Reasonable Faith

Guest (Male): Dear Dr. Craig, I have been following your debates with atheists and your apologetic writings defending the Christian faith. I am impressed with your logical and systematic approach to addressing questions. As someone from another faith-based system, I am having some difficulty articulating an explanation for my faith in Jesus to non-believers. The question is about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Swami Vivekananda, foremost among the Hindu Vedanta, once said the following: "If there is one blow dealt to the historicity of that life, Christ's, as has been the case in modern times, if that rock of historicity, as they pretend to call it, is shaken and shattered, the whole building tumbles down, broken absolutely, never to regain its lost status."

I think what he meant was if you proved Krishna never existed as a single historical person, most Hindu theological frameworks would absorb it without collapse. The Gita would still be studied, the Rasa Lila still performed, the philosophy still practiced. Hinduism's architecture is designed to be less vulnerable on that specific point, whether or not the figures turn out to be historical.

Christianity's structural dependence on specific historical events, particularly the resurrection, as Paul frames it in 1 Corinthians 15:14, "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile," renders it epistemologically distinct. For Christians, the resurrection isn't merely a teaching, it's the event that defeats death and inaugurates salvation. No comparable claim exists in Hinduism regarding Krishna.

For large swaths of traditional Christianity, and still today in many communities, questioning the literal historicity of, say, the Virgin Birth or the resurrection is treated as faithlessness itself. While a historical Jesus is well-supported, this is not the same as proving the narratives: the Virgin Birth, miracles, and resurrection. These remain matters of faith, not historical demonstration.

The rock of historicity Vivekananda identified isn't just a foundation; it's often treated as the only foundation, making it fragile precisely because there's no fallback. The scholarly attitude treats Jesus as an itinerant apocalyptic preacher, crucified under Pilate, whose followers experienced something they interpreted as resurrection.

One conclusion from his statement is that in Hinduism even the most devoted Bhakta can say, "Krishna is real to me as the divine, whether or not he walked in Dwarka." In orthodox Christianity, saying Jesus is real to me as a moral teacher, whether or not he rose from the dead, places you outside the faith's defining boundaries.

The theological uniqueness of Jesus' resurrection doesn't make it more historically verifiable. It remains a singularity by definition; there are no comparable events to establish patterns. And the very 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.

We can observe a missing body, reported appearances, and transformed disciples. We cannot observe eternal life. Any narrative about the resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament is refuted by the claim that they were written many years after the event they predict. They must have had some experiential knowledge, not a historical fact.

My question to you: is there a specific reference or prophecy to the Messiah's resurrection in the Old Testament? There are no definitive statements showing that all Old Testament prophecies about the resurrection explicitly point to Jesus in the New Testament. I look forward to your response. Blessings, Anil, United States.

Dr. William Lane Craig: 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.

First, 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 are the fundamental facts underlying the inference to the resurrection of Jesus, namely: the discovery of his empty tomb, his post-mortem 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've argued, then plausibly Jesus 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.

Second, any narrative about the resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament 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.

Third, is there a specific reference or prophecy to the Messiah's resurrection in the Old Testament? 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 on 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*, published by Crossway in 2008. What you say about the scholarly attitude toward Jesus falls far short of what most scholars think.

You're 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 fairy tale 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's 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.