Historical Jesus Series – Part 1: In the Beginning Was the Word

What is apologetics all about?

A few years ago, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts called The Equipping Podcast (linked below). The hosts had a Christian apologist named Sean McDowell on discussing the evidence for Christianity. I did not know what an apologist was at that point. Still, a little googling revealed that apologists perform a task set forward in 1 Peter 3:15. In this text, Peter charges all Christians to “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” Dr. McDowell explained that we could doubt and wrestle with difficult questions in the Christian faith because God had provided us answers. He even claimed that the resurrection of Jesus was objectively provable through evidence. I was hooked! I bought his 800-page book and started reading, exploring the knowable history of Christianity.

We are post-Easter in the Christian calendar. That means that 2,000 years ago, Christ was appearing, post-resurrection to his followers and training them up to launch the Church. I happen to be studying the history of the resurrection and decided the timing was great for a short series that lays out the evidence for the resurrection. Before getting to the actual evidence for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, I want to put a stone in the shoe for those who may be skeptical about miracles.

“human life forming on Earth by natural processes to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 10^{2,000,000,000}.”
Francis Crick

We will start our journey to the empty tomb a little further back in time with the Big Bang. The creation of human life is virtually impossible by human causes. Nobel Laurette Francis Crick puts the odds of “human life forming on Earth by natural processes to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 10^{2,000,000,000}.”[1]

This post will introduce the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KSA) for the existence of a creator of the universe. I think it is necessary to examine the origin of the universe to understand how the atoning work of Christ could come to fruition and why it was needed.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The KCA was popularized most notably by Dr. William Lane Craig, Research Professor of Philosophy at BIOLA University. Dr. Craig has successfully debated some of the greatest philosophers of the 20th and 21st century using this argument that offers the best hypothesis of why the universe was formed. The KCA proposes that the Big Bang was an external actor’s work, though the KCA does not say who it might be.

What do we know about the Big Bang? The two data points that scientists in the cosmological community agree on regarding the origin of the universe are that the universe began approximately 13.7 billion years ago. And that the universe is expanding out from a single point. I’ll add a third point relevant to the apologetic discussion regarding the formation of the universe. Physicists working from an atheistic bias have worked hard to prove that the universe has always existed. For those with an atheistic worldview, the implications of the universe having a beginning can challenge their entire understanding of existence. In fact, paraphrasing Dr. Craig, the history of cosmology in the twentieth century is partly defined by scientists trying to find any other plausible reason other than the Big Bang as the universe’s origin.

The KCA is a simple and elegant argument that explains the cause of the universe like this:

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist [Big Bang].
Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Proposition 1 is rooted in the concept that something cannot come from nothing. Stephen Hawking understood this and tried to argue around it in his book Grand Design. He proposed that laws of physics have always existed and could create the universe on their own. Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow submit a law of physics that we haven’t found that could be like gravity and is responsible for creating the universe.

Hawking and Mlodinow are brilliant scientists. It is far from me to criticize their understanding of physics, but what they have proposed with this theory is nonsense. This is not a scientific argument but a philosophical one. What material objects did the law of physics act on to create the universe? Despite their best attempts to throw out the Big Bang, they are still left with the same question; how did the elements that formed the universe come into being.

“Therefore, scientists have concluded that the universe must have begun to exist a finite time ago and is now in the process of winding down.”
Dr. William Lane Craig

Proposition 2 is proved out by both a philosophical argument and a scientific one. For brevity, I am only going to submit the scientific argument in this post because writing out the philosophical argument would double my word count. The scientific argument is twofold. First, in 2003 three scientists, Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin, proved that “any universe that is on average, in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be eternal in the past but must have an absolute beginning.”[2]

This point of evidence is supported by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which predicts that “in a finite amount of time, the universe will grind down to a cold, dark, dilute, and lifeless state. But if it has already existed for infinite time, the universe should now be in such a desolate condition. Therefore, scientists have concluded that the universe must have begun to exist a finite time ago and is now in the process of winding down.”[3] Every time we look through a telescope in laymen’s terms, we can see that all of the galaxies are still moving away from each other. This proves that they are moving from a point of origin.

Proposition 3 becomes self-evident if propositions 1 & 2 are true.

Three Takeaways from the Kalam Cosmological Argument

First, for a being to create space and time, that being must exist outside of space and time. Dr. Craig explains the implications of this type of being, saying, “(1) anything that is timeless must also be unchanging and (2) anything that is changeless must be non-physical and immaterial since material things are constantly changing at the molecular and atomic levels.”[4] Another way to describe the being is to say that if he exists outside of the finite reality of time, he must be uncreated and infinitely powerful inside a finite universe.

Second, KCA doesn’t prove that Jesus rose from the dead or that the creator responsible for the Big Bang is the Christian God. KCA is just one of many supernatural cosmological arguments that provide a more consistent hypothesis for the data we have than a naturalistic creation story. Even though KCA doesn’t add anything tactical to the case for the resurrection, it does open the door for a supernatural being to assist in the resurrection. Almost all skeptics of the resurrection start from naturalism and will not consider a supernatural explanation for the resurrection. However, given that KCA is a better hypothesis than any natural explanation for the creation of all things, resurrection historians would do well to lay their biases down when considering the evidence for the resurrection.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.“
The Apostle John

Lastly, in light of the KCA, I urge you to consider reading John 1:1-5 with fresh eyes. Let John’s words wash over you and sit with the understanding that with a word, God created everything!

“1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

[1] Michael R. Licona, “Historians and Miracle Claims,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 12, no. 1-2 (2014): pp. 106-129, https://doi.org/10.1163/17455197-01202002.

[2] William Lane Craig, “FIVE ARGUMENTS FOR GOD,” The Gospel Coalition, 2010, https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/ee/articles/Craig_Atheism.pdf, 7.

[3] Idib.

[4] Idib., 8.

‎The Equipping Podcast on Apple Podcasts This is one of my favorite podcasts out in the intertrons. I highly recommend checking out their series with Dr. Bruce Demarest in addition to the Sean McDowell episodes I referenced.