Discussions of the resurrection appearances tend to focus on seeing Jesus. The tradition of referring to them as appearances is one factor, and there are other reasons for the focus on sight. People tend to value sight above the other senses. Paul focuses on seeing the risen Jesus when addressing his apostleship in 1 Corinthians 9:1, and other resurrection passages similarly emphasize sight (e.g., Mark 16:7, John 20:18). For these and other reasons, discussions of the resurrection appearances are often highly focused on the visual aspect of the encounters, often inordinately so. Critics of Christianity have an interest in simplifying the accounts, as if only a visual experience needs to be explained. And you sometimes come across the claim that only Luke and John refer to people touching the resurrected Jesus, with the suggestion that such details were fabricated in later accounts. The allegedly more developed nature of Luke and John's material is cited as evidence for the evolution of the gospels over time. What I want to do in this post is address some neglected evidence for the involvement of other senses, namely hearing and touch, in the encounters with the risen Jesus.
I'm going to discuss why we should think the resurrection appearances likely involved hearing and touching even if some or all of the resurrection accounts in the gospels and Acts are rejected. Those accounts shouldn't be rejected, and we and others have argued for that conclusion in depth elsewhere. But it's significant that the concept that the resurrection appearances only involved sight doesn't hold up well even under highly skeptical views of the material in the gospels and Acts.
The focus on sight in some resurrection passages shouldn't lead us to the conclusion that only sight was involved. Paul focuses on sight in 1 Corinthians 9:1 and 15:3-8, but elsewhere mentions the revelation he received through the experience as well (Galatians 1:11-16). The former doesn't exclude the latter. Similarly, Mary Magdalene heard and touched Jesus in John 20:14-17, yet what we're told about how she summarized her experience in verse 18 begins with how she had "seen" Jesus, and the touching isn't even mentioned. That sort of greater emphasis on sight and the leaving out of some details when summaries are provided shouldn't lead us to the conclusion that only sight (or whatever else that's mentioned) was involved. In another example from John's gospel, the events of John 20:19-23, which involved more than sight, are summarized as "We have seen the Lord!" in verse 25. Jesus' comments in verse 29 likewise summarize everything that's happened by referring to sight, even though more than sight was involved.
Hearing and touching are common elements of human interaction. They could easily occur in the context of a resurrection appearance. The interest in hearing Jesus and touching him referred to in 1 John 1:1 isn't limited to resurrection appearances, but surely included them and included them prominently. Jesus is frequently heard in the gospels outside of resurrection contexts (discussions with his disciples, the Sermon on the Mount, etc.). Run some searches on terms like "ear", "ears", and "hear", and see how widespread those themes are in the gospels. A lot of significance is assigned to hearing and hearing Jesus in particular. And touching Jesus and being touched by him are referred to many times, including in Mark (Matthew 8:3, 8:15, 14:36, Mark 1:41, 3:10, 5:27, 6:56, 7:33, 10:13, Luke 6:19, 7:39, 22:51, John 9:6, 12:3, etc.). Similarly, there are many references to speaking and touching as common parts of human interaction in other contexts (e.g., the references to greeting people verbally or with a kiss in Paul's letters). In light of the larger context just outlined, the idea that nobody would have tried to speak with or touch Jesus during any of the resurrection experiences is unlikely.
One of the points I made in passing above should be expanded upon. It's one thing to speculate that the resurrection appearances never involved something like eating a meal with the risen Jesus. Maybe all of his appearances happened to occur outside of meal contexts. But it's something else to suggest that practices as common as greetings, kissing, and embracing never occurred. The resurrection appearances were, by their nature, meetings among individuals, and meetings, by their nature, frequently involve things like greetings and embracing. Speaking and touching often occurred in the context of greetings and departures in Jesus' day, as reflected in the gospels (Matthew 26:49, Luke 7:45) and references to greeting people, and sometimes specifically greeting them with a kiss, in Paul's letters and 1 Peter 5:14. Or think of "the right hand of fellowship" in Galatians 2:9. The resurrection material in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, which is widely agreed to have originated in the first decade of Christianity, refers to six different appearances of Jesus. How likely is it that none of those involved the common practices of speaking and touching in contexts like greetings and farewells? So, the number of resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians 15 (and elsewhere) is evidence that hearing and touching the risen Jesus occurred.
