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Is "Jesus rose from the dead" a self-committing proposition?

In his massive and intensively researched book The Resurrection of the Son of God (pp. 714-717) N.T. Wright states that the proposition that Jesus rose from the dead is a self-involving proposition. If it's true, he says, it matters.*

While I agree heartily with Wright that if this proposition is true, it matters, I'm concerned about a confusion that could arise from calling it "self-involving," much less (as he does on p. 717) "self-committing." And I think it is a confusion to which we at the beginning of the 21st century are particularly prone.

The confused reasoning runs approximately like this:

If Jesus rose from the dead, then the Christian God exists. If the Christian God exists, we have to love and obey him. Therefore, to believe that Jesus rose from the dead is to believe that we have to love and obey God. Therefore, to believe that Jesus rose from the dead is to be something very much like a Christian. So belief in the proposition that Jesus rose from the dead already involves being committed to God. So how is it possible to be led to believe that Jesus rose from the dead by anything like neutral evidence? The conclusion is itself not "neutral" but rather self-committing, so one can come to believe it only through self-commitment, not through an objective evaluation of evidence.

In this way, the idea that this proposition is "self-involving" or "self-committing" comes to seem like a challenge to an evidentialist approach to Christian belief.

Wright illustrates this kind of thinking in action on p. 717:

Precisely because at this point we are faced with worldview-level issues, there is no neutral ground, no island in the middle of the epistemological ocean, as yet uncolonized by any of the warring continents....Saying that 'Jesus of Nazareth was bodily raised from the dead' is not only a self-involving statement; it is a self-committing statement, going beyond a reordering of one's private world into various levels of commitment to work out the implications. We cannot simply leave a flag stuck on a hill somewhere and sail back home to safety.

The most crucial slip in such reasoning comes, I believe, in an ambiguity on the words (in my reconstruction) "have to" in the sentence, "If the Christian God exists, we have to love and obey him." If these words are taken to mean "are morally obligated to," then the sentence is true. If they are taken to mean "are compelled to," then it is false.

We see an outworking of this confusion where the reasoner concludes that one cannot come to believe something by way of neutral evidence if that belief is "self-involving." How, exactly, is that supposed to follow? The confusion there is part and parcel of the very notion that belief in a proposition "involves"--especially if this is taken to mean entails--love and commitment to a person.

To see this point, let's look at a different example: Consider the proposition, "I have made vows to my wife to love, honor, and cherish her, and to forsake all others and keep myself only to her as long as we both shall live, and it would be wrong for me to fail to fulfill those vows." Does belief in that proposition entail that you are committed to your wife and that you do love her? It seems obvious that it doesn't. A man could believe that proposition, and hence feel guilty, while carrying out an extramarital affair. A man could believe that proposition and yet say, "But I don't care. I can't stand my wife. I don't want to have anything more to do with her. So it's wrong. So what? I'm outta here." He would, of course, be a very bad man if he did that, as everyone should agree, but it would be a logically possible thing for him to do. So while the above proposition about marriage vows must seem like the ultimate "self-involving" or "self-committing" proposition, and while it is certainly true that, if it is true, it matters, it does not actually entail the involvement or commitment of the person who believes it.

Sometimes I think that Christians don't keep adequately in mind the words of St. James: "The devils also believe, and tremble." James's words entirely undermine one idea floating about in Christian circles (which I am not at all attributing to Wright, by the way) that the difference between saving faith in Christ and mere intellectual assent is the degree of credence one gives to the propositions in question. That confused notion of 'faith' alone has caused a great deal of harm, because it has given people the idea that, to be true Christians, they need to gin up their faith to some sort of heightened pitch of confidence--a mental state that John Locke would quite rightly have condemned as enthusiasm. This problem is closely related to what presuppositionalists often tell evidentialists: "You can't argue someone into the kingdom of God." The evidentialist will usually look puzzled and willingly grant the point, while not understanding what the point of the point is supposed to be. The evidentialist means only to grant that you can't force someone by argument to commit himself to God. The presuppositionalist means (I think) to make tacit use of the idea of saving faith as artificially high degree of credence, so that "You can't argue someone into the kingdom of God" really means, "After you've presented him with the evidence, he still has to believe more strongly than the evidence warrants in order to have saving faith."

But if anyone can be imagined to have full confidence in the truth of the Christian faith, it must surely be the devils. Who believes more strongly in God, Richard Dawkins or Screwtape? Perhaps even more to the point, who believes more strongly in God, Joe Nominal Christian or Screwtape? Obviously, Screwtape, on both counts. So why is Screwtape in hell? Not because he doesn't "truly believe," but because, quite simply, he hates God. He fights against God, quite consciously. So the difference between Screwtape and a true Christian is that the Christian loves God, not that the Christian believes in God more than Screwtape does.

In a very important sense, then, it is simply false to say that the central propositions of Christianity are self-involving or self-committing. Believing them does not guarantee that one is committed to God, not by a long shot. Nor need one imagine a devilish person (which may be a bit hard to imagine) to see the point. James's own audience were people who really did believe in God, but James means to tell them that they are lukewarm or shoulder-shrugging believers whose faith has no relevance to their daily lives: "Show me your faith without works and I will show you my faith by my works."

