Magnificent Obsession by David Robertson (a response, Part 2)

Dear D,

I commented on the first three chapters of your book, Magnificent Obsession in my previous post. I've now got to Chapter 4: Murdered, which raises a few issues worthy of discussion.

In my previous post I noted how you slipped out of the role of apologist in Chapter 3, and into the role of preacher. You do that again in Chapter 4. Rather than try to defend the notion of a spiritual reality and a devil, you ask the reader to "grant the existence of the devil for a moment" and from here on in attempt to show that the Christian message is internally consistent (you seem to assume that the 'moment' extends for the duration of the chapter). Actually, I'm not sure that the Christian message is completely internally consistent, but leaving that aside for now, you do nothing here to convince the reader that the Christian worldview (there is a God, there is a devil, Jesus's death has saving and atoning power) is consistent with reality, you simply ask the reader to grant you that worldview and then proceed as if it is reality.

I suppose that one possible reason there are so many "false teachings" going around in the many flavours of Christianity is that the devil has stuck his oar in and messed it all up, but another reason could be that there is no "true teaching" and the many different flavours are all just human attempts to interpret a selection of confusing and occasionally conflicting scriptures in the light of different varieties of human experience. If you want to convince me toward one rather than the other, there needs to be some evidence to back this up. (For what its worth, I think the Christian conception of the devil is an evolved hybrid concept combining aspects of the OT serpent, the OT Satan, the Canaanite chaos monster (who appears in the bible as Leviathan), the Zoroastrian Ahriman and the Philistine "lord of the flies" Baal-zeebub... but that's going waaaay of topic, so I'll leave that discussion for another time.)

Anyway, you express your opinion that God "would express himself through his Word", that this Word is "supposed to be the message of Christ" but do acknowledge that there are "issues where more than one interpretation is equally valid". Hmmm. So God expresses himself in ambiguous ways? But you then assert your opinion that the Bible is beyond scrutiny - it is true and who are we to query it?

If you want your readers to accept the Bible as ultimate truth, I think there needs to be some justification of this. You seem to be slipping into presuppositional apologetics. That never gets anywhere, in my experience.

But anyway, we now get to the death of Jesus and what its all about. Or rather, you start with "the atonement" and assume that Jesus death has atoning power. Again, I think you've jumped ahead of yourself here. Not all the gospels claim Jesus death has atoning power. The concept is absent in Luke-Acts as I have blogged about in the past.

When we get to the question of "Why did He die?" I agree with you that Hitchens created a straw man caricature of the Christian concept of the atonement, but I think there are issues with the very notion of the atonement that other 'new' atheists are right to question. You say that "He was suffering in our place" as if that somehow solves the problem. Why do we deserve suffering and death? (Not merely one or the other, but both, apparently.) What is it about sin that requires suffering to repay the debt? And how can an innocent party take the penalty for the guilty in a just court?

Suppose someone 'sins' against you by crashing into your car and writing it off. In order to fix that situation, all that is needed is that you get a replacement car, and perhaps a bit of financial compensation to cover the inconvenience. While you probably do want the guilty party to suffer in some way for this, you'll probably be reasonably satisfied when someone else (the insurance company) pays the bills. Here it is entirely justified to have a substitute pay the price.

But suppose someone 'sins' against you by murdering your children. There actually is no way to repay that debt. Nobody can replace the lost child, not even if someone were somehow able to give you more children, this wouldn't repair the damage. Here, if the guilty party goes free and a substitute takes the penalty, there is no justice. It doesn't matter how much pain or even death is imposed on the substitute, nothing can repair the damage. Indeed, inflicting pain and death on an innocent party only serves to make the injustice greater, not less.

Atonement theology confuses these two different types of substitution. It is claimed that we have sinned against God in the latter manner, hurting him in a way equivalent to murder. Yet the payment follows the former manner, assuming that justice can be served by letting the innocent pay. The justice of the cross is no justice at all.

