Saturday, March 31, 2018

Blessed Easter!

I Corinthians 15
12 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
13 But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:
14 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.
16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:
17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.
24 Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
25 For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.
26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
27 For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him.
28 And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.
29 Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?
30 And why stand we in jeopardy every hour?
[snip]
50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.
51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.
Luke 24
32 And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?
33 And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them,
34 Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.
35 And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.
36 And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.
37 But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit.
38 And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?
39 Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.
40 And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet.
41 And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat?
42 And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb.
43 And he took it, and did eat before them.

Easter post here on the importance of the historical, bodily resurrection at What's Wrong With the World.

Blessed Easter!

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

What if the Gospels are bio-pics?

The "literary device" theory that I have written so much about in the past year holds that it was culturally accepted for the gospel authors to alter facts for either literary or theological purposes. Suggestions to this effect range from altering who said what within a scene to changing the year in which the cleansing of the Temple occurred by a full three years to inventing entire incidents.

At times the debate on whether this is a problem can become mired in the ethics of it: Would it be morally wrong for the Gospel authors to do this?

My brief answer is "Yes, it certainly would be." But I'm concerned that another point, perhaps equally important, not be lost sight of.

Those advocating the "literary device" theory will attempt to deflect any ethical judgement against the Gospel authors on the grounds that this was socially accepted, so it was not morally wrong, since everyone sort of tacitly understood that at any given moment an author of a so-called "bios" might be doing such a thing. In this respect, they will say, the Gospels are like movies that are based on true events. Nobody thinks that it is morally wrong for someone to make a bio-pic or a partially fictional movie, because it's just understood that it might be partially fictionalized. The makers of Chariots of Fire are not lying because they crafted a scene in which Jennie, the sister of runner Eric Liddell, expresses concern that he is too devoted to his running and that this may be taking away from his commitment to God. I have heard that the real Jennie, who was still alive when the movie was made, was a little unhappy that she had been portrayed in this way, since no such conversation ever took place. But oh, well, many would say: We all ought to know better than to take everything in a movie to be non-fictional. In other words, non-naive people just know to put a question mark over most things in a dramatized, partially fictionalized bio-pic, and that's why its makers aren't doing something ethically wrong.

But there is now an epistemic problem. What if the only source we had about that period in the life of Eric Liddell were Chariots of Fire? What if we knew that it was partially fictionalized, that its makers had "taken liberties" with what happened, but we didn't know how far that had gone? What if we had no way to check out the specifics?

Perhaps the most we could then conclude would be that Eric Liddell existed, that he probably won some major Olympic victory (maybe a gold medal, though that might have been "transferred" from a silver medal--you never know), that he lived approximately in the period after WWI, that he was deeply religious, and that there may have been some kind of perceived conflict between his religious scruples and his athletic competition. In the movie it is that he would not run on Sunday. And in real life, we can check out the fact that that was true in real life. But suppose we couldn't check it out, but we knew that the movie was fictionalized. Then we'd have only a vague thought that maybe Liddell was asked to run at such a time or in such a way that he perceived it as conflicting with his religion. Or heck, maybe the conflict was something quite different (diet?).

It would be extremely difficult to be confident about anything much, and even in that previous paragraph I am, to no small extent, making up as I go along what we could be confident about and what we couldn't, and how qualified the whole thing would have to be. After all, bio-pics can vary pretty widely in how much liberty they take.

So if the Gospels were like bio-pics, this would mean that from a factual point of view they are not good sources for the life and teachings of Jesus. To no small extent we would be guessing as far as trying to figure out just how "big picture" we would have to go before getting to the far more minimal historical facts that we could glean from them. There would be a great deal we could not know, as the redactive fog descends.

Now, that would be a pretty big deal, especially since we're being asked (if we're Christians) to be ready to die for Jesus and to commit ourselves to a variety of creedal propositions, even if we just restrict ourselves to so-called "Mere Christianity."

The Gospels are our primary source documents for the life, ministry, and teachings of Jesus. We don't have other sources in which we can look things up to separate fact from fiction if the Gospels are like bio-pics.

