A Defense of the Minimal Facts

Have the minimal facts been knocked down? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I was recently sent an article by Matthew Ferguson of Adversus Apologetica where he attempts to knock down the minimal facts approach. Looking through the article, I am largely unimpressed. For those interested, it can be found here.

The minimal facts approach is the one offered by Gary Habermas and Mike Licona. The idea is to take facts that even liberal scholarship will acknowledge that are attested to early and argue from there that the best conclusion that can be reached from what we know is that Jesus rose from the dead.

Much of this is done to avoid going to the gospels. As Habermas has said in many talks, the gospels are by liberal standards 40-70 years afterwards. You can go that route, but it’s much more difficult. It’s also done this way to just avoid “The Bible says it happened, therefore it did,” approach, as Habermas and Licona take facts that have been held by non-Christian scholars in the field.

So looking at Ferguson, I have a problem right off with this sentence.

“When investigating virtually every other past event outside of the origins of Christianity, historians operate under the principle of methodological naturalism.”

He goes on to say that

“If they did not responsibly limit the historical method to a purely secular epistemology, as I have discussed before, supernatural events such as witchcraft at Salem in the late 17th century would be fair game for being considered “historical” and we would have far greater evidence to support such miracles than the resurrection of Jesus. We can all see the absurdity of the former example and yet apologists (who exercise the same skepticism towards supernatural events outside of their religion) consider it an unfair bias to bracket Jesus’ resurrection as a religious, rather than historical, matter.”

Actually, no. I don’t see the absurdity of the former. I happen to know people who have been involved in the occult and have no reason to discount a number of claims that I hear from them. Also, even if we had greater evidence for Salem, so what? That means the evidence for the resurrection is not reliable? Does any historical claim become false if we have more evidence for another claim along the same lines? If we have more evidence for Hitler, does that mean that Napoleon is a myth? If we have more evidence for Napoleon, does that mean Alexander the Great is a myth?

Ferguson also has this idea that we’re all anathema to miracles in other religions. Licona himself asked me about this once in discussing miracles and said “What about miracles outside of Christianity like Apollonius and Vespasian?” My reply was “What about them?” If these people did miracles, so what. Questions need to be asked.

“Is there any particular religious message that is to be conveyed if the miracle is true?”
“What is the evidence for the claim?”
“Who reports the claim?”
“How close to the time is it?”

Personally, I would in fact welcome a strong case for Vespasian or Apollonius doing miracles. Why? Because doing miracles is not anathema to my worldview but is so to a worldview that is rooted in naturalistic thinking. That just opens up even more the possibility that Jesus rose from the dead since we can say “We have clear evidence of a miracle in this case. Why not the other?”

Of course, there is also the fact that Craig Keener has written a massive tour de force demonstrating miracle claims going on today. These have eyewitness testimony and have often medical reports backing them. In the volume, Keener also includes numerous arguments against the position of Hume.

So if we have miracle claims going on today, why should we ipso facto disregard all of them? Let’s open them up. While most atheists tell me about how we shouldn’t let bias deal with the data, if any side will have bias here, it will be the atheistic side. If all of Keener’s miracles were shown to be false I’d think it was a shame, but it would not disprove either his argument against Hume or the resurrection of Jesus. If just one of the hundreds of miracles Keener writes about is an accurate account, then atheism needs to come up with a better explanation.

So at the start, I do not see a good reason to accept methodological naturalism. When I look at history, I want to know what really happened and I cannot do that if I rule out explanations that I disagree with right at the start. If a miraculous event happened in history, the only way we can know that is if we allow ourselves to be open to it, and if we are not open to it when a miracle had in fact occurred, then we can never know true history.

Ferguson goes on to say

“I have, on the other hand, met several apologists who converted for personal reasons and later sought rational and evidential justifications when they were trying to convert other people who do not share such personal experience.”

Of course, some people come to Christianity for various reasons and then when looking into their belief system, find there are rational reasons for believing it. There are many of us who would prefer that apologists not use personal experience as an argument. I cringe every time Bill Craig uses his fifth way for instance. It’s way too much like Mormonism.

On the other hand, there are some people who start out critical and investigate the evidence and come away Christians. Lee Strobel, J. Warner Wallace, and Frank Morison come to mind. What really matters is the evidence that each side presents. If one comes to Christianity first and finds the reasons later, they cannot help that. Their arguments should not be discounted for that reason.

Going on we are told

“Such apologists, seeking to hijack the field of ancient history, are desperate to slap the label “historical” onto the resurrection. This goal is derived in no sense whatsoever from legitimate academic concerns, but instead is one born purely out of the desire to evangelize. Once Jesus’ resurrection is considered “historical,” you just have to accept it and apologists can cram their religion down people’s throats. It was to avoid such non-academic agendas that historians bracketed such religious questions in the first place. I myself was originally content with letting the resurrection be a religious, rather than historical question, but apologists have fired the first shot in attempting to invade the field of ancient history. Since they are now targeting a lay audience with a variety of oversimplified slogans aimed at converting the public rather than seriously engaging historical issues, my duty here on Κέλσος is to correct their misconceptions.”

It is a wonder how Ferguson has this great insight into the mind of everyone who has written on the resurrection from an evangelical perspective. I, for instance, have no desire to shove religion down someone’s throat. Do I wish to share my view? Of course! Who doesn’t? Can I force someone to accept the resurrection? Not at all! I can present the evidence that I see and let them decide and if they disagree, let them disagree with me on historical grounds.

When one considers the last sentence, I hope that Ferguson in turn is going after the new atheists who are targeting the lay audience with simplified slogans and even worse, not doing real research into philosophy and theology at all! This is evidenced by P.Z. Myers’s “Courtier’s Reply.”

Furthermore, I do not see how he could look at a work like Licona’s “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach” which is actually Licona’s PH.D. with a few updates and say that that it has oversimplified slogans and does not seriously engage historical issues. Could he say the same about a work like N.T. Wright’s “The Resurrection of the Son of God”?

To be fair, I will not dispute that there is much out there that is garbage. There are works by Christian apologists that I myself have taken to task for being so light and fluffy. One such work even had Wikipedia cited in the back.

Moving on we read

“One such slogan is the so-called “minimal facts” apologetic, spawned by the likes of Gary Habermas and William Craig.”

Right here, I can tell the study has not been done on this. Craig’s approach is not the minimal facts approach of Habermas. In fact, Habermas himself says that some of Craig’s material are not facts that he would use. Craig’s material relies on the gospels. Habermas’s (And Licona’s in turn) does not. Thus, I will be spending this work defending the real minimal facts approach. If something is not part of the minimal facts, I will not waste time with it.

Ferguson continues,

“This “minimal facts” apologetic attempts to provide a minimal case for believing in just one of Jesus’ miracles: the resurrection. First, I find it to be completely disingenuous for apologists to pretend that they are trying to convince you of “only one” miracle. What if I believed in the resurrection, but thought Jesus did it through sorcery or simply left open-ended the question of its religious significance?”

That’s fine. Go ahead. Habermas has even said in public talks that at the start, he’s not saying God raised Jesus from the dead. He’s saying that Jesus rose. You come up with your explanation. You want to say it was sorcery. Fine. Say it was sorcery. Just give a reason why you think it was and why you think my explanation that it was God who raised Him is lacking. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing?

“Apologists would not accept this and would obviously want to convince me that Elohim had raised their Messiah. What apologists don’t tell you is that in the fine print of the “minimal facts” apologetic there is a clause stating that by accepting the free trial of the resurrection miracle, you are signing yourself up for a lifetime subscription to a fundamentalist, conservative Christian worldview.”

No you’re not. There. An assertion made without an argument can be dismissed just the same way. All you have to do is get that Jesus rose. Don’t want to believe the Bible is Inerrant? Sure. Go ahead. There are some Christian scholars who hold to the bodily resurrection and don’t think the Bible is inerrant. Want to believe in theistic evolution? Sure. Go ahead. There are some like that as well. There are Christians of all stripes who believe Jesus rose from the dead and do not hold to a “conservative and fundamentalist approach.”

Besides, if a fear of accepting such an approach is behind Ferguson, then could it not be said that his worldview is shaping his looking at the evidence instead of the other way around?

“But furthermore, the “minimal facts” apologetic is not rooted in facts to begin with, and when stated honestly boils down to the argument: “If you accept the Bible as factual, how can you deny the fact of Jesus’ resurrection?”

This is not the minimal facts argument. In fact, the minimal facts argument is done to AVOID such a statement. One can take a quite liberal approach to the Bible and still accept the minimal facts. This is simply a straw man on Fergusons’s part. Of course, if the facts are wrong, then they are wrong and that is problematic, but we will see if they are.

“This apologetic takes a variety of forms, but is most commonly represented in the following manner. Apologists claim that there are “four facts” about Jesus’ resurrection:

After his crucifixion Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb.
On the Sunday after the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers.
On different occasions and under various circumstances different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.
The original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every predisposition to the contrary.”

This is Craig’s list. It is not the approach of Habermas and Licona. For instance, Habermas and Licona do not use Joseph of Arimathea at all. In fact, they don’t even get to the gospels. Therefore, I will not be wasting my time dealing with any arguments concerning Joseph or the reliability of the gospels or anything along those lines.

“Apologists love to use the term “facts,” so that these issues are treated as non-negotiable [1]. Of course, where do we learn of the details of these “facts”? From ancient secular sources disinterested in proving a resurrection? Nope, from the New Testament, in the works of authors who had a religious agenda to spread belief in Jesus’ resurrection. I won’t dismiss the argument on the grounds of bias alone, however, and will further demonstrate how the first two “facts” are not facts at all, the third is poorly worded, and the fourth exaggerates and oversimplifies the early belief in the resurrection.”

The NT which is also in fact said to be the best source for the life of Jesus, even according to skeptics like Bart Ehrman. An exception to this could be found perhaps in John Dominic Crossan who uses sources like the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas or in other scholars in the Jesus Seminar who give much weight to Q, which would in reality be found in the NT anyway, but even these would not dispute that the NT contains historical information.

Also, did these people have a bias? Yep. You bet. So did everyone else who wrote anything historical. There was no such thing as uninterested historical writing. Writing was not done just because someone wanted to write something. Ferguson writes about this because he cares about it. I write in response because I care about the topic.

Ferguson also says the first is not a fact. Again, so what? Even if it isn’t, the minimal facts approach is untouched. He also says the second is not a fact, which is interesting as well since this is the one minimal fact that Habermas himself says is not as well attested as the others. What about the third and fourth? Well we’ll see when we get there.

