The Growth Of The Evidence For Christianity

It's sometimes suggested that the arguments for Christianity haven't developed much. There's not a lot being offered beyond the repetition of certain philosophical arguments for God's existence, historical arguments for prophecy fulfillment, historical arguments for Jesus' resurrection, and so forth.

Even if that were the case, that sort of evidence would be sufficient. And much of that older evidence often gets overlooked or underestimated (e.g., the evidence for certain Old Testament miracles, the evidence for apostolic miracles).

There's been more of an increase in the evidence for Christianity than is typically suggested. We've addressed a lot of examples in other posts: apparitions of Jesus, name statistics in the Biblical documents, the evidence for the Testimonium Flavianum in Josephus, modern healings, etc. Think of all of the developments in archeology over the years, for example. Old lines of argument often have new applications. I've written about modern examples of prophecy fulfillment, for instance. The work done in contexts like intelligent design and the paranormal isn't applicable only to Christianity, but it furthers the case for Christianity as far as it goes. And there are frequent advances in those fields.

Since our culture is so secular and trivial, issues like the ones I'm citing in this post don't get discussed much. And even among Christians, few people (as a percentage) bring these things up or attempt to persuade others about them. Those aren't problems with the state of the evidence, though. They're problems with how the state of the evidence is being handled.

How much resurrection evidence should we expect to be mentioned?

When critics of Jesus' resurrection object to something like the lack of mention of the appearance to more than five hundred (1 Corinthians 15:6) in sources other than Paul or the lack of mention of the guards at the tomb in sources other than Matthew, we should ask what we ought to be expecting from these sources. The critics' assumptions about what we should expect may be wrong, and we ought to be careful to not accept false assumptions.

The Cumulative Case For A Christian Understanding Of Psalm 22

I want to put links to some of the relevant posts in our archives in one place:

Is Psalm 22 Messianic?
The Jewishness Of The Individual In Psalm 22
How Well The Psalm Aligns With Roman Crucifixion
How Verse 16 Should Be Rendered
The Individual In Psalm 22 Is Delivered From Death
The Events Of Psalm 22 Are Highly Influential Geographically And Chronologically
Is Psalm 22 too vague to have evidential value for Christianity?
How Well Psalm 22 Aligns With Other Old Testament Passages That Have Evidential Value For Christianity

Why is there so much neglect of the argument from prophecy?

It's widely neglected both in terms of quantity and quality. There are some pastors, apologists, and other individuals who are otherwise highly involved in relevant contexts, yet I don't recall ever seeing them argue for Christianity from the evidence for prophecy fulfillment. Or somebody will only use the argument to a ridiculously small extent. I occasionally hear people go as far as to say that they don't think there's any value to the argument from prophecy or that they think there's only some extremely small number of prophecy arguments they consider worth using. Contrast that to how prominent prophecy is in the Old Testament and how prominent appeals to fulfillment are in the New Testament and the early extrabiblical literature.

Truth, Faith, And Confidence

"And faith is produced by the truth; for faith rests on things that truly are. For in things that are, as they are, we believe; and believing in things that are, as they ever are, we keep firm our confidence in them." (Irenaeus, The Demonstration Of The Apostolic Preaching 3)

What if men like Papias and Polycarp weren't eyewitnesses of the apostles?

I've argued, in other posts here and elsewhere, that they were. But if they weren't, what would follow?

There still would have been other individuals in early church history who had been an eyewitness of one or more of the apostles. There would have been many eyewitnesses, and some of them would have lived well into the second century. That's the nature of life. Skeptical challenges to the eyewitness status of individuals like Papias and Polycarp don't change that. It's not as though the presence of eyewitnesses depends on the status of particular individuals who have traditionally been thought to have been eyewitnesses of the apostles. The fact that eyewitnesses would have existed and have lived until well into the second century can't reasonably be denied. Keep that in mind when you see people questioning the eyewitness status of certain people.

And even those who weren't eyewitnesses could have been in a good position to have had significant information. They were contemporaries of the apostles, lived in an area where one or more apostles had been, etc. Think of the evidence for the apostle John's long lifespan and his interactions with Christians and churches in Asia Minor, for example. On his long lifespan, see here. For a discussion of the evidence for his influence on the Asia Minor region, go here. That post is focused on Ephesus, but much of what's said there is also applicable to Smyrna and other locations in the area. It's not as though Polycarp had to be a disciple of John in order to have had significant information about John and other eyewitnesses of Jesus. Polycarp was in the right place, at the right time, in the right sort of leadership position to have had a lot of reliable information about Jesus and the apostles, even if he wasn't a disciple of John (though the evidence suggests he was).

Anytime skeptics raise doubts about an issue like whether a certain person was an eyewitness of the apostles or whether a New Testament author was an eyewitness of whatever type, it's helpful to begin by asking what's at stake. Even if the skeptic's position were granted for the sake of argument, what would follow from it? Often, even if we granted the skeptic's position, the source in question still offers a large amount of evidence against the skeptic's view of Christianity.

How difficult is it to discern the evidence for Christianity?

One of the recurring themes in Joe Rogan's program with Wesley Huff was the idea that it's so difficult to discern the truth about some of the issues they discussed, including the evidence for Christianity. Rogan repeatedly brought the subject up, but I don't think he ever put it in the form of a question.

When that kind of sentiment comes up, a good way to respond is to mention one or more counterexamples. It's not difficult to discern Jesus' prominence in history, for example, which increases the plausibility of his being a source of Divine revelation. Or you could mention the significance of hostile corroboration of Jesus' resurrection, which is something unusual and widely acknowledged (James' claim to have seen Jesus risen from the dead, Paul's claim, non-Christian corroboration of the empty tomb, etc.). Or bring up some events involved in prophecy fulfillment that are widely accepted (Jesus' death by crucifixion, the timing of the crucifixion, the Romans' destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, etc.). For further discussion of issues like these, see here, among other relevant posts in our archives.

Another point worth making is that people give a lot of time, attention, and other resources to their general education, their career, sports, music, and other things in life. Why think they don't have the resources needed to adequately discern the issues relevant to Christianity?

No, Extrabiblical Evidence Isn't Roman Catholic Or Eastern Orthodox Tradition

Reliance on extrabiblical evidence is often equated with dependence on the alleged traditions of a group like Catholicism or Orthodoxy. But it doesn't make sense to equate extrabiblical evidence with tradition as those groups define it in any relevant way.

For example, all of our Bibles are based on many manuscripts produced by unknown individuals. There's no reason to classify those manuscripts as part of the Sacred Tradition of Catholicism or some equivalent in Orthodoxy. How we define the terminology used by the Bible, what we know about the surrounding historical context, and so forth are largely shaped by a variety of extrabiblical sources, including many archeological artifacts and documents that come from sources who didn't even claim to be Christian. Getting information from those sources isn't equivalent to depending on Catholic tradition, Orthodox tradition, etc. Even when we're assisted by one or more church fathers or what are commonly referred to as patristic documents, we aren't thereby relying on something like the Sacred Tradition of Catholicism or Orthodoxy. There's no reason to think the Didache, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Augustine, and other such sources were Catholic or Orthodox. Similarly, when a modern Catholic or Orthodox uses information found in Tacitus, an archeological artifact from an unknown Christian source, or a modern translation of a patristic document produced by a publisher outside his ecclesial affiliation, he isn't thereby violating his rule of faith, obligated to agree with the rule of faith of those sources, or any other such thing.

Half-Hearted, Weak, And Following The Crowd

"The assent that people usually give to divine truths is very faint and half-hearted, weak and ineffectual. It stems only from a blind inclination to follow the religion that is currently in fashion or from a lazy indifference and unconcernedness as to whether religious truth is indeed either certain or important. Men are unwilling to quarrel with the religion of their country, and since all their neighbors are Christians, they are content to be so too. However, seldom are they at pains to consider the evidences for Christian truths or to ponder the importance or consequences of them. Thus it is that their affections and practice are so little influenced by them….We must therefore endeavor to stir our minds toward serious belief and firm persuasion of divine truths and a deeper sense and awareness of spiritual things." (Henry Scougal, in Robin Taylor, ed., The Life Of God In The Soul Of Man [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2022], approximate Kindle location 865)

More Miracles On Video

I wrote a post on the topic a few years ago. As the Ted Serios case discussed there illustrates, we've had video footage of miracles for a long time. I occasionally come across more examples.

