Are Christian Claims Verifiable? Does It Matter?

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Are Christian Claims Verifiable? Does It Matter?

February 5, 2025

In this episode of the Risen Jesus podcast, we join Dr. Michael Licona and Dr. Courtney Friesen as they discuss the verifiability of Christian claims are verifiable and if it even matters. Dr. Licona argues the affirmative case on both points, sharing several universally agreed-upon facts about Jesus held by Christian and non-Christian historians, and presents the case for the historicity of his resurrection. Dr. Licona concludes that the verifiability of the resurrection determines the truth of the faith, which in turn shows that we have value and that our lives have meaning. Dr. Friesen contends that the claims most central to Christianity fall outside the realm of verification and that the true power of Jesus’ resurrection is that, whether factual or not, it teaches the power of self-sacrificial acts to counteract the world's evils.

Transcript

Are Christian claims verifiable? Does it even really matter? Today's episode tackles these questions with a 2018 debate between Dr. Mike Licona and Dr. Courtney Friesen at the University of Arizona. This is Dr. Kurt Gerris and you are listening to the Risen Jesus podcast. All right.

Hello, everyone. If you can take your seats, we're ready to get seated. Welcome.

My name is Amy Schott. I'm a PhD candidate here in the School of Anthropology. I have the pleasure to welcome you all to the ninth annual Veritas Forum at the University of Arizona.

For those of you that are not familiar with the Veritas Forum, this is a nationwide event that is all about fostering dialogue and engaging with students, faculty, and community members on university campuses to tackle some of life's hardest questions. The Veritas Forum began in 1992 and has grown since then to take place all across the United States. And we're excited to be a part of this ongoing dialogue here at the University of Arizona for the past nine years.

The purpose of the Veritas Forum is to engage students, faculty, staff, and others with big questions of life. We answer questions like, why are we here? What is the purpose? What is our purpose in the world? How can we seek justice in a broken world? Is faith relevant to society? Veritas confronts these types of big picture questions, which are maybe not always directly addressed in some of the university courses. In particular, we seek to engage Christian faith in questions relevant to us and our place in the world.

And we try to do so in a thoughtful academic setting. Veritas is the Latin word for truth. Here, we place the historic Christian faith in dialogue with other beliefs and ideas to better understand truth and what it means for us as individuals, as a university community, and as a society.

In our pursuit of truth, we invite speakers and professors who have thought deeply about these questions to present on an area of their expertise in order to engage with us in this ongoing discussion. So tonight we're tackling this topic, our Christian claims verifiable, and does it matter? So wherever you are in your studies, whether you're a student, a faculty member, a community member, whatever your beliefs and background, I welcome you tonight to be a part of this conversation. One of our goals in hosting the Veritas Forum is to engage with you all as individuals and as a campus community.

Now, I've used this word engage several times and I've done that with a specific purpose. Tonight is more than just about presenting you with an idea as you sit and listen. Tonight is about engaging with each other as a community.

So I hope that you all use tonight's dialogue as a starting point to continue the conversation and your own pursuit of what is truth and why is it necessary. It's important to your life. To help you do that, you'll notice in the program that several of our sponsoring student groups have ways that students and faculty can continue to engage in this topic and other related topics about faith in everyday life.

So if you're interested, I hope you check that out. And then just a quick note, we've also handed out a comment card that we ask that you fill out at the end of the night. You can turn it in on your way out the door and just tell us what you thought about the night and how you heard about us and that sort of thing.

So just a few quick notes about the night. If you haven't turned off your cell phone yet, please make sure that's off just so we can hear our speakers well. And then because we have two speakers tonight, we have a moderator who will be helping to guide that conversation.

And at the end of the night will be the Q&A time. And this is where we really expect engagement with all the audience. So the Q&A time will be if you have a question, you can ask in person up at the microphone or you can text at any time throughout the night.

There'll be a number up on the screen. You can text your question there and there'll be a Q&A person receiving those texts and asking those for you at the end of the night. So two ways to ask questions.

Keep that in mind as you're listening. So now to begin, I will introduce our moderator for the evening. Our moderator is Dan Grossenbach.

Dan is a criminal investigator and he has used his professional skills and his inquisitive nature to test his own religious beliefs. Dan got his undergraduate degree right here at the University of Arizona. And while he was here, he questioned his faith and thoroughly investigated whether Christian claims could be verified.

He then went on to earn a master's degree with honors in Christian apologetics from Biola University in 2008. And has since been a regular speaker and writer on matters of religion. He's also planned and participated in several public debates between Christians and those of other beliefs.

And so with that, I'd like to welcome our moderator, Dan Grossenbach. I'm the moderator, which means I am the bad guy. So I'm going to be cutting people off, keeping the time to the best of my ability.

That includes you for Q&A, although we encourage you to come up with good questions. We are asking, are Christian claims verifiable and does it matter? On our Facebook page we had a variety of different discussion points. And people were answering the question, yes, yes, no, no, yes, no, no, no, yes.

All across the spectrum. And I assure you tonight, we have two different perspectives you're going to be hearing from tonight. So what I wanted to do is tell you how this is going to go.

It's going to start with Dr. Mike Lykona, who I'm going to introduce in a minute, with a 20 minute opening speech, followed by another 20 minute opening speech by Dr. Friesen. And then after that, they're going to immediately go into a six minute rebuttal or response period. So Dr. Lykona will come back up to give a six minute rebuttal, followed by Dr. Friesen coming up for his six minutes.

After that, we open up Q&A. But the first question is going to be from Dr. Lykona to Dr. Friesen, and from Dr. Friesen to Dr. Lykona, kicking off the Q&A. In that time, I may remind you to get your questions ready, so you can text them or come up to one of the mics on either side here.

And if you could please just announce who the question might be for, and then ask it. Each person, each speaker will have about two minutes to give their answer, and then it will extend the offer for the other speaker to give about a one minute response. As we're going here with this, during the course of the event, I just asked for no big applause, big shows of emotion either way until they're done speaking with a speech.

And for the Q&A, we'll try to reserve that to the end as well. So I'll further ado, I'll introduce our speakers and then invite them one at a time to the podium. Dr. Michael Lykona is Associate Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University and President of Reason, Jesus Inc.

He has a PhD in New Testament Studies from the University of Pretoria, which he earned with distinction. Dr. Lykona is author of numerous books and was interviewed by Lee Strobel in his book, The Case for the Real Jesus, in 2017. Dr. Lykona was elected to full membership in the Prestige Society for New Testament Studies.

He has spoken on more than 100 university campuses and has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs. Dr. Lykona's published works are available locally at Gospel Supplies. Dr. Courtney Friesen specializes in religions in the Greek and Roman world, especially Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity.

His research examines the Bible and its reception and reception of classical Greek literature. Dr. Friesen earned his PhD in 2013 from the University of Minnesota in Classical and Near Eastern Studies. Before coming to the University of Arizona, he taught at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Theology and Religion.

So with that, I'd like to welcome all the podium, Dr. Mike Lykona. Well, thank you. Good evening, everyone.

I want to thank Veritas Forum for having this event, and I'd also like to thank Dan Grossenbach for inviting me to participate. Well, life's an adventure, a journey. Where do you want to go on yours? Well, we're all going to have different answers, but I think for the most part, most of our answers are going to come down to a single, simple answer.

And that is, we want for our lives to have meaning. Real meaning. Well, where does real meaning come from? Well, astronomers inform us that our universe will eventually die a... whoa.

There we go. Astronomers tell us that our universe will eventually die a cold death. Every star will burn out leaving an eternal, cosmic night in which all life has ceased to exist.

The entirety of human history, including every one of us, will be forgotten without any lasting value or meaning to human existence. If atheism is true, meaning is only to be found in what makes an individual fulfilled for the moment, but ultimately, nothing matters. Shakespeare articulated this point eloquently in his tragedy of Macbeth.

When the king learns of the queen's death, he says, out, out, brief, candle. Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then has heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Now, for a moment, let's consider the possibility that God exists, that life is part of God's plan, and that he actually loves you. Well, in that case, your life is valued because of who you are, created in God's image. Therefore, your life and what you do has meaning, real meaning.

What is this scenario true? The question we're debating this evening is, are Christian claims verifiable, and does it matter? Surely, the first part of this question, our Christian claims verifiable, refers to the claims of the earliest Christians about Jesus. So perhaps our question may be restated as follows. Can historians verify claims about Jesus made by the earliest Christians? Well, the answer to that question is yes, and no.

One of the claims of the earliest Christians is Jesus died for our sins. Now, historians can verify that Jesus was executed and died as a result. So they can often verify the historical elements of a statement, but of course they can't verify the theological ones.

Moreover, there are many reports that historians cannot verify due to a lack of evidence, and this is true of all ancient historiography as it is of the gospels. However, using the tools of their trade, and despite their differing worldviews, historians of Jesus have arrived at a consensus that Jesus was a historical person who lived in Palestine in the early first century, that he was a Jewish itinerant creature who believed God had chosen him to usher in his kingdom, that he often taught using parables, that he performed deeds that astonished crowds, and that both he and his followers regarded as divine miracles and exorcisms, that he opposed the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem, who then arrested him and brought him before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who had him crucified in April of either the year 30 or 33. Nearly every historian of Jesus grants these facts and more.

I think we can go further and verify Jesus' resurrection. That event is important because Jesus claimed it would be assigned to everyone that his message is true. So I'm going to build a positive historical case for Jesus' resurrection using two major building blocks, facts and method.

Now that's so simple that even a Southern Baptist can understand. Let's begin with the facts. Historians don't always agree on what's a fact, so in order to make things simple for all of us, I'm only going to appeal to those items that virtually all historians regard as facts, whether they're Christian, Jewish, agnostic, or atheist.

