A Critique of Erik Wielenberg's Godless Normative Realism

 

A CRITIQUE OF ERIK WIELENBERG’S GODLESS NORMATIVE REALISM

Erik Wielenberg sets out to provide a justification for objective morality within a framework of philosophical naturalism.  He recognizes that some influential philosophical atheists have argued that the denial of God renders moral realism unlikely.  Wielenberg takes up the challenge of defending “the plausibility of a robust brand of moral realism without appealing to God or any weird cognitive faculties.”[1]  He refers to his view as “Godless Normative Realism” (GNR). Wielenberg summarizes his view in the following manner:

It is a version of moral realism in that it implies that there exist ethical facts that are objective in the sense just explained.  It is non-natural in that it implies that ethical facts and properties are not reducible to natural facts and properties.  And it is non-theistic in that it implies that objective morality does not require a theistic foundation; indeed, the view implies that objective morality does not require an external foundation at all.[2]

 

Moral facts are thus, sui generis in that they are not reducible to natural properties or in need of any external foundation.  Moral states of affairs supervene on natural states.  As Wielenberg states, 

For example, the claim that the property of intrinsic badness supervenes on the property of pain is logically to the claim that necessarily, pain is intrinsically bad… at least some of the supervenience relationships between moral and non-moral properties are brute facts.”[3]  

 

Wielenberg refers to these moral facts as “substantive, metaphysically necessary, brute facts.”[4]  These “basic ethical facts” are simply part of reality and to ask “where they come from?” or “on what foundation do they rest?” is misguided.[5]

            Wielenberg’s project is bound up with providing a critique of theistic ethics—especially Divine Command Theory ethics (DCT). He has to argue that theistic versions of moral realism are not more adequate or robustly explanatory. This attack on DCT is crucial for Wielenberg since his defense of GNR proceeds “not primarily by providing positive arguments for it but rather by defending it against various objections as well as fleshing it out further.”[6]  This argumentative strategy is important to note in that criticisms of GNR by advocates of DCT will often be met by a tu quoque response in which Wielenberg alleges that the DCT of ethics suffers from the same difficulty and, thus, offers no reason to consider DCT as explanatorily advantageous.  

            Although Wielenberg’s thought is nuanced and creative there are a number of potential problems.  Four areas of controversy for his thesis will be examined: (1) the issue of moral Platonism, (2) the nature of Wielenberg’s naturalism, (3) evolutionary arguments against naturalism as applied to Wielenberg’s ethics and (4) the nature of moral obligation.

            First, consider the issue of moral Platonism. There is an interpretative ambiguity in Wielenberg’s work as to whether his view is a version of moral Platonism. William Craig, as a critic of Wielenberg’s position, has consistently described the position as Platonic.[7]  Wielenberg has admitted to a kind of moral Platonism in his book: 

Craig is correct that in Robust Ethics and elsewhere I committed myself to the existence of abstract entities like propositions and properties.”  I did so because I didn’t see how, for example, people could have moral obligations without there being an abstract property like being morally obligated.[8]

 

In response to Craig’s interaction with his views, Wielenberg seems ready to jettison the Platonic aspect of his project.  In light of this, it will helpful to briefly describe the entailments of Wielenberg’s view on both the Platonic and non-Platonic interpretation.

            Platonism posits a bifurcation of reality into two causally unconnected domains.  How these domains relate to each other is a perennial problem and Wielenberg has no discussion as to how this relationship between a realm of abstract objects and a realm of concrete objects is possible.  In light of Wielenberg’s notions of supervenience, Craig asks, “How can a physical object somehow reach out and causally connect to a transcendent, causally isolated, abstract object?”[9]  Wielenberg attempts to lessen the tension in this argument by appealing to theism’s conception of divine causation as an analogy for his conception of supervenience.  But, as Craig, argues, this analogy fails in that within the theistic framework both God and the universe are concrete objects with causal powers which can be causally related to each other.  “But,” as Craig notes, “how physical objects can be causally connected to abstract objects is wholly obscure.”[10]

            Does the non-Platonic interpretation, seemingly embraced by Wielenberg after criticism of the Platonic version, offer a better alternative?  In relinquishing the Platonic version of his thesis this opens him to the charge that “his ‘metaphysics of morals’ becomes vacuous.”[11]  In rejecting moral Platonism, Wielenberg’s position loses what it was claiming to provide, namely, a metaphysical basis for non-naturalistic moral realism.  Beyond this criticism there is the further problem for Wielenberg’s revised, non-Platonic understanding of his project—the problem of uninstantiated properties.

Suppose some moral property, say, loyalty or civility, has not yet been instantiated in the course of human evolution.  How, then, can some physical situation be causally related to loyalty so as to cause its supervenience upon that physical state of affairs?  For there is literally nothing to be causally related to, there being as yet no instance of loyalty.  The physical state of affairs must be able to reach out and instantiate the moral property itself, in which case we are back to a mysterious causal connection between physical objects and abstract objects.[12]

 

Thus, on either a Platonic or non-Platonic understanding, Wielenberg’s conception of moral properties supervening on non-moral states seems problematic.