So let’s move on to the empty tomb. Ferguson thinks that dispatching with the claim about Joseph of Arimathea’s burial of Jesus deals with the empty tomb. No. It would just mean one account of the burial was wrong. It would not mean that there was no burial and thus no empty tomb.

Ferguson writes about the women being at the tomb and how the argument is they were not allowed to testify in a court of law and due to the criterion of embarrassment, the gospel writers would not make up such an account. The problem is that this is irrelevant to the minimal facts approach. The minimal facts approach does not deal with women coming to the tomb. It simply deals with the reality of the tomb. We could come here for extra evidence if need be, but it is not necessary.

Therefore, after giving an explanation for why he thinks the writers would use women based largely on MacDonald’s thesis of Mark basing his work on Homer, Ferguson thinks he’s disproven the empty tomb. Not at all. The basis for the empty tomb in the minimal facts approach is 1 Cor. 15. There, we find that Christ was buried and that Christ was raised. The raising would mean that there was an empty tomb left behind. A Jew would not accept the fact of a resurrection that left behind a body. Resurrection was bodily.

So therefore, I do not see fact two dealt with according to the methodology of the minimal facts approach. Let’s look at what he says about point three, the appearances.

““Fact three” of this apologetic is poorly worded, but this one does have a kernel of historical truth. I don’t think any skeptic denies that the early Christians claimed to have experiences of Jesus risen from the dead.”

Ferguson claims that we have such stories today and there were claims of post-mortem appearances in the ancient world. Fair enough. In fact, I could grant some of them, but do we have any claims of other people in the ancient world being raised to life, especially in the Greco-Roman culture where they were clear that resurrection did not happen?

Ferguson goes on to say that

“Do we have anything better? Well, we do have the apostle Paul, who wasn’t an eye-witness of Jesus, but who claims to have had a vision of him. Paul (2 Corinthians 12:2-4) elsewhere claims that he was once raptured up to “third heaven” in a experience that is very similar to the ones told by crazed street preacher, Clarence “Bro” Cope, who likewise claims to have been raptured to heaven twice and to have had Jesus appear to him. Are we to trust the testimony of people who for all purposes appear to be schizophrenic?”

It is hardly a fair comparison to compare Paul to Clarence “Bro” Cope, and the link that Ferguson has is in a post loaded with argument from outrage. Even if this had been a hallucination on Paul’s part, that does not equate to him being schizophrenic. Ferguson should leave such psychological judgments to those who do study history.

Should we trust Paul as well? NT critics seem to think so! Paul is quite well accepted. I don’t know any NT scholar who looks at what Paul says and says “Paul was crazy! Therefore we don’t need to deal with what he says.” Paul shows himself to be a learned man, a scholar of his day, and someone we should take seriously. Is Ferguson also allowing his bias (What he condemns in others) to interpret the facts to say that this did not happen? Note that in 1 Cor. 15, this is not described as a vision but put alongside appearances to Peter, James, the twelve, and five hundred.

What Ferguson wants us to think then is that all these people conveniently had the same hallucinations, that a rare event like a mass hallucination (Something Licona and Habermas have both dealt with) happened (It can even be disputed that one has happened), that it was a resurrection they thought they saw and that they did not instead see Jesus in Abraham’s bosom vindicated, and this still would not answer the question of where the body was anyway!

Ferguson continues,

“Paul’s testimony is useful, however, since Paul is writing only a couple decades after Jesus and he claims to have known Peter and other eye-witnesses of Jesus. What does Paul relate in 1 Corinthians 15? Nothing about an empty tomb being discovered by women. It is not even clear that Paul believed Jesus had physically resurrected in the same body rather than a spiritual one [4]. Paul instead reports that Jesus ὤφθη (“appeared to him”). This is the passive form of the verb ὁράω (“to see”), which very often means “to be seen in visions.”

To begin with, even Dale Martin in “The Corinthian Body” argues that the body Paul speaks of was physical. The idea that spiritual was opposed to physical was put to the test best by Licona who examined the word translated as physical by translations such as the RSV. He looked at every instance of the word from the 8th century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D. Not once was it translated “physical.” Spiritual would in fact mean something along the lines of “animated by the spirit.”

Furthermore, Licona says about ὤφθη in its Pauline usage in “The Resurrection of Jesus” that there are 29 usages of it by Paul in the NT. 16 refer to physical sight, 12 have the meaning of behold, understand, etc. Only one refers to a vision. However, this is still a problem in that the creed is not Pauline language really but language Paul got from elsewhere.

Where can we go to see? We can consider Luke. Luke uses the word to describe Jesus’s body appearing and Jesus eating food. One could say that this did not happen, but Luke believes that it did and Luke believes in a bodily resurrection. He uses the language of something that can be seen with the eyes. If Paul also agrees that resurrection is what happens to a corpse, then it’s reasonable to say that he thinks these appearances were of a body that had been a corpse and resurrected and thus, physical. One can say Paul is wrong, but let us be clear on what he means.

“Paul, who describes his own visions of Jesus in no physical terms at all (e.g. Galatians 1:15-16) likewise uses the same vocabulary to describe the early disciples’ visions of Jesus. Accordingly, the early post-mortem sightings of Jesus could have been little more than hallucinations and visionary experiences, perfectly explicable in natural terms. This would not at all be surprising for an early apocalyptic cult, in light of of the psychological conditions we observe of cult members today.”

The translation of Galatians 1 this way might be appealing to some in the Carrier type school of thought, but it is problematic still. For one thing, the wording in Galatians is highly ambiguous and most likely will be driven by one’s view of the resurrection. It is not wise to build a case on an ambiguous passage.

These could have been hallucinations? Okay. I need to see evidence of that. Why would the apostles have come up with this? It would have been the most easily disprovable theory and ended up costing them everything, especially in the society of the time where they would have received ostracism and of course, be going against the covenant of YHWH which means they would face His judgment. Paul himself would be in no position to have such an experience. He was a persecutor of the church and the conversion accounts in Acts include objective phenomena which means that this was not something that just took place in Paul’s mind.

It will not work to just say “This case is a cult that has hallucinations, therefore another case is like that.” We need to examine what makes the groups different. In Christianity, the differences are vast in comparison to other movements.

“Stories, of course, change over time, which is why the later Gospel accounts describe the post-mortem appearances in more physical terms. Consider a diachronic analaysis of how the resurrection stories developed over time:

Paul, the earliest source, has no empty tomb and just “appearances” of Jesus.
Mark, half a century later, then has an empty tomb.
Matthew, after him, then has guards at the tomb to confirm it was empty.
Luke then has a Jesus who can teleport and is at first not recognizable to his followers.
Finally, John has Thomas be able to touch Jesus’ wounds.
If you go later into the Gospel of Peter, Jesus emerges as a giant from the tomb with giant angels accompanying him.”

As has been argued earlier, for Paul to have buried and then resurrection would mean that there was an empty tomb left behind. If that is the case, one could then say Mark downplayed what happened with Paul as he left out the appearances! Furthermore, a writer like Hurtado has written showing the earliest view of Jesus would have been him seen as the Lord. Hard to go up from that one!

Now we move on to the fourth fact.

“First off, the ancient Jews and the people around the wider Mediterranean did not have carbon copy beliefs. There were all sorts of strange religions and new beliefs floating around the region at the time. Often times new religions are started by deviating from previous expectations towards new and radical ones. This certainly has a higher probability for explaining the origins of Christianity than a magical resurrection.”

Ferguson is writing against the idea that Christians would have a crucified messiah as their savior. To be sure, there were new beliefs floating around. How having a more radical belief is more probable than a resurrection has not been shown. The term magical is just a bit of well poisoning on Ferguson’s part. Magic in the ancient world does not correspond to what we have in the resurrection.

“But belief in the resurrection need not even be unlikely. Kris Komarnitksy has written an excellent article about how “Cognitive Dissonance Theory” can explain the early Christian belief in the resurrection. This theory observes that among religious groups and cults, when something occurs that violates the adherents’ previous expectations and beliefs, rather than abandon their cherished religious beliefs, they instead invent new and radical ad hoc assumptions to rationalize the alarming information. Just look at liberal Christians today who are “evolution-friendly” and think that Christianity is compatible with Darwin’s theory, after thousands of years of Christianity teaching Six Day Creation and a century and a half of Christians battling evolutionary science. Rather than drop their warm and comforting beliefs about their religion, they merely invent new stories to explain away how utterly discredited it has been.”

Let’s look at the first part. Why should I be held accountable for what Christians did for a century and a half. I am not a theistic evolutionist, but I have no problem with evolution. I just leave it to the sciences. I could not argue for it. I could not argue against it. Furthermore, Ferguson does not realize that there have been a wide variety of accounts of the age of the Earth in church history. This was the case even before the rise of the information we have today.

In fact, if this is what counts for a liberal Christian, then Ferguson has discounted his own theory that believing in the minimal facts requires you be a conservative fundamentalist since I believe in the minimal facts and I have no problem with evolution and hold to an old Earth.

Cognitive dissonance does occur, but should I think it has here? In every single case in ancient history that I know of, when the would-be Messiah died, the movement died. Why was Jesus’s case different? Why again did they go the hard way with a physical resurrection? Why not just divine vindication? Why would Paul and James have converted? Paul was a persecutor. James was a skeptic. What would it take to make you convinced your dead brother was really the Messiah?

“So the early Christians, when their Messiah was crucified, instead of abandoning their faith, rationalized the story through ad hoc assumptions. “Perhaps Jesus had only temporarily died!” “Maybe he will return soon from Heaven and avenge his death!” Such rationalizations could have easily triggered some of the mentally unstable cult members to start having hallucinations and visionary experiences of Jesus. They could tell others, who would then have a prior expectation that triggers similar visions or who would simply delude themselves through placebo effects, and suddenly a new rumor starts circulating that Jesus has been raised from the dead as the “first fruits of the resurrection.” The cult regains its confidence with a new expectation: “Soon all the saints will resurrect!” “Soon Jesus will return in this very generation!” (cf. Mark 13:28-30; 1 John 2:18) tick tock tick tock … “Okay, well maybe we have to wait for a couple new signs, but then he will return!” (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4) tick tock tick tock … And so every generation of Christians has had its expectations reversed and yet believers just keep inventing new ad hoc assumptions to rationalize a worldview that has consistently and repeatedly failed to deliver.”

