Jesus and His Church: Part II: Electric Boogaloo

So, in this post, we shall start off by looking at sola scriptura as an epistemological framework for assessing matters of faith. According to this principle, Scripture is the final and ultimate authority for all matters concerning faith for the Christian. However, whilst virtually all Christians can agree that Scripture is authoritative, there nevertheless exists a plethora of different views on multiple subjects. 

As such, how can we tell which interpretation is valid? Which translation of the Bible ought we to use? Are all translations equal and valid, or are some better than others? Whilst I was still a Protestant, I endeavored to research the underlying context of Biblical passages by looking at commentaries of the Bible that explored the linguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds behind the original text. 

Of course, religious and atheist fundamentalists alike both insist that the Bible shouldn't need to be 'interpreted' since it is the 'Word of God'. You even have people who claim that the King James Version of the Bible is the only correct version of the Bible, amongst other things. Moreover, there were still (primarily philosophical) disagreements between those who relied on finding the context.

The first thing to notice about all of this is that you are indelibly indebted to things other than the Bible to determine what beliefs are true. When arguing for a given interpretation or translation of the Bible, you have to rely on things other than the text of Scripture itself to determine the meaning of Scripture. 

You're reliant on your personal intuitions, your pastor, Biblical scholars, etc. when confronted with difficult passages. How do we decide which approaches to Biblical interpretation are valid or not? You can't say just use the Bible, because that is circular reasoning. 

Second, it is worth noting that nowhere in the Bible does it say that Scripture is the ultimate and final authority either. Jesus said that all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, but then how does one determine what is and is not Scripture? The Protestants famously removed several books from the Bible, but on what basis?

Whilst I was still a Protestant, I decided that it would probably be best to try and discover what the earliest Church believed, since they were closer in time to Jesus than I am. Well, it's worth noting that the New Testament documents were not written until a few decades after Jesus' death and the canon of the New Testament would not be decided until a few centuries after. 

Moreover, most people were illiterate, and so primarily relied on oral tradition and did not read themselves. It took me awhile to find out, but the earliest Church was much closer to Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Church of the East than to Protestantism, especially low church Protestantism. 

The earliest Church had bishops and priests, they had services modeled on Old Testament temple worship. They also had councils, which is even in the text of the New Testament itself. When there was disagreement among the disciples regarding whether Christians were still required to follows the laws of the Torah or not, they held a council in Jerusalem. 

The canon of Scripture was decided by the entire Church through a series of synods and local councils. In other words, we are reliant on tradition in order to even get to Scripture in the first place. Not just the oral tradition preached by the apostles, and the textual tradition of the manuscripts, but you had extra-Biblical teachings passed onto the Church Fathers, and commentaries on Scripture made by the Church Fathers as well. 

So, in order to maintain sola scriptura, you would need to maintain that tradition was authoritative in the past but suddenly ceased being authoritative. However, it seems obvious that to maintain such would be nothing more than an exercise in question begging. Your only reason for believing it would be because you already accept sola scriptura. 

However, sola scriptura is nowhere found in Scripture itself and is not taught by the Church Fathers. Nor is it affirmed in any of the Ecumenical Councils. It's not until Martin Luther, et al. came along that people started claiming that Scripture alone determined matters of faith. But if sola scriptura is true, then why is that? 

In fact, what one finds is that Protestant-exclusive beliefs as a whole do not appear anywhere in the earliest Church. Nor are they evidenced in the writings of the Church Fathers. Scripture is important, but it is important to understand that it is only part of Holy Tradition. So, it seems clear that Protestantism and its various denominations aren't serious contenders for which branch is correct. 

However, it seems far from clear that the Catholics are correct. Now, it is important to understand that when Catholics claim that the Pope has jurisdiction of authority over the whole Church, they base this on the passage where Jesus states that upon this rock He would build His church. They claim that the rock refers to Peter, but they also go a step further and claim that this was the view of the original Church, and that it has always been understood that way.

However, the evidence for such an understanding is nowhere evidenced in the writings of the Church Fathers. Rather, the understanding of the Church Fathers was that the successor of Peter held a position of being first in honour, but did not hold authority over his brother bishops. This is clearly reflected in the Book of Acts.

For during the Council of Jerusalem, when Peter initially sided with the Judaisers, Paul openly rebuked Peter to his face. Whereas there exists a multitude of interpretations of the passage cited by Catholics in defence of papal supremacy. Only a few held the rock to be peter, whereas others held it to mean the Church as whole, others took it to be faith in Christ, and so on. 

The first evidence of anyone holding to the view that the Pope held authority over the whole Church comes to us from the 5th century AD from Pope Leo I. He was the first to argue that the Roman Church held a position of authority over its sister churches based on the primacy of Peter. 

Given that the Pope therefore does not hold authority over the entire Church, the Pope has no authority to excommunicate other Patriarchs. He can break communion with other churches, though. The problem is, however, that he would need a valid reason for doing so, and the other churches not accepting papal supremacy and the Filioque clause, etc., are not valid reasons. 

Jesus and His Church: Part I: The One True Church?

So, in previous posts, we have established that God almost certainly exists, and that the resurrection hypothesis is the best explanation of the available historical data. Knowing these things, we can conclude that Christianity is therefore almost certainly true. However, as you may or may not know, there are nevertheless internal divisions within Christianity. 

Most are familiar with the divide between Catholics and Protestants, but there exists Eastern Orthodoxy as well. There also exists the Old Catholic Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Church of the East. Moreover, within Protestantism, there are many different competing denominations. It might therefore come across as confusing trying to navigate this landscape of differing 'branches' of Christianity. 

One unites all disparate branches of Christianity are two things: belief in God as Trinity, and belief in the resurrection. So, really, Trinitarianism is the one single, unique defining feature of all versions of Christianity. For that reason, we can rightly dismiss Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons as not being Christians, because they do not believe in the Trinity. Same thing applies to Unitarian Universalists. 

