He turned and looked toward the courtroom door. The jurors, surprised by the proclamation, turned and watched the door in anticipation. A minute passed. Nothing happened.
Finally the defense attorney said, “I need to admit to you that I lied about that last statement. But all of you turned with me and watched that door with eager anticipation. This demonstrates that you have a reasonable doubt in this case as to whether anyone was actually killed in the first place! I, therefore, insist that you return a verdict of not guilty.”
The jury, openly rattled by the clever effort, retired to deliberate on the case. Moments later they returned and promptly delivered a verdict of guilty. The defense attorney was shocked.
“How could you return with a verdict so quickly?” he asked the jury. “You must have had some doubt; I saw all of you watch that door with expectation!”
The jury foreman replied, “Yes, we did look, but your client didn’t.”
I’ve been involved in a number of homicide trials over the years. Some of our cases have been evidentially overwhelming, and others have been more difficult to prove. In each and every case, the defendant has been represented by an articulate, intelligent, and committed defense attorney who carefully crafted a defense for his or her client. Many of these attorneys appeared to be incredibly confident, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that pointed to the guilt of their clients.
I’m never surprised by the enthusiasm and self-assurance of good defense attorneys. It’s been my experience that there are many factors that can motivate an attorney to perform confidently and aggressively in behalf of a defendant. I suspect that some attorneys work diligently because they have a true belief in the innocence of their clients. Some attorneys probably work diligently because they have a true belief in the importance of fair and adequate representation in our criminal justice system, even if they don’t personally believe that their clients are innocent. Some attorneys may work diligently because they have a true belief in advancing their careers. One thing is for sure, defense attorneys present the best case they can, even when they may not believe they are defending the truth.
THE GROWING ATTACK FROM SKEPTICS
I became a Christian in 1996. Until 2001, the Jim Wallace I knew prior to 1996 was the most sarcastic atheist I had ever known. I can remember some of my conversations with Christians prior to becoming a believer, and I am now embarrassed by the way I behaved; many of my coworkers continue to remind me of those days. But my own level of prior sarcasm was quickly eclipsed by the atheists who began to write and speak against religion following the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. A new era in atheistic rhetoric began following that dreadful day, as prominent atheists responded to what they saw as evidence of the evil of “religious fundamentalism.” A number of books flooded the shelves of local bookstores. Sam Harris wrote The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason (2004) and Letter to a Christian Nation (2006). Richard Dawkins wrote The God Delusion (2006), and Christopher Hitchens wrote God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007). The attack from atheists and skeptics grew and took on a new form of immediacy, aggression, and sarcasm.
Many Christians, especially those who had been believers for most of their lives, were caught off guard by the confidence and articulate opposition of these authors and those who shared their negative view of Christianity. The culture quickly seemed to embrace the winsome atheist criticisms; book sales for these three writers were phenomenal. The mere fact that anyone could offer a thoughtful and engaging defense of atheism seemed to shake the confidence of many believers who may have been taking their faith for granted. It wasn’t as though these skeptics were offering anything new. Instead, they were presenting old arguments with new vigor, humor, cynicism, and urgency. They were much like the defense attorneys I had faced over the years.
I’ve discovered that good defense attorneys typically bring out the best in prosecutors and detectives, so I’ve learned to embrace the work of defense lawyers who have caused me to make sure my case is sound and reasonable. The fact that there is a defender on the opposite side of the issue who is arguing vociferously against us is no reason to believe that the defender possesses the truth. Defense attorneys operate that way even when they are defending what turns out to be a lie. The existence of a well-articulated defensive argument alone is no reason to surrender our position, but it ought to encourage us to know our case better than anyone else. Defense attorneys (just like those who oppose the claims of Christianity) ought to bring out the best in us.
THE DEFENSIVE STRATEGY
Defense attorneys approach each case differently, but I’ve noticed a number of general strategies that lawyers have taken when trying to defeat my cold-case investigations. By examining these defensive strategies and comparing them to the approach that is often taken by those who oppose Christianity, we can assess the validity of these tactics.
DEFENSE ATTORNEYS CHALLENGE THE NATURE OF TRUTH
If all truth is simply a matter of perspective and subjective opinion, it’s virtually impossible to convict someone of a crime. We live in a culture that is more and more pluralistic with each passing generation. Many of our young adults have been taught (in universities and colleges and through movies, television, and books) that objective truth does not exist or simply cannot be known. As a result, relativism is a common feature of our cultural worldview. People are less and less comfortable accepting that one particular version of the truth is exclusively correct. In fact, many believe that such a view of truth is arrogant and narrow-minded. To make matters worse, a new cultural definition of “tolerance” has emerged. Tolerance used to be the attitude that we took toward one another when we disagreed about an important issue; we would agree to treat each other with respect, even though we refused to embrace each other’s view on a particular topic. Tolerance is now the act of recognizing and embracing all views as equally valuable and true, even though they often make opposite truth claims. According to this redefinition of tolerance, anything other than acceptance and approval is narrow-minded and bigoted. Defense attorneys are capitalizing on these evolving redefinitions of truth and tolerance. If a lawyer can convince a jury that no version of what happened is better than another (because all truth is simply a matter of personal perspective and opinion), the jury is going to have trouble convicting the defendant with any level of confidence. For this reason, some defense attorneys begin by attacking the nature of truth before they ever attack the nature of the prosecution’s case.
