The Living God?

I found myself wondering about the nature of God the other day. Specifically, what does it mean when the Bible (e.g. Deut 5:26, Josh 3:10, 1 Sam 17:26, 2 Kings 19:4, Psalm 42:2, Isaiah 37:4, Jer 10:10, Dan 6:20, and elsewhere) describes God/YHWH as 'The Living God'?

One of the problems here is that it is actually really hard to define 'life'. Dictionary.com offers a huge list of definitions, the first two of which are:

1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally. 
2. the sum of the distinguishing phenomena of organisms, especially metabolism, growth, reproduction, and adaptation to environment.

Other definitions are a bit woolier than those. Basically, when we apply the word 'life' to an animal or plant we are talking about something which is growing, adapting, consuming, excreting, changing, etc.

But what happens when we apply that same word to God? Is God growing? Does he adapt? Does he consume and excrete? Fundamentally, does he change? The book of Hebrews suggests that he does not. So if he never changes, in what sense can we claim that he is alive?

Growing up in church I heard sermons claiming that the emphasis here was to contrast our God, who is real and alive, with the gods of the surrounding nations, who are dead or imaginary.  But, of course, I eventually realised that nobody believes their own gods are dead or imaginary, surely everyone believes that their own gods are real and alive? It really wouldn't surprise me to discover that worshipers of Dagon (or whoever) back in OT times made jokes about worshipers of YHWH following an imaginary or dead god. If that's the point, it's just propaganda.

But suppose that's not it. Suppose the point is not to say our God is alive and yours is dead. What would the meaning be then? If a god is worth worshiping, surely we can assume that he's alive, we don't have to keep repeating it? One possible meaning, that I've heard discussed on podcasts, but have not found much about in written form, is perhaps that there was a dying-and-rising-god mythology about Yahweh long before anyone told stories about Jesus dying and rising. The story goes that the dying-and-rising myth was a common trope in many cultures and religions, and it's possible that it was part of the pre-exilic Hebrew religion as well. Yahweh was considered 'the Living God' because for a time he was believed not to have been living at all, but came back from that, and that is something worthy of worship. It's not just 'our God is alive, your god is dead', but rather 'our God has power over death, can you god do that?' Of course, this is all speculation, but it is interesting.

Beyond the question of 'in what sense is God alive?' lies the opposite question of 'in what sense was Jesus dead between Good Friday and Easter Sunday?'

I think most Christians have never really thought this through - I certainly didn't when I was a Christian. If they'd stop and think about it, I think most believers probably would come up with something like this: The man Jesus, before crucifixion, was made up of a living body and some form of indwelling soul or spirit. When he was crucified, the indwelling soul or spirit left the body and the body died, but the indwelling soul or spirit didn't die and went somewhere else for a few days. When the resurrection happened, the indwelling soul or spirit was put into a renewed (and improved)  reanimated version of the human body and Jesus became a walking, talking, living being once more. I guess for most believers in that sort of thing, the indwelling soul or spirit is the real person of Jesus and the body was just a body. So in this picture of things, the real Jesus didn't die on the cross. The real Jesus just went somewhere else for a few days. Either to harrow hell, as some would have it, or to go to paradise as Luke's Jesus says from the cross, maybe both, I don't know how long it takes to harrow hell. But if he didn't really die on the cross, then how can his death atone for anything?

The more I dig into it, the less sense concepts of living and dying make in the Christian worldview. Maybe I need to read some Thomas Altizer and get to grips with the idea of what would happen if God really died on the cross, and stayed dead! But that's something to think of some other time.

Dr Sean George’s miracle and the God behind it

On a recent edition of the Unbelievable show, the story of Dr Sean George was presented by Sean himself and then discussed with some sceptics. I’ve mentioned this story before when it was on the Hinge podcast, but this new show goes into the story in far more detail. To get the whole story, you’ll need to listen to the podcast. But, in brief, Dr George’s story goes like this:

He had a heart attack in a remote part of Western Australia, staff at a small medical clinic tried CPR, etc., to revive him for an extended time, but eventually gave up and declared him dead. When his wife turned up, she prayed for him and his heart restarted. Despite being dead for an extended period of time, and having multiple organ failures, he eventually made a full recovery with no brain damage. He is back to being a professional medical doctor. There are a few other details in the story about third parties receiving ‘revelations’ and knowing what would happen apparently in advance of the events.

So it sounds like a miracle happened. Dr George certainly believed that God did it. But let’s think about this.

Suppose, for a moment, that Sean George is right in his belief. God intervened, restored him to life and miraculously prevented all the problems, loss of brain function, etc., that usually follow from lack of oxygen flow to the brain for multiple minutes. What does this tell us about God? It tells us that God can intervene and over-ride human physiology, saving those who would otherwise die. It tells us that God can and does give direct revelation to individuals about the future, and about things happening elsewhere in the world. It tells us that God can do these things, but that most of the time he doesn’t do them. He can, but he doesn’t. Most people who experienced what Sean George did have simply died. Even though some of them had someone praying for them. What does this tell us about God? It tells us that he has power, but generally chooses not to use it. He probably won’t save you when you ask. He’ll probably let bad things happen to you, even when he could stop them. That doesn’t actually sound like a God worthy of worship. Would you worship and pray to a God who, most likely, will not act upon those prayers and will, most likely, let you suffer and die, even though he could intervene? Why worship a God like that?

I guess the reason most Christians worship a God like that is because of a future, post-mortem hope in the resurrection. The belief that God can and will raise them to glory, even after they have died. There’s a huge assumption here. We’ve already seen that God generally does not do the things that he can do. So even if he raised Jesus to a resurrection body and glory in heaven, this is absolutely no guarantee that he will do the same for them, or for you. Sure, some of the bible writers made statements that make the ‘evidence’ of Jesus’ resurrection sound like a promise to do the same for you, but a written document is no guarantee, even if it claims to be. The same document says that if the church elders pray for you, you will be healed. Time and time again this promise has been proven false.

So if Sean George’s miracle working God is real, this in no way guarantees anyone will get healing in this lifetime, or a glorious afterlife in the future!

But if that God doesn’t exist, isn’t Sean George’s story so remarkable that it must prove that something ‘supernatural’ is going on? Even if that God isn’t real, surely the truth is out there?

I guess that depends on what you mean by ‘supernatural’. Certainly something weird and unusual happened, but was it beyond natural? In other words, was it impossible by natural means?

The thing is, it certainly happened. I'm not a hyper skeptic. I think that enough people have confirmed the story to demonstrate its overall reliability as a real event. Sean George's heart stopped for an extended period of time. Most other people who have heart stoppages for that length of time do not recover and live fully restored lives. But was he properly dead?