In fact, 1 Corinthians is one of the letters in which Paul passes on a greeting from one group to another and refers to greeting one another with a holy kiss (16:20). We could combine 15:3-8 with 16:20 (as one illustration among others) to argue that it's probable that speaking and/or touching would have occurred to some extent during the resurrection appearances. I encourage people to stop thinking of 1 Corinthians 15 in such an isolated way, as we usually think of it in resurrection discussions, and start combining the passage with the material I've referred to in chapter 16.
It could be objected that the resurrection appearances were different than normal encounters in some relevant ways. Maybe Jesus appeared too briefly for normal greetings to occur, departed suddenly, and so on. But to propose that every appearance was of that nature would be something you'd need to argue for, not just begin with as a default assumption. It isn't what normally happens in human interactions. The more often it happened, the more likely it would be to raise suspicions among the witnesses and the people to whom the witnesses reported their experiences.
1 Corinthians 15 has multiple individuals seeing Jesus more than once, so it can't be argued that everybody who saw him on every occasion would have responded with the sort of startlement, awe, or whatever other reaction somebody would have had when seeing him for the first time. A scenario like we see in Luke 24:31, in which Jesus leaves suddenly, is plausible and could easily have happened and even happened more than once. But a scenario like we see in Matthew 28:9, Luke 24:36, or John 20:17, in which there's a greeting or a touching of Jesus just after a greeting, is not only plausible, but likely to have occurred to some extent. What Matthew, Luke, and John report about the occurrence of greetings during the resurrection appearances (Matthew 28:9, Luke 24:36, John 20:19, 20:26) should be considered historically likely even without such reports. The reaction of the women in Matthew 28:9 and John 20:17, touching Jesus after he greeted them, is likely to have occurred one or more times, probably multiple times, in a scenario like 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, in which there are so many encounters involving so many people. The number of people involved makes it likely that some were of a more extroverted nature, would have attempted to embrace Jesus, kiss him, clasp his hand, or some other such thing, and would have spoken to him rather than remaining silent, for example.
Notice that what's relevant here isn't just what these resurrection witnesses thought Jesus was doing. It's also a matter of what they did in response to him. Even if somebody were to propose that the resurrection appearances just involved hallucinations of Jesus standing before people, for example, it would be unlikely that he would have been perceived as too far away to touch and too far away to speak to on every occasion.
A visual hallucination is distinct from an auditory or tactile one, so more than one type of misperception would have to be proposed in order to sustain a hallucination hypothesis (or something similar) if Jesus was perceived in a more than visual way. And the timing and other aspects of the visual, auditory, and tactile elements would have to align. A misalignment would be easy to notice, much as people frequently can tell that they've been hallucinating, seeing an optical illusion, or some such thing in other contexts in life because of such misalignments. A hallucinated Jesus who never speaks throughout several appearances, who doesn't respond to greetings, whose lips don't move when speaking is perceived, and so on would be suspicious and unlikely to get the reaction we see among the early Christians (including the conversion of former non-Christians, such as James and Paul). We have to explain everything involved in the reports of the appearances of Jesus, including the perception that they were resurrection appearances.
Getting evidence like we have in 1 Corinthians 15 to line up with something like a hallucination hypothesis is much more difficult than is typically suggested. It's highly likely that there would have been efforts to speak with what they thought was the risen Jesus and to touch him and to look for his visual aspects to line up with how they were interacting with him. And we shouldn't stop with material like what we have in 1 Corinthians 15. We have good evidence for the gospel accounts and what other sources tell us. What I've outlined in this post underscores how credible the gospel accounts are in portraying people as speaking with and touching the resurrected Jesus. The kinds of greetings, embracing of Jesus, and such that we see in the gospels is how we should expect people to behave under such circumstances.
We can see the significance of the cumulative effect of factors like these in an individual like Peter. In the gospels and elsewhere, we have evidence that he was impulsive, rash, and outspoken, for example. Those characteristics frequently took the form of his initiating discussions with Jesus and trying to be physically closer to him (e.g., the strikingly similar behavior reported in different contexts by different sources in Matthew 14:29 and John 21:7). And he seems to have participated in at least three of the resurrection appearances mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15. Given Peter's traits, how likely is it that he never spoke to Jesus or tried to move close to him or touch him during all of those resurrection appearances? Peter didn't keep his mouth shut on the Mount of Transfiguration. Matthew refers to how God interrupted Peter rather than waiting for him to finish (17:5), and Mark and Luke commented on how embarrassing Peter's behavior was (Mark 9:6, Luke 9:33). He probably didn't stay silent over the entire course of a few resurrection appearances.
