This thread is a special thread devoted to questions for David and SkepDick in regard to their debate in this thread.  Please submit your questions for the two debators to me or in their comment thread. 

Please do not comment in this thread - all comments aside from David's, SkepDick's, and mine will be deleted.

The resolution for their debate was: "Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?" The supernatural, bodily resurrection of Jesus offers the most reasonable explanation for the empty tomb story.

Here is how the questions will commence: First I will select a question for David, from SkepDick and he will give a short response to it (up to 500 words). After which SkepDick will give a brief response to the question/David's response (up to 250 words).

Then I will select a question for SkepDick from David and he will give a short response to it followed by David giving a brief response to the question/SkepDick's response (with the same word limitations).

Question Round One: Question for David

1. Throughout the debate, your method of argumentation has required us to assume that supernatural causation is possible. However, you have not provided any evidence for the existence of the supernatural, nor have you proposed any means by which it could affect the natural world. Yet it seems to me that before we can conclude that the supernatural, bodily resurrection of Jesus is probable, we must first determine that is possible. Thus, even if everything you have argued is factually true, your method of argumentation has provided no real grounds for accepting your explanation of the facts. In light of this, please either (a) tell me what evidence you have that supernatural causation is possible, or (b) tell me why you think it is not necessary to provide such evidence.

I require clarification before answering this question. Is your question effectively this: "If we assume for the sake of argument that 'everything I have argued is factually true, ' why should we accept that a supernatural explanation for the resurrection is more reasonable than a natural explanation in light of the fact that I have not presented evidence that supernatural events are possible?"

No, that's not what I'm asking. You're twisting my question in such a way that you're missing the entire point. My question has nothing to do with the factual accuracy of anything you or I have argued. My question addresses the possibility of supernatural causation, not reasonable belief in it. I believe that my question is rather clear. In short, I'm asking what evidence you have that the supernatural exists, but please focus on my original question and not this summary of it.

In a definitional sense, surely everyone agrees that supernatural causation is possible. Even the great skeptic David Hume was once asked if it was not possible that there is some supernatural life after death? Hume replied, It is possible that a piece of coal put upon a fire would not burn.... (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) If we do not accept that supernatural causation is possible, then we must pre-define supernatural events as impossible. But we can only know that a supernatural event is impossible if we know in advance that materialism is the correct world-view. Such a position would clearly beg the question (circular reasoning) in favor of materialism. Its one thing to suggest that belief in the supernatural is unreasonable (vis--vis Hume), but we must agree that it is possible.

Once we accept that supernatural causation is logically possible, the question is whether we have evidence for the existence of the supernatural. We do: the resurrection of Jesus Christ! Because my unique method of proving the resurrection does not depend on the assumption that the supernatural exists, I do not need to prove the existence of the supernatural before evaluating the resurrection. Remember my five contentions: (1) Jesus was a real person who was crucified in 1st century Palestine by Pontius Pilate, (2) this same Jesus died on the cross, (3) his body was laid in a tomb, (4) no human stole or otherwise removed the body, and (5) his body was nevertheless missing shortly thereafter.

Observe that none of these premises depend on the existence of the supernatural in order to be true. Only after agreeing that all five natural/historical premises are true meaning the resurrection has occurred do we arrive at the question of supernatural causation. At that point, Richard can fold his arms and say You havent proven the existence of the supernatural, so the resurrection must have a natural explanation! But Im willing to trust in everyones common sense here: resurrection is not likely to occur naturally. Ultimately, I think everyone would agree with this statement: if the resurrection really happened, then we have strong reason to believe that supernatural causation is possible and a supernatural event has in fact occurred.

Thus, the proper chronological discussion of the resurrection and the existence of supernatural causation goes like this. (1) We explore my five natural/historical premises. (2) We conclude that all five premises are true. (3) We infer from that conclusion that the resurrection must have occurred. (4) We ask whether it is more reasonable to believe that it was caused by natural or by supernatural means. If there is any point at which we need to establish the possibility of supernatural causation, it comes up in step 4 and not a moment earlier. But common sense tells us that a resurrection is likely supernatural. Thus, we (5) conclude that the supernatural resurrection of Christ is both possible and it is also the most reasonable explanation for the empty tomb story.

