Evaluating the Ehrman vs Bass Debate

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, our regular followers are no stranger to Dr. Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism, the historical Jesus, the origins and development of early Christianity. He rejected his faith in Christ and has become a vocal critic of Christianity. We have some excerpts from a recent debate that he had on the resurrection of Jesus with Dr. Justin Bass, a New Testament scholar and author from the Dallas area. Primarily we want to see what Bart Ehrman is saying these days and if it's changed much since you debated him on the resurrection in 2006.^[1] I can't believe it was that long ago. What are some of your recollections about that debate?

DR. CRAIG: The debate was at Holy Cross out in Massachusetts. I prepared extensively for this debate because I was convinced that what Bart Ehrman was offering as his objection to belief in the resurrection of Jesus was nothing more than a warmed-over version of David Hume's 18th century argument against miracles. So I explained to the students that this argument is demonstrably fallacious because Hume didn't have the probability calculus at that time. That was developed later. So Hume's argument against the probability of identifying an event as a miracle is hopeless. It's demonstrably incorrect. I explained to the students using PowerPoint slides Bayes theorem and how you would calculate the probability of an event like the resurrection, and then I exposed two errors (as I recall, they were called Bart’s Blunder and Ehrman's Egregious Error) and showed that he was simply offering the same invalid argument as Hume. And I was shocked at his response. It became evident that he wasn't even familiar with the work of David Hume, much less arguments against miracles, and that he thought I was offering a mathematical proof of the existence of God. He said, “You can't prove God mathematically” and then launched off on rhetorical exploits. You could tell that Bart Ehrman used to be a preacher because the remainder of the debate was basically preaching, yelling, and lots of rhetoric, and never came to grips with the argument.

KEVIN HARRIS: We're mainly focused on excerpts from Bart Ehrman in this podcast, but Justin Bass' case is mostly a survey of what scholars agree on as factual and the events surrounding Jesus and the resurrection. He also argues from the profound impact of Jesus on human history. Here's an introductory clip from Justin Bass. Let’s go to that.

DR. BASS: As Bart well knows, New Testament scholars today and over the last 250 years of biblical scholarship disagree on tens of thousands of things, but what they agree on, I think, is fascinating. I think we should focus on those things. These are important things to look at, and I think it's valuable to know what is it they agree on. What's kind of the common ground. My book is basically (the goal is) to capture where that agreement is among scholars, and to put it simply, on these issues, it’s Paul. Paul being a bedrock eyewitness, that he believed he saw the risen Jesus, this has not been denied across the board throughout history. When it comes to his sources, when it comes to Paul's early letters, when it comes to traditions that he is quoting within the letters, Paul, it's agreed upon, that he wrote those letters and it's agreed upon that he's getting these traditions from early on, probably when he hung out with Peter for two weeks with James, the Lord's brother.

KEVIN HARRIS: So he seems to be focusing on the apostle Paul. That's the focal point.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. It's evident that Justin Bass has been strongly influenced, I think, by the apologetic methodology of Gary Habermas and Michael Licona – the so-called minimal facts approach – which approaches this subject through the lens of the apostle Paul. And I think that's a mistake. I think it's tremendously short-sighted to ignore the abundant evidence of the Gospels, where there also exists large majority opinion in support of the fundamental facts underlying Jesus’ resurrection. These would be five in number. Number one would be the fact that Jesus of Nazareth died by Roman crucifixion during the Jewish Passover feast. Second would be that Jesus was then laid in a tomb by a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin whose name we actually have – Joseph of Arimathea. Thirdly would be the fact that that tomb was discovered empty on the first day of the week by a group of Jesus’ female disciples including Mary Magdalene who is named consistently in all the sources. Fourth would be the fact that various individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead. And finally, the fifth fact would be that the earliest disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite every predisposition to the contrary. Those facts are not only supported by an abundance of evidence in the Pauline corpus but also in the Gospels and other sources. The wide majority of New Testament scholars acknowledges all five of those facts. So that turns to debate then to the second step which is how do you best explain those facts.

KEVIN HARRIS: Just for the record, we've talked about this in podcasts past – that is, you don't use the minimal facts methodology here.

DR. CRAIG: No, no, not at all. I think that people sometimes are confused about this because I will summarize the evidence that is to be explained by saying that it consists of the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith. But those are just summations. That's not meant to be a statement of minimal facts. Those are summations of a broad array of evidence that is drawn from the Gospels as well as from Paul.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let's go to this next clip. Here are four lines of evidence from Justin Bass. Clip number two.

