Could you decide you were going to believe in the Loch Ness Monster? In Aliens? Ghosts? Could you decide not to believe in God? And by doing so really believe that he didn't exist and you'd been mistaken when you thought he was real? Why don't you try it for a week. Decide God doesn't exist? Not just act as if he didn't.
Really believe he doesn’t. Does such a decision really work?
No. If I could make myself believe in God - the way some people seem to believe in God - I'd do just that. Save myself so much bother. But belief doesn't work like that.
Decide whether I was going to try to follow a religious practice - yes, one can do that.
But deciding whether you believe God exists or not - a totally different question - no, that just isn't a question of will. If God doesn't seem real you can't manufacture his reality.
Hence the sort of thinking in the OP in this thread - find an objective argument for a God's reality; the truth of Christianity.
Well, one day walking along the canal bank near my home town I began to pray and to approach God as if he did exist.
I daresay I could act as if he didn't. There are times of course when I do act as though he doesn't.
We decide to fall in love.
I can't work out the mechanics of any of this.
My late wife has a crisis of faith shortly before she died. She wanted objective proof.
As far as I can tell she came through that before she became too ill for us to tell what was going on. But I can't be sure. Just as I can't be 100% sure that the Resurrection took place.
Faith isn't the same as cast-iron 100% certainty.
At one time I'd have pinpointed my conversion 'experience' to a particular time and place a few weeks after the tentative prayer on the canal bank. These days I don't get so prescriptive and formally I know it could have been purely psychological.
It's pretty hypothetical to say, 'Well, why didn't I decide to believe in the Flying Jelly Monster?'
Because I didn't.
If I'd grown up in a Muslim environment or a Hindu one or whatever else then I'd probably have worked out a faith position in that context.
But I didn't.
@Bishops Finger I don't see anyone here making out that faith is easy. I know plenty of people who've lost their faith. It happens and can happen to any of us.
I remember hearing a former Baptist minister on the radio saying he'd woken up one morning to find his faith had evaporated. He came to terms with that and found it highly liberating.
@Gamma Gamaliel - one person at least has indicated that they are sure, and that those who are in doubt, and are here expressing that doubt, may somehow be playing *clever games*.
What to do with Matthew 27:51-53? "And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many."
It seems as if for such a crowd of physical resurrectees, along with the fact that they appeared to such a swath of people, they should have enjoyed more notoriety. Any notoriety, really. But, no.
(sighs) Okay, I'll say it and let you folks shoot at me. I know it's going to come off as childish and all that, and maybe that's what I am.
Looking at the text as a starting point, what do we see? People who are described as "saints" and also as those "which slept" (that is, dead people) rose and went into the city and appeared to many.
Okay.
The first thing I'm seeing is that these people are identifiable. I mean, somebody's recognizing them. I doubt very much they rose with little "Hi, my name is...." stickers on their clothes, so these have to be the recently dead, people who died within living memory--because otherwise, how could anyone tell the difference between them and any ordinary stranger? I mean, I don't think they are shambling along muttering "BRAAAAAIIIIIINNNNNNNSSSSS" with bits and pieces falling off their bodies, that's not the biblical picture of resurrection at all. So these are people who would be indistinguishable from ordinary folks EXCEPT that they are known to be holy... and known to be dead.
That argues that the people they appeared to were friends and relatives. This isn't King Jehoshaphat or the prophet Elisha showing up at the temple and saying "I'm back!" Who the hell would believe them? Who could they call as witnesses to their identity?
So, these are the recently dead, residents of Jerusalem, who still possess living friends and relatives who can testify, "Yes, Uncle Joe came to my house. I can't explain it, but I swear it was him, and I buried him myself ten years ago." That's the only way this story makes any sense.
That being the case...
These must have been fairly ordinary, humble people, precisely because we DON'T have the public freak-out you'd expect to see if (say) one of Caiaphas' brothers had risen from the dead. No, these are tradesmen and farmers and servants, ordinary people, who open the door one day to see Grandma Rebekah standing there--or Cousin Nathan. And what do they do? After fainting, I mean. Do they shout it from the housetops? Well, would you?
I think not. Certainly the word would have gotten around, but remember that they live under the power of the Roman government (which is not fond of religious riots) and a repressive religious establishment which has just put to death the most popular rabbi in years. If it were me, I would have yanked Grandma off the steps, sat her down inside with a cup of tea, and quietly sent the word to the rest of the family--but NOT announced it all over the city. Because I don't want the likes of the temple guard showing up to take me away, too. If weird things are happening, you keep schtum. Though I imagine quite a few of them found their way to the baby Christian church after Pentecost blew the doors off, and they felt like "Here are some people who might be open to hearing about the weird thing that happened to us the week their prophet was crucified."
@Gamma Gamaliel - one person at least has indicated that they are sure, and that those who are in doubt, and are here expressing that doubt, may somehow be playing *clever games*.
Okey-doke. Fair do's. I stand corrected.
On the John 6 thing... more there than the verse you quoted.
Is it a Eucharistic reference?
Some Christians understand it that way.
Why does Christianity have to be costly and scary? All you're doing is deciding to believe something wholly fantastical without evidence. That's actually simple, easy, and whimsical.
This I disagree with. I cannot force myself to believe, I cannot even "decide" to believe in something--it's not in my psychology. Sure, I could try to work up some sort of emotional state, but underneath it my logic would still be saying, "You know you're faking that on purpose."
No. I can't choose to believe. The fact that I DO believe in the Resurrection of Jesus, and in a whole bunch of other stuff that goes along with it, is largely due to the evidence. And while some of that evidence is public and historic, it is never going to be repeatable the way an experiment in a science lab is supposed to be--because historic proofs don't work that way. Barring a time machine, you are never going to "prove" any event, including the most mundane: "I had breakfast this morning." Someone can always poke holes in your statement.
No, for history you rely on witnesses, which after 100 years have to be texts given the human lifespan. You look at the historical context--did anything happen as a result of this? Is there another equally reasonable explanation for it? Does the event make any sense at all within the mental framework I use to understand the universe? (For example, the resurrection of Christ means something to me in a way that the sky opening up and suddenly raining down chocolate candy out of the clear blue would not.)
You do consider probability, yes--but if the event we are speaking of is an acknowledged miracle, you cannot and will not approach it without bias. You are going into your evaluation with a pre-existing bias either wholly against miracles or one that admits the possibility, however infinitely small the likelihood. And that pre-existing bias is going to come from mostly nonhistorical sources, since no one (but God) is an eyewitness to ALL of history, and can therefore rule in or out the question "Do miracles ever happen?" That's what it would take to make the claim "Miracles never happen" and have wholly historical evidence for it.*
For ordinary human beings, we're going to answer that question based on authorities we deem good, and on religion and philosophy. Which is why I mentioned pre-existing bias.
* To be sure, it takes witnessing only a single miracle with one's own eyes to force one into the "miracles actually CAN happen" camp; and I am one of these. But there's basically no chance that any of you will take my word for it. Why should you? So my miracle does none of you any good, because try as you like, you aren't going to accept me as an eyewitness--and will always be thinking, "But maybe she was confused..." This is why it's basically a waste of God's time to do miracles in the hopes of convincing unbelievers. "A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still." We get our belief or otherwise, not from history, but from other sources.
On John and the sacraments--somebody I can't remember said that the synoptic gospels are concerned to tell us the what of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and John wants to do the theology of them. Thus John 3 (baptism) and John 6 (communion).
Oh drat. I forgot halfway through writing something I meant to say, and thus I post too much. Forgive me.
I meant to say that the other half of the evidence that leads me to believe is intensely personal, and to your eyes highly subjective, and not something I'd expect anyone else to find strong enough to base their own belief in--because it didn't happen to them. And that is why I sympathize with Karl while being utterly shit myself at passing on my own grounds of faith to be of any use to him or those like him. Because I can answer the historical stuff (the curtain in the temple? Was not on public view, and what are the chances there was a major hush up?) but I can't pass on the personal stuff, because why should he believe me? I doubt I would believe me, if I wasn't me and saw it for myself. And that makes me sad.
I guess for me there are all kinds of people making all kinds of experiential claims of all types. So for me someone saying that they've been captured by aliens is not in itself any kind of evidence in aliens. In fact, I'd probably say my belief in the likelihood of aliens (given the number of stars and planets, why wouldn't human-level evolution happened somewhere else) is actually independent and unaffected by these kinds of human interaction story.
Second, I don't see it is a surprise that believers can explain things, that's part of having a worldview - albeit complicated by variations of explanation and belief. Nor, to me, is it a surprise that people change their worldview.
The things one accepts and explains as part of a worldview don't make much sense to people outside that worldview. Yes.
I get all of that @Lamb Chopped and yet at the same time 'get' @KarlLB's struggles and objections.
A good friend whose father was a vicar and who until recently attended church for many, many years without apparently believing a word of it, dismisses the whole thing as 'special pleading.'
The veil in the Temple wasn't on public view. It could have been a cover-up. Perhaps they sewed it back together before anyone noticed ...
Would a claim like that stack up in a court of law?
That doesn't mean it didn't happen but we are never going to be able to 'prove' it either way.
The Gospels themselves contain claims that there was a cover-up of the empty tomb, of course.
My Grandma rose out of her tomb and came round to our place. We put her up in the back bedroom and kept her out of sight so that Pilate and Herod didn't get to hear of it ...
Again, would that stack up as a witness statement in a court of law?
Or does it sound like the sort of story that might develop around claims that Jesus of Nazareth had risen from the dead - and very conveniently ascended into heaven before anyone except his disciples and their circle noticed?
Or a riff on resurrection stories from the Hebrew scriptures?
Why didn't the Risen Christ march into Herod's palace or Pilate's office and say, 'Got you now!' and disappear through a wall before the guards seized him?
Why not this?
Why not that?
Why not the other?
Why doesn't God write in huge letters across the sky. 'Look. I'm God. Believe in me now?'
Well, for one thing someone or other would challenge it as an atmospheric phenomenon or mass hallucination. Or we could argue that there's no reason why the Almighty should pander to calls for a 'sign'.
'They have Moses and the Prophets ...'
I remember a few occasions in my charismatic evangelical days when people were claimed to have been supernaturally healed but clearly weren't. In some instances it was claimed that they had been healed but the symptoms remained ...
I know Orthodox people who claim to have seen 'myrrh-streaming icons' and the like.
I don't think we 'need' to have the Risen Christ knock at our door to show us the wounds in his hand and side so we can say, 'Right, that settles it. I believe now.'
We are always going to have with the tension of accepting or rejecting the testimony of scripture and tradition/Tradition, of dealing with 2000 year old accounts developed within a particular faith community and with no time-machine or fool-proof means of verifying them.