This is important because all of us are biased due to our race, gender, ethics, nationality, our political philosophical and religious convictions, the way we were raised, the academic institutions with which were affiliated, and the very group of people who's acceptance and respect we desire. There's just no way around this. That's why it's valuable to consider what a heterogeneous consensus of experts in the relevant fields think.

That consensus provides us with fairly secure ground on which to begin. Now of course the consensus can be mistaken, but before you can dismiss a consensus of experts on the matter, you may want to educate yourself on that matter more than watching a few YouTube videos and then discussing it on social media. In what follows, I'll provide four facts relevant to the question of Jesus' resurrection that are granted by a heterogeneous consensus of scholars in the relevant fields.

Given time constraints, I won't be able to explain why historians regard these as facts in my opening statement. So here they are. Number one, Jesus was crucified on the orders of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, and died as a result.

Number two, shortly after Jesus' death, a number of his disciples had experiences they believed were the risen Jesus appearing to them. Number three, some of their experiences were group experiences. And number four, within about five years of Jesus' death, a persecutor of the Christian church named Paul had an experience he believed was an appearance of the risen Jesus and it radically transformed his life from being a persecutor of the church to one of its most able defenders.

Now what do we do with these four facts? This brings us to our second major building block method. Since historians are unable to climb into a time machine and return to the past to verify their conclusions, they employ strictly controlled historical method to determine what probably occurred. This method employs criteria, I'm sorry, it involves criteria to see how well a hypothesis can accommodate the known facts.

The hypothesis that accounts for the facts better than competing hypotheses is regarded as what probably occurred. This method is called inference to the best explanation. Let me show you how it works.

There are four criteria that are typically used to assess hypotheses. The first is called explanatory scope. Now think of a jigsaw puzzle.

The puzzle solution that incorporates all of the puzzle pieces is preferable to one that leaves a few of those puzzle pieces stranded because one doesn't know how they fit in the puzzle solution. Likewise, a hypothesis capable of explaining all of the relevant data is preferable to one that fails to account for some of them. The second criterion is explanatory power.

If a hypothesis is true, we expect certain things to result. Let's say that a man has just completed serving a ten-year prison term overseas and he's just been released and he lands back in the United States and his brothers there at the airport to pick him up. So as a catch-and-off, his brother says, and you whole believe this, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016.

His brother says, no way, prove it. And so he says, well, with the Cubs won the World Series, there would have been a celebratory parade in Chicago, right? And so he takes out and shows him a photo of it. In historical investigation, to the extent that we have the data we would expect if a hypothesis were true, that hypothesis is said to have explanatory power.

The third criterion is less ad hoc. In historical method, ad hoc elements are typically improvisational in nature and are used to fill in a weak spot in a hypothesis. Why did Hitler carry such a hatred of Jews? Well, we don't know.

But to guess that he was bullied by a Jewish boy when he was young would be pure speculation. It's ad hoc in that sense. In historical investigation, the hypothesis that is least ad hoc is preferred.

The fourth and final criterion is plausibility. Plausibility is the degree to which a hypothesis is compatible with our background knowledge. The statement that a three-year-old bench press 300 pounds is implausible given our background knowledge of what three-year-olds are capable of doing.

However, if our background knowledge included the fact that my friend Mike DeVito, who was a defensive lineman in the NFL, was present and helped the three-year-old bench press that 300 pounds, well, that changes everything. And the statement that a three-year-old bench press 300 pounds is then plausible. Strictly controlled historical method assesses hypotheses using these four criteria.

The hypothesis that best fulfills the criteria is regarded as what probably occurred. Now, let's assess the two leading hypotheses among today's scholars pertaining to the question of Jesus' resurrection. The first is the hallucination hypothesis.

And it usually goes like this. After Jesus' sudden and brutal death, his disciples were grief-stricken and experienced hallucinations of Jesus that convinced them he had risen from the dead. Let's assess this hypothesis using the four criteria just discussed.

It's planetary scope. The hallucination hypothesis nicely accounts for Jesus' death by crucifixion since that event would produce grief in his disciples' rendering them candidates for hallucinations. However, multiple studies on hallucinations reveal that only around 7% of those in the frame of mind to hallucinate are likely to experience a visual hallucination.

Thus, with Jesus' disciples, we would anticipate one or perhaps two of them experiencing a visual hallucination of Jesus. But our earliest reports give the appearances to all of them, 100%, which would be unthinkable and without precedent for hallucinations. Therefore, the hallucination hypothesis does not account for the high percentage of those actually claiming to have seen Jesus.

Moreover, because hallucinations are false sensory perceptions of something that's not actually there, they occur only in the mind of an individual and have no external reality. In that sense, hallucinations are like dreams. I couldn't wake up my wife in the middle of the night and say, honey, I'm having this dream, I'm in Maui.

Go back to sleep, join me in my dream, and let's have a free vacation. You can't do that. Well, it's the same with hallucinations.

Groups cannot experience them. So, the hallucination hypothesis cannot account for the reports of appearances of Jesus to groups and the high percentage of the disciples claiming to have seen him. The hallucination hypothesis also does a poor job of accounting for the appearance to Paul, the persecutor, since he regarded Jesus as a failed messiah and false prophet.

He wasn't grieving over Jesus' death. He hated Jesus in the movement he had started. So, Jesus would have been the last person in the universe that Paul would have wanted to see or would have expected to see.

It's a planetary power. If the hallucination hypothesis is true, we expect certain things to result. It's just stated we only expect one or perhaps two of Jesus' disciples to have experienced a visual hallucination of him.

And just like every other failed messianic movement of that time, we'd expect movement Jesus started to fall apart after his death and for Christianity to become nothing more than a footnote in future history books. But these aren't at all what we get. Instead, all of Jesus' disciples claim to have experienced the risen Jesus appearing to them, some even in group settings, and Christianity grows to become the world's largest religion.

So, we do not get what we anticipate if the hallucination hypothesis were true. Thus, it lacks explanatory power. Have any improvised elements been added in order to make the hallucination hypothesis work? Not usually.

So, it passes the less ad hoc criterion. But sometimes an ad hoc element is present when scholars become armchair psychologists. For example, one scholar suggested that Paul's conversion resulted from a hallucination prompted by secret doubts, a growing distaste for Judaism, and having a childhood judgment.

The problem with these, of course, is not a scrap of evidence exists for any of them. It's entirely ad hoc. The fourth and final criterion is plausibility.

Because the hallucination hypothesis requires an unthinkable 100% of Jesus' disciples to experience visual hallucinations, as well as multiple group hallucinations, which are extremely rare if not impossible, it's incompatible with our background knowledge and is therefore implausible. In summary, the hallucination hypothesis is usually not ad hoc. However, it has weak explanatory scope, terrible explanatory power, and is implausible.

It's a weak hypothesis. Now, let's move along and assess the other major hypothesis, the resurrection hypothesis. This hypothesis easily accounts for all of the four facts.

If Jesus rose, we anticipate he would show himself to his disciples and perhaps even an enemy, and that's what we get. Therefore, the resurrection hypothesis has excellent explanatory scope and power. Are there any ad hoc elements in the resurrection hypothesis? Responsible historians understand that worldviews often play an unhealthy role in assessing a miracle hypothesis.

If a historian isn't careful, a worldview rather than the data will be the guiding force of her investigation, and the danger with this such a practice is clear. Bad philosophy corrupts good history. Therefore, historians should either presuppose God's existence, nor a priori excluded.

Instead, they ought to adopt a position of openness and let the facts speak for themselves through the proper assessment of hypotheses. The resurrection hypothesis, of course, does not exclude God's existence, but it doesn't assume it, so it's not ad hoc. The fourth and final criterion is plausibility.

It's certainly true that the dead do not return to life by natural causes. It's also true that the early authors just never claim that Jesus came back to life by natural causes. They instead claim God had raised Jesus, and that changes things just as the NFL player assisting the three-year-old with a bench press changes things.

Accordingly, unless a spiritual dimension is disproved, the resurrection hypothesis is not initially implausible in view of natural law. But can the resurrection hypothesis be said to be plausible in a positive sense? I guess that most of us in this auditorium think there's a spiritual or supernatural dimension of reality, even if you're not a Christian, and the data strongly support the existence of such a dimension. There are more than 100 well-evidenced near-death experiences documented by professionals, while clinically dead the person has an out-of-body experience during which they receive accurate information that could not have possibly known otherwise.

These experiences suggest the existence of a spiritual dimension and that there's life after death for at least some people. I could go on and mention, for ridicule, apparitions, extreme answer, prayer, and paranormal phenomena, but the near-death experiences alone strongly suggest the spiritual dimension of reality and life after death is a pretty big step toward resurrection, and that gives some plausibility to the resurrection hypothesis. It's clear that the resurrection hypothesis is far superior to the hallucination hypothesis, and one once objects other alternative hypotheses to the same process of strictly controlled historical method.

The resurrection hypothesis comes out on top every time. Therefore, the early Christian claim that Jesus rose from the dead is verifiable. In historical terms, it probably occurred.

That brings us back to the question, does it matter? Truth is important. If an airline informs you that your claim leaves at 10 a.m., when it actually leaves at 9 a.m., truth matters. If your professor tells you that your quiz is over chapter three, when it's actually over chapter four, truth matters.

If your spouse tells you that he's working late when he's actually spending time with his mistress, truth matters. Since Jesus predicted he would rise from the dead, if historical inquiry proved that he failed to do so, truth matters. And we would be right to conclude that Jesus was a false prophet, that Christianity is a false religion, and those of us who are Christians should abandon it, because any meaning it provides is illusory.

Even the Apostle Paul, writing within 25 years of Jesus' death said, If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. On the other hand, if Jesus actually rose from the dead, truth matters. His claims about himself and his message that God loves you are true.