I'm currently writing another blog post about what it means to be alive and what it means to be dead. It'll get published eventually. The problem we face is that it is actually quite hard to define life and death. Life is often defined in terms of death, and death is often defined in terms of life, it's confusing. Clearly, if you define 'death' as 'the state from which no return to life is possible', then Sean was never truly dead. He may have exhibited no bodily (or brain?) function, but that does not mean that return to life is impossible, and Sean is an example which proves that. Sean George's return to life and full health is certainly remarkable, definitely rare, but seems merely to be right at the tail end of the bell curve of possibility. As I say, it certainly happened. And because it happened, it is clearly not impossible. It was exceedingly unlikely, but still on the bell curve of possibility, so could be still within the remit of nature. We don't need to look for a supernatural agent, we simply need to redefine our bounds of knowledge of what is natural.

But. Other weird things happened around the extremely unlikely but still naturally possible resuscitation. People claim to have received revelations from God which seem to have come true, the resuscitation itself occurred coincidentally (as in, at the same time as) with Sean's wife turning up and praying, and so on. Does that not suggest something supernatural was going on?

I'm not going to go as far as 'supernatural', but I'll certainly go as far as 'not currently explained by science'. The problem with science is that it can only be used to investigate the repeatable and the fairly frequent. You can't form and test scientific hypotheses based on a one off event. Weird and rare things happen all the time. Charles Fort and the Forteans who came after him have chronicled loads of weird and inexplicable stuff. Is it supernatural? Probably not. Is it rare? Yes.

But I don't think you need to invoke an infinite, all powerful God to explain the inexplicable. For me, the key to this story is that Mrs George initiated the healing. Doctors and nurses couldn't do it, but she turns up and - wham - he is healed. Why do we need to invoke God here? At face value, Mrs George seems to be the one with the healing power (as I said before).

Maybe we'll never know what actually caused the healing. But one thing is clear to me, if it was a God who intervened here, and yet choses not to intervene in millions of other, similar situations, then that God is not a God worthy of our faith.

The Resurrection and the 'Minimal Facts' approach.

James, brother of someone.

I've recently read "The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus" by Gary Habermas and Mike Licona, and discussed that book on a weekly basis with one or two Christians for a few weeks in November last year. The case presented in this book seems to be the best case that Evangelical Christianity has that the resurrection of Jesus was a true, historical event.

I've touched on this subject before (in these blog posts from 2012: 1, 2, 3, & 4), but that was over 5 years ago and I have read much more on the subject since, so it may be worth revisiting my thoughts on the subject now.

The case rests squarely on the shoulders of four or five 'minimal facts', and the discussion goes from there. I guess we need to start by asking what 'facts' are. Dictionary.com defines fact as:

1. something that actually exists; reality; truth
2. something known to exist or to have happened
3. a truth known by actual experience or observation
4. something said to be true or supposed to have happened

This doesn't help us much as the final definition of 'fact' includes the possibility that a fact may, in fact, not be true. To claim that something is a fact, is not necessarily to demonstrate that it is true!

The astounding thing about the 'minimal facts' presented in this argument, is that Habermas and Licona do not, at any point in this book, set out to prove that the minimal facts are, in fact, true facts. There are layers of reasoning and explanation and 'proof' for various things in this book, but they are all based on the assumption that the four (or five) minimal facts are true.

The argument goes like this, if these four (or five) facts are true, then the resurrection appears to be more probable than the alternatives. For the most part I agree with this argument. Where it falls down, of course, are the four (or five) alleged facts.

So what are these 'facts'? Well they are:

1. Jesus died by crucifixion
2. After this, his disciples believed that they saw him alive again
3. Paul, the persecutor of the church, became a Christian following what he believed to be an encounter with the risen Christ
4. James, the skeptic brother of Jesus, became a Christian following what he believed to be an encounter with the risen Christ
5. Jesus's tomb was found empty

The last of these is put out of sequence, because this is the least attested 'fact' in there and is not relied upon in the book. Habermas & Licona's case is made using the first four 'facts' and the fifth is simply used as the icing on the cake, as it were.

For Habermas & Licona, these are established as 'facts' because the majority of biblical scholars hold them to be true, irrespective of their personal beliefs. That is, even skeptical and non-believing scholars hold these to be true.

I think that there is a huge selection bias in this. What sort of person becomes a biblical scholar? Only someone raised in a Christian context, who probably began their studies as some flavour of believer. Even if they then abandoned their faith, they most likely started their study of the bible with presumptions that some (at least) of the biblical stories were true and historical.

If you took a thousand Islamic scholars and asked them if Mohammed encountered the angel Gabriel in a cave, I'll bet that the majority think this is historical fact. Just because a majority believe something does not establish it as fact. 

I'll bet if you took all the religious leaders in Judea in 40AD and asked them if Jesus was the son of God, the overwhelming majority would say no he was not. Would that establish the truth? No. So why should a headcount establish historical truth here?

The 'minimal facts' argument is only a valid argument if you can defend the four (or five) facts without an appeal to authority or majority. Habermas and Licona do not do this, so their case is still unproven.

So why don't I believe these supposed facts? Lets take them one by one, starting with the last.

The Empty Tomb

What evidence have we for the empty tomb? Only the gospel accounts, or later texts which are derivative of them. So the empty tomb can only be considered a historical fact if we can accept that the gospels contain historical information. Habermas & Licona don't even attempt to prove that the gospels contain historical information. They simply assume it, noting that some biblical details can be verified from secular historical sources. Then they go further in suggesting that if there is a historical claim in any book in the bible that cannot be verified from secular sources, we should give the bible the benefit of the doubt and take it on trust that the biblical facts are true. Huh? What kind of historian does this? "The Bible" is a collection of 66 books by multiple authors, many of whom are unknown to us. Even if some of those authors included reliable historical facts in their books, this tells us nothing about the reliability of the authors of the other books. If the book of 2 Kings contains historical information, does this imply that the book of Jonah does? Of course not.

So do the gospels contain historical information? Well, certainly there are characters in the gospels who are known to secular history - two Herods, Pilate, and John the Baptist, but that's about it. Aside from the census, recorded only in Luke, there are no historical events in the gospels that can be confirmed using independent sources. Not even the death of Jesus, as we'll see below. So we really have no way of knowing if most of the stories on the gospels have any connection to real historical events.

However, the main problem with the empty tomb is that we would never have heard of it had it not been part of the larger story of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is not independent data. Given that, we can't use this as evidence for the 'historical' resurrection of Jesus as it only exists as part of a story that makes this claim. Trying to argue from the empty tomb to the resurrection is like trying to prove that the exhaust ports on the Death Star were badly designed, using the evidence that Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star by firing a torpedo into it. The two 'facts' are part of the same story and you can't have one without the other. If one of them is questionable, the other must also be questionable.

There is also no case to be made for multiple attestation within the gospels here, as a couple of centuries of textual criticism have convincingly demonstrated that the account of the crucifixion in Mark is dependent on the Psalms, the accounts in Matthew and Luke are dependent on Mark, and that the account in John is probably dependent on Luke. The crucifixion looks like a literary construct, and the empty tomb forms part of the same (fictive?) story.

It doesn't matter if a whole heap of biblical scholars believe this to be history, I'm not convinced.

