Transcription
[Music] In contemporary Christian apologetics, there are broadly two different ways of defending the resurrection of Jesus, which reflect two different ways in which Christian apologists approach approach the gospels. We can refer to these different approaches as minimalism and maximalism.
If you are at all familiar with contemporary Christian apologetics, then you are probably more familiar with minimalism. This basic approach is utilized by resurrection apologists such as William Lane Craig, Gary Hobbermas, and Michael Lakona. I realize that Craig has rejected the minimalist label elsewhere, but as I will be using the term throughout this video, Craig definitely qualifies. I will explain where Craig differs from the traditional minimal facts approach where appropriate, but in broad strokes, Craig's resurrection argument depends upon the same basic methodology.
Minimalism is characterized by two key commitments. The first is a desire to avoid controversial assumptions or premises within an argument for the resurrection. The second is an attitude of differentialism to experts in the field of New Testament studies. The resulting defenses of the resurrection begin by attempting to locate a small number of facts that are or are supposed to be uncontroversial among New Testament scholars and then attempt to show that the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation of those facts.
Perhaps the most familiar example of this is Gary Hobbermaz's minimal facts argument for the resurrection. As he explains in his recent tome on the subject, "for five decades, my contention has been that at the end of Jesus's life, there is a significant body of evidence data that specialist scholars of almost every religious and philosophical persuasion who publish on these areas recognize as being historical. The chief reason for this widespread agreement among scholars on the historicity of each of these facts is the excellent attesting support that each has in its favor, usually from a variety of historical and other considerations."
What are the prerequisites for an occurrence to be designated as a minimal fact? From the outset of my studies on the death and resurrection of Jesus, my thesis has been that there are at least two major requirements for an occurrence to be designated in this manner. Each of these events must be established by an abundance of strong evidences, usually by multiple critically ascertained independent lines of historical argumentation. In addition, the vast majority of published contemporary scholars with credentials in relevant fields of study have to acknowledge the historicity of the event.
As I noted before, minimalism reflects a particular approach to the gospels. Since minimalism is committed to only using facts which are uncontroversial, it cannot directly utilize the stories recounted in the gospels as trustworthy historical reportage because this is simply not accepted by the overwhelming majority of New Testament scholars. For the most part, contemporary New Testament scholarship views the Gospels as late anonymous and largely legendary stories about Jesus.
However, scholars do for the most part believe that there are historical nuggets contained within the gospels which can be mined out by using what are called the criteria of authenticity. As William Lane Craig explains, "now if we do adopt a position of neutrality when approaching the gospels, how do we move beyond neutrality to the affirmation that some event is actually historical? Scholars have developed a number of so-called criteria of authenticity to enable us to do that. The criteria are really signs of historical credibility. A story in the Gospels exhibiting one of the signs is all things being equal more likely to be historical than it would have been without them."
Andrew Lok adds, "Nevertheless, the process of sifting through the four gospels to determine which events attributed to Jesus can be traced back to the Jesus of history faces various difficulties. To address these difficulties, historians have devised various criteria for determining authenticity such as the criterion of multiple attestation, the criterion of embarrassment and the criterion of dissimilarity." And Habermas further says, "Recent critical scholars tend to apply various analytical principles to the New Testament text to ascertain which individual portions have the highest likelihood of providing legitimate historical insights. Implementing the standards can isolate portions of the text providing the separate insights. The textual criteria of authenticity are the rules that support the likelihood of particular sayings or events in history. In this case, from the life of Jesus."
To be clear, not all minimalists agree that the gospels actually are a mixture of truth and embellishment. Michael Lacona seems to accept this general thesis saying, "like everyone who has ever lived the evangelists and their sources had imperfect memories. The evangelists were biased. Their agenda was to provide us with a literary portrait of Jesus. The gospels are not entirely portraits. Neither are they entirely photographs. They contain elements of both photograph and portrait. Perhaps it would be more accurate to think of them as hybrids." And elsewhere, "the historical accuracy of ancient literature may be viewed in a manner similar to what we observe in movie theaters today. Some movies claim at the beginning to be based on true events, while others claim to be inspired by true events. The latter will involve more dramatic license than the former. Even in the former, however, we expect reenacted conversations to be redacted to varying degrees for clarity, dramatic impact, and artistic improvement."
