Thinking to Believe

Elaine Pagels—famous for her promotion of Gnostic Christianity—was interviewed by David Ian Miller for the April 2, 2007 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. Pagels was discussing the Gospel of Judas. Miller asked her if this gospel would change the way people observe Easter. Pagels answered in the affirmative. She wrongly asserted that Luke and John give different portrayals of Jesus’ resurrection body (one spiritual, one physical), and then went on to say the following:

And what was important to the authors of Luke and John was not to decide between those stories—the important thing is that we know in some sense that he is alive. That the resurrection happened. And that is affirmed. But one thing we can see in these other texts [such as the Gospel of Judas] is that you don’t have to take the resurrection literally to take it seriously. One can speak about Jesus alive after his death with conviction without necessarily meaning that his physical body got out of the grave.

Yes, we could speak of Jesus being alive after His death without meaning His body got out of the grave, but we could not call it a resurrection. Resurrection, like apple, refers to something specific. It does not refer to any sort of life after death, but in the words of N.T. Wright, life after life after death. In the ancient world the word was always bound up with the return to a bodily existence after a disembodied existence following death. We are not free to redefine words to our own fancy, no matter how much Pagels might wish to do so. If Pagels wants to believe in a spiritual ascension she is free to do so, but she is not free to call it a resurrection, nor is she free to say that those who believe such a thing have satisfied the Biblical requirement to believe in Jesus’ resurrection. You can’t evacuate a term of its meaning, and then assert that any content one might choose in its place satisfies the meaning of the word.

If resurrection can mean whatever one wants it to mean, then why is it important that we affirm it? And what are we even affirming? How about I postulate that Jesus’ resurrection means He survived death only in the memory of His followers? Is that an affirmation of His resurrection? Hardly. “Resurrection” means something.

A spiritual resurrection of Jesus makes no sense. It could not explain the rise of Christianity. If Jesus’ spirit merely survived death, there would be nothing extraordinary about Him. Other people experience the same. What made Jesus extraordinary was that His physical body came back to life, and was subsequently glorified. That is what the early church preached, and that is why Christianity was so scandalous. No pagan would have had a problem with a disembodied spirit ascending to heaven, but they had a big problem with a man returning from the dead, never to taste of death again.

But that’s all icing on the cake. My real focus is on her statement that we can take the Biblical texts seriously without taking them literally. While this is a nice sounding catchphrase that is popular in liberal Christianity, what exactly does this mean, and how does it play itself out in the real world? If the context makes it clear that a text is figurative in nature, then we are taking the text seriously when we understand it in a figurative sense. But when the context gives us every reason to believe the author is presenting something as historical fact, we are not taking the text seriously if we assign it a figurative meaning. When it comes to the gospels, we have every reason to believe that the events recorded are intended as genuine historical events. As such, it is impossible to take them seriously all the while denying their historicity.

Is Pagels prepared to treat other purported historical accounts in this fashion? Can she deny the historicity of slave trade in the early Americas while taking the texts that tell us about this horrendous practice seriously? Of course not! So why treat the Bible any differently? She is free to argue that while the gospels present themselves as genuine history, they are not historical events, but she is not free to deny their historicity all the while claiming to take the texts seriously. It is highly disingenuous.

According to Matthew 28:17, when the eleven apostles saw the resurrected Christ in Galilee, some of them worshipped Him, “but some doubted.” In context, the “some” refers to the apostles. This account is important on two fronts.

First, it argues for the historical veracity of the claims made about Jesus in Matthew’s gospel. Many skeptics argue that the gospels were not penned by eyewitnesses to the events, but by later disciples who freely embellished or invented many of the sayings and deeds they attributed to Jesus. This is unlikely given the nature of their reports, including this one.

If later disciples were embellishing, or inventing history it is highly unlikely that they would include embarrassing details such as this one. What purpose would it serve to report that the very pillars of the church—the apostles—doubted the resurrection of Jesus even after He personally appeared to them? At best it could only detract from the witness of Christ’s resurrection. After all, if some of Jesus’ own chosen apostles were not convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead—even after having seen Him alive—how can those who have not seen Him alive be expected to believe on Jesus through the mere testimony of the apostles? If the author was writing historical fiction, we would expect the apostles to emerge as the heroes of unswerving faith. We find just the opposite.

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In the last post I addressed the argument that all religions must be human inventions because they are markedly different from one another, and tend to be limited to a specific culture and/or geography. A more common “argument” against religion comes in the following form: “You are only a Christian because you were born in America where Christianity is the cultural religion. If you would have been born in India, you would probably be a Hindu. You believe in the religion you believe in because you inherited it, not because it is true.”

