Within Reason - #24 William Lane Craig - Did Jesus Rise From The Dead?

Episode Date: March 26, 2023

William Lane Craig is a Christian philosopher, author, and debater. He speaks to host Alex O'Connor about secularism in the US and UK, argument vs emotion in coming to faith in God, and the historical case for the resurrection of Jesus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Within Reason. My name is Alex O'Connor, and Within Reason is a weekly podcast bringing you long-form conversations with interesting guests every single Sunday. Since Within Reason is still a relatively new podcast, it would be a great help to me if you could find us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and subscribe and give us a rating. It really helps to push the podcast even further. And if you like the podcast, it would mean the world to me if you would consider supporting it financially by going to support.

This will take you to my Patreon page, which will allow you to contribute monetarily towards the upkeep of this podcast and really is one of the biggest ways to help this podcast and this YouTube channel to grow. Financial supporters of Within Reason will, wherever possible, receive early access to podcast episodes a few days before they go live to the rest of the world. I'm still very much trying to get this podcast off the ground. It's still very new to me. I still don't know if it's going to be successful.

I don't know if I'll be able to keep it up. But I hope that I can because I'm enjoying it so much. And supporting me on Patreon is one of the best ways you can help me in that process. I'm still doing almost all of the work myself, editing the videos, for example, and the promo. And so if you like what I'm doing, then it would mean a lot to me if you would consider signing up. My guest today is Dr. William Lane Craig. Dr. Craig is a professor at Houston Baptist University and Biola University, and perhaps the world's most prominent Christian, writer, apologist, and philosopher.

Dr. Craig is famed for his prolific philosophical output, as well as his high-profile debates with famous atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, which really brought him to prominence in the new atheist sphere as a fierce debater and someone that you should perhaps be a little bit scared to go up against. I spoke to Dr. Craig a number of years ago in a previous podcast episode and have regularly cited it as perhaps my favorite podcast episode ever produced. And so I was delighted to sit down again with Dr. Craig, this time to talk in particular about Christianity. One important thing to note is that this episode was recorded back on the 13th of October 2022. So if you're wondering why it is that Dr. Craig brings up the death of Queen Elizabeth, it's because it was still quite recent at the time of the recording. In this episode, you can expect to hear us discuss the difference between the USA and the UK

and its approach to the separation of church and state. why it is that upon dreaming that I was in a plane crash, I was motivated to start praying and the historical case for the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. I hope you enjoy it. Dr William Lane Craig, thank you so much for joining me again on the podcast. delighted, Alex. Thanks for asking me.

It is a pleasure to have you back. I remember our last conversation I think went quite well, was received quite well, but I also found after the fact, information was given to me that apparently because my name on YouTube is Cosmic Skeptic, upon first

hearing about my invitation, you were a little bit hesitant to come on my show because of the name Cosmic Skeptic. Is that true? Yes, I think to be a cosmic skeptic is a dreadful thing to be just a horrible position. And I understand you've since changed your moniker, isn't that right? Well, it's a little bit complicated because the podcast has a new name, and I'm hosting it as

Alex O'Connor. But the Cosmic Skeptic name is a little bit too sentimental for me to give up entirely. It's still my Twitter handle and the main attraction of the channel. But it's an unfortunate byproduct of not seriously thinking through the name that I gave my channel when I first set it up, not realizing that one day I'd be inviting distinct. English academics to consider sitting down with me. So I'm glad that you managed to see through that and sit down with me anyway and to do it again. Well, certainly. And before we begin, Alex, I just want to say how really deeply sorry we were to hear of the passing of Queen Elizabeth. Our condolences go out to all of you folks throughout Great Britain and the

Commonwealth. She was a marvelous woman and lived a life of incredible service and dedication to her people. And we'll be greatly missed. I'm quite happy to hear you say that, especially given that I made a video, which you may or may not know that I made a video very recently being quite critical of the monarchy and the reaction to the Queen's death. So did you, did you not see that? That's mere coincidence. I did not see it, but I'm something of an anglophile, having studied in Britain and having roots in Britain. And so we were really grieved to hear of her passing and watch the funeral and were very moved and

were very moved and inspired by the service of the church and well as the interment. And then also just of her very bold and frank Christian testimony that she bore, she was a remarkable monarch. Yeah, the British monarchy is in a strange position of still being officially buttressed by a Christian faith. that is the faith of the Church of England in particular, which I find quite strange, given that the majority of the United Kingdom have now thrown off that religion, unlike the United States, that the UK is kind of the polar opposite in that it is technically a religious state, but in practice very secular, unlike the United States, which is technically secular, but in practice, very religion-oriented. I mean, do you...

Yeah, I think one of the healthiest things for the Christian church, in our country has been the separation of church and state, that we do not have a state church. And what that means is that the church, in order to survive, must do so on its own strength without being propped up by the government. And it seems like across Europe, wherever you have a state church, it has suffered seriously and is in a state of decline. Whereas this separation of church and state that we have in the United States, that we have in the United States has been very, very bracing for the religious vitality of our nation.

