Top 30 Apologetics Books (#14): Simon Greenleaf, The Testimony of the Evangelists
By Rob Bowman | Plus, Peter S. Williams on the Bias Against Miracles
Quotable
Richard Dawkins claims that “The nineteenth century is the last time when it was possible for an educated person to admit to believing in miracles . . . without embarrassment.” This un-evidenced psychological red herring is obviously false (being made in the teeth of overwhelming evidence to the contrary). Why make such a claim? Dawkins is borrowing a rhetorical method from Rudolf Bultmann, who notoriously proclaimed:
it is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.
What Bultmann meant was something along the lines of the assertion that “belief in the supernatural is an intellectually unsustainable position for well-educated adults in a scientific age.” For the New Atheists, “intellectually sustainable” and “scientific” (defined to exclude any explanation incompatible with their naturalism) are synonymous. Hence the appeal to science is, for them, merely a roundabout way of asserting that theism is, as Antony O'Hear claims, “intellectually unsustainable.”
However, as atheist Nigel Warburton notes, “Confident assertion is no substitute for argument.” Indeed, as C. Stephen Evans wryly observes, what we have here “is an unacknowledged, and perhaps unconscious, appeal to authority, the anonymous authority of the ‘modern mind.’” Of course, a great many modern minds manage this supposedly impossible feat! As theologian N. T. Wright notes: “I know plenty of scientists who firmly and avowedly believe in the resurrection, and some indeed who have given a solid and coherent account of why they do so.” Likewise, Plantinga observes:
Very many well-educated people (including even some theologians) understand science and history in a way that is entirely compatible both with the possibility and with the actuality of miracles. Many physicists and engineers, for example, understand “electrical light and the wireless” vastly better than Bultmann or his contemporary followers, but nonetheless hold precisely those New Testament beliefs Bultmann thinks incompatible with using electric lights and radios . . . there are any number of . . . contemporary intellectuals very well acquainted with science who don't feel any problem at all in pursuing science and also believing in miracles . . .
Neither intellect nor education is a barrier to holding supernatural beliefs. For example, 72 percent of Americans with postgraduate degrees believe in miracles. A 2004 study reported that a majority of medical doctors surveyed thought that miracles have happened in history (74 percent) and that they could occur in the present (73 percent).
Graham Veale is unfortunately correct when he warns that the New Atheism aims “to sell consumers a sense of intellectual superiority for a low intellectual price.” Dawkins's false psychological assertion about belief in miracles is deployed in an attempt to create peer pressure against belief. Veale comments: “We can dub this rhetorical strategy ‘sneer pressure.’ The aim is to gain converts by peer pressure, to make the faithful feel foolish and out of place in the modern academic environment.”
The rhetoric of sneer pressure is pervasive in Western culture. Theologian Randall Hardman remembers that in one of his undergraduate classes “the premise was put forward like this: ‘We do history, not theology in here. Leave your faith at the door’” Hardman recalls hearing a number of similar statements, all of which reinforced the expectation “that being a critical historian implies rejecting any supernaturalism.” This biased expectation is commonplace, but it cannot survive critical scrutiny.
— Peter S. Williams, Getting at Jesus: A Comprehensive Critique of Neo-Atheist Nonsense about the Jesus of History (Wipf & Stock, 2019), 24-26.
Note: Below, Dr. Rob Bowman continues his series on the 30 most important apologetics books in church history. See his earlier posts in previous weeks of Useful Things.
#14: Simon Greenleaf, The Testimony of the Evangelists (1846)
Beginning at least in the early 18th century, with some anticipation a century earlier, Christian apologists often used legal reasoning in defense of the faith, especially with regards to the Gospels, Jesus Christ, and his resurrection. The most notable early advocate of this method was probably Thomas Sherlock (1729). However, the classic expression of this approach to apologetics came in a book by Simon Greenleaf (1783–1853), An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists, by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice, first published in 1846 (the same year as Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript). Better known now as simply The Testimony of the Evangelists, portions of Greenleaf’s book have been reprinted numerous times over the past 170-plus years. Greenleaf was a law professor at Harvard University and the author of A Treatise on the Law of Evidence, a standard textbook on the subject for many years. In what follows I will be citing the second edition (1847).
