18: Five Reasons for the Failure of Naturalistic Theories
18
Five Reasons for the Failure of Naturalistic Theories
In this volume, a wide range of naturalistic hypotheses have been treated in great detail, hypotheses aimed both at miracle claims in general and the resurrection of Jesus more specifically. Many refutations were given to each alternative, and different types of responses were sometimes arranged by category. Many responses to miracle claim objections were chiefly foreshadowed by David Hume, although some earlier skeptics were also discussed, such as Benedict Spinoza and the English deists. Critical responses to miracles that appeared later in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries were likewise entertained. A great many of these newer efforts support what were often recast as anti-miraculous arguments as well as new developments of other theses. We also encountered a great variety of critiques from the skeptics as well. There is much to digest from this long and challenging group of thinkers, with many readers being drawn to their favorite candidates.
In many ways and in general, Hume is seemingly viewed and interpreted by many thinkers as being colored by some broad brushstrokes. On the one hand, Hume is the watershed philosopher who was interpreted as being chiefly responsible as the most influential scholar who turned critiques of miracles in the proper, modern direction. On the other hand, Hume was also seen as the lightning rod, as the philosopher who got much attention that he did not deserve, due to the publishing of an exceptionally faulty article that managed to get most of the central issues twisted.
We have taken a great deal of time in this text to understand Hume’s argument against miracles. Initially, we set forth the major, most influential understandings of Hume and decided on what seemed to be the best interpretation, making use of today’s premier scholarly insights. Next, we outlined the philosophical attempts chiefly in analytic philosophical circles to follow in Hume’s footsteps by introducing some dozen and a half additional arguments against miracles. These twin efforts were followed by a third, closer look at a specific argument of Hume’s that we numbered challenge 3:3, where Hume argued that miracles from rival religions, along with their competing teachings, would only serve to cancel out each other, leaving no viable candidates standing as for miraculous events.
This chapter briefly summarizes several categories of critiques against those scholars who oppose the existence of miracles. These classifications emerged from the lengthy discussions in this text and from the even more prolonged, drawn-out critique that still continues today. These group refutations draw together many of the subpoints that have been catalogued together.
The most recent research seems to agree largely and has trended chiefly in the direction of Hume being in error at a number of key points, as we pointed out in the specific details in our other treatments. This does not mean necessarily that a particular bottom line on the miracles question follows automatically, but only that Hume’s approach has frequently been viewed as a less than helpful way of handling the issues. This has been emerging of late as the majority view. Additional arguments in this study on whether miracles have and do actually occur today are forthcoming as we move forward.
For many researchers, Hume appears to have presented a faulty case and, therefore, failed to reach his goal of disproving miracles. His essay was more general in nature but, far more specifically, subsequent naturalistic attempts that sought to explain away miracles, including the resurrection of Jesus in particular, arose later by taking alternate paths that Hume probably hinted were the best routes to take. By dividing the refutations into families, the hope here is to pursue a helpful path through a maze of ideas. Further, more time will be spent on taking the next step by also including the failures of natural alternative efforts to explain miracle claims in nonmiraculous ways, another move that Hume similarly mentioned. This critique begins with overall failures of these tactics.
Reason 1
The skeptical backdrop against miracles provided by David Hume fails to provide good “cover” for the prospect of rejecting miracles.
After the appearance of Hume’s essay “Of Miracles,” there was a great deal of agreement among religious liberals that this work had put to rest the issue of miracles: they simply never occurred. For example, almost a century later, the equally famous skeptic, the nineteenth-century German liberal scholar David Strauss, concluded that Hume’s treatise had settled forever the issue. Supernatural events that ran contrary to the course of nature just did not happen.
In the first half of the twentieth century, prominent Columbia University philosopher John Herman Randall Jr. also maintained this line of reasoning, arguing, “Since Hume’s critique of miracles in the eighteenth century, religious liberals have refused to believe in any such interferences with the order of natural law.” So-called miracles were “the product of the natural causes of human credulity, imagination, and legend.” Then Randall summarized the matter: “In the eighteenth century, miracles were the chief support of faith; in the next, they became the chief problem to be explained.”
To be sure, liberal critics did not need much reason or encouragement to take the stance that miracles were at best longshots. But as documented in our initial chapter on Hume, his case has received much less support in the past few decades, with many questions being raised about his assumptions, his science, and especially his use of induction in his arguments. While some scholars still support him, more have opposed his ideas on miracles.