Well, yeah, one of the things that people don't realize is that the separation of church and state is as much supposed to serve the church as it is supposed to serve the state. The origin of Thomas Jefferson's wall of separation was in a letter wishing to protect the Danbury Baptists, I believe, from persecution by the government. And so it actually works the other way around to what a lot of people think it is. Now we hear talk of the separation of church and state as don't allow religion to meddle in government affairs, but it has its origins in an equal and opposite force, not allowing government to interfere in religious affairs too. Yes, that's absolutely right.

We've got in this country both what's called the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. And this guarantees not only that religion doesn't interfere in the government, but that the government cannot infringe upon the free exercise of religion in this country. And that is a precious right, which is often under duress and needs to be defended, but is extremely important. I think you're quite right about that. Yeah, but this is something that's been eroded potentially in more recent years, and by more recent years, I mean the recent history of the United States since the 20th century, the printing of in God we trust onto the currency seems a little bit strange for a secular nation whose original motto was E pluribus, Unum, putting reference to God in the Pledge of Allegiance, things like this. I wonder as a Christian yourself who will doubtless, celebrate the values that are being instilled into these institutions, are you nonetheless hesitant to see them officially embossed in this way and what should otherwise be a secular nation? That's very interesting question, because I must admit to feeling a degree of discomfort

about those very things, because the way in which they're justified is that this kind of civil religion is so general and so innocuous that it becomes virtually meaningless and therefore is not intended to establish religious faith. And to me, securing that kind of expression at the expense of meaninglessness and inconsequentialness is a high price to pay. So I do feel somewhat uncomfortable about that. I would rather have these phrases be imbued with deep, significant meaning and excluded than included at the price of triviality. Yes, well, I see this problem happening all the time.

I remember, for example, in my Catholic upbringing, being forced to recite the Our Father and the Hail Mary, goodness knows how many times per day. And it got to the point where it's as though the words, didn't mean anything to me anymore because I was reciting them as if a poem or something rather than really reflecting on every single word. Do you think actually, I mean, because the Our Father in particular, it comes from a gospel recording of Jesus when asked by his disciples, how is it that I pray? Jesus responds by saying, well, pray to Our Father, who art in heaven, hallow be thy name. And these are where the words come from. Do you think that the Our Father is supposed to be

recited in maybe a word for word or at least statement for statement fashion, or do you think that that was more an intention of generally how someone should approach prayer? The latter. I think it was supposed to be a schema that you would follow in your praying. You would first honor God and his name, and then you would pray for your daily needs, and this wouldn't simply be provision of food, but for other needs, and then for the advent of God's kingdom, it seems to me this is sort of a general shema that we as Christians can follow in our prayers, but not to be something that is said by rote memorization. Yes, I remember that one time, and Psycho-Analized this as much as you like, but I had a dream that I was dying in a plane crash.

And it kind of confirmed this no atheist in foxhole's narrative and that when I was in this plane crash in my dream One of my first instincts was to say in our father to think look just in case, you know, let's see what we can do here And one of the things that occurred and it was in that strange situation where you're kind of in control but not in control of what you're doing in a dream It wasn't a lucid dream, you know I started I started saying the our father, but I went out of my way to say it in original phrasing I tried to change every single word or every single phrase Well, that's commendable. And it was as if in that moment of where prayer, if it's going to be tried and let's see if this really works and done properly, it was an exercise in trying to really actually get to grips with the words. And I think this is where a lot of religious instruction may go wrong.

And what put so many people off is this ritualistic approach to engagement with religion that you see across schools when it should be about actually engaging with the subject. Yes. And what you did in your dream was you made that your own by putting it in your own words instead of just a ritualistic recitation. You made it a genuine prayer in that sense. I think that's commendable. Yeah, and that's the first time I've mentioned that story publicly. And I do wonder what the religious online will make of it because they'll probably want to read into it a bit.

I must say that I think it's a little bit weak and potentially self-defeating for people to say, aha, see, see, in your moments of despair, you turn to God. It's as if saying, look, I know that we can't convince you with reason and argument and evidence, but I tell you what, when you're in your most desperate situation, then maybe you'll finally consider it. I don't know if that's as strong of an argument as it could be just to preempt that response from people. But I did find that interesting that that was a response, as if I was finally willing to take this Pascalian wager that I've been told so many times is actually a con. Yes, and I wonder what would happen if it weren't simply a dream but a near-death experience.