This part is quite amusing for me since, as an orthodox Preterist, I do hold that Jesus’s coming did take place within a generation! Jesus was right on time! Yet Ferguson’s account relies on possibility after possibility and doesn’t explain more likely options nor does it explain what really happened to the body. Was it eaten by dogs as Crossan says? We’d need an argument for that. Why would Paul and James go for this placebo effect? What did they have to gain from it? This relies on simply psychological history, something that is laden with problems. It’s hard enough to do psychoanalysis when you have the patient right there and can ask him questions. It’s even harder to do it for ancient people.

“Furthermore, thinking that their Messiah had only temporarily suffered, but would soon return in an apocalypse is not even that odd of a new development. Historical Jesus studies have found that Jesus was most likely an apocalyptic prophet teaching that a new “Kingdom of God” would soon come about through divine intervention, but that the righteous for the present would have to endure hardships and wait for their future reward. Sure, if Jesus had been a military Messiah, then faith in him probably would have dissipated following his crucifixion. But Jesus was talking about suffering followed by divine intervention in the first place. Is it really that hard to create an ad hoc assumption that Jesus had only been crucified because of temporary suffering, but that he would be returning soon as the agent carrying out the divine intervention they were awaiting? Not at all. Of course, the divine intervention never happened, but it does explain how belief in the resurrection could emerge through cognitive dissonance, visions, and hallucinations, followed by later legendary developments of a physically resurrected Messiah interacting with his followers.”

Once again, as a Preterist, I say that yes, the divine intervention did happen and is in fact happening. Ferguson reads the Olivet Discourse I suspect the way that a conservative fundamentalist does. You remember them? Those are the people that were condemned earlier. Again, why would this belief have been invented? If anything, it would have most likely been a belief that Jesus would judge Rome as Israel hoped. It would not be that Jesus would judge Jerusalem, the holy city!

And of course, the apostles had nothing to gain from this! They received ostracism and were social pariahs. Paul describes what he had to gain from all of this in 2 Cor. 11. James we know was put to death for what he believed.

In his conclusion, Ferguson says

“The ironic thing about apologetic attempts to “prove” the resurrection is that if god really existed, we would not have to rely on such a fantastical historical quest to prove it. God could just provide miracles today making it clear that he exists and he could tell us that Christianity is the correct religion.”

This is more along the lines of “God must do my work for me.” If Keener is right, God is doing miracles today. Furthermore, much of this has been dealt with in my writing recently on the argument from locality, an argument I find full of problems. See here.

Looking at this from Ferguson, again the question is “Is Ferguson’s worldview shaping the evidence or is the evidence shaping his worldview?” This is an indication that it is the former that is taking place.

Of course, it is not surprising since Ferguson did not even get Habermas’s approach correct. Perhaps he will do better next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

A Response To Khan

Does creation ex nihilo present a problem for the problem of evil. Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

A friend sent me a video from a Mormon on YouTube who goes by the name of Khhaaan1. The video can be found here. I will refer to the producer as Khan from here out. The video is an attempt to show that if you accept creation ex nihilo, you have a problem with the problem of evil.

Khan says at the start that there was no official statement on creation ex nihilo from the church until the 4th Lateran Council in 1215 A.D. This is true, but the reason is why was it mentioned then? It was because of the Albigenses, a sect much like the Manichaean teaching that Augustine dealt with years ago. Matter was seen as the creation of an evil power and spirit was good and the creation of the god of the NT.

Noteworthy at the start is that Khan in this video does not address biblical verses used to support ex nihilo. Perhaps he has done so elsewhere, but in this video there is nothing.

Also, I will state at the start that I have no marriage to creation ex nihilo. It has been a principle I have followed for some time that my Christianity is not dependent on my doctrine of creation but on the essential, the resurrection. I do hold to ex nihilo, but I am open to a better interpretation if one can be found that fits the facts. An eternal universe would not shake my faith. Neither would a multiverse or any scientific discovery like that. I leave that area to the scientists anyway.

Khan goes on to say that the church has been wrong before and uses Galileo as an example. I do not think this is the best example. The church had not entirely closed the door on heliocentrism. Copernicus had had his book on it dedicated to the Pope and the Pope had no problem with it. The problem with Galileo is that Galileo was egotistical, refused to admit any errors, spoke on theology and Scriptural interpretation without being trained in that area and while being asked to not do so, and wanted immediate acceptance of his ideas instead of waiting for more evidence. It didn’t help that he also mocked the Pope, who I think was frankly quite egotistical himself.

I do not doubt the church handled it poorly, but Galileo is really an exception to the normal way the church handled scientific advancement. We can look back and say “They were wrong,” but we must also be frank and admit that the evidence really was not in conclusively yet. A great problem for heliocentrism, Obler’s Paradox, was not even answered until the 19th century. It is easy for us to look back and say they were wrong, but we can be sure some scientists centuries from now will look back on and us and wonder how we missed some truths that they deem to be obvious. We should approach the past with as much charity as we want the future to approach us.

When we start getting to the heart of the matter, Khan to his credit does give a definition of evil. He says evil is an act or event whereby existence would be better if it had not occurred.

I find this troublesome due to the largely subjective nature of the claim. If someone does not want to donate to Deeper Waters for instance, does that mean that is an evil since I think existence would be better if that had occurred? What about all of creation? Would it have been better if God had not created at all, even if the Mormon view was correct and there were spirit children with God? How about eternity? Would Heaven be better if there were one more person in it? If so, then one would have to create an infinite quantity, an impossibility, for there not to be evil there.

For my view, there is no problem, since I think the mistake is that Khan nowhere defined good. There are so many problems you can dispense with at the start if you have a definition of good, such as the so-called Euthyphro dilemma. The good is that at which all things aim.

The good is that at which all things aim said Aristotle, which means that it is something that is desirable. Aquinas took this then and said that something is good insofar as it is an instance of its kind. To be perfect, it must be actual and insofar as it is actual, it is perfect. Since everything desires perfection and that which is the most perfect is the most actual, then we see that goodness and being are the same thing. Goodness just speaks to the thing being desirable. (See Feser’s book “Aquinas” for more.)

Now there is something that must be said about desirable. This does not mean a conscious desire as Aristotle said all things aim for the good, but very few things are conscious in the grand scheme of things. So how do they aim? It is based on their final cause, that is, the end for which they are meant. For Aristotle, this was the most important cause of all. Unfortunately for many of us today, it is the least important cause.

To give an example, a plant has no conscious nature that we know of, but the plant still moves towards water and towards the sun. The plant wishes to be even if it does not realize that or do so consciously. Our cat here often gets scared and will run away when someone he doesn’t know or trust comes over. Why? He naturally wants to live even if he is not consciously thinking “I want to live.” We can also have an end we were made for and actively resist it and try to find it elsewhere. For instance, in Christian thought, we were all made to reflect God and His love and rule with Him forever. Many of us deny this and seek our good in other places like sex, money, power, etc.

As far as I’m concerned, the lack of really establishing a philosophy of good and evil is the Achilles’s heel of Khan’s argument. Note in fact that by my definition, one has an explanation for moral goodness and evil, but also goodness of nature.

So what is evil then? Evil is the privation of that which should be present but is not. If goodness is being, then its opposite, evil, is a kind of non-being, and nothing positive can be said about non-being. We must be clear on this point here. It is not evil that a rock does not have sight, since it is not in the nature of a rock to have sight, but it is an evil that a man has blindness, since it is of the nature of a man to have sight. Blindness is not a positive principle in something, but it is an absence of a good that should be there, the good of sight. It is a name given to a specific absence, but not an existent reality on its own.

I’m also concerned about Khan’s definition of omnipotence. Can God create a square circle is a question He asks. I do not know from his talk if he means this seriously or not, but the answer is no. God cannot do that because that involves a contradiction, and omnipotence has not been historically understood to mean that contradictions can be done. The following lengthy quote from the Summa Theologica, q. 25, article 3, will show Aquinas’s stance.

“It remains therefore, that God is called omnipotent because He can do all things that are possible absolutely; which is the second way of saying a thing is possible. For a thing is said to be possible or impossible absolutely, according to the relation in which the very terms stand to one another, possible if the predicate is not incompatible with the subject, as that Socrates sits; and absolutely impossible when the predicate is altogether incompatible with the subject, as, for instance, that a man is a donkey.

It must, however, be remembered that since every agent produces an effect like itself, to each active power there corresponds a thing possible as its proper object according to the nature of that act on which its active power is founded; for instance, the power of giving warmth is related as to its proper object to the being capable of being warmed. The divine existence, however, upon which the nature of power in God is founded, is infinite, and is not limited to any genus of being; but possesses within itself the perfection of all being. Whence, whatsoever has or can have the nature of being, is numbered among the absolutely possible things, in respect of which God is called omnipotent. Now nothing is opposed to the idea of being except non-being. Therefore, that which implies being and non-being at the same time is repugnant to the idea of an absolutely possible thing, within the scope of the divine omnipotence. For such cannot come under the divine omnipotence, not because of any defect in the power of God, but because it has not the nature of a feasible or possible thing. Therefore, everything that does not imply a contradiction in terms, is numbered amongst those possible things, in respect of which God is called omnipotent: whereas whatever implies contradiction does not come within the scope of divine omnipotence, because it cannot have the aspect of possibility. Hence it is better to say that such things cannot be done, than that God cannot do them. Nor is this contrary to the word of the angel, saying: “No word shall be impossible with God.” For whatever implies a contradiction cannot be a word, because no intellect can possibly conceive such a thing.”

In essence then, God cannot do a contradiction since that would involve being and non-being both and God can only do that which is possible. As C.S. Lewis said in “The Problem of Pain.”

“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.

If you choose to say, ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prifex to them the two other words, ‘God can.’

It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

This then gets us into the free-will defense. To his credit, Khan does bring up Plantinga, Khan does argue that he does not believe that free-will exists, but will grant it for the sake of argument. I come from the approach that free-will exists and that divine sovereignty exists. How are these two reconciled? Much has been written on that question and I do not expect a clear answer. I just see Scripture teaches both and accept both of them. There are some who have God so sovereign that there is no free-will. I find this much more problematic as it makes God the ultimate cause of evil. There are some who say God is not all-knowing with regards to the future and man has free-will, but I find this to be a limitation on God with no metaphysical basis and not compatible with Scripture.

Khan says God could have created people to be more rational or more sensitive. If they were more of these, they would have made better decisions, but I question the premise. For instance, in order to make a person to be perfectly good in nature entirely and perfectly rational, God would have to make someone else like Him, but He cannot do that. He cannot make another being who has no beginning.