For the first four centuries of its existence, the Church was essentially one and whole. Sure, there were minor heretical movements, but these were universally condemned by the whole Church. It was not until 431 AD when the Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorius and Nestorianism that the Church of the East, which had already claimed to be distinct from the Church in the West as early as 410, broke off communion and split off on its own.

Now, there is some quibble about whether or not the Church of the East is truly Nestorian, but they largely follow his teachings and venerate him as a saint, so, really, if it walks like a duck... Really, the onus is on those who claim that the Church of the East isn't Nestorian to show that this is, in fact, the case. Now, Nestorius denied that Mary was the Theotokos or God Bearer.

He instead came up with the term Christotokos or Christ Bearer. This was condemned as heresy since it basically means that Jesus is two persons, therefore resulting in a quadrinity, rather than a Trinity. Now, since then, there was a schism in 1552, whereby part of the Church of the East joined the Roman Catholic Church. There was then a schism in 1968, resulting in the Church of the East splitting in two: the Ancient Church of the East and the Assyrian Church of the East. 

The next schism in the history of the Church occurred just 20 years after the Church of the East split off, in 451 AD, when the churches in Armenia, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and India broke off communion with the rest of the church. This was as a result of the Council of Chalcedon, which, aside from re-affirming the condemnation of Nestorius, also condemned Monophysitism.

Monophysitism was the position that Christ has only one nature, whereas the position of the Church was that Christ has two natures: one human, and one divine. Well, the five churches mentioned maintained that Christ had a single, mixed nature: one nature that was both human and divine, rather than two separate natures. This position, known as miaphysitism to differentiate from traditional Monophysitism, was nevertheless also condemned as heresy.

The five churches mentioned then broke off communion and became to be known as the Oriental Orthodox Church. The biggest schism in Church History, however, was known as the Great Schism, that occurred in 1054. Of course, the events that lead to this were long in the making. There were a number of key doctrines that the Roman Church began teaching that put them at odds with the Eastern churches. 

The Roman Bishop, known as the Pope, asserted jurisdiction of authority over the whole Church, which ran contrary to the notion of the Patriarchs of the Church being a confederacy of brother Bishops. Second, western Churches altered the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed without approval. They added the now-infamous 'Filioque' clause. 

The original creed read that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, whereas the western Churches added the phrase 'and the Son' afterwards. Whilst the Roman Church initially condemned this addition, it was eventually adopted by it and all the western Churches. Lastly, the Roman Church had moved to using unleavened bread in the Eucharist.

In 1054, the Pope sent a representative, Cardinal Humbert, to Constantinople who promptly excommunicated the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Patriarch excommunicated the Cardinal in return. The western churches sided with the Church of Rome and became what is now the Roman Catholic Church, whereas the eastern churches became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Since then, the Catholic Church has undergone numerous changes in its teachings over time. The sale of indulgences in particular kicked off the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, and then the first Vatican council resulted in various parts of the Catholic church breaking away to become the Old Catholic Church. 

Protestantism in particular consists of numerous denominations. It can be roughly divided into high church denominations, such as Anglicanism and Lutheranism, and low church denominations. The chief difference being that low churches do not have the formal priesthood and the ceremonial pomp of the Catholic Mass and Eastern Orthodox Liturgy, whereas the high church denominations still have those things. 

The problem is not too dissimilar from the problem facing the person who knows God exists but is unsure which, if any, religion is true. Quite simply, which branch or denomination do I pick? Are they all equally valid ways to Jesus? Or is only one branch the true way to Jesus? To answer these questions, then, aside from looking at the history of the Church, it is vital to have the correct epistemology. 

Protestants subscribe to sola scriptura, which is the position that Scripture is the final and ultimate authority on matters of faith. Catholics, on the other hand, maintain that one requires the Magisterium of the Catholic Church to properly interpret Scripture. Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, as well as the Church of the East, all maintain that the correct way to approach matters of faith is through Holy Tradition. 

By Holy Tradition, they mean all of Scripture (of course), but also teachings of Jesus and the Apostles not recorded in Scripture but passed on through the writings of the Church Fathers. Moreover, they also include the writings of the Church Fathers themselves, as well as the deliverances of the various councils, particularly the Ecumenical Councils. 

The chief difference between Eastern and Oriental Orthodox is that the Oriental Orthodox reject the Council of Chalcedon, whereas the chief difference between Eastern Orthodox and the Church of the East is that the Church of the East rejects the Council of Ephesus. So, assuming you agreed with the Tradition approach, which one you would pick would depend on whether you count the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon as binding. 

The Catholic Church agrees with the Ecumenical councils, it must be said, but also holds its own councils held since the Great Schism as being binding, including Vatican I and Vatican II. These are the two councils where, amongst other things, Papal Infallibility was properly defined. Vatican I, however, also led to the breaking away of the Old Catholic Church. 

So, in many ways, the Roman Catholic Church stands or falls on Papal Supremacy and Papal Infallibility. As such, whether you would pick the Catholic Church or the Old Catholic Church would depend on whether you accepted Vatican I and II or not. Which Protestant denomination one would pick is a trickier subject, since there are as many different interpretations of Scripture as there are individual Protestants. 

However, many Protestant denominations have their own individual professions of faith and statements, and so on. Nevertheless, there is very much the danger of treating the matter like a spiritual 'buffet', picking and choosing which beliefs one wants to entertain and then finding the exact denomination that matches your exact whims. 

In the next few posts, I will be going over arguments for and against the general epistemological approaches mentioned above and ultimately try and arrive at a conclusion regarding which branch of Christianity, if any, is the 'correct' version of if they're all essentially valid approaches to faith in Christ. 

Weighing the Resurrection Hypothesis

In the previous post, we weighed various naturalistic hypotheses to see if any were a good candidate for the best explanation and found them all extremely wanting. In this post, we shall be looking at how well the resurrection hypothesis meets the criteria for the best explanation. 

