April 2, 2025 • 39 mins
Episode Summary:
In this episode of the Apologetics 315 podcast, hosts Brian Auten and Chad Gross discuss the book “Rational Faith” by Stephen T. Davis. They explore the unique approach Davis takes in defending Christianity, emphasizing humility in apologetics and the rational basis for faith. The conversation covers various themes including theistic evolution, the reliability of the Gospels, and arguments for the resurrection of Jesus. The hosts appreciate Davis's ability to present complex ideas in an accessible manner, making a case for Christianity that is both thoughtful and engaging.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:48 Overview of “Rational Faith” by Stephen T. Davis
02:59 Unique Approach to Apologetics
06:10 Humility in Apologetics
09:01 Theistic Evolution and Christianity
11:56 Faith and Reason in Christianity
15:05 Cosmological Arguments for God's Existence
17:52 The Reliability of the Gospels
21:03 The Resurrection of Jesus
34:42 Conclusion and Future Discussions
================================
We appreciate your feedback.
If you’re on TWITTER, you can follow Chad @TBapologetics.
You can follow Brian @TheBrianAuten
And of course, you can follow @Apologetics315
If you have a question or comment for the podcast, record it and send it our way using www.speakpipe.com/Apologetics315 or you can email us at podcast@apologetics315.com
In this episode of the Apologetics 315 podcast, hosts Brian Auten and Chad Gross discuss the book “Rational Faith” by Stephen T. Davis. They explore the unique approach Davis takes in defending Christianity, emphasizing humility in apologetics and the rational basis for faith. The conversation covers various themes including theistic evolution, the reliability of the Gospels, and arguments for the resurrection of Jesus. The hosts appreciate Davis's ability to present complex ideas in an accessible manner, making a case for Christianity that is both thoughtful and engaging.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:48 Overview of “Rational Faith” by Stephen T. Davis
02:59 Unique Approach to Apologetics
06:10 Humility in Apologetics
09:01 Theistic Evolution and Christianity
11:56 Faith and Reason in Christianity
15:05 Cosmological Arguments for God's Existence
17:52 The Reliability of the Gospels
21:03 The Resurrection of Jesus
34:42 Conclusion and Future Discussions
================================
We appreciate your feedback.
If you’re on TWITTER, you can follow Chad @TBapologetics.
You can follow Brian @TheBrianAuten
And of course, you can follow @Apologetics315
If you have a question or comment for the podcast, record it and send it our way using www.speakpipe.com/Apologetics315 or you can email us at podcast@apologetics315.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to the Apologetics three fifteen podcast with
your hosts Brian Auten and Chad Gross. Join us for
conversations and interviews on the topics of apologetics, evangelism, and
the Christian worldview. Ollive meh, it makes perfect sense. Well,
(00:24):
it's groundhog Day again. Welcome to the podcast. I say
that because we tried to record yesterday and it was
an hour and a half of not recording. Here. We
are here, we are we welcome you to the podcast.
I'm Brian Auten and I'm Chad Gross. This is a
podcast where we talk about apologetic stuff. We interview apologists, authors, thinkers,
(00:47):
all surrounding the idea of is Christianity true? In defending
the faith and looking and exploring issues pertinent to the
culture we're living in. So today we're doing a book review.
If you were listening. A couple of weeks ago, we
talked about this book and Chad suggested it. It's called
(01:08):
Rational Faith, A Philosopher's Defense of Christianity. And as I
stare at the name to get it right, Stephen T.
Davis with a pH ched, how you doing today, man.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I'm doing well. I'm looking forward to discussing this book.
As you know, it's one of my favorites. It's a
little gem that I got years ago from IVP inter
Varsity Press. I didn't request it, actually, and it just
kind of showed up in my mail and it was
on my shelf for a while. And it's a short book,
and so I picked it up one day and man,
(01:41):
I couldn't put it down. And I'm going to talk
about when we get going here, I'm going to talk
about some of the reasons I love the book so much.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, So when we say a short book, we're talking
one hundred and seventy four pages, pretty standard print size,
pretty standard hold it in your hands size. And how
would you describe the book, jed Well, I think the
best way to describe it would just be to talk
about what I love about it. What I love about
it is that a lot of times, especially when you
(02:11):
have a podcast like this one, or you just read
a lot of apologetics work, it just seems like you
begin to come across the same arguments and regurgitated in
a different form, and you feel like sometimes you're reading
some of the same you're almost reading the same book
over and over again in a sense. And one of
(02:32):
the things I love about this book is that it gives,
as the subtitle says, a defense of Christianity, but it
does so in a way where it deals with some
of the more prominent thinkers in the skeptical community. He also,
Stephen Davis, does so with some original thinking and some
original arguments, and you can tell as you're reading the
(02:53):
book it's like thinking along with him. And I found
that really refreshing.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
And I just like the fact that he kind of
argues a case for Christianity and then he takes on
a couple of the more substantial challenges to Christianity and
he does so and what I think is a very
thoughtful way, in a very in a way that is
unique to him, and again not something you hear repeat
it often.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So, yeah, Philosopher's defensive Christianity. And that's really what makes
it a little bit different for me reading it now.
So the reader or the listener who is the potential reader.
Here are nine chapters. Is there any such thing as
objective truth? Good start? Kind of like the Turk style thing,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I actually it's funny you said that, because I actually
want to talk about the title of the book. And
I'm going to use Frank Turk as a comparison, So
it's funny that you brought him up.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah, yeah, Number two, why believe in God? So you know,
that's reminiscent in my mind of like William Lane Greig.
You know where he will before he goes into the arguments,
he's talking about the relevance of it. Number three is
the Bible's picture of Jesus reliable? Number four? Was Jesus
raised from the dead? Number five does evolution disprove Christianity?
(04:12):
Number six can cognitive science explain religion? Number seven is
Christianity unique? Number eight do evil and suffering show that
God does not exist? And number nine can we be
happy apart from God? Yeah? So fairly good broad structure
of the book. But man, he covers so much ground
in such a short amount of time. And as you say,
(04:35):
the thing that's enjoyable about it, if you like that
sort of thing, is that he takes you along his
chain of thinking. He's and one of the things is
that he's not trying to prove Christianity is true, but
to show it's rational and intellectually defensible. So that's a
way different thing. Whereas if you were trying to prove
(04:55):
it true, you would try to be just laying out
all these arguments and making a hard cumulative or like
a strong cumulative case, whereas in this case, in this
he's like, well, here, here's sort of like the the
overall logic of why you'd think it's true, and here's
the chain of thought and all the various arguments that
(05:15):
come along for the ride to get you there. But
he's not like making a sales pitch or a hard
case where it's like, Okay, now that I've proven this,
now we can use another building block, and I'm going
to give you this. It doesn't do that, And so
that's refreshing because you can you can kind of read it,
read through it without being like, well, I don't know
if I accept that, because he's not trying to make
(05:38):
you accept that.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah. One of the things that I love about this
book is I think it's a great example of humble apologetics.
And you're touching on why I think that, and what
I mean by that is, and you've you've brought up
Frank Turik, who you know, we've had on the podcast,
and I definitely have benefited from his work and and
enjoy his stuff. But the difference between this book and
(06:04):
Turk is, like you said, in this book, his goal
is to just demonstrate that it is rational to believe,
that Christianity is rational. It's almost like if you're going
to believe or if you're going to disbelieve, he's just
trying to remove that stumbling block of it, well it's irrational, right.
He's trying to give people permission to look into this
(06:27):
and to believe and to show whereas sometimes when you're reading,
for example, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist,
it's almost like there's this there's this feeling of this
is the most rational view, and sometimes it even and
again I benefit from doctor Turk's work, but sometimes it
can even smack of like you're crazy not to believe this.