There is no other being that can Have being define its essence. Everything else partakes of God in some way. Each can only be a perfection of its kind. God is not looking to create a being exactly like Him. That’s impossible. He is looking to create a being that reflects Him, albeit imperfectly if one means not a total duplicate, but perfectly if we just mean, insofar as we are able.

Even if we granted other spirit beings, the problem would be the same. Michael the archangel cannot be exactly like God. Only God is goodness itself by nature and love itself by nature and being itself by nature. Everything else has being and is loving and good and existent insofar as it exists. (Even the devil. The devil has will, power, and existence, which are good things, and the devil seeks his own good, which is to say he loves his own good. The problem is that his will is bent morally)

So, if God wants to create beings who are to be good, that goodness is to be a choice for them, just as it was for Michael and the devil. If he creates spirit children supposedly, even those must choose for if love for us is to be a free decision, it cannot be a forced free decision. That is a contradiction.

Khan’s situation is problematic because to say we could be more rational means we are better able to think and know all the information needed, but eventually, one will have to reach omniscience, which we cannot, seeing as we are always going to be finite beings by nature and God alone is infinite.

If we go with spirit beings, we just push the problem back a step and then can just as easily say why God allowed these spirit beings who He knew to be evil to come to Earth and do evil here. Perhaps Khan will point to a greater good, but then I can just as well say “That is why God allows people to choose evil here. He uses their evil for a greater good.”

For the problem of evil to be shown to be a problem, it must be shown that God can have no good reason for doing it this way, and I do not think that that can be shown from Khan, though He is welcome to try. I also think that for a larger perspective on this, he might want to try the work “God and Evil” By Meister and Dew Jr.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Ode To Joy

What difference can one life make? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I was going to write something today for a friend in response to a Mormon video, but I must put that one on hold for a day now. As listeners of the podcast know, and I hope you all are listening, my grandmother-in-law passed away Saturday. This is the grandmother on Mike’s said, in other words, the mother of Michael Licona, for those wondering which Mike. His daughter is my wife after all. Right now, Allie is up in Baltimore for the funeral of Grandma Joy.

If you are a fan of Mike, and many of you are, you need to consider that this woman was the main woman in his life before his wife that shaped him, and give thanks. Joy was in turn a great influence on my own wife, helping her through her own personal crises. In the midst of all her pain, she had only joy and concern for other people.

Joy had had breast cancer that was stage four. It disappeared sometime around last September for awhile, and I think this was a gift from God to allow her to have one more Thanksgiving with us all. This was the second time I had got to meet Joy. The first was at the wedding and I did not get to interact with her that much. At this Thanksgiving, Allie and I stayed at her house and got to meet her and regularly speak with her.

Joy was a delight whose Christian faith showed through and her simple laughter in everything. For instance, two of her grandsons came over every day. One was especially interested in Mike’s doing magic tricks with a deck of cards. When Mike was gone one time, I asked this grandson if he would like to play a card game. This one was either an early teenager or about to be one.

“Yeah!”

“Ever heard of 52 pick-up?”

“No!”

“Wanna play it?”

“Yeah!”

To which, I of course threw the deck in the air and watched all the cards land telling him to pick them up. Joy watched and smiled delighting in such a prank.

Joy was active the whole week being in the kitchen helping to prepare meals. She offered advice to Allie and I and I don’t remember her ever being negative about her past experiences. Joy was quite good at living out her name.

Allie and Joy would quite often talk to each other. There was a special bond there between the two of them which made the loss so much harder for Allie. I have even been told that when Joy was not really responsive to anyone, that she still cried when she heard Allie’s voice on the phone.

During the past month, we had been waiting in limbo expecting the end to come any time. We actually expected it the first week in June, but Joy was always a fighter and hung on for a long time. On Saturday, I received the call from Allie while I was out doing some shopping. On the show, I asked for prayer at least twice for the situation.

Through her Christlike actions, Joy helped shape society. Those of you who have appreciated Mike’s work should give thanks for Joy, for one could easily question whether he would have done his resurrection work if it had not been for the influence of a godly mother. Those of you who are mothers out there. Never underestimate the influence that you can have on your children.

Those of you who like my work, and I hope that’s all of you, need to have the same consideration. Because of Joy’s influence, Mike married a Christian woman and together they raised their children to be Christian. One of them is my wife today who has Joy’s Christianity in her. My wife is, aside from Jesus Christ, the greatest influence on my life. It is her that has been the greatest change in my apologetic career really giving me the confidence to go further. Joy’s actions reached far beyond herself. They reached to those who would come after her and even to those who were in no way part of her family at first.

It is said that when we are born, we cry and the world rejoices. We should live so that when we die, the world cries and we rejoice. The world has much to cry about today. Joy, meanwhile, has much to rejoice about. As of now, she is matching her name more than she ever has before. Though not in the body at the moment, she is nevertheless in the presence of Jesus.

In fact, as I drove home from the store, I kept thinking that Joy was in the presence of Jesus, and I could not help but smile. As Paul says in 1 Thessalonians, we do mourn, but not like those without hope. The mourning is not for Joy. Joy is far better off than we are. In her state right now where she is, the happiest she has ever been here is like stark depression in comparison.

It is definitely a time like this that I can even more appreciate the meaning of the resurrection. The study of the resurrection is not an isolated point to prove that Christianity is true. It is something that changes the course of history entirely. I do agree with the claim that apart from the resurrection of Jesus, there is no other hope for mankind.

While we will mourn for a season, especially when the funeral takes place and the reality sinks in the most, we mourn not for Joy, but for ourselves. We are at a loss for not being able to directly interact with her any more for now. There can be no tears shed for Joy. Her battle is over. Her pain is gone. She is in the presence of her Lord. There are tears for those of us left behind and a reminder of why we do what we do. We look forward to the day when the curse will be broken and God will make all things new.

Until then, there will always be an empty part in those of us who knew Joy as we await the time when God will right all the wrongs and reverse all the sufferings. Let us live our lives in a far greater light now realizing the impact that one life has made and will have throughout the centuries. Joy was impacted by those who came before her. Mike has his own impacts through his work. I in turn will have my own impact and if Allie and I have children, they will get the legacy of their great-grandmother. What we do and what happens in the future will be done in part from the work of a simple woman who just sought to honor Christ in her life and set Him first. We in apologetics do far less if we only seek to prove Christianity but do not set Christ first.

Joy’s pebble has already landed in the pond of our timeline, but the circles that go out will go far beyond what she had ever thought and may we do the same and give Christ all that we have and let him see what He will do with the circles that come forward.

May the memory of Joy be eternal and may we always carry it in our hearts.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

A Response To The Argument From Locality

Has there been a defeater for all forms of theism? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

A friend sent me an article recently about “The Argument From Locality” wanting to see if I’d answer. For those interested, the piece can be found here. This is a variant of an argument that has gone around several times. I do not see an author so since the web site is daylight atheism, I will refer to the author as DA. DA starts this way:

“I have formalized an argument that I have seen presented on other occasions in support of the conclusion that no version of theism is true. While other atheist writers have used aspects of it, it has not, as far as I know, been given a concise name. If I may remedy this, I would like to propose that this argument, which I present below, be henceforth referred to as the Argument from Locality.”

Already, this start is problematic. Every form of theism? How about deism? Could it be a deistic God exists? How about a God who might do a worldwide universal display at some later time? Note also that this argument does not deal with ANY of the traditional arguments from God’s existence. If one of those holds, the argument from locality is false. Why? The other arguments are built on metaphysical principles that one follow from the other in a syllogistic sense. We’ll find this argument depends on speculations about what God would or should do, presuppositions we’d find hard to test.

“The Argument from Locality runs as follows. Every religion currently being practiced on this planet, as well as every past religion which no longer has followers, has a definite, discernible origin in time and space. Even if the exact beginnings of a religion are murky, that religion still originated in a definite area and in a definite time period.”

Okay. No problem here.

“However, I argue that any god or gods which existed and which desired to reveal themselves to humanity would not do this – they would not provide a revelation to only one culture, at one time, in one place. There are several good reasons to believe this, and if it holds, then any religion which did have only a single point of origin cannot possibly be true. In short: The fact that all religions originated in one specific culture, at one specific time and place, points strongly to their being the product of that culture, time and place – and not the product of divine revelation.”

Note we already have the presuppositions setting in. “No god would do this!” How DA learned the ways of beings he doesn’t think exist is a question to ponder for sure. Still, we’ll see if DA’s contention holds up.

“For the Argument from Locality to hold, its key proposition – that no rational deity would create a religion with a single point of origin – must be defended. I believe it can be defended, for the following reasons:”

I believe it can’t be. Let’s see who’s right.

“Any deity which desired to be believed in would reveal itself to everyone, not just to a specific person, culture, race or nation. As discussed in “The One True Religion“, there can be no doubt that any religion that had it right would be universal. Modern science has taught us that all humans are the same on fundamental genetic and cognitive levels and that race is a social construct as much as it is a biological one.”

And here we have our first problem. DA is assuming all people would be just like him. Why? Well look at our scientific information! No mention of doing study in anthropology! No mention of going to different cultures and seeing how people act! As should be known, when comparing two things or more, what matters most is not their similarities, but their differences.

Imagine DA going to Japan for instance and coming into someone’s house and walking around with shoes on. They would be stunned. Imagine DA going into the home of a Middle Eastern man and being told “Welcome my guest. Everything I have is yours! I am your servant!” He would think the man insane instead of realizing this can be a way of greeting. Even here in America different groups of people have different customs and behaviors and what seems innocent to one person is a grave insult to another.

“In light of these facts, it is not rational to insist that a god – plainly not a creature of biology, with no special ties or allegiance to any subgroup of humanity – would select any single specific people or ethnicity to be its chosen. (It can hardly be a coincidence that every religion which claims God has a chosen people was founded by those who claimed they were the chosen people.)”

This just does not follow. I’m looking at this over and over and wondering what the connection is. Could it be perhaps that God does have reasons for not doing a sudden grand show that DA doesn’t know about? Could it be that God is more patient than DA realizes and is willing to use a plan to get His message out?

To which, if that was His plan and Christianity is the religion, it seems odd that DA is saying God did not do a good job revealing Himself since billions all over the world today believe in a religion that was revealed at a place and time 2,000 years ago. It looks like the plan worked well.

“It therefore follows that any god which founded a religion would probably provide its initial revelation to multiple peoples – preferably scattered throughout time and space, to ensure as wide a distribution of followers as possible – or, failing that, the initial revelation would be given to one group of people with instructions to spread it to others.”