The death of Jesus by crucifixion

Let's jump to the first (and least contested) of the minimal facts next; Jesus death by crucifixion. Pretty much everyone accepts this as true, right? Indeed, but it suffers from the same problems as the empty tomb - there are no stories of the death of Jesus that don't go on to involve the resurrection. All accounts of the death of Jesus are followed by major miracle claims, and claims that Jesus is or was divine. You really can't separate one from the other. If the stories of Jesus dying on the cross are taken as facts written by reliable historians, then the resurrection is also a fact written by a reliable historian! You can't assume one to be a fact of history, and the other to be questionable. If the resurrection is questionable, then Jesus death by crucifixion is just as questionable. If one is fact, the other should be assumed to be fact. We have no independent data about one that does not also concern the other!

All secular references to the death of Jesus are entirely dependent on the stories told by believing Christians. And as far as we can tell, the earliest believers believed that he was raised just as much as they believed that he died. If they were wrong about one, they could equally be wrong about the other. The observation that one story is miraculous and the other non-miraculous is irrelevant here. In a story containing many unbelievable and impossible events, we can't simply take all the mundane and possible events as probably true.

To establish that Jesus died by crucifixion we would need an account of his life and death that did not feature miracles and did not feature any resurrection claims. As far as I know, no such evidence exists. Literally everything we know about the life and death of Jesus comes to us from the accounts of those who fundamentally believed that he had triumphed over death and had risen. If they were wrong about that, what else were they wrong about?

The conversion of James

I'm even less convinced by this claim than by the empty tomb, even though more biblical scholars are apparently convinced by it. The problem with this 'fact' is that it is not part of the biblical story, even if it is apparently derived from there. I wrote so much on this 'fact' that I decided to make it a separate blog post in its own right, which you can read here. Suffice it to say that I very much doubt the 'fact' of the conversion of James from skeptic to church leader.

The conversion of Paul

This is probably the strongest of the five minimal facts. Most people, even those who doubt the existence of Jesus, believe that there was a guy called Paul in the 1st century, who wrote epistles. That guy claimed, in those letters, to have been a persecutor of the early Christians, and that he had a transformative experience of the risen Christ, becoming an apostle and firm believer in the resurrection.

I read Hermann Detering's book "The Fabricated Paul" a few years ago (indeed, I have an unpublished, half written blog post about it, which may surface eventually, although considering it has been half written since 2013, it may never see the light of day). In this book, Detering makes the case that none of the epistles attributed to Paul were actually written by anyone called Paul. While I'm not entirely convinced by Detering's argument (he makes an excellent case that several of the epistles were written by different authors from each other, but can't really prove that none of them was authentic), I do accept that some of the other epistles were definitely not written by the guy who wrote 1 Corinthians. I'm currently working through Robert M. Price's "The amazing colossal apostle", which makes much the same case, but goes one step further than Detering in claiming that there was no Paul at all. I'll possibly offer some thoughts on that once I get to the end of it.

While both the above books possibly go further than I am willing to go, I am convinced that some of the epistles by 'Paul' were written by others (later) in the name of Paul. That is, some of the epistles are forgeries and pseudepigraphal. That probably entails that some of the historical or biographical 'facts' in some of the epistles are fictional or, certainly, were related by persons who were not there and did not witness any of the events claimed.

Given that, it is tricky to piece together a coherent picture of what the 'real' Paul did, said, experienced, wrote, etc. Even if we take the epistles as all being authentic, it is quite hard to piece together a biography of the letter writer. In what way did he persecute the church? This is unclear. When did he do this? Also unclear. What made his stop the persecution? Fairly unclear. To iron out the uncertainties in the life of Paul, most folk turn to the Acts of the Apostles and find his story there. But there are good reasons not to take Acts as a reliable history. For one thing, it actually contradicts things said in the name of Paul in the epistles. For another thing, it presents Paul and Peter as basically having parallel lives - for every miracle Paul experiences, Peter has an identical experience; their preaching is virtually indistinguishable from each other; they say the same things and do the same things. This is not history, this is someone trying to level the playing-field by demonstrating that these two characters are equal. The Acts seminar's primary conclusion was that the book of Acts was a 2nd century fiction, containing virtually no historical data. If they're right about that, then we really know nothing about Paul's 'pre-conversion' life and persecution of the church, and we hardly know anything about his 'conversion' or 'post-conversion' life either.

Was Paul transformed from anti-Christian-persecutor to believing-Christian-apostle through a visionary experience? Maybe. Is there any link we can make between this experience and the real historical Jesus guy who may have died on a cross a few years earlier? Nope.

So what we are left with is a claim of the conversion of someone from one religion to another. That happens all the time, and in no way provides evidence for the truth of the religion that the person ends up believing in.

The resurrection appearances

Finally we get to this one. I find that this is where Habermas and Licona, and others using this argument completely over-state their case to the point of absurdity. The claim is that all the disciples experienced resurrection appearances.

Really? Well, the gospels and Acts chapter 1 have the disciples encountering the risen Jesus. But none of these writings are first-person claims. As far as I know, we have no writings from Andrew, or Thomas, or James son of Alphaeus, or Thaddeus, or Phillip, or whoever relating their alleged experiences. Of course, Paul does, but he never saw Jesus during his lifetime, so he has nothing to confirm that his vision in any way relates to the real Jesus.

We have a few letters claiming to be written by Peter. None of them relate any post-resurrection experiences. They are far more concerned to claim that the author saw Jesus when he was alive the first time. So that doesn't help us. And of course, the authenticity of these letters is debated, so we really have no data supporting the claim that the author of these letters actually had a post-resurrection experience of Jesus.

Once again, the 'fact' of the resurrection appearances really turns out to be simply an unverifiable claim of early Christians which has been repeated many, many times over the past two thousand years.

We don't know what the 'original' disciples experienced, because they did not tell us. And the stories relating what they apparently did experience (and the stories of their subsequent lives, ministries and martyrdoms) are at best second or third had accounts, and quite possibly works of fiction.

In conclusion

So there you have it, for me, none of the five 'minimal facts' stands up to scrutiny. They are all just unverifiable claims, most of which rely on a particularly orthodox reading of the source documents. I'm not sure any of the "facts" approach the standard of 'balance of probability' let alone 'beyond reasonable doubt', so these claims do not prove that the resurrection happened.

Christianity, to be proven true, needs better evidence. I've been looking for it for years and still can't find it.

A guy walks out of a tomb...

Just listened to the recent Unbelievable show featuring 'Science Mike' and a more conventional Christian called JD Walters. I don't have much to say about the show except that on a few occasions Mike referred to the resurrection using phrases along the lines of "Jesus walked out of the tomb..."

Maybe I've been getting the wrong end of the stick all these years, but I always thought that the whole point of the stone being rolled away was to demonstrate that the tomb was actually empty, not to facilitate the risen Christ leaving? Jesus has no problem in the post-resurrection stories of simply appearing in locked rooms, so I had always assumed that the idea was that he could and did vanish (bodily) out of the tomb, and then appeared wherever later on, like on the road to Emmaus.

Do you think he walked out of the tomb?