            Another area of concern regarding Wielenberg’s view is his conception of naturalism and to what extent his view is “naturalistic.”  It will be helpful to see Wielenberg’s own words describing his position.

In contemporary philosophy, the term “naturalism” is used as a label for a wide range of views.  I endorse a number of theses that are commonly associated with naturalism, including (i) there is no God or non-physical souls; (ii) every physical event that has a cause at all has a complete physical cause; and (iii) the physical sciences are entirely successful in their own domains. At the same time, I reject a number of claims that are commonly included in strong versions of naturalism, including (i) all there is to reality is the natural or physical world and (ii) empirical science is the sole source of human knowledge.[13]  

 

One could quibble with the looseness of some of these descriptive indicators of naturalism but Wielenberg’s general picture is clear. His is a “naturalism” which has more to it than the “natural world.”  This is an ontological claim.  It is matched by the epistemological claim that science is not the sole source of human knowledge.  Wielenberg recognizes, at times, that his view of “robust causal connections” between moral properties and non-moral properties “builds a suspiciously convenient (from a human perspective) degree of order and rationality into the basic structure of the universe.”[14]  In order to forestall any concerns about his naturalistic bona fides he likens his view to philosophy of mind researcher David Chalmers and his views on the relationship between naturalism and Chalmers’ understanding of qualia.  For Chalmers, qualia are sui generis and not reducible to physical processes.  In light of this, Wielenberg argues:

My brand of robust normative realism is naturalistic at least to the extent that Chalmers’ naturalistic dualism is.  Like Chalmers, I endorse the existence of non-physical properties but do not reject the causal closure of the physical or deny that the physical sciences are entirely successful in their own domains. If naturalistic dualists can get by without invoking the forces of darkness, then so can robust normative realists.[15]

 

This appeal to “Chalmers-like” naturalism can be challenged.  It does not appear as if this brand of naturalism is sufficiently “natural” enough.  J. P. Moreland explains:

However, Chalmers’ approach is a version of panpsychism, and it is ‘natural’ in only two senses: it is not theistic and it establishes ‘regular and normal’ connections between the relevant states.  But it is not natural in the sense that panpsychist mental entities are odd and not at home in a physicalist, naturalist ontology, nor can their existence be adequately explained by the Grand Story with its combinatorial processes, a point that Chalmers acknowledges.[16]

 

Therefore, even though Wielenberg wants to refer to his view as “naturalistic,” it contains features that do not comport well with a full-blown naturalism.  In his interaction with Wielenberg, J. P. Moreland attempts to specify the nature and boundaries of philosophical naturalism.  Moreland notes the three areas of ontology, epistemology, and a creation account.  These categories must also be internally consistent with each other and that by clarifying the relationship between these three categories will allow a picture to emerge regarding what ought to constitute the naturalist’s ontology.[17]  Moreland then describes naturalism as follows: “Fundamentally, naturalism is the view that the spatio-temporal universe of entities postulated by our best current (or ideal) theories in the physical sciences, particularly physics, is all there is.”[18]  But it is precisely this definition that Wielenberg says he rejects.[19]  This opens Wielenberg up to the charge of having a “bloated” ontology.[20]  Wielenberg seems content to respond that his is a naturalism which has the features needed to justify objective moral realism.  His ontology and epistemology stretch to accommodate whatever is needed to explain non-naturalistic moral realism.  This seems ad hoc and, thus, a theistic philosophical system would have greater explanatory power and scope.

A third area of criticism regarding Wielenberg’s view revolves around the idea of the “creation story” of naturalism, as so named by Moreland.  For the atheist, naturalistic evolution is “the only game in town” to generate humans.[21]  This evolutionary process is non-teleological in that it is not guided by intelligence that is goal-oriented as to the final outcome.  In light of this a number of philosophers have utilized Alvin Plantinga’s “Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism” (EAAN) to develop “Evolutionary Moral Debunking Arguments” (EMDA).[22]  Space constraints forbid an exhaustive analysis of this argument but the basic idea is that the combination of the belief in naturalism with the belief in evolution renders the probability of one’s cognitive faculties as low. This is due to the fact that evolutionary mechanisms track for survival and reproductive advantage and not for truth.  Adam Lloyd Johnson summarizes the argument as applied to moral beliefs:

Given N[aturalism] and E[volution], I see no good reason to think our moral intuitions point to, or are connected with moral truth that exists beyond our own subjective preferences.  If the origination of our moral beliefs can be explained by their evolutionary survival value, then what reason is there to think they also happen to be objectively true?  Surely there is no objective evidence for them; all we have to go on is our subjective intuitions and there is no reason to think those are reliable, given Nand E.[23]

 

So, if our moral beliefs happened to align with truth, which Wielenberg’s perspective posits, this would be the result of a “lucky coincidence” thus further rendering his view as ad hoc.  Wielenberg does admit that if “there is no God, then it is in some sense an accident that we have the moral properties that we do.”[24]  He also admits that his “view undoubtedly entails that certain elements of the universe (the actual laws of nature and basic ethical facts) fit together in a nifty and perhaps amazing way.”[25]  It is precisely here that Wielenberg’s theistic interlocutors argue that Wielenberg’s GNR lacks the explanatory depth and scope that DCT exhibits.  

