Hitchens had awhile back offered the usual, "what if historians discovered that Jesus was a fraud" objection, arguing that the problems of human existence would be unchanged regardless. For Hitchens, such is a demonstration that the Christian gospel, or any religious story, is impotent.
Douthat offers this rejoinder:
The Christian story is not, for instance, a theological or philosophical treatise. It's not a set of commands or insights about our moral duties. Nor is it a road map to the good life. It has implications for all of those questions, obviously; certainly, Jesus of Nazareth wasn't exactly silent on "the concept of justice" during his lifetime, and Christians have been deriving theologies, philosophies and codes of conduct from his example ever since. But fundamentally, the Christian story is evidence for a particular idea about the universe: It recounts a series of events that, if real, tells us something profound about the nature of God, and His relationship to His creatures, that we couldn't have been expected to understand or accept in precisely the same way without the Gospel narratives.
Douthat nicely notes that the no-gospel hypothesis makes atheism a lot harder as well:
Consider, for instance, the way in which the dominance of the Christian story has actually sharpened one of the best arrows in the anti-theist's quiver. In Western society, especially, the oft-heard claim that the world is too cruel a place for a good omnipotence to have created derives a great deal of its power, whether implicitly or explicitly, from the person of Christ himself. The God of the New Testament seems more immediate, more personal, and more invested in his creation than He had heretofore revealed Himself to be. But this arguably makes Him seem more culpable for the world's suffering as well. Paradoxically, the God who addresses Job out of the whirlwind is far less vulnerable to complaints about the world's injustice than the God who suffers on the Cross - or the human God who cries in the manger. For many Christians, Christ's suffering provides a partial answer to the problem of theodicy. But for many atheists and agnostics, it only sharpens the question: How can a God who loves mankind enough to die for us allow us to suffer as much as we do?
In another vein, we'll note that Hitchens's hypothetical discovery is fatuous. There's no way that at a 2000-year distance anyone could discover definitive evidence discrediting the Christian gospel. This is not to beg the question of its historical authenticity but to not the impossibility of disproving any well established narrative at a distance of such magnitude. The "what ifs"--what if we discovered that Jesus lied, that the miracle stories were fabrications, or (the one with the biggest consequences) that his body still remains in this or that place--are all imaginings that can't by nature occur in the real world.
Take the big one, the resurrection. If human remains were discovered that by some accompanying inscription were identified as those of Jesus of Nazareth, we could determine with high certainty whether they came from the appropriate time and were interred at the appropriate time and with less certainty whether they had been disturbed since internment. We could not determine whether they were genuine or a hoax. For a real-life example of this issue, note the circulation of all kinds of biblical relics among Christian believers of a certain medieval perspective, none of which can be honestly taken as positive evidence for anything historical.
Same goes for any other angle. In the end, we have the persistent belief, demonstrated in exceptional behavior, of people at the time of the event, versus our justifiable skepticism that such a thing could happen. Good alternative explanations aren't forthcoming for the persistent belief and exceptional behavior, so we find that the rational thing to do is to surrender the skepticism and accept the story.
To be fair, Hitchens's point isn't really about the possible discovery of something discrediting. He's not arguing that the story unhistorical. He assumes that. He argues that the story is inconsequential. We way it's both likely historically and massively consequential existentially.
10 comments:
Do you think people would respond to that? Say "well, I guess I can't indisputably prove it wrong. I guess I'll just follow Jesus." I would say that the arguments we have are the same way. Sure, we can give a few good points about the existence of God, but when it comes right down to it we cannot prove anything. This being true, the argument could go either way.
We are distinguishing between assessing the rationality of faith and its persuasiveness initially. Coming to faith involves multiple components, among which historical assessment is not always that prominent.
However, in that light, to say about the Christian God "we cannot prove anything" is to set a standard of proof that no important proposition can satisfy. Prove to someone that you exist, or that his wife loves him. All truth is probable.
In sum, if your point is that rational argument alone doesn't convert people, you are extremely correct. If your point is that rational argument counts for nothing in settling Christian truth claims, we think you've sold the issue short.
"There's no way that at a 2000-year distance anyone could discover definitive evidence discrediting the Christian gospel."
