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What is the best debate on the resurrection of Jesus?

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This one is my favorite of all.

And the MP3 file is here. (H/T Apologetics 315)

Details:

Was Jesus Bodily Raised from the Dead?
William Lane Craig vs. Dr James Crossley

7.30pm, Tuesday 6th March, SHEFFIELD
University Student Union Auditorium, Western Bank,
S10 2TN

Dr. James Crossley is an expert in the gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel. Dr. William Lane Craig is the ablest defender of Christianity active today.

ECM is the reason

I am posting this for ECM, because he is a deist, but he’s been acting very strangely lately. He thinks “the divinity of Jesus can’t be proved because we can’t test it and only have fragmentary, historical, evidence for it”. He accepts that Jesus existed, but not that the bodily resurrection occurred as an event in history.

He also seems to subscribe to an empiricist epistemology. He writes:  “I’m totally content with not being able to know it all, and with knowing that our knowledge of such things will not be, and can never be, perfect.”

And, he adds “my skepticism of historicity as proof, extends to most anything that has such fragmentary records, so that it doesn’t seem like I’m inconsistent, because I’m not. For example, everything we know about alexander the great is based on writings by people 500 years after his death.”

And he has no problems with Christians or what we believe. He believes in all the arguments for a Creator/Designer from science, including intelligent design, and he thinks that practicing Christianity leads to an objectively good life, whereas other religions like Islam do not. He just doesn’t think that the evidence for the resurrection is sufficiently good. He requires more proof before he submits himself to the demands of a personal deity.

What would you guys say to ECM if you had a chance to say anything to him?

8 thoughts on “What is the best debate on the resurrection of Jesus?”

  1. You’ve lead the horse to the Living Water, but you cannot make him drink. I would congratulate ECM for his open mind and heart thus far to accept the natural evidence for Christianity and simply pray that the Spirit will move him to have an experience of Christ. He has come this far, I reckon he just may go all the way. But you won’t reason him into the Kingdom, Wintery! God be with you ECM. There’s not much further to go, but you’ll need a helping hand from above to reach the summit..

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    1. I hate to say this but I think that the best we can do at this point is to show him that we don’t lose these debates on the resurrection, and that the Christian way is simply objectively correct, morally speaking. It may take an experience of loving someone else self-sacrificially to build up the experience of what it is like to be rebelled against. Or he could listen to other atheists and hear how they rebel against Christ just because they do not want to have to deal with the demands of a relationship to another person – however good and self-sacrificially loving that person may be.

      It’s surprising that two-hard-headed Christians are saying this, but that last step requires some personal experience of loving and suffering, I think. A person has to become annoyed with rebellion against God somehow, and then take a step toward God and away from selfishness. It’s as simple as that. There has to be some time in my life where I say to the Lord – “I am sorry to be like these other rebels, and I don’t want to be like that. I know how hard it is to love someone and to will their good only to be rebelled against. I don’t want to rebel against you the way these other people are rebelling against you. What can I do for you right now to let you know that what you did for me on the Cross is enough to get me to love you and to follow you?”

      I recently chose to engage in a relationship with someone where I was self-sacrificially loving them and building them up, and it was hard dealing with that person’s selfishness. The more they rebelled, the more it made me feel bad about neglecting the Lord in my own life. I kept realizing that the reason why loving someone well is so hard is because they are rebellious against their own long-term good. They don’t want to have to do anything or change anything about themselves in order to be made happy by others. That attitude of wanting to get what’s good your own way by using other people is the heart of the rebellion against Christ. We have to run away from that attitude and turn to Christ and say – I will give you my time today. I will try to learn more about you. I will try to honor you with my decisions. I will let your values influence how I choose and live.

      Did you ever have this experience of just wanting to let Christ have some claim on you just because he loves you the most, Stephen? I just have this inclination to care about Jesus because he cared about me first. I don’t like people who don’t want to puzzle out whether God is real and whether he wants to have a relationship with us. I don’t like people who want to be happy all the time instead of having a relationship that involves some give-and-take. I am more inclined to build something together with the Lord rather than to just ignore him and all of these blessings of health and a finely-tuned universe, etc. I have so many things to be thankful for – shouldn’t I feel some obligation to puzzle out whether there is anyone there who gave me these blessings as a gift? What does that person want from me?

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  2. I listened to the Robert Price and WLC debate today. Oh my goodness, Price’s opening speech was totally irrelevant. It was a big ad hominem attack on Craig’s faith. It was good to hear Craig pick him apart after that.

    Craig is definitely very adept at debate and is the best I’ve ever seen in any venue, but he isn’t just resting on his amazing debate skills. The arguments are good and the evidence is good. I don’t think he simply does well because he’s awesome (though he is awesome). He’s arguing truth, which is sometimes hard to rebut.

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    1. Yes, but I consider Price (especially at that time when he was more crazy and weird than he seems to be lately) to have lost that debate badly. I picked Crossley because he is the STRONGEST atheist I have ever seen, and yet realistic. I think the Price debate is more about entertainment. I thought that Price’s recent debate on the Bible and slavery that I blogged about was A LOT better. He was civil and persuasive. He had legitimate concerns.

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  3. Thanks for posting this, Wintery. This demonstrates the extent to which you care for your friend ECM that you are putting this effort into helping him.

    I would recommend that ECM examine the behaviour of the apostles. These guys preached the Gospel, despite heavy persecution, and most of them gave up their lives for it. Unlike other religions, which rely on revelation, Christianity relies on the historic fact: the resurrection. The apostles had no reason to lie because there were no logical earthly benefits to doing so. They had every earthly reason to NOT preach the Gospel (who wants to be thrown to the lions, crucified, or sawn in 2??) and yet they preached that they witnessed the risen Christ. And they weren’t preaching about something someone else told them, but about something they personally witnessed. This is exceptionally powerful. There is no other logical explanation.

    I recommend that ECM look also at the life of the apostle Paul. If he wanted religion, he had it. He was a pharisee, respected by his fellow Jews. He hated Christianity. But next thing we know he’s preaching the Gospel, and getting rejected by his old friends, beaten, shipwrecked, arrested, etc. For what? A lie? Wishful thinking? Not likely! Read 1 Corinthians 15 for Paul’s brilliant defence of resurrection in general and Christ’s resurrection in particular. He says bluntly that “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile” and “if only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men”.

    Note that the fact of the apostles preaching the resurrection and their being persecuted for it is attested to in non-christian sources, hostile to the Gospel. See Pliny the Younger, for example.

    On a personal note, I have had to make difficult decisions in life which would have been very different if I were not absolutely convinced of the strength of evidence for the resurrection. Intellectual integrity, however, demands that overwhelming evidence cannot be ignored.

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  4. I do respect Dr. Craig as a great defender of the faith. But in my opinion , Dr. John warwick Montgomery is the best living defender of historic Christianity. I am a Reformed Bapist theologically. I am not Lutheran. Dr. Montgomery has paved the way for all other present day defenders of Christianity. They stand on his shoulders and have benefited from his vast knowledge and experience!!!

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    1. I like Craig better than Montgomery, and Craig does a lot more debates on the resurrection than Montgomery, too!

      I think that Craig is familiar with Montgomery’s work, as am I.

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