DR. BASS: And then we get bedrock facts that I focus on concerning Jesus's death and resurrection that come forth from those bedrock sources. Those are namely these: Jesus' crucifixion, then we have the claim – the actual just claim – of Jesus’ resurrection. I think that alone is just an innovative, unparalleled, unique idea that had not been known. Nobody was expecting a resurrected Messiah let alone a crucified Messiah in the middle of history. The third is the appearances which largely are cataloged in 1 Corinthians 15, one of these early traditions. And then the fourth would be I could use the great title from Bart's book, The Triumph of Christianity. So the fourth is basically how the early Christians starting in Jerusalem and the very place where Jesus was crucified, went on, launched from there, and went on to transform the Roman Empire, went on to transform many nations, lay the foundations of Western civilization, and ultimately still today the largest religion on the planet. All the Pew research shows throughout the 21st century is going to continue to be – we have a religious future, a religious landscape of the world in our futures.

KEVIN HARRIS: We'll hear from Bart Ehrman in just a moment. In fact, we'll hear from him next. But Justin Bass makes some of the same points you do. Sounds like he's going for a cumulative case.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. He's assembling the facts that need to be explained. But you notice he left out two of the most important; namely, the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea which shows us that they knew the location of the corpse in Jerusalem. It was public knowledge. And then, secondly, again the very public fact of the discovery that Jesus’ tomb was empty. Why anyone would ignore those two facts that are staring us in the face in making a case for Jesus’ resurrection is beyond me. Moreover, I'm not persuaded, frankly, by his fourth point about the transformation of the world that has resulted from Christianity. The problem with that is you can make the same argument for Islam. Look at the way in which this religion that originated in the Arabian peninsula in the preaching of this despised minority man, Muhammad, has grown throughout the world and is now the second largest religion in the world. Muslims could make an equally or nearly equally good argument from the spread and triumph of Islam in the world for the truth of Muhammad's message. And to a lesser degree Mormons could do the same. The Mormon religion has exploded and is now becoming a new world religion right within our own lifetime. I think that the germ of truth in that consideration is the fourth fact that I state; namely, the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite every predisposition to the contrary. It's not the triumph of Christianity that cries out for explanation but rather the very origin of Christianity that cries out for explanation. We know that Christianity originated halfway through the first century or roughly. Where did it come from? Why did this movement arise? It arose because these earliest disciples suddenly and sincerely believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead. But where in the world did they get such an outlandish and un-Jewish idea as that? That is a fact that requires explanation.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here is an initial response from Bart Ehrman. Let's go to clip number three.

DR. EHRMAN: I believe that in a lot of religious traditions you get reports like that. My issue with this kind of bedrock thing is whether it's appropriate to consider these kinds of claims outside of other claims for other religious figures. Do we treat them equally, or do we say it's more likely true because it's in the Bible and less likely true if it's in the Mormon tradition or if it's in the Muslim tradition. I'm just saying if you're a historian, and what you're doing is you're saying we're going to trust eyewitnesses, with the New Testament you don't have Peter's testimony or James' testimony or the 500. You've got Paul.

DR. BASS: But what we have is good enough to convince you for the New Testament eyewitnesses. You've already agreed . . .

DR. EHRMAN: This is exactly my point.

DR. BASS: Jesus appeared to them.

DR. EHRMAN: I agree they claimed it. But that isn't proof that it happened.

KEVIN HARRIS: He kind of verified some of the things that you said there, Bill. How do we handle similar claims in competing religions?

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I think here that Bart Ehrman is quite correct. In approaching these questions as a historian, we want to treat these sources comparably to the way we would treat the historical sources for the origin of Islam and Mormonism. And when you do that exercise, these New Testament documents come out head and shoulders above the historical sources for the life of Muhammad or Joseph Smith. In the case of Islam, it's a striking fact that the Qur’an has scarcely any biographical material in it about the life and doings of Muhammad. The earliest biography of Muhammad was written by a Muslim author about a hundred and fifty years later, whereas the biographies of Jesus were written down during the first generation while the eyewitnesses were still alive. In the case of Joseph Smith, it's somewhat different. Joseph Smith was simply a charlatan. There it wasn't a matter of legends arising. It was simply a matter of lies. Things like the Golden Plates and the Golden Spectacles and the supposed eyewitnesses to whom Joseph Smith showed them, and they later recanted their testimony. Joseph Smith was simply a con man. So the sources, again, for the supernatural elements of the revelation to Joseph Smith are spurious, and neither Islam nor Mormonism compares well with the historical records for Jesus of Nazareth and in particular those five facts that I mentioned which the vast majority of New Testament historians agree are historical.

KEVIN HARRIS: In this next clip, Dr. Ehrman is answering why he doesn't believe in the resurrection of Jesus. Clip number four.

