Evidence That Jesus Rose From The Dead - "Is Faith in God Reasonable?"

Description: On February 1st, 2013 at Purdue University, Dr William Lane Craig participated in a debate with Dr Alex Rosenberg on the topic, "Is Faith In God Reasonable?" Over 5,000 people watched the event on the Purdue University campus along with tens of thousands streaming it live online from around the world. This video is a series of clips from the debate concerning the historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth.

DR. CRAIG: Number seven: God is the best explanation of the historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth. Historians have reached something of a consensus that Jesus came on the scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority – the authority to stand and speak in God’s place. He claimed that in himself the Kingdom of God had come. And as visible demonstrations of this fact, he carried out a ministry of miracle working and exorcisms. But the supreme confirmation of his claim was his resurrection from the dead. If Jesus did rise from the dead then it would seem we have a divine miracle on our hands and thus evidence for the existence of God.

Now, I realize that most people probably think that the resurrection of Jesus is something you just accept by faith or not. But there are actually three facts recognized by the majority of historians today which I believe are best explained by the resurrection of Jesus. Fact number one: on the Sunday after his crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers. Two: on separate occasions, different individuals and groups of people saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death. And three: the original disciples suddenly came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite having every predisposition to the contrary. The eminent British scholar, N. T. Wright, near the end of his 800 page study of the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection concludes that the empty tomb and post-mortem appearances of Jesus have been established to such a high degree of historical probability as to be “virtually certain, as the death of Augustus in AD 14 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.”^[1]

Naturalistic attempts to explain away these three great facts, like the disciples stole the body or Jesus wasn’t really dead have been universally rejected by contemporary scholarship. The simple fact is that there just is no plausible, naturalistic explanation of these facts. Therefore, it seems to me the Christian is amply justified in believing that Jesus rose from the dead and was who he claimed to be. But that entails that God exists. Thus we have a good inductive argument to the existence of God based on the facts concerning the resurrection of Jesus.

DR. ROSENBERG: Let’s turn to the argument from the New Testament. I am sort of gob smacked as a philosopher that he should persist in propounding this preposterous argument. Ask yourself the following question: in 1827, Joseph Smith got eleven people to certify that they observed the golden tablets which he – an illiterate person – was able to translate from Reform Egyptian and convey the Book of Mormon to the Latter Day Saints. Do we believe on the basis of those eleven certificates that are only about one hundred and sixty years old that the Book of Mormon is the revealed word of God? The Qur’an tells us that Mohammed ascended to heaven from the Al-Aqsa Mosque – the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem – on the 26th of February, 621. And there are millions and millions of Muslims all over the world who are committed to that great truth. Do you think we, in this room, should believe it? Right? Scientology that claims eight million adherents throughout the world tells us that seventy five million years ago somebody named Xenu brought billions of people to Earth on spaceships that looked like DC-8s and who are we to believe that there are fifty five thousand people in the United States or eight million people around the world who really believe this, too? Is there any reason why we should accept the certification of L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology? That this actually happened? No, of course not. How many of you are familiar with the Statues of Madonna taken out from their churches once a year which shed tears. Of course, as scientists, we know exactly what the physical properties are of these statues and how the rapid and sudden change of temperature between the inside and the outside of the cathedral produces condensation which the devout believe to be tears, but that is no reason for us to believe it. Think about this. Fifty three of the first sixty two DNA exonerations of people who turned out to be innocent of charges of capital crimes in the United States – fifty three of these people were convicted on eyewitness testimony. We know from cognitive social science how unreliable eyewitness testimony is today. Why should we suppose that eyewitness testimony from 33 AD is any more reliable? This as an argument for God’s existence seems to me to be bizarre.

DR. CRAIG: As for the resurrection of Jesus, he just doesn’t understand, I think, the credibility of the New Testament documents in this regard. You cannot compare them to Joseph Smith which were probably lies or to Mohammed’s ascension which is probably a legend because in this case we are dealing with early eyewitness testimony that is not the result of conspiracy or lie; these people sincerely believed what they said. That is why most historians accept those three facts. Therefore, the naturalist has got to come up with some alternative explanation. You can’t indict eyewitness testimony in general and then use that against a specific case – you would have to show in the specific case of the Gospels that this testimony is unreliable. That is not the opinion of the majority of historians who have investigated these documents.

The resurrection of Jesus, again, you can’t discuss this responsibly without getting your fingers dirty and looking at those documents. You can’t attack other documents like Joseph Smith or Mohammed and use those to impugn the credibility of the Gospel sources. The fact is that the majority of New Testament historians who have investigated these documents have concluded to those three facts that I mentioned. Remember N. T. Wright says they are as firmly established as the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. But the naturalist has no explanation.

DR. ROSENBERG: New Testament scholarship. You know, I have great respect for New Testament scholars and for higher criticism and for the deep scholars of the Christian religion who study the New Testament. Some of them have told us that seventy five percent of it was forged. And all tell us it was written by people who were illiterate and most of them recognize that the writings Matthew, Mark, Luke and John could not have dated from any earlier than 30 or 40 or 50 years after Jesus lived and, of course, the Aramaic in which they were written was completely lost and all the extant New Testaments are in Greek and therefore the opportunity for misrepresentation or mistranscription or other kinds of mistakes was huge and indeed has been documented by scholarship over the last two hundred years. But most of all, why should we accept the credibility of Christian scholars writing about Christian documents? No more than we should accept the scholarship of Islamic scholars writing about Islamic documents or Scientologists writing about Scientology.

DR. CRAIG: The resurrection of Jesus. The sources we have for the resurrection of Jesus go back to within five years of the event and they were not written in Aramaic. He is just incorrect. They were written in Greek and we have the New Testament in the original language in which it was written. And the text is 99.8% authentic and pure. So doubts on that are simply groundless.