Well, welcome to my talk today. Thank you for joining us in this particular workshop. And my paper for today that I'm going to be presenting is called The Resurrection and the Identity of Jesus, the Modest Lutheran Contribution to Apologetics. And Lutherans have not been known for being particularly apologetically inclined people. So I'd like to talk about one of the dimensions of apologetics that we Lutherans have actually been somewhat competent at, and that's the significance of the resurrection for the identity of Jesus and the centrality of the resurrection and the apologetic task. In this, Lutherans over the past half century or so, have been most drawn to what is known as evidentialism or evidential apologetics. The historical matter of Christ's resurrection is, in this case, the primary site at which Lutherans seek to defend the truthfulness of Christian claims about God, the world, Jesus Christ, and us. So my paper will consist of four parts. First, I'll lay out the rationale for evidentialist arguments and provide some remarks about what these are, especially in the case of the resurrection. Then I'll do some comparison and contrast with the two other dominant strands of apologetic argument, presubstitutionalism on the one hand and classic apologetics on the other. Finally, I'll conclude with some comments about what we might learn from evidential arguments for Christ's resurrection and what Lutherans might have to contribute to the conversation about why the Christian faith is important and what good reasons we have to believe that Jesus is raised. So my basic thesis is that Lutheranism, or Lutheran evidentialism rather, sits fundamentally between Thomism on the one hand and Calvinism on the other. And so it therefore represents a distinctive approach that's also theologically significant in its own right. And that's really more the vantage from which I approach this is theologically, why is apologetic methodology and the various different ones, why are they significant and what do they say about the people who use them? So, evidentialism in brief profile. Maybe the most crucial feature of evidentialist approaches to apologetics is that it regards historical matters as the primary domain in which Christian truth claims are to be tested in advance. The prime features of this line of argument seem to have biblical precedent, of course, because the Christian faith is a distinctly historical religion, It's distinctly historical, and the nature of the reality claims that the Christian faith makes are also historical. They're claims about history. Classic models of apologetic argumentation are often multi-tiered in their approach to discussion, evangelism, and debate. One begins first with a reputation of atheism, using one or more of the arguments for classic theism. Perhaps the cosmological argument, and there are many kinds, Perhaps the cosmological argument would be deployed to prove that the world must have metaphysical grounding of some kind, since the world cannot be self-caused or self-grounded. Some version of a moral or teleological argument might also proceed on a similar basis, in other words, offering some sort of fundamental grounding for the teleology that we see in the world, the fundamental design So we might proceed on this basis. Or perhaps the metaphysics of perfect being, now this is my personal favorite argument for God's existence, would be used to argue that God is that in which nothing greater can be conceived. The greatest possible being must have the property of existence in order to actually be the greatest possible being, therefore God exists. Now this is my favorite argument for God's existence. Please repeat that title again. Could you repeat that, your favorite argument? The syllogism? Yeah. Yeah. So, God is that then which nothing greater can be conceived. So the greatest possible being must have the property of existence in order to be the greatest possible being. Therefore, God exists. So that's basically the ontological argument in a nutshell. And if you want to know the details, talk to this guy. The crazy red shirt in the back. Okay, so from here, various arguments about the reliability of the scriptures, the coherence of biblical Trinitarianism and such within the framework of classical theism, and maybe the viability of other Christian claims will then be assembled piecemeal. A cumulative case approach would take the various aspects of apologetic method and put them together in a multi-pronged case for the truth of the Christian faith. Evidentialism, on the other hand, proceeds by making the historical claims of the Christian faith the central field upon which the apologetic task is fought and won. The historical events told of in scripture It is not simply enough to say that God exists, but that God has revealed himself in a particular way, and that he has done and said specific tangible things in history. If we might say that Judaism is founded on the historical event of the Exodus, so also is Christianity founded on the historical event of the resurrection of Jesus. This is not to say that Judaism and Christianity do not make other historical claims about God's action in history, but it is to say that not all events stand on equal footing. The historicity of Adam or Abraham or Isaiah is not quite the same thing as saying that God raised up Jesus from the dead just as he previously raised Israel out of Egypt. Now, scripture authorizes such an approach to defending the viability of the Christian faith. 