This is my reply to Brian G. Chilton's article at
(what are the odds that a Christain might say "no"?)
As anyone who has followed apologetics knows, the resurrection was transformative for the earliest Christians."
----------Not really. Despite the risen Christ telling them to evangelize Gentiles, they shove that responsibility off onto Paul's shoulders, and prefer to limit their own ministries to Jews. Galatians 2:9.
"Those who witnessed the resurrection were willing to give their lives for what they knew to be true."
--------Not really, when Jesus predicted what kind of death Peter would die, Jesus specified that it would be something Peter did NOT want to do. John 21:18-19. Paul fled death threats (Acts 9:24-25). The original apostles continued being "afraid" of Paul until by completely naturalistic means they discovered his conversion (Acts 9:26).
Boldly transformed men willing to risk death? I think not.
"If it were not for the resurrection, it is highly doubtful that the early church would have worshiped Jesus as they did."
----------I don't understand how the disciples' own working of resurrection miracles by command of Jesus (Matthew 10:8) could have been less transformative than their seeing Jesus alive after he was crucified. So the story saying the disciples were downtrodden after Jesus died, is suspicious.
"While the resurrection solidified and verified the ministry of Jesus"
------No, his pre-crucifixion miracles were equally as dazzling, so again, there is the problem of the gospel authors lying in portraying the disciples as dolts and depressed after Jesus died. If my brother suddenly started doing the miracles of Jesus and telling me God wanted him to die by gunshot next week, I'd have no trouble taking his word for it.
"And he also extensively trained them about an already-not-yet kingdom.["
--------Except for Preterists, who say the second coming was fully realized and fulfilled within the natural lifetimes of the original apostles...because of statements that plainly indicate as much....like Matthew 16:28. Jesus did not reward every man according to his works during his transfiguration on the mountain (Matthew 17), so what Jesus was talking about in 16:28 cannot be the Transfiguration. The point is that skeptics have the perfect right, in light of most Christians being end-time freaks, to consider NT eschatology to be one big fat exercise in futility, and accordingly refuse to believe God is ever going to "come back".
"1] The Christology of Jesus impacted the disciples so much that they preserved his teachings, even before the resurrection, and passed them along after the ministry of Jesus was vindicated by the resurrection. As Paul Barnett points out, “It was [C]hristology that gave birth to Christianity, not the reverse. Furthermore, Christ gave birth to [C]hristology. The chronology drives this conclusion.”[2]"
----------Jesus' explicit claims to being God would never have been deemed by the Synoptic authors as unworthy of posterity, and they were writing before John wrote. The fact that alternative theories to answer this exist, might justify your disagreement with me on the point, but they do no increase the probability that the skeptical hypothesis (i.e., that John is fictionalized theology wrapped around a core of historical fact) is false. Reasonableness for another person is not determined by what's reasonable for YOU.
"If the Christological teachings of Jesus gave rise to Christian doctrine—because as Richard Bauckham notes, the “earliest Christology was already in nuce the highest Christology”[3]
-------no, there is testimony even earlier than Paul's creeds. See Mark 3:21 and John 7:5. How high is the Christology in "Jesus cannot do real miracles" and "we are not convinced his miracles are genuinely supernatural"?
"then should it not behoove modern believers to pay close attention to what Jesus said?
-----no it shouldn't, as too many Trinitarian conservative Christians and their scholars have been analyzing the gospels to death 10 times over, yet the continue to disagree about what it meant. The author of Revelation says his words are very serious, yet today's conservatives relegate most of his assertions to "eschatology" which they have classified as "non-essential" and thus permissible for a Christian to disagree with that the Spirit says to the churches. The smart Christian doesn't worry about what Jesus said, because the smart person knows that the record of it from 2,000 years ago has proven many time over to be fatally ambiguous, and thus not only is attempted interpretation of Jesus' statements an exercise in futility, it has the potential to go over the line and draw them into heresy. The average Christian who goes to church more for the obvious social benefits and less for figuring out what Jesus meant, it the smartest type of Christian.
