Craig Keener: failing again to take the resurrection challenge

This is my reply to an article by Craig Keener entitled:

Real Raisings from the Dead or Fake News?

Falsified resurrection stories should not cause us to discount credible miracle accounts.

CRAIG KEENER| MAY 17, 2019

I offer here a challenge to Dr. Keener:  please quit playing in the little leagues with your numerous anecdotal stories of miracles, pick the ONE modern-day miracle claim you believe to be the most impervious to refutation or falsification, and explain why you think the only reasonable interpretation of it is to say it was a genuine miracle..and let's get started.

This is just an echo of a challenge I both posted here and emailed directly to Dr. Keener nearly two years ago, see here.  A challenge he still hasn't offered any reply to.

Around 1960, in the Republic of Congo, a two-year-old girl named Thérèse was bitten by a snake. She cried out for help, but by the time her mother, Antoinette, reached her, Thérèse was unresponsive and seemed to have stopped breathing. No medical help was available to them in their village, so Antoinette strapped little Thérèse to her back and ran to a neighboring village.
 According to the US National Library of Medicine, brain cells start dying less than five minutes after their oxygen supply is removed, an event called hypoxia. After six minutes, lack of oxygen can cause severe brain damage or death. Antoinette estimates that, given the distance and the terrain, it probably took about three hours to reach the next village. By the time they arrived, her daughter was likely either dead or had sustained significant brain damage.
 Antoinette immediately sought out a family friend, Coco Ngoma Moyise, who was an evangelist in the neighboring village. They prayed over the lifeless girl and immediately she started breathing again. By the next day, she was fine—no long-term harm and no brain damage. Today, Thérèse has a master’s degree and is a pastor in Congo.
 When I heard this story, as a Westerner I was naturally tempted toward skepticism, but it was hard to deny. Thérèse is my sister-in-law and Antoinette was my mother-in-law.
 Thérèse (right), with her mother, Antoinette (middle), and the author’s wife, Medine (left).
Image: Courtesy of Craig Keener
Thérèse (right), with her mother, Antoinette (middle), and the author’s wife, Medine (left).

I'm not seeing how you could possibly think this anecdotal evidence somehow renders miracle-skeptics unreasonable.  But I guess you were never writing this piece for skeptics anyway, correct?

And let's not forget that Christianity is full of "cessationists" (i.e., Christians who think the age of miracles ceased long ago...who therefore have their own biblical reasons to be suspicious of modern-day Christian miracle claims.  See Keener debating such a person here.

How much would a Christian cessationist push a skeptic to investigate modern-day miracles?

If even Christian scholars cannot agree whether the bible allows God to do miracles today, lets just say skeptics are more than reasonable if they choose to walk away from a confusing problem created and sustained by Christians.  We cannot be intellectually compelled to go investigating miracle claims until we first determine that the bible allows God to do miracles 2000 years after the 1st century.  Because if it doesn't allow it, then the modern-day miracle might actually be done by demon...and we wouldn't wanna play with fire or anything, would we?

And then there's the stupidity of thinking skeptics have an intellectual obligation to give two shits whether cessationism is biblical or not.  Yeah, maybe we are also unreasonable if we refuse to study the differences between Trinitarians, Unitarians and Oneness Pentecostals.  Yeah right.  Then maybe under Romans 1:20 we are required to care enough about bible inerrancy at least minimally enough to google Geisler and Licona for several weeks so we can figure out which of them has a more "biblical" position on inerrancy, and then for thoroughness, take the next two years to study all the loquacious input Lydia McGrew has to offer about that particular issue.   You are high crack.

By contrast, in February, a video of South African preacher Alph Lukau drew widespread attention for what appeared to be someone raised from the dead in his church. Lukau claims he simply prayed for the unconscious man in the coffin, but regardless of who is responsible, the situation was clearly designed to deceive. The coffin was purchased from one funeral parlor by customers allegedly posing as workers from another funeral parlor, and the hearse was borrowed from yet a third. Critically, none of the funeral parlors ever saw the body of the supposed deceased.
 The video of this apparent resurrection was quickly unmasked, and Lukau was condemned by numerous African church leaders. Nevertheless, questions and concerns remain.

