They appeared on Sean McDowell's YouTube channel in a video released today. Both make a lot of good points, and there's some significance in what they agree about, but far more can and should be said about other relevant issues. And they both substantially underestimate the evidence for Christianity beyond Jesus' resurrection.
A Christian worldview allows for apparitions, near-death experiences, healings, and a wide variety of other paranormal phenomena among non-Christians. The book of Exodus allows for the miracles of the magicians of Pharaoh, but has Moses outperforming them. Similarly, the gospels have Jesus outperforming the demons he encounters, Christ outperforms Antichrist in 2 Thessalonians and the book of Revelation, the Biblical concept of God's common grace allows for and in some ways implies miracles of a positive nature in the lives of non-Christians, etc. You can find a large amount of material in our archives on paranormal issues and miracles among non-Christians in particular, such as my collection of posts on near-death experiences, poltergeists, and other issues here. Or see here on modern miracles more broadly. Jesus' resurrection is a foundational miracle in Christianity, but it's part of a much larger network of miracles that outperforms its competitors. There's good evidence for the Christian God's sovereignty over history in the fulfillment of prophecy, for example. Think of something like the prophecies fulfilled by the Roman empire (its being the fourth great empire predicted by Daniel, its having the penal practices anticipated in Psalm 22 and the third Servant Song in Isaiah 50, its destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in line with Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy, etc.), as I discussed in a recent post. See here for a collection of many of our posts on prophecy issues more generally. Combine that with the evidence we have for Jesus' miracles beyond his resurrection, the miracles of the apostles, later Christian miracles, and so forth, and there's an unrivaled network of miracles that goes far beyond what Licona and Allison refer to. We've discussed these other lines of evidence for Christianity in many places in our archives. A Christian can and should appeal to the resurrection as a foundational and representative miracle when arguing for Christianity, but shouldn't limit himself to the resurrection, much as Peter focused on the resurrection while appealing to multiple other lines of evidence as well in Acts 2.
Allison questioned the significance of Jesus' resurrection and what theological implications it has. That's another area where Allison's excessive skepticism and Licona's overly narrow focus on certain lines of evidence are problematic. We have good evidence for Jesus' self-perception and identity claims that go beyond what's most commonly accepted in modern scholarship. I've done a lot of work on Jesus' identifying himself as the figure of Isaiah 9:1-7, for example. See my post here for an outline of some of the evidence and its significance. Since I've addressed Isaiah 9 issues in many posts over the years, including in posts more recent than the one linked above, you can find a lot of other relevant material in our archives. The post linked above is just meant to provide an introductory overview. And we have good evidence for Jesus' perceiving himself in certain ways and making certain claims about himself in other contexts. Similarly, the Biblical prophecies I referred to above are accompanied by claims about the existence, nature, and superiority of the Christian God. That sort of evidence provides us with some significant context in which to interpret the network of Christian miracles discussed in the paragraph before this one.
In addition to the good points Allison and Licona made about the evidence for facts like the burial of Jesus, the empty tomb, and some early Christians' claims that they saw Jesus after he'd risen from the dead, we should take other factors into account that Allison and Licona didn't mention or underestimated. Regarding the general historical trustworthiness of Luke, for example, see Craig Keener's discussion here and Lydia McGrew's here. Allison mentioned the earliness of Mark's gospel and appealed to the concept of the development of the resurrection material in the gospels over time, but we should keep in mind how insignificant the relative earliness of Mark is and the problems with such appeals to development. See here for a discussion of both issues. Allison and Licona both appeal to the alleged different nature of the resurrection appearance to Paul and its visionary quality, but see my comments (and Steve Hays') here on how similar Paul's experience was to the experiences of the other witnesses. On the Zeitoun Marian apparition, my understanding is that it was highly vague, uncommunicative, and uninteractive, which lessens its significance, raises questions about the nature of its source (e.g., the potential for a source with a lower degree of paranormal abilities, such as the subconscious of a living human), and differentiates it from the resurrection appearances of Jesus. Regarding the rainbow body phenomena, see Lydia McGrew's discussions of some problems with them here and here. But even if we were to take a higher view of events like the Zeitoun and rainbow body ones, without taking qualifiers like mine and Lydia's into account, there would be no reason to reject the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, its theological context (e.g., what I said above about Isaiah 9 and similar lines of evidence), and the superiority of Christianity's network of miracles to its rivals. Whatever adjustments something like a Marian apparition or a Buddhist rainbow body miracle would require us to make in our worldview, it would be an adjustment that would leave the general parameters of traditional Christianity in place.