(06:49):
It's almost there's a difference between I feel like Turk
and Geisler in that book are attempting to compel someone
to believe, whereas Davis is just trying to say, hey,
this is rational, you know, check it out.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Mm hmmm, yeah yeah, And and and then I don't
have enough to faith to be an atheist. They're they're
basically even with the title saying you know, it's not
rational or you know it requires it's not rational to
have to not believe. It's sort of like saying you
need more faith to be an atheist. They say that throughout.
Uh yeah, and so I appreciate that. I I it
(07:25):
was one of my favorite books, first books I read.
You know, look, I look back in that I think Geisler,
to my mind, is is a little too much of
a here's the proof, accept it or not. Yeah, and
it's just too hard, too hard of a sales. It's
a little American for me in the sense of like, yeah,
(07:48):
we're the we're the best, this is the best argument.
This is you know, and rational faith. As you say,
it's a little bit more of a humble approach. Now.
I know we're going to talk about various things, but
one thing that I think demonstrate that and you mentioned
it when we were introducing the book a few weeks ago,
a few episodes ago, I should say, you said people
(08:10):
might disagree with certain conclusions. One one is this chapter
on evolution. Now, so now this is not where we're
going to sit on this book at all. Listeners in
the case you're thinking, but he just says, well, you know,
my view is I think the theistic evolution is true.
(08:31):
But I don't read that and get all defensive. The
way he writes it is like, well, here's my rationale
behind that. And I actually like the fact that that's
his view, because if you are trying to remove obstacles
for the unbeliever, then you can say, like, here this
(08:53):
philosopher who you know, Christians might disagree with this conclusion,
but you know the is not. Oh, the only way
you could be a Christian and accept the Bible is
if you jettison evolution because it sabotages the entire thing
from the ground up, you know. So I kind of
like the fact that if you were giving this to
(09:15):
a non believer, it would be way better for them
than to say, oh, well, I'm a six day creationist.
You know, it's going to lose some credibility in their mind,
you know, most non believers, because of course they're not thinking.
I mean, there's no atheist who's a six day creationists.
At the same time, they have to be an evolutionist.
(09:35):
So if you're lowering the bar to just say, hey,
this is still rational and this is not a central
tenet of faith.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
No, it's really funny you've talked about, you know, the
title rational Faith, and how that's Davis's project here is
to just show that Christianity's rational. That was one of
the things I had in my notes. One of the
other things I had in my notes is very much
like what you just said. So it's really funny how
it's like you're reading a mail. So yeah, in that
(10:06):
chapter where he you know, defends theistic evolution, it's a
great example of what I'm talking about though, of that
humble apologetic If you think back to that chapter, he
lays out Young Earth creationism, Old Earth creationism, ID. He
doesn't besmirch them if you will, or attack them or anything.
(10:27):
He lays them out his views and then says here's
where I come down, right. And so again it's just
him saying this is how I make sense of this,
But he doesn't make it a central issue or an
issue that you know, will make or break whether or
not you accept Christianity. And I very much agree with you.
I remember once I was at Panera having a conversation
(10:47):
with an atheist and he was very much putting a
lot of stock, if you will, in evolution, and I
remember I said to him look, i'll give you evolution.
I'll give it to you. You can have evolution, I said,
you still need to explain the origin of the universe,
the fine tuning of the universe, objective moral truths, the
(11:08):
historical evidence for Jesus's resurrection. Evolution doesn't touch any of that,
I said, So even if I give you biological evolution,
it really doesn't get you very far. And so I
see this kind of like what you're saying is, even
if you don't necessarily agree with theistic evolution, you could
put this in the hands of somebody and this would
(11:28):
at least lay out the views for them and help
them to see that. Oh okay, I don't have to
come down hard on one of these views in order
to be a Christian or to conclude that Christianity is rational.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah. Good point for anybody who's wondering, Well, where's Stephen T.
Davis from? He was, He was a Christian philosopher, but
he was at Claremont McKenna College, So yeah, maybe, as
you said, he's now retired.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yes, And last year I reached out to him via
email and asked him to come on the podcast to
talk about this book, and he wrote back and thank
me very much for my positive comments about the book.
But he said, I am retired and I don't do
that kind of thing anymore. And I told my wife
that it was the first time since we've been doing
(12:16):
the podcast that I genuinely like, remember getting the email,
My heart just sunk a little bit because I wanted
to talk to him so bad.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Oh yeah, you probably saw that it arrived and you're like, yeah,
well yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yes, but I totally respect that and totally get it.
But you know, just selfishly, I really wanted to chat
with him and pick his brain about some things and
just let him know how highly I thought of the book.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, very selfish. So anyway, the relationship between faith and reason,
that's one of the sort of themes the Discus discusses,
arguments for God's existence and then the reliability of the
Gospels of those sorts of areas. There are there anything
you want that pops out? Do you want to talk about?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah? What I really appreciated about Davis in this book,
and I wish more Christian thinkers would do this, is
that he comes right out and says, before he's giving
a rational case right for the faith, he comes right
out and says, hey, the number one reason I'm a
(13:19):
Christian is because I was raised that way, and he
doesn't try to hide it. He doesn't apologize for it,
he doesn't lament it, and he doesn't feel the need
to say, oh, you know, but that doesn't mean I
can't have good reasons to believe or anything like that.
He says, hey, I was raised this way. I was
(13:41):
raised to believe this way. And then he moves forward
with giving arguments and reason because he understands that he
needs to offer you warrant for these beliefs to somebody
who hasn't been raised that way, who hasn't had those experiences.
But I don't know about you, but I found it
very refreshing that he just came out of the gate.
And one of the primary things he says when he's
(14:03):
talking about the existence of God is that the number
one reason I believe is because I was raised that way,
and he didn't apologize for it.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah. I think that's a good point, because you just
got to be honest with people when you're talking to them,
here's my journey. You don't need to present some like, oh,
I never had any good reasons. But then I investigated it,
and I came to the conclusion like nobody can be
like Jay Warner Wallace or something where they go into
their detective mode and then reach Christianity or least least
(14:33):
strouble or something. You know. I think that the honesty
approach in that is the key. And not to say
that people are not going to be honest, but there
might be the pressure to try to bolster one's case
by appearing overly analytical and like appealing to this thing like, no,
you have emotional reasons. You have emotional reasons, there heart reasons,
(14:58):
so to speak. Heck, you could even have the journey
where like maybe you came to faith at some hell
fire preaching or something and you're scared of going to hell,
and that's how you became a Christian. I don't think
you should hide that, you know, but if you then
later investigated and like you thought, hey, well then I
realized that, you know, maybe is this true or not?
(15:19):
Like did my experience was that just hype? I got
to go check this out? And so I think that
people if they hear this your full story without like
ejecting parts that you might think, oh, that maybe they
might not think I'm rational if I let them know.
This not a good approach, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, And I think of my own, you know, story,
and I've shared my own story with people that you know,
I guess I had what some people would call a
little bit more of a dramatic conversion. And you know,
I've had people say something like, oh, well, you know,
I wish I had a testimony like that, and of
course my first thought is, no, you don't trust me.
(15:59):
But but secondly, I like the fact again that David
shares this because it could allow somebody like that to think, oh,
you know, here's here's a guy who was raised just
like I was, and he's doing great philosophy, you know,
And so I don't need to have that dramatic paul
you know, kind of conversion in order to do great things.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
So I want to talk about these cosmological arguments and
such that he talks about.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yeah, yeah, So I really enjoyed the he presents kind
of an argument from contingency. I like how he calls
it his generic cosmological argument. I really appreciated that, and
it was really cool just to see he basically lays
out a couple options. He says, the world is entirely accidental,
(16:49):
or just has no explanation, that's one option, or the
world was brought into existence by some sort of creator.
