Transcription
Welcome to the Midweek “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Frank Turk. I’ve got a pretty lengthy question I want to get to today.
By the way, if you want to send in questions, send questions to hello@crossexamined.org. hello@crossexamined.org. Also, if you go to our website, we’re taking a survey on our website for the podcast. We want to make sure that uh, we’re covering topics that you want to hear about that are relevant to apologetics, theology, philosophy, and so we’ve taken a survey via email, but uh, you may have missed the email. If you go to our website and you go to the homepage and you look down on the right-hand side of the homepage, you will see a little uh window. Hang on, let me find it myself. I thought I had it here just a minute ago, but now I don’t. Um, on the homepage, down on the right—I’m looking, of course, at the desktop version—there should be a little a little button or a little… there it is! It’s a little link that says “Podcast Survey.” If you go there, click on that, just to answer a few questions for us, and you might suggest somebody you want me to have on the podcast or a topic you want me to cover, and uh, we’ll take that under consideration. We already just did a podcast uh earlier, just this past one, with Bill Federer on the Crusades because someone said, “Hey, I haven’t heard much about the Crusades; why don’t we talk about the Crusades?” So we did, in the last podcast. So if you want to put your two cents in, go to cross-examined.org.
Okay, this question comes in from a guy that wants to remain anonymous, and he says this: He says, “I’ve been a Christian for a long time, so this question is not ‘if Jesus is God.’ However, I have a question about the resurrection. My question is, why did he only appear to the disciples and 500 people? I know that he had thousands of followers and then the rest of Israel as a whole. So why not walk down the street and show everyone, including the Pharisees, that he was alive?”
Before I continue with his question, I want to point out something that a lot of people uh just kind of skim over when they look at uh the book of Acts. When you’re reading in the book of Acts, if you go to Acts chapter 6, let’s just take a look at Acts chapter 6 for a second, because as our questioner rightfully points out, he says that thousands of people believe in in that Jesus has risen from the dead very shortly after he’s alleged to have risen from the dead. Well, why didn’t he just walk down the street and convince everybody he had risen from the dead? Well, check out this verse in in chapter six. In fact, let me just read the first seven verses. And as you know, as I’ve said before in this program, there are no verses in the Bible; the verses were added 500 years ago to help us navigate the text, which is really important, but uh, it helps us find things in the Bible, but sometimes we just pull a verse out of context and we’re not really understanding what it means. So let me make sure I get the context here. This is chapter six. You know, the book of Acts is sometimes called the book of the activities; it’s basically the spread of the church from about 33 AD when Jesus resurrected to about 62 AD when it appears that Paul is under house arrest in Rome. It ends abruptly with Paul under house arrest in Ro—at in Rome. It seems like that’s about the time that that Luke must have written this, because he ends it with Paul under house arrest in Rome; doesn’t mention anything about his execution. So it’s quite obvious this was written prior to his execution; doesn’t even mention the execution of Peter either. The two main two main characters in the book of Acts are—their death isn’t mentioned. But you get the deaths of other people, like Stephen, which happens to be here in Acts chap chapter 6, and James, the brother of John, son of Zebedee, in chapter 12 of Acts, but no mention of the two main characters of the book of Acts, Peter and Paul, which is telling us this is probably written by 62 AD. So it’s basically the first 30 years of the church, and here’s what it says uh in Acts chap 6: It says, “In those days when the number of the disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of f of food. So the TW gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and we’ll give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.’” Let me stop right here. Okay, this is—this makes sense. People have different gifts in the body, and not everybody can do everything. We need people to wait on tables; we also need people to do other kinds of ministry, like teaching and helping people who who need uh ministry attention. So not everybody can do everything. In verse five here of chapter 6, it says this: “This proposal about selecting seven men to wait tables essentially pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith in the Holy Spirit, also Philip, and several others. They presented these men to the apostles who prayed and laid hands on them. So the word of God spread.” This is verse seven now. Now listen to this very carefully: “The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.” What? Yeah, a large number of priests became obedient to the faith. How so? Doesn’t say, but quite obviously Luke is telling the truth here, because if he wasn’t, the Jews would have completely discredited Luke by saying, “What priests? None of the none of our priests have become obedient to the faith.” This must have really happened. If it hadn’t happened, the people in the know would say, “You’re lying, Luke; you’re discrediting yourself by saying priests.” Pharisee priests are probably part of this; maybe not the Sadducees, because you see the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection; that’s why they were Saddu—you’ll never forget that. Pharisees did believe in a resurrection, of the possibility of a resurrection, so perhaps they would have been more open to it. And Luke is saying here, “A large number became obedient to the faith.” How did they become obedient? Doesn’t say directly. Might Jesus have appeared to some of them? Maybe. Does the New Testament record everything Jesus said and did? No, it couldn’t. In fact, John even says, “If I tried to record everything Jesus said and did, there wouldn’t be enough books in the world to contain it all.” Obviously hyperbole, but he’s pointing out we can’t record everything. So we don’t know if Jesus appeared to certain priests, or maybe just the witness of the Holy Spirit and the eyewitness accounts of people that had seen Jesus, which which which was over 500, convinced them.
