The Spiral Argument Argument

[Randy_Carson]

I’m not an adjunct any more (thank God), but a stay-at-home parent, homesteader, and freelance writer. And I’m not an NT specialist but a church historian focusing in the Reformation era.

And it’s obvious that your faith doesn’t rest on this argument. It would be very, very bad if it did. That’s one of the reasons why the argument is a joke. It’s obviously an ex post facto argument constructed to justify beliefs that people already hold.

Thanks by the way for the courteous tone. I’m sorry for the strong language I used before. A lot of it was due to my own personal struggles and pressures. I scapegoated you for my own ambivalent feelings about Catholicism.

Edwin

Edwin-

I kinda thought you were having a rough patch…I hope things have taken a turn for the better for you and your family. I do forgive you, and I ask your forgiveness for any uncharitable remarks directed your way.

Easter is fast approaching. What decision did you make with regard to being received into the Catholic Church?

Finally, there is still the matter of the Spiral Argument about which we have been disagreeing for the past couple of years. I’m going to travel this road to see where it leads, and I hope you will join me.

 

[Randy_Carson]

TSA Line 1:

**The Catholic method of proving the Bible to be inspired is this: The Bible is initially approached as any other ancient work. **

There are two points contained in this opening sentence:

1. Keating asserts that the argument which follows is the “Catholic method” for proving the inspiration of scripture, and
2. The Bible is initially approached as a historian might approach any other ancient work.

Objections have been raised to both of these points. Is the Spiral Argument really the method that Catholics use to determine the inspiration of the Bible? Or is it merely a method that a Catholic could use as opposed to and in contrast with the approaches of many non-Catholics which appear to rely on subjective, personal feelings or private revelation. In the larger article, which is technically outside the scope of TSA, Keating opined:

There is perhaps no greater frustration in dealing with Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestants, than in trying to pin them down on why the Bible should be taken as a rule of faith at all, let alone the sole rule. It reduces to the question of why Fundamentalists accept the Bible as inspired, since the Bible can be taken as a rule of faith only if it is first held to be inspired and, thus, inerrant.

Thus, the main thrust of TSA is aimed directly at the Protestant doctrine, sola scriptura. Keating’s argument is that without an infallible (Catholic) Church to determine the canon of scripture, the Protestant cannot really know with certainty what books make up the Bible, and without that knowledge, sola scriptura cannot be practiced with any degree of confidence. The feeling that the Bible is inspired could be easily claimed by the Muslim for the Qu’ran or compared with the Mormon’s “burning in the bosom” for the Book of Mormon.

As noted in the OP, Dr. Tait takes issue with TSA from the opening line writing:

It’s not “the Catholic method.” It’s a method unfortunately endorsed by some apologists.

It’s true that the argument is endorsed by some apologists…some very knowledgable apologists, in fact…but is it “the Catholic method”? Well, apart from merely asserting that the Catholic Church is infallible and has declared the Bible to be inspired, what other formal method is there? Previously, Dr. Tait has objected to my assumption that there must be some other method if TSA is invalid. Well, isn’t that true? There must be some basis for the Catholic belief that the Bible is inspired. If not TSA, what is it?

Dr. Tait also objects to the second half of the opening line as follows:

Bunk. You don’t approach the Bible that way, do you? So don’t pretend you do. No one actually follows this method. It’s pretense.

Do I personally approach the Bible this way? Not at this stage of my walk as a believer, Dr. Tait. But establishing the historical reliability of the Bible is a pre-requisite in just about everyone’s basic approach to Christian apologetics. Perhaps more telling, however, is the number of former atheists and agnostics who testify that in the course of attempting to discredit Christianity, they sought to undermine the reliability of the New Testament - only to discover that they could not do so with any intellectual honesty. IOW, for many converts to the faith, the historical reliability of the NT was the first domino to fall.

At this point, I’d like to open the floor for discussion of the points covered so far, and I welcome comments and questions concerning this first line of TSA.

 

[Tomyris]

TSA Line 1:

**The Catholic method of proving the Bible to be inspired is this: The Bible is initially approached as any other ancient work. **

There are two points contained in this opening sentence:

1. Keating asserts that the argument which follows is the “Catholic method” for proving the inspiration of scripture, and
2. The Bible is initially approached as a historian might approach any other ancient work.