And he goes on to say that his contention is
that this world is the sort of world we would
expect to exist if it were created by God. And
(17:10):
he believes that kind of God's central aim in creating
human beings is that as many of them as possible
would come to freely worship, love and obey Him.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And then he.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Goes into again an argument that Aquinas has argued for
and Leibniz and Samuel Clark people like that, and his
version the premises go like this, if the existence of
the universe can be explained, then God exists. Everything can
be explained. Talk about that in a minute. The universe
(17:42):
is a thing. It's pretty uncontroversial. Therefore, the universe can
be explained, and therefore God exists. Now. Of course, that
idea that everything can be explained is what philosophers call
the principle of sufficient reason. And of course that's the
idea that everything has an explanation of his existence, either
(18:06):
by an external cause or by the necessity of its
own nature. Right, And what I was really impressed in
the book, this is probably the best, most succinct defense
of the PSR or the principle of sufficient reason that
I've read. I thought it was clear. I thought it
(18:28):
was in depth, and I thought that he argued very
persuasively that that principle is indeed sound.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah. And you know, although it's written by a philosopher,
I didn't think he used overlay philosophical language. It seemed
to be simple enough for the lay person, you know,
without heavy jargon or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Right, I think that's a strength honestly throughout the book.
It is a philosopher's defense of Christianity. But he also
states in the book that he wrote it largely for
his students. Remember he talks about how you know, students
were coming to him with questions and this was largely
his attempt to show that show them that Christianity had
(19:14):
a rational kind of foundation, and also to fellow faculty
workers and people like that who were willing to look
into it.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
And back to the other theme, he's not using this
as a proof but part of a case. He would
anticipate a number of objections to that, like, for instance,
if oh, the universe could be its own explanation. So
then he says, well, that explained that contradicts the evidence,
(19:42):
that contradicts law logic. The physical laws don't and matter
alone don't have the power to cause themselves. So yeah,
I mean, I think it's just a nice read through,
you know, Yeah, without getting bogged down.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I just thought it was interesting. Before he kind of
presents his cosmologic argument, he goes on to say that
the kind of a couple purposes of arguments like this
are number one, to show skeptics that religious belief is
not gullible or superstitious, and it also can be useful
(20:19):
in increasing the confidence of religious believers. And so I
like that kind of two fold purpose of theistic arguments
that he lays out, just.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Showing its rational but also like, oh, bolstering the faith
of believers, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
And I think sometimes that's you know, getting away from
the book a little bit. That's sometimes what at least
when I speak on apologetics, a lot of times what
happens is is that people will come up to me
and they'll say something along the lines was, well, I
don't need these arguments, you know. I know God exists,
I experience him in my everyday life, And of course
(20:56):
my response to that is as well, Number one, you
are also sharing this with other people, and there might
be other people who do need these arguments and to
show that it's rational to give them permission to investigate
this if you will. But then on the other hand,
your faith might be enriched by learning these arguments because
(21:17):
you realize that the confidence that you have in your
faith is even more well founded than you knew prior.
I know, the first time I learned the cosmological argument
and the idea that the universe came into existence from nothing,
the idea that this all powerful being was able to
create out of nothing. I mean, it definitely was a
(21:38):
worshipful kind of aha for me that I otherwise wouldn't
have had if I wouldn't have been reflecting on these
types of arguments.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah, I think of the things within there when you're
talking about the principle of sufficient reason, that's one of
my fabs. I think that that's such a I think
it's just intuitive, Like the design thing we've talked about
in the past. I think appealing to design so intuitive.
It's just a matter of reminding people of what's all
around them because they're just blind to it because it's
(22:09):
just everywhere of the design aspects. But with the principle
of sufficient reason, it sort of like cause an effect
this in a sense everything needs a cause. That's sort
of part of it. But you know, even if the
universe is eternal, if you were arguing that, well why
why is it there? Why is it eternal? So there's
(22:31):
always this for me, the principle of sufficient reason is
that there has to be some explanation for things, for
how things are. And the only thing that wouldn't require
that is God because he would be self existence. He
is his own explanation. But nothing else has that property.
Like you can say the universe is just is. That's
(22:54):
not satisfying. That doesn't make any sense. Why is it
like it is? Why or the laws like that? Well,
it just it just popped it into existence. Well why
you know, even if you don't appeal to cause and effect,
what from whence? So yeah, well I just think that's
a really strong thing to appeal to because of its
(23:16):
intuitive aspect.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, I've heard JP Moreland talk about how there has
to be something self existence, self existent for existence to
be a thing. And of course the problem is is
that you know something exists, and it had to come
from somewhere, and then you could say, well, okay, why
does that thing have its existence? And then you could
(23:38):
say why does that thing have its existence? And if
there's nothing self existent, you just keep going back into
what's known as an infinite regress of events. Right, So
there's got to be something that's always existed that everything
else comes from in order for there to be something
in order to avoid that infinite regres And so that's
(24:01):
kind of a similar ideas to what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, it's like this sort of ground of being or
ground of reality.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Did my illustration make sense though?
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yes, believe me, it makes perfect sense. That's right.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So do you want to go on to the Bible's
Portrait of Jesus?
Speaker 1 (24:19):
I have to say for the first few chapters, because
I read them. Here's how I read the book, not
all in one go. I read like the first three chapters,
and then it took a big old break, and then
it read the rest of it leading up to our
time of talking to it talking about it. So I'm
a little fuzzy first three chapters. So some of this
(24:43):
is going to be a refresher if we talk about
it well, you.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Know what, that's great because I have a lot to
say about the chapter on does the Bible give a
reliable picture of Jesus? So that actually works out really well.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
So a couple of things that I took from this
chapter that I really appreciated that come to mind right away,
and then a third that we may or may not
get to. The first thing is is this was the
first time. Now, remember it's been several years since I
first read this book. I've read it a couple times.
I want to say three, but at least two. But
what I love about this chapter is how he says.
(25:20):
He talks about how, you know, okay, we've got these sources,
and we've got the gospels, right, We've got the four Gospels.
And of course he talks about the dating of the
gospels and how most people think that Mark is the
earliest gospel. And then he talks about basically the traditional
dates of the four Gospels. But there are these seven
(25:40):
uncontested letters of Paul. Now what does that mean. That
means that within New Testament scholarship, these seven letters are
without question that Paul wrote them. The large majority everybody says, yeah,
these are uncontested the apostle Paul wrote them. Okay, why
is that significant? Because Paul gives us a ton of
(26:02):
information about Jesus. And so Davis lays out all the
information that Paul gives us about Jesus. Now, what's interesting
is is the letters of Paul were before the Gospel
of Mark. So he creates this nice chain of custody
where he says, Okay, let's look at all this information
(26:24):
that we get about Jesus from these uncontested letters, from
the seven uncontested letters. And I can tell you that
it's a lot of information. Like it's a good bit
of information. I have it all listed, but you know,
just I don't know how exciting that would be, but
let me tell you it's a lot of information. So
what happens is is when you take a look at
all that information that you get from these letters from
(26:46):
Paul and then you parallel it or compare it to Mark,
the information is almost identical. So, in other words, what's
happening is is these earlier letters, right, what's one of
the knocks against the Gospels. Right, Oh, they're written you know,
much later after the events. Okay, Well, I would contest
in the from the point of view of antiquity, they
(27:08):
are not. But let's say that that holds right, Okay, yeah,
but we've got Paul's letters that are much earlier. So
we see kind of what Jay Warner Wallace would say,
is this chain of custody right where we've got these
letters of Paul that are early. They give us tons
of information about Jesus. And then when we look at
the Gospel of Mark, we can see that the information
(27:32):
from Paul is very consistent with what we find in
the Gospel of Mark. And then of course we have
the synoptic Gospels, right, Mark, Luke, and Matthew, and so
we have this nice picture of this early testimony that
kind of substantiates what we find in our three synoptic gospels.