All right, anyway, our questioner goes on and says this, after he said, you know, “Why did he not walk down the street, Jesus that is, and appear to the Pharisees when he’s alive?” The questioner says, “My initial answer to myself is, well, the Pharisees would find a reason not to believe it and say he wasn’t really risen from the dead the first time or something along those lines.” Let me stop again. That’s true of probably some of them, but certainly not all of them, because Acts 6:7 is telling them many of them became believers. Anyway, the questioner goes on, “Jesus doesn’t need to prove anything either. However, I’m sure more than 500 believers would have wanted to see him at least. This question doesn’t rock my faith, but it does seem odd to me that he wouldn’t have shown himself to more than that, so I do wrestle with it, and any insight would help. I just don’t understand why he didn’t show himself more.” And he says, “Thank thank you.”
Okay, this is a great question, and this is uh also been termed the hiddenness of God question: Why is God so hidden? And by the way, I think this is one of the more challenging objections that skeptics and atheists bring forward, because it’s certainly true that God could be more overt if he wanted to. I mean, if he does exist, he certainly could be more overt than he he is. And so this is a fair question that atheists ask. But I pause here to point this out: The hiddenness of God question does not negate the evidence we already have for God, and we’ve been through it many times on this program: The argument from the beginning of the universe, the cosmological argument, which seems Seems to show that we have a spaceless, Timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal, intelligent first cause; the fine tuning of the art of of the universe, which seems to show that this first cause is supremely intelligent and has fine-tuned this universe to such extreme precision that if any one of a number of factors—hundreds of them actually—either about our universe or the solar system were slightly different, either the universe wouldn’t exist or if it did, it couldn’t support life. This appears to be a put-up job, as agnostic uh physicist Paul Davies says. I mean, the whole universe appears to be designed, and if it’s designed, there must be a designer. Now Davies doesn’t know if it’s God, but as an agnostic, he’s saying it sure looks like it’s designed. Life itself appears appears to be the product of intelligence; certainly the genetic code that is in every living thing in our cells—a 3.2 billion letter software program is in every one of your 40 trillion cells—that appears to be the product of intelligence. Why? Because everywhere we see a message, in all of our experience, the message always comes from a mind; it doesn’t come from natural forces. So we’re not arguing from what we don’t know; it’s not a god-of-the-gaps argument to say there must be intelligence out there. We’re arguing from what we do know: Whenever we see a message, it always points back to a mind, and every living thing has a uh a message that is is miles and miles long if you would have put it—lay it all out—it’s just incredible when you look at the DNA of every living thing. And that’s just one aspect of the design of life; DNA is only one; there are many other aspects as well. Also the fact that there are objective moral values and obligations—that we’re obligated to love and not hate, that we’re obligated to do good and not evil, and that good and evil actually exist—is evidence; there’s just a standard out there, and that standard is what we mean by God’s nature. Also the transcendental argument, which has to do with the fact that there are these laws of logic and laws of mathematics out there; these are not made of molecules, and our our very ability to reason and to know the truth outside of our skulls shows that there is some kind of intelligence out there; that this is better explained by a mind; it certainly can’t be explained by molecules in motion, which is the a atheistic viewpoint. So this points to some kind of God as well; it doesn’t mean it’s the Christian God, but if Jesus has risen from the dead, it turns out to be the Christian God. All we’re saying is is that there’s evidence out there for a mind, a Divine mind, and the transcendental argument and our ability to reason is better explained by some some being like God than molecules in motion. Then, of course, the evidence for Jesus’ prophecy, the resurrection, his other miracles, the eyewitness testimony related to that. So even though the hiddenness of God question is a good question, even if we have no answers to why God isn’t more overt than he is, we already have sufficient evidence to believe in God from these arguments, and the hiddenness of God does not negate the evidence for or that we already have, as we pointed out before. We know God by his his effects. If there’s a creation, that’s an effect; we reason back to a cause, a Creator. If there’s design, that’s the effect; we reason back to a cause, a designer. If there’s a moral law written on the heart, that’s the effect; we reason back to a cause, a moral lawgiver. If you have the capacity to reason and to know truth outside your skull, that’s the effect; you reason back to a cause, a mind, a great mind that created our minds. If there’s evidence a man predicted and accomplished his own resurrection from the dead, that’s the effect; you reason back to somebody who could do that, who could predict and accomplish a resurrection, somebody like God. So the hiddenness of God does not defeat those arguments.