Other minimalists like Hobbermas and Craig seem to personally believe in doctrines like biblical inherency for theological reasons but are just granting the mainstream position for the sake of argument. Either way, minimalist apologists begin by agreeing to abide by the mainstream playbook, even if they themselves do not necessarily agree that the gospels are late, anonymous, or contain fabrications. And so by applying the criteria of authenticity, they try to argue that we can show that enough of the details in the gospels and in Paul are historically factual to make an inference to the resurrection as the best explanation.
Which exact facts can be shown to be historical varies depending on who you ask. For example, a minimalist like William Lane Craig thinks that Jesus's empty tomb is critical to the case for the resurrection of Jesus and can be shown to be authentic using the criteria of authenticity, even though it does not have sufficient scholarly support to qualify as one of Gary Hobbermas's minimal facts. On the other hand, minimalists like Mike Lacona, at least in some contexts, try to make the case for the resurrection without making any reference to the empty tomb. Because again, the empty tomb doesn't enjoy the wide scholarly support that other facts might have. As Lacona explains, "the empty tomb doesn't enjoy the nearly unanimous majority agreement of others, nor is the majority who grants the empty tomb composed of a significant number of scholars from numerous theological persuasions. I do not believe we have enough here to warrant including the empty tomb as part of our historical bedrock. since it does not qualify as historical bedrock. I will refrain from employing it in a resurrection hypothesis."
Despite these sorts of disagreements among minimalists, they all share the same basic approach. Assume, at least for the sake of argument, that the gospels are not trustworthy. Try to dig out what facts you can, either by reference to the criteria of authenticity or by reference to broad scholarly agreement, and then try to show that Jesus's resurrection is the best explanation of those facts. As Hobbermas puts it, "the minimal facts approach has the advantage of potentially indicating that Jesus's resurrection occurred even if the New Testament texts are thought to be unreliable." Lacona adds, "We will approach the Gospels with methodological neutrality, that is with neither approval nor skepticism. Claims made of a particular text bear the burden of proof. Accordingly, neither claims of divine inspiration nor general trustworthiness will play any part in our investigation."
Maximalism, by contrast, rejects this whole peacemeal approach to the gospels and to history in general. It asks why we should care what the majority of scholars agree upon so long as we have good evidence to support what we believe. Rather than attempting to dig out a few facts from the gospels which scholars are willing to accept, it takes as a premise the thesis that the gospels present a faithful account of what the original followers of Jesus actually said. It's important to see that maximalism is not saying that everything which the gospels say is necessarily true. It's just saying that the Gospels are at least accurate statements of what Jesus's earliest followers actually claimed.
As Lydia Mcgru puts it, "it is my firm contention that it is not possible to provide a strong argument for the bodily resurrection of Jesus without being prepared to defend the proposition that the gospel accounts of Jesus's resurrection are unmbellished, reliable accounts of at least what the initial puditive witnesses claimed." This distinction is important since certain critics of maximalism such as Paulia are prone to claiming that maximalism is a simple appeal to for the Bible tells me so as though the reasoning were as simple as this. One, whatever the gospels say is true. Two, the Gospels say that Jesus rose from the dead. Three, therefore, Jesus rose from the dead.
Habermas too has been guilty of misunderstanding maximalism in this way saying, "the chief concern regards how these arguments are commonly employed. Some authors might proceed from the conclusion of general textual reliability to particular often major theological conclusions. Thus, after the initial conclusion is reached concerning particular indications that certain authors or texts are trustworthy writings, the researcher may move immediately to several central Christian beliefs. The chief problem is that a generally reliable book does not even necessarily or automatically ensure every report between its covers."