You ask, "After all, who would want to live in a universe where there was no justice?" This is just begging the question. We don't have a range of universes to pick from. We only have this one. Whether we want it to be just or not has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not it is just. From observation, it would seem that there actually is no justice. Innocent people are born, live their lives in misery and famine and then die. Meanwhile others are born into privilege, become mean and selfish, exploit others, make money, live a long life of luxury and die, peacefully in their sleep, at an old age. You can invent a postmortem judgement, heaven and hell to try and restore justice to the grand picture, but without evidence, that really is just wishful thinking. Any finite problem can be solved by an imaginary, infinite and unseen counterweight, but without any evidence for the counterweight, it is 'just a theory' (and not in the scientific sense of the word!).

Anyway, on the subject of sin, we now get to your 'simple experiment': "see if you can go one whole week without saying, doing, or thinking anything bad." You then ask "Why do we find that impossible?" I'll tell you why we find it impossible, because the society that we live in (which derives its morality in large part from 'Christian values') defines many normal and natural aspects of human nature as 'sin' or 'bad'. By nature we are made to try to satisfy our desires, whether for food, sex, or position in society. It is not wrong to desire any of these things, but the bible has branded the desires themselves as sinful, even if they are never acted upon. Part of growing up to function in a group society is learning when not to act on those desires. One of the terrible things the church has done countless times in history is to convince people who have literally done nothing wrong, that their very thoughts are sinful, the ones they haven't acted upon. Indeed, that their very human nature is sinful. Some people haven't been able to live with the pressure of that guilt and there have been many casualties along the way.

You now move on to hell. As I said above, hell is just an unseen, theoretical counterweight. Without evidence, of which you offer none, the argument is worthless. "Jesus suffered hell so that we don't have to." Really? I don't think that's even in the bible!

The message that Christ died in my place is powerful and can be liberating, unless you think about it too much. As soon as you ask the 'Why?' and 'How?' questions it all becomes a bit less certain, and loses its power. I'm more of the opinion that belief that Jesus has paid for the burden of your sins, can effectively reduce the psychological burden of guilt (a guilt that is probably there because of the church's teaching in the first place). There doesn't need to be any reality to it. That is why faith is so important. Not because its true, but because faith itself works, on a psychological level at least. Which is why it works in all religions, maybe not for everybody, but for some.

So grant the non existence of the devil for a moment... and no hell, no sin and no damnation... and no God, no atonement, and no saviour... take away the imaginary, infinite and unseen counterweights... then look at the world. Doesn't it look just like the sort of jumbled chaos you'd expect if there weren't supernatural beings in control of everything?

You end with Mark 10:45, one of the verses that Luke could have used when he was working up Mark into his longer gospel, but chose not to use. Have you ever wondered why? Its worth thinking about.

Until next time,

R.

Magnificent Obsession by David Robertson (a response, Part 1)

Dear D,

I've been reading your book "Magnificent Obsession" and I'd like to make a few comments on it. I'm writing this "review" (OK, so really its a response) in the form of a letter, mostly because your book chapters are written in letter format, but also because I think its quite likely that (unlike most of the book reviews I do on this blog) you might actually read this and will probably respond. (Yes, your reputation does precede you!) 

You might not remember me, but I've been in your church in Dundee on a few occasions (not for quite a few years now) as I'm friends with some of your congregation, both current and former members. 

As you'll see if you browse the previous posts on this blog, I've been a practicing and committed Christian since my teens in the 1980s, but over the past decade or so I've wrestled with a lot of issues to do with faith, belief, God, Jesus, the bible, and how all of them fit into reality. I started with the agenda of simply wanting to know the truth, in the hope that the truth would, indeed, set me free. Over the past decade, however, I (along with the readers of this blog) have witnessed a progressive and ongoing erosion of my faith. This wasn't intentional from the outset, but is rather the honest re-evaluation of my beliefs in the light of my study of the bible, and various books, writings and discussions on both sides of the 'God debate'. 

Anyway, all this by means of introduction. Lets get to thinking about your book. 