But I would ask, going back to the questioner now, if you know somebody who has an issue with the hiddenness of God, I might ask this question of that person: “If God were to show himself directly to you, would you then follow him?” And I know that there are some people who have answered that question, “No.” I mean, I asked the question, you know, “If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?” “No.” “If Jesus really rose from the dead to prove he was God and to save you from your sins, would you repent and follow him?” “No.” Peter Atkins, the Oxford-trained chemist who has debated several uh Christians, including William Lane Craig, was once asked—and during a debate with Hugh Ross actually—“If Jesus were to appear to you, would you believe in him?” He said said, “No, I would go to my psychiatrist because I was seeing a a delusion; I was seeing a hallucination of some kind.” There’s no amount of evidence that could convince him, because he doesn’t want to be convinced; it’s not a matter of the intellect, it’s a matter of the will; it’s not a matter of God’s existence, it’s a matter of his resistance. Now is this true for everybody? Of course not. But I notice that there are many people out there denying the obvious. I think it’s quite obvious there’s some kind of cause out there, certainly from just natural reality that I’ve just discussed; there is some kind of cause beyond us, some kind of intelligence beyond us. When you look at history and you see that Jesus really did rise from the dead, then you realize that that cause beyond us is the Christian God. But even if you didn’t have Jesus in history, you would know that there’s some kind of cause out there. This is natural theology. Paul says in Romans 1, “People are without excuse because they know the truth by what has been made; they know God exists by what has been made; his invisible qualities are clearly seen so that we are without excuse.” And by the way, the Ancients knew this as well; that’s why throughout history atheism has been a tiny tiny minority; why? Because people believe in cause and effect; they always believe that every effect has a cause. And in ancient days, people would say, well, you know, “My crops aren’t growing; it’s because I’m not I’m not worshiping my God rightly.” There’s a cause-and-effect relationship; they may have been misinformed about that, but the the kernel underneath the kernel of truth underneath their conclusion is true: that every effect has a cause. And to say to say effects can happen without causes is to give up all science, because that’s what science is is a search for causes. So the Ancients knew that every effect had a had a cause; they have enough revelation maybe to really figure it out completely, or maybe they were suppressing the truth about the type of cause, but they knew there had to be a Creator; they knew there had to be a designer; they knew there there there was some moral capacity to this being as well, and that’s why they would sacrifice and pay homage. And by the way, we see this uh this tendency to deny the obvious in real time. I mean, even politically, people are actually mad right now when obvious waste, fraud, and abuse is uncovered because it’s uncovered by their political enemies. You know, people, particularly the Democrats right now, are up in arms about Doge—about the department of government efficiency that Elon Musk is heading—and you would think that reasonable people would go, “Well, I’m glad you’re finding fraud, waste, and abuse.” No, they’re not glad; they’re upset; they’re upset that that we’ve discovered that we’re paying millions of dollars to create Sesame Street in Iraq, or that we’re giving millions of dollars or at least thousands of dollars for transgender plays in foreign countries like Guatemala, that we’re actually spending uh a lot of money for condoms in Gaza, and that we’ve discovered that there are millions of people—well over a hundred years old—on the Social Security roles, whether they’re getting—whether somebody’s cashing those checks or not, it’s unclear at this point, but that’s that’s been uncovered, and people are upset about it, that this is being