You have worth, because God made you in his image. Therefore, your life has meaning, real meaning. Thanks, Dr. Lightona.

Dr. Courtney Friesen. I was particularly pleased to accept this invitation to address this topic, because exploring Christian claims is a large part of what I do here at the university, in my position on faculty. I teach courses on the Bible, especially the New Testament, ranging from introductory levels for students with little to no background, all the way through advanced courses.

In fact, we are now offering a minor in New Testament language and literature in which students can learn to read the New Testament in the original language of ancient Greek, and in so doing, even meet one of the university's foundation general education requirements. So students study historical events surrounding New Testament, its composition, its literary and cultural context. Most importantly, from my perspective, the aim of our programs and course offerings is to give students the tools to analyze Christian claims for themselves so that they may consider these profoundly important texts and ideas firsthand and not merely take our word for it.

So if any of that strikes you as worth pursuing, or if any of the topics addressed in this evening's event are of interest to you, please do stay around and chat with me afterwards, or track my email address down online and I'd be happy to meet with you to discuss further. Now, before attempting to answer the question, are Christian claims verifiable? It is quite important to define what is meant by these words, and of course not all of us will use them in precisely the same way. So first, verification.

I will take this to mean testable by shared methods of intellectual and academic inquiry, for instance, scientific or historical methods. Here is important to eliminate possible misinterpretation. To say that something is not verifiable is not to say that it is not true or that one shouldn't believe it.

But some religious claims are clearly not the kinds of things that are within the realm of verification. For instance, especially individual and private revelations from God. As an illustration, let me point to something that I'm pulled apparently occasionally happens among students of your age, for those of you who are students here tonight.

A love struck youth receives a message from God, and armed with this approaches a young woman or man declaring, God told me to marry you. Now, if you find yourself on the receding end of this, you should most definitely ask for verification. But what kind of evidence could this perspective grew more bride, a deuce in support of his or her claim? There is of course nothing that can be offered.

God spoke privately to this individual alone. He or she can't prove it, and conversely, you can't disprove it. Now, the point to be made here is simply that some religious claims such as God told me to marry you are fundamentally not the sorts of things that are susceptible to verification.

And many central Christian claims, I would argue, are of a similar status. We find this in fact throughout the Bible from the very first books where Moses received the words of the law on the mountain directly from the finger of God to the last book of Revelation where the prophet John has taken up into heaven to see a vision of what is to come at the end of days. In this vein, later Christians would come to view all the books of the Bible as similarly inspired by God.

But the divine inspiration of Scripture is strictly speaking, not something that we can verify. It is of the God told me to marry you of type. So when I speak of verification, my interest will be in those claims that deal with material in a shared public sphere of data, claims to which all observers, whether they be believers or unbelievers, have the same access, and the methods deployed in this sort of verification must likewise be those upon which all interpreters of this data, regardless of faith commitments, may broadly agree.

For lack of a better term then, I will refer to these as academic methods. For my purposes, historical and literary criticism, though if we were scientists who might likewise employ the fields of cosmology or biology in relation to religious claims. What then about Christian claims? There we go.

So this phrase is, of course, vague and undeveloped, which Christians, Christians have, of course, now existed for nearly 2,000 years and have found in almost every country on the globe. Do we mean the first century Christians, such as the authors of the New Testament? Do we mean 21st century Christians? Do we mean Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, with all of its variations? Perhaps then it would be useful to take as a starting point the Nicene Creed, a statement that was first written in the year 325 to function as a sort of universal affirmation, and indeed even now today is accepted still among nearly all branches of Christianity. So it's useful for our purposes because it is in a sense a list, bullet-point list of fundamental Christian claims.

Now, as we look down this list, consider which of these claims falls within the realm of the verification. We believe in one God. Now, that one God exists and that he is the creator of the world is to be sure something that philosophers and scientists have been debating for as long as philosophy and science have existed.

But I, for one, remain unconvinced that either the believers or the atheists have achieved anything approaching a verification. At most, those on each side have managed to convince themselves that their view is slightly more compatible with logic and scientific evidence than the other. What about the claim that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God? How could that possibly be verified? What kind of evidence would need to be furnished? Someone might say that it is verified by his extraordinary miraculous deeds.

But of course, we only know about these deeds because they are written down by the very people who were already convinced that he was the Son of God. We have no independent witness to them confirming that they were more than mere fabrications, and that is of course precisely what would be required for verification. Someone else might say that we know he is the only Son of God because of his uniquely inspired teaching.

But here again, we don't have direct access to his teachings. We only have what the Gospel writers composed decades after his death. And again, it cannot be verified by independent corroborating sources.

And we might add also that comparable miraculous deeds and revolutionary teachings have been attributed to numerous prominent religious leaders throughout history, and none of these are necessarily verified as the only Son of God. Perhaps there is verification that he is the only Son of God in that God raised him from the dead. Now come back to the evidence for the resurrection later, but here it should be noted that merely rising from the dead does not establish one as the one and only Son of God.

For according to the Bible, at least the prophet Elijah raised a child from the dead, and Jesus himself raised Lazarus. Now similar conclusions could be drawn regarding much of the rest of this creed. In fact, as we look down this impressive list of Christian claims, there really is only one that lends itself to confident verification.

You'll have to take my word for it. That is that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Now the reason that this event is verified is because it is also noted by the Roman historian Tacitus writing in the early 2nd century.

But this kind of historical detail is very much the exception. Moreover, it strikes me that this particular fact that is scarcely essential to Christianity, that is that it was Pontius Pilate who oversaw the execution rather than say, Marcellus his successor or one of the Herod's. So this leads me to the main thesis I would like to propose this evening.

Those claims that are most central to the core of Christianity throughout its history are precisely the sorts of things that fall outside of the realm of verification. Conversely, oftentimes, though not always, Christian claims that move out further from this core of historic Christianity are more likely to be of that sort, that is, testable for verification and consequently also susceptible to be proven false. Let me illustrate this.

In the closing lines of the Nicene Creed, we find the following claim. The Holy Spirit spoke by the prophets. Now who were the prophets? These are among others, the legendary individuals behind many of the writings of the Bible.

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and probably we should also add Moses and David and others. Thus, this statement entails a claim about God's voice speaking in and through the texts of scripture, a point that has been nearly universally accepted by Christians, but one that as I have already noted is not up for verification. But some Christian communities have not been satisfied with this and have pressed it further.

Consider, for example, the Southern Baptist Convention's faith and message. This is a sort of modern creedal statement defining certain Christian claims and it's relevant here tonight because it is that statement which is affirmed by the Baptist General Convention of Texas, the denomination that founded Houston Baptist University, Dr. Lachos Institution. Now here's what it has to say about the Bible.

As we read through this statement, you will notice that again, there is very little here that can be subjected to verification. Much of this is of the God told me to marry you tight. The Holy Bible was written by divinely-inspired men, divinely-inspired.

It is a perfect treasure, it has God for its author, etc. There is, however, one claim that we can test, and that is that the Bible is without mixture of error. Here we have abundant evidence that is available for scrutiny equally by everyone.

So let's consider one example. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is justifying his disciples picking grain on the Sabbath, which was apparently disproved by the Pharisees because they counted his work, and he cites an example from the Old Testament. Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of presents.

Now, we are in a position to take up Jesus' challenge and to read what David did. We can move our slide down to 1 Samuel, chapter 21, where the story originates. It goes as follows.

David came to gnaw to the high priest, the Himalak. The Himalak came trembling to meet David, and David said to the priest, a Himalak, give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here. Priest answered, I have no ordinary bread at hand, only the holy bread.

Now, with this data before us, we are in a position to verify, or rather in this case, alternatively to disprove the Christian claim that the Bible is without error. Now, clearly some people here, perhaps some of us on stage, will disagree with this point, but I would expect that most neutral observers, and an advanced degree in biblical studies is not required to be among them, most neutral observers will conclude that at least one of these two texts contains an error. The high priest was not both, Abiathar and Himalak.

Now, it should of course be clear to everyone at this point that I have chosen a most trivial of points, but I've raised it here to illustrate how in contrast to this Baptist statement of faith, the historic tenets of Christianity, such as those in the Nicene Creed, are largely beyond this sort of verification. It should also be clear that this alleged error has little consequence for those more central claims, even if it does expose the shortcomings of this one claim associated with one Baptist denomination. But what about those more central claims of Christianity, such as the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, which is of course central to the Nicene Creed also? The New Testament is, as you will probably know, unanimous on this point that God raised Jesus from the dead, but specifically what kind of evidence would be required to verify this.

By the very strictest standards, we might like to have a scientific record of the vital signs of Jesus after his coming back to life. Though I suspect most of us here tonight are comfortable with our own ability simply to observe by observation that someone is alive. If you look to the person on your right and the person on your left, I hope that you can verify that they are in fact living just by looking, even if I have put them to sleep by this point.

We might further want to have a record of a medical exam establishing that the body was genuinely dead, not merely unconscious. Finally, we would like to have some sort of test, perhaps a DNA test, to confirm that this living person is in fact the same person who was dead and not merely a look-alike substitute. Now, of course, no fair-minded person would demand that level of evidence.

So short of this, we must fall back on what we do have, and that is the claims and testimonies of Christians in the first century, and that is all we have. And here, the evidence is often problematic. The first written testimony that we have regarding the resurrection comes from the Apostle Paul.

He began writing nearly two decades after the death of Jesus, and by his own admission, he never met Jesus during his earthly life. He became a convert later. Consider what he writes in 1 Corinthians 15.

Christ was raised on the third day in accordance with scriptures. He appeared to Cephas, then to the 12. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom were still alive.