Notice, too, that various weaknesses in the Marian apparition and rainbow body accounts have been preserved over time, and notice that skeptics continue to analyze and challenge the claims made about the phenomena in question. Contrast that to the common skeptical suggestions that the early Christians suppressed such weaknesses in their accounts, that the early critics of Christianity largely uncritically accepted what Christians told them, even when they could easily have refuted it, and so on.
There was some discussion of the appearance to more than 500 mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:6. I think Allison and Licona both significantly underestimated the evidence for that appearance and its importance. The fact that what happened in the context of that appearance was perceived as a resurrection experience places it in a different category than something like a Marian apparition, since the implications of each of those differ (e.g., the expectation of and desire for physical interaction in the context of a resurrection appearance). Paul doesn't just mention that the appearance to more than 500 happened, but also comments on how many of the witnesses were still alive at the time, suggesting that he'd made a substantial effort to look into and continue following the details surrounding the witnesses to the event and, presumably, the event itself. I've argued elsewhere that it's probable that some non-Christians were involved in the appearance, which undermines the argument that it was hallucinatory, a result of overactive imaginations, or anything like that. And see here regarding how problematic it would be to argue that so many people would have been mistaken about a resurrection appearance, given what we know of human nature and certain cultural practices in ancient Israel. The appearance to more than 500 is more significant than skeptics, and even many conservative Christians, suggest.
My post on that appearance linked above also discusses other skeptics of Christianity to whom Jesus is reported to have appeared. Licona mentioned Paul and James, and there was a lot of discussion of Paul, but those probably weren't the only non-Christians the resurrected Jesus appeared to. I suspect the number was at least in the double digits, for reasons explained in the post linked above.
Much of what I've said in this post is about historical probabilities, not certainties, and general principles that allow exceptions. For example, when I refer to the likelihood that some non-Christians were part of the appearance to more than 500 mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:6, I'm not suggesting that my conclusion is certain, nor am I denying that sometimes no non-Christians (or whatever equivalent) would be present under such circumstances. We're all making probability judgments about the best explanation, not certainty judgments about the only possible explanation.
In a few weeks I may do a commentary on their exchange. I've now read the entire transcript, occasionally listening to be sure of who was speaking. (This is faster than watching the whole video.) I believe that the weakness of the minimal facts or historical bedrock approach was on display here, because Allison's doubts of the robustly physical nature of Jesus' resurrection cannot be well answered with a MFA approach. I also wish that Allison's claims that the resurrection accounts are embellished (specifically that the account of men finding the tomb empty was invented for apologetic reasons) had not been referred to as "details." This is obviously more than just a small matter of detail. At least I was somewhat glad that Allison's dubiousness of the physical resurrection was made fairly clear; this is something that I think was downplayed last year in Licona's interviews with Allison.
ReplyDeleteIt has never been clear to me how pointing out to events like the Fatima appearances or the Zetouin apparition undermine the resurrection appearances. It is usually assumed that these other apparitions must be group hallucinations which is a little question begging. Once you start looking into these other paranormal apparitions it becomes apparent that the "hallucination" hypothesis doesn't work for them either. It doesn't stop skeptics from throwing them up, often out of ignorance, because some other skeptic used it as a defeater for the resurrection. When you bring up the nature of these other cases it invites ridicule because, "we all know such things don't happen." The presupposition of Naturalism is always clanking away in the background.
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