            The fourth area of critical analysis in regards to Wielenberg’s non-theistic moral realism concerns the nature of moral obligation.  Even granting Wielenberg’s defense of “brute ethical facts,” this state of affairs does not automatically create an ethical obligation to obey those ethical facts.  As Olli-Pekka Vainio argues: 

We can think that, e.g., numbers and mathematical rules are brute facts but they do not compel us morally.  Failing in [a] math test makes us stupid but not guilty.  Non-natural brute moral facts need therefore an additional guilty-making property, which cannot be reduced to harm.[26]

 

Wielenberg attempts to specify the nature of obligation (i.e., the “additional guilty-making property”) by grounding moral obligation in the fact of having a normative reason to act.  Wielenberg uses the example of a fellow student who has his arm engulfed in fire and is screaming for assistance.  The example further stipulates that you have time and access to a bucket of water.  From this example, Wielenberg concludes, “The intrinsic features of the student’s pain makes his pain intrinsically bad; those same intrinsic features also give me a normative reason to stop his pain.”[27]  Wielenberg’s thought here is open to at least two challenges.

            First, if moral obligation is simply equated to having reasons to perform an act then this has the consequence of denying that are any supererogatory acts.  The act of sacrificing one’s life for another is a good action but most ethicists would argue that it is above the call of duty.  Wielenberg’s idea of equating “reason to do X” with “obligation to do X” seems too strong.  In his debate with William Craig, Wielenberg attempts to defend against this objection by modifying his view in light of the work of Joseph Raz.

Raz suggests that there is value in us being able to form our own plans and ideals for our lives and that value can generate reasons to refrain from acting on the total balance of moral reasons if doing so would be deeply at odds with our own life plans.  Acting on the total balance of moral reasons anyway in such cases is supererogatory.[28]

 

This move by Wielenberg seems questionable given his system.  Why is it not the case that the “total balance of moral reasons” does not provide a moral obligation that cannot be overridden?  This modification of view by Wielenberg (what he calls a “tweak”) is actually an abandonment of his earlier view.  “For now moral obligations are not determined by having decisive moral reasons for doing some action, which contradicts normative realism.”[29]  

            Even if Wielenberg can overcome the supererogation objection and hold to a view in which moral obligations are determined by having moral reasons, this view of obligation will be seen to fit better within a theistic context with a personal God.  As Vainio, relying on the work of Robert Adams, notes, “the central feature of ethics is the obligatory nature of moral facts, and obligations make sense only in social contexts.”[30]  Although Wielenberg states that these brute ethical facts of moral obligation just obtain, it does seem, as Stephen Evans states, that this is “the kind of truth that cries out for an explanation.”[31] And, again, it is the case that a theistic version of ethics provides a better fit for the moral features necessary to affirm moral realism.

            Erik Wielenberg has attempted to defend a non-naturalistic moral realism that is consistent with atheism.  A significant part of his project is to compare and contrast his view with divine command theory ethics in an effort to demonstrate the superior explanatory power of his view.  This paper has critically engaged Wielenberg’s view and found there to be significant problems in the following areas: (1) the issue of moral Platonism, (2) the nature of Wielenberg’s naturalism, (3) evolutionary arguments against naturalism as applied to Wielenberg’s ethics and (4) the nature of moral obligation.

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     [1]Erik Wielenberg, Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), ix.

     [2]Erik Wielenberg, “In Defense of Non-natural, Non-theistic Moral Realism,” Faith and Philosophy 26 (2009), 24.

     [3]Wielenberg, “In Defense of Non-natural, Non-theistic Moral Realism,” 28.

     [4]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 38.

     [5]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 38.

     [6]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 39.

     [7]William Craig, “Review of Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism. By Erik J. Wielenberg. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014,” Philosophia Christi 19 (2017): 473; “Erik Wielenberg’s Metaphysics of Morals,” Philosophia Christi20 (2018): 333; and Craig’s contributions to William Lane Craig and Erik J. Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality: What is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties?Adam Lloyd Johnson, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2021).

     [8]Erik Wielenberg, “Reply to Craig, Murphy, McNabb, and Johnson,” Philosophia Christi20 (2018), 367.  Also, “Additionally, while in Robust EthicsI freely help myself to various abstract entities—e.g., properties and states of affairs—it may be that those aspects of my view are dispensable.” Johnson, ed., A Debate on God and Morality, 40.

     [9]Craig, “Erik Wielenberg’s Metaphysics of Morals,” 336.

     [10]Craig, “Erik Wielenberg’s Metaphysics of Morals,” 336.

     [11]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 51.

     [12]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 64.

     [13]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 205.

     [14]Erik Wielenberg, “Evil and Atheistic Moral Realism,” in Explaining Evil: Four Views, W. Paul Franks, ed., (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019), 132.