One reason that we don't always realize this point nowadays, especially we who move in academic circles and in the blogosphere, is because we tend to divide the world up into "skeptics" or "infidels," on the one hand, and "believers," on the other. In the process, we tend to elide the crucial difference between believing in God and following him, which in turn can lend spurious credibility to the false conclusion that there is no way to approach the question of God's existence objectively and evidentially. In a sense, the fact that we equate "believing in God" with "loving God" is a good thing, because it means that very few people actively contemplate becoming devils: "If I believed in God, I'd hate him," is a sentiment one rarely hears, and if one did hear it, it would probably be on the lips of someone who had suffered a bereavement or who was thinking of the problem of evil. It certainly isn't a standard way of thinking. Still less do people plan to be uncommitted believers. It's hardly imaginable that anyone would say, "If I believed in God, I'd be a lukewarm Christian." All of this has its good side insofar as it means that most people perceive the fundamental fact that we ought to love, obey, and follow the Christian God with full commitment, if he exists, and that therefore the stakes in the apologetics game are high. But it is bad if it makes people deny the existence of objective evidence or think that all argument on this most important of subjects is in some way circular or "worldview-tainted," because the conclusion is "self-involving."

It is rather an odd thought, but this brings me back to something that was dinned into me as a young child in a fundamentalist church: Saving faith is not just head knowledge. It is the commitment of the whole person. It is loving and following Jesus. My teachers were doubtless not evidentialists, but their teaching indirectly, and in a surprising way, supports the evidentialist approach to apologetics.

*I want to make it clear that I do not mean to pan Wright's book. Even judging by the parts I have read (the book is so large that I have read only sections), it contains much excellent scholarship on historical issues relevant to Jesus' resurrection (particularly on views of resurrection in Jewish thought), and even in several sections much good sense. I am pitching on his notion from the end of the book of a "self-committing proposition" for purposes of this post, because it provides a particularly good illustration of a confusion that I think needs to be addressed.

Comments (43)

Have I mentioned how much I appreciate evidentialism?

I think too much is made of faith as 'a foundation for believing', even though it is a certain kind of foundation for believing: the kind we call "trust in a person". But we can't trust someone when we don't have any distinct reason to even believe he exists: thus the natural reason / revelation distinction, with knowledge of God's existence clearly resting on the "natural reason" side of the distinction. It takes grace to trust in God, to be sure, and therefore to believe Divine Revelation; but anyone can know He exists through the natural light of reason. (That doesn't mean that reason absolutely compels belief in God, any more than reason absolutely compels belief in general relativity, of course.)

I love a good flaying of presuppositionalist and related apologetical fallacies. Bravo.

Another problem in the text is this: 'The conclusion is itself not "neutral" but rather self-committing, so one can come to believe it only through self-commitment, not through an objective evaluation of evidence.'

Phrased this way, it sounds like self-commitment is all one needs to come to the conclusion. But the argument so far is compatible with the idea that to come to the belief one needs both self-commitment AND the objective evaluation of evidence.

Furthermore, even if we grant all the premises of Wright's argument, the following possibility is open: The belief that Jesus rose from the dead is not self-committing, but rather what is self-committing is the conditional claim that if Jesus rose from the dead, then we should to love God.

In fact, I do think the conditional claim is self-committing, in the innocent sense that belief in this claim commits one to loving God if Jesus rose from the dead. I actually think it is more plausible to take this conditional as self-committing than to take its antecedent as self-committing. That is, after all, what we do in the case of lots of other pairs of claims. For instance:
1. George has asked me for help.
2. If George asks me for help, I should help him.
The conclusion of this little argument is self-committing. But there is no self-commitment in (1), and only perfectly ordinary non-normative evidence is needed for (1). All the self-commitment comes from believing (2).

I'll have a little more to say later, but on the fly--in the interests of fairness to Wright, I must emphasize that the first boxed text above is me--It's an attempt to make some sort of argument for what Wright implies without really arguing. Only the second block is actually by Wright.

Alex, I had assumed that "self-committing proposition" is not technical terminology with a literature. I've not run across it elsewhere. But I would assume that it means something like, "A proposition believing which automatically and intrinsically makes one committed to something."

Now, if that's what it means, I'm not really at all sure there _are_ any self-committing propositions. Maybe self-committing utterances, but those would be performative. Like "I, Joe, take thee, Martha, to be my wedded wife."

But even the conditional you give isn't self-committing, because it's possible to believe that one _ought_ to love God while at the same time _not_ loving God. Perhaps one is in this situation because one is trying to do the opposite of what one ought to do--being devilish, as I call it in the post, deliberately defying the "oughts" of the universe. Or perhaps one is in this situation because one is lukewarm while still holding, perhaps tacitly, or perhaps (with a nagging feeling of guilt) occasionally explicitly, that one really ought to love God.

In your example of George, one can believe that one ought to help George while actually _planning_ not to help him. That would be wrong, but one can do it.

Is it possible that all Wright is really saying is that if truth exists, it exerts a claim on one? That if a thing is demonstrably true, one has an obligation to believe it?

This may seem self-evident, but to many affected by postmodernist thought it is not. I remember reading in Touchstone a few years back an account by a college professor who went to great lengths to demonstrate that a certain proposition was correct. He then asked his students about how the truth of the proposition would impact them. Would they have to change any opinions, behaviors, etc. One student's response was, "No. Just because it's true doesn't mean I have to believe it."

Now this may seem like an utterly ridiculous statement, but it seems to be the opinion of many people these days. It may be that Wright is trying to kill two birds with one stone by giving a pitch for the Resurrection and a pitch for "true truth" at the same time.

This is an interesting approach, IMO, especially for apologetics. What is the purpose of demonstrating the truth of the Gospel to people who don't believe in objective truth, only in what's "true for me?" As an Orthodox I don't believe in the "propositional revelation" that some Protestants do, but I do believe that the Gospel contains some propositions. Yet many moderns reject entirely the idea of propositional knowledge. My question would be, do we need to convince them first that there is such a thing as truth, or can we present the Gospel as a narrative with "meaning", then get around to the "truth" bit after the fact?