Though some have died. Then he appeared to James. Then to all the Apostles last the fall as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

Now, this is indeed an impressive claim. But we need to stop and consider what a resurrection appearance might have entailed for Paul. Slide please.

In another place, he speaks of it as follows, but when God was pleased to reveal his son to me, I did not confer with any human being. Now, here we have something much more in the realm of a private revelation. God revealed his son to me.

Just the sort of thing that cannot be readily verified. This is in the God told me to marry you type. Now, as we return to the passage from 1 Corinthians, we note that in each instance, the same verb is used with respect to all of the other eyewitnesses.

So, whatever Paul imagines these appearances consisted of, they are not by nature verifiable accounts. Now, moving beyond Paul, the earliest written gospel, the gospel of Mark, concludes without any eyewitnesses at all. Rather, it merely ends with the empty tomb.

And a mysterious young man instructing the women who had come to the tomb to tell Peter that the disciples should go to Galilee where they would meet Jesus. It is only in the later gospels, written some 10, 20, 30 or more years after Mark, that we begin to find eyewitness accounts of Jesus' post-resurrection. Now, in Matthew, the women meet Jesus himself on the way to the tomb, and he repeats the instructions of the angel that we met in Mark to go to Galilee.

Subsequently, they meet Jesus only after they arrive in Galilee where they worship him on the mountain. Now, Luke adds additional eyewitnesses. But whereas in Matthew, the disciples would only see him after going to Galilee, in Luke, Jesus meets two of them on the road to Emmaus on the very day of his resurrection, which is roughly seven miles from Jerusalem.

Then he appears among them in Jerusalem where they can inspect his resurrected body. Now, in Acts, and this is the text that you will see on the screen, a sequel of Luke written by the same author, Jesus specifically instructs the disciples to remain in Jerusalem. Now, I would like to reassert what I said at the outset.

None of this proves that the resurrection did not occur. But if we are looking to verify the accounts of it as they are presented in the New Testament, or if we endeavor to use the New Testament accounts as evidence to verify the historical reality of the resurrection, we immediately run into problems because they cannot agree on where Jesus encountered the disciples after his resurrection. Now, does any of this matter? Many Christians believe that their faith is bolstered by the accumulation of historical and scientific evidences and diversifications.

What I have suggested on the contrary is that the sensual message of historic Christianity is not something that lends itself to such treatment. What is undeniable, however, is that the resurrection of Jesus has captured the human imagination since it was first preached nearly 2,000 years ago. Its transformative power arises from, among other things, its demonstration that self-sacrificial acts of love for one's friends, and indeed even for one's enemies, are genuinely transcendent and truly divine.

These are the means of breathing new life into the corpses produced by the forces of prejudice, greed, and violence in the world all around us. But the endeavor to prove these things are so, I fear, runs the risk of trivializing it. Consider Jesus' words to the Dowling Thomas in the Gospel of John, who refused to accept the testimony of the apostles unless he could physically verify the bodily evidence for himself.

Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Thank you. All right, I think we're seeing a little bit of an intersection here in finding out where the differences lie a little bit.

That was great. So, well, boy, the Baptist took a hit on both of yours. That's what I should expect from a martial artist and a hockey player, though.

So, we're going to start off with a, or start off, we're going to continue, rather, with a rebuttal. So, Dr. Lykona. All right, well, thank you, Courtney.

The question being debated is, are Christian claims verifiable and does it matter? In the My opening statement, I contended that historians are able to verify many items about Jesus reported by the earliest Christians. However, they don't possess the appropriate tools to verify theological elements, and Courtney agrees with me on this. We can't verify personal revelation.

We can't verify that the scriptures are divinely inspired. We can't verify most of the elements in the Nicene Creed. I then contended that it is possible for the historian to verify the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

I explained how historians employ arguments of inference to the best explanation. This is the method that historians do use, the accepted method that historians use to verify things and to discover the past. And I demonstrated how the resurrection hypothesis is far superior to its leading competitor, the hallucination hypothesis, and that other competing hypotheses meet a similar fate.

Therefore, the resurrection hypothesis describes what probably occurred and can be verified. Now, Courtney replied, well, let's go with Paul. He's our earliest evidence, and when you look at Paul's letter to the Church of Galatia in Galatia, Paul says that God revealed his son to me.

It was an internal kind of experience. Well, not necessarily. The Greek there, N. M. Oi, can mean numerous things.

It's really ambiguous in this text, actually. And later on in Galatians, N. M. Oi is used to mean to me. So the best translation, in my opinion, is God revealed his son to me.

It has nothing to do with the nature of the appearance or saying that this was something that happened internally. He says that in 1 Corinthians, we have the same verb that is used to refer to the other appearances. So he's referring to the oral tradition that has been stylized in 1 Corinthians 15 verses 3 through 7, where he says he appeared to Peter, then to the 12, then to more than 500 at one time, then to James, then to all the apostles.

Last of all, as to one in Timely Born, he appeared also to me. It is the same verb, but that's only referring to the chronology of the events. It has nothing at all to do with the nature of the appearances.

And I could say, look, since Paul really doesn't describe the nature of his appearance in his letters and he doesn't, the only way that we have something that talks about the nature of those appearances is in the Book of Acts, in chapters 9, 22, and 26. And the majority of today's scholars, who opined on the authorship of Luke Acts, admit that whoever this author was, he was a traveling companion of Paul. And so when he describes the appearance of Jesus to him, the resurrection appearance, this is probably coming directly from Paul that is given to the author of Luke Acts.

And it is a different kind than what we find narrated in the Gospels. However, we have to take into consideration that this is a post ascension event, whereas the disciples saw Jesus prior to his ascension, and that could make a huge difference. Now, then he says, well, what about Mark? There's no appearances in Mark.

Well, the majority of scholars today are kind of split with about half of them saying that Mark intended to end his Gospel there with the women just fleeing and saying nothing to no one, which is quite awkward. And then it's like where you have five New Testament scholars, you have seven opinions on why there was the ending ends like this and no agreement. And then you have the other half of New Testament scholars who would say, Mark did not intend to end his Gospel there, but either he got lost or he was unable to because he was put in prison or he died before he could.

And we just don't know. However, what we do know is that Mark has Jesus on numerous occasions throughout the Gospel, predicting his imminent death and resurrection and saying he will appear to them. In fact, just a couple chapters before in 1428, he tells them that they're to go to Galilee and they'll see him there after he's risen from the dead.

And then the angel tells the women in chapter 16 verse 7 that you're to go to Galilee, and there you will see him just as he told you. So it is anticipated that they will see him. And we have to remember that Paul mentions all these appearances in his letter to 1 Corinthians before Mark is even written.

So everyone was known about these appearances anyway. He says the first eyewitnesses weren't until the other Gospels. Well, again, you've got Paul before, and he mentions a bunch Peter, the 12 to more than 500 to all the apostles to James and then Paul lists himself.

He says, in Acts, Jesus instructs his disciples to remain in Jerusalem, but Matthew has them in Galilee. Well, there's a number of reasons that we could give for this. There's certainly some compositional devices going on.

I've written about this extensively in a book I published with Oxford University Press last year on why their difference is in the Gospels. The title of that book is, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? Now, so I do think the Christian claim that Jesus rose from the dead can be verified. This brings us to the second part of our debate question, Does It Matter? And I contend that if Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true.

Therefore, each of us has value and our lives have real meaning because we've made a God's image. According, he didn't give any response to this or provide any reason to think otherwise. So I think we can say that Jesus' resurrection has been verified and it does matter.

Thank you. I'd like to remind you in this time to get your questions ready. And since this is a focus dialogue, we're really specific on our topic.

It's a very narrow focus, as you can tell. Try to be as relevant as you can. So, for example, a question on evolution or maybe Buddhism might not fit in unless you can make it fit.

And I may give you even more help if you do come with something that's not really relevant. I may regurgitate a little bit to try to make it relevant just as a warning. So we're going to have text questions and I think there's a number for them to text, I think, up on the screen or at some point they can do that.

So get your questions ready. All right. Dr. Friesen.

Thank you. Okay. So I would like to pick up on a theme from another one of Dr. Lycona's books.

And that is his 700 page tome on the resurrection of Jesus, which is worth picking up if you're interested in this topic. I will confess that I have not read all 700 pages. But those pages that I have read I've found very interesting, well-written and rigorous.

In the book he introduces a category that he calls historical bedrock. Those things that we can know about Jesus and the immediate after effect of his life and death. And these he lists roughly speaking as Jesus was reputed to be a miracle working exorcist that Jesus was executed by crucifixion that shortly after his death his disciples had experiences that led them to proclaim his resurrection and forcefully that Paul a very few years after Jesus death converted after experiencing what he interpreted as opposed to resurrection appearance.

I would contend that those four points are verifiable. They have corroborating evidence of various sorts that are satisfactory to I think any historian. Tonight, however, he gave us four facts that differed slightly.

Four facts I think because they were related to the resurrection. And here I worry that the facts have moved away from what can be verified and what all interpreters accept as facts. And these revolve around the third point about the group experiences of the resurrection or rather the group experiences of appearances of the resurrected Jesus.

And I worry that these are no longer verifiable facts. The reasons for this will of course become clear in the talk that I gave moments ago. But the evidence that groups of people saw the resurrected Jesus is not in the same category of verification as these other points at least to garner the same level of acceptance.

This is in part because what I have pointed out about Paul, Paul seems to have had a tradition that predates himself, a tradition that we both talked about from 1 Corinthians 15. I think there is no problem in asserting that these early Christians came to the firm conviction and belief that they had encountered the resurrected Jesus. The problem comes or breaks down in the link between what people believed about Jesus and what we can verify about it.