(27:55):
And so to me, that's really powerful. He actually says this.
The Pauline letters were all written well before Mark, and
indeed within twenty to thirty years of the death of Jesus. Accordingly,
what Paul said about the life of Jesus is much
more likely to be reliable on purely historical critical grounds
than something written much later, and this reliability confirms the
(28:17):
authenticity of later texts like Mark that largely agree with
Paul in the Life of Jesus, Mark does not appear
to be a myth or fable or fiction. What we
have here, then, is an impressive reason for regarding Mark
as reliable. And so what he's saying is is that Paul,
we can actually use the letters of Paul to validate
(28:39):
the Gospel of Mark. And I find that to be
very powerful, especially when you consider the relationship between Matthew
Luke and Mark.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yes, it's coming back to me now that you describe that.
That is a I'd never sort of seen that approach before,
But I mean again, that's not maybe my area of speciality.
I like that. Do you think that's something you could
use talking to people.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Yeah, I absolutely do, because I have used it in
a conversation with somebody. I have a friend who is
an atheist and is very skeptical about the reliability of
the New Testament, and after reading this in Davis's book,
I was actually able he was calling into question the
reliability of the Gospels, and I was able to explain
(29:25):
to him that we have these seven uncontested letters of Paul.
I was able to read to him because I wrote
a blog post about it. I was able to pull
up the blog post, and I was able to read
to him all the things that these letters tell us
about Jesus and show him that these letters could confirm
the Gospel of Mark. And I also told him, you know,
(29:45):
explain to him the relationship between Matthew, Mark Luke and
John as they are synoptic, and able to show him
the kind of that chain of custody that I was
talking about. And he had not heard that either, and
I think it gave him something to think about. So
I absolutely think you could use it in a conversation.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Well you heard it here first, you can use that
the next thing. Next chapter he's talking about the resurrection
of Jesus. Was Jesus raised from the dead? How would
you describe the approach?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
This is where it's very tempting to get into the
minimal facts versus the maximal facts debate and all of that, right,
But I think that both parties here, honestly, if they
read Davis's book, I would like to think. I do
have a side note though about in Errancy that I'll
get to, but I do think both parties would find
(30:36):
some things in here to Like I mean, as I
said in chapter three where he talks about does the
Bible give a reliable picture of Jesus. He argues for
the reliability of the Gospels, he argues for the reliability
of Paul. And so you see this argument for as
I said, the Gospels and Paul. But then he goes
(30:57):
on in chapter four and then he says, Okay, now
that we've kind of established this idea that we have
a reliable we have some reliable texts, like what can
we garner from these texts? And that's when he does
take what would be kind of a minimal facts approach,
which I have some thoughts on. He argues for the
(31:18):
empty tomb, he argues for the appearances, and he uses
those kind of as his central arguments to demonstrate that
the resurrection happened. He also uses an argument from Swinburne
on probability. Now, this debate between the maximum facts and
(31:39):
the minimal facts, which I don't want to get into
that a lot. I just want to make a point
here that I think is salient, and I also think
it is helpful when it comes to these two chapters.
Just allow me to make the point. I like how
in chapter three he argues for the reliability of the Gospels,
and then he goes on and says, Okay, let's look
at a few facts from the Gospels and we're going
to make a case. I think so sometimes people get
(32:01):
hung up on that term minimal right, because they want
to say, oh, well, we don't want to use the
minimal facts. I like this idea of just using the
central facts.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah, so I think that's that's what he says. The
central facts are regarding it, the things that are most pertinent,
that are historically credible that no one's going to contest.
But he's not appealing to this. Many people agree and
one hundred percent agree, and these are the very we're
going to only going to go with the ones that
(32:31):
people agree on or no, he's just saying, these are
the these are the core components of making a case
for the resurrection. So it's it's almost like going like this,
I don't care if it's mix, noemial, maximum, whatever. These
are the pillars for making the case. Now that just
so happens that they're really realiable pillars to use. So
(32:55):
it's like kind of like's, as Craig would say, it
doesn't end run the whole debate, like you know, hey,
you're gonna have to argue that the tomb was empty,
You're gonna have to argue that Jesus died, and then
you're gonna have to argue that everyone saw him and
there was eyewitness testimony. So and then there you have it.
(33:16):
You know, you're starting to build a case with those
big pillars.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yeah, and so I very much like the fact that
also that because if you're in a conversation, if you've
ever been in a conversation with somebody about the evidence
for the resurrection, sometimes it's difficult to present it if
you present it in the way of, oh, okay, well
we've got these reliable documents. Okay, well, but that doesn't
(33:42):
tell you what the reliable documents say, right, So let's
take it a next step and let's say we've got
these documents. We have good reason to believe they're reliable,
but we're just going to focus on these facts because
it allows for a concise case to be made. So,
for example, if I say, okay, the Gospels are reliable,
we've got these early letters of Paul, and we're going
(34:02):
to focus on the fact that they tell us that
Jesus was crucified, that his disciples claimed and believed that
he rose from the dead, that the apostle Paul and James,
the skeptics changed their minds, and that the tomb was empty. Okay,
so that's what we're going to focus on. Well, that
doesn't say I'm throwing out the other things that the
(34:22):
Gospels present, and I can call upon those if I
need them, But that allows me to centralize my case
into something that's digestible to somebody, especially for somebody who's
not familiar with the Bible, right, because there's a lot
going on in the Gospels around the resurrection accounts and things.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah. You know, I'm just reminded here about how the
evidence you bring to a case really depends on your audience.
If you think, okay, let's say I'm interacting with a
hardcore skeptic who has read all of Bard Airman's books,
who's been watching all the atheists stuff, and now like, okay, well,
(35:03):
I need a really robust, very detailed, very meticulous, air
tight case, and I need to know every counter argument
they're going to make. Okay, Right, you might choose a
certain sort of strategy, you're gambit that you might use
in that sort of interaction because you know that Okay,
(35:26):
this is going to be meticulously torn apart if I
don't give them, well, if I give any any holes
in my case where people are going to try to
tear it apart, then I have to be very careful.
Now it's going to be a completely different approach. I
know I'm using way extremes here. If I'm trying to
say to my son, who's ten, why should you believe
(35:48):
Jesus rose from the dead, you know, way different, Or
if you're talking or you're talking to a Christian who's like, yeah,
I believe it, but why should I believe it? I mean,
I just believe by faith. Then you're going to make
a different case one that where you don't have to
appeal to facts that are hugely historically you know backed,
(36:08):
because the only way that someone's going to receive that
is if they have confidence, historical confidence, you know what
I'm saying. So I just I'm reminded of that when
when we're talking here, because he seems to just say, well,
here's how do I really know it's true? He's yes,
he's appealing to historical credibility, he's appealing to the evidence
(36:34):
that we have, and I think that's what the normal
person who is a little skeptical and needs to have
a rational grounding and a reasonable rational grounding. Nut Okay,
can you prove it historically or something? Or is this
truly the best explanation? Well, he does say that it's
the best explanation. But for a Christian who needs backing
(36:56):
of their faith, I don't think we have to worry
so to speak about having a huge, you know, air tight,
kind of meticulous sort of thing. Is it actually will
turn them off because they think that the only way
you can have confidence is if you're meticulously realized, you know,
have every I dotted and every T crossed historically and
(37:22):
every possible objection defended against. Does that make any sense? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (37:26):
And I mean what who can say that about any
any view they hold, I mean, regardless of what your
view is. I mean, who can say, oh, yeah, I've
got answers to all my questions and I'm not curious
about anything. I figured everything out.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
So that's basically four out of the nine chapters we've
kind of covered. That's halfway through the book, and so listener,
we're going to wrap it up for now. This is
part one of our review, probably our part one of
two of the review of this book and discussion about
some of the themes. If you have any thoughts, you
can tell us by sending an email to podcast at
(38:02):
apologetics three fifteen dot com. Thank you so much for listening.
