Becoming acquainted with William Lane Craig's work in the early 1990s, I only later found out that in addition to being a expert on the Kalam cosmological argument for God's existence, Craig also defended the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus. Over the years I had become familiar with his historical argument but was curious to see how he arrived at these conclusions. Here in one scholarly tome is the enormous iceberg that is below the surface backing up the historical argument for the Resurrection that Craig presents in his debates and talks at universities. Though the title to the book is a bit unwieldy, the depth and breadth of Craig's research in this area of New Testament studies simply boggles my mind.
Craig begins with a short preface exploring the 20th century trend in theology concerning the historicity of the Resurrection, the necessity of historicity in theology, and questions concerning presuppositions. Presuppositions may be innocuous or vicious (xvi-xvii). They are innocuous if they guide the research but do not become part of the verification of the hypothesis. In contrast, a presuppostion becomes vicious if it is used as grounds for the acceptance of the hypothesis. With this in mind, Craig lays out his pressuppositions: (a) Markan priority; (b) John's gospel is independent on the synoptics; (c) Mark 16:8 is the end of the original conclusion to Mark's gospel; and (d) the theological doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures and thus their historical reliability. Craig points out that (a) through (c) represent the consensus of scholarly opinion today. Concerning inspiration, Craig says this presuppostion remains innoucous because he does not argue in the book for the credibility of an account on it being inspired (xvii).
With this out of the way, Craig begins examining in Part 1, the evidence of Paul found in 1 Corinthians 15. In 1 Cor. 15, scholars have come to a consensus that there is a pre-Pauline formula embedded in it. Craig surveys the debates concerning the length, unity, and structure of the formula, the geographical origin of the formula, the Semitic nature of the formula, etc. Having established a very strong case for the formula, Craig then examines the witnesses of the Resurrection appearnces that the formula lists. Craig closes out Part 1 with a chapter on Paul's implicit mention of the empty tomb and on Paul's understanding of the nature of the Resurrection body. Many theologicans have tried to play down the physicallity of Jesus' resurrection by saying something to the affect that Jesus was raised "spiritually" in some ghostly manner of speaking. Craig argues against this and concludes, "In no sense did Paul appear to have conceived Christ's resurrection body to be immaterial or unextended" (157).
Part 2 concerns the evidence from the gospels. Craig surveys the evidence from the burial narrative, the empty tomb narrative, and the appearance narratives. Craig closes Part 2 out with a chapter discussing the locality of the appearances and the nature of the gospel portrayal of the resurrection body.
Part 3 is Craig's powerful historical assessment of the evidence that was already surveyed. He groups the evidence around three broad areas:
- The Historical Fact of the Empty Tomb (10 lines of evidence)
- The Historical Fact of the Resurrection Appearances (4 lines of evidence)
- The Historical Fact the the First Disciples Believed in the Resurrection of Jesus
Througout Part 3, Craig explores alternative naturalistic explanations and shows why they are all universally rejected by scholars. Such that the "rational man can hardly now be blamed if he infers that at the tomb of Jesus on that early Easter morning a divine miracle has occurred" (420).
Bravo, to William Lane Craig for another fine piece of scholarship and a model to show the rest of us how we should do scholarship.
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