Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary

Report on Licona-Patterson debate on the resurrection

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This after action report was sent in by commenter Aaron as a comment to another post about the debate on the resurrection that was held last night. I apologize for the formatting!

LICONA-PATTERSON DEBATE: A BRIEF REPORT AND ANALYSIS
HELD ON 3/31/2010

A few hours ago my wife and I attended a debate on Jesus’ Resurrection between Mike Licona and Stephen Patterson (a Jesus Seminar scholar) at FSU in Tallahassee, FL. What follows is a brief report and analysis of the debate.

******A BRIEF REPORT

I. Opening

A. Licona presents 5 facts (taken solely from Paul’s undisputed writings) and 4 criteria (method) for concluding that Jesus was physically raised from the dead.

5 Facts
1. Paul was an eyewitness (hostile).
2. Paul knew Jesus’ disciples.
3. Paul taught what the disciples taught.
4. They taught appearances to individuals and groups, to friend and foe alike.
5. They and Paul taught Jesus was physically raised.

4 Criteria
1. Explanatory Scope
2. Explanatory Power
3. Less Ad Hoc
4. Plausibility

The Resurrection hypothesis passes numbers 1, 2, and 3 with flying colors; and it neither passes nor fails number 4 (plausibility).

B. Patterson claims he believes in Jesus’ resurrection, but he does not believe that God raised Jesus physically. For Patterson the bottom line of the debate is whether or not the dead Jesus got resuscitated.

-When Paul uses “according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3-4), he meant God cares for his people according to Hebrew Scriptures. In Jewish terms, resurrection meant “vindication.”

-Patterson asks, “How did Jesus appear to Paul?” and quotes Gal. 1:16, stating that God reveals His Son “in me” (Greek: en emoi), not “to me.”

-“Flesh and blood cannot enter God’s kingdom” (1 Cor. 15:50) contradicts “flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39) of Jesus’ getting back to God’s kingdom. Therefore, it follows that Paul did not believe in physical resurrection of Jesus.

-The ancient may believe a person comes back to life and then goes to heaven, but we—the modern man—no longer believe this because our worldview does not allow it.

II. First Rebuttal

A. Licona reviews his facts/method and points out that Patterson disagrees with his number 5 fact, namely, Paul taught that Jesus was physically raised. Licona says:

-Patterson’s appeal to Jewish meaning of resurrection to be “vindication” is irrelevant. In fact, Patterson himself says—Licona quoting him here—that 1 Cor. 15 should be the basis for knowing the earliest Christian traditions.

-Patterson’s translation of soma psuchikon—as “physical” body—(1 Cor. 15:44) is untenable, because there is zero basis for this. “Natural body” is more like it.

-“Flesh and blood” means “mortality” not “physicality.”

-Patterson’s translation of en emoi –as “in me”–(Gal. 1:16) is not strictly “in me.” Gal. 1:24 says, “And they praised God because of me [en emoi].” 1 Cor. 14:11c says, “he is a foreigner to me [en emoi].” The en emoi cannot always legitimately be translated “in me.”

B. Patterson abandons his en emoi=“to me” argument and resorts to saying that Paul’s relation with Jesus was a matter of “spiritual envelopment.”

Patterson tries to resuscitate his soma psuchikon=“physical body” argument, but he could not get it back to life.

Patterson admits that the whole debate is all about worldview. Making a reference to Licona’s fourth criteria, he finds Jesus’ physical resurrection to be implausible because he believes dead people do not come to life. Jesus’ coming to life cannot be an exception, and neither is it necessary.

III. Second Rebuttal

A. Licona reminds the audience of the two major building blocks for the resurrection: facts and method.

-Licona reiterates his points on “to me” versus “in me” and the issue on the use on some psuchikon (natural body) and soma pnematikon (spiritual body).

-Licona says Patterson’s is a worldview problem—a metaphysical bias, not a historically based argument.

B. Patterson is reduced to asking if Paul believed the way the apostles believed, since early Christian proclamation (found in the gospels) was ambiguous.

IV. Closing
A. Licona answers Patterson’s question

B. Patterson’s main conclusion was that if Licona’s view of Jesus’ physical resurrection makes you a better person (e.g., treating your fellow with love, etc.), then stay with it and ignore Patterson’s view.

V. Q and A Session

Only the first question, addressed to Paterson, will be mentioned here:
“Given that this is a worldview issue to you, what is your philosophical justification—since you have no historical justification—for [sic] believing that a dead person does not become alive?” Patterson answers, “Mine is a biological—not a philosophical—justification.” The questioner follows up, “What is your philosophical justification for your biological justification that people will not become alive in the future?” Patterson answered, “I think it’s a good guess.”

*******A DEBATE ANALYSIS

No doubt, Mike Licona killed Stephen Patterson here—it was embarrassing. This is perhaps Licona’s biggest win. The case for Jesus’ resurrection obtains—big time!

There were moments one could tell that Patterson was greatly rattled, and he seemed to be merely going in circles, as though at a loss as to what he was trying to say. Also, there were a few times that he sounded like he was conceding a number of points that Licona had used to demolish his arguments. Frankly, I felt bad for Patterson because he was such a very nice guy and had exercised lots of grace, despite the fiasco.

Basically, having abandoned all his initial arguments (including criticizing the gospels—straw man attack), Patterson was reduced, literally, to making a baseless assumption that “a dead person does not become alive.”

After the debate I personally spoke to Patterson and asked him, “Since you have no historical justification for believing that a dead person does not come to life, you really cannot say—as a historian—that Jesus’ resurrection is implausible.” He responded something to this effect: “Well, we have to use biology and gravity, and historians draw from these.” I said, “So then, you would be using historical justification, not merely biological justification.” His answer seemed rather incoherent, and then he said, “Well, that [biology] is all we have to work with.”