On the contrary, though, maximalism is more subtle. The argument only asserts the premise that the gospels are accurate reflections of what Jesus's earliest followers were claiming. It leaves the truth of those claims an open question to be settled by consideration of additional premises. Nor is it the case that this premise is unjustified. for maximalists are prepared to offer strong arguments to support the authenticity of the gospels. As Jake O'Connell explains, "first we begin by looking at the Bible just as we would any other historical document by using the same criteria we would use for any other historical document. Considering issues of authorship, date, and confirmation from other sources, we establish that certain portions of the Bible are historical. In some cases, perhaps the whole book, in some cases, perhaps only specific passages within the book." And Lydia Mcgru adds, "Multiple lines of evidence, including undesigned coincidences, external confirmations, and the lesserknown arguments from unexplained illusions, unnecessary details, reconcilable variation, and unique personalities show us the historical intention of the authors as well as their success in getting the facts right. External confirmations also support these conclusions. There is a hefty empirical case that the Gospels are mirrors of Jesus rather than literary masks."
Given that the Gospels are authentic reflections of the testimony of the disciples, a trillemma emerges. Either the testimony reporting the resurrection of Jesus is deliberately false, honestly mistaken, or it is true. The maximalist then attempts to show that these first two possibilities are not credible, thereby leaving us with the third possibility that the testimony is true. And if the testimony bearing on the resurrection of Jesus is true, then the resurrection really happened. And if the resurrection really happened, then we have excellent reason to believe in the truth of Christianity.
While this survey of minimalism and maximalism has been overly brief, I hope that by now viewers have a reasonably clear grasp of these two different ways of defending the resurrection of Jesus. But why is all of this relevant? Well, the reason is that my case for the resurrection falls solidly within the maximalist camp. And when I consider objections to the resurrection in the latter portion of this video, the distinction between these two methods of defending the resurrection of Jesus will become important. This is because maximalism is simply not subject to many of these objections in the first place and because it can handle the other objections far better than minimalism. As such, I think that it is important for viewers to have a firm understanding of how minimalism differs from maximalism from the start. Hence, I implore viewers not to disregard this portion of the video. It will turn out to be highly relevant later on.
While it is not the purpose of this video to bash minimalism, it is also a simple fact that minimalism is currently the far more popular method of defending Jesus's resurrection among contemporary Christian apologists. As such, it is likely to be the only defense of Jesus's resurrection which many of my viewers have ever encountered. This video thus functions not just as a defense of Jesus's resurrection, but also to some viewers a wholly new way of doing so. So for that reason, I believe it is worth spending a little time motivating the maximalist case over against the minimalist case.
The label maximalism has unfortunately led to some confusion. It is sometimes thought that the maximalist must utilize all of the available evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. But the term simply denotes a refusal to introduce any sort of arbitrary restriction such as wide scholarly agreement on the facts which may be used to make the case. In other words, maximalists are not willing to exclusively tie themselves to a certain body of facts. any fact, regardless of how widely acknowledged it may be, is allowed.
There are several advantages to maximalism over minimalism. Maximalism does not concede valuable ground to the skeptic by allowing the skeptic to assume that the gospels are unreliable and it is not vulnerable to the possibility that the tides of contemporary scholarly opinion may change thereby changing the facts to which one can appeal. Habermas himself, oddly enough, seems to think that his argument could still be made even if the tides of scholarly consensus were to turn against him, saying, "If the case for historicity already has been resolved, this is an independent conclusion that stands regardless of whether any particular headcount of scholars agrees. It is well known that scholarly acclamation frequently changes and even irerudite opinions may be mistaken. In such a case, the minimal facts argument would miss the nearly unanimous agreement on the data by scholars, but it would still have the more crucial factual portion of the argument on its side, assuming the plethora of evidence remains the same."
But as a basic definitional matter, Habermas is plainly wrong that in this situation, the argument would remain the minimal facts argument. By his own lights, wide scholarly agreement is a necessary condition for a fact to qualify as a minimal fact. He has said over and over again in our minimal facts approach, we only consider content that is considered historical by virtually all who study the subject. What are the prerequisites for an occurrence to be designated as a minimal fact? The vast majority of published contemporary scholars with credentials in relevant fields of study have to acknowledge the historicity of the event and almost all critical scholars who explore this subject agree that these are a minimal amount of knowable historical facts. Hence, if scholarly opinion were to turn against him, while he could still argue that the resurrection is the best explanation for this same set of facts, by definition, it would no longer be the minimal facts argument.
