"Many [theists] will tell you, for instance, in considerable detail, that the Resurrection of Christ is better attested than most events we take to be historical." (p. 270)
It certainly is not. And, if it were, then the Resurrection would be not an article of faith but a fact on a par with World War II. People disagree in their interpretations of World War II and the same would then apply to the Resurrection.
That claim about the Resurrection is one that many people who have been brought up as Christians like to hear but how many adult converts to Christianity make the claim? Some do, of course. Every possible opinion exists. We each have to reach our own conclusions, not just accept what anyone else says, especially not about historical evidence.
(I found the above book particularly illuminating. One of its articles crystallized my thinking on the subject.)
27 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree, at the very least, belief in the actual existence of Christ--and hence His resurrection--is attested to far earlier than many anti-Christians like. Even if we set aside the testimony of the NT, I only need to cite writers like Flavius Josephus, Pliny the Younger, and Tacitus, to show how one-sided the antisupernaturalists are.
And, of course, such early Christian non-NT writings as the "Didache," 1 Clement, the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch, written before the writers listed above, contradicts the anti-Christians.
The arguments of the antisupernaturalists continue to strike me as strained, desperate, weak, and unconvincing. And I don't buy the even weaker arguments defending the Q theory and a post AD 70 dating for the Synoptic gospels.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But I do not deny the actual existence of Christ! And belief in his Resurrection is not strong attestation to it. How do Tacitus etc show that "antisupernaturalists" are "one-sided"? Are Christians not one-sided? How do "Didache" etc contradict "anti-Christians"?
How are antisupernaturalist arguments strained etc? I did not say anything about Q. James Crossley argues for a very early Mark.
Your response strikes me as unconvincing but merely saying that does not get us anywhere.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But many who hate Christianity do try to deny Christ lived and lives. I thought you would understand that.
Yes, many antisupernaturalists are one sided. They say that since miracles are impossible, that means Our Lord did not rise from the dead. The miracles recorded at Lourdes by un-impeachably honest witnesses challenges that view.
It's good that the work of Abbot Chapman and William Farmer finally seems to be undermining the dominance of the Q theory.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We are talking about people who do not accept Christianity, not who "hate" it. You refer to what you think "anti-Christians would like," not just to people who disagree with you. The whole subject becomes an instant emotionally charged battlefield instead of just an interesting and important discussion.
No doubt some anti-supernaturalists are one-sided. Are some Christians one-sided? Some say that miracles are impossible? Reasons can be given for such an opinion and it can be discussed. Lourdes does not prove that the Resurrection happened.
You invest your ideas of significance and value in a particular belief. Therefore, you defend that belief by denigrating some unimpeachably honest scholars who do not accept that belief. Learned, well-informed scholars are accused of intellectual dishonesty ("strained," "desperate," "weak" etc). "Unconvincing" to you, certainly not to many others.
All of this is unnecessary and, worse, counterproductive. Can we not just straightforwardly discuss the issue and learn from each other? Each of us has a finite, fallible set of opinions. Having to fight off imputations like "one-sided," "hate" etc does not help.
I did not say anything about Q.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Like it or not, hatred of Christianity is real. Christians, along with the Jews, are the most persecuted religious believers in the world. Because both, in somewhat different ways, are challenges to the world.
You are missing the point about Lourdes. If miracles happens there, then it is just as possible Christ rose from the dead.
These scholars you praise so much puzzles me. I've looked some of them up and either they were never Christians at all or have become disbelievers. Yet they spend years or decades trying to undermine the most sacred, core beliefs of Christianity: the divinity of Christ and His Resurrection. Why should they even care?
I also note how few such persons take a similarly critical view of Islam or Buddhism. In fact, I've read of how scholars who investigate the origins and ideas of Islam (in matters like the Yemeni fragments of the Koran) do so at real personal cost and danger.
But the antisupernaturalists at least force Christian scholars to sharpen and refine their rebuttals.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But we don't have to discuss hatred of Christianity when all that we started to discuss was the truth claims of Christianity.
I am not missing the point about Lourdes. Lourdes cures prove neither that resurrections are possible nor that the Resurrection of Christ happened.
Why should they care? It is an important subject and Christian belief has been central to Western civilization and is still widespread throughout the world. We would have a world of very closed minds if the scriptures of each tradition were studied only by adherents of that tradition.
