Evidence for Christian Theism
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Introduction
Before coming to the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus a few general remarks are in order.
The Christ Myth Theory. The first is a response to the claim that no such historical person as Jesus ever existed. This view, sometimes called, “Christ Mythicism,” holds that Jesus is a legendary figure cobbled together from various pagan myths and gradually embellished over the centuries. While a popular topic of discussion on the internet among amateur critics of religion, the Christ Myth Theory is universally rejected by serious historians for the excellent reason that the evidence for the historicity of Jesus is better than that for most other figures of the ancient world. In the following chapters we shall see that the New Testament is a historically reliable source of information about Jesus and there are, moreover, references to him in ancient non-Christian authors. In addition we also have the indisputable fact of a worldwide Christian Church that, against initially fierce persecution, rapidly rose and spread out from Judea in the first century AD. [1] Many details of the life of Jesus, finally, satisfy accepted criteria of historical authenticity. [2] To deny the existence of Jesus is therefore to adopt a historical skepticism so radical that one must jettison most of ancient history. Among mainstream modern historians the existence of Jesus is historical fact.
Though universally rejected by serious historians, the Christ Myth Theory has a certain purchase on popular perception. For this reason it may be helpful to preface our discussion by noting the following: Not only is the existence of Jesus historical fact, but the evidence for his resurrection is surprisingly strong.
This claim is likely to be met with surprise by those unfamiliar with the consensus in contemporary New Testament scholarship concerning the historicity of the key facts undergirding the Resurrection Hypothesis; that is, that Jesus died by crucifixion and was buried; that his tomb was found to be empty three days later by a group of his female followers and that various individuals and groups thereafter had experiences that completely convinced them that they had seen, spoken to and eaten with a physically resurrected Jesus—points to which we shall shortly return. Meanwhile, a few examples may serve to establish the present claim that there is a compelling historical case for the Resurrection to be considered.
Antony Flew is the British philosopher who renounced his atheism on review of the evidence for the existence of God from the integrated complexity of the physical world—the arguments from cosmic and biological teleology discussed in Chapter 12 and Chapter 13 respectively. Flew did not publicly convert to Christianity but, as a result of discussions with the historians Gary Habermas and N. T. Wright, and after 50 years of fierce anti-religious polemic, he was nevertheless compelled to concede that, “The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It is outstandingly different in quality and quantity."
Flew is representative of many skeptics who have been challenged by the strength of the evidence for the Resurrection. To his number we may add journalist Lee Strobel and the criminologist J. Warner Wallace who each began to investigate the Resurrection evidence as committed atheists (one to disabuse his wife of her fledgling Christianity; the other to demolish his religious coworkers in workplace debates) only to both unexpectedly come themselves to believe. And not only atheists but also those with prior religious commitments that would plausibly prejudice them against belief in the Resurrection of Jesus have been swayed by the evidence. The Jewish scholar and historian Pinchas Lapide, for instance, was finally compelled to conclude that the only explanation for the historical evidence was that his God, the God of Israel, had raised Jesus from the dead. The case of Nabeel Queshi is equally dramatic. He was an Islamic apologist who began a debate with Christian David Wood on the competing historical claims of their respective religions. The debate lasted many years. At the end of it, Queshi converted to Christianity and wrote the best-selling book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. Historian Gaza Vermes, meanwhile, may represent the limit to which skepticism may be taken while responsibly accounting for the facts. He formulated eight possible theories to explain the historical evidence which fall between two extremes of opposite certainty. One of those extremes is total denial and the other is total acceptance and both of them, Vermes said, are, "not susceptible to rational judgement."
This much is undeniable: Conscientious inquirers have been challenged and often persuaded by the evidence against strong predispositions to the contrary. These examples do not of course make the case for the Resurrection of Jesus but they do show that there is a case to be heard. And while there are many rational responses to all of this, ignoring the unavoidable inference that there is something here that requires attention is not one of them. The evidence that we will be examining in the following chapters is worthy of serious consideration.
I noted earlier that the majority of New Testament scholars affirm the key facts undergirding the inference to the Resurrection. And in what follows we shall see that while there are various theories put forward to account for these facts the Resurrection itself is an inference to the best explanation using the accepted criteria for assessing competing historical hypotheses. If all this is so, it might be wondered why the majority of New Testament scholars do not also affirm the Resurrection Hypothesis. And this brings us to two final considerations that need to be borne in mind as we assess the historical case for the Resurrection.
The Total Relevant Background Evidence. New Testament historians who affirm the key facts undergirding the inference to the Resurrection of Jesus but then postulate a naturalistic explanation for those facts typically do so on methodological grounds or on the basis of philosophical presuppositions that lie out the scope of the historical argument.
Bart Ehrman, for example, objects that miracles by their very nature lie beyond the explanatory scope of the historian. “Historians,” he writes, “have no difficulty whatsoever speaking about the belief in Jesus’ resurrection. For it is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution.” But a historian, qua historian, cannot adjudicate on whether a miracle occurred. And so Ehrman places the Resurrection hypothesis in historical quarantine.
Whatever the merits of this view there is no reason of principle why the methodological constraints that normatively apply to a historian should proscribe a synthetic argument for the resurrection that includes historical evidence. Likewise, the fact that cosmology is the study of the physical universe has no bearing on the soundness of a synthetic argument for the existence of God that includes data on cosmological fine tuning—even though its formulator, by postulating God, has left the methodological constraints of pure cosmology for natural theology. Indeed, the strength of the cumulative case for Christian theism is found precisely in the cohesion of the evidence for its central claims across multiple disciplines.
