…On the Day They Face the Judgment of Jesus Whom they
Naively Denied[1]
“…that at the
name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord.” (Philippians 2:11)
New Testament scholar Dr. Craig
Hazen frames this data into the abductive reasoning (above)
investigational program by proposing 12 common hypotheses which people have
employed to seek to reconcile all of the data to the potential end that they
might undermine it. Each entry into the
following list of competing hypotheses (identified by simple titles) will be
followed by numbers from the above list of 12, which Hazen deems refute each hypothesis
as false. His material here is not
copyrighted.
§
The Unknown Tomb, 4-12
§
The Wrong Tomb, 5-12
§
The Story is Legend, 1-12
§
Jesus Had a Twin Brother, 4, 11
§
Hallucination, 5, 11, 12
§
Existential Resurrection, 4, 5, 11, 12
§
Spiritual Resurrection, 4, 5, 11, 12 (both of
these mean Jesus rose without his body)
§
Disciples Stole Body, 5, 6, 11, 12
§
Authorities Hid Body, 5-12
§
Swoon Theory Conspiracy, 1,6
§
Passover Plot Conspiracy, 5, 6, 11, 12
§
Jesus Rose Bodily, all of the data harmonizes
with Jesus’ resurrection.
Dr. Craig completes his chart with
the following challenge: If one deems
that there is not enough data to make a rational judgment, then the skeptic
should turn his skepticism on almost all of what we know from ancient antiquity
for the reason that the matter of credibility with respect to the New Testament
in particular, is vastly stronger than it is for any other historical documents
from antiquity.[2]
Consequently, should Jesus Christ
indeed be who the New Testament (NT) claims him to be, then no escape
will be found in pleading “ignorant” on the day of judgment. Neither Scripture (Romans 1:18-20) nor
rationality as expressed by Aristotle, encourages such a ploy. The latter indeed states,
“We
punish [people] for the very fact of being in ignorance if a man seems responsible for his own ignorance. Hence, the fine for offenses committed by
drunks is double; after all, he can decide not to get drunk, and it is this that causes his ignorance. There is punishment too, when people are in
ignorance of a point of law that should be known and is not difficult to know…people
themselves are responsible for [their careless-ness] through living disorderly
lives; they are responsible for being unjust or profligate, the former through
evildoing, the latter through drinking and so on … Not knowing that
dispositions are attained by actually doing things is a sign of a complete ignoramus.”[3]
We have solid reasons to know that Jesus lived,
and did, and said substantially everything recorded about him in the four
Gospels of the NT. Yet, judged according
to the standards that are employed in historical research in general, we have
even greater grounds to embrace with full conviction that Jesus, who died, was
seen alive on the third day following his death. St. Paul stated about him before the
intellectual leaders at Athens that God “has fixed a day on which he will
judge the world [by Jesus Christ] and of this he has given assurance to
all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).
[1] The doctrine of Christ’s judgment has its source not
in biblical fundamentalism, but in both the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds.
[2] Lee Strobel, ed. The Case for Christ.
(Zondervan, 2016). The work contains an
array of interviews from top-flight scholars in the fields they ad-dress and thereby substantiates the
validity of every one of the “historical facts cited. Copies are available on the internet for
under 7.00 $.
[3] H.H. Joachim, tr. Renford Bambrough, ed. Philosophy
of Aristotle. “Ethics” Book III. (Mentor, 1963), pp. 323-4, boldface mine.
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