If some people are remiss about criticizing Islam or Buddhism, that proves nothing about the issues involved in studying Christianity.
You are still taking an adversarial position and trying to attack the motives of non-believing Biblical scholars. Relax. Accept disagreement. Learn from different sources.
Hume's argument: In our experience, men often lie or err but are never resurrected. Therefore, it is always more probable that a report of a resurrection is a lie or an error than that it is true.
I do not believe that the disciples lied. They responded to the unexpected and devastating execution of their Messiah by reinterpreting scripture as prophesying that suffering, death and resurrection were the way to Messiahship. They then convinced themselves that Jesus was present, confirming their new interpretation. To this day, Christians claim to encounter Christ without meaning that he was present in any physical, visible, tangible, audible sense. But the Evangelists wrote it that way. Paul saw a light and heard a voice. (Such experiences happen.) he did not meet a man walking down the road. The man on the road to Emmaus seems to have been a stranger who consoled and inspired two disciples, then slipped away when he realized that they were latching onto what he had said and he had nothing else to offer them.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And the doctrinal claims of orthodox, Nicene/Chalcedonian Christianity are true.
Again, you are missing my point about Lourdes. Put minimally, I said that the miracles recorded there makes it possible the supreme miracle of Christ's Resurrection was possible.
But the impression I got of at least some of the antisupernaturalist scholars you favor was that that they are hostile to the supernatural claims and beliefs of orthodox Christianity. Meaning some are not dispassionate scholars. And that makes my hackles rise!
I dismiss Hume because I disagree with his dismissal of the supernatural.
Your last paragraph: Yet again you are insisting the antisupernaturalist argument the Apostles were deluded by some kind of mass self-hypnosis is true. No, Christianity makes sense only if we take seriously the Apostles insistence that Christ actually, literally, and bodily rose from the dead. So yes, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and St. Paul literally met the risen Christ.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am not missing any points. A resurrection is logically possible so, if all you want to prove is that resurrection is possible, then I accept that but that gets us no further forward in establishing whether a resurrection has in fact occurred which is surely the point.
Christians are not dispassionate scholars. My hackles do not rise. I understand that most people most of the time are strongly attached to their existing, and often preconceived, beliefs.
But you need to reply to Hume's argument, not just dismiss it. The supernatural has to be demonstrated or proved, not just assumed.
I accept that the Apostles insisted on a bodily resurrection but that does not make me accept that what they insisted on was true. The existence of Christianity can be fully explained on other hypotheses.
Certain doctrinal statements are true? A gratuitous assertion can be gratuitously denied. I can assert that those beliefs are untrue! But that alone gets us nowhere and I do not make such an assertion.
You seem to be trying to say that the mere existence of Christianity and the truth of Christianity are identical! That cannot be true of any belief.
"Self-hypnosis" is inaccurate. People become deeply convinced of a particular world view because it is their way of comprehending their experience. It is a historical fact that the disciples came to accept a new interpretation of Hebrew scriptures so how did that happen?
Either:
the spiritually risen Jesus inspired the new interpretation;
the bodily risen Jesus expounded the new interpretation (as it says in the Gospels);
the disciples responded to their disillusionment by making a new interpretation and began to "sense" Jesus' presence as Christians do to this day.
I think that the third explanation is the simplest but there is another misunderstanding here. My purpose in writing this is not to try to get you to accept it. Clearly absolutely impossible! We are simply sharing and comparing our different understandings of the origins of Christianity. Can we accept that that is all that we are doing?
Paul.
To be more precise, the Evangelists insist on a bodily resurrection and the Evangelists are supposed to transmit the Apostolic tradition. The Apostles are the "witnesses to the Resurrection," mainly Peter, Apostle to the Hebrews, and Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles. Neither Peter's Pentecost sermon nor Paul's letters mention either a tomb burial or an empty tomb. Paul says that a physical body went into the earth like a seed and that a different kind of "spiritual body" emerged like a plant. Very different from a resuscitated corpse in a tomb. (If someone did lose consciousness after three hours of impalement, he could have gone into a coma and revived in a tomb.) Peter merely quotes scripture and presents no details about the mode of resurrection.
I present these reflections in the hope that they can be considered and discussed, not just dismissed out of hand because they are unorthodox. There is something methodologically wrong here. The orthodox view is merely stated and alternatives are summarily dismissed. This satisfies the person who is doing the stating and dismissing and maybe his fellow believers but no one else so what is the point? I feel that genuine dialogue has not even started.
