Ankerberg Show

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome. Today, we invite you to hear a debate between one of the world's foremost philosophical atheists, Dr. Anthony Flew, former professor of Oxford University, and Christian philosopher and historian Dr. Gary Habermas, current chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Liberty University, on the topic: Did Jesus rise from the dead?

If we've got good arguments for God's existence, if we have evidence for God writing Scripture, if we have evidence for him acting in time, if Jesus does miracles, then he rises from the dead. And if today we see cases of double-blind experiments where a medical journal publishes answers to prayer where 21 out of 26 categories the person is statistically better, we see some healing examples which we had time to go into, near-death experiences, and then we talk about the evidence for the resurrection, I think the Christian's point is the resurrection is not isolated; it's part of a bigger picture, what we would want to call a theistic worldview.

Christianity stands or falls on Christ's resurrection. If Christ has risen from the dead, then Christianity is true. If he did not, then Christianity is false. Even the apostle Paul wrote, "If Christ has not been raised, then your faith is groundless, your preaching is useless, and you are still in your sins." We invite you to join us for this important debate on the Ankerberg Show.

Welcome. We're talking with two world-class philosophers here. I think everybody that's taken a graduate course in philosophy knows Dr. Anthony Flew. He's one of the world's foremost philosophical atheists. And Dr. Gary Habermas, a renowned Christian philosopher and historian, considered by many to be the foremost expert on the evidence for Jesus' resurrection.

We're talking about the question: Did Jesus rise from the dead? And what's the evidence? Is there any evidence? One of the key things, gentlemen, that we've got to talk about is what did happen to this fellow by the name of Paul that was out there killing Christians, going after them, wasn't in the frame of mind to believe, didn't want to believe, thought they were dead wrong, and all of a sudden, he became one of the greatest propagators of the Christian faith. Tony, talk to me. What do you think happened to Paul?

Dr. Anthony Flew: The account seems to be that he had some companions, the people who later, after he had fortunately temporarily lost his sight, took him on into Damascus. He thought that the risen Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, had seen that, and the Messiah had talked to him.

But his companions, apparently at most, heard a voice on some accounts, and on some they didn't. But they certainly are not said to have seen something that you could push around on any sort of ordinary or even abnormal human body.

Dr. Gary Habermas: Again, I think the main problem with Paul is, he's right, the crux of the data is that we have Paul himself on several occasions, 1 Corinthians 9:1, 1 Corinthians 15:8, Galatians 1, saying he saw Jesus.

But if he's not, I don't think he's a candidate for Kent's theory, not a candidate for conversion disorder because, like I said, conversion disorder does not involve hallucination. So Paul would have to have a conversion disorder, number two, an auditory hallucination because he thought he heard a voice, three, a visual hallucination, four, and then a Messiah complex, visions of grandeur, so to speak, because he believed God spoke to him and gave him a message for the whole world. And five, there's not one speck of evidence from Paul's account that he was in the mood to be changed, why he would want to change.

So it seems to me we have four psychological problems and then a biblical problem from Paul's writing. I'm wondering how you can change a conversion disorder of Kent, your theory. How you can combine, let's say, a conversion disorder with a visual hallucination, with an auditory hallucination, with visions of grandeur, Messiah complex? Does this all happen at once?

Dr. Anthony Flew: I'm not at the moment, in fact most of the time, I'm not trying to offer a naturalistic or any other explanation of it. I want to know what the alleged phenomena are here in the case of Paul.

Dr. Gary Habermas: But that is a naturalistic theory.

Dr. Anthony Flew: Well, it's a possible one. It may be something wrong with that. I don't profess to be a psychological expert who knows what a conversion disorder is. I've read my William James and so on and heard about this.

Dr. Gary Habermas: But that's one of Kent's two big points, is that Paul had—I'm just saying it doesn't even follow. Even if he had a conversion disorder, it doesn't follow that he would see, hear, and think God gave him a message. That's incredible.

Dr. Anthony Flew: These are the reasons for not accepting conversion disorder explanation. I'm not particularly worried about that. I read this in Kent. He gives me this psych—the thing I want to maintain is that there wasn't anything there to be seen. What he thought he saw was the risen Christ. But what was there to be seen? And his companions, apparently, didn't see the risen Christ or anything else other than Paul obviously having some very important transforming experience.

Dr. Gary Habermas: We do know from the—if you take the three texts in Acts, Acts 9, 22, and 26, they did see a light. The companions did see a light. They all fell down on their knees. They heard a voice, but they didn't understand what the voice was saying.

So it's—I don't want this to go—I don't want people to get the idea that what I'm agreeing with you on is that they were just standing there and they saw nothing. They saw light, they heard a voice, they fell down to the ground. So plainly, there's an objective effect on them, too, which, by the way, is an additional problem for conversion disorder. Because if Paul has a conversion disorder, how come his companions are falling down to the ground, seeing a light, and hearing a voice?

Dr. Anthony Flew: Okay, I never professed to be a psychological expert. Okay, conversion order... but still, in order to have something that is going to transform your life and so on, and this is where we're entirely agreed, this is absolutely crucial about this. But unless there was something there that the television cameras could have picked up and all that, we don't have any reason for thinking that, other than if we already have reasons for believing that God's going to communicate with Paul.

Dr. Gary Habermas: You've got Philippians 3. You've got those three arguments in Philippians 3 that Paul thought this was a physical body.

Dr. Anthony Flew: Yeah, okay, he thought that. But the fact that he thought that is not a reason at this decisive stage for saying that it was there.