“Objective Truth”
While many truths are certainly a matter of opinion, some truths are completely independent of anyone’s personal view. My statement “Police cars are the coolest cars on the road” may be true for me (given that I am often the one driving these cars), while completely untrue for you (especially when I pull you over for rolling through a stop sign). This statement is a matter of my “subjective” opinion; it is dependent on the “subject” who possesses it. The statement “Police cars are equipped to travel in excess of 100 mph” is not dependent on my opinion, however; this second statement is either true or false on the basis of the “object” itself. Police cars are equipped to travel this fast, and my “subjective” opinion has nothing to do with it.
The erosion of the classic view of objective truth and tolerance is also taking its toll on those who hold a Christian worldview. The notion that there might be only one way to God (or only one truth about the identity and nature of God) is offensive and intolerant to many skeptics and nonbelievers. Like prosecutors who face similar misunderstandings about the nature of truth, Christians may also have to expose the logical problems inherent to the new cultural definitions. While some may argue that all religions are basically the same, this is simply untrue. The world’s religions propose contrary claims related to the nature of God. Eastern religions propose the existence of an impersonal god, while the monotheistic
religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam claim that God is personal. Judaism refuses to recognize Jesus as anything other than a “rabbi” or spiritual teacher, while Christianity claims that Jesus was God Himself. Islam denies that Jesus died on the cross, while Christianity claims that Jesus died at the crucifixion and then rose from the dead, verifying His deity. All of these claims about God and Jesus may be false, but they cannot all be true; they contradict one another by definition. The logical law of “noncontradiction” states that contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same time. Those who are evaluating the claims of the world’s religions, like jurors evaluating a criminal case, must decide which of the views is supported by the evidence, rather than surrender the decision to an errant view of truth.
In addition to this, those who are investigating Christianity may want to rethink the latest cultural definitions of truth and tolerance. Those who claim that truth is a matter of perspective and opinion are proclaiming this as more than a matter of perspective and opinion. They would like us to believe that this definition is objectively true, even as they deny the existence of objective truth. When a statement fails to meet its own standard for being true, it is said to be “self-refuting.” The claim that “objective truth does not exist” is self-refuting because it is, in fact, an objective claim about truth. The current redefinition of tolerance doesn’t fare much better. Those who claim that tolerance requires all ideas and perspectives to be embraced as equally true and valuable simultaneously deny the classic view of tolerance. In other words, the new definition of tolerance is intolerant of the old definition. It cannot follow its own rules. It is just as self-refuting as the new redefinition of truth; we simply need to help people understand that this is the case.
DEFENSE ATTORNEYS FOCUS ON THE BEST THE PROSECUTION HAS TO OFFER
While circumstantial cases are built on many pieces of evidence that are evaluated as a group, some pieces are better (and more important to the case) than others. For this reason, defense attorneys focus their attention on the heart of the prosecution’s case, the prominent and most condemning pieces of evidence that have been presented. If they can discredit or eliminate these key pieces of evidence, the foundation of the prosecution’s case may begin to crumble. In fact, if I want to know what the defense thinks of my case (and what it considers to be the most devastating piece of evidence), I simply have to observe what it is attacking with the most vigor. If my case is thin or weak, the defense will be comfortable attacking the one piece it believes to be critical. If my case is substantial and strong, the defense will find itself trying to attack a much larger number of issues in an effort to limit the cumulative impact of the evidence. I know where my case is strong when I see what the defense has chosen to attack.
What Makes It “Hearsay”?
A “hearsay” statement is anything said outside of the courtroom that is then offered inside the courtroom (during a court proceeding) as evidence of the truth of the matter asserted. Since jurors have to assess the credibility of a witness, courts generally require witnesses to be in the courtroom so (1) they can “swear” or promise that their testimony is true, (2) they can be personally present at the proceeding so the jury can assess them visually, and (3) they can be cross-examined by the opposition.
Skeptics do something similar when they attack the claims of Christianity. The Christian worldview is built on the eyewitness testimony of the gospel writers. For this reason, many skeptics attack the reliability of the Gospels as their primary tactic in trying to defeat the case for Christianity. This focused attack on the Gospels reveals the strength of our case. Like defense attorneys, skeptics recognize our most valuable piece of evidence. As a result, some critics attempt to undermine the reliability of the gospel writers as eyewitnesses (we’ll talk more about that in section 2), while others seek to have this testimony “tossed out” as unreliable “hearsay” before it can even be evaluated. They argue that the gospel accounts fail to meet the judicial standard we require of eyewitnesses in criminal cases. Witnesses must be present in court in order for their testimony to be considered in a criminal trial. This often presents a problem for me as cold-case detective. I have a few cases that are now impossible to complete because key witnesses are dead and can no longer testify in court. It’s not enough that I may have someone who heard what these witnesses once said about an event. If I called those “second level” witnesses into court, their testimony would be considered “hearsay.” It would be inadmissible simply because the original witness was no longer available to be cross-examined for evaluation. This is a reasonable standard to hold for criminal trials; as a society, we hold that “it is better that ten guilty persons escape … than that one innocent suffer.”30 For this reason, we’ve created a rigorous (and sometimes difficult) legal standard for eyewitnesses.