So it would be a pretty radical thing to decide that the Gospels are like bio-pics. I therefore propose that people try to examine the arguments that are given for this type of liberty that the Gospel authors supposedly had. Do those arguments hold up? I've argued at length that they do not.

Please do this instead of spending your time arguing that it wouldn't matter anyway. And please don't distract yourself into arguing that it wouldn't matter because it "wouldn't be unethical." Whether it would be unethical or not, since it would greatly reduce the amount that we can know with any degree of justification about Jesus, we need to figure out whether the Gospels are accurately characterized in this way.

It is astonishing to me, and somewhat disheartening, that it is this hard to get people even to look through the telescope. It seems to me that those spending endless amounts of energy (e.g., on Facebook) arguing that this would be no big deal are apparently determined to let go or let slide the thesis that this is what the Gospels are like. Hey, if it's no big deal, why should we bother finding out if it's true or not?

Wouldn't your time be better spent trying to find out if it's true or not? And at a minimum, wouldn't it be better epistemically if the Gospels, as historical sources, are not like bio-pics, are more reliable than that? So let's try to figure that out. Because there is no good reason to think that they are. See the series.

Saturday, March 24, 2018

"I thirst"

As we go into Holy Week, this song is especially meaningful.

It strikes me that perhaps the last time I shared it I didn't even know that the historicity of Jesus' words "I thirst" had been called into question by so-called "evangelical" scholars. What a sad thing that is.

Our Lord not only suffered all of the agony of crucifixion but also expressed physical agony. And the great wonder of it all is that he, who was the king of creation, who made the rivers and the seas, suffered thirst for you and for me.

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

"We Would See Jesus"

This was one of those hymns I kept passing up in the hymnal, thinking, "I don't know that one." Well, it was time to get to know it. It's beautiful, partly because of the Mendelssohn tune. The tune is "Songs Without Words" opus 30, #3.

The words...Well, they were written when hymn lyrics were hymn lyrics. Fun fact: Anna Bartlett Warner, who wrote these lyrics, also wrote the words to "Jesus Loves Me." More verses here. Performance here.

1. We would see Jesus, for the shadows lengthen
Across this little landscape of our life;
We would see Jesus, our weak faith to strengthen
For the last weariness, the final strife.

2. We would see Jesus, the great rock foundation
Whereon our feet were set with sov’reign grace;
Nor life nor death, with all their agitation,
Can thence remove us, if we see His face.

3. We would see Jesus: sense is all too binding,
And heaven appears too dim, too far away;
We would see Thee, Thyself our hearts reminding
What Thou hast suffered, our great debt to pay.

4. We would see Jesus: this is all we’re needing;
Strength, joy, and willingness come with the sight;
We would see Jesus, dying, risen, pleading;
Then welcome day, and farewell mortal night.

Friday, March 09, 2018

Transcript and commentary: The "I am" statements, again

Regular readers will remember the dust-up last fall in which I discussed the fact that ostensibly evangelical scholar Craig A. Evans had agreed with skeptic Bart Ehrman, strongly implying that Jesus never uttered the "I am" statements or "I and the Father are one" in an historically recognizable fashion. Instead, he said, these were "he is" declarations of the "Johannine community."

At that time, NT scholar Michael Licona rather surprisingly jumped to Evans's defense, going on at some length to bolster and stand up for his views. When I (quite understandably) concluded that Licona shared those views, Licona accused me of misrepresentation, claiming that he, personally, is agnostic on the historicity of these sayings in John and merely was explaining what "many scholars" think on the subject. However, it was apparently sufficiently important to explain and defend what these "many scholars" think that he did so repeatedly and at some length, adding a great deal to what Evans had said. Exchanges on the topic from that time can be followed here and here.

On February 21, 2018, Dr. Licona debated Bart Ehrman on the question of the reliability of the Gospels. There is much that I could say about this debate, the most notable point of which is that, frankly, Dr. Licona didn't really defend the reliability of the Gospels. One of the more painful portions is the place beginning around 1:46 and in the minutes following where Licona insists that Luke knowingly, and contrary to fact, places the first meeting between Jesus and his disciples in Jerusalem, even though it really took place in Galilee (minute 1:47), but that this is nonetheless "accurate" because Licona dubs Luke's deliberate fictionalization on this factual point a "compositional device." Ehrman is (predictably) merciless. Ehrman: "The appearance was in Galilee but Luke says it was in Jerusalem, and you think that that's accurate?"