Some of Hume’s chief problems that were argued and documented earlier included the following: (1) The presence of a number of informal logical fallacies, including some major and rather obvious examples of circular argumentation and question-begging. Of course, these problems can be corrected, but in Hume’s case they are woven so deeply within his argument that much of the seeming force of the charges would be removed too. (2) Pontificating on what can or cannot occur in nature, while failing to address the role that might be played by a greater power that chooses to act, is not the best way to ascertain if these events can occur. Even stranger here, the present sentiment seems to be that Hume was some species of deist or theist. (3) Hume’s four subarguments against miracles in part 2 of his essay sometimes raise thoughtful issues, but they tend to pick around the edges, while none comes close to indicating that miracles cannot occur. (4) If Hume was referring to the fellows at the pub or a few other places, then his sample size was obviously way too small with regard to his claim that “uniform experience” opposed all miracles. In such a case, his observations would have been almost valueless. But if Hume were to have extended his approach by asking enough people to make a decent sampling size, then the problem was that he almost certainly would have heard some miracle testimonies, just like present-day polling numbers. But either way, his major contention is inductively mistaken from the outset. (5) If miracles do not break the laws of nature, as a number of philosophers claim, Hume’s program probably could not even get started. (6) Elsewhere in his writings, Hume speaks out against some of the same principles that he employs in his argument, such as the very notion of our inability to demonstrate that uniformity and causality are true. Why the seeming discrepancy? (7) Finally, there are hundreds of documented miracle claims today, some even observed under stringent conditions. They have been published in medical journals, medical volumes, and elsewhere. This point alone could very well bring the downfall of Hume’s thesis.
Almost two dozen a priori objections to miracles were listed previously, some of which were inspired by Hume’s approach along with a number of updates by analytic philosophers. These charges were divided into five categories and over 100 responses were addressed to them, as follows: (1) A priori objections are usually fair game, but the problem is that they generally tend to either represent or become a priori rejections, where data are often ignored. The latter is not a fair approach for getting rid of ideas that we reject or even wish were not there. (2) Like the first set of critiques regarding Hume above, we still have not determined if there is a greater power in existence that can overcome any potential odds against miracles. For example, what good are the laws of nature if they are far from the ultimate force in the universe? (3) When miraculous-sounding claims are made, usually it is still possible to investigate the surrounding nonmiraculous “checkable” assertions, such as historical details or the structure of the arguments. Perhaps the measurable, weighable, observable aspects are enough to decide on the entire question. (4) Nature cannot be broadened in order to account adequately for events like Jesus’s well-evidenced resurrection from the dead. (5) There are ways to trace an event back to a likely supernatural identification. In volume 4 of this study, we will present many details on two such detailed approaches—one moving from a theistic universe to Jesus’s resurrection, and the other built on clear means of demarcation that already surround Jesus’s resurrection.
Some of these critiques are quite forceful even by themselves. Unless Hume can answer or disprove at least each of the major ones plus a few others, his hypothesis is doomed. It is for these and other reasons that most scholars do indeed think that he has overextended himself. Additionally, those who depended upon Hume for their belief that miracles do not happen are likely to have built their interpretation of Jesus’s resurrection on questionable foundations.
Reason 2
Each natural hypothesis especially aimed at Jesus’s resurrection is refuted by multiple reasons taken from the list of minimal historical facts and the data that confirm them.
Hume argued that whenever he heard of a claimed miracle, he always considered whether it was more likely that a supernatural event really did occur on such an occasion, or that the one reporting the event “should either deceive or be deceived.” His rule was to “always reject the greater miracle.”
As an aside for right now, we have commented several times in this study that naturalism, including materialism or other possible forms of atheism and agnosticism whenever they may be assumed or employed, carry their own burdens of proof, depending on what is being asserted. It is helpful to recall once again that if Hume’s rule of thumb in this matter is to always reject the greater miracle, then some forceful argument, evidence, or something else substantial must serve as a support as to why his view ought to be given preference above the others.
Hume might retort that those reporting miracles are frequently in error of some sort or another, and that miracles, by definition, are much rarer than normal events. No one is disputing that claim. But how many instantaneous healings or other events, or perhaps even very well-evidenced NDEs, would have to obtain before Hume’s thesis would crumble, especially since he seems to admit no supernatural events, since the evidence is declared to be “uniform” against miracles? So then, would one clear and very well-evidenced miracle or supernatural testimony do the job? Ten? A couple dozen? Given the available data, it seems like the theists would have the clear advantage on these comparative arguments.
The further matter is Hume’s proposal to basically take any natural response over any supernatural one, and we have seen that this is a very common move among critics even today. But there is still the matter of why this is so. This sounds like prejudice unless there is sufficient data on the opposite side.
But here there is an additional kicker against the specific point that we are addressing. Every one of the naturalistic alternative suppositions that is lined up against Jesus’s resurrection is itself opposed by an entire cartel of factual refutations of various sorts, as recognized by many critics themselves (and as will be pointed out below). These reasons to reject the original naturalistic counter proposal, in turn, are themselves strengthened further. Since the refutations here are almost always drawn from and based on the minimal facts, this means that each refutation is backed by the very reasons affirmed by these very critical scholars who may be attempting to dismiss the resurrection! Thus, virtually all critical scholars, even the most skeptical ones, agree to the historicity of the minimal data that oppose these natural hypotheses. The combination is a strong listing of refutations—each multiply evidenced with additional full scholarly support regarding its historicity. That is probably why only a minority of critical scholars prefer these critical alternative theories anyway.
Reason 3
None of the major natural alternative theses covers all the minimal data, so more than one theory is probably necessary.
