My Challenge to Tim Chaffey and his "In Defense of Easter: Answering Critical Challenge to the Resurrection of Jesus"

In my studies on the resurrection of Jesus, I recently acquired "In Defense of Easter:  Answering Critical Challenges to the Resurrection of Jesus" (2nd printing, 2016) by Tim Chaffey.  I could not find any publisher information in the book beyond "Copyright © 2014 Tim Chaffey", so apparently this is a self-published effort.

Curiously, his chapter 5 is entitled "What Do Historians Say About the Evidences of the Resurrection?" and yet the only historians he references or cites in that chapter are Habermas and Licona, who are not mere "historians" but two Christian apologists that are the most outspoken on Jesus' resurrection being a provable fact of history.

That Chaffey was writing primarily for Christian edification and less to convince skeptics, is clear from what he says in chapter 5:

"The bible is the Word of God, so it is accurate in all it affirms.  Since it tells us Jesus rose from the dead, we can have completely confidence that he did...The critics and skeptics simply have an anti-supernatual bias, or more accurately, an anti-biblical bias.  Thus, they have developed absurd positions in effort to explain away the only reasonable conclusion that can be derived from those facts."

Mr. Chaffey has authored other books, has advanced degrees in Theology, Apologetics and Church History, and this Easter book come with Gary Habermas' endorsement on the back cover and on the second page.

Half of the second page of the book is taken up by accolades from Answers in Genesis scholar Terry Mortenson, who holds an MDiv and a PhD in the history of geology.

Mortenson says:

“Tim Chaffey has done his homework for this book. He has paid careful attention to the details of all the relevant biblical texts regarding the Resurrection of lesus, and he is thoroughly informed on the multitude of arguments and objections raised by skeptics who have attempted to explain away the empty tomb. His tone is respectful but clear and firm as he dismantles the fallacious reasoning of the enemies of the gospel. Unlike many books on the subject, Tim draws out the connection between the Resurrection and the literal history in Genesis 1-11. I also really appreciated the way he ended the book by sharing how the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus impacted his own life in a time of great testing and by his separate challenge to both his Christian and non-Christian readers. Every Christian will profit by reading this excellent defense of the Resurrection and the gospel. Nonbelievers will be challenged to carefully consider the Messiah Jesus who died for their sins and rose from the dead to restore them to a right relationship with their Creator, if they will simply turn from their sin and trust in Him as Lord and Savior. I heartily recommend this book!” —Terry Mortenson, Ph.D., Coventry University (UK); Speaker and Researcher; Answers in Genesis

Since Mr. Chaffey holds advanced degrees in all the fields highly relevant to the questions that skeptics would naturally ask in debates about gospel sources and historicity, I posted yesterday (August 24, 2017), the following challenge over at Mr. Chaffey's blog.  I will assume that the reason my post remains invisible as of today (August 25) is because Mr. Chaffey has not had time to review it for approval:

Mr. Chaffey,

I obtained your book "In Defense of Easter" (2014).

The back cover of your book says one of the purposes in writing it was to help Christians "to answer today's skeptical challenges."

I am a skeptic with several challenges to the resurrection of Jesus that I believe were not disturbed by anything in your book, and I also have challenges to your arguments in that book.

I would like to discuss your book with you, at any time, date and internet location most convenient to you.

Here's a short list of the issues I'm prepared to discuss, or propositions I'm willing to defend.  Most are especially powerful precisely because they represent specific skeptical attacks that you didn't deal with in your book:

1 - There are only 3 eyewitness accounts of Jesus' resurrection in the NT, at best, all the rest are hearsay.  And that's generously granting assumptions of apostolic gospel authorship that I am otherwise prepared to attack on the merits.

2 - Apostle Paul's gospel contradicts the one Jesus preached.

3 - The actions of the 11 apostles after allegedly experiencing the risen Christ indicate what they actually experienced, if anything, was something less than the "amazing transformation" lauded so loudly by apologists.

4 - Because Matthew is in all likelihood not responsible for the content in canonical Greek Matthew, he and his gospel are disqualified as  witnesses.

5 - Because John was willing to falsely characterize divine words he got by vision, as if they were things the historical Jesus really said and did, John and his gospel are disqualified as witnesses.

6 – John’s intent to write a "spiritual" gospel as opposed to imitating the Synoptics which he knew had already disclosed the “external facts”, argues that “spiritual” here implies something different than mere writing down of eyewitness testimony.  The historical evidence that is accepted by even fundamentalists makes clear that John’s source for gospel material included visions and not just memory.