I was recently reading about some of the research done on these near-death experiences that people report, and there is sometimes a remarkable sense of approaching God or coming near to God that is consistent across these experiences. Yes. I mean, of course, I would, being an atheist, favor an explanation of such experiences that says something like, well, if religion is, from a sociological, psychological perspective,

something like an exercise in the denial of death, as terror management theory would have it, that human beings are trying to cope with their position in the universe by essentially inventing stories that aren't really true, that this is what we'd expect when people come, face to face with death, they'll have a momentary, at least need to more emphatically reaffirm this death-denying aspect of their culture and their faith. And so it would be no surprise even on an atheistic account that people would become more religious. In fact, this is what studies indicate

that when reminded of one's own death, a person becomes more religious, and that's even true if they're an atheist. They become more religious nonetheless. And there's a religious and an atheist interpretation of why that might be. Yeah, I'm not familiar with that, but that's fascinating. It's a fascinating area of study, terror management theory that says that most of human endeavors are an exercise in trying to ignore or deal with our fear of death. There are lots of really interesting study cases if people are reminded of their own deaths. The most famous example was some judges in Arizona.

were asked to recommend a bond for a case of solicitation to prostitution. And those who were reminded of their own death gave an average bond of $455. And those who weren't reminded of their own death gave an average bond of $50. And the theory was that when, if most of human culture and human activity is an exercise in dealing with our fear of death, then when reminded of our death, even in a fairly subtle way, we become more in need of affirming the things which deny our death, which in this case would be taking part in something bigger than the individual, like the legal system for a judge. That would be their way of contributing to a culture that exists outside of them. And so religion is sometimes portrayed as the most obvious version of

this by literally promising immortality. It's a way to escape from death. That would be my atheistic interpretation of what happened in that dreamy plane. But who knows? Maybe it was God trying to, you know, tickle me in the shadows or something. I'm not sure. I guess we'll find out one day. I couldn't say. I invited you today, Dr. Craig, to hopefully talk a little bit about the nature of Christianity in particular, given that last time we spoke, we talked about the Kalam cosmological argument, which is a great point of philosophical interest. But at the end of the day, you're not just a theist, but a Christian. And one of the questions I wanted to ask you, actually, was in regards to this kind of thought that somebody may be,

would be compelled to take this Pascalian wager at the moment of their death. And this is the kind of story that you often hear of somebody coming to faith in a moment of emotional necessity. What do you think is a more powerful approach to bringing people to the faith of Christianity? Is it things like trying to prove the historicity of the resurrection or more trying to demonstrate what it is that the resurrection is supposed to represent for people emotionally? Yeah. Well, I'm sure that if you're talking about evangelism,

effectiveness, it would be the latter because I do think that people tend to make decisions primarily on the basis of emotions rather than on the basis of reason. But having said that, I think that many university-educated people are closed to the message of the gospel because they think that it is intellectually uncredible and therefore not something that can be believed by an intelligent person. And so for that reason, I have tried to present the message of the gospel in the context of giving an intellectual defense of the faith. I doubt that very many people will become Christians because of the arguments. But I think that what the arguments can do

is give a person the permission to believe when his heart is moved by the message of the gospel. I see. So when talking to, say, an atheistic crowd, I've seen that in some of your lecture tours, I attended one in person, actually, when you came to Oxford just before the pandemic, I think. and you you tend to use five arguments I believe

I'm not sure if this is still your approach but you'd lay out I think it must have been the kalam the fine tuning and one of the arguments was the resurrection of Jesus in those instances when you're talking to university students who are oftentimes going to be predominantly atheists maybe not in the actual lecture theatre given the kind of talk that it is but is your approach here something like listen to these arguments they should convince you or compel you, at least, to move slightly more towards Christianity.

Or is it more a sense of, well, let me paint this as an intellectually credible position for you, but actually bringing you to Christianity is going to require something else entirely? Yes, it's the latter. And so if you look at those arguments, Alex, that I present, they begin with great generality. God is the best explanation, why anything at all exactly. rather than nothing. And then it becomes a little bit more specific.

God is the best explanation of the origin of the universe. And then still more specific, God is the best explanation of the fine tuning of the universe for intelligent life. And then the moral argument that God is the best explanation for objective moral duties and values in the world, which raises then, of course, the question of, our moral culpability before God.

And then I end, typically, with the claim that God can be personally known and experienced. And often I will, if I have time, share here a word of personal testimony from my own experience of coming to Christ. And so it moves from the intellectual to that more personal dimension and attempts to end with a definite personal appeal to people to explore a commitment to Christ and to know him in a personal way. So it's not just an intellectual exercise. I've heard you described as an evidentialist and I wonder how much this label applies to you in how much weight you put upon the public evidence for Christianity as reason for your belief. There's a

There was a letter that Dostoevsky once wrote to a friend of his, and I can't remember who it was. But in writing this letter, he said, and I'm paraphrasing here, but it was just about if I found that all of the facts lay outside of Christ, I'd sooner reject the facts and throw myself with Christ, then reject Christ and throw myself in with the fact. This is something that Dostoevsky wrote, which I think it goes unremarked upon in religious.