We can point to our own experiences but those can be dismissed as subjective.
We can point to the lives of holy Saints or saints but these can be dismissed as hagiography or wishful thinking or someone can point to the time when our sainted aunt was brusque with her next door neighbour.
I get all the stuff about our not 'choosing' to believe or not making ourselves believe, as it were - but now I'm Orthodox I'm very wary of getting into anything that sounds like crude determinism. 'I believe because God revealed himself to me and I'm one of the Elect' sort of thing.
But it's hard to avoid sounding like that to some extent.
'Listen, none of you are going to believe me, but I've seen miracles, right?'
Some people will accept that, others won't.
And yet, and yet ...
I often come back to George Herbert. 'I struck the board and cried "No more! I will abroad ...'
'I heard the voice of One calling, "Child!"
And I replied, "My Lord!"'
The problem with other people's personal experiences is that they contradict. People who are absolutely sure they've been abducted by aliens have been mentioned, but aliens at least don't directly contradict Christianity. People whose personal experience is of having had past lives absolutely does. My own sister at the age of two turning round and saying in a completely different voice to her normal one: "My name is Emily and I lived a long time ago", when she knew no-one of that name (it wasn't in vogue at the time) but did have a great great aunt of that name who died in childhood... but no, that doesn't convince me of reincarnation either, because to be consistent I'd have to believe in multiple contradictory things.
However we cut it, we've inherited a body of belief from a first century Jewish sect which developed into the Church/es in all their varieties and forms that we have today and which agreed (more or less) on which writings and accounts should be included among their sacred texts.
This body of belief includes the death and apparent resurrection of someone they believed to be the Messiah.
We can 'chose' to accept their testimony or we can chose not to.
On John and the sacraments--somebody I can't remember said that the synoptic gospels are concerned to tell us the what of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and John wants to do the theology of them. Thus John 3 (baptism) and John 6 (communion).
However we cut it, we've inherited a body of belief from a first century Jewish sect which developed into the Church/es in all their varieties and forms that we have today and which agreed (more or less) on which writings and accounts should be included among their sacred texts.
This body of belief includes the death and apparent resurrection of someone they believed to be the Messiah.
We can 'chose' to accept their testimony or we can chose not to.
It's a Pascale's Wager kinda thing.
Choose is the odd word here. It's more whether it seems convincing or not to us, which is a different thing to choice.
The veil in the Temple wasn't on public view. It could have been a cover-up. Perhaps they sewed it back together before anyone noticed ...
Would a claim like that stack up in a court of law?
I had always thought (since theological studies many years ago) that the rending of the temple veil was symbolic / a metaphor for the ending of the separation between God and man, with both being united through the death and resurrection of Christ.
All of the gospel writers used literary devices and emphases to give their particular take, it seems.
In addition, most people don’t treat bible texts as literal objective records, I think (although some do).
Personally, I find it hopeless to try to have a laser focus on particular verses or incidents as if they were historical facts or propositions. A more helpful approach, for me, is to ask where the narrative takes me and how it aligns with my life story. And within that reflection, I can choose to live ‘as if’ and see if the unfolding story ‘feels right’ in the future.
In many ways that view of living in hope and trust translates to human relationships too. Perhaps that’s why we can’t love God whom we have not seen, if we cannot love the people that we have. That’s a central theme in many narratives for me.
Peace to those who need objective proof of God: I fully agree that you will not get it. So maybe you should just get on with living your life based on how the lack of objective proof lands with you?
The problem with other people's personal experiences is that they contradict. People who are absolutely sure they've been abducted by aliens have been mentioned, but aliens at least don't directly contradict Christianity. People whose personal experience is of having had past lives absolutely does. My own sister at the age of two turning round and saying in a completely different voice to her normal one: "My name is Emily and I lived a long time ago", when she knew no-one of that name (it wasn't in vogue at the time) but did have a great great aunt of that name who died in childhood... but no, that doesn't convince me of reincarnation either, because to be consistent I'd have to believe in multiple contradictory things.
I have to say I maintain a position of "prudent doubt" with regard to reincarnation. There are enough instances of the sort you describe to at least allow the possibility, and there are hints in the Gospels that the possibility was considered by contemporaries of John the Baptist.
If we assume for a moment that it is something that happens, would it not square the circle of how the NT seems to point both to universal reconciliation and a separation of the sheep and the goats? If we're required to keep trying until such time as we become the person God calls us to be, whether in this incarnation or another? This would rhyme, if not fully match, with Buddhist ideas of freeing oneself from the cycle of reincarnation as being the goal.
It's not something I believe, but it's something I wouldn't be shocked to find out is true.
However we cut it, we've inherited a body of belief from a first century Jewish sect which developed into the Church/es in all their varieties and forms that we have today and which agreed (more or less) on which writings and accounts should be included among their sacred texts.
This body of belief includes the death and apparent resurrection of someone they believed to be the Messiah.
We can 'chose' to accept their testimony or we can chose not to.
It's a Pascale's Wager kinda thing.
Choose is the odd word here. It's more whether it seems convincing or not to us, which is a different thing to choice.
I can see the distinction you are making but we still choose whether to go with it or not.
If I convinced you that there was going to be a gig you'd enjoy that involved two buses and a fair walk to see it, you may very well be interested in going. Whether you'd trust my judgement sufficiently to catch the buses and trog across town to see it is another matter and an issue of choice.
I can only speak for myself. I had sufficient respect for the figure of Christ from Sunday School, school assemblies and a general culturally Christian background to feel that it was worth giving it a go.
I suppose I figured that if the Christian faith considered that a particular human being was also God Incarnate it was so monumental and outrageous a claim to warrant consideration. If it was true then the implications were enormous.
Now, that didn't mean I had to wait until I was absolutely 100% convinced or had incontrovertibly objective proof in some way.
I took a punt.
I'm still taking them. 'Lord, I believe. Help Thou mine unbelief.'
Others have given up doing so.
Like Mousethief.
Others seem all chipper and upbeat and seem to be able to keep at it.
It's not for me to judge which of those approaches is the right one for them.
I chose to go along with the received narrative held by the Christian churches. It wasn't that I had no option but to do so. I could have turned away.
Who knows? I might jack it all in at some point. Others have. I hope I don't but there's no guarantee.
But if I'm going to wait for apparently objective proof one way or another I'm going to be waiting a long time.
Sure, but choosing to act on a tentative and provisional belief is a totally different thing to "choosing to believe". I make a distinction between them because they are like apples and oranges.
You have to remember I have taken this punt myself and I've continued to take this punt. This doesn’t alter the fact that the objective evidence (and there's another pair of things some people seem to use interchangeably when they're fundamentally different - evidence and proof), such at is, isn't great.
Nothing is *proven*, except in Maths. Some things have overwhelming evidence. That the earth isn't flat for example. My only point really is that the existence of God isn't one of those overwhelmingly evidenced things.
Sure, but choosing to act on a tentative and provisional belief is a totally different thing to "choosing to believe". I make a distinction between them because they are like apples and oranges.
You have to remember I have taken this punt myself and I've continued to take this punt. This doesn’t alter the fact that the objective evidence (and there's another pair of things some people seem to use interchangeably when they're fundamentally different - evidence and proof), such at is, isn't great.
Nothing is *proven*, except in Maths. Some things have overwhelming evidence. That the earth isn't flat for example. My only point really is that the existence of God isn't one of those overwhelmingly evidenced things.
I guess I am “some people”? Actually, the formulation works just as well for me this way:
Peace to those who need objective evidence of God: I fully agree that you will not get it. So maybe you should just get on with living your life based on how the lack of objective evidence lands with you?
So I agree with you.
Up until: what follows from living out a tentative belief, and finding it works (for me) is then a condition of belief that follows from subjective experience. So it does follow, at least, from a choice.
I know that will never work for you - but it makes me wonder why you persist with the punt, if that is the case. Why bother?
Sure, but choosing to act on a tentative and provisional belief is a totally different thing to "choosing to believe". I make a distinction between them because they are like apples and oranges.
You have to remember I have taken this punt myself and I've continued to take this punt. This doesn’t alter the fact that the objective evidence (and there's another pair of things some people seem to use interchangeably when they're fundamentally different - evidence and proof), such at is, isn't great.
Nothing is *proven*, except in Maths. Some things have overwhelming evidence. That the earth isn't flat for example. My only point really is that the existence of God isn't one of those overwhelmingly evidenced things.
I do remember that you have taken a punt on these things and are continuing to do so.
I'm doing the same.
Which is why I'm not echoing @Cameron's question. Why bother?
It may well be that your posting here is part of your punting.
Who knows? We none of us have windows into each others' souls.
I really don’t understand your interpretation of the question @Gamma Gamaliel , or the inference that it’s inappropriate to ask it - here of all places. Isn’t the whole point of half the threads here to inquire into our beliefs and reasons? What am I missing?
Sure, but choosing to act on a tentative and provisional belief is a totally different thing to "choosing to believe". I make a distinction between them because they are like apples and oranges.
You have to remember I have taken this punt myself and I've continued to take this punt. This doesn’t alter the fact that the objective evidence (and there's another pair of things some people seem to use interchangeably when they're fundamentally different - evidence and proof), such at is, isn't great.
Nothing is *proven*, except in Maths. Some things have overwhelming evidence. That the earth isn't flat for example. My only point really is that the existence of God isn't one of those overwhelmingly evidenced things.
I guess I am “some people”? Actually, the formulation works just as well for me this way:
Peace to those who need objective evidence of God: I fully agree that you will not get it. So maybe you should just get on with living your life based on how the lack of objective evidence lands with you?
This works the same for you because you're sitting outside of the need for evidence.
So I agree with you.
Up until: what follows from living out a tentative belief, and finding it works (for me) is then a condition of belief that follows from subjective experience. So it does follow, at least, from a choice.
As I've said before, how does that jive with other people's subjective experiences not being conducive to belief. In other words, we apparently have a God who reveals himself to some degree to some people who act on that tentative and provisional belief but ignores others. Why would he do that?
I know that will never work for you - but it makes me wonder why you persist with the punt, if that is the case. Why bother?
Because if God is real then it's worth carrying on looking for him. If only to ask "why did you keep running?"
The problem with merely acquiescing in my current state is that other people make such positive statements about their belief in God being a source of support, comfort and so on. I wouldn't mind a bit of that. I can't see how it's actually possible but surely God is for everyone, even die-hard natural sceptics like me. It's hardly a selling point if faith is only for people comfortable with believing things they have little foundation for.
I'm uncomfortable with going further because I'm trying not to make this thread be about me and making it more Epiphanies or All Saints material. I think the path is well trodden anyway.
