Cameron Bertuzzi just posted a video responding to Gavin Ortlund regarding the Zeitoun Marian apparitions. I want to address several of the issues involved.
Cameron distinguishes between the theological significance of an event and its evidential weight. However, theological significance can have evidential implications, and Jesus' resurrection does. As I mentioned in a thread last week (including in the comments section), the foundational nature of Jesus' resurrection makes it less susceptible than Zeitoun is to something like a demonic or human psi explanation. And the resurrection's foundational nature connects it to other miracles in an evidential way, meaning that those other miracles are indirect evidence for the resurrection. That connection to other miracles gives the resurrection an evidential advantage over Zeitoun.
The resurrection is the culmination of each of the gospels. It's at the center of the Christian proclamation in Acts. Paul refers to it as foundational (1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 15:17). An apostle had to be an eyewitness of the resurrected Christ (Acts 1:21-22, 1 Corinthians 9:1), and apostleship involved the performance of miracles (2 Corinthians 12:12). In that sense, the resurrection is foundational to apostolic miracles. When Peter describes the means by which apostolic miracles are performed, he refers to the resurrection in the process (Acts 4:10). Post-apostolic Christian miracles have been done in a framework in which Jesus' resurrection is considered foundational.
We should also go back further, though, before the New Testament era. The resurrection is connected to Old Testament prophecy. The resurrection is anticipated in a major context in the Old Testament, as a vindication of the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah's final Servant Song in Isaiah 53:10-11. And as my thread last week discussed, we have a lot of evidence for some of Jesus' fulfillment of Isaiah's Servant Songs and related material in Isaiah and elsewhere. That includes non-Christian documents, archeology, videos, etc. (more than we have for Zeitoun and Marian apparitions in general).
In both of these contexts, the miracles that followed and were built upon Jesus' resurrection and the ones that anticipated it beforehand, there's indirect evidence for the resurrection. Those lines of evidence need to be taken into account when evaluating how much evidence we have for the resurrection of Christ. At one point in Cameron's video, he refers to how Zeitoun has more "immediate" evidence. But evidence doesn't have to be immediate in order to be evidence.
You could also argue for Zeitoun's connections with other miracles. But the circumstances aren't symmetrical. The resurrection isn't dependent on Zeitoun, whereas Zeitoun, in the scenario under consideration in which it's being cited as the best evidence for Christianity, is dependent on the resurrection. Christian miracles down through the centuries have been done with the resurrection in mind as a central factor, whereas nobody was thinking of Zeitoun until the twentieth century. Zeitoun has less of a relationship with other miracles than Jesus' resurrection does.
Part of what we take into account when evaluating the evidential status of something is the evidence against it. There's more evidence against the Zeitoun apparitions than there is against Jesus' resurrection. My thread last week discussed the large amount of historical evidence we have against a non-Protestant view of Mary (like Cameron's Catholic view) and how problematic the Coptic setting of Zeitoun is for non-Coptic views of Mary, including a Protestant view. So, there are problems in those contexts with seeing the entity behind Zeitoun as the Mary of any branch of Christianity. My thread last week also briefly addressed, in the comments section, some problems with the behavior of the Zeitoun apparitions. It looks to me like there was a paranormal source of a weaker rather than stronger nature behind Zeitoun, one that was struggling to manifest itself at times and often behaved differently than we'd expect Mary to behave. The characteristics involved make more sense coming from a human source than from God, Mary, or demons. There are many discrediting parallels between the behavior of the Zeitoun apparitions and what we see in other paranormal cases. I expect to be discussing the subject in more depth in at least one future post. I'll draw largely from parallels with the Enfield Poltergeist, since it's such a large case for which we have so much information and is the paranormal case I've studied the most. But I'll be citing other cases as well.
Near the end of his video, Cameron discussed some theological implications of Zeitoun that follow from a Marian view of the case. He's right about some of what he brings up, but there are some problems as well. He tells us that a Marian interpretation of Zeitoun would support the communion of saints, specifying that saints in heaven "can" know about events on earth and "can" appear to people on earth. But how many Protestants object to those concepts? They're obviously Biblical, and they're widely accepted among Protestants (e.g., the appearance of Samuel in 1 Samuel 28, as mentioned by Gavin in his video; the appearance of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration; acceptance by some Protestants, including me, of apparitions of the dead in extrabiblical contexts; the knowledge of events on earth among the heavenly saints in Revelation 6:10). How many Protestants who claim to oppose those concepts would persist in that claim if you brought up Biblical passages like the ones I just mentioned? For evidence against a Roman Catholic view of the communion of saints, see here. Cameron mentions how a Marian interpretation of Zeitoun would support "a kind of Marian devotion", and there's some truth to that, but he doesn't address how the Coptic setting of the apparitions is problematic for his Catholicism.
He concludes his video by asking who appeared at Zeitoun. As with so many other paranormal cases, probably a human source whose characteristics are discernibly different than Mary's.
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