Elsewhere, I've discussed the UFO videos released to the public in recent years. Stephen Braude recently did another interview with Jeffrey Mishlove, which addresses some of the paranormal cases Braude has investigated. In the interview, he discusses some recent table levitations captured on video. Go here to watch an earlier interview with Mishlove that showed some photographs and video of table levitations. The segment here about Ariel Farias includes some video footage. Jimmy Akin recently discussed the evidence for animal telepathy, including some video of the phenomena. See here and here for a couple of relevant sections of his program. These are just some examples. I'm not trying to be exhaustive.

We need to keep in mind that the skeptical claim that we don't have good evidence for any miracles, sometimes even taking the form of claiming that miracles are never caught on video, was a weak objection from the start. And it's been getting weaker with the passing of time.

Paul's Familiarity With The Other Resurrection Witnesses

Last year, I wrote about the significance of the details mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:6 regarding the appearance to more than five hundred. Something else worth noting is that Paul's comments elsewhere corroborate the idea that he was closely following the lives of the other resurrection witnesses. Think of his comments in Galatians 1-2 about visiting other apostles, spending a lot of time with them, and coordinating his efforts with theirs. Or his discussion of the sufferings of the apostles in 1 Corinthians 4:9-13. Or his discussion of the practices of the apostles when traveling in 1 Corinthians 9:5. Or his reference to how they were all proclaiming the same message, a comment he makes shortly after 1 Corinthians 15:6, in verse 11.

Do passages like Hebrews 11:1 support a view of faith that has little or no concern for evidence?

Stephen Woodford, who operates the Rationality Rules YouTube channel, recently posted a video about the alleged irrationality of theism. It's been getting a lot of attention, including some responses from Christians. I'm not going to interact with all of it. What I want to focus on is a segment about faith, which promotes a popular misinterpretation of Hebrews 11:1. That verse is often cited to support the idea that Christian faith has little or no concern for evidence, that it involves a blind leap in the dark, and so on. A couple of other passages, John 20:29 and 2 Corinthians 5:7, sometimes get interpreted in a similar manner.

You Can Emphasize The Resurrection Without Isolating It

Follow Peter's example in Acts 2, where he highlights Jesus' resurrection while also addressing prophecy fulfillment, Jesus' miracles other than his resurrection, and the miracles of the apostles. And Jesus, the prophets, and others did the same before Peter. Make much of Jesus' resurrection, but bring up other lines of evidence for Christianity as well.

The Poor Quality Of Skepticism

The Twitter account of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) recently linked a video of a presentation by Chris Roe, former president of the SPR, about the poor quality of skepticism of the paranormal. It's worth watching. There's a lot of valuable material in it.

Evidence For The December 15, 1977 Enfield Levitations

There's widespread agreement that the events of December 15, 1977 are among the most significant ones in the Enfield case. I've discussed much of the evidence for those events in previous posts, like this one that provides an overview of the day as a whole and this one focusing on an interview with one of the witnesses, John Rainbow. See here for a discussion I had with David Robertson in 2018 that was partly about the background to the events of that day. He explains what he was trying to accomplish and the reasoning behind it. Contrary to what people often suggest, there were more than two people outside the house who saw Janet Hodgson levitating that day. There were at least four who saw the levitation, and David told me, as quoted in the post linked above, that he suspects there were more than four. Keep in mind that the Hodgsons' house was directly across from a school, that the children were being let out of the school around the time of at least one of the levitations, and that the street the house is on is a very busy one. Anybody who's interested can read the posts linked above and other relevant ones in our archives for more about these issues. I don't want to reinvent the wheel here. What I want to do in this post is add some further lines of evidence for these December 15 events, including some that I don't recall having seen discussed before.

Witnesses In Every Generation

People often underestimate how much Christians of earlier generations were concerned about having evidence for Christianity and how much evidence they had access to. For example:

"if they [non-Christian Jews] had only been in their own land with that testimony of the Scriptures, and not every where, certainly the Church which is everywhere could not have had them as witnesses among all nations to the prophecies which were sent before concerning Christ." (Augustine, The City Of God, 18:46)

Exalted And Stooping

"This passage [in Isaiah 40] begins with God gathering his lambs in his arms (40:11) and ends with his giving strength to the faint who have no might (40:29-31). Between these two pictures of God's stooping to help the helpless are the most exalted glimpses of his majesty: 'the nations are like a drop from a bucket' (40:15); 'the nations are as nothing before him' (40:17); 'earth's inhabitants are like grasshoppers' (40:22); '[he] makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness' (40:23); he created the stars and calls all their billions by name (40:26). This juxtaposition of God's self-exaltation and self-humbling is pervasive in the biblical picture of God's providence and is near the essence of his peculiar and wonderful glory." (John Piper, Providence [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2020], approximate Kindle location 4684)

The Servant Songs begin shortly after, at the start of chapter 42. "I, the Lord, will answer them myself, as the God of Israel I will not forsake them….'Present your case,' the Lord says. 'Bring forward your strong arguments,' the King of Jacob says. Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place; as for the former events, declare what they were, that we may consider them and know their outcome. Or announce to us what is coming" (Isaiah 41:17, 41:21-22).

The Best Arguments For The Enfield Poltergeist

In a post last year, I made some recommendations about how to begin studying the Enfield case. What I want to do in this post is make some suggestions about how to argue for the case's authenticity.

Because the evidence for it is so multifaceted and so strong in so many contexts, and because there's some variability in which arguments will persuade which people, there are many approaches you can take that would have some merit. I'm not suggesting that the approach I'll outline below is the only one that should be taken. You can make whatever adjustments you think are appropriate to my recommendations, but I'll discuss a few of the arguments I would include. I'll start with a couple that I think would be the easiest to use, then mention some that are harder to articulate, but have a lot of value.

Are Gnostic and pagan documents part of Roman Catholic tradition?

In the mid 1990s, I met a man online named John Wallace who impressed upon me the value of hostile corroboration. He made good use of the corroboration of Christianity that we have from ancient non-Christian sources. I also read some material in Philip Schaff's church history that left an impression on me in that context. A series I wrote on the canon of scripture several years ago has a segment about hostile corroboration of the New Testament canon, and it concludes with a quote from the material in Schaff's church history I just referred to. Ever since I came across Wallace and Schaff's work, I've given a lot of attention to hostile corroboration as a line of evidence. You can find many traces of it in my work over the years.

I often think of that line of evidence when I see Catholics and Orthodox claim that Protestants are relying on Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox tradition when we accept our canon of scripture, interpret it in light of ancient sources, or some such thing. They act as though anything outside of scripture should be equated with Catholic or Orthodox tradition. I know that hostile corroboration has long been a large part of what shapes my views on matters like the canon of scripture and scripture interpretation. When Bible translators make judgments about how to render the Biblical text, Biblical commentators decide how to best interpret certain Biblical passages, and so forth, they rely partly on information they're getting from Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Trypho, Celsus, Porphyry, archeological artifacts, and other ancient non-Christian sources. And something like a New Testament manuscript or a catacomb inscription isn't always accompanied by an extensive statement of faith on the part of the individual(s) who produced the manuscript or inscription. Think of the absurdity of suggesting that everything from Josephus to Celsus to an ancient New Testament manuscript from a largely unknown source is equivalent to Roman Catholic Sacred Tradition.

But many Protestants are taken in by that sort of argumentation. And many Catholics and Orthodox think they're arguing well when they utilize such poor arguments. That's largely because we're such a secular, trivial culture that doesn't think and talk about issues like these nearly enough.

If a Catholic or Orthodox just wants to argue that part of what Protestants are relying on is Catholic or Orthodox tradition, then that qualifier should be added upfront rather than later in the discussion. And they should justify their claim about partial dependence on their tradition and explain why that partial dependence allegedly is problematic. A Protestant doesn't have to accept, and shouldn't accept, the assumption that all or even most of the church fathers or other early Christians were Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. And even if they had been Catholic or Orthodox, Catholics and Orthodox often depend on information they get from Protestant or other non-Catholic or non-Orthodox archeologists, historians, Bible translators, patristic scholars, etc. So what? All of us make our historical judgments, including judgments about matters like religion and morals, on the basis of testimony or other evidence from sources outside our church, denomination, or ecclesiastical movement. Again, so what?