Commentary

Michelle Malkin explains how the left regularly fakes hate crimes

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Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin

Her latest column is here. (And yes, I do admire her! Duh!)

Excerpt:

If you can’t stand the heat, manufacture a hate crime epidemic.

After years of covering racial hoaxes on college campuses and victim sob stories in the public arena, I’ve encountered countless opportunists who live by that demented mindset. At best, the fakers are desperately seeking 15 minutes of infamy. At worst, their aim is the criminalization of political dissent.

Upon decimating the deliberative process to hand President Obama a health care “reform” victory, unpopular Beltway Democrats and their media water-carriers now claim there’s a Tea Party epidemic of racism, harassment, and violence against them. On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a tepid, obligatory statement against smearing all conservatives as national security threats. But her lieutenants had already emptied their tar buckets. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Chris Van Hollen blamed Republican leaders of “stoking the flames.” Democrat House Whip James Clyburn accused the GOP of “aiding and abetting” what he called “terrorism.”

Here’s an example:

In November 2009, Kentucky Census worker Bill Sparkman was found dead in a secluded rural cemetery with the word “Fed” scrawled on his chest with a rope around his neck. The Atlantic Monthly, the Huffington Post, and liberal media hosts stampeded over themselves to blame Fox News, conservative blogs, Republicans, and right-wing radio. Federal, state, and local authorities discovered that Sparkman had killed himself and deliberately concocted a hate crime hoax as part of an insurance scam to benefit his surviving son.

The article contains many more faked hate crimes conducted by the left to smear conservatives. A substantial portion of people on the left thinks that anyone who disagrees with them is a terrorist. And if evidence is not available to substantiate that claim, then it just has to be manufactured. By the left.

The mainstream news media is more than willing to run with the lies. After all, CNN thinks that a tea party rally of thousands of people actually drew a few dozen people, (check the photos – is that “a few dozen people” like the CNN woman said?). It’s not like the lamestream media is there to tell the truth – they’re leftists. And they ignore real hate crimes committed against conservatives. All the news that fits… they print.

By the way, ECM sent me this article from the American Spectator a few days ago. It talks about Jewish Republican Eric Cantor’s campaign headquarters getting shot up (with real guns and real bullets). The point of the article is that the religious left had nothing to say about attacks on the wrong kinds of victims. If you’re a Jewish conservative, then hate crimes just don’t happen to you! They can’t, because only secular leftists can be victims of hate, see? So just keep in mind that reports of hate crimes have to be taken with a grain of salt.

Commentary

The bigger the government, the smaller the person

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An article from Dennis Prager in Front Page Magazine. (H/T Muddling Towards Maturity)

Excerpt:

The need to be needed is universal. Men need it; women need it. The sexes may feel needed in different ways, but the depth of the need is the same. Many women feel particularly alive when needed by their young children; many men feel worthy when needed by their family and/or their work.

[…]Only when we are needed do we believe we have significance. Give a boy a special task — just about any task — and he blossoms. Give a girl a person — in fact, almost any living being — who depends on her, and she blossoms.

[…]As I regularly note, the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. One can add: The bigger the government, the less significant the citizen — especially men.

This is easy to explain because it is definitional. The more the state does, the less its citizens are needed to do. One well-known example is the way welfare robbed so many men of significance when women and their children came to depend financially on the state.

And it goes further than that. In order to feel significant, men not only need to have others depend on them, they also need to depend on themselves, on their own work and initiative. But that, too, is destroyed as the state gets bigger. Fewer and fewer people work for themselves (which leads to, among other things, the disappearance of that quintessentially American ideal of the risk-taking entrepreneur).

It gets worse. As being needed and significant shifts from the individual to the state, the state increasingly determines who is needed and who has significance.

Prager goes on to explain three groups who have increasing influence as government grows – politicians, news media, and intellectuals.

Mark Steyn has more to say about the decline of the West. (H/T Muddling Towards Maturity)

Excerpt:

Is America set for decline? It’s been a grand run. The country’s been the leading economic power since it overtook Britain in the 1880s. That’s impressive. Nevertheless, over the course of that century and a quarter, Detroit went from the world’s industrial powerhouse to an urban wasteland, and the once-golden state of California atrophied into a land of government run by the government for the government. What happens when the policies that brought ruin to Detroit and sclerosis to California become the basis for the nation at large? Strictly on the numbers, the United States is in the express lane to Declinistan: unsustainable entitlements, the remorseless governmentalization of the economy and individual liberty, and a centralization of power that will cripple a nation of this size. Decline is the way to bet. But what will ensure it is if the American people accept decline as a price worth paying for European social democracy.

Is that so hard to imagine? Every time I retail the latest indignity imposed upon the “citizen” by some or other Continental apparatchik, I receive e-mails from the heartland pointing out, with much reference to the Second Amendment, that it couldn’t happen here because Americans aren’t Euro-weenies. But nor were Euro-weenies once upon a time. Hayek’s greatest insight in The Road to Serfdom is psychological: “There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought,” he wrote with an immigrant’s eye on the Britain of 1944. “It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer are precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally agreed to excel. The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one’s neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority.” Two-thirds of a century on, almost every item on the list has been abandoned, from “independence and self-reliance” (40 percent of people receive state handouts) to “a healthy suspicion of power and authority” — the reflex response now to almost any passing inconvenience is to demand the government “do something,” the cost to individual liberty be damned. American exceptionalism would have to be awfully exceptional to suffer a similar expansion of government and not witness, in enough of the populace, the same descent into dependency and fatalism. As Europe demonstrates, a determined state can change the character of a people in the space of a generation or two. Look at what the Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population: That’s what happened in Britain.

Could it happen here?