Response:

It appears that David relies on his five premises even more than I realized earlier in the debate. I'm unsure that David has not constructed a tautology here: i.e., "the resurrection is possible because it happened."

I thought he might wish to prove the possibility of supernatural causation before his five premises. As I stated in my opening, historical inquiry, operating with methodological naturalism, will not come to the conclusion David has argued for; at most, it will prove the existence of mysteries, not the supernatural.

At any rate, I certainly see no reason that David's five steps necessitate his conclusion. The existence of aliens is a logical possibility; given David's five premises, the possibility of alien exhumation seems to me at least as likely as a supernatural event. Matthew recorded an earthquake; is it not possible that all five of David's premises are true because Jesus' body fell into a pit opened and closed by that earthquake? Furthermore, David's argument requires us to assume that supernatural events are more likely than uncaused events, yet I do not see that this is the case either.

Accordingly, though I do not believe that David has given us sufficient reason to move from step (2) to (3) of his progression, I certainly see no reason that (3) is true. With the natural possibility of alien exhumation and the earthquake, we can easily see that David's argument does not logically necessitate his conclusion (yet, the necessity of his conclusion is crucial to his argument).

Question Round One: Question for SkepDick

In your second rebuttal and conclusion you agreed that the Jews may indeed have believed Jesus' tomb was empty by the time Matthew wrote his gospel. But under your theory, no Christian writer prior to Matthew even taught an empty tomb. Thus, why did the Jews already believe the tomb was empty before Matthew's gospel was published?

JesseWrote:
Question Round One: Question for SkepDick

In your second rebuttal and conclusion you agreed that the Jews may indeed have believed Jesus' tomb was empty by the time Matthew wrote his gospel. But under your theory, no Christian writer prior to Matthew even taught an empty tomb. Thus, why did the Jews already believe the tomb was empty before Matthew's gospel was published?

David has misinterpreted my position. As I clearly stated, the Jewish polemic recorded by Matthew does not presuppose an empty tomb, it only presupposes an empty tomb story. This does not mean the Jews believed the Christian report of the empty tomb. Indeed, by the time the gospels were written, any readers of them would probably not have been in a position to verify the empty tomb. So, not only could the Christians at that time not prove the tomb was empty, but the Jews couldn't prove it was occupied. This means that the Jews were responding only to Christian testimony and not to direct physical evidence. In other words, anonymous Jews in unspecified times and places are alleged to have accused the disciples of stealing the body. From the evidence, however, we have no reason to believe these Jews were the same ones who could have inspected the tomb of Jesus. It appears much more likely that the Jews making such a claim would have been Jews living after the Jewish War with no access to the evidence at all. Thus their argument would have been along the lines of, "if the tomb really was empty, that would just mean the disciples stole the body." The Jews did not have to believe the tomb was empty to make such a claim; they were probably just covering all their bases in the same way that I have argued for the swoon theory--which I don't accept--over the resurrection.

I argued that the authentic letters of Paul supply no evidence for a pre-Markan empty tomb tradition, and I argued that Mark may have meant his empty tomb symbolically. Neither of these arguments indicates that Matthew was the first person to teach an empty tomb. At the very most, it would mean that Matthew may have been the first person to record the empty tomb tradition who believed in it literally. However, there is plenty of reason to believe that the empty tomb story existed in oral tradition older than Matthew's gospel, and the possibility exists that other gospels were written that have now been lost (and if David is correct in arguing that all the gospels were written independently of each other, yet Luke claims familiarity with other gospels, this must be the case), and those gospels may have recorded an empty tomb.

It should be clear now that I don't claim Jews living at the time of the crucifixion ever believed the tomb was actually empty. All the Jews that Matthew refers to had to believe was that Christians taught an empty tomb. Thus what David's question boils down to is "where did the Jews hear the story of the empty tomb?" The answer is simple: early Christians. The more difficult question is how belief in the empty tomb developed among the early church, and though I've got some good ideas, the truth is that I'm still trying to figure that out.