I always thought that the tomb was empty before the stone was rolled away. Jesus didn't need the stone to be moved in order to get out. The rolling away of the stone was only to allow the witnesses to see an empty tomb.

Magnificent Obsession by David Robertson (a response, Part 3)

Dear D,

While these posts may appear in quick succession, several months have passed since I read the last chunk of your book and formed my thoughts on it, so sorry if this appears a bit disconnected from the previous posts. My comments on the first three chapters of your book can be found here, and my comments on chapter four are here.

Now we get to Chapter 5 "Marvellous" in which you tackle the subject of the resurrection. You believe it happened, and you believe this because you believe that the Biblical stories are true. I don't think you have really given us any story of how you came to believe that these stories are true so far.

For myself, I believed that these stories were true because my family and Church family all believed that these stories were true and managed to embed that belief in me from an early age. I may not have made any personal commitment to be a Christian until I was in my late teens, but the fundamental belief in the truth of the Bible was always there from the word go. I suspect that much the same is true of you. We are both products of a Scottish Christian upbringing.

Suppose you weren't though. Suppose you happened upon this book with no preconceptions about its author or authority. What would it take to convince you that this book conveys truth? I've wrestled with this question in other posts on this blog, so I'll leave it out for now, but I do think there is something in John Loftus's "Outsider test for faith" idea.

Anyway, the resurrection... or rather, sin. You start by talking about sin. Indeed, you get to the doctrine of total depravity quite rapidly. I always find it interesting that the so called 'good news' needs to start with the 'bad theory' - once you've convinced people that they are bad, then you can sell them your way of fixing the perceived problem that you gave them in the first place.

Before really getting into the question of sin, though, you jump (abruptly) to the question of evidence. Your imaginary correspondent apparently raised this question somewhere off stage left. And you skirt around this issue in a really unsatisfying way by saying:

"There is plenty of evidence for what I assert. I can't list it. Whole books have been written..." 

Most of these books you don't cite, so I'm not sure how your reader is supposed to test your claims.

But the central claim of this chapter is that, unlike most of the other things you claim, that you can prove the resurrection. Strong claim. So let's look at your proof.

At least you start from common ground here: "Resurrections just don't happen." At least we agree on that. Then you dismiss a few straw-man theories, the 'swoon' theory, the 'conspiracy' theory and the 'cock-up' theory. All of these theories are bunk, I'll agree with you there, but the fundamental flaw in all of these theories is that they accept some of the details of the gospel story as true and accurate, and only cast doubt on one or two details. This is 19th century rationalism - only people who believe that the Bible is true, but that miracles don't happen have to resort to such theories. How about the theory that the whole thing is fiction? You don't go there. And yet that is the most likely scenario.

Resurrections just don't happen. But stories of resurrections do happen. Loads of them. This story could be complete fiction. Why don't you even consider this 'theory'? Because your responses to all the theories rely on the assumption that some of the details in the gospel stories are true, and from this basis you will attempt to prove that other details in the same stories must also be true.

Your first port of call is Bauckham's book (which I read and reviewed six years ago), which you take to be conclusive proof that the gospels were written by actual eyewitnesses. The assumption is that if someone who was there wrote this, then the story is completely accurate. Really? Read some of the actual eyewitness testimony from the Salem Witch Trials! People who were actually verifiably somewhere at a given point in history can and did report absolute nonsense about what they apparently saw. With the gospels we don't even have that.

Next you raise the old turkey of the women. If this was made up, surely the fabricator would have made a man the central character!? Why? Why would a man go to the tomb? Culturally, it was the women who would go to embalm the body. In the context of the story, it has to be the women who are the first witnesses. The story demands that the women discover the empty tomb, whether the story is true or not.

Then you take the conflicting gospel reports head on and claim that the fact that they disagree with one another somehow makes the accounts more likely to be true. You don't really address the actual irreconcilable differences between the stories, you do broad brush strokes and paint a picture that works. Its a shame that a detailed look at the evidence shows the opposite. Have a look at my post "Why did the angels say what they said?" for more on this.

Next you (once again) use the evidence of some details in the story to demonstrate that other details in the story are true. The if the resurrection appearances are true then the resurrection must also be true. Well, yes, but claiming that 500 nameless people saw Jesus at one unspecified time, in an unspecified location, doesn't really help us much. As far as I know, the only other reference to 500 people (other than in Corinthians) who could have seen the resurrected Jesus comes from the Gospel of Nicodemus which specifies that there were 500 guards placed at the tomb. Not sure I believe that story, maybe the author of 1 Corinthians 15 did...

Finally you cite the evidence that nobody dies for a lie. Well, aside from the fact that that we know some folk have died for lies (Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, springs to mind), this doesn't help us much - the stories of the martyrdoms of the disciples are part of the same literary tradition that contains the Bible stories. Once again, you are using one part of a story to prove another part of the same story.

You close the chapter with anecdotes about people believing in the resurrection. The fact that people believe it is not in doubt. Whether they have good grounds for believing in it is the question, and I'm not sure your case for that is very strong.

Cheers,

R.

"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...

How could Paul know?

I've just been listening to a debate between Atheist Dan Barker and Catholic William Albrecht, which I found on a random podcast while searching for something to do with Dan Barker. The subject of the debate was "Did Jesus rise from the dead?"

Barker's basic case was that historical methods can never lead us to a conclusion that a miracle happened, as they only operate in the realms of probability and repeatability. In general, he gave a good, but hardly spectacular defence of this.

Albrecht, on the other hand set out to prove that not only was Jesus raised from the dead, but that he was raised in a physical body. The main body of the discussion in the debate ended up arguing about the meaning of the phrase 'spiritual body' as used by Paul in several places in his letters. 

Albrecht seemed to think that if he could show that Paul meant something physical by using the phrase "spiritual body" that this would somehow prove the resurrection, and prove it was physical. Barker seemed to think that if he could show that Paul meant that Jesus was raised as a spirit (i.e. non physical) then this would prove that Paul's experience of Jesus was purely in the form of visions, which would not entail any kind of resurrection, physical or otherwise.

I felt that this whole aspect of the debate was utterly irrelevant. Because why should it matter what Paul meant by what he said in the letters? 

How on earth could Paul possibly know anything about the nature of Christ's resurrection body? 

He never knew Jesus pre-crucifixion, and he never met Jesus post-resurrection, except in the form of an appearance or vision. He did not touch Jesus.

So on what basis could Paul say anything at all, with authority, about the physical nature of the post-resurrection Christ? All he knew was what he has seen (but not touched), what others may have told him, what he deduced from the OT scriptures, and what he received by revelation or inspiration.

In a historical investigation of the question, we can't appeal to inspiration, revelation, interpretation of scripture, so the only authority Paul could have on this issue (the physical nature of Christ's resurrected body) would have to have come from others. Perhaps Cephas or James, both of whom Paul mentions speaking to in Jerusalem. Paul never says where he got this information. 

It is debatable whether or not Paul actually meant a physical resurrection, but even if he did believe this, his authority is entirely second hand. Paul believed it because some unspecified person told him. That's not great authority.

