157 - Behold the Man with Peter S Williams - Apologetics 315 Podcast

Episode Transcript
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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.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
All we know is that there's still no contact with
the colony and the xenomorph may be involved.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hello and welcome to the podcast. This is Brian Aughton
joined by Chad Gross as always, and we've just recorded
a lovely conversation with our guest today, Peter s Williams.
We talked about all kinds of things revolving around the
historical Jesus. You're almost spewed when we talked about ancient aliens.
So tell us, tell us what we're going to get

(00:48):
into today.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:49):
So, Peter S.

Speaker 5 (00:51):
Williams is my favorite author on the planet. I've said
that multiple times and it's kind of funny. I was
supposed to interview him so solo to do this interview
because you were off looking for any spooks inspectors that
you could find, but the technology didn't work out on
his end, and you can ask my family. I walked

(01:11):
around for about three hours kind of pouting because I
was so pumped to interview my favorite author on my
favorite topic, and I was like, so ready, and then
it didn't happen, and oh my gosh, I was in
a I didn't I didn't handle it very Christian like,
but no, I'm kidding, But yeah, we had a great
talk with him about his book Behold the Man, Essays

(01:34):
on the Historical Jesus. We talked about philosophy, history, theology.
We even got to talk about how to engage people
on the topic and how to overcome maybe some roadblocks
that they have in their own epistemology or theory of knowledge.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
And yeah, we did get.

Speaker 4 (01:51):
To ask me.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
I'm not gonna say we talked about aliens, but we
talked about aliens.

Speaker 6 (01:56):
We did, and.

Speaker 5 (01:58):
That was one of the most interesting parts arts of
the discussion, just because of the justification he offered in
covering that topic.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
And I'm not going to.

Speaker 5 (02:06):
Say what that is because I want listeners to continue
on in here for themselves, but yeah, I really enjoyed it.
And I also found it super interesting to talk about
some more unique arguments for a high Christology and early
high Christology, and so that was enjoyable as well. But
I just you know, I always geek out when we

(02:26):
interview him.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
And the point where we were talking about aliens, you
asked a question and then I said, I didn't really
have anything to ask, So I said, well, I don't
have anything to ask about aliens because it usually edit
that out. But then the response, it was a great
response and.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
I got a lot out of it. But I'm curious
if it came across like a rebuke.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
You know what I mean, like, oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Because I was thinking, boy, I feel bad now.

Speaker 5 (02:52):
Well what I said was that is not what was
in my mind. I was genuinely just sharing something that
related to what Peter said.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
So I certainly didn't mean.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
No SA So yeah, I don't. I don't think you
guys were doing it. But I'm thinking maybe it. Maybe
it's going to sound like you guys totally like dis
me or something like, well, ancient aliens. There is a
really good topic and you here's why. And then I'm like,
then I'm crawling away.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, you were right, guys.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Anyway, So we talk about his book Behold the Man,
essays on the historical Jesus, and the difference with this
book is like some of his books, not all of them,
some of them are collections of essays and writings, and
so they're put together intentionally in a particular order that
serves a purpose for that collection. And this was really,

(03:45):
in a way an eclectic sort of bunch of essays,
but they all had the same sort of overarching purpose
looking at the historical Jesus. So you'll hear more about
it in the interview.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Let's go to it. Let's get ready. Switch me on.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Well, Peter S.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
Williams, thanks for coming back to the podcast.

Speaker 4 (04:04):
Oh a real pleasure. Thanks for having me guys.

Speaker 5 (04:06):
Yeah, so we wanted to have you on to discuss
your book, Behold the Man, Essays on the Historical Jesus.
And I've been telling people that I get to interview
my favorite author about my favorite topic, so this is
really great. I just wanted to start out by allowing
you to kind of talk about what inspired you to
write the book and how does it differ from some

(04:28):
of your earlier work on Jesus.

Speaker 6 (04:30):
Okay, sure. So I've been doing a series of books
with my publisher, which a Whip and Stock from the US.
I've been doing a series of essays on books, and
this is the fourth and as far as I know,
final book in that series, and all of these books
in the series are kind of collecting together previously written

(04:54):
essays and other material, giving them a kind of spruce
up and a revision, and in the last three of
these volumes kind of giving an introductory kind of preface
or chapter to kind of draw it together. And I have,
as you say, written about the historical Jesus before. I
did a book called Understanding Jesus some years ago, and

(05:17):
more recently one called Getting at Jesus, which was a
response to what the new atheist movement had to say
about the historical Jesus. And this book has a fairly
eclectic variety of topics in the papers that are gathered together,
but I've introduced it with a new chapter that's putting

(05:39):
the search for the historical Jesus in the context of
the contemporary world views that people kind of bring to
that investigation with them, and updating material that I've been
thinking about for a number of years about the shift
from what some would call a kind of pre modern

(06:00):
theistic worldview, thinking about that the modernist kind of scientistic worldview,
postmodernism coming out of that, and now actually there's a
whole raft of so called meta modern writers talking about
what is the worldview that's coming after modernism and postmodernism,

(06:23):
both in the kind of the world of the arts
and as a philosophy, and some people are talking about
that the search for meta modern worldview or a post
postmodern worldview. And so I kind of trace that intellectual
lineage and get into where I think that the metamodernism
has some correct criticisms of modernism and postmodernism, which the

(06:48):
sort of criticisms which I, as a Christian philosopher, have
been making of those movements for many years. But how
I think they are failing to give satisfying answers, but
in that very process showing that they are hungry for
something better, for a worldview that is more conducive to

(07:08):
the realities of our experience and the need for human flourishing.
It's just that I think that a theistic, a Christian
worldview can offer those things that they're looking for, although
they're kind of frightened to go there. So that's the
kind of worldview context. And then I say, when we're
thinking about getting into the historical Jesus, you have this

(07:30):
element of the worldview that you bring to the investigation
and how that kind of affects your investigation.

Speaker 4 (07:36):
There's the whole.

Speaker 6 (07:37):
Category of gathering the relevant evidence for the investigation, so
thinking about what are good rules of historical investigation and
gathering relevant evidence, and then there's the need to explain
the relevant evidence and to look for the best explanation
of that evidence. So again that's about you know, what
are the good rules for what makes a good explanation.

(08:00):
And here's where the kind of worldview particularly starts impacting
on what kind of explanations are you even going to
allow to be considered in that investigation. You know, if
you're really committed to a naturalistic worldview, you're not really
going to be open to considering an explanation of the
relevant data about Jesus that has anything supernatural happening in it, right, ye, Right,

(08:27):
If you come to the investigation even with a naturalism
that is kind of open to being shown wrong by
empirical investigation, then you might be willing to consider a
supernatural a Christian explanation of Jesus basically given sufficient evidence. Certainly,
if you're agnostic when you come to the investigation, or

(08:50):
you believe in some kind of a something supernatural out there,
but you're not quite sure what So depending on kind
of where you are on that kind of sliding scale,
as it were, you'll be more or less open, and
it will perhaps take more or less weight of evidence
and argumentation to convince you that the Christian understanding of

(09:11):
Jesus is the most plausible one. So you get this
kind of interaction between these categories of the worldview that
you bring to the investigation, the search for evidence and
the need to explain that evidence. And then we get
into the individual chapters on a sort of eclectic range
of issues, which you can ask me to unpack in

(09:32):
a moment, because I've said enough on this introductory bit.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
No, it's certainly enough to what the appetite.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yes, So would you say that looking at the different
world views and sort of offering a critique of those
is also part of that sort of deciding what sort
of epistemology one's bringing to it. Like, if this is
your approach, let me maybe open you or persuade you
that you need to be open to other ways of
evaluating how you might something. Is that the idea to

(10:01):
sort of like open the door epistemologically, if you will,
so that people can actually take the evidence in.