You seem, at the outset, to imagine yourself to have a different agenda to other apologists, and perhaps a different audience too, but I have to say that, much like almost all apologetics, this book is most likely to be read by those who are already (Evangelical) Christians and will serve to reinforce their already established beliefs. Of course, I expect a small number of non-Christians and atheist/agnostic types might read it too, but mostly for the challenge of 'debunking' it; I'm not sure they'll be swayed too much. The book is also being read by folk like me, somewhere in the middle ground, who've heard you on the Unbelievable show a few times... 

In Chapter 1, "Man", you aim to show that Jesus is (not was) a real person. As real to you as your own wife is. I once expressed similar sentiments myself, but came to realise that the comparison is not good. I can (literally) see my wife, I can (literally) hear her speaking to me, I can (literally) touch her. Occasionally I trust my feelings regarding her and she has to point out that I've completely misread what she says or what she wants. My feelings can be wrong, and frequently are. But with Jesus, all we have is an (unchanging) book, our feelings and our interpretative framework. If our feelings or interpretation are wrong, we have no way of knowing this. If our feelings come entirely from chemical impulses in our physiology, we have no way of distinguishing this from the 'promptings' of the Holy Spirit, if such exist. This is not analogous to a relationship with a person. A person can correct you even when your feelings are wrong.

But considering that this is apparently the stated intent of Chapter 1, you move rather rapidly from the subjective experience of Jesus now to the (slightly) more solid ground of the historical Jesus. Your evidence and reasoning here are not new, or particularly compelling, and you do quite a lot of appealing to authority, but anyway, on to the evidence. 

You present three pieces of non-biblical evidence for the historical Jesus. You mention Serapion, without presenting what he said. Probably just as well, as the evidence is very weak. He (writing at an unknown time between the destruction of Jerusalem and the 3rd century) mentions the execution of a Jewish "wise king" and nothing else. No name, no location, and the text suggests this occurred immediately before the destruction of Jerusalem. This might have nothing to do with Jesus, yet you suggest this is evidence. You also quote the rather late evidence of Tacitus. All this really tells us is that, by the beginning of the 2nd century, there were "Christians" who believed in a Christ who had been crucified by Pilate. These beliefs were attested some three or four generations after the alleged event. Nobody doubts that there was Christian belief in the 2nd century. This isn't evidence for any actual events occurring some 90 years earlier than the document was written. Even supposing that Serapion was referring to Jesus, all these two sources really give us is evidence for two things:

1. that there was a man, known as "Christ", who was executed, and
2. that there was a Christian religion in the early 2nd century.

I have to say that neither of these facts is particularly controversial. Almost everyone who knows anything about Christianity, but is not a Christian, will happily endorse both these statements.

You also quote the disputed passage from Josephus. Most 'critical' scholars appear to think that this is at least partially a Christian forgery. Origen certainly knew nothing about this passage, so some suggest it was added after his time. Josephus, whose job more or less required him to consider Vespasion as "lord", would never have said that Jesus was the Christ or Messiah, so that line -at least- is a Christian insertion. Given that, this passage only really shows that later believers in Christ were willing to change documents they copied to fit their own agendas. It gives us no information about a historical person. And that's really all there is outside of the Bible...

I've read thorough and compelling analysis of these passages in the 'new-atheist' literature, and your brief mention of them here does not provide enough reasoning to make me reconsider these passages as having anything useful to say about the historical person of Jesus. So to find him we have to trust the New Testament.

Of course, you do trust the NT accounts, without really giving your readers much justification for doing this. A serious historian can't take a book which claims a man walked on water or transmuted water into wine as being a reliable historical document. Our first approach must be one of scepticism, but you jump over this and assert that there is "no substantive reason to doubt" that these documents are eye-witness testimony. Well, to even the casual observer there are loads of reasons to doubt this, firstly the outrageous claims in the books, then the fact that they appear to have copied each other and changed bits of the things they copied to fit their own agendas, and also the fact that Jesus in the 4th gospel sounds almost nothing like the Jesus of the other three.

Now I'm not following the "nineteenth century paradigm of 'miracles don't happen'" here, I began all this firmly believing in the miracles and it was through a study of the unreliable reportage in the gospels that I ever came to doubt them.

