New Atheism_A Survival Guide

by Graham Veale

  The key to critical history is not so much that one excludes testimony, as that one reasons from the evidence to produced statements about the past that are in addition to anything testified. The historian includes in their account passages which cannot be found in any source. 48

  So there are three points we need to make here. The first is that we have already noted that the Gospels should not be treated as a collection of myths; the second is that there is nothing miraculous about an empty tomb, a vision of a religious leader, or a claim that someone rose from the dead. We should be clear that the tomb was empty and that the disciples believed that Jesus had been resurrected. And this brings us to the third point that we need to make. The sceptic cannot use conspiracy theories to explain the evidence. No ridiculous stories about women visiting the wrong tomb, and confusing a gardener for their Messiah. No tall tales about Jesus’ family removing his body to the family plot, and forgetting to mention this to his disciples. No fantasies in which Jesus’ disciples steal his body to start a world religion! And in the absence of old fashioned conspiracy theories, we are left with one explanation: Christianity is correct. Jesus rose from the dead.

  Beyond the Grave, Beyond Personality

  Jesus’ ministry and Resurrection had an extraordinary effect on his first followers. Paul’s letters were written within a generation of Jesus’ Crucifixion. He uses formulae, prayers and confessions that his readers would approve of. This is the language of the first Jewish Christians. A study of these early Christian devotional practices shows that the first Christians worshipped Jesus. This is incredible as Jewish monotheists believed that religious worship should be given to YHWH and YHWH alone. Yet Jewish Christians confessed Jesus, called upon his name for Salvation, and celebrated a meal at which Jesus was the presiding Lord. 49

  Time and again the New Testament texts casually talk about Jesus as if he has the same authority, power and rights as YHWH. The Old Testament texts, for example, teach us that we must call upon the name of YHWH to be saved (Joel 2:32); Paul reminds the Roman church that they must call on Jesus’ name to be saved (Rom. 10:9–13). Isaiah makes clear that every tongue will confess and every knee will bow to YHWH and YHWH alone (Isa. 45:23–5); yet the hymn that Paul quotes in Philippians 2 is clear that every tongue will confess and every knee will bow to Jesus!

  YHWH alone walks on the waves and tells the storms to cease (Job 9:8, 38:11; Jonah 1; Ps. 89:9, 107:23–32); yet the early Churches believed that Jesus performed these very miracles. God had a counsel of angels who, many Jews believed, aided him in creation and providence; yet the hymns quoted in Hebrews 2 and Colossians 1 make it clear that Jesus is superior to these angelic beings. 50 What God does, from creation to judgment, Jesus does. What God deserves, from praise to obedience, Jesus deserves.

  This way of thinking about Jesus permeates the entire New Testament. It is not a product of one Gospel or Paul’s theology. As Larry Huratdo concludes:

  amazing devotion to Jesus appeared more like an explosion, a volcanic eruption, than an evolution. However counter-intuitive it will perhaps seem, the exalted claims and the unprecedented devotional practices that reflect a treatment of Jesus as somehow sharing divine attributes and status began among Jewish believers and within the earliest moments of the young Christian movement.

  What would cause Jewish monotheists to worship a human being? We can turn to the evidence contained by the Gospels for an answer. Jesus Christ of Nazareth claimed to fulfil all of Israel’s hopes; he claimed authority over God’s law and God’s Temple; he claimed the right to forgive sins and that he would judge the world. In short, Jesus claimed the role reserved for God himself. Yet he also prayed to his Father in Heaven. This was a shocking, bizarre situation, and it would have been easy to dismiss Jesus as another mad prophet, if it were not for the wisdom of his teachings, and the miracle of the Resurrection.

  It is impossible to overstate how much Jesus changed our conception of God. His followers remained monotheists—they believed in one God. Yet Jesus forced his followers to recognise that God is more than one personality with unlimited power. God is personal, but triune. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons, inextricably linked by the same unlimited power and love. As Francis Schaeffer put it, we worship a God who is infinitely personal. In the words of CS Lewis, our God is beyond personality. Moreover, God became one of us to die like us. Christianity teaches that the Father gave his only Son, who came out of love to suffer to redeem us, and who sends the Spirit to draw us to him.