"The teachings of Jesus not only impacted the early believers’ Christology, but they paid close attention to other aspects of the didactic of Jesus, as well. Thus, the modern believer should take the ethical, historical, and theological/philosophical teachings of Jesus into consideration as they live out, research, and build a biblical worldview."
-------And in the process, discover that there are no hard and fast answers to the interpretive questions that bear directly upon doctrine...even though they are supposed to believe that Jesus lives in their hearts, and thus would presumably, but never actually does, alert them when they've arrived at a false conclusion. Why did God want all people to recognize rape as wrong, but he didn't enable us to instinctively know which doctrines are true? Is God a liberal? Does he care about our heart more than he cares about propositional doctrine?
"The Ethical Teachings of Jesus"
If Jesus is YHWH, then it was Jesus who required his OT Hebrews to burn adolescent girls to death (Leviticus 21:9). The disappearance of the Mosaic theocracy is never predicted in the writings of Moses, and therefore, its disappearance indicates Judaism "evolves" over time....like any religion. The notion that God always knew the 1st covenant wasn't supposed to last, is a false doctrine taught by NT authors and Paul.
"The Sermon on the Mount is just as controversial today as it was when Jesus first uttered it."
------Meaning the modern-day Christian should be satisfied with any interpretation they arrive at after they have considered the literary context and social context, otherwise, words that are supposed to 'guide' are fatally ambiguous even for like-minded Christians who attend the same church and cannot agree on simple things like whether the SOM is even intended for modern believers.
"Jesus taught such things as showing mercy unto others (Matt. 5:7), having a purity of the heart (Matt. 5:8), and maintaining one’s role as a peacemaker (Matt. 5:9). He taught that believers were to stand for the truth by remaining the salt of the earth (Matt. 5:13) while also maintaining a compassionate heart by being the light of the world (Matt. 5:14). He also taught that angry bitterness and lust made one as guilty as committing murder or adultery (Matt. 5:21–30).
------He also wanted people to burn little girls to death. If Jesus was God, read Leviticus 21:7. It is absolutely foolish to think the Pharisees who attacked Jesus' teachings, would not have asked something like "if you are claiming to be god, when why aren't you commanding us to slaughter our enemies the way you allegedly did back in the days of Moses and Joshua?" So we can be reasonable to assume he was asked questions like that, yet the gospel authors do themselves a favor by refusing to report such things.
"One of the most forgotten teachings of Jesus in modern times is his call to love one’s enemies and pray for those who may mistreat a person (Matt. 5:43–48). If Jesus rose from the dead, and he did, then the believer must take seriously the ethical commitments to which he calls his disciples to live. If one chooses to reject his moral standards, then one must ask, “Whose standards am I following—Jesus’s or my own?”
--------The plight of the believer is unavoidable, because Christians have always disagreed on what exactly Jesus meant with his ethical teachings, yes, even on things Jesus allegedly got specific on, such as divorce.
Jesus was also giving an ethical teaching when saying a man leave his gift at the altar and first be reconciled to his brother, and THEN offer the gift at the altar. Does that :"apply" to modern day unbelievers? Should their struggle to be righteous be so intense that they put forth effort to find that altar or build a new one, just so they can obey Jesus? How do you know the destruction by Titus in 70 a.d. was god's "obvious" way of relieving modern-day believers from this requirement? Isn't that merely your own interpretation? Isn't the true interpretation guided by how the originally intended hearers would likely have interpreted it?
"The Historical Teachings of Jesus
Here again, it is common for one to dismiss the teachings of Jesus when it comes to uncomfortable historical matters. Granted, the issue with Jesus mentioning Abiathar being the high priest when Ahimelech held the position in Mark 2:26 poses some issues. But one finds good reasons to think that something in the transmission from Aramaic to Greek could have been left off as the teaching/text was being translated. James Brooks avers that the best explanation to describe the hiccup is that the Aramaic word abba (meaning father) was originally added to Abiathar (abba-Abiathar) in the original teaching. Thus, the teaching would say “he entered the house of God in the time of abba-Abiathar” (Mark 2:26), which would be correct as Ahimelech was the father of Abiathar.[4]
-----Nice to know you agree with skeptics about how easily the NT text could be corrupted, and of course,
your argument necessarily means yo are talking about corruptions so early that the existing mss. do not reflect
the change....thus a theory of significant textual change taking place during the first 100 years after the originals, is well within reasonable limits. God's concern to preserve the originals inerrant, but not the copies, is an absurd theory that imposes not
the least bit of intellectual obligation upon any non-Christian or skeptic.