uncovered; they don’t want anything that Trump does to succeed, even if it’s finding waste, fraud, and abuse. I mean, if Trump were to cure cancer tomorrow, there would be people protesting with signs saying, “Trump wants to put doctors out of business,” right? Because they’ve already bought in to the idea that “I don’t want Trump to succeed because I don’t like Trump or I don’t like some of his political positions,” and so they’re going to deny any kind of success; they’re going to deny it because somehow something they care about is uh is under investigation or has been exposed. I mean, follow the money. Well, sex, money, and power are three of the great tempters that can cause any of us to get off track. So when people are objecting that obvious waste, fraud, and abuse is being uncovered, you might want to ask them, “Why would you object that this is being uncovered and hopefully corrected?” Why? It’d be interesting to see the answer. I haven’t seen good arguments against this. I mean, there are people who are actually appealing to the courts to stop this, as if the executive branch does not have the ability to execute the laws that have been passed; that’s their job. Now maybe there’s a constitutional question as to whether or not money that has been appropriated by Congress can be rescinded. Okay, that’s a fair point; you might want to look at, but to expose it and to say, “Hey, this is waste, fraud, and abuse,” and for people to go, “Well, I I’m mad about this,” you go, “There’s something else going on here.” People are not actually following the evidence where it leads; they’re following what they want to be true, not what actually is true. And by the way, this this can cut all of us; it could cut me; it could cut you. You know, a lot of us just believe what we want to believe. As Pascal said, “People invariably base their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.” So we got to check all of ourselves on this very issue. Anyway, I digress. It is true that God could show show more of himself, so why doesn’t God show more of himself? Now whenever you ask a question, “Why doesn’t God do X,” whatever it is, there’s always some speculation involved. If if if in fact he doesn’t explain why he doesn’t do X, whatever X is, and in this case, why doesn’t he show himself more? Okay, that is a fair question to ask, but there’s going to be some there’s going to be some speculation involved. So let me let me let me give three speculations, and some of this is supported here by the scriptures. The first is: Do you notice that Jesus himself seems to hide his teachings from some uh, you know, he says this when he talks about parallel—when he when he explains parables? I think it’s in Matthew 13; he explains it, and he says, “Hey, I hide this from some people.” In fact, in John 15:22, he talks about uh Pharisees or unbelievers, and he says this about them: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.” He also says this in I think John chapter 9 here: Jesus is saying that those who heard his message and saw his works but still rejected him bear greater guilt because they can’t claim ignorance anymore, and here he’s referring primarily to the Pharisees and the religious leaders and others who rejected him despite this clear evidence as to who he was. They had seen his miracles, heard his teachings, and still chose to reject him. So Jesus, in hiding the truth from some people he knows are not going to accept it, is in a way doing an act of mercy, because if he had shown them too much, they’d have been even more culpable on Judgment Day. Now by saying in 15:22, “They have no sin,” he he he wouldn’t mean that they’re sinless, but that they would not be guilty of rejecting him as the Messiah because he hadn’t revealed himself as the Messiah, but now that he has, they knowingly—that they knowingly rejected the truth; they they are more culpable on Judgment Day. And I think Jesus even talks about this in Luke 12, when he—and I’m doing this from memory, and I don’t have it in front of me—but he says something like, “Um, to whom much is given, much will be required,” and he’s talking about judgment, that if you’ve been given a lot, you’ll be judged at a much higher standard than someone who hasn’t been given a lot. And so Jesus, in one way, in hiding his teachings through parables—he says, “Those that do have ears to hear will understand; those that don’t”—he is actually being merciful by hiding it. And but by the way, the Bible even says that God hides himself in Isaiah 45, I believe it is; it says, “You are the God who hides himself.” And C.S. Lewis had much to say about this; we’ll get to it in a minute. You say, “Well, why would God hide himself other than preventing people who are going to be judged at a at a greater to a greater level of culpability?” What might be another reason he might hide himself and not show his full glory?