Speaker 4 (10:09):
Yes, that's right.

Speaker 6 (10:11):
The epistemology that the theory of knowledge that we bring
to this is absolutely crucial, and that's a crucial element
of worldviews. And so modernism basically wants to hold onto
the idea that we can get truth, particularly about the
material world, particularly through scientific empirical investigation, right, And I

(10:34):
have no problem with that until you put a full
stop at the end of the sentence and say, and
that's the only way.

Speaker 4 (10:40):
To know anything scientism, Yeah, scientist.

Speaker 6 (10:45):
So I want to critique scientism that the postmodernists will
kind of say to the modernist, you haven't really gone
far enough in your rejection of things that we can know,
because the modernist will say this, we can know, but
we can't know stuff about about morals, about esthetics, about
the supernatural, and there are these whole swathes of things

(11:06):
that we can't know about what we can know this
scientific stuff, and then the postmodernist wants to call into
question even that, and like all all theories and narratives
are kind of power plays, and it's just a language game,
and we can't get outside of our language to actually
no reality and so on.

Speaker 4 (11:22):
So there I'm.

Speaker 6 (11:23):
Kind of with the modernist against the postmodernist right, because
I think we really can know things. Yes, so there's
a kind of plague on both your Hous's critique going
on there epistemologically and saying that what is it to
have a properly skeptical attitude about investigating the historical Jesus?

(11:44):
What is a proper skepticism, and saying we need to
bring ideas to the table with us that don't close
down our investigation before we've looked at the evidence, that
don't make our mind up in advance of look at
what the evidence might tell us, and that we can
bring ideas to the table that actually open that open

(12:06):
up possibilities, but again without prejudging. So you don't start
off by just assuming, say the Christian view of Jesus.
But you can come to the investigation assuming that that
is at least a possibility that one could be open
to given a good enough argument. Right, So not foreclosing possibilities,

(12:34):
but you're open to possibilities, but on the basis of
a good argument based in good evidence. And then then
you get into the particulars of what of well, what
rules make for what counts as good evidence? What rules
make for what counts as the best explanation of data.
But yeah, that sort of epistemological stream is a crucial

(12:54):
element in those different worldviews, differs between them and is
one of the major things that I get into in
that introductory chapter.

Speaker 5 (13:04):
Yeah, you mentioned metamodernism and in the opening chapter and
how that might offer a more balanced framework for historical
Jesus research. And you've spoken a little bit about this,
but can you unpack a little bit for listeners specifically
what you mean by metamodernism, because that term actually was

(13:25):
was new to me, So I just want to make
sure everybody knows.

Speaker 6 (13:29):
Even the use of the term is quite controverted at
the moment. Some writers in this field feel that, you know, postmodernism,
the worldview that becomes kind of cultural dominant after the
dominance of postmodernism that kind of arose in the kind
of peaked in the kind of early nineties, say, but

(13:50):
what has come subsequent to that since the kind of
early two thousands. Some writers talk about polymodernism, but metamodernism
seems to be the that's kind of mostly stuck. And
many writers talk about a stance in the arts, particularly
that kind of oscillate between modernist and postmodernist perspectives, or

(14:12):
try to braid together modern and postmodern perspectives, things that
kind of combine the kind of ironic detachment of postmodern
art and literature and filmmaking and so on with a
hunger and an ability to express deeply felt emotion without

(14:35):
feeling that that's kind of cringey. For example, you often
find these things kind of combined. And if I start
mentioning the kind of arts that's been mentioned here, things
like the Carteen series, Rick and Morty, or you know,
compare that to the Simpsons, particularly, it's kind of peak,

(14:58):
which would be kind of more postmar and Rick and
Morty would be more kind of metamodern. Or the films
of Wes Anderson or Oscar Winner a couple of years ago,
everything everywhere, all at once. The writers and makers of
that film explicitly called it a meta modern film, and
it seemed to affirm a kind of modernist nihilism about

(15:21):
reality on the one hand, and say, you know, nothing,
nothing has any objective intrinsic meaning to it.

Speaker 4 (15:30):
But I am going to choose.

Speaker 6 (15:34):
To love the people in my family and find personal
meaning in that. And I can find meaning in this
meaningless universe by committing myself to the specific relationships that
I find myself in and not be overwhelmed by the

(15:55):
everything bagel. If you've seen the film that of we
have so many choices in what some are called the
kind of hypermodernist reality, we have so many choices, and
the film used that both of the kind of symbol
of the immigrant experience in America, our kind of experience
of life in the kind of internet dominated world. You know,

(16:18):
how do you commit to anything in a world where
there's so much choice and variety and things are just
of the moment and so on. But against really agreeing
that with a backdrop inherited from modernism of the kind
of Richard Dawkins esque the world is just pitiless and

(16:38):
difference and no good, no evil, that's all that there is.
So it was kind of I would describe it as
a kind of trying to have your cake and eat
it approach to the modern postmodern dilemma. And that kind
of attempt to braid or oscillate between or cludge those
views together is what some are describing as meta modernism.

(17:00):
And my fundamental point would be really since that since
the modernist and postmodernist outlooks at a fundamental worldview level
actually contradict each other. Oscillating between two contradictory worldviews does
not provide a coherent worldview in which it is satisfying
to live. But that is what the meta modern movement

(17:21):
as a whole is desperate for. If you look at
the work of folks like Timothy Timothy Vermulion that I
write about in the book, he really expresses this hunger
for something more that the scottishilosopher Timothy Rowsen, who talks
about the way in which modernism tore apart truth from
goodness and beauty, and he says, the worldview that I

(17:45):
would be looking for, and that's an expression if I
haven't found it yet, but I'm looking for it. The
worldview I would be looking for is a worldview that
can somehow put together truth and goodness and beauty as a.

Speaker 4 (17:56):
Kind of inherent part of it.

Speaker 6 (17:59):
And as a Christian thinker, and I'm thinking, yeah, I
know a worldview that does this. Central to the monotheistic worldview,
in which God is the locust of truth and goodness
and beauty objectively, inherently speaking, right, But so many within
the metam movement have brought into the kind of new

(18:21):
atheist modernist critique of that the evils of the kind
of pre modern or traditional kind of worldviews, as if
kind of buying into a contemporary version of an Abrahamic
religious worldview would necessarily mean signing up to say, misogyny

(18:43):
or colonialism, or you know, whatever list of evils you
want to pick, and that doesn't at least that doesn't
necessarily follow. So I think you want to start from
the ontological basis of the view and kind of work
your way up from there without worrying about everything that's
kind of been inherited from cultures that have had that

(19:06):
ontology at the center of them.