"Nonetheless, if Jesus is truly the divine Son of God—and the resurrection confirmed that he was"
---------No, Deuteronomy 18 teaches that if a prophet does a genuinely supernatural miracle, you STILL
don't know whether he is approved or disapproved by God.
"—then, it stands to reason that Jesus would know perfectly whether such people existed when he referred to a historical Adam and Eve (implied in Matt. 19:4–6), Abraham and the early patriarchs (Matt. 22:32), and even Noah (Matt. 24:37)."
------but in truth the texts tell us less about what Jesus thought, and more about what the gospel authors believed. John's gospel is a perfect illustration of how easily some early Christians could modify or invent doctrinally significant sayings and
put them in the mouth of Jesus. The same thing is reasonably deduced from the Markan priority and literary interdependence solutions to the Synoptic Problem.
" In our age of skepticism, it is easy to cast doubt on these figures of the past. But at the end of it all, we must ask ourselves whether we can take Jesus at his word."
---------That only makes sense to believers. It does nothing to render skepticism unreasonable.
"Finally, one will ask whether a person can trust what Jesus says about the world, the kingdom of God, heaven and hell, and the direction of history. While there are a plethora of viewpoints concerning eschatology,"
----------Does God the Holy Spirit want authentically born again Christians disagreeing with each other on how to interpret the allegedly urgent serious teachings found in the book of Revelation? Is there a possibility that God also withholds truth from even sincerely seeking authentically born again Christians? If so, what would be unreasonable to say that such a god is merely "toying" with us and doesn't deserve for us to grovel at his feet? If I'm sincerely seeking truth, and God isn't revealing it despite his knowing much better than anybody what I need to convince me, I'm not thinking that kind of god is the least bit serious. And if God has sovereign reasons for not opening the mind of Jehovah Witness to "truth" until they've been in that cult for 30 years, then YOU are wrong for telling JW's they must leave. No, God might want some of them to stay deceived, in which case their leaving by their own freewill might mean they are leaving before God is done deceiving them. Compare 2nd Thess. 2:11 with Jeremiah 4:10 and 20:7. If we have enough freewill to disobey god, then we have enough freewill to give up false theology quicker than god wants us to. Yet, Christian preaching and evangelism make no sense in light of
God's sovereignty. You will tell anybody and everybody that God wants them to know the truth, when in fact you don't have the first clue whether God has singled out any prospective convert for deception.
"the arrow of history is undebatable when it comes to the teachings of Jesus. In his Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24–25), Jesus warned that such things as wars, false prophets, famines,[5] earthquakes, and various disasters would come."
----------All of which can be proven to have been fulfilled right around the a.d. 70 time that most conservative Christian trinitarian scholars date the Synoptics. Your rushing headlong to make these statements of Jesus apply to events in 2022 and afterward is unreasonable. Do you also look at the sky, expecting Jesus to gallop down from heaven on a white horse? (!?)
"Yet he noted that such things only serve as labor pains, indicating that the coming of the Son of Man was nigh (Matt. 24:8). Much more could be added to this eschatologically rich message. However, the most important aspect of his message is that despite the troubles that would come, God would move the arrow of history toward a time when he delivers the people of God and recreates the heavens and the earth. The kingdom of God would reach its ultimate and complete actualization when the “Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne” (Matt. 25:31).[6] Some may call this fanciful thinking. But this came from one who actually defeated death itself."
----------And because not even equally sincerely seeking authentically born again Trinitarian Christians can agree with each other on how to interpret such eschatological statements, you are forced to conclude 1) god wants Christians to be doctrinally divided, or 2) the people in the debate who are wrong are living in sin or have unconfessed sin, or aren't praying hard enough, etc, etc or 3) there is no god, which is why Christians debate the meaning of the bible about as often as equally American politicians and lawyers debate the meaning of the US Constitution. These are purely naturalistic documents created so long ago that only very general principles can be gleaned from them, and the "right" interpretation is fatally elusive for wholly non-supernatural reasons.