1 Corinthians 15 well. Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we have testified about God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those who have already fallen asleep in Christ must have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. Likewise, Peter exhorts us to be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks context of this chapter of Peter, this is 1st Peter 3.15. In the context of this chapter, Peter's talking about the hope, specifically the resurrection. So such an evidential apologetic, because it is of a synthetic and historical nature, is naturally probabilistic. This is to say we will always be arguing in terms of the likelihood that contingent events that could have been otherwise, talking about the likelihood that they happen, and therefore they're not true by definition. They require reasons and evidences in order to furnish us with a rationale for actually believing them. Even so, some very sophisticated efforts to give historical reasons for Christ's resurrection have been mounted by some important scholars in recent years, including Richard Swinburne, M.T. Wright, Michael Lacona, and two Lutherans that I'll mention, Wolfert Pannenberg and John Bork Montgomery. Presuppositional is now. Presuppositional apologetics, especially in its popular Vantillian form, this comes from the Dutch reformed theologian Cornelius Vantill, in this form doesn't outright reject the use of historical evidences or inductive argumentation, but it rejects the notion that these should be central lines of apologetics always shape the way in which data are assessed and evaluated. If presuppositions are faulty or inconsistently applied, then no matter of convincing inductive argument will bring one to a viable conclusion. This is especially the case because historical method is variable. In some cases, historical method is unevenly applied to some events and not to others. Moreover, presuppositionalists will point out that facts are not self-explanatory. Brute facts are no more than this. To say that Jesus was probably raised does not, the presuppositionalists will point out, necessarily validate Christian claims about God. They may, in fact, have another explanation. So brute facts themselves don't demonstrate much more than that they simply have Simply demonstrating that Christ's resurrection is likely does not necessarily carry with it everything that evidentialists want to freight it with, or so the presuppositionalists will point out. Now, evidentialists are not entirely unaware of this reality that facts are not necessarily self-interpreting, and they've done important work providing methodological and historiographical criteria for evaluating historical truth claims. Even so, presuppositionalists will assert that the primary apologetic task is to demonstrate that the Christian faith is the only truly coherent worldview, and that any of its alternatives either have interior logical flaws, or they are self-unaware in the way that they actually rely on premises that are indebted to Christianity in some fashion, but then reject in the end. against the alternatives. Now they'll typically argue on analytic and axiomatic terms from the truths of reason themselves and then find within these a commitment to the biblical view of God in the world. Sometimes this approach to apologetics seems futile when engaging Christianity's alternatives. After all, why would you assume the conclusion that you're trying to prove to somebody else, or rather, convince somebody else of, why would you use circular reasoning to convince somebody of something? Perhaps this actually convinces nobody of anything, unless you already buy in. So the exercise isn't completely self-defeating, of course, because it is an attempt, at least rhetorically, to demonstrate that any conditions for reasoning at all are fundamentally indebted to Christian worldview, Such argumentation is designed to help people understand exactly this. So there's a significant theological dimension to the presuppositional alternative, and it's worth noting for the purpose of this particular talk. Most presuppositionalists tend to be reformed in their theology, if not in their soteriology, and therefore they're committed to the fundamental fallenness of humanity, including human reason. So there's no way to argue someone into faith, they say, because rationality itself is a gift of divine provision. Faith in the Christian God is likewise a product of divine predestination as well. Therefore, a negative sort of argument, using reason to show human ignorance and blindness in sinful rebellion against God, is the way that they actually defend the faith. It is a consistent application of their belief in human sin, known as total depravity. to our minds as well. Calvinists will often point out Romans 1 as evidence of this human blindness to the truth of God's revelation in creation. Natural revelation constitutes a particular problem for the presuppositionalist in this case. While they may not deny what's known as the sense of the divine or the sensus divinitatis, you know, just a general sense in all people that there is a God out there, While they may not reject this, it doesn't necessarily rise to a fully