And that is to say that beliefs about Jesus being raised from the dead don't move easily to verifiable evidence that Jesus was raised from the dead. So to me Paul then becomes a sort of a lynchpin and since Dr. LaCona has brought acts into the picture, I guess I will identify myself as the other half of New Testament scholars who don't necessarily think that acts was written by a traveling companion of the apostle. But the conversion of Paul and Paul's experience of the resurrected Christ in acts is narrated on three different occasions.

And each time we get a slightly different perception of what occurred. And let me just read them from the text. This comes from Acts 9, chapter 7. The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one.

So this is the author of Acts description of what happened to Paul on the famous road to Damascus. There he was traveling and the light shot forth. And this is Paul's experience as narrated by Acts.

What intrigues us here is who else was brought into this moment of experience. We move quickly to the other account. So in Acts, chapter 9, if they heard the voice but saw no one in Acts, chapter 22 verse 9, we get the same story recorded by Paul where he says, those who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking.

So we have a divergence on who saw what when. And we could connect this further to the distinction between God's revelation in Paul and God's revelation to Paul. A distinction that Dr. Lacona made but I would suggest that that doesn't eliminate the problem of the private nature of the revelation that Paul has claimed to have for himself.

Whether it's to him or in him or any other preposition that one might like to include. So I apologize for going over. And we had the text number up on the screen.

Okay, I see some heads nodding. Great, thank you. Okay, well, we're going to be getting some text questions I think.

And before as those come in, we're going to launch this with a question from each speaker to the other. And so let's just begin with that with Dr. Lacona. Okay, thanks Courtney.

This is fun. And we had dinner last night and we just had a really great time. And you can see he's a fun guy to be around but what you don't know is he's even more fun once he has a couple of beers in him.

Just easy, just easy. Alright, I didn't want to clarify something. You did say groupings that you wouldn't agree with my third point that scholars agree that group saw Jesus.

And I didn't say that scholars agree that group saw Jesus. And so for the historian, they have to be able to count for what those experiences were. Okay, so just out of curiosity, you said that we can verify Jesus's death by crucifixion because we have, it's multiple attested by Tacitus.

Jesus' resurrection is multiple attested you could say by Paul, Mark, and John. So if you'd like multiple attestation, why would you reject resurrection? Yeah, so I mean, that's, it is, there is, of course, no question that we have lawful sources and we can conclude almost every book of the New Testament in that. Not really.

I'm saying multiple independence. Yeah, so you're right that the gospels oftentimes give us independent attestation to certain events. And so, but by the time the gospels are being produced, clearly they are being written by individuals and in communities where the resurrection is taking for granted.

So that wouldn't necessarily, to me, that doesn't add verification in the same way that Tacitus' reference to the court picture. How would Tacitus know about the court? That is a good question. I'll put it back to you, but my assumption is that he didn't read it from the New Testament.

I agree. Okay. So I would suggest that he, I mean, he, by the time of Tacitus, there are now Christian communities around the Roman Empire who are well known enough that the contours of their beliefs are out in the past is, of course, writing in the early Christian communities are now known as those outside.

So, sorry, you're saying that you think Tacitus got his information that Pilate crucified Jesus from the Christians? Probably not from the Christians. He, well, I, it's true that I don't know where he got it from. But I would suggest that he probably didn't get it.

What are you moving towards here? That Tacitus is not, is not independent either. He probably got it from some, you know, imperial records. Yeah.

He, he might have had records. Yeah. I don't know that he would have cared enough about the Christians to dig through records to figure out about what happened in, in around 30.

Probably by the time of Tacitus, it would have been mentioned in, in reference to Nero, you know, being the rumors that he burned Rome. Yeah. So by this time, I suspect that people knew enough about Christianity that that point would have just been something that.

So I guess what I'm getting around to is a multiple out of the station. Of course, you've got Paul. Right.

And I think you'd agree with me that Paul knew Peter, James, and John. And so he's talking about them. They're, you know, they're telling him they saw him as well.

When it comes to John, the majority of New Testament scholars today would say, even though they don't accept the traditional authorship of John's gospel of John's sonizivity, the majority do think that the author was either one of Jesus' minor disciples or that whoever the author was, he had his major source, one of Jesus' disciples. So John is going to be providing independent testimony to Paul. So there's at least two right there.

Yeah. So multiple individuals. Yeah.

So the, I mean, the circle of people that includes the gospel authors and Paul are all people who were aware of the belief in Jesus' resurrection. Claiming to be eyewitnesses. Yeah.

So that's that. I mean, that doesn't quite rise to the level of independent attestation in the same way, from sources that are not already convinced that Jesus is a resurrection son of God. So if we have multiple independent sources for Caesar's assassination, which we have many.

Sure. All right. And they're already pre-convinced that he was assassinated.

Does that qualify us? It's a worthwhile question to consider. Okay. Last question.

That was a little over the time. So I'll give you the grace as well. So Dr. Friesen, you want to ask Dr. Laikona question? Okay.

So let's think about the resurrection appearances in the Gospels as we're on that topic. So we have, at least in one tradition, the nutritionists preserved by Mark and Matthew, the notion that Jesus would appear to his disciples in Galilee. Or only after they had gone to Galilee.

And in Luke and tradition, Gospel of Luke, we get a strikingly different notion that in contrast to Matthew and something that was predicted in Mark, but not narrated in Mark, that they would only see him after they had made the journey to Galilee. Luke has him appearing to two of Jesus' followers and disciples on the very day as they're apparently on the road away from Jerusalem. And then immediately back into Jerusalem.

So I guess my question is, is your, when you draw on those texts as evidence for the resurrection, for the eyewitness accounts, are you interested in harmonizing those? Do you have a sort of historical scenario that can make sense of those? Or do you treat one of them as historical over against the other? That's a fair question. It really is, and it's a difficult one. I learned that it was more difficult than I originally thought.

So first of all, I didn't appeal to Matthew and Mark for my case for the resurrection. So even if they were wrong, it's irrelevant for what I presented. But let's just take it anyway, what we're saying there.

I don't know what's going on with, you know, you've got Matthew and implied with Mark that they're first going to meet in Galilee, whereas Luke and John is Jerusalem. There are a few details in the resurrection narratives that I just can't recognize. I don't know what's going on.

Even the use of compositional devices, which I've really spent a lot of time with, I can't figure out what's going on there. If I had to take a guess, you know, like when Caesar was assassinated, Plutarch, you know, you've got Appian, Dio, Cicero, Nicolaus, Livy, Plutarch, Swaytonius, and Velias, who mentioned it. And they disagree with one another.

Plutarch has multiple reports on it, and he disagrees with himself. And I think in many of those cases, you have compositional devices going on, like abbreviation, time compression, you know. But they disagree with one another on the Brutus Cassius and the conspirators when they fled after killing Caesar, and they fled to the capital.

Did they come down that day, or was it the next day? And when did they have the trial? And you got the same thing going on with the Catalunarian conspiracy in 63 BC. And, you know, when did Cicero present the letters before the Senate, and then they arrested the conspirators, that they executed them that day, or was it the next day? So you've got this. They know what's going on, but there is some time compression happening.

If I had to guess, and I wouldn't bet, I wouldn't bet 50 bucks on it, correct. I might think that what happened is Jesus first met them in Jerusalem. And the reason Matthew and Mark implied in Mark say Galilee is maybe there was something up in Galilee, because that's where Jesus' ministry began, but I really don't know.

But I don't discount Caesar's assassination, or that the conspirators came down and spoke to the Senate and gave a speech to the people, or that the Catalunarian conspirators were executed, because I can't reconcile when and where certain things took place. The survivors of the Titanic disagreed with one another on whether the Titanic broke in half before sinking, or it went down in tag, and they were eyewitnesses. But we don't conclude that the Titanic didn't sink.

We just have these discrepancies, but we still get the gist of what happened. All right. Well, we can tell that the main thrust of what's been discussed here, I think if I could summarize a little bit, Dr. Lycona, that you game up with facts and methods.

So there's four facts that you're relying upon to accommodate the most plausible exploratory, or the explanatory power, less at hoc, and you had the criteria for the plausibility and whatnot. And then Dr. Friesen, you said that there are central claims to Christianity that fall outside of history, and that some more minor events in the New Testament may fall within the historical method, but you allege that they could actually be proven false and true. So it doesn't help the case.

So with that, I'd like to invite questions from the audience. This is the real fun part, not to take anything away so far, but we'd like to hear from you. And if you could make your ways down to the microphones, we'll start there and interspersed them with some questions here.

Okay, maybe start with a live question. I'll go to the one on the screen in a minute. Is there anybody ready? Waiting for the brave souls to come up to the mics.

Don't be shy unless everybody texted their questions. So maybe we'll go back to the text question and then come back to the audience. Okay, the question directed for Dr. Lycona, is hallucination really one of the two leading hypotheses for the resurrection? It seems like an agreed upon lie by all the writers of the gospels is more in line with what many atheists would espouse.

Are there other hypotheses for the resurrection and what are their significant shortcomings? Okay, so, yeah, believe it or not, it is the leading alternative hypothesis. And when I say this, I'm saying this is what scholars offer. Honestly, I don't know of any scholar out there who would say that the gospel authors were in this conspiracy to lie about the whole thing.

I don't know if it's a single scholar who would say that. Now maybe someone outside the field of history or New Testament studies would say it, but I don't know of any scholar who would say it. The last part of that, are there any other hypotheses for the resurrection? Yeah, there's like George Nicklesburg of Harvard.

I don't know if he's still Harvard, but he would say that resurrection was a metaphor that just signified that God had vindicated Jesus in heaven, just like he vindicates every Jewish martyr and Jesus is the most recent one. Well, I think that's the most easily refuted one out there. First of all, you got to show some evidence for it, not just say it.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, 20 says Christ is the first fruits of those who sleep. In other words, he's the first to be raised from the dead with the resurrection body, and then three verses later, and he says, well, each in his own order, Christ, the first fruits, after that, those who belong to Christ, the followers of Jesus act as coming. So Jesus first for resurrection and then all his followers when he returns.