Have you ever considered the possibility that Paul's description of the Eucharist is absent from the rest of the NT because it's his interpretation of it?
It's not that different and in any case, most church services use Paul's version.
I have often wondered why John's gospel makes no reference to the Eucharist. I can only conclude that it's because it had already been well covered elsewhere.
How about John chapter 6?
Having read the section in full. I understand your question but I do not see it as a Eucharist.
Have you ever considered the possibility that Paul's description of the Eucharist is absent from the rest of the NT because it's his interpretation of it?
It's not that different and in any case, most church services use Paul's version.
I have often wondered why John's gospel makes no reference to the Eucharist. I can only conclude that it's because it had already been well covered elsewhere.
How about John chapter 6?
Having read the section in full. I understand your question but I do not see it as a Eucharist.
Not a Eucharist but about the Eucharist, or as you originally put it, a reference to the Eucharist.
If it's not a reference to the Eucharist, what is it referring to?
I don't think anyone was claiming that a Eucharist takes place in that chapter. Interesting that John includes the story though, and before the Last Supper too.
@Cameron - being pedantic I said that I wasn't going to echo your question, not that you shouldn't have asked it.
Ok, perhaps I'm splitting hairs.
It's not so much that I think the question is inappropriate but KarlLB's questions here may well be part of his search. So 'why bother?' may not be a helpful question to ask.
None of us would be posting here at all if we didn't find it helpful in some way.
At ant rate, @KarlLB has answered for himself and said that he doesn't want to make this thread all about him. Which is jolly decent of him.
But more seriously, I'm not sure it helps to be dismissive when Shipmates are struggling with issues of faith or trying to find answers to tough questions.
I'm feeling chipper at the moment as I've been to Vespers and made my confession, which I don't like doing but which I find cathartic.
Another day I might be wondering whether I'm deluding myself or whether God really exists. Life's like that. Faith's like that. Some people can live with the paradox. Others struggle. Or rather, I think we all struggle and what mithers some of us won't be an issue to someone else.
I can't expect everyone to be like me nor is it up to me how or what they post on these boards.
One of the troublesome points about this discussion is that the New Testament accounts include statements that large numbers of people witnessed this or that, and it seems clear that at that time, many of these statements were believed at face value by many people. If one wants to discount all of this, then it must be a vast historical conspiracy, and I, for one, don't believe in successful vast conspiracies. It seems to me that we are not necessarily smarter now than they were then. If you want to question whether some name out of the past was a real person, then you should ask yourself whether, in another fifteen centuries, people will doubt the historicity of QE1 or of Shakespeare or of the Cromwells.
As I once commented on another board--and was criticized for it--faith is a choice. You can risk your life or your sanity on it. (Try a cost/benefit analysis.) That may make you uncomfortable, but no one promised comfort.
I agree with KarlB that faith is not a thing you can just decide to have (or not have). It's inconvenient, even maddening that way.
And I agree with Harry CH that the odds of a successful vast conspiracy that never manages to break down and betray itself in what, 2000 years? is ... super unlikely. Because humans.
Nobody has to believe in Christianity. I have no wish to force it on anyone.
But being a Christian is not an untenable, illogical place to stand. If it were, why do we have 2000 years of human beings of all backgrounds, education and intelligence standing right there?
It has to be one of the options on the table--just as any other belief system that has survived that long and successfully must. Which is why I have a problem with the OP. If mass delusion covered it so well, why are we still arguing about it lo these many years later?
If it's not a reference to the Eucharist, what is it referring to?
I don't think anyone was claiming that a Eucharist takes place in that chapter. Interesting that John includes the story though, and before the Last Supper too.
Why do you think he did that?
The author of John likes to be different. In my opinion, his gospel is the most inspirational but I cannot trust it's accuracy. 'John' is recording what he thinks Jesus would be saying.
But more seriously, I'm not sure it helps to be dismissive when Shipmates are struggling with issues of faith or trying to find answers to tough questions.
[…]
I can't expect everyone to be like me nor is it up to me how or what they post on these boards.
Amen to the second point. But that links to the first point: we are all here voluntarily, and we are all vulnerable if we are sincere. You might want to take another cold look at how many kinds of faith experiences are dismissed, and by whom.
Nobody has to believe in Christianity. I have no wish to force it on anyone.
But being a Christian is not an untenable, illogical place to stand. If it were, why do we have 2000 years of human beings of all backgrounds, education and intelligence standing right there?
It has to be one of the options on the table--just as any other belief system that has survived that long and successfully must. Which is why I have a problem with the OP. If mass delusion covered it so well, why are we still arguing about it lo these many years later?
I don't think it is illogical, I just think it only makes sense within it's own worldview.
People believe all kinds of things and stand within many different traditions that go back thousands of years. It isn't that one thing is logical/illogical as much as that it makes sense for a bunch of people until it stops making sense.
I don't really understand your last paragraph. Clearly our understanding of group dynamcs has changed in the last 100 years never mind the last 2000. Things we can explain now we couldn't then.
I don't think it is illogical, I just think it only makes sense within it's own worldview.
People believe all kinds of things and stand within many different traditions that go back thousands of years. It isn't that one thing is logical/illogical as much as that it makes sense for a bunch of people until it stops making sense.
I don't really understand your last paragraph. Clearly our understanding of group dynamcs has changed in the last 100 years never mind the last 2000. Things we can explain now we couldn't then.
First of all, nothing makes sense outside its own worldview. Even science, even math. Worldview is pervasive. If you lived (for instance) within an entirely irrational worldview, even pure math would mean nothing to you.
I am not arguing that Christianity is either logical or provable. Most real things are neither. That's no shame to them--it's simply a reminder of the limits of logic. Can you prove your spouse's fidelity using scientific principles? Can you logic your way into the experience of hearing a great symphony, or holding a newborn? Of course not. Anybody who tried, you'd think they were nuts. We use different standards for those things.
Hell, we can't even find a decent way to standardize taste or smell. "It's sort of like this" is about as far as we can go, with chemical notes for those so inclined. It still doesn't get the point across the way a single whiff does.
As for understanding of group dynamics--you think the ancients didn't realize that people are easily deceived, and that beliefs and attitudes are contagious? They made copious use of those facts, just as people today do when they're trying to manipulate someone. The fact that we have a particular vocabulary for it doesn't mean they didn't recognize the phenomenon.
Look, glancing back at the OP, you have a problem with understanding how history works--any history. You are asking for a large number of nameable, attestable people who are witnesses to the resurrection but who do NOT appear in the Gospels or book of Acts. Give me a break. You are speaking of an event that took place in the backwaters of the Roman empire among the common people. We are lucky to have the names of the high profile people in government there at the time. This is the time of laboriously handwritten and expensive manuscripts, not the days of "let's take a selfie and put it up on Twitter for no expense to me." We couldn't prove Pontius Pilate's existence outside Scripture until the 20th century, and he's not small potatoes as far as social status goes. He's a freaking governor of a province! And what is true for him goes for others as well. The written proof for the existence of any number of people rests on a single manuscript or inscription, or maybe if we're lucky half a dozen.
What were you expecting--written (and still existing--papyrus and vellum are perishable, and Jerusalem was destroyed not forty years later) non-Scriptural proof of say a dozen, two dozen people of no particular standing in regards to an event that took place outside the city among a sect that was in dangerous disfavor with the local government? We don't have that kind of evidence for entire wars. Go ask any ancient historian. Your standard of proof needs reworking, if this is your primary objection to Christianity. Because it also constitutes an objection to most of the history of the ancient world.
I am not going to try to argue you into Christianity, if for no other reason than that it's a waste of time and disrespectful to boot. Nobody comes to faith through apologetics. But apologetics is good for one thing, and that's dismantling mistaken objections (often based on sheer ignorance) that stand in the way of people believing who would otherwise do so.
Ancient peoples did not have modern understanding of medicine and psychology
I'm not trying to offend or attack anything, I just thought something was interesting to discuss.
Anyone is free to believe anything, as far as I'm concerned. That a deity gives you visions, that the future can be seen in animal entrails, that a scarab beetle was involved in the creation of all things. Knock yourself out.
If it's not a reference to the Eucharist, what is it referring to?
I don't think anyone was claiming that a Eucharist takes place in that chapter. Interesting that John includes the story though, and before the Last Supper too.
Why do you think he did that?
The author of John likes to be different. In my opinion, his gospel is the most inspirational but I cannot trust it's accuracy. 'John' is recording what he thinks Jesus would be saying.
This sounds like it could be material for a good Kerygmania thread.
Why is John's Gospel any less 'accurate' than the Synoptics and how can we tell? Personal opinion?
Meanwhile, I'm not sure whether @Cameron's 'long hard look' jibe was a dig at me - I can be overly critical of certain spiritualities at times - or a sideswipe at @KarlLB.
I'll take hostly advice and not pursue anything that's likely to inflame anything.
I hope I've not dismissed other people's spiritual experiences. That's not the intention. I have tried to explain why I can't own them myself. To clarify however:
1. Lots of people have spiritual experiences and an awful lot of them contradict each other. It's therefore very difficult to decide which ones I can build positive conclusions on.
2. What an experience means to a particular person can be terribly subjective. I'm reminded a little obliquely of Screwtape drawing attention to different meanings of "really" - "all that really happened was you heard some music in a candle-lit church" versus "it's all very well talking about that high dive from the comfort of an armchair but you need to get up there and see what it's really like!" As Screwtape observes, either use of the word could be defended.
3. Attaching too much significance objectively beyond the person to whom an experience occurred is problematic. It would be very easy to conclude that the receivers of such experiences are God's favourites, or even worse, the "really saved" ones whilst the rest of us are Outside. I'm naturally reluctant to take any steps down that particular line.
4. The existence of these experiences is hardly a closely guarded secret. An awful lot of highly intelligent people whose reasoning I generally find very sound find them entirely unconvincing and that has to inform my assessment of them also.
5. I'm naturally sceptical by nature.
I was resisting the imputation that I was being dismissive, when others of the thread and the board seem to be doing that so much more effectively. So there is no need for anyone to feel specifically targeted, and mindful of hostly advice, maybe I should not have read it in that personal way myself.
But honestly: don’t the five points you have posted above lead, almost methodically, to dismissing others’ experiences? To explain what I mean, I would like to respond to those points by recasting them in a different and more accommodating way, that would not require someone to dismiss (or affirm):
1. Lots of people have spiritual experiences and an awful lot of them contradict each other. I can’t really know how each experience fits into each person’s unique life and cultural context, so I can choose to trust that unless I have reason to call out deceit, maybe it was meaningful for each of them despite contradictions (because of differences in context and the moment in their story). So I don’t have to form a judgement on the differences and contradictions.