We hope you enjoy this and we'll be having further
interviews after we're done with this book, so we'll talk
to you then later. Thanks for listening to the podcast.
If you have a question you'd like us to address,
or just a message for us feedback good or bad,
you can either email us at podcast at apologetics three
(38:24):
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(38:44):
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Remember you can find lots of Apologetics resources at apologeticspree
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Find Chad's apologetic stuff over at truth bomb Apologetics. That's
truthbomb dot blogspot dot com. This has been Brian Aughton
(39:07):
and Chad Gross for the Apologetics three fifteen podcast, and
thanks for listening.
Hello, and welcome to the Apologetics three fifteen podcast with
your hosts Brian Auten and Chad Gross. Join us for
conversations and interviews on the topics of apologetics, evangelism, and
the Christian worldview. Ollive meh, it makes perfect sense. Well,
(00:24):
it's groundhog Day again. Welcome to the podcast. I say
that because we tried to record yesterday and it was
an hour and a half of not recording. Here. We
are here, we are we welcome you to the podcast.
I'm Brian Auten and I'm Chad Gross. This is a
podcast where we talk about apologetic stuff. We interview apologists, authors, thinkers,
(00:47):
all surrounding the idea of is Christianity true? In defending
the faith and looking and exploring issues pertinent to the
culture we're living in. So today we're doing a book review.
If you were listening. A couple of weeks ago, we
talked about this book and Chad suggested it. It's called
(01:08):
Rational Faith, A Philosopher's Defense of Christianity. And as I
stare at the name to get it right, Stephen T.
Davis with a pH ched, how you doing today, man.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I'm doing well. I'm looking forward to discussing this book.
As you know, it's one of my favorites. It's a
little gem that I got years ago from IVP inter
Varsity Press. I didn't request it, actually, and it just
kind of showed up in my mail and it was
on my shelf for a while. And it's a short book,
and so I picked it up one day and man,
(01:41):
I couldn't put it down. And I'm going to talk
about when we get going here, I'm going to talk
about some of the reasons I love the book so much.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, So when we say a short book, we're talking
one hundred and seventy four pages, pretty standard print size,
pretty standard hold it in your hands size. And how
would you describe the book, jed Well, I think the
best way to describe it would just be to talk
about what I love about it. What I love about
it is that a lot of times, especially when you
(02:11):
have a podcast like this one, or you just read
a lot of apologetics work, it just seems like you
begin to come across the same arguments and regurgitated in
a different form, and you feel like sometimes you're reading
some of the same you're almost reading the same book
over and over again in a sense. And one of
(02:32):
the things I love about this book is that it gives,
as the subtitle says, a defense of Christianity, but it
does so in a way where it deals with some
of the more prominent thinkers in the skeptical community. He also,
Stephen Davis, does so with some original thinking and some
original arguments, and you can tell as you're reading the
(02:53):
book it's like thinking along with him. And I found
that really refreshing.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
And I just like the fact that he kind of
argues a case for Christianity and then he takes on
a couple of the more substantial challenges to Christianity and
he does so and what I think is a very
thoughtful way, in a very in a way that is
unique to him, and again not something you hear repeat
it often.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So, yeah, Philosopher's defensive Christianity. And that's really what makes
it a little bit different for me reading it now.
So the reader or the listener who is the potential reader.
Here are nine chapters. Is there any such thing as
objective truth? Good start? Kind of like the Turk style thing,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
I actually it's funny you said that, because I actually
want to talk about the title of the book. And
I'm going to use Frank Turk as a comparison, So
it's funny that you brought him up.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah, yeah, Number two, why believe in God? So you know,
that's reminiscent in my mind of like William Lane Greig.
You know where he will before he goes into the arguments,
he's talking about the relevance of it. Number three is
the Bible's picture of Jesus reliable? Number four? Was Jesus
raised from the dead? Number five does evolution disprove Christianity?
(04:12):
Number six can cognitive science explain religion? Number seven is
Christianity unique? Number eight do evil and suffering show that
God does not exist? And number nine can we be
happy apart from God? Yeah? So fairly good broad structure
of the book. But man, he covers so much ground
in such a short amount of time. And as you say,
(04:35):
the thing that's enjoyable about it, if you like that
sort of thing, is that he takes you along his
chain of thinking. He's and one of the things is
that he's not trying to prove Christianity is true, but
to show it's rational and intellectually defensible. So that's a
way different thing. Whereas if you were trying to prove
(04:55):
it true, you would try to be just laying out
all these arguments and making a hard cumulative or like
a strong cumulative case, whereas in this case, in this
he's like, well, here, here's sort of like the the
overall logic of why you'd think it's true, and here's
the chain of thought and all the various arguments that
(05:15):
come along for the ride to get you there. But
he's not like making a sales pitch or a hard
case where it's like, Okay, now that I've proven this,
now we can use another building block, and I'm going
to give you this. It doesn't do that, And so
that's refreshing because you can you can kind of read it,
read through it without being like, well, I don't know
if I accept that, because he's not trying to make
(05:38):
you accept that.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah. One of the things that I love about this
book is I think it's a great example of humble apologetics.
And you're touching on why I think that, and what
I mean by that is, and you've you've brought up
Frank Turik, who you know, we've had on the podcast,
and I definitely have benefited from his work and and
enjoy his stuff. But the difference between this book and
(06:04):
Turk is, like you said, in this book, his goal
is to just demonstrate that it is rational to believe,
that Christianity is rational. It's almost like if you're going
to believe or if you're going to disbelieve, he's just
trying to remove that stumbling block of it, well it's irrational, right.
He's trying to give people permission to look into this
(06:27):
and to believe and to show whereas sometimes when you're reading,
for example, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist,
it's almost like there's this there's this feeling of this
is the most rational view, and sometimes it even and
again I benefit from doctor Turk's work, but sometimes it
can even smack of like you're crazy not to believe this.
(06:49):
It's almost there's a difference between I feel like Turk
and Geisler in that book are attempting to compel someone
to believe, whereas Davis is just trying to say, hey,
this is rational, you know, check it out.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Mm hmmm, yeah yeah, And and and then I don't
have enough to faith to be an atheist. They're they're
basically even with the title saying you know, it's not
rational or you know it requires it's not rational to
have to not believe. It's sort of like saying you
need more faith to be an atheist. They say that throughout.
Uh yeah, and so I appreciate that. I I it
(07:25):
was one of my favorite books, first books I read.
You know, look, I look back in that I think Geisler,
to my mind, is is a little too much of
a here's the proof, accept it or not. Yeah, and
it's just too hard, too hard of a sales. It's
a little American for me in the sense of like, yeah,
(07:48):
we're the we're the best, this is the best argument.
This is you know, and rational faith. As you say,
it's a little bit more of a humble approach. Now.
I know we're going to talk about various things, but
one thing that I think demonstrate that and you mentioned
it when we were introducing the book a few weeks ago,
a few episodes ago, I should say, you said people
(08:10):
might disagree with certain conclusions. One one is this chapter
on evolution. Now, so now this is not where we're
going to sit on this book at all. Listeners in
the case you're thinking, but he just says, well, you know,
my view is I think the theistic evolution is true.