Objections have been raised to both of these points. Is the Spiral Argument really the method that Catholics use to determine the inspiration of the Bible? Or is it merely a method that a Catholic could use as opposed to and in contrast with the approaches of many non-Catholics which appear to rely on subjective, personal feelings or private revelation. In the larger article, which is technically outside the scope of TSA, Keating opined:

There is perhaps no greater frustration in dealing with Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestants, than in trying to pin them down on why the Bible should be taken as a rule of faith at all, let alone the sole rule. It reduces to the question of why Fundamentalists accept the Bible as inspired, since the Bible can be taken as a rule of faith only if it is first held to be inspired and, thus, inerrant.

Thus, the main thrust of TSA is aimed directly at the Protestant doctrine, sola scriptura. Keating’s argument is that without an infallible (Catholic) Church to determine the canon of scripture, the Protestant cannot really know with certainty what books make up the Bible, and without that knowledge, sola scriptura cannot be practiced with any degree of confidence. The feeling that the Bible is inspired could be easily claimed by the Muslim for the Qu’ran or compared with the Mormon’s “burning in the bosom” for the Book of Mormon.

As noted in the OP, Dr. Tait takes issue with TSA from the opening line writing:

It’s true that the argument is endorsed by some apologists…some very knowledgable apologists, in fact…but is it “the Catholic method”? Well, apart from merely asserting that the Catholic Church is infallible and has declared the Bible to be inspired, what other formal method is there? Previously, Dr. Tait has objected to my assumption that there must be some other method if TSA is invalid. Well, isn’t that true? There must be some basis for the Catholic belief that the Bible is inspired. If not TSA, what is it?

Dr. Tait also objects to the second half of the opening line as follows:

Bunk. You don’t approach the Bible that way, do you? So don’t pretend you do. No one actually follows this method. It’s pretense.

Do I personally approach the Bible this way? Not at this stage of my walk as a believer, Dr. Tait. But establishing the historical reliability of the Bible is a pre-requisite in just about everyone’s basic approach to Christian apologetics. Perhaps more telling, however, is the number of former atheists and agnostics who testify that in the course of attempting to discredit Christianity, they sought to undermine the reliability of the New Testament - only to discover that they could not do so with any intellectual honesty. IOW, for many converts to the faith, the historical reliability of the NT was the first domino to fall.

At this point, I’d like to open the floor for discussion of the points covered so far, and I welcome comments and questions concerning this first line of TSA.

I think it’s dead wrong. For one thing, if you say it is THE way, then all other ways are wrong. Most enormously presumptuous! Secondly, IMHO the Catholic argument is that the Church says it is inspired, so Catholics believe it is inspired.

 

[Lucy107]

To answer the question “And the method is what?”

It appears that the method is deductive reasoning.

That no Christian has ever used to come to the conclusion that the Bible is inspired.

Secondly, IMHO the Catholic argument is that the Church says it is inspired, so Catholics believe it is inspired.

Yes.

Fideism is often condemned, by religious and seculars alike.
And yet in essence, any faith is in some vital way fideistic.

 

[Lucy107]

Not questioned in what way? No one claims that Virgil is an accurate work of history.

And no threat of eternal damnation is proclaimed if one fails to hold Virgil’s work as an accurate work of history.

 

[grannymh]

TSA Line 1:

**The Catholic method of proving the Bible to be inspired is this: The Bible is initially approached as any other ancient work. **

At this point, I’d like to open the floor for discussion of the points covered so far, and I welcome comments and questions concerning this first line of TSA.

My gut instinct is that there is truth in this opening to the Spiral Argument.

However, finding the truth depends on one’s geographical location. To explain. As a Catholic child, I learned that in my “neighborhood” there were people who considered Jesus to be a prophet among prophets. This did not necessarily mean that Jesus was Divine. Today, there are many people without a Christian faith who accept the historical fact that the human Jesus is a prophet among many historical prophets across the globe. Today, it is not necessary to search the Bible to find teachings attributed to Jesus the Prophet. The importance of feeding the poor is one example. Taking care of the sick with healing medicines is another example.

I am grappling with the idea that the Catholic method should be an “universal” method in which anyone can approach Jesus, in the Bible’s Gospels, as being an historic human. Thus, in a sense, we could approach Jesus as a historic figure in the same way we would approach other historic people in ancient writings.

