Category: Christianity

Previous discussions have been covering the matter of miracles, especially as they pertain to Christianity. In contemporary culture these are dismissed or ridiculed as mere myths — even among some Christians churches, or perhaps at best as mere allegories. But to demonstrate the reality of miracles, it is not necessary to show evidence of any and all, but to demonstrate solid, irrefutable substantiation for one. And thus we come to the central miracle upon which the Christian faith stands or falls: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. There can be no dispute about the fact that Jesus lived, was sentenced to death under Pontius Pilate, crucified, and died. This evidence is extensive, not merely from the independent writings and teachings of his followers, but confirmed by pagan and Jewish sources as well. All testify independently that he was sentenced by Pilate to crucifixion, and his death was reported back to the Prefect. All eyewitness testimony also mentions by name Joseph of Arimithea, a member of the Jewish ruling council, who offers his family tomb for the burial of Jesus. Furthermore, Pilate is petitioned, by Jewish leaders, for a Roman guard for the tomb — highly unusual for a criminal shamefully executed by crucifixion as a troublemaker and a threat to Rome. And then, two days later, the tomb is found empty. By the way: was the tomb really empty? If not, then the whole basis for the apostolic preaching that Jesus had risen from the dead is immediately proven to be a hoax — one could simply check the tomb (of a well-known Jewish leader) to demonstrate the teaching of this new religious cult a lie. So there must be a reason for this most unusual finding. And there have been several proposed: The disciples stole the body. Let’s think this one through: the disciples, who abandoned Jesus in terror, and were hiding in fear of the Jewish leaders, somehow found the courage to go to the tomb; overcome the Roman guards; roll away an extremely heavy stone; and drag the now-decomposing body away. What purpose would the stolen body serve the disciples? Where would they hide it? How do you then proclaim a resurrection for which there is no living body? Keep in mind Lazarus, who rejoined his sisters and dined with them and Jesus after he was raised (and the Jews had plans to kill Lazarus to deny the miracle). A true resurrection requires a living, breathing human being, in the flesh. The guards were asleep. The guards: unarmed fishermen, cowards all, could never overcome armed and trained Roman guards. But perhaps the guards were asleep (the story they were later bribed to repeat)? A Roman guard who slept on duty would receive at best, severe discipline, or more likely, a death sentence. And of course if sleeping, they would never awaken as men manhandled a massive stone away and tiptoed away with a lifeless body. And the disciples, faithful Jews all, knew to touch a corpse made them ceremoniously unclean, unthinkable for an observant Jew. Grave robbers Grave robbing was not uncommon at this time — hence those with the social standing or wealth used heavy gravestones to guard against this. So, in addition to insurmountable barriers of the heavy gravestone and the Roman guards, there was one more important piece of evidence against this: the grave clothes. Robbers would not carefully unwrap the grave clothes of the corpse (standard in Jewish burial rituals) in the tomb, but would take the wrapped corpse (if they took it all — they were primarily looking for objects of value) to unwrap elsewhere, to facilitate the quickest getaway. Jesus was seen, independently, bodily, and in many contexts after his resurrection. He embraced Mary Magdeline near the tomb; spoke with the disciples on the road to Emmaus; dined with his disciples; allowed Thomas to examine his wounds to dispel his doubts. Hence we have the eyewitness testimony of many separate individuals, in many places and different times, that the grave was empty and their Savior risen, bodily, as He had promised. Some have postulated that these visitations were hallucinations — but mass hallucinations by multiple individuals in different locations and contexts do not occur. The apostles were transformed from clueless cowards to courageous evangelists, who boldly spread Christianity — the message of the resurrected Christ and His salvation — through the whole ancient world, were tortured and persecuted, and all but one martyred. One does not endure such persecution and death for a lie, a hoax, or a hallucination. They did so because they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, in the flesh, Son of God and Son of Man. Are miracles possible? The most important miracle of all time is verified beyond doubt, and casts the bright light of truth on all such works performed by Him & in His name.