If the Jews couldn't verify that the tomb was empty, they would've said, "You can't prove this fantastic story, so we don't believe it." They didn't have to invent an elaborate polemic involving a conspiratorial theft by the disciples and sleeping Roman guards. The most reasonable conclusion is that the Jews really did believe the tomb was empty. The fact that Jesus' enemies in that same generation believed the tomb was empty is extremely powerful evidence that the tomb really was empty.

But regardless of whether the Jews believed the tomb was empty or had just invented a polemic, some Christian teachers clearly taught an empty tomb prior to Matthew. If not, then it never would've entered the Jews' minds to invent an elaborate polemic to counter-act an empty tomb story! Because the anti-Christian polemic was "widely circulated" among the Jews (Matthew 28:15) by the time Matthew wrote, the only reasonable conclusion is that it was the widely read Christian teachers -- Mark, Paul, or both -- who had already taught an empty tomb. But that position is devastating to Richard's hypothesis that neither Mark nor Paul believed in an empty tomb.

Richard's hypothesis doesn't explain which pre-Matthean Christians believed in an empty tomb, why they believed that, or how it spread, if neither Mark nor Paul taught that the tomb was empty. Unfortunately, no answers are forthcoming from Richard. Thus, we must conclude that it was Mark, Paul, or both who taught an empty tomb.

Question for David: From the Audience:

Richard pointed out in his opening statement that the ascension of Jesus doesn't really make much sense when considered historically. Can you make any sense of it? Where did Jesus go? What was really going on there?

There are three potential issues Richard raised regarding the ascension: historical, scientific, and theological. From the standpoint of raw historical data, there's nothing wrong with the ascension narrative (Acts 1). Although Richard makes it sound like some kind of convenient after-thought, the ascension is described several times in that book (Acts 2:33, 3:21, 7:55). Paul also testified to the reality of the ascension (Ephesians 2:6, 4:8-10, 1 Timothy 3:16, Colossians 3:1). So did Peter (1 Peter 3:22), and the unknown author of the book of Hebrews (Hebrews 1:13, 6:20). Jesus himself foretold the ascension when he told his captors, "You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." (Mark 14:62, Matthew 26:64, Luke 22:69) So the ascension is affirmed in nine different books of the New Testament.

Although Acts is the only book that contains the full narrative, the other books are fully compatible with the ascension narrative. With several independent sources testifying to the reality of the ascended Christ, and zero sources that actually say otherwise, I see no historical reason to doubt it.

From a scientific perspective there's nothing wrong with the ascension narrative. God and heaven are indeed above the Earth, but they're not detectable by telescope. Long before we had any ability to see "out there" -- and thus the motive to lie -- the Bible confirmed that God is invisible (Hebrews 11:27) and that "things in heaven" are invisible, too. (Colossians 1:15-16) Jesus himself is no longer visible, either (1 Timothy 1:17). Because the Bible does not tell us that the Lord or heaven remained visually detectable after the ascension -- and indeed, it tells us the opposite -- our evolving view of astronomy has not given us any reason to doubt the ascension narrative.

From a theological perspective I would have to speculate. It is emphatically not necessary that I provide a 'motive' for Jesus to do what He did in order to prove that He actually did it. As I told Richard, it would be a No True Scotsman Fallacy to conclude that the ascension did not happen simply because in his opinion Jesus would have done things differently. Nevertheless, my best guess is that remaining on Earth would have seriously undermined human free will; who could reject a risen Christ that was standing in front of Him? By ascending to heaven and becoming visually undetectable, Jesus remains available for all of us; at the same time, he is sufficiently hidden so that people who choose to spend their lives apart from Him can freely do so.

We can still ask questions about the ascension, i.e. "at what point in Jesus' ascension did he become no longer visually detectable?" or "where exactly is heaven?" These abstract philosophical questions, while interesting, have many plausible answers and none of them actually discredit the ascension narrative. Thus, I see neither a historical, nor a scientific, nor a theological problem with the ascension.