religious analyses of his works. What do you make of an approach like that? Is it something that you're sympathetic to? Or do you think that if the evidence points in the other direction, that is what should trump any sort of emotional opinion? Now, those are two different questions. I think that a person can be in a situation in which the evidence points in an opposite direction to what is true. We all know situations in which people are, presented with misinformation, for example. So I talked to people in the old Soviet Union before the fall of the Iron Curtain about how they managed to stay Christian, despite the constant Marxist propaganda that was

fed to them by their professors at the university. And for many of these students, they had no recall. intellectually, other than simply their personal experience of Christ, which was so real that they would follow it in opposition to the arguments and evidence of their professors. And I think that that is quite legitimate. And for that reason, I'm not an evidentialist in a certain sense of that term. Although I think there is adequate evidence to make it more probable than not, that Christian theism is true, I don't think that that sort of evidence and argument is necessary

in order for belief in Christ to be rational. I think that on the basis of the personal experience of God himself, that a person can be rational in believing in Christ. And that's that fifth point that I mentioned, that God can be immediately known and experienced. And I think for the person who truly knows God, this is a reality that is such that he will be willing to hold to it even in the face of evidence to the contrary, with the hope, of course, that he will find out that, in fact, that evidence against it was illusory or answerable and hope to get answers to the objections. So there's a difference between what that is and what you said Dostoevsky believed that if the facts really were against Christ, he would choose Christ rather than the facts.

I think that's impossible because if the facts are that Christ is not God, that he did not rise from the dead, it would be crazy to believe those things. So we want our beliefs to be aligned with the truth. but in our historical situationness, sometimes people are in situations where they don't have adequate evidence to apprehend the truth. And there we can be thankful that God through His Holy Spirit has made an immediate knowledge of God accessible to them. So would you say something like, let's say sufficient evidence? And by evidence, I mean things like empirical evidence, analytical evidence, analytical,

reasoning as opposed to personal experience might not be sufficient reason to engender a belief in God but could potentially be a good reason to to disbelieve that say if there were evidence strictly to the contrary if the bones of Jesus were discovered for instance to give a famous example this would be the kind of thing or I should form it as a question would this be the kind of thing that would essentially just invalidate all of the religious experience that you may have had in your life that you say sort of exists in a different evidential plane. But surely upon discovering the bones of Jesus, proving that he never rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, this would give you reason to essentially favor this evidence over the personal experience

that you've had with God such that that personal experience becomes invalidated? If the bones of Jesus were actually discovered, then the resurrection would be false and you should not believe in it. But I think that given the uncertainty inherent in archaeological discoveries, we're never going to have evidence that the actual bones of Jesus were found. I think the possibility would always be there to say this is probably not actually his tomb. For Unfortunately, I don't think we find ourselves in that situation, Alex, because I think that the evidence for the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, including the empty tomb, is very strong. And so I don't feel that sort of tension between faith and fact. To me, faith and fact are aligned. But I do realize that for certain people, at certain times and places in history, the evidence and the truth can be out of sync with each other.

And again, I refer back to my illustration of students in the old Soviet Union who had to persist in faith in spite of the evidence that they had from their professors and teachers. And I think that they were rational to do so. Well, let's see if you might be able to help out a non-resistant non-believer like myself. You say that we're kind of in the opposite situation to the one that I hypothetically described in that our historical evidence seems to point towards a resurrection of Jesus. And I'm wondering if we can dive into that a little bit. One question is, do you think it's fair to say that we can't prove historically the resurrection of Jesus?

That's not the kind of thing that's open to historical proof. Rather, we can only prove historical facts surrounding the resurrection of Jesus and then ask what the best explanation for those factors. Ah. Well, I guess I don't see an inherent contradiction between those two things because I think proving that a certain historical hypothesis is the best explanation and is more probable than not. is a form of proof.

So it all depends on how much weight you pack into that word prove. If you mean a mathematical demonstration, then of course you cannot. But that's simply inherent in the nature of historical inquiry. But if you mean prove in the sense of provide good historical evidence for a conclusion to make it more probable than not in that sense, I think it can be proven. So here's a question, because this comes up a lot. People will often say that when we look at the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, we don't have very much. We have the Gospels, we have the letters of Paul, we have passing reference to Jesus' existence in some extra-biblical texts. This isn't very much. And then a response often comes, okay, maybe this isn't a whole lot, but by the historical standards that we usually apply to look at cases of what we're going to be. may have happened in history, we have this wealth of evidence. If you compare the attestations to Jesus' ministry to any other historical figure of the time, it dwarfs it. Do you think that because

of the radical nature of the claim being made here, not just involving the miracles of Jesus' ministry and the resurrection, but also the moral importance of this story and the fact that it's supposed to be essentially the central event of human history, that although we may have a higher standard of historical evidence compared to other average historical facts, we should expect a much higher standard of evidence, perhaps even higher than what we have available to us as it stands. Yeah, I don't agree with that attitude at all, Alex. I got myself into some controversy by saying this recently, it seems to me that in virtue of what's at stake in believing in the existence of God and Christ, that it would be wrong to demand higher standards of evidence

for this. If anything, it would seem to me that one would be more ready to believe if there's any sort of shred of evidence that would be supportive of it because of the tremendous practical benefits from its being true. And this is the idea of the Pascalian wagering, again, that you mentioned earlier. In addition to being epistemically justified in holding a belief, a person could be practically justified in holding a belief. And I think that belief in Christianity, can be pragmatically justified in virtue of the great benefits that are to be had if it turns out to be true.