Finally for now maybe: Crucifixion victims were thrown in a mass grave. Any surviving disciples would most likely have fled from Jerusalem at Jesus' arrest or between his arrest and execution. The pious story of a decent burial in an unused tomb could easily have grown up in the oral tradition before the first Gospel was written. Then reports of resurrection appearances could be linked to the idea of a tomb found to be empty.
Kaor, Paul!
Until people who think as you do can somehow disprove the cures recorded at Lourdes are not acts of divine intervention, I will consider them to be exactly that, true acts of God.
I disagree, Christians too can be dispassionate scholars, even if they use their evidence and arguments to come to conclusions the antisupernaturalists dislike. Two examples I immediately thought of being Fr. Raymond Brown and Fr. Meier, esp. the latter's MARGINAL JEW series.
And I accept the doctrinal definitions of the Church as true, and their mere existence are also historical facts. And that new "spiritual" interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures by the Apostles came about because of the actual resurrection of Christ. And you seem to be deeply invested in denying the supernatural claims of Christianity.
I do not believe, if Christ had been a fraud, con-man, or deluded fool, etc., that a coward like Peter or a persecutor like Paul could have lived and preached as they did, even to martyrdom. No, something happened which overwhelmed and changed them, the actual resurrection of Christ. That is the simplest explanation.
I don't care about this empty tomb obsession, because it is irrelevant to what really matters, the Apostles proclaiming the literal resurrection of Christ.
I see nothing impossible in Joseph of Arimathea giving a decent burial for Christ. Because it is not surprising for Christ to have some disciples or sympathizers who were men of wealth and influence to whom Pontius Pilate would give some heeding. There are plenty of other historical examples of precisely the same thing: alleged prophets who had wealthy followers.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I do not have to disprove that an as yet unexplained event is an act of God.
Of course Christians can be dispassionate. I was merely replying to your saying that sceptics are not dispassionate.
More later.
Paul.
"Conclusions that antisupernaturalists dislike"? Let's just try to find the truth.
Of course the existence of a doctrine is a historical fact!
You seem to be deeply invested in the opposite. These observations get us nowhere.
I accept that you believe the doctrines are true.
I do not believe that Jesus was a fraud, con-man or deluded fool. He was a powerful healer and preacher who, like a lot other sane people, believed that the kingdom of God was imminent. It wasn't.
The Resurrection is not the simplest explanation. It is a very complicated one.
Examining the alleged evidence of an empty tomb is an obsession which you don't care about?
IIt is not impossible that Jesus received a decent burial.
Sorry for the sporadic response. I kept expecting to be interrupted so I sent each point separately.
Sean, this is not a discussion. It just becomes a squabble and you frequently reply to things that I have not said.
Kaor, Paul!
Sporadic comment 1: I'll try to be clearer, I did say some, not all, antisupernaturalists struck me as hostile to Christianity, thus not dispassionate.
Sporadic comment 2: I believe the truth lies with Catholic Christianity.
Sporadic comment 3: I don't understand what you meant in the second sentence.
Sporadic comment 4: I believe Our Lord to be far more than a simple healer/preacher. He is God as well as Man. And He also warned His disciples that no man knew the hour of His return. One year or a trillion, what difference does it make?
Sporadic comment 5: What you believe to be the simplest explanation about the Resurrection only follows from denying the supernatural is real, which I do not believe to be the truth.
The Resurrection is what matters. So of course Christ's tomb would be empty.
Sporadic comment 6: We finally agreed about something!
Sporadic comment 7: Apologies for squabbling. But some of your comments touches on ultimate questions that many, many. many people are passionate about.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
You said that I seemed to be deeply invested in denying the supernatural claims of Christianity. I meant that you seemed to be deeply invested in accepting those claims. Such observations about each other's motives cancel each other out. We should just discuss the issues.
This entire exchange is happening on the wrong basis. I am sure that Catholic apologists do not fall back on Lourdes the way you do. We can interpret an event as an act of God only if we believe in God in the first place. We do know that belief can have physical effects. My friend's vicar prayed and cured a persistent pain that he had.
Do you claim that you can conclusively state in a few words that your belief is so obviously true that anyone who does not accept it is dishonest? No one should make such a claim.
I know you believe that the truth lies with Catholic Christianity! This becomes circular.
