Luke And The Census (November 27, 2005)
More from my son’s letter from college:
"When I brought up the census as one indication that the [Virgin Birth] story was based in fact, he dismissed my claim by saying the facts of the story don't hold up - how, for example, it would have been chaos for everyone to go back to their home town to report. How would you respond to this particular instance?"
I wrote back,
When the professor says "it would have been chaos for everyone to go back to their home town to report," it seems he is simply unaware of the facts on the ground. Chaos or not, that is what they did. Any good scholarly commentary on Luke refers to the census edict issued in neighboring Egypt in A. D. 104, which reads,
Gaius Vibius Maximus, Prefect of Egypt [says]: Seeing that the time has come for the house to house census, it is necessary to compel all those who for any cause whatsoever are residing outside of their provinces to return to their homes, that they may both carry out the regular order of the census and may also attend diligently to the cultivation of their allotments.
The census that Luke records was not unique. They did them every 14 years.
More generally, it is good to be aware that among liberal scholars there is an almost constant elitist condescension toward the writers of the Bible. These scholars have somehow figured out - without evidence, without doing their homework - that the biblical writers were clever con artists who made stuff up and their gullible audiences swallowed it. They pretend to know with omniscient rigor all the historical and cultural nuances of the day and so can declare with absolute authority what could or could not have happened.
I don't mind if a given scholar chooses not to believe a text for whatever personal reason he or she might have. What annoys me is when they couch their disbelief in terms of "the assured results of scholarship" when in fact they are just expressing a doubt as prejudiced against the Bible as the faith of a fundamentalist is in favor of it. The important thing is for everybody to do their homework and let the facts speak no matter what the biases of faith or unbelief dictate.
The homework on Luke as a historian shows that, in areas that we can confirm, he is extraordinarily careful and accurate, which should give us reasonable confidence about his reliability in matters that we can't confirm. He is famously precise, for example, in his terms for government officials ("magistrate," "town clerk," "procounsul" etc.) that varied from place to place throughout the Mediterranean world. Archeological scholarship has confirmed that Luke's terms were inerrant, giving strong evidence that he had actually been to those places. No one making up the story at a desk in Antioch could conceivably have been that accurate.
Making up a phony census with a contrived "return-to-your-home" policy would have been uncharacteristic of Luke, and it does not seem reasonable to expect that he could have slipped it past Theophilus, the recipient of his letters. If your professor's view is correct, Theophilus would have been left scratching his head and wondering, "What in the world is this? Who ever heard of a census where people return to their home towns?" No, Theophilus knew about the practice. Luke was not writing in a cultural vacuum.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Should The Bible Be Taken Literally? (November 20, 2005)
More from my son’s letter from college:
“While many fundamentalists make the mistake of taking the Bible too literally (i.e. Genesis), this professor, from what I could gather, didn't think the Bible should be taken literally at all. He pointed not only to Genesis, but to the virgin birth, which he believes is metaphoric. He pointed to how Paul did not talk about Christ as being born of a virgin, because he wrote before some of the gospel writers, and that story was not yet invented. How would you respond to this particular instance, and also, how would you determine when the Bible should be taken literally or not?”
I wrote:
On the general question of when the Bible should be taken literally, my simple diagnostic is, "What was the author's intent?" For example, when Isaiah says, "Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low," he is not envisioning a sandblaster the size of an Independence Day spaceship that will grind away the earth's surface until it is all uniform altitude. He was speaking metaphorically and expected his audience to understand him that way.
You mentioned Genesis. I think the author there flags a metaphorical element when he says, "there was evening and morning, the first day" etc. - though the sun that makes for evening and morning was not created until the fourth day! Literalist John MacArthur writes, "Such a cycle of light and dark means that the earth was rotating on its axis, so that there was a source of light on one side of the earth, though the sun was not yet created." MacArthur believes that God must have created a temporary sun that he knocked out of the sky and replaced with our real sun three days later. That strikes me as nonsense, an exegetical contortion motivated solely by an overly literal reading of the text. It is no virtue to blind yourself to symbol and metaphor. When Jesus said he was a door, he did not mean that he was made of wood and had hinges. One time he even got angry with his disciples when they took him too literally. He said "Beware the yeast of the Pharisees" and they started talking about bread! (Matthew 16:5-12).