So Jesus isn't the most recent Jewish martyr to stand in a long line who was verified. And there are others, but I mean, they're just weak. Do you have anything to add? Well, I mean, the gospel of Matthew gives us one that the body is stolen.

So we would have advocates for that. Yeah, maybe in the past. But as far as I know today, I couldn't name a single scholar who says that fraud was involved, that the disciples were lying or stole the body.

I don't know if a single scholar would say that. Gary Habermas is actually done bean counting on this and he says, you know, it's accepted by virtually 100% of scholars in the relevant fields that the disciples actually believed the risen Jesus had appeared to them. So you have to account for those and they do in various ways, but at least they would acknowledge those experiences that convinced them.

So they weren't to see it. Well, if I leave it there and go to the last question, the first person out there, go ahead. This is directed to Dr. Friesen.

Concerning God told me to marry you. I know of two couples in which both parties got direct personal revelations, audible, visual and situational, from God to marry each other. But my own parents and my good friends, Winston and Christina, Fiance.

My question is, if several people have consistent divine personal revelations, do the personal revelations become verified? Yes. Did everybody hear that? Okay, so the question was back to the guy told me to marry her or him question. So if that happened, can that be verifiable or considered verifiable is his question? Well, I hope they're happily married.

I would submit to those individuals that if you are making your choice on that basis alone, you probably will have some second guessing. In other words, it would be surprising if that voice from God didn't confirm the intention that you may already have felt that I can't speak to the individual situation. But I think in the manner that I am deploying the term verification, I wouldn't take that to the verification in a sort of strictly scientific context.

If God tells me to marry somebody, then I go and approach that person and she says, oh yeah, God told that to me also. Well, then you can set the date for the wedding at least. But it doesn't satisfy me.

I'm just a skeptic for those sorts of things. Now, the voice of God speaks to people in all kinds of different ways. And I wouldn't want to suggest to such happily married couples that what they experienced wasn't true and genuine and meaningful.

Simply that it isn't the kind of thing I would admit into, well, a court of law, for instance. God told me to divorce you, you wouldn't pass the test to a department of law either. So, yeah, I mean, those are interesting.

I mean, clearly those sorts of experiences are held. Just like the first century Christians really genuinely had experiences. I don't disagree with Dr. LaCoto on that point.

That there was something that there was some kind of transformative experience. Hall particularly had one. So, I'm just suggesting that the nature of that kind of experience of private revelation is difficult to rise to the level of verification.

I hope that helps a little bit. One may respond. Yeah, sure.

I agree with them actually. Without hearing the details of the two things that you gave. Now, I had an old friend back when we lived in Virginia Beach, Mike Kowoski.

And he and his wife, Rebecca, had an experience like that. They hated each other. They worked with each other.

They hated each other. I mean, it was just they robbed each other the wrong way. And Mike told me that one morning he woke up and he was spending some time reading scriptures and praying.

And he said, though God spoke to him and said, I want you to marry Rebecca. And he said, oh, you got to be kidding. I don't want to do that.

But he just really felt it. He goes into work that day and he passes by Rebecca and she's crying. He says, you okay? Yeah, I'm okay.

And then he ends up asking her out at one point. And she goes in and she says, I got to confess to you why I was crying. Because God had just told me sitting there that he wanted me to marry you.

So, I look at that and I say, she, well, there's no sense. There's no scientific way of verifying that. But the coincidence seems to me to be good enough to say, I mean, I would ask her to marry me at that point if I had that.

We often just say for ourselves on that one. Let's go over there. Jason, number two.

So, I have two questions. The first is rather minor. And it addresses whether or not these claims are verifiable.

You've done a great job of presenting textual claims and textual evidence. But I'm wondering what your physical or material evidence is for these claims. That comes from me personally as an archaeologist.

I'm very rooted in a material culture background. But more importantly, I'm interested in the second half of what this talk was about, which is, does it matter? You're addressing a group of academics who are very aware of the process that goes into constructing a religion. And at least since the Reformation, the major issue in the Christian faith has been faith, not necessarily knowledge and scientific evidence.

So, what does it mean for a modern society to care whether or not these claims are verifiable? And what is the role of faith? Well, in your history, I'm guessing, right? No, I'm asking both of you, actually, from a classicist and a classical archaeologist. I'm sure Dr. Friesen can address this as well. You want to go first? Well, I mean, from archaeological evidence, there is none.

But on the other hand, I mean, just what kind of evidence would we really expect to have? I mean, so, you know, we don't know where the tomb is, and so we can't verify an empty tomb. So, you know, those are really things that are beyond... You know, I don't expect that that's going to change any time in the near future. But in terms of how it matters, and I tried, did try briefly to speak to this at the end, because I think, for many Christians, evidence matters a lot.

But I did try just briefly to articulate my own worry about undue recourse to evidence. And, in fact, it might just be that, you know, a self-perception or an understanding of Christianity, that does not hang and fall on one's ability to demonstrate the scientific nature of the beliefs that one holds, is actually potentially a liberating moment for people, potentially, right? What I try to argue or what I try to suggest is that, conversely, the real core of what is in the Nicene Creed and what sort of stands at the heart of historical Christianity is just not part of this kind of field of inquiry. And I suspect that some Christians will find that to resonate with experience, right? That what convinces people of the resurrection is not something that we can point to scientifically.

Well, I would answer about the archaeological evidence for the resurrection. We don't have an archaeological evidence for a lot of things. So, for example, when Alexander the Great finished his conquest and went into India, he set up 12 altars, each of which were 75 feet tall.

You know, the scrap of evidence for those. When the Roman general Crassus defeated Spartacus in 71 BC, Plutarch says he built a wall that was 40 miles long in order to hem in Spartacus in his army. It may have been an exaggeration by Plutarch, but it was still a very long wall, not a scrap of that remains.

In 48 BC, you had Caesar defeated Poppy at Farsalis, where tens of thousands died, and archaeologists have never found anything. We don't even know where Farsalis was in terms of the battlefield. He had tens of thousands died.

So, we don't look for archaeological evidence to verify certain things. Most things in history are verified by documentary evidence. Now, in terms of, does it matter, you ask about faith since the reformation? Yeah, as a Protestant, I do believe that salvation is by faith, but that doesn't mean that I can't have a reasonable faith.

If you look at Paul and the book of Acts and the servants in it, they would present the truth to Christianity based on the miracles and resurrection of Jesus. So, even the apostles were preaching, hey, you can believe because this is true, and here's some evidence for it. Now, Courtney did mention doubting Thomas in his rebuttal, and, you know, there Jesus says, hey, Thomas, you've seen him believe, but blessed are those who have not seen and still believe.

Well, the term blessed there in Greek, the word is macarias. It's the same Greek word used in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, et cetera. And the Greek word does not mean that God is going to bless you or you receive a blessing because you do these things.

Macarias means joyful, free of care or concern. Many scholars today are using the term flourishing. So, in essence, what Jesus is saying to Thomas, Thomas, you've seen and yet, and you believe because you've seen, but people can flourish in their walk with Christ.

They can flourish in their Christian life without seeing. They can still believe and flourish in their faith. Good.

We're going to do one more round of the live questions and then go back to the screen. So, go ahead. Hi.

First, I'd like to say I'm Mike Lykona. It's nice to meet you in person after all this time. Eric, loud spirit.

Oh, wow. Okay. Good to meet you.

Dr. Friesen, a couple questions if you want mine. Let's just tell me. Let's just do one question.

That's okay. Okay. Do you believe, can you tell me, do you believe that Jesus sinned? And can you name one if so? I don't, I'm not qualified to answer.

I mean, does your second question illuminate that aluminum? What's your asking? I may have to allow it. Okay. Well, when the Old Testament was written, God spoke to the prophets and He gave them, that He gave them word as to certain conditions that the Messiah would fulfill so that we could recognize Him.

And imagine if one of those conditions was that the Messiah, when He came, we know that the Scripture says He would be born in Bethlehem, that He would have to come before the destruction of the Second Temple. But what if one of the conditions was that He had to be able to run a thousand miles an hour? Now that wasn't one of the conditions, but if that was a condition, that would certainly set Him apart from every other person and allow us to recognize Him if we had somebody that was born in Bethlehem that came before the destruction of the Second Temple and was able to run a thousand miles an hour, would you not agree? If you could do that. Okay.

Are you aware of the fact that one of the conditions that absolutely, positively, had to be fulfilled in the Messiah is that He had to be whole. He had to be without sin. Isaiah 53 says He would die for the sins of the people.

Now stop and think about this. All of the people. Just one second.

We want to try to avoid the lengthy questions and I think what you're getting at and correct me if I'm wrong is that the power of prophecy or the non-power of prophecy in predicting Jesus as a historical figure, are you asking the relevance of prophecy in the historical verification? No. No. Actually, that's not at the point.

Can you try to do it one sentence, let's try to do it one sentence. One condition was that He would be without sin, but the only person that the vast majority of the world accepts that has ever lived without sin, including those who do not follow Christ as apparently yourself, but the entire Muslim world, no person who's ever lived has been accepted by His enemies as to be a man without sin. Okay.

I'm just going to cut you off there until we get to be the bad guy, so I have to do that. So I'll let you respond, Courtney, and then Mike afterwards, and I'll go for you. Okay.

Thank you for your comment. Mike, do you have anything to do? Yeah, I mean, I don't know that we could verify that Jesus was without sin. I mean, scripture says that I don't know that that's capable of verification, though.

Thank you for your question. We're going to go over there and then up to the screen. Quick question.