One of the chief means of choosing a natural path to explain the resurrection of Jesus is to cover as many historical aspects of the New Testament case as well as possible. Of course, these efforts will differ between individuals in that they are person relative to a large extent. Decisions are often based on particular perceptions of the known data, or even sound rather emotional in nature. So personal evaluations of which responses do the best job of explaining this or that aspect may differ. However, speaking broadly here, no single thesis does the job of covering well even all of the crucial information alone. It seems inevitable that major components are neglected somewhere.
For example, various forms of hallucination theories may well remain the most popular views today. But at a minimum, two huge hurdles and a host of smaller ones stand in their way. The empty tomb with its incredible list of critically ascertained, positive reasons is really problematic here and clearly requires another explanation, for hallucinations would leave a body in the tomb untouched. The report that groups of witnesses saw the risen Jesus is even more troublesome, especially since these same reports are known to be multiply attested and exceptionally early.
That Jesus’s disciples stole his dead body leaves a gaping hole when, as far as we know, these witnesses were clearly willing to die for their proclamation that Jesus had risen from the dead. Surely they would remember that they had stolen the body themselves! Virtually no critics get past this point. But what about anyone else stealing the body for whatever reasons—even unknown persons? That seems a little craftier, though, and is not plagued by the same reasons just mentioned. But to the extent that someone might argue this view successfully, they will have addressed only the empty tomb but basically almost nothing else. So, what about the toughest data to explain—namely, the appearances, plus everything else in the research that is well accredited?
The swoon (or apparent death) theory was popular mostly in the early nineteenth century but hardly at all today. Like the stolen body theses, there are knockout punches awaiting here—how could an undeniably hurting, exceptionally wounded, and sickly Jesus convince anyone that he was the risen Lord of life? And what about the Roman spear wound confirmed in a Roman source? Further, given the state of the medical findings today in dozens of studies, even the most critical scholars shy away and avoid this theory.
Other attempts to explain away the resurrection appearances of Jesus could be mentioned as examples, and many of these have been treated in great detail in this volume. But the chief problem we are raising at this point is that one natural alternative thesis does not cover very well all of the known facts that are considered to be solid by large numbers of critical scholars. Some of the evidence in favor of these facts seems altogether unanswerable in any coherent sense, particularly when there are remaining aspects of the data that have not been adequately addressed. Additional naturalistic riders may have to be added in order to address further uncovered aspects of the evidence that remain outstanding.
Still, the argument against naturalistic theories being considered here is that a single alternative seems not to cover the knowable aspects, hence failing to do the job well. This alone is another difficult hill to climb. Lurking in the background, however, is the larger question of whether any of the natural hypotheses or adjustments are capable of doing the job.
Reason 4
Nineteenth-century German liberal scholars indicated many of the weaknesses in each of the natural theses by refuting individually each hypothesis on a piecemeal basis.
The last two reasons for the failure of naturalistic theories are not separate, standalone critiques but are additional indications that the previous three points were accurate. In other words, Hume was badly mistaken in his theorizing for a variety of reasons, and hence his thesis cannot serve as the backdrop for rejecting miracles. It is even more crucial that each natural hypothesis has been refuted for multiple reasons. This is shown further by the need for more than one of these alternate views to be correct at the same time in order to cover the factual landscape. These final two points provide additional corroboration of the first three by showing additional angles regarding the collapse of these alternative ideas.
The nineteenth century was the heyday of German liberalism, and German universities were the hotbed in developing naturalistic approaches to the resurrection of Jesus. Liberal theology dominated the leading schools and more than one of these professors even rejected the existence of Jesus. To say the least, some of the critical approaches were very creative.
Throughout the century, there was definitely a motive to expose this central Christian event of Jesus’s resurrection as a myth, and in a glut of volumes with titles such as “The Historical Jesus,” these scholars quite often indicated their willingness to engage the historical data. This was simply an intriguing trend in this century. However, in the process of treating relevant subject areas in Jesus’s life and giving their own nonsupernatural “remedies,” several of these major researchers leveled hearty criticisms at their fellow German liberals. Several of the major refutations emerged during this historical period, including some of the truly crushing comments aimed squarely at rival hypotheses.
For example, David Strauss’s devastating critique of the swoon theory has stood the test of time, remaining the chief critique still being proposed today against various suppositions of Jesus’s apparent death. Strauss popularized the hallucination thesis in its place. However, scholars like Friedrich Schleiermacher, Heinrich Paulus, and especially Theodor Keim eliminated the hallucination (subjective vision) theory that David Strauss had popularized, providing a number of key critiques in the process.
Form-critical scholars along with other researchers of various stripes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries facilitated the spread of ancient mythical or legendary accounts promoted by the German history of religions school (religionsgeschichtliche Schule). However, at the end of German liberalism, these critical scholars who concentrated on ancient mythology and legendary interests could not provide adequate accounts of the early proclamation of the resurrection appearances, as they recognized themselves. These and other theses were negated by the German liberals themselves, the very scholars who, according to their own theological agendas, should have embraced them. But rather than supporting their colleagues, they chewed up the other liberal views and spat them out.
