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

Today, the Doctrine of Christ, Part 45.

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

We now come at long last to the resurrection hypothesis. Does the resurrection hypothesis do any better than its rivals

in explaining the evidence of the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances of Jesus,

and the origin of the disciples' belief in his resurrection.

Well, in order to answer that question, let's run the resurrection hypothesis through

those six criteria that McCullough suggests for assessing historical hypotheses.

First, you remember, the best explanation or hypothesis must have greater explanatory scope

than its rivals.

And the resurrection hypothesis certainly has wide explanatory scope.

It explains the emptiness of the tomb, the appearances of Jesus, alive

after his death, and the origin of the disciples' belief in the resurrection of Jesus.

And so it exceeds counter explanations that have a narrower explanatory scope, such as the wrong tomb hypothesis or the hallucination

hypothesis, which you'll remember could only explain one or two of those three great facts

undergirding the inference to the resurrection of Jesus.

The second criterion is explanatory power.

This is probably the greatest strength of the resurrection hypothesis.

It explains so well the empty tomb, the postmortem appearances, and the origin of the

disciples' belief. By contrast,

hypotheses like the conspiracy hypothesis or the apparent death hypothesis, just do not account

convincingly for the facts of the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, and the

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