Category: Apologetics

Christmas Myths

Every year at Christmastime, you hear people trying to debunk aspects of the holiday and the biblical accounts behind it.

One of the most common allegations is that Christmas is based on a pagan holiday, and so it is really “pagan” in origin.

Not only is this particular claim made by secularists who don’t like Christianity in general, it’s also made by some in the Protestant community. Before I was Catholic, some members of my Protestant congregation didn’t celebrate Christmas because of its “unbiblical,” pagan origins.

Other allegations charge the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth with contradictions, and almost every aspect of the Christmas story and the Christmas celebration has been challenged.

So let’s take an objective look and see what the historical evidence has to say.

 

Not a Matter of Faith

First, we should point out that Jesus being born on December 25th is not a matter of faith.

Those who delight in saying that he wasn’t sometimes seem to take pleasure in the idea that they’re somehow undermining Christianity, but they’re not.

The Church may celebrate Jesus’ birth on this day, but it’s not a matter of Catholic doctrine. It’s not a teaching of the Faith but a matter of custom.

In fact, as we’ll see, there were a number of dates for Jesus’ birth proposed in the early Church, and it is still celebrated on other days in some parts of the Christian world.

For example, some Eastern Christians celebrate Christmas on January 6th.

 

December 25th?

One of the most commonly repeated claims is that Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th, and that this date was chosen to subvert a pagan holiday.

Further, it’s claimed that Jesus couldn’t have been born on this date because the Gospel of Luke reports that shepherds were out tending their flocks on the night Jesus was born (2:8). It would have been too cold for that in December, so Jesus must have been born in a warmer time of year.

This latter claim is absolute nonsense. First, winters are quite mild in Israel. Bethlehem is just six miles from Jerusalem, and the temperature in Jerusalem on December 25th ranges from an average of 55 degrees in the day to 43 degrees at night. It’s still well above freezing, even in the coldest part of the night.

Second, sheep do just fine in the cold. That’s why they’re covered in wool! As a species, sheep grew up outdoors, and they haven’t lost their cold resistance due to domestication. (If anything, humans have bred them to have even thicker wool.)

If you google “winter sheep care,” you’ll find websites advising you not to keep your sheep indoors all day (they will go crazy if they’re locked up all the time) and not to be afraid of having them outside (they’re covered in warm, water-resistant wool). You’ll also find lots of pictures of domesticated sheep casually strolling around in the snow.

Another charge I’ve seen is that Jesus couldn’t have been born in December because the shepherds had lambs in their flocks, but lambing season is in the springtime.

There are multiple problems with this. First, while some breeds of sheep lamb in the spring, other sheep breed all year round and do not have a consistent lambing season.

Second, at least in English, a sheep is still considered a lamb until it is one year old, meaning lambs could be present any time of the year, even for breeds that have a lambing season.

Thirdly, and most importantly, Luke nowhere mentions lambs. They’re just not in the text. This idea is simply a product of people’s imaginations.

Finally, the shepherds around Bethlehem do keep sheep outdoors, even on December 25th. “William Hendricksen quotes a letter dated Jan. 16, 1967, received from New Testament scholar Harry Mulder, then teaching in Beirut, in which the latter tells of being in Shepherd Field at Bethlehem on the just-passed Christmas Eve, and says: ‘Right near us a few flocks of sheep were nestled. Even the lambs were not lacking. . . . It is therefore definitely not impossible that the Lord Jesus was born in December’” (Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed., §569).

 

A Pagan Holiday?

What about the claim that the celebration of Christmas on December 25th is based on a pagan holiday?

My first reaction to this charge would be, “Well, supposing that’s true, so what?”

In the face of a popular holiday that people find objectionable, it is common to create an alternative, wholesome celebration.

For example, some Protestant churches hold “Reformation Day” or “harvest festival” celebrations as alternatives to Halloween, and some Catholics have their children dress up as saints rather than ghosts and monsters.

If early Christians decided to place the celebration of Christ’s birth in opposition to a popular pagan holiday as a way of subverting it and giving Christians an alternative, wholesome thing to celebrate, then that would be a good thing.

Subverting paganism is good, and so is providing wholesome alternatives.

Further, if Christmas was timed to oppose a pagan holiday, that would not mean that Christmas is “really” pagan. It would mean that Christmas is really anti-pagan.

When a Protestant church celebrates Reformation Day to commemorate the publication of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses on October 31, 1517, they are not “really” celebrating ghosts and monsters. They’re really celebrating the Reformation; they’re just doing it in opposition to a pop culture ghosts-and-monsters festival.

The same thing goes for those who celebrate harvest festivals. What they’re “really” celebrating is the harvest season—as an alternative to celebrating the pop culture version of Halloween.

In the same way, if Christians timed Christmas to compete with a pagan holiday, they weren’t celebrating a pagan deity. They were celebrating Christ’s birth! And by competing with a pagan holiday, they would be doing something anti-pagan.

So Christmas is just not pagan, no matter what pagans were doing on December 25th.

 

Which Pagan Holiday?

If Christmas was timed to compete with a pagan holiday, which would it have been?

Some sources try to link it with the Roman holiday Saturnalia, which was a festival in honor of the god Saturn.

For Saturnalia people would shut their businesses, wear festive clothing, have a banquet, get drunk, gamble, reverse roles (such as having masters serve slaves), give each other gifts (often inexpensive gag gifts), and elect a mock “king of Saturnalia” to preside over the festivities.

But there is a major problem claiming that Christmas is an alternative to Saturnalia. This Roman festival was originally celebrated on December 17, though by the time of the Republic it extended through December 23.

Christmas wasn’t held until after Saturnalia was over, making it a poor alternative. To be a true alternative, it would need to be taking place at the same time.

 

Sol Invictus?

Many sources link Christmas with a different holiday—the birth of Sol Invictus—that is, the sun god Sol, who was nicknamed Invictus or “the Unconquerable.” This was celebrated on December 25th.

The first thing to say is that we have no early Christian sources saying, “We decided to celebrate Christmas on December 25th in order to compete with Sol Invictus.” That means that the idea is sheer speculation, not something that we have evidence for.

It’s not even particularly good speculation, because the only thing the two celebrations have in common is the date December 25th, but just because two things happen at the same time doesn’t mean one is based on the other.

For Christians to want to compete with Sol Invictus, the latter holiday would have to be something worth competing with.

That might be the case if Sol Invictus was a major Roman god, if the December 25th celebration was a popular one, and if it was longstanding and deeply entrenched in Roman culture—thus creating social pressure for Christians to find an alternative to it.

But none of those things are true. In the first place, Sol Invictus was not a major Roman deity. The Sol wasn’t even the most popular solar deity (that would be Apollo), and scholars today don’t know a great deal about the worship of Sol because the Romans didn’t talk about him that much. He simply wasn’t that important.

Furthermore, December 25th wasn’t a major festival of the god Sol. It was a single-day celebration, but Sol had multi-day celebrations in August and October.

Neither was December 25th a longstanding festival of Sol. His oldest celebration was in August, and we have no evidence of December 25th being celebrated as the birth of Sol Invictus before A.D. 274. In fact, some scholars have argued that the celebration was instituted by the Emperor Aurelian when he dedicated a temple to Sol in that year.

Sol Invictus thus appears to be a recent holiday. It was one of Sol’s lesser holidays. And Sol was not a major deity. Christians would not have felt the need to compete with it by placing Jesus’ birth on it.

 

Christmas First?

If it is correct that Sol Invictus was not instituted until A.D. 274, then we have evidence that the timing of Christmas could not have been based on it.

The reason is that we know Christians were already celebrating on December 25th at this time.

Around A.D. 204, St. Hippolytus of Rome wrote a commentary on the book of Daniel, and in it he states: “For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th” (Commentary on Daniel 4:23:3).

We also have an ancient statue of Hippolytus—rediscovered in 1551—that has inscriptions of calendrical calculations, and this also mentions Christ’s birth as being on December 25th.

These pieces of evidence indicate that some Christians were already commemorating Christ’s birth decades before the institution of Sol Invictus.

Could the causal arrow be pointing the other way, then? Could Romans have based Sol Invictus on the date of Christmas?

 

Why December 25th?

Probably not. There was another, every obvious reason why Romans would dedicate a temple to Sol or celebrate his birth on December 25th—it was the day of the winter solstice.

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, after which the days begin growing longer, and that makes it an important day for worshippers of the sun all over the world. The same would have been true for the Romans.

Technically, because the Julian calendar is slightly off in reckoning the length of the year, the astronomical winter solstice had drifted slightly from December 25th, but the latter date was the conventionally recognized date by tradition, so it was the ritually important one in Rome.

What about Christians? Could the fact that December 25th was the winter solstice have played a role in their celebrating it as Jesus’ birth?

Malachi 4:2 says that for those who fear God, “the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings,” and early Christian authors saw this as a symbol of Jesus Christ.

One might thus speculate that, understanding Jesus as “the sun of righteousness,” they chose to place his birthday on the winter solstice for the same reason Romans did.

However, another view has been proposed in scholarly circles.

 

The Calculation Theory

The easiest date in Jesus’ life to calculate is actually the date of his death, because the Crucifixion occurred on a Friday in conjunction with Passover.

Scholars have calculated that the most likely date for it is April 3, A.D. 33, though some have argued for April 7, A.D. 30.

However, in the ancient world, many early Christian sources reckoned that it was March 25th.

One reason for this is clear: Just as December 25th was the winter solstice, March 25th—3 months later—was the spring equinox, and the timing of Passover was determined by the spring equinox.

Even if you didn’t have other knowledge to calculate with besides Jesus being crucified at Passover, it would be easy for ancients to conclude he died around March 25th, and that became the standard date.

Easter was a much more important holiday for early Christians than Christmas, and so many scholars have proposed that it was actually the date of Jesus’ death that was used to calculate the date of his birth.

How would they have done that?

 

Integral Age Theory?

We have evidence that—at least in certain periods of history—various Jewish and Christian sources held to what is sometimes called the “integral age” theory.

This is the belief that important figures like prophets and saints lived “perfect” lives—perfect in the sense of being made of complete years.

If you were such a figure, you would die on the same date that you were born on, so you lived to be exactly so many years old, with no overage or underage.

For integral age advocates, Jesus would have been born—or perhaps conceived—on the same day that he died.

This may well be why we celebrate March 25th as the Annunciation, which is commonly taken to be not only when Gabriel appeared to Mary but also the date of Jesus’ conception.

Add 9 months to March 25th, and what do you get? December 25th.