So throughout nineteenth-century Germany during this liberal period, scholars quite frequently supported their own approaches while tearing through each other’s naturalistic resurrection theses in a point-by-point fashion as they elevated their own critical visions. Their language toward one another was possibly more pointed than anything in the history of theology. For example, Strauss once commented about a pastor who had been attacking his views: “This offspring of the legitimate marriage between theological ignorance and religious intolerance, blessed by a sleep-walking philosophy, succeeds in making itself so completely ridiculous that it renders any serious reply unnecessary.” Normally far more reserved, Schweitzer himself remarked regarding Neander’s Life of Jesus that “it is a patchwork of unsatisfactory compromises. It is the child of despair, and has perplexity for godfather. One cannot read it without pain.”
Given such an acidic atmosphere even when addressing often like-minded colleagues, perhaps it will not be a great surprise to find former distinguished New Testament professor J. Gresham Machen of Princeton Theological Seminary testifying that, at the end of the German liberal era with the scholarly attacks on the views of fellow liberals, “the advocates of one theory are often the severest critics of another.” Without such nastiness, Machen time and again added many comments on the views of some of liberalism’s most influential scholars that, in his estimation, presented natural approaches to the resurrection appearances that were nothing more than suppositions with virtually no effort at producing any historical or other data in their own defense. That Machen was one of the well-trained scholarly critics at the close of the German liberal era increases the value of his insights.
One other note is needed before moving forward. Even while criticizing each other’s resurrection alternatives, the German liberals often devoted considerably longer treatments to these naturalistic options than did later scholars, as we will see next. Just a few of the more striking examples will be mentioned here. Schleiermacher took several jabs at other liberal natural theories, while devoting several chapters and dozens of pages to discussing whether or not Jesus actually died (though his own view on this topic is often debated). Influential New Testament scholar F. C. Baur took over thirty pages to explain that Paul was the recipient of subjective, nonmiraculous experiences at his conversion, but that he mistook these inner events for outer, objective realities and concluded that Jesus had actually appeared to him. In the process, Baur still employed a few criticisms along the way for others who disagreed with his approach. Strauss took far more swipes at the resurrection theses of others, while spending less time on his favorite option—the subjective vision hypothesis.
French scholar Ernest Renan devoted some sixty pages in two brief chapters to the death and burial of Jesus plus a lengthy appendix at the end of his book Vie de Jésus. He made some notable comments regarding Jesus’s memorable character along with Mary Magdalene’s enthusiasm and imagination, which gave way to the doctrine of the resurrection including the “apparitions” of Jesus to Peter and the others. Yet, Renan was criticized heavily and actually relieved of his teaching position for almost ten years as well as roundly criticized by the “French school of critical theology.”
Occasionally there were surprising concessions by these authors themselves. Otto Pfleiderer, a member of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule, devoted two long chapters of about seventy pages in length to ancient pagan parallels that rivaled Jesus as a miracle worker and then turned to parallels to Jesus’s resurrection in the ancient world. But then Pfleiderer remarkably conceded that Jesus’s predictions of his resurrection beforehand, plus some eyewitness testimony in the New Testament along with the “historical fact” of Jesus’s death and the “visions” afterward to his disciples, were all unique vis-à-vis the pagan accounts.
It is rather amazing that the nineteenth-century German liberals labored over such details in order to exalt their theses, often while decimating their colleagues’ alternate resurrection accounts. Similarly, it has already been argued that the conservative scholars who lived during this German heyday also critiqued the liberal scholars, assessing their naturalistic theses with the same zeal and detail. These conservatives quite often taught at some of the major British and American universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Aberdeen, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Theological Seminary. A few examples here should suffice.
These comments have concerned the various hard-hitting criticisms between the treatments that these nineteenth-century liberal German scholars devoted to their own natural theories concerning what caused the disciples’ resurrection beliefs, as contrasted with critiquing other liberal scholars with whom they disagreed. The conservative scholars from this same period followed suit, manifesting perhaps even more critical detail regarding the liberal attacks on the resurrection, while the latter’s sometimes-large page counts reflected their seriousness. It is noteworthy that both the nineteenth- to early twentieth-century liberal and conservative retorts often seemed far more meticulous when compared to the volume of similar efforts throughout the majority of the twentieth century, as will be discussed next.
Reason 5
In contrast, most twentieth-century critical scholars rejected wholesale the naturalistic theories.
Whereas nineteenth-century critical scholars generally attacked the alternative resurrection hypotheses piece by piece until none remained, twentieth-century researchers took a different approach altogether. In their treatment of naturalistic resurrection views, the majority of scholars during the past several decades, both liberal writers as well as other more moderate scholars, tended to eschew detailed line-by-line critiques. Instead, after making references to these natural alternative approaches, today’s skeptics and other scholars generally either cite just a few of these theses and then reject them briefly with a couple of details or comments, mention just the most influential comeback, or simply issue a blanket statement declaring that the alternative positions, overall, are rather misguided or even hopeless. Few of these examples, listed in note 35, below, exceed twelve pages in length while others are only a few lines long—far behind the average during the reign of nineteenth-century German trends for either the liberals or the conservatives, as we have seen. Conservative critiques are usually much lengthier, including many more details.