We should also consider how the resurrection witnesses would have interacted with each other and other people. They would have talked among themselves (Mark 16:3), told others about their experiences (Luke 24:10), sought to verify that the tomb was empty (Luke 24:12), discussed how they wanted to interact with Jesus if they saw him again (John 20:24-25), etc. What Acts 1:3 reports about the witnesses interacting with Jesus in a variety of ways and receiving instruction from him on a variety of issues is what you'd expect to happen under such circumstances. That's partly because we should expect people to have talked to the risen Jesus when they met him, to have asked him questions, to have looked for evidence that he had risen from the dead, etc. The skeptical suggestion that the people involved would have thought so little about what was going on, had so little interest in interacting with the risen Jesus, had so little interest in verifying what others had reported to them, and so on is highly unlikely. The inclusion of the relevant details in the gospels, Acts, and elsewhere isn't as suspicious as the lack of them in skeptical scenarios.
And are the reports of people touching Jesus only found in Luke and John, with the implication that such accounts are just fabricated late developments? There's not much reason to think that Luke postdates Matthew. Luke could easily be the earlier of the two. And we have good reason to date Luke to the mid 60s at the latest. That doesn't leave much time for an evolution in perceptions of the resurrection appearances, and many eyewitnesses of Jesus and the apostles would have still been alive at the time. Furthermore, Matthew 28:9 refers to the touching of Jesus' feet. The fact that the reference to touching his feet is so brief, doesn't get much attention, and is so often overlooked is evidence for its credibility. Matthew's comments on the subject are of a highly incidental nature. 1 Timothy 5:18 is likewise often overlooked, but its reference to Luke's gospel as scripture implies agreement with what that gospel says about the resurrection appearances. And every New Testament source who doesn't mention that the resurrected Jesus was touched (or mention that he was heard) is a source we shouldn't expect to mention such a fact.
The only thing I would want to emphasize as a *very small* corrective here is that I don't think Paul *could* touch Jesus in his own personal experiences, because Jesus does not appear to have been "with" Paul in the same sense that he was "with" the twelve in the Gospel appearances, with Mary Magdalene, etc.
ReplyDeleteNow, some people have insisted that in Paul's experiences on the Damascus road, Jesus had to be literally floating in the air above the road, so that if Paul could have risen above the road himself he could have touched Jesus. I myself don't think we should insist on that. (In fact, I think it's false.) But even if it were true, it was obviously never tested. The picture we get from all the accounts of the appearance on the Damascus road at their most robust is that of Paul down on the road, looking up into heaven, and seeing and hearing Jesus. He absolutely did hear something, as you say--articulate words. He had a dialogue with Jesus. Apparently a short one, but a dialogue nonetheless. One of the accounts even mentions what language Jesus was speaking. However, it's quite clear that Jesus was not down on the road with him, standing with his feet on the road, where Paul could have touched him.
In contrast, he *was* standing with the disciples in the upper room and on the shore of Galilee, with Mary Magdalene in the garden, with the other women on the road. This is where touching comes in.
There was some sort of disanalogy between Paul's experiences and those of the others. I suspect he was a bit touchy about it (no pun intended), but the disanalogy is there nonetheless in the accounts.
I guess I would add that *if* one just discounts the Gospel accounts and tries to use only I Cor. 15, then the point that they would have been talking to one another about their accounts becomes less forceful, because presumably what they would have been talking about is whatever type of experience they had. But on the basis of I Cor. 15 alone, we don't know that they had a detailed, polymodal experience. A skeptical or semi-skeptical suggestion (a la Bart Ehrman) is that what they experienced at most was something like a Marian apparition--vision at a distance, in the sky, etc. They could have talked about this among themselves, for sure, and speculated about whether others would also see him, and it's plausible that they would have. But that doesn't tell us that what they were talking about among themselves about--what type of experience. For that we do need the Gospel accounts of the "presentness" of Jesus in bodily form.
ReplyDeleteI address views like what you've associated with Ehrman in my original post. And there's other good evidence for the physicality of the appearances outside the gospels, like what I referred to in my post on the empty tomb earlier this week. The gospels are correct in what they report and often underestimated, but the material outside the gospels is often underestimated as well.