Or do we do what Wright is (possibly) doing -- address both concerns simultaneously?

Rob, I should first say that Wright is a real historian. He's occasionally too much inclined to grant, waive, or even endorse various textual assumptions about the New Testament documents, as far as I'm concerned, but he's still an incredibly learned guy who actually is right about a lot of things. But...he shouldn't do epistemology. I don't think those pages of his book will bear the interpretation you are putting on them as _all_ they are saying, though I think he would endorse what you say.

You can see even in the quotation I give above where he talks about how there is no "neutral ground." Notice, too, that he refers explicitly not simply to one's personal ocean of life commitments but to the "epistemological ocean." And he says that this "no neutral epistemological ground" stuff follows from the fact that we are talking about "worldview-level issues." That whole way of talking and thinking is muddled and is unfortunately doing the opposite of challenging post-modernism; it's playing into the hands of postmodernism. In fact, it gives the skeptic an out. The skeptic can say something like, "Well, that conclusion isn't consonant with my worldview, and I don't like the flag you're trying to plant on my piece of historical real estate, so the heck with your argument." It sounds like a concession--and if so it is an entirely unnecessary one--that the argument Wright himself has given does not have an objective claim on people regardless of their "worldviews."

It's a bit of a paradox: Once one realizes that it is possible, in principle, to believe in God without loving and following him, one is less able to weasel out of admitting the force of arguments for the existence of the Christian God by saying that they are worldview-tainted or non-neutral. One can conclude quite objectively that God exists. What one then chooses to do about it...is a matter of enormous moment, but it is analytically separate from the question of whether the evidence supports the conclusion that the Christian God exists.

Evidentiary apologetics will not lead one to the Christian God. He is known only by revelation. Therefore, the modern apologetic idea that says, "The Resurrection happened, therefore God exists," seems to me wrongheaded.

Having said that, I'm still not sure that Wright is saying what you're saying he's saying. :-)

I think he's arguing for the "ought" not for the "must," in other words. If the Resurrection is true, and the hearer accepts it as true, then that truth exerts a subsequent "claim" on him. Now he can either accept the claim or reject it, but he is not free simply to ignore it, because ignoring it at that point is identical to rejecting it. It seems to me that this is what Wright is getting at, and I don't see how that interp. gives a skeptic an out, nor how it plays into postmodernist hands.

Presented with the idea that Jesus rose from the dead, one can either believe it or disbelieve it. If one chooses the former, one faces a further choice -- either to live out its ramifications by committing to it or to reject them. At this point it becomes impossible to remain neutral on it, or to ignore it, as the knowledge commands a commitment (one way or the other).


Rob G says, 'Evidentiary apologetics will not lead one to the Christian God. He is known only by revelation. Therefore, the modern apologetic idea that says, "The Resurrection happened, therefore God exists," seems to me wrongheaded.'
Rob seems to assume that the only special revelation, that is to say scripture, that qualifies as revelation. That would seem to be a denial that there is such a thing as natural revelation. That would then necessarily mean there is only one book of revelation, scripture; and that Creation is not a book of revelation.

That is the position held by some presuppositionalists, that seems to go beyond the view Lydia attributes to the presuppositionalists that "After you've presented him with the evidence, he still has to believe more strongly then the evidence warrants in order to have saving faith."

The Rt. Revd. N. T. Wright' makes the assertion that the proposition that Jesus rose from the dead is a self involving proposition.
Let me reformulate the proposition in a way that would avoid making it a self affirming proposition.
If we apply the same tests of history to the New Testament as we do to other ancient documents we must conclude that the New Testament is historically reliable. The New Testament asserts as historical fact that Jesus rose from the dead. Men cannot rise from the dead apart from the intervention of a Theistic being. Therefore, since Jesus rose from the dead, then God must exist.

Also, Rob G., I think you are confused about something when you conclude from the fact that the Christian God is known only by revelation that evidentialist apologetics do not lead to him. Was not the sending of Jesus Christ a crucial and central part of God's revelation of himself? Surely it was. And was not God's raising Jesus from the dead a part of that revelation as well--in particular, an attestation that Jesus was who he said he was? I think it is obvious that it was. I fully agree that the specific doctrines of Christianity require revelation. But it is God's common practice to make it clear to man _that_ a revelation is being given by signs, and the resurrection of Jesus was the great and central miraculous sign of Christianity and of history. The historical apologist argues that, in fact, this event happened. And it actually is probabilistically true that, if this event happened, it is enormously probable that the Christian God exists. (No one thinks that Zeus raised Jesus from the dead! Nor does anyone for a moment believe that it happened but that it happened by natural processes.)

So, yes, revelation is necessary to our having the specifics of Christianity. We couldn't deduce "We can have forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ" from first principles! But God both caused these truths to be truths and attested that they are truths by way of an historical person and the historical events of his life, death, and resurrection: "That which we have seen with our eyes and our hands have handled, of the word of life," as the Apostle John wrote.

Evidentiary apologetics will not lead one to the Christian God. He is known only by revelation.

Yes, but what besides evidence will bring the rational man to accept revelation? It seems to me that to believe something without evidence is always irrational.

Also, you seem to be suggesting that if a man seeks the truth by means of evidence he will not find it, except, perhaps, by accident.

Moreover, even in everyday life, if you make an assertion, and somebody retorts, "How do you know that?," they are demanding that you provide evidence for your assertion; and if you can not provide any, you will have been exposed as not knowing what you're talking about. How are things any different for divine matters?

It seems that evidence is crucial for any religious claims to be taken seriously.

Lydia, thanks for the post.