Jesus' Use Of Object Lessons

In her book on the historicity of the gospel of John, Lydia McGrew discusses how the gospels agree about Jesus' frequent use of object lessons (The Eye Of The Beholder [Tampa, Florida: DeWard Publishing, 2021], 393-95). He used the presence of his relatives (Matthew 12:49-50), bread (Matthew 16:5-12), children (Mark 9:35-37, 10:13-16), fishing (Luke 5:4-10), a well (John 4:7-14), a need for feet to be washed (John 13:1-17), etc. to illustrate points he wanted to make. Lydia concludes:

"This is what Paley means by a 'visible agreement of manner' in the teaching of Jesus throughout the Gospels. He points out further, '[N]othing of this manner is perceptible in the speeches recorded in the Acts, or in any other but those that are attributed to Christ….[I]n truth, it was a very unlikely manner for a forger or fabulist to attempt; and a manner very difficult for any writer to execute, if he had to supply all the materials, both the incidents, and the observations upon them, out of his own head.'" (395)

Don't Underestimate Prophecy Fulfillment

Prophecy fulfillment is often underestimated in a lot of contexts for a lot of reasons. For example, it seems that people often underestimate the value of prophecy fulfillment that's occurred since the Biblical era, and there's probably more than one reason why that happens. We hear more about the postbiblical era than the Biblical era, since we have more evidence for the former and it's closer to our time. We become more accustomed to it accordingly, and we often grow increasingly less appreciative of something the more we're accustomed to it. And we don't have any Biblical passages informing or reminding us that the prophecies have been fulfilled and how significant those fulfillments are, since the fulfillments occurred after the Bible was written. I suspect there's also an overreaction to false claims that have been made about alleged prophecy fulfillment in our day and in previous generations. People overreact to those false claims by going too far in the other direction, so that they neglect the fulfillments that have occurred.

Here's a post I wrote a couple of years ago that provides some examples of postbiblical prophecy fulfillment and how to argue for it. And this post goes into more depth about how to think through and articulate the principles involved. Here's one that lists some examples of prophecies fulfilled by non-Christians and/or whose fulfillment is acknowledged by non-Christians. The list includes some postbiblical fulfillments.

How To Argue For Miracles And Demonic Activity In Particular

Here's something I recently wrote in private correspondence about miracles. I was addressing a large number and variety of issues and providing links to articles that say more, so I didn't go into a lot of depth in the correspondence itself. I wasn't attempting to cover every category of miracle or every related issue.

Further Testing On The Enfield Knocking Phenomena

In 2010, Barrie Colvin published an article documenting that some knocking phenomena in several paranormal cases had a different acoustic quality than normal knocking. More recently, John Fraser did some research on the subject and wrote about it in a book he published last year, Poltergeist! (Washington, United States: Sixth Books, 2020). Chapter 6 of that book discusses some work he did with James Tacchi to replicate Colvin's findings. Colvin, Fraser, Tacchi, and others who have written on this subject over the past several years have made suggestions for further research and added further qualifiers to Colvin's initial findings. For example, Tacchi was able to duplicate the acoustic properties of paranormal knocking by normal means when the audio recorder was around 15 feet away. But the distinction between normal and paranormal knocking seems to hold up when the recording device is closer to the source of the knocking. You can read Fraser's book and the other relevant sources if you want more details.

I don't know much about acoustic issues. I've been able to follow some portions of these discussions, but haven't been able to follow others. However, I've done a lot of research on a poltergeist case, Enfield, for which we have a large amount of relevant information and audio recordings. I want to discuss some examples of relevant incidents and information from that case that Colvin, Fraser, Tacchi, or anybody else who's interested could look into. For example, as Fraser mentions in his book, it's important that we know how close the audio recording device was to the source of the knocking, and it would be good to have a knock done by normal means in the nearby context for the sake of comparison. I know of some incidents on the Enfield tapes that meet one or more of the relevant criteria, and there's a lot of potential to find more such incidents on the tapes.

Support For Christianity From Ancient Non-Christian Sources

A decade ago, I collected some links to many of Triablogue's articles on corroboration of Christianity from ancient non-Christian sources. I recently updated the post. Some links have been added, and some have been changed. I've also revised the text below the links.

How Difficult It Would Have Been To Fake The New Testament's Historical Details

The political condition of Palestine at the time to which the New Testament narrative properly belongs, was one curiously complicated and anomalous; it underwent frequent changes, but retained through all of them certain peculiarities, which made the position of the country unique among the dependencies of Rome. Not having been conquered in the ordinary way, but having passed under the Roman dominion with the consent and by the assistance of a large party among the inhabitants, it was allowed to maintain for a while a species of semi-independence, not unlike that of various native states in India which are really British dependencies. A mixture, and to some extent an alternation, of Roman with native power resulted from this arrangement, and a consequent complication in the political status, which must have made it very difficult to be thoroughly understood by any one who was not a native and a contemporary. The chief representative of the Roman power in the East—the President of Syria, the local governor, whether a Herod or a Roman Procurator, and the High Priest, had each and all certain rights and a certain authority in the country. A double system of taxation, a double administration of justice, and even in some degree a double military command, were the natural consequence; while Jewish and Roman customs, Jewish and Roman words, were simultaneously in use, and a condition of things existed full of harsh contrasts, strange mixtures, and abrupt transitions. Within the space of fifty years Palestine was a single united kingdom under a native ruler, a set of principalities under native ethnarchs and tetrarchs, a country in part containing such principalities, in part reduced to the condition of a Roman province, a kingdom reunited once more under a native sovereign, and a country reduced wholly under Rome and governed by procurators dependent on the president of Syria, but still subject in certain respects to the Jewish monarch of a neighboring territory. These facts we know from Josephus and other writers, who, though less accurate, on the whole confirm his statements; they render the civil history of Judaea during the period one very difficult to master and remember; the frequent changes, supervening upon the original complication, are a fertile source of confusion, and seem to have bewildered even the sagacious and painstaking Tacitus. The New Testament narrative, however, falls into no error in treating of the period; it marks, incidentally and without effort or pretension, the various changes in the civil government—the sole kingdom of Herod the Great,—the partition of his dominions among his sons,—the reduction of Judaea to the condition of a Roman province, while Galilee, Ituraea, and Trachonitis continued under native princes,—the restoration of the old kingdom of Palestine in the person of Agrippa the First, and the final reduction of the whole under Roman rule, and reestablishment of Procurators as the civil heads, while a species of ecclesiastical superintendence was exercised by Agrippa the Second. Again, the New Testament narrative exhibits in the most remarkable way the mixture in the government—the occasional power of the president of Syria, as shown in Cyrenius’s “taxing”; the ordinary division of authority between the High Priest and the Procurator; the existence of two separate taxation—the civil and the ecclesiastical, the “census” and the “didrachm;” of two tribunals, two modes of capital punishment, two military forces, two methods of marking time; at every turn it shows, even in such little measures as verbal expressions, the coexistence of Jewish with Roman ideas and practices in the country—a coexistence which (it must be remembered) came to an end within forty years of our Lord’s crucifixion. (George Rawlinson)

Reports Of Disembodied Hands

In my post yesterday, I quoted some comments by Stephen Braude about how reports of paranormal events are sometimes "similar in so many peculiar details" (The Limits Of Influence [Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc., 1997], 26). An example I've noticed that goes across multiple types of paranormal phenomena is the involvement of disembodied hands. The appearance of disembodied hands is a recurring theme in Braude's discussions of various mediums in his book cited above (43, 142, 146, etc.). As I've discussed elsewhere, disembodied hands were sometimes reported in the Enfield Poltergeist. The post just linked refers to how Alan Gauld and A.D. Cornell discuss the appearance of disembodied hands in their book on poltergeists and hauntings.

It wouldn't be too hard for people to occasionally lie or be honestly mistaken about seeing a disembodied hand, but the frequency with which it's reported and the highly credible nature of some of those reports are significant. It seems more likely that something paranormal is going on than that all of the witnesses have been mistaken in the same unusual way.

How The Nature Of A Miracle Can Be Evidential

"Even if witnesses were biased or predisposed to experience paranormal phenomena, that would not explain why the biased misperceptions or reports are similar in so many peculiar details. One would need an elaborate psychological theory (to say the least) to explain why people of dissimilar backgrounds and cultures, with apparently no common needs to experience bizarre phenomena of any sort, independently report (for example) 'raining' stones inside a house or the intense heat of apports." (Stephen Braude, The Limits Of Influence [Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc., 1997], 26)

Early Christian Access To Evidence We Don't Have

In some ways, we're in a better position to judge issues pertaining to the truthfulness of Christianity than people in the ancient world were (advances in knowledge in relevant fields, the development of technology that helps us evaluate the issues, etc.). But there are other contexts in which the people who lived in the ancient world, or some subset of them, were better off than we are. One of the advantages they had that people today often underestimate is access to writings that are no longer extant.