With regard to the virgin birth, ask yourself, "Do Luke and Matthew intend to say that Jesus was literally born of a virgin?" If so, then, though you may disbelieve them, you cannot really say, "This is a metaphor with some deeper meaning." No, if they meant to say that Mary conceived without sex, then it is a question of fact rather than of literary interpretation.
Read the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, and you can see that no reasonable person can doubt that they intend their accounts to be taken literally. I would go as far as to say that their literal intent is as obvious as Isaiah's metaphorical intent above, and that anyone who could read deliberate metaphor into their narratives is no more qualified to evaluate biblical genre than John MacArthur. One can err on either side - manufacturing propositions out of pictures (MacArthur), or pictures out of propositions (your liberal professor).
Concerning the point that "Paul did not talk about Christ as being born of a virgin, because he wrote before some of the gospel writers, and that story was not yet invented."
Not so. The only gospel writer that Paul definitely wrote before was John, and John did not mention the virgin birth! The theory of a "late developing story" would make a lot more sense if John talked about the virgin birth and Luke did not - but the opposite holds.
The fact that Paul and Luke wrote at the same time can be established by this quick guide to the dating of Luke:
Begin with Luke's second volume, Acts. Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in the early 60s A.D. The fact that Luke stops before Paul's execution (about A. D. 67), before Neronian persecution in Rome (A. D. 64), and even before James' death (A. D. 62 - Josephus) tells us that Acts was completed before those events occurred. The terminal date for Acts is about A.D. 62 (and it took a long time to research and write!). The first volume, the gospel of Luke, was researched and finished before that, which takes us back to the 50s A.D. - the same time that Paul was writing his letters. Luke wrote within living memory of birth witnesses. Read the first two chapters of Luke, and notice how much of it is from Mary's perspective - what she thought in her heart, etc. I think Luke interviewed Mary herself (who would have been in her 70s) and was able to glean information that other gospel and epistle writers simply did not have.
Also, it is important to remember that Paul and Luke knew each other - note the "we" passages of Acts where Luke himself has joined the missionary team (16:10-17; 20:5-21:18; 27:1-28:16). In Colossians 3:14 Paul writes, "Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings," and in 2 Timothy 4:11 he says, "Only Luke is with
me."
Since Paul and Luke were colleagues and writing at the same time, it just plain flies in the face of facts to say that the virgin birth story that Luke wrote about developed later than Paul. Paul knew about the virgin birth. He does not mention it (neither do Mark or John, for that matter) for the simple reason that he never says anything at all about Jesus' birth! The topic does not come up. So what? I've written
over a hundred "Pastor's Pages" on a variety of topics - pastoral, biblical, apologetic - more in volume than Paul's letters combined - and I don't think I've mentioned the virgin birth either. Maybe I have, I don't know. The point is, if I haven't, it would be silly to conclude by my silence that I haven't heard of or don't believe in the virgin birth of Christ.
I'm amazed at the assumption on the part of some that every biblical author must be an encyclopedia of information covering every possible topic, and if some topic is not covered, then it has to be a deliberate omission ("He didn't believe that story!") or evidence of ignorance ("He never even heard that story"). That is just a bad argument, a desperate move employed by writers with an axe to grind. (This is one of my beefs with several left-wing evangelicals - their tendency to tease out doctrines from what they perceive to be deliberate silences.) Beware of that maneuver - it is just a trick.