Finally, in this first chapter, you (rather oddly) jump to the subject of the virgin birth. If this happened, as you say, it would define history. But two contradictory birth stories don't really make a very strong case. Yes, the authors of Matthew and Luke both appear to believe that Jesus was virgin born, but Mark, John, Paul and the other writers of the NT don't mention it, so it doesn't appear too foundational for them. You conclude with a couple of anecdotes of prodigals returning to faith. Yes, it happens. Hindus also become Muslims, Christians become Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. Anecdotes prove nothing.

So the odd thing in chapter 1 is that you don't support your main claim, that Jesus is real, with even a single anecdote from your own experience. We end this chapter having established that Jesus might have been a real person and that some people, some time after his lifetime believed outrageous things about him. What you haven't yet provided is any evidence that these outrageous claims are actually true.

In Chapter 2, you turn to the subject of "Miracles". You start off by poo-pooing the atheist caricature of blind faith. Fair enough. I know plenty of Christians who believe stuff because of the evidence of their experiences. You have a headache, somebody prays for you, the headache goes away, you have evidence that prayer for healing works. Of course the cause-effect chain might not be as clear cut as it appears to the believer, but to deny experience is pointless. But Christian faith is not, as you say, merely 'based on knowledge', it is based primarily on the bible and then, somewhat secondarily, on an interpretation of the evidence perceived through a biblical mindset. I've blogged before about the lack of a negative feedback loop in the Christian mindset. You pray, God answers, faith is boosted. You pray, no answer, faith is not diminished. Whichever way you slice it, if positive experiences boost faith and negative ones do nothing, then the net effect will always be to boost faith, even if the positives are only coincidence. Anyway, I seem to be straying away from what you said in your book.

The question at hand regards God. If there is a God (or there are gods) then miracles must be considered a possibility. Although, I must say even if there is a God, that doesn't necessarily imply that there must be miracles. So we can't simply assume that miracles can't or don't happen. Fine. I agree. Evidence for miracles amounts to evidence for God, not necessarily your God, but let's not go there just now.

Miracles might happen today. Miracles might have happened in the past. Either way, what constitutes evidence for a miracle? One thing that doesn't - in itself - provide any evidence for a miracle having occurred is somebody telling a story that a miracle occurred. By their very nature, miracles are rare events. Made up stories are rather common. So even if there are real miracles, the balance of probability is that any story claiming a miracle occurred is most likely fiction. The bible doesn't get special pleading here. The stories recorded here of miracles are probably fiction unless they can be verified somehow.

And there's the problem the apologist faces, we have no verification mechanism to prove miracles in the past. We could prove (some of) them if they occur now, but not the ones in the past. We have no evidence, only stories.

Did Jesus perform miracles? Well, the stories say so. His followers several generations later believed that he did. But that is no evidence. Throughout the 1980s and 90s there were hundreds if not thousands of people who believed that Elvis was still alive. Today there are thousands of folk who believe that the American government destroyed their own buildings on 9/11 2001. Widespread belief does not make a claim true. And holding a belief within a short period after the event does not make it any more likely to be true.

The historian only has probability to deal with. If something occurs today, there's a good chance it happened in the past. If miracles happen today, we can believe they happened in the past too. That is the 'principle of analogy'. We know that people are apparently healed by faith healers today, so we can assume that this happened in the past as well. We know there are exorcists who apparently cast out demons today, so we can assume this happened in the past as well. We know that people cannot walk on water, so we must assume that this cannot have been possible in the past. Jesus could well have been know as a healer and exorcist. He maybe even had a reputation as a miracle worker. But we have no access to what happened, so cannot conclude the truth of the stories.

I'm astonished that you take the words of Quadratus as true. He claims that there are 'some' (i.e. more than one) who had been raised from the dead by Jesus still alive some 90 years later. Unless they were infants at the time of their resurrections, it is almost inconceivable that this story is true, and even then it is highly doubtful. This first apologist is doing the same as many of his successors - exaggerating and embellishing his story to try and persuade his audience.