There's a patristic document that provides many illustrations of that advantage, but that document doesn't get discussed much. I suspect few people involved in apologetics and other relevant contexts have read it. I'm referring to Jerome's Lives Of Illustrious Men. It has 135 sections, but they're short, so it doesn't take long to read. He provides brief overviews of the lives of individuals who lived during the first few centuries of Christianity, mostly Christians. The primary value of the document in this context is what Jerome tells us about what those individuals wrote. Many of the writings he refers to are no longer extant. But they were available to the earliest Christians and shaped what they believed.

You can read Jerome's entire document on one page here, but without any notes. Or you can read it with notes and with each section on a separate page here.

His list of individuals is far from exhaustive. And there are some documents he doesn't mention that were written by the people he discusses. Martin Hengel noted, "of the second-century Christian writings known to us by title, around 85% have been lost. The real loss must be substantially higher." (The Four Gospels And The One Gospel Of Jesus Christ [Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000], 55)

The Hiddenness Of God

A recent article by Jonathan McLatchie makes some good points on the subject.

How Much The Early Sources Agree About The Apostles

In a recent post on Peter's prominence in the New Testament, I mentioned a significant similarity in how Matthew 14:29 and John 21:7 portray Peter. When people discuss agreements among the gospels and other early Christian sources, agreements about Jesus get the most attention, for good reason. But there are many agreements on other matters as well, including about other individuals. Peter is a good example, and I provide some illustrations in my post linked above (his impulsiveness, his outspokenness, etc.).

But something else should be noted, which doesn't get as much attention, and it's illustrated in the passages in Matthew 14 and John 21 mentioned above. Notice that the passages not only portray Peter behaving so similarly, but also agree about the behavior of the other disciples. They're more reserved, more hesitant to act, or however you'd put it. That's also reflected in another passage I cited in my earlier post, John 20:6. John refrains from entering the tomb, but Peter goes in. There are many examples of agreements like these in the gospels, Acts, Paul's letters, etc. That's a problem for skeptical views that involve less common ground among the early Christian sources, higher levels of carelessness, and so on.

The Perennial Jewish Corroboration Of Christianity

What's below are some comments from Augustine on Jewish corroboration of Christianity. Notice that he was writing about 1600 years ago and that his comments are applicable to every century of the church's history. We're sometimes told that people didn't have much evidence for Christianity during most of church history, as if people had little evidence for the religion between the earliest years of the history of the church and the modern era. Supposedly, recent developments in fields like archeology and historical scholarship have brought about a major change. Those who lived in the medieval era, for example, allegedly didn't have much evidence to go by. It's true that they had significantly less evidence than we have, but they had more than is often suggested. Augustine is addressing a significant line of evidence for Christianity that's existed throughout church history:

"Indeed, it is a great confirmation of our faith that such important testimony is borne by enemies. The believing Gentiles cannot suppose these testimonies to Christ to be recent forgeries; for they find them in books held sacred for so many ages by those who crucified Christ, and still regarded with the highest veneration by those who every day blaspheme Christ. If the prophecies of Christ were the production of the preachers of Christ, we might suspect their genuineness. But now the preacher expounds the text of the blasphemer. In this way the Most High God orders the blindness of the ungodly for the profit of the saint, in His righteous government bringing good out of evil, that those who by their own choice live wickedly may be, in His just judgment, made the instruments of His will. So, lest those that were to preach Christ to the world should be thought to have forged the prophecies which speak of Christ as to be born, to work miracles, to suffer unjustly, to die, to rise again, to ascend to heaven, to publish the gospel of eternal life among all nations, the unbelief of the Jews has been made of signal benefit to us; so that those who do not receive in their heart for their own good these truths, carry, in their hands for our benefit the writings in which these truths are contained. And the unbelief of the Jews increases rather than lessens the authority of the books, for this blindness is itself foretold. They testify to the truth by their not understanding it. By not understanding the books which predict that they would not understand, they prove these books to be true." (Reply To Faustus The Manichaean, 16:21)

Some Examples Of Undesigned Coincidences

A series of brief videos providing examples of undesigned coincidences was recently posted to Lydia McGrew's YouTube channel. It's a good introduction to the subject. You can click on each of the video links below. For a book-length treatment, go here.

One: What An Undesigned Coincidence Is
Two: Destroy This Temple
Three: Did Jesus Need GPS?
Four: Do You Love Me More Than These?
Five: How Did King David Lose One Of His Best Friends?
Six: I Am Among You As One Who Serves
Seven: So, You're A King?
Eight: The Feeding Of The 5000
Nine: The Nazareth Inscription
Ten: Was Paul A Slacker?
Eleven: Was Timothy Jewish Or Greek?
Twelve: What Happens When You Try To Lay A Trap For Jesus?
Thirteen: What Herod Said To His Servants
Fourteen: Why Is It Hard To Get Churches Interested In Apologetics?
Fifteen: Why Would Jesus Be Rude?

Facts Don't Care About Your Religious Feelings

Ben Shapiro's line, "Facts don't care about your feelings.", is popular among political conservatives. And it should be. It's a good line. At the time I'm writing this, the tweet just linked has close to 400000 likes. The line and variants of it are often repeated, featured in memes, etc.

But it's remarkable how many conservatives have far less concern about facts and reason in religious contexts. If you follow religious discussions at political web sites, on political talk radio, on political television programs, and so forth, you notice that there isn't much interest in religion and that the few religious discussions that do occur tend to be of a shallow nature intellectually. There's often not much depth in their political discussions either. The people who go to these web sites, listen to these radio shows, etc. largely want somebody else, like Shapiro, to do the intellectual work for them. But at least there's more interest shown in intellectual matters and more intellectual work done by laymen in political contexts than in religious ones. And they don't just know more about politics than religion. They also seem to know a lot more about sports, humor, movies, music, and other subjects than they do about religious matters.

Political conservatives are better than the average American in a lot of ways. (See the sources linked here for some of the relevant documentation.) Most Americans don't care much about intellectual issues in religious or political contexts. But if political conservatives are going to be so (rightly) critical of the emotionalism of the political left, and they're going to keep showing so much interest in sentiments like the one expressed in Shapiro's popular line, they ought to be making far more of an effort to be consistent about it. The sentiment Shapiro is expressing matters more in religion than it does in politics, but people act as though the opposite is true.

Soteriology As Evidence For The Gospels

A neglected line of evidence for the harmony and historicity of the gospels is their agreement on soteriological issues. I'll cite several examples.

They all approach salvation from a first-century Jewish perspective, as a matter of needing to be reconciled to the God of Israel because of our sin. In all four gospels, Jesus doesn't just lead people to God the Father, but also calls them to himself to an extent unprecedented among the prophets, priests, kings, and other earlier leaders and later church leaders: come to him, believe in him, follow him, he forgives sins, etc. Salvation is framed in terms of being Abraham's children in a spiritual rather than physical sense (Matthew 3:9, Luke 19:9, John 8:39). The redeemed are referred to as children in a broader sense as well, without the connection to Abraham, and as young children in particular (Matthew 18:3, Mark 10:14, Luke 11:13, John 13:33). Salvation involves entrance into the kingdom of God (Matthew 5:20, Mark 10:15, Luke 18:24, John 3:5). All of the gospels portray Jesus' crucifixion as salvific, as illustrated by the Last Supper and Jesus' comments in John 6, for example. There's a common theme of Jesus as the shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (Matthew 26:31, Mark 14:27, Luke 15:4, John 10:11). All of the gospels agree on the freeness of salvation, in the sense that it's received through faith alone, as illustrated in my recent post on justification apart from baptism. All four gospels portray repentance as implied by faith, so that repentance will sometimes be mentioned alongside faith to emphasize it, whereas only one or the other will be mentioned on other occasions. They agree in having faith accompanied by regeneration and sanctification, so that saving faith is evidenced by improved behavior. Matthew 11:28-30 has Jesus offering rest and a yoke simultaneously. John 5:24 lays out justification through faith alone, then follows it with a reference to judgment according to works in 5:29. And the gospels agree about the general parameters of the connection between faith and works. Jesus demands perfection (Matthew 5:48, Mark 12:28-31, Luke 6:36, John 15:12), and there are comments about how "difficult", "impossible", etc. his demands are (Matthew 25:24-26, Mark 10:17-27, Luke 18:18-27, John 6:60), yet those demands are accompanied by his acceptance of individuals who fall well short of what he's demanding. Men like Peter and John are portrayed as redeemed individuals and different than the average person (having faith, associating closely with Jesus, etc.), but they still sin to a significant degree. There's also agreement that individuals like Judas were never saved to begin with. People often associate the thinking behind 1 John 2:19 with the fourth gospel, but some of the same concepts are found in Matthew 7:21-23.