And going further down this line of thought, how could many of the people who apparently saw (and may have touched) Jesus in the period between resurrection and ascension could definitely say that his flesh was "incorruptible"? Did anyone try to corrupt it? According to John, Thomas didn't even take Jesus up on the offer of touching him. Nobody could make this claim on experiential grounds. It can only be made on the basis of deduction, revelation, or inspiration.

So how did Paul know? He didn't. He asserted it because it fit with his theology, but Paul's opinion can tell us nothing about whether the resurrection was a historical event.

Something had to happen...?

I've just been listening to last week's Unbelievable podcast, featuring a debate between Bart Ehrman and Simon Gathercole on the subject of "How God became Jesus". I don't have much to say about the debate as a whole, but there was one claim made at about 55 min into podcast which I found to be interesting. While talking about the resurrection and the start of Christianity, the host Justin Brierley said: 

"...you need something to explain why suddenly these very radical views about Jesus were coming from"

To which the guest Simon Gathercole responded:

"I think... everyone thinks that you have to have some kind of 'big bang', because if there wasn't something, then Christianity... the Jesus movement would have fizzled out, just like the Theudas movement fizzled out, just like the Judas the Galilean movement fizzled out, to cite two other sort of messianic, or semi-messianic movements. So yes, certainly something had to happen which kept the movement alive."

Really? Something had to happen or the religion would never have kept going? And everyone thinks it? By that token, Joseph Smith really had to have had a visitation from the angel Moroni, or Mohammed really had to have had revelations from the angel Gabriel, and so on. 

Not all religions start with an actual supernatural event. Indeed, almost by definition, all religions (except possibly the 'one true religion') must have started without any supernatural event. Why should Christianity be the exception to that? Why did Christianity need an actual resurrection to get going while the Mithras religion didn't, or the Zoroastrian religion didn't, etc.? Are the claims of Christianity so much more unbelievable than the claims of other religions that it couldn't possibly get going without some grounding in reality, but the others could, because they are somehow more believable? I doubt it.

Myths and timelines...

I've been thinking over some apologetic lines of reasoning recently. I'll deal with them in more detail in future posts, but for now consider the following two statements:

1. Thirty years ago Perseus tamed and rode the flying horse Pegasus.
2. Yesterday Hercules captured the three headed dog Cerberus.

According to some lines of apologetic reasoning, the second of those statements is more likely to be true and accurate than the first. Apologists think that the closer the writing of the story to the date of the alleged event, the more likely it is that the description of the event is true. 

Well that sounds reasonable, at first glance, but I think if you consider the example given above, the line of reasoning is quite clearly flawed. Neither of those events happened (at least not in recent history!), so neither is more likely than the other. The timing of the writing about the event is entirely unrelated to the factual accuracy of the story. Or in other words, a mythical event remains a mythical event even if it is claimed to have happened in very recent history.

The same, presumably applies to eyewitness claims:

1. Thirty years ago I saw Perseus taming and riding Pegasus.
2. Yesterday I saw Hercules capturing Cerberus.

Which of those is more likely to be true?

So when it comes to the gospels, the apologists think they have won the argument if they can demonstrate that the (eyewitness?) gospel writers were doing their writing within a generation of the resurrection of Jesus. Surely a document written in 60AD, a mere 30 years after the resurrection, is going to be pretty accurate, certainly more accurate than a late document written in the early 2nd century? Well, not if the document describes an impossible or mythical event. If the resurrection didn't happen, and a book was written one day after the claimed date of the resurrection, then such a book would be no more likely to be true than one written yesterday.

All this basically to say that arguments for an early dating of the gospels prove nothing. 

All our experience tells us that in reality people can't walk on water, transmute water into wine, kill fig trees with a single word, and that executed men do not come back to life after being dead three days. All our experience tells us that these things can happen in fiction. A very, very early date for the gospels can never be sufficient evidence to prove that the impossible happened.

Jesus is alive...

We sang a song in church last week, for which the main focus of the lyrics and the 'hook' of the tune was the words "Jesus is alive!" This phrase, in a variety of languages, has been one of the main declarations of Christian worship for the best part of two thousand years. But singing it this week made me question why. Why is this phrase a primary article of worship? Its not a statement about something Jesus has done (for us), but is rather a statement of belief in an attribute of Jesus.

In contemporary Christian understanding of Jesus, he has been alive for all of eternity past and will be alive for all of eternity future. Yes, there was that brief three day period when he was apparently - in some sense - dead, but that's barely a blip in an eternity of life. I realsed, when singing those words last week, that the message of the song wasn't 'Jesus is alive again, having been dead', it wasn't a celebration of resurrection 'Jesus is risen', but it was simply a statement of belief that the Christian God is a living God, not a lifeless one like the idols of the pagans.

Then I realised that this statement of worship pre-dates Christianity. Its all through the Old Testament too. God is 'the living God' (e.g. Deut 5:26; Joshua 3:10; 1 Samuel 17:26; etc.) and oaths in the OT were sworn 'as surely as Yahweh lives' (e.g. Judges 8:19; Ruth 3:13; 1 Samuel 14:39; etc.). I found myself thinking that the Christian declaration 'Jesus is alive' is basically an update of the OT statement about God. Then I searched and found that the phrase 'Jesus is alive' (or something equivalent) does not actually occur in the NT!

The most common phrasing for a similar thought that I found in the NT is Jesus / Christ 'has been raised', although there are a few 'has risen' type statements in the gospels. But the most common type of phrasing describes an action that was done by God to Christ - God (the active participant) raised Jesus (to whom no action is attributed) from the dead. The statement is not about something Jesus did or about his attributes. So if that's the NT way of thinking, then why has the 'Jesus is alive' type thinking come to be so dominant?

This return to OT-type thinking seems to be a post canonical shift. Its as if the OT thinking about God has been transferred onto the NT character of Jesus, making him the active participant. This looks like a harmonisation of Christian thinking and Jewish thinking. Some speculate this happened in the 2nd century resulting in the emergence of the 'Catholic' variety of Christianity.

Once again, I can't help but think that the conflict between nascent Catholicism and Marcionism is hiding somewhere in here. In Marcionism (the earliest form of Christianity we know much about!) the Father God who raised Jesus from the dead was emphatically not the same God as the God of the OT. This religion was completely distinct from Jewish thinking. Meanwhile, as Margaret Barker suggests, there was a popular non-monotheistic version of Judaism which meshed well with Christian thought - that Yahweh in OT times and Jesus in NT times were the same character - the son of Elyon, the Most High God. If this is true, then Yahweh, the living God, became Jesus, the God who is alive. Throw all this into a melting pot and fight it out until only one 'orthodox' hybrid religion emerges, and it is easy to see how the idea of Jesus as the living God could win out. Maybe.

Worth thinking about though.

Why did the angels say what they said?

Happy (belated) Easter to all my readers!

What happened on the first Easter Sunday morning? I'm sure most of us have heard or read some of the stories over the past couple of weeks or so. But looking at the stories with a critical eye, there are a few issues that are hard to resolve. Like this one, why did the angels say what they said?