You do the same. You speak of 'hundreds' at the funeral of Lazarus. Where is that in the bible? In John 11v31 it implies that all those present for the resurrection of Lazarus had previously been in the house of Mary and Martha. They must have had a very big house!

Citing the 5000 who were fed or the hundreds who witnessed Lazarus being raised as evidence is just silly. We have no access to these people, we have no names, we have no independent testimony. They are just part of the story. As Robert M. Price frequently points out, using the characters in the story as supporting evidence is much like arguing for the existence of the Emerald City using the evidence of the Yellow Brick Road; of course there must be an Emerald City, where else would the Yellow Brick Road go? Even the first readers of the gospels had no way of finding any of the alleged witnesses, they were too late and probably too far away (some say Mark was most likely written in Rome, some claim Matthew was written in Antioch, almost everyone agrees that John was written late, and so on). If they couldn't confirm the miracle claims, what hope have we got?

The problem we face is that miracles don't happen today. Sure, healings happen, but not resurrections, walks on water, miraculous multiplications of food, etc. I've never seen good evidence for them. You don't claim they do. So we have a problem. We simply cannot verify unique events in history.

You build a theology of why Jesus might do miracles, but all this is built on the presupposition of the Christian God and Christian theology. Given that this is is the question we are actually trying to answer, your reasoning seems a bit circular, much like the accusation you point at some atheists out there.

Blimey, this response is getting quite long, and we're only 20% of the way through the book. Sorry about that, but you can't really respond to an entire book in just a few words.

Moving on we get to Chapter 3, "Messenger". Handily enough, after playing the nazi card, you begin this chapter with a summary of the book so far. You admit you're building a cumulative case, and assume the reader has accepted that Jesus was a real historical person, the bible accounts are accurate history and that miracles are possible. As you can tell from what I've said above, I don't accept these foundations of your cumulative case. 

You assert that the message of Jesus is the same as the message of the Old Testament, without discussing any specific passages, which is a bit sloppy. If you're making a case for something, you actually need to make the case. Then you cite Richard Bauckham as if that settles the 'eyewitnesses' argument. It really doesn't. I've read Bauckham and remain unconvinced. 

But the question remains, where did the teaching come from if not from Jesus? True, this is a problem for the skeptic. Maybe it originates from one man. Maybe Jesus, maybe someone else. Maybe it's a collection of sayings from multiple sources. There is no compelling reason to assume it all must have come from one man. And your argument that it couldn't have been the disciples as they were 'unlettered men' is fallacious - none of the gospels claim to be written by anyone in particular and only church tradition links the names to the gospels. It is clear that some of the gospels were written by very educated men, perhaps men who could have fabricated an inspiring central character for their writings.

You assume (rather than demonstrate) that the teaching attributed to Jesus originated from him. You briefly discuss the 'problematic' passages and talk about interpreting the bible with the bible. Basically this means you can explain away the bits of the bible that you don't like or are plainly nonsense, using the bits of the bible that you like, or which seem more reasonable. If the bible is an edited collection of various sayings by diverse people it would make perfect sense that there would be some disagreements in the text and some contradictions in there. It is only your presupposition that won't let you view it this way. 

There is an exceptionally clear command from Jesus in the gospel - give everything you have to the poor. It is clear and unambiguous, so why do I not know any Christians who have done this (yes, I know of one or two, but these are the exception rather than the rule)? It is because most Christians find ways to get around this by reading stuff into the context (so it doesn't apply to me!). All Christians 'pick and choose' the verses they like and 'interpret' the verses they don't like accordingly. If your starting point is the gospel of Matthew, you end up in a very different place than if your starting point is the letter to the Romans. This is why there are so many different denominations - they each hold a different set of passages as 'primary' and let those interpret the 'secondary' passages, but the choice of primary versus secondary is rather arbitrary.

But what is the message? Well, you side-step this and ask the reader to read the bible. Then you stop being an apologist for a bit and turn into a preacher - rather than defending the gospel message, you simply present it. So there's not much more to say about this chapter. I'll move on to the next chapter, which is pretty meaty, in the next post.

Cheers,

R.