Søren Kierkegaard—this is the second reason that I’m bringing up—Søren Kierkegaard many years ago told a parable about a young prince in his jurisdiction who sees a beautiful peasant woman, and he immediately falls in love with her. And this prince goes to his father, the King, and he says, “I really I think I found the woman I want to marry, but she’s a peasant; what do I do?” And the King says, “Son, if you go to this woman with all the trappings of the crown, you go to to her as the prince, you know, with the chariots and the guards and the trumpets and the flags, she may acquiesce to you just because she wants to one day be the queen. In other words, she might not love you for who you are but what you have, and you you can’t you can’t win her love that way, at least not fairly; she just may want to become the queen and not love you for who you are. If you really want to if you really really want to win her hand, you need to renounce the throne, go to her village as a peasant, and win her as a peer.” And that’s what he does; he renounces the throne; he goes to her into her village as a peasant, which is what he is now, and he wins her hand in marriage as an equal, as a peer. I mean, if God were to show up routinely with all of his power, would we really have the free will to say no? If God were a stalker and would appear to you all the time and say, “I’m still here; follow me,” would you really have the free will to reject him? Pascal said, “God has given us enough evidence if we’re willing to believe, but not so much evidence that we’re compelled to believe, that we can go our own way if we want to.” And I think that I think that little um parable by Kierkegaard makes some sense. Does it answer the issue completely? No, but I think it’s I think it makes some sense that yeah, if God were to overpower us with his presence, we wouldn’t have the free will that we need to have. And even prior to God creating this physical creation, you say, “How could the Angels then have made a choice? They were in the presence of God.” William Lane Craig has said he believes that God gave the Angels some distance so they could make a free choice; he called it epistemic distance, meaning they didn’t get the full complete knowledge of who God is, his complete um his complete being; they didn’t experience that; if they had, they couldn’t have gone their own way; he had to back off in order for them to make a free choice. Now this is speculation; the Bible doesn’t even really tell us other than oblique references to how Satan fell and the angels fell, but this is speculation; plausible.
All right, the third reason why God might not be as overt as we might like him to be is not only the ability to choose but our ability to grow in our current state requires some distance from God. And C.S. Lewis talks about this in the Screwtape Letters, where he says this—this is this is letter number eight: He says, “This is—this is letter number eight: He says, ‘You must have often wondered’—he’s just so you know the premise of the Screwtape Letters—the Screwtape Letters are a senior demon coaching a junior demon on how to tempt human beings, so everything is reversed in the world of Screwtape; when when he refers to the enemy, the enemy is God. Okay, so here’s what Screwtape letter number eight says: ‘You must have often wondered why the enemy, I.E., God, does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree he chooses or to to—let me start over; I’m having trouble speaking today; not good if you’re trying to do a podcast. Let me just start over. You must have often wondered why the enemy does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree he chooses, and at any moment, but you now see that the irresistible and the indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of a scheme forbids him to use. Merely to override a human will, as his felt presence in any but the faintest and the most mitigated degree would certainly do, would be useless for him. He cannot ravish; he can only woo. He cannot ravish; he can only woo.’ Now Lewis goes on to say that for certain people he did ravish; he did give more of his presence, in fact he says that a little bit later in this letter, because those people would then communicate to the rest of us through the Bible, but this is this is that that were those were special instances; God doesn’t do that continually. If he did that continually, we wouldn’t have this free will ability to go our own way. And as we’ve talked about many times on this program, there’s a difference between belief that and belief in. Belief that is getting evidence that God exists, and belief in is not only believing that he exists but trusting in him. The first is of the mind—believe that—and the second, belief in, is not just of the mind but of the will. You can know that something’s true and still not assent to it, unless it’s so overpowering that you now have no choice; you go right to belief in. This is why Paul says, ultimately, every knee is going to bow to Jesus, not in a salvific way, but everyone’s going to go, ‘Okay, yeah, he’s here.’ C.S. Lewis also put it this way: He said, ‘When the author of the play walks onto the stage, the play is over.’ In other words, right now you have the ability, as the play is going on, to make a choice whether to follow Jesus or not, but once he walks onto the stage, your ability is over; over; you’ve already made your choice; you’re either with him or you’re against him. And God gives us enough freedom so he doesn’t overpower our will when he provides evidence through nature, through Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, that is good enough to convince us he does exist, but not so overpowering that we can’t go our own way. And so we could talk more about this; in fact, I want to at some point talk about Screwtape Letter number one, because it is so good; it answers so many questions uh, but I don’t have enough time in this podcast to do that. It’s related to this, but Screwtape number one is an a masterpiece; Screwtape Letter number one is a masterpiece on why people believe what they believe and what what demons try and do to us, but I don’t have enough time to get into it at this point. But it is a great question that has been sent in. To sum it all up, we we know there’s enough evidence to believe, but not so much evidence that we don’t have uh free will to go our own way. And a lot of people don’t want Jesus to be the savior; they don’t want Jesus to be God because they do want to go their own way. “Men love darkness rather than light,” said Jesus. We suppress the truth in unrighteousness to go our own way; we want to do what we want to do, so God gives us that ability to do so without without overpowering us with his presence. So there’s a lot more we could say, and we’ll cover it at another podcast.
I do want to mention that uh we do have some more events coming up on college campuses and also at churches. I’m going to be at Godspeak Church this coming weekend, the 15th and 16th; that’s out in Thousand Oaks, California. My friend Rob McCoy is the pastor there. That is uh one service on what is it—on Saturday night, the 16th—and then three on Sunday morning. Uh, the 15th is Saturday; 16th is Sunday. And then we’re going to be at, Lord willing, Wayne State University, right in the heart of Detroit, Michigan, on the 19th; that’s a Wednesday night. We’ll be up at Summit; there’s a Summit event uh summit.org uh at the Billy Graham Cove. You guys ever been to the Billy Graham Cove? Uh, it’s a beautiful facility not far from Asheville. Anyway, we’re we’re holding an event there in Summit; that is the 21st of March. And then we’re going to continue with our series, “The Bible You Never Knew,” on the 24th of March at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time, here just north of Charlotte, North Carolina. Anybody’s welcome if you’re near Charlotte; it’s actually at Freedom House Church in Lake Norman, just north of Charlotte, but it is also live-streamed. We’re going through Moses at this point, talking about how there are so many parallels in the life of Moses to the to the life of Jesus that this is stitched together by the hand of God. Then we’re going to be at Mississippi State University on the 27th; that’s in Starkville, Mississippi. I’ll be at a national conference on sexual exploitation in Louisville, Kentucky, on the 31st of March. Then we have the Unshaken Conference on the 5th of April; that’s out in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at my friend Skip Heitzig’s church. And a lot more coming after that; keep an eye on our website for more. And don’t forget about the online CIA course that is happening now and the online course, “The Great Book of Romans.” I’ll be your instructor in both of those courses. In fact, in the CIA course, it’s not just me; it’s going to be Greg Koukl, Natasha Crane, Alisa Childers live, and myself, and many other instructors you’ll see on video. Go to crossexamined.org; click on “Online Courses”; you will see all that there. And by the way, we’re going to have Kirk Cameron on soon—the podcast as well. Kirk is doing some great work with Brave Books; I don’t know if you’ve heard about Brave Books; they’re great books for kids that teach biblical principles, and we’re going to have Kirk on to talk more about that. So keep an eye on the podcast for that. And Lord willing, we will see you here next week. God bless.
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