If that's the case, one wonders what becomes of Doubting Thomas? (Recall that Licona casts some doubt on the historicity of the Doubting Thomas sequence in the book Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?, p. 178, but doesn't quite conclude there that it is ahistorical.) Given Licona's relative confidence now (according to his statements in this debate) that the first meeting between Jesus and his disciples really took place in Galilee, where does that leave the Thomas sequence? Did the other disciples send a message from Galilee down to Thomas, who was still hanging around dubiously in Jerusalem, that they had seen Jesus? What happened next? Moreover, since the meeting that Licona is now saying is the true first meeting, as recorded in Matthew 28:16ff, uses the phrase "the eleven" for the number of central male disciples present, and since Licona has already insisted in his book that this must be a counting noun rather than a generic term for the group, this would also (on Licona's interpretation that this was the first meeting) seem once again to contradict the Doubting Thomas sequence. One wonders if Licona has thought of this, or if it is a matter of any concern to him.

In this post I chiefly want to transcribe and discuss Licona's answer to Ehrman's argument from silence concerning Jesus' comparatively more explicit claims to deity (such as "Before Abraham was, I am" and "I and the Father are one") in the Gospel of John. In his usual bullying fashion, Ehrman goes on about this at some length around from 1:14 and following, trying to make it sound like John is in opposition to the synoptics concerning the deity of Christ and as though it is just too incredible that Jesus could have made these statements historically without their being mentioned in the synoptic Gospels. It is sheer sleight of hand and should be called out as such, but it is difficult for most people just to stand up to Ehrman when he does this kind of thing.

A questioner in the Q & A reminds Licona of that portion of Ehrman's discussion. Licona thanks the questioner for reminding him, since he had not responded to it in his first rebuttal. He then goes on a tour of alleged places in the Gospel of Mark that imply Jesus' deity by Jesus' actions. Some of them are solid, such as the claim to the divine prerogative to forgive sins in Mark 2. Others are highly dubious as claims to deity. These include Jesus' claim in Mark 3:27 to be able to bind Satan, which isn't a claim to deity at all. It is of course a claim to represent the one true God, who is stronger than Satan. But the archangel Michael can bind and cast down Satan, per the Book of Revelation, though he is a created being.

Anyway, there is nothing at all wrong with challenging Bart's implication that the synoptics don't give the faintest hint that Jesus is God. That is Bart's typical exaggeration, and it's fine to call it out.

But Licona, who is getting set up to call the historicity of Jesus' unique claims in John "irrelevant" (!), exaggerates the strength of the case for Jesus' deity from the Gospel of Mark alone. He continues by calling into question the historicity of the unique statements in John:
2:08:15

So what Mark does is he gives us a literary portrait of Jesus, of Jesus claiming to be God through his deeds. Whereas what I think in John’s gospel, and virtually every single Johannine scholar will say, that John is giving us a paraphrase. He’s taking Jesus’ stuff and he’s restating it in Johannine idiom. And many will say that John takes what Jesus would have said and done implicitly and he restates it in an explicit manner. So did Jesus actually make some of these divine claims explicitly, word-for-word, like he does in John? Who knows? But whether he did or not is irrelevant. He still made claims through his actions and the things that he did that came to the same thing.
The first point I want to note here is the increasing difficulty Licona should have in plausibly denying that he is expressing his own view that the statements in John are not recognizably historical. Here he actually says, "Whereas what I think in John's gospel..." then shifts mid-sentence to "virtually every single Johannine scholar," then to "many will say" and finally to "Who knows?" But he started out with "Whereas what I think in John's gospel..." in contrast to the apparently historical events just recounted from Mark.

If this is what he thinks, then this is what he thinks, and he should be willing to admit it rather than being unclear.

Next, the apparent implication that "virtually every single Johannine scholar" denies the literal, recognizable historicity of the unique deity sayings in John is fairly hyperbolic and dubious. It is certainly false if we include the "democracy of the dead." It is questionable even if applied to evangelical scholars living today.