More from my son’s letter from college:
“While many fundamentalists make the mistake of taking the Bible too literally (i.e. Genesis), this professor, from what I could gather, didn't think the Bible should be taken literally at all. He pointed not only to Genesis, but to the virgin birth, which he believes is metaphoric. He pointed to how Paul did not talk about Christ as being born of a virgin, because he wrote before some of the gospel writers, and that story was not yet invented. How would you respond to this particular instance, and also, how would you determine when the Bible should be taken literally or not?”
I wrote:
On the general question of when the Bible should be taken literally, my simple diagnostic is, "What was the author's intent?" For example, when Isaiah says, "Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low," he is not envisioning a sandblaster the size of an Independence Day spaceship that will grind away the earth's surface until it is all uniform altitude. He was speaking metaphorically and expected his audience to understand him that way.
You mentioned Genesis. I think the author there flags a metaphorical element when he says, "there was evening and morning, the first day" etc. - though the sun that makes for evening and morning was not created until the fourth day! Literalist John MacArthur writes, "Such a cycle of light and dark means that the earth was rotating on its axis, so that there was a source of light on one side of the earth, though the sun was not yet created." MacArthur believes that God must have created a temporary sun that he knocked out of the sky and replaced with our real sun three days later. That strikes me as nonsense, an exegetical contortion motivated solely by an overly literal reading of the text. It is no virtue to blind yourself to symbol and metaphor. When Jesus said he was a door, he did not mean that he was made of wood and had hinges. One time he even got angry with his disciples when they took him too literally. He said "Beware the yeast of the Pharisees" and they started talking about bread! (Matthew 16:5-12).
With regard to the virgin birth, ask yourself, "Do Luke and Matthew intend to say that Jesus was literally born of a virgin?" If so, then, though you may disbelieve them, you cannot really say, "This is a metaphor with some deeper meaning." No, if they meant to say that Mary conceived without sex, then it is a question of fact rather than of literary interpretation.
Read the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, and you can see that no reasonable person can doubt that they intend their accounts to be taken literally. I would go as far as to say that their literal intent is as obvious as Isaiah's metaphorical intent above, and that anyone who could read deliberate metaphor into their narratives is no more qualified to evaluate biblical genre than John MacArthur. One can err on either side - manufacturing propositions out of pictures (MacArthur), or pictures out of propositions (your liberal professor).
Concerning the point that "Paul did not talk about Christ as being born of a virgin, because he wrote before some of the gospel writers, and that story was not yet invented."
Not so. The only gospel writer that Paul definitely wrote before was John, and John did not mention the virgin birth! The theory of a "late developing story" would make a lot more sense if John talked about the virgin birth and Luke did not - but the opposite holds.
The fact that Paul and Luke wrote at the same time can be established by this quick guide to the dating of Luke:
Begin with Luke's second volume, Acts. Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in the early 60s A.D. The fact that Luke stops before Paul's execution (about A. D. 67), before Neronian persecution in Rome (A. D. 64), and even before James' death (A. D. 62 - Josephus) tells us that Acts was completed before those events occurred. The terminal date for Acts is about A.D. 62 (and it took a long time to research and write!). The first volume, the gospel of Luke, was researched and finished before that, which takes us back to the 50s A.D. - the same time that Paul was writing his letters. Luke wrote within living memory of birth witnesses. Read the first two chapters of Luke, and notice how much of it is from Mary's perspective - what she thought in her heart, etc. I think Luke interviewed Mary herself (who would have been in her 70s) and was able to glean information that other gospel and epistle writers simply did not have.
Also, it is important to remember that Paul and Luke knew each other - note the "we" passages of Acts where Luke himself has joined the missionary team (16:10-17; 20:5-21:18; 27:1-28:16). In Colossians 3:14 Paul writes, "Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings," and in 2 Timothy 4:11 he says, "Only Luke is with
me."