Speaker 5 (19:09):
That's helpful, and I know the brand has a question,
but I just wanted to say that's one of the
things I appreciate so much about your work is I
think that you're a little bit broader in the things
you write about and cover, and I think that you
work within those those three tenets that you talked about,
the goodness and the truth and the beauty. I don't
think you neglect any of those if anybody were to

(19:30):
look at your body of work, And that's one of
the things I appreciate about it so much.

Speaker 4 (19:34):
Thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (19:35):
Yeah, that trick has been central to my work in
philosophy since back in the days when I was doing
my m fil thesis, and it's been central to a
lot of the stuff that I've taught and written about
and talked about over the years.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very evident.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
Okay, So in the book, it shifts gears from talking
about the different worldviews and epistemologies and sort of critiquing
and laying those out. But then we get into Jesus himself.
And I was kind of my ears perked up because
I didn't start where I thought it would, would it starts,
you know, you kind of start looking at the Epistle

(20:12):
of James. So part of historical Jesus studies trying to
get at, you know, the belief in how, you know Jesus,
did early Christians believe that Jesus was God? You know,
these sorts of questions are central to you know, looking
at Jesus historically. So talk a little bit about the

(20:32):
Epistle of James and why we might start there and
how Jesus as God and sort of a high christology,
if you will, of James plays a role.

Speaker 4 (20:42):
That's right.

Speaker 6 (20:43):
So I'm looking at James as evincing an early high
Christology so called. Say, there were those who will say
that Jesus's original followers viewed him as you know, the
Messiah paths, as a pit, but not as the divine

(21:04):
son of God, and that that idea is something that
came into Christianity later and generally to you know, to
try and make that move plausible, you need to push
that idea of Jesus's divine into the era when Christianity
leaves its Jewish roots and gets out into the Greco
Roman world where maybe Christians can be influenced by ideas

(21:26):
of Greek demi gods and so on, and then stick
the idea that Jesus was divine into the early second century, say,
or you know, even more visibly into a discussion at
the Council of Nicia. According to Dan Brown's book The
Da Vinci Code. Right now, that that Dan Brown idea

(21:49):
is something you can undermine simply by looking at archaeology,
which is something I did in a recent talk which
you can find on my podcast. Gave a lecture at
the European Leadership Forum in May on New Testament archaeology
in Jesus and looking at how the archaeology itself shows
that there was a high Christology at least one hundred

(22:12):
or more years before the councilor and nicea. But when
you can push that even earlier, when you look at
the literary evidence in the New Testament. Of course, but many,
not many people would think of going to the Letter
of James to do this. And I think it's a
particularly interesting letter to look at because whoever wrote it,
it's clearly a Jewish milliare a Jewish Christian milliere, and

(22:38):
it's written from a Jewish Christian to Jewish Christians in
the diaspora. I think there is good evidence to date
this letter very early, could even be as early as
the kind of forties AD, not any later than the sixties.
And I think there is actually plausible evidence thing that

(23:00):
it was written by James, the brother of Jesus, which
would make it particularly interesting, right, But that's kind of
a separable string to this argument. At the very least,
it's a Jewish Christian milia, it's early, and in the
book there are a couple of indications that I talk
about that the writer and thus his readers have a

(23:24):
high christology about Jesus. Not only is there a discussion
about the writer's use of Lord, which the Jews substituted
for the holy name of God and refused to call
the Roman empress Caesar Lord because they reserved that for
God basically, and it calls Jesus Lord. But there's this

(23:46):
phraseology used in the letters about James talking or whoever
wrote it, talking about non Christian's blaspheming the holy name
by which you are called, or the Holy name that
is called over you. Now, terminology of blasphemy in and
of itself doesn't necessitate blasphemy in a religious sense. It

(24:11):
can just mean talking bad of although I would say
the context here suggests that it means blasphemy in a
religious sense, So that's interesting. But this phraseology of the
Holy Name or the noble name that is called over
you is a repeated Old Testament phraseology about the name
of God being called over Israel as the people of God,

(24:35):
that God owns Israel as his people. And now here
is the author of the epistle saying to his Jewish
Christian readers about non Christians blaspheming the noble name that
is called over you, and that that is clearly I
think from context, either a reference to the designation of

(24:57):
Christians as Christians. It was originally an outsider term of abuse.
The early Christians you see from the New Testament described
themselves as followers of the way. I think of Jesus
expression I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
They said, you know the way, we are followers of
the Way, and it was Christian was a term of abuse.

(25:19):
It basically means christ slave that was coined by non
Christians and then adopted by followers of the Way of
their self description. Or it could be a reference to
the name of Christ used in baptism, being called over
people in baptism when they are inducted in baptism into
the Christian community. But either way it seems to be

(25:42):
an application of a Jewish way of describing God's ownership
of Israel and then applying that to Jesus Christ owning
Christians in a parallelism. So all of those indications, taken
accumulatively together, I think give a very strong indication that

(26:05):
the writer and thus the readers of James or whoever
wrote it, have a high Christology. Plausibly, you know, in
the in like the mid to late forties, in the fifties.
And of course, since the writer and the readers who

(26:26):
are in this diaspora that are being written to already
have that view of Jesus, this is new information that's
been communicated to them, then that idea must predate the
writer and the readers going out from Jerusalem, where Christianity
started to the places where they're being, where they are

(26:47):
and where this letter is being written to them, which
again pushes it even earlier. So I think that you know,
it's not something many people have written about, but it
is a very interesting place to go for evincing an
early high Christology within years, within decades of the death

(27:08):
of the historical Jesus.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, I couldn't help but to think.

Speaker 5 (27:11):
When I was reading that chapter, I was thinking of
the Muslim scholar Shabi Ali's kind of evolutionary Christology, and
I was imagining how he would respond to that, And
I thought it would be fascinating in a debate if
somebody would kind of take your argument and flesh it out,
because I think it would catch him quite off guard
because it's not typically one that you hear.

Speaker 6 (27:32):
Yeah, right, I mean, you can find phrases in Pauline
letters from the fifties. But I think this is as
if not plausibly earlier than those Pauline references to our
Christ as our Lord and God and so on.

Speaker 5 (27:50):
Yeah, now you mentioned you said that you thought there
was pretty good evidence that James, actually the brother of Jesus,
actually wrote it. But then while you were talking about
the or, you said James or whoever wrote it, right,
which I understand the modesty there, But could you just
offer maybe one reason why you think James wrote it.

Speaker 4 (28:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (28:10):
I look at some of the parallelisms between phrases in
the letter, the language of the letter and the language
of For example, James's speech is recorded in acts at
the Council of Jerusalem. There are some interesting kind of
parallelisms in the language he uses. But we have the

(28:31):
unanimous testimony of the early church fathers such as Athanasius,
Serial of Jerusalem, Eusebius, Oregon, and so on. All they
unanimously attribute the epistle to James, the brother of Jesus.
There's a kind of the Jewish and the local knowledge

(28:52):
of Jewish conditions in that era displayed by the letter.
The way in which the the Right's kind of authoritatively
without having to introduce himself, and a kind of argument
by elimination from like who would be able to write

(29:12):
in that manner that we know of from from the
early church writers and so on, so sort of argument
from authorial prominence. I guess it's it's a kind of
cumulative case. And perhaps that the most weighty part of
that is simply the the unanimous testimony of all of
the earliest writers who talk about him write letter, you

(29:36):
know that that generation of early church fathers where you're
talking about you know, at least kind of people who knew,
people who knew people who were there ground zero.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Excellent, thank you. That was that was even better than
one reason.