In terms of explanatory scope, the resurrection hypothesis accounts for all the data, which is more than I can say for most of the naturalistic alternatives, and it has particularly strong explanatory power because the evidence is exactly what we would expect were the resurrection hypothesis true. It is also not particularly ad hoc since we need only suppose that God exists (which is entailed by the various arguments for the existence of God). 

How about plausibility? Just how plausible is it that God resurrected Jesus from the dead? What accepted truths, if any, imply the resurrection hypothesis? Which accepted truths, if any, imply that it is false? Now, this depends on whether or not God exists. An atheist will presumably argue that God's non-existence implies that it is false, whereas a (Christian) theist would presumably argue that God's existence implies that it is true. 

Of course, without any sort of argument for either position, then such claims are clearly question begging. If we assume agnosticism, then, at worst, plausibility is simply inscrutable. At best, we can conclude that whilst it is perhaps not necessarily plausible, it is not necessarily implausible either. However, why settle for this when we have an array of logically valid, sound arguments that show beyond a reasonable doubt that God almost certainly exists? 

With all due respect to my atheist friends and so on, atheism makes about as much sense as putting an ashtray on a motorcycle. Whilst the question of whether or not God exists might seem like an open question, it only seems this way if one ignores virtually all of philosophy and theology. Atheism logically entails its own defeat and requires us to accept a number of beliefs that are quite frankly absurd.

A similar discussion can be had when it comes to whether or not the resurrection hypothesis is disconfirmed by accepted truths or not. Now, somebody might argue that dead people stay dead. That is true enough. But the hypothesis is not that Jesus rose from the dead naturally so this response will not do. 

It's worth noting that Christianity had virtually everything stacked against it. It had none of the advantages of pagan cults which took pre-existing beliefs and myths and/or relied on humanity's base instincts, like sex cults, etc. It didn't tell people what they wanted to hear. In fact, it told people what they didn't want to hear.

Its central figure was a Galilean Jew from Nazareth who was publicly crucified for sedition and who was accused of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin. It made tough ethical demands on its followers. Really, the crucifixion of Jesus should have put a stop to the fledgling religion, but it didn't. We could suppose that the disciples were inculcated fanatics, sure, but what about James and Paul?

Moreover, why did people flock to Christianity in the thousands? Out of all the pagan religions to have ever existed, only Hinduism still persists and is limited almost entirely to India and its diaspora. The chief rival to Christianity, Islam, takes Jesus and places Him as a prophet of high importance. Why is this the case? 

So, even if we insist on rating the plausibility and level of disconfirmation somewhat neutrally, the resurrection hypothesis still comes out on top above the rival hypotheses. Even if we combine naturalistic hypotheses, these can never be more probable than either hypothesis in isolation. A combination can only be as probable or less. 

As such, given the total poverty of naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection hypothesis, it is clear that there is no chance of any them soon exceeding the resurrection hypothesis in any of the criteria for the best explanation. You'd have to resort to wildly implausible, ad hoc scenarios such as 'advanced aliens' or claim that God exists but allowed demonic forces to 'trick' humanity. But if that is your route to avoid concluding that Jesus rose from the dead, you might as well just admit you don't have an argument. It will save everybody some time. 

Naturalistic Alternatives to the Resurrection Hypothesis

So, in the previous post we established the following facts: 
1. Jesus was crucified.
2. Jesus was buried.
3. Jesus' tomb was found empty.
4. Jesus' disciples and other followers had experiences they believed to be encounters with the risen Jesus. 5. Jesus' sceptical half-brother, James, converted after a similar experience.
6. The Church persecutor, Paul, converted after a similar experience.
7. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah.
8. Jesus claimed to be divine.
9. Jesus predicted His own death and resurrection. 

Aside from these facts, we also have to explain the meteoric rise and success of Christianity when its central claims and teachings ran against the prevailing socio-cultural milieu of the 1st century. Now, we shall refer to the claim that Jesus was resurrected from the dead simply as 'the resurrection hypothesis'. The question is, is the resurrection hypothesis the best explanation of these facts, or is some other naturalistic alternative the best explanation? 

When assessing various hypotheses and trying to decide which (if any) are the best explanation, we are relying on the following criteria: 
1. The hypothesis must imply further statements describing present, observable data. 
2. The hypothesis must have greater explanatory scope than its rivals. 
3. The hypothesis must have greater explanatory power than its rivals. 
4. The hypothesis must be more plausible than its rivals. 
5. The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than its rivals. 
6. The hypothesis must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than its rivals. 
7. The hypothesis must so exceed its rivals in fulfilling the prior conditions that there is little chance of a rival hypothesis soon exceeding it. 

We are already familiar with the resurrection hypothesis, but what are the naturalistic alternatives? The naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection hypothesis are as follows: 
1. The Doppelganger Hypothesis: Jesus had a lookalike and so either Jesus was a conman or else a lookalike capitalised on Jesus' death to dupe the disciples. 
2. The Cognitive Dissonance Hypothesis: the disciples invented the resurrection appearances to reconcile cognitive dissonance following Jesus' death. 
3. The Hallucination Hypothesis: the disciples hallucinated the risen Jesus. 
4. The Revival Hypothesis: Jesus wasn't really dead when He was taken from the cross and regained consciousness in the tomb. 
5. The Wrong Tomb Hypothesis: Jesus' followers went to the wrong tomb. 
6. The Stolen Body Hypothesis: the disciples or some other group stole Jesus' body. 
7. The Fraud/Conspiracy Hypothesis: the whole thing is made up. 

Pretty much every hypothesis satisfies condition one, so we shall skip that and move straight ahead to explanatory scope. Simply put, the more data points a hypothesis explains, the more explanatory scope it has. Explanatory power refers to how well the hypothesis explains those data points. Specifically, it refers to how probable the evidence is were the hypothesis to be true. 