Previous essays in a series on miracles: On Miracles I began, in a previous essay, to lay out a framework for reasonable faith in the proposition of miracles, with particular focus on the Resurrection. In 2007, Rev. Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Denver, penned an essay in First Things based on a speech he had previously given: I’d like to start with a proposition. Here it is: To be a Christian is to believe in history. All the great world religions have sacred books … What those sacred texts have in common is that they’re essentially wisdom literature. They’re collections of noble teachings aimed at helping believers live ethically and find the right path to peace or happiness or enlightenment. The Bible also aims to make people wise. But it does much more. It seeks to lead them to salvation, which is much more than enlightenment. The Bible’s starting point is totally different from any other sacred book. The first words are: “In the beginning …” The Bible begins with a step-by-step report of the first day in the history of the world … Christianity, thus, means believing definite things about history and about our own respective places in history. We don’t just profess belief in the Incarnation. We say we believe that God took flesh at a precise moment in time and in a definite place. Pontius Pilate and Mary are mentioned by name in the creed — and the reference to Mary, his mother, guarantees Christ’s humanity, while the reference to Pilate, who condemned him to death, guarantees his historicity. All this ensures that we can never reduce the Incarnation to an abstract concept, a metaphor, or a pretty idea. It ensures that we can never regard Jesus Christ as some kind of ideal archetype or mythical figure. He was truly a man and truly God. … There’s something else, too. We believe that this historical event, which happened more than 2,000 years ago, represents a personal intervention by God “for us men and for our salvation.” God entered history for you and me, for all humanity. These are extraordinary claims. To be a Christian means believing that you are part of a vast historical project. The Archbishop’s article is extraordinary, and I encourage you to read it. It cuts straight to the heart of the Christian faith: the assertion and conviction that it is not merely a belief system, nor simply a framework for morality and wise living, but rather a radical, and historical, event in time. Christianity claims, outrageously, that the eternal God of the universe stepped into time — and the events resulting from this intervention are verifiable in history, not merely believed in the intellect. The Archbishop stresses, appropriately, this history as detailed in Scripture. But it may be argued — and has been argued — that the Scriptures are a hopelessly biased and distorted record, if indeed they are a record at all, of the events detailed in its its pages. Filled with fantastic myths and implausible events, written by zealots, they portray not history but fantasy. If indeed a man named Jesus even existed — and some doubt even this simple premise — we surely know little or nothing of him. Hence the distinction has grown between the “Jesus of history”, of whom we know precious little, and the “Christ of faith” — the spiritual apparition created by zealous followers and true believers, perhaps morally and ethically useful, but surely not based in history and fact. These are in fact the presuppositions, almost always unspoken, when one hears about the “historical Jesus” today — the assumption that the divine did not intervene in history; that the biblical record is replete with myth, hyperbole, and fabrication; that the Gospel record in particular — especially where it relates miracles or other supernatural events such as the Incarnation and the Resurrection, is simply not to be believed. The moral teachings of Jesus (if he even existed), such as the Sermon on the Mount, may be reasonably accurate of his teaching as a moral agent, but surely anything smacking of the supernatural must be dismissed. This is invariably the perspective of the mainstream media, manifest in the Time or Newsweek cover story at Easter, supported by media-friendly theological skeptics such as the Jesus Seminar. Consider this from the opening statement of the Jesus Seminar in 1985, a most enlightening summary of the Seminar’s preconditions and assumptions: … we are having increasing difficulty these days in accepting the biblical account of the creation and of the apocalyptic conclusion in anything like a literal sense. The difficulty just mentioned is connected with a second feature: we now know that narrative accounts of ourselves, our nation, the Western tradition, and the history of the world, are fictions … Our dilemma is becoming acute: just as the beginning of the created world is receding in geological time before our very eyes, so the future no longer presents itself as naive imminence … To put the matter bluntly, we are having as much trouble with the middle, the messiah, as we are with the terminal points (creation and Armageddon). What we need is a new fiction that takes as its starting point the central event in the Judeo-Christian drama and reconciles that middle with a new story that reaches beyond old beginnings and endings. In sum, we need a new narrative of Jesus, a new gospel, if you will, that places Jesus differently in the grand scheme, the epic story. Not any fiction will do. The fiction of the superiority of the Aryan race led to the extermination of six million Jews. The fiction of American superiority prompted the massacre of thousands of Native Americans and the Vietnam War. The fiction of Revelation keeps many common folk in bondage to ignorance and fear. We require a new, liberating fiction, one that squares with the best knowledge we can now accumulate and one that transcends self-serving ideologies. [Emphasis mine] Thus we have…