To appreciate the importance of agreements like these, consider how easily the gospels could have disagreed, even disagreed radically, on these matters. Think of the wide variety of views of salvation of one sort or another found in Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, etc. To cite an example I discussed in another recent post, think about the role of baptism in the gospels. Given the tendency in Christian circles to make baptism more prominent in later centuries, it would have been easy for one or more of the gospels to have given baptism a much more prominent role if the gospels had been written later and were less historical.

The Importance Of Your Testimony As A Miracle Witness

In the comments section following my recent tribute to Maurice Grosse, I had a discussion with a commenter, Anthony, about a subject I want to expand upon here. It's significant, and it has implications beyond Enfield. He commented on how we haven't been hearing much lately from some of the Enfield witnesses. I discussed how common that sort of thing is (in life in general, not just in paranormal contexts), and I went into some of the reasons why it may happen in a given situation.

In the course of the discussion, I mentioned some examples of Enfield witnesses who have remained active in discussing the case and their involvement in it (Graham Morris and David Robertson). Another example who came to mind, though I didn't mention him there, is John Rainbow. You can go here to read a post I put up in January of 2019 about what Rainbow experienced and his importance as a witness. Something that's significant about him in this context is the situation surrounding his death. When Melvyn Willin was putting together his recent book on Enfield, he contacted some of the people involved in the original events to get their thoughts on the case a few decades later. Concerning Rainbow, he wrote:

Mrs Rainbow - the wife of John Rainbow a local tradesman who had witnessed Janet levitating - replied that unfortunately her husband had died in July 2018, but she confirmed that he had continued to believe that what he had seen was a genuine levitation. She added, "…he also had a witness who also saw what was happening [an apparent reference to Hazel Short]." (The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes [United States: White Crow Books, 2019], 117)

Notice how much had to be in place to produce that section of Willin's book. Rainbow would have to have an ongoing willingness to discuss the issues with other people. He did it to such an extent that his wife had the impression described above, that he held the belief in question until his death. And he'd made the relevant contact information available. His wife not only read the letter sent by Willin, but even responded to it and provided so much significant information and allowed her response to be published.

By contrast, think of how many people never tell anybody about such an experience they've had, only mention it once, don't provide any means of contacting them again later if the need arises, etc. How many witnesses' spouses would be willing to read a letter like Willin's, respond to it in such a valuable way, and allow the response to be published? Many people would be so apathetic, lazy, angry, or whatever that they wouldn't even do half that much. What Rainbow and his wife did is commendable, and I wish more people would do it.

If you've witnessed a miracle of some sort (or had some other significant experience), have you left any record of it for other people? Have you provided the relevant details to relatives, your church, or other people who could pass the information on to others over time? Have you made yourself available for further contact in case more information is needed? We should ask ourselves questions like these and apply the same scrutiny to ourselves that we apply to other miracle witnesses.

Principles For Evaluating Prophecy

Here are some examples of what we should take into account (and see here for more):

- In the abstract, how likely is it that the prediction would be fulfilled by normal means?

- How many examples are there of the prophecy being fulfilled historically? Let's consider the Servant Songs of Isaiah, for example. We could begin with the abstract question mentioned above. Before we consider named historical candidates for fulfillment, how likely does it seem upfront that any entity would fulfill the predictions in question, such as those in the Servant Songs? We could then move on to the historical question of whether any entity has fulfilled the prophecy and how many have done so. For example, "Christians claimed that the facts of Jesus' life were proclaimed beforehand in the Jewish prophecies, but [according to Celsus] in fact the 'prophecies could be applied to thousands of others far more plausibly than to Jesus' ([Origen's Against Celsus] 2.28)." (Robert Wilken, The Christians As The Romans Saw Them [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984], 115) Celsus' claim is absurd, and he never backed it up. But there's an element of truth in the underlying reasoning, namely that we should apply this historical test I'm referring to. If a skeptic is going to claim that there's nothing significant in how Jesus' life lines up with a prophecy or series of prophecies, yet he can't name anybody else whose life lines up comparably or better, that's significant. Critics like Celsus should be asked to name names and provide the relevant documentation.

Jesus' Fulfillment Of The Seventy Weeks Prophecy

One of the themes I've been emphasizing about prophecy fulfillment is that a fulfillment can be evidential for Christianity even if the fulfillment is thought to be of a secondary or typological nature. For example, though I've argued that the Servant Songs in Isaiah are about the Messiah in their original context, Jesus' alignment with the passages is evidentially significant in support of Christianity even if the passages are about the nation of Israel, a Jewish remnant, or some other entity instead. See the article just linked for a further discussion of that example.

The same is true of Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy. See the article on that prophecy here by Robert Newman. I consider his interpretation of the passage the best one I've seen. I take it as the original meaning of the passage. But even if I'm wrong, it still seems evidentially significant that Jesus' life lines up so well with the passage in the manner discussed by Newman. Even if you think the passage in its original context refers to some entity other than the Messiah, that Jesus fulfilled it in some significantly different way than how Newman proposes, or whatever, it's still significant that Jesus was crucified during the sixty-ninth sabbatical cycle after the 445 B.C. decree to rebuild Jerusalem. And there are other ways in which Jesus' life lines up well with the passage. See the second-to-last paragraph of the post here for further discussion.

The more Jesus' life lines up so well with passages like the Servant Songs and the Seventy Weeks prophecy, the more difficult it is to deny that something supernatural has occurred. It's noteworthy that you don't even have to grant a Christian understanding of the original meaning of these passages to reach the conclusion that there's been a supernatural fulfillment of the passages.

Great To The Ends Of The Earth

Billions of Gentiles are celebrating the resurrection of the Jewish Messiah.

"It is too small a thing that you should be my Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make you a light of the nations….he will sprinkle many nations, kings will shut their mouths on account of him…he will prolong his days [after death]…I will allot him a portion with the great" (Isaiah 49:6, 52:15, 53:10, 53:12)

"Name for me one other human being (let alone one other Jew) who has come anywhere near fulfilling these verses. There is none….Just consider how utterly absurd it would have seemed if as you stood at the foot of the cross as Yeshua suffered a torturous, ignominious, shameful death, someone told you, 'Two thousand years from now, this man will be the world's most famous Jew and world history will be divided into the years before his birth and the years after his birth. Hundreds of millions of people from all world religions will forsake their idols and their dead traditions and will instead become followers of the God of Israel through him.' Yet this is literal truth, without a hint of exaggeration. We dare not downplay the significance of this." (Michael Brown, Answering Jewish Objections To Jesus, vol. 3 [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2003], 160)

Modern Evidence For Christianity

When people use traditional arguments for Jesus' resurrection at Eastertime or use such arguments on other occasions, an objection will sometimes be raised about the nature of the evidence. Supposedly, we have too little evidence for events from antiquity, God ought to be providing more evidence, he should be more active in the world today if he was so active in the past, etc.

People often underestimate the traditional arguments for Christianity. We should continue using those arguments and should explain to people why and how they're underestimating the arguments in question. But we should supplement the more traditional arguments with newer ones, including ones focused on evidence from the modern world. I want to provide some examples, then comment on some related issues.

Go here for a series I wrote several years ago about miracles in the modern world, based on Craig Keener's two-volume work on miracles. Steve Hays has discussed modern apparitions of Jesus. We've sometimes written about God's unusual providence in the lives of modern Christians, such as answers to prayer in the life of George Muller. See here, for example. And here's something I wrote about video evidence for miracles. In another post, I wrote about modern evidence for the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Earlier in this post, I mentioned arguments that come up in the context of Easter. People typically think of arguments for Jesus' resurrection that are appeals to evidence from antiquity. But see here for a collection of posts we've written over the years on the Shroud of Turin, which involves a lot of evidence of a more modern nature.

Something we need to keep in mind, though, is that every generation can claim that it's the generation in which human knowledge has advanced more than ever before and that it has the latest technology. Just as we have more knowledge and technology than previous generations, the same will be true of the generation after ours. And the next one. And the next one. Why think God should have parted the Red Sea or raised Jesus from the dead in our day? What if people a few generations from now think of our generation as too ignorant, not advanced enough, etc. to be at the center of God's attention? It's likely that we will be viewed that way, if human history continues on its normal course long enough. Why think our generation's knowledge and technology represent the pinnacle? While people today speak so highly of video evidence, for example, how unadvanced will our video technology seem to people living a hundred or a thousand years from now? How much can you anticipate future technological developments? How many people a hundred years ago were expecting what we have today?