     [15]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 15-16.

     [16]J. P. Moreland, “Oppy on the Argument from Consciousness,” Faith and Philosophy 29 (2012), 79-80.

     [17]J. P. Moreland, “Wielenberg and Emergence: Borrowed Capital on the Cheap,” in Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 95.

     [18]Moreland, “Wielenberg and Emergence: Borrowed Capital on the Cheap,” 95.

     [19]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 207.

     [20]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 108.  Consider also Craig’s description of Wielenberg’s “extravagant metaphysical claims” (32).

     [21]The language of “only game in town” comes from Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 24.

     [22]Alvin Plantinga’s argument is developed in Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and naturalism(New York: Oxford, 2011), 307-350. Philosophers using variants of this argument against Wielenberg include William Craig in Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality; Mark Linville, “Darwin, Duties, and the Demiurge,” in Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 166-184; Adam Lloyd Johnson, “Debunking Nontheistic Moral Realism: A Critique of Erik Wielenberg’s Attempt to Deflect the Lucky Coincidence Objection,” Faith and Philosophy17 (2015), 353-367.

     [23]Johnson, “Debunking Nontheistic Moral Realism,” 358.

     [24]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 56.

     [25]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 175

     [26]Olli-Pekka Vainio, “Objective Morality After Darwin (And Without God)?” Heythrop Journal56 (2015): 588.

     [27]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 8.

     [28]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 43.

     [29]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 53.

     [30]Vainio, “Objective Morality After Darwin (And Without God)?” 588.

     [31]C. Stephen Evans, God and Moral Obligation (New York: Oxford, 2013), 152.

The Rationality of the Resurrection of Jesus

* The outline from a talk I gave at Truth Seekers in Tempe, AZ.

The Rationality of the Resurrection of Jesus

Richard Klaus

May 18, 2019

Introduction

1.     Outline of talk: three movements

a.     Realism and the Resurrection

b.     Rationality and the Resurrection

c.      Responses to the Resurrection

Realism and the Resurrection

1.     The resurrection of Jesus is of central importance in the New Testament portrait of the early church’s confession.

a.     Identity of Jesus: Jesus is “declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1.4)

b.     Salvation: “…that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved…” (Romans 10.9)

c.      Judgment: “God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world through a Man whom he has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17.30-31)

2.     New Testament’s realism about the resurrection: consequences for being wrong!

a.     1 Corinthians 15.13-19

¹³But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; ¹⁴and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.  ¹⁵Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God the he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised.  ¹⁶For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; ¹⁷and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.  ¹⁸Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  ¹⁹If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.

b.     Not all share this view…

                                               i.     Interview with Serene Jones in The New York Times (April 20, 2019)[1]

KRISTOF: Happy Easter, Reverend Jones! To start, do you think of Easter as a literal flesh-and-blood resurrection? I have problems with that.

JONES: When you look in the Gospels, the stories are all over the place. There’s no resurrection story in Mark, just an empty tomb. Those who claim to know whether or not it happened are kidding themselves. But that empty tomb symbolizes that the ultimate love in our lives cannot be crucified and killed.

KRISTOF: But without a physical resurrection, isn’t there a risk that we are left with just the crucifixion?

JONES: Crucifixion is not something that God is orchestrating from upstairs. The pervasive idea of an abusive God-father who sends his own kid to the cross so God could forgive people is nuts. For me, the cross is an enactment of our human hatred. But what happens on Easter is the triumph of love in the midst of suffering. Isn’t that reason for hope?

KRISTOF: Isn’t a Christianity without a physical resurrection less powerful and awesome? When the message is about love, that’s less religion, more philosophy.

JONES: For me, the message of Easter is that love is stronger than life or death. That’s a much more awesome claim than that they put Jesus in the tomb and three days later he wasn’t there. For Christians for whom the physical resurrection becomes a sort of obsession, that seems to me to be a pretty wobbly faith. What if tomorrow someone found the body of Jesus still in the tomb? Would that then mean that Christianity was a lie? No, faith is stronger than that.

Rationality and the Resurrection

1.     Nature of the argument is historical in nature.

a.     “What is decisive in historical argument is not some isolated piece of evidence, but rather the convergence of all the available evidence and of the interpretation that can be based on such evidence.  Therefore, the argument is conclusive only in view of all the available evidence and upon due consideration of the relevant circumstances.”[2]

b.     Miracles and historical explanation

                                               i.     Kai Nielson on resurrection

“Jesus, let us suppose—I don’t know much about such things and to be perfectly frank, I’m not terribly interested in them—but let us suppose it were the case that Jesus was raised from the dead.  Suppose you collected the bones, and they together in some way reconstituted the living Jesus.  Suppose something like that really happened.  Suppose there were good historical evidence for it.  I have no idea if there is or isn’t; I suspect for anything like that, there isn’t very good evidence, but let us assume there is.  This wouldn’t show there was an infinite intelligible being.  It wouldn’t give you any way of being able to detect if there is a God.  It would be just that a very strange happening happened, namely, that somebody who died—or certainly appeared to have died—came together again as a living human being.  It wouldn’t enable you to understand at all what you were talking about concerning an infinite individual.  It would just be a very peculiar fact we hadn’t explained and indeed lacked the scientific resources to explain.  And the same thing is true of the familiar resurrection story.”[3]