Here is the story as told by (what most scholars agree is) the earliest of the four gospels:

Mark 16: 1-8
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”
But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

The message of the 'young man', who we will assume to be intended to be understood as an angel (the word only means messenger anyway), is clear: If you want to see Jesus, you need to go to Galilee. The final portion of this chapter, from verse 9 onwards, is generally considered to be a later addition which was not part of the original. So we can't speculate about what the original ending might have been if, indeed, verse 8 is not the original ending, as some claim.

Matthew has a slightly different take on things:

Matthew 28: 1-10
After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”
So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

In this version of the story, the angel delivers the same message as in Mark. But here, Jesus himself appears and, erm, says the same thing as the angel. So what was the point of the angelic message if the women were about to meet Jesus anyway, and he was going to give them the same message? Waste of a good messenger, if you ask me.

Most critical scholars agree that Matthew's account is an embellished retelling of Mark's original. It certainly appears as if Matthew thought the empty tomb was a bit of an anticlimax, and really needed a risen Jesus in his story straight away, so inserts a quick (and pointless) appearance of Jesus to the women, before the final appearance of Jesus to the disciples, in Galilee, for the great commission at the end of the chapter.

It certainly seems to me that even if there really was an empty tomb, and even if there really was an angelic messenger, that the appearance of Jesus to the women must be considered as an invention of the writer of 'Matthew', and not a historical event. That is, even if the overall Gospel message is true, and Jesus really is the risen saviour and Son of God, the gospel account of Matthew still contains stories that the author just made up. But if that's the case, how can you trust anything else in there? Sigh.

So we've got to the point of identifying major problems with the story, and we're only two gospels in. Things get more complicated when we look at Luke:

Luke 24: 1-12
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” Then they remembered his words.
When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

Then, in verses 13 to 32 we have the well known 'road to Emmaus' story, in which Jesus appears to two of his (presumably male) disciples in a non-Galilean setting. They specifically say that others (not the women) went to the tomb and found it empty, but saw no angels. Following this, the story continues in verses 33-36:

They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognised by them when he broke the bread.
While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 

After this, they all go out to Bethany and Jesus ascends to heaven (v 51), having never gone to Galilee.

So in this version of the story, the angel(s) have a different message. Its not 'go to Galilee to see him', it has become, 'remember what he said in Galilee'. Indeed, the story here reaches its definite conclusion in the ascension with Jesus and all the disciples never having left the vicinity of Jerusalem. It would appear that the writer of Luke knew stories that the angels had apparently said something about Galilee, but also had heard stories that Jesus had appeared exclusively in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and so modified the original wording (remember from Luke 1:1-4 that he thinks the earlier gospels were inaccurate; we assume he had access to a copy of Mark, possibly Matthew as well) to keep reference to Galilee, but not to instruct anyone to go there. So it appears that 'Luke' changed the meaning and details of the stories he had in order to harmonise them. In other words, Luke too includes stuff that he just made up.

Another odd feature of this telling of the story is in verse 34, where one of the 'road to Emmaus' disciples claims, not only that Jesus had risen, but also that he had appeared to Simon (Peter?), an event that doesn't actually occur in this telling of the story. They say this to 'the eleven' - presumably including Peter himself! i would have thought that if Peter had seen Jesus by this point, he would have known about it and not needed telling. Surely their 'gospel' message should have been 'the Lord has risen - we know because we've seen him' not 'the Lord has risen, we know because Simon has seen him'. And again, it is a pointless message as Jesus promptly appears to all of them anyway.

I think my point is pretty much made by now, but we may as well have a look at the story in John as well:

John 20: 1-20
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

In this telling of the story, we don't have a self-contradiction (as in Matthew), as the angels, though present, don't say or do anything to drive the story on. They're just there apparently in attendance on the risen Jesus, who does most of the talking. Here, as in Matthew, one of the women is the first to see Jesus, and here, as in Luke, Jesus appears to all the disciples in Jerusalem, before anyone has gone to Galilee. Of course, there is a Galilean appearance in John 21, but many people consider that chapter to be a later addition to the gospel, and not part of 'John's' original. Here it is Jesus who tells the woman (singular this time) to go and tell his disciples / brothers something, but the content of the message is not an instruction to go to Galilee, but a fairly vague message that he is about to ascend to the Father. This also is a fairly pointless message - without the text that follows it, the sense would seem to be 'I am ascending to the Father (soon? immediately?) so you won't see me again', but the story tells of immediate visitations to the disciples, so there was no need for this message. Surely he could have told the disciples this when he saw them?

All the conflicting messages in these stories are suggestive. They suggest to me that the earliest versions of the stories contained only the briefest appearance of angels (or Jesus) to a tiny subset of his disciples, while the rest had to simply accept that Jesus had risen (and ascended) on the basis of the testimony of only one or two apparent eyewitnesses. That is, the original resurrection stories were spread by only a tiny handful of people, perhaps only one or two women!

But stories grow in the telling. Appearances by Jesus simply had to be added into the mix for dramatic purposes. I mean, nobody would really believe it if Jesus only appeared to one woman, would they? But if he appeared to many, things would be different...

But if he appeared to many, and in Jerusalem, then why did the angels say what they said...?

The God of Christian experience vs. the God of the Bible

A recurring struggle I have faced over the past few years as I wrestle with (my) faith is the apparent discrepancy between the claims the bible makes about God and the reality I have experienced and observed as a Christian for over twenty years. 

You see, the God of Christian experience (GCE) seems considerably different from the God described in the bible (GTB). So much so that I have to wonder if the God of the bible is an amplified and exaggerated version of the 'real God' as distorted through the rose tinted lens of faith. Of course it is equally possible that the characteristics of the 'real God' are distorted by experience too. Taking a skeptical position, we might also have to consider the possibility that GCE is purely an illusion based on misunderstood experience.

But anyway, here are a few of the characteristics of the God of Christian experience, based on my experiences and observations of others:

• GCE seems to be a source of comfort for many.
• GCE seems to provide some form of guidance sometimes, though this is often ambiguous.
• GCE seems to answer certain prayer requests, sometimes.
• GCE seems able to perform a range of mostly minor healings, sometimes.
• GCE seems to be able to strengthen and embolden people, sometimes.
• GCE seems to be a source of joy, even in otherwise joyless circumstances.

Most, if not all, of these characteristics appear to be sporadic; sometimes being in evidence while at other times being seemingly absent. The characteristics which most commonly appear active are also those in which it is hardest to be sure that there is any real external influence, such as the comfort, joy and emboldenings. The skeptic could write all of these off as being 'purely psychological' and having no supernatural source. It could be that God provides genuine comfort to the believer, or it could be that believing in God - in itself - is the source of comfort.

But what of the others? Answered prayers are common, but rarely does a believer calculate the probabilities of the things they ask for happening 'by chance'. Indeed, for many believers there is no such thing as chance, so if what they prayed for actually happened, then it must have been God at work. And if the thing prayed for does not happen, then it must have been against the will of God, so he didn't do it. I've commented before about the positive feedback loop here - if the prayed-for thing happens, the believer's faith is boosted, if it doesn't happen, their faith is not lessened, so as long as prayed-for things happen occasionally, the net effect is a boost of faith. If the believer prays for lots of possible things on a regular basis, they will see answered prayers fairly frequently, whether or not there is a God involved.