This is odd since the first point didn’t even follow. Yet how is this revelation to be done? Does DA not realize that people speak different languages? Does he not realize that these people would have to translate this message? Who does he think would do the translating? Could this not easily be controlled by the powerful? What would be the content? Repent? Repent to who? Who is this God? What is He like? Without past action, why should I trust Him?

Amusingly, DA ends by saying the revelation would be given to one group of people with instructions to spread it to others.

But I thought a rational God would not choose one group of people….

And isn’t that exactly what was done through the people of Israel? With a statement like this, DA has buried his own argument.

“But there are other points, detailed below, which tell against the second possibility; and while the first possibility would be virtually indisputable evidence of divine origin, it is a possibility which no known religion, present or past, embodies. It would be extraordinary for people from across the globe and throughout history who had no contact with each other to independently invent the exact same religion, without a god giving them all the same information through revelation. But again, this situation describes no religion in existence today or ever.”

It would be, and it gives me not a single reason to believe it either. Could I not just say this is a delusion? There are several people who claim religious experiences today. An atheist would say the content of them is a delusion. Yet again, we still have the problem of how this message would come about, how it would be translated, what the content would be, etc.

“If there is a reward for believing, it is fundamentally unfair that some would receive more and more reliable evidence than others.”

The first objection here is who told him that this was unfair supposedly? Where did this moral standard come from?

Second, could it also be that those who get more evidence are the ones who are seeking more evidence? As we’ll see in this post, DA has not done a good job of seeking.

Third, while some people can get more evidence depending on certain events, all that is needed is sufficient evidence. Do people have sufficient evidence that God has revealed Himself in Christ?

“An example may best elucidate this point. In Christianity, those who believe and worship God as he instructs are rewarded with a blissful eternity in Heaven. But not everyone has an equal chance to attain this reward.”

I’d say at the start that my view of Heaven is quite different from DA’s and it’s quite noteworthy that the Bible seems to spend more time talking about the resurrection than it does about Heaven.

Yet what is meant by an equal chance? Does this mean everyone has to have the exact same evidence? As we’ll see, this is problematic.

“According to Christianity, some people, such as Jesus’ apostles, were eyewitnesses to his life, his miracles, and his resurrection from the dead. Skeptics such as Doubting Thomas were able to assuage their doubts by examining Jesus’ empty tomb and touching his resurrected body. But modern skeptics do not have access to this evidence.”

Let’s suppose the incarnation and death and resurrection are essential for Christianity to be true. Is DA saying that for Chritsianity to be true, then Jesus must appear in every culture repeatedly and appear to everyone and be murdered and raised again? Wouldn’t a culture learn about this eventually and, I don’t know, stop murdering the God-man that comes down? And again, could not one culture still tell another they have the story wrong? Could there not be just as much religious conflict?

“No one alive today witnessed any of Jesus’ miracles, including the resurrection; even if they actually happened, the only evidence we now possess of them is a book, a copy of copies translated from an ancient language that contradicts itself in many places, that claims to contain the accounts of eyewitnesses.”

Absent is any mention of a work such as Craig Keener’s “Miracles” that offers eyewitness claims of miracles around the world today. Absent is any mention of Richard Bauckham’s study “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.” Absent is any mention of works on the historical evidence for the resurrection such as N.T. Wright’s “The Resurrection of the Son of God” or Mike Licona’s “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach.”

Furthermore, I see the same line here about copy of copies. This is meant to call the textual process into question. If that is the case, I think DA should be acquainted with the words of an authority on the subject who is a NT scholar of textual criticism. This scholar says:

“If the primary purpose of this discipline is to get back to the original text, we may as well admit either defeat or victory, depending on how one chooses to look at it, because we’re not going to get much closer to the original text than we already are.… At this stage, our work on the original amounts to little more than tinkering. There’s something about historical scholarship that refuses to concede that a major task has been accomplished, but there it is.”

He also says:

“In spite of these remarkable [textual] differences, scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the original words of the New Testament with reasonable (although probably not 100 percent) accuracy.”

Who is this scholar? His name is Bart Ehrman.

The first quote is here: Novum Testamentum Graecum Editio Critica Maior: An Evaluation: TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, 1998, a revision of a paper presented at the Textual Criticism section of the 1997 Society of Biblical Literature in San Francisco. http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol03/Ehrman1998.html

The second is from here: The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 481.

It is doubtful that DA has read anything other than Bart Ehrman on textual criticism. Has he read anything by Daniel Wallace? Has he read “The Reliability of the New Testament” edited by Rob Stewart. Has he read Wegner’s “A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible?”

Furthermore, where does he think most of our information about ancient history comes from? Most of it comes from books! Does he treat the accounts of Plutarch the same way? What about the life of Alexander the Great?

As for contradictions, does he automatically throw out anything that has any contradiction in it? Suppose he comes across what he thinks is a contradiction? Does he bother to study it? Does he consider that perhaps a different culture wrote differently than he does? Does he consider that a writer like Plutarch could write about the same event in different accounts in ways that would seem contradictory?

“Even if Jesus’ life happened exactly as the Bible describes it, the Bible itself is the only witness to that fact, and our historical knowledge is so murky and the evidence so scanty that some people have argued that Jesus never existed at all.”

Some people have argued that. You won’t really find them in NT scholarship. For most scholars, that’s an idea that is lucky to even get a footnote. DA says the evidence is murky and scant and the Bible is the only witness. Absent then is any mention of the cases that people have made of what can be known about Jesus if we don’t use the Bible, and the list is pretty impressive. What if we only used Lucian, Tacitus, Josephus, Mara Bar-Serapion, Pliny, Seutonius, etc.? None of these are Christian writers.

But we don’t have just that. We have four gospels which are first century manuscripts, and it would be wonderful to have four accounts within 70 years of a person that lived in the ancient world. We have not only that, but we also have the letters of Paul and other letters like Hebrews. Once again, DA has not done the work of interacting with what is presented. Dismissal is not an argument.

“But while people currently living must muddle through this tortuous mess if they are to arrive at the correct conclusion for salvation, that same conclusion was effortless for Jesus’ contemporaries, those who were witnesses to his life and his ministry.”

And if we followed church tradition, that same evidence led to their martyrdom. One suspects DA would not be as longing for evidence if he figured that would be the cost. Note in fact that our same principle applies. Those who were seeking during the ministry of Jesus would get the light revealed to them. Those who weren’t, would not.

Also, if DA thinks a case can be made that Jesus never even existed, it is clear he has not at all begun wading through this “tortuous mess.”

“This cannot be considered fair. Why should God pick a small number of people and overwhelm them with so much first-hand evidence that their coming to the correct conclusion is virtually assured, while all the rest of us are forced to subsist on scraps of handed-down hearsay? Is salvation like winning the lottery – a matter of luck? How can God be a god of justice if he gives some people a much better chance than others?”

DA once again appeals to some standard of morality that we have no idea of. Furthermore, what evidence is there that we have scraps of handed-down hearsay? The gospels and Pauline epistles are not short little reads always.

Not only that, for a faith that was revealed so badly apparently, why is DA arguing against it 2,000 years later in a locale and culture quite foreign to the original? The fact that he’s arguing indicates that the plan of revelation worked well. Furthermore, we still have the problem of what if this is a historical religion meant to take place in one time and place?

In fact, it could be argued that this was the best time and place. The world had a language that was universal. There was a travel system that allowed for travel from place to place. The philosophical categories to understand Christianity were in place. The Second Temple mindset was there as well. If this was to be revealed at one time, could this not be a good time?

“The answer is: he cannot. If God’s system of salvation is to be considered fair, then it must be a level playing field, giving everyone the same chance and the same evidence on which to base a decision. Plainly, in this case it is not. It does no good to say that the apostles who had first-hand evidence balanced this by paying in much greater persecution and hardship – many more recent Christians with nothing but hearsay to go on were subjected to persecutions at least as great for their faith. While I have used Christianity as an example, an analogous argument could be applied to any religion purportedly founded or sustained by specific miraculous events at a specific place and time.”

Indeed, many have suffered, but it is the assumption that they have just hearsay. First, it has not been established that this is what the gospel accounts are. Second, if Keener is right, miracles taking place are also testimony to what has happened. Third, if my position on this being a historical faith is right, then DA’s contention is just not possible. Again, we don’t need equal evidence. We need sufficient evidence.

“If there is a punishment for not believing, it is fundamentally unfair that some would receive less evidence than others, or no evidence at all. This is the flip side of the previous point, but is different in subtle yet important ways. If a religion claims to be the exclusive way to salvation and threatens Hell for those who do not believe in it, then what happens to those who never even heard of it due to distance in time or space? What chance do they have of escaping damnation?

For example, if Christianity is the correct religion, then generation after generation – dozens of indigenous cultures, thousands of tribes, millions and millions of people – in North, Central and South America, in Europe, in Africa, in Asia, in Australia and Indonesia – all lived and died in total, tragic ignorance of the one true god, without ever being given a chance to know the love of Jesus or hear about the sacrifice he made. This holds true both for those people who lived before Jesus as well as those who lived during or after his time but before missionaries arrived there. They were never told about the Bible, never got to witness or benefit from any miracles, and never even had one single prophet raised up from among their number. Why did God neglect these people? ”

This is a long section, but simply one argument. To start with, DA needs to know someone does not go to Hell for failing to believe. They go to Hell for their sins. Believing in Jesus is the antidote to that judgment, but if you go to judgment and don’t have Jesus, what will God judge you by?

Your works.

God is also not arbitrary. He gives the same standard. It’s perfection. What other system could be used? Would it be a points system? How would we know how many points? Would that not be arbitrary anyway? How many points does a good deed give? How many points does a bad one take away? How many per deed?

DA also assumes that in the Christian worldview that all such people go straight to Hell. This is not a common evangelical position. It is instead argued that people are judged by the light that they have. In fact, in passages like Revelation 7, we are told a great number from all over the world experience the presence of God in joy.

Also, DA assumes there has been no miracle done or revelation sent. DA is unaware then of dreams Muslims have today of Jesus appearing to them. (In fact, I have a good friend who is a convert from Islam who had such an event where Jesus revealed Himself in a dream.) DA is unaware of missionaries that go to deliver the gospel and are told by the people that they have been waiting for them because they were told to look for people with a book who would be giving a revelation of the one true God. DA assumes that no miracle has taken place. Again, any reaction to Keener? Has DA even heard of Keener?