Several additional works similarly express their critiques in few words, only making remarks concerning one or two of the best-known alternative views. Chief among the areas of defense here are the empty tomb and various problems with hallucinations. Especially in these last examples, the overall appearance of the criticism almost seems to be a half-hearted critique due to the author being convinced that the enterprise itself is unnecessary to spell out, hence the perception of a wholesale dismissal. The overall result and appearance is that, even for liberal scholars at this present time, the naturalistic theories have had their day in court and we need to move on elsewhere.
A last aspect of this issue should also be mentioned. One indication of these trends is that there seems at present to be a shortage of influential specialist scholars who are satisfied to champion just a single naturalistic theory, stick with it, and live or die with that choice. Clearly, that was not true of the English deists, the continental rationalists, or the entire movement of German liberals from Schleiermacher through Strauss and Bousset into the early twentieth century along with a number of other scholars since those days. In the past few years, at least two of the major critical scholars who held only one naturalist position have passed away. That there appears to be a dearth of those researchers presently who advocate for only one alternative is certainly significant.
One aspect of the current debate that could help account for this trend was expressed by philosopher Angus Menuge. He stated that “Habermas’ ‘minimal facts’ approach . . . does explain why, over time, one skeptical alternative after another to the historical fact of the resurrection has been abandoned, leaving critics with shrinking cover to hide from Christ’s claim on their life.”
Conclusion
Such is the summarized critical work of at least the more than a century of the German liberal dominance of theology, including the scholarly employment of naturalistic theories to Jesus’s resurrection. Actually, the efforts that have been viewed here in the current four chapters on these hypotheses actually get fairly close to extending into a second century in duration if the thinkers mentioned earlier are counted, such as the (mostly) English deists and some continental rationalists like Spinoza and Reimarus with regard to their opposition to supernatural events, written in works before the writings of Schleiermacher and the birth of German liberalism.
Yet, we are taking nothing for granted here. Just because scholarly adherence to naturalistic alternative theories may be at an all-time “low” at present, it is not “dead in the water” just because of the present lull. According to one recent estimate with regard to the period of the Third Quest for the historical Jesus, “less than one-quarter of critical scholars who addressed the historicity question offered naturalistic theories.” Still, the state of each major alternative hypotheses will be pursued in this volume.
Notes
Many scholarly writings have addressed these trends, some written before Hume’s day, which was before the American Revolutionary War era. Most of those works before that time were supportive of miracles, as are an amazing number of writings in certain recent scholarly works today. The Western intellectual spectrum could include the following scholarly works. Living a little more than a century before Hume was the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, Penseés: Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects (New York: Washington Square, 1965), particularly thoughts 801 and 802 plus section 13, “The Miracles,” 803–56. Rick Kennedy presents an amazing study in A History of Reasonableness: Testimony and Authority in the Art of Thinking (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004), esp. chaps. 2–5, tracking Augustine and the eleventh through the eighteenth centuries, with frequent thoughts on discussions of miracles (43–44, 105, 115, 137, 150–53, 158, 164–66, 172–73, 184–85, 196–213). Stanley Tweyman, ed., Hume on Miracles (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1996) is a collection of essays with half being written before Hume’s death, and the other half from after Hume’s time. From this same period is Richard Whately, Historic Doubts Relative to the Existence of Napoleon Bonaparte (London: Hatchard, Piccadilly, 1819); Robert Bruce Mullin, Miracles and the Modern Religious Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); philosopher of science Stanley L. Jaki, Miracles and Physics (Front Royal, VA: Christendom, 1989), esp. chaps. 1–2 for a couple of centuries of overview on this issue. Containing more on the current state of modern physics with regard to the question of miracles, see Werner Schaaffs, Theology, Physics, and Miracles, trans. Richard L. Renfield (Washington, DC: Canon, 1974); Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984); Norman L. Geisler, Miracles and the Modern Mind: A Defense of Biblical Miracles (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), defending biblical miracles, as the title indicates, while covering critiques from Spinoza to the present; Richard Swinburne, ed., Miracles (New York: Macmillan, 1989), featuring a cross-section of both negative and positive responses.
David Hume, “Of Miracles,” esp. as Hume sets forth in the last two paragraphs of part 1 in section 10 of his famous work An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
David Friedrich Strauss, A New Life of Jesus, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1864), 1:199–201.
John Herman Randall Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind: A Survey of the Intellectual Background of the Present Age, rev. ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1940), 553–54.