We should supplement traditional arguments for Christianity with more modern arguments. But we should keep in mind that the more modern arguments aren't necessary and are often overestimated.

Bias Is Just One Factor Among Others

The issue of bias came up in a recent thread. Being biased and being unreliable are different things. A biased source isn't equivalent to an unreliable source. We get a lot of our information about the Roman empire from Roman sources, Jewish history from Jewish sources, American history from American sources, etc. We do that sort of thing in many contexts, even the most ordinary contexts of our everyday lives. We trust what relatives tell us concerning subjects they're biased about, trust doctors who have various biases, trust banks who have financial biases, and so on. If somebody wants to sell us something, we don't just take his bias in favor of getting money into account. We also consider a lot of other factors: his conscience, his moral standards, his religious views, the history of his behavior in relevant contexts, the potential legal problems he would face if he defrauded us in some way, what would happen to his reputation, etc. There are checks and balances in life, and we take those into account. You can't just isolate the factors that would move a source in the direction of unreliability and ignore the factors that would move him in the other direction.

I doubt there are any skeptics who never believe what a skeptic tells them about issues closely related to Christianity, since skeptics are biased. Rather, atheists frequently trust what other atheists tell them in those contexts, Muslims frequently trust Muslims, etc. It's simplistic to isolate bias from every other factor and act as if we should decide whether to believe a source based solely on whether the source is biased.

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about the credibility of the witnesses in the Enfield Poltergeist case. The opening paragraphs address issues related to assessing witnesses in general, and much of what's said there is applicable here.

Though we don't need to cite non-Christian sources to substantiate conclusions that are favorable to Christianity, there are many non-Christian sources that can be cited. Here's a post I put together several years ago about non-Christian corroboration of the claims of the early Christians.

Much of the information we have on the relevant non-Christian sources is currently extant only in Christian sources (e.g., what Celsus wrote is extant in Origen's response to Celsus), but we have the same kind of situation in other historical contexts. Statements made by Roman emperors are currently extant only in sources other than the writings of those emperors, something said by Tacitus is only extant in another source who preserved what he said, something a murder victim said prior to his death is preserved by a court witness who heard him say it, etc. Even when the source who preserved the material in question is biased in some relevant way, we don't dismiss what he's reported just because he's biased, for the reasons I've explained above.

Christians aren't the only people who follow the reasoning I'm outlining here. Rather, these are principles widely accepted by historians, scientists, atheists, Muslims, Hindus, etc., not just Christians.

Easter Resources 2020

I've been posting a collection of Easter resources each year for about a decade:

2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019

There's an archive of our posts with the Easter label here. And you can search for posts with other labels by replacing the word Easter in the URL with another phrase (Resurrection, Empty Tomb, Cross, etc.). Keep clicking on Older Posts at the bottom of the screen to see more posts.

We've written some e-books that address Easter issues. See the e-books section of the sidebar to the right.

A few years ago, I posted a collection of articles on skeptical myths about the church fathers. Many of those articles address Easter issues.

Here are some examples of posts we've written on Easter subjects over the years:

Miracles On Video
Easter Prophecy Fulfillment
Resurrection Evidence Outside The New Testament
Early Non-Extant Documents On The Resurrection
Evidence For The Empty Tomb
Early Affirmation Of The Empty Tomb From Gentile Non-Christians
Jesus' Burial And Empty Tomb Outside The Gospels And Acts
Evidence For The Shroud Of Turin
Fifty Agreements Among The Resurrection Accounts
The Consistencies Among The Resurrection Accounts In 1 Corinthians 15, The Gospels, And Acts
The Restrained Nature Of The Resurrection Accounts
The Contrast Between The Prominence Of Female Witnesses In Luke And Their Lack Of Prominence In Acts
Alleged Errors And Contradictions In The Resurrection Accounts
Harmonizing The Resurrection Accounts
The Context In Which The Gospels Were Composed
How Early The Synoptics And Acts Were Written
The Authorship Of Matthew
The Authorship Of Mark
The Authorship Of Luke And Acts
The Authorship Of John
The Authorship Of The Pauline Letters (see the comments section)
The Historicity Of Acts
Easter Material Corroborated In The Letters Of Peter
Why It's Significant That The Earliest Sources Don't Narrate The Resurrection Appearance To James
Evidence That Saul Of Tarsus Saw Jesus Risen From The Dead
The Spiritual Body Of 1 Corinthians 15
Why Didn't The Risen Jesus Appear To More And Different People?
Why Doesn't Jesus Appear To Everybody?
Matthew 27:52-53
How The Apostles Died
How To Make A Case For The Resurrection
Independent, Converging Lines Of Evidence For Jesus' Resurrection
What If Alleged Miracles, Like Jesus' Resurrection, Were Caused By A Currently Unknown Natural Process?
Miracles In The Modern World
Reviews Of Debates On Jesus' Resurrection

After the 2019 Easter Resources post linked above, Steve Hays linked an article on astronomical evidence for the date of the crucifixion. Here's something I wrote about Jesus' fulfillment of the first three Servant Songs in Isaiah. Steve presented an argument for penal substitution based on the events surrounding Jesus' death. I wrote a post addressing the common claim that the guards at the tomb, people touching Jesus' resurrection body, and other such details in the resurrection accounts were fabricated in an attempt to make the resurrection seem more credible. Steve linked a video of Darrell Bock and Gary Habermas discussing the evidence for the resurrection and its implications. He also posted some Good Friday artwork and music (here, here, here, here, and here). And he posted a satirical video about the regulative principle of worship and Easter. I wrote about the significance of prophecy fulfillment in the context of Easter. Steve responded to a skeptic of the resurrection. His response addresses Paul's view of the resurrection, the empty tomb, and a lot of other issues. I wrote about how the gospels are corroborated in the letters of Peter. The post addresses the crucifixion, the empty tomb, whether the author of the letters claims to have been a resurrection witness, and other issues related to Easter. Steve wrote about the appearance of Jesus to Paul on the road to Damascus, the nature of the appearance and the evidence for it. Later, he posted some excerpts from a book about the resurrection of the Servant in Isaiah 52-53. In another post, he addressed the light motif in scripture and how it relates to resurrection. He later discussed the passages in John 20 that refer to Jesus appearing to people after the door where they were had been locked. He also wrote about the implications of idealism for Jesus' death and resurrection. I made some suggestions about how we should argue for prophecy fulfillment, such as by using the Servant Songs to argue for fulfillment in the modern world. Steve linked an article by Gary Habermas on how Jewish scholars have viewed Jesus' resurrection. I wrote about some connections between Easter and Christmas in Isaiah's Servant Songs. Steve posted about a recent book by Lydia McGrew, and he commented on some issues related to Easter in the process. He then commented on John 20 and whether and how the resurrected Jesus walked through walls. He also linked a video by Michael Brown about Matthew 27:52-53. I expanded on the theme of light in the gospels, in connection with Jesus seeing himself as the light of Isaiah's Servant Songs. Steve addressed some alleged contradictions among the gospel accounts about the women who went to Jesus' tomb and, in another post, the women at the cross. I wrote about video evidence for miracles, which is relevant to disputes over the possibility of miracles and what evidence we have for them. The post discusses some of the principles involved in evaluating miracle claims and the significance of video evidence, and I provide links to some online videos of miracles. Steve quoted Lydia McGrew on the earliest evidence for the resurrection. He also quoted her on the subject of harmonizing the resurrection accounts.

Miracles On Video: Some Examples

People often ask for video evidence of miracles (atheists, agnostics, cessationists, etc.). Some individuals even demand video of miracles, or come close to demanding it, as if any other evidence would be insufficient. I want to provide some examples of miracles caught on film and other forms of evidence for miracles involving video.

But I'm going to offer some qualifiers first. There are some background and interpretive issues that should be addressed.

Regarding the principles involved in evaluating the credibility of witnesses, including those involved with videos, see here. For an outline of my view of the paranormal, see this post. Expectations are important in judging the videos I'll be discussing below. People often bring false expectations to this kind of discussion, which distorts their judgment. I can't address all of the relevant issues here. But it may be helpful to some readers to briefly outline some of the explanatory options for paranormal phenomena.