Leaving terminological considerations aside, this move also makes very pressing the question of why Hobbermas feels that it is important to tie himself to the whims of contemporary scholarship in the first place. If he is going to appeal to the same facts regardless of whether or not most scholars agree upon them, then why only appeal to these facts at all? Why not appeal to any facts which are well-evided regardless of how widely acknowledged they may be? The answer surely seems to be that Hobbermas places evidential weight in scholarly consensus. To be sure, he doesn't think that this is the only source of evidence, but in certain passages, he definitely appears to think that scholarly consensus increases the likelihood that a proposition is true or that a fact is real. He will deny this when directly asked, yet other statements of his on the matter seem conclusive. For example, later within the very same chapter where he claims that scholarly consensus isn't evidential in and of itself, we find Habermas asking, "How can these moves be made with many cases being affirmed strongly by researchers who usually distrust the gospels along with many other New Testament books, especially when many additional instances in scholars could be provided something similar ilar to man's statements must be the case that well-evced data often reside in texts still thought to be biased elsewhere he says critical scholars agree with these data precisely because they are well supported on factual grounds often for multiple reasons these statements are clear-cut is absolutely placing epistemic weight in scholarly consensus"
The assumption is that if most scholars accept it, then they must have good reasons for doing so. This is of course a terrible assumption. Most scholars in general and biblical scholars in particular are not immune from social influences like social contagion, peer pressure, conformity, and compliance. that most scholars accept the fact is not an independent reason to believe that they are correct. As Mike Lakona himself admits, "historians are prone neither to give much attention to epistemology nor to justifying their methods." And Robert Stewart adds, "The minimal facts method requires that we exclude many propositions that are very well justified simply because only a clear majority as opposed to the vast majority of scholars affirm them. But justification is not something that is dependent upon being believed by anyone. Propositions are justified or unjustified even if nobody believes them." Responsible belief is based on justification, not vice versa. This is an apparent problem for the minimal facts method.
Consider these statements from Mike Lacona. "A consensus opinion can be valuable for recognizing objectivity when the group is composed of scholars from all interested camps. hand. These scholars span a very wide range of theological and philosophical convictions and include atheists, agnostics, Jews, and Christians who made their abode at both ends of the theological spectrum and everywhere in between. We therefore have the heterogeneity we desire in a consensus. And this gives us confidence that our horizons will not lead us completely astray." Commenting on this passage in a review of Lacona's book, we find Habermas saying, "Lacona makes an insightful comment here regarding guarding against our own horizons. We must beware of our own imported biases as well. When discussing the minimal facts, I have always purposely included notes at each juncture that list representative numbers of skeptics of various stripes who still affirm the data in question. This is a significant methodological procedure that serves more than one purpose among others. It assures the readers that they are not being asked to accept something that only conservatives believe or that is only recognized by those who believe in the veracity of the New Testament text and so on. After all, this sort of widespread recognition and approval is the very thing that our stated method requires."
Again, we see both Hobbermas and Lacona placing epistemic weight in scholarly consensus here. The stated reason for this requirement mentioned by Lacona and reinforced by Habermas is that scholarly consensus is needed to guard us against our own biases. In other words, if we didn't have scholarly consensus, then we couldn't be sure that our biases aren't clouding our judgment. Despite Habrammaz's and to a lesser extent Lacona's protests that it is really just the evidence that matters, these quotations show us that this is not really true. They do think the scholarly consensus provides further epistemic support because they think that it guards against personal bias.