But perhaps Mike meant to do what he does elsewhere, which is to make some extremely strong statement such as "virtually every Johannine scholar says" that John "adapted Jesus' sayings"--a statement so vague as to be nearly contentless--and then to use that broad claim as a jumping-off point for some more specific claim concerning ahistoricity in the Gospel of John. Thus "virtually every Johannine scholar" ends up being an unwitting endorser of some specific claim concerning John's allegedly altering facts. He does this, in fact, with the very point at issue (the historicity of the unique deity claims in John) in this post. There, he moves from a statement by Craig Keener that all "Johannine scholars acknowledge Johannine adaptation of the Jesus tradition" to John's alleged "adaptation" in the form of completely making up the more explicit claims to deity in John in contrast to this, a conclusion (wrongly) inferred from the synoptics: "Jesus spoke of His identity implicitly, even in terms that were somewhat cryptic" rather than anything "nearly as overt as we find in John."

We don't actually know that virtually every Johannine scholar, much less "all" such scholars, believe that John did that. Even if they did, of course, this is a fairly blatant argument from authority in the worst of senses and a poor argument. Popularity, especially popularity among the living alone, has always been a terrible test of truth. And the same applies to "many scholars," with which Licona continues.

The next point I want to note is the abuse of the term "paraphrase." If, as discussed by Licona elsewhere, all that Jesus said and did concerning his deity is the kind of implication that we find in the synoptic Gospels, if the scenes surrounding John 8:58 and John 10:31 and the shocking statements by Jesus in those verses never took place in any recognizable form, and if John wrote the scenes as they occur in his Gospel anyway, knowing that they never took place historically in a recognizable fashion, this is not paraphrase. It is not remotely like paraphrase. It is fiction, pure and simple. It might or might not be fiction based on theological truth as taught by Jesus in some other fashion. But that does not make it a paraphrase. To use "paraphrase" in this way is the sheerest word kidnapping, and it needs to be called out sharply and unequivocally.

The next point to which I want to draw attention is the straw man technique of suddenly talking about whether or not Jesus uttered these sayings "word-for-word." That is not the question, and Licona must know that it is not the question. If Jesus said, "I and the Father are a unity" rather than "I and the Father are one," or if he spoke in Aramaic and we have a good translation into Greek, or if he said, "Before Abraham was living in Canaan, I am," etc., and if the dialogue and the attempted stoning took place recognizably as recounted in John, that would still be a direct denial of what Ehrman is saying--that the events did not take place historically. Those who disagree with Ehrman on this point and who are willing to take him on head-to-head, rather than conceding his denial of historicity, do not have to hold that Jesus' words and the dialogue leading up to them is precisely, exactly, word-for-word as we have it. That is a blatant straw man representation of anyone on the "conservative" side who would not concede what Licona is conceding. It is meant to make it sound as though Licona (and/or the "many scholars" whose view he is putting forward) are not actually denying historicity in any important sense that deserves scrutiny, when in fact they are.

Finally, there is the blatantly false statement that the historicity of these fairly explicit statements in John is "irrelevant" and that the claims Licona has laid out from Mark "come to the same thing." This is completely incorrect from an epistemic point of view. You simply cannot make implicit claims equivalent to explicit claims, or even nearly explicit claims. The latter are always going to have epistemic vectors that the former don't have. It can never be epistemically irrelevant whether or not Jesus claimed, so clearly that he was nearly stoned, to be the "I am" of the Old Testament and whether he said (again, so clearly that the Jews tried to stone him) that he was one with Yahweh. To try to get away with brushing off the importance of the question, as Licona does, is just breathtaking. I have no doubt that Dr. Licona has convinced himself of what he says about the "irrelevance" of the historicity of these statements in John, but it is certainly untrue, and Christians need to reject it decisively. I fear that the reason some are not doing so is, quite simply, that they are afraid that they cannot defend the historicity of John.

Making false epistemic claims merely gives us false comfort. Let us, as knowledgeable and informed Christians, instead admit the importance of John's Gospel and then defend it vigorously, with reasons and evidence. But it appears that we will have to do so without the help of Dr. Evans and Dr. Licona and perhaps others. If so, be it so. Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world, Bart Ehrman included. (I John 4:4)