The bones of Jesus

1. Christians are sometimes asked if they'd cease to be Christian in case the bones of Jesus were excavated in a Jerusalem cemetery. Of course, that's not a realistic prospect. For one thing, we don't have an independent DNA sample of Jesus to ID the bones. But the hypothetical isn't meant to be realistic.

2. There are different ways to answer the question, depending on what the question is after. One function of the question is to test whether Christian faith is based on historical facts. Does the Christian faith require that certain things happened in real space and time? Or is it theological fiction–like Perelandra?

To be true, indeed, to be anything in particular, Christianity must stand for some things. It can't be consistent with everything. If Christianity is true, that entails the falsity of claims to the contrary. 

And this isn't just about ideas. We have a stake in whether it's true. There's an enormous lot riding on Christianity. 

3. However, the question can have a more sinister motivation, to find or create a crack in a Christian's faith, then widen the crack. But we have to be careful about how seriously we take some hypothetical or counterfactual scenarios. The way they generally work is to change one key variable but leave everything else in place. Yet that's artificial.

If we're going to toy with hypothetical defeaters for Christianity, we could turn that around. A 2000-year-old tomb containing the bones of Jesus represents an alternate history scenario. But if we're talking about alternate history, then in that same alternate history, maybe Paul wrote something different in 1 Corinthians 15. In that alternate history, perhaps the physical resurrection of Jesus is inessential to the Christian faith. Perhaps the immortality of the soul will suffice.

The point, then, is that if an atheist uses this tactic to find or create a crack in a Christian's faith, two can play that game. A Christian doesn't have to submit to a hypothetical scenario that changes one key variable but leaves everything else intact. If it's counterfactual in one respect, why not another? If the hypothetical, as posed by the atheist, is inconsistent with Christianity, a Christian can adjust the hypothetical to make it consistent by changing another key variable. 

My point is that Christians shouldn't allow themselves to be intimidated or cornered by arbitrary hypothetical challenges. Don't mix two divergent timelines–where Paul says in one timeline our faith is in vain unless Jesus was raised, but in an alternate timeline his bones are still in the tomb, then combine them. That's cheating.