The original book Greenleaf published was a massive reference work, the bulk of which was a “Harmony of the Gospels” that included numerous, sometimes lengthy notes in support of the accuracy of the Gospels (49–497). The portions typically reprinted are Greenleaf’s opening “An Examination, Etc.” (1–48) and concluding material on the trials of Jesus (507–68). Also omitted from the popular reprints, regrettably, is Greenleaf’s “Note on the Resurrection” (498–506).
In “Examination,” Greenleaf begins by urging that those who wish to discover truth must be ready “to investigate with candor to follow the truth wherever it may lead us” (1). He proposes to bring to the Gospels “the tests to which other evidence is subjected in human tribunals” (2). Here is the first test or rule he presents:
Every document, apparently ancient, coming from the proper repository or custody, and bearing on its face no evident marks of forgery, the law presumes to be genuine, and devolves on the opposing party the burden of proving it to be otherwise (7).
After some additional preliminaries, Greenleaf examines in turn the four Gospels (10-20). He explains that the issue is not whether there is some possibility of their accounts being false, but whether there is sufficient reason to think they are true (21). As long as there is good evidence for the facts presented in the Gospels, they should be considered proved. One of the strengths of Greenleaf’s argument is that he explains clearly why the burden of proof is on the critics of the Gospels. He then argues for the credibility of the Gospels on the basis of five tests, such as their honesty, the number and consistency of their testimonies, and external confirmation (25–45).
Greenleaf’s book is a classic work of evidentialist apologetics. Its legal evidences approach has influenced many famous evangelical Christian apologists, such as John Warwick Montgomery and Josh McDowell.
Note: This series originally appeared in the Apologetics Book Club group on Facebook and was revised for publication as a book, Faith Thinkers: 30 Christian Apologists You Should Know (Tampa, FL: De Ward, 2019). The book includes an introduction, additional quotes from each of the 30 books, readings for each author, and a list of other recommended readings. For a free excerpt from the published book, please visit https://faiththinkers.org.
—Rob Bowman Jr. is an evangelical Christian apologist, biblical scholar, author, editor, and lecturer. He is the author of over sixty articles and author or co-author of thirteen books, including Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ, co-authored with J. Ed Komoszewski. He leads the Apologetics Book Club on Facebook.
Book Highlight
*Unless otherwise noted, descriptions are those provided by the publisher, sometimes edited for brevity.
Portraying themselves as challenging blind religious dogma with evidence-led skepticism, the neo-atheist movement claims that the New Testament contains unreliable tales about a mythical figure who, far from being the resurrected Lord of life, may not even have lived. This comprehensive critique documents the falsehood of these neo-atheist claims, correcting their historical and philosophical mistakes to show how we can get at the truth about the historical Jesus.
Reviews
"Peter Williams is a highly regarded Christian intellectual, and his writings and lectures always engage important topics in a rigorous and skillful way. Getting at Jesus may be his best and most important book to date. The book manages to be, at once, well researched, insightful in the topics covered, very well ordered in the flow of the book's argument, and interesting to read. I highly endorse Williams' outstanding contribution to believers and unbelievers alike."
— J. P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Biola University, author of Scientism and Secularism
"Are the high profile neo-atheists right when they claim that there is little-to-no evidence for the existence of Jesus, much less his exalted self-understanding, the historical reliability of the Gospels, or the veracity of the resurrection? Peter S. Williams leaves no stone unturned to amass the most comprehensive collection of scholarly testimony against these novel and misguided claims that is available today. Time and time again, he shows how the critics do not even follow their own alleged standards for truth. A must read for anyone who cares about evidence and not just propaganda."
— Craig L. Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Denver Seminary
Find Getting at Jesus at Amazon, Wipf and Stock, and other major booksellers.
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