Rejoinders on behalf of Hume’s basic ideas include Antony Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief: A Study of His First Inquiry (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), esp. chap. 8, “Miracles and Methodology”; Robert J. Fogelin, “What Hume Actually Said about Miracles,” Hume Studies 16 (1990): 81–87; Fogelin, A Defense of Hume on Miracles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Fred Wilson, Hume’s Defense of Causal Inference (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); Wilson, “The Logic of Probabilities in Hume’s Argument against Miracles,” Hume Studies 15 (1989): 255–75; Richard Otte, “Schlesinger and Miracles,” Faith and Philosophy 10 (1993): esp. 93, 97; William L. Vanderburgh, David Hume on Miracles, Evidence, and Probability (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2019).
Contrary expositions include George I. Mavrodes, “David Hume and the Probability of Miracles,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43 (1998): 176–77; John Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument against Miracles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), esp. the entire host of critiques found in part 1; John Earman, “Bayes, Hume, and Miracles,” Faith and Philosophy 10 (1993): 293, 305–6; Robert A. Larmer, The Legitimacy of Miracle (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2014), esp. chaps. 2–4, specifically 60–61; Rodney D. Holder, “Hume on Miracles: Bayesian Interpretation, Multiple Testimony, and the Existence of God,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1998): 60–62; George N. Schlesinger, “Miracles and Probabilities,” Nous 21 (1987): 219, 230–32; Schlesinger, “The Credibility of Extraordinary Events,” Analysis 51 (1991): 125; Benjamin F. Armstrong Jr., “Hume on Miracles: Begging-the-Question against Believers,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 9 (1992): 319, 327; Roy A. Sorensen, “Hume’s Scepticism concerning Reports of Miracles,” Analysis 43 (1983): 60; Stanley L. Jaki, Physics and Miracles (Front Royal, VA: Christendom, 1989), esp. 19–25, 32–33, 78–79, 92–93.
See W. David Beck, Does God Exist? A History of Answers to the Question (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2021), 130–32; cf. Jordan Howard Sobel, Logic and Theism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), section 7.5–6; also, William Lad Sessions, Reading Hume’s Dialogues (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).
For an excellent discussion here, see Mavrodes, “Probability of Miracles,” 176–77.
For healing experiments confirmed by testing, see Candy Gunther Brown, Testing Prayer: Science and Healing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012). Reports containing multiple cases from physicians include H. Richard Casdorph, The Miracles (Plainfield, NJ: Logos, 1976), with photographs; Rex Gardner, Healing Miracles: A Doctor Investigates (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1986).
Gary R. Habermas, Philosophy of History, Miracles, and the Resurrection of Jesus, 3rd ed. (Sagamore Beach, MA: Academx, 2012), 10–24, 29–33.
Hume, “Of Miracles,” part 1, in Essential Works of David Hume, ed. Ralph Cohen (New York: Bantam, 1965), 128–29.
Hume, 128.
By twisting and turning this way and that, often in rather strange ways, some efforts may settle for saying something about most of the major aspects of the historical reports surrounding the resurrection. But the comments in this paragraph make the point that no single alternative thesis covers all the bases without exceptionally ad hoc requirements.
Although, in the overall scheme of naturalists who respond on the subject of the historicity of the resurrection, relatively few scholars take one of the forms of this option. See Gary R. Habermas, “The Late Twentieth-Century Resurgence of Naturalistic Responses to Jesus’ Resurrection,” Trinity Journal 22 (2001): esp. 186–90, 194–96, including two generally unnamed theses that were named in this article: the “illumination” and “illusion” alternatives.
Incredibly, perhaps the most popular natural thesis is actually beset by the most refutations. For example, see Gary R. Habermas, “Explaining Away Jesus’ Resurrection: The Recent Revival of Hallucination Theories,” Christian Research Journal 23 (2001): 26–31, 47–49.
Both Bruno Bauer and Peter Jensen took this position. As a contrast on the last point here, agnostic New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman notes that he knows of no scholar in a cognate field today who teaches in an accredited university, college, seminary, or divinity school who “has any doubts that Jesus existed.” See Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 2–3.
Schweitzer devotes two chapters to the fictitious lives of Jesus in Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery (New York: Macmillan, 1968), chaps. 4, 12.
See chaps. 4–6 of volume 4 of this study for specific details regarding the nineteenth-century liberal attacks on Jesus’s resurrection, the key sources, and the fates of these efforts to disprove other liberal theses.
Examples of such criticism as applied to the German religionsgeschichtliche Schule are the detailed critiques by Ehrman (Did Jesus Exist?, 26, 207–18, 221–30, 256–58). Again, these along with other related trends from the days of the German liberals’ theological scholarship, including their naturalistic theories and the subsequent refutations by others of this group, are cited and discussed in the three chapters above on this school of thought.
Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 97.
Schweitzer, 101.
J. Gresham Machen, The Origin of Paul’s Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1925), 65.
For examples, Machen (The Origin of Paul’s Religion) remarked that the liberal “diagnosis rests upon totally insufficient data” and has “no real basis,” “no evidence,” and “prejudges” the case (59), “not the slightest evidence,” “no evidence,” and no “certain information” (65). An alternate thesis concerning Paul’s appearance is judged to be “very romantic, but very un-Pauline” (66). On several other occasions, Machen asks for the critical evidence to be produced instead of being assumed (61, 64, 67).
Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Life of Jesus ed. Jack C. Verheyden, trans. S. Maclean Gilmour (Mifflintown, PA: Sigler, 1975), 440, 442–43, 455 esp., 474.
Schleiermacher, 415–17, 439, 441, 445, 447, 450–52, 455–58, 463–65, 469–71, 477–81.
Ferdinand Christian Baur, Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Works, His Epistles and Teachings; A Contribution to a Critical History of Primitive Christianity, trans. A. Menzies, 2 vols. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1873; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 1:63–92, particularly 67–81, see also 1:264; 2:251–53.
David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. George Eliot (Mifflintown, PA: Sigler, 1994), 45–46, 678–79, 707, 718, 734, 737–41, 744, 751, besides criticizing the German liberal “rationalists” (423, 479–81, 485).
Strauss, 742–44, plus the excellent editor’s annotations on 794–95.
Ernest Renan, Vie de Jésus (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1864), 343–56, esp. 351, 355–56; plus 418, 420–27, incl. the “apparitions” to Peter and the twelve disciples along with Paul later. Renan also affirms his preference for the Gospel of John (423), a typical liberal move, at least earlier in the movement.
Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 180, 189–90.
Otto Pfleiderer, The Early Christian Conception of Christ: Its Significance and Value in the History of Religion (London: Williams & Norgate, 1905), 63–133.
Pfleiderer, 102, 157–58. This did not indicate, however, that Pfleiderer accepted the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection.
Perhaps the best example here of conservatives treating these liberal naturistic theories is Scottish theologian James Orr, where approximately half of his almost 300-page book on Jesus’s resurrection was devoted to addressing these alternate theses plus other critical questions. See Orr, The Resurrection of Jesus (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908; repr., Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1965), 205–61 for just hallucination, objective vision, and legendary theses alone. Earlier than Orr, both Brooke Foss Westcott’s The Gospel of the Resurrection: Thoughts on its Relation to Reason and History (London: Macmillan, 1865), 7–14, 30–54, 108–20, and William Milligan’s The Resurrection of Our Lord (London: Macmillan, 1881), 76–119 included almost fifty pages each of refutations. Also appearing very early, though with fewer pages of rebuttal against the liberals, is Alfred Edersheim’s huge study, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1883), 2:621–29, and George P. Fisher’s text The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1883), 193–99, 202. Frederic Louis Godet included a treatment of the hallucination hypothesis in Lectures in Defense of the Christian Faith, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1883); see also H. C. G. Moule, The Resurrection of Christ (Minneapolis: Klock & Klock, 1898). Kirsopp Lake included more than thirty pages of critical responses in The Historical Evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (London: Williams & Norgate, 2012), 187–99, 209–13, 218–19, 225–26, 237–38, 245, 262–67, 271–76. W. J. Sparrow-Simpson included some forty pages devoted to the liberal hypotheses in The Resurrection and the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1968), 40, 44, 100–122, 159–65, 436–42. Some of the most penetrating refutations of liberal ideas were included in Doremus A. Hayes’s volume, The Resurrection Fact (Nashville: Cokesbury, 1932), 35–38, 275–99. Often cited by critical scholars and available in many reprints is Frank Morison’s Who Moved the Stone? (London: Faber & Faber, 1930), 64, 88–102, 114, which also treated alternative theories in a fair amount of detail.
Elsewhere, the term “liberal” is a reference to scholars who take any of several views that are basically defined by Bernard Ramm as those holding “specifically to a spirit of inquiry to which nothing is sacrosanct.” Citing Kenneth Cauthen, Ramm defines liberal views as rallying around the three themes of erasing supernatural-natural distinctions, elevating human autonomy above theology, and celebrating the world as an open system that is in process. See the very helpful volume of definitions by Bernard Ramm, A Handbook of Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), 80–82.