Now, having said that, though, I do think that it is also epistemically justified, and I wouldn't want to be misunderstood there. I just said a moment ago that I think it can be proved, by which I mean that you can show that the best explanation of the established facts concerning. the fate of Jesus of Nazareth, is the explanation the original disciples gave that God raised him from the dead. But I wouldn't apply to that epistemic justification a different standard than you would apply to other events in history. Even despite the fact that this is a far more significant historical event and one which we're expected to believe is authored by a supernatural creator who has a very strong interest in us coming to believe that it occurred. I think this is that even from a secular perspective, there's that old maxim of Carl Sagan's

that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I wonder what you think of that, but that would be true even if it weren't for the fact that the extraordinary claim being made here is one that we're supposed to believe that the omnipotent creator of the universe also wants us desperately to believe. And yet the evidence provided is maybe just about in line, maybe a little bit more of what we'd expect from any average historical analysis into the past. Shouldn't we expect a bit more if God wants us to believe this so badly? This common-sensical slogan that extraordinary events require extraordinary events, I think, is demonstrably false. it misunderstands the probability calculus, events which are extraordinary and therefore highly improbable

relative to the background evidence can nevertheless turn out to be highly probable if the evidence on the hypothesis is much more probable than the evidence would be if the hypothesis were false. And so it's just, I think, demonstrably wrong to mouth this slogan that extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence. You can have ordinary evidence that will be sufficient to establish an extraordinary event. What's key will be the ratio between the probability of the evidence on the hypothesis and the probability of the evidence on the negation of the hypothesis. Now, again, in terms of what's at stake, there you get into these pragmatic considerations.

I mean, epistemically speaking, you shouldn't raise or lower your epistemic standards based on what's at stake. but if you do think that the pragmatic can encroach on the epistemic, that there can be pragmatic encroachment on the epistemic to either raise or lower the bar for belief, then I think it can go either way. And in the case of Christianity, I would say it would lower the bar because of what's at stake. You don't want to miss out by making the bar too high. And that would be the danger you would run. Let me give you an illustration of pragmatic justification that involves lowering the bar. Suppose you're diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer and you're told that you have only

a few more months to live and that it looks pretty hopeless. On the other hand, there is this treatment that you can take that a few people have managed to survive the cancer by doing this treatment. And so you decide to take it. Now, if you go simply by what the epistemic evidence would justify, you would believe that you are not going to survive. You are probably not going to make it. But suppose you also know that that people who believe that they will make it are shown to have a better chance of survival than those who are realistic.

In that case, you would be pragmatically justified in believing that you're going to make it because that will increase the chances that you actually will make it. So that would be a case where if you allow the pragmatic to encroach on the epistemic, it would serve to lower the bar to make you pragmatically justified in believing

something that you're not epistemically justified in believing. But again, Alex, I want to emphasize, I think that Christianity is epistemically justified and that the facts that establish the resurrection of Jesus or that undergird, I should say, are recognized by the wide majority of New Testament historians, and that when you compare the resurrection hypothesis to the alternative hypotheses, it exceeds those hypotheses in terms of meeting the standards for being the best explanation

by head and shoulders. So this is all in one sense sort of academic. It's not the situation in which we actually find ourselves. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot that I want to say about this epistemic bar, but I'm also interested in shelving that to actually talk about some of this evidence. You say that, look, this explanation of the historical facts around Jesus' death are best explained by a resurrection when you compare them to the alternatives. Surely it's quite a difficult thing to do to judge the prior probabilities involved here.

For example, one explanation that's sometimes given of the, the facts around Jesus' death is that, you know, the disciples all made it up. The disciples were just flatly lying. Now, this might be a bit of a strange suggestion. Why would people be put to death as the disciples were to die for something they knew to be true? There are various reasons why it might be a bad explanation that they were all lying. But when compared, for an atheist at least, against an explanation that says that there was some divine intervention that led to a man actually rising again from the dead, even though alternative explanations do, I grant you, seem incredibly implausible.