   First of a series of essays on the problem of miracles in Christianity During a conversation with friends on the subject of faith and reason, a reader brought up the following objection: The most Christian apologetics can accomplish is to show faith in Divine revelation to be a reasonable proposition. I would say the challenges presented by various content in the Holy Scriptures are significant. As you pointed out, “we evaluate scriptures claiming to be revelation with the tools of archeology, linguistics, textual analysis for internal consistency and external verification, to validate, in some measure, the veracity of such claims.” This is all very good, but what of the more difficult propositions hidden in the texts: creation stories, Noah’s Ark, the parting of the Red Sea, a talking ass, sword wielding angelic messengers, chariots of fire swooping in to carry men to heaven, floating ax heads, the regeneration of limbs, a virgin birth, or Lazarus raised from the dead? The subject raised here is a challenging one, and a common point put forward in any discussion about faith and reason: what about the miracles spoken about in Scripture? The events such as those mentioned above lie entirely outside the realm of our experience, and it appears utterly reasonable and rational to dismiss them as fabrications, myth, or at best allegorical tales intended for moral teaching. The belief in miracles by people of religious faith is perhaps the area most incomprehensible to the skeptic. Such events are logically and physically impossible, reside outside the laws of nature and science, and therefore no rational, intelligent person could or should believe such unadulterated nonsense. Even those of religious conviction often struggle with this aspect of their faith. Some will simply dodge the issue: “The Bible says it, I believe it.” End of discussion — and not terribly satisfying for those seeking more rational evidence for faith than mere assent to the truth of revelation alone. For most who reject the possibility of miracles, their impossibility arises less from evidence found lacking — for they rarely objectively evaluate the evidence — than from the presuppositions fundamental to their view of the world. If the universe is purely material, randomly engendered and devoid of any possibility of divine existence, then miracles must, by necessity, be either mythical in origin or have other, naturalistic explanations. For those who believe in some sort of divine entity or power — especially one which is impersonal or abstract — the intimate intervention of a personal, supernatural Being into the natural world in any demonstrable way is inconceivable. Even for those who may believe in a personal God, the idea that the divine would intervene demonstrably in ways contravening the laws of nature and their daily experience of the world seems highly implausible and impossibly remote. Yet the problem of miracles is central to the integrity of faith. If in fact miracles cannot occur, if in fact they are naught but myths and morality tales, then faith itself must be without substance or certainty, and becomes nothing more than a comfortable belief system without basis in reality, history, or objective truth. The problem of miracles must be met head-on if we are to have a faith grounded in reason rather than diaphanous desire. It is not imperative that every miracle held by faith be provable — indeed, were such a thing possible, it would destroy the very essence of faith, for we do not believe in what we see, but rather in that which is unseen. Once the premise that the divine can intervene, and indeed has intervened in tangible ways superseding the dictates of logic and the constraints of the material universe, however, the largest hurdle to accepting their possibility has been bridged. Reason demands that faith be reasonable: that the injection of the divine and transcendent into the temporal and material ought not lie purely within the realm of the easily-deceptive determinations born of mere thought or mental theorems. If God has stepped into history, we should expect to see His footprints. Christianity at its very heart is about just such an injection of the timeless into time, of the transcendent into the material. The ripples of this event radiate throughout history, with implications unspeakably vast and ever-widening. At the vortex of this widening gyre lies a miracle: the God-man come to earth, unjustly executed, and subsequently raised from the dead. That a man should claim to be God is hardly unique; that a man be unjustly tortured and killed, and esteemed thereafter as a martyr, is no rare event. That a man should make such claims, and meet such an end, and rise thenceforth from the grave, recasts preposterous claims as profound certainty and transforms his death into something transcendent and immensely powerful. If this event is but myth, Christianity becomes nothing more than platitudes and powerless moralizing; if true, no event in time is more significant, no aspect of life untouched by its enormity and seriousness. If belief in this miracle be reasonable, if we may trace these long-traveled waves of faith back to their source, and in the inspection of their origins find evidence substantial and compelling, then the world becomes a vastly different place from that seen through a myopic focus on superficial pseudo-reality and all-too-comfortable denial of the divine. By their very nature as supernatural phenomena, one cannot “prove” a miracle as one might prove a math theorem. Nor will mere facts or historical evidence of themselves be sufficient to document with unquestioned certainty those things upon which so much rests — for the human mind often proves stubbornly intransigent when new conclusions run counter to cherished beliefs or worldview conviction. Were such a point-by-point approach fail-safe, there would be no Holocaust deniers nor 9/11 conspirators. If God exists, if He intrudes in human history in ways unexplainable by mere reason and material experience, then such a manifestation has profound implications for all who encounter it. For a God who intervenes thus…

