Christian Apologetics Blog

Christian Apologetics?

Arnie Gentile — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:52:00 GMT

What in the world is that? This is often the reply I get when I mention Christian apologetics. Is it about apologizing for Christianity…perhaps saying we’re sorry for the Crusades or the Inquisition? Well…not exactly.

The meaning of the word “apology” has morphed over the centuries. It comes from the Greek word apologia, which originally meant “a speech made in defense.” We find it used several times in the New Testament where the writer speaks of either defending oneself against the accusations of others or defending the gospel by offering reasons to believe (Acts 26:2; Phil. 1:7, 16; 2 Tim. 4:16; 1 Peter 3:15). The word presupposes that people believe things for reasons, and are therefore obligated to offer those reasons when challenged.

Christian apologetics in our contemporary context becomes an exercise in formulating and communicating the rational basis for the Christian worldview, thus commending it to the spiritual seeker for his or her consideration as a viable option in the marketplace of ideas. For the Christian, apologetics serves the purpose of deepening his or her conviction that what is accepted by faith is firmly rooted in reason. In this latter sense, the New Testament employs the Greek word bebaioo, which means “to make firm, establish, make secure” (Rom. 15:8; 1 Cor. 1:6; Heb. 2:3, 13:9). It is from this conviction that the Christian may confidently deliver his or her testimony.

Christian apologetics is unique in that it begins with reasoned dialogue (Greek: dialegomenos) not dogma (Acts 17:2, 18:4, 19:8) intended to persuade (Greek: peitho) not preach (Acts 18:4; 19:8). People believe things for reasons, but they need to be good reasons. Persuasion is the means by which connections are made between reasons and belief. A good reason resonates with what is true, that is, it is a “truth indicator.” Loving Christian apologists package good reasons to believe Christianity in culturally sensitive ways, in ways which the culture can grasp.

Therefore, Christians do not offer their faith to others simply because it works or because it is useful. We commend the faith to seekers because we are convinced that it is true, and, therefore, superior in that sense to any other worldview, sacred or secular. The New Testament claims that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and, if this is true, then all that Jesus said and did must be true as well. The Old Testament claims that God created the world out of nothing, and, if this is true, then all that we possess is a gift of God’s grace.

The Bible further claims that human beings were specially created by God to live in relationship with him and with each other and to steward the resources of the earth for our mutual benefit and God’s glory. The Christian believes that all of this is true, and that theology, philosophy, history, and science all converge in demonstration of this truth. Faith and reason, science and the Bible, rational thought and theology are not foes, but friends. They are not pugilists, but partners in proclaiming the glory of God. It is the task of Christian apologetics to make this case, and it is to that end that this blogsite has been created.

We welcome believer and seeker alike to participate in a spirit of grace and discovery. In pursuit of truth, let's follow the evidence wherever it leads. Jesus himself proclaimed that knowing the truth is the path to freedom (John 8:32). Have your say, and enjoy your stay, but please comment with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15).

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

Priceless Perfume and Scandalous Piety

Arnie Gentile — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:30:00 GMT

Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus.... But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him) said, "Why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?" He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief [who] used to help himself to what was put into [the moneybag]. Jesus said, "Leave her alone.... The poor you will always have with you, but you do not always have me (John 12:1-7; See also Matt 26:6-13 and Mark 14:3-9).

"Scandalous!”…. Such was the judgement of Judas as Mary wantonly poured a jar of priceless perfume over Jesus. In today’s currency, the value of this rare and aromatic ointment likely would exceed $40,000. Didn’t Mary get that the central purpose of Christianity is all about eliminating hunger, sheltering the homeless, and rescuing AIDS babies in Africa? Hadn’t she learned anything in three years of following the Master? The tradition of this story, as revealed in Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts, includes not only the disgust of Judas, whom we learn from John was a thief anyway, but the disdain of the other disciples as well. Surely Jesus would rebuke Mary for getting it wrong. Hadn't he rebuked Peter for getting it wrong about Jesus’ impending death and James and John for blowing it when it came to the question of who were going to be the Messiah’s thrown-mates?

And if we’re honest, don’t we wonder a little bit ourselves? Isn’t our first instinct to blame the woman and to exonerate the disciples? After all, weren’t the disciples exhibiting true Christian values, the same "missional" concerns that also define 21st century Christianity? Don’t we largely agree that such ideologies as environmentalism, social and economic egalitarianism, the elimination of all hunger on the planet, and the pursuit of world peace must be our most pressing concerns if we are really followers of Christ? Isn't there a part of us that wonders if Judas might have been a better Christian than the woman? It’s as if John included the bit about Judas’ fraudulence in order to enable future generations to dismiss him more easily and go easier on Mary!

In one of the most startling moments in all the gospels, Jesus quietly but firmly admonishes his “missional” disciples to stand down and leave the woman alone. “The poor you will always have with you,” he states. There is something...well...almost cruel about these words as we hear them through modern ears. Impulsively, we want to respond, “Jesus, don’t you care?” But the woman clearly has her priorities rightly aligned, at least according to Jesus.

Christ's words take aim at a Church that is “missional” at its core, that buys into the activism and the utopianism of those who insist that the exigencies of our planet are the most proper concerns of religion, and that is embarrassed by the Bible and the traditions of our faith that demand the deepest contemplation of the highest realities. The poor will always be with us. No more gentle and powerful a rebuke could have been delivered to us who believe that by saving the planet and everything on it, animal, vegetable, and mineral, by somehow in our own power restoring the world to a Garden of Eden, we have answered the call.

Even if we could succeed in such a project, the souls of men and women would still cry out for completion. This is because it is not the core mission of the Church to completely eradicate poverty, AIDS, war, social injustice, or any other perceived or real suffering or evil in this world. It is not our job to establish the Kingdom of God on earth and then present it, pristine and shiny, to our Savior when he returns. It is to point people, in the midst of their messiness, to beatitude, to a contemplation of the highest things, the things not of this world, to the hope and the peace that surpass all understanding. It is to illuminate the reality of the human condition and impress upon men and women the amazing grace of a God who desires to share with us his glory and his friendship. It is to be a conduit for the revelation that is given to us as gift that we need only receive, not create, a gift that enables us to embrace goodness, truth, and beauty and to suffer well, love well, and die well.

This is the scandal of the Good News and the grounds of our mission. That is, to spend our most expensive resources only on what ultimately matters. Do you love me, Jesus still asks…. then hate your family, and follow me; then let the dead bury the dead, and follow me; then sell all that you have, and follow me; feed my sheep and lead them to the highest things, to the source of living water, to the personal presence of the living God. If we do this, the hungry, the homeless, and the helpless, with whom we will always dwell, will also be fully loved, truly served, and richly blessed.

