense historically of belief in the resurrection of Jesus. Whereas most German theologians were either skeptical of the event of the resurrection or thought that it was something to which historical investigation was completely irrelevant being assumed only by faith, Pannenberg was rigorously historical in his approach to the resurrection appearances and the empty tomb and the origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection. So I thought if I could study under Pannenberg on this subject, I could develop a case for the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection that would beautifully complement my work on the kalam cosmological argument. And that is exactly what happened. Three books came out of that work under Pannenberg including the one we're talking about today – The Son Rises.

KEVIN HARRIS: I've always been impressed by Pannenberg’s insight on what you call the religio-historical context of the resurrection as the key to its significance. You mention this in chapter 6 of the book, and you've used it very effectively in several of your debates. For those not familiar with this insight, tell us about it.

DR. CRAIG: The question has to do with the interpretation of a miracle. How do you know that an event is a miracle, and what is the significance of that event? I think, as David Hume showed, a purportedly miraculous event taken in isolation from its context is inherently ambiguous. He gives the example of the revivification of Queen Elizabeth and he says even if all the witnesses agreed that Queen Elizabeth somehow rose from the dead, resumed her throne, and ruled for several more years, I wouldn't have the least inclination to believe that she was miraculously risen from the dead. I would believe the most preposterous naturalistic explanation for this imposture rather than say that God raised her from the dead. And I think Hume is right about that. What makes the case of Jesus of Nazareth so different, as Pannenberg points out, is the religio-historical context in which it occurs. It comes as the climax to Jesus’ own unparalleled life and teachings whereby he put himself in the very place of God himself. He was convicted by the Jewish Sanhedrin on the charge of blasphemy for having blasphemed against God, and then was delivered over to the Romans to be crucified as a traitor. As Pannenberg says, if this man has been raised from the dead by God then those allegedly blasphemous claims have been publicly and unambiguously confirmed by the God of Israel who was allegedly blasphemed by Jesus. So whereas Queen Elizabeth’s revivification would inspire nothing but curiosity, the resurrection of Jesus, I think, is pregnant with theological significance because of the powerful religio-historical context in which it occurs. It is God's vindication of the man whom the Jewish authorities had rejected as a blasphemer.

KEVIN HARRIS: I was crowded in with 4,000 other people at that Parsons debate in Dallas that you did, and he brought up some kind of an illustration. I think it was: What if you heard that some professor at the university was flying around the campus like Superman? Wouldn't you want good evidence for that? Would you believe it? I leaned over to my friend and I said, “Watch this. He's gonna use the religio-historical significance as key from Pannenberg.” And sure enough, that's the first thing you began to rebut with and was part of that. My friend looked at me and he thought I was so smart! But I remember that moment. There were books out on the resurrection when you wrote The Son Rises. What did you want to contribute to the topic? Did you think anything was missing in the popular or scholarly works?

DR. CRAIG: Well, I wasn't really very familiar with scholarly works on the resurrection of Jesus. One of the things that this study in Munich did for me was to unearth this treasure trove of German scholarship on this subject which has never been translated into English. I was shocked that some of the best books on the resurrection of Jesus were not available in English. In fact, you ask for an anecdote. The first day that I visited Pannenberg in his office . . . in Munich, he took me into the theological library on the floor of the theology department and he said to me, “Well, why don't you get started with these three books,” and he pulled three books off the shelf. One of them was in German, two of them were in French, and I could not possibly have said to Pannenberg, “Oh, Professor Pannenberg, I can't read these.” I was expected to be able to do that, and so having just spent nine months in French language school, I was equipped to handle the French. And then we'd been to German language school, I was prepared for that, as well. So, as I say, there was really a treasure trove of literature that had never been translated into English that became available to me. What I was familiar with was popular apologetics for the resurrection – things like Frank Morison's book Who Moved the Stone? or Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict. But frankly this popular-level apologetic was stuck in the apologetics of the 18th and 19th century. It was all about who stole the body and why the disciples couldn't have stolen the body (the tomb was guarded by Roman soldiers who would have prevented the theft, and so on and so forth). And that sort of popular-level apologetics is just completely out of date. It has been completely undermined by modern scholarship which doesn't treat the resurrection narratives as reliable. The skeptical scholar says there never was a guard at the tomb, and many skeptics will say the empty tomb story is a late developing legend that never really happened. So the popular-level apologetic that I was familiar with was just soon evacuated of any importance. What I gained as a result of this study was a much more sophisticated and scholarly apologetic for the resurrection that is rooted in the best contemporary New Testament research.