I put parentheses around “argument” for good reason: this is not a valid argument against the truth of religion in general, or Christianity in particular. As an empirical observation, it is undeniable that one’s religious beliefs are largely determined by where they live, and/or the religious beliefs of their parents (an accident of history, not the result of critical examination and rational reflection). But does it follow from this that the object of all religious faith must be a human invention? No. It is non sequitur.

This sort of thinking commits the genetic fallacy (invalidating a view based on how a person came to hold that view). The fact of the matter is that the truth of a belief is independent of the influences that brought one to believe it. While I may be a Christian because I live in a society in which most people are Christians, it does not mean that my Christian beliefs are not true. The truth of Christianity depends on the veracity of the claims themselves, nothing more and nothing less.

It is not important how someone came to hold the view they hold; all that is important is the soundness of the reasons for which they hold the view they do. If I was born in India I would probably have been raised a Hindu, and might even be a Hindu today. But that would not change the fact that Hinduism is false, and Christianity is true. The empirical observation that people tend to inherit their religious beliefs tells us nothing about the truth value of those beliefs.

This argument is a double-edged sword that can be turned against the atheist as well. American atheists were born in America, and educated in a school system where scientific naturalism and secularism are the prevailing philosophies. Is it any wonder, then, why they believe in no god? If they had been born in Saudi Arabia they would probably be a Muslim theist. Does that mean scientific naturalism is therefore false? Of course not! The truth-value of scientific naturalism, Christianity, and Islam must be determined on the merits of those views themselves.

This “argument” also ignores the conversion factor: instances in which large numbers of people of one religion convert to a different religion. Think of Christianity. Christianity originated in a thoroughly Jewish culture. People who held Jewish beliefs abandoned them by the thousands in favor of Christian beliefs. Pagans did the same. Why? Because they found something to be true of Christianity they did not find in their own religion. The claims of Christianity were so compelling that they abandoned the religion of their parents/nation. It was a matter of truth, not inheritance.

Most skeptics and all atheists think of religion as a human invention because (1) religions differ greatly from one another, and (2) religious views are often culture-specific. Let me address each in turn.

Religions differ from one another

It is reasoned that if God exists and is knowable by man, everyone should be in basic agreement about who he/she/it/they is/are. Instead, religious views are often very different: God is one, God is many; God is personal, God is impersonal; Jesus is God incarnate, Jesus is a heretic; the world exists, the world is an illusion. Skeptics conclude that either God is unknowable by man (in which case the whole question of religious truth is irrelevant), or more likely, God does not exist to begin with. Religion is just a human invention, and the variegated expressions of religion reflect the variegated creativity of man.

Both conclusions are flawed in that they confuse epistemology with ontology. Just because people have different answers to the same question (epistemology) does not mean there is no correct answer (ontology), or that no one knows the correct answer. If ten math students give ten different answers to the same math problem, it does not mean there is no correct answer, or that none of the students possess the correct answer. Difficulty in knowing a thing does not translate into an inability to know that thing, or the lack of a thing to be known in the first place. At best, the existence of a multiplicity of religious beliefs only highlights a possible epistemological problem associated with knowing God. It is not a good argument against the existence of God/gods (an ontological issue).

If the Bible is to be believed, the problem is not so much with epistemology as it is corrupted volition. Deep down men know the one true God, but in rebellion they will to suppress that knowledge, making up religions that are more palatable to their tastes. Think Romans 1-3.

Religious views are culture-specific

This is the more important of the two reasons. When you look at religion on a global level it becomes readily apparent that religious perspectives are often specific to a particular culture or geographical locale. It is claimed that the most reasonable explanation for this phenomenon is that religions are mere cultural inventions passed on from generation to generation. They don’t spread beyond the culture because—as an invention—they are not the sort of things that are accessible to, and discoverable by men outside the community in which they arose.

The observation that religions tend to be isolated to a particular culture and geography is true. The question is why that’s so. Is it because they are human inventions, or is there some other reason? I think the atheist is largely correct when he concludes from the multiplicity of geographical and culture-specific religions that religion is a human invention. Indeed, because they are markedly different from one another, they can’t all be right about God. At best, only one of them can be right, relegating the rest to human imagination. Where the skeptic errs is in his conclusion that all religions must be mere human inventions. Indeed, one religion could be the correct one.

But how could it be that only one culture has the truth about God, and none of the others (this isn’t to say there is no truth to be found in false religions, but only that on the macro-level, one religion is true and the rest are false)? It could be that God only chose to reveal Himself to one people, or it could be that all but one people remained faithful to the truths God revealed to them about Himself. It could be any number of other reasons as well. The point is that we need not conclude all religions are mere human inventions because they tend to be cultural and/or geographical-specific. That conclusion does not follow from the premises.

My next post will address a similar argument against religion.