Whatever happened on Easter morning, it was weird. I don't know what happened that morning, but whatever happened, it was very, very strange. But it doesn't seem obvious to me that even though these different explanations aren't particularly compelling, that that should increase my credence in the belief that a man rose from the dead, which seems infinitely less plausible before, you know, all other things being equal. Yeah, I don't think that there is anything implausible about miracles if God exists. And so in presenting a case for Christianity, I don't lead with the evidence for the resurrection. I lead with those other arguments that give you a theistic concept.

context. And if there is a God who created and designed the universe and brought it into existence, then the idea that he might raise someone from the dead is not so implausible. Peter Slazac, an Australian philosopher, and our debate on the resurrection, remarked that for a creator of the universe, the odd resurrection is. child's play. And I thought, well, that's really true. So for the atheist who stumbles at the miraculous nature of this explanation, I think he needs to go back to those theistic arguments and review those before coming to the evidence for Jesus' resurrection. Now, I think my listeners will be broadly familiar. So perhaps without going into too much depth, just bullet pointing,

what are the main points of evidence that you would direct people's attention to to say these are reasons to think that a man rose from the dead on Easter morning? First I would say what are the facts to be explained? And those would include things like the death of Jesus of Nazareth by Roman crucifixion during Passover around AD 30. Second, his burial or interment in a tomb by a member of the Sanhedron, the Jewish Sanhedron named Joseph of Arimathea. Thirdly, the discovery by a group of his female followers on the Sunday morning after

the crucifixion that that tomb was empty. Fourth would be that thereafter various individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his time. death. And then the last one would be that the earliest disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead despite having every predisposition to the contrary. And then I would ask the question, if those are the facts of the case and the wide majority of scholars agree with all five of those points, then the question is how do you best explain them? And I can't think of a better explanation.

than the one that the original disciples gave. When you assess these explanations in terms of the standard criteria for being a good historical explanation, things like explanatory power, explanatory scope, plausibility, degree of ad hocness, consistency with other beliefs, and so on and so forth. Why could the disciples not have been making it up? well just take one of the facts that they suddenly and sincerely came to believe that

God had raised him from the dead despite every predisposition of the contrary you would have to say that that is in fact not a fact so you would you would go back to whether or not that is true and I think that the evidence is that these earliest followers of Jesus did sincerely believe the truth of the message that they proclaimed and were willing to die for. People don't die for a lie that they have themselves made up. And so I think that it's very, very plausible that these earliest disciples sincerely believe this. Moreover, if they were making it up, they would never have invented something like the resurrection of Jesus, because, as I said, it is completely contrary to every predisposition they had in first century Judaism. In Judaism, the resurrection

was never of an isolated person within human history. It was always a general resurrection of all the righteous dead after the end of the world. So the original disciples confronted with Jesus, crucifixion and death would not have come to make up a lie about his rising from the dead, they would have at best look forward to their reunion with him on the day of judgment when all of the righteous dead would be raised and ushered into the kingdom of God. I think that those who hold to a conspiracy theory are looking at history through a rearview mirror. They don't put themselves in the footsteps of these first century Jews and ask, what would they say after their Messiah was crucified? They would not say, oh, well, God

raised him from the dead, and he was Messiah after all, because that was completely contrary to Jewish beliefs. So as NT Wright, the prominent New Testament scholar has, rightly put it, if your favorite Messiah got himself crucified, you basically had two choices. You either go home or you get yourself a new Messiah. But it would have been completely un-Jewish to say that God raised him from the dead and he was the Messiah after all. So I think the conspiracy theory contradicts both the sincerity of the first disciples, as evident from their willingness to suffer and die for what they preached, as well as for the anachronistic nature of the hypothesis that they made up this belief.

What evidence do we have about disciples being put to death for their beliefs? I know that in the gospels themselves, or in the Bible, I believe only two disciples' deaths are recorded, one of which being the suicide of Judas and the other being, rightly as you say, due to somebody being a Christian, but I wonder, is there a conversation to be had, for instance, about whether, do we know that had they recanted their belief, they would have been saved, for example, because it may have gotten to a point where nothing they could have said would have saved them. And so even if they were making it up, it may have been too late and they go to death anyway. Right. I don't think there's any way to know. But what we do know,

I think, from the evidence of the New Testament, is that these earliest Christian, believers were willing to suffer incredibly in attestation to the truth of what they proclaimed. And some of them, at least, did die, and others were willing to die. And so I think that the sincerity of these earliest Christians is pretty indisputable. Okay, so people don't die for things they know to be false, but people do die for things that they mistakenly think are true but are in fact false. So here's theory number two. What if the disciples were simply mistaken in their belief that Jesus had risen from

the dead, perhaps a grief-induced hallucination or something of the sort? Yes, yes. That's a better theory, I think. And unlike the conspiracy theory, the hallucination theory is one that still finds defenders today, whereas the conspiracy theory has been obsolete for well-eastern theory. over 100 years. I think there are a number of problems with the hallucination theory. One that I've already alluded to, Jews did not believe in a resurrection of an isolated person within history. So if they were to project hallucinations of Jesus after his death, they would have

projected hallucinations of Jesus glorified in heaven, in Abraham's bosom. This is where the righteous dead went to wait until the resurrection at the end of the world. But in that case, it wouldn't have led to believe in Jesus' resurrection, but rather believe in Jesus' assumption or translation into heaven. And in Jewish thinking, these are two very different categories. The assumption of a person is the snatching of that person out of the spacetime world into heavenly realms. whereas a resurrection is the raising up of that dead person in the grave in the spacetime universe to new life. And they proclaim not the assumption of Jesus, but the resurrection of Jesus. And therefore, I don't think hallucinations have the adequate explanatory power to account for the belief in the resurrection.

