“None of these traditions and narratives can be said to remove doubt. Yet even though they suggest that doubt was not eliminated altogether for those who had the original Easter experiences, some conservative Christians today not only claim a higher degree of certainty than the apostles seem to have had, but make such certainty the standard of their Christian orthodoxy. If the apostles do not meet the criteria of their ‘fundamentals of the faith’, nor do the New Testament authors, then something is terribly wrong with this definition of Christianity.”
“Be that as it may, the point remains that Easter is not about historical certainty. In Matthew, it even explicitly includes doubt. And by making the day a day for celebrating certainty, we risk losing one of the most important steps that may help us to experience the ‘resurrection power’ that drove early Christianity and has continued to transform lives down the ages.”
“I wish you a happy Easter. But to get there, you may need to experience the uncertainty the earliest disciples felt. And then, finding no certainty to cling to, may you know the powerful, life-transforming effect of letting go. It is like being reborn, like being raised from death to life.”
http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2009/04/celebrating-easter-with-doubting.html
This is a good example of how McGrath misinterprets the Bible to justify his own experience.
1.Since McGrath doesn’t regard the NT as a reliable source of historical information, it’s duplicitous of him to cite these narratives as if he believes them, as if they describe real events.
2.These incidents are not recorded to justify doubt. They are not turning doubt into a paradigm of faith. Rather, they are recorded to remove doubt. To reassure the reader.
3.McGrath is not a doubter. McGrath is a disbeliever. Far from being doubtful, McGrath exhibits a high degree of certainty when it comes to disbelieving the miraculous elements of the Bible. This is another example of his duplicity. He casts himself in the role of an honest doubter when, in fact, he’s a doctrinaire unbeliever.
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We have to ask what people were doubting, why they doubted it, whether that doubt is portrayed positively by scripture, and whether it was overcome. Just citing some passages about doubt among the resurrection witnesses isn't sufficient. There's a difference between a highly undefined doubt among some resurrection witnesses and the highly defined rejection of so much of what the early Christians believed by somebody like James McGrath. Matthew 28:17 doesn't tell us much about the nature of the doubt, even what its object was. But even if we assume doubt about the resurrection, it doesn't follow that those people continued to doubt, that their doubt was comparable to McGrath's rejection of the resurrection, that they also doubted the many other aspects of traditional Christianity that McGrath rejects, etc. If somebody who believed in Jesus' other miracles, for example, doubted the resurrection temporarily, such doubt is far from McGrath's position.
ReplyDeleteMcGrath makes many misleading comments in his article, such as:
"Luke and John, written some 50 years after the fact, are the first to introduce a physical element to the encounter with Jesus."
The creed of 1 Corinthians 15 is a creed, not a biography or church history, for example, so we wouldn't expect many details about the nature of the resurrection appearances there. Still, the details we do have there (the fact that some of the witnesses were unbelievers beforehand, the involvement of coordinated group activity, etc.) are inconsistent with naturalistic theories.
Mark's gospel doesn't narrate any resurrection appearances, so, again, we wouldn't expect the details McGrath is referring to there. But the empty tomb implies a physical resurrection, the Jewish context suggests that the witnesses would have looked for physical evidence, and human nature in general suggests that physical evidence would have been sought. The idea that hundreds of resurrection witnesses living in a first-century Jewish context would have all, or even mostly, failed to seek physical evidence is highly unlikely. It's even more unlikely that such a lack of interest in physical evidence would have continued for decades, until around the time when McGrath thinks Luke and John were written.
How does McGrath know that Luke significantly postdates Matthew? He doesn't.
As the contrast between the discussion of the resurrection witnesses in 1 Corinthians 15 and the lack of such details about resurrection appearances in Mark's gospel illustrates, a later account can be a less detailed account. An author can leave out details he's aware of. Luke suggests that his material goes back to the original witnesses (Luke 1:1-4). The absence of some of his details in a source like Mark's gospel or Matthew's gospel isn't sufficient reason to reject Luke's account.
Matthew tells us that the risen Jesus' feet were touched (Matthew 28:9). And when a passage like Matthew 28:17 tells us that people "saw" Jesus, with references to an empty tomb and the touching of His feet in the context, the likely meaning of "saw" is a reference to physical vision.
The same observation applies to 1 Corinthians 15. Paul was a Jew writing about other Jewish resurrection witnesses, referring to a physical burial of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:4), referring to how the same "it" that was buried is raised (1 Corinthians 15:36, 15:42-44, 15:53-54), etc. Thus, when Paul refers to how Jesus "appeared" and was "seen" (1 Corinthians 9:1), the likely implication is that physical appearances and physical vision were involved.
At the time I read McGrath's article, it had two positive responses, one from AIGBusted and another from Steven Carr. That tells you something.
really why would the church allow him to teach?
ReplyDeleteMcGrath has backed himself into a dilemma. If, on the one hand, he regards the Gospels as unreliable, then he can't cite the example of doubters in the Gospels (even if his interpretation were correct) to justify doubt.
ReplyDeleteIf, on the other hand, he treats the Gospels as sufficiently reliable to cite the example of doubters in the Gospels, then that also commits him to Gospel miracles.
I've been having an enlightening conversation with him as well. Just for your edification.
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TU...AD,
ReplyDeleteI didn't really expect him to read it. I pointed it out to him to shame him for his very crappy hermeneutical not-skills. A little irony never hurt nobody. ;-)
And let's give the man his due, though - he IS a professor, not a "professor". Unless you know sthg I don't know, let's not cast aspersions on his credentials.
ReplyDeleteRespectfully,
Rhology
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Eh, not so much.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Rhology is just another blinkered and benighted fundy like I am. We're too blinded by our fideism to share in McGrath's enlightenment.
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TUAD, Will you send me a quick email, please?
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