The many examples exemplify a very wide swath of scholars from different perspectives. They may include self-identified non-Christians, skeptics, or moderate researchers who still reject natural theses for the resurrection. These approaches encompass the views of Geza Vermes, The Resurrection (London: Penguin, 2008), 143–49; Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983), 120–28; James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, vol. 1 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 1:831–32, 838, 873–79; Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Louisville: Westminster, 1985), 72, 76; E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993), 277–81; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man, trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977), 88–106; Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology, trans. James W. Leitch (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 172–82, 186, 197–202; Karl Barth, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, vol. 4.1 of Church Dogmatics, trans. G. W. Bromiley, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 303, 334–37, 340–41, 351–52; Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to New Testament Christology (New York: Paulist, 1994), 162–70; John A. T. Robinson, Can We Trust the New Testament? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 120–29; N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 27–28, 77, 80–81n265, 318, 550, 638–39, 686, 689, 697–706, 709–10; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 101–5; Johnson, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 133–140; Ulrich Wilckens, Resurrection: Biblical Testimony to the Resurrection. An Historical Examination and Explanation, trans. A. M. Stewart (Atlanta: Knox, 1978), 117–19; Markus Barth, introduction, in Markus Barth and Verne H. Fletcher, Acquittal by Resurrection: Freedom, Law, and Justice in the Light of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964), 23–31; Gerald O’Collins, Jesus Risen: The Resurrection—What Actually Happened and What Does It Mean? (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1987), 99–109, 118–27; Richard Swinburne, The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003), 174–86; Stephen T. Davis, Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 16, 179–84; George Eldon Ladd, I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 132–42; Charles C. Anderson, The Historical Jesus: A Continuing Quest (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 166–73; Thorwald Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship: Interpretive Models, Biblical Reflections, Theological Consequences (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 117–24; Murray J. Harris, Raised Immortal: Resurrection and Immortality in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 57–62; Robert Geis, Life of Christ (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2013), 313–22; John Drane, Introducing the New Testament (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 103–6; Paul L. Maier, In the Fullness of Time: A Historian Looks at Christmas, Easter, and the Early Church (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 189–96; Laurence W. Miller, Jesus Christ Is Alive (Boston: Wilde, 1949), 35–45; Grant R. Osborne, The Resurrection Narratives: A Redactional Study (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), 275–78.
For just a few of these briefer examples that often exemplify the hit-and-miss pattern just mentioned, see C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incarnational Narrative as History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 352–55; Raymond E. Brown, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist, 1973), 122, 126–29; Neville Clark, Interpreting the Resurrection (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967), 100, 104; A. M. Ramsey, The Resurrection of Christ: A Study of the Event and Its Meaning for the Christian Faith, rev. ed. (London: Fontana, 1961), 41, 49–50; Helmut Thielicke, “The Resurrection Kerygma,” in Leonhard Goppelt, Helmut Thielicke, and Hans-Rudolf Müller-Schwefe, The Easter Message Today: Three Essays, trans. Salvator Attanasio and Darrell Likens Guder (New York: Nelson, 1964), 85–91, 103.
Confessional evangelical scholars and other conservatives have sometimes been left out of the surveys on the last two points above, not necessarily because of their training or their views. Quite often, in fact, the conservatives’ graduate training is stronger than other researchers as well as having been done with professors, mentors, and other colleagues who generally oppose their views, thereby making them even better equipped in the process. This last thought, in particular, is vastly neglected and underappreciated in terms of evangelical competence. On the subject of conservative voices in these resurrection discussions, see Benjamin C. F. Shaw, “What’s Good for the Goose Is Good for the Gander: Historiography and the Historical Jesus,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 15 (2017): 291–309. One important reason to note the diversity of the scholars in these lists was so that it may be seen even more forcefully that the points being made in this context are present across the scholarly landscape and do not at all depend on “loading up” with conservative voices. An excellent and highly acclaimed example is the work of Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 2010). Licona’s careful examination of the oft-neglected role of historiography in these studies (31–198), the more than 250 pages on the historical, clearly ascertained bedrock events surrounding Jesus’s resurrection (199–464) as well as the central task of entertaining rival resurrection hypotheses (465–582) is done so carefully that the final conclusion (582–610) is very difficult to resist, even from researchers who differ with Licona’s conclusions. This final point is emphasized by more than one of the recent scholars who wrote recommendations and complimented these or other aspects of Licona’s work, even though they clearly disagreed with his overall stance. Since the chief topic of this chapter is a wrap-up of the naturalistic countertheses that oppose the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection, we will just note additionally that the coauthored volume by Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004), includes more than 100 pages (including the endnotes) of evaluation regarding these natural alternative suppositions. Another conservative work that clearly belongs in the heart of this discussion is Wright’s text, The Resurrection of the Son of God, which includes lengthy treatments of the ancient pre-New Testament sources (1–206), about 375 pages devoted to the key New Testament texts and extending afterward (207–583), as well as treating major historical matters (585–738). In fact, the texts by Licona and Wright are probably the two most celebrated of these studies in print.
Reference is made here to Gerd Lüdemann’s subjective vision thesis in The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, and Theology, trans. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994) and his other works, plus John Shelby Spong’s view that the primacy of Peter’s conviction and influence was responsible for bringing the other disciples to faith in the living Lord as well in Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? A Bishop’s Search for the Origins of Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 1994) and his other writings.
Angus Menuge, review of Debating Christian Theism, ed. J. P. Moreland, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis, Philosophia Christi 16 (2014): 456. Intriguingly, one evangelical critic of the minimal facts approach notes this method’s “near-exclusive use in Christian apologetic circles.” See Lydia McGrew, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts (Chillicothe, OH: DeWard, 2017), 220–21.
As noted in Habermas, “Late Twentieth-Century Resurgence,” there was a resurgence of these theses that has more recently seemed to have evaporated, at least somewhat.
Gary R. Habermas, “Mapping the Recent Trend toward the Bodily Resurrection Appearances of Jesus in Light of Other Prominent Critical Positions,” in The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue, ed. Robert B. Stewart (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 78–92, particularly 82–86, 91–92.