William Lane Craig debates Ben Shapiro about Jesus...

hey everybody and welcome to absolute apologetics I'm your host Kyle Bailey and today we'll be discussing William Lane Craig and Ben Shapiro's objections to the resurrection of Jesus if you're new here consider subscribing if you enjoy this video hit the like button and share it with others don't forget to hit the notification bell so that you don't miss an episode let's get started [Music] it's an oddity I think you're absolutely right in saying that Jesus understanding of the Messiah was radically different from the prevailing cultural understanding of the Messiah among the chief priests and the common people and he didn't meet their expectations indeed that's what helped to get him crucified being the Messiah you're right in and of itself isn't a blasphemous claim but to claim to be the Son of God in a unique sense and then especially the son of man prophesied by Daniel sitting at the right hand of the power that is truly blasphemous and is sufficient for his condemnation now the question I think that is raised by your interpretation yes yeah your interpretation man is this why should we believe Jesus reinterpretation of the Messiah rather than the one that the chief priests and the people held and I think the answer to that is his resurrection from the dead Jesus resurrection from the dead is Yahweh's public and unequivocal vindication of the man whom the chief priests had rejected as a blasphemer it is the divine demonstration that these allegedly blasphemous claims are in fact true that he was who he claimed to be and that therefore I follow Jesus in his conception of what it means to be the Messiah so when it comes to the resurrection why is resurrection proof of divinity so Lazarus is is Reservoir that was why I wanted to emphasize the religio historical context before we talked about the resurrection a miracle taken in isolation is inherently ambiguous the proper interpretation of a miracle is going to be given by the religio historical context in which it occurs and the resurrection of Jesus is not just the resurrection of any old body it's the resurrection of the man who claimed to be Messiah son of God and Son of Man and who was crucified for those allegedly blasphemous claims if God has raised this man from the dead then he has I think unequivocally and publicly vindicated those allegedly blasphemous claims so one of the counterclaims to some of this is that the Gospels are written significantly after Jesus lives even the earliest gospel is written what 7dc someone somewhere in somewhere 40 years after after Jesus is crucified so what's to say I mean that like most historical events there is some play in the joints here so that this would be the historical argument against the exact veracity of the gospel revelations well now I think it's important to understand been that in order for a historical document to be reliable it isn't required that it be in an attempt radius of course solace what I would argue is that underlying the inference to the resurrection of Jesus are three great independently established facts which are supported by the historical evidence and which surprisingly I did my doctoral work on this in Germany are recognized as such by the majority of New Testament scholars today who studied the historical Jesus and these facts would be that after his crucifixion and burial by a member of the Sanhedrin named Joseph of Arimathea the Jesus tomb was discovered empty on the first day of the week by a group of his female followers secondly would be that various individuals and groups of people then witnessed appearances of Jesus alive and finally number three would be that the original disciple suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead despite having every predisposition to the the vast majority of scholars have come to accept as convincing the evidence in support of those three facts not assuming biblical inerrancy or inspiration but treating the Gospels as ordinary historical documents you can show for example that the fact of the discovery of the empty tomb is attested by at least six independent sources in the New Testament some of which are extraordinaire aliy early no scholar denies that individuals and groups saw post-mortem appearances of Jesus the only question is whether you should or could dismiss them as hallucinatory and again nobody denies that the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead so these three facts are pretty firmly established and the only question is then how do you best explain them and down through history attempts have been made to explain these facts without recourse to the Resurrection like the conspiracy theory the apparent death Theory the hallucination theory and so forth and I would argue that none of these naturalistic theories meets the criteria for being the best historical explanation of the facts none of them is as good an explanation as the one that the original disciples gave that God raised Jesus from the dead and if that's right then I think we have good grounds indeed are almost compelled to revise our typical understanding of who the Messiah was supposed to be so we can have the historical argument back and forth obviously and I think that their arguments that you can make I think their arguments that I can make back I honestly find them relatively uninteresting is the truth simply because I'm not sure that we're going to come to any sort of consensus on them you know on the on the historical argument for example I think it's fairly easy to claim there's there's a sect of Judaism right now in which there's a sub small subsection of people who believe that the lubavitcher rebbe is still alive randal above ature Rebbe passed away in the 1990s and there's still people who treat him as though he is not they call him the Messiah they think there was the political Messiah they have and and they still do that 20 years after his death you know that's not proof to me that he is actually alive some experience it right so you know especially when you're talking about events 2,000 years ago if people write that down I think there's such a this man's tomb is empty I mean I haven't dug him up so I would know but the the claims if somebody claims 2,000 years from now that his tomb was empty or claimed 70 years from now that his tomb was empty then yeah that's an important difference been the important time gap is not the gap between the events and the present good evidence doesn't become bad evidence just because of the lapse of time the critical event as you just said is the time gap between the events and the recording of those rekts events and in the cases of the events of the life of Jesus and his resurrection that time gap is extraordinarily narrow we can push back even before the writing of the Gospels and the epistles of Paul by discerning the traditions upon which they relied when they wrote and some of these go back to within it's estimated five years after Jesus crucifixion