Moreover, the hallucination hypothesis doesn't say anything to explain the historicity of the empty tomb. The fact of Jesus' empty tomb was a publicly inspectable fact in Jerusalem, which anyone could verify, including the enemies of the disciples. And therefore, in order to explain the empty tomb, you've got to conjoined to the hallucination hypothesis, some independent hypothesis to explain all the evidence. And thus the hallucination hypothesis is not only defective in explanatory power, it's defective in explanatory scope because it requires some independent hypothesis in conjunction with it to explain the full scope of the evidence.

So those are just a couple of problems with the hallucination hypothesis. Yeah, I mean, for example, you'd have to, because people might want say, well, maybe the disciples just hit the body, but then you're not talking about hallucinations anymore. Now you're talking about deceit. Right. You're back to the conspiracy theory again, that they stole the body and then they lied about the resurrection appearances for some mysterious reason. And as I say, I think that that hypothesis is just so implausible in light of the evidence sincerity of these men and women, as well as the fact that it's terribly anachronistic because that's not the sort of lie that a first century Jew would make up when his favorite Messiah

got crucified. Now, we've kind of spoken so far as if the reports that we have in the Gospels and I suppose the letters of Paul, things like this as well, are accurate. We're saying, well, look, you know, the disciples wouldn't have been. made this up or they they couldn't have been hallucinating because people could have checked as if the the timeline and the events that we that we believe happened were justified in believing what if the very reports of the disciples death and their beliefs and their and what they not just what actually happened but the reports of what these people claimed happened are

mistaken for example yeah the only reason that we can believe in group of appearances is because of a passing reference that Paul made to the 500 that's not recognized anywhere else. A group appearances appear in some of the Gospels, not others. Indeed, there are no post-resurrection appearances at all in the earliest gospel, which is thought to be the source for Matthew and Luke as well. It seems a little bit kind of spotty, and people might ask, okay, sure, if these group appearances happened, you'd be hard pressed to explain them as a hallucination.

But what if the reports are just wrong? Okay. Now, this goes back to that first step establishing the data to be explained. It seems to me that once you reach the second step, that is to say, what is the best explanation of the facts, then these naturalistic explanations all turn out to be pretty hopeless. They really, really are implausible and don't do the trick. And that's why scholars who don't accept the resurrection hypothesis, generally speaking, don't adopt any of those naturalistic alternatives. Instead, they just embrace agnosticism.

They just say, what you said, something remarkable happened on Easter morning, but we don't know what it is. So I do think that that second step is the easier step. What I didn't appreciate when I did my study of the historicity of the resurrection in Germany under Volvot Pannenberg is the degree to which the first step, that is to say, establishing the data to be explained, represents the wide majority view of contemporary New Testament scholars. That is to say things like Jesus' crucifixion,

honorable burial, the discovery of his empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, the transformation of the first disciples. These represent the wide view, a widely held view of the majority of scholars, whether liberal or conservative, Christian or non-Christian, these facts are pretty convincingly established. So take, for example, the post-mortem appearances of Jesus. These are attested, as you say, in this extremely early tradition that Paul quotes in 1st Corinthians 15 and then hands on to his converts in Corinth. This tradition goes back to within the first five years after the crucifixion of Jesus. And therefore is not plausibly explained away as a late legendary development. Rather, people were still alive, were still around who had seen these

post-mortem appearances of Jesus. Moreover, these appearances are multiply and independently attested, as you say, in the Gospels, such as the appearance to the 12 disciples. And therefore, we have really good historical grounds for believing that these disciples, experienced these post-mortem appearances of Jesus, even in Mark, whereas you say a resurrection appearance is not narrated. Nevertheless, Mark clearly knows of resurrection appearances of Jesus because he foreshadows them when Jesus says, go into Galilee, there you will see me. And so the disciples in the other Gospels then go to Galilee and do experience these appearances. So even Mark knows of them, but simply foreshadows them and doesn't narrate them.

And so Alex, I'm not kidding. I can't think of any historical Jesus scholar who denies that the original disciples had these post-mortem appearances of Jesus. Even the skeptical critic, John Dominic Crosson, when I debated him on the resurrection of Jesus, I thought perhaps he denied the appearances. But he was indignant when I suggest that. He says, of course I believe that they had these experiences. So again, you're back to whether or not these can be plausibly explained on the basis of psychological phenomena like hallucinations. but it's pretty difficult to deny that they occurred.