2. What an experience means to a person is always subjective. We all have a view ‘from somewhere’, so it is unsurprising that I might see something differently.
3. I cannot expect to be able to determine an objective significance for an experience that is essentially subjective. Nor can I know if the source of the experience intended the message to be received in such a way. In addition to which, if we believe there is a God who intervenes (or allow that as a possibility), then the experience could be to motivate or change the ‘receiver’ for someone else’s sake - and involve them in personal hardship - so it would be possible to see them as messengers or agents, rather than people receiving special privileges. (Would I want to have the vision of Mary that Maximilian Kolbe did, and to have my life end the same way? I honestly think I would be too much a coward). Maybe the one being blessed is the one who is not having such experiences, and yet seems to have, strangely, enough of even a scrap of faith to ‘go on’?
4. Many people I see as intelligent choose to dismiss such experiences. But also, lots of intelligent people have opposite political beliefs to me, in ways I don’t feel obliged to agree with - I don’t decide my views by majority vote amongst Mensa members. So I think it is best to make up my own mind - although, based on points 1-3, I know I can’t be certain and maybe the experience has some validity, meaning or purpose for the person in question that I can’t grasp, or maybe wouldn’t want to share in. So I am slow to judge.
5. I am a naturally sceptical person, but knowing that allows me to be aware that it’s a trait that has both advantages and disadvantages, and look for ways to balance that. So if someone’s story resonates with me for reasons I can’t quite pin down, or touches me deeply in an emotional way, maybe that’s OK?
Landing on point 5, as I do, is also intrinsic to my response to all the smoke in the resurrection stories. I feel a fire at the heart of it all.
I don’t expect (and certainly don’t need) you to agree with any of the above, but can we draw a line under it there, and just say that there are two different ways of approaching matters, each of which is an internally consistent view? I think the semantic salami-slicing has been doing neither of us any credit, in relation to matters that my heart tells me we both care about deeply, so I am not keen to keep doing that.
What to do with Matthew 27:51-53? "And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many."
It seems as if for such a crowd of physical resurrectees, along with the fact that they appeared to such a swath of people, they should have enjoyed more notoriety. Any notoriety, really. But, no.
(sighs) Okay, I'll say it and let you folks shoot at me. I know it's going to come off as childish and all that, and maybe that's what I am.
Looking at the text as a starting point, what do we see? People who are described as "saints" and also as those "which slept" (that is, dead people) rose and went into the city and appeared to many.
Okay.
The first thing I'm seeing is that these people are identifiable. I mean, somebody's recognizing them. I doubt very much they rose with little "Hi, my name is...." stickers on their clothes, so these have to be the recently dead, people who died within living memory--because otherwise, how could anyone tell the difference between them and any ordinary stranger? I mean, I don't think they are shambling along muttering "BRAAAAAIIIIIINNNNNNNSSSSS" with bits and pieces falling off their bodies, that's not the biblical picture of resurrection at all. So these are people who would be indistinguishable from ordinary folks EXCEPT that they are known to be holy... and known to be dead.
That argues that the people they appeared to were friends and relatives. This isn't King Jehoshaphat or the prophet Elisha showing up at the temple and saying "I'm back!" Who the hell would believe them? Who could they call as witnesses to their identity?
So, these are the recently dead, residents of Jerusalem, who still possess living friends and relatives who can testify, "Yes, Uncle Joe came to my house. I can't explain it, but I swear it was him, and I buried him myself ten years ago." That's the only way this story makes any sense.
That being the case...
These must have been fairly ordinary, humble people, precisely because we DON'T have the public freak-out you'd expect to see if (say) one of Caiaphas' brothers had risen from the dead. No, these are tradesmen and farmers and servants, ordinary people, who open the door one day to see Grandma Rebekah standing there--or Cousin Nathan. And what do they do? After fainting, I mean. Do they shout it from the housetops? Well, would you?
I think not. Certainly the word would have gotten around, but remember that they live under the power of the Roman government (which is not fond of religious riots) and a repressive religious establishment which has just put to death the most popular rabbi in years. If it were me, I would have yanked Grandma off the steps, sat her down inside with a cup of tea, and quietly sent the word to the rest of the family--but NOT announced it all over the city. Because I don't want the likes of the temple guard showing up to take me away, too. If weird things are happening, you keep schtum. Though I imagine quite a few of them found their way to the baby Christian church after Pentecost blew the doors off, and they felt like "Here are some people who might be open to hearing about the weird thing that happened to us the week their prophet was crucified."
No-no, not childish on your part, I don't think. Have at it however you like. And don't discount that Jesus was pretty clear about child-likeness being a preferred mode of engagement with his Gospel. I imagine that you're imagining these resurrected commoners as looking, sounding, smelling exactly as they had well before they died. Maybe that's the case, which would have them blend in pretty easily among the rest of Jerusalem that didn't know these people personally. I imagine that you're also imagining that like Jesus' own resurrection, these people's resurrections were without witnesses -- not a single living soul saw (1) the graves opened, or (2) many people coming out of these graves. Maybe there was a long interval between the earthquake and these graves opening and people emerging from them. But if there wasn't, maybe just like today, those people would have rushed outside of their dwellings to avoid being crushed by their quaking walls and roofs. And if throngs of people were outside, why assume no one saw the dead arise? I dunno. But many is many, and for myself, I just can't imaging that many could go so completely ignored by almost every person capable of writing something down at that time, whether they knew a reanimated human from that group or not. That's my assumption.
Were the followers of Jesus afraid of the status quo? Probably, but my take is that they were more afraid of the Pharisees than they were of Pilate. Jesus said "render unto Ceasar," after all. Peter denied Jesus three times, but it wasn't because a Praetorian brought him in for questioning. The actual ending of the Gospel of Mark says that the women went away and told no one because they were afraid, even though the angel instructed them to share the news. That was just three women *not seeing* a resurrected Jesus, which is pretty different than many appearing to many.
Why does Christianity have to be costly and scary? All you're doing is deciding to believe something wholly fantastical without evidence. That's actually simple, easy, and whimsical.
This I disagree with. I cannot force myself to believe, I cannot even "decide" to believe in something--it's not in my psychology. Sure, I could try to work up some sort of emotional state, but underneath it my logic would still be saying, "You know you're faking that on purpose."
No. I can't choose to believe. The fact that I DO believe in the Resurrection of Jesus, and in a whole bunch of other stuff that goes along with it, is largely due to the evidence. And while some of that evidence is public and historic, it is never going to be repeatable the way an experiment in a science lab is supposed to be--because historic proofs don't work that way. Barring a time machine, you are never going to "prove" any event, including the most mundane: "I had breakfast this morning." Someone can always poke holes in your statement.
No, for history you rely on witnesses, which after 100 years have to be texts given the human lifespan. You look at the historical context--did anything happen as a result of this? Is there another equally reasonable explanation for it? Does the event make any sense at all within the mental framework I use to understand the universe? (For example, the resurrection of Christ means something to me in a way that the sky opening up and suddenly raining down chocolate candy out of the clear blue would not.)
"Believe" is a word that Christians employ. How then should it be said? Ascribing to a collection of claims? What terminology can we use?
I'm comfortable with the idea that History is about establishing probabilities. Starting from a baseline of eyewitness testimony for that, however, is problematic to me. It's too easy to point and click to increasing amounts of data that show how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be. I think it makes for compelling stories, but not for outright establishing the facts of any case (I'm not suggesting you've claimed as much). In context, "faith is the substance of things hoped for." So it puzzles me why so many religious people must have it otherwise. Why can't Christians stop at the water's edge of faith? It seems to me that just about any pressing beyond that boundary opens up the very holes you mentioned.
For what it's worth (maybe not much), I think "many" probably equals a couple dozen or less. Remember that the ancient world was on a completely different (and much smaller) scale than we are; their idea of cities, etc. would look ridiculously tiny to us. (I had the hardest time dealing with this in regards with my field of doctoral study, which involved early printed books; the number of copies and the number of people among whom they circulated was jaw-droppingly low.) In a similar mode, the number of babies killed at Bethlehem was probably a couple dozen or fewer.
It's also worth remembering that Jews in Jesus' day considered cemeteries unclean, positioned them far away from the city, and would not normally be in them or very near them. Not like today in the U.S. at least, where people go for walks there, or gape at famous tombstones, and I have with my own eyes seen a children's playground established in the middle of one. People who were out in the countryside would avoid graves as a matter of course, and all the more during Passover, as contact with a grave would very likely render you unclean and prevent you from taking part in worship, celebrations, etc. Which is a Big Deal™ when you're dealing with the highest holiday of the year.
This means that the chance of anybody being around to witness the exact moment of their resurrection is very limited. And even if somebody was--
The text suggests that these people were very disoriented, and outright tells us that they didn't actually come into the city for a day or two. Which is not surprising, when you imagine what it would be like to wake up in a freaking TOMB with nobody around to explain anything to you. (No Jesus-and-a-crowd-plus-weeping-relatives, like in the other cases.) So I think what you'd get, if you had a time machine and staked out the area, would be one person stumbling out... then, after an hour or two, another... and so on. Not a mass emergence like cicadas.
(And yes, I'm feeling the creepy vibes here too. Which is another point in the case for "Why make this shit up if you didn't think it really happened?" Me, if I were going to make shit up, I'd have them all emerge as a group immediately and make for the city. It wouldn't occur to me to do all this creepy stuff.)
Forgive me for being such a geek about all this. It's just that history and culture is a huge interest of mine, and you tripped the trigger that set me rambling.
Oh, and as for the ending of Mark? We have no idea whether that actually IS the ending. Something could have happened to the rest of the scroll. It's certainly an odd place to end, particularly when it's clear that the author DOES believe in the resurrection. So why the weird ending? God knows. I'd love to know. Ain't nobody gonna tell me... (weeps)
As for terminology, I have no idea what to use other than "believe." "Be convinced of"? I really don't think I'm invested in the "know" vs. "believe" thing myself. The only bit I'm really clear on is that I can't choose my faith. If I could make myself believe something, life would be a lot smoother in many ways. But I can't. Which is why I stand with KarlLB on this one.
You've witnessed these things personally, have you? Or taken these things on trust? You've seen protons and neutrons? Counted the quarks?
You seem to be suggesting that there's no qualitative difference between what some bloke down the pub told you, and the collective understanding of contemporary science.
Nobody has "seen" protons in the sense of looked at a proton with the naked eye, because they're too small. Plenty of people have "seen" protons in the sense of taking a bottle of hydrogen gas, ionizing the gas, accelerating the resulting protons, and doing various things with them. Small cyclotrons are buildable by sufficiently motivated people in their homes.