Us skeptics have colleges to attend, jobs to work and kids to raise.  We are not unreasonable to say that because there are so many false miracle claims in the world, its better to toss the baby out with the bathwater, since the only alternative is to investigate (and thus fill up our lives with) a bunch of false bullshit.  Since we are limited, there MUST come a time when we decide for ourselves that we have done enough research to justify drawing conclusions about the ultimate issue, just like you don't know everything there is to know about pleasing a woman in bed, but you did some study and arbitrarily decided the point at which you thought you knew enough to justify ending your studies. 

I am no more open to miracle claims than I am open to archaeological claims asserting that artifacts unique to the Book of Mormon have been found.  So much fraud attends both investigations that I've decided other things in life are more important than pretending to be what I'm not...an objective robot eternally willing to change my mind about anything whenever anybody comes up with some new claim.  If you reached the firm conclusion that Mormonism is bullshit, at some point before knowing everything there is to know about the subject, you obviously agree with my closed-mindedness.

But my lack of openness doesn't mean I cannot be convinced otherwise.  how many Christians took a firm doctrinal stance and considered the matter closed, then changed their minds later anyway?  I won't be open to miracle claims until somebody comes up with something more convincing than unsubstantiated allegations about how doctors in third-world countries were baffled at some sort of healing.

And as I argued years ago, because Christians say the stakes are extremely high, we are thus perfectly reasonable to demand that their evidence meet the highest standards of authentication normally imposed on evidence by courts of law.  If God has no trouble parting the Red Sea, he should have no trouble producing evidence that would meet court-tests of authentication and admissibility.

I’m married to an African, have spent time teaching in Africa, and count many African Christians as relatives and friends. I’ve learned much from them and their approach to miracles challenges me in good ways. African Christianity has a tradition of prophetic leaders, and there is great respect among Africans across the continent for a “man of God.”

And if they aren't specifically 'Christian' in outlook, your bible would require you view such prophets as false.

But because miracles draw crowds, many leaders compete in miracle narratives.

So if my salvation is such a huge pressing issue, what should I prioritize?  Picking up the kids from school?  Or phone the school telling them to let the kids walk home so I can google Christian miracle claims originating in Africa?  According to your Christian logic, my eternal destiny is more important than temporal earthly desires, correct?  And didn't Jesus use promises of great material and spiritual riches to entice his followers to give up custody of their kids (Matthew 19:29)? 

Do you recommend that I follow Jesus' advice in Matthew 19:29, yes or no?

Or do you recommend that I pick up my kids from school, and only google African miracle claims whenever I decide I don't have anything better to do?  If that's the case, then apparently, you don't think my salvation is that important.

The internet democratizes access, so leaders who publicly demonstrate their miracle prowess can become wildly successful. Churches can control the setting and potentially any staging. The opportunity for fakery abounds and my miracle-believing, African Pentecostal friends lament the spread of fraudulent miracle-workers.

 I wonder how far a skeptic could milk the following excuse:  "Given your admission to many false miracle claims among Christians, I wouldn't wanna be misled by a demon-inspired miracle, so playing it safe would counsel that I just avoid looking at miracle-claims entirely...especially given that as an unbeliever, I'm even more prone to being deceived by demonic miracles, than Christians are."

NOW what are you gonna do? Quote that part of the bible where God promises atheists protection from demons as long as they are sincerely researching miracle-claims?

Is there a way we can distinguish between fabricated miracle reports and the genuine article?

Maybe.  But that means you'll have to devote your attention to a subject rife with falsehoods and demonic deceptions, and if you are an atheist, the apologist has to admit you run a greater risk of being deceived by demonic miracle reports, than any Christian would be. 

Misplaced cynicism
Christians use the word miracle in different ways. Because we believe that God works through his creation, we are right to thank God for recoveries from sickness or injury, dramatic or not.