Surely if there is a real God then it should be possible to observe his actions consistently? The GTB is frequently portrayed as consistent, unchanging, and so on, yet GCE seems to act with no consistency, except perhaps in influencing the feelings of his followers.

Before I started taking a properly critical look at (my own) faith, I would have made the claim (had I thought to express it this way) that the real God was broadly the same as GTB and the reasons that GCE appears to be smaller and less powerful than GTB were that something (either the devil, my puny faith, or some unrepented sin in my life) was blocking the full experience of God from breaking through. I guess this is pretty standard Evangelical belief. Its certainly consistent with the picture of reality expressed by most of the evangelism programmes that I've seen or been part of. The problem is sin, our sin gets in the way. In other words, most of the time, the reason GCE appears so small is my fault. The picture would be something like this:

But when you look at the holiest people you know (and, having been in some good churches for many years, I have known a good many truly godly people) you will see that they have exactly the same experiences as you. Something seems to block God from getting through, so GCE is so much smaller than GTB, even for those spiritual giants. Of course, they would never say it in those terms, but this is my observation.

I eventually, through observations like the above, and through a critical reading of certain bible passages, came to view things a bit differently. While still convinced that the real God was there, I considered that GTB was an exaggeration. The real God, while still powerful, wasn't omni-anything. But I never really reconsidered the presupposition that something in me was also blocking the full reality of the real God, so for many years I guess I believed that the real god was somewhere in between GTB and GCE. Like so:

But then I came to wonder whether there was any actual evidence that the real God was any more powerful than GCE. The claims in the bible are simply that, claims. The more I looked into the evidence for things claimed in the bible, the more I found that the bible itself is the only evidence for all the miracles up to and including the resurrection of Jesus. I've recently posted several thoughts on the so called 'evidence' for God [see here, or here] and it all eventually boils down to assuming that the reporting of events as presented in the bible is fundamentally accurate and true. Without that assumption, all arguments defending biblical miracles, including the resurrection, fall apart.

For several years two things kept me believing that the real God was greater in power than GCE (though less than GTB). These were the firm belief that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead, and the belief/observation that 'miraculous' healings continue to happen today. Let's look at both of these:

Firstly, contemporary miraculous healings. I've been through this issue recently on the blog. The issues here for me remain that while healings undoubtedly and indisputably happen in the world today, these don't appear (as far as I can tell) to happen more in a Christian context than in contexts associated with any other religion or belief system. The other issue is that almost all of the healing claims I have heard of are well within the realms of possible natural occurrences. That is, if someone experiences a remission from cancer, how do we know if this was due to God's healing power or was 'just one of those things' that happen? What we observe is that healings happen, and that the claimed power of these healings comes from some supernatural source, for which there is usually little or no other evidence. What if there is some other explanation other than the involvement of a God? Which is more likely - that some people have some inherent 'magical' healing ability, or that some God chooses to channel his 'magical' healing ability through some people? Given that we don't know the mechanism in either case, Occam's razor would tend to prefer the former option; invoking a God is not required as a source of the unknown ability, that only multiplies the entities involved.

Of course, if this is true, then we are attributing 'natural' healing ability to God which doesn't come from him. Thus actually CGE is greater in power than the real God:

That's an uncomfortable thought, but one we must face if we're really serious about examining the validity of (our) faith. Even if there is a God, if we attribute things to him which he has no part of, then our picture of God ends up positively skewed and we imagine him to be bigger than he actually is.

And so, all that remains is the resurrection of Jesus. If this happened then it would fundamentally endorse the things he taught and go much of the way to proving the existence of God, and not merely any god, but specifically the Christian God. For me, this was the last remaining support holding up my faith. But, like all the other things, I found that this belief didn't really stand up to scrutiny. The evidence for the resurrection is simply not strong enough. All that we can really be sure of is that there were folk who came to be known as Christians who believed that Jesus died and rose again. We can be sure these people believed this a couple of generations after the time of the alleged events. What we can't do is bridge the gap between the beliefs in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries and the supposed events of about 30AD. Nobody wrote anything for at least a generation, and the things written by the first generation of writers were rewritten by subsequent generations.

You can see where I'm going with this. Eventually, I have come to the conclusion that as we can't be sure if the resurrection actually happened, we can't use this as anything remotely like evidence for the existence of God, whether we're talking about GTB, GCE or the real God.

I'm still open to the possibility that there is a 'real' God. But the more I consider the evidence of Christian experience, the smaller he appears to become. Is this really a God worth believing in? Or, more crucially, is this really a God worth trusting, following, or committing your life to? All the truly important aspects of God, which would make him worthy of praise and commitment, are those aspects which are claimed in the bible, but are not evident in Christian experience. These evaporate as we look critically at God.

The atoning death of the 2nd person of the Trinity...

Christianity (or at least most branches of it) claims that God is three persons in one being, the Trinity. And it (or at least most branches of it) also teaches that Jesus Christ, the second person of this Trinity, died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice on our behalf, and was resurrected to life three days later. Christianity (or at least...) also teaches that there is a part of a person which survives death, that is, the soul. Now some (but by no means most) versions of Christianity claim that Jesus went to hell during his three days dead, while some (but...) claim that hell, by definition, is a place where God is not.

So put all that together. The result is incoherent.

Who or what really died on the cross? The one being of the Godhead? No, merely one of the three persons. But if that person is inexplicably and inseparably linked to the other two persons, then how could he die without them also dying? Or did the Trinity get reduced to a Binity for three days? Surely nobody who holds to the idea of the Trinity could accept that? But if the second person of the Trinity didn't separate from the life of the other two, then what was it that died?

And what was actually sacrificed? Jesus was apparently without a physical body for somewhere less than 36 hours, and then got a better body. That doesn't actually seem like a sacrifice, more like an inconvenience. An exceptionally painful inconvenience, I'll give you that, but not actually a sacrifice. The whole point of sacrifice is to give up something that you don't get back again. Ever. So the resurrection completely undoes the sacrifice. Its like me putting a tenner in the offering plate on a Sunday and then coming back on Wednesday to reclaim the tenner, and actually getting fifteen pounds back. No significant sacrifice, certainly not when viewed on the eternal timescale.

And what about the 'harrowing of hell' thing? If God went to hell, then surely hell ceased to be hell. By definition. Maybe Rob Bell is right and

everyone

gets

to

go

to

heaven?

I've got no major point to make here other than that when you scrutinise some of the doctrines of Christianity, they don't actually work. And especially, when you try and harmonise them, they don't always work together.

For what its worth, having wrestled with both issues over the past few years, I no longer find either the doctrine of the atonement or the doctrine of the Trinity actually makes sense. It may be that someone died on a cross two thousand years ago, but I can no longer accept that that person was inseparably part of God or that there could be any transaction in that death which took my place in some death that I should actually have died myself. There would be no justice in such a deal.

