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Permalink Reply by Dennis Smith on April 29, 2012 at 12:56pm

It would all be speculation. What did people nearly 2000 years ago do or think or how were they motivated when you have nothing in any historical record other than the NT? How do you go about determining what they REALLY believed if it was different from what is in the extent documents and why it changed; how exactly it evolved into what is in the extent documents?

There are, of course, the literary and form critics along with the textual critics who argue for pre-gospel written documents, none of which are extent and for oral tradition that predates those supposed documents. All of that is also speculation. Perhaps it is based on sound reasoning and cohesive principles but in the end, no one knows.

All we know if what is in the extent documents. Are the documents reliable to the point they can be traced back toward the supposed actual events? How far back is that? Are there any other independent, well attested, perhaps eyewitness reports, documented reports regarding any of the events other than general historical events. Not even those mentioned in the NT can be verified and some of them could be argued to be wrong.

So, the issue for me is what sort of evidence would it require for me to accept as fact that such an extraordinary event as someone rising from the dead as the satisfaction of a vicarious, propitiatory sacrifice to satisfy the justice of the deity that created the entire universe so he would not send most of the people who have lived to eternal torment. That that person was also actually God in carnate?

It would take more evidence that I might possibly be able to imagine and certainly far more than actually exists.

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Permalink Reply by Bobby Havicon on April 29, 2012 at 1:19pm

As for evidence, the Christians I'm used to (Presbyterians) say that the ultimate evidence is that one believes in spite of the lack of evidence, which itself is evidence of the grace of God in that person's life, since the message of the cross is foolishness to the perishing. It's quite frustrating, but in a sense liberating, at least in dealing with the Reformed. Now I just say I don't believe, and who's fault is that? If it takes a supernatural act of God to create the very belief I lack, then what am I to do? If his sovereignty trumps my will, as the Reformed understanding of scripture dictates, then I'll become a Christian whenever he chooses to bless me with his grace. Until then...

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