The German Rabi Peter Levinson said: "If I believed in Jesus' Resurrection I would be baptized tomorrow." http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,920335-2,00.html

So, maybe he would (if he believed), but he wouldn't have to. If he were not baptized (but believed in Resurrection and its specific consequences), then maybe we would ask: is he crazy? But, as I understand the post, when asking this, we should realize that many times we decide similarly: we know we should do "it" (whatever "it" means), sometimes we also know doing "it" is the only way to happiness (or the only way obviating despair), but we do not want. And that *is* puzzling: how could anyone be so silly? On the accounts I take to be more reasonable than others, there is sufficient evidence that such choices -- puzzling as it, at least to some point, is -- happen very often, they are called sins, and those accounts suppose that at least part of the mystery is explained by alluding to some value which the morally badly deciding agent takes to inhere in the bad choice, insofar as he understands this value. The opposing accounts claim that such decisions (in such settings are) are, in some sense, impossible, there are no sins, and the alleged explanation is no good. Such accounts seem to be incompatible with the claim that someone can believe in the Resurrection (and its relevant consequences) and, at he same time, rebel against God or be a nominal Christian.

Perhaps I stated my premise poorly. Let me restate it this way: one cannot reason one's way to belief in the Christian God. Ratiocination may get you as far as theism, but without the revelation of Himself given in Christ (of which Scripture is subsidiary) you will not get to the Christian God. I do not believe that natural revelation can bring one to belief in the Holy Trinity, only to a "God in general" or the "God of the philosophers." Christians know God through Christ, and only through Christ.

As far as the Resurrection proving the existence of the Christian God, I'd still disagree. I have heard people infected by postmodernist thought say things like, "So what if Jesus rose from the dead? What does that mean to me?" It may seem irrational, but it's entirely possible to believe that if the Resurrection really happened, it was some sort of one-off historical fluke, with no repercussions on "me" whatsoever, along the lines of the Tunguska incident or the Cambrian discontinuity.

"It seems to me that to believe something without evidence is always irrational."

This would seem to imply that tradition cannot be a vehicle of knowledge.

'Moreover, even in everyday life, if you make an assertion, and somebody retorts, "How do you know that?," they are demanding that you provide evidence for your assertion; and if you can not provide any, you will have been exposed as not knowing what you're talking about.'

Really? I am a drummer, and I can provide evidence for the claim by sitting down behind a set and playing. But I can't explain "how" I do it, anymore than I can explain "how" I ride a bike. There is "evidence" here, and there is knowledge, but it's got nothing to do with simple ratiocination. As someone recently summarized Michael Polanyi's thought along these lines: "I know more than I can tell." To argue otherwise is to accept Enlightenment definitions of what constitutes knowledge.

"It seems that evidence is crucial for any religious claims to be taken seriously."

No doubt. But the evidence in question is of the nature of that of a courtroom not a scientific laboratory. The 'proofs' of the existence of God are not like the 'proofs' in a geometry exercise (except, perhaps, for the ontological argument, which is either true or not true).


I have heard people infected by postmodernist thought say things like, "So what if Jesus rose from the dead? What does that mean to me?" It may seem irrational, but it's entirely possible to believe that

Yes. Irrational. That's the point. Please, please, don't say that you can't "get to" some conclusion by way of reason and evidence, then say that some people might deny the conclusion even if they had the evidence, then admit that they would be irrational. Evidence supports what it supports. People can refuse to believe the conclusion or, as I imagine in my post, they can admit the conclusion and refuse to act rightly upon it. But as for the former, it is no defect either of reason or of the evidence that people can be irrational, and the latter concerns right action rather than epistemic justification, when we are already granting ex hypothesi that the person has epistemic justification.

**Please, please, don't say that you can't "get to" some conclusion by way of reason and evidence, then say that some people might deny the conclusion even if they had the evidence, then admit that they would be irrational.**

I didn't say that. What I said was that to the person who finds the evidence compelling, another person's rejection of it may SEEM irrational.

I assumed that, given your reference to postmodernism, and given that you had seemed to evaluate postmodernism negatively, you were admitting that such a rejection of evidence really is irrational. I'm beginning to guess, though I don't want uncharitably to attribute this to you if it isn't true, that you think there is no objective fact of the matter as to whether some particular body of evidence really does support some conclusion. There is nothing but a subjective feeling about the matter, which may vary from one person to another. If that is correct, then I can only suggest that you should spend less time talking to postmodernists. Please don't forget that postmodernists are badly messed up at exactly this point and provide no model for real epistemology.

I should add that subjectivism is an equal opportunity solvent. If it is not possible to say that some evidence really _does_ support some conclusion but at the most that it "seems irrational to A" to reject that conclusion based on that evidence, this applies just as much to the proposition that the earth is round or that viruses cause disease as to the proposition that Christ died for our sins (for example).

"I assumed that, given your reference to postmodernism, and given that you had seemed to evaluate postmodernism negatively, you were admitting that such a rejection of evidence really is irrational."

Yes, it is, if the evidence is strong enough truly to convince.

"you think there is no objective fact of the matter as to whether some particular body of evidence really does support some conclusion. There is nothing but a subjective feeling about the matter, which may vary from one person to another."

No, I do not believe this, although many postmodernists do. What I am saying is that not all conclusions are equally supportable by means of "evidence" alone. One cannot reason to the existence of the Christian God in the same way that one can reason to the proposition that if you stick your hand in a fire it will be burned. Enlightenment modernists WANT the evidence to be the same -- they want God proved to them beyond the shadow of a doubt. (Postmodernists, of course, go too far in the other direction.) Belief in the Christian God, however, does not rise to that level of evidentiary certainty. There is knowledge, and there is certainty, but it is not of that sort.