                                              ii.     Assessment of evidence is worldview dependent

                                            iii.     Michael Licona argument: historians make a number of philosophical assumptions about reality[4]

1.     External world is real.

2.     Senses provide fairly accurate perception of the external world.

3.     Logic “facilitates our quest for truth rather than merely functioning as a pragmatic tool that aims at our survival and quality of life.”[5]

4.     Natural laws in effect today are the same as those in the past.

5.     History is at least partially knowable.

                                            iv.     “If they [historians] have the liberty to proceed with these five philosophical assumptions, should they be prohibited from adopting a sixth philosophical assumption that involves the existence of God who acts in history?”[6]

Note: Here’s where a fuller worldview approach may strengthen Licona’s case.  “The existence of a God who acts in history” is not a bare assumption arbitrarily chosen.  Rather, the existence of God (biblically understood) provides the explanatory context for the other philosophical assumptions to flourish.  The Christian God makes historiography possible.[7]

                                              v.     “Thus the historian would be epistemically justified in embracing a theistic worldview while making historical considerations.  After all, why should an atheist or agnostic worldview be awarded a default position, especially when good data exists for a theistic reality.  Additionally if a significant majority of those in modern society hold a theistic worldview, how can an assumption of theism be regarded as ad hoc?  Those historians who are not as sanguine may provide reasons why they do not agree with a theistic horizon and why their historical conclusions are different, however, this does not prohibit theistic historians from proceeding any more than postmodern historians prohibit realists from proceeding.”[8]

c.      Definition of miracle: “An event in history for which natural explanations are inadequate.”[9]

d.     Recognizing a miracle: “We may recognize that an event is a miracle when the event…

                                               i.     “is extremely unlikely to have occurred given the circumstances and/or natural law and…

                                              ii.     “occurs in an environment or context charged with religious significance.”[10]

2.     Epistemic duties vs. epistemic rights

a.     The Christian is within his or her epistemic rights to affirm the historicity of the resurrection given the evidence.

b.     Rational to believe in light of the evidence.

3.     Some key historical pieces that need to be explained

a.     Burial of Jesus’ body by Joseph of Arimathea

                                               i.     Burial is mentioned in earliest evidence from 1 Corinthians 15.3-5

                                              ii.     Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention

1.     He is a member of the court that put Jesus to death

2.     Hostile critics would have called “foul” on the untrue creation of a member of the Sanhedrin being used to foster Christian belief.

3.     No other competing burial stories.

b.     Empty tomb of Jesus

                                               i.     Early evidence from disciples and Paul

1.     No time for legend to develop

2.     Why do they have this belief?  If not empty why believe this?

                                              ii.     Discovery of tomb by women

1.     Marks of historicity

2.     “Given the low status of women in Jewish society and their lack of qualification to serve as legal witnesses, the plausible explanation, in light of the gospels’ conviction that the disciples were in Jerusalem over the Easter weekend, why women and not the male disciples were made discoverers of the empty tomb is that the women were in fact the ones who made this discovery.  This conclusion receives confirmation from the fact that there seems to be no reason why the later Christian church should wish to humiliate its leaders by having them hiding in cowardice in Jerusalem, while the women boldly carry out their last devotions to Jesus’ body, unless this were in fact the truth.  Furthermore, the listing of the women’s names again weighs against unhistorical legend at the story’s core, for these persons were known in the Urgemeinde [community] and so could not be easily associated with a false account.”[11]

                                            iii.     Impossible to proclaim resurrection in Jerusalem had tomb not been empty

“Even if the disciples failed to check the empty tomb, the Jews could have been guilty of no such oversight. … When therefore the disciples began to preach the resurrection in Jerusalem, and people responded, and the religious authorities stood helplessly by, the tomb must have been empty.  The fact that the Christian fellowship, founded on the belief in Jesus’ resurrection, could come into existence and flourish in the very city where he was executed and buried seems powerful evidence for the historicity of the empty tomb.”[12]

                                            iv.     Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb

1.     Matthew 28.11-15

¹¹Now while they were on their way, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened.  ¹²And when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, ¹³and said, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’  ¹⁴And if this should come to the governor’s ears, we will win him over and keep you out of trouble.”  ¹⁵And they took money and did as they had been instructed; and this story was widely spread among the Jews, and is to this day.

2.     “Rather the real value of Matthew’s story is the incidental—and for that reason all the more reliable—information that Jewish polemic never denied that the tomb was empty, but instead tried to explain it away.  Thus the early opponents of the Christians themselves bear witness to the fact of the empty tomb.”[13]

                                              v.     No tomb veneration

1.     “A further strong consideration in favour of the empty tomb reports being regarded as rooted in historical fact is the absence of any tomb veneration in earliest Christianity.  We know that it was quite customary at the time of Jesus for devotees to meet at the tomb of the dead prophet for worship.  The practice is reflected in Matt. 23.29 (‘you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous’).  And it continues to today in the veneration accorded to the tombs of Abraham in Hebron and of David in Jerusalem.  Jesus the Evidence [a 1984 British documentary] provided fascinating footage of the worship still practised at the tomb of the lesser known near contemporary of Jesus, the charismatic rabbi, Honi, ‘the circle-drawer’.”

