As a Matter of Fact

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The entire discussion of Christian apologetics would be greatly served if there was a clearer appreciation of a critical distinction: that of (1) facts and (2) contentions.

1. Fact: A fact is something that has really occurred or is actually the case. The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability, that is whether it can be proven to correspond to experience. (ref)
2. Contention: a point contended for or affirmed in controversy. (ref)

The subtle trick of apologetics is get that rubber stamp out: labelling contentions as facts is job one. We do not like doubt. When in doubt, stamp it!

A Recent Comment

One of my commenters recently posted the following:

The foundation of the Christian religion is not in fuzzy emotions or the logical coherence of its theology, but in a historical event: the resurrection; that it occurred, that there were many eyewitnesses to it, and that many of those eyewitnesses died attesting to it.

I formerly believe and said exactly the same thing. But is the resurrection a fact, or a contention? That would be a contention. In scholarly circles, among those who are most well versed in the relevant information and fields of study, affirming the resurrection is most decidedly done “in controversy”.

Care must be taken: it all rests in how carefully we cast our nets.

But what about there being eyewitnesses to it? Surely we can say that there were eyewitnesses. Actually, no. That would be a contention too. When Luke says that he is passing on an organized account, but fails to specify where the various threads of information came from, we only have the word of a single author. And he is an author who was not present for the events recorded. Nor does he tell us who actually was present; i.e., which eyewitnesses does his gospel represent? Seems important, but why dwell… When Paul tells us that he heard, second hand, about five hundred people seeing Jesus, we have hearsay of an event at second or third remove – and again, without any specifics as to who those people were, where they were, or when it happened. The testimony of a single author, who wasn’t there. In point of fact, none of the gospel accounts states that the writer is an eyewitness. But what if they had? If they had, which they did not, analogy could be drawn to the Mormon witnesses that affirm the existence of the Golden Tablets… Yet nobody outside Mormon circles was witness to their existence, and only Mormons take this claim seriously. Eyewitness testimony by religious zealots about their religious leaders has a history of being anything but objective. Thin. Very thin. That is why only corroboration from sources outside a religion could be considered “verification.”

OK, but surely the eyewitnesses died attesting; i.e., the martyrs were real. That must surely be a fact. Sorry, but no. Historians are by no means contention free here either. The book of Acts speaks of martyrs, and so does Josephus. But not the same martyrs. No martyr is “multiply attested” by both pagan and Christian sources. Nor does Josephus (or other pagan sources) affirm that these followers of Jesus actually died as martyrs. We have no confirmation whatever of either (1) why or (2) how they met their deaths “as martyrs.” The trail actually goes cold for nearly every claimed martyr, with not a word penned about them for centuries. Yet in almost supernatural form, Foxes Book of Martyrs provides vivid traditions about all of the apostles and their martyrdoms: in the middle ages.

Lift the rocks, and keep lifting. There’s nothing there.

Facts? No, just a long series of contentions. One contention upon another. And we call the constellation of these unconfirmed suppositions a “foundation” upon which to erect what William Lane Craig terms, “reasonable faith.”

What Facts Look Like

So, what do actual facts look like?

Actual facts will be affirmed by people without need for a particular religious pre-commitment. For example, a six-day creation is not a fact in any proper sense, because it is a highly contentious claim, and no one makes such a claim from the evidence… unless, if and only if, they have a religious text informing them as such. A spherical earth, by contrast, is (1) verifiable and (2) does not require a particular faith commitment to be accepted.

Concerning the gospels:

• Fact: they were written anonymously.
• Contention: they are eyewitness accounts.

Concerning Genesis:

• Fact: it was written anonymously.
• Fact: it is written in a language too recent for the time of Moses.
• Contention: Moses wrote it.

Concerning Jesus:

• Fact: pagan sources feature god-men with virginal conceptions centuries before Jesus.
• Fact: these sources predate any analogue in Jewish writings.
• Fact: Roman imperial theology featured savior titles for Caesar decades before the exact same titles were applied to Jesus.
• Contention: Christian authors were not borrowing the titles and divine identity of Jesus from pagan sources.

Always ask: is this verifiable? Within the realm of religion, I am sorry to say that “verification” requires an outside source. Verification by others seeking to affirm the same specific supernatural claims simply isn’t satisfactory. Why? We need look no further than miracle claims or textual authority claims from religions of opposition to see. Verification must come from outside the given faith “bubble.” Otherwise, affirmation would be a far better word choice.

Summary

As Christians, we anchor our “reasonable faith” in an unfortunate selection of contentions. We stamp those contentions as “fact”, even though they are not verifiable and are made in the face of notable scholarly controversy.

There is a game being run, and its the same game played by Muslims and Mormons. Our faith – like theirs – is entirely reasonable given the backdrop of “facts” we maintain. Our reasonable faith is a blind faith, and what we are blind to is our incremental, bit-by-bit, parceling out of the blind leap, one small “fact” at a time. And we are indeed blind to the fact that this is what we are doing. The back-check is simple: Christians do not accept Muslim facts, nor vice versa. That’s because they aren’t facts; they are contentions. Even liberal Christians do not accept the facts of conservative Christians.  We would be better off to admit of our elastic definition of “fact.” But a reasonable faith anchored on contentions, well, that doesn’t sell many books, does it?

Once again, we do not like doubt, but certainty. Certainty is what sells apologetics books. When in doubt, we stamp it “fact.”