Where I do believe the postmodernists are right is in their critique of Enlightenment ways of knowing as exhaustive. They are wrong in that their answer to same casts doubt on knowing altogether. Right diagnosis, wrong prescription.

No doubt. But the evidence in question is of the nature of that of a courtroom not a scientific laboratory. The 'proofs' of the existence of God are not like the 'proofs' in a geometry exercise

I would say that the proofs of the existence of God are similar to geometry but not quite as clear, since one has to work from effects back to causes.

On the other hand, evidence of the truth of this or that particular religion is more like courtroom evidence; and it is this latter type of evidence that is required if one is reasonably expected to accept as true any claims of divine revelation.

Lydia,

Did you see Bill Craig's Q & A at Reasonable Faith about post-modernism versus modernity and verificationist influences. I think it adds something interesting to any discussion of Wright (whose work I love, but whose fundamental assumptions about post modernism and narrative Craig refutes).

I thought it was interesting and given Wright's emphasis on narrative in the past relavent to this thread. If you get a chance you should check it out.

here is the link

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=q_and_a

Later,
Jay

Rob G, you are mistaken, and on at least two counts. First of all, the sort of "Enlightenment" folks you claim to be distancing yourself from actually *totally agree* that religious claims, such as the claims of Christianity, cannot be well-supported by neutral evidence, that they belong in a separate realm, and so forth. So you are more of the "Enlightenment" club (in the bad sense of that term) than you realize. They certainly do not "want" the evidence for Christianity to be of the same sort as that for scientific or non-miraculous historical truths; they want to tell us that religion "isn't that sort of thing." Of course, they want, thereby, to relegate Christianity to the back of the bus (to use a phrase Frank Beckwith is fond of), while you don't, but you are playing their game by making an artificial distinction between the Christian claims and other historical claims.

And that is your second mistake. Jesus of Nazareth was a real, historical person. He suffered under Pontius Pilate. He was buried, and he rose again the third day. These things happened on earth. After his resurrection he could be seen, heard, and touched. He ate fish. And if he had remained dead, his dead body was an object that would itself have been open to sense. God revealed himself in time and space to mortal men living in time and space. That Jesus rose again is an historical proposition and can be investigated as such--by way of records and testimony--just as can the proposition that Napoleon was incarcerated on Elba (or pick your own historical proposition). There is nothing *in principle* different about these propositions from other historical propositions, merely because they have theological implications.

And they _do_ have theological implications. That is itself a matter of inference to the best explanation, not a matter of some special, mystical sort of religious experience or "sense." The best explanation (by far) of "Jesus rose from the dead" is that he was raised by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that Jesus was who he said he was.

Thanks for the link, Jay. I'll look forward to checking it out. I've been given a conjecture that some of Wright's hesitations on this epistemological score may be due to McGrath, who is very big in England right now and is anti-evidentialist.

Great link from Craig. I'm with him whole-heartedly on opposition to this whole business of "addressing a post-modern world in a post-modern way." It's all nonsense, and as he says, it will undermine the church.

In fact, I would say something that might sound even more radical than what WLC says (though I strongly suspect he would agree with it): The reason that we should address the world by standing up for truth rather than fuzzifying everything into "narratives" and the like is because this is what the gospel _is_. It isn't just some narrative that people should adopt because it works for them. People may become Christians (of a sort) that way, but Jesus' parable about the wheat that withered when the sun grew hot then comes to mind. I am not saying that every Christian needs to be an apologist. I am saying that every Christian needs to believe that Christianity is objectively true, and therefore there is no substitute and must be no compromise on presenting it in that way to them. Now, notice that the reasons I'm giving here really have nothing to do with challenging the statement that people are "postmodern" when it comes to religious matters. Craig makes a good case for the essential agreement between people calling themselves "postmodernists" and people who could be called "modernists" when it comes to the division between science and faith. In fact, he sounds a bit like my comment to Rob G above about what he doeesn't like in the Enlightenment, though I wrote the comment before reading Craig's answer to the question. But to my mind, that isn't _why_ we should resist the Emergent nonsense that calls upon us to abandon an evidential approach to Christianity because we live in a "postmodern world." Even if I couldn't find some way to cast the present problems as "modern" rather than "postmodern," my point would still be that postmodernism is a deadly sickness, a poison, the rat poison of the mind, and it would be insane for the physician to imbibe the same poison his patient has taken in order to "address the patient where he is."

Respecting Lydia's comment above: Tolkien said that the Christian story is like a myth in the sense that it works on us in the same way that any myth does (or should do), by conveying truth to us inside of a story that has profound meaning, by changing our consciousness and initiating us into a world within which the divine activity in history can impact us and be made real to us. Now this idea of Tolkien's (and CSL, for that matter, who was persuaded by it and adopted it) sounds a lot like what some post-modernist is saying when he talks about "metanarratives," but I think it is in an important way quite different and more robust. Tolkien's understanding tells us about how the Christian story affects us. It's not a thing we adopt merely because we find it suitable to our taste, or satisfying to our aesthetic sense, even though it may in fact be both of those things. Tolkien insists that the Christian story is a true myth, a fact, a concrete reality. To accept it as a concrete fact is to think that there are good reasons (warrant) for believing that the story is true as it is reported to us, and it is good to point out that the gospel story is not actually conveyed, Tolkien's view notwithstanding, in mythical form. It is a testimonial, "that which we have handled," etc. The apostles argue for the reality of the resurrection in the way an eyewitness argues with a sceptic or a jury. Evidence is offered and the sceptic is invited to examine the evidence. No teller of myth speaks in this way. So to say that the Christian story is understood in terms of a narrative and in a "mythic" sense is in no way to discount its knowability as a concrete fact, and hence the possibility that the rational person can accept the resurrection of Christ on the basis of evidence. And for two thousand years, rational men have been convinced of the truth of the gospel precisely on the basis of this good evidence. A Christian who lacks this sober component of warranted belief seems to me no real Christian at all.