Do you thank god for farts, burps, predatory birds who sadistically torture their prey, and other things because they too, ultimately originate with the miracle of god's creation?

When we offer thanksgiving for a successful surgery or an effective immune system, we don’t need to claim it happened only by miraculous means.
 Neither should we limit the term exclusively to what lacks possible natural causes. The Bible says that God parted the Red Sea using a strong east wind that blew all night (Ex. 14:21). But just because we recognize the natural components of this event, we would be wrong to conclude it was merely a fortuitous coincidence that allowed the Israelites to cross on dry ground.

Thanks for the strong sign that you aren't writing this for skeptics, but only for those who are already Christian.  If a skeptic wished to, she'd be perfectly reasonable and rational to disregard this article of yours in its entirety.  You know how to address skeptics with better arguments, but you typically choose to avoid doing so.

So how can we evaluate popular accounts of miracles?

Maybe you should have instead asked "Can skeptics be reasonable to avoid investigating miracle claims upon the basis that we Christians say many miracles are done by demons, and skeptics, not being Christians, are thus more prone to the danger of being successfully deceived by the devil?"

When we don’t know the witnesses and lack other evidence, we have to live with varying amounts of uncertainty.

Then, because you don't "know" any of the NT authors...

But examining credible examples can help us understand how to approach miracles while being neither gullible nor faithless.

Since you'd never wish to stumble a skeptic, I'll assume your miracle-investigation advice is limited to just Christians, not those who are more prone to being deceived by demonic and heretical imitations?

If some African Christians accept miracle claims too quickly, many of us in the secular West indulge the opposite cultural temptation. Our heritage of antisupernaturalism, stemming from 18th-century Deists and the naturalist philosophy of David Hume, predisposes us to dismiss all miracles.

It also predisposes us to be absolutely closed-minded to any fool who might seriously wish to prove the existence of fairies.

That way, at least, we cannot be embarrassed by claims that turn out to be fraudulent.
 Resurrection reports appear through much of church history. In the late second century, Irenaeus, for example, reproached Gnostics’ lack of miracles by noting an orthodox church in France where, he reported, raisings were frequent. Raisings were also among the documented miracles Augustine surveyed in book 22 of The City of God. John Wesley offered a firsthand account of an apparently dead man being revived through prayer, recorded on the day it occurred, December 25, 1742.

Anecdotal evidence you surely don't expect to impress atheists?

Most early 20th-century testimonies are impossible to verify today,

Makes you wonder how impossible it is to verify 1st century miracle reports.

but occasionally some evidence remains. For example, in 1907, one year after the beginning of the early Pentecostal Azusa Street Revival, the revival’s newspaper The Apostolic Faith reported the raising of one Eula Wilson, whose blindness was also healed in the process.
 I was initially skeptical, but The Apostolic Faith cited its source, The Nazarene Messenger, another newspaper that recounted the same story but left out the healing from blindness. My first instinct was to suppose that The Apostolic Faith was embellishing the initial report. While such embellishments happen, in this case The Nazarene Messenger also had a source, The Wichita Eagle. This report, from within days of the event itself, included testimony from the attending physician and included Wilson’s healing from blindness.

Any fool who attended a Benny Hinn crusade in the front row next to the stage,  could tell you, within the next two days, that they saw healings with their own eyes.  But this would not interest you in the slightest, since, like an atheist bible skeptic, you've reached the point wherein you believe your prior studies of Hinn's miracles are sufficiently complete to justify you in drawing the deduction that NONE of his miracle claims are true or worthy of serious investigatory effort.  How much attention do you pay to Hinn's thousands of miracle claims, Dr. Keener?

Or do you agree with atheist bible skeptics that where the subject is already known to be fraught with fraudulent claims, you eventually reach a point where it becomes reasonable to generalize that the present is likely nothing but a repeat of the past?  Like Benny Hinn, the general subject of modern-day miracles is full of fraudulent cases, and like you, I reached a point where I became reasonable to stop being open to the possibility of the tooth-fairy's existence, and drew the general conclusion that any future evidence is too likely to be similarly inconclusive or fraudulent to justify continued willingness to investigate.