“More importantly, what is the fate of those who never heard? Did they all go to Hell when they died, simply because God chose not to tell them the way to salvation? Or did they somehow get to Heaven without the redemptive powers of Jesus or even the Jewish law? And if so, if this is possible, then what was the point of sending Jesus or giving the law at all?”

DA has a false assumption here as well. Either they’ve heard of Jesus and therefore have access, or else they have not heard and if they get there then, Jesus was not necessary. Could it be that Jesus is necessary even if people have not heard of Him?

For instance, OT saints are saved by looking forward to the coming Messiah. None of them had to know that His name was Jesus and He’d die on a cross and rose again. They had to show loyalty to what had been revealed to them by YHWH. Why could not the same apply to pagans?

Indeed, it does! Romans 1 states that at the start, this knowledge of God was revealed not through special revelation, but through creation itself, but man chose to instead look to the creation itself instead of through it and worship the creation. Romans 2 goes along with this saying that people know right and wrong not through special revelation, but rather through a general revelation written on their own hearts. If someone does not follow the evidence they have, upon what grounds is more owed?

“The Bible, supposedly God’s instruction book to humanity, nowhere addresses this crucial problem. Since the Bible is supposed to contain all relevant information regarding God’s plan of salvation, it is exceedingly strange and hard to explain, at least for those who believe in it, that it does not answer such an obviously important question.”

No it’s not. Why should it explain it? Considering the cost it took to write something in the ancient world and the time it took to do so, a writer would want to be concise and hit on the central issues. Speculation about those who never heard would not be of interest.

Also, DA has an understanding that the message is salvation. It’s not. The message is the kingdom of God with Christ ruling as king. Salvation is a part of that, but that is not the main thing. Salvation is saying that this is your proper response to the rule of God in Christ. That makes no sense without that rule being established.

Furthermore, why consider the Bible as God’s instruction book? It is a common understanding that the Bible is meant to be an ethical guide for us. No one would dispute that the Bible has ethical statements in it to be followed, but that is not the central purpose. It is also not written to tell us everything about salvation. How could it?

“The most relevant thing it says is its dictum that no man gets to Heaven without Jesus Christ, which implies that all those millions of people who lived and died without ever hearing of him were all damned through no fault of their own, but merely because they were born in the wrong place or at the wrong time.”

Again, this does not follow. One could say the death and resurrection of Jesus is necessary, but hearing about it is not. Christians would in a sense have to say this because we believe in the salvation of OT saints. Why could this not just as well apply to others who are “righteous pagans” and follow the light that they have?

“This is horrendously unfair – an infinite atrocity from a god one of whose main characteristics is supposed to be justice.”

As we have seen, DA has not dealt with problems to his theory and has not given a moral standard. If my case is right, nothing unfair has been done.

“Lacking biblical guidance, some Christian apologists have attempted to solve this problem themselves. But the answers they have come up with are extremely weak, self-evidently flawed, and give rise to more questions than they answer. A typical example can be found in Jack Chick’s book “The Soul-Winner’s Handy Guide“, which hedges on the matter by offering a variety of poor solutions.”

So DA wants to interact with Christian apologists and he goes to Jack Chick?

Jack Chick?

Yep. No need to interact with real scholarship here. Don’t interact with Paul Copan or Peter Kreeft or other Christian philosophers on this issue. Just go straight to Jack Chick.

“Firstly, it claims that all people are sinners and that God always judges righteously, though this does not in any way answer the problem; in fact, it is a refusal to face the problem.”

Actually, no. This can just as easily be the start of a case presented later, but to be fair, I don’t read Jack Chick. I prefer to read actual authorities.

“Secondly, it asserts of these people that “God’s laws are already written in their hearts”. If that is the case, then why was it necessary for God to give the laws to anyone? Why do Christian groups today go to all the effort of sending missionaries to other countries if they will only tell people what they already know? And even if people do have such innate knowledge, this does not change the fact that those who were born elsewhere and elsewhen still had much less evidence to go on than those who lived in a time and a place where God was regularly dispensing miracles. Surely the vague promptings of conscience cannot be as powerful an impetus toward salvation as an eyewitness experience to the power of God.”

DA doesn’t realize the purpose of the Law in Israel was not so they would be good boys and girls, but so that they would enter into covenant with Him. The Law of Israel also included laws that are not part of general revelation, such as ceremonial and civil laws. These laws have never been a requirement for all to follow.

Why send missionaries then? Clearly to share specific revelation and because the truth of Christ is not written on the hearts, only the truth of morality.

“Finally, Chick’s book reluctantly offers, “Perhaps God, in his foreknowledge, had already known these people would not believe even if they were presented the gospel.” This is ludicrous. Are we to believe that in all these cultures – millions of people who lived throughout thousands of years – there wasn’t one single person who would have accepted the gospel if he had heard it? Humans are not so monolithic and never have been. And when Christian missionaries did arrive to conquer and colonize these cultures, they seemed to have little enough difficulty finding converts.”

I have no wish to defend Chick’s point here. I’m just including this to show I am being thorough.

“Besides, throughout the New Testament, God repeatedly reveals his message to people whom he must know will reject it. (See Matthew 10:5-6, for example, where Jesus tells his disciples to go and preach to the Jews, despite his lamentation in chapter 8 that most if not all of them are going to Hell.) And this does make sense. After all, if God had decided not to reveal his message to people whom he knows will not accept it, there would be no reason for him to reveal his message to anyone at all. He could just use his omniscient foreknowledge to pick out the people who would accept it if they heard it, save them, and condemn the rest. For Christians to say that God places a high emphasis on evangelism, then turn around and say that he doesn’t bother spreading his word to everyone, is profoundly inconsistent, not to mention unjust.”

Only the last point needs to be addressed about evangelism. No inconsistency exists. God is the master. We are the servants. Why should the servant expect the master to do all the work? Again also, no standard of justice has been given.

“Similar situations arise with many other religions. According to Judaism, God chose the Israelites as his people and gave his laws only to them. So what happens to everyone else? Do they have no chance? Is God a racist, condemning people to eternal exclusion from his kingdom based on the situation of their birth? Likewise Islam. Does the Qur’an, God’s final revelation to humankind, anywhere explicitly tell us the fate of those who lived and died without ever hearing of monotheism? Since Allah states he does not forgive idolatry, are the pagans and polytheists of ancient times damned to infinite torment for circumstances beyond their control?”

We have already addressed the purpose of the law and what is general revelation and what isn’t. Also, a passage like Amos 3:2 shows that because Israel was chosen, that was the basis for their judgment. It has not yet been mentioned that DA likely has an assumption that punishment and reward is the same for everyone. There are degrees in both cases.

“A religion which strongly reflects the beliefs of its time is more likely to be a product of its time than of revelation. If a given religion was purely the invention of human beings, we would expect that that religion would bear similarities to its culture of origin. On the other hand, a transcendent or all-knowing deity, or even one that was merely far wiser than human beings, would not be limited by what was known or believed at the time he dispensed a revelation, but could provide new information of which people were not previously aware and which did not correspond to any concepts in their experience. However, when we examine religions, we find that the former and not the latter situation invariably applies.”

Why new information would have to be revealed is not spelled out, but in fact, in Christianity, new information was revealed. We had a fuller revelation of the nature of God in Christ. We have a deeper understanding of morality based on the life of Christ. It could be DA is being like Dawkins expecting scientific information would be revealed. Why should it be?

“Christianity, again, is a perfect example of this. The theology of this religion blends apocalyptic fears, Jewish monotheistic ideals, Greek ethical philosophy, and the worship practices and beliefs of the mystery cults at precisely the time when those things were mixing at a cosmopolitan crossroads of the Roman Empire. Granted, God could decide to reveal his wisdom to humanity at a time and place when it would exactly resemble a syncretistic fusion of the prevailing theologies of the day. However, all else being equal, the principle of Occam’s Razor should lead us to conclude that it is nothing more than that. Positing a deity is an extra assumption that is not necessary and gives no additional explanatory power to any attempt to explain the origins of the Christian religion.”

DA is free to see if he can make a historical basis for when Mithras, Osiris, Dionyuss, Horus, Attis, etc. lived on this Earth and what eyewitnesses wrote about them if he wishes. Again, it is more likely that DA has brought into modern copycat nonsense that not even Bart Ehrman takes seriously.

“Another way in which this aspect of the Argument from Locality applies is in regard to those religious tenets which state beliefs and approve practices that were widely agreed upon at the time, but that today are recognized to be false or morally wrong. One particularly glaring example is the way the Christian and Jewish scriptures both implicitly and explicitly approve of the practices of human slavery and the institutional inequality of women.”

Absent is any interaction with works on slavery in the Ancient Near East culture. In fact, the seeds of the destruction of slavery are rooted in Scripture and the basis for its destruction the first time was the idea that man is in the image of God. Slavery was a less than desirable condition tolerated for the time being until its non-existence was more feasible. Poor people had to have someone to work for after all and they could not go to the local Wal-Mart and get a job.

As for women, has DA not heard of Ruth and Esther? How about Deborah and Hannah and other women celebrated in the OT? This OT is also the same one that says men and women both bear the image of God fully in the very first chapter!

Does he not see how Jesus interacted with women in his ministry? Does he not note that Paul said there is no male or female in Christ, or even slave and free? If anything uplifted women to where they are today, it was Christianity.

“Likewise, these writings show no special insight into the workings of the universe other than what was widely known to the people of their time, and make many mistakes common to those who lived in that era – for example, the belief that mental illness and physical disability were caused by demon possession.”

Nowhere do I see the NT saying that all mental illness and physical disability are the result of demon possession. It does indicate that some can be. Has DA proven otherwise? Has he examined every case past and present and shown none of them are the result of demonic activity? Note there are several healings in the NT that aren’t connected to demons. This even includes raisings of the dead.

“Again, under the Argument from Locality this is exactly what we should expect: these religions, being the product of those time periods, cannot be expected to show knowledge advanced beyond what the people of those periods possessed.”

And given the time and cost of writing and not to mention delivery of writing, we would not expect them to waste time writing so much on secondary issues. The apostles were not made to be scientists but made to be deliverers of the message of the Kingdom.

“In closing, consider what would refute the Argument from Locality. We could have found ourselves living in a world with only one religion, spread throughout the globe, with prophets from among every people. We could have found that, when we first contacted isolated native tribes, their religion was identical to one that already existed rather than being entirely their own. We could have found religions that bore no resemblance to the culture of their time and place of origin, in possession of advanced scientific knowledge or advanced ethical principles totally unlike what was commonly believed at the time. These are reasonable things to expect if there really was a god genuinely interested in revealing itself to humanity and being worshipped.”

