Historical Arguments for Christianity

I've posted here before about why I think that historical arguments for Christianity don't work, due to an empirical deficiency in research: they don't answer competing claims from other religions (the example I gave was the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama), which (a) demonstrate enough to show that they should be taken seriously, and (b) would, if true, immediately prove (orthodox) Christianity wrong, no matter what the state of our own arguments. However, I am wondering whether even this is giving too much credit to the historical arguments; maybe they can't even in principle do this much?

Where do we get our knowledge of classical, orthodox Christian doctrine? From Paul, from Peter, from John, (from Priscilla?), from the church throughout the years, and so on. Now, even if Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried, and on the third day rose again as the Son of God (i.e. fully God and fully man) in power, it could still stand to reason that almost everything else that these later thinkers wrote is dead wrong. Maybe a good try, but wrong. Jesus' resurrection and the accurate transmission of the NT and OT texts has nothing to do with their theological validity.

At this point, one could say that God wouldn't leave His people hanging, and would give them direction through his inspired Word. Well, 2000 years later, I'm still looking for that direction; the church has quibbled, and no one really agrees on these issues of utmost importance. We look to our readings of Scripture, but so does the other side. We change our minds, and read back our thoughts to past transmitters of the tradition. Where is the guidance? There isn't enough to establish the argument that the NT is valid theologically, at any rate.

Ok, fine, granted, but what about Jesus? He said some stuff too, and maybe that at least shows that what later thinkers said was good, when it was strictly concerned with unpacking what He said. If He truly were God Incarnate, He would have been right too, and so an historical argument which gives evidence that He was who He said He was (and which further gives evidence that He said that He was God; not exactly a finished task!), gives evidence for some NT theology. But first, why think that we understand Jesus when no one around him seemed to do so? To be honest, even the speeches at the Last Supper where the disciples thought that Jesus spoke plainly are pretty opaque to me if I don't start by assuming that one tradition or another is true, so why should I think that I understand His parables?

Second, if Jesus was truly human (which would be necessary for any sort of orthodox Christianity), then how did He have perfect knowledge? If He truly were tempted in every way as we have been, then He had to wrestle with epistemological problems which cause so much grief for those concerned with knowing the truth rather than merely with having a spot of worldly comfort. So, how could He have known all the theological truths?

The answer could be that it would be like the way in which He did not sin: Jesus as human was tempted to sin and had to struggle for correct knowledge, but Jesus as God together as the entire Trinity saw to it that Jesus the unified person would come through in both practice and theory. But, are these two equivalent? It seems that it would be possible for someone not to sin, even within social settings according to a normal life, even if extremely difficult. But how can one, growing up in an environment with wrong thinking (as every environment is) without any source to correct that, to suddenly reach the Truth through human means? If there were no demons which possessed people, how would the human Jesus have come to know that? If a miracle, then Jesus didn't face our struggles; if not a miracle, then it is highly implausible that Jesus' judgments were all correct. But if this is the case, then why take Jesus' thoughts on theology as more than a highly inspired individual?

Maybe this shouldn't be a problem for theology; God could still have performed a miracle. It is logically possible. But for an apologetic argument, creating a key bridge from an historical resurrection to orthodox (or even mostly orthodox) Christianity by resorting to an actual miracle (not merely the possibility of miracles, but a really instantiated one) which nonetheless has absolutely no historical backing, seems to me to defeat the purpose. There may even need to be two miracles: one, that Jesus got it right, and two, that we have understood him properly in all the details we hold dear.

So, if this (together with former posts) is right, then there is no argument (even a strictly evidential one) outside of Christianity which could provide grounds for accepting it, and I therefore have no reason to prefer it to Islam or Buddhism, or just a straight-up rational religion or a pure pluralism. Further, anyone who thinks they do, either started by assuming Christianity or took a blind leap of faith. One can still choose to be a Christian, but it is nothing more than a gamble with bad odds, unless perhaps pluralism is true.

A Long Night

This last Wednesday I took the 7:30 train home (the last one) instead of the 5:45. Last time I'll ever make that mistake.

The train started off late; about 45 minutes, due to mechanical problems. It seemd to be going rather slowly, and eventually stopped again. A couple times. Finally, we were told that we would need to get off at a town still in Wisconsin, and take a bus to our destination.

