#1001 Question from a Hindu Background Believer

Dr. craig’s response

I absolutely loved your letter, Anil, until you got to the last couple paragraphs, where you trotted out these tired, old free-thought objections that should not give you serious pause. Indeed, they fit so ill with the rest of your fine letter that I can’t help but wonder what’s going on here.

So as not to end on a down note, let me briefly respond to your closing objections.

1. The claim that Jesus was raised "to live forever" cannot be historically verified, because history deals with observable phenomena, and "living forever" is by definition not something we can observe. Where has anyone claimed that we can prove historically that Jesus was raised to live forever? I’m not aware of anyone who makes such a claim. What can be proved historically is the fundamental facts underlying the inference to the resurrection of Jesus, namely, the discovery of his empty tomb, his postmortem appearances to various individuals and groups, and the transformation of the lives of the original disciples, including their coming to believe in Jesus’ resurrection. That’s what can be historically verified. The inference that the best explanation of these facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead is a philosophical inference. If that inference is justified, as I have argued, then Jesus plausibly was who he claimed to be, the Messiah, the unique Son of God, and the divine-human Son of Man. Moreover, in Jewish thinking the concept of resurrection is not just the resuscitation of a corpse but a new, immortal form of existence. So it’s a very short step to the further inference that Jesus will not die again.

2. “Any narrative about the resurrection of Jesus in the NT is refuted by the claim that “they were written many years after the event they predict.” Don’t be silly, Anil! The earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch hundreds of years after Alexander’s death, and yet historians regard them as largely reliable accounts of the life of Alexander. If your claim were true, then we would have to close all the university departments of history.

3. “Is there a specific reference or prophecy to the Messiah’s resurrection in the OT?” I don’t think so. Isaiah 53.10-12 is about the best you could do, but that is unclear. I suppose you’re looking for a proof from prophecy rather than from history concerning Jesus’ resurrection. But there’s no need for such a thing, as explained in my answer to your first question. In fact, ironically, the absence of any traditional connection between the Messiah and resurrection from the dead is powerful evidence that the disciples did not come to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead based upon Old Testament scriptures or Jewish influences. One of the most striking features of the origin of belief in Jesus’ resurrection is that it was so contrary to traditional Jewish messianic expectations, and therefore the transformation in the earliest disciples requires some sort of further explanation.

What the remainder of your excellent letter displays, Anil, is the uniqueness and strength of the Christian faith in comparison with other world religions like Hinduism. As Vivekananda says, Christianity, being rooted in events of history, is, unlike every other world religion, falsifiable in its claims. Refute the fact of Jesus’ resurrection, and Christianity will be falsified. By contrast, Hinduism purchases invulnerability only at the expense of being unfalsifiable, irrelevant to the evidence. Christianity’s being rooted in historical events, makes it, as you put it, “epistemologically distinct.” This is its great strength.

Moreover, if Jesus’ resurrection can be established, then we also have a means of verifying Christianity’s truth. Your statement that Jesus’ resurrection “remains [a] matter of faith, not historical demonstration” reveals that you are ignorant of the evidence for the fundamental facts undergirding the inference to Jesus’ resurrection. I suggest that you read the chapter on the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection in my book Reasonable Faith (Crossway, 2008). What you say about “the scholarly attitude” toward Jesus falls far short of what most scholars think. You are evidently unaware that the wide majority of New Testament historians who have written on the subject agree with the historicity of the three fundamental facts that I mentioned above.

So you’re absolutely right that while the Hindu can say, “Krishna is real to me as the divine, whether or not he walked in Dwarka," no orthodox Christian can say, "Jesus is real to me as a moral teacher, whether or not he rose from the dead." The Hindu can go on living in his fairytale world regardless of the facts, but the Christian lives in the real world and makes radical claims about the historical facticity of Jesus of Nazareth, claims which can in large measure be either falsified or verified.

You’re also right to emphasize that the resurrection of Jesus is “a singularity” that breaks all patterns. There is nothing like it in other religions of the world. Therefore, if Jesus rose from the dead, that cannot be shrugged off. You’re right that “The theological uniqueness of Jesus' resurrection doesn't make it more historically verifiable,” but it does make it more theologically significant. What makes it historically verifiable is that the facts supporting it are recorded in multiple, reliable, first-century sources, just like other recognized facts of ancient history.