Some recent Western raising reports have become Christian films, such as those of Annabel Beam (Miracles from Heaven) and Baptist minister Don Piper (90 Minutes in Heaven). Both stories are inspiring but neither is triumphalistic: Beam experienced incredible suffering before her remarkable healing, and Piper suffered greatly along the road to recovery. If a testimony is being used for fundraising or a particular minister’s glory, caution is the wiser instinct. But in cases like these, no obvious self-
aggrandizing motive is in view.
 Another raising film, Breakthrough, released this past Easter. Based on Joyce Smith’s book The Impossible, the film recounts the experience of Joyce’s teenage son John. Unable to revive John after the boy drowned, physician Kent Sutterer had abandoned hope when John’s desperate mother started praying. At that moment, John’s heart restarted. Doctors deemed his subsequent full recovery remarkable.
 The witness of a medical professional like Sutterer further pushes against knee-jerk skepticism about raisings. Chauncey Crandall, a cardiologist in West Palm Beach, felt led to pray for a man who had already been unresponsive for some 40 minutes. Crandall assumed the man, Jeff Markin, was beyond help.
 Although the death certificate had been signed and Markin’s extremities were already turning black, Crandall prayed aloud for Markin. Then he urged a colleague to shock Markin with defibrillator paddles one more time; after the jolt of electricity, Markin’s heart immediately began beating. Markin made a full recovery, became a believer in Christ himself, and now testifies alongside Crandall to what God did for him.
 This is an impressive story, but it has some important context. This was not the first time Crandall had prayed for a raising.

Why would the skeptic be wrong to conclude that the naturalistic defibrillator is what naturalistically caused this person's heart to begin beating?  Is that naturalistic conclusion somehow "less likely" than your miracle-conclusion, a conclusion that violates Occam's Razor by being the one hypothesis that carries the highest possible degree of complexity " (i.e, 'god')?

Previously, his own son, Chad, died from leukemia. Crandall prayed in faith for Chad’s raising. Chad did not revive. In the face of crushing disappointment, Crandall had to decide whether to distance himself from God or trust him no matter what. He chose the latter, and so he was ready when God called him to pray for Markin.

Yup, you aren't talking to skeptics.  Your miracle-investigation advice is limited solely to those who already believe and are therefore easily primed to cross the line and view anecdotal evidence as confirming their views.

And it’s not just that doctors witness raisings. Sometimes, they are the ones raised. On October 24, 2008, Sean George, head of general medicine at Kalgoorlie Hospital in Australia, suffered a fatal heart attack. He was in cardiac arrest for an hour and 25 minutes and even flatlined for 37 minutes. His wife, also a physician, arrived and prayed for him and, abruptly, his heart restarted. After recovering, he returned to his medical practice. George has the full medical documentation online.

I've reviewed that "documentation" and therefore sent the following message to this Dr. George:




After sending, the confirmation message said:




If the text is unreadable, here's what I requested:

Dr. Craig Keener, at https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/june/miracles-resurrections-real-raisings-fake-news-keener-afric.html?share=0VzDX1%2byFTTRU5sk76j9HayahHrRXwc4 

says your page at https://seangeorge.com.au/my-story/medical-details/
contains the "full medical documentation" of your resurrection story, but I noticed that this "documentation" is simply your "notes" regarding specific sub-topics related to the alleged miracle, along with a few "screenshots" of select portions of the medical documents.  

 Would you please provide a true, correct and unredacted copy of ALL of the original medical files (including but not limited to those which bear the signature of the medical technician or doctor) documenting all of your assertions and "notes" on this matter, along with a statement from each doctor involved as to hohw likely they think the miracle-explanation is.  Please send all documentation to barryjoneswhat@gmail.com, or provide a link to a cloud or google drive or similar if the documentation is more than what can be emailed.  Please also provide the telephone numbers and email addresses of all doctors and medical technicians or specialists who signed the above-requested medical documents, as I would like to interview them before I accept Keener's "miracle" interpretation of this event.

 Thank you,  Barry.