It's been some years since I read _On Fairy Stories_ (and at the moment I haven't time to pull it off the shelf). My recollection is that Tolkien does say expressly there that what is different about Christianity is that it is true. (A pretty big difference.) I think, too, that Tolkien's use of "myth" especially refers to the eucatastrophe in the gospel--where everything is terrible and hopeless and then turns around suddenly and gloriously. Probably the moment when Jesus says "Mary" to Mary Magdalene fits that description best. I don't believe that he meant to say that this makes it, in genre, like a fairy tale rather than like history, though I don't believe Tolkien ever addressed that genre question explicitly. Lewis _does_ address the genre question explicitly and is contemptuous of people who _literally_ claim that the gospels are myths--he says the people who say that haven't read any myths. Where Lewis found the notion of "myth" useful was chiefly w.r.t. theology rather than history (and even there, carefully qualified)--specifically, the doctrine of the atonement. As I understand him, he claimed that it was not necessary to adopt one particular view of the atonement (Anselmian, or whatever) and that one could believe that the atonement _works_ as one accepts without further highly specific analysis that such things are supposed to _work_ in a mythic story, except that (as he was quick to point out) this one is literally true. So he accepted that "Christ died for our sins" without adopting a specific theory as to _how_ Christ's death could bring us forgiveness of sins. Lewis's own unique contribution to the cornucopia of theories of the atonement--what he calls the "perfect penitent"--doesn't seem to me terribly valuable.

Lydia,

In the words of Fred Durst, "I think we're in agreeance." You've recalled his idea of euchatastrophe correctly. I don't think Tolkien thought for a minute that the gospels were mythical in genre, he being far too expert to make a mistake like that, although like you I don't know if he addressed it specifically, although CSL does so in Surprised By Joy, "I was now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths; they had not the mythical taste." It is the question of how we are effected by the gospel, which is like a myth, to his thinking, and even more robustly, Lewis insists that there is the extant "Myth of the Dying God" that recurs over and over in so many cultures and ages, and that the Gospel is an apotheosis of this recurring myth, or better yet, the Incarnation of it into fact. Thus Lewis:

Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens--at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle.

Those who do not know that this great myth became Fact when the Virgin conceived are, indeed to be pitied. But Christians also need to be reminded...that what became Fact was a Myth, that it carries with it into the world of Fact all of the properties of a myth. God is more than god, not less; Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology.

God In The Dock, "Myth Became Fact," pp.66-67 taken from The Quotable Lewis


"you are playing their game by making an artificial distinction between the Christian claims and other historical claims."

There is a distinction between the Christian claims and other historical claims, because the Christian claims have a metaphysical dimension that other historical claims do not. That Jesus Christ really lived, died, and rose again, has an import beyond the fact that say, Thomas Jefferson, lived, became president, and died. It seems to me that to demand the idea that "Jesus rose from the dead bodily, therefore the Christian God exists," betrays a certain suspicion of the validity of knowledge other than the logical and empirical. The Enlightenment rejects non-empirical, non-logical knowledge. Post-modernism rejects the certainty of knowledge altogether. I reject neither. There is, in fact, a special sense or knowledge granted to the believer. We know God not in the sense of knowing "information about" but in the sense of " having communion with." The certainty we are given is not rational or logical certainty, but the certainty of the Holy Spirit in faith. What I do reject is the idea that the claims of Christian faith can be proven merely logically or rationally.

There is a distinction between the Christian claims and other historical claims, because the Christian claims have a metaphysical dimension that other historical claims do not.

Belief in the resurrection of Jesus might seem to commit one to range of other beliefs about God and Christianity. But this is not to say that all of Christianity can be deduced from the resurrection. And one certainly wouldn't be committed to following the truths of Christianity even if one believed that they were truths. But if the resurrection is a historical claim, I think it can be evaluated accordingly, providing you don't have some irrational commitment to disbelief in the possibilities of miracles that would prevent you from giving full consideration to otherwise reliable testimony. It's not a question of logical or empirical demonstration. We're talking about warranted belief. Is belief in the resurrection of Jesus warranted on the basis of the existing evidence, or not? I think it is, and I think you can make a good case that the apostles thought so too.

Rob,

You seem to be suggesting that since Lydia claims that the Resurrection can be known empirically, she is denying that it can be known with certainty by supernatural faith, which does not follow.

Your argument is confusing; you might be trying to explain too much. If you will admit that there is evidence (not absolute proof, just evidence) for the truths of religion, then we are in essential agreement. And we can leave it at that.

Just because something has metaphysical implications, it doesn't follow that you need some special "sense" in order justifiably to believe that claim. When the Big Bang was first proposed as a scientific theory, I'm told that there was rather a kerfuffle, because it was considered that it had theistic implications. You know, if you believe in the Principle of Sufficient Reason (which is rather important for science anyway), there is this question as to _why_ this kicking-off event took place, and the scientists were bright enough to see that divine action would make a good explanation, and nothing else did nearly so well. Nor were they happy about that. But that didn't mean that the _evidence_ didn't favor the Big Bang, nor that you needed the special leading of the Holy Spirit to conclude that it occurred!