DeleteRegarding Paul, I've outlined my view of the appearance to him here. Paul apparently didn't touch the risen Jesus, but he could have "if he could have risen above the road", as you put it. He apparently heard Jesus physically, and the hearing and the seeing of Jesus are grouped together, the visual and auditory interactions with Jesus are described in physical terms, etc. I discuss some of the relevant details in my post linked above.
The thing is, though, that if Paul didn't in fact "rise above the road," he didn't verify that Jesus was fully, polymodally present. And it does seem that the others in the group on the road did not see him and did not hear his words clearly, whereas I would maintain that anyone who had walked into the upper room at that moment would have seen and heard Jesus just as the disciples did, unless Jesus performed a special miracle to block their sight. I think we have to admit that a Jesus floating in the air above the Damascus road for a very brief time, not visible to other people in the group, and not touched by anybody (whether that was just an accident of the fact that he was floating too high or not) is much less convincing evidence of a bodily resurrection than a Jesus who gets handed things among a group and stands around talking with the group for hours.
DeleteThis is why I think it's so important to rely on the Gospel accounts rather than trying to "route" the argument "through Paul" to any great extent. I know you're trying to combine everything, so it's not like you're doing an apologia for the minimal facts or do-it-all-with-Paul approach, but in general I think it's kind of important to recognize the limitations of the *appearance* to Paul. I think we can get a top-heavy Bayes factor from the conversion of Paul, but that would work even if what he had was a veridical vision, which I do think is at least a live option in his case but is *not* a live option as an explanation in the case of the disciples.
I agree that the appearance to Paul is evidentially inferior to the most evidential appearances in the gospels and Acts in some ways. But his experience did involve seeing Jesus, hearing him, and being physically impacted in multiple ways (falling down in coordination with his companions, being blinded in coordination with seeing light, etc.). It's a highly physical experience, involving multiple physical senses, and highly objective. The differences between the perceptions of Paul and those of his travel companions are easy to explain under a scenario in which the experience is objective and physical, as Steve and I discuss in the thread linked earlier. The overlap between Paul's perceptions and those of his travel companions is more significant than the differences.
DeleteWe're mostly in agreement. But one of the points I'm emphasizing in this thread is that even the material critics of the resurrection are less skeptical about, like 1 Corinthians 15, is much more problematic for them than is typically suggested.
I want to reiterate some points I made in my original post that are relevant to a view of 1 Corinthians 15 like Lydia referred to in her second post above. And I can use this as an opportunity to expand on some of my points.
ReplyDeleteFor reasons I explained above, a critic of the resurrection would want to argue that most or all of the resurrection appearances involved an appearance of Jesus at a distance too far away to allow a conversation with him or for him to be touched. Some of the appearances mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15 were appearances to groups. In those contexts, it's likely that some of the individuals involved would want to speak to Jesus and/or touch him for one reason or another (greetings, farewells, embracing, an interest in verifying that Jesus was physically present, etc.). And the appearances to individuals mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15 involved people who had characteristics that would make them likely to have spoken to Jesus and/or tried to touch him. See what I wrote in my original post about the characteristics of Peter. James and Paul were among the most prominent leaders of the early church. They were highly outspoken. That fact and other things we learn about them in Paul's letters and elsewhere suggest that they, like Peter, would be likely to want to speak to Jesus and/or touch him. With James, there's the additional factor of his being a close relative of Jesus. And James, like Peter, seems to have been present for multiple appearances. That makes it even harder to maintain that he never spoke to Jesus or tried to touch him. Given factors like these, a critic of the resurrection would want to argue that most or all of the appearances of Jesus involved his appearing far away rather than close enough to speak with or touch.
But notice some problems with that scenario:
- Did all of these witnesses just happen to be in a setting in which Jesus could be expected to appear at such a distance when they were so prone to hallucinating (or experiencing an optical illusion or whatever else)? They were all in an outdoors setting or inside a large building, for example, rather than, say, inside one of their houses?
- Being in such a setting doesn't require that Jesus would be hallucinated (or whatever) at a long distance. You could be out in a field, for example, a setting in which Jesus could be perceived as far away, yet see him close to you anyway. It seems very unlikely that Jesus would be perceived as far away so much of the time. I've read a lot of paranormal literature, had discussions with researchers, etc., and my sense is that things like hallucinations and apparitions of the dead (whatever you think they are) appear close to the experiencer more often than they appear at a long distance.