Speaker 6 (29:52):
Well, very often in history and historical arguments, you're you're
you're making a cumulative case. No historical argument is ever
kind of knocked down in the way say a mathematomagical
argument or sometimes a logical argument can be in philosophy,
when you can disprove something by showing it self contradictory. Right,

(30:13):
But in history you are looking at evidence and making
arguments from them, just like you are kind of in
the sciences, and so you want an accumulation of evidences
that point in the same direction to make a kind
of cumulative case, kind of like the case that a
scientist makes in a paper or that a lawyer would

(30:34):
make it in a court. That's the kind of inferential
argumentation that a historian is doing. And so you get
lots of indications that maybe in their own right would
not be enough to convince you of something, but put
them all together, then they become a weighted case for
thinking something. Particularly when you're making a kind of comparative analysis,

(30:56):
it's kind of sayn are there any are there any
counter indications? Is there any apparently undermining evidence against this case?

Speaker 4 (31:05):
And so on.

Speaker 6 (31:06):
So you're kind of weighing up argument against argument where
there are countering arguments, and trying to work your way
through to what is the most sensible thing to think?
But you can you can never say a proof, but
you can say most reasonable.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
That's good.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
So we started in a place where I did you
know you wouldn't think with your book with worldviews when
we're talking about Jesus, and then we talk about epistemology,
and then I think we're going to start with like,
you know, the synoptics, but we start with James so
that after James, I think, oh, well, now we'll go
down to the synoptics where most people start because you know, reasons.

(31:46):
But we started sort of like with John. And the
thing that I tend to hear is that you know,
John was later. John is more of a developed Christology.
Maybe it was developed by the Yohaney community, you know
these the community sort of finally decided that Jesus was,
you know, more than just basic stuff here. He's now

(32:10):
he's becoming divine and things like that. So why start
here with John? What is the dating that you would
suggest for John? And why this approach? Can you unpack that?

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (32:22):
Well, as we said, I've already written a couple of
books on Jesus, and perhaps they would be structured more
in the way that you're kind of expressing that you
would expect. And for example, in my Getting at Jesus book,
I go through the you know, who wrote the Gospels
and when and so on, and starting with the synoptics
and the snoptic problem and arguing that, yeah, I think,

(32:44):
you know, probably Mark was the first one published and
dating it to well, I think plausibly as early as
forty nine. And you know that's not beyond the pale
these days in New Testament scholarship, atheist James called James Crossley.
I think it's James Crossley. There's an athia anyway, would
date it to the mid forties. You know, I'm not
beyond the pale and dating it at forty nine. But

(33:06):
here I am collecting together a collection of things that
I've written here and there. But I think it is
interesting that it's taking kind of the road less traveled
a little bit, as you say, and looking at you know,
high Christology in the Epistle of James, and then looking
at well, what can we say about that the particularly

(33:27):
the dating, the origin, and that the historicity of the
Fourth Gospel, let's call it the Fourth Gospel. I do
argue that I think it is most plausibly written by
John the Apostle. But I look at various arguments that
have been given for dating the Fourth Gospel earlier than
the traditional date. Now that the traditional date would be

(33:51):
towards the end of the first century, but various people
have given arguments for saying that they think it might
be written from before the Jewish War, before the fall
of Jerusalem in seventy eight. And there are a number
of kind of archaeological references that are made in the

(34:11):
Fourth Gospel that people try and argue our indications that
the accuracy of these archaeological references are indications that that
the information at least must have come from before the
fall of Jerusalem, and that maybe that means the Gospel
was written from before then. I don't think that those

(34:32):
arguments hold water. And I go through arguments about that
the sheep Pool and the sheep Gate in the Temple
that I made in this context. I read everything that
I could get my hands on on the archaeology of
the of the Second Temple, and that the Jewish war conquest,

(34:53):
which which kind of finalized with the G's hold up
in the in the Temple there, and the archaeology of
of the pool with its famous double pool and the
colonnades around it that were discovered, and so on. I
don't think there is a good argument to say that
the Gospel must have been written before the fall of Jerusalem.

(35:18):
But I do think there are good arguments to say
that it was written by John the Apostle, and I
would date it to the end of the first century,
along with the traditional kind of dates around about of
ninety eight ad ish, you know, And here I'm kind
of saying, yeah, it would be lovely if you could,

(35:38):
if you could show from these arguments that it was actually,
you know, earlier than people thought. But you know, those
arguments don't seem to hold up, and you've got to
follow the evidence where it leads. But I do think
where the evidence leads is it was written by John
and that he is an eyewitness. So yeah, we've got

(36:01):
eyewitness testimony in this gospel, but it's the latest a
gospel like Luke would date to the mid first century,
I think. But it's not by an eyewitness. It's a secondhand,
a collation, a sort of journalistic collation, if you like,
of reports from people who seem to know what they

(36:22):
were talking about. But it's not an eyewitness report in
that sense. That's where the evidence seems to point. I
think Matthew's gospel might well be include material, the so
called Q source material that might well be written by
an eyewitness. That Q material could plausibly have been written

(36:43):
by Matthew the apostle at the time. This collection of
Jesus' teaching may may be then part of that gospel,
whether or not the whole Gospel was written by Matthew,
but Mark seems to pre date and again is not
an eyewitness, although it does seem to be written by Mark,

(37:05):
who has the scribe to Peter the Apostle, who was
an eyewitness. So you just have to kind of follow
the evidence where it leads, and I think people sometimes
get a bit carried away with oh, you know, maybe
we can we can, we can push these arguments for
early and so on, and are not sufficiently careful in

(37:29):
making those arguments as I try and share.

Speaker 5 (37:33):
Now you mentioned there you said this is this is
a bit to the side of the central issue. But
I'm something I've always wanted to ask you is that
you mentioned you read every I read everything I could
on the archaeology, right or something along those lines. So
when I one of the things I find fascinating when
I read your work is the amount of footnotes and

(37:59):
how all widely read you are so and I honestly
don't know of another author that I can point to
that I could say, oh, yeah, like this person.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
I mean, I haven't seen that.

Speaker 5 (38:11):
So my question is is how are you able to
research so widely? And like I feel like, does he
do anything other than read like, you know, like, I
guess I'm just I'm kind of looking into I guess
I'm looking into Like, how are you able to do

(38:31):
that so effectively?

Speaker 4 (38:33):
Yeah, it is a matter of putting the time in.

Speaker 6 (38:36):
I do have time for other things in life, but
I do spend a good chunk of my life reading things,
underlining things and highlighting things in kindle books and so on.

Speaker 4 (38:48):
You know.

Speaker 6 (38:49):
Of course, this book, as I say, it's a revised
collection of things that I've previously written. So the research
is you know, the book basically came out. I've been
doing a book a year for a number of years.
But that's my dint of this essay on series have
been you know, some new material gets written, but the

(39:10):
bulk of them are kind of revisions of old stuff.
So I don't have to do huge amounts of research
in these particular years in order to get these books out,
because it's drawing on research which I've done in previous years. Right,
you know, when I originally wrote the essay, a bunch
of these essays were published in the college journal for

(39:32):
the Norwich In University College that I've been working for
part time, Theophalos, which is an open source journal you
can find online. You can find a lot of the
original versions of my papers in Theophalist Journal. But then
when I'm coming to the book, I will revise, do
some additional research, see you know, you know what new

(39:52):
stuff in that field has come out, so on, and
try and sprust it up a bit, make sure it's
up to date.