No. What refutes it is a reasonable case. DA once again has the mindset often shown. “If God were as smart as I am, He would know how He ought to reveal Himself. Since He did not do so, He does not exist.” DA will need to interact with our reasons.

“But in reality, we find none of these things. What we find are numerous contradictory and conflicting religions, some with specific “chosen” races or ethnicities, and the further separated they are in time and space, the more their beliefs clash. When we encounter previously isolated tribes, their religions are always new and unique. When we examine the ethical codes and scientific knowledge of religions, they always bear strong resemblances to the times and places where those religions originated. Under the assumption of atheism, this is precisely what we should expect.”

Part of the problem is DA writes as a Post-Gutenberg Post-Enlightenment thinker who assumes scientific knowledge is what everyone cares about. Not so. DA will need to interact with our arguments and the reasons put forward and with real scholarship instead of Jack Chick. Note that not ONE theistic argument has been countered thus far.

“One could, of course, argue that this does not prove anything, that God deliberately intended things to be this way. Maybe he has reasons of his own, unknowable to us, for sending his messengers to only one people. Maybe he decided not to disclose advanced knowledge to primitive people. Maybe he allows evil spirits to delude people into creating false religions. Maybe, maybe, maybe – but that is precisely the point. When one believes in supernatural beings that can violate the laws of nature at will and that have motivations inscrutable to humans, all grounds for believing one proposition over another vanish, all knowledge disappears. There is no longer any reason to expect any state of affairs rather than any other. Such a doctrine is impossible to falsify and leads to nothing but epistemic chaos. In explaining anything, theism turns out to explain nothing.”

Unlike DA, I don’t hold to a natural-supernatural distinction. Yet DA has naught but speculation here. Who says God’s motivation is inscrutable? Numerous Christian phlosophers have written on this. Why also believe that all grounds for belieiving propositions vanish? They don’t. The propositions to be believed are consistent propositions backed by evidence. DA has this idea that if you allow a miracle, anything goes, and then looks at the world and says “Why aren’t there miracles?” If we present evidence of one DA will say “If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.” In essence, he is arguing in a circle.

“But atheism does not have the luxury of infinitely imaginative explanations unconstrained by fact. Given a few first principles – physical laws and observations whose existence no one disputes – atheism requires that the world can only be one way, and that is the way we in fact find it to be. Believers may argue why God set up the world in just the one way we would expect it to be if he did not exist, but for a freethinker, the conclusion is obvious.”

It could only be one way? Why? Why could it not be a brute fact as some atheist thinkers said? Why should I think on atheism that the laws of nature will be consistent? Why think the universe will not just pop out of existence? These are questions that philosophers regularly do argue about.

Of course, we could just as well ask where the first principles come from. DA has not given any argument. He has not given a metaphysical basis for existence or countered a single theistic argument and has said his own speculations are enough.

In conclusion, we find DA’s approach highly lacking and raising more problems than it solves, but such is what we are used to. It is easier to just speculate than to actually interact with real scholarship and contend with it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 7/6/2013

What’s coming up on this week’s podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Our boys in blue have always been known for putting away the bad guys behind bars and protecting the populace. While most of them go after physical crimes, there was one that decided to also take his skills of investigation and go after intellectual crimes, that is, false ideas floating around concerning Christianity. This was as a result of his using his detective skills to answer the greatest cold-case of all time. Did Jesus rise from the dead?

That should be enough to tell you who my guest is this week. If you don’t already know and you’re enthused about Christian apologetics, then this is someone that you definitely need to know. He is the newest member of the Stand To Reason Family. He is the producer of the Please Convince Me web site and podcast. He is the author of Cold-Case Christianity.

That’s right, my guest is Mr. J. Warner Wallace.

I’m quite excited to have him as a guest on the show as I’ve found him to not only be a great defender of the faith, but a good friend as well. J. Warner Wallace is a really down to Earth guy who has a passion for what he does and that passion extends especially to the youth of today.

As many of you know, the youth of today concern me greatly. So many of our Christians are falling away by following just one click. A young man can be on YouTube listening to his favorite Christian video and see a link to an atheist video in the related links and there gets that objection he’s never been told about in school.

All it takes is just one click.

It’s for reasons like this that J. Warner Wallace wrote his excellent book “Cold-Case Christianity” which we’ll be spending a good deal of time talking about. Cold-Case Christianity is one of those entry level books that is going to be for this generation what Case for Christ was for an earlier generation.

Cold-Case Christianity has the advantage of not only giving you good information, but also about giving you proper thinking tools when examining evidence. In other words, you don’t just get the answers, but you get told how it is that one is supposed to be able to reach those answers and what mistakes to avoid.

The book is so good that when I begin teaching through Skype for a church up north this month, it’s going to be the textbook that I’ll be using.

The Deeper Waters Podcast, as I hope you know, airs from 3-5 PM EST on Saturday. Our show will be live so we welcome your calls. The call-in number for our show is 714-242-5180. I urge you to listen live to the show, but keep in mind that you can always download a podcast and listen to it later on.

So please join me this Saturday as I welcome on my fellow apologist, and even more importantly, my friend, J. Warner Wallace.

The link can be found here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Waves Come Crashing Down Part 5

Has the new wave come to a crash again? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Dealing with our opponent with massive hubris once again, we come across this claim:

“5)…100% FACT: the gospels are overflowing (jam packed) with what we call SCI-FI material (like superhero comic books) (voice coming from the sky, a guy floating up into the heavens, zombies breaking from their graves and marching into a major city, a flesh and bone man vanishing into thin air [puff, gone], etc, etc, etc) …RED FLAG!!!!”

This is simply an argument from credulity. The argument goes like this.

The gospels contain events considered miraculous.
Miraculous events do not happen.
Therefore, the gospels are not historical.

If this were the case, this would be a good argument, but the problem is that this has not been shown to be the case. It has not been shown that miraculous events do not happen. Someone could say “I have never seen good evidence” but that only means that they have never seen it. It does not mean that no one ever has, and considering after Keener’s research there are numerous claims all around the world, no one can say that there are no longer being claimed today miracles, which would mean at least some people claim to have evidence.

So where are we going to go to see if miracles do not happen?

The first place most people go to today is the sciences, but this plan will not work. Someone can believe in the sciences fully and still believe in miracles. Why? The sciences only tell you what will happen if there is no interference from another agent outside the chain of events. They cannot tell you that there can be no interference.

In fact, to believe in miracles, one must have a basic idea of science. Now of course, the ancients did not know all about science that we do, but they did know some facts that we would not contest. They knew it took sex to make a baby. They knew it took an object like a boat to move on water. They knew that water does not suddenly turn to wine on its own.. They knew dead people stay dead.

In fact, this is how they recognized a miracle had taken place. This was an event outside of the ordinary that they had no explanation for. In fact, we today still have no explanation for many of these events. Imagine being a doctor verifying that your patient was dead and had been dead for a number of hours and then come some Christians wanting to pray anyway. You grant them their request figuring “What can be the harm?” and lo and behold, the dead patient comes back to life and moves around on his own and is in good health.

Would you be justified in thinking a miracle had taken place?

Now do you have to abandon atheism to be open to miracles? Not at all! Of course, finding a miracle could make you abandon it, but at this point, all you need is a non-dogmatic approach to miracles. You can say all you want “I’m skeptical of miracles, but I want to keep an open mind.” Of course, you also want to make sure that you don’t stack the deck way too high. All that is needed is sufficient evidence.

Another place to go to would be history. Does history show that miracles have taken place?

Unfortunately, the problem is that usually our metaphysics drives the way our history goes. If you come to the evidence and have as an a priori that miracles cannot happen, then what do you do when you find a miraculous event happening in any piece of literature? Well that can’t be a real event!

There are some miracles in the Bible that one would be at difficulty to demonstrate happened. For instance, did Jesus turn water into wine at the Wedding of Cana? It is highly doubtful we will ever find a drop of wine in Cana still that we can say came from this wedding. We can look at the story and ask on its own some questions.

Is the story in a generally reliable account?
Does it contain anachronisms?
Is it an eyewitness account or does it have an eyewitness source?
Has the story remained unchanged?
What is the length of time between the event and the writing?
Etc.

We could ask this about several miracles. Was a blind man healed? Did a centurion have his servant healed? Did Jairus’s daughter get raised from the dead? Some of these miracles we might find something that can corroborate them. We could make an archaeological finding that showed someone honored a site where such an event was to take place, but that would not demonstrate the event.

A greater exception to this would be the resurrection of Jesus since we have numerous claims afterwards that need to be explained as well as the rise of the Christian church that needs to be explained. Due to the greater effects of this miracle, there is far more evidence.

So if we look at history and realize our metaphysics is driving us, then the place to go to is our metaphysics. For those who don’t know, metaphysics refers to the study of being as being. Biology studies material being that lives. Physics studies being in motion. Theology studies the being of God. Mathematics studies being in so far as its numeral. Ethics studies being in so far as it is related to the good. Metaphysics studies being as just being.

This gets us into questions of what is the basis for existence, what is existence, and is there any existence outside of our material world? I have written elsewhere on this blog on reasons for believing in God’s existence. (See my posts on the Five Ways of Aquinas.)

If we find that God exists, what is there to stop Him from acting on the natural world? Then this gets us into theology. Why should one choose theism over deism? Yet if there is historical evidence for miracles, such as the resurrection or the works of Keener, then deism has a problem.

Note in fact it could be the case that there have been no miracles in history. It does not mean there can be no miracles in the future. If we say God exists and realize He has not done any miracles yet, it does not mean He never can do them.

In conclusion, the irrefutable fact seems quite refutable. An argument from credulity is not an argument.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

J.P. Holding also replies here.

Book Plunge: Prosperity and Poverty

What are my thoughts on E. Calvin Beisner’s book on economics? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Economics is a topic often not talked about in the church today, aside from the discussions of how much people need to be tithing, but it is a topic that should be discussed far more often. When we look at our country today, the reason we’re in an economic crisis is because people believed several myths about economics. For Christians wanting to redeem the world for Christ, that includes the economic world and that will mean being able to dispute those economic myths.

Of course, this isn’t just to dispute myths, but also out of Christian concern for the well-being of all, including the poor. There are many programs out there designed to help people in poverty, but in reality, they help keep them in poverty. Beisner’s work is designed to help us realize all of this from a Christian perspective.

