Cold Case Christianity: The Reasonable, Evidential Nature of Christian Faith

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

The Reasonable, Evidential Nature of Christian Faith

Posted: 23 Feb 2018 05:49 AM PST

Skeptics sometimes portray Christians as both “unreasonable” and “unreasoning”. The Christian culture only exacerbates the problem when it advocates for a definition of “faith” removed from evidence.

Blame it on Hebrews 11:1 which says faith "is" evidence, and speaks about faith in a way that today's apologists wouldn't be caught dead speaking.   If Hebrews 11:1 doesn't promote blind faith, why don't more apologists quote it in non-defensive contexts?

Is true faith blind?

Yes:

 29 Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed." (Jn. 20:29 NAU)  

The hope that saves is the kind that doesn't see:

 24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?
 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. (Rom. 8:24-25 NAU)

Wallace continues:

How are true believers to respond to doubt?

Like a child, i.e., when you doubt, that's just the devil trying to steal your joy:

...Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
 9 But resist him, firm in your faith,  (1 Pet. 5:8-9 NAU)

Wallace continues:

What is the relationship between faith and reason?

It isn't good.  When Paul addressed the Corinthians, he specifically disclaimed any attempt at persuasive reasoning:

 2 For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
 3 I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling,
 4 and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
 5 so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. (1 Cor. 2:2-5 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Richard Dawkins once said:
 “Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that.”
 This view of Christian belief is common among skeptics and believers alike.

Then you cannot blame the skeptics for viewing faith as blind assent the way so many Christians do.  If spiritually alive people can't even get it right, you are a fucking fool to expect spiritually dead people to do any better.

Critics think Christians accept truth claims without any evidential support and many Christians embrace the claims of Christianity unaware of the strong evidence supporting our worldview.

Dream on, none of the evidence supporting Christianity is strong, it is rather weak, full of holes, and that's probably why the Christian scholars who go around trying to prove this crap are a decided minority.

Dawkins is correct when he argues against forming beliefs without evidence.

Then apparently you never read Hebrews 11:1

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Heb. 11:1 NAU)

Wallace continues:

People who accept truth claims without any examination or need for evidence are prone to believing myths and making bad decisions.

Which must mean the original Jerusalem church under James was prone to believing myths:

 17 After we arrived in Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.
 18 And the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present.
 19 After he had greeted them, he began to relate one by one the things which God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.
 20 And when they heard it they began glorifying God; and they said to him, "You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law;
 21 and they have been told about you, that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs.
 22 "What, then, is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come.
 23 "Therefore do this that we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow;
 24 take them and purify yourself along with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads; and all will know that there is nothing to the things which they have been told about you, but that you yourself also walk orderly, keeping the Law. (Acts 21:17-24 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Christians Are Called to A Reasonable Faith
Christians, however, are not called to make decisions without good evidence.

Yes they are.  The Jesus whose miracles during his earthly ministry were so fake that his own family didn't believe him (John 7:5, Mark 3:21) wanted any mothers and fathers following him to give up custody of their kids just to follow him around, with a prosperity gospel promise that they'd get eternal life by doing so:

 29 "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name's sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life. (Matt. 19:29 NAU)

Wallace continues:

The God of the Bible does not call his children to obey blindly.

then why does apostle Paul think he can persuade a bitterly immoral and divided Corinthian church that he might possibly have physically flown up to heaven, by simply telling them a story?

 1 Boasting is necessary, though it is not profitable; but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.
 2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago-- whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows-- such a man was caught up to the third heaven.
 3 And I know how such a man-- whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows--
 4 was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak.   (2 Cor. 12:1-4 NAU)

If Paul expected such a congregation to believe this crap, then trust me, his god wanted them to believe blindly.  Wallace continues:

The Gospels are themselves an important form of direct evidence; the testimony of eyewitnesses who observed the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Correction, only two of them could possibly claim to be eyewitness testimony, Matthew and John.  If hearsay was so clearly useful for establishing facts, to the point that Mark's and Luke's non-eyewitness status ends up being no problems, I don't think most modern courts of law would routinely exclude hearsay.   Most Christian scholars deny apostle Matthew wrote the gospel now bearing his name, and with conservative scholars like Craig A. Evans admitting in his debates with Bart Ehrman that Jesus never actually said "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58), you've got serious problems pretending the gospel authors only wished to assert facts.

That’s why the scriptures repeatedly call us to have a reasoned belief in Christ, and not to resort to the behavior of unreasoning animals:

Jude 4, 10
For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ…But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.

That passage is not calling anybody to anything, it is labeling heretics in a defamatory way.

The Bible uses this word for “unreasoning” in a pejorative manner; to be unreasoning is to act like a brute animal. God clearly wants more from beings created in His image.

Paul cursed his judaizer opponents in Galatians 1:8-9, this might suggest Paul approved of childish reasoning that automatically sides with whoever appears more serious or more flashy.

Christians Are Called to An Examined Faith
In fact, God wants us to examine all the evidence at our disposal and to study the things of God with great intensity. When we do this, we truly begin to worship Him with our mind:

But you cannot say what exact degree of intensity, which makes the statement useless.  Does God want a Christian wife and mother to quit her job and homeschool her kids so she can keep her kids' minds unstained from the world?  You wouldn't try to answer that in a definitive way to save your life, despite the fact that it agrees perfectly with all the rest of the fanatical devoted bullshit in the bible a bout how the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Matthew 22:37-38
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment.”

Because if you don't, he will foist innumerable atrocities on you, like rape (Isaiah 13:13-16) and parental cannibalism (Deuteronomy 28:53-57).  Obviously God calls you to a reasoned faith.  Nobody wants to get raped, so the other option is to believe what the sky-tyrant tells you.  That's "reasonable".