robust view of God's revelation of himself in the natural world. The danger of idolatry always presents itself, they will say, because, as Calvin liked to point out, the human heart is an idol-making factory. And the suspicion of natural revelation in many Reformed thinkers makes them cautious St. Thomas Aquinas. Thomism, as it is called, commits an error precisely by positing that theology is some sort of synthesis between natural philosophical knowledge of God on the one hand, and supernatural biblical knowledge of God on the other. Another aspect of this on the divine side of things, if you will, is the resistance to the idea that anything other than God himself could be the evidentiary basis upon which to establish his authority. Presuppositionalism proceeds as an argument about the authority upon which someone bases their reasoning, and with the intention of demonstrating that the Christian worldview is the only one that doesn't commit someone to fundamental logical errors. Consequently, the Calvinist tendency to exalt God and his holiness and infinite qualitative distinction from us slogan, Soli Deo Gloria. This forms the backbone of their apologetic method. Okay, classical apologetics, classical theism. Let's talk about that now. Classic apologetic model, which appeals to such arguments as the cosmological one, is not the exclusive possession of Roman Catholics. However, the classic approach finds its greatest inspiration in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. argument for God's existence. Aquinas importantly links classic apologetics to classical theism, the notion that God is an unmoved mover who grounds the world's contingency, since he is the necessary and uncaused being who sets in motion all things other than himself, including the world. Classic apologetics, with various versions of the cosmological, moral, teleological arguments, they've done important works in in this line of argumentation. If it's taken as part of a larger cumulative case for the existence of God as well as the corresponding coherence of the Christian faith, then it is one of the most important building blocks of such an argument for Christianity. Having shown that theism is more reasonable than the conclusion of atheism, the apologists can then proceed to show that the God who made the world in a very particular way. Arguments about the authority of scripture, the historical truth of the Bible, the historical reliability of the resurrection accounts, all of these can be offered in more specific reference to the Christian faith thereafter. In this way, classic apologetics must move beyond generic theism to the viability of Christianity in particular. So it's sort of at least a two-step sort of argument. The debt to Aquinas and Catholicism is significant here. For Aquinas, theology is queen of the sciences, therefore provides a coherent framework for structuring all human knowledge. Natural knowledge of God is distilled in the form of arguments for theism in general. It must then be supplemented with the contents of special revelation in the Bible in order to offer a fully robust and Christian view of reality. Of course, in Aquinas' case, the revelation of God isn't necessarily limited to the Bible, but it also includes the tradition of the church, the magisterium, and arguably the papacy as well, although it's important to note that there's not a fully developed doctrine of papal infallibility yet, at the time of Thomas Aquinas. So the classical approach to apologetics is If the human will is free in some sense, even aided by grace, of course, then human rationality can be enlightened by such arguments for classic theism, for God's existence. Even if humans are captive to sin and must be freed by grace in order to make a free choice for God, such arguments for God's existence can be a part of a broader appeal for accepting Christian faith. Even Roman Catholics will admit that grace must free the sinful will in order for it to make a choice in favor of God and his revelation. Classic apologetic method would critique presuppositionalism for being unhelpfully circular, even if its circular reasoning is technically valid. Exponents of the classic approach would say that presuppositionalism probably cedes too much of the field in the interest of its theological view that humanity is totally depraved. They will say that there are important arguments to be made from the contingency of the world and to the necessity of God's own being. They will also say that using these arguments in concert with other ones for the rational viability of faith are an important dimension of making the case for a truly robust Christian worldview. So all of these things taken together are important aspects of defending the Christian faith. So I'll kind of draw this to a conclusion. And what I'm wanting to communicate here is evidentialism as a Lutheran contribution to apologetics. Now, of course, not all evidentialists are Lutherans, and not all Lutherans are evidentialists, but evidentialism has been particularly popular amongst the Lutherans, and most Lutherans who are interested in apologetics happen to be evidentialists. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about this. So I come to this year's conference to make a slight revision of something I said last year. My paper at last year's conference dealt with classic Protestant approaches to scripture. One of the things that I discussed was Luther's and Calvin's views of the Bible as self-interpreting and self-authenticating, because of the work of the Holy Spirit, of course. On this basis, I sort of concluded my paper by saying that Luther and Calvin would probably be more amenable to the presuppositionalist framework than any other particular apologetic methodologies. Now, I'm going to leave Calvin off, because I do in fact think that his general theological perspective does fit very well with the presuppositionalist way of thinking. I've had the opportunity to actually think this over, and I'd like to account for a small piece of evidence that I didn't give so much thought to when I was writing my paper for last year. So it's worth asking, why have Lutherans been drawn to evidentialism? Perhaps the foremost evidentialist apologist of the last several decades, John Ward Montgomery, is himself a Lutheran theologian. Others, like Wolfhard Kahnenberg, a German scholar, have proposed that the historical nature of the Resurrection is of singular and unique importance for the rational coherence of the Christian faith. Such arguments from evidence for the Resurrection are not undertaken at the expense of other such arguments, but they have pride of place, because the Resurrection is an utterly unique event. If the Resurrection is true, then other arguments about its significance, the propriety of using classical theism, the truthfulness of the Bible, If the Resurrection is true, all of these other arguments are simply triage. They are secondary and simply shore up the primary argument, which is about whether Jesus is raised. Nor does this ignore the historiographical problems of events and their non-self-evident character. An evidential argument for the Resurrection must also of historical evidences. Now, Michael Lykona, not a Lutheran, but has written an important book dealing with many of these historiographical issues. That is, what sort of historical methodology do we use to approach history that will reliably allow us to evaluate historical claims? Now, Lykona has helpfully used this in service at least on that score. I would suggest that this, however, is also a sort of distinctly Lutheran contribution to apologetics in the sense that it focuses all things on the events of God's revelation of himself to us. Classic apologetics suffers a sort of distinct weakness because it speaks of God in general. This is fine on some level. I wouldn't deny it. But it does not bring us to the gracious and merciful God who reveals himself to us specifically in Christ's death and resurrection. You have to take it another step beyond simply proving the existence of God. Lutherans with St. Paul and many other Christians, of course, are aggressively interested in discussing God, not in the abstract necessarily, but moving to Jesus Christ, focusing on historical evidences, These evidences for the Resurrection also properly ground the doctrine of the Trinity. In a rather pithy way, the Lutheran theologian Robert Jensen has said that God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead. God's tripersonal character is on display in the event of the Resurrection of Christ, both in the Father's raising of Him from death and in His Spirit's bestowal Trinitarian event. Lutherans have rightly focused, therefore, on the Resurrection, and on the historical evidences for it, because of their distinctly Christ-focused way of proclaiming the Gospel. The heart of the Christian faith itself is that Christ has been delivered on the cross for our sins, and that His Resurrection vindicates the salvation that He brings to each one of us. The risen Christ now imparts His Holy Spirit to us, creating faith and sustaining us in our new life with Him. With an emphatic focus on the resurrection of Jesus, Lutheran evidentialists have made a distinctive contribution to the apologetic task, and they've done so in a way that is actually consistent with their stringent commitment to Christ crucified and raised. It is in this way I suggest that Lutheran evidentialism can be correctly situated between Thomism and Calvinism. So my point here is to say Lutherans have not simply adopted evidentialism out of convenience or at random, but it is a commitment that actually arises from some fundamentally distinctive Lutheran theological commitments, just as Thomism in particular has provided us with a particular way of arguing about or arguing for God's existence that comes from distinctly Roman Catholic convictions about God and the world. Likewise, presuppositionalism arises naturally from a Calvinist perspective on grace, free will, human nature, and the fallenness of human reason. So that's what I wanted to suggest today, is that Lutheran evidentialism is not simply offered at random or out of convenience, but it's a methodology that arises from the way that we distinctively view and confess the Christian So I wanted to have plenty of time for discussion. So I have left that. How much time do we have left? I've got about 18 minutes left. 18 minutes, all right. Matt. What do you think is the biggest problem with the evidentialist model? I think the hardest part is that historical events are not naturally self-interpreting. And so there are worldview constraints arise when you're trying to make an evidential argument for, say, the