-----------------------------

Raisings in Africa
What about raisings reported outside the West? Are there credible African resurrection stories?

If non-Christians investigate modern-day miracle claims, are they more prone than a Christian to become deceived by a demonic imitation?

Lack of medical facilities in many locations makes miracles both more necessary and harder to document. Still, people in traditional cultures are often familiar with signs of death, such as rigor mortis or lack of pulse and respiration, because they are less insulated from it than Westerners are. So while we may not be able to say how dead a person was in a clinical sense, such cases still seem significant, whatever the terminology used to describe them.

Then you cannot seriously expect the skeptic to find any such miracle-raisings, originating in such context, to be sufficiently believable to put miracle-viability back on the epistemological map.   If it isn't strong evidence, we kick it to the curb.

One friend I worked with during my first three summers in Nigeria was Leo Bawa, a missions researcher who now holds a PhD from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. When I was conducting research for a book on miracles, I asked Bawa if he knew of any. “Not many,” he replied, before giving me seven pages of eyewitness accounts.
 One experience in particular caught my eye: In a village where Bawa had been doing research, some non-Christian neighbors brought him their dead child, asking if he could help. He prayed for a couple of hours and then handed the child back to them alive. Reasoning it may have been a misdiagnosed death, I asked how often he prayed for dead persons. He said he had done so only one other time; he prayed for his best friend after his death, and the friend stayed dead. In this non-Christian village, however, Bawa believes God answered his prayer for the honor of Christ.

You don't provide his full name or the full account, so, dismissed.

Other miracles seem to have happened without any prayer at all. I know Timothy Olonade from my time in Nigeria, a man who had a prominent scar that I never asked about. Years after I first met him, some mutual friends, including my doctor in Nigeria, told me Olonade’s story and I followed up with him.

Please provide this Nigerian doctor's telephone number, email address and website address, if any.  I'd like to interview him about this.

In December 1985, Olonade was killed in a head-on traffic accident. After being pronounced dead in the hospital, he was sent to the morgue. Hours later, as a worker went in to move some bodies, he found Olonade moving. Dumbfounded, the doctor at the hospital expected that Olonade would at least have irreparable brain damage. But he fully recovered, something his maxillofacial surgeon described as miraculous. Now an Anglican priest, Olonade is a leader in the Nigerian missions movement.

Please provide the telephone number, email address and website address, if any, of both this "doctor at the hospital" and and this "maxillofacial surgeon".  I'd like to interview them about this, and I'll be asking for all of the medical documentation that existed in 1985, so please prepare the appropriate medical releases.

Some stories have come to me unbidden. I was in an academic meeting with Ayodeji Adewuya, who has a PhD from the University of Manchester, when I shared some global miracle accounts. A few Western professors in the meeting understandably questioned me, then Adewuya stood up and shared his own experience. His son was pronounced dead at birth in 1981. After half an hour of prayer, however, the child was restored with no brain damage. This same son now has a master’s degree from University College of London and another from Cornell.

Contact details, please.

My wife is from the Republic of Congo (the smaller of the two African countries named Congo) and I’ve interviewed her friends and family with credible accounts, frequently corroborated by multiple, independent witnesses.

Take the one miracle claim among them, which you think is the most impervious to falsification, and lets get started.  That is surely a more efficient way to achieve your alleged goals, than simply constantly spouting these anecdotal stories.

Take, for instance, the story of Albert Bissouessoue. A deacon in the Evangelical Church of Congo, Bissouessoue is my wife’s brother’s father-in-law.

So, like Benny Hinn, he's already a Christian and thus already predisposed to see miracles when and if he sees something he cannot find a naturalistic explanation for.

When he was a school inspector in Etoumbi, in the north of Congo, people knew him as a strong Christian.

So he has a "strong" predisposition to seeing miracles where he thinks naturalistic explanations fail.  Ok.

A crowd brought to his residence a girl’s body, reporting that she died some eight hours earlier.

But we don't know whether their diagnosis was correct.  People's hearts stop all the time and start again, meaning heart stoppage is not a reliable sign of actual "death".  What symptoms did they find, that they interpreted as her death?