7 - The NT admission that most of Paul's converts apostatized from him for the Judaizer gospel, warrants skeptics to be a bit more hesitant than Christians before classifying Paul as a truth-robot.  The NT evidence against Paul's integrity is many, varied and strong.

8 - Papias asserted Mark "omitted nothing" of what he heard Peter preach.  Because Bauckham is wrong when saying Papias here was using mere literary convention, Papias meant that phrase literally...in which case Mark's silence on the virgin birth is not due to his "omission" of it, the virgin birth doesn't appear in his gospel because there was never a virgin birth story available for him to omit in the first place...a strong attack on Matthew's and Luke's credibility.

9 - Paul's belief that Mark's abandonment of ministry justifies excluding him from further ministry work (Acts 15) will always remain a justifiable reason (assuming Acts’ historicity here) to say Mark wasn't too impressed with gospel claims, even assuming he later fixed his disagreements with Paul and wrote the gospel now bearing his name.

10 - Mark's strong apathy toward writing down Peter's preaching supports the above premise that he was less than impressed with the gospel, and likely only joined himself to the group for superficial reasons.  Not a good day for fundamentalists who think Mark was inspired by God to write his gospel.

11 - Peter's explicit refusal to endorse Mark's gospel writing, militates, for obvious reasons, against the idea that Peter approved of it.

12 - stories of women becoming pregnant by a god in a way not disturbing her virginity, are securely dated hundreds of years before the 1st century.  The copycat Savior hypothesis is virtually unassailable, once the admittedly false skeptical exaggerations of the evidence are excluded, and rationally warrants skepticism toward Matthew's and Luke's honesty.

13 - The failure of Jesus' own immediate family to believe his ministry-miracles were genuinely supernatural (the logical inference from John 7:5 and Mark 3:21-31) provides reasonable and rational warrant for skeptics to say the miracles Jesus allegedly did, were no more real than those done by Benny Hinn and other wildly popular con artists.

14 - The evidence for the specific contention that most of the apostles or earliest Christians died as martyrs (i.e., were forced to choose between death or committing blasphemy, and chose death) is furiously scanty and debatable, justifying skepticism toward this popular apologetic argument.

15 - the mass-hallucination hypothesis does not require the exact same mental images to have been shared by the original apostles.  Mass-hallucination need not require such impossibility any more than Pentecostals being slain in the spirit requires them to all move and talk in the exact same way before they can validly claim to have shared the same experience. 

16 - There are contradictions in the resurrection accounts that are not capable of reasonable harmonization.

I am also willing to discuss whatever apologetics argument you think is the most clear and compelling.

I will avoid publicly posting our exchanges, if you wish, but if I hear nothing from you by Friday August 25, (you need only send a quick email), I will post this message to my own blog and continue awaiting your response there.

Thank you,

Barry Jones.

barryjoneswhat@gmail.com

 That last part was said with the presumption that my post would post quickly as it normally does elsewhere.

The reason I made so many summary points to Chaffey was to preempt the possibility that he'd employ a popular but dishonest excuse many Christians employ so that they can feel better about running away from the challenges posted by informed skeptics, namely, the excuse that the challenging skeptic does not appear smart enough to make him or her a worthwhile discussion or debate participant.

It should be perfectly obvious from Mr. Chaffey's conservative Christian beliefs, that he would strongly disagree with all of my 16 asserted points.  If so, then we must assume Mr. Chaffey has good reasons to think those 16 points arise from provable misinterpretations of the relevant biblical and patristic sources.

If Mr. Chaffey is confident that the only person who could seriously argue my 16 points is somebody who has has sorely misunderstood the biblical and patristic sources, then he think refuting me on those points would be a piece of cake.

So let's take my first point: there are only 3 resurrection testimonies in the NT that come down to us today in first-hand form, the rest are hearsay.

 The only NT sources that at least potentially qualify as first-hand here are Matthew, John and Paul.  That's a far cry from the "many eyewitnesses" dogma fundamentalists trumpet from the rooftops today in their populist apologetic efforts.

If Mr. Chaffey can find additional testimonies to Jesus resurrection in the NT which come down to us today in first-hand form, I welcome him to get in contact with me and arrange for us to discuss the topic at times, dates and internet sites most convenient to him.