"The effort to substitute an activist ideology for the faith...is, of course, rooted in the very project of modern intelligence as an autonomous reality, which systematically accepts nothing it did not cause or make." ~ James V. Schall, from Another Sort of Learning, 1988.

"In the absence of faith now, we are governed by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror." ~ Flannery O'Connor

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

Darwin, Dawkins, and the Intellectually Satisfied Atheist

Arnie Gentile — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:18:00 GMT

In his popular book The Blind Watchmaker, evolutionary biologist and militant atheist Richard Dawkins claims that Charles Darwin’s theory has given atheists the opportunity to be intellectually satisfied. One wonders, however, how this can be true. The Scriptures tell us that only a fool insists that there is no God (Psalm 14:1). Somewhere here there is a disconnect.

Darwin’s theory of natural selection is driven by the notions of chance and randomness. That is, at some point in the evolutionary chain, a random mutation happens by chance, thus changing the entire future of a species. This, allegedly, is how life has developed on our planet, and the explanation, which renders the intervention of a creative God unnecessary, apparently satisfies the intellects of atheists.

Are atheists really so easily pleased? This is most curious, because even random or chance occurrences must be grounded in some kind of order. A random or chance event is nothing more or less than the point of intersection of some combination of things that have been proceeding along a pathway consistent with their preordained purpose. If I walk down the hall en route to the restroom, turn the corner, and just happen to bump into a colleague who is headed for the break room for a cup of coffee, the chance encounter depends entirely upon the orders of our purposeful directions and ends. No order, no chance. So even chance occurrences, such that there are, can only be explained according to order, and we are right back to where we must always begin, and that is to explain the order that exists.

We do not create the order that exists, Hume, Kant, and Hobbes notwithstanding. “What is” is already and always before us. We may receive it humbly, persevere in our quest to understand it, and align ourselves with it as incomplete creatures in pursuit of the highest things. We may also choose to deny it, banish it to the realm of chaos, and arrogate to ourselves the task of “fixing” it to meet our own finite standards. The one who has chosen to proclaim that there is no God has chosen the latter, presumably achieving Dawkinsian intellectual satisfaction.

But the problem with the so called intellectually satisfied atheist is that he has settled for too little. He has taken a symptom (chance or randomness) as an explanation of the whole. He has not ventured behind the symptom to the reason, which of course rests in the order that already exists. The question remains, “Whence cometh this order that makes chance possible”?

If we encounter a man on the street babbling incoherently, we do not simply declare that this is a random, chaotic, cosmic event and go merrily on our way. We interpret this to be an instance of “dis-order” precisely because we understand that there is an order to the brain and the mind that has been interrupted. It is this order and its origin that we seek to grasp as an object of knowledge that satisfies our intellect. This is why the Scriptures tell us that the one who fails to receive this obvious truth, who refuses to wonder at existence and its order, showing no interest in plumbing the depths of the eternal principles behind it, is not just intellectually unsatisfied, despite his or her claim to the contrary, but is actually a fool, one to be shunned and dismissed as a laughable charlatan, and one who has chosen a dangerous path that, if followed unrepentantly, will lead to destruction.

So just why has Dawkins advanced this myth of the intellectually mollified atheist? Perhaps he is just randomly verbalizing some words that by chance have happened to roll out of his mouth. But I propose that Scripture offers a more meaningful meditation on Dawkins’ musings. Having defined a fool as one who does not acknowledge first things, the Scriptures go on to tell us that “A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion” (Proverb 18:2). One who does not consider existence and its order as a wonder and a gift, nor contemplates the grace and the goodness of the Giver, becomes an ideologue, not a wise man.

"The mass of humans have been forced to be happy about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless, it is not native to humans to be so. Human beings are more themselves, humans are more human-like, when joy is the fundamental thing in them.... Joy... is the gigantic secret of the Christian."

G. K. Chesterton

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

An Evolutionist Ponders the Evidence

Arnie Gentile — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:06:43 GMT

Naturalistic evolutionist and anthropologist Christopher Stringer expresses his wonder at the archeological record thus:

"For millenia upon millenia, we had been churning out the same forms of stone utensils, for example. But about 40,000 years ago, a perceptible shift in our handiwork took place. Throughout the Old World, tool kits leapt in sophistication with the appearance of Upper Paleolithic style implements. Signs of use of ropes, bone spear points, fishhooks and harpoons emerge, along with sudden manifestations of sculpture, paintings, and musical instruments.

"We also find evidence of the first long distance exchange of stones and beads. Objects made of mammal bone and ivory, antlers, marine and fresh water shells, fossil coral, limestone, schist, steatite, jet, lignite, hematite, and pyrite were manufactured. Materials were chosen with extraordinary care: some originated hundreds of miles from their point of manufacture.

"It is an extraordinary catalogue of achievements that seem to have come about virtually from nowhere, though obviously they did have a source. The question is: What was it?"¹

Well, Dr. Stringer, with all due respect, perhaps those creatures that had previously been so primitive "for millenia upon millenia" were not "us." Perhaps the "extraordinary catalogue of achievements" suddenly appearing in the archeological record 40,000 years ago provides evidence, not of a sudden "leap" in evolution (a leap which evolution, as we all understand it, would never countenance), but instead evidence of a momentous event wrought by the Creator of the universe by means of which human beings made in His image suddenly came into existence immediately expressing this image (Genesis 1:26-28). I fully understand that this is likely not your preferred explanation, but might it not yet be the best explanation?

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Hamlet, Act I, scene v).

"By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible" (Hebrews 11:3).

Blessings,

Arnie

¹Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, Who was Adam, Navpress, 2005, 84.

A Response to Scot McKnight's Advocacy of Evolution

Arnie Gentile — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:56:00 GMT

In a June 7^th post at his blog (The Search for the Historical Adam 2), theologian Scot McKnight interacts with an article in Christianity Today by Richard Ostling. Ostling’s article concerns itself mainly with the results of genetics, their possible impact on our view of evolution, and how these issues may affect our view of the early Genesis account. In my estimation, Ostling's article is well-written, fair, and balanced, as far as it goes, including multiple viewpoints and raising important questions with regard to the contents and potential consequences of the debate itself. McKnight, however, is quite straightforward in his advocacy of Darwin’s theory of evolution, common descent, and natural selection, and seems to believe that Christians must take this theory seriously, perhaps even adjusting our traditional creationist notions on the historicity of the Adam and Eve account, including the concept of a historical Fall. He admonishes Christians that

The scientific data cannot be brushed under the rug and ignored. I continue the discussion here because I am convinced that the scientific evidence for an old earth, evolution, and common descent is so strong that Christians must adjust – this is a reprise of Copernicus and Galileo.