Lydia Mcgru correctly counters this position of difference to modern scholarship by saying, "apparently the answer to the question of why we don't bestow such terms on the basis of the strength of the evidence alone is this doing so isn't guarding enough against our own biases. If that is a correct way to approach things, shouldn't you then be afraid that if you think the arguments for something are very strong, but the heterogenous consensus doesn't support it, you are being too moved by your own biases and should therefore correct your too high confidence in the proposition. This is one of the things I mean by conflating sociology and epistemology. I am referring to giving what I consider to be gravely undue weight to purely sociological considerations. The bestowal of a term of apparent epistemic appribation such as known historical facts or historical bedrock is being held hostage to a purely contingent sociological factor. whether or not a certain varied consensus obtains concerning that fact. And that's being done on the grounds that otherwise we'd be too likely to be personally biased."
Minimal facts apologists also prioritize the proximity of a source to an event far more than the credibility of the source. This is one reason why they are so fixated upon 1 Corinthians 15 and more dubious about using the gospels. As Gary Hobbermaus explains, "in general, early sources and other evidences are strongly preferred over later data. While greater intervening differences are allowed, especially in ancient history, even the difference of a decade or two can be decisive with application to the historical Jesus. Any material written between AD30 and 50 would be regarded as being especially exemplary. reports from such an early time frame would actually predate the written form of the four canonical gospels or any other such writings for that matter."
A celebrated instance is the early preauline list of Jesus's resurrection appearances that the Apostle Paul delivers to his readers in 1 Corinthians 15 3-8. The consensus critical position is that Paul very probably received at least the material on which this early tradition is based and more likely the creed itself in the early to mid30s. Mike Lacona adds, "Paul could have received the traditions encapsulated in 1 Corinthians 15 3-7 in Damascus after his conversion experience. He could have received it three years later when he spent time with Peter in Jerusalem or 14 years later when he visited again with the Jerusalem leadership. Although it is impossible to know when Paul received it and from whom, what can be said is that the traditions about Jesus's resurrection embedded in 1 Corinthians 15 3-7 predates Paul's founding of the church in Corenth in AD51. and could go back to the very earliest period of the posteaster church." And elsewhere he writes, "Virtually all who study first century Christianity admit that Paul is the earliest known author to comment on the resurrection of Jesus. Accordingly, his views on what happened to Jesus after his crucifixion carry a great amount of weight. And again, Paul is very important because he is our earliest written source that mentions the resurrection of Jesus."
Since the writings of Paul are almost universally agreed to predate the gospels, proponents of the minimal facts approach assume that they are automatically more valuable. I think that this is a mistake. While I will suggest later in this video that at least some of the gospels were written far earlier than is commonly supposed, even predating some of Paul's writings, I ultimately care a lot more about who the information is coming from than I do how close it is to the events. Specifically, I care about how well positioned the source is to know the truth of what they are reporting. For that reason, I would prefer a firsthand account written 30 years after an event to an 11thhand account from the very next day. For the same reason, because I affirm the traditional authorship of the Gospels, I prefer the Gospels, even if they were written decades later, over the creed in First Corinthians 15, even though it might date to within months of the resurrection, because I am not at all sure where it comes from. Obviously, these issues are not completely unrelated. The sources need to have been written early enough to have been written by people who were close to the events. But this nevertheless marks a significant difference between my maximalist case for the resurrection and the minimal facts approach. I prioritize the position and knowledgeability of my sources over the date at which they were written.
Maximalism is immune to the newer developments in historical Jesus studies which call into question the usefulness of the criteria of authenticity. As Anthony Leiddon puts it in the introduction to an important book criticizing the traditional criteria of authenticity, "almost all contemporary Jesus historians who employ the traditional authenticity criteria do so with repeated reservations and qualifications. One can hardly blame historians for establishing rules for the road or aiming towards historioggraphical rigor. But as the reservations about these traditional criteria become greater and as the qualifications offered by their adherence become more pronounced, it must be asked whether these traditional methods are poorly founded or perhaps should be abandoned altogether. In this way, the authors of this book think it is time to rethink the traditional quest for authenticity from the ground up."