Speaker 4 (39:59):
But yeah, I just.

Speaker 6 (40:00):
Do have to spend a lot of time reading stuff.
It's good that I enjoy doing that. I have more interests,
but I love that in books when I read them
as well, because then it gives me places to go
in researching those topics and kind of forming my opinions
on things.

Speaker 5 (40:19):
So yeah, so then we you kind of move on
in the book to the to the resurrection. And one
of the things you talked about earlier on in the
interview was this idea of you know, we have these
these pieces of evidence or facts that need explanation, and
then of course you move to, well, what's the.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Best explanation of these facts? Right?

Speaker 5 (40:39):
Yeah, and then you talked about how it depends on
what you're open to as an explanation. So how does
one kind of handle the philosophical challenges to the idea
of a miracle when it comes to the resurrection.

Speaker 6 (40:53):
Yeah, and that's quite a diverse set of challenges really,
I would say, because you could say, you know, there
are traditional challenges even from defining what you mean by
a miracle. I mean, David Hume is the kind of
lowchi classicus of this, of saying that, you know, Hume
notoriously defined a miracle as a violation of the laws

(41:17):
of nature in a kind of what many have said
is a bit of a prejudicial kind of phraseology really,
and gave some notorious arguments against miracles which are still
debated is today as to whether he is arguing that
miracles are not possible, or he's allowing that they're possible
but arguing that they're not ever ever plausible to believe in.

(41:40):
Different people takeing different ways, and I have in various
of my sources, particularly that there's a bunch of stuff
on this in the Getting at Jesus book, looked at
the interpretation of Hume's arguments and so on. Some of
it comes from, as I say, that the worldview ontology
that you bring to the question. If you believe that

(42:01):
only the material, physical natural world exists, then of course
anything that happens must be a thing that it is
possible to happen within that kind of an ontology, and
must have a causal relationship as one can specify within
that kind of ontology. If you are open to the

(42:21):
possibility that there is a God outside of the natural world,
then it seems to follow that one must be open
to the possibility of events that are not tied to
other events in the world by a kind of naturalistic description.

Speaker 4 (42:38):
Right. So David Hume.

Speaker 6 (42:42):
In one passage says that you know, if some lead
were of itself to float in the air, and he
talks about how we know that this is unbelievable because
you know that can't happen, and that's never you know,
people don't experience that happen, it's never been seen to happen,

(43:05):
and so on. But he is really given that the
game away where he says of itself, if God were
to cause a piece of lead to levitate, then the
lead would not be levitating of itself. It would be
levitating by the application of a particular choice on God's

(43:25):
part to exercise his omnipotence to cause that to happen. Right,
So it is not an instance of lead levitating of itself.
It would be a miracle, it would be an application
of God's power.

Speaker 4 (43:40):
So the question is tied to you know, what.

Speaker 6 (43:44):
Kind of things do you think exist and what kind
of things do you think it's even possible to exist?
So you know, there's a difference between saying I don't
think God does exist and saying I don't think it's
even possible for God to exist. It's not that too
much of as we get into the ontolo logical argument
for God's existence, right.

Speaker 4 (44:02):
But.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
That's a whole other story.

Speaker 6 (44:09):
But you see how that your your kind of ontology
can affect what you're kind of going to take seriously,
but also you're you're you're kind of the way in
which you describe miracles, whether you take kind of human
arguments against miracles seriously or not. And then getting into that,
I basically I would argue that you can't really address

(44:30):
the issue dismiss the issue of miracles a pra or
I You've got to get into the details of, well,
what is the evidence and is there a good enough
evidential case to convince me that a miracle has happened,
And you can't set that bar so artificially high a
priori that you're in a position where you're basically saying,

(44:51):
you know, I could never be convinced, Then what you're
what you're really saying is my my worldview is unfalsified
on you know, empirically unfalsifiable, which is, you know, perhaps
an uncomfortable position for modernists, people with a modernist kind
of scientific worldview or scientistic worldview to be in. So

(45:13):
if you want to leave your worldview open to empirical falsification,
well then you've got to get into those details of well,
what is the evidence and what are the good criteria
for making you know what the best explanation is? And
if you don't, you know, you're not just completely determined
to rule out a theistic explanation from the get go,

(45:34):
well then you know you might as well look at
the argument and see where you end up at the
end the end of considering it.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
So tied to miracles. Of course, this is all pointing
towards the resurrection. And sometimes when we're talking about the resurrection,
when it comes to apologetics, the discussion comes up with, well,
what's the right approach of doing that? Should we look
at data that scholars agree upon and try to narrow
our focus and sort of make a case that way,

(46:02):
or do we want to broaden that and just use
every bit of available data possible. I kind of think,
you know, it depends on who you're talking to. My
personal opinion, and maybe you think the same based upon
like the depending on the worldview of the person and
what sort of epistemology they may have, what sort of
background information they already have, things like that, What does

(46:24):
your approach tend to look like?

Speaker 1 (46:26):
And do you have any thoughts on that?

Speaker 6 (46:28):
Yeah, yeah, I agree that you don't necessarily want to
try and pick a one size pix all approach. You
want to fit it to the occasion. But of course
when you're writing for a general audience you often have
to pick an approach. I do discuss in the opening
chapter that difference between the kind of let's throw everything

(46:49):
in the kitchen sink at it kind of approach to
argument and the so called kind of minimal facts approach.
I kind of contrast the kind of traditional Christian evidences
approach is as you might find, say, in the work
of someone like normanel Geisler, and I look at how
he argues in his classic test on Christian apologics, and

(47:12):
then contrasts that with the kind of approach taken by
someone like Gary Habermass is currently coming out with his
four volume massive Magnum Opus on the Resurrection. Three volumes
are available thus far, and he has in his career
taken this approach, which he calls the minimal facts approach.

Speaker 4 (47:32):
I try and try.

Speaker 6 (47:33):
And hive off a particular element of that approach. Haber
Mass will use this rule, as you say, of general consent,
of kind of majority consent or a large majority consent
of scholars relevant to an issue, accepting it whatever their
worldview might be. And I think that that might be

(47:53):
a useful kind of rhetorical approach, depending on your situation.
But I think, why not just say, let's just use
good rules for what counts as evidence, and then use
evidence that falls within those rules. Why add this rule
about majority consent, because as haber Massive self says, you know,

(48:16):
consent doesn't equal truth. And it's like sometimes he seems
to be using that rule just as a kind of
a rhetorical move to kind of try and get a
shorthand on the conversation and kind of get to the
point quicker.

Speaker 4 (48:35):
And if someone is willing to go that way, then
you know, great, fine.