DavidWrote:
There are three potential issues Richard raised regarding the ascension: historical, scientific, and theological. From the standpoint of raw historical data, there's nothing wrong with the ascension narrative (Acts 1). Although Richard makes it sound like some kind of convenient after-thought, the ascension is described several times in that book (Acts 2:33, 3:21, 7:55). Paul also testified to the reality of the ascension (Ephesians 2:6, 4:8-10, 1 Timothy 3:16, Colossians 3:1). So did Peter (1 Peter 3:22), and the unknown author of the book of Hebrews (Hebrews 1:13, 6:20). Jesus himself foretold the ascension when he told his captors, "You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." (Mark 14:62, Matthew 26:64, Luke 22:69) So the ascension is affirmed in nine different books of the New Testament.



Although Acts is the only book that contains the full narrative, the other books are fully compatible with the ascension narrative. With several independent sources testifying to the reality of the ascended Christ, and zero sources that actually say otherwise, I see no historical reason to doubt it.



From a scientific perspective there's nothing wrong with the ascension narrative. God and heaven are indeed above the Earth, but they're not detectable by telescope. Long before we had any ability to see "out there" -- and thus the motive to lie -- the Bible confirmed that God is invisible (Hebrews 11:27) and that "things in heaven" are invisible, too. (Colossians 1:15-16) Jesus himself is no longer visible, either (1 Timothy 1:17). Because the Bible does not tell us that the Lord or heaven remained visually detectable after the ascension -- and indeed, it tells us the opposite -- our evolving view of astronomy has not given us any reason to doubt the ascension narrative.



From a theological perspective I would have to speculate. It is emphatically not necessary that I provide a 'motive' for Jesus to do what He did in order to prove that He actually did it. As I told Richard, it would be a No True Scotsman Fallacy to conclude that the ascension did not happen simply because in his opinion Jesus would have done things differently. Nevertheless, my best guess is that remaining on Earth would have seriously undermined human free will; who could reject a risen Christ that was standing in front of Him? By ascending to heaven and becoming visually undetectable, Jesus remains available for all of us; at the same time, he is sufficiently hidden so that people who choose to spend their lives apart from Him can freely do so.



We can still ask questions about the ascension, i.e. "at what point in Jesus' ascension did he become no longer visually detectable?" or "where exactly is heaven?" These abstract philosophical questions, while interesting, have many plausible answers and none of them actually discredit the ascension narrative. Thus, I see neither a historical, nor a scientific, nor a theological problem with the ascension.

Unfortunately, David hasn't answered the question. The reader asked what happened at Jesus' ascension, but David just says he believes it happened.

All of the verses David cites, except those written by the author of Luke/Acts, merely imply the ascension by stating that Jesus is in Heaven. However, this implied ascension is not distinguished by the early writers from the resurrection. Accordingly, Luke is the only writer to place an intermediate tarrying on earth between the resurrection and the ascension; Luke is the only writer who places the ascension in a historical context. Therefore, what David says about the other books misleading and irrelevant.

The questions David says he could "speculate about" at the end of his response seem more like the questions the reader was hoping for an answer to, yet it David just repeated what he'd already said in our debate and never told us the "many plausible answers" he has hiding for those questions.

For the record, "You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven" makes the most sense when understood as a reference to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.

David makes a bad guess when he mentions free will then asks, "who could reject a risen Christ that was standing in front of Him?" This does not account for the free will of the disciples, Paul, women, or the 500, and thus doesn't give us a plausible speculation.

Question for SkepDick: From the Audience

You claimed that the resurrection of Jesus is probably the result of legendary embellishment, but as David pointed out in his conclusion, you didn't show any evidence of embellishment in Mark. Can you explain this omission?

JesseWrote:
Question for SkepDick: From the Audience

You claimed that the resurrection of Jesus is probably the result of legendary embellishment, but as David pointed out in his conclusion, you didn't show any evidence of embellishment in Mark. Can you explain this omission?

Certainly.

As I argued, it is likely that the empty tomb was originally a symbol that became the subject of legendary embellishment. Since no authors that we know of mention the empty tomb before Mark, no evidence for a pre-Markan empty tomb tradition exists. This means that there is no legendary embellishment of the empty tomb in Mark because the legend began there.