Since Paul and Luke were colleagues and writing at the same time, it just plain flies in the face of facts to say that the virgin birth story that Luke wrote about developed later than Paul. Paul knew about the virgin birth. He does not mention it (neither do Mark or John, for that matter) for the simple reason that he never says anything at all about Jesus' birth! The topic does not come up. So what? I've written
over a hundred "Pastor's Pages" on a variety of topics - pastoral, biblical, apologetic - more in volume than Paul's letters combined - and I don't think I've mentioned the virgin birth either. Maybe I have, I don't know. The point is, if I haven't, it would be silly to conclude by my silence that I haven't heard of or don't believe in the virgin birth of Christ.
I'm amazed at the assumption on the part of some that every biblical author must be an encyclopedia of information covering every possible topic, and if some topic is not covered, then it has to be a deliberate omission ("He didn't believe that story!") or evidence of ignorance ("He never even heard that story"). That is just a bad argument, a desperate move employed by writers with an axe to grind. (This is one of my beefs with several left-wing evangelicals - their tendency to tease out doctrines from what they perceive to be deliberate silences.) Beware of that maneuver - it is just a trick.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Are Commandments Against Fornication Directed At Pedophilia? (November 13, 2005)
More from my son’s letter from college:
"The professor challenged many traditional Christian beliefs about sex. For instance, he said that the restriction against fornication was not strictly applicable because, at the time, women were married as soon as they hit puberty, and thus a restriction against fornication was really a restriction against pedophilia. If you could illuminate the truth on why a Biblical ban on fornication is not merely a ban on pedophilia that would be helpful."
I responded:
This is an easy one!
The Greek word translated "fornication" (now more commonly "sexual immorality"), porneia, has never meant "pedophilia." Instead it is a general term for any kind of sexual impurity. That would presumably include pedophilia, but my search has not yielded a single instance where pedophilia is implied, and many instances where it clearly cannot mean that.
Look at the following passages.
Matthew 19:9: I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness (porneia), and marries another woman commits adultery.
Jesus did not mean that a man could divorce his wife only if she was messing around with an underage boy.
John 8:41: “We are not illegitimate children," they protested. (Literally, "We were not born of fornication (porneia).”
What a nail in the coffin of the "fornication=pedophilia" theory this is! All the Jewish leaders were saying was that they were not bastards - they were not born out of wedlock. They weren't claiming not to be the products of men mating with pre-pubescent children, which clearly could not produce babies at all.
1 Corinthians 5:1: It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality (porneia) among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans. A man has his father's wife.
This cannot be a case of pedophilia. The reason that this "man" (Greek is indefinite about his age) is clearly not a boy sleeping with his step-mom is because in the next few verses Paul regards him as the guilty party and insists that the church discipline him and all such evildoers. Read verses 2-13 and you will see it is obvious that Paul is not talking about a minor. Nor is the woman a minor - she is his
father's wife!
1 Corinthians 7:2: But since there is so much immorality (porneia), each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.
Paul is not recommending marriage because men are chasing little girls and women are chasing little boys. The problem that marriage addresses is promiscuity, not pedophilia.
Revelation 17:2: With her the kings of the earth committed adultery (porneia) and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries (porneia).
The whore of Babylon was not underage, nor were her regal consorts.
Summary:
"Fornication" (porneia) is the general word for sexual immorality and includes such things as adultery (Matthew 19:9), out-of-wedlock sex (John 8:41), incest (1 Corinthians 5:1) and flagrant promiscuity (Revelation 17:2). When you see a commandment condemning fornication (e.g. Colossians 3:5: Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: fornication [porneia]…) it is not speaking about pedophilia except in that pedophilia is a subset of immorality in general.
The professor who equated fornication with pedophilia does not know Greek, has not read the Bible, and has not spent five minutes investigating this ridiculous claim.
Postscript: my son responded, "I think I didn't quite word my question correctly in this regard. The professor wasn't calling all porneia pedophilia - merely fornication. Thus, he would argue that adultery and incest do not fall under the heading of what he deems excusable by Biblical standards - only that fornication had a different definition since women were not single past menstruation. Still, the passage in John answers that objection."