Prior essays on the problem of miracles: The Problem of Miracles The Historical Jesus It has been said that Christianity is the only religion which traces its origins to the humiliation of its God. As followers of its crucified leader dispersed widely after its germinal events, traveling great distances from a remote corner of the Empire over dusty Roman roads, they indeed told a tale bizarre in every respect. How ludicrous the story of a God made man; who worked miracles among men; who suffered the most heinous execution the Romans could devise. A man who, if these fables be factual, arose from the dead, utterly transforming the lives of all who saw Him — these same men who audaciously claimed to be eyewitnesses to this mysterious manifestation. The people of the ancient world were no strangers to quixotic stories, to endless tales of gods and goddesses, myths and magic. Rome in its pragmatic wisdom absorbed them all, with their blood rites and orgies, their asceticism and temple prostitutes. Such tolerance kept the Empire unified and the conquered content; no sense risking unrest and rebellion over senseless fantasies. Such legends amused and titillated, and their rituals provided feeble comfort in a brutal world ruled by heartless Fate. Yet Christianity was not merely another imagined tale of jealous gods and devious deities, but carried in its implausible story a spark fully absent from pagan fables: the flicker of hope in hopeless darkness, of purpose in a world chained and weighted to emptiness and futility. This spark fell upon the dry straw of a desperate world, and started a conflagration which reshaped that world in ways unimaginable. This revolution, arising from a most contentious corner of the Empire — another abrasive annoyance from the ever-troublesome Jews — in short time became a growing threat to an Empire enfeebled by its own ruthless tyranny and the decadence borne of absolute power devoid of principle. The pagan empire had no grasp of its insidious power: a movement thriving among the chattel classes, criminals and no-counts, women and slaves. It spat in the face of the tolerance of its time, refusing the worship of the Emperor, bending the knee to no pagan rite or ritual. It spoke freedom to the slaves, equality to women, obedience to God before Caesar. When persecuted, it grew even faster than when left alone — and it could not be left alone long, lest it conquer the very conquerors themselves. But who were these Christians? And what of this criminal, this unknown itinerate rabbi whose rabid followers feared not death but proclaimed some glorious resurrection of the inglorious rabble-rouser? That Jesus of Nazareth should be mentioned at all in the stories and histories of Rome and its Empire is most remarkable. Countless criminals and revolutionaries had been slaughtered in Rome’s savage fashion for offenses great and small. Why mention but one, a deluded and subversive sorcerer executed by crucifixion? The inscrutable nature of these Christian outcasts, who turned the other cheek while steely in their convictions, cried out for some explanation. Just as the revolution Jesus had started could not long be ignored, its Founder too found mention among those compiling the history of Rome and its rule. Such mention was scattered and scornful, yet unmistakable in identifying the source of the Christians’ unshakable foundations. Some references are more elliptical than others, but all point to living man in history. The first great Christian persecution occurred under Nero. Seeking scapegoats for the Great Fire in Rome in 64 A.D., Nero singled out the Christians. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote concerning the Great Fire, in book 15, chapter 44 of his Annals: Consequently, to get rid of the report [that Nero had intentionally set the fire], Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. During the reign of Trajan, in 112 A.D., Christianity was outlawed in the Roman Empire but not being actively persecuted. A Roman governor, Pliny the Younger, in a letter to Trajan, requested guidance on how to prosecute the crimes of Christians, and describes the beliefs of those being accused: … they met on a stated day before it was light, and addressed a form of prayer to Christ, as to a divinity, binding themselves by a solemn oath, not for the purposes of any wicked design, but never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble, to eat in common a harmless meal. … While not directly describing Christ as such, Pliny relates that early Christians worshiped him as a god. The Roman historians were not the only ones cataloging the events around the time of Christ and the early Church. Perhaps the best-known non-Roman historian was Josephus. Flavius Josephus was a Jewish priest, born in Jerusalem around 37 A.D. During Jewish Revolt in 66 A.D., he was captured by the…