Obviously, I could be way off center.

 

[Contarini]

grannymh:
My gut instinct is that there is truth in this opening to the Spiral Argument.

However, finding the truth depends on one’s geographical location. To explain. As a Catholic child, I learned that in my “neighborhood” there were people who considered Jesus to be a prophet among prophets. This did not necessarily mean that Jesus was Divine. Today, there are many people without a Christian faith who accept the historical fact that the human Jesus is a prophet among many historical prophets across the globe. Today, it is not necessary to search the Bible to find teachings attributed to Jesus the Prophet. The importance of feeding the poor is one example. Taking care of the sick with healing medicines is another example.

I am grappling with the idea that the Catholic method should be an “universal” method in which anyone can approach Jesus, in the Bible’s Gospels, as being an historic human. Thus, in a sense, we could approach Jesus as a historic figure in the same way we would approach other historic people in ancient writings.

Obviously, I could be way off center.

There’s certainly value in trying to look at Jesus from a purely historical point of view. No one can be neutral, of course. But for apologetics purposes it is very helpful to be able to talk about what can be shown historically to be true about Jesus as opposed to the things that we have to accept on faith. And even for our own faith, it can be very valuable to do this, because it can give us a “fresher” understanding of Jesus as a real first-century Jew. The work of N. T. Wright is immensely valuable on both these fronts.

But in the first place, to say that this is the Catholic approach seems odd. And much more importantly, approaching Jesus through normal historical methodology won’t get us where the spiral argument needs to go. No historically trained, critically minded person actually approaching Jesus as they would any other ancient figure would be likely to conclude that part of Matt. 16 without parallel in Mark and Luke is historically accurate. And this of course isn’t the only such passage–it’s just the most relevant for the spiral argument.

The place where any historically based apologetic needs to start is the Cross, because that is the one event that practically everyone (leaving out the Muslims, who deny the crucifixion for their own faith-driven reasons and thus, as far as I’m concerned, disqualify themselves from serious consideration as a “corrected” version of the faith proclaimed by Jesus) agrees really happened.

Proving the accuracy of the Gospels in some generalized way that will ensure that every single story in the Gospels can be trusted is a non-starter. That’s just not how historians work, for one thing, and the Gospels in particular have many stories that by purely historical method look suspect.

Edwin

 

[Isaiah45_9]

TSA Line 1:

**The Catholic method of proving the Bible to be inspired is this: The Bible is initially approached as any other ancient work. **

This is too vague to even approach.

How is any other ancient work approached? Detailed methodology please.

If the methodology is inconsistent, then the entire premise fails.

 

[grannymh]

May I expand in what I said in post 26.
“I am grappling with the idea that the Catholic method should be an “universal” method in which anyone can approach Jesus, in the Bible’s Gospels, as being an historic human. Thus, in a sense, we could approach Jesus as a historic figure in the same way we would approach other historic people in ancient writings.”

Apparently, people are a bit unsettled about the term “Catholic method” and I do agree with them. So, for me, the Spiral Argument will be described as an universal method among many other universal methods. I use the term universal as meaning that anyone can use the method that appeals to them

The next thing I need to deal with are these correct sentences from Contarini, post 27.
“And much more importantly, approaching Jesus through normal historical methodology won’t get us where the spiral argument needs to go. No historically trained, critically minded person actually approaching Jesus as they would any other ancient figure would be likely to conclude that part of Matt. 16 without parallel in Mark and Luke is historically accurate. And this of course isn’t the only such passage–it’s just the most relevant for the spiral argument.”

I am not a historically trained, critically minded person using a normal historical method. Thank you for reminding me. Apparently, I am not part of the gang. Which, in essence, gives me the freedom to use other kinds of approaches.

 

[Randy_Carson]

There’s certainly value in trying to look at Jesus from a purely historical point of view. No one can be neutral, of course. But for apologetics purposes it is very helpful to be able to talk about what can be shown historically to be true about Jesus as opposed to the things that we have to accept on faith. And even for our own faith, it can be very valuable to do this, because it can give us a “fresher” understanding of Jesus as a real first-century Jew. The work of N. T. Wright is immensely valuable on both these fronts.

