My pastor
recommended The Defense Never Rests
some time ago as a kind of Lutheran alternative (or perhaps supplement) to C.S.
Lewis. I am rather new to Christianity,
having spent five decades, more-or-less, as an atheist. On its face, I was skeptical of the idea that
the author, Craig A. Parton, had succeeded in making a substantial proof of the
truth claims of Christianity. If anyone
had succeeded in doing that, I presumed, it would probably have made news. While Mr. Parton’s arguments haven’t entirely
shaken me from that initial suspicion, his book is nevertheless a worthy effort.
The book divides
into roughly four sections. The first is
a sort of religious biography of the author himself. Christian readers may find much in this
section to relate to. Even as a recent convert,
I found material there that struck a chord.
However, if you are a hardened atheist and looking for the meat of
Parton’s arguments, you might do well to tear the book approximately in two,
and give the first half to some Christian relative – preferably one that has
run away screaming from a liberal church.
The second section
is a brief compendium of positions regarding apologetics in the abstract. If one has an interest in apologetics as a discipline, this section provides
some good introductory material.
The third section is
the substance of the author’s argument, which I will talk about at more length.
The fourth section
consists of ruminations about alternative apologetic material for those more
likely to be persuaded by their emotions than their intellects – people whom Parton
calls, somewhat awkwardly, “the tender-minded”.
There are also a
number of appendices, as one would expect in a scholarly work.
My primary
interest is in critiquing Parton’s core arguments and contrasting them with my
own experience of faith. I will
summarize Parton’s arguments for those who have no intention of reading the
book, but no summary is really adequate.
By all means, buy the book and read it for yourself. Then you can skip my insultingly brief
summary.
Parton begins
boldly, making it clear that he is going to make his case for Christianity
entirely on the secular naturalist’s terms.
He sets out to prove the reliability of the Gospels as historical
documents, showing that their provenance is as good as, or better than, most
other documents from the ancient world.
He then examines the writers of the Gospels as witnesses, showing, by
various means, that they do not exhibit the characteristics of liars. On this basis, Parton concludes that
resurrection itself is proven to have occurred – by the standard of being
reasonable though not beyond all possible doubt. From the resurrection, he concludes Christ’s
divinity, the veracity of his statements, and, by extension the truth of scripture
as a whole. It is a good case, overall. It might prevail in front of a jury of a
dozen average, unbiased people – if such a group of people could be found.
Personally, while
I find the arguments reassuring, my own faith springs from other sources. I give the author credit for attempting to
take on materialism on materialism’s own ground, but, having spent a very long
time in that camp, I can still imagine the objections from that quarter very
clearly. While I have sworn an oath
never to advocate on the Devil’s behalf (as Mr. Parton probably has himself) I
don’t believe it is an affront to God to speculate about the Devil’s
counterarguments. With respect, then, I
will now dust off my atheist hat and put it on – being careful to remove it
again once I am done, and make my closing comments from a much more comfortable
Christian perspective.
First, there is a
principle in inductive logic, dating back at least to David Hume, that proving extraordinary
claims requires extraordinary evidence.
If I tell my wife I parked the car in the garage it is reasonable for
her to believe me based merely on the fact that I do not lie as a matter of
course. On the other hand, if I tell her
I parked an elephant in the garage, it would be prudent for her to have a look. From any non-believer’s perspective, Christ’s
resurrection is certainly an extraordinary claim. By the usual inductive standards it should
require a bit more than a lack of evidence of deliberate deceit. Even if the documents and the witnesses look
quite good, the evidence is probably insufficient to overcome the sheer
uniqueness of the event. I say “probably”
because, to the best of my knowledge, this standard doesn’t have a quantifiable
test.
The way the
standard is supposed to work is that the “strange” assertion has to compete
against all the existing “knowledge” that its acceptance would overturn. So, if you want to prove that Santa Claus
exists, you have to overturn your audience’s present knowledge about the flight
characteristics of reindeer. You have to
persuade them that their parents, who may have eventually admitted to buying them
Santa’s Christmas gifts, were either delusional or liars. Et cetera.
By that standard, an intelligent atheist with what he assumes is a
fairly extensive knowledge of how the material world works will simply balk at
Parton’s argument. Evidence just
sufficient to convince a jury to acquit or convict will probably not do.
