@soccerdadforlife - Hey Tom,

Sorry this has taken me so long to get back to you.  

Ben:  "Probably not and it seems like special pleading to leave the door open for a handful of Jewish mystics 2,000 years ago."

Tom:  You are still slurping the Humean epistemic kool-aid.  See my latest post.

It appears you have assembled a plausible legal case that lacks anything definitive to go on.  And from that weak case, you hope to overturn the many objections and anti-empirical elements to the NT literature?  You might have your suspicions one way, but a skeptic is going to have their's and *either* way it's inconclusive hearsay.  

Ben:  "Did the early Christians really care about evidence apart from mystical methods?"

Tom:  I have posted about this a number of times. I John 1:1-3 is VERY empirical, as is the Jewish legal epistemology, which formed the epistemic culture of the early Jewish church.  I have posted quite a number of texts that show this kind of thinking in the NT.  There is evidence from Acts that the apostles were questioned in formal tribunals both by the church and by the Samaritans.

Incidentally, 1 John doesn't have much in the way of historical information that would be helpful, and it also has things to say like this:

1 John 2:27  But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.

Magic anointing?  Sounds like pretty straight up mysticism to me.

1 John 4:1-3  Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.

Circular reasoning?

1 John 4:6  We are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Dogmatism?

1 John 5:6-12 This is He who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not only by water, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.  And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one.  If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for this is the witness of God which He has testified of His Son.  He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; he who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of His Son.  And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.  He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

That's quite the cross checking there, Tom.    Obviously these mystics have their priorities out of line.  I don't know what they are claiming to "touch" in the opening verses, but I wouldn't touch the rest of their epistemology with a ten foot pole.

Ben:  "It's not like they checked historical records..."  

Tom:  Which historical records?

It really doesn't matter since they can't be said to have done anything comparable at all.

Ben:  "It's not like they...interviewed Roman guards..."  

Tom:  Which Roman guards?

The guards who were supposedly at the tomb?  Again, this isn't about being "fair" to them.  It's about being fair to *our* epistemology which is sitting on their mystical backs.  

Ben:  "It's not like they...exhaustively cross checked eyewitness testimony."

Tom:  Here you could be wrong; though the text doesn't explicitly say it, I would expect that a proto-gospel would have been carried by all evangelists like Paul which would have an authoritative credential from the apostles accompanying it.

True.  I could be wrong.  And so you could you.  Not knowing either way really isn't that helpful towards forming a definitive conclusion for a Christian orthodox supernatural historical theory.  

Ben:  "They only looked to see if Paul's claims corresponded with Scripture.  That's pathetic."

Tom:  And exactly how should they have done it, practically speaking, being in Berea and not in Jerusalem?  

Again, doesn't matter.  When we have no practical way to verify important information, we say we don't know what the answer is.  We don't join a cult.  

Tom:  What if they had the evidence of miracles occurring in front of their own eyes by the hand of Paul as a credential that God was attesting to Paul's story?

Paul claims even the false prophets can do the same thing and we might infer all the so called evangelical miracles are of the bogus variety we see today.  Maybe this was great evidence back in the day, but we see this level of ignorance alive and well all over the world and we don't join their religions.  

Ben

@StrokeofThought - Philip,

Philip:  I take the issue of discussion to be what the view of the New Testament authors was concerning reason, and I take your primary point to be that within the context of the New Testament - which is cluttered with a stress on faith as a way of knowing - any positive view of reason has a low prior probability.

That's not a bad way to put it.  In my head I imagine a pie chart that has a small pie of reason and evidence.  Obviously any belief system is going to have some measure of these.  The question is, does it have enough of a priority and what *else* is in the epistemic pie that taints reliability.  

1. John 14:11 - Jesus affirms evidence.

Philip:  If there was a verse which seemed to contradict Jesus's admonition here to use evidence as a way of knowing, it wouldn't follow that one of them was false.  The statements 'Believe based on evidence' and 'Believe based on faith' are not contradictory statements, provided each one does not purport to be exhaustively prescriptive.  The natural conclusion would be to take the independent admonitions as advocating a wholistic view of knowledge. And Jesus does say that many other places, and so I do think the result is to conclude that the view we should have is wholistic.  The verse you cite is addressed to the Pharisees, and as such is responding to their specific intent.  It is not meant to be taken as a universal principle.