We should note that the gospels contain smaller, somewhat trivial discrepancies in the material they share with Mark. However, after the point that Mark's gospel ends (16:8), the discrepancies among the gospels become more serious and their occurence skyrockets.

Consequently, the proper question seems to be, "is there evidence of legendary details in Mark's narrative?" Christian apologists have argued that because Mark's narrative is theologically simple and unadorned, it is likely historical. I disagree with this conclusion; there do appear to be legendary details in Mark's gospel.

First, the entire notion of an empty could be seen as a legendary embellishment of the simpler story of Jesus' resurrection. Remember, the resurrection doctrine I argued for of Paul (and some of his contemporaries) did not require an empty tomb.

Second, the presence of a messenger in the tomb has legendary qualities. First, although Mark only calls this messenger a young man, he apparently possesses psychic abilities. Also, the words he uses seem too formal to be historic; they are more likely the author's construction. Specifically, the man states that the women are looking for "Jesus of Nazareth, " as if they'd be looking for some other Jesus, "who was crucified, " as if they might have forgotten.

The women's reason for going to the tomb also is odd. What reason is there for them to anoint this dead man (especially if John, who omits the women's intention to anoint Jesus, is correct when stating that Jesus was already anointed by those who buried him)? Also, the women appear to not know how they will get inside the tomb, yet they go anyway. Matthew omits this detail because his story includes guards who could have either helped with rolling the stone away, or would have prevented tomb access altogether. For these reasons, many commentators have accused Mark of sloppy prose (i.e., not giving his characters plausible motivation for their actions).

Furthermore, many people have noticed that Mark 16:2 contains some odd terminology. It seems to me that this terminology is understood best as a reference back to the Psalms I argued in my opening statement that Mark used in creating his empty tomb story.

Another legendary detail I have already argued for is the connection of the young man in the tomb with the man who flees naked at Jesus' arrest.

Another odd detail is that the man instructs the women to tell the "disciples and Peter." However, Peter is a disciple. Referring to Peter by name in this instance seems indicative of the early struggles for power that characterized the early church.

I hope this clears things up.

Of course the "young man" in Mark is "psychic"; he's an angel, as I demonstrated during the debate. That's not necessarily legendary unless we presuppose angels don't exist. Nor is anything legendary about an author referring to two separate "young men" on different occasions in his book.

The angel's "formal language" = legendary? By that logic, the New York Times is probably legendary, too! Had the angel spoken plainly, no doubt Richard would complain that an angel should be more precise and eloquent!

The women went to anoint Jesus because they didn't know he had been anointed yet. They only saw his subsequent burial. Nothing complicated or legendary there.

If Mark intended to evoke images of Psalms or other OT Scripture in verse 16:2, he would have said he was quoting Scripture, i.e. Mark 12:10, 15:28.

The angel gives special deference to Peter, but that simply highlights Peter's unique position among the apostles. It's not necessarily legendary.

Finally, there is a pre-Markan empty tomb story: the gospel of Matthew. Richard never told us WHY he believes Mark was written first (except the anonymous Wikipedia article -- and they've actually being sued for inaccurate information), whereas I offered the unanimous testimony of early historians that Matthew was written first. But if Matthew was written first, then Richard must prove Mark was MORE "legendary" than Matthew. Unfortunately, even if Richard's answer had been 100% correct, it doesn't appear that Mark is "more legendary" than Matthew. Thus, the legendary development hypothesis fails anyway.

Question for both participants from the Moderator:

[Note, this is a general question and as such both participants will be given 500 words in which to answer. Additionally they will submit their answers to me and after I receive both of them I will post their answers together.]

First, I would like to congratulate both of you for your performance in this debate. It has been quite an informative debate and both sides have presented their cases for their positions in an expert manner. The two of you, in my opinion, did very well.

After reading through the entire debate I think one essential question was missed by the both of you, or perhaps I didn't catch it initially. The question I present to both of you is: Why is this debate important?

While I (and the audience) have my own reasons on why I think the debate is important, I'd like to hear your opinions on why you think it is.