"Many things are difficult to believe. It is difficult for me to wrap my mind around the fact that light travels at 186,000 miles a second."
-------The difference being that the speed of light is empirically demonstrable...the "right" interpretation of Jesus' words isn't.
"Likewise, some of the things mentioned in this article may be like the speed of light—very difficult to fathom. However, at the end of the day, we must all ask ourselves who we trust. Who is trustworthy?
----------Our own senses, which tell us that the whole business of trying to interpret Jesus "correctly" is fraught peril, making it unworthy of the risks of trying to figure it out...which may lead to creating of, or joining to, psychologically damaging cults. There's lots of good and lots of bad in a gun, so until you can show that somebody "should" play with the gun, it's probably best that they don't. So go ahead: show that the words of Jesus "apply" to today's people. But remember that the Apocrypha survived historical persecution too. And don't commit the ad populum fallacy.
"Who is a reliable witness?"
---------That's assuming the witnesses can be identified, but most Christian Trinitarian scholars think the 4 gospels are combinations of some authentically apostolic content added to and modified by any number of later copyists. Aunt Martha's original affidavit in Court should be worthy to consider...but if lawyers could prove that it has the same number and type of authorship, authenticity and textual problems that the canonical gospels have, then a person is a fool to pretend that this is still "Martha's" affidavit...and they are reasonable to simply dismiss it as incapable of reasonable certain resolution.
"For me, the thing that led me back to Christianity after a time of doubt was the amazing amount of evidence supporting the literal resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth."
----------And it doesn't bother you that the earliest testimony from his own family members was that he couldn't do real miracles (Mark 3:21, 6:1-4, John 7:5)? We skeptics have testimony about Jesus' miracle abilities that is even earlier than that 1st Corinthians 15 "creed" that you all hang your hats on.
What Jesus was like before he died, counts far more than what anonymous gospels say about his "resurrection".
Benny Hinn's having thousands of followers means nothing, because his own family members call him a con-artist. See what I mean?
"If Jesus truly raised from the dead and defeated death, then that is One whose opinion is worth trusting."
---------No, Jesus' resurrection doesn't prove he "defeated" death, and Deut. 18 will not support your rushing immediately from "he did a miracle!" to "he must be approved by God!"
"Some may call it naïve. Well and good. When you are able to conquer death, then let’s talk."
----------When you can show Jesus conquered death, then let's talk.
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Date: Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 5:15 PM
Subject: Bellator Christi Comment
To: barryjoneswhat------
Due to the length of your comment and the multiple areas you discuss, we will not be able to publish your comment as it currently stands. Try to engage only one or two areas in which you find disagreement. Use the following link as a guide: https://
Brian G. Chilton, PhD Candidate, MDiv
Author of "Layman's Manual on Christian Apologetics"
Founder of Bellator Christi Ministries
Brian responded, and I replied:
I am scholarly and thorough in my replies. Twitter panders to fools who think posting their two cents worth is a legitimate way to 'discuss' something. I will have none of it. I require myself to respond point by point. Anything less only invites the common "you didn't answer his point!" sneer. You take the risk of dealing with lengthy replies if you continue to contend that skeptics are unreasonable to reject the gospel. Some of us have scholarly knowledge of the subject.
"Barry, thank you for your comment. You bring up two interesting rebuttals. For the first, you note, “Despite the risen Christ telling them [the disciples] to evangelize Gentiles, they shove that responsibility off onto Paul.” You must be referring to the issues Paul faced when evangelizing Gentile nations, particularly in the first few decades.
We must first realize that despite their transformation, God was doing things with the church that they never anticipated."