What would it take for you to take the other person to you? For Dr. LaCote, I know you mentioned in your book, but both of you just comment on what would it take for you to accept the resurrection and for you to reject the resurrection? I think that's a really useful and interesting way to frame the question. I should just, I mean, just as a point of clarification, in the comments that I have made this evening, I have been careful to steer away from rejecting the resurrection, merely that the resurrection is not the sort of thing that lends itself to verification. So that is to say that the evidence that we have available to us doesn't amount to the, for me, to the level of confidence of, say, the execution of Jesus under Pontius Pilate.

So, on that point, I mean, I don't think Dr. LaCote and I are in fact necessarily sitting on two opposite poles here in the pit. We agree on the same bedrock, historical material, and we agree that it would be nice to be able to explain how you get from a dead Jesus in the grave to the conviction held by many people within a few years of his death that he was risen from the dead. It's simply a matter of, as the debate was framed tonight, around whether or not the linkage between those two points is verifiable, and that's really part of the disagreement in that I just don't think that the evidence that's available to us allows us to claim that kind of verification in a strictly academic historical sense.

So in order to take Dr. LaCote's position, I guess what it would request, so let's get to try to finally answer your question if I may, although I don't know that I'm quite able to, but in order to take the view that the resurrection is verified, I would want to have an unbiased, independent source. So in other words, as you've seen over the course of our discussion, I think that the testimony of Christians, even if it includes several early, presumably independent ones like Paul Mark and the gospel writers, those sources just aren't detached enough from what they're describing in order to count the verification. Well, yeah, but Paul, he was biased at the time of writing because he was a Christian, but he was biased in the opposite direction when he had the appearance, he was actually hostile to Christianity.

So if we actually had a document from a non-Christian that said, hey, Jesus rose, I saw, I'm a non-Christian, we would think such a person was a moron and not a good source. So I think with Paul, we kind of had the best, very best we could ask for. In terms of what it would take me to say that Jesus didn't rise from the dead, I would want to see it when you subject it to strictly controlled historical method use in arguments of inference to the best explanation.

I'd want to see a hypothesis that was significantly superior to the resurrection hypothesis or for the woman who asked the question and she likes arching artifacts, I would want to have archeologists discover an ossuary, a bone box in Jerusalem and it says, Jesus, the son of Joseph on it, when you open it up, there's the bones of a crucified victim and with a manuscript on it that says in Greek, we fooled the world until today and it's signed by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and I'd want to be able to verify that those were the bones of Jesus, so if he put to do that, then I would give up the Christian faith for sure. Fair enough. We'll get right to you and we're going to go to the screen for this one.

In what, okay, this one is for both of you, so both pay attention here. In what balance should the verifiable and the unverifiable aspects of Christianity be held? In other words, you both stated it matters if we can verify the Christian claims, but how much verification is necessary and or reasonable in the personal faith of an individual to accept Christianity is truth. Dr. Friesen? Well, toward the latter part of this question, I can't, I mean, I can't answer on the basis of any individual, so that's very much up to the questioner.

What I try to do is to frame the discussion around a couple of historical points of reference, notably the Nicene Creed, and to try to make the point that those central Christian notions are really not verifiable. Now, whether they are reasonable is a different question entirely, right? Do they make sense? And that's something that could be pursued and is worth pursuing further. We won't get to that tonight, but does the theological motions that are presented in the Nicene Creed stand up to your or my own experience of the world as we see it? And those are questions that are worth thinking about, but again, they're not part of this process of verification.

They're out to sorts of things that we amass evidence for. For many people, they're deeply personal. For others, they're philosophical and ethical.

And so that very, I think that very much comes down to the individual who is asking for. Yeah, I agree with the entirely. It's just it's impossible to verify theological claims.

I mean, you don't put your laptop in an MRI in order to diagnose why it's running slowly because the MRI is the wrong tool for that and you just can't use historical tools to verify a theological claim. There's just no way to do that. For me, whether Christianity is true makes a big difference because if you are going to be a true and authentic follower of Jesus, it requires sacrifice at times.

And in many places in the world, it means persecution and even martyrdom. So I don't want to just embrace a worldview, Christianity or whatever, because that's the way I was raised. I want to embrace it because it's true, especially if it's going to be costly to me.

So for me, that's why the something like the resurrection of Jesus is important. I may not be. I can't verify that Jesus death at the tones for my sin.

I can't verify that Jesus is seated right now at God's right hand or that he's God's divine, uniquely divine son. But if Jesus rose from the dead, I think I'm rational to believe in virgin birth because if Jesus rose, virgin birth is child's play. And if he rose, then his claims about himself were probably true.

And the message that he taught about salvation is probably true if he rose from the dead. So I don't have to prove those kinds of things, but if Jesus' resurrection probably occurred, I'm certainly rational in believing those theological claims that I can't prove. Good.

Let's go to what might be our last question. Okay. I'm finding myself a little bit questioning about your standard of evidence, what you consider as evidence.

For example, I have been told that there is absolutely no archaeological evidence that could be connected to the Peloponnesian Wars. We have only one source for knowledge of that, namely Thucydides. And here with the Gospels, we have at least four or five different sources.

And I also want to make one slight correction. In 1 Samuel, Ahemelik is just one of over 80 priests. And Abhiyathar was another of those priests.

Let's pick your question. But my question goes back to you. And then also I find myself questioning you saying it's so personal.

But when we look at, for example, I think of Daniel 9, there's a prophecy in there where the book is known before Jesus was alive. But it prophesies concerning the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. So how is that exactly? Is that Daniel 9? 926b through 27, yes.

Referencing the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Well, referencing the Jewish revolt 6680 and it includes the destruction of the temple. Okay, so you've managed to slide three in there, so I'll go back.

I think it was a reverse order. I mean, clearly the content of the Danielic prophecy is going to be disputed whether it's a road. Abhiyathar was the son of Himalak and doesn't appear later.

That of course doesn't solve the problem that I raised, but you're right. He seems to be identified as high priest in Mark, which is not found in 1 Samuel. I grant that.

And then, yeah, the first question, I mean, you're right, the Peloponnesian War. You are not technically correct. I wouldn't say that that Thucydides is the only source.

That's what I was told. Yeah, so, well, I mean, we have a lot of other ancient references and contemporary references of Peloponnesian War from literature of the time period. Ranging from, you know, material that we find in dramatic productions in Athens, Aristotle's colonies, we will have xenophonic others who will have references to it.

But you're absolutely right that when we're reconstructing anything from the ancient world, much of it is very difficult to verify. And we're coming off there. Almost.

But on that point, we're in agreement that historical reconstruction of ancient events is very, very, very difficult with what the material is. Yeah, good. And you're taking a pass around.

Okay. All right, let's go over here for a last question. My question relates to the power of personal testimony, and I'll try to make this quick.

In the ancient church, there was an awful lot of martyrdom among the Christians, and the ways that they were killed was often, like, brutal. And then there's even Christians say, like, Dr. Lupunu was saying that they're martyred for their faith. My question is basically claims of the ancient martyrdom and modern claims of, like, healings, you know, miraculous healings and stuff.

It seems like that's something that could be verified. So is there, are the ancient stories of martyrdom? Is that a type of evidence? And are modern accounts of miracles? Does that, can that stand as evidence? All ancient martyrdom of Christians shows is that they believed that what they believed is true. That's all it shows.

They probably wouldn't go through all that suffering for something they knew was false. All the early Christians, okay? Now, and same thing with Christians being martyrdom today. It's no different than jihadists who are given their lives for their cause or anyone who's given their life.

It just shows that they are dying for what they believe is true, but it doesn't mean what they believe is true. Now, I will say, though, for the disciples it's a little bit different because they would have known what they were suffering for was true or false. And liars make poor martyrs.

And this is why the majority of scholars today, given the evidence we have, that they were proclaiming that Jesus had been raised and they were willing to suffer continuously and willing to die for that proclamation as led scholars to conclude that they were not only saying Jesus had appeared to them, they actually believed it. Can I answer that? Okay. Would you be willing to address one of those questions? Yeah, so I think I don't disagree with the point in general to say that I think that it is certainly the case that the people who became convinced of this, of the resurrection, were, had a strong enough conviction that many of them were willing to die for it.

Now, we should add that the evidence for when these people start getting martyrdom comes quite a bit later. For some of them, for some of them, what we know about Peter and Paul is even quite murky and, you know, we have reports and acts and so forth. And we've got John who talks about death of Paul, right? Yeah, so Peter, I mean, yes, okay, fair enough.

So we know these people are going to die. But I think I agree with Dr. Lakota that being a willing martyr is not sufficient for me to rise to the level of verification for what the martyr believed that motivated him or her to act in that way. And if, because if it was, then we would need to treat similarly all faith traditions, which have inspired martyrs, right? So we're told, you know, I mean, we've already, Dr. Lakota mentioned, you know, jihadists, and I think that's a very good example, right? They have what we're told after, according to a certain promise of a reward in the afterlife, a certain number of virgins that they'll receive in paradise.

I feel one of not comfortable to suggest that their conviction to die for that belief establishes or verifies the reality of that belief. I understand. That's a much, much further removed from the actual origin of his mom.

Right, yeah. And so Dr. Lakota's point is, is, is well taken, that these are, you know, that these are first, there are people in the first generation of Jesus followers who, who seem to have given their, or who seem to have died as martyrs. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's not deniable.

All right. One more question here, and then we'll try to get the one on the slide, and then we're going to have to start wrapping it up because we do have a hard stop to give the room back to the University of Michigan. You have heard also a theory about the resurrection of Jesus wasn't actually dead that they thought he was, but he wasn't.