Counted the quarks? Sure. The way to do that goes by the name of "deep inelastic scattering" - basically using a high-energy electron beam to probe the sub-structure of the proton. You discover that the proton contains three charged scattering centers consistent with the three valence quarks that make up a proton.
I think the first such measurement was at SLAC in the 60s, and similar measurements have been done many times since, with different machines and techniques, and all measuring the same answer.
Do I know that in the same way I know my wife? Know her what? I know she exists by direct observation, so pretty much exactly the same way. Know her as a person - how she thinks and feels, her hopes and desires, and all that? What does it mean to ask those questions of a proton?
For what it's worth (maybe not much), I think "many" probably equals a couple dozen or less. Remember that the ancient world was on a completely different (and much smaller) scale than we are; their idea of cities, etc. would look ridiculously tiny to us. (I had the hardest time dealing with this in regards with my field of doctoral study, which involved early printed books; the number of copies and the number of people among whom they circulated was jaw-droppingly low.) In a similar mode, the number of babies killed at Bethlehem was probably a couple dozen or fewer.
I suppose I'd want to know what the Greek word or phrase specified. Otherwise, it may be just as easy to say that "many" probably"meant hundreds. The Bible is full of large numbers of peoples, and at least in the case of the feeding of the 5000 we extrapolate that to mean 5000 men, with maybe 2-3x that number of accompanying women and children (so I've been told many times, anyway). The word many is also used to describe people that Jesus healed and people converted by the Apostles. Maybe we should scale back all of it, then. Not really as big a deal?
It's also worth remembering that Jews in Jesus' day considered cemeteries unclean, positioned them far away from the city, and would not normally be in them or very near them. Not like today in the U.S. at least, where people go for walks there, or gape at famous tombstones, and I have with my own eyes seen a children's playground established in the middle of one. People who were out in the countryside would avoid graves as a matter of course, and all the more during Passover, as contact with a grave would very likely render you unclean and prevent you from taking part in worship, celebrations, etc. Which is a Big Deal™ when you're dealing with the highest holiday of the year.
This means that the chance of anybody being around to witness the exact moment of their resurrection is very limited. And even if somebody was --
I understand this, yes. And yet we have to come to terms with the fact that it's attested to in the Gospel. Maybe we can just count this as another thing that looks ridiculous to us moderns?
The text suggests that these people were very disoriented, and outright tells us that they didn't actually come into the city for a day or two. Which is not surprising, when you imagine what it would be like to wake up in a freaking TOMB with nobody around to explain anything to you. (No Jesus-and-a-crowd-plus-weeping-relatives, like in the other cases.) So I think what you'd get, if you had a time machine and staked out the area, would be one person stumbling out... then, after an hour or two, another... and so on. Not a mass emergence like cicadas.
Well, if "after his resurrection" means a later linear time than Jesus' own resurrection -- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of the following week) I see your point. But if "after his resurrection" means in the same manner as Jesus' resurrection, I don't. If you want to read-in disorientation for these people, okay, but I don't get that from the text at all.
(And yes, I'm feeling the creepy vibes here too. Which is another point in the case for "Why make this shit up if you didn't think it really happened?" Me, if I were going to make shit up, I'd have them all emerge as a group immediately and make for the city. It wouldn't occur to me to do all this creepy stuff.)
Forgive me for being such a geek about all this. It's just that history and culture is a huge interest of mine, and you tripped the trigger that set me rambling.
As long as you're enjoying your geek-out! Though, I've been known to trigger people in difficult ways from time to time, LOL.
Oh, and as for the ending of Mark? We have no idea whether that actually IS the ending. Something could have happened to the rest of the scroll. It's certainly an odd place to end, particularly when it's clear that the author DOES believe in the resurrection. So why the weird ending? God knows. I'd love to know. Ain't nobody gonna tell me... (weeps)
Current Biblical scholarly consensus as I've read it seems to agree that Mark originally ended with the women remaining silent, and that subsequent scribes & such added the rest, precisely for the theological reason you've mentioned. Gotta keep the stories straight.
As for terminology, I have no idea what to use other than "believe." "Be convinced of"? I really don't think I'm invested in the "know" vs. "believe" thing myself. The only bit I'm really clear on is that I can't choose my faith. If I could make myself believe something, life would be a lot smoother in many ways. But I can't. Which is why I stand with KarlLB on this one.
I don't disagree with @KarlLB either. But I think it would help a lot if Christians in general admitted as much, stopped trying to claim Truth with a capital T, and accepted that at best, their "faith" is hope, and an agreement within to live according to the guidelines for that hope and its specified, claimed outcomes.
Dude, I haven’t signed on to be a lawyer, and certainly not to try to convince you against your will. I was sharing with you things i happen to know as the result of an odd education. But I’m hearing some frustration from you and take that as a sign to quit. So i will.
In good will. From the top down. John wasn't killed. And very late as the gospels are, especially his, whatever is bodged on, was obvious at the time (like the Pericope Adulterae). And, naturally, Paul didn't have a vision of the resurrected Christ or a mystical experience of His presence, naturally he had hysterical blindness (conversion disorder) and an auditory hallucination, from guilt. The believing brain is all that is naturally necessary.
I was hearing about the 'minimal witness' criticism of the reliability of the resurrection and was wondering if this might be something worth discussing here.
<snip>
Thoughts?
I wonder if I might venture a couple of thoughts on the OP theory.
At the forensic level, we can be sure (multiple attestation of sources and forms) that the appearances were to groups as well as individuals. In particular, there were appearances to the 11 main disciples. Other named people include a double Mary (Matt 28), Cleopas (Luke 24), Barsabbas and Matthias (Acts 1)...
However the more important question, and one which I would suggest challenges all alternative theories, is why a group of Jewish people insisted that the long awaited Kingdom of God (KoG) had finally arrived.
This was to be in C1 Judaism the Biggest Event Ever. For this, people had cried, prayed, killed and died. The time when God would finally fulfil His promise to Abraham, and return to His people to free them, and through them humanity, from the curse of sin and death. Jesus Himself talks a lot, lot, lot about it. Resurrection, by contrast, was a debated fringe topic in C1 Judaism.
Then suddenly this group of Jews burst onto the scene saying that it had all happened; according to the scriptures, yes, but in a totally different way to what people expected. God had come, arguments over resurrection were over, and the KoG was with us.
Compare the reaction to Lazarus return from the dead (John 11), and Herod's thoughts on the Baptist resurrected (Matt 14). No-one says “This is it, the KoG has arrived, God has returned to His People”. Surely the appearances of Jesus must have been so compelling and so unusual that they led the witnesses to the unavoidable conclusion that Jesus' resurrection had happened? And much more.
I was hearing about the 'minimal witness' criticism of the reliability of the resurrection and was wondering if this might be something worth discussing here.
<snip>
Thoughts?
I wonder if I might venture a couple of thoughts on the OP theory.
At the forensic level, we can be sure (multiple attestation of sources and forms) that the appearances were to groups as well as individuals. In particular, there were appearances to the 11 main disciples. Other named people include a double Mary (Matt 28), Cleopas (Luke 24), Barsabbas and Matthias (Acts 1)...
However the more important question, and one which I would suggest challenges all alternative theories, is why a group of Jewish people insisted that the long awaited Kingdom of God (KoG) had finally arrived.
This was to be in C1 Judaism the Biggest Event Ever. For this, people had cried, prayed, killed and died. The time when God would finally fulfil His promise to Abraham, and return to His people to free them, and through them humanity, from the curse of sin and death. Jesus Himself talks a lot, lot, lot about it. Resurrection, by contrast, was a debated fringe topic in C1 Judaism.
Then suddenly this group of Jews burst onto the scene saying that it had all happened; according to the scriptures, yes, but in a totally different way to what people expected. God had come, arguments over resurrection were over, and the KoG was with us.
Compare the reaction to Lazarus return from the dead (John 11), and Herod's thoughts on the Baptist resurrected (Matt 14). No-one says “This is it, the KoG has arrived, God has returned to His People”. Surely the appearances of Jesus must have been so compelling and so unusual that they led the witnesses to the unavoidable conclusion that Jesus' resurrection had happened? And much more.
To me these are just assertions. Plenty of religions make assertions that others don't agree with - that make perfect sense within that framework but no sense to anyone else.
For example, I was just reading about the Mormon Book of Abraham. Without getting into the weeds, Joseph Smith made all kinds of claims, which are refuted by scholars but are defended by their church. One of the defenses of JS's actions is that the sheer effort required to falsify this amount of material means it (the falsification) didn't happen and therefore one must believe it despite all the objections.
I am assuming nobody here gives much credibility to Mormon assertions, but if anyone does, I don't mean any disrespect. You are entitled to believe whatever you like.
There are assertions of post-resurrection appearances. There are assertions of people being raised from the grave, of the sun standing still and the curtain being ripped. None of that, in itself, makes them factual.
In the context of this discussion, the debate is in reply to a Christian author who focused on these four named individuals who gave first-person accounts.
And they're assertions made 40 years after their subjects @KoF.
This desperately arrogated and quoted if not plagiarized, incidentally Mormon, Paul and his list of eyewitnesses, from 'forensic' (by what definition?) 'scholar' (by what definition?) sources, lists three who overlap with the much later gospels and Acts. Peter, James (the Greater) and John. All Appalachian kin weren't they? Along with Mary, Elizabeth, John the Baptist, James the Less and Just, Son of Alphaeus and brother of Jesus (did Mary re-marry? Or is this Mary's sister? Mary...).
Comments
Well, one day walking along the canal bank near my home town I began to pray and to approach God as if he did exist.
I daresay I could act as if he didn't. There are times of course when I do act as though he doesn't.
We decide to fall in love.
I can't work out the mechanics of any of this.
My late wife has a crisis of faith shortly before she died. She wanted objective proof.
As far as I can tell she came through that before she became too ill for us to tell what was going on. But I can't be sure. Just as I can't be 100% sure that the Resurrection took place.
Faith isn't the same as cast-iron 100% certainty.
At one time I'd have pinpointed my conversion 'experience' to a particular time and place a few weeks after the tentative prayer on the canal bank. These days I don't get so prescriptive and formally I know it could have been purely psychological.
It's pretty hypothetical to say, 'Well, why didn't I decide to believe in the Flying Jelly Monster?'
Because I didn't.
If I'd grown up in a Muslim environment or a Hindu one or whatever else then I'd probably have worked out a faith position in that context.
But I didn't.
@Bishops Finger I don't see anyone here making out that faith is easy. I know plenty of people who've lost their faith. It happens and can happen to any of us.
I remember hearing a former Baptist minister on the radio saying he'd woken up one morning to find his faith had evaporated. He came to terms with that and found it highly liberating.