Try this scenario. Archeologists discover an intact codex (or scroll, if you prefer) of the gospel of Mark that radiocarbon dating assigns to c. 15 B.C. (plus or minus 50 years) and that paleographic analysis assigns to c. A.D. 30–40. Thus, scholars agree that the text was almost certainly written in c. A.D. 30–35, putting it, at most, only a few years after the fact. Moreover, stylometric analysis shows that the ending—an alternative to the traditional (and dubious) chapter 16, verses 9–20—is perfectly consistent with the rest of the text. Wouldn't such evidence be enough to convince all but the most tendentious that this new find constituted the original and authentic Gospel of Mark? And suppose, further, that this original ending described, say, a hoax perpetuated on the women at the tomb by someone trying to determine whether the disciples of Jesus were reliable witnesses to his prophetic credentials or simply gullible followers of a charismatic leader.
Given that Mark is generally recognized as the earliest gospel (by decades, according to some), wouldn't the above scenario provide enough evidence to explain away the resurrection of Christ in purely naturalistic terms? Wouldn't fair-minded individuals find it more reasonable to infer that the original ending was lost and that 16:9–20 was a later addition based on the original reports of the women at the tomb by a frightened and devoted group of followers? And wouldn't the best interpretation of the other gospel accounts be that they followed the later addition to Mark in writing their own accounts?
Of course, there has been no such discovery, and I'm not claiming that the likelihood of such a scenario is at all plausible. But it's certainly possible. And if it's possible, that means that someone could, at a 2000-year distance, discover definitive historical evidence discrediting the Christian gospel.
Note, however, that the argument cuts in both directions. For if it's possible to discover definitive historical evidence against the Christian message, it's also possible to discover definitive historical evidence in favor of it. And that gives us all the more reason to be diligent in our historical investigations into the origins of Christianity.
What I am arguing is that we Christians have our list of "apologetics" in our arsenal, but not one of them really PROVES that God exists. But, as you have stated this is true for a great deal of issues. I suppose it is useful (I guess I cannot argue with people's testimonies that say this was helpful in coming to Christianity), but it should not be the primary mode of evangelism as some have made it out to be. The New Testament text shows a mode of proclaiming the gospel that involves how you live (I am thinking specifically of Paul, here, although I know it is true elsewhere).
I understand that I can have a "both-and" mindset, but my bias shows apologetics as something intended to attack and cripple the other person in order to show that we are superior, and not so much intended to be used out of love. Again this is just a bias, because my experience shows people who try to argue for the existence of God being the same people who yell at the Christian bookstore clerk for not owning the newest blue NIV study Bible.
Are you sure that you don't mean KJV?
JB, we commented on your provocative comment a few days ago, but it never made it through the ether, apparently. We'll try again.
We think that your hypothetical discovery is a very clever, almost surgically precise way to challenge our assertion that these "what if X were discovered" hypotheticals are misleading. But in fact, we think that this fantastic and specific discovery of what we'll call an "Anti-Mark" still demonstrates our point.
First of all, Mark's testimony is not the earliest textual witness to the message of the resurrection. Nearly everyone says 1 Corinthians is. Further, neither 1 Corinthians nor any of the other epistles can rightly be explained in their present form if the message of the resurrection did not precede them by some years. The vectors in the epistles point to a well established resurrection kerygma in the 30s.
Second, Anti-Mark would be the second early textual witness that there were some who thought the resurrection of Jesus a hoax. Matthew 28 offers the same, of course: the guards say that the disciples stole the body. Anti-Mark would be an earlier witness to that hypothesis, but it would not tell us something that we didn't already know: that such explanations existed.
Third, Anti-Mark would be a very curious document. Frequently in the equivalent of Mark 8-14, it would contain multiple statements of Jesus referring to his resurrection directly and clearly by way of promise. We suppose that the ending of Anti-Mark could say that the disciples remembered Jesus' prophecies of resurrection and decided to do something to make it appear that they happened, but the narrative now looks suspiciously like another ending was eliminated from a Christian text and a new one substituted, all by a decidedly anti-Christian redactor.
Which suggests another observation: a story like anti-Mark's could clearly arise only in response to Christian proclamation of the resurrection. It would be prior to Mark, but not prior to such proclamation.