DR. EHRMAN: Why don't I think a person got raised from the dead?

DR. BASS: Yes. Why don't you think Jesus got raised from the dead (not anybody)?

DR. EHRMAN: I don’t think anybody got raised from the dead because it violates the laws of nature.

DR. BASS: So you have a kind of materialist/fundamentalist view?

DR. EHRMAN: Let me ask this. You think God raised Jesus from the dead. Right? Do you think God can break the laws of mathematics?

DR. BASS: God can’t contradict himself. No. Because mathematics is his language.

DR. EHRMAN: That’s right. The other language he uses is physics. Can he break the laws of physics?

DR. BASS: I think we're getting off . . .

DR. EHRMAN: No, no, we are not. This is precisely . . . you asked me why I don't believe it. And the reason I don't believe it is because it violates the laws of physics, and I don’t think God . . .

DR. BASS: He can feed things into his system.

DR. EHRMAN: I don't think God can break the law of physics any more than he can break the law of mathematics.

DR. BASS: Feeding things into his system to bring a dead person to life is not the same thing as making two plus two five. That's completely different things.

DR. EHRMAN: They are both laws that have never been broken in history.

DR. BASS: Except in the case of Jesus, right?

DR. EHRMAN: Because what you're arguing is that the most probable event that happens with Jesus because Paul and Peter said it happened, the most probable thing is the violation of a law of physics that has never been violated in 13.8 billion years. Never. Except in this one instance. Now, if you're a historian, historians don't argue that something that happened only once in all of history is the most probable occurrence because somebody said it happened.

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, he's obviously trying to tie all that into what he thinks historians are restricted when examining things like the resurrection.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. This is so bad. It shows that Bart Ehrman hasn't learned a thing in over 20 years. He is still offering that same warmed-over version of Hume's argument against the identifiability of a miracle. While, as a New Testament scholar, he might have an excuse for not being familiar with these sorts of philosophical arguments, Ehrman has no excuse in this case because these things have been explained to him, and he is ignoring them. He is evincing a kind of invincible ignorance with regard to these issues. There are so many things to be said here. For example, the comparison of the laws of physics to the laws of mathematics just betrays terrible ignorance. In the first place, there aren't any such things as laws of mathematics. That's just a category mistake. In mathematics what you have are axioms and then you have theorems that are derived logically from the axioms. For example, the axioms of Peano arithmetic or the axioms of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. If those axioms are regarded as logically necessary then the theorems derived from them will also share in that same logical necessity. By contrast, the laws of physics are contingent. You have to discover what they are. They're not logically necessary. If they were logically necessary then physics would be an a priori discipline like mathematics. The physicist would never need to look at the empirical world or observations or conduct experiments. He could work like a mathematician totally a priori which falsifies the very nature of science as an investigative discipline. Moreover, the laws of nature have implicit in them ceteris paribus conditions; that is to say, they inform us what would happen if no interfering factors are involved. So the laws of nature give you ideal conditions that, if certain conditions obtain, then certain other conditions will follow from that. But implicit in that is that there are no interfering factors. It's not that the laws of nature are broken when there are interfering factors. It's that the laws of nature do not apply in that case because you don't have that kind of ideal case. They are laws that hold given the implicit condition that nothing is interfering with the operation. Now, as Justin Bass said, when God feeds information into the physical universe to do a miracle then you've got a factor that the laws of nature cannot take account of. They declare only what will happen if there are no such supernatural or natural inputs. So the laws of nature are not broken by miracles as Bart Ehrman would assert. Rather, they don't apply in the case in which God is acting. So his whole idea of miracles as breaking the laws of nature is simply misconceived and wrong-headed. Finally, his claim that historians appeal to some sort of a frequency model of probability where they could never establish a singular event is just completely wrong. In one sense, every event in history is unique. Of course, you can establish events that have a frequency of one time in history. It all depends on whether the evidence is good enough for it. And here he fails to reckon with the fact that one must not only consider the intrinsic probability of the event (say, the probability of the event given the laws of nature). That's all Bart, following David Hume, considers. But what he doesn't consider is that other factor in the probability calculus; namely: what is the probability of the evidence given the resurrection of Jesus compared to the probability of the evidence given no resurrection of Jesus? What that means in practical terms: what is the probability of the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, the origin of the Christian faith, given the resurrection compared to the probability of those facts given that Jesus did not rise from the dead? Well, I think that clearly the evidence is far, far more probable given the resurrection hypothesis. And that can serve to out-balance any improbability that you see in the event of the resurrection itself. So Ehrman here is completely confused. No one should be deceived by this sort of philosophical drivel. And that's what it is. You notice this is not an objection that is based upon historical research or upon New Testament studies. This is a philosophical objection. It's Hume's argument against the identification of a miracle, and here Bart Ehrman is completely outside of his field. This is not New Testament studies. It's not history. It is philosophy. And his faux pas are evident in the way he handles this question. I'm sorry if I appear overly passionate about this, but, honestly, it just aggravates me that Ehrman, 20 years after our debate, in his writing about these things should be spouting the same philosophical mistakes when he's been corrected on these. He has no excuse for this.

