Read Did Jesus Rise From the Dead? Online
Authors: William Lane Craig
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Did Jesus Rise From the Dead? (12 page)
Now I think that the sense of discomfort that many people, even Christians, feel about appealing to God as part of an explanatory hypothesis for some phenomenon in the world is that doing so has this air of artificiality about it—just seems too easy when confronted with some unexplained phenomenon to throw up one’s hands and say, “God did it!” Is the hypothesis that “God raised Jesus from the dead” contrived, in this sense?
I don’t think so. A supernatural explanation of the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith is not contrived given the context of Jesus’ own unparalleled life, ministry, and personal claims. A supernatural hypothesis is appropriate in such a context. It’s also precisely because of this historical context that the Resurrection Hypothesis does not seem contrived when compared to miraculous explanations of other sorts; for example, that a “psychological miracle” occurred, causing normal men and women to become conspirators and liars who would be martyred willingly for their lies; or that a “biological miracle” occurred, which prevented Jesus’ dying on the cross (despite the spear-thrust through his chest, and so forth). It is these miraculous hypotheses that strike us as artificial and contrived, not the Resurrection Hypothesis, which makes abundantly good sense in the context of Jesus’ ministry and radical personal claims. Thus, it seems to me that the Resurrection Hypothesis cannot be characterized as excessively contrived.
5.
Disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs:
I can’t think of any accepted beliefs which disconfirm the Resurrection Hypothesis—unless one thinks that, say, “Dead men do not rise” disconfirms the hypothesis. But this generalization does nothing to disconfirm our hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead. We may consistently believe both—that men do not rise naturally from the dead and that God raised Jesus from the dead. By contrast, rival theories are disconfirmed by accepted beliefs about, for example, the instability of conspiracies, the likelihood of death as a result of crucifixion, the psychological characteristics of hallucinatory experiences, and so forth, as we have seen.
6.
Exceeds other hypotheses in fulfilling conditions 1—5:
There’s certainly little chance that any of the rival hypotheses will ever exceed the Resurrection Hypothesis in fulfilling the above conditions. When confronted with the facts of the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith, the stupefaction of contemporary scholarship suggests that no better rival is anywhere on the horizon. Once you give up the prejudice against miracles, it’s hard to deny that the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation of the facts.
In conclusion, therefore, three great, independently established facts—the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith—all point to the same marvelous conclusion: that God raised Jesus from the dead. Given that God exists, this conclusion cannot be barred to anyone seeking for the truth about Jesus.
1.
Craig, William L., “Does God Exist? Responding to the New
Atheism” (working paper, Impact 360 Institute, Atlanta, 2014).
2.
Horst Georg Pohlmann,
Abriss der Dogmatik,
3rd rev. ed.
(Dusseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1966), 230.
3.
John A. T. Robinson,
The Human Face of God
(Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1973), 131.
4.
Antiquities,
IV.8.15
5.
Sotah, 19a.
6.
Kiddushin, 82b.
7.
Berachos, 60b.
8.
Jacob Kremer,
Die Osterevangelien—Geschichten um
Geschichte
(Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1977), 49—50.
9.
Gary Habermas, “Experience of the Risen Jesus: The
Foundational Historical Issue in the Early Proclamation of the
Resurrection,”
Dialog
45 (2006): 292.
10.
C. H. Dodd, “The Appearances of the Risen Christ: A study in
the form criticism of the Gospels,” in
More New Testament
Studies
(Manchester: University of Manchester, 1968), 128.
11.
Antiquities,
20.200.
12.
Hans Grass,
Ostergeschehen und Osterberichte,
4th ed.
(Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), 80.
13.
Gerd Ludemann,
What Really Happened to Jesus?,
trans.
John Bowden (Louisville, Kent.: Westminster John Knox
Press, 1995), 80.
14.
R. H. Fuller,
The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives
(London: SPCK, 1972), 2.
15.
C. Behan McCullagh,
Justifying Historical Descriptions
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 19.
16.
N. T. Wright, lecture at Asbury College and Seminary, 1999.
17.
The
Life of Flavius Josephus
75. 420—1.
18.
Krister Stendahl, “Paul among Jews and Gentiles,” in
Paul
among Jews and Gentiles
(Philadelphia: Fortess Press, 1976),
12—13.
About William Lane Craig, Ph.D.
William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California. He and his wife Jan have two grown children.
At the age of sixteen as a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity, during which time he and Jan started their family. In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until assuming his position at Talbot in 1994.
He has authored or edited over thirty books, including
The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology;
and
God, Time and Eternity,
as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology, including
The Journal of Philosophy, New Testament Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy,
and
British Journal for Philosophy of Science.
Find out more:
reasonablefaith.org
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