Again, the existence of the Christian God is _objectively_ the best explanation for Jesus' resurrection. And Jesus' resurrection is _objectively_ the best explanation for the historical evidence (testimony and steadfastness of the apostles, for example). I get the odd feeling, Rob, that you would almost prefer that that were not the case and that the existence of the Christian God were unjustified by evidence, because that would then leave some kind of necessity for this special leading of the Holy Spirit to which you want to give epistemic force.

As for myself, I certainly believe in the leading of the HOly Spirit. And do you know where I think it comes? Two places, in particular: First, to urge men to seek the truth and to follow the evidence, which men are unfortunately rather disinclined to do when they don't like the way the evidence is going. Second, to urge men to be willing to love God and commit themselves to God as a _consequence_ of their belief in what the evidence objectively supports, which (as I point out in the main post) they are not compelled to do. The devils also believe, etc.

Ultimately, man has free will and can resist at any point along the line. This is no disparagement to the force of the evidence available to them, and when they know it, they are without excuse.

That's very good Lydia. I think there is the matter of volition that comes into play here, as you point out. We have the warrant for belief, but there remains a chasm to be crossed precisely because of those metaphysical implications of which Rob speaks. Few people deny the existence of Homer because few have any vested interest in such a denial. On the other hand, to believe in resurrection puts us at risk, in a not dissimilar way than the risk involved when we believe in the true love of a lover. There is a leap to be made, though not a Kierkegaardian one. But a leap nonetheless. We require divine help for that. But reason is not thereby negated--just the opposite. And neither is grace negated by the fact that our reason is involved, since we are graced to have a rational faculty through which the world can be understood and God's existence can be discerned.

**First of all, the sort of "Enlightenment" folks you claim to be distancing yourself from actually *totally agree* that religious claims, such as the claims of Christianity, cannot be well-supported by neutral evidence, that they belong in a separate realm, and so forth.**

Correct, but I believe this is because they are mistaken in many cases about the nature of the evidence, as I said above. This mistake is based on a number of more foundational errors, but manifests itself as a belief in the scientific method as the be-all-and-end-all of knowledge. Hence, they demand that Christianity be proved in the same way that, say, the theory of gravity has been proven, as opposed to the way that it's been proven that Booth shot Lincoln. The evidence for Christianity's truth amounts to a huge accumulation of circumstantial evidence of various sorts, which reasonable people should find quite compelling. It is not the kind of evidence, however, that can command belief beyond a shadow of a doubt. If it were, faith wouldn't be necessary.

I have just as little patience with the 'emergent' folks as you do (probably even less) but they are in fact onto something, namely, the fact that evidentiary apologetics simply do not 'work' on many people infected by postmodernism. Where I disagree with the Emergents and their fellow-travellers is in their conclusion that because of this traditional apologetics has lost its inherent value and can be chucked altogether. It seems to me that it is not problematic, though, to present the Christian message as a narrative having meaning, while at the same time insisting on its objective truth. The foundation of the faith, after all, is a true story, not a series of propositions. Postmodernists go wrong in that they divorce 'truth' from 'meaning,' but I believe they are correct in their rejection of the Enlightenment tendency to reduce truth to the propositional.

"Is belief in the resurrection of Jesus warranted on the basis of the existing evidence, or not? I think it is, and I think you can make a good case that the apostles thought so too."

Of course they did. But I don't know of any case where either they or the early Christian apologists (or the later ones, for that matter) argued backwards from the Resurrection to the existence of God. It seems to me to be a quite recent development in the history of apologetics, which makes it suspect, IMO. It would be revealing, I think, to trace how and why this particular apologetic approach developed.



I haven't time to respond to this in detail, but...surely you realize that the apostles were addressing a Jewish audience in nearly all the sermons of theirs we have. They didn't need to argue for the existence of God with their audience. One the one occasion when he was talking to a pagan audience, Paul began by arguing from creation (that he was preaching the God who made all things), but even a pagan audience were not what we today would call atheists. Far from it. They believed in too many gods!

Moreover, Rob, you don't seem to "get" that evidential relations are objective. It simply *is true* that the resurrection is positively supportive of the existence of God, and specifically the existence of the Judeo-Christian God, and even more specifically the existence of the Christian God. This is because we know what Jesus taught, etc. You can't change that. That's just the way things *are*. Those sorts of evidential relationships are not dependent on what "works" for people.

One quick addendum: The apostles did repeatedly and insistently use the resurrection as evidence--that Jesus was the Messiah. They did this all the time. It's everywhere in Acts. Like a drumbeat.

"Paul began by arguing from creation (that he was preaching the God who made all things), but even a pagan audience were not what we today would call atheists. Far from it. They believed in too many gods!"

Well, that's not strictly true, because there were Stoics and Epicureans and such. Christians eventually had to deal with these folks too, and from what I've read, I don't recall them doing it by appeal to the Resurrection.

'Moreover, Rob, you don't seem to "get" that evidential relations are objective.'

Of course I do. But their objectivity means little or nothing to people who either don't believe in objective truth, or don't believe that truth exerts a claim on one.

'Those sorts of evidential relationships are not dependent on what "works" for people.'

When speaking of the internal truth of the propositions, that is correct. What I'm saying is that if you're attempting to share the faith with people who doubt the validity of the idea of 'objective truth,' trying to convince them that the Christian faith is 'objectively true' doesn't accomplish much. It's barking up the wrong tree, so to speak.

These types of folks will say things like, "Who cares if it's true? What does that mean to me?" From our perspective as believers, truth carries its own meaning -- all truth is necessarily meaningful, and posing a division between the two is non-rational. But to the postmodernist, who has separated truth from meaning, this isn't the case. At this level it doesn't matter whether he's right or not; to make any progress with him the believer who's talking to him needs to get past this hurdle somehow.