Yes, as I've said, characters in the Bible get lots of evidence and turn around and demonize it for the next 2,000 years for everyone else.  I think the latter shows their true colors since the former comes to us only in hearsay form. (@nyclegodesi24 - also)  It is claimed I took the "a wicked generation asks for a sign" out of context, but I can't tell you how many times I've seen Christians turn on atheists with that quote.  And who can blame them?  I don't think Jesus said, "*This* wicked generation asks for a sign" and I can point to a wide variety of passages that advocates a very similar universalize-able theme. Thomas is rebuked for wanting to cross check the claims.  Jesus turns the subject to everyone else who is blessed for not seeing.  The rich man in hell is rebuked for asking for evidence to be sent to his living brothers.  Paul in a completely general way claims that *everyone* is without excuse and should know they are subject to the power and judgment of a supreme being (without the Bible at all).  Why shouldn't we conclude that it is a universal that anyone who asks for a miraculous sign is wicked?  If we're lucky we can scrounge up some exceptions from the Bible (like Gideon), but we'd have to conclude they were just that.  Exceptions.  Many atheists today wonder why miracles do not accompany the gospel and many ask the question, "Why doesn't God heal amputees?" for the sake of fact checking the gospel message.  It seems to me that it is the *skeptic* that wants a balanced view of mysticism and evidence and it is the Christian worldview that fails him.  A modern Christian cannot ride both horses.  Does it even matter what the excuse is for why God doesn't heal amputees?  As I said, the NT is much more in line with fideism than modern Christian evidentialists would like to acknowledge.

2. Paul.

Philip:  Paul used the Scriptures in debate as long as it was common ground, for that would make for the most effective argument with those he wanted to convince.  

One can claim in all the examples we have Paul happened to be using the right tool for the right job.  However, this is *all* we have to work with to both understand their epistemic priorities as well as what we (from our point of view, later in history) have to build upon.  If the first century evangelists only have a whole world full of mystics and theologians to convert, that's not very impressive epistemically and doesn't show us they can do better (or well enough) if they need to.  Maybe that's not their fault, but it sure isn't the modern day skeptic's fault either who lives in a world filled with various religions.  Sure, they care about reason and evidence on their level, but it's just not a sufficient enough level to take seriously.  Modern apologists show a much deeper level of interest in reason and evidence, but they tend to use it hedge in a flimsy faith premise that wasn't argued into place by reason and evidence.  So if the modern counter parts are closer to that balance and still fail (in my view at least), then the NT writers must be that much further away.  

3. Peter.

Philip:  I didn't include the verse's full context from 2 Peter - the next verse reveals Peter is talking about the Transfiguration, which is found in the Gospel traditions. The verses from Acts where Peter uses witness to the resurrection as an argument again support Peter's integrated approach to knowing.  This comports well with his admonition to have a reason to give others when they ask why they believe.

The transfiguration does seem to be a very random showcase event in the gospels (though it is suspiciously absent from John, even though John was supposed to have been there), but in 2 Peter it may well be just a vision Peter had on a mountain.  I'm not going to defend mythicism here, since I don't understand it rigorously enough to do so, but that is the kind of thing they claim.  

Philip:  I think humans are at the mercy of trying to interpret the universe and the world in which they live in some accurate way.  Many arguments philosophers make based on the contingency of the universe, religious experience, miracles, beauty, design, and so forth, are merely codifications of facts which have always supported belief in God as people encounter and experience those things.  In this way, our theology is helplessly wholistic, and the minds of the authors of the NT would be operating in the natural way that the minds of humans do, and that means reasoning about the context they were in.

You are correct, that lots of different religious people are basing their beliefs on many different  things in their experience just like everyone else.  That doesn't mean there aren't strong themes that characterize and distinguish them from other ways of knowing things.

Philip:  To summarize, here is why I don't think low prior probability is a problem.  The first is that prior probability only matters in a case where the views you are discussing are exclusive; in this case, we can say the best explanation of the pertinent evidence is that both faith and reason were important to the NT authors.  

They *did* have to justify themselves to other mystics somehow.

Philip:  Secondly, the facts supporting the use of reason are pretty strong: admonition from Jesus, clear use of apologetics from the two main Apostles.  The point here is explanatory scope and explanatory power are both higher for the view of faith and reason operating together.

We can't exclude the anti-evidential apologetics used as well or ignore why "faith" is even a necessary corner stone to begin with.  The best explanation is that the NT authors have to sell a bunch of stories to future audiences that weren't going to have much to go on other that holy hearsay.  Evidentialism is there in a sense, but is superficial and undermined in the finished epistemic product.  That leaves being faithful to Bible stories.  Hence, fideism.  

Philip:  Thirdly, its tremendously psychologically implausible to suppose that the NT authors did not engage in reasoning as they looked at the world, Scripture, and Jesus, and tried to put everything together.  This might only be implicit in the NT, but it has a high prior probability of being true because of the way we know humans see the world, since we are humans.  

I think I said basically the same thing when I said it would be physiologically impossible to be an *absolute* mystic (or fideist) with your epistemology.  And I wouldn't expect them to be, but I'm not going to trust the conclusions of people in those domains of "knowledge" who lean that way as a rule.

Philip:  As such, it should be the expected view, and would need a profoundly high amount of evidence to overturn it.  A theology of the NT needs to incorporate all of the evidence, and I think the only way you can do that is if you think that reason is an important part of the Christian faith.

I don't see that you are explaining the evidence I am referring to, so I have flail my arms and keep pointing at it like a little kid trying to get his parents' attention.  hehe

Philip:  Thanks for the post, Ben.