  Compared to this Triune God, who else could be worthy of worship?

  * * *

  39 See Edward B. Davis, ‘A Whale of a Tale: Fundamentalist Fish Stories’ www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1991/PSCF12-91Davis.html.

  40 Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans: 2008) and Ben Witherington’s What Have they Done With Jesus (HarperOne:2007) develop the case that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony. Witherington notes the importance of key eyewitnesses like James, Peter, Mary and the ‘Beloved Disciple’ in the early Church. Bauckham notes that Papias, a first Century Bishop, preferred the testimony of living eyewitnesses to written texts; this illustrates the importance of eyewitnesses in early Christianity.

  41 James Dunn explains how Christian communities passed down reliable information in Jesus Remembered (Eerdmans: 2003). Craig Keener’s The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Eerdmans:2009) explains the importance of memorisation in ancient Mediterranean education.

  42 James Dunn explains how Christian communities passed down reliable information in Jesus Remembered (Eerdmans: 2003). Craig Keener’s The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Eerdmans:2009) explains the importance of memorisation in ancient Mediterranean education.

  43 The Jewish concept of resurrection is described in texts like 1 Enoch 51; Daniel 12; 2 Maccabees 7:11, 2 Baruch 49–51; Josephus War 3.374f; Josephus Apion 2.218; Wisdom of Solomon 3, 9:15; Syballine Oracles 4.179–92; The Apocalypse of Moses 41.2f, 43.2f; Isaiah 26:19

  44 Winston Churchhill said this—or so I’ve heard.

  45 Many critical scholars believe that Mark’s Gospel originally ended at 16:8, without a resurrection appearance. Yet there is no doubt: Mark clearly believed in the physical resurrection of Jesus, and knew of resurrection appearances: Mark 8:31–33; 9:9, 30–32; 10:32–34 & 16:6.

  46 Matthew’s report that the dead left the tombs at Jesus’ death is sometimes taken as evidence that Matthew was a poor historian given to creative story telling. But we need to compare Matthew’s Passion to Josephus’ account of the signs that accompanied the fall of the Temple, or Dio Cassius’ account of Claudius’ death. These are wilder tales by far. Yet no one writes off all of their material on the Temple’s fall or the Emperor’s death! We should also note that Luke’s account is more subdued, and contains little that could count as legendary embellishments.

  47 In any case, we do have an eyewitness account, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Some sceptics try to make hay out of the fact that Paul does not mention the empty tomb in 1 Corinthians. But Paul doesn’t mention Caiaphas or Pilate either. Does that mean he didn’t know about them?

  48 The Philosophy of History (Continuum:2008), 18. It is also worth reading John Tosh’s The Pursuit of History (Longman:2009) and Richard Evans’ In Defence of History (Granta:2001).

  49 Larry Hurtado gives a summary of the Early Churches’ view of Jesus in ‘Early Devotion to Jesus: A Report, Reflections and Implications.’ Expository Times 122/4 (2011): 167–76. See also Hurtado’s responses to Dunn and McGrath on his personal blog: larryhurtado.wordpress.com/ The full force of the relevant New Testament texts can be experienced by reading R. Bowman’s and JE Komoszewski’s Putting Jesus in His Place (Kregel:2007).

  50 Ben Witherington III points out that these early hymns to Jesus depend on Jewish ‘Wisdom’ Theology, and not Greek religious speculation. See The Indelible Image: Volume II (IVP Academic: 2010), 118–130. Angels and ‘elevated’ humans like Enoch often appear in
Jewish literature. But not one of these characters receives anything like the praise that the first Churches lavished on Jesus. See the essays in Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the God of Israel (Eerdmans:2008).

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  The Insider Test for Faith

  Heaven have mercy on us all - for we are all somehow dreadfully knocked about the head, and sadly need mending.

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  Where can I go from your Spirit?

  Where can I flee from your presence?

