My Challenge to Brian Chilton on the problem of Evil

This is my reply to an article by Brian Chilton entitled

Did God Create Evil?

God and Evil

By: Brian G. Chilton | July 3, 2018 

After Bible study one evening, a good friend of mine and I discussed the problem of evil. He asked an excellent question, “Did God create evil?” I said, “No, I don’t think he did.” However, my friend objected because he said, “God created everything, so he must have created evil.” This conversation was quite good, and we found common ground by the end of our discussion. This article relates to some of the issues that we discussed.

I would have asked you whether you'd be willing to stop calling all instances of rape "evil" if you found out one instance was caused by God.  That's a more direct challenge that doesn't do much to enhance friendship.

One of the first issues we needed to clarify was the nature of evil. What do we mean when we say something is evil? My friend was using the term to define any type of disaster or bad thing. I was using to term to define immoral behaviors, such as torturing babies.

Then apparently you'd agree that God was evil, since God tortured David's infant son for 7 days with a terrible sickness before finally killing it...for something the baby obviously didn't do, and there is no contextual expression or implication that this torture/death was for atonement:

 10 'Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.'
 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:10-18 NAU)

The arbitrary nature of God is clear from the fact that God did this to the baby after assuring David that his sins at issue (adultery and murder) were "taken away" meaning God would not require capital punishment.

To say nothing of how the passage reeks with political corruption, wherein the prophet of God can so easily fend off the divinely mandated death-penalty for his favorite politician.

Chilton continues:

How do we answer this question? Did God create evil? In this article, I would like to look at four common tricky areas that need to be dissected in order to answer the question.
 Ontology and Epistemology of God and Evil. The terms ontology and epistemology are philosophical terms but are important to this area of conversation. One cannot neglect philosophy because bad philosophy often leads to bad theology. First, let me define the terms and how they play a role in this discussion.
 Ontology is the study of the nature of being. It deals with how we know something exists. For instance, does a pizza exist? How do we know a pizza exists? These are ontological questions that deal with the nature of pizza’s existence. And oh, how tragic life would be without the existence of pizza!

LOL.

Epistemology deals with the theory of knowledge.[1] This area deals with how we know something to be true. What is the nature of such and such? To use our illustration of pizza, ontology would ask, “Does pizza exist?,” whereas epistemology would ask, “Is pizza good?; Can we know that pizza is tasty?” So, a created thing would deal with the area of ontology, whereas the nature of the thing would deal more in the area of epistemology more or less.
 When we talk about God creating all things, we must understand that God created everything that exists including the potentials to do certain things.

And if that is a reliable portrayal of god, it is most reasonable to deduce that God has been creating creatures throughout all of eternity, resulting in a logical contradiction;  the created order existing just as long as God has.

However, if we grant the existence of human freedom, then God is not responsible for the actions that people take.

That's a pretty big IF. Arminians and Calvinists have been at each other's theological throats since the 16th century, and before that it was Augustine and Pelagius.  But I would think God forcing people to sin in Ezekiel 38-39 would not be convincingly amenable to Arminian interpretation.  The commentators are understandably reluctant to explain how God's choice of metaphor "put a hook in your jaws (38:4) was a good illustration of his respect for human freewill.

Yes, God provides the means and conditions that can lead to a person’s actions and God knows the free actions that a person will take, but the person is responsible for his or her own actions.[2]

You won't be reconciling your Molinism with the sadistic puppetry God exercises in Ezekiel 38-39 anytime soon.

Therefore, God created all things and created the conditions where a person could do good or evil. But, God did not create evil, because evil is not a thing to be created. It is not like a virus or slab of concrete. Evil is an attribute. It is a personal rejection of the good, the good which is an attribute of God.

Once again, that the bible teaches that God forces people to sin is clear from Ezekiel 38-39.

The Moral Character of God. God is thoroughly identified in the Scriptures as being the ultimate good.

But this wouldn't constitute any intellectual obligation upon the atheist, even if such appeal to authority sounds convincing to other Christians.

John tells us that God is love (1 Jn. 4:8).

Actually, you cannot demonstrate the identity of John's human author with enough clarity as to render skeptics of the issue unreasonable.  Thus the gospel is John is sufficiently anonymous that skeptics can be reasonable to reject it just like they don't pay attention to another anonymous 1st century works like Hebrews.  Furthermore, the last verse of John indicates the author was a "we" and therefore they are conveying what the "disciple" taught, which means John wasn't written by john, but at best written by his followers, which means the gospel constitutes hearsay, another justification for atheists to resist any attempt to quote it as an "authority" on God.

Scripture also indicates that God is absolutely holy, which means that he is set apart and absolutely pure (1 Sam. 2:2; 6:20; Ps. 99:9; 1 Cor. 3:17; Rev. 4:8).

If you take that stuff seriously, then because God sometimes causes men to rape women, you can no longer make the broad-brushing claim that all rape is evil.  You'd have to carefully qualify that rape is only evil if God is not causing it:

15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold. (Isa. 13:15-17 NAU)

 I'm not really worried about other internet apologists who dismiss this argument by merely carping that Isaiah here is merely engaging in "trash talk".  My view that this was a serious threat from a serious god has the backing of Christians who are legitimately credentialed bible scholars:

17–18 As the macabre scene resulting from the cosmic quake passes, the finger points to historical movement. Yahweh calls attention to stirrings among the feared Medes for which he claims responsibility.

Watts, J. D. W. (2002). Vol. 24: Word Biblical Commentary :

Isaiah 1-33. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 198). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Since atheists need only show their interpretation of a bible verse to be "reasonable" to start disproving the insulting rhetoric in Psalm 14:1 and Romans 1:20, it is significant that evangelical Christian scholars, that is, the type highly unlikely to credit God with causing rape, would nevertheless admit this was the case.  Thus my accusation that Isaiah 13 teaches that God causes rape, is "reasonable" and I need prove nothing more to avoid the "foolish" label.

