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The reader may be familiar with the famous argument from the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume in his essay Of Miracles. Simplified, specifically with reference to the Resurrection, it may be stated as:
"The likelihood of a report of a resurrection being the result of fraud, a mistake, hallucination, or simple misunderstanding is always greater than the likelihood the resurrection actually happened."
I objected to the argument as question begging in a post here. My purpose in this post is not to re-litigate that question, however, or at least not directly, but to explore what is going on with the specific question of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Behind Hume's argument is the assumption that the Resurrection can be reasonably evaluated in a manner similar to other historical questions, like the question of whether King Arthur really existed or Vikings discovered America before Columbus. In other words, it approaches the Resurrection as an intra-historical event.
But the Resurrection, if it happened, is a trans-historical event, not simply another event in history. Nothing much changes with respect to philosophy, the nature of man, the meaning of freedom or history, or even the self-understanding of the British people, if it turns out that King Arthur was really only a mythical personality. A few scholars might be interested but the rest of us can safely ignore it. But the Resurrection, if true, obviously carries deep implications concerning everything we understand about man, the universe and history. In such a case, history could only be understood in light of the Resurrection, not the Resurrection understood in light of other conclusions from history. That is what is at stake with respect to a trans-historical event.
The point is that what is at stake in the question of the Resurrection is one's entire philosophical understanding of himself and the world. And that is how we naturally, and reasonably, evaluate it. G.K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, discusses how he developed a personal philosophy he thought unique and original to him, only to discover when he finished it that it mapped directly onto orthodox Christianity. He came to believe in the Gospel because it was in the light of the Gospel that he knew why everything else he thought true was actually true. Columbo-style evaluation of the Resurrection accounts in the NT had little to do with it.
The same is true in the other direction. A Christian doesn't abandon his faith because a skeptic points out a few discrepancies in the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection. He abandons it because, over time, he has thought about his Christian-based philosophy in its entirety and found it untenable. Detective-style questions concerning the Resurrection accounts may be part of it, of course, but there will likely also be questioning the existence of God Himself, the goodness of Christian morality, and the historical effect of Christianity, among other things.
The trans-historical nature of the Resurrection (whether it actually happened or not) is why debating Hume's argument in standard form typically generates a lot more heat than light. What goes into the "likelihood" that is the basis of the argument is a lot more, for both the believer and the unbeliever, than just isolated witness reports extracted from the New Testament. Those differences in opinion, ranging from opinions on philosophy to history to the existence of God, are where the real conversation must begin.
Discussion (214)
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I don't think one can rule out the possibility of a human being rising from the dead. But the probabilities seem to weight against a human being dying and then coming back to life.
Now, in the case of Jesus, those who say that Jesus died and rose from the dead argue that Jesus wasn't your garden variety human being. They argue that Jesus was 100 percent man and 100 percent God.
So, even if we think that it is impossible for garden variety human beings to rise from the dead, this would not tell us anything about whether Jesus rose from the dead.
The problem, however, is that this just pushed the problem back one more step where we still have to confront it. We then have to examine whether Jesus was a garden variety human being or this special being that is 100 percent human and 100 percent God.
But it is no easier to resolve the question of whether Jesus was 100 percent man and 100 percent God or merely a man than it is to resolve the question of whether a human being died and rose from the dead.
That's why I think it is reasonable to doubt claims that go against our everyday experience. I don't think begging the question is needed. Only our observations about how the world actually works plus the use of induction is needed.
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I would agree with that. So let's stay with the question of whether Jesus rose from the dead.
If He did, then the event would not be just another event in history, it would be an event that transcends history, and we could expect that it would radically change the form of subsequent history. Is this history subsequent to the Resurrection just the same sort of history that had gone on before, for thousands of years, all over the world?
The history of Western Civilization itself, and its revolutionary and unprecedented development after the advent of Christ, all the way up to the modern world, is the thing that made me reconsider Christianity after I had abandoned it when I went to college. Western civilization post-Christ took on a dynamic trajectory simply of a different order than any that had gone on before, and made me suspect something well out of the ordinary happened in Palestine in the First Century AD.
This is another instance of the fact that one's view on the Resurrection brings in to play one's philosophy on everything. The reader who thinks there is nothing special about Western Civilization and its history will not be impressed with the argument I just made.
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I watched a video several weeks ago in which the podcaster evaluated Jesus in light of the prevailing religious attitudes of the time.
Although Jesus lived amidst the influences of Jewish culture, he also lived amidst the Roman culture.
According to the podcaster, it is most likely that the Romans had no problem with the idea that a human could magically rise from the dead. They lived in a mindset where humans could become flowers, as Narcissus did, where gods could give humans they liked special powers and that if an individual was devoted through prayer to a specific god or goddess, that deity might appear to the devout individual while they walked down the street or traipsed through the woods.
So if Jesus was a man, even a miracle working magician of a man, a Roman might not dismiss the stories the public was repeating about him. The streets of Rome itself had magicians who worked their magic, attributing their powers to whichever deity was their preference.
Then the other question comes up for the Romans: if Jesus who was a man rose from the dead, was it through the power of some god or goddess? That mental conception of the resurrection was within the laws of dogma defining their viewpoint.
Where a serious problem for the Romans cropped up was when legions of people began to believe in Jesus, not as a guy who was allowed to rise up from being dead through the power of a god or a goddess, but as an Individual who was Divine. This was especially problematic for Roman society as a whole, as when a Roman converted to Christianity, they renounced their beliefs in the Roman pantheon of gods and goddesses. So tolerance for Jesus-believers evaporated, and soon the Coliseum held Christians who would be offered up to the lions.
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Dudes, Jesus wasn't the only man who rose from the dead.
Hello? Lazarus?
The Centurion's daughter?
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I just gave a homily at a funeral in which I described the strange, scriptural phenomenon in which Jesus performs miracles, including raising Lazarus from the dead, and eye-witnesses who were standing right there when it happened...and they don't get it.
It's not so much that they deny the possibility of what has taken place, as they are completely oblivious as to its significance, its meaning, the demand it places on them.
My theme, in the homily, was that the miracle is not defined by what happened, however likely, unlikely or even impossible it was. The miracle is defined by the experience, in the witness or subject, of overwhelming gratitude, of knowing that what could have been horribly otherwise is wonderfully what it is. (The deceased, subject of the funeral, had reason to be grateful...and was. A sort of miracle in itself.)
I gave this homily at a Masonic lodge in a very small town, to a congregation of perhaps forty five mourners. They got it.
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