Not every paranormal ability or event has to be either good or evil or have come directly from a being such as God or a demon. An ability or event can be neutral in some sense. An ability can be something somebody was born with or developed over time, akin to having an unusually good memory or eyesight or a musical talent. It's neutral in the sense that it could be used for good, evil, or neither. A paranormal ability could be latent, then be manifested later in a person's life for whatever reason. Not every paranormal ability or event has to involve some kind of strength. It could be a weakness of some sort, a result of the malfunctioning of a person's soul and/or body. You can't assume that something allegedly paranormal is fake or demonic, for example, just because you find it disgusting, nonsensical, or objectionable in some other way. And so on. I can't go into these issues in a lot of depth at this point. But given how little our culture discusses these things and how much bad reasoning there is on these matters, it's useful to lay out some of the explanatory options for those who haven't given these issues much consideration. Some of the resources I'll be citing below expand on these themes.

The Credibility Of The Enfield Witnesses

An important component of evaluating Enfield or any other paranormal case is to judge the character of the witnesses. On the reliability of witnesses in general, especially as it pertains to the paranormal, see Stephen Braude's article here. I've said a lot in other posts about the evidence we have for the trustworthiness of the witnesses in the Enfield case (the initial skepticism of some of the witnesses; the ongoing skepticism of witnesses who corroborated the case; witnesses admitting facts against their interest when they could easily have denied those facts without being refuted; evidence against the fabrication of the case for money; evidence against the fabrication of the case for attention; etc.). What I want to do in this post is provide some additional illustrations from the tapes of Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair. I'll use "MG" to refer to Grosse's tapes and "GP" to refer to Playfair's. MG3B is tape 3B in Grosse's collection, GP78A is 78A in Playfair's, etc.

Human testimony is generally reliable. Many of our previous posts, on Enfield and other topics, have addressed the reliability of human memory and the limitations of the explanatory value of hallucinations, for example, and Braude's article linked above addresses such issues. We don't begin with a default assumption that people are lying, nor should we even be agnostic. Liars typically are highly selective in what they lie about. They don't have an interest in lying about most topics. And there's a danger of lying so much that their dishonesty isn't as believable as they want it to be. So, even unusually dishonest people have a lot of motivation to often tell the truth. And there are checks and balances in life. A desire to be dishonest in a particular context can be outweighed by some negative consequences that might or probably would follow from that dishonesty. Where one person has a motive to be dishonest, other people involved have motives to be honest and to oppose the dishonesty of the first individual. Where multiple people are involved in a deception, coordination is required, not only initially, but also for however long they want to maintain the deception afterward. The obstacles that sort of coordination will face are often difficult or impossible to anticipate. Planning and carrying out a deception involve time, effort, and other resources, and the more extensive the deception is, the higher the price that has to be paid to carry it out. Even where two people are sufficiently motivated to be dishonest, they can be dishonest in opposing ways. The larger the number of people we're supposed to think are lying in the same way, even though one or more of them could benefit significantly from lying in a different manner, the more problematic a fraud hypothesis becomes. And so on.

In the remainder of this post, I want to move on from these general principles to the details involved in the Enfield case. I'll start with some of the general parameters of the case, then get into some of the lesser details provided by Grosse and Playfair's tapes.

Arguing For Prophecy Fulfillment From Common Ground With Skeptics

Christians often argue for Biblical prophecy fulfillment by using prophecies that are highly controversial, both in terms of the meaning of the passages and their alleged fulfillment. Critics often object to supposed fulfillments in the ancient world on the basis that we know too little about ancient history in general or the portion of ancient history that's most relevant to the fulfillment of prophecy. Or they'll argue that what we know is inconsistent with the claim of prophecy fulfillment.

One way to meet those objections is to argue that although the fulfillments occurred in the ancient world and are highly controversial, the evidence we have for them is sufficient. But another approach worth taking is to focus on the fulfillments that are acknowledged by critics, especially ones for which we have a lot of evidence in the modern world.

In the past, I've often cited the example of what the Old Testament predicts about Israel and the Messiah's influence on Gentiles. See this post on Jesus' fulfillment of Isaiah's Servant Songs, for instance. What I want to do in this post is supplement what I've argued elsewhere, such as in the article just linked.

The Number Of Enfield Witnesses

I recently finished listening to Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's audio cassettes pertaining to the Enfield Poltergeist. Those tapes mention many witnesses who aren't discussed in Playfair's book on Enfield or in other material that's easily accessible to the public. So, it's useful to reassess the number of witnesses involved in the case.

In my experience, the number of Enfield witnesses is typically described as being thirty or more, such as the "at least thirty" reference in the preface to Playfair's book (This House Is Haunted [United States: White Crow Books, 2011], ix). That's a highly conservative estimate, though. I would estimate that the number is a triple-digit one. A lot depends on factors like what qualifies as a paranormal event and whether you require testimony from each witness or only reports about witnesses. One difficulty is that the terminology involved is often ambiguous. A plural term will be used to refer to who was present when something happened, but the number of people involved isn't specified beyond the use of the plural. At this stage of my research into Enfield, I would say that the number of people who witnessed at least one paranormal event affiliated with the case is at least in the upper double digits and probably in the low triple digits.

And there's a lot of potential for the discovery of other witnesses in the future. Not all of Grosse's signed witness statements have been made public, for example. And paranormal events associated with the case were reported as recently as the mid 2000s. A man in his twenties who witnessed an event in the year the case started, 1977, might only be in his sixties today. So, even witnesses of the earliest events in the case could easily still be alive and continue to be alive for multiple decades to come. For a variety of reasons, people who witness something like a paranormal event sometimes don't tell anybody or many people about it initially, but tell more people later. We also need to keep the surroundings of the Hodgsons' house in mind. They lived on a highly-traveled road.

The significance of that fact was impressed upon me when I began listening through the Enfield tapes. I eventually went to tape 1 in Grosse's collection and worked my way through all of the tapes, but I had decided ahead of time that there was one tape I wanted to listen to before I began that process. It was tape 32B in Grosse's collection, the recording of Janet being dragged out of bed by the poltergeist a couple of times at around 1:30 in the morning on December 3, 1977. Something that struck me about that tape, which I wasn't expecting, was how often you could hear vehicles driving by even at that time of day. As I would eventually learn, that's a common feature of the tapes. It was a busy road, even late at night. Grosse was impressed by the heavy traffic, and you can hear him asking John Burcombe about it on one of the tapes (53B in Grosse's collection, 57:27). Burcombe seems to say something about how the street was commonly used as a shortcut to get somewhere else. Since the family wanted the lights kept on at night, the house would have stood out from the others around it, and people driving by would have been able to see inside to some extent. You wonder how many people saw objects levitating or other significant events while driving by, perhaps often without recognizing the significance of what they'd seen. But given how fast most of the vehicles drove by, I doubt that there was much that happened along those lines. Still, it's worth keeping in mind. And there were times when vehicles had to drive more slowly, or even stop, outside the Hodgsons' house. There was a school directly across the street. In fact, the crossing guard, Hazel Short, stored her stop/go sign in front of the Hodgsons' house. She witnessed a levitation of Janet on December 15, 1977 through the windows of the house while performing her crossing guard activities.

The presence of a school there is significant for other reasons as well. A lot of school staff and students would be there, many people would park nearby, etc. Last year, I asked David Robertson about the possibility that more people than the four who are usually discussed may have witnessed Janet's December 15 levitation, and he responded:

With the December 15, 1977 levitation of Janet, there were people outside on the other side of Green Street collecting their children [from the school that was there]. I suspect there were more than four, but some probably didn't want to be interviewed. Some were quite frightened. Maurice and Guy dealt with this as they had the audio recorders and collected statements. All I can say is that if you could identify the school and class, you might get others.

Grosse interviewed Robertson about the December 15 events on the morning of December 16. On that tape, Robertson comments on the teleportation of some objects through a bedroom window to the front of the Hodgsons' house. He mentions that "a lot of people in the school opposite were watching" (48A, 1:47).

Curtains would often obstruct a view of the inside of the house. However, in addition to occasions when the Hodgsons kept one or more of the curtains open, the poltergeist often moved the curtains, and even removed them entirely, as I discussed in another post. The December 15 witnesses were able to see inside the house because of a couple of factors like the ones I just mentioned. The poltergeist was blowing at least one of the curtains inward, and it had entirely removed the curtain from one of the windows.