But in the first place, to say that this is the Catholic approach seems odd. And much more importantly, approaching Jesus through normal historical methodology won’t get us where the spiral argument needs to go. No historically trained, critically minded person actually approaching Jesus as they would any other ancient figure would be likely to conclude that part of Matt. 16 without parallel in Mark and Luke is historically accurate. And this of course isn’t the only such passage–it’s just the most relevant for the spiral argument.

The place where any historically based apologetic needs to start is the Cross, because that is the one event that practically everyone (leaving out the Muslims, who deny the crucifixion for their own faith-driven reasons and thus, as far as I’m concerned, disqualify themselves from serious consideration as a “corrected” version of the faith proclaimed by Jesus) agrees really happened.

Proving the accuracy of the Gospels in some generalized way that will ensure that every single story in the Gospels can be trusted is a non-starter. That’s just not how historians work, for one thing, and the Gospels in particular have many stories that by purely historical method look suspect.

Edwin

Well, Dr. Tait, that’s what this thread is all about.

I’m pretty sure that you’re going to “attack” TSA on two fronts…both of which you have articulated above.

1. The general reliability of the gospels is insufficient to support TSA, and
2. Mt. 16:18 lacks corroboration.

But are we just quibbling over CA’s use of the word “prove”? IOW, are you looking at “prove” as a mathematician might prove a theorem or even 2 + 2 = 4? Or is it sufficient to demonstrate that the historical reliability of the New Testament is highly probable? What if the evidence for the resurrection is more compelling than for Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon?

What’s the bar?

 

[SyCarl]

I don’t think anyone can approach the Bible on a purely historical basis as we all have our pre-existing opinions and biases.

However I don’t really think that there is sufficient historical evidence to sufficiently show that the Bible is historically accurate. This is especially so when the accuracy we are looking for largely pertains to what Jesus said which really cannot be corroborated by evidence outside the Bible itself.

Also because something may have some evidence for its accuracy does not mean that all its contents are accurate. The method proposed could be applied to other ancient texts. Suppose we look at Homer’s Iliad. We have evidence that there was a city of Troy and we know the cities of Greece existed. We can probably say that Troy was probably destroyed in a war. There are many temple ruins showing the Greeks worshipped a pantheon of gods. Because it may be accurate in these matters, should we accept everything the Iliad contains as accurate? Should we accept that the Greek gods were real?

Further on in the spiral argument it is basically assumed that there is only one reasonable interpretation of the scriptural passages at the Catholic Church claims apply to itself. Unfortunately this is not the case. There are other reasonable interpretations of the relevant passages. So the argument comes down to relying on your personal interpretation to arrive at the conclusions it makes about the Church.

 

[Mystophilus]

Most of it is not too bad, if rather enthusiastic about the precise degree of certainty regarding the text (higher than most historical documents, but not absolute) and its historicity (high, but still disputed, e.g., regarding Luke’s census). There are, however, a couple of basic flaws in the reasoning.

Certainly if Christ had not risen his disciples would not have died horrible deaths affirming the reality and truth of the resurrection.

Following the same logic, Muhammad’s revelation from God must have been similarly true (q.v. Summayah bint Khayyat, died 615; Yasir ibn Amir, died, 615; Al-Qasim ibn Hasan, died 680; Husayn ibn Ali, died 680; Muhammad ibn Muslim and Ibraheem ibn Muslim, died 682; Zayd ibn Ali, died 740, etc). Did all of the willing martyrs of Vietnam’s war against the USA prove the truth of communism? The willingness of people to die for a cause demonstrates the strength of their feeling, not its accuracy.

Further, Christ said he would found a Church. Both the Bible (still taken as merely a historical book, not yet as an inspired one) and other ancient works attest to the fact that Christ established a Church with the rudiments of what we see in the Catholic Church today—papacy, hierarchy, priesthood, sacraments, and teaching authority.

The Bible says this, but, in so far as I am aware, we have no other historical document which attests to Christ’s establishing a church. As for the papacy, that belongs to Catholic theology.

This Catholic Church tells us the Bible is inspired, and we can take the Church’s word for it precisely because the Church is infallible.

The underlined part does not logically follow from any of the above.

On the first level we argue to the reliability of the Bible insofar as it is history. From that we conclude that an infallible Church was founded.

And there is the illogical leap: history does not prove the church infallible. That idea is the product of Catholic theology.

 

[Contarini]

The Bible says this, but, in so far as I am aware, we have no other historical document which attests to Christ’s establishing a church.