KEVIN HARRIS: In this last clip they summarize their cases. Let's go to clip number five. Last one.

DR. BASS: I would just say follow the evidence where it leads. And I think if you look at the appearances, if you look at what has transpired over the last two thousand years, and especially, I think, these points that what Jesus wanted to happen has happened, the fact that Jesus is still appearing to people in dreams and visions all over the world, I think all this points . . . I mean, where there's a lot of smoke, there's a fire. And I think when you look at all the things that have happened around the world, I think we see all the smoke. It must go back to a fire. If Bart's correct, it’s just smoke all the way down. And I don't think so. I think there was a fire.

DR. EHRMAN: I think that the big issue in Christian apologetics is that apologists are doing theology claiming to do history. I have no trouble with people doing theology. I have no trouble with people believing Jesus was raised from the dead. History is actually two things, and I think apologists tend to get it confused. I think that's what's going on here. The two things are history in one sense is anything that happened in the past. The other sense that history (the term, the way historians use “history”) is what you can establish as having happened in the past where you have evidence. And for that you need historical arguments. You can't have religious arguments. You have to have historical arguments, just like you can't have mathematical arguments to prove philosophy or you can't have philosophical arguments . . . There are different realms of discourse, and theology and history are different realms of discourse. If you pretend you're doing history when in fact you're doing theology, I just don't think it's right. And you're trying to convince people because they don't know. Oh, that sounds like it's history. No, it is not history. To claim that something is historical requires a critical evaluation of all the sources and all the information and to establish levels of probability. It isn't simply to tell people what they want to hear.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let's look at those one at a time. If you listen to the entire debate and read Justin's new book, he includes arguments for the profound continuing impact of Jesus on history. You've kind of addressed that earlier. Bart says there's a difference between doing history and doing theology, and apparently you can't mix the two.

DR. CRAIG: The hypocrisy of Ehrman’s statement is that there's a difference between doing history and doing philosophy, and yet his conclusions are determined by his naive philosophical arguments and not by historical evidence. When we apply the canons of historiography to the sources for the life of Jesus, those five facts that I mentioned fall out of such an investigation. Those are the conclusions that one reach. That is how far the historical investigation goes. The next step then will be a philosophical argument as to what is the best explanation of those four facts. And there one will consider the various criteria for assessing something as the best explanation and argue that the resurrection hypothesis exceeds its rivals in terms of explanatory power, explanatory scope, degree of ad-hoc-ness, plausibility, and so on and so forth. The approach of the Christian apologist is on all fours with the approach of the historian. The historical evidence establishes the facts to be explained, and then one explores various explanatory hypotheses to see which one is the best explanation of those facts. I've already said that I express skepticism about Justin's argument from the triumph of Christianity in the world and contemporary miracles and visions of Jesus today. Those are fine if you want to add them in, but the heart of the case is going to be the historical facts that are established by objective historical investigation, and then the application of those criteria for determining a best explanation to the competing explanatory hypotheses.

KEVIN HARRIS: Do you think Bart thinks that having the domain of the historical method in his corner, rather than theology or philosophy, that he has a perceived intellectual advantage? It's much like those who say, “I have science. You have faith.”

DR. CRAIG: I think you're correct that Bart Ehrman thinks that, when in fact it's not the case. The dirty little secret here is that Bart Ehrman is not a New Testament historian. He is a text critic. His area of expertise is establishing the original text – the original Greek text – of the New Testament documents. That's what he was trained in. That's what he has his doctorate in. That's his area of expertise. And he's only lately come over then to try to do historical Jesus research. And when he does that, as we've just seen, it is driven by this naturalistic philosophy that precludes a priori miracles based upon this obsolete and demonstrably incorrect argument of David Hume.

KEVIN HARRIS: Sum it up for us. Tie it all together. What are your final thoughts?

DR. CRAIG: What this video clip shows me, I think, is that the case that is offered for the resurrection of Jesus by persons like myself as well as Richard Swinburne, Michael Licona, Steve Davis, and others (N. T. Wright) is a very solid case, and that Ehrman’s skepticism is based upon demonstrably false philosophical claims. He is now without excuse for these mistakes because they have been explained to him patiently, and he has refused to assimilate them and choose to ignore the fallaciousness of his own arguments.^[2]