They had taken her first to traditional practitioners, who sacrificed animals and smeared blood on her in vain attempts to revive her.

Thanks for this clue about the degree to which they were able to discern actual "truth".

After reproaching them for not coming first to the living God, Bissouessoue prayed for half an hour, and the child revived.
 As you might expect, this caused quite a stir in Etoumbi.

If the people were gullible enough to seek out witch doctors, then yes, I can only imagine how anecdotal claims of resurrection from death would spread like wildfire in such communities.

So, when another child died, people came looking for Bissouessoue. Unfortunately, he was out of town, so they drafted his wife, Julienne, to pray. When she prayed, this second child revived immediately.

Why should the reader automatically assume gullible followers of witch doctors correctly diagnosed the child as "dead"?  You also don't tell us how LONG she was "dead" which leaves plenty of room for naturalistically-caused revival.

Julienne herself was shocked, reporting that God simply gave her faith in that moment.

Another sign that the people involved were of an emotional type quick to see the divine in their own feelings during moments of extreme duress.

When I asked Albert and Julienne if they had ever prayed for anyone else who was dead, they reported that these were the only two occasions. They consider it something special that God was doing for his witness in that community.

And once again, you aren't writing to combat skeptics, you are writing to edify Christians.  But just so that the reader is clear, you aren't making a rebuttal to the skeptical view by simply telling edifying stories to those who already believe.  I'm suspicious that if you were cross-examined by somebody like me after you came prepared with all of your medical documentation, you wouldn't last long.  I assume that the miracles you report after publishing your two-volume "Miracles" work are the exact miracles you think most impervious to falsification, since any smart Christian scholar would be quick to use only their very best evidence to support their beliefs. If this is the "best" you've got, let's just say I'm not exactly "unreasonable" to find wasting my money in strip bars more productive than miracle-investigation.

And of course, there is the story from my own mother-in-law and sister-in-law, Antoinette and Thérèse. Because of how well I know them, their story, more than any other account, forced me to reconsider my Western cynicism.

There's simply no denying the truth in conclusory allegations targeted to an already-Christian audience.

The place of miracles
The antidote to false miracle claims is not to reject miracles altogether.

Then apparently you think the antidote to Benny Hinn's false miracle claims is not to reject Benny Hinn's credibility altogether.  Well then what?  Are skeptics under some intellectual obligation to continue reviewing each and every miracle claim Hinn spews out?  If so, what is your epistemological basis for saying any such obligation exists?

We must take care when we hear of (or even experience) a miraculous event that we neither accept all miracles as true nor dismiss them all as fake. The reality is much more complex.

We must also make a decision about what's more important...going to work in the morning so we can keep our families housed and fed, or doing what Jesus said, and giving up custody of our property and our children so that we can have more time to follow him around (Matthew 19:29).  I LOVE committing the sin of blindly assuming that my need to hold a job and feed my family is more important than my "salvation".

But how do we exercise the appropriate amount of caution?

Would you counsel Christians to pray to God about it?  If so, why?  How the hell would they ever know what answer God was giving, or if God was even giving an answer at all?  Yet pray you must, as a bible-believing Christian.  Nothing fails quite like prayer, but your bible-based beliefs forbid you from the obvious and constrain you to see answers to prayer even when there's no empirically detectable link between the actual answer and the phenomena you subjectively think is the answer.  If God lived in the real world, he'd make known to me his desire to save me, no less directly than my neighbor notifies me that he wants to borrow a hammer.  God's "hiddenness" is a real son-of-a-bitch that you aren't fixing by merely carping about God's mysterious ways.  People are always reasonable and justified to walk away from a leader, when the leader insists he has instructions for them to follow, but instead of giving them directly, forces the followers to learn dead languages and enter the fray of endless debate by scholars on the subject, as the only means they have of discerning the meaning in his list of instructions.

While no formula allows us to verify all miracle stories, I have noticed a pattern.
 Fraudulent miracles tend to flourish where they profit their purveyors.