2.     “This strange silence, exceptional in view of the religious practice of the time, has only one obvious explanation.  The first Christians did not regard the place where Jesus had been laid as having any special significance because no grave was thought to contain Jesus’ earthly remains.  The tomb was not venerated, it did not become a place of pilgrimage, because the tomb was empty!”[14]

                                            vi.     Naturalistic explanations for empty tomb fail[15]

1.     Conspiracy theory

a.     Morally implausible: disciples not charlatans/hoaxers

b.     Psychologically implausible: disciples were broken, fearful, and defeated

c.      Characteristically implausible: changed lives and martyrs

2.     Apparent death/swoon theory

a.     Physically implausible: Jesus was tortured and killed by highly skilled Roman soldiers

b.     Religiously implausible: a severely wounded Jesus surviving the torture and crucifixion would not evoke worship but pit and medical attention

c.      Biographically implausible: it would mean Jesus tricked the disciples and this is out of character for him

3.     Wrong tomb: women went to wrong tomb

a.     Arbitrary selection of data

b.     Others and especially opponents would have known the correct location

c.      Appearances of Jesus to many different people under different circumstances

                                               i.     “New Testament historians concur that the disciples experienced something that made them believe that Jesus had risen from death to life.  The point in question is how to explain the disciple’s encounters with the resurrected Jesus.”[16]

Note: Gary R. Habermas, “Resurrection Research From 1975 to the Present: What Are Critical Scholars Saying?” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3.2 (2005), 135-153.

i.                Looks at over 2000 scholarly publications on Jesus’ death and resurrection in German, French, and English.

ii.              “From considerations such as the research areas above, perhaps the single most crucial development has emerged.  With few exceptions, the fact that after Jesus’ death his followers had experiences that they thought were appearances of the risen Jesus is arguably one of the two or three most recognized events from the four Gospels, along with Jesus’ central proclamation of the Kingdom of God and his death by crucifixion.  Few critical scholars reject the notion that, after Jesus’ death the early Christians had real experiences of some sort.”[17]

                                              ii.     Appearances of risen Jesus

1.     Women

a.     “The fact that women are chosen for the first appearance and not the male disciples lends credibility to this incident.  It would seem purposeless to make unqualified women the first witnesses of the risen Jesus, were this not the case.  In fact Paul’s formula and Luke may well omit them because of their lack of legal status.  So why have such a story at all?  Any conceivable purpose for such an appearance would have been better served by, say, an appearance to Peter at the tomb.  That Christ appears first to the women therefore speaks in favor of its historicity.”[18]

2.     Peter

a.     Attested in early formula from c. AD 33-36 that Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15.3-5.

3.     Twelve

a.     Attested in early formula from c. AD 33-36 that Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15.3-5.

4.     500 disciples

a.     Attested in early formula from c. AD 33-36 that Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15.3-5.

b.     “Why does Paul add this remark?  The great NT scholar of Cambridge University, C. H. Dodd, replies, ‘There can hardly be any purpose in mentioning the fact that most of the 500 are still alive, unless Paul is saying, in effect, “The witnesses are there to be questioned.”’  Notice: Paul could never have said this if the event had not occurred.  He could not have challenged people to ask the witnesses if the event had never taken place and there were not witnesses.  But evidently there were witnesses to this event, and Paul knew that some of them had died in the meantime.  Therefore, the event must have taken place.”[19]

5.     James (Jesus’ brother)

a.     Attested in early formula from c. AD 33-36 that Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15.3-5.

b.     James was not a believer during Jesus’ ministry: Mark 3.21, 31; 6.3-4; John 7.5.

c.      Subsequently found to be a leader in the church: Acts 15.12-21; Galatians 1.19).

d.     Suffers martyrdom for his faith in the risen Jesus.

e.     “Given James’s antipathy to Jesus during his lifetime and his leadership of the church thereafter, it seems very plausible that his turnabout was due to a resurrection appearance of Jesus to him.  Paul’s personal contact with James in Jerusalem in AD 36 and his naming James in the list of witnesses makes this a firm conclusion.”[20]

6.     Paul

a.     An antagonistic opponent of Christianity

b.     Conversion and martyrdom 

d.     Origin of the disciple’s belief in the resurrection

                                               i.     What caused this belief?

                                              ii.     “R. H. Fuller points out, even the most sceptical critic must posit some mysterious X to get the movement going.  But the question is, what was that X?”[21]

                                            iii.     Belief is very early: not enough time for legend to develop

                                            iv.     Not from Christian influences: no Christianity yet!

                                              v.     Not from Pagan influences

1.     Sometimes alleged that there were many “dying-rising” gods in the ancient world and that Christianity could have borrowed or been influenced by them.

2.     “First, most scholars now agree that Fraser’s classification of ‘dying and raising gods’ is largely a scholarly construct that is not born out of the actual historical evidence.  Ironically, one of the leading voices among those who continue to champion a Greco-Roman oriented history of religions approach to early Christianity—Jonathan Z. Smith—has also been a leading voice in proclaiming the demise of the ‘dying and rising gods’ thesis.  In his well-known article ‘Dying and Rising Gods,’ Smith concludes: ‘The category of dying and rising gods, once a major topic of scholarly investigation, must now be understood to have been largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts.’  This rejection of the existence of a ‘dying and rising gods’ pattern among ancient Mediterranean religions has become a virtual consensus over the last half century.  And, obviously, if there is no identifiable concept of ‘dying and rising gods,’ then the Christian claims about Jesus can hardly be indebted to them.”[22]

                                            vi.     Not from Jewish influences

1.     Jewish view of resurrection:

a.     At the end of history

b.     Of all the righteous or of all people

c.      No notion of a resurrection of an individual within history

2.     Concept of “translation” to heaven vs. resurrection

Responses to the Resurrection

1.     Hallucination explanations

a.     Increasing use of this concept in arguments against the resurrection

b.     “The Resurrection of Jesus: A Clinical Review of Psychiatric Hypotheses for the Biblical Story of Easter” Joseph W. Bergeron and Gary R. Habermas Irish Theological Journal 80.2 (2015), 157-172.

                                               i.     Look at three different kinds of psychiatric hypotheses

1.     Hallucinations

2.     Conversion disorders

3.     Bereavement-related visions

                                              ii.     “Based on a comprehensive Pubmed search of medical literature regarding Jesus’ disciples and related topics from 1918 to 2012, psychiatric hypotheses for the disciples’ post-crucifixion experiences of Jesus are not be found in peer-reviewed medical literature.”[23]

c.      Hallucinations: three types of causes

                                               i.     Psychophysiologic

1.     Due to alteration of brain structure and function

2.     Tumors, midbrain strokes, localized dysfunction of brain structures

                                              ii.     Psychobiochemical

1.     Due to neurotransmitter disturbances

2.     Toxicity, drug effects, withdrawal, metabolic disturbances, infections

                                            iii.     Psychodynamic

1.     Arising from intrusion of the unconscious into the conscious mind

2.     Mental illnesses like schizophrenia

d.     Hallucinations are private experiences

                                               i.     Cannot explain simultaneous group encounters

                                              ii.     “The wide variety of times and places that Jesus appeared, along with the differing mindsets of the witnesses, is another formidable obstacle.  The accounts of men and women, hard-headed and soft-hearted alike, all believing that they saw Jesus, both indoors and outdoors, provide an insurmountable barrier for hallucinations.  The odds that each person would be in precisely the proper and same frame of mind to experience a hallucination, even individually, decrease exponentially.”[24]

e.     Collective hallucinations

                                               i.     “…such an explanation is far outside mainstream clinical thought. … Concordantly, the concept of collective-hallucination is not found in peer reviewed medical and psychological literature.”[25]

                                              ii.     “Again, it is important to note that simultaneous identical collective hallucinations are not found in peer-reviewed medical literature, and there is no mention of such phenomena in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [5^th ed.].”[26]

                                            iii.     Those who have argued for the possibility of collective hallucinations note that a sense of “expectation” and “emotional excitement” would be required.[27]

1.     Does not fit the profile of the disciples or unbelievers who came to believe in the appearances of Jesus (James and Paul).

2.     If there was an expectation within some their Jewish context would have led them to interpret their experience not as a resurrection appearance but as a translation of Jesus into the heavenly realm.

f.      Conclusions

“The proposed hallucination hypotheses are naïve in the light of medical and psychiatric pathognomic considerations.  Those suffering illnesses characterized by hallucination are sick.  They require medical and psychosocial support, a structured environment, pharmacological support, and behavioural treatment.  Persons suffering from psychosis in Jesus’ time, not having benefit of modern medical treatment, might well be considered lunatics or demon possessed (e.g., Matt 4:24).  They would be unlikely candidates to organize as a group and implement the rapid and historic widespread expansion of the Christian religion during the first century.

“In considering the possible etiologies of hallucinations, we have seen that neither the predominant Jewish view of the bodily resurrection, nor the situations, actions, and characteristics of the New Testament apostles themselves, fit typically-observed medical and psychological phenomena.  This would especially be the case with those who prior to these appearances did not venerate Jesus as other than a misguided common man, such as Paul and probably James the brother of Jesus thought.  Further, if Jesus’ tomb had been found empty, as a majority of scholars now concur was the case, this would be an additional factor counting against a purely psychiatric hypothesis for the biblical account of Easter.”[28]

2.     “Anything but the resurrection!”

a.     Again, the issue of worldviews comes to expression.

b.     In responding to a debate on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus between Gary Habermas and Antony Flew, Charles Hartshorne claims…

“I can neither explain away the evidences to which Habermas appeals, nor can I simply agree with Flew’s or Hume’s positions.”