  In April 2000 the historian David Irving was found to be a Holocaust denier, a racist and an anti-semite by a High Court Judge. Irving lacked any formal historical training, yet had earned the grudging respect of many academic historians with his obsessive pursuit of documents, diaries and witnesses to illuminate Hitler’s conduct during World War Two. Irving came to wider public attention by writing biographies which lionised Hitler, and that argued that he was more sinned against than sinning; in fact Winston Churchill emerged as one of history’s villains in Irving’s analysis. Eventually, the logic of Irving’s work led him to deny the reality of the Final Solution.

  Irving argued that Hitler never desired the extermination of Europe’s Jews; he wanted Europe’s Jews to be exiled to Eastern Europe. The SS acted against Hitler’s orders when it carried out mass executions in Russia. Irving insisted that ‘only’ a few hundred thousand Jewish civilians perished at the hands of ill-disciplined SS units on the Eastern Front. This number was roughly similar to the number of German civilian causalities caused by the Allied bombing campaign.

  It was Irving’s contention that there had been no systematic attempt to exterminate Europe’s Jews in the gas chambers of Sobibor, Treblinka and other death camps. Those Jews who died in concentration camps died from disease and exposure to the elements. Allied propaganda invented the story of the Holocaust once the conflict was over. Europe’s historians had fallen for a Zionist myth. The numerous eyewitnesses to the depravities of the concentration camps were the victims of a ‘mass hysteria’.

  In ‘Denying the Holocaust’ (1994) the American historian Deborah Lipstadt outed Irving’s neo-facist connections. Lipstadt argued that Irving was one of the ‘most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial’ because he had earned the respect of many academic historians, and this gave him credibility. She accused Irving of consistently distorting evidence and misquoting sources to exonerate Hitler. Lipstadt further claimed that Irving had been ‘discredited’ by fellow historians; this might have infuriated Irving more than her other accusations. Whatever his motives, Irving took Lipstadt to High Court for defamation of character.

  In court, Irving faced expert witnesses who systematically tore his ‘scholarship’ to shreds. This was no easy task, as Irving represented himself in court; he proved to be a master of obfuscation and evasion. But inevitably his deliberate falsification of the historical record emerged. Cambridge historian Professor Richard Evans demolished Irving’s credibility by painstakingly analysing each source that Irving cited. Irving’s self-belief collapsed with his arguments. In his closing statement he addressed the claim that he had connections with European neo-Nazi’s. His mind wandered from his prepared notes, and he forgot to address the Judge, Mr Justice Charles Gray, as ‘Your Honour.’ Instead, in a surreal slip of the tongue, he called the Judge ‘Mein Fuhrer!’

  Mr Justice Gray found in favour of Deborah Lipstadt, rejecting Irving’s action in a 350 page judgment that left his academic reputation in ruins. To deny the Holocaust required more than a poor reading of the evidence. It demanded that the historian lie, and lie repeatedly, about the documents and how best to interpret them. Rational argument prevailed at this trial. 51 But the detailed, clinical use of reason made many observers uncomfortable. James Dalrymple commented in the Independent:

  I felt like a man in some kind of Kafkaesque dream. What was going on here? Was this some kind of grotesque Monty Python episode? Everybody seemed to be in such good spirits. As if they were taking part in some kind of historical parlour game. Spot the gas chamber for 20 points.

  Similarly, Phillip Blom wrote in Berliner Zeitung:

  ..the debate here was about mass murder, about bizarre arithmetical tasks, that sounded as if they came from a textbook from the gates of Hell: if you have two gassing lorries with a capacity of sixty individuals and you have 172 days to kill 97,000 Jews, how many journeys must each lorry make each day?

  Yet Richard Evans needed ‘some kind of emotional curtain between the court proceedings and the death camps’ to testify effectively. He was not merely protecting his own emotional health. Irving was a powerful orator and a master of sophistry. An emotionally charged courtroom suited Irving, not his critics. But the calm recondite atmosphere of the High Court allowed historians like Christopher Browning and Richard Evans to dissect Irving’s arguments piece by piece, until the historical credibility of Holocaust denial was in shreds.