in bin Shapiro's first objection he says many resurrections have happened in the Bible why is Jesus resurrection unique it's important to understand that the resurrection of Jesus is unique to other biblical resurrections in a few different ways dr. Craig correctly pointed out that the religio historical context of Jesus being tried and condemned as a blasphemer and then subsequently raised from the dead sends a message that God approved of Jesus claims about himself also other resurrections in the Bible were performed by a human conduit in the case of Jesus we find God Himself raising Jesus from the dead confirming his unique status as the Son of God lastly other resurrections from the dead only had a temporary effect on the recipient in debt they eventually died again in the case of Jesus we find that he was raised from the dead into a glorified immortal body as a demonstration of the kind of bodies that the righteous will receive at the end of the age in bin Shapiro's second objection he says that many scholars date the gospel accounts to somewhere around 70 AD so how do we know that they're accurate and that there haven't been inventions of the resurrections story at a later date as dr. Craig pointed out despite the fact that many scholars like to point to a theory that the Gospels were written some 40 years after the death of Jesus these same scholars affirm that the women discovered the empty tomb that a variety of people and groups of witnesses saw the resurrected Jesus and that the disciples came to suddenly and sincerely believed that Jesus rose from the dead despite facing death and persecution in addition to this professional forensic specialists such as former cold-case detective Warner Wallis demonstrates clearly that the Gospels were written early based on several factors a major factor is that the New Testament fails to mention one of the most monumental historical events of the first century that is the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD being that Jesus prophesied the destruction of the temple it's down it stands to reason that if the Gospels or any other books of the New Testament were written after 70 AD then we should expect to find mention of the temples destruction as it would be a powerful confirmation of Jesus prophecy therefore we can establish that the New Testament as a whole was written before 70 AD additionally according to the intro to the book of Acts we know it was written after the Gospel of Luke and we can date the book of Acts to before 61 to 64 AD and that it does not mention the deaths of either Peter or Paul who were the key characters in its narrative and they died around that time there is additional evidence in the letters of first Timothy and first Corinthians in which Paul quotes Luke's Gospel which we can use to date Luke's Gospel to between 50 and 53 AD knowing the early date of Luke's Gospel helps us to date Matthew and Mark - even earlier being that Luke often repeated or quoted entire passages from them totaling to 350 verses from Mark and 250 verses from Matthew that appear in Luke's Gospel estimates are that mark was written around 45 ad with Matthew shortly thereafter this means that we had the first written gospel only 12 years after the event which is extraordinary in terms of historical documents even if one goes with a later dating of the Gospels it still stands that the chief components of the resurrection narrative are considered unaltered by the vast majority of scholars in that realm in his final objection Ben Shapiro points to a fringe sect of Judaism that believes that their rabbi who has called the Labov ature Rebbe resurrected from the dead contrary to the beliefs of this fringe sect the Labov ature Rebbe has been lying dead in his grave since June 12 1994 in New York City although a small number of random followers of the Rebbe have claimed to see him alive these sightings are comparable to those who have claimed to see Elvis still alive the difference between these so-called Resurrection sightings and the evidence for Jesus resurrection are a world apart for starters the tomb of Jesus is empty this would be a bare minimum for followers of the Rebbe to demonstrate and it would be very simple to prove yet all evidence confirms that the Rebbe is still in the same grave he was buried in back in 1994 kentley Jesus post-resurrection appearances are reported by upwards of 500 witnesses in New Testament times many facing death thirdly the brothers of Jesus who did not believe prior to the resurrection also came to the to the belief in the resurrection through their own eyewitness experiences the only reasonable explanation of Jesus's unbelieving brothers changing their mind is that they did in fact witnessed the resurrected Jesus fourthly Paul who was a violent persecutor of Christians came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus through an eyewitness experience himself as with the brothers of Jesus this would make no sense unless he truly witnessed the resurrected Christ and finally there was no material benefit to becoming a Christian during the first century as you would face death property seizure and persecution on a daily basis followers of the Rebbe who claim he is alive have nothing to lose and everything to gain by making this assertion although I do respect ben shapiro it's clear that his objections to the resurrection of jesus do not stand up to the well-known data surrounding the resurrection i believe that when the evidence for the resurrection is evaluated thoroughly we can understand it as a historical event that has the validity equaling any other major event that historians accept if we reject the historical validity of the resurrection that we must also reject almost all other major histories along with it we can apply the same standards that we use to determine the assassination of Julius Caesar to also determine that Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead I want to thank you for watching absolute apologetics what did you think about this episode let us know in the comments if you're new here consider subscribing if you enjoyed this video hit the like button and share it with others also hit the notification bell so that you don't miss an episode you can find more content like this at our website biblical questions net we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Pastor Kyle Bailey

Views: 488,414

Rating: 4.8116107 out of 5

Keywords: William Lane Craig debates Ben Shapiro about Jesus, william lane craig, ben shapiro, daily wire, sunday special, ben shapiro destroys, reasonable faith, ben shapiro best moments, ben shapiro debate, william lane craig debate, ben shapiro william lane craig, ben shapiro william lane craig jesus, evidence for the resurrection, christianity vs judaism, richard dawkins, defending your faith, dr. kyle bailey, dr. william lane craig, christianity explained, lubavitcher rebbe

Id: ktuXPpNnK8c

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 27 2019