Minimalist resurrection arguments, especially that of William Lane Craig, are critically dependent upon the utility of the traditional criteria of authenticity. As Craig has clearly said, "if an apologetic based on the claims of Christ is to work, we must do the requisite spade work of sorting out those claims of Jesus that can be established as authentic and then drawing out their implications. This will involve not only mastering Greek but also the methods of modern criticism and the criteria of authenticity." But as these criteria become more obsolete, so too do arguments which depend upon them, such is the risk of tethering one's resurrection argument too closely to the evershifting winds of popular opinion within New Testament studies. By contrast, such developments can never challenge a maximalist case for the resurrection since maximalism does not insist upon a self-imposed limitation according to which the only acceptable facts are the ones which enjoy broad scholarly support.
Still more concerning is the fact that the criteria of authenticity work on the assumption that the gospels are largely mythical. That is why they exist. to use them to make one's case for the resurrection implicitly allows the skeptic to continue understanding the gospels as mostly untrustworthy sources. As Raphael Lannister points out, "Craig relies on the criteria of authenticity, tools used by Jesus researchers to discover the nuggets of truth buried within the legendary material of the biblical texts in order to determine what it is that Jesus really said and did. This is already something of a counterintuitive development as these are tools constructed and used by critical scholars who already reject the Christ of faith that Craig believes in which work on the premise that the New Testament is filled with mythical embellishments."
Even if the resurrection could be established by using the criteria of authenticity, it remains unclear how the minimalist apologist will be able to move from the resurrection happening to the truth of robust Christian theism. All that has been established is that a bunch of likely unreliable documents contain enough nuggets of historical information to infer that Jesus rose from the dead. As McGru puts it, "the criteriological approach is designed to support only specific passages rather than a document as a whole. If one uses these criteria as an aid to establishing minimal facts while explicitly issuing any intention to argue that the whole documents are reliable and represent authentic apostolic testimony, then something like a question will understandably remain about any segments that have not been individually authenticated."
Even more importantly, maximalism allows the apologist the necessary background information to be able to make sense of the resurrection and its meaning. Suppose for the moment that the bodily resurrection of Jesus genuinely was the best explanation of the minimal facts, a conclusion which I will call into question presently. Taken with the idea that the gospels are not generally trustworthy, something which minimalists seem willing to grant, at least for the sake of argument, it's very difficult to see what we should make of the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. Suppose that King Ferdinand II of Aragon were to return to life tomorrow. This fact might be interesting, but we should hardly be able to conclude that he was God or that there were any important religious implications flowing from this. We would be utterly unable to know what to make of this event. Miracles in isolation are ambiguous. One needs access to the context of the miracle in order to make sense of it. But by granting the skeptic the basic unreliability of the gospels, the proponent of minimalism also cuts off their ability to make any sort of sense out of what the resurrection means, even if they can establish that it happened. Without the context of Jesus's divine claims and his prediction of his resurrection as a divine vindication of those claims, the resurrection of Jesus is as ambiguous as the hypothetical resurrection of King Ferdinand tomorrow. By using the Gospels as holistic sources of information, maximalism avoids this problem. It makes it very easy to see the theological significance of the resurrection because it allows the gospels to contextualize this event.
Lydia Mcgru rightly says, "I do not wish to say that the minimal facts approach is valueless by any means and its widespread use may be in part a result of the fact that it provides a straightforward template for a debate format. However, I do want to say that it is incomplete and that its heavy promotion and near exclusive use in Christian apologetic circles can perhaps unintentionally give an unfortunate misimpression. That misimpression is that we cannot establish the high reliability of the gospels and or acts by neutral historical means. and therefore we ought to issue any argument that involves relying on a premise of reliability. A correlary error is that we cannot neutrally establish that the resurrection accounts in the gospels and in acts came from the apostles themselves rather than being in whole or in part later additions by those who are not in a position to know what really happened or what the apostles claimed. But most significantly of all, it is much clearer that a maximalist argument supports the bodily resurrection of Jesus as having actually occurred."