Chilton continues:

Since God is the absolute good and absolutely pure, it is false to claim that God does evil.

Ok, so you are preaching to Christians only, you are NOT attempting to persuade skeptics.  Thanks for clarifying.

James says that “No one undergoing a trial should say, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ since God is not tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death” (Jms. 1:13-15). James answers the question for us in great detail about God’s relationship to evil. God cannot do evil because God is the absolute good.[3]

James' idealistic theology is refuted from Ezekiel 38-39, where God is obviously forcing pagan people (i.e., "hook in your jaws" [38:4]) to attack Israel.  This moral objection to god cannot be removed by simply carping that this battle is yet future.  God's threat to force people to sin, remains evil at present, just like Hitler's threat in 1942 to exterminate Jews was evil, even if at the time of threat, he hadn't quite carried it out yet.

So, how do we know what is evil and what is good?

Easy, you just go along with whatever the bible says.  If God says rape is evil, it's evil.  If the bible says God causes rape, then those particular instances of divinely caused rape are NOT evil.

If you are driving down a highway, you will see a sign that posts the speed limit. In town, the speed limit will most likely be 35 miles per hour. How do you know that you’re breaking the speed limit driving 55 miles per hour in that zone unless there is a speed limit posted stating that one should only go 35 miles per hour?

Good point:  You cannot prove that an adult man having sex with his 8 year old wife is "sin" because there's nothing in the bible or the "Law" either condemning or prohibiting such age-discrepant marriages. When you drive in a car and there's no signpost telling you what the speed limit is...

The law must exist before you can know if you’re breaking the law.

So because God felt no need to condemn or prohibit sex within adult-child marriages, you cannot know whether such activity constitutes breaking God's law.

Moral standards must exist before one can know that he or she is doing evil. Objective moral standards come from God.

There is no such thing as an objective moral standard.  If you reply "thou shalt not torture babies to death solely for entertainment", I would respond:  "what objective standard or moral yardstick are you using to show that this act is immoral?"  You cannot ask me what I think, my conscience is no more the basis for objective morality than is the conscience of a serial killer.

Again, evil is not something to be created. Evil stems from a rejection of God’s moral goodness.

Old-earth creationists reluctantly admit that carnivores existed on earth before sin did, which would thus force you to to say that when a lion tears out a zebra's guts, this is not evil.  Then you'll have to explain why most people are horrified to watch such carnage for the first time...is this the holy spirit manifesting his morality in their hearts? Or do those people merely hold an incorrect view of morality?   If the latter, then you agree that we can manifest compassion without this implying God's existence.

Ra’ah, Disaster, and Evil. Let’s face it. Biblical interpretation is tough especially when it comes to the original languages.

Justifying the atheist, if they so choose, to reject bible discussions because it is absurd to think the creator of the universe wants modern people to have a more difficult time discerning his will than he wanted for Moses, Abraham, the apostles, etc.

Some individuals have spent their entire lives seeking to master the biblical languages but are still left with questions.

Tragic, given that the NT tells Christians so much about what to do, nobody would have time to bother with extra-curricular non-essentials that the bible never expresses or implies any demand for, like learning dead languages.

If that is the case, should those of us with less training in the biblical languages not have much more humility when it comes to such terms? I think so.
 Often, Hebrew words can take several different meanings depending on context. I remember when taking Greek that Dr. Chad Thornhill would often emphasize context, context, context when interpreting a confusing term. In Hebrew, one such example is the confusion that occurs with the term ra’ah. Ra’ah describes a disaster but it can also be used to describe something evil. Ingrid Faro explains with the following:
 “For example, the Hebrew root “evil” (ra’; ra’ah; r’ ’) occurs 46 times in Genesis and is rightly translated into English using at least 20 different words, and nuanced in the Septuagint by using eight Greek forms (11 lexemes). Yet English-speaking people often incorrectly assume an underlying meaning of “sinister, moral wrong” and interject that into each use of the Hebrew word.”[4]
 In Amos 5:3, it is noted that “If this is a judgment announcement against the rich, then the Hebrew phrase עֵת רָעָה (’et ra’ah) must be translated, “[a] disastrous time.” See G. V. Smith, Amos, 170.”[5] Thus, the term ra’ah can indicate a disaster that has befallen a group of people and does not necessarily mean “evil” as some older translations have indicated.
 But, doesn’t disaster indicate something evil? If God brings disaster, does that not indicate that God does something evil? No, not at all! God is holy.

And there you go...your presuppositions are driving your exegesis, which we otherwise call "eisogesis".  You are not going to call god unholy regardless of what you might discover about the bible in the future.

If a people are unrepentant and are unwilling to stop doing evil, then God is completely justified in bringing judgment.

You think God was justified to torture David's infant son for 7 days.  I'd say you believe in God's justified judgment for reasons other than moral argument.  You believe it simply because "the bible tells me so".

The disaster is not evil if it is due justice.

Then the rapes God threatened against the women of Babylon in Isaiah 13 wouldn't be evil if they were due justice.

Like a parent disciplining a child or a judge executing judgment against a convicted criminal, disasters are sometimes the judgment of God poured out upon an unrepentant people.

What we'd like to know is why you don't think it evil for God to torture babies.  is it merely because the bible says God is holy and good?  How could you possibly expect this to sound convincing to the skeptics you are trying to prepare your Christian audience to answer?

I think it was good that the Allies stormed into Germany to overtake the evil Adolf Hitler.

Morality is relative and therefore doesn't permit dogmatism on whether some act is good or evil.  You simply say what you feel, and flock to the particular group that agrees with you.

Likewise, it is actually good for God to bring judgment as it coincides with his holy nature.

Then you are forced to calls God's threat of rape in Isaiah 13 "good", and therefore admit that had those rapes actually took place, those rapes would have been "good" too.

Evil Allowed to Permit the Ultimate Good. So, the final question that must be tackled is this: If God is good, then why would he allow evil to exist in the first place? Why would he create a condition where evil could exist? The answer to this is quite simple. God’s allowance of evil is to allow a greater good.

Then because rape often causes the victim to be more aware of her surroundings, or causes her to volunteer at a rape crises clinic, this justifies ignoring the short term pain and calling the rape good solely beacuse of the long-term good. 

Sure, your bible expressly forbids you from saying "let us do evil that good may come", but blindly quoting the bible cannot get rid of a well-developed argument.  If you are willing to call an act "good" because it is likely to produce long-term good even if it also produces short-term pain, then because rape can have long-term good, you cannot cite to the short-term pain as if that's all there is to say in the moral analysis.

With all of your lecturing about how God looks to the long-term good when causing people to suffer, you are not at liberty to pretend that rape's moral classification requires nothing more than citation to its causing immediate temporal harm or pain.  You aren't done deciding whether rape is good or bad until you have also factored in all that long-term and divinely intended "good" you keep talking about.

So...is rape evil because of it's short term infliction of pain?  Or is it good because it produces the long term result of motivating the victim to be more protective of herself in the future?

What is that greater good? Love.

Then you are forced to defend God's torturing of David's baby for 7 days, as a "loving" act.  Good luck.

For love to truly exist, it must be free.

No, when you have your dangerous brother involuntarily civilly committed  as he resists arrests, this too is "loving".

And unless you think we might possibly sin after we get to heaven, the fact that we'll authentically love god in heaven without ability to sin, proves that God could have infused Adam and Eve with the same holy will,  and we wouldn't be in the mess your god pretends to bitch about today. 

And God's alleged taking aborted babies to heaven proves that human beings don't "need" to live on this sinful earth for any amount of time in order to make possible our future sinless perfection.  How do you think God causes aborted babies, who go to heaven, to refrain from sin the rest of eternity?

It must be freely given, freely received, and reciprocal between both parties.

No, the parent can authentically love the teen son as they have him arrested for theft, and while he manifests hatred toward them as he goes off to jail, no reciprocity needed.

God could have created us as robots or automatons. But, that would not provide true love.

But it would have achieved a sinless world, and some would argue that refraining from sin is better than preserving the Arminian view of love.

The ultimate love was given in Jesus, who experienced the horrors of torture and experienced the just punishment that we deserve.

No, he was a common criminal whose own family tried to stop his public outbursts, and all this stuff about his dying for sin is gratuitous theological afterthought.  And Calvinists could sing circles around a Molinist like you, on the absurdities you create by pretending that atonement didn't actually occur until the individual sinner's moment of faith.

He did so that we would have life eternally. The penalty of our eternal punishment was paid on the cross at Calvary. God lovingly confers his grace to all who would willingly receive.

dismissed, you are clearly reserving this part solely for church.  I don't go to church.

His grace is freely offered and is freely received. This kind of love would not be possible if God had not allowed the conditions that would allow evil to exist.

But it could be argued that preventing people from sinning is more holy than infusing people with an Arminian-type of "freewill".

A greater good has come.

Then why don't you praise god every time a child is raped to death?  If God didn't interfere to save the child, then just standing around and allowing that rape to proceed must be "godly".

One day, those who have trusted Christ for their salvation will no longer need to worry about evil because evil will be vanquished.

Then according to your prior statements, that would also vanquish true love, since love cannot exist without the genuine possibility of doing evil.  But if we can authentically love God in heaven without ability to sin, God could have given the same ability to Adam and Eve.  So God's choice to do things in a way that fills the earth with evil, proves him every bit a moral failure as Hitler who chose to fix the Jew-problem in the unnecessarily brutish way that he did.

The redeemed of Christ will be transformed. We will experience the bliss and glory of the heaven that awaits us. To God be the glory!
 So, did God create evil? It depends on what you mean. God created the conditions for evil to exist but did so to allow a greater good which is the free love that is experienced between the Lover (God), the beloved (us), and the spirit of love between the two. Evil is not a thing to be created. Rather, it is a condition that exists when a person or group of people reject God’s goodness and his holy moral nature.

Tell that to the Christian woman 5 minutes after she has been raped.  Apparently, your theological arguments stop making sense when people experience actual evil in real-time.

My challenge to Brian Chilton's argument from the early New Testament "creeds"

Brian Chilton did a podcast on the "early NT creeds".  Since the sources of those creeds are obviously relevant to the question of how early they are, I issued the following challenge to him:




If that's too blurry, here's a paste of the text:

barry • 4 minutes agoHold on, this is waiting to be approved by BellatorChristi.So, let's grant that the apostles began preaching the resurrection of Jesus every bit as early as Acts 2 says they did. Now we've pushed the resurrection-creed back to 33. a.d., even further back than Habermas would dare date the 1st Corinthians 15:3-4 "creed". 

Are you willing to discuss the possible NT sources behind such "creed"?

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See here.

We'll have to see what Chilton thinks is more important:  uninterrupted preaching to the choir, or defending his specific presuppositions from skeptical attack.  Since he posts what he does for the purpose of "apologetics", I'm hoping its the latter.

If you simply teach apologetics without input from an actual skeptic, you create the risk that your Christian audience will go into the world, armed with your teachings, and get slaughtered by actual skeptics whose actual arguments go beyond what you were teaching in class.  Showing how you survived a challenge from an actual skeptic is far more likely to equip your readers to deploy apologetics in the real world successfully.

UPDATE:

A few minutes later, this was how Chilton justified refusal to take up my challenge:
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barry • 2 hours ago
So, let's grant that the apostles began preaching the resurrection of Jesus every bit as early as Acts 2 says they did. Now we've pushed the resurrection-creed back to 33. a.d., even further back than Habermas would dare date the 1st Corinthians 15:3-4 "creed".

Are you willing to discuss the possible NT sources behind such "creed"?

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Brian Chilton Mod  barry • an hour ago
Barry, I've already discussed the sources behind such creeds. There's no reason to go back into this issue. I encourage you to listen to the podcast and to also reference other resources at https://bellatorchristi.com concerning the multiple eyewitness testimonies concerning the risen Jesus.

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barry  Brian Chilton • 3 minutes ago
Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by BellatorChristi.
I'll take that as a "no, I am not willing to discuss the possible NT sources behind such creed". Fair enough. While I'll be challenging your arguments at my own blog, it's clear that you have no intention of debating a skeptic at your own blog. Have a nice life. Should you ever desire to see arguments you haven't addressed before, you know how to contact me. barryjoneswhat@gmail.com
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Perhaps I should pat myself on the back.  This Brian Chilton is a legitimate Christian bible scholar, and yet he clearly doesn't think he could convincingly refute arguments that I'd make to him on each of his individual points.

My challenge to Brian Chilton on the "creed" of 1st Corinthians 15:3-8

Brian Chilton wrote an article in which he extolls the reliability of the "creed" most scholars see in 1st Corinthians 15:3-4.

I replied to him, (see here)and we so far had a few exchanges that seem to indicate Brian doesn't wish to get into a discussion about the people who are the alleged source of this creed.  Here's what we've said so far as of June 19, 2019.  Some others also posted:
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UPDATE:  June 20, 2019
Look for the update at the end, Mr. Chilton seems to think that the cause of truth is served better if he deletes my citation to scholarly sources, shuts down the dialogue and restricts his replies to his own "podcast" where he can safely pontificate about why I'm wrong in my absence.
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Pofarmer • 19 hours agoYou realize what you did was give yourself a huge dose of confirmation bias, right? Why not read Remsburg, or Randall Helms, or say, Richard Carriers “Not the Impossible Faith” which contains a lot of scholarship in the early church. These bozos are just telling you what you wanted to hear. •Reply•Share ›Brian Chilton Mod  Pofarmer • 18 hours agoThe sword cuts both ways. Carrier is not a respected scholar. Ehrman, a man who is not a Christian, holds the Creeds to be 35 AD. Dunn is a giant in the field and he holds the Creeds to be at least 35 AD, but probably much earlier. Larry Hurtado would also agree. They are far from being "bozos." •Reply•Share ›Pofarmer  Brian Chilton • 17 hours agoIf you’re going to list Lee Strobel, and McDowell, and Habermas, you certainly don’t get to complain about Carrier, who actually has relevant credentials in the field. I’ll not that Ehrman has a problem relying on non existant sources, as does Dunn in this instance, as noted by Raphael Lataster. I’ll also note that an early Christian Creed, even if they did exist, don’t point to an historical Jesus any more than the creeds of the Mithras Cult or that of Dionysus. In fact, there are many early creeds And writings, such as the Didiche, which are clearly problematic for this view, you’d do much better to look at some contrary scholarship and not let yourself be led around by this questionable group you’ve chosen. •Reply•Share ›Brian Chilton Mod  Pofarmer • 10 hours agoSeriously? So, you're going to dismiss material that is less than 2 years after the person in question and then elevate Carrier over Dunn and Ehrman? I think you would do well to listen to your own advice. •Reply•Share ›This comment was deleted.barry • a day agothis is weird...you promise to deal with my comments in a later podcast...but somebody removed my comment and marked it as "spam". Ok. •Edit•Reply•Share ›Brian Chilton Mod  barry • 21 hours agoIt shows up as approved on my end. I'm not sure what's going on. •Reply•Share ›Brian Chilton Mod  barry • 21 hours agoThat's weird because I approved your message. •Reply•Share ›barry • a day agoI never understood why Habermas' tries to make such a big deal out of the the "creed" of 1st Cor. 15:3-4.First, Paul goes on to point out that some in the Corinthian church he founded denied the possibility of resurrection from the dead (v. 12). Makes you wonder what gospel Paul was preaching years prior. Can you imagine somebody joining the Jehovah's Witnesses, and still believing the whole time that the Trinity doctrine is biblical?Second, doesn't matter if the church was claiming, as soon as the Acts 2 Pentecost, that Jesus rose from the dead. That "early" doesn't necessarily imply "true" is clear from the fact that false rumors about the apostles could and did spread like wildfire within the original Christian church. See Acts 21:18-24. Of course, you have the option of disagreeing with James and saying this rumor about Paul was true. I personally think it was.Third, Paul obviously disagreed with the Judaizers...which means the Judaizer gospel was sufficiently early as to impress his own churches enough to motivate them to abandon Paul's gospel and go the more legalistic route. Galatians 1:6-9. Does Habermas argue that the early preaching of the Judaizer gospel argues that it was the "true" gospel?Fourth, Paul said he "received" such creed, but he doesn't say from who, and according to Galatians 1:1, 11-12, he got his revelations by divine telepathy, specifically excluding the possibility of input by any other human beings. If the church was preaching the risen Christ as an "early creed", and if Paul thought that creed reasonable, you'd figure he would admit that it was also by the help of the original apostles and their "creed" that Paul learned such "creed".Fifth, Paul has credibility problems: he admits that, 14 years after the fact, he still doesn't know whether his flying into the sky was physical or spiritual, 2nd Cor. 12:1-4. If you were on trial for a murder you didn't commit, and the prosecution's only witness against you said that it was while he was flying into the sky by divine powers that he noticed you pulling the trigger... exactly what level of voice-volume would you have as you implored the Court to drop the charges for lack of evidence? If the Court didn't drop the charges, how intensely would you use this religious fanatic's claimed experiences to convince the jury he is simply unworthy of any credence? And you want today's skeptics to view as reliable a man from 2,000 years ago who was similarly prone to such literal flights of fancy?Back before Paul converted, he persecuted the Christians violently, by his own admission:13 even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief; (1 Tim. 1:13 NAU)A common sense Christian understanding requires that back when Saul was persecuting those Christians, they would have been truthfully testifying to him based on either their own eyewitness sightings of the risen Christ (reliable reports), or based on the "creed" of the same (which you and Habermas insist must be viewed as reliable by people living 2,000 years after the fact). If this is reasonable, then when Saul was persecuting the Christians, he was rejecting the very best quality testimony possible (i.e., this creed coming to him in real-time from the living voices of those who originated the creed...or eyewitnesses). If God wishes to show mercy to somebody who was guilty of rejecting the very best quality resurrection testimony possible, it is perfectly reasonable and rational to deduce that it is more likely that this god has less contempt for skeptics living 2,000 years after the fact....who are deprived of the very best quality testimony. In short, the god of Paul does not view skepticism of "reliable sources" with the same level of contempt that today's evangelical Christian apologists do, otherwise, Paul would have been himself "without excuse". Now if the very best quality testimony wasn't sufficient to deprive Paul of excuse, how could you rationally argue that the lesser quality evidence available to skeptics living 2,000 years after the fact, is sufficient to deprive them of excuse?Sixth, you have to ask yourself whether the skeptical view of the 1st Cor 15 "creed" can be reasonable. If it can, then you don't win the debate by merely showing that Habermas' viewpoint is reasonable. Surely you realize that you do not prove the other girl's viewpoint unreasonable merely because you can show your own contrary viewpoint to be reasonable. Even courts of law recognize the obvious fact that reasonable people do not always agree on how to weigh and interpret testimony. Habermas' view, if "reasonable" would not automatically render the skeptical view irrational. If you would win the 1st Cor. 15 creed-debate with a skeptic, you'd have to show that Habermas' interpretation has greater explanatory scope and power than the skeptical interpretation. Consider yourself challenged.Looking forward to dialoging with you. •Edit•Reply•Share ›Brian Chilton Mod  barry • a day agoBarry, you bring up a lot in your response. I may very well record a podcast on this issue to provide a more robust answer. First, it is important to note that the early NT creedal material is not original to Habermas. Concerning 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, guys like Bart Ehrman, James D. G. Dunn, and multiple others consider the text to be early, no later than 35 AD. Critical scholars accept that this material is early.Second, the creeds themselves are part of a greater body of material that stem from the kerygma, the preaching of the early church. The kerygma stems from a larger body of oral, and possibly written, material that predates Paul and originates with the earliest church. The creedal material posits this larger body of material in accessible information that is easily remembered and makes it identifiable by modern historians. There are many things that go into finding these creeds, much of which deals with the structure and composition of the texts.Third, the creedal material is not only found within Pauline literature, they are also found in the Pastorals and in the sermon summaries of Acts. Many of the sermon summaries are Petrine in origin. Interestingly, the formulations used by Peter are similar to those employed by Paul.Lastly, I will not delve into the areas concerning Paul's possible NDE which he records in 2 Corinthians 12. That is for another topic. But, you are right in the sense that just because this material is early does not necessarily mean that it's true. However, what one must say if one is to be true to the evidence is that this is what the earliest church taught within the first 2-5 years of the church and it must have been what the historical Jesus of Nazareth taught himself.Be looking for a podcast soon that will deal with your comments. I may record one this week on the issue and will give a more thorough treatment there.Have a great day! •Reply•Share ›barry  Brian Chilton • 4 hours agoSo let's deal with a very basic philosophical issue here: Do you believe that the historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection is so compelling that the theory that he rose from the dead is more reasonable than any naturalistic theory? •Edit•Reply•Share › data-role=children id=post-4507657423 alt=Avatar data-role=user-avatar data-user=60804434 v:shapes="_x0000_i1036">Brian Chilton Mod  barry • 4 hours agoAbsolutely! No naturalistic theory can successfully deal with all the evidence. •Reply•Share ›barry  Brian Chilton • 3 hours agoOk, then you'd be open to a dialogue wherein I state the proper criteria for reasonableness of testimony? •Edit•Reply•Share › data-role=voting data-action=upvote alt=Avatar data-role=user-avatar data-user=60804434 v:shapes="_x0000_i1038">Brian Chilton Mod  barry • 3 hours agoIt depends on what you mean by "proper criteria." If you are going the route of Humeanism, then you have reached a dead end. Humeanism has long been shown to be nothing more than a bias against anything supernatural. It's ironic that those who claim to be "free thinkers" like David Hume are often the most closed minded when it comes to data that does not verify his or her own worldview. I am going to assume that the reasonableness you would provide would most likely address events that are unlike things that are experienced everyday. If so, the problem is not with evidence but with one's presuppositions. •Reply•Share ›barry  Brian Chilton • 2 hours agoNo. Hume has nothing to do with what I was talking about. Let's get started, then you'll see what I was talking about. Habermas' minimal facts approach isn't the only game in town. Applying specific principles of historical criteria to each alleged individual witness is rather the normative historiographical procedure.Let's start at the top of the resurrection witness list, and work downward in systematic fashion:Is the identity of the author of Canonical Greek Matthew sufficiently obscure as to justify striking his resurrection testimony from your list of resurrection witnesses?Please don't say that your case for the resurrection doesn't depend on what Matthew has to say. You would be running the risk of trivializing some evidence for Jesus' resurrection that, under your own beliefs, God intended for people to lean on when evaluating the subject. •Edit•Reply•Share ›Brian Chilton Mod  barry • 2 hours agoI think you're missing the concept behind these creeds. These creedal formulations come from multiple witnesses across the board. These creeds come out of historiographic procedures and methodologies that identify early material in any ancient work. For instance, these procedures have identified Aramisms within the material which is indicative of early material. Thus, this material is early, from ground zero (in Jerusalem), and all proclaim the same message of the risen Jesus within 2-5 years of the actual events. Some historians claim that a number of the creeds date to within months of the events themselves. •Reply•Share ›barry  Brian Chilton • an hour ago • editedI think you are missing the point of my attacks on the resurrection witnesses. I'm doing that to justify skepticism of the creeds.You already agreed that earliness doesn't demonstrate truth. I agree. But I maintain that because the actual "eyewitnesses testimony" to Jesus' resurrection, as recorded in the NT, stands on such sandy evidentiary foundation already, whatever "creed" might have emerged from that state of affairs cannot be so historically reliable as to render the gainsayers unreasonable.The historical direction is not
creed ---> alleged eyewitnesses, but
alleged eyewitnesses ---> creed.Therefore, when I attack the resurrection testimony of "Matthew", I am justifying the skeptical choice to ignore the creeds. If similar problems can be demonstrated with the other "eyewitnesses", then complete apathy toward these creeds becomes reasonable.So here's what's going on: You are saying this 1st Cor. 15 creed's factual allegations are historically reliable. And I'm going back to the creed's alleged sources to show that it emerged from less than reliable information. Matthew's problems are just the tip of the ice-box. •Edit•Reply•Share ›Brian Chilton Mod  barry • an hour agoI disagree entirely. Within any historical investigation, the examiner looks for eyewitness testimony. You have testimony coming from multiple areas. There are five independent testimonies within the Four Gospels (M=information only in Matthew, Mark, L=information only in Luke, John, and Q=information in both Matthew and Luke). Not only do you have the five independent sources, you also have early creedal material that Paul received in Jerusalem (c. 35 AD). You have sermon summaries that not only come from Paul but also Petrine sources. So, already you have 7 very early independent witnesses. I could go on. Ehrman counts as many as 11 or more independent witnesses. Your skepticism is built on an anti-supernatural bias. In this case, it's odd because even agnostics like Bart Ehrman accept the data that I have provided.Call it what you will, and take no offense to what I am about to say, but your doubts stem more from a prepackaged presuppositionalism opposed to the supernatural moreso than an evidentiary historical analysis. That, in turn, comes from a Humean outlook on history which is problematic. Humeans will not accept a miraculous claim no matter how much evidence is given to the contrary. From the information you have already provided, you have shown that no matter how many witnesses, no matter how much evidence is given, you will still remain skeptical because dead people don't rise from the dead according to the Humean outlook. That is well and good as such is your prerogative. It was the way I operated for five years so I understand completely. But I do not think it is being honest with the data that is given. The big question all of us must ask is this, what if it IS true? •Reply•Share › data-role=voting alt=Avatar class=user v:shapes="_x0000_i1043">

 barry  Brian Chilton • 14 minutes agoHold on, this is waiting to be approved by BellatorChristi.I already told you that Hume's miracle-rebuttal had nothing to do with my attack on the resurrection witnesses. I also tried to initiate a dialogue wherein we could discuss the individual merits of individual testimonies. You apparently have less interest in this, and more interest in incorrectly broadbrushing me as deluded by Humean presuppositions.I haven't broadbrushed you, so i'd appreciate a bit of objective reciprocity on your part.Are you willing to discuss the creed-sources in systematic one-at-a-time fashion, yes or no?If God wanted Matthew's resurrection testimony to be viewed and considered by the world, how could you possibly argue that considering his own unique testimony is a bad idea? God did not canonize Habermas' minimal facts approach. Paul's "creed" draws from what he "received" and what he "received" came to him via divine telepathy, not from real human beings conveying information to him.Your attempt to ground Paul's 1st Cor. 15 "creed" in actual testimony from real live original Christians overlooks Galatians 1:1, 11-12, where Paul's admission to "receiving" the gospel straight from divine telepathy (i.e., "revelation") came with a specific denial that any other human played a part in his acquisition of such knowledge.That Paul meant this in a literal way is clear from Galatians 2, where he admits that because God is no respecter of persons, Paul cared nothing for the earthly authority that others might see in the Jerusalem Pillar apostles, making clear he does not view the original apostles as highly as other people do, which is consistent with his claim in Gal. 1 that no other human beings were involved in the manner by which he "received" or became knowledgeable of the gospel. Therefore, under your own Christian principle that scripture interprets scripture, it is more likely that Paul was talking about his own solitary revelations, when in 1st Cor. 15 he said he "received" the notion that Jesus died and rose again.You will say he surely didn't get his list of apostolic eyewitnesses in the creed this same way, but on the contrary, since Paul admits to learning facts by flying up into heaven (2nd Cor. 12:1-4) and he admits ability to get information from other humans solely by vision/telepathy (Acts 16:9), and he admits it was by "revelation" that he knew enough about the Judaizer controversy to go to Jerusalem to settle it (Galatians 2:1), and the fact that Paul had an overabundance of "revelations" requiring divine miracle to keep his pride in check (2nd Cor. 12:7 ff), it is perfectly reasonable to conclude Paul's basis for his 1st Cor. 15 list of apostles who saw the risen Christ, was also "revelation" or "vision" no less than his knowledge that Jesus was executed, buried and risen on the third day.Therefore, the creed itself, along with its list of apostolic eyewitnesses of the risen Christ, f is most reasonably viewed as ultimately stemming, NOT from information Paul gained from other real human beings, but from what 'god' was telling him through 'revelation'.I cannot understand why you have such reticence to discuss Matthew and the possible SOURCES of the alleged 1st Cor. 15 "creed". You seem hell-bent on just bowling me over with a smorgasbord of "evidence" and then insisting that no skeptic can explain it away naturalistically. That's neither systematic, nor fair, nor objective.I'm sorry that my attempt to stick solely to the merits of each link in your cumulative chain of resurrection witnesses, did little more than encourage you to start psychoanalyzing my motives. When you are ready to start talking about the issues related to the people whom you think are the source for Paul's "creed" (i.e., the apostles) I'll be happy to discuss that matter with you.

Update June 20, 2019:

After that point the discussion went like this:

Brian Chilton Mod barry • 20 hours agoYou are not reading the text correctly. You are superimposing something on the text that is not there. 2 Corinthians came AFTER 1 Corinthians. Paul is directing them to material that he passed on to them which he received not by special Revelation but by his meeting with Peter and James in Jerusalem in 35 AD. Your interpretation of the data does not stand.

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barry • 20 hours ago • editedI'm not seeing why you automatically assume that Paul's phrase "what I received" means "what I received from the apostles". There's nothing in the immediate context to identify the source he got the information from, so you are pretending that information which is absent from the context, is so clear as to render the skeptic unreasonable for questioning the human nature of said source. If it were somebody other than Paul, the human nature of his sources might be a legitimate inference. But Paul as a mystic who already felt himself as having received the gospel solely by divine telepathy. No, that interpretation isn't infallible, but it doesn't need to be, it only needs to be "reasonable", and interpreting Paul's "what I received" in the same manner he is already known to have said he "receives" gospel-things, is reasonable enough to render the skeptic reasonable, even if it doesn't render you, the apologist, unreasonable.

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Brian Chilton Mod barry • 20 hours agoPaul was constantly defending his apostolicity since he a) was not an original apostle and b) was a persecutor of the church. It would be nonsensical for him to provide a message he had secretly received without the backing of the original apostles. Your interpretation is illogical in light of the data. I know of no serious scholar who holds that view.

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barry  • 20 hours agoIn Galatians 1, Paul claimed he received his gospel straight from divine telepathy (v. 1), then he pronounces a divine curse on anybody who would disagree with that gospel (v. 6-9), then he specifically disclaims that any other human being was involved in the means by which he acquired his gospel (v. 11-12).
He does that before even mentioning any of the original apostles as he does in ch. 2, and even then, he makes clear he is not as impressed with their authority as other people are (2:6).
He specifically disclaims the notion that he was "taught" his gospel by any other man (1:11, esp. v. 12), and he apparently thinks his notifying the Galatians of such secret solitary telepathic revelation is sufficient to make any gainsayer worthy of the divine curse (1:8).
So I'm not seeing a good biblical basis for your comment that it would be nonsensical for him to provide a message he had secretly received without the backing of the original apostles.
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This comment was deleted.
·          Brian Chilton Mod barry • 19 hours agoI'm going to cover this issue on the forthcoming podcast and I'll let this be the final statement on the issue because we're not going anywhere in this conversation. Paul notes that he received the gospel message most likely implying that it was from the risen Jesus. So what? He is making a claim to apostolicity which he had to do for the reasons I previously mentioned. He says that he went to Jerusalem to check his message with Peter and James. There are numerous reasons to believe that Paul received the early Creeds and traditions which he passed along to the churches. Again, scholarship strongly holds to this notion. I will give a further response on the podcast. Good talking with you.


This comment was deleted.

Do you see that last "this comment was deleted"? That was my comment. Therein I was replying to Chilton's expressed concern that he knows of no "serious" scholar who thinks Paul's "receiving" in 1st Cor. 15:3 is the same as his "receiving" in Galatians 1:1, 11-12. While I saved a copy of the page as my comment was showing, for whatever reason, the page will not display the comments unless it is opened while online, which means it reverts to the redacted version still present online, instead of preserving the full discussion as I intended.

To check, I dropped the html page into notepad, then did a search for the terms unique to my deleted comment, and verified that, for unknown reasons, the saving of the page did not preserve the full comment section despite the fact that the comments were present during the saving.  I have no idea why the webpages that show commentary, don't show the commentary if you save them and open them later offline.  This is a new bug that never happened before 2016.

Anyway, while I cannot remember everything I said in the deleted comment, I did provide Chilton therein a few of those "serious" scholars he didn't know about, who deny that Paul is referring to a "creed" in 1st Cor. 15:3, and affirm that there Paul is referring to his telepathic receiving of direct revelation without human assistance, a curious admission Paul makes explicitly in Galatians 1:1, 11-12.  Here is my reconstruction of my comment which Chilton deleted:

From R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians, p. 642-644:

 “There is no indication that in vss. 3–4  Paul is reciting a fixed formula, such as is found in the Apostles’ Creed.”  

“…In Galatians 1:11—2:2  Paul is at pains to prove historically that he did not receive his Gospel from men in any manner whatsoever. We prefer Paul’s own account as to the manner in which he received the Gospel to that of any present-day commentators.”

Other commentators agree that Paul in 1st Cor. 15:3 was referring to his reception of direct revelation without the help of any human being's input.  See F. W. Grosheide, Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 349; Leon Morris, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, p. 289;  J. P. Lange, A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, p. 309. 

But since these commentators aren't fundamentalists, perhaps you won't think they are "serious"? 

Notably, Chilton's deletion of that rather scholarly comment violates his own professed comment deletion policy.  From  https://bellatorchristi.com/website-rules-regarding-comments-and-replies/

The host reserves the right to add and delete comments at the host’s own discretion with or without warning. We certainly will allow comments and arguments that differ from ours as long as they are presented with class and integrity. Blessings, Pastor Brian Chilton 

So apparently the only way Chilton can justify deleting my scholarly-citation comment is to pretend he seriously thinks it wasn't "presented with class and integrity".  Yeah right.  That comment was more objective and scholarly than my previous comments which Chilton allowed.