Some scholars have thus proposed that the date of Christmas was calculated from what was regarded as the day of Jesus’ death.

 

The Tradition Theory

It should be pointed out that the calculation theory is speculative, and it depends on a number of unprovable assumptions.

Just like we don’t have Christian records saying, “We set Christmas on December 25th to compete with a pagan holiday,” we also don’t have ones that say, “We calculated the date of Christmas using the date of Christ’s death.”

Further, we don’t have evidence of Christians holding to the integral age theory before the celebration of December 25th started—only afterwards. And one would have to reckon Christ’s integral age not from birth but from conception.

The calculation theory is possible, but so is another view—that early Christians simply had a tradition that this was the day on which Jesus was born.

If so, it was not the only tradition. From the late second century, we have other dates that were proposed as well, including January 6 and 10, April 19 and 20, May 20, and November 18.

The two dates that attracted the most support, though, were December 25th and January 6th, which was another date sometimes reckoned as the winter solstice, and both went on to be celebrated as Christmas in different parts of the world. (Note that January 6th is still celebrated as the feast of the Epiphany, or visit of the Magi, on the Roman calendar.)

We thus do not have a definitive way of establishing the day on which Christ was born.

However, what we can say is that it certainly could have been December 25th (the sheep do not rule that out), that we have early Christian sources supporting this date, and that it was definitely not based on a pagan holiday.

The early Christians who support December 25th do so because that is when they sincerely believed Christ was born.

 

Looking at the Gospels

While the calendar date of Jesus’ birth is something that we cannot know definitively, the Gospels present us with solid information about Jesus’ birth.

Matthew and Luke inform us that it took place in Bethlehem, and Luke states that, when the time came, Mary “gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” (2:7).

This statement has given rise to popular images of the birth, such as Christmas cards depicting Jesus being born in a barn (because of the manger) and Joseph and Mary being turned away from the ancient equivalent of motels (because of the mention of the inn)—often in a cold, snowy environment.

However, all of these images are probably wrong.

As we mentioned earlier, the average temperature in the Jerusalem area on December 25th is well above freezing, and so although snow is possible, it is unlikely.

Further, the Greek term that is translated “inn” is kataluma, and it refers to a place where people live. It’s a general term that can refer to any such place and does not mean an inn, specifically.

There is a more definite term for inn—pandocheion—and Luke uses that term in the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:34).

What most people don’t know is that a kataluma could refer to a place where people stayed within a home—a living room or guest room. Thus the “upper room” where Jesus eats the Last Supper is referred to as a kataluma (Mark 17:14, Luke 22:11).

Since Joseph’s family was from Bethlehem (Luke 2:3-4), he and Mary were likely staying with family. But there were so many family members there for Caesar’s enrollment (2:1) that the living area was full, and so Mary chose to give birth in another part of the house.

Family rooms tended to be on the upper floor of a house, so Mary would have gone to the lower part of the house, which is where animals were kept, as indicated by the presence of the manger.

What kind of animals were they? We cannot say, though cows, sheep, and goats were commonly kept.

In any event, the image of Jesus being born in a barn is probably wrong. It was likely the lower part of a house, and—specially—it was likely in a cave.

In regions with caves, Israelites often would take advantage of them by building their homes over them, and we have sources from the second century indicating that Jesus was born in a cave. Thus, the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem is celebrated as Jesus’ birthplace to this day.

 

The Visit of the Magi

Our Christmas cards often depict the magi as showing up on the night of Jesus’ birth—just like the shepherds did (Luke 2:8-10). However, they did not.

We also should mention that—despite them being referred to as “three kings”—the magi were not kings. “Wise men” comes closer, but Matthew uses the specific term magoi for them (2:1).

The magi were originally a Persian tribe with priestly duties (like the Jewish tribe of Levi), but over time the term had broadened and was used for anyone who performed ritual activities that were thought to be in some way similar to those of the magi. Thus we read about Jewish magi like Elymas bar-Jesus (Acts 13:6-8).

The magi who visited Jesus came from a country in “the East” (2:2, 9)—perhaps Babylonia or Persia—and they arrived as much as two years after Jesus’ birth.

We know this because, when they failed to report back to Herod the Great, he killed “all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi” (2:16).

The magi had told Herod when they had first seen Jesus’ star (2:7), and this would have been between one and two years earlier. (Herod likely rounded the figure up to two years in an attempt to ensure that his effort would result in the death of the correct child.)

In any event, the magi did not arrive on the night of Jesus’ birth but considerably afterward, and the Holy Family was either still in Bethlehem or had returned for another visit. Likely they were staying with the same family members, and Matthew does indicate that the magi found the baby Jesus with his mother in a “house” (2:11).

 

Conclusion

There are a large number of myths about Christmas. Some come from skeptics, such as those who say Jesus couldn’t possibly have been born on December 25th and that this date was chosen to compete with a pagan holiday.

Other myths come from Christians themselves, such as in artistic representations that tend to compress everything about Jesus’ birth into one scene, with the shepherds and the magi present together, in a barn, on a snowy evening.

Of course, it’s natural for Christians to represent the birth of our Savior in art, but we should be aware of the difference between what the Gospels actually say and when artistic license is being taken.

Myths aside, it remains true that our Savior really was born into the world, and on Christmas we honor the truth of this event.

More People Are Demanding to Be ‘Debaptized’ — Here’s What’s Wrong With That

In some places, the demand for debaptisms has been going up, which could be rather surprising.

“What’s a debaptism?” you might ask. “Is that even a thing? How can you un-pour water on someone?”

The short answer is that No, debaptism isn’t a thing, but that hasn’t stopped people from asking for it. And yes, “debaptism” is the language they use. The Pillar explains:

The Catholic Church in Belgium reported on Wednesday a sharp rise in the number of people asking for their names to be removed from baptismal registers.

The Church’s latest annual report, published on Nov. 30, said there were 5,237 such requests in 2021, compared to 1,261 in 2020 and 1,800 in 2019. …

Nevertheless, a rising movement in Europe promoting ‘debaptism’ has encouraged Catholics to write to Church authorities asking to be removed from parish baptismal records. The movement is a consortium of several political and philosophical factions among European secularists.

 

A Movement With Some History

This movement has been around for a while. For example, in 2012, NPR reported:

In France, an elderly man is fighting to make a formal break with the Catholic Church. He’s taken the Church to court over its refusal to let him nullify his baptism, in a case that could have far-reaching effects.

Seventy-one-year-old Rene LeBouvier’s parents and his brother are buried in a churchyard in the tiny village of Fleury in northwest France. He himself was baptized in the Romanesque stone church and attended Mass here as a boy. …

But his views began to change in the 1970s, when he was introduced to free thinkers. As he didn’t believe in God anymore, he thought it would be more honest to leave the Church. So he wrote to his diocese and asked to be un-baptized.

 

Problems for the Debaptizers

There are problems with what the debaptizers are asking for.

It’s not possible to un-pour water on someone after it has been poured on them. This makes debaptism physically impossible (though some atheist organizations have used tongue-in-cheek ceremonies with hairdryers).

However, it’s also not theologically possible to reverse all the effects of baptism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

Incorporated into Christ by baptism, the person baptized is configured to Christ. Baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of his belonging to Christ. No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation. Given once for all, baptism cannot be repeated. (1272)

So, when you get baptized, an indelible spiritual mark is put on your soul, and nothing can remove this.

You can commit sins that will remove the sanctifying grace that baptism gave you, but the mark remains.

And — if you change your mind and repent — you can return to grace and resume life as a Christian.

You don’t need to get baptized again. In fact, you can’t get baptized again, because the spiritual mark remains.

 

What Happens in “Debaptisms”?

What happens when a person decides he doesn’t want to be a Christian anymore and sends in a “debaptism” request? The Pillar explains:

A spokesman for the Belgian bishops’ conference told The Pillar on Dec. 1 that when the Church received a ‘debaptism’ request, ‘it is noted in the register in the margin that the person has requested to be de-registered.’

‘You are not allowed to cross out or delete an entry in an official register,’ he explained.

That makes sense, because there needs to be a record of the fact the person was baptized. Suppose that they later change their mind and decide they want to live as a Christian again. There needs to be a record of the fact that they were baptized in order to show that they shouldn’t be baptized again.

What happened in the case of Monsieur LeBouvier? NPR reports:

‘They sent me a copy of my records, and in the margins next to my name, they wrote that I had chosen to leave the Church,’ he says.

Specifically, the revised record said that he “has renounced his baptism.” But that wasn’t enough for Lebouvier, and he sued the Church to have his name removed from the records.

 

A Parallel Case

Why would he do that? Let’s consider a parallel case — getting civilly married.

People sometimes go before a government official, get hitched, and then later change their minds and decide they don’t want to be married to each other after all.

When that happens, they get a divorce, and they seem to be happy with that. They don’t demand that the state go back and erase all records of them ever having been married.

There are good reasons the state doesn’t do that. Various legal matters may turn on the fact that the two people were married at one time (taxes, child custody cases, inheritances, lawsuits, etc.), and the state needs to have a record of the marriage — even if the state now regards it as dissolved.

 

Um … Why?

So why would someone like LeBouvier want his baptismal record obliterated?

Part of it could be confusion caused by poor catechesis. He might think that the existence of a physical record of his baptism itself makes him a Christian.

This would be a case of magical thinking, however, as it isn’t writing on a piece of paper that does this.

On the other hand, it could be cantankerousness. LeBouvier could have simply resented the Church and wanted to be difficult.

Instead of being satisfied with the fact that his parish noted in the records that he had renounced his baptism, he wanted to be a jerk and make a demand that he knew could not be granted, giving him a pretext to take the Church to court.

 

A Case Resolved

Whatever his motives, he ultimately lost. In 2014, the French Supreme Court ruled against LeBouvier, which is as it should be.

It’s a simple matter of historical fact that LeBouvier was baptized. That’s true regardless of what the effects of baptism are, and as an unbeliever, LeBouvier presumably wouldn’t even believe in the indelible mark it left on his soul.

It’s just true that — on a certain date — he was baptized in a certain parish, and there can be records of that fact occurring, just like there can be records of any other historical event taking place. Shy of having a flux capacitor-equipped DeLorean, there’s no way to go back in time and undo the event.

Just as the state can keep records of things that happened — like marriages — even if their effects are regarded as now neutralized (or not, from a religious perspective), so can the Church.

 

The Effect of a Document

There is a reason that people like LeBouvier might not be satisfied with the Church simply noting in the baptismal records that they no longer consider themselves Christian.