We can't 'legislate' any of these things.
(sighs) Okay, I'll say it and let you folks shoot at me. I know it's going to come off as childish and all that, and maybe that's what I am.
Looking at the text as a starting point, what do we see? People who are described as "saints" and also as those "which slept" (that is, dead people) rose and went into the city and appeared to many.
Okay.
The first thing I'm seeing is that these people are identifiable. I mean, somebody's recognizing them. I doubt very much they rose with little "Hi, my name is...." stickers on their clothes, so these have to be the recently dead, people who died within living memory--because otherwise, how could anyone tell the difference between them and any ordinary stranger? I mean, I don't think they are shambling along muttering "BRAAAAAIIIIIINNNNNNNSSSSS" with bits and pieces falling off their bodies, that's not the biblical picture of resurrection at all. So these are people who would be indistinguishable from ordinary folks EXCEPT that they are known to be holy... and known to be dead.
That argues that the people they appeared to were friends and relatives. This isn't King Jehoshaphat or the prophet Elisha showing up at the temple and saying "I'm back!" Who the hell would believe them? Who could they call as witnesses to their identity?
So, these are the recently dead, residents of Jerusalem, who still possess living friends and relatives who can testify, "Yes, Uncle Joe came to my house. I can't explain it, but I swear it was him, and I buried him myself ten years ago." That's the only way this story makes any sense.
That being the case...
These must have been fairly ordinary, humble people, precisely because we DON'T have the public freak-out you'd expect to see if (say) one of Caiaphas' brothers had risen from the dead. No, these are tradesmen and farmers and servants, ordinary people, who open the door one day to see Grandma Rebekah standing there--or Cousin Nathan. And what do they do? After fainting, I mean. Do they shout it from the housetops? Well, would you?
I think not. Certainly the word would have gotten around, but remember that they live under the power of the Roman government (which is not fond of religious riots) and a repressive religious establishment which has just put to death the most popular rabbi in years. If it were me, I would have yanked Grandma off the steps, sat her down inside with a cup of tea, and quietly sent the word to the rest of the family--but NOT announced it all over the city. Because I don't want the likes of the temple guard showing up to take me away, too. If weird things are happening, you keep schtum. Though I imagine quite a few of them found their way to the baby Christian church after Pentecost blew the doors off, and they felt like "Here are some people who might be open to hearing about the weird thing that happened to us the week their prophet was crucified."
Okey-doke. Fair do's. I stand corrected.
On the John 6 thing... more there than the verse you quoted.
Is it a Eucharistic reference?
Some Christians understand it that way.
This I disagree with. I cannot force myself to believe, I cannot even "decide" to believe in something--it's not in my psychology. Sure, I could try to work up some sort of emotional state, but underneath it my logic would still be saying, "You know you're faking that on purpose."
No. I can't choose to believe. The fact that I DO believe in the Resurrection of Jesus, and in a whole bunch of other stuff that goes along with it, is largely due to the evidence. And while some of that evidence is public and historic, it is never going to be repeatable the way an experiment in a science lab is supposed to be--because historic proofs don't work that way. Barring a time machine, you are never going to "prove" any event, including the most mundane: "I had breakfast this morning." Someone can always poke holes in your statement.
No, for history you rely on witnesses, which after 100 years have to be texts given the human lifespan. You look at the historical context--did anything happen as a result of this? Is there another equally reasonable explanation for it? Does the event make any sense at all within the mental framework I use to understand the universe? (For example, the resurrection of Christ means something to me in a way that the sky opening up and suddenly raining down chocolate candy out of the clear blue would not.)
You do consider probability, yes--but if the event we are speaking of is an acknowledged miracle, you cannot and will not approach it without bias. You are going into your evaluation with a pre-existing bias either wholly against miracles or one that admits the possibility, however infinitely small the likelihood. And that pre-existing bias is going to come from mostly nonhistorical sources, since no one (but God) is an eyewitness to ALL of history, and can therefore rule in or out the question "Do miracles ever happen?" That's what it would take to make the claim "Miracles never happen" and have wholly historical evidence for it.*
For ordinary human beings, we're going to answer that question based on authorities we deem good, and on religion and philosophy. Which is why I mentioned pre-existing bias.
* To be sure, it takes witnessing only a single miracle with one's own eyes to force one into the "miracles actually CAN happen" camp; and I am one of these. But there's basically no chance that any of you will take my word for it. Why should you? So my miracle does none of you any good, because try as you like, you aren't going to accept me as an eyewitness--and will always be thinking, "But maybe she was confused..." This is why it's basically a waste of God's time to do miracles in the hopes of convincing unbelievers. "A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still." We get our belief or otherwise, not from history, but from other sources.
It makes sense to me.
I meant to say that the other half of the evidence that leads me to believe is intensely personal, and to your eyes highly subjective, and not something I'd expect anyone else to find strong enough to base their own belief in--because it didn't happen to them. And that is why I sympathize with Karl while being utterly shit myself at passing on my own grounds of faith to be of any use to him or those like him. Because I can answer the historical stuff (the curtain in the temple? Was not on public view, and what are the chances there was a major hush up?) but I can't pass on the personal stuff, because why should he believe me? I doubt I would believe me, if I wasn't me and saw it for myself. And that makes me sad.
Second, I don't see it is a surprise that believers can explain things, that's part of having a worldview - albeit complicated by variations of explanation and belief. Nor, to me, is it a surprise that people change their worldview.
The things one accepts and explains as part of a worldview don't make much sense to people outside that worldview. Yes.
A good friend whose father was a vicar and who until recently attended church for many, many years without apparently believing a word of it, dismisses the whole thing as 'special pleading.'
The veil in the Temple wasn't on public view. It could have been a cover-up. Perhaps they sewed it back together before anyone noticed ...
Would a claim like that stack up in a court of law?
That doesn't mean it didn't happen but we are never going to be able to 'prove' it either way.
The Gospels themselves contain claims that there was a cover-up of the empty tomb, of course.
My Grandma rose out of her tomb and came round to our place. We put her up in the back bedroom and kept her out of sight so that Pilate and Herod didn't get to hear of it ...
Again, would that stack up as a witness statement in a court of law?
Or does it sound like the sort of story that might develop around claims that Jesus of Nazareth had risen from the dead - and very conveniently ascended into heaven before anyone except his disciples and their circle noticed?
Or a riff on resurrection stories from the Hebrew scriptures?
Why didn't the Risen Christ march into Herod's palace or Pilate's office and say, 'Got you now!' and disappear through a wall before the guards seized him?
Why not this?
Why not that?
Why not the other?
Why doesn't God write in huge letters across the sky. 'Look. I'm God. Believe in me now?'
Well, for one thing someone or other would challenge it as an atmospheric phenomenon or mass hallucination. Or we could argue that there's no reason why the Almighty should pander to calls for a 'sign'.
'They have Moses and the Prophets ...'
I remember a few occasions in my charismatic evangelical days when people were claimed to have been supernaturally healed but clearly weren't. In some instances it was claimed that they had been healed but the symptoms remained ...
I know Orthodox people who claim to have seen 'myrrh-streaming icons' and the like.
I don't think we 'need' to have the Risen Christ knock at our door to show us the wounds in his hand and side so we can say, 'Right, that settles it. I believe now.'
We are always going to have with the tension of accepting or rejecting the testimony of scripture and tradition/Tradition, of dealing with 2000 year old accounts developed within a particular faith community and with no time-machine or fool-proof means of verifying them.
We can point to our own experiences but those can be dismissed as subjective.
We can point to the lives of holy Saints or saints but these can be dismissed as hagiography or wishful thinking or someone can point to the time when our sainted aunt was brusque with her next door neighbour.
I get all the stuff about our not 'choosing' to believe or not making ourselves believe, as it were - but now I'm Orthodox I'm very wary of getting into anything that sounds like crude determinism. 'I believe because God revealed himself to me and I'm one of the Elect' sort of thing.
But it's hard to avoid sounding like that to some extent.
'Listen, none of you are going to believe me, but I've seen miracles, right?'
Some people will accept that, others won't.
And yet, and yet ...
I often come back to George Herbert. 'I struck the board and cried "No more! I will abroad ...'
'I heard the voice of One calling, "Child!"
And I replied, "My Lord!"'
However we cut it, we've inherited a body of belief from a first century Jewish sect which developed into the Church/es in all their varieties and forms that we have today and which agreed (more or less) on which writings and accounts should be included among their sacred texts.
This body of belief includes the death and apparent resurrection of someone they believed to be the Messiah.
We can 'chose' to accept their testimony or we can chose not to.
It's a Pascale's Wager kinda thing.
Sure, I think that's a fairly standard view.
Choose is the odd word here. It's more whether it seems convincing or not to us, which is a different thing to choice.
I had always thought (since theological studies many years ago) that the rending of the temple veil was symbolic / a metaphor for the ending of the separation between God and man, with both being united through the death and resurrection of Christ.
All of the gospel writers used literary devices and emphases to give their particular take, it seems.
In addition, most people don’t treat bible texts as literal objective records, I think (although some do).
Personally, I find it hopeless to try to have a laser focus on particular verses or incidents as if they were historical facts or propositions. A more helpful approach, for me, is to ask where the narrative takes me and how it aligns with my life story. And within that reflection, I can choose to live ‘as if’ and see if the unfolding story ‘feels right’ in the future.
In many ways that view of living in hope and trust translates to human relationships too. Perhaps that’s why we can’t love God whom we have not seen, if we cannot love the people that we have. That’s a central theme in many narratives for me.
Peace to those who need objective proof of God: I fully agree that you will not get it. So maybe you should just get on with living your life based on how the lack of objective proof lands with you?
I have to say I maintain a position of "prudent doubt" with regard to reincarnation. There are enough instances of the sort you describe to at least allow the possibility, and there are hints in the Gospels that the possibility was considered by contemporaries of John the Baptist.
If we assume for a moment that it is something that happens, would it not square the circle of how the NT seems to point both to universal reconciliation and a separation of the sheep and the goats? If we're required to keep trying until such time as we become the person God calls us to be, whether in this incarnation or another? This would rhyme, if not fully match, with Buddhist ideas of freeing oneself from the cycle of reincarnation as being the goal.
It's not something I believe, but it's something I wouldn't be shocked to find out is true.
I can see the distinction you are making but we still choose whether to go with it or not.
If I convinced you that there was going to be a gig you'd enjoy that involved two buses and a fair walk to see it, you may very well be interested in going. Whether you'd trust my judgement sufficiently to catch the buses and trog across town to see it is another matter and an issue of choice.