When Jesus ran around doing "miracles", he begged for money.  What other purpose was there for the "money-box" that Judas used to allegedly "steal from" in John 12:6?  See also John 13:29.

After Jesus died, the apostles demanded their follows give the apostles control over all money and property, and to hold anything back and lie about it was to ensure one's death, Acts 5.

Apostle Paul convinced his churches to put together a large bag of money he said would be used to help the starving Jerusalem church.  1st Corinthians 16:1-3.  The deliverers likely knew it would be shameful for the Jerusalem church to count it to make sure it agrees with how much Paul's certification said was in the bag, so they must have been tempted to grab a few handfuls, to spend on themselves as they traveled, especially in light of Paul's advice, see next sentence:

Paul, like any good politician, insists that those who rule the church well are worthy of "double" the expected wages (1st Timothy 5:17-18).  Today we call it cronyism.

This is what we see in the Lukau story from South Africa. Yes, some Christians downplay miracles too much, but others need to stop exalting them as the highest ministry or as a sign of divine approval, especially where leadership and teaching are concerned.

Another complication in the study of modern miracles, thus giving the skeptic, if they choose to employ it,  yet another reason to consider the subject too fraught with peril and misunderstanding to be considered worthy of any serious study.

When Paul lists spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:28, he actually ranks teaching higher than miracles.

And as we saw, Paul turned Christian teaching into a money-making venture, and we don't really know whether his claims to "suffering" were as fearful as he describes.  If prayer was so good and powerful, why didn't mere prayer solve the Jerusalem church's poverty problem, sort of like God said his miracles ensured that the children of Israel continued to have food and water as they lived 40 years in the desert?  George Carlin was right:  God has an on-going problem with money, and he cannot do much without it.

The Greek text of Ephesians 4:11 links pastors with teachers, and the Pastoral Epistles make teaching ability a prerequisite for ministry (1 Tim. 3:2, 2 Tim. 2:24, Titus 1:9). Miracles are nowhere a biblical requirement (or necessary endorsement) for ministry. Someone might even have a gift of miracles but not be a good teacher. One can have both kinds of gifts (Acts 19:9–12), but one does not necessarily entail the other.
 By contrast, credible dramatic signs are most frequent where the gospel is breaking fresh ground—as in the Gospels and Acts. In these situations, the miracles tend to advance the cause of faith, not the will or needs of a particular person or group.

BULLSHIT!  The miracles advance the cause of Jesus and later the apostles no less than miracles advance the cause of Benny Hinn!

Miracles are a wonderful foretaste of the coming kingdom.

The fact that you aren't a preterist thus makes the Christians who are preterists wonder how you could be such a smart good Christian and yet God apparently cannot enlighten you about the obvious.

Thus Jesus’ exorcisms revealed the kingdom’s nearness (Luke 11:20),

A kingdom that obviously failed to arrive as promised.  Ask any Christian who is a preterist, they will tell you what's obvious, that Jesus intended this "comming soon" screed to mean "soon" according to the human sense of time, not God's sense of time.  He could hardly spur them on to do good works in fear of being found lazy by the master, if he meant "you better keep busy, or the master of the house might return after a few thousand years..."

and Jesus describes his healings in language that invokes Isaiah’s description of the ultimate restoration (Luke 7:22). Nevertheless, the kingdom’s fullness remains future.

How much time do you think skeptics are intellectually obligated to spend learning about why other equally knowledgeable Christian scholars disagree with your eschatological views, before we become justified to start drawing ultimate conclusions about who is right, or whether the biblical data are fatally ambiguous and worthy of ignoring?

Even genuine gifts are limited: Paul says that we know in part, and we prophesy in part (1 Cor. 13:9).
 When God acts in our lives, we should testify about it, but when possible we should also offer verification.

You mean like when I asked you almost two years ago for you to verify whatever modern-day miracle you thought most impervious to falsification?  I'm still waiting.

If Jesus urged a leper to follow the scriptural prescription to verify his healing with a priest (Mark 1:44), it is appropriate for us to verify miracles when possible.