But this standard is simply too much to require of historical eyewitness testimony. The vast majority of historical events must be evaluated in spite of the fact that the eyewitnesses are now dead and cannot come into court to testify. The eyewitnesses who observed the crafting and signing of the Constitution of the United States are lost to us. Those who witnessed the life of Abraham Lincoln are also lost to us. It’s one thing to require eyewitness cross-examination on a case that may condemn a defendant to the gas chamber; it’s another thing to hold history up to such an unreasonable necessity. If we require this standard for historical accounts, be prepared to jettison everything you think you know about the past. Nothing can be known about history if live eyewitnesses are the only reliable witnesses we can consult. If this were the case, we could know nothing with certainty beyond two or three living generations. Once the eyewitnesses die, history is lost. But we have great confidence about many historical events, in spite of the fact that the eyewitnesses have long been in their graves. As we evaluate the writers of any historical account, we must simply do our best to assess them under the four criteria we discussed in chapter 4 (we’ll apply these criteria in section 2). Our goals are the same as we have for living courtroom eyewitnesses, but our expectations are appropriate to the examination of history. This is reasonable, given the nature of events that occurred in the distant past.
DEFENSE ATTORNEYS TARGET THE MICRO AND DISTRACT FROM THE MACRO
As we’ve already described, strong circumstantial cases are built on large collections of evidence; the more pieces of evidence that point to the suspect, the stronger the case. For this reason, defense attorneys attempt to distract juries from the larger collection by focusing them on individual pieces. The last thing the defense attorney wants the jury to see is how the pieces come together as a group to complete the puzzle. Instead, a defense lawyer wants jurors to examine each piece of the puzzle in isolation from all the rest, hoping that the item under consideration can be explained in some manner that won’t implicate his or her client. If there is more than one reasonable way to interpret an individual piece of evidence, the law requires that juries decide in favor of the defendant’s innocence. Defense attorneys, therefore, spend time trying to take the jury’s eyes off the larger collection and focus the jury on the minutiae. A single puzzle piece, when examined in isolation, is difficult to understand without seeing the larger puzzle. One little puzzle piece might be part of any number of puzzles; there’s just no way to know until we see how it fits with the rest. It’s the job of defense attorneys to keep jurors from seeing how the pieces fit together.
Those who challenge the claims of Christianity take a similar approach. Let’s take a look at the case for Peter’s influence on the gospel of Mark as an example. Skeptics have noticed that Mark’s account fails to include the fact that Peter got out of the boat and nearly drowned when Jesus was walking on water (as we described earlier, compare Mark 6:45–52 with Matt. 14:22–33). If this part of the puzzle is examined in isolation, it seems reasonable that Peter had no influence on the gospel of Mark at all (as many skeptics claim). How could Mark leave
out this detail if he truly had access to Peter? Skeptics have used this passage of Scripture to argue against the eyewitness authorship and reliability of the Bible. But when this individual passage is examined alongside all the other verses involving Peter in the gospel of Mark, the more reasonable explanation emerges. It’s only when examining all these passages as a group that we see Mark’s consistent pattern of respect and stewardship toward Peter. It’s in the larger context where we see that Mark consistently seeks to protect Peter’s reputation and honor. When we combine this fact with the other pieces of the puzzle offered in chapter 5, the case for Peter’s influence on Mark’s gospel is substantial and reasonable. Like jurors in a criminal trial, we need to resist the effort of those who want us to focus on the individual puzzle pieces as though they were not part of a larger puzzle.
DEFENSE ATTORNEYS ATTACK THE MESSENGER
“Ad Hominem” Attacks
Ad hominem (Latin for “to the man”) is an abbreviated form of Argumentum ad hominem. It describes what is normally seen as a logical fallacy: the attempt to discredit the truth of a claim by pointing out some negative characteristic, behavior, or belief of the person who is making the claim. Dictionary.com describes ad hominem as “attacking an opponent’s character rather than answering his argument.”
Nearly every piece of courtroom evidence is submitted through the involvement of a human agent. Eyewitness testimony is one obvious example of this, but even forensic evidence is dependent on human participation: a detective who first observed it or a criminalist who later examined it. Defense attorneys sometimes attack the person presenting the evidence when they don’t like what the evidence says about their client. This is why you often see a vigorous (and critical) cross-examination of key witnesses; defense attorneys typically vilify these witnesses, claiming some bias or highlighting potentially offensive behavior in the witness’s professional or personal life. If the defense can get the jury to hate the witness, it may be able to get the jury to hate the evidence the witness has presented.
Cold-Case Christianity Page 15