I think they are thinking of non-canonical early Christian texts, and that’s a fair point. But obviously historians are even more skeptical about what Ignatius or Irenaeus have to say about what Christ did than they are about what the Gospels have to say–and they are fairly skeptical about the Gospels.

So disputing the extra-Biblical texts is rather pointless, since the argument fails with regard to the earlier and more reliable canonical texts.

The underlined part does not logically follow from any of the above.

And there is the illogical leap: history does not prove the church infallible.

Exactly. That’s the fundamental reason why the argument fails.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

May I expand in what I said in post 26.
“I am grappling with the idea that the Catholic method should be an “universal” method in which anyone can approach Jesus, in the Bible’s Gospels, as being an historic human. Thus, in a sense, we could approach Jesus as a historic figure in the same way we would approach other historic people in ancient writings.”

Apparently, people are a bit unsettled about the term “Catholic method” and I do agree with them. So, for me, the Spiral Argument will be described as an universal method among many other universal methods. I use the term universal as meaning that anyone can use the method that appeals to them

The next thing I need to deal with are these correct sentences from Contarini, post 27.
“And much more importantly, approaching Jesus through normal historical methodology won’t get us where the spiral argument needs to go. No historically trained, critically minded person actually approaching Jesus as they would any other ancient figure would be likely to conclude that part of Matt. 16 without parallel in Mark and Luke is historically accurate. And this of course isn’t the only such passage–it’s just the most relevant for the spiral argument.”

I am not a historically trained, critically minded person using a normal historical method. Thank you for reminding me. Apparently, I am not part of the gang. Which, in essence, gives me the freedom to use other kinds of approaches.

And here we have the core of why the argument is appealing. It appeals to American anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism. It invites Christians with no historical training to assume that their faith-based, uncritical reading of ancient texts is just how any normal person would read any ancient text and thus has more validity than the readings of those nasty scholars who have actually spent years studying how to read ancient texts and thus are contaminated.

We need to get these assumptions out in the open. They are, it seems to me, completely untenable assumptions. But at least this thread may do the service of making people voice them.

To be clear: there are naive believing readings of texts and there are naively skeptical readings. For instance, naive skeptics typically assume that simply because the texts are ancient we can’t really be sure that they have any historical value at all. Naive skeptics come up with clever suggestions as to what might “really” lie behind the miracle stories (Jesus walked across hidden stepping stones and thus looked as if he was walking across the water, etc.). Naive skeptics jump to the assumption that if texts aren’t entirely accurate they must be deliberate frauds. And so on. Naive skeptics are easy foils for apologetics of the Catholic Answers type, and that I think is why the tract in question spends a whole paragraph on textual criticism (a typical issue raised by the naive skeptic). In short, the distinction between critical and naive reading isn’t a distinction between faith and unbelief. It’s a distinction between people jumping to conclusions based on their knowledge and experiences as modern people (believers or unbelievers), vs. people asking careful critical questions building on the inquiries made by generations of scholars before them.

Unlike most of the “hard sciences,” history is a “club” in which “laypeople” can participate quite easily. Distinguishing between critical scholars and other people isn’t an attempt to exclude anyone. You can be part of a serious historical conversation if you want to by reading accessible surveys of the scholarship and weighing which of the various expert views makes more sense to you (this is how I, as a non-specialist in this field, do it myself, though I do have some tools and skills at my disposal that many others don’t have, such as a knowledge of Greek and of the general way in which historical inquiry into religious subjects works). But if you simply brush off the consensus of experts as irrelevant elitism and choose to “pursue other methods,” then you have declared your lack of seriousness about historical inquiry. You have disqualified yourself from making any statement about what the historical evidence shows, and thus from making the kind of argument under discussion here. Of course no one can stop you from making such statements. But you will only be putting a stumbling block in the path of those whom you wish to persuade of the reasonableness of the Faith, at least if they have any smattering of critical thinking themselves.

Edwin

 

[GKC]

And here we have the core of why the argument is appealing. It appeals to American anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism. It invites Christians with no historical training to assume that their faith-based, uncritical reading of ancient texts is just how any normal person would read any ancient text and thus has more validity than the readings of those nasty scholars who have actually spent years studying how to read ancient texts and thus are contaminated.