I answered,
Now I'm confused. You say that the professor wasn't calling all porneia pedophilia - merely fornication. But the whole point here is that "fornication" is an English word used to translate Greek porneia. In order to understand precisely what the Bible does or does not condemn, it is pointless to plumb the meaning of an English word and base any conclusions off that.
In English, the Bible says, "Don't fornicate." Now if someone (a professor, say) comes along and declares, "When it says, 'Don't fornicate,' what that really means in our terms is, 'Don't have sex with the underaged,' then it is legitimate to respond, "But strictly speaking the Bible doesn't say 'Don't fornicate'; it says 'Don't porneia.'" The question really is, "What exactly does porneia mean?" And we find very quickly that it refers to a variety of things, among them, clearly, sex out of wedlock regardless of the age of the participants.
It may be that the professor was referring to some other Greek or Hebrew word, or some particular passage that he felt could be construed as a ban against pedophilia. Even if that is the case - and, for argument's sake, I will grant that point in its entirety - it is irrelevant to the question of whether the Bible forbids non-marital
sex even when that sex is neither adulterous, incestuous nor pedophilic. The answer to that question is, "Of course it does. It forbids it every time it says 'Don't porneia.'"
More from my son’s letter from college:
"The professor challenged many traditional Christian beliefs about sex. For instance, he said that the restriction against fornication was not strictly applicable because, at the time, women were married as soon as they hit puberty, and thus a restriction against fornication was really a restriction against pedophilia. If you could illuminate the truth on why a Biblical ban on fornication is not merely a ban on pedophilia that would be helpful."
I responded:
This is an easy one!
The Greek word translated "fornication" (now more commonly "sexual immorality"), porneia, has never meant "pedophilia." Instead it is a general term for any kind of sexual impurity. That would presumably include pedophilia, but my search has not yielded a single instance where pedophilia is implied, and many instances where it clearly cannot mean that.
Look at the following passages.
Matthew 19:9: I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness (porneia), and marries another woman commits adultery.
Jesus did not mean that a man could divorce his wife only if she was messing around with an underage boy.
John 8:41: “We are not illegitimate children," they protested. (Literally, "We were not born of fornication (porneia).”
What a nail in the coffin of the "fornication=pedophilia" theory this is! All the Jewish leaders were saying was that they were not bastards - they were not born out of wedlock. They weren't claiming not to be the products of men mating with pre-pubescent children, which clearly could not produce babies at all.
1 Corinthians 5:1: It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality (porneia) among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans. A man has his father's wife.
This cannot be a case of pedophilia. The reason that this "man" (Greek is indefinite about his age) is clearly not a boy sleeping with his step-mom is because in the next few verses Paul regards him as the guilty party and insists that the church discipline him and all such evildoers. Read verses 2-13 and you will see it is obvious that Paul is not talking about a minor. Nor is the woman a minor - she is his
father's wife!
1 Corinthians 7:2: But since there is so much immorality (porneia), each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.
Paul is not recommending marriage because men are chasing little girls and women are chasing little boys. The problem that marriage addresses is promiscuity, not pedophilia.
Revelation 17:2: With her the kings of the earth committed adultery (porneia) and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries (porneia).
The whore of Babylon was not underage, nor were her regal consorts.
Summary:
"Fornication" (porneia) is the general word for sexual immorality and includes such things as adultery (Matthew 19:9), out-of-wedlock sex (John 8:41), incest (1 Corinthians 5:1) and flagrant promiscuity (Revelation 17:2). When you see a commandment condemning fornication (e.g. Colossians 3:5: Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: fornication [porneia]…) it is not speaking about pedophilia except in that pedophilia is a subset of immorality in general.
The professor who equated fornication with pedophilia does not know Greek, has not read the Bible, and has not spent five minutes investigating this ridiculous claim.