Thank you for the comments.

Ben

@soccerdadforlife - Hey Tom,

Tom:  "This is all a red herring.  The point is the content of I John 1:1-3"

I would call it *context*. But I do agree. Those verses do smell fishy.  (bu dum bum, ching)    

Tom:  "Now, you assert that since Christians rely on mystical knowledge, they therefore do not rely on empirical knowledge.  Don't you see the illogic in your thinking?  Suppose I rely on mathematical knowledge; does this necessarily mean that I do not rely on empirical knowledge?  Or, let's suppose that some Christians only rely on mystical knowledge.  Does this necessarily mean that all Christians eschew empirical knowledge?"

Right, you are saying it's both and to a *degree* I agree (see my comments to Philip).  However if you are just using 1st John, we don't really know what the author is claiming to have seen, heard, and touched since it's not even the point of his letter/sermon thingie.  In context, clearly their *priority* is on the testimony of God (since it outright says so), the ever so bizarrely informative spiritual anointing (move over wikipedia), and other various seemingly incoherent mystical fixations.  To the extent, it's no wonder someone like Origen would write this about those first few verses:  "...no one is so foolish as not to see that the word "hands" is taken figuratively, as when John says, 'Our hands have handled the Word of life.'"  I don't necessarily think he is correct, I'm not so sure I can blame him either for his conclusion.  Either way, human testimony is a second class citizen to questionable methods.

Tom:  "I suspect that the real reason you have a problem with the text is because you object to the idea of a mystical experience a priori.  It's purely metaphysical prejudice."

You might be on to something there if we lived in a world where mysticism was well known to be a reliable method of acquiring facts about reality.  Granted, maybe crystal balls and tea leaves really did work 2,000 years ago, but I don't really have any good reason to think so.  If we can't confirm such claims today when we *can* investigate, why should we give even more undeserved benefit of the doubt with historical hearsay?  I just don't see what's a priori or prejudiced about that.  Mysticism in many forms has its chance to validate itself. 

Tom:  "The point, like the one for the following objection, is that your requirement is unreasonable as it is unnecessarily strict."

Maybe we can't expect them to rise above the going epistemology of their culture, but it doesn't make much sense for *us* to build on their backs either.  I think I've said this.

Tom:  "The point is that you are requiring them to use a certain kind of evidence in order to prove their case to which they might not have had access.  Let's try this with modern history.  "In order to prove that an attack occurred on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, you have to interview all the Japanese pilots who participated in the supposed attack.  Just because some are dead, that's no excuse." Do you see how unreasonable your requirement is?"

I understand your point and always have.  However, your analogy excludes the very elements in question (supernatural happenings) to make its irrelevant point.  Let's use a more applicable analogy and it's easy to see how it fails: 

A local newspaper claimed Nikola Tesla built a cold fusion reactor.  He's dead now.  We'd have to interview him to confirm his designs work.  We can't do that since he's dead.  Tom says we should still believe in cold fusion, because otherwise, we're being unreasonable. 

Do you see *my* point?

Tom:  "The point is that you must consider the legal and cultural context, which would have imposed cross-checking eyewitness testimony.  You must assume a charitable interpretation--that they would act consistently with their cultural background."

Well we might be so charitable if the elements of the Christian religion in question were not in question.  There's still the possibility that the early Christian belief was not exactly like the subsequent orthodoxy (in other words Paul was testifying to something more mundane than what the gospels portray) and there is the option that this legal system has been abused in some way by later Christians struggling to establish their sectarian viewpoint (with everyone accusing everyone of making stuff up to support their view).  The Jews are not one monolithic infallible legal entity.  They have the same spectrum of bias and nonsense we have today.  We can't really know just why *these Jews* concluded what they did unless we can evaluate the sources and the cross examination directly for ourselves.

Tom:  "But in the case of the New Testament, we have sufficient information.  If Paul has signed and sealed documents from a hearing in Jerusalem about the resurrection of Christ, then that is strong evidence, as the Bereans could verify the documents by a trip to Jerusalem.  We know that Paul had some important documents that he carried with him.  This is all very reasonable speculation.  If the Bereans verified Paul's treatment of the Old Testament, it is not unreasonable to expect that they would want to verify his historical claims about the resurrection of Christ."

I see that you believe what you have here is sufficient cause to believe, but it seems reasonable for me to maintain that you can't make a legal case based on a legal case you don't have.  Especially a legal case that was apparently presented to a judge who didn't ultimately buy it himself (King Agrippa, right?).

Tom:  "Whole lotta rhetoric goin' on heah.  Paul doesn't claim that the false prophets can do all the miracles that Paul does, such as raise people from the dead."

2 Thessalonians 2:9, Mark 13:21-23, and Matthew 24:23-29 don't limit the extent to which the false prophets can do miracles.  Where are you coming from with the resurrection exception?

Ben