We need to get these assumptions out in the open. They are, it seems to me, completely untenable assumptions. But at least this thread may do the service of making people voice them.

To be clear: there are naive believing readings of texts and there are naively skeptical readings. For instance, naive skeptics typically assume that simply because the texts are ancient we can’t really be sure that they have any historical value at all. Naive skeptics come up with clever suggestions as to what might “really” lie behind the miracle stories (Jesus walked across hidden stepping stones and thus looked as if he was walking across the water, etc.). Naive skeptics jump to the assumption that if texts aren’t entirely accurate they must be deliberate frauds. And so on. Naive skeptics are easy foils for apologetics of the Catholic Answers type, and that I think is why the tract in question spends a whole paragraph on textual criticism (a typical issue raised by the naive skeptic). In short, the distinction between critical and naive reading isn’t a distinction between faith and unbelief. It’s a distinction between people jumping to conclusions based on their knowledge and experiences as modern people (believers or unbelievers), vs. people asking careful critical questions building on the inquiries made by generations of scholars before them.

Unlike most of the “hard sciences,” history is a “club” in which “laypeople” can participate quite easily. Distinguishing between critical scholars and other people isn’t an attempt to exclude anyone. You can be part of a serious historical conversation if you want to by reading accessible surveys of the scholarship and weighing which of the various expert views makes more sense to you (this is how I, as a non-specialist in this field, do it myself, though I do have some tools and skills at my disposal that many others don’t have, such as a knowledge of Greek and of the general way in which historical inquiry into religious subjects works). But if you simply brush off the consensus of experts as irrelevant elitism and choose to “pursue other methods,” then you have declared your lack of seriousness about historical inquiry. You have disqualified yourself from making any statement about what the historical evidence shows, and thus from making the kind of argument under discussion here. Of course no one can stop you from making such statements. But you will only be putting a stumbling block in the path of those whom you wish to persuade of the reasonableness of the Faith, at least if they have any smattering of critical thinking themselves.

Edwin

This last para is admirable, and relevant to approaching history beyond the subject matter of the thread.

GKC

 

[grannymh]

subjects works). But if you simply brush off the consensus of experts as irrelevant elitism and choose to “pursue other methods,” then you have declared your lack of seriousness about historical inquiry.

Perhaps the concept of adding to the consensus of experts has been overlooked.

You have disqualified yourself from making any statement about what the historical evidence shows, and thus from making the kind of argument under discussion here.

Seems to me, that the discussion does include the Spiral Argument per thread’s title.

Of course no one can stop you from making such statements.

So far, my statements simply test the waters. In other words, as one influenced by the early books of Franklin Covey, I deferred to you and the other posters.

But you will only be putting a stumbling block in the path of those whom you wish to persuade of the reasonableness of the Faith, at least if they have any smattering of critical thinking themselves.

Edwin

Thank you for your concern.

Note: I am interested in what other posters have to say, so it may be prudent for me to simply listen for a bit.

 

[eddie_too]

Jesus is infallible. Jesus is almighty God. the only reasons for believing that God could not or did not come up with a method to ensure future generations of human beings received the authentic teachings of Jesus Christ are that either Jesus is not God or that Jesus did not want God’s truth to be available to all future generations.

as for secular studies of the bible, they will necessarily fall short of reason and accuracy because they eliminate the Holy Spirit from their disciplines. without the Holy Spirit’s guidance, there is no way to ascertain the truths found in the bible.

using secular standards to assess and judge the bible is of little value to those who want to know and love Jesus and His Father and Holy Spirit.

I suppose secular efforts to study the bible provide jobs to people, but the fruit of the secular efforts beyond these jobs (a mere worldly fruit) and possibly conversions to Jesus (a great spiritual fruit) that result from these studies is of little value to anyone because they are necessarily deficient.

 

[Contarini]

Well, Dr. Tait, that’s what this thread is all about.

I’m pretty sure that you’re going to “attack” TSA on two fronts…both of which you have articulated above.

1. The general reliability of the gospels is insufficient to support TSA, and
2. Mt. 16:18 lacks corroboration.

But are we just quibbling over CA’s use of the word “prove”? IOW, are you looking at “prove” as a mathematician might prove a theorem or even 2 + 2 = 4? Or is it sufficient to demonstrate that the historical reliability of the New Testament is highly probable? What if the evidence for the resurrection is more compelling than for Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon?

What’s the bar?

Good questions.

One of the reasons I get so apoplectic about the spiral argument is that I first encountered it in the context of Catholic-Protestant arguments about how we can be certain what we believe is true. One common (and very bad, in my opinion) Catholic argument goes like this:

If you don’t have an infallible authority for what you believe, you can’t be really sure it’s true.

To which Protestants quite reasonably respond: Well, your infallible authority itself rests on a fallible decision to trust that authority.

To which, in my experience, Catholics often respond with the spiral argument.

Now in that context we don’t need to get into the historical specifics to show that the argument fails. Historical evidence is never, ever infallible. Thus, even if the spiral argument worked as claimed, it wouldn’t solve the problem (a false problem raised by trying to prove too much in the first place) that the Catholic argument runs into there. There is no way around the fact that all our religious beliefs are, at bottom, fallible, including our beliefs (if we have them) about certain religious authorities being infallible.

So back to your question: what do we mean when we use the word “proof” historically? For starters, I would have answered the OP (in the other thread) by saying that “proof” just isn’t the right word to use when it comes to the specifics of Christian revelation. You and others cited Aquinas a lot in that thread in a general way, as the champion of the integration of faith and reason. But in fact Aquinas is very insistent that in the strict sense we can’t prove anything specific to Christian revelation (as opposed to some general theistic tenets), and that it’s very harmful to try to prove more than the argument will actually support. So I think I’m the one championing Aquinas’ basic principles.

But obviously we do sometimes use the word “proof” when speaking of history, knowing that we are doing so in a looser way than in mathematics or philosophy. I think the word “proof” is appropriate when there is no reasonable alternative. Obviously there’s room for a lot of subjectivity there, which is why we say things like “proved to my satisfaction.” That is to say, I can’t see any reasonable alternative, so for all practical purposes I don’t doubt that it did happen this way.

A lot of things in more modern history are easy to prove in this way. It is logically possible that Napoleon Bonaparte never existed or was never Emperor or France or didn’t win the battle of Austerlitz or whatever. But there is so much evidence of so many different kinds that no sane and reasonable person doubts these things. To all intents and purposes, it is certain, barring some really dramatic revelation that would completely change what we think we know about reality (such as that we are living in a virtual world run by machines as in the Matrix movies).

Ancient history is trickier, but there are still things that we are certain of beyond any reasonable doubt. Your example of Caesar crossing the Rubicon is a good one if we take it to mean “that Caesar brought his army from Gaul into Italy and attacked Rome.” (Whether Caesar said “alea jacta est” as he crossed the river that took him into Italy is quite another matter, or even whether crossing the river itself had quite the significance we traditionally impute to it.) It would be possible to reject the historicity of this event without quite the drastic questioning of reality that would happen if we rejected the historicity of Napoleon, but there isn’t any good reason to reject it. All the evidence we have indicates that there was such a person, that he was a general in Gaul, and that after his campaigns in Gaul he marched on Rome and became Dictator until he was assassinated. There isn’t, as far as I know, any evidence pointing in the other direction. And we have evidence of many different kinds, from many different sources, pointing to these events. (That’s quite different from assuming that Caesar’s own accounts are accurate, of course.)

Alexander the Great, as we’ve agreed previously, is in a different category. We have surprisingly little evidence for his life. It’s possible for a maverick, revisionist sort of person to suggest that he never existed without entirely crossing the boundaries of sanity and reason. But it’s still highly unlikely that he didn’t exist at all. We know that there were Greek-speaking kingdoms ruling the Middle East in the third century. We know that there were cities all over the region called “Alexandria.” I could imagine a clever person constructing an argument to the effect that the Hellenistic kingdoms were the result of Greek mercenaries (such as those described in Xenophon’s Anabasis) rising up and overthrowing the tottering Persian empire. I’m not sure how such a person would explain all the cities named Alexandria, but there would probably be a way if you really wanted to. But again, the overwhelmingly more likely possibility is that there was someone named Alexander who delivered the coup de grace to the Persian Empire, even if he wasn’t quite the superman of much later, Roman-era narratives.