Postscript: my son responded, "I think I didn't quite word my question correctly in this regard. The professor wasn't calling all porneia pedophilia - merely fornication. Thus, he would argue that adultery and incest do not fall under the heading of what he deems excusable by Biblical standards - only that fornication had a different definition since women were not single past menstruation. Still, the passage in John answers that objection."
I answered,
Now I'm confused. You say that the professor wasn't calling all porneia pedophilia - merely fornication. But the whole point here is that "fornication" is an English word used to translate Greek porneia. In order to understand precisely what the Bible does or does not condemn, it is pointless to plumb the meaning of an English word and base any conclusions off that.
In English, the Bible says, "Don't fornicate." Now if someone (a professor, say) comes along and declares, "When it says, 'Don't fornicate,' what that really means in our terms is, 'Don't have sex with the underaged,' then it is legitimate to respond, "But strictly speaking the Bible doesn't say 'Don't fornicate'; it says 'Don't porneia.'" The question really is, "What exactly does porneia mean?" And we find very quickly that it refers to a variety of things, among them, clearly, sex out of wedlock regardless of the age of the participants.
It may be that the professor was referring to some other Greek or Hebrew word, or some particular passage that he felt could be construed as a ban against pedophilia. Even if that is the case - and, for argument's sake, I will grant that point in its entirety - it is irrelevant to the question of whether the Bible forbids non-marital
sex even when that sex is neither adulterous, incestuous nor pedophilic. The answer to that question is, "Of course it does. It forbids it every time it says 'Don't porneia.'"
Monday, November 7, 2005
Does Apostolic Suffering Have Apologetic Value? (November 7, 2005)
For the next several weeks I'll be dealing with some defense-of-the-faith issues brought up in an email my son wrote me from college. He wrote, "Hey Dad, I went to an interesting lecture/discussion earlier this week by a religion professor. Of course, he was ridiculously liberal, and I ended up challenging him on a lot of his stances, but the discussion was nonetheless intellectually stimulating, so I was wondering how you would respond to some of his views...
"This is a question I had on my own. Often times, I've heard used as proof of the resurrection the willingness of the apostles to die for their belief. My question is: how is this different from cult members who drink poison kool-aid because they honestly believe a space-ship is coming to abduct them? I don't mean to sound sacrilegious at all with this question, I'm just honestly asking for the sake of argument. After all, just as the apostles, those cult members must have really believed their outrageous claim to be willing to die for it. What separates the apostles? (In the intellectual form of the question, rather than just the obvious 'because their claim was true').
Thanks, Ben"
My response:
People have always been willing to die for outrageously kooky beliefs that they held sincerely. On that criterion alone, nothing distinguishes the apostles of Christ from the Jim Jones Kool-Aid drinkers or the Marshall Applewhite self-castrated spaceship riders. But willingness to die for an amazing belief really isn't the issue. The issue is whether a group of people would choose to suffer and die (and not in an afternoon, but through decades) over something they all knew to be false! As you point out, the cult members "must have really believed their outrageous claim to be able to die for it." That is true, they did. They weren't snickering to themselves in private, "Boy what a bunch of baloney this is." They were true believers. But on the theory that Jesus did not rise from the dead - the disciples stole the body, disposed of it somehow, made up these stories about seeing him alive - then the disciples weren't true believers at all; they were knowingly perpetrating a scam. On that assumption, why in the world did they all go to their deaths (after multiple beatings, imprisonments, etc.) for something they themselves knew they had just made up?
I seem to recall that Lee Strobel addresses this issue in The Case For Christ. (Yes, here it is):
Strobel: "'They were willing to die for their beliefs. But so have Muslims and Mormons and followers of Jim Jones and David Koresh. This may show that they were fanatical, but let's face it: it doesn't prove that what they believed is true.'"
J. P. Moreland: "'[T]hink carefully about the difference. Muslims might be willing to die for their belief that Allah revealed himself to Muhammad, but this revelation was not done in a publicly observable way. So they could be wrong about it. They may sincerely think it's true, but they can't know for a fact, because they didn't witness it themselves.