---------How could that be consistent with your belief in NT inerrancy? That they anticipated from the very beginning a need to evangelize Gentiles is what your are forced to conclude from Matthew 28:19-20. That they were taught by the risen Christ exactly how to go about promoting the "kingdom of God" is supported by Acts 1:3. That they actually went around boldly exercising their evangelism powers seems clear from Acts 2 through Acts 5. These texts will not allow your purely naturalistic theory that says the disciples weren't done getting "transformed" until the passing of the earlier period. No, it is within the earlier period that your NT says God successfully "transformed" them. Feel free to arguethat it was just enough transformation to make them "bold", but no quite enough to make them "evangelize Gentiles", but such a trifle would hardly impose the slightest intellectual obligation on a skeptic.
"For many of the disciples, they grew in a culture where Jews did not converse with Gentiles." Very few, if any, would have worshiped with Gentiles."
------In other words, despite the disciples seeing the risen Christ (Matthew 28:19-20), despite his instructing them in operations of the Gentile gospel (Id) and despite their special divine inspiration at the very earliest stage (John 20:22, Acts 2), this STILL did not completely divest them of their prior incorrect ethical/racial leanings? If that is the case, then what makes you so sure that the bible authors being divinely "inspired", is some sort of assurance that they could not error in what they wrote? Under y our theory, apostles who are "inspired" by God can still manifest their wrongful understanding in everything they do, which would thus include writing.
"So, God was doing something new in the history of the church, blending Jews and Gentiles together."
------No, Jesus evangelized Gentiles before he had disciples (Matthew 4:15) and after the 12 were called (12:18). We are not unreasonable to draw the inference that if these references are historically accurate, then the disciples likely conversed with the pre-crucifixion Jesus many times, given a) his openness to Gentiles and b) the Jewish culture's general antagonism toward Gentiles. We may also assume that Jesus, not being stupid, answered obvious questions about the matter before he was crucified, knowing that he would be asking the disciples after his resurrection to expand evangelism to Gentiles. The apologist's theory of keeping it all a secret until the very last nanosecond might help "reconcile" the apparently contradictory NT data on the subject, but nothing about such theory imposes the least bit of intellectual obligation upon a non-Christian.
Your definition of "transformed" was "Those who witnessed the resurrection were willing to give their lives for what they knew to be true". But in light of my reply, it appears that you now wish to qualify what you meant, so as to leave room in their transformed minds to allow a significant bit of their prior incorrect beliefs about Jewish-Gentile relations to remain, so that you can then use such remaining prejudices to 'explain' why they didn't quite "get it" at the early stage. No dice: If the Holy Spirit emboldened Peter to mouth-off so confidently to Jews in Acts 2 at the early stage, we are not unreasonable to draw the inference that he would have also mouthed-off equally confidently toward Gentiles at the earliest stage. So that if he didn't, we are reasonable to assume this is because the mightily transformative grace of God had zero to do with any evangelism he did in the early period.(i.e., Act 2 is just fiction).
"Furthermore, a good deal of historical evidence can be found that either explicitly or implicitly notes that the disciples journeyed to Gentile nations to evangelize."
--------But you are merely setting a naturalistic basis for the Gentile expansion. Why didn't the shock of seeing the risen Christ (Acts 1:3) and their being filled with the Holy Spirit 40 days later at Pentecost (Acts 2) completely divest their minds of their previously held prejudices? Maybe the skeptics are correct, and the degree of "transformation' they experienced upon "seeing" the risen Christ actually wasn't quite as eventful as most Christian apologists insist? That could be supported from Matthew 28:17.
"While the accounts differ on their level of authenticity, it can be said with certainty that both Peter and Paul traveled to Rome where they both died for their faith.
------Then you and I have a fundamental disagreement about historiography. In my view, held also by Mike Licona and other Christians, there is no such thing as "certainty" in the conclusions that are limited to inferences drawn from ancient historical testimony. That a lot of church fathers believed Peter went off to preach in Rome doesn't convince me anymore than most of the church thinking Gospel of Hebrews was authentic Matthew, convinces you of who authored that particular gospel.
"A good deal of evidence suggests that Thomas traveled to Madras, India to evangelize, where he also was executed. Peter was crucified; Paul was beheaded; and Thomas was speared to death."