It interestingly begins with the story of the rich young man and starts to setting the context in a Christian framework there by making it clear Christ must be worth everything. Beisner begins by setting in play biblical values such as what justice is biblically, what work is, and what the importance of rest is.

From there, Beisner goes on to discuss modern economic policies and not just how they have failed but how it would have been known and in fact was known that they would fail. All of this is regularly interspersed with references to passages of Scripture, particularly the Ten Commandments, much of that being on the commandment to not steal. The emphasis is that the moral way and the effective way is also the biblical way.

Some readers will wonder about biblical texts such as the year of Jubilee or the coming together in Acts 2 and wonder if these violate the principles? Beisner goes to great detail to show they do not, although I as an orthodox Preterist would add that Acts only happened in Jerusalem since Christians there knew Jesus was going to judge the place soon so what good does it do to hold on to even the treasured land that they normally saw their identity in?

Beisner also gives us a warning that we should not show partiality to the poor even if we want to help them, which we should. A law that favors the rich is unjust. So also is a law that favors the poor. As he says “God is not ‘on the side of the poor’ despite protests to the contrary. Any law, therefore, that gives an advantage in the economic sphere to anyone, rich or poor, violates Biblical justice. (Page 52)

Beisner explains why many solutions to modern economic problems do not work, such as minimum wage laws or price controls. He also tells us to ask ourselves the key question of who benefits from these laws. When we do that, we will find it is not the poor that are supposedly being looked out for.

Finally, he offers the solution and shows how the church can handle the burden and should be handling the burden. We have made it a point of letting the state handle the situation when we ourselves are to do that as followers of Christ. Government need not be in the business of charity.

There are three ways I think this work could improve.

The first is that there is an appendix at the end explaining the relation of biblical law to economics. Beisner says he is not a reconstructionist. I would have liked to have seen this explanation at the beginning. Otherwise, throughout the book one can think they are reading an argument from theonomy rather than from natural law. The advantage of natural law is that biblical laws can be seen as “Just your religion” but natural law thinking says “These are truths anyone can know through reason.”

The second is that I would have liked to have seen a glossary of terms which I think would be helpful in case this was someone’s first read on economics. It would be beneficial for someone to be able to say “What was marginal utility again?”, go to the back and look up a definition, and then return to their reading.

Finally, there are books on a Christian philosophy of government, but I would like to have seen some on just economics, such as Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson”, or Ron Nash’s “Poverty and Wealth.” Also would be writings from people like Von Mises, Walter Williams, and Thomas Sowell. People interested in economics will need more places to go to.

Still, I do conclude that Beisner’s work is a helpful work for anyone wanting to understand a Christian philosophy of economics and give it my endorsement.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Wave Comes Crashing Down Part 3 and 4

What shall we find as we turn again to low hanging atheist fruit? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Today, we’ll be looking briefly at two bogus claims. Let’s see the first.

“3)…100% FACT: and these unknown/anonymous/hidden writers blatantly copied each other (or other sources like the alleged Q, L, M documents), virtually word for word in many places …RED FLAG!!!! ”

In some places, yes, they are identical, and this would be the case with a strong oral tradition. In many places, they are not. Yet the gospels were written in a time where there were no plagiarism laws and material that was put out there would be considered the property of the community and thus could be shared. In fact, the gospel writers would want to make sure that it was shared.

Furthermore, our critic says nothing about the times when the writings are quite different. Did God speak to Jesus or to the crowd at the baptism of Jesus? Was Jairus’s daughter dead when he came to Jesus or was she about to die? A good theory of the production of the gospel documents needs to take into account not only the similarities between the accounts, known often as the synoptic problem, but also the differences.

“4)…100% FACT: and worse yet, these unknown/anonymous/hidden writers wrote scenes impossible to eyewitness (like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane) …RED FLAG!!!! ”

The Garden is a poor choice. Personally, I don’t know many people that can fall asleep at the drop of a hat, especially if it was a stressful situation like what was going on. All that would be needed was one disciple to be watching to see what was going on, and that’s entirely plausible, even if as they watched they started to doze off.

Another situation that our critic might have chosen to use could be the trial of Jesus, but this is also faulty. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that none of the disciples were privy to what happened at the trial of Jesus. Does that mean there would be no record?

Not at all! In fact, a strong case can be made that Joseph of Arimathea did in fact bury Jesus. If so, could he not have been a witness to what happened at the trial of Jesus? What about Nicodemus? Is it possible he might have been a witness to what happened?

Noteworthy is that our critic also has not interacted with the latest research on this, such as Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.” The pitfall of our critic is that he has no idea on how history is done and instead bases his arguments on credulity, which is simply circular reasoning.

Let this be an example to critics everywhere. There is nothing wrong with being skeptical of the accounts in the gospels. That’s in fact understandable. They contain quite incredible claims. What is wrong is having a hyperskepticism that only the most unreasonable of conditions must be met before one accepts the claims that are found in them. Do real history. Treat them like any other document and see what happens.

J.P. Holding’s critiques can be found here

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: The Jesus Quest

Where does Ben Witherington see the quest going? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

In The Jesus Quest, Ben Witherington surveys many of the latest writings (at the time) on the historical Jesus by scholars and critiques them. Rarely does he make a statement about his own view. He interacts with all sides, but he does seem to have more non-Christian scholars being critiqued rather than Christian ones.

The book starts with a quite brief explanation of the first two quests that could be read in about ten minutes or so. This gets us then into the third quest, which is of course the meat of the work. The start before looking at the various views of Jesus is looking at the views of Galilee.

As Witherington says, the quest for the historical Jesus is also becoming the quest for the historical Galilee. We cannot separate Jesus from the time and the culture that He lived in and understanding this has been an essential step in looking at who the man was and the way He saw Himself and the way His contemporaries saw Him.

At this point, Witherington does his readers a great service by familiarizing them with many aspects of the culture of Jesus that would not be known by most. For instance, he gives a brief explanation of an honor/shame culture and what it means to say a society believes in limited good.

The next chapter goes into looking at the Jesus Seminar and their methodology. Witherington points out that a minority of fellows on the voting panel could think Jesus did not say something and yet it will still show up in the results that Jesus did not say it despite it was the opinion of a minority. Also of course, there’s the troubling aspect that the group had a bias against miracles and did not represent members from leading educational institutions or even other countries.

So now we get into more specific looks. Witherington’s first group is the cynic sage group which consists of Crossan, Mack, and Downing. Next are the ones who see Jesus as a man of the Spirit, which includes Borg, Vermes, and Twelftree. (Twelftree being the first Christian being reviewed) For Jesus as an eschatological prophet, the views critiqued are that of Sanders and Casey. Next is the prophet of social change where Witherington interacts with Theissen, Horsley, and Kaylor. In the seventh chapter, there’s a look at the Jesus as the Wisdom of God, though from a different perspective, the feminist scholarship of Fiorenza. It is in this chapter Witherington goes into the most detail of his own view of Jesus as God’s Wisdom. Finally, he reviews the idea of Jesus as a marginal Jew and as a Jewish Messiah. Knowledgeable readers should recognize John Meier for the first view. For the second, Witherington critiques Stuhlmacher, Dunn, De Jonge, Bockmuehl, and finally, N.T. Wright.

Witherington’s book provides an excellent read. Witherington is known to have a fascinating memory and is a fair critiquer. He points out benefits made from the views of others and is dismayed that some people will not read their books due to their wild ideas. He treats the Christian authors just as critically.

I was dismayed at Witherington’s arguments when it came to eschatological passages like Mark 13. For instance, Witherington says that passages like Mark 14:62 and 13:26 are not about vindication as Wright says since Casey says that the events of God’s judgment take place on Earth but not in Heaven. I do not think Wright would disagree with this! It is the point that earthly events are a sign of what is going on in the Heavens. I am under the impression that Witherington sees 1 Thess. 4 and the Olivet Discourse as referring to the same event, when I do not see that at all. After all, if the Olivet Discourse is the same as 1 Thess. 4, it strikes me as odd that the resurrection would be left out of that.

In spite of all of this, a reader wanting to learn about the quest for the historical Jesus and about interacting with the scholarship on the quest will be benefited by reading Witherington. My concerns after all are about a secondary matter and do not drive away from the value on primary issues that this book addresses. For those who want to know about leading scholarship in this field, I recommend it without hesitation.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast: Michael Licona 6/29/2013

What’s coming up on Saturday’s episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast. Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Some of you have been wondering I’m sure when Michael Licona would show up on the Deeper Waters Podcast. Most readers of this blog and listeners of this show know that he is my father-in-law so it would seem natural that he would be an early guest. Mike has a schedule like everyone else. We had hoped to have him earlier this month, but there were difficulties involving his mother’s health. Now, we’re ready to go.

Some of you also know about Mike from the controversy that arose back in 2011 over his book “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach.” If you are, I think if you were one who sided against him, you should listen in and hear his view and let it be given a fair shake. There are many misunderstandings of his position and unfortunately, many people will already be convinced of Mike being liberal in his position to Scripture. He is not.

Yet of course, there is much more to this than Matthew 27. We need to talk about the resurrection itself. Mike has written the book that is now the authority on the topic and anyone who wants to give an argument against the resurrection of Jesus had better be capable of making a stand against the arguments in this book. I predict in reality that too many people will handle it the same way they do with Keener. The “too long, didn’t read” applies here.

We’ll hopefully be talking about the methodology as well of historiography. It’s not just about knowing the facts but knowing how it is that you get to the facts. Mike found in his research that many schools teaching history are not teaching historiography. What difference does that make?

What about the problem of miracles? Mike has a chapter in his book on this entirely. Of course, you should know that Craig Keener will be our guest on August 3rd to give us a much fuller treatment, but Mike will have to deal with that objection answering the position of Hume as well as answering modern advocates of a Humean position, such as Bart Ehrman.

Then we get into the facts themselves. What are the facts concerning the resurrection of Jesus? Can we really know anything that would allow us to make a case? Do we have more than just “The Bible says so” in order to show that Jesus rose from the dead?

Finally, there is a section in the book dealing with counter-theories. Many scholars avoid offering theories on the resurrection, but some do. Mike interacts with those theories and gives his reasons for thinking that they do not add up, all the while even commending them where they do meet the necessary criteria of historiography.

I am excited about this interview and for those of you who have questions about the resurrection of Jesus, this is the guest for you! Feel free to call in! Our number for taking questions during the show is 714-242-5180! I hope to hear from you!

The link can be found here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters