My reply to Lee Strobel's YouTube video about Jesus' resurrection

 I posted the following comments in reply to one of Lee Strobel's videos about Jesus' resurrection and the allegedly "early" nature of the "creed" in 1st Corinthians 15:3-4.   That video is here.  I had to post my reply in two parts because it was too long as a single message.

First, even assuming the skeptical theory of legendary development is wrong, the reasonableness of resurrection skepticism does not require that the resurrection accounts be late legends. How many people who attend a Benny Hinn crusade testify just a few days later about how Hinn healed people? How soon after the alleged appearances of Mary in Fatima were they first reported? Very soon, And yet you couldn't care less, the early nature of the miracle testimony doesn't sway you in the least, you are STILL skeptical. So you have no right to pretend that if the late-legend hypothesis is refuted, this forces the conclusion that the reports are truthful. AS IF THE ONLY TIME TESTIMONY CAN CONTAIN LIES IS WHEN IT IS LATE (!?) You will say the rumor about Paul in Acts 21:18-24 was false, so apparently, thousands of Jews within the mother church CAN screw up the truth within the lifetime of the person in question. The ending of John's gospel admits that a misunderstanding of Jesus had prevailed among the "brethren". So apparently, testimony being "early" does precisely nothing to intellectually obligate an unbeliever to be more trusting that the testimoy is true. And Irenaeus says John wrote a gospel to refute Cerinthus, which logically requires that Cerinthus' more gnostic version of the gospel was even earlier than John's gospel...yet Christians today insist that Cerinthus was wrong, no matter how early his version of the gospel was. So stop telling yourself that "early" means "truthful". YOU don't even believe that.

Second, the truths in Mark 3:21 and John 7:5 are earlier than the "creed" of 1st Cor. 15:3-4, and those gospel texts show that Jesus' own family didn't find his miracles convincing. There is nothing unreasonable in saying, on the basis of these texts, that Jesus couldn't do genuinely supernatural miracles, and so, like with so many other religious fraudsters, Jesus might have been able to wow large crowds, but they were stupid and gullible. A messiah who cannot do real miracles, probably wouldn't be selected by God to rise from the dead, nor to die for anybody's sins.

Third, even assuming Jesus rose from the dead, Deut. 18 warns that even false prophets can possibly perform true miracles. Of course the test is whether the prophet spoke consistently with Mosaic law. Jesus did not, he forgave sins often in contexts neither expressing or implying he wanted them to obey the Mosaic ritual. You will say Jesus was god and could change the rules, but I deny he is god, so your presupposition of Jesus' divinity does not impose an intellectual obligation on a skeptic in any degree. I call Paul a liar, so I don't really care whether he was calling Jesus god in 50 a.d., Paul's word is not the end of an argument, but the beginning.

Fourth, if we cannot find fault with ignorant teens who accept Christ and thus make an ultimate judgment call about Jesus' resurrection before they even know about, much less have any ability to refute, all the skeptical arguments, then fairness demands that YOU cannot find fault with ignorant skeptics who reject Christ and thus make an ultimate judgment call about Jesus' resurrection before they even know about, much less have any ability to refute, all the apologetics arguments. Is it written in the stars that only Christians are allowed to benefit from ignorance? No.

Fifth, the NT portrays James as a Judaizer leading a large church of legalistic Christians (Acts 21:20), and Josephus reports that the more scrupulous Jews were angered when James was put to death, which would hardly be the case if James had been preaching to them things they considered blasphemous, such as "Christ died for your sins" or "Jesus rose from the dead". And this legalistic church shows by their dumbfounded response in Acts 11:18 that they would never have guessed God granted repentance to Gentiles unless Peter revealed his vision story to them. And contrary to Christian scholarly trifles, apostle Paul is a liar, the rift in Acts 15 and Galatians 2 wasn't between him and some ultra-conservative faction of the Jerusalem church, it was between him and the entire Jerusalem church, period. So since it is reasonable to say the original apostles were Judaizers, who therefore continued seeing divine significance in Temple ritual and animal sacrifice, would never have viewed Jesus' death as an atonement, therefore, we can be reasonable to say the first part of the Corinthian creed (i.e., "Christ died for our sins") wasn't given to Paul by the original 12 apostles during the critical early period.

Sixth, Paul, using language identical to the "creed" in 1st Cor. 15:3-4, says in 11:23 that he received "from the Lord" actual words of the historical Jesus at the last supper. That is, even if Paul really did get gospel facts from the original 12 apostles, he was not willing to properly credit these human sources, he just characterizes these as facts which the "Lord" revealed to him. So the issue is not the actual historical truth, but merely what Paul meant with his words, since you as a bible believer are stuck with whatever Paul meant, you don't have the option of saying Paul got the gospel wrong, or lied about which sources he got it from. So Paul is being somewhat dishonest in 1st Cor. 15:3-4, if by "received", he means "from other apostles". But see next argument for why that's probably not what he meant.

Seventh, Paul in Galatians 1 speaks about how he "received" the gospel, and in vv. 11-12 explicitly denies that the method involved the input of any other human being. It was SOLELY by divine telepathy, at least according to Paul. So there cannot be anything unreasonable in the skeptical hypothesis which infers on the basis of Galatians 1, that when he says "received" in 1st Cor. 15:3, he does NOT mean "from other people", but rather "solely from God". All attempts to make the Corinthian creed originate from apostles earlier than Paul, are abortive.

Eighth, that the NT texts are too ambiguous to justify Christian dogmatism is clear from the fact that even Christian apologists disagree with each other about how reliable the sources are. Lydia McGrew denies bible inerrancy, but says a resurrection case should include the witness of all canonical gospels. Licona, on the other hand, explicitly refuses to characterize the resurrection testimony of Matthew and John as "historical bedrock", because he thinks apostolic authorship of the gospels is "fuzziest" when it comes to Matthew and John.

Ninth, Paul cursed other Christians whose gospel disagreed with his own (Galatians1:6-9), which means "accepting Jesus" is nowhere near as safe as you pretend when you do apologetics or evangelism on unbelievers. According to Galatians 1, and Jesus' similar warning in Matthew 7:22-23, lots of sincere people who thought they were Christians will be getting a nasty surprise on Judgment Day despite their ability to truthfully say they performed many wonderful works in his name. The Galatian churches Paul founded obviously knew him personally, yet STILL abandoned his gospel in favor of the legalistic Judaizer gospel. So the atheist is only being reasonable by refusing to do anything that might cause him to commit the additional sin of heresy. And yet doctrinal divisions in Christianity for the last 2,000 years makes it reasonable to infer that the NT text is fatally ambiguous as to meaning, and therefore, remaining an unbeliever is an evil that is less serious than the idiot who take a chance and finds out he didn't accept the right Jesus, and ends up in hell forever.

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Tenth, you preach that God wants a personal relationship with me, which means you are committing the fallacy of equivocation. You intend for us to define "personal relationship" normally but in fact you mean a relationship with an invisible man who never interacts with his followers except through writings of dubious text, origin and authorship from 2,000 years ago, and who apparently seems to think that leaving his sincere followers in the dark about important aspects of their daily lives is best...which must mean that Christian apologists are more eager to promote divine/human relations than God himself. A skeptic could not possibly be unreasonable to demand that if God wants me to make a radical commitment to Jesus, he first show me radical authentication of the relevant evidence. The arguments of apologists do not "radically authenticate" that evidence, they merely show that the evidence often conforms to rules of historiography.

Eleventh, you will insist that all skepticism toward Jesus' resurrection is unreasonable, but you are simply overstating how wonderful your "evidence" is. Reasonableness can be consistent with accuracy, but by no means demands accuracy. Not all jurors who convict an innocent person were necessarily stupid, blind, drunk, biased, bribed, etc. So even assuming skepticism is "wrong", that doesn't automatically mean skeptics are "unreasonable".

Twelfth, it is acceptable to say that this or that skeptic was unreasonable, but it is illogical to jump from there to "skepticism is unreasonable". Just like if I hear stupid arguments from stupid Christians, i should not jump to the conclusion "Christianity is unreasonable". One particular skeptic, myself, has very strong arguments showing the reasonableness of doubting Jesus' resurrection. You'll probably never know how Lee Strobel would hold up under cross-examination, because he refuses to debate informed skeptics. At my blog I've been challenged resurrection apologists for years. Aside from a few anonymous YouTube know-nothings, nobody has dared accept the challenge.

Thirteenth, more and more conservative Christian scholars are rejecting the eternal conscious torment view of hell for Annihilationism, which says God will extinguish your sense of self-awareness. Since it is reasonable to adopt that interpretation, you are deprived of the ability to use "hell" to scare the skeptic into heaven: the skeptic has already accepted that nature will extinguish her consciousness, so that rejecting Jesus is about as dangerous as rejecting Mormonism. Therefore, the skeptic cannot be said to be ignoring any serious danger "warnings".

Finally, Given that your god is hidden and allegedly infinite in his ways, you don't have the first clue what he wants me to study first, nor for how long. So you forfeit the right to balk if I answer those questions for myself. I've decided that studying Christian apologetics for 20 years justifies me to draw ultimate conclusions about the reasonableness of Christianity.

I've challenged Christian apologists for years to produce the one miracle they think the most impervious to falsification, and they never respond.

Come get you some:

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/12/my-questions-to-dr-craig-keener.html

My reply to Olive Tree on the "receive" of 1st Corinthians 15:3

Here is what I posted to the Christian "Olive Tree" blog in reply to its article on 1st Corinthians 15, see here.

"The gospel the Corinthians received is explicated. Paul passed on (paradidōmi) the tradition of the gospel he also received (paralambanō). In one sense, the gospel Paul proclaimed was independently given to him (Gal. 1:11–17), but Paul does not deny that he received the fundamental tenets of the gospel from others."
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If the goal is correct interpretation,  then Pauls' "not denying" that he received the fundamental tenants of the gospel from others, is irrelevant.  What's relevant is what exactly Paul DID mean by the word "received", and then afterword, why you think that meaning would reasonably imply his receiving any part of that gospel from other people. 

There is nothing in the immediate context that makes "reception from other humans" more likely than "divine telepathy". 

Apparently, the single solitary reason you impute a human-to-human element to Paul's "receiving" in 15:3 is because that is the only way to justify continuing to insist that what he received has historical value (i.e., "creed").  For if he meant "receive" in 15:3 the same way he meant it in Galatians 1 (i.e., divine telepathy or "vision"), then the basis for the "reception" in 1st Cor. 15:3 would be divine telepathy, the burden would be on you to prove it also had a basis in some human 'creed', you wouldn't be able to fulfill that burden, and about 90,00 pages of Habermas squeak and squawk about how the creed goes all the way back to the Jurassic period, would go up in flames. 

And there you are, one of the major historical evidences for Jesus' resurrection...up in smoke.  I'm not seeing how my divine-telepathy interpretation of "receive" in 1st Cor. 15:3 violates anything in the grammar, context, or requires Paul to be inconsistent in his various statements.  Nor am I seeing any basis for arguing that Paul meant this specific word as his reception of something from other human beings.  In other words, there is a dangerous risk here that regardless of how much you argue for the "creed" interpretation, there is never going to be enough evidence in its favor to render my interpretation unreasonable.  In which case it would be correct to conclude that the interpretation of 15:3 that precludes the creed's "historicity" is reasonable.

I comment more extensively on this hermeneutical issue in reply to a person who asked me about it here at my own blog.  See here.

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.