Therefore, we'd say that in the end the credibility of Anti-Mark's witness would have to be decided not on its apparently earlier provenance than Mark but on the inherent credibility of its assertion of a hoax. And of course there's a reason why concerning the resurrection hoax hypotheses are not seriously held these days and haven't been since David Strauss: they fail to explain the behavior of early Christians and their opponents.
All this is to draw attention to the fact that the evidence for the resurrection is more like a very complex web than an object that rests on a few pillars. Poke a hole in part of the web and the web still holds together.
Of course, we agree that Christian claims must be open to historical investigation. We just don't want the nature of the case so far to be misunderestimated, or thoughtful Christians to be freaked out every time they hear rumors of a new discovery, let alone a hypothetical one.
Burchett, we agree completely that blasting people with so-called apologetics is ineffective persuasion. As we said, coming to faith involves multiple components, and rational argument is the most prominent only for a few folk. The fact that some nutjobs do what you describe does not, of course, negate the validity of considering whether Christian faith is rational.
It's worth noting the difference between demonstrating that the faith is rational and proving that it is undeniably true.
I understand the force of your argument, but I'm still not persuaded. I'll explain why by responding to each of your points separately.
1. Mark's testimony is not the earliest textual witness to the message of the resurrection. Nearly everyone says 1 Corinthians is.
Response: The fact that Mark (in its present form) is dated later than I Corinthians is really beside the point. Anti-Mark—from which, by hypothesis, Mark would have later originated—would precede I Corinthians by at least two decades.
2. Neither 1 Corinthians nor any of the other epistles can rightly be explained in their present form if the message of the resurrection did not precede them by some years. The vectors in the epistles point to a well established resurrection kerygma in the 30s.
Response: The hypothetical scenario allows for the message of the resurrection to have been well established in the 30s, "based on the original reports of the women at the tomb by a frightened and devoted group of followers." Since they, presumably, would have had no access to Anti-Mark, their witness to the empty tomb would have preceded uninterrupted.
3. Anti-Mark would be the second early textual witness that there were some who thought the resurrection of Jesus a hoax. Matthew 28 offers the same, of course: the guards say that the disciples stole the body. Anti-Mark would be an earlier witness to that hypothesis, but it would not tell us something that we didn't already know: that such explanations existed.
Response: Anti-Mark would be the earliest witness, period, not just an earlier witness to an alleged hoax. That, I think, would give it a great deal of evidential support.
4. Anti-Mark would be a very curious document. Frequently in the equivalent of Mark 8-14, it would contain multiple statements of Jesus referring to his resurrection directly and clearly by way of promise. We suppose that the ending of Anti-Mark could say that the disciples remembered Jesus' prophecies of resurrection and decided to do something to make it appear that they happened, but the narrative now looks suspiciously like another ending was eliminated from a Christian text and a new one substituted, all by a decidedly anti-Christian redactor.
Response: This, I think, is your best objection, but it can be easily met by tweaking the hypothetical scenario a bit. Assume that the passages you alluded to in Mark 8–14 are missing from Anti-Mark. It seems to me that the scholarly community would then conclude that later redactors edited Anti-Mark (to create Mark) in order to bring it in line with the tradition stretching back to the women at the tomb, who were, according to Anti-Mark, the victims of a hoax.
5. A story like Anti-Mark's could clearly arise only in response to Christian proclamation of the resurrection. It would be prior to Mark, but not prior to such proclamation. Therefore, we'd say that in the end the credibility of Anti-Mark's witness would have to be decided not on its apparently earlier provenance than Mark but on the inherent credibility of its assertion of a hoax.
Response: The word "only," here, makes this a pretty strong claim. In fact, it makes it an absolute claim. Do you really want to say that there is no other possible explanation? And as far as the inherent credibility of the hypothetical scenario is concerned, remember that the alternative has an even lower initial probability. People don't often come back from the dead, but they do often get victimized by hoaxes, even implausible ones.
6. And of course there's a reason why the resurrection hoax hypotheses are not seriously held these days and haven't been since David Strauss: they fail to explain the behavior of early Christians and their opponents.
Response: The question isn't what do scholars conclude given the evidence they have, but what would they conclude given the evidence of Anti-Mark. I think this is an important point. The fact that our current evidence makes a hoax highly unlikely is only indirectly relevant to the question of whether it would be likely given further evidence. Like all inductive reasoning, the strength of the argument can be altered with further evidence.