- Even if Jesus had been perceived as a long way off, would everybody involved be satisfied with that situation? Probably not. Most likely, some of the people involved would make an effort to move closer to Jesus, much as Peter and John ran to the tomb in John 20:4 and Peter went after Jesus in John 21:7. Notice, too, that Jesus and the disciples were communicating with each other (apparently with raised voices) even before Peter moved closer in 21:7. These passages in John's gospel illustrate how inadequate it is to speculate that Jesus appeared far away from people in 1 Corinthians 15. The people he appeared to could have raised their voices or moved closer to Jesus. If he kept moving away, disappearing, failing to answer what they said to him, etc. every time, that would raise suspicions. And why assume that something like a hallucination would have such a character? A hallucination wouldn't inherently move away, disappear, etc. under such circumstances, and we wouldn't expect the hallucinator's mind to give the hallucination such characteristics.
- As I mentioned in my original post, these hallucinations would need to be coordinated on multiple levels. The people involved in the group hallucinations would have to hallucinate about the same subject at the same time or close to it, and any changes that occurred afterward (e.g., Jesus disappearing before Peter had enough time to get to him) would have to be adequately coordinated with the experiences of the others involved. That's extremely unlikely to have occurred with one group, much less the three mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15. (And I doubt that those three are the only ones that were group experiences. See here regarding the evidence that Paul's experience was a group one.)
ReplyDelete- If the hallucinations kept having traits that are favorable to a skeptical scenario (something we can't just assume), that would raise suspicions among the experiencers. Not only would it not make sense for Jesus to keep appearing so far away, but it would also be senseless for him to keep moving away or disappearing anytime anybody moved closer and to never speak. Keep in mind that these are resurrection appearances. When the physicality of a resurrection is involved, it's especially valuable for the resurrected individual to be closer rather than further away. And physical activities, such as speaking and accommodating interest in touching, would be more important accordingly. So, a Jesus who keeps appearing far away, never speaking, etc. would be especially suspicious in a resurrection context. But we're supposed to believe that such experiences convinced so many people that a resurrection had occurred (not just apparitions, visions, hallucinations, etc.), including non-Christians who converted as a result of the experience(s)? Resurrection appearances like the ones we see in the gospels and Acts make much more sense of the strength of conviction the witnesses had, including enough conviction for multiple skeptics to convert (and James and Paul probably weren't the only skeptical witnesses or the only people who converted after seeing the risen Jesus).
- A post I put up earlier this week addressed evidence for the empty tomb outside the gospels, and, as I explained in the original post in this thread, it's likely that one or more of the relevant witnesses would have verified that the tomb was empty. The idea that none of them did so, even a persecutor like Paul or members of Jesus' immediate family, is absurd.
- Any appeal to something like Marian apparitions would have to argue that they're analogous and that the phenomena in question (Marian apparitions or whatever else) aren't supernatural (assuming the critic is proposing that nothing supernatural occurred with Jesus). Those who are interested can search our archives for the posts Steve Hays wrote about Marian apparitions.
I'm somewhat more concerned about a critic who wants to advocate some kind of paranormal event that is not a bodily resurrection. Dale Allison is a good idea here.
ReplyDeleteI think a problem with the minimal facts approach (which, again, I realize you are *not* trying to push, but it just ends up being related to what we're discussing) is that it doesn't have nearly enough resources against some kind of vision theory or paranormal theory because of its attempt to do without the appearances in the Gospels. Paul's experience *can* be better assimilated to that kind of idea, much better than can the Gospel appearances.
I think this is very much what Allison is going for, though he himself is highly ambivalent and undecided. I think he wants to suggest (at least at times) that the Marian apparitions are *real*. A real *something*. But not bodily. And I think he wants to suggest the same about the appearances of Jesus. In a recent discussion with Mike Licona he even went so far as to suggest that the appearances that Paul lists might have occurred after Pentecost!! Of course he doesn't believe in the ascension or treat the ascension as some kind of dividing line between the time when Jesus was on earth and when he wasn't, because he's not at all convinced that Jesus was on earth for the resurrection appearances themselves.
I think to counter that we really need the witnesses attesting to Jesus, as you might say, leaving footprints on the ground.