I agree with McKnight that “the scientific data cannot be brushed under the rug and ignored”. This is precisely why the Church, the pillar of truth, must embrace an old earth and an old universe. However, it is also precisely why we should let the theory of evolution drown in its own primordial soup. As far as this moment being a “reprise of Copernicus and Galileo”, nothing could be further from the truth. Copernicus and Galileo were vindicated by the evidence. Darwin has been decimated by the evidence, and devoted evolutionists continue to prop the theory up with ad hoc proposals like punctuated equilibrium. The universe and the earth are old, and the theory of evolution is false. This is where the evidence continues to lead us, genetics notwithstanding, and I believe that, if alive today, even Darwin would agree and recant.

McKnight concludes his blog post, favorably quoting Ted Olson, another CT writer on this topic:

At this juncture, we counsel patience. We don’t need another fundamentalist reaction against science. We need instead a positive interdisciplinary engagement that recognizes the good will of all involved and that creative thinking takes time. In the long run, it may be the humility of our scholars as much as their technical expertise that will bring us to deeper knowledge of the truth”.

Olson offers a false dichotomy. For Olson, there appear to be only two possible responses to the current state of scientific affairs, “another fundamentalist reaction against science” or “a positive interdisciplinary engagement.” Despite his irenic tone, I hear a sophisticated and subtle rebuke of creationists who are not embarrassed by the Bible and insist on the historicity of Genesis 1-3 and everything that comes with it.

First of all, one can be “fundamentalist” regarding the Bible’s historical account of creation without buying into a particular chronology (e.g., young earth creationism). Secondly, the beef is not with science, but with evolution, which has been wrongly identified with science. Science has superbly constructed an evidential argument for an old universe and an old earth. Science has uncovered scant, if any, real empirical support for the theory of evolution as proposed by Darwin, and prospects are getting worse, not better.

As Phillip E. Johnson has asserted, theistic evolutionists seem to believe that “the job of Christian intellectuals is not to challenge the picture of reality provided by a science committed to naturalism, but to accept the picture and show how it can be given a theistic interpretation” (See "God and Evolution: An Exchange"). This is a problem because the longer we accommodate those who popularize the notion of metaphysical naturalism, the more damage they do and the less they have to account for it. The notion that God may be somehow vaguely behind the process of descent by modification through natural selection is not strong enough to establish that he is necessary. It is but a small step from here to relegating God to the isolated ghetto of deistic irrelevance or non-existence altogether.

Biblical “humility” is not exhibited by capitulation to the ascendant scientific ideology of the moment and the prevailing strong scientism that it spawns, which claims, unscientifically, that science is the only source of substantial knowledge. In truth, science blindly and dogmatically clings to Darwinism against the evidence with the same religious tenacity as the Church clung to the epicycles of Ptolemy in the day of Copernicus. Meanwhile, the Church will demonstrate true humility and godly courage when we demur from a strategy of accommodation and once again begin to fulfill our mandate to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and...take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).

For starters, I invite you to consider the following articles at this blog.

Humans: God’s Unique Creatures on Earth

Theistic Evolution and Progressive Creationism

There are seven other articles within the category of Science and Faith that may be of interest to you. Please feel welcome to browse and comment in the spirit of 1 Peter 3:15-16.

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

Does God Want Christians to be Happy?

Arnie Gentile — Sun, 22 May 2011 00:20:00 GMT

Christians often ponder this question because it is popular to proclaim that God is more interested in our holiness than in our happiness. However, is it really possible to separate these two notions?

In a very practical sense, one wonders how attractive Christianity would be to the world if Christians were curmudgeons! But Scripture seems to suggest that we of all people should be happy. In fact, the English word “blessed” translates the New Testament Greek word makarios, which means “happy.” In his Sermon on the Mount, none other than Jesus himself described as “happy” those who live faithfully in the Kingdom of God (See Matthew 5:1-12).

It is interesting that ancient Greek philosophers for several centuries prior to Christ wrestled with this very issue. They were in search of the key to eudemonia, that is, happiness or human flourishing. They concluded that it was arête and phronesis, that is, virtue and practical wisdom respectively. But they were interested not in a person who just does good and moral things, but in a person who was indeed internally virtuous. Only such a person could be said to be happy and flourishing. So far the Bible would agree. But unfortunately, these thinkers did not entertain a doctrine of sin and, therefore, sought in futility to achieve this end through human effort alone.

The beauty of Christianity is that it completes the puzzle by providing the enabling power to achieve such a condition, and it does not restrict this gift to philosophers, but offers it to all people. This power resides in the person of the Holy Spirit who is given to and resides within all those who believe. It is the power that raised Jesus from the dead and that now also works within us, enabling us to become actually “holy” persons, that is, truly internally transformed human beings.

Therefore, it is true that God is infinitely concerned about our obedience which leads to holiness, our inner transformation and progressive deliverance from the power of sin. But this is also the very path to happiness and human flourishing, so God must be infinitely concerned about our happiness as well, so concerned that he has graciously provided us with the power to achieve it!

Hence, happiness in a biblical sense is not about the nature of our circumstances or the stuff we possess, but about living faithfully in the Kingdom of God. By so living, we learn to enjoy those things that God gives us in life as gifts without clinging to them as necessary components of our eternal well being. In addition, we learn that we need not fret when the wicked prosper, or when hard times and suffering come our way, but in the midst of these challenges, we may instead continue to delight ourselves in the Lord, who works all things together for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purpose, and who gives us the desires of our heart (Romans 8:28; Psalm 37:1-4; Proverbs 13:12).

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

May Divorced Christians Remarry? Reflections on Matthew 19:3-9

Arnie Gentile — Tue, 03 May 2011 02:39:00 GMT

The issue of remarriage after divorce seems to continually perplex Christians. I was divorced myself a couple of years before becoming a Christian. I recall attending adult singles groups and observing other divorced Christian brothers and sisters agonizing over the question of whether or not they could "legally" remarry. In my young Christian naïve manner I kept asking, “What about grace?” And herein, I have discovered, lay the answer to the anguish.

The major problem, as I see it, is that even as New Testament Christians, we tend to approach Jesus’ teachings as if he were giving us a new system of law instead of delivering us from legalism. In order to grasp this, we need to look closely at his interaction with his opponents on the issue of divorce and remarriage in Matthew 19:3-9.

In Matthew 19:3-9, Jesus is addressing a group of legalistic religious leaders who had become experts at loop-holing the law and had come to “test” Jesus’ legal understanding of divorce. They wanted sanction for casually dismissing one's wife for any reason. Jesus does not take the bait and simply closes their loophole. He refuses to give them the easy way out and instead offers them a theological basis for taking marriage seriously and living up to their marriage vows, just as God had ordained at Creation.