So I was curious if that actually is a compliment theory and what evidence there is that Jesus was actually dead. All right, fair question. I'm only aware of maybe a handful of scholars who have posited that since 1985.

One is barber-tearing, and she basically says Jesus survived his death. He was put in the tomb, and they used aloe and herbs to heal him. And he came back to perfect health, and then he married Mary Magdalene, and they went off to France and, you know, had children.

But nobody accepts that today except barber-tearing. That's stuff for the Finche Code, not scholarship. There are kind of others, maybe a handful, but they're typically not scholars in the relevant field.

They're philosophers who would say, well, maybe Jesus survived his death. And they're of the uber-skeptical ill. And again, there's not even a handful of those since 1985.

The reason the overwhelming majority of the American census of scholars would say to the end of Jesus God, there's numerous reasons. Number one, it's multiple attested and independent sort, multiple independent sources, early sources, unsympathetic sources like Josephus, Tacitus, Lucian, Marabar, Sorapian. You've got the fact that the chances of surviving crucifixion are extremely small.

We only have one testimony from antiquity of someone being surviving crucifixion. And that's Josephus who mentions during the fall of Jerusalem, he saw three of his friends crucified. He went to his friend, the Roman commander Titus.

And as a favor, he asked Titus to spare their lives. Titus ordered that all three be removed from their crosses and provided the best medical care Rome had to offer. In spite of that, two of the three still died.

So even if Jesus was removed prematurely and medically assisted, his chances of survival were next and no. They were very small. Moreover, there's no evidence that Jesus was removed while a library provided any medical care whatsoever, much less Rome's best.

Historians have to go with probabilities, not remote possibilities. So given all the evidence we have for Jesus' death by crucifixion, without good evidence to the contrary, the historian at least must conclude that Jesus was crucified and that the process killed him. After freezing this woman theory, what do you think of it? I will... Hurry us along? With one sentence, the Romans knew how to kill people I think.

All right, so this one is back to you, Dr. Friesen. You talk about how people came to believe Jesus. How would you describe the presence of Christianity not dying out? But instead, you see it expand and spread as we see it now.

If the resurrection was not a fact, why is it such a debated topic now? Yeah, so the gospel message of Christianity, which entailed the resurrection of Jesus, was profoundly transformative and I suspect radically transformed the way people thought about the world and the way that they imagined that God was going to bring justice amidst the Roman imperial regime, which they weren't fond of, in Judea and Galilee, and that Jesus, the notion that Jesus had raised from the dead convinced many of these people that the end of the age was now emerging and that God's kingdom was at hand. And it provided them a hope that they themselves would be raised at the end of the age when the world attracts faith and conviction all around the world. And so it doesn't become a surprise that it attracted attention and conviction in the first century.

I'm not sure if I've fully answered the question. I think I'll skip the last part. I don't know that people debate all kinds of non-facts, whether they're in the news or otherwise.

And so I guess that is not the new one. I don't know if I can comment or respond to that. Sure.

Well, I wouldn't use that as an argument for the truth of Christianity or the resurrection. I think we could say the same thing about Islam. And you could say, well, if Muhammad didn't actually have those revelations of the Quran, then how do you explain Islam's explosive growth to where it is today? Well, great.

We're up against the time crunch. But before we leave, could either of you please maybe tie up any loose ends or any last closing comments? And I'll pitch it to you, Dr. Friesen, if you want to. We'll pray for you later.

Thank you. Well, thank you again for all of you who've made the journey out on this late evening. And just to reiterate that I am here on campus just down the road there.

And my email address is readily accessible. So the conversation doesn't have to stop now. If we'll continue in the fall semester, we'll be offering a course on the New Testament where you can come and look at these things for yourself.

So I'd be very happy to talk with any of you about that. We have, in fact, some students here that I can see who have taken related courses. So don't hesitate to furnish yourself with the opportunities that Arizona provides you to study.

All kinds of matters related to Christianity, including really these central topics that we have talked about today. So my class will spend quite a bit of time looking at what kind of evidence we have for the historical Jesus and his first followers. So I'll just have a few just prepared remarks and then I'll pass it back.

So the Gospel of Matthew reports that when Jesus appeared to his disciples in Galilee after the resurrection, among those who saw him physically and even literally, quote, some worship, but some doubted, end quote. So for this crowd, even presented with the most conclusive of evidence, verification did not achieve a successful outcome. And from where we stand, of course, nothing approaching that level of demonstration will be available.

Indeed, what I have proposed is that for those Christian claims that have been most cherished throughout history, verification is rarely ever successful or accessible, rather. So consider Paul's programmatic statement about the Gospel of Romans chapter 1. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed through faith and for faith.

Now Christians have consistently maintained that Jesus' self-giving death broke down the barriers that divide humans. And through the resurrection, God demonstrated that love, justice, peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation have the final say. In these we must hope reside life-giving and transformative power.

Perhaps then these claims, or rather these convictions, are not merely one among many, but rather are so fundamental as to be the basis against which all other claims must be assessed. So Christians might do well to attend to the comments of the 20th century Protestant theologian Karl Barth commenting on Romans chapter 1 verse 16. Quote, The Gospel is not a truth among truths, rather it is a question mark set against all truths.

The person who apprehends its meaning is removed from all strife within the whole, even with existence itself. Anxiety concerning the victory of the Gospel, that is Christian apologetics, is meaningless because the Gospel is the victory by which the world is overcome. Thank you.

Now I just want to thank you for having me and Courtney. I've enjoyed my time with you last night. I've enjoyed this tonight, so thanks.

So in response to one thing he just said there in Matthew 28 where at the resurrection, afterward when they went to Galilee, and it's of some belief, but others doubted, the word that's used there is this hodzel, which means to have two thoughts. It's the same word used in Matthew when Jesus is walking on water and invites Peter to come. He's walking on water and then he begins the sink and asks Jesus to save him.

And so Jesus pulls him up and says, why did you doubt this hodzel? He's having two separate thoughts. It's like, hey, this is really cool. I believe in you.

But then he gets out there and says, but how am I doing this? And he starts the sink. He's having two thoughts. So if you think about this, my both of my parents have died within the last five years, but wouldn't they came in the auditorium right now and they walked up on stage and said, hey, I'm proud of you what you're doing here.

Nice job tonight. I mean, it's like, wait a minute, you're dead. But it's like, I see that.

It's this hodzel. It's thinking two separate thoughts. Luke uses a different term.

He uses opposites, unbelieving. When he says, out of joy and amazement, they were unbelieving when they saw Jesus. It's like the walk off how run in the bottom of the night in the seventh day of the late series.

Unbelievable. That's what's going on here. I think in Matthew 28.

Now, I just want to reiterate why the resurrection is important to me is because all of us have our idiosyncrasies. I want to mind as I'm a second guesser. I doubt a lot.

And it's because it's so important in our worldviews if it's possible that eternity hangs in the balance of what we do with God and what we believe. And Jesus claimed, I think, to be the only way. If that's true, then well, I want to know it's true.

And it's not just a matter for me of believing because the Bible said that if I'm going to have to make sacrifices in my life, if I have to be willing to be persecuted and even martyred, I want to know, I want to have some confidence that what I believe is true. And so that's why the resurrection and evidence is important to me. Does it matter? Yes.

Because if Jesus rose from the dead, and that means I probably was made in God's image, that I have value, that there is real meaning to life. And for each and every one of us on a practical basis, if we really are that valuable because we've been made in God's image and he loves us, as Jesus said, then we can trust and we can pray. For college students here, you can ask God to lead you to a good spouse.

I did, and I've been married for over 30 years. I've married a really great woman. But man, I passed it a lot.

I prayed a lot and asked God to help me select this spouse. And I'll tell you, it made a world of difference to my parents when they were dying, to have that confidence. Now, they weren't dealing with it as a psychological crutch.

They really believed that Christianity was true. And if Jesus rose from the dead, that belief was well founded. So I hope these two men have proven the fact that the New Testament is studied by serious scholars.

And throughout the world, and throughout the country, there are serious scholars from a fundamental Christian to a, yeah, a fundamental atheist. So you have everything in between. So you don't go to the University of Victoria.

No, no, I'm not, I was using this hand gesture randomly. Or subconsciously, I hope not, though. Okay, so you don't go debating the top Muslim apologist, Shabir Ali, or the rockstar celebrity New Testament scholar, part Airmen.

You don't go to get your PhD at the University of Minnesota and then on to Oxford and then come and be one and only premier New Testament scholar here at the University of Arizona. Unless you're a serious scholar, so there's serious men studying these things. And so I hope that that's a takeaway for you today.

If you like this event, if you like Veritas, it's not only New Testament scholars from the classics or humanities, it's also from all, all different kinds of areas of study. So you'll have biologists or philosophers, mathematicians. And so I hope you come back and check us out again.

If you look at your program here on the back, if you, if you were engaged today, many of you are still here. So I'm assuming you're engaged. You may want to continue the conversation at these follow-up sessions.

They'll be smaller. They'll get to where you're at and be able to really ask questions. So these gentlemen, I think, offer maybe to hang around for a few minutes afterwards if you didn't get a chance to ask your question.

Maybe we maybe kicked out of this room, but we'll have the Foyer out there and then the entrance area. I wanted to thank at this time Veritas Forum. There's a whole committee.

We've been planning this for about 10 months or so. I want to thank the sponsors that made this happen. And last of all, a big thank to Dr. Mike Lacona and Dr. Courtney Friesen.

Thanks for joining us today. If you'd like to learn more about the work and ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona, visit RisenJesus.com, where you can find authentic answers to genuine questions about the reliability of the Gospels and the resurrection of Jesus. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast, visit Dr. Lacona's YouTube channel, or consider becoming a monthly supporter.

This has been the Risen Jesus Podcast, a ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona.