Tag Archives: Christianity

Podcasts

German historian Jurgen Speiss outlines a case for the resurrection of Jesus

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A prominent German scholar defends the resurrection. (H/T Apologetics 315)

The MP3 file is here.

Speaker info:

Dr Jürgen Spiess is the founder and director of the “Institute of Science and Faith” (www.iguw.de) in Marburg/Germany. He studied at the University of Munich, where he  took a  PhD in Ancient History (with the subsidiary subjects “Egyptology” and “Philosophy of History”).

For fifteen years, he acted as General Secretary of SMD (IFES-Germany).  He is author and editor of books and articles including the subjects; F.M. Dostoevsky, C.S. Lewis, Medical Ethics, Science and Faith, The Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and Christian Apologetics. He lectured at many European universities in Russia (St. Petersburg, Novosobirsk, Irkutsk, Tomsk) Ukraine and Georgia. He is a member of the “German Dostoevsky Society” and the “Inklings Society.” He lost his first family (wife and child) by a car accident. He is married again and has one daughter.

Topics:

  • How did Jurgen become a Christian?
  • What is Jurgen’s academic background?
  • Can science detect historical miracles?
  • How history is more like legal work
  • the difference between what is plausible and what happened
  • what are the earliest and best sources for the life of Jesus?
  • are the authors of the New Testament trying to write history?
  • how Luke and Acts is based on eyewitnesses and Luke’s experiences
  • when were the gospels written?
  • how the destruction of Jerusalem helps us to date the sources
  • how early are the earliest extant manuscript fragments?
  • how early are the earliest extant complete manuscripts?
  • how good is the evidence for the empty tomb?
  • the significance of women discovering the empty tomb
  • did Jews expect that one person alone would rise before all?
  • if the tomb was not empty, why didn’t anyone produce the body?
  • the appearances are in the gospels, Acts and 1 Cor 15:3-7
  • 1 Cor 15:3-7 was received by Paul 1-6 years after Jesus’ death
  • 1 Cor was written in 55 A.D. by Paul
  • the disciples had to have an experience to change their lives
  • what does the resurrection mean to Christians today?

There is a period of (hostile) Q&A at the end of the lecture.

You can also read more about the European Leadership Forum.

Further study

The top 10 links to help you along with your learning.

  1. How every Christian can learn to explain the resurrection of Jesus to others
  2. The earliest source for the minimal facts about the resurrection
  3. The earliest sources for the empty tomb narrative
  4. Who were the first witnesses to the empty tomb?
  5. Did the divinity of Jesus emerge slowly after many years of embellishments?
  6. What about all those other books that the Church left out the Bible?
  7. Assessing Bart Ehrman’s case against the resurrection of Jesus
  8. William Lane Craig debates radical skeptics on the resurrection of Jesus
  9. Did Christianity copy from Buddhism, Mithraism or the myth of Osiris?
  10. Quick overview of N.T. Wright’s case for the resurrection

Debates are a fun way to learn

Two debates where you can see this play out:

Or you can listen to my favorite debate on the resurrection.

Extra stuff

Stand to Reason has a post featuring Mike Licona discussing Ehrman.

Polemics

Why doesn’t God show us more evidence for his existence?

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Have you ever heard someone say that if God existed, he would give us more evidence? This is called the “hiddenness of God” argument. It’s also known as the argument from “rational non-belief”.

Basically the argument is something like this:

  1. God is all powerful
  2. God is all loving
  3. God wants all people to know about him
  4. Some people don’t know about him
  5. Therefore, there is no God.

You may hear have heard this argument before, when talking to atheists, as in William Lane Craig’s debate with Theodore Drange, (audio, video).

Basically, the atheist is saying that he’s looked for God real hard and that if God were there, he should have found him by now. After all, God can do anything he wants that’s logically possible, and he wants us to know that he exists. To defeat the argument we need to find a possible explanation of why God would want to remain hidden when our eternal destination depends on our knowledge of his existence.

What reason could God have for remaining hidden?

Dr. Michael Murray, a brilliant professor of philosophy at Franklin & Marshall College, has found a reason for God to remain hidden.

His paper on divine hiddenness is here:
“Coercion and the Hiddenness of God“, American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol 30, 1993.

He argues that if God reveals himself too much to people, he takes away our freedom to make morally-significant decisions, including responding to his self-revelation to us. Murray argues that God stays somewhat hidden, so that he gives people space to either 1) respond to God, or 2) avoid God so we can keep our autonomy from him. God places a higher value on people having the free will to respond to him, and if he shows too much of himself he takes away their free choice to respond to him, because once he is too overt about his existence, people will just feel obligated to belief in him in order to avoid being punished.

But believing in God just to avoid punishment is NOT what God wants for us. If it is too obvious to us that God exists and that he really will judge us, then people will respond to him and behave morally out of self-preservation. But God wants us to respond to him out of interest in him, just like we might try to get to know someone we admire. God has to dial down the immediacy of the threat of judgment, and the probability that the threat is actual. That leaves it up to us to respond to God’s veiled revelation of himself to us, in nature and in Scripture.

(Note: I think that we don’t seek God on our own, and that he must take the initiative to reach out to us and draw us to him. But I do think that we are free to resist his revelation, at which point God stops himself short of coercing our will. We are therefore responsible for our own fate).

The atheist’s argument is a logical/deductive argument. It aims to show that there is a contradiction between God’s will for us and his hiding from us. In order to derive a contradiction, God MUST NOT have any possible reason to remain hidden. If he has a reason for remaining hidden that is consistent with his goodness, then the argument will not go through.

When Murray offers a possible reason for God to remain hidden in order to allow people to freely respond to him, then the argument is defeated. God wants people to respond to him freely so that there is a genuine love relationship – not coercion by overt threat of damnation. To rescue the argument, the atheist has to be able to prove that God could provide more evidence of his existence without interfering with the free choice of his creatures to reject him.

People choose to separate themselves from God for many reasons. Maybe they are professors in academia and didn’t want to be thought of as weird by their colleagues. Maybe they didn’t want to be burdened with traditional morality when tempted by some sin, especially sexual sin. Maybe their fundamentalist parents ordered them around too much without providing any reasons. Maybe the brittle fundamentalist beliefs of their childhood were exploded by evidence for micro-evolution or New Testament manuscript variants. Maybe they wanted something really bad, that God did not give them. How could a good God allow them to suffer like that?

The point is that there a lot of people who don’t want to know God, and God chooses not to violate their freedom by forcing himself on them. God wants a relationship – he wants you to respond to him. (See Matthew 7:7-8) For those people who don’t want to know him, he allows them to speculate about unobservable entities like the multiverse. He allows them to think that all religions are the same and that there is nothing special about Christianity. He allows them to believe that God has no plan for those who never hear about Jesus. He allows them to be so disappointed because of some instance of suffering that they reject him. God doesn’t force people to love him.

More of Michael Murray’s work

Murray has defended the argument in works published by prestigious academic presses such as Cambridge University Press, (ISBN: 0521006104, 2001) and Routledge (ISBN: 0415380383, 2007). The book chapter from the Cambridge book is here.  The book chapter from the Routledge book is here.

Michael Murray’s papers are really fun to read, because he uses hilarious examples. (But I disagree with his view that God’s work of introducing biological information in living creatures has to be front-loaded).

Here’s more terrific stuff from Dr. Murray:

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Mentoring

Paul Copan discusses tactics for preaching the gospel

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This article talks about 10 factors related to talking about sin (bad news) during evangelism. (H/T Apologetics 315)

Here’s one factor from his list that I’m a little uncomfortable with:

2.  I have met plenty of “the encountered” who report that those who “witness” by telling the bad news first commonly come across as judgmental, legalistic, arrogant, scolding, and morally superior.  Yes, rebels against God love darkness rather than light.  Does this mean we never mention the need to turn away from the lifestyle of the spiritually dead?  Not at all.  (See the comments on idolatry below.)  Our consciously taking on Paul’s chief-of-sinners title would go a long way in building bridges.  In the words of the evangelist D. T. Niles, we are like one beggar telling another where to find bread.  We should remember that friendship commonly helps lower defenses and helps create a context for people to connect with the gospel.

I believe in objective morality, so I like it if someone who is morally superior to me judges me and scolds me. I’m ok with that. What’s the big deal? It’s only annoying to be judged if you’re a relativist. I think it’s fun to be judged. FUN!

And here’s one that I agree with:

5.  How many of us came to trust in Christ because a stranger told us that we were sinners?  While this certainly occurs, we more likely turned to Christ through believing friends or relatives who modeled an attractive, redeemed life. Statistics reveal that up to 90% of those who have come to Christ and faithfully continue in their discipleship were introduced to the Christian faith through believing friends and relatives.  This personal connection to the gospel came through love, acceptance, and a patient modeling of the Christian faith.  (See, for example, the Arns’ The Master’s Plan for Making Disciples.)

A more recent piece of research comes from Bridge Builders’ David Bennett.  He describes how adults become Christians — which, we should remember, is typically more of a process than it is for kids at a Christian summer camp!  His survey shows that times of crisis/felt needs (death, illness) present an open door for Christian friendship; in his research, this has been the most effective means of seeing people respond to Christ.  Ninety-two percent (92%) of those surveyed first had a Christian friend before they responded to the gospel. The research showed that those who found Christ did so through a gradual process.

This article is kinda nice, gentle and Christian-y. Blech! But I thought some of you (you know who are – MARA!) would like it. Paul Copan is a great philosopher. He knows when to be mean (his response to John Dominic Crossan at the Greer-Heard Forum was fantastic!), and he knows when to be nice.

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