Academia Versus Apologetics?
The Christian apologetic community is up in arms over the NT Review podcast and an interview with New Testament doctoral candidate Laura Robinson’s interview on the Shannon Q Youtube channel. Laura, and her co-host, Ian Mills, on the NT Review, which I listen to, took Lee Strobel’s book “The Case for Christ” to the woodshed. Laura then went on to take on a number of Christian apologists for their approach. She believes many evangelical defenders of the faith are engaging in poor arguments and ignoring counter proposals.
For example, Laura (I hope she doesn’t mind me using her first name) disagrees with folks like Mike Licona or Mike Winger for making statements such as the Gospel writers would never have invented women discovering the empty tomb because they could not have testified in any ancient public proceeding. She stated that if the Gospels were written decades later and you were trying to come up with a reason why Jerusalem was not all abuzz about the disappearance of Christ’s body, you would create women as eyewitnesses because they would not have be taken seriously.
Yet, you still have to come up with a reason for fabricating the story. One person on Twitter argued it might have been that the disciples suffered from “dissonance reducing hallucinations.” The problems with this suggestion is myriad. Typically these “hallucinations” are auditory not visual and they are highly individualistic. Moreover, other “messiahs” died in Israel but we don’t have any evidence that any of them were worshipped or produced mass hallucinations. Furthermore, the Jesus movement would have probably died out rather quickly once the disciples faced pushback and probably would have been killed quickly as those suffering from “dissonance reducing hallucinations” typically suffer from psychosis and would have been avoided rather than attract a crowd. Thus, the counter proposals simply aren’t as convincing because they aren’t as thoroughly convincing.
When I was a trial lawyer, I learned that if a person doesn’t have a compelling, consistent narrative but only a random set of objections that they are on a fast track to an unfavorable verdict. That’s what I find when I read Dale Allison’s book “Resurrecting Jesus.”
Don’t get me wrong, I do think many apologists should address these issues. Back when I was regularly blogging on apologetic issues, I spent more time reading and responding to skeptics like Richard Dawkins then parroting Josh McDowell. I believed that was only fair given my background as a former card carrying atheist that was so geeky about it that I gave away copies of Freud’s “Future of an Illusion” and Bertrand Russell’s “Why I’m Not a Christian.” I was harshly treated by a number of conservative Christians and I didn’t want to become “that person.” So, to a degree, I agree with Laura.
However, Laura and Ian, like a lot of modern scholars, base their counterproposals on assuming that academic theories are facts. I remember asking Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann about something that is called “The Documentary Hypothesis,” which, in short, proposes that the first five books of the Hebrew Bible were written and edited by four differing “parties.” He smiled and told me, “Well, I believe it but I can’t prove it and too many proceed like they have!” Amen.
I listen to the NT Review and as a Phd Student in New Testament, I enjoy it. The hosts are bright and engaging people. However, they often speak as if a number of scholarly constructs, especially those that own their inheritance to German scholarship of the 18th and 19th century are any more than…well…theories.
Moreover, as Biblical scholar Stephen Barton has warned, it is important to keep in mind the “genealogy” of the historical methods utilized by Laura, Ian, etc. stem from “Enlightenment epistemological atheism" that can tempt one to be led down an overly secular path that is alien to the evangelical spirit of the New Testament itself.