Proofs of the resurrection?

"Proofs of the Resurrection" is a video lecture series by Mike Licona on YouTube. Someone posted links to all of the episodes in a comment on one of my previous posts. You can watch the lectures here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. I thought I would watch the lectures. But I don't have time for that, so I ripped the audio content from them and put it on my iPod and have been listening to the lectures on my daily commute to work. There's a lot in here, most of which I won't comment on in detail, but here are my main thoughts and opinions on these lectures.

Despite the title of the lecture series, the first 5 hours of lectures offer no proofs or even evidence for the resurrection or anything else. Licona starts by explaining why only the opinions of experts who have studied the resurrection as historians really matter. Thus the opinions of textual critics like Bart Ehrman or people with a background in theology, but not history, do not matter. These people are not qualified to give informed opinions. Unlike Licona, of course. It seems that only he and his mentor Gary Habermas are really qualified to make historical judgements on this topic. And they both conclude that the resurrection really happened, so it must have done. QED. Licona also (strangely) dismisses the need for consensus - consensus doesn't mean anything if it is a consensus among non-experts. He then relies on consensus in some of his later arguments.

Next Licona, by way of anecdote, implies that the science of physics is very imprecise and that history is at least as precise as this, so therefore history is science. No it is not. Here he is trying, once more, to persuade his (already believing) audience that his conclusions are as firm as anything in science, before he has even discussed the evidence that led him to those conclusions. This is not science or history, this is apologetics. Indeed, later on in the lecture series it becomes clear that this is intended as apologetics, the aim here is not to find out the truth, but to defend the faith.

Can the historian ever conclude that a miracle happened? Well, if history is science (as Licona claims) then I would say only if the same kind of miracle can be observed to happen today (that's a topic for a future blog). Based on this, I don't think the historian can ever conclude that the resurrection happened, as it was a unique event with no other historical or contemporary parallels. Licona redefines miracles here as events which happen with no apparent naturalistic cause and which occur in a religious setting. He contends that you can conclude miracles by historical methods.

After the discussion of miracles (we're now in hour five) we get the biggest and most ludicrous claims in the whole series - firstly, that the 'burden of proof' regarding the resurrection is actually on the side of the skeptic, and unless a skeptic can disprove it, beyond reasonable doubt, then we are entirely justified in believing in it. Then, on the back of this comes his response to Sagan's "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" statement, here he basically claims that it is not required to provide enough evidence to change someone else's worldview, only enough evidence to convince someone who is already predisposed to believe in miracles. Eh? What? I think I'll have to come back to this in a future posting. But this makes it clear that he is dealing with the kind of apologetics which exists only to entrench the beliefs of those who are already believers, not to convince anyone else that Jesus actually came back from the dead. Thus, he fails in the stated purpose of the series, he fails to convince skeptics and, essentially, he fails as an evangelist!

Finally, after a lot of preamble, he gets to the evidence - evidence from the gospels, evidence from the epistles, evidence from 'pre-Pauline' material, evidence from the church fathers, evidence from early non-Christian sources. Despite claiming to be an inerrantist, he (repeatedly) states that he doesn't require the inerrancy of the biblical writings as part of his argument. What he does is he looks at all the evidence and starts labeling it as 'possible', 'probable', 'definite', and so on, using historical criteria. Many of his arguments here appeal to consensus, which is odd as he dismissed consensus as being irrelevant in lecture one!

Along the way, he assumes the gospels and epistles were all written by single authors (OK, Matthew may not have been written by someone called 'Matthew', but it was written by a single individual) and have not been modified by later editors. He also assumes that the gospel accounts are trustworthy and were written as history. He does assume that at least one of the gospel authors (the 4th one) was an eyewitness of the resurrection. He also assumes the earliest dating of most of the documents.

Based on all this he establishes a number of 'historical facts' which are 'beyond doubt', including:

1. Jesus died by crucifixion
   
2. The disciples believed that they saw Jesus raised from the dead
3. Paul, a persecutor of the church, converted because of an encounter with the risen Jesus
4. Jesus' brother James, who had been skeptical, came to faith and was martyred for it
5. There was an empty tomb

Only after he establishes those 'facts' does he consider the skeptical arguments against the resurrection, and he only considers the skeptical arguments which accept that some of the above are historical facts. Thus, crucially, he does not even mention the 'Christ Myth' hypothesis, which claims that all of the above 'facts' are part of the same fiction.

The problem for me is that the above reasoning 'puts the cart before the horse' the facts are established before the source documents are questioned. And then the source documents look good - because they contain facts!

Wearing a slightly skeptical hat (and it doesn't need to be radically skeptical), there is reasonable doubt over those five facts.

1. Jesus died? What we are sure of is that in the early 2nd century (Tacitus wrote circa 116AD), perhaps the very late 1st century (Josephus wrote circa 95AD) there were 'Christians' who were believers in a Messiah who they claimed was killed by crucifixion by the order of Pontius Pilate. We know when Pilate had responsibility in Palestine, so we can roughly date this alleged event. All the secular references to Jesus death show that there was a belief in this event by Christians, not that the event actually happened. But if there was a real, historical Jesus, then it is reasonable to assume, on the basis of the evidence, that he was crucified and died.
   
2. Disciples saw? The evidence is one or two steps removed for this. What we have is evidence that Christians in the late first century believed that their predecessors in the faith had seen the risen Christ. We do not have any eyewitness accounts and the letters attributed to Peter are widely held to be pseudopigrapha.
3. Paul's vision? This comes from Paul's letters and from Acts. There is good evidence that these documents were edited in the 2nd century, and the accounts are contradictory, so it is hard to conclude 'facts' from this.
4. James martyred? Someone called James, the brother of Jesus 'called the messiah' was killed. We know this from a secular source (Josephus), but it doesn't tell us what he believed. Had he seen a risen Jesus? We don't know. That comes from 2nd century tradition.
   
5. Empty tomb? The earliest stories of the empty tomb that we know of were not widely circulated until 50 or more years after the alleged event, so there is no way of confirming these stories, even then, the stories could not be confirmed as this is over a generation later.

So. If, and only if, we accept the NT writings as accurate historical reportage, can we conclude that the resurrection of Jesus happened.

Unfortunately, it appears that many of the documents we have have been redacted, edited, tampered with and perhaps even rewritten by people up to a century after the alleged events. Given this, it is nearly impossible to figure out what, if any, of the content of the NT writings is original or dates back to a time within living memory of Jesus.

Licona makes a big deal out of the fact that he only considers documents which originated within 150 years of Jesus' death. What he fails to point out is that in that society, at that time, 150 years is about 8 to 10 generations after Jesus and that the average life expectancy was only of the order of thirty years! Even a document written 50 years after the event would likely have been written by the grandchildren or the great-grandchildren of the 'first disciples', or whoever was around at the time of Pontius Pilate.

Proof? No. Its a good case, enough to convince those who already believe that the Bible is trustworthy, but nobody else.