  It might seem odd to treat belief in God as if it is a ‘hypothesis’. Quite often people come to believe in God simply because they feel that someone is expressing himself through creation, rather as an artist does through his writing or painting. And most Christians do not come to faith after considering abstract academic arguments. Christian faith is not a theory; it involves a deep personal repentance before God, and an absolute dependence on Christ. We do not often arrive at such a personal commitment by abstract reasoning alone; more often it results from personal experience. Many come to faith through a profound sense of sin, and an urgent need for forgiveness.

  So it might seem odd to have spent five chapters presenting detached, academic reasons for taking belief in God seriously. But New Atheists allege that Christians are in the grip of blind faith. Baptist Pastor turned sceptic John Loftus insists that Christians fail The Outsider Test:

  If you were born in Saudi Arabia, you would be a Muslim right now….That is a cold hard fact. Dare you deny it? Since this is so, or at least 99% so, then the proper method to evaluate your religious beliefs is with a healthy measure of skepticism. Test your beliefs as if you were an outsider to the faith you are evaluating. If your faith stands up under muster, then you can have your faith. If not, abandon it… 52

  So, sometimes it is helpful to draw our emotional curtains so that we can assess the evidence with a clear mind. And whatever Mr Loftus’s expectations, theism passes his Outsider Test. When we look at the facts dispassionately, we can see that the order of the physical and moral world is best explained by the existence of a personal creator. That seems to be a cold, hard fact, and I dare not deny it. Certainly Mr Loftus has given me no reason to doubt it.

  Of course, our social environment has a great deal of influence over our religious, political and moral beliefs. We do not want to uncritically absorb our fundamental beliefs from the society that surrounds us; a little scepticism can, indeed, be helpful. At the same time, we should not be unduly sceptical of our culture’s beliefs. If we lived in a different political culture we might not believe that all human beings have intrinsic rights; or we might believe in the intrinsic superiority of our own culture and race. But it would not be sensible to reject liberal democracy because we might have been North Korean!

  Nor is it advisable to evaluate every belief from behind emotional curtains; personal experience can provide grounds for many important beliefs. For example, we do not appreciate the value of a human life until we have witnessed childbirth or comforted the dying. And if someone suggested that love and friendship are nothing more than neural and chemical conditions to facilitate bonding, or that beauty was simply an evolved neurological response, we might suggest that he needed to get out of the laboratory a little more, because he simply had not grasped the subject matter.

  Now, if there is a God, he is worthy of worship: infinitely loving and morally perfect. So it is likely that a perfect God would want to do more than reveal theological information. Any God worthy of the title would want to engage us, and transform us, by bringing us into rel
ationship with him. As Paul Moser says in The Evidence for God:

  A God worthy of worship would not be in the business of just expanding our databases or simply giving us an informational plan of rescue from our troubles. Divine self-revelation…would seek to transform humans motivationally, toward perfect love and its required volitional cooperation with God. 53

  God would not want us to study him from behind emotional curtains; we should expect God to reveal himself in challenging and inspiring ways. The Christian faith claims that God is the ultimate source of meaning and significance; that we were made to know God and to enjoy him forever. So, if Christianity is true it must be existentially relevant, morally challenging, and go some way to satisfying our spiritual needs. Christianity must pass what we could call an ‘Insider Test’.

  Does religious experience provide evidence for God’s existence? And should we trust our own private, personal experiences when reflecting on the Christian faith? Christian theism claims to be much more than an academic explanation of the universe. Theology is not just meant to be studied in the abstract; Christian teaching is meant to be lived. It is meant to enable us to know and to enjoy God. So we need to consider the role of personal experience in coming to faith.

  Once More, This Time with Feelings!

  Arguably, the phenomenon of religious experience provides additional evidence for theism. After surveying a wide range of evidence from the social sciences, psychologist Michael Argyle reports that

  Religious Experiences convey to those who have them a feeling of having been in contact with a powerful force, usually a feeling of unity in the whole of creation, and also of contact with a transcendent being. Those experiencing them have a sense of joy, feel more integrated, perhaps forgiven, have a sense of timelessness, and are convinced that they have been in contact with something real; the experience carries its own validity for them. There are fruits of the spirit in that many who have Religious Experiences want to lead a better life and do more for other people. 54