Clinton Ohlers: Two Parables on Divine Action

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

Of course, there is public evidence for the Resurrection:

Peace Be With You

Thanks for the note @Patrick. Yes, I do have evidence. Here is my summary: www.veritas.org/evidence-easter-scientists-list/ But listen to Dr. Gary Habermas talk about the minimal facts approach: Dr. NT Wright takes a historian’s perspective: http://ntwrightpage.com/2016/07/12/christian-origins-and-the-resurrection-of-jesus-the-resurrection-of-jesus-as-a-historical-problem/ The thing is that there is just a massive amount of evidence, much more than I can share briefly with you. Its almost as if an intelligence beyond our time is revealing Himself to us in history. The Resurrection is quite a bit like evolution. We have to be careful about misidentifying our personal ignorance of evidence as lack of evidence all together. The two are not the same thing. There is a lot of evidence for evolution, just as there is a lot of evidence for the Resurrection. This is not merely about Truth though, it is also about affections. Tell me, what do you think of Jesus? Have you had a chance …

However…

@swamidass

Evidence alone does not give a good account of our collective belief that Jesus rose from the dead. I think, however, we’ve laid out the tools to make sense of this.

How We Believe The Unbelievable

I think there might be some value in remembering how we all came to confident faith in Jesus. It was not merely evidence, but also personal experience. There is a common pattern.

1. We learn of the person Jesus in history (including the Gospels, prophecies, and more), and it usually includes at least testimonial evidence for the Resurrection, if not a full apologetics case.

2. At some point along the way we encounter others who confess their experience with Jesus, the Risen One. Of note is the far reaching diversity (temporarily, culturally, spatially, and psychologically) of the Church, which is a bizarre feature of the testimony.

3. We usually come perceive a strong experience (personally perceived, even if it happens in a crowd) with living and real Presence in the world. Depending on our pneumatology, we might call it the filling of the Spirit, or “seeing” Jesus, or we might even lack words to describe it.

I was going to put examples, it is almost silly to do in just this moment (or perhaps I am wrong). It is just such a common pattern. We see it in @sygarte’s story (in his upcoming book, Jesus, Segregation, and a West County Church in STL), in Francis Collin’s Language of God, in my own story too (http://peacefulscience.org/swamidass-confident-fatih.pdf). We see it in Todd Cade’s confession too: Todd Cade’s Confession of Hope.

We even see them in the Gospel of Paul (1 Cor 15). (1) the person of Jesus, including evidence of prophecy and death, (2) the evidence of many other’s testimonies, and (3) the evidence of the messenger’s testimony himself. The extension here is that we also can come to experience something of this living God, to be able to our own testimony to the chain we are hearing.

There is a mutually reinforcing epistemology to these three things. That is, it seems, how we come to confidence in the Resurrection.This might be how the Resurrection becomes the one sign, because God is continually revealing Himself to all of us through this sign.

Personal Experience Overlooked?

I wonder if we have not paid proper attention to the miraculous nature of the religious experience in bringing us to confident knowledge of divine action.

It seems as if it is the collaboration of public evidence, with private religious experience, and public confession of said experience is what makes the Resurrection so potent. With out the religious experience, I’m not sure we could believe. After all, we can always wonder if it was just a natural explanation we can’t figure out yet.

Of course, having encountered Jesus, and affirmed the Resurrection, we come to a different view of the world. Now, on hearing the report of Mary and Martha, we believe that God raised Lazarus from the dead without difficulty, even though that miracle is just as unbelievable as the first. In that way the Resurrection (including all three elements: (1) historical Jesus, (2) testimony of others, (3) our own experience) becomes epistemological grounding for all the rest. Jesus becomes why we trust the rest as true. Without the Resurrection, however, we have good reason to think all of it is false.

I suppose I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I wrote recently to our resident atheist:

@swamidass

The reason we are different [my atheist friend] is not precisely about public evidence or reason, it is more about private evidence. I’ve seen something you have not yet seen. I’ve encountered a living reality of the world that you have not. If you saw it too, you might believe in God too. If I had never seen it, I might be an atheist too. The difference in us is this.

It is not that we think different about science, use different logical rules, or process evidence in a different ways. I just saw something you have yet to see.

Perhaps it is private evidence that comes from religious experience (@kelvin_M) or embodied discernment of providence (@jack.collins) is inaccessible to “SCIENCE”. It just can’t see what we might clearly see.

Does this start to give us a way forward? @jrfarris @rcohlers