 

[Contarini]

Similarly (though the issues on both sides are a bit different), it’s possible that there was no such person as Jesus. But such a radically skeptical position is highly unlikely. One can imagine a Hellenistic/Jewish mystery cult emerging based on a legendary divine-human figure who never actually existed, but there are just too many hurdles that the “Jesus myth” proponents have to surmount. Chief among them is why on earth people constructing such a cult would put a crucified criminal at its center. Dying gods are one thing, crucified gods another. In short, nearly all historians believe that there is some sort of historical core to the story of Jesus. (I think we would have a few more “Alexander myth” proponents if Alexander had become the basis for the world’s largest religion and people were running around demanding that other people accept Alexander into their hearts or face eternal damnation.) So while maybe the word “proof” is a bit strong even here, we can say with great confidence that there was a Galilean rabbi named Jesus who lived toward the end of the Second Temple era and who was crucified by the Romans.

In general, I think it’s appropriate to say that something is proven or certain by historical means if practically all scholars in the field agree (this is pretty rare). Or, a little more loosely, we can speak of something being solidly established if a consensus of scholars from a range of different perspectives agree on it, with the dissenters all clustering around a particular religious or ideological bias. This is very far from absolutely certain, since scholarly consensuses can change, sometimes quite dramatically. But anything that has less than this cannot possibly be described as being “proven” or “established” or “certain” by historical methods.

The Resurrection of Jesus, by this standard, isn’t by any means certain. There is reasonable doubt. However, I think it is reasonably certain that the earliest Christians believed Jesus to have risen from the dead. The alternative explanations don’t hold much water. From that, I think it is highly reasonable to conclude that the thing actually happened. But given the element of uncertainty as to just what the eyewitnesses said (since our accounts are most likely a step or two removed at best from the eyewitnesses), and given the abundant evidence we have that eyewitnesses are often highly suggestible and unreliable, a person who concludes that there just isn’t enough evidence to compel belief is not acting unreasonably. Hence, I don’t think we can speak of proof for the resurrection, but I think we can say that the evidence is pretty good.

Regarding the “You are Peter” passage, though, the shoe is on the other foot. The simplest and most likely explanation is that this is an editorial addition by the author of the Gospel of Matthew. There are other possibilities, but they are less probable and there is no strictly historical reason to go to such lengths to explain away the fact that two of our three sources (including the one most scholars think is oldest and most reliable) don’t have this addition, and that the one that does have it is the one (among the three Synoptics) that most consistently seems to add theological explanations and iron out awkward bits.

Is it certain? No. A person who believes that Jesus really said these words is not acting unreasonably. But a person who constructs a supposedly deductive argument with the historicity of “You are Peter” as a linchpin (and it is a linchpin for the spiral argument, because this is the passage that speaks most clearly of Jesus establishing a Church and giving it authority) is truly acting unreasonably.

By the standard I gave several paragraphs ago, it is pretty solidly established that Jesus did not say these words. That is to say, you can find a wide consensus of scholars who agree that the passage is an interpolation, including Catholic and other Christian scholars. The only scholars who think otherwise are those with a clear theological motivation for doing so.

Now I’m not going to press this point–as I said, I think it’s quite possible that Jesus did say the words, and people whose theological commitments require them to think he did aren’t acting unreasonably. But insofar as either possibility can be said to have the weight of the historical evidence on its side, as evaluated by most scholars, it’s pretty clearly the possibility that these words were added later.

Edwin

 

[grannymh]

Well, Dr. Tait, that’s what this thread is all about.

I’m pretty sure that you’re going to “attack” TSA on two fronts…both of which you have articulated above.

1. The general reliability of the gospels is insufficient to support TSA, and
2. Mt. 16:18 lacks corroboration.

Speaking of Matthew 16: 18…

It seems to me that chapter 14, Gospel of John, is the better source for the founding of the Catholic Church because it introduces the Holy Spirit Whom the Father will send in the name of Jesus. Thus, the ecumenical councils will be reminded of all that Jesus said. It seems reasonable that following the teachings of Jesus would strongly indicate that Jesus is the founder of the Catholic Church.

In addition, there is Matthew 28: 16-20 which also affirms, via actions, that Jesus is the founder of the Catholic Church as He directly commissions the apostles. Matthew 28: 18 affirms the power of Jesus to establish the Sacrament of Baptism. The last sentence “and behold, I am with you always until the end of the age.” clearly places Jesus as the Founder of the Catholic Church because He remains as its Head.