If Jesus urged a leper to follow the scriptural prescription to verify his healing with a priest (Mark 1:44), and if in the Great Commission Jesus insisted his apostles convey "all" of his teachings to the rest of the world (Matthew 28:20), then Paul's relaxing the rules for Gentiles was one big fat heresy.  I am quite aware of that divided portion of Christ's body called "dispensationalism", and I have no sympathy for such a desperate way to get rid of the soteriological inconsistencies in the bible.

This way open-minded people who do not know the witnesses well enough to take their word for it can still experience the awe of seeing God at work.

be sure you remind Dr. George of this, as I sent him a request for verifying medical documentation.

Additional layers of evaluation help. For example, false teachers often exploit people for money (Jer. 6:13, Micah 3:11, 2 Pet. 2:3)

Like the apostles did in demanding they take charge of their followers' money and property.  Acts 5.

and tell them whatever they want to hear (2 Tim. 4:3–4).

Like Paul who thought circumcision to be nothing, but coddled the scruples of the Jews anyway (Acts 16:3), or the Paul who thought the law was fulfilled and faded, but who, when coming to Jerusalem, pretended to believe the same way the Jews did about the continuing divine significance of the ceremonial system (Acts 21:18-24).

Jesus warned us to discern prophets by their fruits, not by their gifts (Matt. 7:15–23).

Then the mere fact that a miracle proves the supernatural and thus refutes the atheists, is all the more reason for atheists to stay away from such discussions.  The devil appears to be a really convincing deceiver, even many Christians fall into his snares, right?.  Probably best to avoid the risk entirely by entirely avoiding investigating anything that might turn out to be one of his clever imitations. 

Christian apologists who insist that atheists examine modern-day miracle claims are stupid know nothings who have no interest in protective spiritual good and all interest in soulless unedifying bickering back and forth academia. 

What is the outcome of a particular miracle? God’s gifts are good, but their main purpose is building up Christ’s body, not our reputations (note 1 Cor. 12–14). Most of Jesus’ miracles, such as healing sickness, expelling spirits, and stilling storms, demonstrated compassion as well as power.

They also tended to build up his reputation, sort of like miracles tend to make Benny Hinn appear in the eyes of his followers as having a stellar reputation.

Moreover, genuine gifts should honor Jesus (1 Cor. 12:3, 1 John 4:1–6). The Book of Acts shows that Jesus’ name should get the credit for miracles, because they attest to his gospel, not the miracle worker (Acts 3:12–13; 14:3).
 Indeed, Scripture offers many examples of those gifted by God’s Spirit who were disobeying God, such as Balaam and Samson. One of the most striking examples is Saul, who, on an errand to try to kill David, ended up falling down and prophesying. This was not because Saul was godly, but because God’s Spirit was strong in that place (1 Sam. 19:20–24).

So God sees nothing philosophically wrong with use his strength to prevent evil.  This can only result in the hypothesis that if any evil exists, it is because God does not wish to stop it.  If a little girl is raped for 15 minutes straight, this is because God didn't want to stop it.  In other words, if we were as godly as god, and saw this rape, we would just walk on by and, like god, do nothing about it.  Aren't god's omissions just as "godly" as his actions?

Not every claim to a miraculous raising today is authentic.

But because so many are false, that's quite sufficient to justify the skeptic, if they choose to deny the viability of miracles while also refusing to examine them.  You stopped being objectively open to the possibility of Mormon truth long ago, despite your not knowing everything there is to know about that religion.  You have no room to pretend that non-Christians are wrong when they imitate your logic and draw firm conclusions about the ultimate issue of miracles before they've learned everything about the issue.

Everywhere in the world, most people who die stay dead. Even those resuscitated miraculously, such as Lazarus, die again;

you don't have any biblical evidence that Lazarus ever died again, while in John 11, Jesus makes explicit that what happened to him was "resurrection" and thus something more permanent than "resuscitation"...unless you admit that between the time of Jesus and the career of Paul, "resurrection" evolved in meaning?

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.