I will now respond to the last comment Chilton intended to use to end the discusion:

I'm going to cover this issue on the forthcoming podcast and I'll let this be the final statement on the issue because we're not going anywhere in this conversation.

On the contrary, I was willing to sustain my attack on this Corinthian creed by a) allowing for the sake of argument that the apostolic resurrection preaching took place as early as Acts 2 says, and b) showing the fatal problems that plague those bits of NT information that you think are the sources for the creed.  I say we were getting somewhere, and only quit doing so when you decided saving face before you really got cornered was somehow better than just dealing with the full force of the skeptical argument I was attempting to set forth.

Paul notes that he received the gospel message most likely implying that it was from the risen Jesus. So what?

If he got the message from the risen Christ, then the burden transfers to YOU to explain what additional or different source you think he was drawing from when saying in 1st Cor. 15:3 that he "received" the gospel.  Paul there infamously doesn't specify from where he "received" this, so it makes perfect sense to apply here what he said in Galatians 1, namely that he "received" his gospel by divine telepathy, expressly disclaiming that any other human being was involved in his reception of this:

1 Paul, an apostle (not sent from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead),
 ... 11 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.
 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Gal. 1:1, 11-12 NAU)

Paul sure does leave the distinct impression that he didn't get his gospel by learning it from any other human being.

He is making a claim to apostolicity which he had to do for the reasons I previously mentioned.

And the facts he alleges within such claim to apostolicity specifically disclaim any involvement of other human beings while he was in the process of receiving or learning the gospel.  So since Paul is obviously talking about the basic gospel in 1st Cor. 15:3-4, and he doesn't there express or imply the source from which he received it, there is nothing whatever "unreasonable" about using scripture to interpret scripture, or using Paul to intepret Paul here, and infer that he must have meant here, what he meant when discussing the same subject in Galatians 1:  Paul received the gospel directly from heaven and no human being  was involved in his "learning" it either.

The point is that if Paul in 1st Cor. 15:3-4 is referring to what he received without the aid of human teaching, then he isn't referring to something that is created by the aid of human teaching (i.e., a "creed" of the early church).

He says that he went to Jerusalem to check his message with Peter and James.

Which he wouldn't need to do if he had full confidence that what he got by divine telepathy was sufficiently secure as to render the "false brethren" without excuse along with any fools that might accept their lies back in Jerusalem.  No sir, Paul was a big talker, but only inconsistently so.  His visions were NOT sufficient to secure doctrine enough to consider them the final word in any dispute with "false brethren".

But it's nice to know you admit that yes he was "checking with" the Jerusalem church...other inerrantist apologists, not wishing to make Paul sound dependent on the authority of the original disciples, insist that surely Galatians 2:2 means something else, but they are blinded by their own pathologically extreme confirmation-bias.  They still haven't explained why conservatives like J.B. Lightfoot complained that Galatians 2 is a "shipwreck of grammar" and that it contains rambling disconnected bits that sound like Paul is fearful of saying too much and of saying too little.

There are numerous reasons to believe that Paul received the early Creeds and traditions which he passed along to the churches.

But received how.  According to Galatians 1:1, 11-12, if the "creed" is the "gospel", then he didn't receive it through the help of any human being.  You were challenged to produce a statement by Paul that he "received" the gospel with the help of any other human being or apostle.  You failed to show any such thing.  I'm sure you are correct, but that is irrelevant, you cannot merely be correct, you believe Paul was inspired by God, so you are forced to show how your "correct" theory can be reconciled with everything Paul said about the subject under discussion.  You have failed to show that the gospel "creed" Paul "received" in 1st Cor. 15:3-4 is any different than the purely non-human gospel creed he specifies in Galatians 1.  perhaps you didn't know, but Gary Habermas' cute little theories are not canonical.   You need to pay less attention to modern squabbles of philosophy and pay more attention to the express wording of scripture. 

Again, scholarship strongly holds to this notion.

I'm not saying your own position is unreasonable, maybe it's reasonable.  I'm saying the reasonableness of your interpretation cannot be used to argue that my contrary interpretation is thus "unreasonable".  Reasonableness is a very broad thing that doesn't slice and dice the way "accuracy" does.  Unless you think every jury that ever convicted an innocent man, was thus "unreasonable" by the mere fact that they called it wrong, then you are going to have to agree with me that inaccuracy doesn't automatically entail unreasonableness.  You don't need to be told that lots of mature college educated smart adults disagree with each other about historical facts, or how much weight to give a certain person's testimony, up to and including even historians disagreeing on basic historical method (Licona 2010) and this sorry state of affairs also occurs within that furiously divided camp called "evangelicalism".

So until the day you can reconcile the non-human creed in Galatians 1:1, 11-12 with the creed made up by the early apostolic human preaching in 1st Cor. 15:3-4, you must necessarily fail in your quest to prove skeptics to be "unreasonable". 

I will give a further response on the podcast. Good talking with you.

The reader will have to judge for themselves, based on Chilton's unwillingness to discuss the sources of the creed, his putting an arbitrary stop to the discussion right about the time he started running out of ammo, and his deletion of scholarly comments enlightening him about those "serious" scholars who deny 1st Cor. 15:3-4 is reciting any 'creed', why Chilton thinks that hearing the sound of his own uninterrupted voice in a "podcast" as he goeth about "refuting" me in my convenient absence, is somehow "more objective" at getting down to the truth of the matter.  Is Chilton a catholic?

If you were thinking that skeptics sometimes lose sleep at night all worried that maybe, just maybe, the "creed" in 1st Cor. 15 goes back to 34 a.d., think again.