Now, balking at Parton’s
argument certainly doesn’t disprove
Christ’s resurrection either. All manner
of events occurred in the ancient world that we cannot now prove happened. The evidence to either prove or disprove them
conclusively has eroded with time. What
we are left with in this particular instance is a miserable epistemic dichotomy. If you begin with a Christian worldview, the
body of evidence for Christ’s resurrection looks fairly conclusive. If you begin with a secular naturalist
worldview – it just isn’t enough.1
Another argument Parton
offers for the resurrection that falls a bit flat is Frank Morrison’s examination
of the respective motivations of the Romans, the Jewish religious leaders, and Christ’s
disciples. Morrison argues that hiding Christ’s body would have been
counterproductive for all three parties.
It would have undermined the authority of both the Romans and the Jews
(the Sanhedrin) to give credence to the idea of Christ’s divinity. The disciples, on the other hand, would have
only helped to make themselves martyrs to a religion they would have known to
be grounded in a lie. Therefore, since
none of these parties would have profited from hiding the body, Christ must
have actually risen. Sadly, this
argument is simply a false dilemma.
Since the first of three Jewish revolts against the Romans occurred a
mere thirty-three years after the Crucifixion, it is reasonable to assume that
there were people in Judea in Christ’s time who would have been well-motivated
to undermine the credibility of both the Romans and their Jewish
collaborators. While we have no record
that Jewish revolutionaries removed the body, we cannot reasonably expect such
a thing to have been carefully recorded.
We have no proof, but the mere possibility is enough the break the power
of the dilemma.
Beyond the
credibility of the resurrection itself, I would expect determined atheists to
have difficulty with Parton’s sudden leap from the resurrection to the veracity
of Christ’s words. It does not follow
that a being with supernatural powers (or perhaps a being who has merely been acted upon by supernatural powers) must
always tell the truth. I do not claim
the Greek gods were anything but myth, but the people who believed that those gods
existed also believed that they were profligate liars. Here on Earth, power and truthfulness often
have quite an inverse relationship. I certainly
do not believe Christ lied, but I do
believe there is no strictly logical connection between supernatural power and
veracity. Satan, who has considerable
power, is the king of deceptions.
Linking Christ’s resurrection to the necessity of his truthfulness is
probably an unintentional instance of begging
the question. Again, I think the
whole persona of the trinity is so well ingrained within the lifelong
Christian’s mind that he leaps rather quickly from the resurrection to the
veracity of Christ’s words, then to the veracity of scripture in its entirety –
but for the non-believer new proofs are required at each step. One can believe in the resurrection without,
by logical necessity, believing the
whole of Genesis.
I will take my
atheist hat off now, take an aspirin, and pray that I have not incurred the
Lord’s displeasure. My final objection
fits well enough within the Christian sphere.
Before Mr. Parton
begins his case proper, he dispenses with the idea of a sort of “try-it-you’ll-like-it”
approach to Christianity. I will not
argue with the cited philosopher, Anthony Flew, because a penetrating
discussion of his position would be an essay in itself.2 In any case, I think I can make my point
without resorting to that. I believe
that by rejecting the “try-it-you’ll-like-it” approach entirely, Parton is, at
least by implication, narrowing the path to belief a little too much. Although he goes on to discuss alternate
approaches to faith for the “tender-minded” near the end of the book (via music
or literature, for example) I was left with the impression that he believes the
historical/legal approach is somehow better or more complete than any other. I do not believe this is true.
The reason for my
own belief, as best as I can express it, is disappointingly circular. I
believe because I can. Let me unpack
that. If you told me I had to believe in
Santa Claus to make everybody happy and to fit in with the world around me, I
could easily pretend to. I could figure
out what reality + Santa Claus would have to be like, and talk to believing adults
the way that I currently talk to believing four-year-olds. But I could not actually believe in Santa Claus. There are no hoof prints on my roof. The stocks of toys on the shelves in the
local Walmart dwindle suspiciously in late December. Sure, I could act the part, eventually quite
automatically – but belief is not a choice. My experience of Christianity is nothing like
that. Somehow, midway through the
Catechism I attended with my wife, I simply found that I believed. In the beginning,
I had only suspended disbelief – the
way one does when one is watching a movie.
