(Book: On Guard, by William Lane Craig. Chapter 8: “Who Was Jesus?”)
Christianity is, above all else, a story. We don’t see God showing up in real life. Jesus doesn’t go to church on Sunday. Miracles like healing someone born blind, or resurrecting someone who died three days ago, only happen in the tales told from the pulpit and in ancient parchments. The heart of the Gospel is the story of the Gospel, and if there are any doubts about the story, then Christianity itself is in danger of being reduced to a pleasant (or not-so-pleasant) myth.
Starting in Chapter 8, William Lane Craig takes on the task of trying to make the Gospel sound like history. It’s not an easy task, but Craig has thousands of years of pro-Christian scholarship to call on, as well as an equal or greater volume of traditional apologetics. The classic problem, of course, is that the primary historical evidence is highly biased: the documents that survive were mostly written by men who wrote for the explicit purpose of persuading people that Jesus was the Christ. What’s more, we know historically that the early Christians went out of their way to destroy any evidence and/or testimony that was contrary to the message they wanted to preach, even from non-Christian sources, so we don’t have much in the way of balance. The deck is stacked in Craig’s favor, and now he’s ready to deal out the cards.