Speaker 6 (48:40):
Sometimes it seems that he, in particularly Michael Lacona, who
uses a same or similar approach, is using it as
a kind of bulwark against worldview bias. I often feel
that Michael Lacona, in his work on the Resurrection is
trying to kind of bend over backwards not to be
biased to towards the Resurrection, that he ends up being

(49:03):
overly cautious on what data he will allow. And I
think actually that if you are careful in forming your
criteria of evidence gathering, that that criteria itself should be
the bulwark against bias. It's like, are these standard criteria

(49:25):
criteria that.

Speaker 4 (49:26):
People with other world views accept and use?

Speaker 3 (49:30):
So it's more like common ground finding the common ground
that you can argue from sort of.

Speaker 6 (49:35):
If I can show that these criteria result in this
set of data, then that's the set of data that
I should use. Whether or not people with those other
world views a majority of them also accept that data,
because all that shows is that they're being inconsistent with
their epistemological foundations. And why should I be constrained by that?

(49:58):
Why should the particular a person if I'm talking to
a particular person in conversation, want to be limited by that, Well,
it's going to depend on them. You know, when you're
talking to a particular individual, you have to engage with
the particular individual at where they're at. So I basically say,
you can take these kind of three approaches, a kind

(50:19):
of criteria approach with or without this majority consent criteria
that Haber mass ads, and then there's actually no contradiction
between that and the throw everything in the kitchen sink
at it kind of approached that someone like Lydia McGrew
for example, would take right, So that these are not

(50:43):
mutually exclusive approaches, and in it, I tend to think
that the best argument, strongest argument for something is all
of the arguments taken together in context. But it may
be you know, pH torrtally useful in particular situations, given
restrictions of time, et cetera, to focus on a criteria

(51:07):
approach or even a minimum of facts approach.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Yeah, that was that was really helpful.

Speaker 5 (51:13):
So one of the things that people might find interesting
in this book is some of the explanations that you
you kind of tackle, and one of those is ancient aliens. Yeah,
so I'm wondering, why do you think, like, what do
you think draws people to those types of explanations, for example,

(51:37):
ancient aliens? And kind of how can we as Christians
respond if somebody perhaps says, hey, I think the best
explanation of the resurrection, or maybe another phenomenon is ancient aliens.

Speaker 6 (51:50):
Notorious non documentaries on the so called documentary channel as
used to be ancient aliens. I mean there's a lot
of this stuff that has media in past decades.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
I like that.

Speaker 5 (52:04):
Sorry to interrupt, but I like the description of so
called documentary channels.

Speaker 3 (52:09):
He almost uses coffee I did, anyway, go ahead, sorry.

Speaker 4 (52:16):
But I mean going back to say, like the nineteen.

Speaker 6 (52:20):
Fifties, you've had the growth of UFO religions, UFO cults,
and would say where people have formed spiritualities, ways of
life with belief in aliens as a central part of them.
And many of these viewpoints want to co opt the
historical Jesus into their worldview and fold him in. And

(52:44):
I think people who have those views deserve an apologetic
response from Christians just as much as say, Mormons deserve
a response from Christian apologists or etc. So it's worth
taking seriously from that point of view, just from the
point of view that you know, apologetics is motivated by

(53:07):
a Christian desire to love our neighbor, particularly to love
their rationality, and to engage with them about what's reasonable
to believe and to found your way of life upon.
But also because popular culture, the so called documentaries that
we've talked about and so on, have spread this kind

(53:28):
of popular belief in aliens and particularly in explanations of
things in human history in terms of aliens, and people
with a kind of modernistic, naturalistic worldview might well say that,
you know, in explaining the historical Jesus, well, you know,
an explanation that involves aliens is at least a scientific explanation, right,

(53:54):
rather than a supernatural explanation, and is to that extent
more plausible.

Speaker 4 (53:58):
Right.

Speaker 6 (54:00):
Why should I go to a supernatural explanation when invoking
aliens could surely explain the data for the resurrection ap
plausibly at least that stays within a materialistic worldview in
doing that, right, So, I think there are a number
of reasons for kind of taking this seriously as seriously

(54:23):
as an apologist would want to engage with a Mormon
understanding of Jesus or a Muslim understanding of Jesus, etc. So, yeah,
there's lots to engage with that. I have a chapter
which is a revised version of a kind of a
peer reviewed paper that I published in the Offerlics Journal
about ancient alien theories and Jesus and UFO religions and

(54:47):
so on, and looking at scientific evidence about the existence
of alien life, you know, the search for Indian life
or the SETI program search for extra terrestrial intelligence is
definitely a scientific field. It interacts with scientific fields like

(55:09):
the study of abiogenesis, the origin of life you get
as astrobiology and so on. A whole host of scientific fields.
Design detection overlaps with this and looking for signs of
alien civilizations, etc. But going into questions about, you know,
scientifically speaking, just just on secular scientific grounds, how plausible

(55:34):
is it to think that there are intelligent aliens out
there in the universe, that there are any relatively close
to Earth, if there are any, particularly that there would
be any who would be minded and capable of coming here,
what are the plausibilities of that? Before you even get

(55:57):
into what is the plausibility of them arriving in the
first century and being interested in doing things that might
give rise to people thinking that Jesus was a miracle
working divine risen, son of God, when you know he's
an alien or it's an alien conspiracy or something along
those lines. But I look at the secular scientific evidence

(56:19):
in order to argue that even if you think that
there could be aliens out there, actually probably not intelligent.
And even if you think they're intelligent, they're probably not
anywhere anywhere near us. And even if they're anywhere near us,
what makes you think that they would be interested or
capable of interstellar spaceflight? And even if they were, what

(56:40):
makes you think that they're close enough to be able
to safely get here or send equipment here? And even
if they did, what makes you think they would happen
to arrive in the first century? You know, well before
we've been you know, broadcasting our existence through technological use
of radio frequencies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So

(57:01):
just going into the compound implausibility of that, as I've
rejoined to those kind of ancient alien theories that want
to link everything, including the historical Jesus, into the aliens,
did it mean.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
Well, I don't know what I have to ask about
ancient aliens. To be honest, what do you think, Chad?

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Oh? No, I thought that was a good explanation.

Speaker 5 (57:29):
I just I really like the point about you know
that they somebody who believes this, especially since this has
been kind of a phenomenon since the nineteen fifties, you know,
deserves an answer, just like the Mormon or the Jehovah's
Witness or the atheist or anyone else, because I think
that the tendency might be for somebody to hear. Oh gosh,
you know, why would you even why would you even
address that? But yeah, you know you don't want to

(57:52):
be kind of a snob about the explanations that you're
willing to engage with, especially if somebody believes it, because
you could you could lose them if you disc on it, right, yea.

