Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Christ, part 34.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

In our survey of theories of the resurrection of Jesus, we've looked at the advent of modernity with

the Enlightenment and saw the skepticism that arose concerning Jesus' resurrection.

We talked about the conspiracy theory of Rai Marus and then the apparent death theory of Heinz Paulus.

And we now come to a third theory, the mythology theory.

With the publication in 1835 of his book, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, David Friedrich Strauss turned a major hinge

in Christian history. He sounded the death knell for both the parent death theory and the conspiracy theory.

He saw that neither of these were plausible accounts of the evidence, and therefore he sought

a third alternative in what we can call the mythological explanation. According to this view,

the miraculous events of the Gospels never happened. Rather, the gospel accounts of these events

are the result of a long process of the accrual of legend

and the shaping of religious imagination.

Here is how Strauss contrasted his theory with those of his predecessors.

He writes, and I quote,

In the view of the church,

Jesus was miraculously revived.

According to the deistic view of Rymoros,

his corpse was stolen by the disciples.

In the rationalistic view,

he only appeared to be dead and revived.

...