(08:31):
But I don't read that and get all defensive. The
way he writes it is like, well, here's my rationale
behind that. And I actually like the fact that that's
his view, because if you are trying to remove obstacles
for the unbeliever, then you can say, like, here this
(08:53):
philosopher who you know, Christians might disagree with this conclusion,
but you know the is not. Oh, the only way
you could be a Christian and accept the Bible is
if you jettison evolution because it sabotages the entire thing
from the ground up, you know. So I kind of
like the fact that if you were giving this to
(09:15):
a non believer, it would be way better for them
than to say, oh, well, I'm a six day creationist.
You know, it's going to lose some credibility in their mind,
you know, most non believers, because of course they're not thinking.
I mean, there's no atheist who's a six day creationists.
At the same time, they have to be an evolutionist.
(09:35):
So if you're lowering the bar to just say, hey,
this is still rational and this is not a central
tenet of faith.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
No, it's really funny you've talked about, you know, the
title rational Faith, and how that's Davis's project here is
to just show that Christianity's rational. That was one of
the things I had in my notes. One of the
other things I had in my notes is very much
like what you just said. So it's really funny how
it's like you're reading a mail. So yeah, in that
(10:06):
chapter where he you know, defends theistic evolution, it's a
great example of what I'm talking about though, of that
humble apologetic If you think back to that chapter, he
lays out Young Earth creationism, Old Earth creationism, ID. He
doesn't besmirch them if you will, or attack them or anything.
(10:27):
He lays them out his views and then says here's
where I come down, right. And so again it's just
him saying this is how I make sense of this,
But he doesn't make it a central issue or an
issue that you know, will make or break whether or
not you accept Christianity. And I very much agree with you.
I remember once I was at Panera having a conversation
(10:47):
with an atheist and he was very much putting a
lot of stock, if you will, in evolution, and I
remember I said to him look, i'll give you evolution.
I'll give it to you. You can have evolution, I said,
you still need to explain the origin of the universe,
the fine tuning of the universe, objective moral truths, the
(11:08):
historical evidence for Jesus's resurrection. Evolution doesn't touch any of that,
I said, So even if I give you biological evolution,
it really doesn't get you very far. And so I
see this kind of like what you're saying is, even
if you don't necessarily agree with theistic evolution, you could
put this in the hands of somebody and this would
(11:28):
at least lay out the views for them and help
them to see that. Oh okay, I don't have to
come down hard on one of these views in order
to be a Christian or to conclude that Christianity is rational.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah. Good point for anybody who's wondering, Well, where's Stephen T.
Davis from? He was, He was a Christian philosopher, but
he was at Claremont McKenna College, So yeah, maybe, as
you said, he's now retired.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yes, And last year I reached out to him via
email and asked him to come on the podcast to
talk about this book, and he wrote back and thank
me very much for my positive comments about the book.
But he said, I am retired and I don't do
that kind of thing anymore. And I told my wife
that it was the first time since we've been doing
(12:16):
the podcast that I genuinely like, remember getting the email,
My heart just sunk a little bit because I wanted
to talk to him so bad.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Oh yeah, you probably saw that it arrived and you're like, yeah,
well yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yes, but I totally respect that and totally get it.
But you know, just selfishly, I really wanted to chat
with him and pick his brain about some things and
just let him know how highly I thought of the book.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, very selfish. So anyway, the relationship between faith and reason,
that's one of the sort of themes the Discus discusses,
arguments for God's existence and then the reliability of the
Gospels of those sorts of areas. There are there anything
you want that pops out? Do you want to talk about?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah? What I really appreciated about Davis in this book,
and I wish more Christian thinkers would do this, is
that he comes right out and says, before he's giving
a rational case right for the faith, he comes right
out and says, hey, the number one reason I'm a
(13:19):
Christian is because I was raised that way, and he
doesn't try to hide it. He doesn't apologize for it,
he doesn't lament it, and he doesn't feel the need
to say, oh, you know, but that doesn't mean I
can't have good reasons to believe or anything like that.
He says, hey, I was raised this way. I was
(13:41):
raised to believe this way. And then he moves forward
with giving arguments and reason because he understands that he
needs to offer you warrant for these beliefs to somebody
who hasn't been raised that way, who hasn't had those experiences.
But I don't know about you, but I found it
very refreshing that he just came out of the gate.
And one of the primary things he says when he's
(14:03):
talking about the existence of God is that the number
one reason I believe is because I was raised that way,
and he didn't apologize for it.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah. I think that's a good point, because you just
got to be honest with people when you're talking to them,
here's my journey. You don't need to present some like, oh,
I never had any good reasons. But then I investigated it,
and I came to the conclusion like nobody can be
like Jay Warner Wallace or something where they go into
their detective mode and then reach Christianity or least least
(14:33):
strouble or something. You know. I think that the honesty
approach in that is the key. And not to say
that people are not going to be honest, but there
might be the pressure to try to bolster one's case
by appearing overly analytical and like appealing to this thing like, no,
you have emotional reasons. You have emotional reasons, there heart reasons,
(14:58):
so to speak. Heck, you could even have the journey
where like maybe you came to faith at some hell
fire preaching or something and you're scared of going to hell,
and that's how you became a Christian. I don't think
you should hide that, you know, but if you then
later investigated and like you thought, hey, well then I
realized that, you know, maybe is this true or not?
(15:19):
Like did my experience was that just hype? I got
to go check this out? And so I think that
people if they hear this your full story without like
ejecting parts that you might think, oh, that maybe they
might not think I'm rational if I let them know.
This not a good approach, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, And I think of my own, you know, story,
and I've shared my own story with people that you know,
I guess I had what some people would call a
little bit more of a dramatic conversion. And you know,
I've had people say something like, oh, well, you know,
I wish I had a testimony like that, and of
course my first thought is, no, you don't trust me.
(15:59):
But but secondly, I like the fact again that David
shares this because it could allow somebody like that to think, oh,
you know, here's here's a guy who was raised just
like I was, and he's doing great philosophy, you know,
And so I don't need to have that dramatic paul
you know, kind of conversion in order to do great things.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
So I want to talk about these cosmological arguments and
such that he talks about.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yeah, yeah, So I really enjoyed the he presents kind
of an argument from contingency. I like how he calls
it his generic cosmological argument. I really appreciated that, and
it was really cool just to see he basically lays
out a couple options. He says, the world is entirely accidental,
(16:49):
or just has no explanation, that's one option, or the
world was brought into existence by some sort of creator.
And he goes on to say that his contention is
that this world is the sort of world we would
expect to exist if it were created by God. And
(17:10):
he believes that kind of God's central aim in creating
human beings is that as many of them as possible
would come to freely worship, love and obey Him.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And then he.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Goes into again an argument that Aquinas has argued for
and Leibniz and Samuel Clark people like that, and his
version the premises go like this, if the existence of
the universe can be explained, then God exists. Everything can
be explained. Talk about that in a minute. The universe
(17:42):
is a thing. It's pretty uncontroversial. Therefore, the universe can
be explained, and therefore God exists. Now. Of course, that
idea that everything can be explained is what philosophers call
the principle of sufficient reason. And of course that's the
idea that everything has an explanation of his existence, either
(18:06):
by an external cause or by the necessity of its
own nature. Right, And what I was really impressed in
the book, this is probably the best, most succinct defense
of the PSR or the principle of sufficient reason that
I've read. I thought it was clear. I thought it
(18:28):
was in depth, and I thought that he argued very
persuasively that that principle is indeed sound.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah. And you know, although it's written by a philosopher,
I didn't think he used overlay philosophical language. It seemed
to be simple enough for the lay person, you know,
without heavy jargon or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Right, I think that's a strength honestly throughout the book.
It is a philosopher's defense of Christianity. But he also
states in the book that he wrote it largely for
his students. Remember he talks about how you know, students
were coming to him with questions and this was largely
his attempt to show that show them that Christianity had
(19:14):
a rational kind of foundation, and also to fellow faculty
workers and people like that who were willing to look
into it.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
And back to the other theme, he's not using this
as a proof but part of a case. He would
anticipate a number of objections to that, like, for instance,
if oh, the universe could be its own explanation. So
then he says, well, that explained that contradicts the evidence,
(19:42):
that contradicts law logic. The physical laws don't and matter
alone don't have the power to cause themselves. So yeah,
I mean, I think it's just a nice read through,
you know, Yeah, without getting bogged down.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I just thought it was interesting. Before he kind of
presents his cosmologic argument, he goes on to say that
the kind of a couple purposes of arguments like this
are number one, to show skeptics that religious belief is
not gullible or superstitious, and it also can be useful
(20:19):
in increasing the confidence of religious believers. And so I
like that kind of two fold purpose of theistic arguments
that he lays out, just.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Showing its rational but also like, oh, bolstering the faith
of believers, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
And I think sometimes that's you know, getting away from
the book a little bit. That's sometimes what at least
when I speak on apologetics, a lot of times what
happens is is that people will come up to me
and they'll say something along the lines was, well, I
don't need these arguments, you know. I know God exists,
I experience him in my everyday life, And of course
(20:56):
my response to that is as well, Number one, you
are also sharing this with other people, and there might
be other people who do need these arguments and to
show that it's rational to give them permission to investigate
this if you will. But then on the other hand,
your faith might be enriched by learning these arguments because
(21:17):
you realize that the confidence that you have in your
faith is even more well founded than you knew prior.
I know, the first time I learned the cosmological argument
and the idea that the universe came into existence from nothing,
the idea that this all powerful being was able to
create out of nothing. I mean, it definitely was a
(21:38):
worshipful kind of aha for me that I otherwise wouldn't
have had if I wouldn't have been reflecting on these
types of arguments.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah, I think of the things within there when you're
talking about the principle of sufficient reason, that's one of
my fabs. I think that that's such a I think
it's just intuitive, Like the design thing we've talked about
in the past. I think appealing to design so intuitive.
It's just a matter of reminding people of what's all
around them because they're just blind to it because it's
(22:09):
just everywhere of the design aspects. But with the principle
of sufficient reason, it sort of like cause an effect
this in a sense everything needs a cause. That's sort
of part of it. But you know, even if the
universe is eternal, if you were arguing that, well why
why is it there? Why is it eternal? So there's
(22:31):
always this for me, the principle of sufficient reason is
that there has to be some explanation for things, for
how things are. And the only thing that wouldn't require
that is God because he would be self existence. He
is his own explanation. But nothing else has that property.
Like you can say the universe is just is. That's
(22:54):
not satisfying. That doesn't make any sense. Why is it
like it is? Why or the laws like that? Well,
it just it just popped it into existence. Well why
you know, even if you don't appeal to cause and effect,
what from whence? So yeah, well I just think that's
a really strong thing to appeal to because of its
(23:16):
intuitive aspect.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, I've heard JP Moreland talk about how there has
to be something self existence, self existent for existence to
be a thing. And of course the problem is is
that you know something exists, and it had to come
from somewhere, and then you could say, well, okay, why
does that thing have its existence? And then you could
(23:38):
say why does that thing have its existence? And if
there's nothing self existent, you just keep going back into
what's known as an infinite regress of events. Right, So
there's got to be something that's always existed that everything
else comes from in order for there to be something
in order to avoid that infinite regres And so that's
(24:01):
kind of a similar ideas to what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, it's like this sort of ground of being or
ground of reality.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Did my illustration make sense though?
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yes, believe me, it makes perfect sense. That's right.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So do you want to go on to the Bible's
Portrait of Jesus?
Speaker 1 (24:19):
I have to say for the first few chapters, because
I read them. Here's how I read the book, not
all in one go. I read like the first three chapters,
and then it took a big old break, and then
it read the rest of it leading up to our
time of talking to it talking about it. So I'm
a little fuzzy first three chapters. So some of this
(24:43):
is going to be a refresher if we talk about
it well, you.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Know what, that's great because I have a lot to
say about the chapter on does the Bible give a
reliable picture of Jesus? So that actually works out really well.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
So a couple of things that I took from this
chapter that I really appreciated that come to mind right away,
and then a third that we may or may not
get to. The first thing is is this was the
first time. Now, remember it's been several years since I
first read this book. I've read it a couple times.
I want to say three, but at least two. But
what I love about this chapter is how he says.
(25:20):
He talks about how, you know, okay, we've got these sources,
and we've got the gospels, right, We've got the four Gospels.
And of course he talks about the dating of the
gospels and how most people think that Mark is the
earliest gospel. And then he talks about basically the traditional
dates of the four Gospels. But there are these seven
(25:40):
uncontested letters of Paul. Now what does that mean. That
means that within New Testament scholarship, these seven letters are
without question that Paul wrote them. The large majority everybody says, yeah,
these are uncontested the apostle Paul wrote them. Okay, why
is that significant? Because Paul gives us a ton of
(26:02):
information about Jesus. And so Davis lays out all the
information that Paul gives us about Jesus. Now, what's interesting
is is the letters of Paul were before the Gospel
of Mark. So he creates this nice chain of custody
where he says, Okay, let's look at all this information
(26:24):
that we get about Jesus from these uncontested letters, from
the seven uncontested letters. And I can tell you that
it's a lot of information. Like it's a good bit
of information. I have it all listed, but you know,
just I don't know how exciting that would be, but
let me tell you it's a lot of information. So
what happens is is when you take a look at
all that information that you get from these letters from
(26:46):
Paul and then you parallel it or compare it to Mark,
the information is almost identical. So, in other words, what's
happening is is these earlier letters, right, what's one of
the knocks against the Gospels. Right, Oh, they're written you know,
much later after the events. Okay, Well, I would contest
in the from the point of view of antiquity, they
(27:08):
are not. But let's say that that holds right, Okay, yeah,
but we've got Paul's letters that are much earlier. So
we see kind of what Jay Warner Wallace would say,
is this chain of custody right where we've got these
letters of Paul that are early. They give us tons
of information about Jesus. And then when we look at
the Gospel of Mark, we can see that the information
(27:32):
from Paul is very consistent with what we find in
the Gospel of Mark. And then of course we have
the synoptic Gospels, right, Mark, Luke, and Matthew, and so
we have this nice picture of this early testimony that
kind of substantiates what we find in our three synoptic gospels.
(27:55):
And so to me, that's really powerful. He actually says this.
The Pauline letters were all written well before Mark, and
indeed within twenty to thirty years of the death of Jesus. Accordingly,
what Paul said about the life of Jesus is much
more likely to be reliable on purely historical critical grounds
than something written much later, and this reliability confirms the
(28:17):
authenticity of later texts like Mark that largely agree with
Paul in the Life of Jesus, Mark does not appear
to be a myth or fable or fiction. What we
have here, then, is an impressive reason for regarding Mark
as reliable. And so what he's saying is is that Paul,
we can actually use the letters of Paul to validate
(28:39):
the Gospel of Mark. And I find that to be
very powerful, especially when you consider the relationship between Matthew
Luke and Mark.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yes, it's coming back to me now that you describe that.
That is a I'd never sort of seen that approach before,
But I mean again, that's not maybe my area of speciality.
I like that. Do you think that's something you could
use talking to people.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Yeah, I absolutely do, because I have used it in
a conversation with somebody. I have a friend who is
an atheist and is very skeptical about the reliability of
the New Testament, and after reading this in Davis's book,
I was actually able he was calling into question the
reliability of the Gospels, and I was able to explain
(29:25):
to him that we have these seven uncontested letters of Paul.