Speaker 6 (58:01):
Just because of an explanation doesn't strike you as plausible, that's
no reason not to engage with it. The reason to
engage with the thing is because other people find it plausible, right, right,
And you want to love them and love their rationality.
Say that's right. You want to take people seriously, and
that means taking their ideas seriously, even if you don't

(58:24):
think that they are ultimately supportable.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (58:26):
I remember once I was teaching a Sunday school class
and there was a young lady in the class who
had a sister who believed in fairies. It was kind
of a branch of like a new age. And she
believed that a fairy lived in her in the necklace,
Like she had a crystal around her neck, and she
believed that a fairy lived in it. And she also

(58:48):
believed that there were like devious fairies who would do
things like hyder car keys and things like that. And
so when this lady shared about it, a number of
people in the room kind of laughed. And thankfully, I
give credit to the Holy Spirit for this. I looked
at them and I said, because I was the teacher,

(59:10):
I said, I said, you just lost any opportunity you
have for reaching that young lady. I said, because you
you if you were to laugh at her, or ridicule
her or discount her, I said, she won't hear anything
you have to say after that. And so I really
like that that idea of like honoring somebody's view even

(59:32):
if you don't find it personally plausible.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Well, you know, that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
I said, I don't have anything to ask about this
because I simply just wasn't interested. But you know, I'm
really challenged by what you're both of you have said
there and this idea, because I kind of felt that way,
like I don't really care about this subject. I find
it hard to engage with subjects I'm not interested in.
But you're right, you know, if someone is seriously dealing

(01:00:01):
with that, Like I remember talking to a lady about
angels or something like that, and you know, it was
an idea. I thought, how can anybody believe that? But
you know, because I knew this person and they were
talking about it, suddenly the desire and the motivation was
there to learn about that. So, yeah, you're saying those

(01:00:24):
things really correct me.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
Thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:00:27):
Yeah, I wanted to ask that. Sometimes when you get
into conversations with somebody and you're talking about evidence and
what is the best explanation of the evidence, sometimes I think,
and I experience in conversation that people aren't as driven
by the evidence and the facts as you would think

(01:00:49):
they would be, and a lot of it boils down
to what feels comfortable or kind of their own personal experience,
even if their experience contradict with known data. So when
you're in a conversation with somebody and it seems like
they're reluctant to consider things that they're not comfortable with,

(01:01:11):
but it's more based on feelings and experience than dealing
with data, what are some ways that you can kind
of challenge their epistemology, if you will, or even maybe
they're ontology depending to get them to be more open,
to allow the facts to inform them more than their

(01:01:32):
experience or their feelings or their preferences. And I guess
admittedly that's a challenge for all of us.

Speaker 4 (01:01:39):
Yes, well, I'm glad you said that.

Speaker 6 (01:01:41):
I think that is a challenge for everybody of every worldview, right,
But to take us back to what we were saying
earlier about truth and goodness and beauty, for example, I
think it's kind of a bit of a holdover from
modernist thinking to make this separation between kind of facts,

(01:02:02):
particularly kind of empirical facts that we that we get
at in a kind of scientific kind of a way,
and then to say everything else is just subjective.

Speaker 4 (01:02:14):
And I tend to think.

Speaker 6 (01:02:16):
That we start from this kind of first person, conscious
awareness of ourselves and of an apparent world beyond us,
and I tend to adopt an epistemology of it is
wise to start from a position of trust. That if
you reject trust from the outset, you're never actually going

(01:02:39):
to think you can reasonably believe anything, really, apart from
a very few kind of apparently indupable things. You know,
I think therefore I am kind of kind of stuff.
You know, if you want to believe that there really
is a world outside of yourself and you're not in
the matrix, and that you really can but what you

(01:03:00):
had for breakfast, and that generally speaking, what your senses
tell you can help you reliably navigate the world and
so on, those are not things that you can prove,
certainly not scientifically, because any science you did would have
to rely upon you assuming that those things were true
and remembering the results of your experiments and so on.

(01:03:24):
But then how do you know you trust your memory?
So we start from this position of trust, and even
to kind of use the basic rules of logic. Those
are things that you can't argue for because they are
the basis of arguing for anything. So in a sense,
trying to argue for them would be circular. But they
are the very foundation of rationality, and you just kind

(01:03:46):
of intuit that you see that, and we experience things
like look at that rainbow, that's beautiful, and I don't.
I'm no more or going through some sort of argument
in my head to the conclusion, you know, premise, premise, premise,
et cetera, conclusion that rainbow is beautiful than I am.

(01:04:09):
When I'm remembering that I had toast for breakfast. It
just seems to me that I remember having toast for breakfast,
and it's entirely reasonable for me to believe that until
and unless I'm given some sufficiently convincing counter argument, which
ultimately would be based and grounded in things which I

(01:04:33):
have to accept intuitively, right, that that rainbow is beautiful
as something I experienced, and I think that that is
reasonable to believe until unless I'm given sufficient counter arguments
to say that no, it's you know, actually that rainbow
is ugly and you're mistaken, or actually, no, nothing is
objectively beautiful. You know, that's just a subjective expression of

(01:04:56):
your own emotion, like a kind of emotiva aesthetics parallel
to a kind of emotive emotivist approach to ethics. That
would say, you know, saying child murder is wrong is
just an expression of your emotions.

Speaker 4 (01:05:11):
Well, no, I'm with C. S. Lewis.

Speaker 6 (01:05:14):
When you know, the ancients when they ask, you know,
can can an emotional reaction be appropriate or inappropriate to
the thing and is directed towards Modernism loses this, this
idea that our subjective reactions to things can be either
objectively appropriate or inappropriate, and they're not just subjective full stop,

(01:05:39):
because they are your reaction to the world. That your
reaction to the world emotionally speaking and so on can
be appropriate and inappropriate, your trust can be appropriately or
inappropriately placed in things, et cetera. So I wouldn't to
kind of question a little bit of the kind of modernism,

(01:05:59):
perhaps of the epistemology that you were kind of outlining
there and wanting to affirm that, yes, it is reasonable
for us to trust our experience and our kind of
intuitive reactions to things, but we do have to be
open to being shown wrong, and there are very few

(01:06:23):
things where it is kind of impossible for us to
be shown wrong without kind of giving up everything. You know,
I cannot, you know, conceive of an argument showing me
that the law of non contradiction is not true right,
because any argument would have to assume that that logical

(01:06:45):
law is true. I would find it very hard to
conceive of an argument that could convince me that torturing
small children just for the sheer heck of.

Speaker 4 (01:06:56):
It is evil.

Speaker 6 (01:07:00):
Even an atheist like Karen Nielsen would say, those kind
of basic moral intuitions are more certain than any skeptical
argument that you could imagine being lodged against them, And
so it's not really open to counter argument. But sure
there are things that are open to counter argument. I
seem to remember having toast for breakfast, but I could

(01:07:23):
just about conceive of you giving me enough evidence to
convince me that actually you had employed some kind of
psychiatrist to hypnotize me into believing that I had toast
when I didn't, and then forgetting that I'd been hypnotized.
And maybe if you showed me a video of me

(01:07:45):
being hypnotized by him, and then I would say, no,
hang on a minute, have you just generated that using
an AI to create a fake video? But you know,
maybe you could do enough right to convince me. And
so there are things where we can reach a point
of being irrational to keep believing our initial position on

(01:08:09):
the basis of other things that ultimately will track back
to intuitions. But we do have to be to be
open and getting to a point. Whether you're thinking of,
you know, ourselves or convincing other people of getting to
that kind of tipping point of them being or us
being open to being shown to be wrong. It's ultimately
something that only we or they control, right, We're not

(01:08:33):
were in charge of what other people will allow themselves
to be convinced by. I think it's Brian Left how
the philosopher who said arguments don't convince people of anything,
they only appeal to them to be convinced, or something
something like this. Arguments don't prove anything that they appeal

(01:08:57):
for our making up our minds on things.