"The apostles did repeatedly and insistently use the resurrection as evidence--that Jesus was the Messiah. They did this all the time."

True enough, although I don't see how it's pertinent to the subject at hand.


I suppose the underlying issue here is whether it is even possible, by using words, to reach the sort of person who would say "Who cares if it's true? What does that mean to me?". Sometimes a person has to stop being an idiot as a prerequisite to what comes next.

Well, yes, from our POV that seems obvious. But that doesn't take away from the fact that many young people today are being brought up to believe such nonsense, which is why I asked the question above: do we need to do a certain amount of "pre-apologetics" relating to the nature of truth first before presenting the claims of the Gospel? Or do we hit both things simultaneously?

If all we do is continue to repeat the "evidence-that-demands-a-verdict" approach to apologetics by itself, we won't get very far. That approach makes sense to unbelievers who accept Enlightenment categories, but not to those who question or reject them.

If all we do is continue to repeat the "evidence-that-demands-a-verdict" approach to apologetics by itself, we won't get very far.

I don't think anyone here is recommending that. But I also don't think it's a question as to what "approach" "works." It's merely a question of what is true. And as far as Lydia's approach goes, I think it's never been more relevant or needed than right now, when epistemological confusion abounds. The sound of clear, cogent, no-nonsense argumentation always has a way of piercing through the fog. You demonstrate that it's possible to talk plain sense, that Kierkegaard and Sartre didn't give us the last interpretation of the world. Give me one copy of Mere Christianity for every one thousand obscure and meandering Emergentist sermons, and I'll make more conversions, and they will be real conversions.

Sometimes a person has to stop being an idiot as a prerequisite to what comes next.

While we're passing out comment-of-the-week nominations, that one gets mine.

Look, Rob, there are several problems here: First of all, I agree with Byronic man 100% here--the fact that there are young people who don't believe in objective truth and evidence means that we need to be _more_ evidential, not _less_ evidential. You seem to have this idea that if people are "idiots" (to use Zippy's wonderful term) in this particularly poisonous way, that should make us sort of more...dare I say wussy?...about the evidential nature of our own case. Whereas I think just the opposite is true, and that both for reasons of principle and for reasons of practicality. In principle, it's never more important to sound out loudly about the fact that Christianity is a faith founded on fact than when the whole world is saying "so what?" about facts. From a practical perspective, I think that there are young people who are secretly at heart tired of all the relativistic nonsense and who respond to a straightforward declaration both of what we believe and of why.

But ultimately, you can't change either the message or the "why" of the message because your audience has drunk intellectual poison. Does that problem need to be fixed? Absolutely. You might start by pointing out (as Bill Craig does in one of the four views books--or is it five views?) the simple fact that postmodernism is self-refuting. We all know how to do that move. But if they're too far gone, then they're going to have to choose to come back to the world of normal human sense. I recommend talking to them at high school age rather than waiting for graduate school. As for college...it depends on what they're majoring in. Engineering majors may be the most hopeful. Education majors and English majors may be in big trouble by sophomore year.

**You seem to have this idea that if people are "idiots" (to use Zippy's wonderful term) in this particularly poisonous way, that should make us sort of more...dare I say wussy?...about the evidential nature of our own case.**

No, not at all. I wish to keep the evidential aspect intact while adding our case's inherent narrative appeal. If postmodernism-affected young people want to hear a story, why not give them the story? (while all along, of course, appealing to its truth). I don't think one can reduce the Gospel to a mere series of facts, but this doesn't mean that facts are unimportant.

Enlightenment-addled brains didn't care so much about the Gospel's intuitive or emotional appeal. They wanted the facts, and much of modern apologetics arose in response to that. Postmodernism-addled brains, on the other hand, do care about the intuitive and emotional side of truth claims, and I can see no reason why the apologetic effort should not take this into account.

And while we're talking evidence, you know, of course, that there are all kinds of evidence, and clearly a book like Mere Christianity, to cite the most popular example, depends on the testimony of civilization itself, and not just the traditional Western kind. Our general picture of morality, culture and history do much more to shape our judgements on ultimates than sets of purely logical progressions of propositions from first premises. You might find Socrates' argument for the immortality of the soul logically lock-tite. But if the rest of your world picture is incongruent with Socrates on that point, you'll dismiss him anyway.

However, sooner or later I think you do get down to the question of whether or not Jesus actually rose from the dead. Did it really happen? If it did, it's the most meaningful event in history, and any sane person convinced of it will deal with it as such. So a reasonable person (even most who play at being post-modern), is just going to want to know whether or not there is warrant for belief in this peculiar Christian claim, and at some point you have to demand, I think, that a historical claim be backed up with the sort of evidence that we usually demand of historical claims. Is there eyewitness testimony and is it reliable? Ten different witnesses to a traffic accident may tell ten different stories. But they all agree that there was a traffic accident. That speaks. It's not the sum total of the argument by any means, but if it's not there, the rest won't hold together of it's own accord. If Christ is not truly raised, our faith is in vain.

Education majors and English majors may be in big trouble by sophomore year.

"I wonder what they do teach them at these schools."

Postmodernism-addled brains, on the other hand, do care about the intuitive and emotional side of truth claims, and I can see no reason why the apologetic effort should not take this into account.

I, for one, don't deny that. After all, I love Walker Percy. But at the end of a Percy binge, I think you come to this point, and no further: "Christianity ought to be true, and if it isn't, we're all in big trouble. So, is it?"

"No one thinks that Zeus raised Jesus from the dead!"

That's correct. It was Asclepius whom Zeus raised from the dead.

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