Integral to Ehrman’s ban on miracles is the assumption that history is limited to what can occur in the natural world and that what can occur in the natural world is determined by the inductive confirmation of natural law in everyday experience. This recalls Hume’s objection to miracles discussed in Chapter 24. But as we saw there the assumption that our experience of the laws of nature is our only relevant background evidence is unwarranted. Equally relevant to our assessment of a purported miracle is any background evidence for the existence of God—such as the nine lines of evidence presented in Chapters 10 to 18. And if on the total background evidence it is probable that there is a God then it is probable that there exists a being with the power to violate the laws of nature and a claimed miracle can be rationally evaluated on the basis of whatever evidence is available for it.
This is a point I have been at pains to emphasise from the very beginning of my argument. Clearly enough, if you think it unlikely that there is a God then, however good the historical evidence, you will think it unlikely that a God raised Jesus from the dead. If, on the other hand, you think it very likely that there is a God and come to see that the Resurrection is an inference to the best explanation from the historical evidence, then you will think it very likely that God raised Jesus from the dead. The historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus must therefore be evaluated against the total relevant background evidence for the existence of God. And since we have seen Parts II and III that the evidence of natural theology and a priori reasoning not only establishes that there very probably is a God but that God will very probably become incarnate and live a perfect life filled with great suffering that ends in a miracle, so good historical evidence for a prophet whose life meets all of these criteria will be very compelling indeed.
Paradigm Pressures. A final of word of caution is due. No one can evaluate this subject in a vacuum because everyone brings to it a prior attitude towards the religious life. The Resurrection of Jesus is, as N. T. Wright puts it, “a self-involving hypothesis.” And this is because anyone assessing the historical evidence for the Resurrection who begins to intuit its credibility will feel himself suddenly implicated in a very personal way. Here we should recall Nagel who confessed, "I want atheism to be true. I hope there is no God. I do not want there to be a God. I do not want the universe to be like that,” as well as Michael Rea’s observation that, "Most sensible people would recoil in horror upon hearing that a person of great power and influence had taken a special interest in them and had very definite, detailed and not-easily-implemented views about how they ought to live their lives.” [3] And if, what is by no means improbable, one does have a preexisting indisposition to becoming a Christian he is going to feel the sudden force of massive paradigm pressures that may interfere with his rational adjudication of the evidence.
To clarify this point consider someone who has a strong indisposition to living a religious life; who is examining the Resurrection evidence for the first time; and who with considerable unease is just beginning to recognise the force of that evidence. What options will lie before him if he finds himself rationally obligated to conclude that Jesus rose from the dead? There are two. One: Remembering Socrates’ policy that we must, “Follow the argument wherever it takes us,” he may simply draw the conclusion and declare himself a Christian. This, I suggest, is the only rational response to the reality of the Incarnation but it is also, as we are supposing, something he does not want to do. Two: He may accept the reality of the Incarnation but refuse to declare himself a Christian. Very few people, however, would be willing to live in defiance of their own rational principles. Wishing to avoid this dilemma he may therefore choose to preemptively resist the deliverances of rational intuition in his ongoing assessment of the evidence. And in that case his conclusion, whatever it is, will be a post hoc rationalisation for something that was determined in advance and on nonrational grounds.
Nagel, though himself an atheist, proposes something of the sort as an explanation for the monomaniacal, neurotic physicalism in the philosophy of mind and the dull refusal to look beyond the embattled physicalistic paradigm. Moreland, taking up the theme, suggests that from pneumatophobia a man naturally takes refuge in hylomania. [4] The idea applies to the historical case for the Resurrection with only slight adjustment.
In closing I wish to emphasise this strongly: I am not suggesting every New Testament scholar who proposes a naturalistic explanation for the historical facts undergirding the Resurrection Hypothesis is Christophobic. But suppose, firstly, that it can be shown that the Resurrection is an inference to the best explanation using accepted criteria for evaluating competing historical hypotheses; secondly, that the relevant background evidence of natural theology is included and supports that inference; and thirdly, that methodological issues have been addressed. If under these conditions, and without further justification, one insists upon a naturalistic explanation for the Resurrection evidence then, in the absence of a reason to think otherwise, we are justified in suspecting that paradigm pressures are at play. Socrates is surely right. We must follow the argument wherever it takes us. And this entails we pay no heed to who is and who is not willing to come with us.
[1] Professor C. F. D. Moule of Cambridge writes,
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[2] These will be discussed in the next post. To take one example, consider the "Criterion of Embarrassment." This is a principle of historical analysis which states that any detail problematic to an ancient account can be presumed true on the logic that the author would not have invented a detail problematic to his account. Both the baptism of and the crucifixion of Jesus are supported by this Criterion since neither are events of a sort the early Christian Church would wish to invent: Baptism was administered for the remission of sins and Jesus is held by the church to have been sinless; nor would the Church have plausibly invented the brutal, humiliating death of its leader.
[3] Paradigm pressures apply to the evaluation of arguments for theism in general and to arguments for Christian theism in particular. And this is because the moral and religious restrictions that inhere only vaguely in the idea of basic theism are made concrete and explicit in the exacting and uncompromising moral teachings of Jesus.
[4] That is, from a fear of the spiritual one naturally takes refuge in the physical.
[3] Paradigm pressures apply to the evaluation of arguments for theism in general and to arguments for Christian theism in particular. And this is because the moral and religious restrictions that inhere only vaguely in the idea of basic theism are made concrete and explicit in the exacting and uncompromising moral teachings of Jesus.
[4] That is, from a fear of the spiritual one naturally takes refuge in the physical.