Lean not on your own understanding?

Proverbs 3v5-6 says:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight."

While these verses have been etched into my brain since before I could read, I was surprised to discover that the version I remember is a hybrid of the NIV and RSV versions. I remember the verse as above, but with 'acknowledge' (RSV) in it rather than 'submit' (NIV). But anyway...

This verse presupposes that there is only one Lord, you already trust this Lord and that this Lord is able to control what happens in your life.

Where this verse falls down is for the person who has doubts. Or for the person who is presented with multiple 'Lords' to choose between. Or for the person who is not sure if there are any 'Lords' who are trustworthy, or can control what happens in life.

You see, that person, needs to use their own understanding to weigh the evidence and decide whether or not there is a Lord and whether or not that Lord is worthy of trust in all things. They can't not lean on their own understanding!

Well, I guess they could, but then it would be a 'gut instinct' type decision, and they are rarely trustworthy...

This verse keeps committed Christians committed to Christianity, because it requires them to surrender their intellect to something they may never have considered in an intellectual manner anyway. This verse prevents the Christian from asking (legitimate?) questions, and actually seeking the truth. It assumes you already have the truth, so there is no need to go looking.

Somewhere along the way I started leaning on my own understanding. I'm not quite sure when that happened. Christians will say that's where I went wrong. Skeptics will say I did the right thing. I think that my own understanding is reasonably trustworthy, but Christians will tell me that its not, that its part of my fallen nature, and my human reason should not be trusted. Blindly trusting in the claims of an ancient book is much better, of course.

Curiously, Christian apologists appeal to the reason and understanding of their skeptical audience. Human understanding is a good thing when its used to bring you towards God, but an untrustworthy thing when it takes you away from Him. Or, in many cases, leads you to question whether there even is a Him. I'm not sure you can have that both ways.

"If Christianity is true, then people don't really die..."

I heard the Unbelievable radio show featuring David Smalley and Frank Turek last month. It annoyed me as both contributors seemed to keep misunderstanding and misrepresenting the views of the other. Possibly deliberately. But for some reason I then went on to download the Dogma Debate episodes that were recorded after this, which again featured Smalley (he's the host of Dogma Debate) and Turek. That's episodes 298 and 299 of Dogma Debate. Once again they seemed to misunderstand each other, although I think that for the most part it was Smalley who did most of the misunderstanding. But anyway, I don't want to review either show, I just want to mention one thing that Turek said in part 2 of the Dogma Debate show. About 1 hr, 16 minutes into episode #299, Turek says:

"If Christianity is true, then people don't really die, they just change location."

Wow. That's a strong statement. And I know exactly where Turek is coming from here, I used to believe much the same thing myself. But when I heard it expressed this way, coming just a few minutes after the discussion of what Christ achieved by dying on the cross, I suddenly saw a problem. 

Using the logic of the above statement, if Christianity is true, then Jesus did not die on the cross, he merely changed location. It suddenly seems a lot less of a thing that Jesus changed location for your sins, how could changing location atone for anything?

Where was Jesus in the days following his death 'at the ninth hour' on Good Friday, and his resurrection at dawn on the first day of the week? The harrowing of hell isn't actually in the Bible (there's a compelling case that the 1 Peter 3 verse is a mistranslation, and refers to Enoch, not Jesus). If Jesus changed location, where did he go? Does it actually matter where he went? Surely what matters is whether he lived or died?

Was he actually dead? Did the Trinity become a Duality for 2 or 3 days? I don't know anyone who would actually claim that. Fundamentally, Christians believe that Jesus was somewhere and was (in at least some sense of the word) alive during that time. So, essentially, Jesus did not die on the cross. Sure, his earthly body died, but his Spirit remained alive somewhere, and then changed location back into his resurrection body a couple of days later. So what was the sacrifice? Jesus took on flesh when he incarnated, and that flesh died on the cross, but Jesus himself was eternal, did not die, and lives eternally, at least if we believe some of the claims of the NT.

Sounds to me that if the above claim of Christianity is true, then other claims of Christianity must be false...