historicity of Jesus. So it appears simple at first blush, right? You say, all right, well, we're going to deploy a historical argument to show us that the New Testament's witness to Christ's being raised is true, or reliable, or something like that. So we're going to make a probabilistic argument, maybe using Bayesian theory, like Swinburne. Well, the problem is that there's, it appears simple at first, but there's a huge complex of methodological and historical sort of baggage that has to get front loaded into the entire enterprise. And so it actually ends up being very, very complicated. And so I think that's ultimately the biggest issue for the evidentialist approach. There's more actual work to be done with it than it might at first appear. Yeah, you mentioned John Ward Montgomery and he's still out there. Right now he's making a strong case for the inerrancy of scriptures and he's trying to fight the movement within evangelicalism that's kind of watering down not only inerrancy but gospel reliability. So he's still out there kicking, but You know, Dr. Geisler, my old mentor that just went to be with the Lord this last June, he was, in fact, it was William Lane Craig who was one of their students at Trinity Evangelical Divinity. They would actually, in between classes, have these heated debates between classical apologetics and the evidentialism of John Warwick Montgomery. Yet, when Craig asked Geisler what he thought of John Warwick Montgomery, he thought he was going to say something And he said, oh, the guy's a genius. He's probably the most brilliant guy I know. But it's neat to see Montgomery still out there, still doing it. And of course, Geyser is the classical approach. So he believed you argue for God first, and then you go to historical evidence. Whereas Montgomery would argue that the Bible always assumes God's existence, never argues for it. mention though about evangelism is that if you prove Jesus rose from the dead, but it's outside of a theistic framework, it could be just viewed as just a really weird event. But within the theistic world view, it shows, okay, when this proves God's not going to raise a liar or a lunatic from the dead, it proves Jesus' claims to be God, Savior, and Messiah to be true. Yeah, but it's nice to know Montgomery's still out there. Yeah. Couldn't you argue though, Doc, that if the evidence is really strong, that you can not prove, but at least show that it's more likely than not that Christ rose from the dead, you can actually argue for Christianity backwards. Because if it is true that Christ rose from the dead, then everything he said in his life is true. So it goes back, you could argue from there on. That's my professor. Another one of my professors, Gary Habermas, did that exactly. He said, he starts with the resurrection, argues for the resurrection, but he says once you have the resurrection, then you say, wow, that's really unique. One guy rose from the dead, never to die again. What was his worldview? And then he uses that as an argument for God. I don't think I think Montgomery is just, once you get the resurrection, you get the whole deal, but whatever the case, yeah. But I think that Geiser's point is well taken, that without the theistic framework, it could be considered just kind of a weird event. At the same time, I was just talking to Dan Kreft earlier, where what I don't like about the presupposition is, yes, we interpret things through the lenses of our worldview, but when our worldview keeps having problem after problem after problem, in our thought to where we go to another worldview, and I certainly think the bodily resurrection of Jesus and Nazareth from the dead. Could be, you know, the straw that breaks the camel's back where the atheist says, okay, not only did Jesus rise, but, in fact, I had a guy, he's a Navy scientist guy, that I had him over my house, and he, his friends were Christians, they were trying to lead him to Christ, but he had a problem, he was an atheist, and he thought science proved atheism. So he came over my house and he asked nothing but questions evolution I answered his objections and a few months later I asked if he had ever come to Christ and he said yeah and I said when did you come to Christ he said well six months ago when I had dinner at your house and you answered my questions about God and science and I said but I never gave you the gospel message and he said oh yeah but others did and I had no problem with Jesus but how can I as my God and Savior if I don't believe in God. And so, once the Holy Spirit removed the obstacles in this area, then it was enough for him to then embrace. So, yeah, and this idea that, you know, classical apologists argue in a logically coherent way. Evidentialists do that. Presuppositionalists do that. They've got their own logical foundations. The fact of the matter is most human beings on the planet Earth, including apologists, Blaise Pascal's thought, so that sometimes it just takes a little piece of evidence out here for us to move from there to say, okay, now I'm willing to accept Christ. It doesn't always follow that 12-point apologetic methodology of Geisler or whoever else. Yeah. Any other questions? What are your views on the effectiveness of the minimal case argument? Clarify for me the minimal case argument. Well, taking what the opposition would give us as true, empty-tuned. This is Gary Haberman. You might be able to explain it better. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do think that there are some problems with this, if I understand exactly the minimal case. Because ultimately what And this goes into precisely the historiographical problem that goes along with making an evidential case for the resurrection. Because if you create an artificially critical framework from which you're going to argue for the likelihood of specific events, you can end up, at least on a rhetorical level, undercutting certain other theological commitments that you would have. And I think that the big one here I didn't want to bring in necessarily was, like Hona is now at this point where he's admitting that there might be certain mythological material inside the New Testament itself, because if you sort of minimize the And, you know, to put it kind of bluntly, you might end up with, like, a view of the New Testament that's not really that different from, say, like, Rudolf Bultmann's, but at least you have a physically raised Jesus. But that doesn't, like, that presents pretty serious problems theologically when we want to interpret and teach the New Testament as an inspired text, or a collection of inspired and inerrant texts, right? Does that get out of your question at all? Yes, very good, thank you. Yeah, I think that would be my issue with the minimal case. So I appreciate that sort of argumentation in a very narrow scholarly sense, because it might be really, really situationally effective. On the other hand, if it is taken too far and goes to these sort of eccentric lengths, you might end up just undermining the authority of scripture, on the other hand. In your evidential approach, do you see, okay, with historical criticism, so much is based on kind of the latest biblical criticism. Yeah. And it's almost, it's just okay to ignore what the church fathers have said. about like who wrote the Gospels, when they were written, things of that source. Now it's like it's like assumed by so many that Mark wrote first, Matthew was an unknown author, Luke maybe an unknown author borrowed from Mark and then had some extra information, all this wild speculation. In your approach, in your apologetic approach, do you still look to the early church fathers as reliable sources for where the Gospels came from, when they were written, and things of that sort. Yeah, I do, and I think that some of the most compelling reasons to do so is that within the entire academy as a whole, you have various and sort of inferring or inductively deciding when they were written, how reliable they might be. I'll illustrate for you. So in the biblical studies world, they are maximally skeptical, right? They're maximally skeptical, this is historical critical readings of scripture, maximally skeptical of them. But if you were to go to like a classics department or an ancient history department they would not treat any of the other antique writings that they deal with from the same same era and same general geographical vicinity with that sort of like almost insane level of criticism. And so I think that this is part of the historiographical sort of scaffolding that is the fact that with much contemporary higher critical investigation of the texts, you have an essentially broken methodology that, just from a purely utilitarian standpoint, is just unreliable in delivering than anything else, and I'm more familiar with New Testament scholarship than Old Testament, but that it is just plagued by faddishness. And it's always downstream from English departments, and that's always dangerous. So I would say that this kind of thing can actually be waged within the academy, but probably using something more like a classics or ancient history type of historiography, because that It's just much more reliable in terms of the actual consequences of the type of research that takes place. Just the payout is much better using classics or ancient history to study the New Testament. So that's where I would kind of go with it. Yeah? Yeah, I'd just say, in terms of debunking historical criticism, turn to C.S. Lewis, one of the great literary critics, great literary scholar of our time. Oh, I was going to mention, You could argue he doesn't consider himself an apologist. Probably the greatest American Lutheran apologist is Paul Meyer. Yeah, ancient historian. Yes, archaeologist and ancient historian at Western Michigan University. In the fullness of time, he's written so much about, what did you say, Doc? Yeah, oh yeah, no. In fact, I think he made a statement that something along the lines, and I'm paraphrasing, very loose paraphrase, something along the lines that only New Testament scholars would have a problem with this passage. Historians accept it as, hey, it's reliable, early, you know, and these guys are attacking things that, in the history department, would pass the test with flying colors. He's a great evidentialist because he's laying out the historical evidence for, he said, archaeology is the Bible's best friend. You know, the Egyptology and Assyriology is kind of a tricky case, and I don't know enough about this in particular, but in certain cases, like the archaeological, I would be suspicious of archaeology in certain ways as well, but I think definitely, Well, if there are no other questions, I'm going to take a seat.