I can only speak for myself. I had sufficient respect for the figure of Christ from Sunday School, school assemblies and a general culturally Christian background to feel that it was worth giving it a go.
I suppose I figured that if the Christian faith considered that a particular human being was also God Incarnate it was so monumental and outrageous a claim to warrant consideration. If it was true then the implications were enormous.
Now, that didn't mean I had to wait until I was absolutely 100% convinced or had incontrovertibly objective proof in some way.
I took a punt.
I'm still taking them. 'Lord, I believe. Help Thou mine unbelief.'
Others have given up doing so.
Like Mousethief.
Others seem all chipper and upbeat and seem to be able to keep at it.
It's not for me to judge which of those approaches is the right one for them.
I chose to go along with the received narrative held by the Christian churches. It wasn't that I had no option but to do so. I could have turned away.
Who knows? I might jack it all in at some point. Others have. I hope I don't but there's no guarantee.
But if I'm going to wait for apparently objective proof one way or another I'm going to be waiting a long time.
You have to remember I have taken this punt myself and I've continued to take this punt. This doesn’t alter the fact that the objective evidence (and there's another pair of things some people seem to use interchangeably when they're fundamentally different - evidence and proof), such at is, isn't great.
Nothing is *proven*, except in Maths. Some things have overwhelming evidence. That the earth isn't flat for example. My only point really is that the existence of God isn't one of those overwhelmingly evidenced things.
I guess I am “some people”? Actually, the formulation works just as well for me this way:
Peace to those who need objective evidence of God: I fully agree that you will not get it. So maybe you should just get on with living your life based on how the lack of objective evidence lands with you?
So I agree with you.
Up until: what follows from living out a tentative belief, and finding it works (for me) is then a condition of belief that follows from subjective experience. So it does follow, at least, from a choice.
I know that will never work for you - but it makes me wonder why you persist with the punt, if that is the case. Why bother?
I do remember that you have taken a punt on these things and are continuing to do so.
I'm doing the same.
Which is why I'm not echoing @Cameron's question. Why bother?
It may well be that your posting here is part of your punting.
Who knows? We none of us have windows into each others' souls.
This works the same for you because you're sitting outside of the need for evidence.
As I've said before, how does that jive with other people's subjective experiences not being conducive to belief. In other words, we apparently have a God who reveals himself to some degree to some people who act on that tentative and provisional belief but ignores others. Why would he do that?
Because if God is real then it's worth carrying on looking for him. If only to ask "why did you keep running?"
The problem with merely acquiescing in my current state is that other people make such positive statements about their belief in God being a source of support, comfort and so on. I wouldn't mind a bit of that. I can't see how it's actually possible but surely God is for everyone, even die-hard natural sceptics like me. It's hardly a selling point if faith is only for people comfortable with believing things they have little foundation for.
I'm uncomfortable with going further because I'm trying not to make this thread be about me and making it more Epiphanies or All Saints material. I think the path is well trodden anyway.
Having read the section in full. I understand your question but I do not see it as a Eucharist.
If it's not a reference to the Eucharist, what is it referring to?
I don't think anyone was claiming that a Eucharist takes place in that chapter. Interesting that John includes the story though, and before the Last Supper too.
Why do you think he did that?
Ok, perhaps I'm splitting hairs.
It's not so much that I think the question is inappropriate but KarlLB's questions here may well be part of his search. So 'why bother?' may not be a helpful question to ask.
None of us would be posting here at all if we didn't find it helpful in some way.
At ant rate, @KarlLB has answered for himself and said that he doesn't want to make this thread all about him. Which is jolly decent of him.
But more seriously, I'm not sure it helps to be dismissive when Shipmates are struggling with issues of faith or trying to find answers to tough questions.
I'm feeling chipper at the moment as I've been to Vespers and made my confession, which I don't like doing but which I find cathartic.
Another day I might be wondering whether I'm deluding myself or whether God really exists. Life's like that. Faith's like that. Some people can live with the paradox. Others struggle. Or rather, I think we all struggle and what mithers some of us won't be an issue to someone else.
I can't expect everyone to be like me nor is it up to me how or what they post on these boards.
As I once commented on another board--and was criticized for it--faith is a choice. You can risk your life or your sanity on it. (Try a cost/benefit analysis.) That may make you uncomfortable, but no one promised comfort.
And I agree with Harry CH that the odds of a successful vast conspiracy that never manages to break down and betray itself in what, 2000 years? is ... super unlikely. Because humans.
Nobody has to believe in Christianity. I have no wish to force it on anyone.
But being a Christian is not an untenable, illogical place to stand. If it were, why do we have 2000 years of human beings of all backgrounds, education and intelligence standing right there?
It has to be one of the options on the table--just as any other belief system that has survived that long and successfully must. Which is why I have a problem with the OP. If mass delusion covered it so well, why are we still arguing about it lo these many years later?
I take your point about Elizabeth 1st, Shakespeare etc. but then there's also Robin Hood, Bendigaidfran and King Arthur.
The author of John likes to be different. In my opinion, his gospel is the most inspirational but I cannot trust it's accuracy. 'John' is recording what he thinks Jesus would be saying.
Amen to the second point. But that links to the first point: we are all here voluntarily, and we are all vulnerable if we are sincere. You might want to take another cold look at how many kinds of faith experiences are dismissed, and by whom.
I don't think it is illogical, I just think it only makes sense within it's own worldview.
People believe all kinds of things and stand within many different traditions that go back thousands of years. It isn't that one thing is logical/illogical as much as that it makes sense for a bunch of people until it stops making sense.
I don't really understand your last paragraph. Clearly our understanding of group dynamcs has changed in the last 100 years never mind the last 2000. Things we can explain now we couldn't then.
First of all, nothing makes sense outside its own worldview. Even science, even math. Worldview is pervasive. If you lived (for instance) within an entirely irrational worldview, even pure math would mean nothing to you.
I am not arguing that Christianity is either logical or provable. Most real things are neither. That's no shame to them--it's simply a reminder of the limits of logic. Can you prove your spouse's fidelity using scientific principles? Can you logic your way into the experience of hearing a great symphony, or holding a newborn? Of course not. Anybody who tried, you'd think they were nuts. We use different standards for those things.
Hell, we can't even find a decent way to standardize taste or smell. "It's sort of like this" is about as far as we can go, with chemical notes for those so inclined. It still doesn't get the point across the way a single whiff does.
As for understanding of group dynamics--you think the ancients didn't realize that people are easily deceived, and that beliefs and attitudes are contagious? They made copious use of those facts, just as people today do when they're trying to manipulate someone. The fact that we have a particular vocabulary for it doesn't mean they didn't recognize the phenomenon.
Look, glancing back at the OP, you have a problem with understanding how history works--any history. You are asking for a large number of nameable, attestable people who are witnesses to the resurrection but who do NOT appear in the Gospels or book of Acts. Give me a break. You are speaking of an event that took place in the backwaters of the Roman empire among the common people. We are lucky to have the names of the high profile people in government there at the time. This is the time of laboriously handwritten and expensive manuscripts, not the days of "let's take a selfie and put it up on Twitter for no expense to me." We couldn't prove Pontius Pilate's existence outside Scripture until the 20th century, and he's not small potatoes as far as social status goes. He's a freaking governor of a province! And what is true for him goes for others as well. The written proof for the existence of any number of people rests on a single manuscript or inscription, or maybe if we're lucky half a dozen.
What were you expecting--written (and still existing--papyrus and vellum are perishable, and Jerusalem was destroyed not forty years later) non-Scriptural proof of say a dozen, two dozen people of no particular standing in regards to an event that took place outside the city among a sect that was in dangerous disfavor with the local government? We don't have that kind of evidence for entire wars. Go ask any ancient historian. Your standard of proof needs reworking, if this is your primary objection to Christianity. Because it also constitutes an objection to most of the history of the ancient world.
I am not going to try to argue you into Christianity, if for no other reason than that it's a waste of time and disrespectful to boot. Nobody comes to faith through apologetics. But apologetics is good for one thing, and that's dismantling mistaken objections (often based on sheer ignorance) that stand in the way of people believing who would otherwise do so.
Ancient peoples did not have modern understanding of medicine and psychology
I'm not trying to offend or attack anything, I just thought something was interesting to discuss.
Anyone is free to believe anything, as far as I'm concerned. That a deity gives you visions, that the future can be seen in animal entrails, that a scarab beetle was involved in the creation of all things. Knock yourself out.
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
This sounds like it could be material for a good Kerygmania thread.
Why is John's Gospel any less 'accurate' than the Synoptics and how can we tell? Personal opinion?
Meanwhile, I'm not sure whether @Cameron's 'long hard look' jibe was a dig at me - I can be overly critical of certain spiritualities at times - or a sideswipe at @KarlLB.
I'll take hostly advice and not pursue anything that's likely to inflame anything.
Or was the 'heated' reference to @KoF's post?
I hope I've not dismissed other people's spiritual experiences. That's not the intention. I have tried to explain why I can't own them myself. To clarify however:
1. Lots of people have spiritual experiences and an awful lot of them contradict each other. It's therefore very difficult to decide which ones I can build positive conclusions on.
2. What an experience means to a particular person can be terribly subjective. I'm reminded a little obliquely of Screwtape drawing attention to different meanings of "really" - "all that really happened was you heard some music in a candle-lit church" versus "it's all very well talking about that high dive from the comfort of an armchair but you need to get up there and see what it's really like!" As Screwtape observes, either use of the word could be defended.
3. Attaching too much significance objectively beyond the person to whom an experience occurred is problematic. It would be very easy to conclude that the receivers of such experiences are God's favourites, or even worse, the "really saved" ones whilst the rest of us are Outside. I'm naturally reluctant to take any steps down that particular line.
4. The existence of these experiences is hardly a closely guarded secret. An awful lot of highly intelligent people whose reasoning I generally find very sound find them entirely unconvincing and that has to inform my assessment of them also.
5. I'm naturally sceptical by nature.
I was resisting the imputation that I was being dismissive, when others of the thread and the board seem to be doing that so much more effectively. So there is no need for anyone to feel specifically targeted, and mindful of hostly advice, maybe I should not have read it in that personal way myself.
But honestly: don’t the five points you have posted above lead, almost methodically, to dismissing others’ experiences? To explain what I mean, I would like to respond to those points by recasting them in a different and more accommodating way, that would not require someone to dismiss (or affirm):
1. Lots of people have spiritual experiences and an awful lot of them contradict each other. I can’t really know how each experience fits into each person’s unique life and cultural context, so I can choose to trust that unless I have reason to call out deceit, maybe it was meaningful for each of them despite contradictions (because of differences in context and the moment in their story). So I don’t have to form a judgement on the differences and contradictions.