We pulled into this town (about halfway between Milwaukee and my stop) at about 10:45. Mind you, I was supposed to be home by 8:36 according to the normal schedule. I had called Joy to pick me up, as I thought that they had meant that we would need to get a bus ourselves and I had no idea whether one would go to my stop. Now that we got out, there was a bus waiting for us that they had called up.

So, all I needed to do was to call Joy and tell her that she didn't need to make the rest of the trip, right? I called about 5 times before the bus left, and she never picked up. As a result, I had to forego the bus in case she didn't realize that she didn't need to come the rest of the way.

About half an hour later, standing outside in cold because no buildings were open and there wasn't a whole lot around to cut down the wind, I finally got a call from Joy (whom I had been calling incessantly). Her phone had been on the whole time; the calls just weren't getting through. She even had called me a few times, and I only got them halfway through our conversation (which lasted until she arrived, since I was afraid that if I hung up we wouldn't be able to reconnect).

She finally pulled up around 11:30-11:45. I was violently shaking from the cold at this point, and continued randomly shivering all the way back home (where, after an hour and a half from the ordeal, my temperature was still only 96 something). We pulled in about 1:00, and I still had to be at the train station around 6 the next morning.

To add insult to injury, I found out that the 5:45 had gotten out late, so I could have taken it home after all.

Rationalistic and Mythological Pluralism

Since the issue has come up both in Facebook and Blogspot comments, I figure that I would address it: what does one do when one is a pluralist, and participates in the community while eschewing deeply-held beliefs in the community? While I am still working out an answer (this is a critical and highly complex issue for the pluralist, I think, and kudos to all who called me to explain myself more), I think it would be helpful to lay out two poles of pluralism: the rational, and the mythological.

Now, any given pluralist-orthodox interaction will most likely lie somewhere in the middle, and I think that any such interaction will necessarily share in both aspects, but identifying the extremes will provide an explanatory model at least. The Rational Pluralist has a different theory behind the religious symbolism, where the symbolism is for the masses. These people need something to hold on to, and it will lead them to live their lives in a better fashion; the symbolism may actually participate in the truth somehow, even if not literally. The Pluralist knows the truth of the matter, but for the sake of the well-being of the community will only lead to the truth those with the commitment and aptitude to realize it. The models for the Rational Pluralist view I take to be the medieval Averroists and Maimonideans, who basically held that a good chunk of their religions where Aristotle wrapped up in something palatable to the average believer.

The alternative is the Mythological Pluralist. Unlike the Rational Pluralist, the Mythological Pluralist doesn't have anything else to put behind the communal view; she thinks that it isn't quite right, but has nothing better to put in its place. It is the closest to the truth that she will get. For that reason, she treats it as a movie, or a book: one suspends disbelief in these stories, and simply lives in the world without questioning it. Upon reflection, she will disbelieve that Christ actually lived as an historical figure (or at least she will be agnostic concerning it), but most of the time she is living it instead of reflecting on it. She will participate in the conversations of the community with little difference in day-to-day life.

So, both of these pluralists can live in the community while engaging in communal conversation. I think that the key for both is that orthopraxy is more important than orthodoxy, and that the latter is unattainable for most people (if not for all). The problem with pulling too much in the Mythological direction is that one loses the ability to legitimately criticize community standards, because one refuses to call them into question in daily life (although, hasn't one already done so by choosing the Mythological route? How can one live mythologically if one does not see a problem in living literally, and how can one morally see a problem in such an important area without desiring to fix it? How can one see any problem if one does not have any better explanation of what is truly Real?). The problem with the Rational direction is that one is essentially lying to the community (although, because there is simply no better option; does this make a difference? Is symbolism a lie when the audience takes it literally? How does Jesus fare on this, with his parables and how His audience took them?); there are some issues with elitism as well, which may make a difference to some people (though, is this a legitimate issue, since one would expect that God would make the truth known to as many as possible and so within their abilities, or merely a taste forced on it by our culture, since we should expect that those who have studied longer and harder do actually know more about what they say?). Does a middle ground help alleviate these problems, or compound them?