When people get a divorce, they get a court decree — a piece of paper that says they’re no longer legally married — and even though the state hasn’t gone back and erased all records of their marriage, the decree seems to satisfy them.

But the Church doesn’t have an equivalent of this when someone abandons the Faith.

The 1983 Code of Canon Law did envision the possibility of someone defecting from the Church “by a formal act.” This had certain canonical effects, such as no longer being required to have a Catholic wedding.

 

Defections and the German Kirchensteuer

But the German church tax system (Kirchensteuer) complicated matters. Under this system, the German government automatically takes a portion of an individual’s income and gives it to the church they are a member of.

Consequently, some Germans began defecting from the Church and claiming they no longer needed to pay the tax.

Apparently in response to the German situation, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts in 2006 instituted a cumbersome process that made it harder to formally defect. The process involved things like meeting personally with your bishop and convincing him that you really, most sincerely, did not consider yourself a Catholic anymore.

Unsatisfied with the results of this, in 2009 Pope Benedict XVI decided to eliminate the concept of formal defection from canon law entirely.

This had serious unintended consequences, as it meant that people who had been baptized but not raised Catholic — many of whom might not even know that they had been baptized — were now legally unable to contract valid marriages (because of the obligation to observe “canonical form”) and were condemned to the state of perpetual, objective fornication.

To my mind, the cure was worse than the disease caused by the German tax situation, but it meant that one no longer even got a letter from one’s bishop saying that he believed you no longer regarded yourself as Catholic.

 

Looking to the Future

As the secularization of Europe progresses, it remains to be seen whether future Church leaders will deem it appropriate to create a document certifying that “We recognize that you no longer consider yourself or wish to live as a Catholic.”

Hopefully, such a document will not be needed — and God forbid that anyone should want one.

But while the French courts ruled against LeBouvier, we can’t count on this remaining the case in the future.

Anti-Catholic and anti-Christian animus continues to spread in the legal system, and just as there are cantankerous litigants who may just want to “stick it to the Church,” there may be cantankerous judges who wish to do the same thing.

To head off the legal collision that could result from activist judges demanding that the Church mutilate its baptismal records, it could one day be prudent to create a way of formally acknowledging the sad reality of people who no longer consider themselves Christian.

How Was Jesus Born?

A reader writes:

I have been a sponsor for RCIA catechumens and candidates. Mary is a frequent topic of discussion with questions about immaculate conception, perpetual virginity and how do we know Jesus was not born vaginally.

Do you have any resources we might share with them, please?

Thank you for writing.

It is not Church teaching that Jesus was not born vaginally. What the Church teaches is that Mary remained a virgin before, during, and after Christ’s birth. However, it does not have a teaching on specifically how Christ’s birth happened. This is left for theologians to speculate about.

(See Cardinal Avery Dulles’s remarks here.)

A common speculation is that Jesus came out of Mary’s womb miraculously and non-vaginally.

This speculation is found very early in Christian literature.

For example, the second century document known as the Infancy Gospel of James (aka the Protoevangelium of James) indicates a miraculous, non-vaginal birth, whereby there is a great light and Jesus suddenly appears outside of Mary’s womb and a later inspection confirms that she is still physically a virgin according to a common understanding of the time (see sections 19 and 20).

Even earlier than that, the first century document known as the Ascension of Isaiah–which likely was written in A.D. 67–similarly indicates a miraculous, non-vaginal birth where Jesus suddenly appears outside Mary’s womb (see 11:7-9).

We thus have very early Christian testimony to Jesus having a miraculous, non-vaginal birth, but this is still not Church teaching.

I hope this helps, and God bless you!

Misusing the Sign of Jonah

A reader writes:

The muslim Ahmed Deedat once wanted to prove that Jesus did not die on the cross. For this he used the sign of Jonah in Matthew 12:40 making the connection: Jonah alive in the fish = Jesus alive in the tomb. Hence these questions on which I would like to have your opinion.

1. If Jesus died in the tomb, did Jonah therefore die in the belly of the fish and then rise again (Jonah chapter 2)?

2. If Jonah didn’t die in the fish, would that also mean Jesus wasn’t in the tomb either?

Regarding your questions:

1) Jesus did not die in the tomb. He died on the Cross, and afterward his body was put in the tomb.

Jonah did not die in the fish. He lived through the entire experience.

2) No. Just because Jonah didn’t die in the fish does not mean that Jesus was not in the tomb. He was in it.

If your account is accurate, what Mr. Deedat is doing is making two mistakes.

 

Pressing Analogies Beyond Their Limits

First, he is pressing an analogy beyond its limits. In an analogy, there are two things that are similar in some way. The similarity is the basis of the analogy/comparison.

But there also are differences between the two things, which are also essential for the analogy. If there were no differences, one would be comparing a thing to itself, which would make no sense.

Thus, in the comparison between Jonah and Jesus, both go into something for “three days.” That is the similarity.

But then the differences start: Jonah is named Jonah, while Jesus is named Jesus. Jonah went into a fish, while Jesus went into a tomb. Jonah went to Nineveh, while Jesus didn’t. Jonah lived centuries before Christ, while Jesus lived centuries after Jonah. Et cetera.

What Mr. Deedat is doing is failing to appreciate that not every element of an analogy is the same, and he is pressing the analogy beyond its limits.

Specifically, he is insisting that the life-status of the two figures must be the same, but this is one of the differences between the two things being compared: Jonah was alive, while Jesus was dead.

 

Failing to Identify the Point of Analogy

Second, Mr. Deedat would be failing to notice that the life-status of the two figures is not part of the sign of being “in” something for “three days.”

Jonah was alive when he went into the fish, while Jesus was already dead when he went into the tomb.

Therefore, Jesus being dead tells us nothing about Jonah’s status and whether he was alive. Nor does Jonah’s status of being alive tell us anything about Jesus’ life-status.

The point of the comparison is that they were both in something for “three days.” That is the comparison. Whether they were alive or dead while they were in this thing is simply not part of the comparison.

I hope this helps, and God bless you!

Will God Give Me Whatever I Want? (Prosperity Gospel, Word Faith, Write Your Own Ticket with God)

The Gospels contain some remarkable statements about prayer. They’re found particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, though there are parallels in Mark and Luke.

These statements sound very positive—as if you can ask God for anything you want, and he’ll give it to you so long as you believe.

When people take these passages in isolation—apart from other things the New Testament says—they can develop a false theology of prayer.

In Protestant circles, there is a movement known as prosperity theology (also known as the prosperity gospel or the health and wealth gospel), according to which God wants all his people to be healthy, wealthy, and highly successful.

If a Christian does not have these blessings, then he either hasn’t asked for them or he hasn’t asked for them in faith. Either way he is at fault.

But a careful reading of the New Testament indicates this view is distorted.

One encouraging prayer text is found in the Sermon on the Mount:

Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened (Matt. 7:7-8).

Jesus doesn’t mention limits on what you may ask for, and you might suppose you could ask for absolutely anything and receive it.

But he also doesn’t give examples. He doesn’t say, “Ask for fabulous wealth, health, and success, and it will be yours.”

He thus may have something more modest in mind, and he may mean this primarily as asking for spiritual rather than material blessings.

In both Matthew and Luke, Jesus immediately gives an analogy based on fathers giving their children things to eat. In Matthew, Jesus concludes that God will give “good things” to his children (7:11), and in Luke he says that God will give them “the Holy Spirit” (Luke 11:13)—suggesting the passage may be primarily about spiritual “good things.”

When we look at the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, we do not find Jesus encouraging dreams of a lavish lifestyle.

In the Lord’s Prayer, he teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (6:11), suggesting a daily, hand-to-mouth reliance on God—not fabulous riches.

Jesus goes on to explicitly state:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (6:19-21).

He thus indicates earthly riches can be a spiritual distraction from God, and we shouldn’t set our hearts on them. He also says:

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (6:24).

He also tells us:

Do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well (6:31-33).

Jesus thus wants us to focus “first” on spiritual values and treat material needs as secondary. Rather than encouraging people to “dream big” about what God could give them, he encourages humble, ongoing dependence—asking God for what we need, not what we dream.

He certainly does not encourage us to imagine a success-filled life with no troubles, saying, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day” (6:34). Again, the goal is living a trusting, spiritual life—not one of runaway success.

Another encouraging prayer text occurs when the disciples ask why they failed to cast a demon out of a boy, Jesus says it was:

Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you (17:20).

This seems paradoxical. Jesus says the disciples have “little faith” but then says that if they had “faith as a grain of mustard seed,” they’d be able to accomplish amazing miracles. If so, shouldn’t their little faith have been enough?

The solution is found by considering who really performs miracles—God—and God’s power is unlimited. Therefore, it ultimately doesn’t matter how big your faith is, because God is the one who performs the miracle.

The reason the disciples failed is that they had inadequate faith and weren’t properly trusting God. Perhaps they thought they had been endowed with magical exorcistic abilities and had lost sight of God when using them.

Another text ripe for abuse occurs in the next chapter:

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven (18:19).

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Agree on anything, ask God for it, and it will be done.

But not so fast. This statement is introduced by the word “again,” telling us that we need to examine the context, because Jesus is restating a thought he has already been exploring.

When we check the context, we find that it isn’t accumulating property for oneself but Church discipline. Jesus has been telling the disciples how to deal with a fellow Christian who sins. He says that if the offender won’t listen to others, take him to the church, and if he won’t listen to the church, excommunicate him. He then says:

Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (18:18).

The statement about agreeing “on earth” is in the context of exercising the power of binding and loosing, which deals with matters of spiritual discipline—not material prosperity.

When Jesus assures the disciples “again” of what will happen when they agree, he’s assuring them of the ability to bind and loose.

The final passage we should consider occurs when the disciples asked how the fig tree withered so quickly. Jesus replies:

Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and never doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and cast into the sea,” it will be done. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith (Matt. 21:21-21; cf. Mark 11:22-24, Luke 17:6).

This is essentially the same point we saw with the failed exorcism: It doesn’t matter the size of what you’re asking for, because God has the power to do anything. And Jesus puts the matter positively, saying that “whatever you ask” will be received.

But there is an unstated assumption that Jesus expects us to understand—that what we ask is in accordance with God’s will.

First century Jews knew not every prayer request is something God wills, and God’s will is the controlling factor.

Jesus himself bore witness to this in the garden of Gethsemane when he prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (26:39).

If the Son of God himself recognized that God does not will to grant every request, we’d better recognize it, too!