If you want to get some idea of how well people could see the front of the house even from the other side of the road, where the school is, here's a video of the outside of the Hodgsons' house that was recently recorded. At one point in the video, you can even see a woman who now lives there (presumably) walking out of the front door.

Given these and other factors, I think it's highly likely that there were a lot more than the roughly thirty witnesses often referred to. The number on record seems likely to be in the low triple digits, and it could easily grow in the years to come. I have lists with names and documentation, but I'm still working on some of the details and looking into some other possibilities. It's useful at this stage, though, to provide an approximation of the number of people involved.

Jesus' Fulfillment Of The Other Servant Songs

Isaiah has been called the fifth gospel for good reason. We've written a lot about the evidence for Jesus' fulfillment of passages like Isaiah 9 and 52-53, such as here and here. But I want to say more about a few passages in Isaiah that Jesus has fulfilled that don't get discussed as often. The fourth of the passages commonly referred to as Servant Songs, 52:13-53:12, gets a lot of attention. The three Servant Songs that come before it, in chapters 42, 49, and 50, are discussed much less. They're the subject of this post.

At the outset, I want to repeat something I've noted before about prophecy fulfillment. Jesus' alignment with Isaiah 42, 49, and 50 would be highly evidential for Christianity even if we were to conclude that he only fulfilled the passages in a secondary, typological way. Even if we thought the passages originally or primarily referred to Israel, a remnant within the nation, Isaiah, Deutero-Isaiah, or Cyrus, for example, it's tremendously unlikely that Jesus' life would just happen to align with the passages as much as it does. So, it's not enough for critics to argue that the passages are about some entity other than the Messiah, Jesus in particular, or whatever. They have to also go on to address how closely the passages line up with Jesus. A Christian could, for the sake of argument, grant a non-Christian understanding of the primary meaning of the passages, yet argue that Jesus wouldn't have naturalistically lined up with the passages as well as he has. Something supernatural seems to be going on.

I also should note that my material on Isaiah 9 and 52-53 linked above discusses some of the connections between the first three Servant Songs and other passages in Isaiah. When those other passages refer to a king or the Messiah, for example, those passages give us information about the identity of the figure in the three Servant Songs under consideration here. The connections with other passages are important and should be kept in mind. I'll be mentioning some of them below, but I won't be repeating everything I said in my earlier articles. You may want to read or reread the material on Isaiah 9 and 52-53 to get a better idea of the connections involved.

We have more evidence than we need to prove Christianity

https://www.christianpost.com/news/we-have-more-evidence-than-we-need-to-prove-christianity-apologist-says.html

Christmas Resources 2018

The issues surrounding Jesus' birth are important, but often neglected. I've been posting an annual collection of resources for the Christmas season for several years:

2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017

Go here for an archive of our posts with the Christmas label. Keep clicking on Older Posts, at the bottom of the screen after scrolling down, to see more.

I've written posts that provide the text of the infancy narratives with links to relevant material added to the text. See here for Matthew and here for Luke.

And here's a collection of our reviews of Christmas books. Some of the reviews are on Triablogue, and others are on Amazon or Goodreads.

Raymond Brown's book on the infancy narratives is still widely considered the standard in the field. See here for a collection of responses to the book.

For some corrections of skeptical myths about the church fathers, including on issues related to Christmas, go here.

Here are some examples of the posts we've written on Christmas issues over the years:

Resurrection Witnesses Lived More Than Half A Century

Resurrections, both in the sense of resuscitation and in the higher sense of transformation into an immortal state, are often considered the greatest of the miracles attributed to Jesus and the apostles. But the documents that attribute those miracles to them are often dated to the closing decades of the first century or later. I've argued elsewhere that three of the gospels and Acts were written in the mid sixties or earlier. But even if we dated them to later decades, would their testimony about resurrections be too late to be credible? One way of approaching that issue is to ask how many resurrection witnesses would still have been alive in those later decades.

The claims of resurrection come from a large number and variety of sources, and the claims are placed in highly public settings. There's no effort to explain a lack of evidence by claiming that the resurrections were more private. Jesus' reputation as somebody who raised the dead in Matthew 11:5 comes in the midst of a context unlikely to be made up (the doubts of John the Baptist) and is often considered early Q material. (See the discussion in Craig Keener, A Commentary On The Gospel Of Matthew [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1999], 333-34, where he mentions that most scholars accept the historicity of Jesus' comments in Matthew 11:5-6.) The raising of the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17) is highly public. Its public nature is mentioned frequently and emphatically (7:11-12, 7:17-18, 7:24). Paul refers to hundreds of witnesses of Jesus' resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:5-8). And so on.

Easter Resources 2018

This is my annual collection of resources for the Easter season. Here are the previous years' posts:

2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017

Here are some representative examples of the issues we've addressed:

How To Make A Case For The Resurrection
Independent, Converging Lines Of Evidence For Jesus' Resurrection
Resurrection Evidence Outside The New Testament
Easter Prophecy Fulfillment
Fifty Agreements Among The Resurrection Accounts
The Consistencies Among The Resurrection Accounts In 1 Corinthians 15, The Gospels, And Acts
The Restrained Nature Of The Resurrection Accounts
Evidence For The Shroud Of Turin
The 1982 Carbon Dating Of The Shroud Of Turin
The Context In Which The Gospels Were Composed
How Early The Synoptics Were Written
The Authorship Of Matthew
The Authorship Of Mark
The Authorship Of Luke And Acts
The Authorship Of John
The Authorship Of The Pauline Letters (see the comments section)
The Historicity Of Acts
Evidence For The Empty Tomb
Why It's Significant That The Earliest Sources Don't Narrate The Resurrection Appearance To James
Evidence That Saul Of Tarsus Saw Jesus Risen From The Dead
The Spiritual Body Of 1 Corinthians 15
Why Didn't The Risen Jesus Appear To More And Different People?
Why Doesn't Jesus Appear To Everybody?
Matthew 27:52-53
How The Apostles Died
Miracles In The Modern World
Reviews Of Debates On Jesus' Resurrection

On the sidebar on the right side of the screen, you can access some e-books we've written that address issues relevant to Easter.

After the 2017 Easter resources post linked above, Steve Hays wrote about 1 Corinthians 15:14 and the question of whether we would believe in Christianity or the resurrection if the evidence suggested that it's false. He also responded to Larry Shapiro on a couple of issues related to the resurrection. Steve interacted with Shapiro's response to Mike Licona concerning how Shapiro would react to a modern resurrection. Steve also replied to Shapiro's argument against the resurrection based on the rarity of miracles. Patrick Chan quoted some comments from Craig Blomberg and Ben Witherington on the genre of the gospels. I wrote a list of fifty examples of agreements among the New Testament resurrection accounts. Later, I wrote about how the resurrection appearances mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15 dovetail with what we find in the gospels and Acts. Steve responded to a tendency of some apologists to be overly focused on the resurrection. I addressed the restrained nature of the resurrection accounts. And Steve wrote about the spiritual body Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 15. He also addressed how a popular liberal interpretation of the passage has implications those liberals don't want. I posted a collection of resources on prophecy fulfillment related to the Easter season. And Steve linked an article by Craig Evans on how studying history helps us understand Easter. Steve and Patrick linked some videos of Easter music: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Steve provided an overview of how he'd make a case for Jesus' resurrection. He also wrote about the nature of the resurrection body, in response to Dale Allison. And here's something he wrote about passages in the resurrection narratives that are sometimes taken as Jesus materializing or dematerializing. He also addressed the relationship between the soul and the body and the significance of the resurrection in that context. He later wrote about the relationship between information and the resurrection body. I wrote about the evidence that 1 Timothy 5:18 cites Luke's gospel as scripture and the significance of that fact for Easter issues. Steve wrote about the number of angels at Jesus' tomb and the possibility of the use of idiomatic expressions.. He also wrote about evidence for the deity of Isaiah's Suffering Servant. Another post by Steve discusses whether prophecy fulfillment, like Jesus' fulfillment of the Suffering Servant passage, could be staged. I linked an article that discusses some evidence for the deity of Isaiah's Servant figure and the connections between the Servant passages and others in Isaiah. Steve and I addressed the objection that Jesus should make an appearance to every individual or every Christian, much as he made an appearance to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. Here's Steve's response. And here's mine. Steve wrote about the issues involved in harmonizing the resurrection accounts, using the analogy of four people reporting on what happened during a high school reunion. He also wrote a response to Bart Ehrman, part of which addresses resurrection issues. And a later post responding to Richard Carrier is partly about the resurrection.