Then, there it was, unbidden and unexplained, – faith. Now, this sort of
phenomenon does not fit neatly into either of Parton’s categories. I had certainly not been “tough-minded,”
bowing only to substantial evidence, but I hadn’t been “tender-minded” either –
bowing to some aesthetic event. The Holy
Spirit, in my case, planted faith inside my head with all the awe-inspiring
drama of a mailman putting a letter in a mailbox. It was just there – an anomalous presence in an otherwise fairly
analytical life. Now, with guidance this
kernel of belief has gone on to make all sorts of far-reaching changes to the
way I understand the world, and I struggle with all sorts of problems like any
other wretched sinner – but faith itself wasn’t something that I put there or
could have put there by my own effort.
This is not merely the regurgitation of Lutheran doctrine – it is my actual experience.
What is important
about my experience of faith is that it is utterly worthless as a piece of
evidence for anyone but myself. The
contents of my head are not open for public scrutiny. A materialist skeptic could shrug my
statements off as some mild form of mental illness – as a delusion pure and
simple. I could not prove such a person
wrong. It is perfectly possible, too,
for a fellow Christian to doubt my faith.
None of that concerns me very much.
If I cared, I could as easily impugn a skeptic’s motives for being
dismissive. It is a common enough human
tendency to bolster one’s own beliefs by attributing the beliefs of others to
various defects, either in themselves or in their environment. I believe what I believe. God is known to each of us individually and in
perfect silence – or he is not known at all.
From a broader
perspective, the whole project of apologetics is something of an
enigma. Surely it is a good thing to
bring people to Christ, and to strengthen our fellow Christians in their
faith. Some are drawn to that work,
which can take a variety of forms.
Different people find different obstacles to the possibility of belief, and are amenable to different kinds of
argument or persuasion. Dr. Parton seeks
to influence people with rigorous, rational minds, and there is an
audience of people who will find his words helpful – myself among them. Nevertheless, with deference to the author,
all attempts at apologetics are attended by an air of pathos. What, after all, is the apologist doing? The apologist can ultimately bring no one to faith. According to the scripture itself, only the
Holy Spirit can do that. Well, then the apologist can prepare
the ground – make the work of the Holy Spirit a bit easier. Without a doubt, apologists, teachers,
pastors, friends, and all manner of other people cultivate the soil of faith –
playing their deliberate or unwitting roles as the Holy Spirit’s instruments. Yet, whatever we may do, none of us has any
right to the smallest particle of pride.
God can plant faith in the heart of the hardest skeptic in the most
unlikely circumstances if he so chooses.
He can grow a rose in granite. Without
our help. Without breaking a sweat. The best apologist is no better than a child
bringing a badly made peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich to his father. God, I imagine, must smile at us and love us
– but more for the poignant sincerity of our effort than for our inevitably
inadequate assistance.
For
all my criticism, I personally think Parton makes a pretty good butter-and-jelly
sandwich by the meagre measure of his human capability. What more do I have any right to ask?
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1 The evidence for early human evolution
presents the same sort of case in the opposite direction: To the secular naturalist the anthropological
evidence proves the theory – but to the biblically-oriented Christian it is too
much to ask to infer a human ancestor, sometimes complete with behavior, from a
mere handful of broken and badly worn bones.
The “extraordinary evidence standard” (for lack of a better term) is not
a law of nature but simply an acknowledgement of a common heuristic. Generally speaking, people prefer to live in
a world that is reasonably explicable.
If you abandon your worldview at the slightest provocation, or worse –
fill it up with contradictions, you doom yourself to a life of unending chaos
and confusion. Thus, people are
pigheaded in their own defense. By their
nature, they prefer to “know” a coherent fabric of falsehoods than to “know”
nothing at all.
2 Briefly, Flew’s parable is a straw
man. Christians, at least since the Crucifixion,
have not asserted the demonstrable, physical presence of a “gardener,” then
retreated by degrees as evidence was found lacking. They asserted the non-corporeal, untestable omni-presence
of God from the Church’s beginning. They
did not assert this arbitrarily, to defend their weak position, but asserted it
on the sometimes quite uncomfortable basis of immutable scripture. While this presents its own philosophical problems,
it is fundamentally different from Flew’s metaphor.