Well, I mean, we have, it seems a little suspicious to me, shall we say, that in Mark's gospel, we end with no account of a post-resurrection appearance, but essentially a prediction. Go to Galilee and Jesus will meet you there, and that's it. And then we have the Gospel of Matthew, the next earliest, which reports, okay, a meeting of Jesus with the 12 at Galilee. as predicted by Mark, if being used as a source, potentially something if this didn't really happen, that the author of Matthew could have said, well, look, this is something Mark said was going to happen,

so maybe we should include it. And crucially, in that report that Matthew gives of the appearance to the 12 at Galilee, not all of the disciples even believe, some of them doubt. And so it can't be this obvious, wow, look at this appearance of Jesus, undeniable proof that he's risen from the dead. I mean, some of the disciples who'd been with him for his entire ministry were present at this appearance and doubted that it was him they didn't like it wasn't even universally obvious to the people there that it was Jesus and then Luke's gospel the next earliest we have the addition of more appearances we have the the road to ameus the appearance to the two disciples walking along the road to ameus we also get the addition of the ascension and then john's gospel the latest gospel

at the the latest gospel written according to most biblical scholarship more fanciful still now we have appearances of Jesus that require him to move into rooms with locked doors and then you have the story of doubting Thomas

coming up and touching the wounds in other words the further away we get on the timeline from the actual event itself the more fanciful and the more frequent these appearances seem to be recounted. Is this not, can you understand the suspicion upon someone reading the gospels in

their historical order might have in thinking that we have this development of what they may suspect as a myth over time? Yeah, I can understand it, but I think that that is based upon a failure to appreciate the effort of New Testament historians to get at the traditional sources behind the gospel stories, so that it's not simply the date of when the gospels were written. What's important here is the date of the traditions that they embody. And so, for example, in Matthew and Luke, you have traditions of the appearances that are independent of Mark. They didn't come from Mark, but neither are they simply invented out of whole cloth by Matthew

in Luke because they have these tale-tale signs of tradition that has been handed on and received by these authors. And similarly with the traditions in John. So I think what you've got

is multiple independent traditions of these post-mortem appearances of Jesus. And it won't do to just write these off as legendary or mythical

because they go right back to the earliest sources such as Paul's tradition that he hands on in 1st Corinthians 15 which goes back to within five years after Jesus' death the pre-marking passion story of Jesus which foreshadows his appearance in Galilee and is an extremely early source

and then you've got these sources behind Matthew and Luke and John that also speak of these post-mortem appearances of Jesus. So it would be unreasonable to just say that these are all late-developing legends that did not characterize the experience of the earliest disciples. And as I say, this isn't just sort of my opinion. This is the virtually anonymous opinion of historical Jesus scholarship. I find it fascinating. It's strange. You know, I like to keep these podcasts conversational, and so I don't prepare strictly. But I had an idea of things that I might want to say in response to you.

But as with our episode on the Kalam, you surprised me sometimes with, with how powerfully you can respond to these points. Talking of disciples lying or hallucinating, I often hear talk about points that I know you've given yourself in the past about why would they invent women discovering the tombs or you don't get group hallucinations occurring. And I have things to say on these points, but to hear about just in principle,

why would these disciples hallucinate something that's totally out of accordance with their religious tradition? And indeed, why would they make that up if they weren't hallucinating it? I think it's fascinating. And so I hope people listening have, I mean, I feel like I haven't challenged you as much as I expected to, but I've just been so interested in letting you explain these in their depth because I think they're wonderful responses. And I appreciate that so much, Alex.

This was all new information to me when I did my doctoral work in Munich under Pollenberg. When I went there, I basically thought that the apologetic for the resurrection of Jesus was a sort of Josh McDowell apologetic based on who moved the stone, you know, that kind of thing. Was it conspiracy? Was it hallucination? Was it wrong tomb theory? It was all those naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection. But what I did not know about and what I discovered was this wealth of historical data pertinent to those five facts that I mentioned that call for some sort of explanation. And that is fascinating. If you haven't done so, I'd encourage you to read my account of these in my book, Reasonable Faith, where I lay out multiple lines of evidence in favor of each one of those five facts

that has proved convincing to most New Testament scholars today. Yes, well, I did want to end by asking you if you had recommended reading or listening or watching, I suppose, for my viewers. Reasonable Faith will be linked, as I probably would have linked it anyway in the description. I wonder if you have advice not just for reading Christian, on the historicity of the resurrection, but also if you know of the best skeptical resources from people that you disagree with that you might recommend. Yes, I do.

I think that the most powerful, negative case that I've ever read concerning the resurrection of Jesus by an esteemed New Testament scholar who's very objective and credible is an essay by Dale Allison on the resurrection of Jesus. I can't remember the exact title. It is, it might be in his book on Jesus' resurrection, but you can find it by looking at Dale Allison. And it is all the more remarkable that for all his skepticism, which I think is excessive, he still comes in the end to affirming the historicity of the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, the transformation in the lives of the earliest disciples, those facts that I mentioned. But you will not find anywhere a more critical and objective sifting of the

evidence than in Dale Allison's work on the resurrection. Well, I will make sure that that is linked also in the description down below. Dr. Craig, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Alex. It's been a pleasure.