This kind of faith is unafraid of challenges.

Then apparently J. Warner Wallace doesn't have Christian faith, because I've been challenging him routinely on everything he believes, and yet he bears more "self-promotion/marketing gimmick/just-ignore-the-competition" fruit than he bears "unafraid of challenges" fruit.  Of course you don't have "time" to debate me, you are always flying around the country so you can appear on another Christian's t.v. or radio show.  Should we just call you J. Warner Commercial?  How did the world ever get along before you were born?

In fact, Christians are encouraged to examine what they believe critically so they can be fully convinced:
 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21
Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophetic utterances. But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good…

And in context, "everything" is limited to prophetic utterances.  If you don't arbitrarily limit the "everything" even further, than apparently God wants Christians to fully inspect anything and everything in their lives that has to do with god, which would leave them no time to cook, clean, or purchase books by self-promoting attention-whore apologists.  You wouldn't want that, would you?

1 John 4:1
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Verses 2 and 3 indicate the test wasn't for everything, but only for whether a spirit did or didn't confess that Jesus had come in the flesh:

 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God;
 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. (1 Jn. 4:2-3 NAU)

Romans 14:5
Let each man be fully convinced in his own mind.

And the part that you missed is "let", since apparently you do not "let" people believe what they want, you instead force your religion on other people.

2 Timothy 3:14
You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them…

Rather bad advice for any Christian who is starting to recognize that the church she joined is heretical.  Apparently this verse doesn't apply as broadly as you thought it did.

Christians Are Called to An Evidential Faith
Critical examination requires us to investigate the evidence,

and contrawise, love "believes all things" (1st Cor. 13:7).

and God holds evidence in high regard.

Not when it comes to the type of hope that saves.  Hope that is seen is not hope.  Romans 8:24 supra.

He wants us to be convinced after we examine the facts. Jesus valued evidence and continually provided evidence to make his case:
 John 14:11
“Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”

Apparently you didn't notice that Jesus distinguishes there two possible bases for conversion, and only one of them required drawing conclusions from the evidence.

Jesus continued to provide evidence to the disciples, even after the Resurrection:
 Acts 1:2-3
…until the day when He was taken up, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. To these He also presented Himself alive, after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days, and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.

Nevermind the fact that while this alleged 40-days of kingdom-of-God preaching by Jesus surely must have been as important if not more important than his pre-Cross teachings, the NT authors don't give us shit from those 40-days, despite Matthew's admission that the risen Christ wanted future Gentile followers to obey "all" that he had taught the disciples (Matthew 28:20).

The earliest Christians understood the connection between reason, evidence and faith, and they did not see these concepts as mutually exclusive.

Wrong, Paul refused to use persuasive reasoning, see 1st Cor. 2:4

In fact, Paul often used direct evidence to make his case for Christianity:
 Acts 17:30-31
“Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

Nevermind that Paul there was quoting Aratus out of context and applying his Stoic polytheism to Christian monotheism.  Nevermind that the philosophers laughed him off (v. 32).  Nevermind that Paul left immediately after their skepticism manifested itself (v. 33).

Acts 17:2-3
And according to Paul’s custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead

The same Paul would later write in contradiction to his younger contentious days, and require that anybody who doesn't see things his way after two warnings (not two lessons) must be shunned and avoided thereafter, Titus 3:9.

Christians Are Called to A Case-Making Faith
When believers use their minds, investigate the evidence and become convinced, something wonderful happens: We have the courage to defend what we believe using the same evidence, logic and reasoning power we used to come to faith in the first place:

And Mormons would testify in agreement with you that something wonderful happens when they use their minds to investigate the evidence and become convinced that the book of Mormon is the inspired word of God.

1 Peter 3:15
…but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence…

Christians in all disciplines of inquiry and discovery have used their reasoning power to investigate the evidence. Christians are not irrational, and Christian faith is not blind. The rich intellectual history of Christianity calls each of us to have a reasonable, examined, evidential, case-making faith. This kind of faith honors God and withstands skeptical criticism and personal doubt.

The part you left out is that the doctrinal divisions of "true" Christians are so serious and deep, your customers could not even believe obtaining a Ph.d in New Testament studies would help them restore unity to the body of Christ.  Calvinists don't just disagree with Arminians, they disagree with fellow-Calvinists (5-Point Calvinism, 3-point Calvinism, infralapsarianism, supralapsarianism, and many Christians' hostile attittude toward Calvinism suggests they perceive Calvinism to be faulty on essentials, not peripherals).  Apologists don't just disagree with skeptics, they disagree with other apologists (Presuppositionalism?  Evidentialism?, including even on how to argue the resurrection of Jesus, Geisler, v. Licona, Dan Wallace, etc?).  Creationists don't just disagree with evolutionists, they disagree with other creationists (young earth v. old earth?  Ken Ham v. Hugh Ross?).  Conservatives don't just disagree with liberals, they disagree with other conservatives (is bible inerrancy true?  What is it's scope and extent?  Geisler v. Licona?).

You want your customers to believe the Trinitarian Protestants involved in the above-cited debates are genuinely born again, yet you also want them to believe that the holy spirit won't necessarily give them the correct interpretation of a bible passage despite their seeking such with a right heart for perhaps decades?

Christianity's internal divisions and splintering of sub-groups is more likely the result of god not existing, than of God having mysterious reasons for refusing to do his part to enable Christians to obey his command to be like-minded in all things (1st Cor. 1:10)  FUCK YOU.