----------irrelevant. The unwillingness of the disciples IN THE EARLY STAGES to evangelize Gentles is a problem, and your naturalistic theory that they were whole-hearted Jews having difficulty giving up long cherished racial and ethical prejudices might be true, but is not consistent with the type of transformation boasted of in Mathew 28:19, and its divinely inspired implementation AT THE EARLY STAGE, in Acts 2. Did God take away their fears of the Jews WITHOUT taking away their views about Gentiles (!?)
"This brings us to your second objection. You argue that because Peter did not want to die and that Paul fled death threats that this, in some way, diminishes their testimony of witnessing the risen Jesus."
---------No, I'm saying their unwillingness to face death for their faith means you are wrong when you say "Those who witnessed the resurrection were willing to give their lives for what they knew to be true". In nearly every case we can examine, this is false. Matthew and John are often touted in patristic sources as dying by natural means, not execution. That's enough to ustify today's people to be skeptical that any truth in ancient martyr-stories is to obfuscated by legend and edification to make those accounts the least bit "useful".
"This could not be farther from the truth. Paul willingly traveled to Jerusalem, even though numerous people warned him not to do so, because of the Spirit leading him."
------That doesn't answer why he wasn't willing to face King Aretus and the men seeking his death earlier in his ministry.
"Additionally, Peter, John, and the disciples stand boldly against the same Sanhedrin that had condemned Jesus to death just a few days after Pentecost."
--------But Jesus still said Peter wouldn't be willing to die for his faith. Nothing else in the bible can erase that problematic "prediction", and of course, if he's unwilling to die for his faith, then he isn't a "martyr". You can open up that possibility by saying Jesus got it wrong, but if you don't want to select that option, then Peter did not go to his death willingly. You have Jesus' word on it.
"This would have happened in the very same year that Jesus was crucified, died, and resurrected."
-----your point is moot unless and until you somehow get rid of Jesus' prediction that Peter would go to his death unwillingly.
"Furthermore, not one of them recanted their belief that they had seen the risen Jesus."
---------But we can reasonably infer recantation from Matthew 28:17, where "doubt" in Greek is the same word that characterizes a FAILING faith in Matthew 14:31. That is, some of the disciples had an attitude of failing faith when they allegedly "saw" the risen Christ.
"This point is not something that just believers accept. Rather, the consensus of historical scholarship–believer and unbeliever alike–accept this as a historical fact."
-------The NT was written for the obvious purpose of edification. Skeptics have a perfect explanation for why we don't find the NT ever claiming any apostle recanted their faith.
But regardless, your argument from "no recantation" is overthrown by the argument from "his own family didn't believe his miracles were genuinely supernatural." See Mark 3:21, 6:1-4, John 6:66 and 7:5.
What's worse? James the brother of Jesus recanting his faith? Or James the brother of Jesus thinking Jesus' miracles before the crucifixion were fake?
"Thus, the early disciples were most certainly bold men who were willing to risk death for what they knew to be true–that is, that Jesus of Nazareth had risen from the dead."
-------You have not refuted my argument "Paul fled death threats (Acts 9:24-25)". His fleeing certainly sounds more consistent with a fear of dying for his faith, and sounds totally inconsistent with your theory that he was willing to face death for his faith.
========================
Date: Thu, Feb 3, 2022 at 6:58 PM
Subject: Bellator Christi Comment
To: barryjoneswhat-------
=======================
So I shortened my reply:
"For the first, you note, “Despite the risen Christ telling them [the disciples] to evangelize Gentiles, they shove that responsibility off onto Paul.” You must be referring to the issues Paul faced when evangelizing Gentile nations, particularly in the first few decades. We must first realize that despite their transformation, God was doing things with the church that they never anticipated. For many of the disciples, they grew in a culture where Jews did not converse with Gentiles."
----------But if, at the earliest possible stage, the Holy Spirit's indwelling caused the disciples to overcome their fear of reprisal from Jews (i.e., Acts 2), then why didn't this same divine indwelling ALSO cause the disciples to overcome the social conditioning about Jews/Gentiles that the disciples "grew in"?
Also, I need to know exactly what you believe about skepticism toward the gospel: Do you say all people of today who reject what you say is the true gospel. are unreasonable?
Or do you allow that sometimes, a modern-day skeptic can be reasonable to reject what you believe to be the true gospel?
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