"'However, the apostles were willing to die for something they had seen with their own eyes and touched with their own hands. They were in a unique position not just to believe Jesus rose from the dead but to know for sure. And when you've got eleven credible people with no ulterior motives, with nothing to gain and a lot to lose, who all agree they observed something with their own eyes - now you've got some difficulty explaining that away.'"
Strobel: "I smiled because I had been playing devil's advocate by raising my objection. Actually, I knew he was right. In fact, this critical distinction was pivotal in my own spiritual journey. It had been put to me this way: People will die for their religious beliefs if they sincerely believe they're true, but people won't die for their religious beliefs if they know their beliefs are false." (The Case For Christ, (page 247).
For the next several weeks I'll be dealing with some defense-of-the-faith issues brought up in an email my son wrote me from college. He wrote, "Hey Dad, I went to an interesting lecture/discussion earlier this week by a religion professor. Of course, he was ridiculously liberal, and I ended up challenging him on a lot of his stances, but the discussion was nonetheless intellectually stimulating, so I was wondering how you would respond to some of his views...
"This is a question I had on my own. Often times, I've heard used as proof of the resurrection the willingness of the apostles to die for their belief. My question is: how is this different from cult members who drink poison kool-aid because they honestly believe a space-ship is coming to abduct them? I don't mean to sound sacrilegious at all with this question, I'm just honestly asking for the sake of argument. After all, just as the apostles, those cult members must have really believed their outrageous claim to be willing to die for it. What separates the apostles? (In the intellectual form of the question, rather than just the obvious 'because their claim was true').
Thanks, Ben"
My response:
People have always been willing to die for outrageously kooky beliefs that they held sincerely. On that criterion alone, nothing distinguishes the apostles of Christ from the Jim Jones Kool-Aid drinkers or the Marshall Applewhite self-castrated spaceship riders. But willingness to die for an amazing belief really isn't the issue. The issue is whether a group of people would choose to suffer and die (and not in an afternoon, but through decades) over something they all knew to be false! As you point out, the cult members "must have really believed their outrageous claim to be able to die for it." That is true, they did. They weren't snickering to themselves in private, "Boy what a bunch of baloney this is." They were true believers. But on the theory that Jesus did not rise from the dead - the disciples stole the body, disposed of it somehow, made up these stories about seeing him alive - then the disciples weren't true believers at all; they were knowingly perpetrating a scam. On that assumption, why in the world did they all go to their deaths (after multiple beatings, imprisonments, etc.) for something they themselves knew they had just made up?
I seem to recall that Lee Strobel addresses this issue in The Case For Christ. (Yes, here it is):
Strobel: "'They were willing to die for their beliefs. But so have Muslims and Mormons and followers of Jim Jones and David Koresh. This may show that they were fanatical, but let's face it: it doesn't prove that what they believed is true.'"
J. P. Moreland: "'[T]hink carefully about the difference. Muslims might be willing to die for their belief that Allah revealed himself to Muhammad, but this revelation was not done in a publicly observable way. So they could be wrong about it. They may sincerely think it's true, but they can't know for a fact, because they didn't witness it themselves.
"'However, the apostles were willing to die for something they had seen with their own eyes and touched with their own hands. They were in a unique position not just to believe Jesus rose from the dead but to know for sure. And when you've got eleven credible people with no ulterior motives, with nothing to gain and a lot to lose, who all agree they observed something with their own eyes - now you've got some difficulty explaining that away.'"
Strobel: "I smiled because I had been playing devil's advocate by raising my objection. Actually, I knew he was right. In fact, this critical distinction was pivotal in my own spiritual journey. It had been put to me this way: People will die for their religious beliefs if they sincerely believe they're true, but people won't die for their religious beliefs if they know their beliefs are false." (The Case For Christ, (page 247).
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