I was able to read to him because I wrote
a blog post about it. I was able to pull
up the blog post, and I was able to read
to him all the things that these letters tell us
about Jesus and show him that these letters could confirm
the Gospel of Mark. And I also told him, you know,
(29:45):
explain to him the relationship between Matthew, Mark Luke and
John as they are synoptic, and able to show him
the kind of that chain of custody that I was
talking about. And he had not heard that either, and
I think it gave him something to think about. So
I absolutely think you could use it in a conversation.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Well you heard it here first, you can use that
the next thing. Next chapter he's talking about the resurrection
of Jesus. Was Jesus raised from the dead? How would
you describe the approach?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
This is where it's very tempting to get into the
minimal facts versus the maximal facts debate and all of that, right,
But I think that both parties here, honestly, if they
read Davis's book, I would like to think. I do
have a side note though about in Errancy that I'll
get to, but I do think both parties would find
(30:36):
some things in here to Like I mean, as I
said in chapter three where he talks about does the
Bible give a reliable picture of Jesus. He argues for
the reliability of the Gospels, he argues for the reliability
of Paul. And so you see this argument for as
I said, the Gospels and Paul. But then he goes
(30:57):
on in chapter four and then he says, Okay, now
that we've kind of established this idea that we have
a reliable we have some reliable texts, like what can
we garner from these texts? And that's when he does
take what would be kind of a minimal facts approach,
which I have some thoughts on. He argues for the
(31:18):
empty tomb, he argues for the appearances, and he uses
those kind of as his central arguments to demonstrate that
the resurrection happened. He also uses an argument from Swinburne
on probability. Now, this debate between the maximum facts and
(31:39):
the minimal facts, which I don't want to get into
that a lot. I just want to make a point
here that I think is salient, and I also think
it is helpful when it comes to these two chapters.
Just allow me to make the point. I like how
in chapter three he argues for the reliability of the Gospels,
and then he goes on and says, Okay, let's look
at a few facts from the Gospels and we're going
to make a case. I think so sometimes people get
(32:01):
hung up on that term minimal right, because they want
to say, oh, well, we don't want to use the
minimal facts. I like this idea of just using the
central facts.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah, so I think that's that's what he says. The
central facts are regarding it, the things that are most pertinent,
that are historically credible that no one's going to contest.
But he's not appealing to this. Many people agree and
one hundred percent agree, and these are the very we're
going to only going to go with the ones that
(32:31):
people agree on or no, he's just saying, these are
the these are the core components of making a case
for the resurrection. So it's it's almost like going like this,
I don't care if it's mix, noemial, maximum, whatever. These
are the pillars for making the case. Now that just
so happens that they're really realiable pillars to use. So
(32:55):
it's like kind of like's, as Craig would say, it
doesn't end run the whole debate, like you know, hey,
you're gonna have to argue that the tomb was empty,
You're gonna have to argue that Jesus died, and then
you're gonna have to argue that everyone saw him and
there was eyewitness testimony. So and then there you have it.
(33:16):
You know, you're starting to build a case with those
big pillars.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yeah, and so I very much like the fact that
also that because if you're in a conversation, if you've
ever been in a conversation with somebody about the evidence
for the resurrection, sometimes it's difficult to present it if
you present it in the way of, oh, okay, well
we've got these reliable documents. Okay, well, but that doesn't
(33:42):
tell you what the reliable documents say, right, So let's
take it a next step and let's say we've got
these documents. We have good reason to believe they're reliable,
but we're just going to focus on these facts because
it allows for a concise case to be made. So,
for example, if I say, okay, the Gospels are reliable,
we've got these early letters of Paul, and we're going
(34:02):
to focus on the fact that they tell us that
Jesus was crucified, that his disciples claimed and believed that
he rose from the dead, that the apostle Paul and James,
the skeptics changed their minds, and that the tomb was empty. Okay,
so that's what we're going to focus on. Well, that
doesn't say I'm throwing out the other things that the
(34:22):
Gospels present, and I can call upon those if I
need them, But that allows me to centralize my case
into something that's digestible to somebody, especially for somebody who's
not familiar with the Bible, right, because there's a lot
going on in the Gospels around the resurrection accounts and things.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah. You know, I'm just reminded here about how the
evidence you bring to a case really depends on your audience.
If you think, okay, let's say I'm interacting with a
hardcore skeptic who has read all of Bard Airman's books,
who's been watching all the atheists stuff, and now like, okay, well,
(35:03):
I need a really robust, very detailed, very meticulous, air
tight case, and I need to know every counter argument
they're going to make. Okay, Right, you might choose a
certain sort of strategy, you're gambit that you might use
in that sort of interaction because you know that Okay,
(35:26):
this is going to be meticulously torn apart if I
don't give them, well, if I give any any holes
in my case where people are going to try to
tear it apart, then I have to be very careful.
Now it's going to be a completely different approach. I
know I'm using way extremes here. If I'm trying to
say to my son, who's ten, why should you believe
(35:48):
Jesus rose from the dead, you know, way different, Or
if you're talking or you're talking to a Christian who's like, yeah,
I believe it, but why should I believe it? I mean,
I just believe by faith. Then you're going to make
a different case one that where you don't have to
appeal to facts that are hugely historically you know backed,
(36:08):
because the only way that someone's going to receive that
is if they have confidence, historical confidence, you know what
I'm saying. So I just I'm reminded of that when
when we're talking here, because he seems to just say, well,
here's how do I really know it's true? He's yes,
he's appealing to historical credibility, he's appealing to the evidence
(36:34):
that we have, and I think that's what the normal
person who is a little skeptical and needs to have
a rational grounding and a reasonable rational grounding. Nut Okay,
can you prove it historically or something? Or is this
truly the best explanation? Well, he does say that it's
the best explanation. But for a Christian who needs backing
(36:56):
of their faith, I don't think we have to worry
so to speak about having a huge, you know, air tight,
kind of meticulous sort of thing. Is it actually will
turn them off because they think that the only way
you can have confidence is if you're meticulously realized, you know,
have every I dotted and every T crossed historically and
(37:22):
every possible objection defended against. Does that make any sense? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (37:26):
And I mean what who can say that about any
any view they hold, I mean, regardless of what your
view is. I mean, who can say, oh, yeah, I've
got answers to all my questions and I'm not curious
about anything. I figured everything out.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
So that's basically four out of the nine chapters we've
kind of covered. That's halfway through the book, and so listener,
we're going to wrap it up for now. This is
part one of our review, probably our part one of
two of the review of this book and discussion about
some of the themes. If you have any thoughts, you
can tell us by sending an email to podcast at
(38:02):
apologetics three fifteen dot com. Thank you so much for listening.
We hope you enjoy this and we'll be having further
interviews after we're done with this book, so we'll talk
to you then later. Thanks for listening to the podcast.
If you have a question you'd like us to address,
or just a message for us feedback good or bad,
you can either email us at podcast at apologetics three
(38:24):
fifteen dot com or leave a voice message for us
using speak Pipe. Just go to speakpipe dot com slash
apologetics three fifteen to leave us a message. And remember,
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guarantee that we'll read it on the podcast. We also
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(38:44):
you've enjoyed today's podcast, please leave a review in iTunes
or the podcast platform me your choice, and please share
this episode with a friend if you've found it useful.
Remember you can find lots of Apologetics resources at apologeticspree
fifteen dot com, along with show notes for today's episode.
Find Chad's apologetic stuff over at truth bomb Apologetics. That's
truthbomb dot blogspot dot com. This has been Brian Aughton
(39:07):
and Chad Gross for the Apologetics three fifteen podcast, and
thanks for listening.
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