They ignore Jesus’ gentle persuasion and insist instead on a legal ruling. After all, didn't Moses himself certify such a practice? So Jesus, after admonishing them for their hard hearts, obliges them, saying in so many words, “OK, you want a ruling based on a legalistic interpretation of Torah, consider this, if you dismiss your spouse as casually as you would like, you risk putting yourself legally in danger of committing adultery, a capital offense (Leviticus 20:10). So stick that in your legalistic pipes and smoke it!”

The shock effect this would have had on those men cannot be overestimated. But nowhere in this exchange has Jesus locked the door on grace. Nowhere has he legally forbidden remarriage to a divorced person. It was not his intention to create another law, but to clearly demonstrate the consequences of a world without grace. And so he confronted his inquisitors with the cost of taking so lightly the relational goodness and beauty God had built into his Creation long before he gave Moses the law.

It’s as if Jesus were saying, “You are religious leaders, men responsible for the spiritual condition of God’s people. Shame on you! You of all people should know better than to come to me for justification of your attempts to loophole the way of God! Now stop this nonsense and get about the business of healing your own relationships as well as those of the people God has called you to serve!” In other words, Jesus was actually challenging them to stop being legalists and to become dispensers of grace, to become healers instead of harmers, to become men of God not men of the world, because the stakes are exceedingly high.

It is only when we understand fully the things that God hates most, that we can commit ourselves to picking up our cross and doing his will. But it is only within an environment of grace that we can do so without condemnation if we fail. The religious leaders that Jesus confronted did not see divorce as a failure to meet God’s standard, but as a quick and convenient path to a greener pasture. They did not see themselves as sinners in need of grace, so Jesus gave them a not so gentle lesson about their true condition before the law and the potential consequences of their unrepentant hearts.

However, to those of us truly broken by our failure, Scripture reminds us that “a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench” (Isaiah 42:3). King David also asserts that God "will not delight in sacrifice...; [He] will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, [He] will not despise" (Psalm 51:16-17). He is the God of second chances. He has been for me, and I am sure he will be for those of you who wrestle with this issue as well.

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

Miracles, Part 8: What Does the Resurrection Mean?

Arnie Gentile — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:50:00 GMT

Is there such a thing as religious knowledge? If one were to ask this question in today's public square, he or she would likely be censored. Today, the notion that there is such a thing as religious truth that can be known is not in vogue.

The famous twentieth century Christian thinker Francis Schaeffer astutely observed that, when it comes to knowledge, people today behave as if they live in a two-tiered world, a world in which there is an upper room and a lower room. We live in a culture that has been infected with the notion that information we can trust can only be obtained in the lower room through empirical observation and reason. This is the realm of the hard sciences. Religion, ethics, theology, and philosophy do not give us facts, so the narrative goes, but only personal opinions, and so these occupy the upper room of faith and fantasy where reason has no place.

Christianity pushes against this notion, and challenges all reasonable persons to test its truth claims in the lower room. Christianity has never been afraid of a good intellectual fight, and its history is replete with brilliant thinkers who have commended the faith boldly, reasonably, and successfully to their generations. The challenge of Christianity to the world is rooted in the words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians15:17: "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins." Paul throws down the gauntlet and asserts that the truth of Christianity hangs by the thread of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If it happened, then Christianity is true. If it didn't, then Christianity is a hoax.

Paul contends that the Christian faith is not just a matter of opinion, but a matter of historical facts that can be tested. Unlike other religions that are based on individual subjective experiences, cultural indoctrination, unfalsifiable assumptions, and unverifiable claims, Christianity points to an historical event in space and time, offers credible "lower-room" evidence for this event, and invites anyone to falsify it. Having considered this evidence in some depth in this series, we conclude that the evidence leads us to the empty tomb and the resurrection from the dead of Jesus Christ, the Son of God in the flesh, a miracle wrought by God himself.

If this is true, then it certainly has consequences for our lives. Jesus taught that there is a God, the person and nature of whom have been revealed in the Old Testament. He called this God his Father. He claimed that he himself was the only path to knowing this God and to eternal life. Yet he promised that his yoke would be easy and his burden light for all who follow him. His resurrection from the dead was his ultimate credential, validating his claims. We should be stunned by this event. But we need not make an irrational leap of faith to believe it. The evidence strongly and loudly proclaims across the millennia that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that in believing in him, we may have life. He is the one born of a virgin, God incarnate, the one who came to save the world. Accepting this as true is only reasonable.

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

Miracles, Part 7: Who Did Jesus Think He Was?

Arnie Gentile — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:45:00 GMT

We have built a strong case for the historical accuracy of the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. If the resurrection actually happened, as the evidence strongly suggests, then the probability increases exponentially that the message that Jesus proclaimed was true. But did Jesus really claim to be divine? It has become fashionable within popular culture to deny this, and to believe that the disciples made up these claims. Therefore, we will again use a minimalist approach, assuming that the Bible is just another piece of ancient literature, neither inspired nor inerrant, and looking at two texts that almost all mainstream critical scholars, even those who are unbelieving, accept as historically authentic.

At Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin recorded in Mark 14:53-65, the high priest asks Jesus in verse 61, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" Without hesitation, Jesus' replies in verse 62, "I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven." In response, the high priest tore his garment, and the Sanhedrin delivered the verdict of blasphemy and the sentence of death. Why? Jesus was equating himself to the Son of Man who appeared to Daniel in a vision coming "with the clouds of heaven" (Daniel 7:13-14). This figure is described by Daniel as eternal, glorious, sovereign, and ruler of an everlasting kingdom. The high priest and Sanhedrin knew immediately that Jesus was claiming to be this figure. Their verdict of blasphemy indicates that by so doing, Jesus was claiming to be God.

It is important to understand that "Son of Man" was Jesus' favorite title for himself as recorded in all four of the Gospels. Thus the title is attested in multiple sources. But this title appears only three times in the New Testament outside the Gospels (Acts 7:56; Revelation 1:13; 14:14) and only three other times in all of Christian literature during the Church's first 120 years (See Habermas and Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, 166). Therefore, it is highly unlikely that this title was invented by the Church and inserted into the Gospels. Moreover, we would certainly not expect the Jewish leaders to concede such a title to Jesus. Therefore, the text in question also passes the critical criterion of "dissimilarity." That is, neither Jesus' opponents nor his supporters are likely sources for this title, leaving Jesus as its most probable source. For these reasons, almost all critical scholars concede that Jesus claimed to be divine in this instance.