2. What an experience means to a person is always subjective. We all have a view ‘from somewhere’, so it is unsurprising that I might see something differently.
3. I cannot expect to be able to determine an objective significance for an experience that is essentially subjective. Nor can I know if the source of the experience intended the message to be received in such a way. In addition to which, if we believe there is a God who intervenes (or allow that as a possibility), then the experience could be to motivate or change the ‘receiver’ for someone else’s sake - and involve them in personal hardship - so it would be possible to see them as messengers or agents, rather than people receiving special privileges. (Would I want to have the vision of Mary that Maximilian Kolbe did, and to have my life end the same way? I honestly think I would be too much a coward). Maybe the one being blessed is the one who is not having such experiences, and yet seems to have, strangely, enough of even a scrap of faith to ‘go on’?
4. Many people I see as intelligent choose to dismiss such experiences. But also, lots of intelligent people have opposite political beliefs to me, in ways I don’t feel obliged to agree with - I don’t decide my views by majority vote amongst Mensa members. So I think it is best to make up my own mind - although, based on points 1-3, I know I can’t be certain and maybe the experience has some validity, meaning or purpose for the person in question that I can’t grasp, or maybe wouldn’t want to share in. So I am slow to judge.
5. I am a naturally sceptical person, but knowing that allows me to be aware that it’s a trait that has both advantages and disadvantages, and look for ways to balance that. So if someone’s story resonates with me for reasons I can’t quite pin down, or touches me deeply in an emotional way, maybe that’s OK?
Landing on point 5, as I do, is also intrinsic to my response to all the smoke in the resurrection stories. I feel a fire at the heart of it all.
I don’t expect (and certainly don’t need) you to agree with any of the above, but can we draw a line under it there, and just say that there are two different ways of approaching matters, each of which is an internally consistent view? I think the semantic salami-slicing has been doing neither of us any credit, in relation to matters that my heart tells me we both care about deeply, so I am not keen to keep doing that.
No-no, not childish on your part, I don't think. Have at it however you like. And don't discount that Jesus was pretty clear about child-likeness being a preferred mode of engagement with his Gospel. I imagine that you're imagining these resurrected commoners as looking, sounding, smelling exactly as they had well before they died. Maybe that's the case, which would have them blend in pretty easily among the rest of Jerusalem that didn't know these people personally. I imagine that you're also imagining that like Jesus' own resurrection, these people's resurrections were without witnesses -- not a single living soul saw (1) the graves opened, or (2) many people coming out of these graves. Maybe there was a long interval between the earthquake and these graves opening and people emerging from them. But if there wasn't, maybe just like today, those people would have rushed outside of their dwellings to avoid being crushed by their quaking walls and roofs. And if throngs of people were outside, why assume no one saw the dead arise? I dunno. But many is many, and for myself, I just can't imaging that many could go so completely ignored by almost every person capable of writing something down at that time, whether they knew a reanimated human from that group or not. That's my assumption.
Were the followers of Jesus afraid of the status quo? Probably, but my take is that they were more afraid of the Pharisees than they were of Pilate. Jesus said "render unto Ceasar," after all. Peter denied Jesus three times, but it wasn't because a Praetorian brought him in for questioning. The actual ending of the Gospel of Mark says that the women went away and told no one because they were afraid, even though the angel instructed them to share the news. That was just three women *not seeing* a resurrected Jesus, which is pretty different than many appearing to many.
"Believe" is a word that Christians employ. How then should it be said? Ascribing to a collection of claims? What terminology can we use?
I'm comfortable with the idea that History is about establishing probabilities. Starting from a baseline of eyewitness testimony for that, however, is problematic to me. It's too easy to point and click to increasing amounts of data that show how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be. I think it makes for compelling stories, but not for outright establishing the facts of any case (I'm not suggesting you've claimed as much). In context, "faith is the substance of things hoped for." So it puzzles me why so many religious people must have it otherwise. Why can't Christians stop at the water's edge of faith? It seems to me that just about any pressing beyond that boundary opens up the very holes you mentioned.
It's also worth remembering that Jews in Jesus' day considered cemeteries unclean, positioned them far away from the city, and would not normally be in them or very near them. Not like today in the U.S. at least, where people go for walks there, or gape at famous tombstones, and I have with my own eyes seen a children's playground established in the middle of one. People who were out in the countryside would avoid graves as a matter of course, and all the more during Passover, as contact with a grave would very likely render you unclean and prevent you from taking part in worship, celebrations, etc. Which is a Big Deal™ when you're dealing with the highest holiday of the year.
This means that the chance of anybody being around to witness the exact moment of their resurrection is very limited. And even if somebody was--
The text suggests that these people were very disoriented, and outright tells us that they didn't actually come into the city for a day or two. Which is not surprising, when you imagine what it would be like to wake up in a freaking TOMB with nobody around to explain anything to you. (No Jesus-and-a-crowd-plus-weeping-relatives, like in the other cases.) So I think what you'd get, if you had a time machine and staked out the area, would be one person stumbling out... then, after an hour or two, another... and so on. Not a mass emergence like cicadas.
(And yes, I'm feeling the creepy vibes here too. Which is another point in the case for "Why make this shit up if you didn't think it really happened?" Me, if I were going to make shit up, I'd have them all emerge as a group immediately and make for the city. It wouldn't occur to me to do all this creepy stuff.)
Forgive me for being such a geek about all this. It's just that history and culture is a huge interest of mine, and you tripped the trigger that set me rambling.
Oh, and as for the ending of Mark? We have no idea whether that actually IS the ending. Something could have happened to the rest of the scroll. It's certainly an odd place to end, particularly when it's clear that the author DOES believe in the resurrection. So why the weird ending? God knows. I'd love to know. Ain't nobody gonna tell me... (weeps)
As for terminology, I have no idea what to use other than "believe." "Be convinced of"? I really don't think I'm invested in the "know" vs. "believe" thing myself. The only bit I'm really clear on is that I can't choose my faith. If I could make myself believe something, life would be a lot smoother in many ways. But I can't. Which is why I stand with KarlLB on this one.
You seem to be suggesting that there's no qualitative difference between what some bloke down the pub told you, and the collective understanding of contemporary science.
Nobody has "seen" protons in the sense of looked at a proton with the naked eye, because they're too small. Plenty of people have "seen" protons in the sense of taking a bottle of hydrogen gas, ionizing the gas, accelerating the resulting protons, and doing various things with them. Small cyclotrons are buildable by sufficiently motivated people in their homes.
Counted the quarks? Sure. The way to do that goes by the name of "deep inelastic scattering" - basically using a high-energy electron beam to probe the sub-structure of the proton. You discover that the proton contains three charged scattering centers consistent with the three valence quarks that make up a proton.
I think the first such measurement was at SLAC in the 60s, and similar measurements have been done many times since, with different machines and techniques, and all measuring the same answer.
Do I know that in the same way I know my wife? Know her what? I know she exists by direct observation, so pretty much exactly the same way. Know her as a person - how she thinks and feels, her hopes and desires, and all that? What does it mean to ask those questions of a proton?
I understand this, yes. And yet we have to come to terms with the fact that it's attested to in the Gospel. Maybe we can just count this as another thing that looks ridiculous to us moderns?
Well, if "after his resurrection" means a later linear time than Jesus' own resurrection -- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of the following week) I see your point. But if "after his resurrection" means in the same manner as Jesus' resurrection, I don't. If you want to read-in disorientation for these people, okay, but I don't get that from the text at all.
As long as you're enjoying your geek-out! Though, I've been known to trigger people in difficult ways from time to time, LOL.
Current Biblical scholarly consensus as I've read it seems to agree that Mark originally ended with the women remaining silent, and that subsequent scribes & such added the rest, precisely for the theological reason you've mentioned. Gotta keep the stories straight.
I don't disagree with @KarlLB either. But I think it would help a lot if Christians in general admitted as much, stopped trying to claim Truth with a capital T, and accepted that at best, their "faith" is hope, and an agreement within to live according to the guidelines for that hope and its specified, claimed outcomes.
I wonder if I might venture a couple of thoughts on the OP theory.
At the forensic level, we can be sure (multiple attestation of sources and forms) that the appearances were to groups as well as individuals. In particular, there were appearances to the 11 main disciples. Other named people include a double Mary (Matt 28), Cleopas (Luke 24), Barsabbas and Matthias (Acts 1)...
However the more important question, and one which I would suggest challenges all alternative theories, is why a group of Jewish people insisted that the long awaited Kingdom of God (KoG) had finally arrived.
This was to be in C1 Judaism the Biggest Event Ever. For this, people had cried, prayed, killed and died. The time when God would finally fulfil His promise to Abraham, and return to His people to free them, and through them humanity, from the curse of sin and death. Jesus Himself talks a lot, lot, lot about it. Resurrection, by contrast, was a debated fringe topic in C1 Judaism.
Then suddenly this group of Jews burst onto the scene saying that it had all happened; according to the scriptures, yes, but in a totally different way to what people expected. God had come, arguments over resurrection were over, and the KoG was with us.
Compare the reaction to Lazarus return from the dead (John 11), and Herod's thoughts on the Baptist resurrected (Matt 14). No-one says “This is it, the KoG has arrived, God has returned to His People”. Surely the appearances of Jesus must have been so compelling and so unusual that they led the witnesses to the unavoidable conclusion that Jesus' resurrection had happened? And much more.
To me these are just assertions. Plenty of religions make assertions that others don't agree with - that make perfect sense within that framework but no sense to anyone else.
For example, I was just reading about the Mormon Book of Abraham. Without getting into the weeds, Joseph Smith made all kinds of claims, which are refuted by scholars but are defended by their church. One of the defenses of JS's actions is that the sheer effort required to falsify this amount of material means it (the falsification) didn't happen and therefore one must believe it despite all the objections.
I am assuming nobody here gives much credibility to Mormon assertions, but if anyone does, I don't mean any disrespect. You are entitled to believe whatever you like.
There are assertions of post-resurrection appearances. There are assertions of people being raised from the grave, of the sun standing still and the curtain being ripped. None of that, in itself, makes them factual.
In the context of this discussion, the debate is in reply to a Christian author who focused on these four named individuals who gave first-person accounts.
This desperately arrogated and quoted if not plagiarized, incidentally Mormon, Paul and his list of eyewitnesses, from 'forensic' (by what definition?) 'scholar' (by what definition?) sources, lists three who overlap with the much later gospels and Acts. Peter, James (the Greater) and John. All Appalachian kin weren't they? Along with Mary, Elizabeth, John the Baptist, James the Less and Just, Son of Alphaeus and brother of Jesus (did Mary re-marry? Or is this Mary's sister? Mary...).