Speaker 5 (01:09:00):
Yeah, that's really helpful. I like that we have to
be open to being shown that we're wrong. I mean,
I'm thinking that might be a good you know, when
you enter into a conversation with somebody and you might
be talking about a topic that you disagree with, maybe
that would be a good kind of question to ask
at some point of like, well, hey, you know, I
could be wrong, but are you open as well to

(01:09:23):
the possibility at least that you might be wrong, or
that alternative view might be the case. I was just
thinking when I asked the question, I guess for context,
I was thinking of just a conversation I had last
summer with a couple Mormon elders, and you know, I said,
you have had an experience that you believe was an

(01:09:44):
experience of God, and so have I, but unfortunately we
believe things that contradict. So do you agree, at least
on that basis that we both can't be right? And
they affirmed like, yeah, you know you And I said, okay, well,
then how do we adjudicate between whose experience? If either

(01:10:04):
experience was genuine, how do we adjudicate which one was?
And I was trying to lead them to the idea,
well that's where you look at the evidence, that's where
you look at reality, and they kind of just said, well,
I don't know, and then I suggested.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Well how about we look at some evidence.

Speaker 5 (01:10:21):
But it just seemed like even when I was able
to show them something that was pretty objective, they just
always punted to that experience that they had. But I
think that goes back to what you're saying. They weren't
open to being shown that they were in error, and
of course that's very difficult to admit, especially with something

(01:10:43):
that important. So I appreciate that as well.

Speaker 6 (01:10:45):
Yeah, I found that the specific Brian left our quote
because I use it in there in one of my books,
A Universe from someone I created in Arguments do not
compel our assent, They merely appeal for it. Arguments do
not compel our assent, They merely appeal for it. So

(01:11:05):
I think that's right. And this is this is where
you know, personal relationship, trust, genuineness of that interaction and
relationship and time invested into it often really matter.

Speaker 4 (01:11:22):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:11:22):
Research on conversion generally shows that people tend to take
a number of years to move from a non Christian
spirituality into embracing a Christian spirituality. This is not the
sort of thing that typically happens in one conversation, right,

(01:11:43):
And it's something that takes place within a context where
people are assessing, you know, are you genuine and trustworthy?
Can I be open and real in this situation? How
can of combative is this? Are you disagreeing me? Disagreeing

(01:12:05):
with me just because you love a good argument or
because you want to win? And show how stupid I am,
or are you disagreeing me with me because you want
what's best for me?

Speaker 4 (01:12:19):
Right?

Speaker 6 (01:12:19):
And those are the whole host of different situations, right,
And we know this on our own experience. And this
comes back again to love as the motivation for Christian apologetics.
And you know, do unto others as you would have
them do to you applies to apologetics just as much
as to anything else.

Speaker 4 (01:12:41):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:12:41):
M hm, that's really good. I'm just curious kind of
like more of a personal or reflective question, what what
is you know, you've written a good bit on the
historical Jesus, as we've talked about throughout the interview. What
is that research over the years done for your own
your own faith or your own walk with you Jesus.

Speaker 6 (01:13:01):
Yeah, well's kind of two issues there. I think certainly
my confidence in the credibility of the testimony that we
have about Jesus and the kind of the Christian picture
of Jesus that are put together from historical sources is

(01:13:23):
definitely increased by my investigation over the years of those
kind of issues in terms of the textual integrity of
the sources and the testimonial reliability of those sources, the
internal and external evidence, also the non biblical, the extra

(01:13:47):
biblical evidence, both written and archaeological, as it pertains to
the historical Jesus. But I think you've got to make
a connection between that personal spirituality and of the approach
that I took in my book Understanding Jesus, the subtitled
Five Ways to Spiritual Enlightenment, and I gave this kind

(01:14:10):
of cumulative case argument for the Christian view of Jesus.
But not only from the point of view of the
kind of abstract you know, who did he think he
was and did he do things that would back that up?
But from the point of view of what role did
Jesus seem to think he should play in your personal

(01:14:34):
way of life, in your personal spirituality, what role did
Jesus see himself playing in your spirituality?

Speaker 4 (01:14:40):
And did he do things that lead you to take
that seriously?

Speaker 6 (01:14:45):
And so from the point of view of faith being
about making a personal commitment of trust and allegiance to
following Christ, to the way way of life, the way
of relating to God that he promulgated, And so it

(01:15:06):
is not Christianity is not just a kind of our worldview.
It only includes that but it is about this question
of what kind of spirituality are you going to have
and what role does Jesus play in that? And that
ultimately is about who are you going to trust, where

(01:15:27):
is your allegiance placed, what are you you know, who
are you committed to ultimately in arranging how you're going
to live your life? And I think it's the apologetic
stuff supports that, but it's not to be confused with that.

(01:15:49):
It is a signpost to the real thing. It's not
the real thing itself. And so you've got to come
to that point of grappling with if or you know,
asking the question is the Christian worldview true? Is the
Christian idea of who Jesus was true? Well, that's that's
one thing, but actually asking okay, what am I going

(01:16:14):
to do with Jesus? How am I going to react
to this? On a personal level, it's whether the rubber
really hit the hits the road. And there again, you know,
no amount of argumentation can put your arm behind your back.

(01:16:34):
You know, I always describe arguments attach a price tag
to things. A good argument you attaches a price tag
to the rejection of a particular conclusion, and that is
a price tag in terms of rationality, in terms of
personal consistency. Perhaps you know, am I committed to being

(01:16:57):
a person who is consistent in the things that I think,
who is reasonable.

Speaker 4 (01:17:04):
And so on?

Speaker 6 (01:17:05):
But there's still a shift from that to what am
I ashes going to do? You know, as Jame says,
you you.

Speaker 4 (01:17:12):
Believe there's there's one God. Oh you're doing well.

Speaker 6 (01:17:16):
Even the demons believe and tremble right, this is not
where it's at. This is not the be all end
or what really matters is grappling with how am I
personally going to react to Jesus.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:17:32):
I love that idea of apologetics being a sign post
to Jesus, but that doesn't equate to the actual experiencing
him or following him, and they shouldn't be confused.

Speaker 2 (01:17:43):
I really like that. That's helpful. Well.

Speaker 4 (01:17:45):
Peter S.

Speaker 3 (01:17:46):
Williams, thank you so much for being with us again.
And we've been talking about your book Behold the Man,
Essays on the Historical Jesus and listeners. If you want
to find more resources and writings and stuff Peter S. Williams,
you can go to Peterswilliams dot com. It's not Peter's Williams,
it's Peter Swilliams, and there's also his YouTube channel and

(01:18:10):
there's tons of great playlists there with all kinds of
great content. So, Peter, thank you so much for being
with us again. Enjoyable read and great conversation as always, Thank.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
You, Yes, thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:18:22):
It's a great pleasure.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
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 fifteen dot com, or
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(01:18:46):
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Speaker 2 (01:19:01):
With a friend if you've found it useful.

Speaker 3 (01:19:03):
Remember you can find lots of Apologetics resources at apologetics
three fifteen dot com, along with show notes for today's episode.
Find Chad's apologetic stuff over at Truthbombapologetics that's truthbomb dot
blogspot dot com. This has been Brian Aughton and Chad
Gross for the Apologetics three fifteen podcast, and thanks for listening.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}157 - Behold the Man with Peter S Williams