KEVIN HARRIS: I noticed that there were about 200 reviews on the paperback edition on Amazon. 80% of them gave the book the highest rating of five stars. Now, there were a couple of one star reviews. Here's one. He says, “I have to admit how shocked I was to find that William Lane Craig claims Open Theists, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox as his Christian brothers. It made more sense after I found out he adapted a Jesuit view of God called Molinism. I started researching it to find out that it was a heresy in the 1500s, and it's still against Christian orthodoxy today. These Molinists are trying to claim they are Christians just like Mormons, Catholics, and Jehovah's Witnesses.” Then he says, “Buy this book and be prepared to stand up for the truth of God's Word.” Any response to that at all?

DR. CRAIG: It's odd because Molinism plays no part whatsoever in this book. This is about the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and has absolutely nothing to do with Molinism which he finds so offensive. So why he would think that that was important to mention in a review is beyond me. And why he would then say “buy this book and be prepared to stand up for the truth of God's Word” – that doesn't make sense either if he dislikes the book so much.

KEVIN HARRIS: The other negative review came from a lady who ordered a new copy of the book but Amazon sent her a used copy that was marked up with notes and a highlighter. So she complained and only gave you one star on this. Nevertheless, you mentioned earlier some of the responses. Do you recall any responses whether negative or positive when you first wrote the book?

DR. CRAIG: I think that the book has been very positively received and has helped to generate a new interest in the resurrection of Jesus as a key component in Christian apologetics. When you look at Christian apologetics today, the historical resurrection of Jesus and the evidence for that event really occupies a very central position. So I think that the book has helped to contribute to the realization that this important central event in our faith has very good historical credentials.

KEVIN HARRIS: Take us back to the time when this book was being written. You and Jan – what was going on and what were your lives like at the time?

DR. CRAIG: Well, we were living in Munich in the Habsburgerplatz which is near the English Garden. We had a nice apartment that was supplied by the Volkswagen Foundation. I had finished my doctoral thesis by this time and was studying for my doctoral exams in theology. As my memory serves me, I wrote this book during that time while awaiting those exams. Now, as you may know, what happened was in December, just before we returned to the United States, I failed those exams. It was a devastating experience. It was the most devastating experience I have ever gone through in my life. I wondered whether I was outside the will of God. Why this had been allowed to happen. It wasn't due to a lack of preparation on my part. I had been very ill-advised about how to prepare for these exams, and so as a result was caught flat-footed. We came back to the United States then in December and began teaching in January at Trinity. I knew I had to take the exams again. I couldn't end in failure. In Germany, if you fail them one time, you get a second chance. So for the next two years I spent full time preparing for these exams. And as a result of that I became familiar with the body of systematic theology to an extent and depth that would never have been possible had I not failed the exams. I saw for the first time that my preparation in seminary in systematic theology had been woefully inadequate. As a result of the preparation for those exams I was far better equipped to understand and articulate Christian doctrine than I would have been otherwise, and God has tremendously used that since then. As you know, I'm now writing a systematic philosophical theology that flows out of that study I did during those two years initially. So looking back, although I'd never, ever in my life want to go through such an experience again, I can honestly say that I'm glad that I failed because God used that tremendously in my life, and it gave me a new insight into the will of God. What I realized is that God's will for your life can include failure. God can lead you into failure because he has things to teach you through failure that you would never learn through success. So that was the context in which The Son Rises was written.

KEVIN HARRIS: You still use the four points in this book in recent debates on the resurrection. Ten lines of evidence, four points. Apparently time has been good to those four points and the other lines of evidence in The Son Rises.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, I still use them today. The four points you're referring to, I think, are what happened to Jesus after his crucifixion (and that would include his burial in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea), the discovery that the tomb was empty on the first day of the week by a group of his female disciples, and then the experience of the disciples of appearances of Jesus alive after his death, and then finally the sudden and sincere transformation in the lives of those disciples as they came to believe, against every predisposition to the contrary, that God had raised Jesus from the dead. Those four facts, I think, are firmly established and can be affirmed with confidence by any historical inquirer today.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we conclude today, I noticed in re-reading the introduction that you emphasize the importance of the historical evidence of the resurrection, but you then emphasize that the Holy Spirit can bring the reality of the resurrection to the seeking heart of the person who perhaps is not privy to the historical evidence. So you were established in your thinking on this early in your career.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. One of the things that I disagreed with so-called evidentialist apologetics is that the claim that belief in Christianity in the absence of evidence is irrational. It seemed to me that that was just clearly mistaken. As a result of my study, I realized acutely that the vast, vast majority of mankind down through history has never had the library resources or the education or the leisure time to study the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Therefore, if belief in the resurrection of Jesus could be rational only on the basis of evidence, that would consign the vast majority of Christians in the history of the world to irrationality or unbelief which seemed to be simply unacceptable. There must be another way of coming to rational belief in Jesus' resurrection in addition to historical evidence, and that way is through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is risen and alive today, and through his Spirit can bear witness to the spirit of someone who is seeking him. And to such a person, I think, he can come to a rational and firm conviction in the truth of Jesus’ resurrection even in the absence of evidence for that event.^[1]