We agree that a decent burial for Jesus is possible. You sometimes fall back from trying to establish that something is true and are content to claim merely that it is possible.
The tomb would be empty only if he was in a tomb in the first place.
I do not have to deny the supernatural. Others have to prove it.
Passion is indeed a problem in these matters.
I said a while back that my purpose is not to convince but merely to present for discussion an alternative interpretation. Discussion is lost in counter-assertion and denial.
Paul.
Jesus is recorded as having said that the end times would happen while some of his audience were still alive. Perspectives had changed by the time the Gospels were written. Beliefs developed and changed like everything else.
To discuss this properly, we would really need to start again from the beginning and just look at historical evidence and philosophical reasoning without any hostility to "antisupernaturalists," without any questioning of sceptics' honesty or motivations, without any passion, without any references to "haters" of Christianity. An immense smoke screen has been generated and we are still in it.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, "deeply invested," which still puzzles me. Why should so many who disbelieve in the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, His resurrection, etc., put so much toil in working up elaborate arguments trying to debunk these doctrines? I know you said it was because of how massively influential the Faith has been. But the effort seems out of proportion.
Of course I am also "invested," because that is what I believe!
There are far better apologists than an amateur like me! And I have read soe of them. I cite Lourdes because I believe the cures recorded there are as clear examples of prima facie evidence of the supernatural as we are going to get short of Christ personally appearing to anyone a la what happened to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. A man dying of bone cancer instantaneously cured after being placed in the waters at Lourdes certainly seems supernatural!
No, not all who disbelieve in Christ do so for bad reasons. I simply don't believe in their arguments.
Some of those "end times" prophecies of Christ refer, IIRC, to the Jewish revolt of AD 66-70 and the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans. That would certainly be apocalyptic to Christ audience in AD 32!
I think we have reached an impasse, due to us having irreconcilable fundamental principles. That said, I think a good brief discussion of similar issues would be Fr. Raymond Brown's AN INTRODUCTION TO NEW TESTAMENT CHRISTOLOGY. There's also Fr. John Meier's massive MARGINAL JEW series, in four volumes.*
Ad astra! Sean
*Fr. Meier was writing a fifth and concluding volume before he died. I've read the first three volumes--and he wrote with impressive erudition and a far higher intellectual level than I've reached!
Correction: Fr. Meier completed five volumes of his MARGINAL JEW series. It was vol. 6 that was unfinished at his death in 2022.
Sean,
People don't work up elaborate arguments to debunk Christian doctrines. They say what they think about the doctrines. Because you so fundamentally accept the doctrines, you are "puzzled" by people disagreeing with you. That puzzlement is an inability to understand and acknowledge that many people do indeed simply disagree with you. They do not start from a premise of Christian doctrines, then have to work up elaborate debunking arguments. They simply see no reason to accept those doctrines in the first place, then, on examination, find lots of reasons to disagree with the doctrines in any case. I have summarized such reasons before.
Of course you are invested because that is what you believe in? We go round in circles. Of anyone who argues toward a particular conclusion, it can be said that he seems to be invested in that conclusion. When I argued against the frequency of intelligent life in the universe, someone said, "You sound as if you don't want there to be other intelligent life!" - which is simply not the point. I am responding, of course, to your saying that I seem to be invested in sceptical arguments. (Sometimes the origin of an exchange seems to be forgotten.)
Prima facie evidence indeed! That means that the supernatural is a possible explanation. You fall back from arguing that a conclusion is certain to arguing that it is merely possible. Hypnosis (mental, not supernatural) cured an organic skin disease (physical).
I know you don't agree with arguments against belief in Christ. I have stated my arguments and that is all that I can do. I am not about to repeat them here. The point, as I have said, is not to get you to change your mind - obviously completely impossible - but to clarify what the arguments in fact are and also now to add that they are certainly not elaborate arguments that have had to be worked up.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I agree with that "clarifying." So I should reread the volumes I have of Fr. Meier's MARGINAL JEW series.
I should also reread the late Pope Benedict XVI's three vol. JESUS OF NAZARETH. He too was a scholar of great erudition and faith. I took a quick look at the list of contents for the second volume, HOLY WEEK: FROM THE ENTRANCE INTO JERUSALEM TO THE RESURRECTION, and the Pope discussed many of the points you mentioned.
Ad astra! Sean
At secondary school, I read Catholic apologetics and CS Lewis but since then I have read, thought and reflected more widely.
Post a Comment