Yes, a high view of the historicity of the gospels should be included in a response to somebody like Allison, and that evidence will accomplish a lot that can't be accomplished with something like 1 Corinthians 15. And when people like Allison cite paranormal literature, or somebody like Ehrman makes philosophical claims, for example, it should be pointed out that they're going beyond a field like New Testament scholarship. And we should cite other paranormal literature and other philosophical considerations, along with the relevant evidence from prophecy, patristics, etc. Everything is on the table, and everything ought to be on the table. It makes sense in some contexts to focus on a portion of the evidence rather than looking at all of it, but we all have to take everything we're familiar with into account at some point. And even when the focus is primarily or exclusively on something like the Pauline evidence, we should point out how problematic that evidence is for people like Ehrman and Allison. People shouldn't be allowed to discuss something like 1 Corinthians 15 in any significant depth without addressing the evidence that activities like greetings and farewells would have occurred during the appearances in question, with all of the physicality implied (hearing a voice, embracing, etc.).
DeleteThe thing is, though, if you see and hear a person floating in the sky, you don't really do greetings and farewells, do you? I'm not really trying to be a jerk, here, but I'm just pointing out that if I saw Jesus in the sky, even if I heard him talking to me, I would think of it as a very different kind of thing from what I would think if he was standing beside me on the ground. In the former case it would be an entirely open possibility (to my mind anyway) that it was a vision and that the normal interactions of touching, etc., were not really options.The difference from the ascension, which I noticed that Steve referred to in the older post linked, is that literally just five minutes previously Jesus *was* standing right next to them, and then he went up into the sky. That's a whole different matter than a situation where you're walking or riding along and suddenly, bam, you see (or seem to see) this person floating in the sky surrounded by a bright light.
DeleteThe appearance to Paul is different in some ways, but similar in others. My focus in this thread has been on hearing and touching in general with regard to the resurrection witnesses in general, not just touching or just Paul's experience. In Paul's encounter, seeing, hearing, and non-bodily touching were involved, but apparently no touching of Jesus' body. (Similarly, we consider it significant when Jesus is given food to eat, builds a fire on a seashore, or some such thing in the gospels, even though those aren't instances of touching his body.) As you said, there presumably wouldn't have been any effort by Paul or his companions to touch Jesus' body, but it could easily be the case that one or more of them moved closer to try to see what was happening better or hear him better. Even though the encounter apparently was a brief one, Jesus talks to Paul, and Paul talks to Jesus, though the talking doesn't take the form of greetings or farewells. In Paul's experience, we don't need to demonstrate that activities like greetings and embracing are probable, since there are multiple lines of evidence for the probable physicality of the experience on other grounds. And since Paul had been such an enemy of Jesus, his experience shouldn't be thought of as representative of how somebody like Peter or Mary Magdalene, or even somebody like James the brother of Jesus, would have interacted with him.
DeleteThe attempt to explain the appearances as hallucinations is hugely problematic. As far as I am aware, I have never experienced a hallucination, but let's say that on average each person has one hallucination in a lifetime. What are the chances that two people would have the same hallucination at the same time? What about three or four people? It would have to be astronomically unlikely. It doesn't help to argue that the people who thought they saw the same thing may not have actually seen the same thing. If three or more people thought they saw the Risen Jesus at the same time, it would be utterly extraordinary.
ReplyDeleteEven if it was a hallucination, it would still be strong evidence for a supernatural event. But if we have established that *something* supernatural happened, we don't have to concede that it was only a paranormally induced hallucination. Paranormally induced hallucinations are no more compatible with naturalism than resurrections. Christians are able to explain what happened in terms of their overall worldview. On the other hand, atheists can't explain what happened as a paranormal event because there is no place for paranormal events in their worldview.
Those are good points, David. And we have some statistics on how common hallucinations, apparitions of the dead, and such are. Mike Licona has done a lot of good work in gathering that sort of data and pointing out some of the problems that follow for naturalistic views of the resurrection appearances. See here for some of his comments on the subject.
DeleteThe large majority of people aren't atheists, however, and even some atheists accept the paranormal or are significantly open to it. Lydia cited Dale Allison as an example of somebody who's open to the paranormal, yet rejects much of how traditional Christianity has viewed the events surrounding the resurrection appearances. And there are many other people with views like Allison's. But your points, which are largely applicable to some types of people other than atheists as well, are good ones.
Thanks, Jason. Yes, in theory one could accept a paranormal explanation for the appearances as an alternative to an actual Resurrection. Dale Allison is a curious case. I think he regards himself as some kind of Christian. So, presumably, he would think that God could cause several people to experience visions of the Risen Jesus simultaneously even though Jesus was not physically present. That is not inconceivable but it is problematic. Those visions led to the belief that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead, which didn't actually happen, according to Allison's view. Would God have allowed that mistake to arise? It seems unlikely.
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