Plausibility is a tad more complex; it refers to the degree the hypothesis is implied by accepted truths and the degree to which its negation is implied by accepted truths. A hypothesis is more plausible if it is implied by a greater variety of accepted truths and to a stronger degree and its probable negation is implied by a lesser variety of accepted truths and to a less stronger degree. 

The quality of being ad hoc simply refers to how many new suppositions about the past are required for the hypothesis to work. The fewer new suppositions about the past not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs, the better. Whereas the degree to which a hypothesis is disconfirmed by accepted beliefs is pretty straightforward. 

When conjoined with accepted truths, the hypothesis must imply fewer statements which are believed to be false. The final criterion is pretty self-explanatory. So, let us first review the naturalistic alternatives starting with the Doppelganger Hypothesis. There are two separate versions of this hypothesis, one where Jesus is a fraud and one where His lookalike is the conman. 

Regarding explanatory scope, the only area that might trip it up is the fact that the empty tomb needs explaining. Of course, we could suitably tailor our hypothesis to account for this fact. If Jesus were a fraud, then we could suppose He got rid of His lookalike's body, whereas if the lookalike was the conman, we could suppose he got rid of Jesus' body. 

However, what of explanatory power? This is where this hypothesis quickly crumbles. Why would the disciples conclude that they had seen the resurrected Jesus? Remember that resurrection entailed a glorious transformation into an immortal new form and was believed to be reserved for the end of time. Why would they take an ordinary human being to be a resurrected being? 

Even if we assume that the disciples were somehow too ignorant to know, an ex-Pharisee like Paul would absolutely have known the difference. So, this hypothesis, whilst it could ostensibly explain all the facts, it doesn't really explain them very well because there are obvious holes. It is also not very plausible. For the simple reason that there is zero evidence of such a lookalike.

For this hypothesis to work, we need to suppose that another man looked so much like Jesus that His own disciples couldn't tell it wasn't Him. But if such a person existed, why is there no mention of him? And how is it that either Jesus or the lookalike then somehow completely disappeared from the historical record? If Jesus or someone who looked exactly like Him were running around, someone would have noticed. 

This hypothesis is also particularly ad hoc in that it requires us to accept the existence of a doppelganger in the absence of any evidence of such an individual. It is also therefore greatly disconfirmed due to the fact that there is no such evidence of such a doppelganger. So, despite a somewhat promising start, this hypothesis falls apart like a house of cards made on sand. 

Let us therefore move onto the Cognitive Dissonance hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, the disciples were so distraught following Jesus' death that, to reconcile that reality with their Messianic hopes, they invented the resurrection appearances to deal with the cognitive dissonance they were suffering. 

As far as explanatory scope goes, this fails right off the bat, because it doesn't explain the empty tomb, or the conversions of James and Paul. It also suffers in terms of poor explanatory power because, once again, why would they claim Jesus was resurrected? It would have been easier to say either that Jesus returned to ordinary life, or even that His body has been assumed or translated into heaven. 

Whilst somewhat more plausible than the doppelganger hypothesis, it's still not very plausible because there's just no reason to suppose James and Paul would suffer the same kind of cognitive dissonance, nor would they just take the disciples at their word (especially if Jesus' body still lay in the grave!) 

It is disconfirmed by the fact that cognitive dissonance is a well understood phenomenon and would only have affected believers in Jesus. About the only area it does well in is that it is not terribly ad hoc. So, with all things considered, this hypothesis is likewise a dismal failure. 

The hallucination hypothesis has been somewhat popular amongst scholars sceptical of the claims of Christianity. However, it suffers in terms of explanatory scope since it fails to explain the empty tomb. It also doesn't have very good explanatory power since hallucinations are private and internal and thus unique to individuals. 

We could reasonably suppose a few people hallucinating the risen Jesus, but all of the disciples plus however many other followers? Not to mention James and Paul as well. Moreover, hallucinations follow the expectations of the hallucinator, so why would they hallucinate a resurrected Jesus instead of say an ordinary human Jesus? 

This hypothesis is therefore not very plausible since the phenomenon of hallucinations are particularly well understood and the accounts of the risen Jesus in the New Testament do not match accounts of hallucination. Even in cases of so-called "mass hallucinations" (which are basically just illusions rather than hallucinations) accounts of what was seen vary by individual. 

Whilst not very ad hoc except in the fact we have to believe hundreds of people experience identical visions of a resurrected Jesus, it is disconfirmed by the fact that this is just not how hallucinations work at all. I could buy some of the core disciples having a vision of Jesus and then maybe they think He has been taken up into heaven, but not people hostile or indifferent to Christianity. 

The revival hypothesis maintains that Jesus was taken down from the cross before He was actually dead and regained consciousness in the tomb and then paid His disciples, et al., a visit. This is another hypothesis that does well in terms of explanatory scope but fails in explanatory power and other criteria. 

As far as explanatory power is concerned, it doesn't explain the resurrection appearances or the conversions of James and Paul very well since Jesus would have been bloodied and bruised from all the scourging and other tortures, not to mention wounds and health issues from being crucified for several hours. 

So, why would anyone think He was a resurrected being? Why would they assume He had risen from the dead at all? However, the main thing to note is that the chances of Jesus' surviving being flogged, tortured, and then crucified are slim to none. Bearing in mind, also, that the Roman soldiers officiating the execution would have been severely punished if Jesus had really gotten away. 

However, much with the doppelganger hypothesis, Jesus disappears from the historical record afterwards. So, what happened to Him? Moreover, this hypothesis severely underestimates the brutality of crucifixion and Roman torture. This hypothesis is just therefore not very plausible. 

It is disconfirmed by what we know about the reality of crucifixion and Roman torture. It is also somewhat ad hoc since we have to suppose that a number of disparate things all coincided: Jesus somehow survived without the Roman soldiers noticing, He somehow duped the disciples and others that He was a resurrected, and then just disappeared without a trace? 

The wrong tomb hypothesis is fairly simple: the women followers of Jesus and then the disciples visited the wrong tomb. The first major problem with this, of course, is that it does nothing to explain the resurrection appearances or the conversions of James and Paul. However, even in terms of explanatory power it is particularly weak.

Why would they jump to the conclusion that Jesus was resurrected? Assuming they were gullible enough, wouldn't they have more easily assumed that Jesus' body was taken up into heaven? Wouldn't they have assumed that the body was simply missing or stolen? However, more realistically, they would have realised they visited the wrong tomb.

Moreover, why did the authorities not produce Jesus' body? In terms of plausibility, this hypothesis is not very plausible at all because even if we assumed that Jesus' followers and disciples were really gullible, there's just no way the authorities would not have produced Jesus' body had it still lain in the tomb. 

We next come to the stolen body hypothesis, which involves either the disciples or some other group stealing Jesus' body. In terms of explanatory scope, it does not explain the resurrection appearances or the conversion of James and Paul. In terms of explanatory power, it doesn't make sense why the disciples claimed Jesus was resurrected rather than returned to ordinary life or taken up into heaven. 

It is at least somewhat plausible, albeit not that much since it entails the disciples making up accounts they never deviated from (which just never happens in conspiracies like this). If we suppose that body snatching thieves were the culprits, this is even less likely since there is no evidence of such groups operating in 1st century AD Judea (thus also making this hypothesis somewhat ad hoc). 

As far as the fraud/conspiracy hypothesis is concerned, whilst the most popular against online sceptics, it is perhaps the weakest of them all because it fails virtually every criterion except explanatory scope. In terms of explanatory power, it fails because there is no divergence in the accounts, no record of anybody ever recanting their beliefs.

Why would James and Paul just go along with it? Why resurrection instead of something more palatable? It's plausible in the sense that, sure, people make things up all the time, but is very implausible in the sense that conspiracies involving many people almost always fail. The more people involved in a lie, the greater the chances of being discovered.

People make mistakes, change their story, get cold feet, and so on. These are people who went to their graves rather than recant their claim that they had seen the risen Jesus. It's extremely ad hoc because the conditions for such a conspiracy to work undetected are very exact. It's disconfirmed by the fact that conspiracies get found out.

Take the Watergate scandal. Those involved didn't even last a week before it all fell apart. You're telling me that twelve 1st century peasants kept a lie going for 40 years? Nonsense. So, as we can see, none of the naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection hypothesis manage to amount to much if anything at all. Of course, this does not mean that the resurrection hypothesis wins by default. 

We will take a look at the resurrection hypothesis separately, but for now it is worth noting that, if we are to posit a naturalistic alternative to the resurrection hypothesis, then we are going to have to resort to combining hypotheses. The problem with this, of course, is that two conjoined statements are never more probable than either statement on its own. 

The probability of two events occurring together is always less than or equal to the probability of either event occurring by itself. To suggest otherwise is to commit the conjunction fallacy. This is illustrated in the famous Linda Problem. You are asked to imagine a woman named Linda and are introduced to different background facts about Linda. 

Linda is: 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy and, as a student, was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Now, which statement is more probable? 1) Linda is a bank teller, or; 2) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement?

Even if we assume that the probability of her being a feminist is high and the probability of her being a bank teller is low, the conjoined probability will never be greater than either option. For instance, suppose the probability of her being a bank teller is 0.05 and the probability of her being a feminist is 0.95. The probability of both is the probability of one multiplied by the probability of the other. But 0.05 x 0.95 is 0.0475, which is lower than the probability of her being a bank teller. 

Building A Case for the Resurrection: Maximal Data, Minimal Facts, and Socio-Cultural Background

With the preliminaries out of the way, we can move on to sifting through the evidence to build a case for the resurrection. Now, even though the evidence shows that the Gospels are reliable ancient biographies that contain eyewitness testimony, we can feasibly build a case for the resurrection that doesn't rely on them at all.

Of the thirteen epistles that bears Paul's name, seven of them are universally regarded by even critical scholars as being authentically written by Paul. Of these seven, we only need rely on just two epistles: 1 Corinthians and Galatians. Two passages, one from each epistle, are important, because they contain the earliest reference to belief in the risen Christ.

So, 1 Corinthians is universally believed to have been written around 55 AD, which means it was written roughly only 20 years after Jesus' lifetime. However, 1 Corinthians 15 contains creedal material that predates the writing of the letter itself. Various clues in how it is written reveal an oral origin and Paul himself states he is relating material that he himself received. 

Clues to the time when Paul received this oral tradition can be found in Galatians, where Paul details what he did immediately following his conversion to Christianity. He states how after spending time in Arabia and then Damascus, he went to Jerusalem and met with some of the disciples of Jesus. Paul states this was 3 years after his conversion. 

However, the oral tradition already existed when Paul visited the disciples in Jerusalem. Meaning that it had already been formulated and begun to be circulated at that time, and so the creedal material is older than 3 years after the death of Jesus. As such, scholars place the origin of the creedal material anywhere from 6 months to 2 years after the death of Jesus.

This is important because it establishes that belief in the risen Christ and the appearances to the apostles were part of the earliest traditions of the Church. In other words, belief in the resurrection did not develop over time and sceptics of the past have argued. So, before the Gospels were written, the earliest Christians already believed that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead.

Aside from attesting to the earliness of belief in the risen Jesus, it also contains the earliest accounts of the appearances of Jesus to the disciples. Aside from the appearance to Peter and the other disciples, it also mentions appearances to other groups, including a group of roughly 500 people, as well as Jesus' half-brother James. 

Paul even specifies that many of those whom Jesus appeared to were still alive at the time of his writing. In other words, they would have been available to seek out and speak with in order to get their testimony. What this means, then, is that multiple individuals clearly had experiences that they interpreted to be encounters with the risen Jesus. 

So far, we have learned two important key facts: the earliest Christians all believed that Jesus rose from the dead, and many individuals had experiences that they took to be encounters with the resurrected Jesus. What other facts can we know beyond a reasonable doubt? 

Well, we can know with certainty that Jesus was executed via crucifixion. If Jesus were not dead, then He could hardly have been resurrected from the dead now, could He? This fact is corroborated by external historical sources also: multiple non-Christian sources attest to the crucifixion of Jesus. Tacitus in particular confirms that it was during the reign of Tiberius and that Jesus was executed under Pontius Pilate. 

Jesus' death by crucifixion is thereby regarded as one of the surest facts about His life by the overwhelming majority of scholars. However, what happened to Jesus' body after His death? This is where there is at least some dispute. The Christian story is that Jesus was buried in a tomb which was then discovered by a group of His female followers.

Now, whilst a good number of scholars accept both of these as facts, it is not as universal as the support for the previously mentioned facts, so some argument is needed. For some scholars maintain that Jesus' body was either left on the cross to be eaten, or else was dumped into a mass grave. Thus, we can't just appeal to the majority of scholars. 

First of all, belief in Jesus' burial is part of the earliest Christian tradition mentioned above. This becomes hard to explain if Jesus had not actually been buried. For all the authorities had to do to quash reports of Jesus' rising from the dead would be to produce a body. This therefore greatly raises the level of plausibility of the burial of Jesus.

Second, we know that, in at least some situations, the Romans did permit burial of crucifixion victims. Of course, the question here would then be: why would the Romans permit the burial of Jesus? Well, Jesus was crucified on the eve of the Passover, and it was against Jewish law to leave someone 'hanging on a tree'. 

Interestingly, the Gospels portray two secret followers of Jesus amongst the Sanhedrin, Joseph and Nicodemus, as being the buriers of Jesus. Well, this would make sense if we suppose that, anxious to avoid transgressing the law, the Sanhedrin would have wanted Jesus taken down and dealt with as soon as possible. 

This would mean that Joseph and Nicodemus could easily have petitioned Pilate to take Jesus' body down from the cross. The rest of the Sanhedrin just wanted to make sure the law was observed. But wouldn't they have found Joseph and Nicodemus burying Jesus in an actual tomb odd? To answer that question, we must look to Jewish law and burial practices and customs.

In fact, we can also look more broadly at 1st century Near Eastern and Mediterranean socio-cultural values as well. Now, in the case of a blasphemer (which is what the Sanhedrin considered Jesus), Jewish law does state that they were to be buried in an ignominious fashion, but what did that mean precisely? Well, to be purposefully buried away from family was considered shameful.

Now, Christian philosopher and theologian, William Lane Craig, finds issue with this by pointing out that the language accounts of the Gospels do not read like Jesus was buried in a shameful manner. Whilst true, this is not incompatible with the fact that being purposefully buried away from family members would have been considered dishonorable. 

We can grant that Joseph and Nicodemus, as secret followers of Jesus, did everything they could to rightfully honor Jesus' body in death, but this would have been kept secret from the Sanhedrin. As far as the general public knew, Jesus was buried shamefully after being executed in the most heinous fashion. So, this whole account is very plausible in light of ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman burial practices and socio-cultural values.

Whereas if the Gospel writers were simply making things up, why go to all that bother? Why not have the disciples steal Jesus' body and bury Him after the fact? Thus, we can be reasonably confident that Jesus was really buried in a tomb after His death via crucifixion. This in turn provides good evidence that the tomb was therefore discovered empty.

Because if Jesus' body had still lain in the grave, then, once again, the authorities could easily have produced Jesus' body. Now, the Gospels have the Sanhedrin claiming that the disciples stole Jesus' body and hid it away somewhere. However, if Jesus' body had still lain in His tomb, and the Sanhedrin and/or Romans produced Jesus' body, this would make no sense.

There is no mention of a body being produced anywhere in the entire historical record, even in works hostile to Christianity. So, we are forced to accept that the tomb really was discovered empty. Another fact that supports the authenticity of the accounts of the empty tomb is that it features women discovering the empty tomb.

However, a woman's testimony was considered virtually worthless in ancient Jewish and Graeco-Roman society. Had the Gospel authors been inventing the accounts, why on earth would they chose women? Surely, they would have had the male disciples as the discoverers of the empty tomb. So, we can therefore be confident that Jesus' tomb was therefore discovered empty. 

Aside from these facts, we also know that Paul was a former pharisee who converted to Christianity, and that Jesus' half-brother, James, who was described as being sceptical of Jesus' claims in the Gospels, also converted to Christianity after a similar experience with the risen Jesus. However, what other facts can we discern? 

Whilst scholarship is divided whether or not Jesus really claimed to be divine and/or the Messiah, we can easily construct historical arguments that show both of these things were the case. Jesus really did claim to be divine and really did claim to be the Messiah. 

We can be confident that Jesus claimed to be Israel's Messiah because, otherwise, it makes no sense why He was executed via crucifixion. Moreover, if Jesus Himself never claimed to be the Messiah, then it becomes inexplicable how such claims became attributed to Him. After all, there were figures in Jewish history who were regarded as teachers and even healers who were never considered as being contenders for the Messiah.

Moreover, there is no non-Messianic version of Christianity. You'd think that if Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah that there would be early, non-Messianic traditions circulating alongside the Messianic traditions, but there is no trace of anything even remotely resembling this. We don't start seeing alternative traditions until much later. 

It is often claimed (without evidence, it should be said) that the canonical Gospels were either arbitrarily chosen by Constantine at the Council of Nicaea and/or that competing accounts were destroyed. Now, aside from there being no shred of evidence that this ever happened, we have hard evidence explicitly contradicting this claim.

Aside from the basic facts, such as Constantine having no role within the Council of Nicaea, and the canon of the New Testament being decided prior to the Council of Nicaea, there's the fact that we have extant copies of rival accounts to the four canonical Gospels, and they are much too late to be considered 'valid alternatives' to the canonical Gospels. 

However, it is worth noting that even in heretical forms of Christianity such as Gnosticism, Jesus is still portrayed as some kind of divine or messianic figure. It's not until much later where you get heresies such as Arianism that deny the divinity of Christ. If Jesus never claimed to be divine and never claimed to be the Messiah, why is it that the earliest traditions of Christianity hold him to be both?

Surely, if Jesus never claimed to be either, then non-Messianic, non-Trinitarian Christianity would have predated Trinitarian, Messianic Christianity and not the other way round. Especially considering that Jesus was crucified. To say that a crucified deity/messiah would have been a hard sell would be a colossal understatement. 

In an honour-shame based society such as the 1st century Near East and Mediterranean, it would have been considered utterly absurd. Jews were strict monotheists who believed that those hung from a tree were cursed by God. The pagan Greeks and Romans would have considered a deity actually becoming human (as opposed to merely appearing human) and then be crucified as utterly non-sensical.

The reason for this was because crucifixion was a status degradation ritual meant to dishonour someone as much as possible, and so it would have defied how the Greeks and Romans understood honour and deity for one to be actually fully human and actually crucified. Especially considered that Jesus was Jewish, as the Greeks and Romans held negative views of Jews. 

Jesus also hailed from Galilee, and Galileans had a negative reputation amongst Jews and non-Jews alike. Jews regarded them as backwards country bumpkins, and it was also a hotspot for uprisings and so not regarded well by the Romans. Jesus specifically hailed from Nazareth, a city of absolutely no repute whatsoever.

Jesus associated with social undesirables, such as fishermen, tax collectors, and prostitutes. Jesus' teachings made specific ethical demands of His followers (i.e. giving up familial relations if they became an obstacle) that would have been unthinkable in the social world of the 1st century. 

Jesus was a rural itinerant preacher in a world controlled by wealthy urbanites, so His social standing alone would have been enough for non-Jews to find claims regarding His divinity as ridiculous. However, they also believed that the best possible fate was to escape the world of matter. So, a deity to actually take on human flesh would have likewise been considered ridiculous to non-Jews. 

It's also worth noting that resurrection was not only a belief unique to Judaism, but also a specific mode of returning from death to life. It wasn't simply a return to your ordinary human life that you had before. But, rather, also involved a transformation into an immortal body. However, the prevailing belief amongst Jews of the 1st century was that this was reserved exclusively for the righteous dead at the end of history. 

Gentiles would have regarded resurrection as less than ideal, since it still meant having a body, and Jews would have found the idea of someone executed as a criminal and blasphemer being resurrected before the end of time as particularly odd as well. So, we can be confident that Jesus really did predict His own death and resurrection.

Note how the disciples are routinely depicted as being confused when Jesus would say He would die and be resurrected. Aside from portraying the disciples negatively, it matches the socio-cultural background data. It makes sense that the disciples would have been confused since they were not expecting the Messiah to be killed and resurrected. 

So, we can be reasonably confident of the following facts: 
1. Jesus was crucified. 
2. Jesus was buried. 
3. Jesus' tomb was found empty.
4. Jesus' disciples and other followers had experiences they believed to be encounters with the risen Jesus. 
5. Jesus' sceptical half-brother, James, converted after a similar experience. 
6. The Church persecutor, Paul, converted after a similar experience. 
7. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah.
8. Jesus claimed to be divine. 
9. Jesus predicted His own death and resurrection. 

Aside from these facts, we also have to explain the meteoric rise and success of Christianity when its central claims and teachings ran against the prevailing socio-cultural milieu of the 1st century.

Approaches to Assessing the Evidence for the Resurrection

When it comes to assessing the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event, it is often claimed by atheists that the text of what is now referred to as the New Testament is practically useless is determining what actually happened since it reflects the "biases of ancient Christians" rather than actual events. Aside from this, many also labour under the delusion that the Christian seeking to demonstrate the historicity of the resurrection must first demonstrate the reliability and truth of the entire Bible.

It's sort of a catch-22; atheists claim that the Bible is untrustworthy as a source and so cannot be used but also expect Christians to verify the veracity of the Bible as a source before they will accept any argument that the resurrection happened. Unfortunately for atheists and others sceptical of the claims of Christianity, that is not how historical investigation works. 

You can't claim that the Bible is unreliable without actual evidence, and you don't need to 'prove the entire Bible' either just to show that one event reported by the Bible happened. It is not uncommon for atheists who claim to be former Christians (as if this gives some kind of added credibility) to argue that if Christianity is true, the entire Bible needs to be validated since it claims to be the "word of God".

However, this is once again very sloppy methodology. The correct approach from a purely academic point of view is to assume an air of agnosticism and treat it like any other historical text. Treating it to a kind of radical hyper-scepticism based on your personal beliefs and prejudices is just poor epistemology and historiography. 

Now, from a historical perspective, it is perfectly possible for the Bible to be generally unreliable and for the resurrection to have happened, just as it is perfectly possible for the Bible to be generally reliable and for the resurrection to not have happened. What matters, then, is that we apply the criteria of history fairly and construct valid historical arguments for why the resurrection happened. 

As such, we need not be saddled with the laborious and time-consuming task of proving the general reliability of the entire Bible. It is the task of the historian to analyse sources with the rigorous criteria of historical research and to determine what can be determined if anything from those sources. 

Nevertheless, it is no coincidence that the claims of atheists and other sceptics of the Bible are, quite frankly, utterly baloney. From a textual criticism standpoint, the New Testament has the most reliable textual transmission of any ancient document in existence. 

Prior to the advent of the printing press, ancient texts had to be copied by hand, and so small errors could creep in. The field of textual criticism is concerned with analysing ancient texts to find and correct these small errors using a number of different criteria. 

So, first, one general principle is that the more copies there are, the easier it will be to detect errors. Second, the earlier in time a copy is to the original, the better. You do get critics like Bart Ehrman who claim that the New Testament is 'hopelessly corrupt' but is this a fair assessment? The New Testament has over 5,700 Greek manuscripts and over 10,000 in Latin.

There are then more copies in other languages such as Arabic, Coptic, Syriac, and so on. The earliest fragments of the New Testament date to the 2nd century, with complete manuscripts dating to the 5th century. The next best in terms of textual transmission would be the works of Homer, which have about 2,000 copies total. 

However, most ancient works don't even amount to that many. Tacitus' Annals, for instance, only has a handful of manuscripts dating to the 10th century and later. Yet, scholars do not run around like headless chickens worrying that we cannot recover what Tacitus originally wrote. So, why the excessive amounts of hyper-scepticism towards the New Testament?

Simply arguing that it claims to be the "word of God" will not do. You need to present an actual argument devoid of special pleading and question begging. Some instead try to attack the reliability of the New Testament on the basis of its oral traditions instead.

Scholars currently estimate that the Gospels were written roughly 30 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, with the letters of Paul being written in the 50s AD. Critics opine that this is too long after the events to be reliable. Yet, 30 years is roughly the time between the Gulf War and now, yet we would be considered out of our minds for rejecting firsthand accounts written today, 

For most of history, in fact, contemporary writings were rare. It was quite common for accounts to be written decades if not centuries after the events they describe. So, the only way to justify this radical hyper-scepticism against the New Testament is by special pleading and question begging. 

Bear in mind also that the New Testament itself shows that Jesus followed standard teaching practices of the 1st century that would have aided their memorability. Jesus utilised ancient mnemonic devices such as world play, poetic forms, contrasting thesis with antithesis, and so on. It's also worth noting that all four Gospels fall into the category of ancient biography. Moreover, we can be reasonably confident also that the New Testament documents were written by who they said they were. 

Of course, simply relying on general blanket dismissals in lieu of actual investigation is lazy and sloppy methodology. Instead, what we can do is carefully analyse the sources and see what, if anything, can be gleaned from them. That is what actual historians do. Obviously, a report coming to us from a generally reliable source can raise its overall credibility but there's multiple different things that go into assessing whether something is historical or not. 

There are times where knowing a source's bias can assist us in detecting nuggets of truth. Suppose we have a source that is biased in favour of a certain group or person. If that source reports something that reflects negatively on that person or group, we can reasonably take that as evidence that it is more likely to be true. Because why would they want to make something bad up about someone they are biased in favour of?

So, whilst we could spend a serious amount of time defending the general reliability and accuracy of the Bible, it really isn't necessary when it comes to determining whether the resurrection actually happened or not. Rather, we can go through the sources and see what truths we can learn from them, and then construct an argument that appeals to the resurrection as the best explanation, i.e. an abductive argument. 

A Methodological Approach to Miracles in the Field of History

Most forms of arguments from miracles usually focus on contemporary examples, since those are, it seems, much easier to verify than those in the distant past. However, there are those who argue it is impossible even in principle to verify historical accounts of purported miracles. It should be worth noting, of course, that there are those who argue that it is impossible in principle to even verify contemporary reports of miracles.

David Hume famously argued that no amount evidence could ever demonstrate the truth of a miracle claim because, according to Hume, we have the evidence of the regularity of nature in opposition. Now, arguments in favour of the existence of God notwithstanding, this certainly seems like question begging. The reason for this is because the regularity of nature only precludes the possibility of miracles if you already believe miracles are by nature impossible.

It should be worth noting that the laws of physics, which govern the regularity of nature, are descriptive. They are not necessary truths like the laws of logic and mathematics. We can easily imagine other universes with differing laws of physics. As such, whilst our experience provides good evidence that the universe behaves in a regular manner, it is not evidence that miracles are impossible.

If God exists, then the reason the universe behaves the way it does is because either God is micromanaging every little detail or else wound up the universe and generally leaves it alone. Assuming a position of agnosticism, the real reason the universe behaves the way it does is simply a mystery. 

Any approach that just declares something impossible without proper investigation is, quite frankly, sloppy and intellectually lazy. Carl Sagan famously stated that extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence, but this is very faulty epistemological approach because what is and what is not considered extraordinary is entirely subjective. 

If you can't bring yourself to admit that miracles are at least possible, then you may need to rethink your epistemology. However, what of miracle claims in the distant past? Even if we grant that miracles are at least possible and therefore in principle verifiable or falsifiable, what of non-contemporary miracle claims? 

As aforementioned, some argue that miracle claims cannot be historically verified. Bart Ehrman, for instance, offers the following two arguments. First, he says that the historian is committed to methodological naturalism and so cannot confirm if a miracle has occurred or not. Second, he says that historians are only capable of reconstructing what probably happened and miracle are defined as the least probable scenario.

Regarding the first argument, methodological naturalism is not a prerequisite of historical research. It is a staple of the majority of scientific inquiry since it is exclusively concerned with how the natural world operates. Historians have no such burden since they are investigating the past. To assume that all past events are explainable within the purview of naturalism is question begging. 

The second argument, however, manages to be even worse. Because the argument commits the fallacy of equivocation and also presents a loaded definition of miracle that clearly seems to be based on question begging as well. We can grant that the historian is concerned with the most probable reconstruction of past events, but we must clearly define in what sense we mean by the term 'probable'.

Do we mean purely statistical probability or epistemic probability? The first clearly seems ill-suited to the field history, which deals with non-repeatable often one-off events. We can grant therefore that a miracle is the least probable event statistically but only a proper investigation can determine what is most probable epistemically. 

However, need we even define miracle that way? There really is no widely agreed upon definition of miracle, after all. Do we simply mean supernatural events? But then what is the difference between natural and supernatural? I think we could plausibly grant that a miracle is any event that at least seemingly defies the current understanding of the laws of nature, including the laws of probability. 

This seems sufficiently robust to me and does not beg the question. So, unless we are postmodernist who believes historical knowledge is impossible, vis a vis Keith Jenkins, then we can conclude that historical knowledge of miracles is at least in principle possible.