Historical Evidence

If you are not already subscribed to the Unbelievable? podcast, you should be. Just about every week, Justin Brierley does a great job of putting together a discussion between believers and non-believers so that we can be a "fly on the wall" as it were and listen in on the types of questions that are raised against Christianity and how those questions and challenges are responded to.

Last week, we got to hear a discussion that, in part, delved into the idea of evidence for the resurrection as a means to faith. Chris Sinkinson, author of Confident Christianity, was discussing with James Croft, the idea that there is much evidence for the historicity of the resurrection. Croft denied such was the case and posed questions regarding why, if that were true, are not more historians believers.


In response, while Chris attempted to explain that the evidence is the same for everyone, but how we interpret the evidence differs from person to person, the conversation ended up with the age-old argument first brought up by Scottish skeptic David Hume regarding the requirement of "extraordinary evidence" to back up "extraordinary claims."

This got me to thinking (again) about this type of challenge. In fact, it seems to me that it is not actually the evidence that is required to be extraordinary. After all, how can one piece of evidence be more extraordinary than any other. We have written documents from those whom we believe to be (or be very close to) eye witnesses of the events. We have scholarly agreement upon many of the historical facts surrounding the death and burial of Jesus of Nazareth as well as reports of sightings of Jesus post-mortem. We have a general consensus regarding what the first disciples believed with regards to these events and how that influenced the start of Christianity.

None of these pieces of evidence is any more or less extraordinary that any other evidence of historical events. But, says the followers of Hume's thinking, in this case, you are asking me to base my eternal destiny on this evidence. To take such evidence and conclude that the Christian God exists and raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead would carry much more broad and life-altering implications and therefore, extraordinary evidence is required as opposed to historical events which, if found to be different than what we learned in high school history class, would have little impact on my life.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it is not the evidence itself that one should expect more from (or more of) but rather, given the life-altering implications of such a claim of history, one must be more rigorous to investigate these claims to ensure that they are accurate. The evidence itself for the empty tomb, the origin of Christianity, the life-change in the disciples, the claims of post-mortem appearances, etc. are evidence enough to reasonably conclude that Jesus was raised from the dead and, by implication, that His claims of divinity and such are true.

Therefore, given the implications of believing such things based on the evidence, I would think that it would be important to ensure that the historical events actually happened. In other words, there better have actually been an empty tomb. It better be true that the first disciples' lives were changed following what they believed to be appearances of a living Jesus of Nazareth after his death and burial. The claims of the first Christians that they saw Christ risen from the dead must have actually been made by those purported to have made such claims.

When I hear people claim that the evidence that would be required (Croft actually claims this during the show) would include physically being present and witnessing the cessation of life and then staying in the presence of the body for three days and seeing with one's own eyes the body suddenly come to life once again, it shows me that people simply do not want to believe. If that is the level of evidence which is needed to make a person believe, well...it doesn't seem like that evidence is possible to provide since we cannot travel back in time with them to give them such evidence.

Instead, it seems to me that we should challenge why the existing, widely accepted evidence is not sufficient for them. Perhaps they do not believe that the evidence is valid because the need more assurance that the evidence is accurate. Fair enough. But please do not claim that "more extraordinary" evidence is required due to the nature of the claims being made. All that should be required is extraordinary effort to ensure that the data is valid and correct.

If the evidence of the resurrection put forth by the likes of William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas and others is historically accurate, then it seems perfectly reasonable (in fact, almost obligatory) to accept the resurrection as historical fact.

Is that extraordinary enough for you?

Grace, love and peace.