Minimalism is vulnerable to the charge that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is not in fact the best explanation of the minimal facts once it is clear how little is truly granted by the vast majority of scholars. In other words, the minimal facts are probably too minimal to get you to the bodily resurrection of Jesus. This becomes especially clear when one grasps how thin a conception of a resurrection appearance most scholars are willing to acknowledge that the disciples experienced. Unfortunately, when apologists like Gary Hobbermaus and Mike Lacona state that most scholars believe that there were post-mortem appearances of Jesus, the average churchgoer tends to assume that most scholars are granting that there were appearances of Jesus like those described in the Gospels. This is simply not true, and it is misleading to state this without significant qualifications.
Steven T. Davis asks the right question, saying, "Suppose that the witnesses to the resurrection did as claimed, see the risen Jesus. What kind of seeing was this? Was it a normal or abnormal seeing? Was the thing that they saw, that is Jesus's risen body, a material object like a tree or a house or another human body? Were the perceptual processes that were at work in seeing Jesus normal?" I don't think that most enthusiasts about the minimal facts argument realize that most scholars do not in fact think that this was a normal visual perception of a physical object. As Gerald O'Collins points out, "most New Testament scholars would be reluctant to assert that the risen Christ became present in such a way that neutral or even hostile spectators could have observed him in an ordinary physical fashion." For the most part, when New Testament scholars are saying there were appearances of Jesus, they are talking about something like visions or grief hallucinations. For example, Bart Urman says, "By vision, I simply mean something that is seen whether it is really there or not."
And so if one is truly going to restrict the resurrection argument to just those facts which are granted by the overwhelming consensus of critical scholars, then one is only entitled to argue from these visionary or hallucinatory appearances of Jesus. But once this point has been firmly grasped, it becomes unclear why the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation. There is no reason to think that the disciples belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus was rational if it was formed in response to these vague sorts of visionary experiences. Recall that the empty tomb is not a minimal fact according to Habermas and Lacona. Habermas and Lacona will pile on evidence to show that the disciples were sincere in their belief. But notice that the issue which I am raising regards the rationality of the disciples belief in the resurrection, not the sincerity of it. All of the evidence in the world for the sincerity of the disciples belief will do nothing to demonstrate the rationality of their belief. This is the essence of what has been called the bottleneck problem for the minimal facts argument.
As McGru explains, "I am saying here that even if the skeptic fully grants that the disciples firmly believed this, that has fairly limited force to support the conclusion that it really happened, absent more information about why they believed it. You cannot make up the deficiency there simply by providing more and more and more evidence that they believed it."
Maximalism on the other hand faces no such problem. This is because maximalism is allowed to make use of the details of the resurrection appearances provided in the gospels. And if these details accurately describe the experiences which the disciples had, then it is easy to see the rationality of their belief in the resurrection. Since the phenomenological character of these experiences of the risen Jesus would be just like that of any other veritical experience of a human being. There is no looming possibility that the experiences might have actually been like dreams or visions with respect to their phenomenological texture.
As Timothy and Lydia Mcgru say, "the accounts of the 11's encounters with Jesus are striking in a number of respects. And while in the context of this argument, we are not entitled on pain of circularity to assume that these accounts are true, we need to get clear in our minds what sort of claim is being made. First, the accounts of Jesus's appearances to the disciples are neither vague nor spiritualized, but rather circumstantial, empirical, and detailed. Not only do they purport to give a number of his statements, they also state expressly that he deliberately displayed empirical evidence that he was not a spirit, but rather a physical being. It was therefore a physical resurrection claim that the disciples made." William Lane Craig agrees that "every resurrection appearance narrated in the Gospels is a physical bodily appearance. All their separate sources of information agree that Jesus appeared physically and bodily to the disciples and other witnesses. There is no trace of non-physical appearances in the sources." A remarkable fact if all the appearances were really visionary as some critics would have us believe. But it remains unclear why Craig thinks that he can appeal to the resurrection appearances within the gospels since he has not shown that these stories or the details present within them meet any of the criteria of authenticity. The maximalist need not worry about this because the maximalist explicitly utilizes the gospels as holistic sources. However, the limitations which minimalists like Craig place upon themselves preclude them from making these sorts of appeals to the details within the resurrection account in the gospels.