“My metaphysical bias is against resurrections.”[29]

---

     [1] Nicholas Kristof, “Reverend, You Say the Virgin Birth Is ‘a Bizarre Claim’?” The New York Times April 20, 2019—online: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/opinion/sunday/christian-easter-serene-jones.html.

     [2] Wolfhart Pannenberg in Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, Gary Habermas and Antony Flew, edited by Terry L. Miethe (San Francisco, Cal.: Harper and Row, 1987), 130

     [3] J. P. Moreland and Kai Nielson, Does God Exist? The Great Debate (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 1990), 64.

     [4] Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2010), 156.

     [5] Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2010), 156.

     [6] Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2010), 157.

     [7] The basic idea is that the existence of God is needed to make philosophical sense of basic features of reality.  In chapter four of his book Why Should I Believe Christianity (Christian Focus, 2016) James Anderson briefly examines six fundamental features of our world that “we take for granted in our lives and explain[s] why we need God in order to make sense of that thing.”  The features Anderson looks at are: existence, values, morality, reason, mind, and science.  For more developed argumentation on science and its dependence on God see James Anderson, “The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God: The Theological Foundation of Modern Science” Reformed Faith and Practice vol. 4, issue 1, May 2019—online: https://journal.rts.edu/article/the-laws-of-nature-and-of-natures-god-the-theological-foundations-of-modern-science/.  Also see my essay “Why Science Needs God: Analyzing the Religion and Science Conflict” Christian Post January 12, 2019—online: https://www.academia.edu/38140780/Why_Science_Needs_God_Analyzing_the_Religion_and_Science_Conflict.

     [8] Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2010), 159-160.

     [9] Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2010), 134.

     [10] Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2010), 163.

     [11] William Lane Craig, “On Doubts About the Resurrection” Modern Theology 6:1 (1989), 59.

     [12] William Lane Craig, “On Doubts About the Resurrection” Modern Theology 6:1 (1989), 59-60.

     [13] William Lane Craig, “The Guard at the Tomb” New Testament Studies 30 (1984), 279.  Craig also provides argumentation for the historical reliability of the entire episode as narrated in Matthew’s Gospel.  Article available online: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/historical-jesus/the-guard-at-the-tomb/.

     [14] James D. G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Philadelphia, Penn.: Westminster Press, 1985), 67-68.

     [15] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1994), 278-280.

     [16] Joseph W. Bergeron and Gary R. Habermas “The Resurrection of Jesus: A Clinical Review of Psychiatric Hypotheses for the Biblical Story of Easter” Irish Theological Journal 80 (2015), 2.  Page numbers here are to online version available here:

     [17] Gary R. Habermas, “Resurrection Research From 1975 to the Present: What Are Critical Scholars Saying?” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3.2 (2005), 149.

     [18] William Lane Craig, “On Doubts About the Resurrection” Modern Theology 6:1 (1989), 63.

     [19] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1994), 282.

     [20] William Lane Craig, “On Doubts About the Resurrection” Modern Theology 6:1 (1989), 63-64.

     [21] William Lane Craig, “On Doubts About the Resurrection” Modern Theology 6:1 (1989), 68.

     [22] Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd, The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2007), 142-143.  Also see the online article by Ronald Nash “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?” http://www.equip.org/PDF/DB109.pdf.

     [23] Joseph W. Bergeron and Gary R. Habermas, “The Resurrection of Jesus: A Clinical Review of Psychiatric Hypotheses for the Biblical Story of Easter” Theological Journal 80.2 (2015), 3—page numbers are to online version: http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/irish-theological-quarterly/Habermas_Resurrection%20of%20Jesus.pdf.

[24] Gary R. Habermas, “Explaining Away Jesus’ Resurrection: The Recent Revival of Hallucination Theories” Christian Research Journal 23.4 (2001), 5—page numbers are to online version: http://www.equip.org/PDF/DJ923.pdf.

     [25] Joseph W. Bergeron and Gary R. Habermas, “The Resurrection of Jesus: A Clinical Review of Psychiatric Hypotheses for the Biblical Story of Easter” Theological Journal 80.2 (2015), 7-8.

     [26] Joseph W. Bergeron and Gary R. Habermas, “The Resurrection of Jesus: A Clinical Review of Psychiatric Hypotheses for the Biblical Story of Easter” Theological Journal 80.2 (2015), 9.

     [27] Gary R. Habermas, “Explaining Away Jesus’ Resurrection: The Recent Revival of Hallucination Theories” Christian Research Journal 23.4 (2001), 3.

     [28] Joseph W. Bergeron and Gary R. Habermas, “The Resurrection of Jesus: A Clinical Review of Psychiatric Hypotheses for the Biblical Story of Easter” Theological Journal 80.2 (2015), 11-12.

     [29] Charles Hartshorne in Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, Gary Habermas and Antony Flew, edited by Terry L. Miethe (San Francisco, Cal.: Harper and Row, 1987), 142.