7. All this is to draw attention to the fact that the evidence for the resurrection is more like a very complex web than an object that rests on a few pillars. Poke a hole in part of the web and the web still holds together.
Response: The web analogy is a good one, but even webs can be radically altered if the hole is big enough.
8. Of course, we agree that Christian claims must be open to historical investigation. We just don't want the nature of the case so far to be misunderestimated, or thoughtful Christians to be freaked out every time they hear rumors of a new discovery, let alone a hypothetical one.
Response: Agreed. But I would add that there's also the danger of overconfidence (which can lead to a whole host of evils) if the evidence is taken to be stronger than it actually is. I think that one of the reasons why so many outsiders don't even listen to Christian apologists anymore is because they're suspicious of the claims to absolute certitude. If we really believe that Christianity is a faith and not a proof, we'd do well to take those suspicions seriously.
JB, you and we are converging on a consensus here. We still note the following.
Let us explain our note that Anti-Mark would be secondary. Since the document would have been produced by someone who obviously didn't believe the Christian gospel, it's impossible to explain its origin unless someone wanted to offer a counter-explanation to Christian proclamation of the resurrection. In other words, Christian proclamation (oral) would have to precede Anti-Mark (written), or there's no sense in Anti-Mark having been produced in writing or orally. There must be interest in Jesus and what happened to him after his death. The former we might understand, but not the latter unless some folks thought that something weird was afoot.
With your rejoinders, the outcome is still the same: from the 30s forward there was Christian proclamation of Jesus as risen and a counter-claim that there was a hoax. We simply assert that the hypothetical discovery of Anti-Mark would primarily provide further textual evidence for the existence of the counter-claim, but the claim itself would have to be judged on its coherence as well as the provenance of the textual witness.
With the real evidence, the credibility that the historical Christian resurrection account has depends in our view on the difficulty of explaining the phenomenon of Christian proclamation apart from a space-and-time resurrection, not just on the provenance of the documents. So newly discovered documents, one of the favorite "what ifs," are not going to change the issue that much. Your custom-designed "what-if" document would alter somewhat the balance on the provenance of the evidence, though not the explanatory power of the competing hypotheses. And it would seriously alter the notion of the origin of Mark (and probably Matthew and Luke), but it would not thereby change the extremely probably proposition that followers of Jesus proclaimed him risen soon after his death.
We definitely affirm the need to eschew overconfidence. But we think that has to do with assessing the entire issue of God and faith rightly. The issue rests in a web, which can be devastated, but only thread by thread (in this web, there's no big rock that can blow through most of the web all at once).
But the web, as you obviously know, produces only probability, ground for certitude, but not certainty.
In our view C. Stephen Evans expresses this well in The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith (which gentle readers should read instead of our dialogue): the account of Jesus in the Gospels is more likely historical than unhistorical. But the personal cost of commitment that the truth of the gospel message demands is so high that one is hard pressed to justify the commitment. In other words, the commitment demanded itself demands higher certainty.
Yet people believe. Evans asks why and points to the witness of the Holy Spirit as an answer.
Our inclination is to explain this differently from Evans on the last point. We note that beyond the issues of history to other matters, there is the power of the gospel to explain and address the human condition as we experience it. Believers believe not just because of historical evidence. As we noted before, most folks hardly consider historical evidence in coming to faith. Believers believe because what we observe of other believers and hear in their message makes sense of what we know of ourselves and others around us.
The Gospel makes a historical claims, of course, which, if historically incredible, fatally damage the credibility of the gospel as an explanation of the human condition. We would insist that an unhistorical gospel is no gospel at all. Maybe at best a very weak gospel.
But our point is to say that no credibly imaginable "discovery" is going to change the fundamental balance of the historical issue, which rests on so many distinct considerations.
Compare physics. Quantum, a revolutionary discovery, has replaced Newtonian. But Newtonian remains true, guiding just about every engineering endeavor outside of nuclear. Relativity and its aftermath didn't make gravity run in reverse.
History is much less subject to such revolution than is natural science, but even in the fields subject to revolution, knowledge changes incrementally and on the fringes.
