There are a few ingredients for this argument. I will list them:
1. You need to watch this video several times:
William Lane Craig: The Evidence for Jesus's Resurrection. Southampton Guildhall, October 2011
https://youtu.be/4iyxR8uE9GQ
The Jesus of Testimony: ( this is another good video):
https://youtu.be/mpwQFYnhqEs
2. Many of the assertions in the New Testament were verifiable or disprovable at the time they were written.
There is a big difference between writing something and people accepting it.
For example, let's focus on Mark's gospel.
Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.
--Mark 5:11-13
Mark lists the place where this incident happened. The time when it happened can also be estimated, since his ministry was only three years long. So Mark claims that at a certain time, at a specific place, there were 2,000 dead pigs in this lake. That would either be a big smelly lake or a lot of bacon. You would think that news of this would have traveled far and have been remembered for a long time.
So Mark sits in his basement and writes out all 16 chapters of his gospel. That is easy enough, but what happens when he gives his gospel to someone else and he reads chapter 5? If he has never heard of this incident, then he will never read further in Mark's gospel. Therefore the fact that Mark's gospel has been handed down to us is evidence that what was verifiable or refutable was found to be reasonable and compelling.
When I read Mark's gospel and began to count the number verifiable incidents, I quickly realized there were just too many to count. Please try this for yourself. Two other similar incidents were the feeding of the five thousand and the feeding of the four thousand. You read of "crowds, "large crowds", "the entire city" seeing Jesus do something.
3. It is most scholars think that the gospels were written before 70 AD, because the destruction of Jerusalem is not mentioned.
4. Having explained what I just wrote, you now ask the Muslim you are talking to to help you understand how the gospels, which were written in the time when many witnesses were still alive, were able to gain acceptance, if in fact Jesus never rose from the dead or was seen by many people (1 Cor 15).
Something took Christianity from Judaism:
from a religion that avoided non-Jews to universally accepting anyone
from dietary laws to none
from circumcision to none
from Sabbath worship to Sunday (the day that Jesus rose)
forgiveness of sins by animal sacrifice to Jesus paying the price for our sin.
from unitarian monotheism to trinitarianism
Surely something very significant happened around the time of Jesus. A plain reading of the Bible says that it was the resurrection. What is the Muslim's explanation?
Very few Muslims been able to answer at this point.
If there is an answer, the next questions are:
- What in the Quran motivates your answer?
- Are you helping the Quran or is it helping you?
***** the rest of this article is under construction
As we know, Muslims actually do not have a lot of justification for Islam, so much of dawah is a matter of reciting endless lists of Bible difficulties, leaving you to conclude that Christianity is not intellectually viable.
Here are two general strategies to defend against this:
1. The Atlas defense (Named after the person who holds up the earth in mythology)
Everyone understands that Muslims can't use arguments that contradict the Quran.
For example, a Muslim cannot claim that Jesus never existed.
But here is a question that has been not been explored: what does it mean when Muslims use arguments that are not motivated by the Quran?
If Mohammed wants to claim to be a prophet he needs to bear a high burden of proof.
More than that, if Mohammed wants to claim to be the prophet who replaces all the prophets that came before him, then he must bear a much higher burden of proof. He must show that he is right and everyone else is wrong.
To the extent that Muslims employ arguments that are not motivated (or outlined in some way) in the Quran, they are showing that they are the ones who are supporting the Quran, rather than the Quran supporting them.
Here is a specific example:
It is a fact that within the realm of history, there is no satisfactory explanation for how Christianity started. As Christians we say it started because many people saw the miracles of Jesus and 500 people saw him resurrected (1 Corinthians 15), but to admit that would be outside the domain of historians. So this unexplained event qualifies as a miracle, and this is the basis of Christianity.
What is the response of Islam? Ahmed Deedat and Shabir Ally both defended a form of swoon theory, but how is this supported by the Quran? It does the easy work (4:157) and leaves the hard work to Muslims.
In fact the very act of quoting the Bible to find difficulties is not found in the Quran.
How often do you see the Quran accurately citing Bible verses the way they are quoted by the New Testament writers? In contrast the New Testament quotes the Old Testament accurately many times.
2. The Peer Review defense
When Muslims question the accuracy of what is recorded in the New Testament, it must be pointed out that what was written was compelling enough to cause it to be read, believed and re-copied for others. All this was done without compulsion. For this reason the documents deserve a lot of benefit-of-the-doubt.
.3 The Paradigm defense
When Muslims recite their list of Bible difficulties, they fall short by not presenting an alternative hypothesis that explains how it came to be that the early church formed, wrote the New Testament books, and grew rapidly even in the face of persecution. The more difficulties they find, the more unlikely it is that the church would emerge and grow.
Again, if the Quran were a sensible book something like this would be found in the first or second chapter.
In contrast, the Bible has explained creation, fall of man and redemption by the third chapter of Genesis.
3. What did the prophethood of Jesus accomplish?
The net result of Christianity is that the largest religion on earth was formed through the mis-perceived crucifixion of Jesus.
4.What reason does the Quran give for why we should believe in its revelation?
The New Testament reads like a historical narrative by people who were drawn into Christianity by what they had seen. There is nothing else like the Bible.
The person who writes the rebuttal to a certain work always has the advantage. This is why, in the legal system, the defendant is always granted the opportunity to have the last word to the jury. The Quran came after the Bible, and also has the advantage that it was written by Allah. And yet we see Muslim scholars quote every sort of liberal Christian scholars in defense of Islam, but not the Quran. This proves the Quran does not provide a good roadmap for Muslims trying to disprove Christianity.
The Quran says "Truth stands out clear from Error"
--Quran 2:256
And yet Muslims cannot present a clearly superior case for Islam than Christians can for Christianity.
It is would be perhaps defensible for Allah to cast people into hellfire if he had revealed himself to them and they willingly and openly rebelled against him. But Allah has not.
And not only has he not revealed himself but he has actually mislead people by making it appear that Jesus was crucified.
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