What about the title "Son of God"? In Mark 13:32, Jesus states that concerning the time of the end of all things "no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." From a critical historical standpoint, this statement passes the criterion of "embarrassment" since it suggests that there is something that the Son of God (Jesus) does not know, a notion that would likely not appear in the text if the disciples were creating a fictional account. This is why critical scholars largely agree that Jesus is the authentic source of this statement. Furthermore, in this text, Jesus employs an ascending scale of emphasis that underscores his position as one who is higher than any one on earth, above "even the angels in heaven," and submitted to only the Father in the limited sense of his knowledge in this particular case. Hence it is clear that Jesus viewed his Sonship in relation to the Father as unique, a Sonship that supports the Scriptural notion that Jesus claimed that he and his Father were one in essence, that is, divine (John 10:30).

So what do we make of all this? Based on these texts, there is broad agreement among critical scholars that Jesus claimed to be divine. But we have also shown in this series that there is substantial evidence supporting the claim of the early Church that Jesus rose from the dead. It is therefore but a small step to conclude that the resurrection of Jesus was an historical event validating his claim to divinity and, therefore, all that he said about himself, including his predictions that he would rise from the dead, the condition of man, the path to salvation, the nature of the spiritual world, and the destiny of creation. That is, the resurrection meets all of the criteria of a miracle wrought by Jesus' divine Father in heaven vindicating the message of his divine Son on earth.

Hence, we have now completely escaped the darkness of our stone houses and have come into the blinding light of the resurrected Son of God. There appears to be strong positive evidence that God exists and has broken through to our world. But why has he done so? What does the resurrection mean for you and me? We will address this question in our final article of the series.

Blessings,

Arnie Gentle

Miracles, Part 6: Was the Resurrected Jesus for Real?

Arnie Gentile — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 21:27:00 GMT

What was the nature of Jesus' resurrection appearances? Most attempts to explain these appearances in purely naturalistic terms have long been discredited by critical scholars. Nonetheless, we will consider two theories: the hallucination theory, which has made a comeback, and the objective vision theory, which is fairly recent in origin.

The hallucination theory suggests that the disciples had an identical yet purely subjective hallucinatory experience that led them to believe that they all had seen the risen Jesus. First, we must acknowledge the very subjective and personal nature of a hallucination. Psychologists point out that it is this characteristic of a hallucination that makes the experience available only to an individual, not to a group. For example, among a group of individuals lost in a desert without water for a few days, one may believe he sees an oasis ahead, another may claim to see a camel caravan coming over a dune, and yet another may assert that he is surrounded by rattlesnakes, while none of the others in the group see anything but miles of sand. This is typical of hallucinations. No one has the same experience as another.

Also, the antecedent psychological condition of the disciples does not seem conducive to a hallucinatory experience. They were in despair, having lost their closest companion. There was no anticipation or preparatory excitement among any of the disciples that would have induced such an experience. Moreover, there was certainly no such anticipation on the part of skeptics such as Paul and James. As we have already noted, anticipating an encounter with a risen Christ would have been the furthest thing from their minds.

In addition, hallucinations tend to result from mental instability or illness. Again, there is no evidence in the text to suggest that any of the disciples suffered from such maladies. Finally, we are left with no explanation for the empty tomb, a New Testament proclamation that most critical scholars accept as historical. Therefore, it seems highly unlikely that the appearances of Jesus proclaimed by the disciples were of a hallucinatory nature
.

Could these appearances have been objective visions? That is, perhaps Jesus' spirit was translated directly to heaven, and God then began sending to the disciples actual visionary manifestations of some kind that led them to conclude that Jesus was alive spiritually in the heavenly realm. It is well documented that first century Second Temple Judaism knew nothing of a non-physical resurrection of the dead. One of the undisputed features of Pharisaic theology, which was the popular theology of that day, was its espousal of a bodily resurrection of the dead in the end times, and the disciples employed the common vocabulary consistent with this notion to explain Christ’s appearance.

Therefore, it is difficult to understand why some one as theologically astute as the Apostle Paul would be using the well known terminology of physical resurrection to explain the appearances of Jesus to himself and the other disciples if he understood these experiences to be only visionary and non-corporeal. First century Jews knew the difference between a vision and a resurrection, as did first century pagans, and it seems quite implausible that Paul and the other disciples would have failed to make this distinction, particularly when faced with threats to their lives. Furthermore, we are still left with no explanation for the empty tomb.

Finally, there is the testimony of Peter recorded by Luke in the book of Acts. In Acts 2:24, Peter states plainly about Jesus that “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, for it was not possible for him to be held by it.” In verse 32, Peter asserts, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.” Sandwiched in between these two verses, Peter presents a contrast between King David and Jesus, quoting Psalm 16:8-11 as his proof text (Acts 2:25-28). He points out that King David “both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day” (Acts 2:29). Peter argues that David must have been speaking prophetically in this psalm, for “he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption” (Acts 2:31, italics mine).

This is as lucid a statement as Peter could make about his understanding of the resurrection. Unlike David’s body, which by contrast remains decomposed in its tomb, Christ’s body experienced no such corruption or decay after his death and burial. Peter’s testimony contains the concept of a physically resurrected Christ in space and time, and it appears that Peter was indeed preaching such a Christ within but a few weeks of Christ's crucifixion. Once again, a broad consensus of scholars agree, just as they agree about the Corinthian creed, that this is a summary of a real sermon that expresses the deepest convictions of the Church in its earliest days, convictions that never wavered, even when believers faced torture and death. Even conservative Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide, who denies the Christian claim that Jesus is God or the Jewish Messiah, has argued that "if the Disciples were totally disappointed and on the verge of desperate flight because of the very real reason of the Crucifixion, it took another very real reason in order to transform them from a band of disheartened and dejected Jews into the most self-confident missionary society in world history." He admits a very real resurrection as a very plausible explanation.

Thus, all of the truth indicators present in the ancient texts, the authenticity of which are agreed upon by virtually all critical scholars, point to the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. No one at the time anticipated such an event, yet many claimed to have witnessed it. Nor did the disciples begin proclaiming an incorporeal vision and later invent the story of a bodily resurrection. All the evidence supports a primitive claim and a primitive conviction that Jesus Christ walked out of the tomb in his own strength, fully alive. As St. John asserts at the beginning of his first epistle, that "which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life...we proclaim also to you, that you too may have fellowship with us."

But the early disciples did not only exhort their listeners to believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, but also to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. These men were convinced that the resurrection meant something profound about the nature of God and the eternal destiny of all people on earth. It was not just a trick to impress people, but a miracle that validated all that Jesus had said during his lifetime about himself, God, and the human condition. Just who did Jesus think he was? We will explore this question in our next entry.

Blessings,

Arnie Gentle

Miracles, Part 5: The Transformation of the Disciples

Arnie Gentile — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 20:58:00 GMT

The remarkable change in the attitudes and belief systems of the disciples themselves also provides evidence that something amazing had happened. We will look first at two of the least likely to have been converted without having witnessed an extraordinary event: the Apostle Paul and James, the half brother of Jesus.

How do we explain the conversion of a hostile skeptic like the Apostle Paul? We are told that in Jerusalem, he was "ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison" (Acts 8:3). In addition, "still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, [he] went to the high priest and asked for letters to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem" (Acts 9:1-2). Within a matter of days after his departure for Damascus to carry out his threats, Paul was preaching that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of God in the Damascus synagogues (Act 9:19-22). What could have happened?

Paul testified that he had encountered the risen Christ en route to Damascus (Acts 26:12-18). Paul describes this event simply and humbly in the concluding verse of the creed, 1 Corinthians 15:8: "Last of all, as to one untimely born, [Christ] also appeared to me." Keep in mind that this is the only direct, first person, eyewitness claim of this sort in the New Testament. So even if we reject the gospel narratives, we must still account for the conversion claim of Paul. There is no evidence in the biblical text of any antecedent history that would incline Paul to such a conversion, since he seemed to be a quite committed and well-adjusted anti-Christian bigot, comfortable in his own legalistic Judaism, even by his own self-assessment (Phil 3:5-11).

Therefore, to so suddenly and radically switch sides and embrace such a foreign religious worldview, thereby jeopardizing all he had previously lived for, required a momentous event which Paul must have interpreted as authentic. He had bet his life on his claim, echoed in the Corinthian creed, that Jesus had appeared to him. How extraordinary was the conversion of Paul? Imagine militant anti-religion atheist and Neo-Darwinist biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, suddenly preaching that Jesus Christ is the Son of God risen from the dead. No wonder Festus asked Paul if he had lost his mind (Acts 26:24)!

What about James, the brother of Jesus. The Gospels suggest that Jesus’ brothers were less than enamored with their eldest step-brother, mocking him and even considering him crazy (John 7:1-5; Mark 3:20-21). If Jesus were still in the tomb, what would have possibly compelled James to become not only the senior pastor of the Jerusalem church, but also one of its early martyrs, stoned to death by order of the high priest (Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, Chapter 9, Section 1)? That Jesus appeared to James, as the Corinthian creed asserts, seems to be the most reasonable explanation. In fact, as philosopher William Lane Craig points out, “Even the skeptical New Testament critic Hans Grass admits that the conversion of James is one of the surest proofs of the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (Craig, Reasonable Faith, Crossways, 1994, 283). The doubter surely must proffer an alternate explanation that offers sufficient scope and power to account for this evidence.

And what of the others who had been with Jesus and claimed that they had seen him after his death? After the arrest of Jesus, the Scriptures tell us that his most loyal followers cowardly fled and remained in hiding after their Master's crucifixion, shaking in their boots (John 20:19). Then, only a short time afterward, we find them boldly testifying, in the face of intense persecution, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God risen from the dead. History tells us that the Church spread like wildfire as a result of what these early witnesses claimed, and Church tradition tells us that the majority of them went to their death for their testimony (Martyrdom of the Apostles). It may be true that many have died for what they have believed, but these men died proclaiming that they had actually seen Jesus alive after his crucifixion. Would they have suffered persecution and death for what they all knew to be false? Would you?

The cumulative case we have presented in this series has led mainstream critical scholars to accept that the disciples really experienced something. But what was it? Maybe they thought that they were witnessing something that had objectively happened to Jesus when in fact they were experiencing something subjectively happening to themselves. Perhaps the tomb was not empty after all, and they were experiencing a group hallucination or a vision of some kind rather than witnessing a real bodily resurrection from the dead. We will address this question in our next entry entitled "Was the Resurrected Jesus for Real?"

Blessings,

Arnie Gentle

Miracles, Part 4: The Corinthian Creed and the Gospels

Arnie Gentile — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:11:00 GMT

Having established a very early date for the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus, we now ask if we can discern whether the claim had a real referent in time and space. That is, did the disciples, by making this claim, really believe that they had witnessed something extraordinary happen to Jesus. In this article, we address what some might consider “inconsistencies” between the creed recorded in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 and the gospel accounts. We will show that these texts are not only consistent with each other, but that they are mutually corroborative as well.

First, Paul’s text never mentions the women at the tomb. However, we must acknowledge that the story of the women at the tomb in the Gospels passes the criteria of critical scholarship. Since first-century Jews considered the testimony of women unreliable and unacceptable in a court of law, including such an element in the Gospels makes it highly unlikely that the event was fabricated. Why risk offending and alienating your readers if the account is not true? Therefore, scholars call this the criterion of offensiveness or embarrassment.

The account of the women also appears in all four gospels. Therefore, since there are multiple independent sources that document this same event, the event's historicity is greatly enhanced. Scholars call this the criterion of multiple attestation. So by the standards of accepted critical scholarship, we would seem bound to accept this account as authentically historical, and to conclude that these women really witnessed something remarkable in space and time. The Corinthian creed, which originated early in Jerusalem, may exclude this information for “seeker-sensitive” reasons, since Jewish unbelievers would have likely rejected the creed had it included the testimony of the women.

In addition, the Corinthian text may be construed to imply that Peter was the first witness to the resurrected Jesus when the Gospels identify the women as the first. We must note, however, that Peter actually is not identified as the first witness to the resurrection; he only appears first in the Corinthian text. This also would be consistent with a “seeker-sensitive” approach to evangelism, since the implied priority of the male witness would be much more palatable to first century Jews.

Finally, regarding the five hundred that saw Jesus all at once, the gospel accounts concern themselves primarily with the appearances in and around Jerusalem. A group appearance such as this would have had to happen in a large open area, perhaps when the disciples met the risen Master in Galilee. The fact that this account does not appear in the Gospels, but in Paul's text alone, does not warrant dismissing it as mythical or legendary. In fact, Paul invites his readers to verify this tradition themselves by mentioning that many of these witnesses were still alive and available for cross-examination.

We must always keep in mind that the creed that appears in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 was constructed early in Jerusalem within a religious context that was quite skeptical of the new movement. In such an environment, it would make sense to strategically include only core information that was critical and to refrain from including peripheral information over which the creed's Jewish audience might stumble. A couple of decades later, as the message moved outward into the Gentile world and it began to appear that Jesus may tarry, more detailed accounts were included in the Gospels to preserve the tradition for future generations.

Therefore, it is much more reasonable to consider the differences between the Corinthian creed and the Gospels as matters of strategic discrimination rather than inconsistencies or contradictions. That the gospel accounts pass the criteria of critical historical scholarship should compel us to weigh their historicity seriously rather than to casually dismiss them. At the very least, we should recognize that the Gospels, although written decades after the event, make the same proclamation found in the Corinthian creed, which scholars date no later than three to five years after the event. Such corroboration over decades is stunning evidence that something really happened in space and time.

In our next post, entitled "The Transformation of the Disciples," we will consider the evidence provided by the radical change in the attitudes and the belief systems of the disciples. What does this transformation tell us about the reality of the event to which the creed in 1 Corinthians alludes and which the Gospels corroborate? By answering this question, we hope to lovingly coax our skeptic out of the dampness and darkness of his or her stone house and further into the warmth of the light.

Blessings,

Arnie Gentle

Miracles, Part 3: The Corinthian Creed and the Early Proclamation of the Resurrection

Arnie Gentile — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:05:00 GMT

Since we may now consider the truth of miracle claims, let us train our investigative tools on the greatest one of them all. Did Jesus Christ literally rise from the dead? The question is critical since upon its answer rests the veracity of all other Christian truth claims. As the apostle Paul asserts, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then Christianity is a hoax, and to expend any further energy to proclaim it, the efforts of a fool. Therefore, simply blindly believing in the resurrection of Jesus is not enough. We must know that he rose from the dead beyond any reasonable doubt.

Of course, in order to acquire such knowledge, we must examine and be persuaded by historical evidence, if any such evidence exists. We contend that such evidence does exist, and that if we follow it, it will lead us to the rational conclusion that Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead in space and time. Furthermore, we do not assume in our argument that the Bible is the inspired word of God or even that the Bible is exhaustively reliable. Therefore, we use scriptural texts from only those undisputed Pauline epistles that all branches of biblical scholarship, liberal, moderate, and conservative, accept as authentic. What we offer then is based on the "minimal facts" argument proposed by Gary Habermas. And so we begin with 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. Paul states:

"For I delivered to you as a matter of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, although some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me."

There is wide consensus among scholars that 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 is a creed reflecting an early tradition that the apostle Paul is reciting to his readers rather than an original passage composed by Paul himself. When did Paul receive this creed? It is generally accepted that Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians about 55-57 A.D. Paul, however, is reflecting on his first visit to Corinth, when he originally “delivered” this information which he had “received.” This visit is generally dated at 51 A.D., a little less than twenty years after the event. By historical critical standards, this would be insufficient time for a legend or a myth to substantially corrupt a received tradition. Therefore, even if we stop here, we will have established an early date of reception relative to the actual events which Paul describes.

There is evidence, however, that this creedal tradition which Paul passed on to the parishioners at Corinth may have had an even earlier origin. In Galatians 1:18-19, Paul records his visit to Jerusalem during which he spent fifteen days with Peter. During this visit, Paul also spoke with James, “the Lord’s brother.” Paul reveals in his account of this trip that it occurred only three years after his conversion. Therefore, it is virtually certain that Paul received this creedal tradition no later than during this visit. This would date the historical substance of this creed conservatively within five years or less of the actual events. This is a remarkably short historical distance and strong evidence that the tradition that Paul passed on to the Corinthians that Jesus died, was buried, was raised on the third day, and appeared had a very early origin.

Some might respond that ascribing an early date to this creed represents the consensus of only “fundamentalist” Christians and not truly “credible” critical scholars. They would be mistaken. Esteemed critical scholars of all stripes concur that this creed had a very early origin, perhaps dating back as early as 30 A.D. There is consensus across a broad range of theological perspectives that within this creed rests likely the most primitive evidence of what the earliest Christians actually believed and proclaimed.

Why is all of this important? A generation has been weaned on the radical teachings of the Jesus Seminar, which for almost three decades has aggressively popularized the notion that the story of the resurrection has no basis in fact, but was fabricated by later disciples for political or devotional reasons. Therefore, it is the people of this generation whose stone houses we need to call upon with the truth of the early date of the resurrection account. And we will continue to draw them into the light in our next post entitled "The Corinthian Creed and the Gospels."

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

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Miracles, Part 2: Defeating David Hume

Arnie Gentile — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 22:22:00 GMT

In our last post, we dealt with the objection to miracles presented by naturalism. We learned that naturalism cannot justify itself since it presupposes without reason the absence of anything outside of the material realm. We also learned that the claim that only empirical investigation of the physical world gives us knowledge is self-defeating, since there is no empirical method that yields such a conclusion.

Nonetheless, naturalism remains the prevailing worldview of our day. How can this be? Those who assert naturalism frequently call to their aid the argument against miracles proposed by the eighteenth century thinker David Hume in the hope that pointing to this argument will once and for all silence supernaturalism. Therefore, it behooves us to examine Hume's argument for its validity.

Hume argued that miracle claims needed to be considered against the uniformity of human experience regarding the laws of nature. Hume asserted that our uniform experience tells us that the laws of nature are inviolable, and, therefore, innately forbid such events. Hence, he concluded that it is always better to believe that a purely naturalistic explanation of the event is available if not presently known. He supported his stance with the following four rebuttals against the veracity of miracle claims: 1) It is always possible that any miracle claim could be simply inaccurate. 2) People love tabloid stories, and, therefore, may be prone to lie about such experiences. 3) Miracle claims usually occur among the ignorant and the unenlightened. 4) Miracles of similar kinds are reported in many different religions.

Four preliminary concerns

We must first recognize Hume's anchor claim concerning the inviolability of natural laws for the circular argument that it is. It assumes a priori that this is the state of affairs without proof, and it fails to disprove that God could have at some time in the past set aside these natural laws and broken into history. If an all-powerful creator God exists, then what we may think about the strength of the natural laws is irrelevant when considering the possibility of miracles.

In addition, Hume's sample of experience is too small. That is, he only lives in a particular place during a particular time. It may be that people at other places and in other times have had different yet plausible background information regarding the violability of natural laws that led them to an alternate conclusion. Hume can only tell us about his experience. But just because Hume has not seen a miracle and does not believe in miracles does not mean that someone else unknown to him has not witnessed such an event. Hume's personal world is too small for him to speak confidently about the experience of all persons in all places at all times.

Furthermore,Hume's argument from the uniformity of human experience could be applied to any unusual and unrepeatable event in history. These would include the exploits of Napoleon, the success of the American Revolution, and the conquests of Alexander the Great. All of these are highly unlikely, unrepeatable events which Hume did not witness. Why should he accept the testimony for their veracity?

Finally, modern science has gone beyond the Newtonian assumptions of Hume's day, viewing the laws of nature as more probabilistic than absolute and inviolable, leaving open the potential for an unexplainable event to occur. With all this in mind, let's consider Hume's four rebuttals against the legitimacy of miracle claims.

1) A miracle claim may be inaccurate.

This is precisely why forensic historical tools must be brought to bear on any miracle claim. If it is at all possible that God may exist and that a supernatural event may have happened, it would be unscientific to ignore the claim without an investigation. Investigating the evidence for past, unrepeatable events is the practice of forensic disciplines such as history, archaeology, anthropology, paleontology, and criminology. The tools employed in these fields can be applied to test claims of supernatural intervention as well.

2) People love tabloid stories, and, therefore, may be prone to lie about such experiences, and 3) miracle claims usually occur among the ignorant and the unenlightened.

In these objections, I count at least three logical fallacies: an attack on a straw man, an ad hominem attack on persons of lesser enlightenment than Hume, and the genetic fallacy, in this case, assuming that anyone reporting a miracle must be placed in the category of the ignorant. But Luke and the Apostle Paul were among the most educated men of their day, and persons throughout history, many very likely much smarter than Hume, have believed and publicly proclaimed that particular miracles have occurred in the past. In the end, each of these objections is a non sequitur. It may be true that some people are prone to deception and some people are "ignorant" or "unenlightened," but such shortcomings do not a priori eliminate the veracity of one's testimony regarding a specific event. Even liars and loons can accurately perceive and report that a dead man has come to life.

4) Miracle claims occur in many religions.

This complaint does not account for differences in the reliability of witnesses, the distance in time between the alleged event and the first accounting, and the quality of the event given its context and apparent purpose. These are all part of the process of assessing any such truth claim, nuances that Hume ignores when it comes to miracle claims, but which he carefully observes in his own historical works.

Conclusion

Hence, Hume fails, because his argument begs the question. Hume begins his argument against miracles by categorically denying that miracle claims are valid, which is exactly what he he must prove. He claims to have demonstrated that miracle claims are inherently untrustworthy when all he has done is declare his bias against such claims. For all we know, some miracle claims may be valid. We can only know if we investigate them. Hume presupposes that the uniformity of human experience and the inviolability of natural laws enable us to simply dismiss such claims, but he has not proven this to be the case.

And so, we are left with the possibility of miracles after all. We have peeked beyond the curtains of our stone houses and have seen a glimmer of light. Next, we will crack open the door as we begin our investigation of the most famous miracle claim in history, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We will begin our journey by investigating the Corinthian Creed and the early proclamation of the Resurrection. Hang on to those sunglasses.

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

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Miracles, Part 1: Naturalism versus Theism

Arnie Gentile — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 19:20:00 GMT

Do miracles occur? Is there evidence that exists in support of reports of miracles? Just what is a miracle anyway? We talk about the “Miracle on Ice” that occurred in the 1980 Olympics when the USA defeated the USSR in hockey. We speak of the “miracle” of child birth or the “miracle” of a budding rose. These may be quite descriptive popular usages of the term, but it does have a more technical meaning within theological circles. Christian philosopher Gary Habermas proposes the following useful definition:

A miracle is a dynamic, specialized event which nature is incapable of producing, that temporarily supersedes (or appears to supersede) the normally-observed, known pattern of nature. It is brought about by the power of God or another supernatural agent for the purpose of verifying or drawing attention to a person or message.

In this series we will be talking about the possibility of miracles in general and the probability of one particular miracle: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If we live in an open universe within which we acknowledge the existence of a personal God and his supernatural intervention, that is, if we accept the worldview called Theism, miracles fit nicely into our understanding of this world. However, we do not live in a world which readily recognizes Theism. In fact, we live in a world that has largely become what I would call "theophobic."

The prevailing worldview of our day is called Naturalism. Naturalism claims that we live in a closed universe of physical and chemical causes. Naturalism argues that any explanation of an event is preferable to a supernatural explanation, even if the latter is the best explanation. Another name for this point of view is Materialism since it claims that there is nothing immaterial or spiritual about our world; it is only matter in motion.

One who holds a naturalistic worldview is much like a man who shuts himself up in a stone house with walls eight feet thick, locks all the doors, closes all the curtains, and then sits in the middle of the house with his ears covered so as to block out any remaining faint noises that may penetrate his fortress. Then he begins to chant over and over again, “There is no outside; there is no outside; there is no outside...” until the statement becomes truth to him. Now imagine if he had shut up with himself about a dozen infant children whom he raised within this environment. Well, they would likely grow up learning the same chant. This is what has happened in our culture over the past century .

Several generations have grown up in a system within which our schools, our media outlets, our political elites, our entertainment icons, and, yes, even many of our churches have been actively promoting a world without God by shouting the mantra, “There is nothing outside the natural world” over and over again. A commitment to this notion spawns an endorsement of modern (atheistic) Secularism, which is an attempt to erect a utopian society on this planet from which God and his Word are excluded, and in which the Church and its message are marginalized if not altogether ignored. Given this state of affairs, one would likely find it incredible to learn that there is really no successful positive argument that exists in support of Naturalism. One might find it even more astonishing to learn that there is strong positive evidence for the objective existence of “something outside.”

Thus when we encounter someone thoroughly schooled in the language of our culture, she will likely assert the popular slogan that miracles don’t happen. However, she will be rendered speechless when asked to provide evidence that miracles do not occur. She will likely simply reassert her slogan or some version of it like “no one has ever seen a miracle happen.” But now she has dug herself a deeper ditch, since she has committed herself to the project of proving that miracles have never happened, an impossible burden indeed!

You see, Naturalism is a parasitic notion. It is not a worldview that can be supported by positive argument, and it, therefore, must prey on other worldviews by categorically denying them. No one has and no one can ever prove that God does not exist. No one has and no one can prove that miracles have never happened. To claim otherwise is simply to assert Naturalism as one’s default worldview without reason.

Someone may protest at this point and claim that only science provides us with real knowledge because science is established on the basis of purely empirical observation and not upon some allegedly mystical revelation. Unfortunately, our objector would be engaging in a bit of mystical thinking himself, since his claim that only science gives us knowledge cannot be established through empirical investigation, as his claim requires. Hence, his objection fails.

Theism, on the other hand, is a real worldview that enjoys the support of positive arguments that have existed for hundreds of years. Interestingly, the more we learn about the universe we live in, the more the evidence mounts in favor of Theism and against Naturalism. The discovery that the universe had a beginning, and must therefore have a cause is one among many such findings.

In our next post, entitled "Defeating David Hume," we will address probably the most powerful argument ever posed against miracles, and begin to peek through the curtains of our stone houses to see if there really is a knowable objective reality beyond the walls. Don’t forget to wear your sunglasses.

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

Bonus Video

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