SWNID:
I agree that the discovery of Anti-Mark would do nothing to lower the already high probability that the followers of Jesus proclaimed his resurrection soon after his death. In fact, I think it would raise the probability that such a proclamation took place by providing one more—indeed, the earliest—piece of evidence testifying to the fact that the women at the tomb found it empty and shared that discovery with others. But that says nothing about the effect such a discovery would have on the probability of the resurrection itself. Nor does it say anything about the effect such a discovery should have on the probability of the resurrection. Indeed, if Anti-Mark (suitably amended) turned out to be the true account of what actually happened, there would be something seriously wrong with any historical investigation that concluded otherwise.
I also agree that “the claim [of a hoax] itself would have to be judged on its coherence as well as the provenance of the textual witness.” So let me see if I can supplement Anti-Mark a bit to make it more plausible. Suppose a cache of letters is found together with Anti-Mark and dated to the same period. The letters, duly reconstructed, describe Anti-Mark as a document written in the last few months of Jesus’ ministry by someone from Alexandria who was hired to determine whether Jesus was an authentic prophet. He gathered his information in and around Jerusalem from the testimony of others, wrote it down as Anti-Mark, and took it to his wealthy patron in Alexandria immediately after the women discovered the empty tomb. The letters identify their authors as the writer of Anti-Mark and his wealthy patron and display neither collusion nor an anti-resurrection agenda. They simply describe an attempt to determine the truth about Jesus and his ministry by an inquisitive outsider to satisfy his own curiosity.
The point of this exercise is to show that Anti-Mark need not be understood as a “counter-explanation to the Christian proclamation of the resurrection.” Nothing in the above scenario can be legitimately interpreted as reactionary. So if such a discovery were made, it would do more than simply “provide further textual evidence for the existence of the counter-claim.” Indeed, it would provide an independent witness to the events surrounding the empty tomb, one that made the traditional resurrection account much less plausible. It would also provide an alternative explanation for why the early followers believed in the resurrection: the women, unaware of a hoax, discovered an empty tomb. And finally, it would provide indirect evidence for the claim that later witnesses embellished the original account of Jesus’ life and death.
One thing it would not explain, however, is why so many of the early followers maintained their belief in the face of persecution, when all they had to go on was the testimony of the empty tomb. But I think that’s not nearly as difficult to explain as is usually thought. All kinds of people have voluntarily endured persecution and even death on the basis of much less evidence. Consider the followers of either Muhammad or Joseph Smith. Neither of these two leaders presented any evidence (other than his word) to support his claims. Yet they both managed to attract a great many followers who willingly gave their lives for the cause. It’s a sobering fact about human psychology that so many can be misled by so little.
Of course, I’m not claiming that Christianity is devoid of evidence or that Christians are exceptionally gullible. (I don’t believe either is true.) Nor am I claiming that just any old witness to a hoax would overturn the probability of the traditional resurrection account. I’m simply pointing out that if—and it’s a very big if—a discovery like the one outlined above were made, it would greatly reduce the evidential value of the traditional resurrection account, even to the point of making it improbable. As things stand now, however, the likelihood of such a discovery is miniscule, at best, and there’s no reason to think that will ever change. So, to repeat, (1) if such a discovery were made, it would make the traditional resurrection account improbable, but (2) given the traditional resurrection account, the probability of such a discovery being made is extremely low.
Does it still sound like we’re converging on a consensus? From your comments so far, it sounds like you’ve (mostly) been defending 2, whereas I’ve (mostly) been defending 1. It should be clear, however, that they could both be true.
Yes, I think we're still consensusing on this, as you describe your defense of proposition one and mine of prop two. These notions are necessarily complementary.
I'll note that what you say about Muslims, Mormons, et al. is significant: people die for faiths that lack historical evidence. The difference must be stressed, however, that Christianity involves a core proclamation of what is normally understood to be a historical event and so stands on a rather different footing. There's no way to disprove the claims of Islam or the LDS via history, or at least a much lesser way.
And so perhaps it is the combination of props one and two that is significant: that in theory Christianity is historically disprovable but in reality the likelihood of such disproof is minuscule.
And the elaboration of your hypothetical is as good an illustration as any could be of that. It would take an enormously complex kind of discovery to be significant in this way, not nearly the kind of thing that gets glibly discussed over coffee.
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