Jesus wants to encourage us to pray, and he may not mention this exception every time, but he expects us to recognize it.

It’s certainly found elsewhere in the New Testament. James warns those who boast of their business plans that they need to take God’s will into account, saying, “Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this or that’” (4:15).

He also identifies one of the causes of unanswered prayer: “You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (4:3).

Asking for unlimited wealth and success would be precisely the kind of prayer that won’t be answered.

And that may be a good thing, for Jesus also says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matt. 19:24).

Did God Have a Wife?

Various social media sites have claimed that—in the Old Testament—God originally had a wife that the Israelites worshipped.

This goddess was named Asherah, and she is mentioned at various places in the Hebrew scriptures.

The claim is made that we have no biblical texts that can be confidently dated prior to the reign of King Josiah (640-609 B.C.) that condemn the worship of this goddess.

Before that time, it was allegedly normative for Israelites to worship Asherah alongside God.

How accurate are these claims?

Not very.

It’s true that there was a goddess named Asherah that was worshipped in the Ancient Near East, and it’s true that some Israelites worshipped her.

But it is false to claim that this was a normative practice among Israelites—and that we have no texts from before the time of Josiah condemning the practice.

To understand the situation, we need to understand how the Israelite religion developed.

As a nation, Israel was descended from the patriarch Abraham, who came from “Ur of the Chaldees” (Gen. 12:28)—meaning he was from Mesopotamia, or modern Iraq.

As a native of Mesopotamia, Abraham was raised in the religion of the area, which centered on various eastern deities.

But the Bible records that eventually the true God—the Creator of the universe—called Abraham to leave Mesopotamia and come to the Promised Land of Canaan.

This is discussed in the book of Joshua, which states:

Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Your fathers lived of old beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.

“Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many” (Josh. 24:2-3).

The Bible thus acknowledges that—before God appeared to him—Abraham worshipped other gods, which was the normal practice of people in the Ancient Near East.

When Abraham came to Canaan it was filled with its own people, who also worshipped a variety of gods.

Later, when Abraham’s descendants spent time in Egypt, they also lived among a polytheistic people.

Being surrounded by polytheistic people meant that the Israelites were tempted to join their neighbors in worshipping other gods, and they sometimes did so.

They even did so during the Exodus, as Moses was leading them out of Egypt and back to the Promised Land.

This is illustrated by the golden calf incident (Exod. 32) and by Moses’ instruction to offer their sacrifices to God, saying, “they may no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-idols after which they were prostituting” (Lev. 17:7, LEB).

While people did engage in these practices, they were not acceptable. Thus, after the golden calf incident:

Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tables out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.

And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it upon the water, and made the sons of Israel drink it.

And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought a great sin upon them?” (Exod. 32:19-21).

It was similarly recognized that, upon returning to Canaan, the polytheistic inhabitants could tempt the Israelites into being unfaithful to God. Concerning the Canaanites, God says:

You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods.

They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you” (Exod. 23:32-33).

Also, God made a covenant with the Israelites that they would worship only him. This requirement is explicit in the Ten Commandments:

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

“You shall have no other gods before me.

“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exod. 20:2-4).

The Bible thus depicts orthodox Israelite religion as involving the worship of God alone. However, it frankly acknowledges that unorthodox Israelites could and did worship other deities.

The struggle against this is a major theme in the Bible, and the prophets regularly condemn Israelites for worshipping other gods. You cannot read the Old Testament without repeatedly encountering this theme.

So what about Asherah? She was a goddess that was worshipped by the Canaanites—as well as other people in the Ancient Near East—and she was often regarded as the wife of the high god.

In the Canaanite pantheon, the high god—the head of the pantheon of gods—was named El, which is the Hebrew word for “God.”

El was also named Yahweh, and some Canaanites regarded Asherah as the wife of Yahweh.

Under the influence of their Canaanite neighbors, some Israelites did worship her—just as they worshipped other gods, like Ba’al and Milcom.

But according to the Old Testament, by doing this, they departed from the normative, orthodox Israelite religion and did things they were not supposed to.

What about the claim that this was normative before the time of King Josiah? Two points need to be made.

First, the theory depends on a very late dating of the biblical texts. There is good evidence that the books of Exodus and Leviticus were written around the time of David and Solomon (c. 1000 B.C.)—long before Josiah.

Furthermore, we have other texts before Josiah condemning the worship of Asherah.

For example, Isaiah 17:8 prophesies that a time is coming when the Israelites “will not have regard for the altars, the work of their hands, and they will not look to what their own fingers have made, either the Asherim or the altars of incense” to pagan gods.

The Asherim were pole-like religious objects used to worship Asherah, and even liberal scholars acknowledge that Isaiah 17 was written during the time of the prophet Isaiah (8th century B.C.), well before Josiah (7th century B.C.).

Even earlier was the event recorded in 1 Kings 15:13 that King Asa “removed Maacah his mother from being queen mother because she had an abominable image made for Asherah; and Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron.”

Asa reigned between 912 and 870 B.C., and while 1 Kings wasn’t written until later, it records events repudiating Asherah that took place long before Josiah.

Second, the “Asherah worship was normative” view is just cherry-picking Old Testament texts.

If—at one time—it was orthodox for Israelites to worship Asherah, where are the texts praising her?

There aren’t any.

Advocates of this view must argue that any texts that were positive toward her were removed, and new, negative passages were introduced after Josiah.

That’s simply cherry-picking. You can prove anything you want—on any subject you want—if you get to pick evidence you think favors your position and ignore all evidence to the contrary.

For example, you could “prove” that the original thirteen U.S. colonies were founded by Russian immigrants by saying that—later on—all the references to Russian immigrants were mysteriously removed from our historical documents and replaced by references saying they were founded by English colonists.

The fact is, the texts we have in the Old Testament indicate that orthodox Israelites worshipped the true God, that unorthodox Israelites also worshipped other gods like Asherah, and that this practice was condemned from very early times.

Pascal’s Wager and Ethics

Pascal’s Wager is an argument proposed by the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal in his posthumously published work Pensées (1670).

Pascal proposed the wager as a method of helping a person torn between belief and unbelief in God when they don’t feel able to settle the question based on evidence.

As such, the wager is not an evidential or “cognitive” argument for belief in God. It is an example of practical or “non-cognitive” reasoning.

In essence, Pascal seeks to show that—whether or not God exists—it is in the interests of a person who is unable to decide between these options to go ahead and believe.

It thus offers practical reasons to believe rather than new evidence to believe.

I won’t go into the details of Pascal’s Wager, because I’ve written about it elsewhere (for example, here).

However, the wager relies on insights that can be useful in other situations, and I’d like to explore some of those here.

 

Context

First, we need to understand the context in which the wager was proposed and what its limitations are.

We’ve already mentioned that it is not designed to give new evidence. That’s the point of the wager. It’s meant to help someone who has reviewed the evidence and still feels unable to decide.

As a result, the wager turns to look at matters besides evidence—that is, what is in the person’s interest.

There is nothing wrong with interest-based, practical reason. Humans constantly make prudential judgments about what to do based on their interests: Is it in my interest to take this job or that? To marry this person or that? To watch this movie or that?

Making decisions that maximize our interests is a fundamental part of the human experience. Such reasoning is built into us.

 

An Objection: Proportion to Evidence

Some question whether it is legitimate to apply practical reason to matters of belief.

Some have claimed that we have a moral duty to proportion our beliefs strictly to the evidence we have supporting them.

It is difficult to know what advocates of this claim are envisioning, because this is not how humans work. We do not constantly review our beliefs and assign numerical probabilities to them.

Much less do we proportion the beliefs themselves, so that we would say, “I 75% believe this, but I 25% disbelieve it.”

Beliefs are binary. In the typical human experience, we either believe something or we don’t.

We may have different degrees of confidence about our belief, but the belief itself is either there or it isn’t.

 

How Things Work in Science

It is readily admitted by scientists that the results of science are always provisional.

No matter how much evidence has been accumulated for a scientific theory, it’s always possible that new evidence will emerge that indicates the theory must be modified or rejected in favor of a better one.

But that doesn’t stop scientists from believing particular scientific claims.

Based on the evidence so far accumulated, they accept—let’s say—the existence of electrons. They believe in them, and then they proceed about their business on the premise that electrons exist, without doubting this.

If someone asks them how sure they are that electrons exist, they may stop and mentally review the evidence and say something like, “Well, the results of science are always provisional, so I can’t say with infallible certainty that they do. But the evidence is so strong that I can’t imagine a scenario where sufficient evidence would emerge to overturn their existence. So, I believe that electrons do exist, and I don’t worry about the tiny chance that they don’t.”

In saying something like this, a scientist would be acknowledging that:

    1. There is always a gap between the evidence at hand and total certainty, and
    2. That this gap is sufficiently small that the scientist doesn’t worry about it.

In other words, the scientist has made a leap of faith to overcome the evidential gap. He then adopts the belief that electrons exist, and he doesn’t deem it worthwhile to worry about the possibility that he is wrong unless something happens to cause him to reflect on the question.

 

Everyday Life

Such leaps of scientific faith are omnipresent in the sciences, but the same applies in all areas of human life.

For example, most people believe that their spouses are not secretly trying to kill them. The evidence for this proposition is significantly less than the evidence for the existence of electrons.

In fact—among a population of billions—any number of people do try to kill their spouses. But—absent evidence that this is the case in a particular instance—the odds are so low that it is not worth worrying about.

People thus accumulate a certain amount of evidence—e.g., that someone loves them and will not kill them—they adopt the belief, “I am safe with this person,” they marry them, and then they don’t worry about it until significant evidence emerges to the contrary.

This is simply how human belief works.

And so, the idea that we should proportion our belief to the evidence does not describe the human experience.

Instead, we see enough evidence that we deem it rational to adopt a belief, we adopt it, and then we don’t worry about the chance we are wrong until something happens that causes us to question the belief.

In other words, we make a leap of faith to overcome the gap between the evidence we have and the position of belief (i.e., acceptance of a proposition without worrying about it) that we need to achieve in order to move on with life.

 

Paranoia and Self-Interest

We even have a word for people who fail to do this and who continue to worry about the possibility they are wrong: We call them paranoid.

If—despite the evidence a person has that they are safe with their spouse—they continue to worry about the idea that their spouse is going to kill them, that person is paranoid, and we tell them so.

“Look,” we may say, “it is hypothetically possible that your spouse is plotting your murder. But the evidence for that is so small that you shouldn’t be worrying about it. You are only hurting yourself by doing so—and you may be dooming your marriage to failure.”

By making an argument like this, we are appealing to the person’s interests.

They are currently hurting themselves with unnecessary worry—which is contrary to their interests.

And they may in the future hurt the interests of both themselves and their spouse by dooming a marriage that can otherwise benefit both.

In appealing to them to stop worrying, we urge them to use practical reason to overcome the evidential gap between what they’ve seen and the subjective certitude they need to move on with their life on the belief that they are safe with their spouse.

In other words, we are counseling them to make a leap of faith in their own self-interest.

 

Back to Science

This is the same thing every scientist does when they make a leap of scientific faith between the evidence that electrons exist and the belief that they do—or any other scientific belief they may entertain.

At some point, it would become scientific paranoia to continue to have doubts or anxiety about the existence of electrons (or whatever).

We would thus counsel a paranoid scientist to set aside his doubts and move on—given that he lacks compelling evidence to the contrary.

Is it rational—in terms of self-interest—for the scientist to worry about the reality of electrons, or is it better to believe that they do and move on—being willing to reconsider this if contrary evidence emerges in the future?

If the scientist continues to devote time and energy to the non-existence of electrons—in spite of the current evidence—he is hurting himself and his career.

He is harming his quest for greater scientific understanding by wasting time on an exceedingly unlikely hypothesis, and also hurting society at large by denying others the discoveries he could otherwise make.

We thus counsel him to set aside his worries and make the scientific leap of faith needed to overcome the evidential gap between what experiments have shown and belief (acceptance without worry) that electrons exist.

 

Preliminary Lessons

From the preceding, I take it that there is simply a difference between the degree of confidence that the evidence alone would warrant and the belief that corresponds to this.

It is rational to make leaps of faith between the two—and it is rational to do so on practical (prudential) grounds.

At some point, the evidential chance of being wrong is low enough that it simply is not worth worrying about the idea one is wrong.

Instead, it is in one’s interest—and the interests of others—to set aside doubts and proceed on the basis of belief.

At some point, we judge it impractical to continue to worry above the evidential gap and choose to embrace a belief on practical grounds. That’s just how humans work.

I thus take it as established—at least from this point forward—that there is a difference between:

    • Whether we believe a proposition (which is binary; we either believe a proposition or we don’t), and
    • What degree of confidence we feel regarding the proposition when we review the evidence for it.

I further take it as established that:

    • It can be rational to believe a proposition even if the confidence level we feel based on the evidence is less than what would be required for infallible certainty,
    • We all do this constantly; we all wager, all the time, and
    • There is nothing wrong with this; it is how human cognition works.

This puts us in a position to consider interesting aspects of the reasoning involved in Pascal’s Wager.

 

A Limit of Pascal’s Wager

Pascal’s Wager was formulated to help a person in a specific situation—being torn between belief in the Christian God and a western form of skepticism that would involve agnosticism or materialistic atheism. As a result, it does not deal with other religious options.

Many have pointed out that there are other options, and the wager doesn’t address them. This is true, but it does not deprive the wager of its utility for those who are in this situation.

In his 1896 lecture “The Will to Believe” (later published as an essay), William James provided helpful discussion of this subject, noting that—for various people—some hypotheses are “live” while others are “dead.”

James defined a live hypothesis as “one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed,” whereas a dead hypothesis is one that does not strike the hearer as a real possibility.

James referred to the decision between two hypotheses as an “option” and stated:

A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones.

If I say to you: “Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan,” it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive.

But if I say: “Be an agnostic or be Christian,” it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your belief.

Pascal’s Wager, then, is designed to help a person for whom both Christianity and western skepticism are live hypotheses.

 

Other Wagers

However, wager-style reasoning can be applied to other situations. To cite a simple example that I’ve discussed before, one can construct a kind of “reincarnation wager.”

Suppose a person’s live option is whether to believe in reincarnation or whether to believe that this life is the only one we have.

How we spend our time has consequences—whether it is achieving goals with respect to this life or with respect to the afterlife.

Consequently, if a person feels unable to decide the issue of reincarnation based on evidence, it will be in his interest to believe the latter so as to make the most of the time he has. If it turns out he is wrong and he reincarnates, he will simply get more time to pursue his goals and “get it right.”

There also can be a similar “afterlife wager” for those who have a live option between believing that there is no afterlife and the possibility that there is an afterlife in which we experience positive or negative consequences based on what we do in this one.

If one is unable to decide this question based on evidence, it will be prudent to assume that there is such an afterlife so as to take reasonable steps to ensure a good afterlife.

If it turned out that the person were wrong and there was no afterlife, the person would not experience a negative one and would only have wasted reasonable efforts in pursuit of a good one.

 

Wagering, Materialism, and Morals

In light of the applicability of wager-style arguments to other situations, I’d like to address one involving materialism and morals.

Despite the fact we all constantly wager and adopt beliefs based partly on practical rather than evidential reasons, one of the concerns limiting the use of wager-like reasoning is a nagging anxiety people have about whether they are doing something “wrong” by adopting beliefs on these grounds.

I concede that people have a moral intuition that there needs to be some kind of relationship between belief and evidence.

For example, we have the intuition that we would be violating what philosophers call our “epistemic duties” if we chose to believe something that had a massive amount of evidence against it and no evidence for it.

This is true. However, it is not applicable to the situation that Pascal’s Wager is designed to address.

The wager is specifically intended to address a situation in which a person has considered the evidence and still feels unable to make an evidence-based decision.

Further, as William James points out, we may be forced to make a choice, for to refuse to adopt belief in a proposition is to adopt the alternative of non-belief in it. James discusses this in terms of a decision between adopting a religious view or not doing so:

[W]e see, first that religion offers itself as a momentous option. We are supposed to gain, even now, by our belief, and to lose by our nonbelief, a certain vital good.

Secondly, religion is a forced option, so far as that good goes. We cannot escape the issue by remaining sceptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve.

It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one else?

Scepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error—that is your faith-vetoer’s exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.

One thus does not escape the trap of making a choice in this situation. It is simply a choice between belief and non-belief.

And—in the absence of evidence that decides the matter—it is made on non-evidential grounds no matter which choice is made.

 

Religion vs. Scientific Materialism

The above illustrates the difficulties with the idea that it is somehow immoral—a violation of epistemic duties—to adopt a belief based partly on pragmatic rather than evidential concerns.

However, there is more that can be said about this when a particular situation is considered—that is, one like Pascal’s original situation of a person torn between Christianity and skepticism.

Today in the West, skepticism typically entails a form of materialism in which science is given a primary place (i.e., scientific materialism).

Conventional science is driven by empirical phenomena—things that can be observed and measured using the conventional senses (sight, hearing, etc.) and their technological extensions (microscopes, telescopes, spectrometers, gas chromatographs, etc.).

Science is held to be incapable of investigating non-empirical phenomena (souls, spirits, God), and so these are deemed outside the realm of science.

Indeed, for scientific materialism, it is the non-empirical quality of these entities that drives rejection of their existence in the first place.

However, it isn’t only souls, spirits, and God that are not subject to empirical investigation. It is also morality.

Moral properties like good and evil, right and wrong, cannot be detected with the senses or their technological extensions. As a result, it is difficult to see how morality could be real if scientific materialism were true.

 

Another Wager

This leads us to another wager—this time between a religious worldview and scientific materialism:

1) Suppose a person adopts a religious worldview, and it turned out that scientific materialism were right and that there are no non-empirical things.

In that case, the person would not be violating their epistemic duties because morality would be a fiction, and the person had done nothing wrong by being religious.

2) On the other hand, suppose that a person adopts a worldview of scientific materialism, and it turns out the religious worldview is correct.

On the religious worldview, morality is real, and one should be a moral person. The person then has a choice:

a) In keeping with their scientific materialism, they could reject the real existence on the grounds that it is non-empirical. In this case, they would be doing something wrong because the religious worldview is true and morality is real.

b) Or, despite their scientific materialism, they could continue to accept the real existence of morality. In this case they also would be doing something wrong, because they are violating their own principles, and violating your own principles is morally wrong.

We thus see that (1) if a person incorrectly adopts a religious viewpoint, he does nothing wrong, while (2) if he incorrectly adopts scientific materialism, he inescapably does something wrong.

Given these facts, the logical thing to do is to accept the religious worldview since—whether it is correct or not—one avoids doing something wrong.

 

Testing the Wager

One way of testing this wager is to ask, “If the religious worldview is true, could I still be doing something wrong by adopting it? Not in the sense of being religious, because we’re assuming this view is true. But perhaps by violating my epistemic duties in some way from within a religious perspective?”

At this point, we are speaking purely from within a religious perspective. We are taking it that religion is true and asking whether one can violate one’s epistemic duties and thus do something morally wrong.

The answer, of course, is yes. From a religious perspective, people of any stripe—religious or not—need to be moral people, and that includes honoring their epistemic duties.

If a person—religious or non-religious—stifles his conscience to convince himself that murder is an okay thing to do, then he is violating his epistemic duties.

So, yes, religious people can violate their epistemic duties. But what does this have to do with the question of being religious itself?

We can infer from this that one should not violate one’s epistemic duties by adopting beliefs that one should not, so don’t join a religion that teaches them.

If you have a functioning conscience, don’t become a member of the Manson Family and participate in its murder sprees. And if you have good evidence that evolution is true, don’t join a church that insists on Young Earth Creationism.

 

The Religious View in General

But how would one be violating one’s religious duties merely by adopting a religious point of view?

This returns us to the question of evidence and what relationship it has with belief adoption.

If a person thought that he had conclusive evidence against religion, then he should not adopt a religious point of view.

And if a person thought he had conclusive evidence for religion, then he should adopt it.

However, neither of these situations is what wager-style arguments are designed to address (or at least the kind that we are considering). They are for people who don’t think that they can settle the matter based on their review of the evidence.

But there is still a need to settle it, and so wagers appeal to practical reason to overcome the evidential gap—just as we do in science and in everyday life.

Given the omnipresence of pragmatic leaps of faith in every field of human endeavor—indeed, in virtually every belief we adopt except as the result of a mathematical demonstration—it is hard to see how using practical reason to overcome an evidential deadlock could be seen as violating our epistemic duties.

We use practical reason to overcome evidential gaps all the time. It is built into human nature, and so we are simply acting in accord with our nature when we do so. There is nothing wrong with this.

 

Intellectual and Moral Coherence

Further, adopting a religious perspective provides a greater degree of intellectual and moral coherence than adopting scientific materialism.

Whether or not one is religious, we have an inbuilt moral sense that tells us that we have moral duties, including the epistemic ones that the person torn between religion and materialism is concerned about.

On a materialist view, these may have an evolutionary explanation, but they do not objectively bind, and—as non-empirical—they should not be given credence.

Nevertheless—unless they are psychopaths—materialists find themselves inescapably falling back into thinking and acting as if morality is objectively real. They are as horrified by murder, bigotry, and oppression as anyone—even though their worldview would imply that there is nothing objectively wrong with any of these.

Materialists thus have a lived experience that is inconsistent with their belief system, resulting in a lack of coherence between the two.

By contrast, on the religious view, non-empirical entities are real, and this provides an intellectual framework that allows our in-built moral sense to be what we take it to be—a reflection of reality and something that is objectively binding on us.

The religious view thus provides a form of coherence between the intellectual and the moral that scientific materialism does not.

Coherence between belief and lived experience is a desirable feature of worldviews, and the religious worldview offers this regarding moral realism, whereas materialism does not.

This is one more reason—in addition to the evidential and pragmatic reasons—to prefer the religious worldview.

What Is Manifesting, and Does It Work?

There’s a pop culture buzzword you may have encountered: manifesting.

It’s discussed on social media sites and by self-help, lifestyle, and New Age gurus.

This isn’t surprising. People are always looking for ways to better their condition, and there are cultural fads in which people latch on to specific words and phrases that become “the hot new thing” for a time.

To appraise a cultural phenomenon, we need to look past trendy terms and examine the underlying substance. So, what is “manifesting”?

The current use of the term is too new to appear in standard dictionaries, but Wikipedia says manifestation refers to “self-help strategies intended to bring about a personal goal, primarily by focusing one’s thoughts upon the desired outcome. . . . While the process involves positive thinking, or even directing requests to ‘the universe,’ it also involves action-steps on the part of the individual.”

An article on Vox.com cites the following as examples:

On TikTok, teenagers share stories about how “scripting,” or repeatedly writing down a wish, caused a crush to finally text them back. On YouTube, vloggers lead tutorials on how to properly manifest your dream future. On Instagram, someone will write that $20,000 will soon land in your hands, and all you have to do is comment “YES.” On Twitter, [extreme fans] will, ironically or not, attempt to manifest the release of a new Lorde album.

It’s easy to see these examples as superstitious. Superstition involves attributing too much efficacy to something.

Attributing too much efficacy to a remedy (“Eat this one superfood and you’ll lose your excess weight!”) is a form of scientific superstition. Attributing too much efficacy to a prayer (“Say this prayer three times; it never fails!”) is a form of religious superstition (CCC 2111).

“Just comment ‘YES’ and you’ll get $20,000” and “Write down your wish repeatedly and the boy you like will text you back” easily can be regarded as superstitious.

However, if it was obvious that attempts at manifesting a particular outcome never work, the practice would not be trendy. Even if most attempts to manifest fail, there needs to be enough plausibility and enough success for people to retain interest in the practice.

How might we explain that? We need to consider two kinds of causes that might produce success: normal and paranormal ones.

Random chance is an obvious possible natural cause. Maybe your boyfriend was going to text you back anyway, and he just happened to do so shortly after you tried to manifest this, lending plausibility to the idea that your manifesting efforts were the cause.

However, just because one thing happens after another doesn’t mean that was its cause. In logic, that idea is known as the post hoc ergo proper hoc fallacy (Latin, “After this, therefore because of this”). Or, as they say in scientific circles, “Correlation is not causation.”

Natural causes also can relate to manifesting in other ways. If you decide—with respect to a goal—that you’re going to think positive and act positive, that can help you achieve the goal.

Thinking and acting positively can make you more likable, and that can open doors and help remove obstacles. Similarly, self-confident action toward a goal can help you become “the little engine that could” in achieving it.

What about the paranormal aspects of manifesting? Here we need to differentiate more carefully than practitioners of manifestation may commonly do. What does it mean to ask “the universe” to manifest some desired goal?

It could mean that there are aspects of the universe and human nature that allow a human being to increase the likelihood of something happening by “positive thinking” or willing it to happen.

If humans have an ability to influence things in the world just by thinking about or willing them, then this would be a natural ability (i.e., one built into human nature), but it is not an ability recognized by mainstream science, making it some kind of psychic ability. In parapsychological terms, it would be classified either as a form of remote influencing or as a form of psychokinesis (mind over matter).

On the other hand, someone practicing manifestation may also be open to God or some other spirit taking a hand in helping them achieve their goal. In this case, the effect would be supernatural since it would be above (Latin, super) what human nature is capable of doing.

Could psychic functioning be involved in cases of manifestation? A knowledge of the history of Catholic thought on this subject would not rule out the possibility.

Doctors of the Church like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas held that God built weak abilities into human nature that today we would call psychic.

For example, both Augustine and Aquinas believed in precognition (Aquinas called it “natural prophecy,” to distinguish it from the supernatural prophecy God gives; see Disputed Questions on Truth 12:3).

More to the point, Aquinas believed that “when a soul is vehemently moved to wickedness,” it can physically harm another person. This was his explanation for the evil eye (ST I:117:3 ad 2; II-II:96:3 ad 1).

Aquinas didn’t discuss the reverse of this (i.e., could a soul vehemently moved by love physically help a person, such as healing them), but he’s talking about psychokinesis.

More recent Catholic authors—such as Fr. Alois Wiesinger (1885-1955)—have suggested that what today are considered psychic powers are the remnants of the “preternatural gifts” Adam and Eve enjoyed before the fall.

This is not to say that psychic functioning exists. It is simply to say that Catholic tradition has recognized its possible existence, and so the matter would need to be considered and the evidence for and against it evaluated.

When it comes to supernatural causation, this could play a role. Suppose a person is suffering in a terrible situation and uses manifestation to cry out for help, being open to God’s help. In this case, their efforts would be a kind of implicit, confused prayer.

Fortunately, God loves us even when we’re confused and aren’t thinking clearly about him. As a result, God might have mercy on such a person and intervene. God “sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45).

However, there also is danger. Suppose a person is trying to manifest a sexual encounter outside of marriage with someone they’re attracted to. God isn’t going to help them with that, because the goal is evil. However, a demon might intervene to foster the parties’ temptations.

This leads us to the two fundamental problems with manifesting. First, there is a tremendous risk here of superstition—of attributing way more efficacy to it than is warranted—and second, it isn’t clearly thought out and doesn’t make the needed distinctions.

In other words, thinking positively, having goals, and taking concrete steps toward them are good. But don’t attribute too much efficacy to these things. And if you’re going to invoke superhuman powers, make sure you’re talking specifically to God (or his angels or saints), that you’re pursuing a morally licit goal, and that the result is dependent on God’s will rather than your efforts.

Pascal’s Wager: Eternal Gamble

Suppose that you have a friend who was raised Catholic (or at least Christian) but is now having doubts about whether God exists. You’ve given him a number of books about evidence for the Christian faith, but they haven’t really clicked for him. On the other hand, neither have arguments against Christianity. He feels torn between belief and unbelief, unable to resolve whether to be a Christian or an agnostic.

Your strategy of giving him more evidence doesn’t seem to be what he needs, so you wonder: Is there something else you can do, some way of helping him break out of his dilemma?

According to one of the most important apologists in the last 500 years, there is.

Short Life, Sharp Mind

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was a French mathematician who, in the most improbable manner, became the greatest apologist of his day. A child prodigy in mathematics, he wrote a number of brilliant papers solving mathematical problems. He became a follower of Jansenism, a seventeenth-century heresy that held, among other things, that Christ died not for all men but only for those who will be finally saved. When he was 23 years old, Pascal fell away from the rigors of the heresy and spent a number of years living a worldly life.

At 31, he experienced a profound mystical experience that convinced him to retire from the world. He ended up withdrawing to Port-Royal, a Benedictine abbey that was a hotbed of the Jansenist heresy. From there Pascal composed two major works, his Provincial Letters, which attacked and satirized the Jesuits, and his Pensées.

The Pensées (French, thoughts) were a collection of notes for Apologie de la Religion Chrétienne (Apology for the Christian Religion) that Pascal planned to write. He never got the chance. A malignant growth in his stomach spread to his brain, and he died August 19, 1662, at the age of 39. His notes for this unwritten work were published posthumously and, despite the fact that many are mere scraps that give little insight into what he was thinking, some are of such quality that they have made Pascal one of the most famous apologists in history.

Many of the Pensées are notes about traditional apologetic arguments, like fulfilled prophecy and miracles. But the most famous is a piece called Infinite—Nothing(no. 233), and it gave the world a distinctly non traditional argument now known as Pascal’s Wager.

This note represents Pascal at his most frustrating. He has a Major Insight, but he can’t figure out how to express it clearly or simply, so he makes several stabs at getting the idea down. The original piece of paper containing the note is a mess, with writing going in several directions, lots erasures, and corrections.

Because of the mess, it is notoriously difficult to summarize the Wager. Pascal gives at least three different versions of the same general argument, and philosophers have been driven nuts trying to give a precise account of what he was saying.

What They Did for Fun Before Television

To understand the Wager, one needs to understand a principle element in its development: gambling. Since seventeenth-century France didn’t have television, the Internet, or paintball, gambling was a major pastime. So major, in fact, that it helped push back the boundaries of mathematical knowledge. People wanted better ways of knowing which bets were safe and which weren’t. As a result, the foundations of game theory and probability calculus were laid. Pascal helped in this effort.

He realized was that game theory provides a means of practical decision making about important matters—i.e., money—when a person is uncertain of the outcome. The brilliant insight that lies behind the Wager is that some.aspects of this theory can be applied to other, similar matters about which one is uncertain. One such matter is religion.

Pascal realized that this reasoning might appeal to dissolute French gamblers in a way that traditional apologetics did not. In his day, an awful lot of Frenchmen had been raised Catholic but were tempted by agnosticism. Many, unreachable by traditional apologetics, seemed stuck between belief and unbelief. Pascal sought to reach them by taking one of their favorite pastimes and turning it in a spiritual direction.

You Bet Your Life!

Here’s one way of stating the Wager: Assume that you are torn between belief and non-belief in God based on the evidence. You have to pick one or the other, because belief and non-belief are opposites. Anything other than belief in God is, by definition, non-belief (typically agnosticism or atheism, if you were a seventeenth-century European).

If you are forced to choose between belief and non-belief and can’t decide based on the evidence, how can you resolve the situation? Pascal suggests that you look to your interests, just as you would in an uncertain situation where you had to take one bet or another.

So which is it? Belief or non-belief in God?

Since the options that Pascal is considering are (essentially) Catholicism and agnosticism, it is fairly easy to lay out how belief and non-belief affect your interests. Concerning happiness, he writes, “Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. . . . If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that he is.”

In other words, if you embrace belief in God and you are right, you get an eternity of happiness in heaven; if you are wrong you lose nothing, since you go to the oblivion that awaits you anyway if there is no God and no afterlife. Since the first option maximizes your interests, you should choose to embrace belief.

You have probably heard the flipside of this argument: If you choose not to believe in God and you are wrong, you get an eternity of agony in hell; if you choose not to believe in him and you’re right, you get oblivion again. Since you can avoid hell if God does exist but can’t avoid oblivion if he doesn’t, then once again you should embrace belief.

The “hell” version is probably the most common way of putting the argument, though Pascal himself doesn’t explore that side of it. I suspect it is more popular because, for most of us (given our sense of sin), the thought of unending pain is more of a motivator than the thought of unending bliss.

Let the Objections Begin

People have made objections to every argument for why you should believe in God, and you can bet that an argument as nontraditional as Pascal’s Wager has been subjected to a large number of objections. Some of these Pascal himself anticipated and provided answers for in the Infinite—Nothing note. Others he could not easily have foreseen.

Part of the problem is that we are working from an unpublished note he wrote to remind himself of the general lines along which he wanted to flesh out his argument. It wasn’t intended to be a fully developed, publishable version of the Wager.

Thus one has to work with Pascal to tease out the insight he is trying to express. I must confess to some occupational sympathy for him. As an apologist, I would be uncomfortable with the idea of people rummaging through my hard drives after my death and publishing my raw, unedited notes for books I had been thinking about writing. Should they do so, I at least would want the notes to be read in the most charitable light possible, since I didn’t get the chance to fine-tune my half-articulated arguments.

Certainly Pascal was on to something. The Wager has become one of the most famous arguments—or, more precisely, argument styles —for why a person should believe in God. It has provided comfort to a lot of people doubting the existence of God. With that in mind, let’s look at some of the most popular objections to the Wager.

The Many Religions Objection

Probably the most popular objection today is one that Pascal could not have anticipated. Unlike French people in the 1600s, we live in a world in which we are acutely aware of the variety of religious options. It is no longer a choice simply between Catholicism and agnosticism or—put more broadly—a choice between Western theism and atheistic agnosticism. Consequently, many people object to the Wager on the grounds that it doesn’t address other religious positions.

True. But to demand this of the Wager is to press it beyond the bounds Pascal intended. It was never meant as a decision procedure for deciding between all religious options, only between two.

Kept in its intended role, it (or some version of it) is a useful tool. In the nineteenth century, the philosopher William James wrote an excellent piece on Pascal’s Wager titled “The Will to Believe” (you can find it on the Internet). He points out that at any given moment we are only drawn toward certain options. He calls them “live options.” If belief in the God of the Bible and atheist-leaning skepticism are your two live options at the moment, then the Wager can help.

The Evil God Objection

Sometimes people argue, “What if God exists, but he will send people to hell if they believe in him—or, at least, if they believe in him purely because of the Wager? In that case, it wouldn’t be in your interest to believe in him.”

True, but do we have any reason to think that this is the case? The world doesn’t seem to be pragmatically perverse, such that seeking our good normally results in the opposite. As long as I don’t have any evidence that such an evil, damn-my-believers God exists, believing in him isn’t a live option for me. I’m not tempted to believe in such a God, and the Wager is only meant to help me decide between things I am tempted to believe. Again, the argument is being pressed beyond its role by adding another religious option.

The Evidence Objection

Many people note that Pascal’s Wager is a pragmatic argument rather than an evidential one: It does not argue that God exists, it argues that you should believe that God exists. Those who voice this objection maintain one should not believe anything without sufficient evidence for it. Since Pascal’s Wager gives us no evidence that God exists, one shouldn’t believe on its basis.

In “The Will to Believe,” James points out that there is a problem with the evidence rule, at least as Pascal’s critics are advancing it. If you really are in a situation where based on the evidence you can’t decide between believing and not believing something, then you have to make the decision based on something else. You have to make it because there are no other alternatives besides believing or not believing something, and you can’t decide based on evidence because of the situation you’re in.

At such times, James argues, one must make the decision based on something else, and the typical thing we use is what he calls our “passional nature,” which includes the desire to promote our own good.

If I am on my deathbed and can’t wait for more evidence to tip the scales—or if I am at any other point where I need to move on and think about something else—it is appropriate for me to embrace belief on the grounds that I want to go to heaven.

I would take matters a step further and argue that our passional nature’s desire for good does constitute a form of evidence. Our passions—our desire to eat, to sleep, to move around, to flee danger—are oriented toward our good. Given the way of the world, if we never ate, slept, moved around, or fled danger, we’d die. Thus our passions tell us something about the way the world is. They are a kind of indirect evidence about it.

Given that, and in the absence of decisive evidence to the contrary (like reason to think that there is an evil God who damns his believers), there is no reason not to trust my desire to go to heaven when it tells me to seek God. In the same way, there is no reason not to trust my desire to eat when it tells me to seek food. The presumption is that both passions are oriented to my good unless proven otherwise. And they both provide indirect evidence about the world I live in: One where both God and food exist.

This covers the situation envisioned by Pascal’s first presentation of the Wager, where someone feels the evidence for God and against God is even. What about the other form we looked at, where someone feels the evidence is against God’s existence?

Here the evidence objection has more plausibility. There is a better case to be made that one should stick to the evidence and ignore game theory considerations when the evidence strongly points to one bet rather than another.

Let’s suppose that the objection succeeds to the point of showing that it is not rational to believe in God for any non-zero chance that he exists. It may be possible to revise the Wager in such a way that it is still serviceable.

Mr. Spock might go around calculating the mathematical probability that the God of the Bible exists, but ordinary people don’t. Instead, they develop a “gut feel” for the evidence. As a result, some people might feel that the evidence is sufficient to make belief in the Christian God reasonable even if they do not feel it is sufficient to require belief.

For such people, Pascal’s revised version of the Wager might be appropriate. In this case the argument could tell you: As long as you feel that the evidence makes it reasonable to believe in the Christian God, let your best interests tell you to go ahead and make the leap of faith to becoming a believer.

This corresponds to the way things are, anyway. While Catholic theology holds that it is possible (for at least some people) to prove with certainty the existence of a God by natural reason, it is different when showing that this God is the God of the Bible. Miracles and fulfilled prophecy provide motives of credibility to believe in the God of the Bible, but there remains a gap that must be bridged by a leap of faith.

The Hypocritical Believer Objection

Some have objected that God wouldn’t want people to believe in him just because they want to go to heaven. That would make them hypocrites. Several replies are in order:

    1. Then why did the apostles go about telling people to believe in order to gain salvation? Self-interest is clearly presented as a motive for belief in the apostolic message. It’s okay to believe in order to be saved.
    2. Pascal isn’t encouraging hypocrites who merely go through the motions of the Christian life. He’s urging people to really and sincerely become believers in God.
    3. Our greatest good is to be united with God by the beatific vision, which is the essence of heaven. Seeking our greatest good thus consists in seeking union with God. There is no separating the two.

The “I Can’t Control My Beliefs” Objection

The hypocritical believer objection seems to be motivated by the fact that often our beliefs don’t seem fully under our control. That is what prompts the image of someone merely going through the motions of the Christian life without really committing to belief in God. What may one make of the objection that for many it does not seem possible to control our beliefs?

Pascal anticipates this objection when he writes, “You would like to cure yourself of unbelief and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound [in unbelief] like you and who now stake all their possessions [on God’s existence]. These are people who know the way which you would follow and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having Masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness.”

For those who find an emotional barrier to belief in God, Pascal recommends doing things that will overcome this barrier: Act on the assumption that God exists and strive to live the Christian life as sincerely as one can. Eventually the emotional barrier may melt, and you may realize that you really do believe in God.

The Cost of the Christian Life

Of course, many don’t want to live the Christian life because of the cost—like giving up the pleasures of being a dissolute French gambler.

Pascal anticipates this and has two responses. First, he points out that these costs are nothing compared to what you stand to gain. Even if there is a tiny, finite cost in this life (or even if it costs you this life as a whole), that is still nothing compared to the infinite life of bliss you stand to gain.

Second, Pascal argues that you aren’t really losing anything. Even in this life what you will gain by being a Christian outweighs the self-restraint you must show, leaving you better off even if there were no heaven.

He writes, “Now, what harm will befall you in taking this side? You will be faithful, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful. Certainly you will not have those poisonous pleasures, glory and luxury; but will you not have others? I will tell you that you will thereby gain in this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognize that you have wagered for something certain and infinite, for which you have given nothing.”

Jesus Without the Gospels

The four Gospels are our primary sources of information about Jesus Christ, and thus they are prime targets for skeptics. Those who want to discredit the Christian faith must in some way cast doubt on the Gospels and what they tell us about Jesus.

They use various strategies. Some point out that the Gospels record Jesus performing miracles, which don’t fit with a materialist worldview. However, many don’t employ such naked anti-supernaturalism—which stems from a philosophical position rather than from arguments based on historical evidence.

Many try to undermine the Gospels by trying to distance them from the events they record. Common strategies involve claims that they were written (a) late, (b) not by eyewitnesses, or (c) by people we don’t know.

There are problems with each of these claims (see “Appreciating the Gospels”), but for the sake of argument—as a thought experiment—let’s take the Gospels completely off the table. Suppose that they had never been written. What would we still know about Jesus?

The primary sources of evidence we would be left with would be the rest of the New Testament: Acts and the letters of Paul and other authors, including the book of Revelation (which is also a letter). Just to be generous, though, let’s remove Acts as well, since it’s the sequel to one of the Gospels and is a historical work that repeats a lot of information from Luke.

 

Appreciating the Gospels

The arguments that the Gospels are unreliable based on when and who they were written by are unpersuasive.

In the first place, when a book was written does not tell you much about its accuracy. A competent historian can write quality work about any period in time that he has studied. It’s more about how he handles his sources than how distant in time he is.

Historians today write about events decades, centuries, and even millennia ago, but we don’t simply dismiss them.

Roman historians like Suetonius, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio wrote about events as far before their day as Jesus was before the Gospels, but their works are taken seriously as sources.

And the Gospels weren’t written that late. On the late dating of the Gospels, they were written between thirty and eighty years after Jesus and within a generation.

In actuality, the gospels were likely written in the 50s and 60s—between twenty and thirty years after Jesus and easily within living memory.

We also know who was behind them. As German scholar Martin Hengel pointed out, the Gospels needed names as soon as more than one was in circulation. The names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were thus attached to them as soon as they started appearing.

Finally, whether someone is an eyewitness has little to do with whether one can write a competent biography. Many biographies are written today about historical figures—from Alexander the Great to Abraham Lincoln—whose authors could not possibly have been eyewitnesses. Again, it’s about how a biographer handles his sources.

In the case of the Gospels, two (Matthew and John) are attributed to eyewitnesses and two (Mark and Luke) are written by men who knew eyewitnesses.

 

History Without Historical Works

By removing the Gospels and Acts from the discussion, we’re depriving ourselves of the historical books that the New Testament contains—that is, the books written to chronicle early Christian history.

But it’s entirely possible to learn about history from other sorts of documents. For example, scholars can learn about what happened during the Civil War by reading the letters people wrote to each other at the time.

Some time ago, I started a project of reading the letters of the New Testament to see what could be learned about Christ and early Christian history just from them.

That project is large and ongoing, but even a brief look at the New Testament letters reveals that we’d still know quite a bit about Jesus and the early Church even if the Gospels had not been penned.

 

Paul and the Historical Jesus

Sometimes skeptics who dismiss the Gospels state that Paul’s letters are actually the earliest Christian documents we have, implying that they should be more historically reliable.

This is misleading, as the evidence indicates the Gospels and Paul’s letters were written during the same period—the A.D. 50s and 60s—but it is true that at least some of Paul’s letters were likely written before the Gospels.

In particular, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians were, and even the most skeptical acknowledge that these were written by Paul. (Also, none of these might be the earliest document in the New Testament. The letter of James could be.)

The historical value of Paul’s letters is sometimes dismissed by saying that he isn’t very interested in the historical Jesus, meaning that he doesn’t tell extended stories about Jesus or regularly quote his sayings.

This is sometimes coupled with a distinction between “the Jesus of history” and “the Christ of faith.” The former refers to the historical observable facts about Jesus (e.g., he lived in first century Palestine—something anyone alive at the time could have seen), while the latter deals with his significance for religious belief (e.g., he is the Son of God and Savior of mankind—things that are matters of faith).

While Paul is obviously concerned about Jesus’ religious significance, what would he make of the claim that he isn’t interested in the historical Jesus? Given his fiery temper, he’d blow his stack. Paul is emphatic about the importance of the historical figure of Jesus and the events connected with his life, death, and resurrection.

He tells the Corinthians: “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 1:22-23; 2:1-2).

Paul thus considers knowledge of the historical Jesus absolutely crucial, and he made it the central theme of his in-person preaching. It was the first thing he wanted his converts to know about and the foundation of everything else.

His letters take a different approach because they are written to people who already know about Jesus. He’s not writing to people who have never heard the gospel but to those who have already been converted.

Still, there is a lot of information about Jesus in his letters. In the passage we just quoted from 1 Corinthians, we learn (1) that there was a man named Jesus, (2) who is regarded as the Christ, or Jewish Messiah, and who (3) was crucified.

 

Jesus’ Family

Since Jesus was regarded as the Jewish Messiah, it’s unsurprising that Paul indicates (4) he was an Israelite (Rom. 9:4-5) and (5) was “descended from David according to the flesh” (Rom. 1:3).

The fact Paul adds “according to the flesh” suggests that there was something more than simply human about Jesus, and when Paul oddly notes the Jesus was “born of woman” (Gal. 4:4)—with no mention of a human father—it suggests (6) that there may have been something unusual about his birth.

Jesus also had other family members, (7) who are referred to as “the brethren of the Lord” (1 Cor. 9:5), and (8) one of them was named James (Gal. 1:19).

 

Jesus’ Ministry

As an adult, (9) Jesus began a ministry. “Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs” (Rom. 15:8)

As part of this ministry, (10) Jesus taught on various subjects. One teaching was (11) a prohibition on divorce. “To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband . . . and that the husband should not divorce his wife” (1 Cor. 7:10-11)

Jesus also taught (12) that “The Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:14). Paul later gives a direct quotation of Jesus on this point: “The laborer deserves his wages.” (1 Tim. 5:18), which is a quotation of Luke 10:7.

Without using direct quotations, Paul also cites other teachings of Jesus that we know from the Gospels, including love being the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:8), blessing those who persecute you (Rom. 13:14), and not judging others (Rom. 14:4).

To spread his teachings, (13) Jesus was associated with a group of men known as apostles (1 Cor. 15:7), and in particular (14) with a group known as “the Twelve” (1 Cor. 15:5b). One member was a notable man (15) known as Cephas—or, to use this name’s Greek equivalent, Peter (1 Cor. 15:5a, Gal. 1:18-19, 2:9).

 

Conflict over Jesus

Jesus’ ministry did not please everyone, and (16) some opposed him (Rom. 15:3). Apparently, these included some of Jesus’ own countrymen, who Paul says “killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets” (1 Thess. 2:15). So, (17) Jewish individuals somehow caused the Romans to crucify Jesus.

Crucifixion was a punishment that Romans inflicted on certain criminals, provided that they were not Roman citizens. We can thus infer (18) that Jesus was regarded by the Romans as a criminal—which would not be at all surprising if he was publicly regarded as the Messiah, who was expected by Jews to throw off Roman rule, and who thus would be regarded by the Roman authorities as a rebel king.

We also can infer (19) that Jesus—unlike Paul—was a Jew who was not a Roman citizen.

How did Jesus get into trouble with the Roman authorities? Does Paul give us any information about how that happened?

He says, “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the chalice, after supper, saying, ‘This chalice is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’” (1 Cor. 10:23-25).

So, (20) there was a night on which Jesus was betrayed to the authorities (presumably by someone close to him), and (21) on that night he participated in an important supper where a group of his disciples were present.

He then (22) took bread and wine and declared them to be his body and blood (notice that we have direct quotations from Jesus here). He also (23) claimed to institute the new covenant prophesied by Jeremiah (Jer. 31:31-33) and (24) instructed his followers to perform this ceremony in remembrance of him.

 

Jesus’ Death, Resurrection, and Ascension

After being turned over to the authorities, (25) Jesus was taken before the Roman governor, for Paul refers to “Christ Jesus who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession” (1 Tim. 6:15). This tells us that Jesus’ crucifixion happened between A.D. 26 and 36, which was the period during which Pilate was the governor of Judaea.

Paul indicates that, after his encounter with Pilate, “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day” (1 Cor. 15:3-4).

Jesus was not only crucified but also (26) died, (27) was buried, and (28) raised back to life (cf. Rom. 6:4).

He was then (29) seen alive by his disciples. “He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles” (1 Cor. 15:5-7).

Following this, (30) Jesus ascended into heaven (Eph. 4:8-10), and (31) he is currently in heaven (Rom. 10:6).

 

The Christ of Faith

At this point we pass from the realm of what could be observed by a person present at these historical events, but Paul is not done telling us about Jesus.

He indicates that (32) Jesus is the Son of God (Rom. 1:3). While this term can be applied to righteous men, Paul indicates that (33) it was true of Jesus in a unique sense (Rom. 8:29).

Paul indicates that (34) Jesus was present at and active in the creation of the world, “for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16).

Christ died on the cross (35) so that we could be saved from our sins. “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” (Rom. 5:8-9).

While Jesus is currently in heaven, (36) he will return from there (1 Thess. 4:16), and (37) the dead will be raised back to life (1 Thess. 4:17). At this point, (38) Christ will judge the living and the dead. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body” (2 Cor. 5:10).

 

Conclusion

All of the points that we’ve covered are found in the four Gospels. From what we’ve seen, it is possible to reconstruct basically the entire Gospel message just from the letters of Paul.

And this is when Paul isn’t even trying to give us a lesson in the life of Christ! Imagine how much more of the Gospel story we would hear if we were listening to Paul’s introductory preaching to his converts!

Nor are we limited to Paul’s letters. We haven’t even considered the rest of the New Testament letters (including Revelation).

These also contain multiple facts about both the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. To cite just one example, Peter reports what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration (2 Pet. 1:16-18)

It’s also worth noting that Paul is not unique in his presentation of the Gospel facts. They were widely agreed upon, including by those who knew Jesus personally, such as Peter and James.

Paul is emphatic that his presentation of the gospel must be accepted (Gal. 1:8-9), and he indicates that the leaders of the Jerusalem church agreed with him.

“When they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised” (Gal. 2:9; cf. 2:1).

While the Gospels are precious and irreplaceable sources about Jesus and his life and teachings, the substance of the Christian faith itself—including the key facts about Jesus—would remain known to us today even if the Gospels had never been written.

Rather than dismissing the Gospels because they are not (quite) as early as some of the letters, we should see the letters as providing powerful confirmation of the message of the Gospels.

Taken together, the twenty-seven documents of the New Testament provide a dramatic and consistent picture of what the first Christians proclaimed about their Lord as both the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.

 

Dates of the New Testament Documents

Below are dates proposed for the New Testament documents. The “late dating” figures are adapted from liberal scholar Raymond Brown’s An Introduction to the New Testament. The “reevaluated dating” figures are taken from my own work, The Bible Is a Catholic Book.

  Late Dating Reevaluated Dating
Matthew 80-90 c. 63
Mark 68-73 c. 55
Luke c. 85 59
John 80-110 c. 65
Acts c. 85 60
Romans 57-58 54-55
1 Corinthians 56-57 c. 53
2 Corinthians 57 54-55
Galatians 54-55 c. 50
Ephesians c. 65 or c. 95 58-60
Colossians 61-63 or c. 85 58-60
Philippians c. 56 58-60
1 Thessalonians 50-51 c. 50
2 Thessalonians c. 51-52 or c. 85 c. 50
1 Timothy c. 65 or c. 95 c. 65
2 Timothy 64-67 or 68-95 c. 66
Titus c. 65 or c. 95 c. 65
Philemon c. 55 58-60
Hebrews c. 65 or c. 85 c. 68
James c. 85-95 c. 48
1 Peter 60-63 or c. 80 c. 62-63
2 Peter c. 130 c. 64-65
1 John c. 100 c. 65
2 John c. 100 c. 65
3 John c. 101 c. 65
Jude c. 55 or c. 95 c. 64-65
Revelation 92-96 c. 68