It is not just important to establish that the apostles genuinely believed in the resurrection but also that they were rational in doing so. If we are to be able to base our belief in the resurrection of Jesus on the apostles belief in the resurrection, then it is absolutely critical that the apostles belief in the resurrection was rational. In order for their belief to have been rational, their experiences of the risen Jesus would need to correspond to their belief in Jesus's bodily resurrection. And in order to establish this, we need to have details about what the resurrection appearances were like. In order to get those, we need the witness of the gospels.
As Lydia Mcgru observes, "one particular concern is the nature of the appearances to the disciples treated as one of the minimal facts and the relationship between the details of the appearances in Jesus's bodily resurrection. Generally, this minimal fact is stated in minimal terms, such as that in some sense, the early followers of Jesus thought that they had seen the risen Jesus or that the disciples had experiences that led them to believe and proclaim that Jesus had been resurrected and had appeared to them. The limited wording and absence of detail are part and parcel of the method presumably in order to be able to claim widespread support across the scholarly spectrum. But if we cannot be at all sure that the accounts as given in the gospels and in the first chapter of acts represent at least what the disciples claimed, the argument for the bodily resurrection of Jesus is considerably weakened. It is these details that give such tremendous force to the apostles testimony and to their willingness to die for it. For it is from these details that we can conclude with confidence that they were not hallucinating, experiencing some sort of non-physical paranormal event, having visions, or merely mistaken. Yet, by no means will the vast majority of New Testament scholars admit that Jesus's close friends had these sorts of experiences. You can't get these sorts of details out of the creed in 1 Corinthians 15. You simply can't. And that's why you need the Gospels to establish not just that the disciples believed in the resurrection, but that they did so for good reasons."
As Eric Manning summarizes, "I'm not saying that the creed has no value whatsoever, but here's the big problem. What does the creed tell us about the nature of the appearances? Not much. The Gospels give us a walking, talking Jesus who eats with people and invites them to touch him, especially in Luke and John. The majority of scholars do not acknowledge those kinds of appearances. Rather, they explicitly deny them and label these stories as late embellishments. Vague and fleeting appearances aren't all that evidentially convincing. And a floating Jesus would not make us think Jesus rose from the dead rather than that they saw some kind of apparition. And that's the Achilles heel of the minimal facts argument. It is very difficult to evaluate the rationality of the disciples beliefs when we aren't able to describe in detail their experiences. There's a lot we'd like to know that this simple creed doesn't give us. It wasn't meant to."
I can appreciate that proponents of the minimal facts approach are trying to appeal to premises which are uncontroversial in making their argument for the resurrection. After all, as a general rule, arguments which employ more widely accepted premises are more likely to persuade. But if the problems which I have raised for the minimal facts approach are decisive, then the resurrection apologist will simply have to accept that the case for the resurrection cannot be made by exclusively using uncontroversial premises. More foundational issues and disagreements will need to be addressed. And that is why I spent so much time laying the groundwork for this video in prior videos. A strong case can indeed be made for the resurrection, but most of the controversy will regard issues which are not directly related to the resurrection.
I understand that this section may have been upsetting for some viewers. After all, in a video dedicated to defending Jesus's resurrection, why am I starting off by attacking the most popular argument for this event? Perhaps some viewers share Gary Hobbermaus's concern when he says, "In my opinion, raising objections on behalf of the unbeliever to the historicity of Jesus's resurrection, Jesus's view of God, his deity, or the truthfulness of Jesus's message, is definitely not the way to argue against a fellow evangelical, even if we object to their methods. The response almost seems to me to be one of burning the message along with the messenger." But I want to be clear that I am not here raising any objections to the historicity of Jesus's resurrection. Rather, I am trying to draw our attention to some very important distinctions which will be absolutely critical when we turn to addressing objections to the case for the resurrection. It is crucial that viewers clearly understand how and why my resurrection argument differs from the minimal facts so that they understand why it is able to better handle the objections.
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