Dr. Gary Habermas: Yes, but I mean, when you said Paul believed in a spiritual, sort of a ghosty appearance of Jesus, Paul's very clear that what appeared is a body. So he must have thought he saw a body. And you still have the—if you like the Acts accounts, you still have his three companions falling down, seeing a light, and hearing a voice. And that's not conversion... Did you say, are you giving up the conversion disorder?

Dr. Anthony Flew: Okay, I'm quite happy to give it up. I've never really been devoted to this. Okay, I took it from Kent. He gives me this psycho—the thing I want to maintain is that there wasn't anything there to be seen.

Dr. Gary Habermas: Well, if it's not a conversion disorder, I'll just turn the question around to you. If it's not a conversion disorder and he did not see Jesus, then what did he and his companions see? Why do they all fall down together? What happened on the way to Damascus? If it's not a hallucination and it's not a resurrection, what is it?

Dr. Anthony Flew: If it wasn't visible to his companions, then it can't have been a physical body.

Dr. Gary Habermas: Who said it wasn't visible to the companions? I mean, they see a light, they fall down, they hear a voice.

Dr. Anthony Flew: That's all we're told about. They see a light and fall down.

Dr. Gary Habermas: Let's put it this way. Philosophically, as you know, a contradiction—two things cannot both be and not be at the same time, same place, same matter. We're told what they saw, but we're not told what they didn't see. There could have been a physical body standing right there. The text nowhere says there was no body here. And then in Philippians 3, Paul says he's a body. The only data we have is Paul's, right? We don't have the companions'. We only have Paul's, and Paul seems to think it was a physical body.

So at least here's the problem: one of our four facts, Paul believes he saw an appearance of the risen Jesus. Now, if it's not an hallucination, where do we go?

Dr. Anthony Flew: This is what virtually all the people in the Gospels who saw the risen Christ seem to have thought, you know. The only cases of them actually poking and so on and trying to see whether it was tangible are a very small group compared with all the other...

Dr. Gary Habermas: How many times do you have to touch somebody for him to occupy time and space? Not very many. Once would do it, right?

Dr. Anthony Flew: Oh yes, but the point is that what's a minority is the cases of people who are mentioned as having seen the risen Jesus, of whom we're also told that they did something to verify whether there was an object there to be seen.

Of course, now, somebody wouldn't have to touch Jesus. You can be objectively present in this room and me never touch you. So we have the women touching Jesus, Mary touching Jesus, you have Thomas given the opportunity to touch if you like the Gospels again. But even Paul's accounts, again we go back to Philippians 3, if Paul's thought is that Jesus appeared physically, at least that's Paul's conviction.

So it seems to me, again, you have the two horns of the dilemma again with the disciples. You've either got hallucinations because they believed they saw something... Kent says Habermas' facts are okay, but I think it's an hallucination. Do you still like hallucinations for the Gospels, for the disciples?

Dr. Anthony Flew: Well, I'm not sure about what labels apply. What seems to me is the crucial thing is whether there was something there to be seen, hallucinated, or what not. Not whether you call it a hallucination or a vision or what not. The crucial thing is whether there was something there to be seen. And it seems to me the evidence that that is so is pretty weak.

Dr. Gary Habermas: You've got the disciples saying Paul and the others had experiences that they believed were appearances of the risen Jesus. Okay, you've got a tomb that's empty, so something physical is going on. At least some of the texts claim they touched Jesus.

This all points in the direction to a body being there. They know this person; they've been with him for three years. He's their best friend. In some cases, he's their relative, he's their brother, he's their son. Where can we go from here? You still have to take hallucination, right?

Dr. Anthony Flew: Some are said to have been, for instance, walking along with him for some time without apparently noticing he's the risen Christ.

Dr. Gary Habermas: And I think that's a good point. I mean, I haven't seen you for 15 years, and I recognized you in the hotel yesterday, but there were changes, and there were changes for me after 15 years. I mean, if there are slight subtle changes in the resurrection body, which I think there are, that's all you need. You know how you look at somebody and you look back and you say, "is that you?"

I think the fact that Paul does say "spiritual body," I think it's a literal body, but—and I think it occupies space and time and could be touched, but there are changes. And so I think that accounts for the fact that he looked just a little different.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Could I throw in too the fact that I think it's always fascinating that you have another skeptic, a very tough skeptic, during Jesus' own life, his brother, who actually at one time implied Jesus ought to go up to Jerusalem and get himself killed in kind of a sarcastic way. And all of a sudden, this boy ends up as the head of the church in Jerusalem. Now, he didn't believe in Jesus the whole time Jesus was living. What happened to James, Tony?

Dr. Anthony Flew: Don't know. You know, why is—why am I expected to know? Why is anyone expected to know what went on in Jerusalem at an unknown date?

Dr. John Ankerberg: I think it's like going into court and saying to Habermas, except for your ten witnesses, you've got nothing, Habermas.

Dr. Anthony Flew: Oh no, I think he's got a lot. You know, I think he's got—I mean, I think rather few of these people are clearly reporting that they saw something that was there and took some steps to discover whether it really was. Thomas is a rather curious minor figure among all these people who were seeing the risen...

Yes, I do, because he seems to be doing the thing that virtually anyone with any skeptical inclination at all would do right away.

Dr. Gary Habermas: I think what John's going is this is just a part of the multi-faceted nature of the resurrection evidence. You've got a group of women, you've got a lone woman, Mary Magdalene. You've got a group of men, you've got a lone man, James, who in 1 Corinthians 15:7 we've got Paul's testimony about James. Now James is no longer a skeptic; he believes he sees Jesus. You've got Paul, and you've got an empty tomb. And we've got one strand after another after another, and that's why I think Christians say we have a lot of evidence that come in.

Just about the time the skeptic says, "Well, what about this?" you say, "Well, what about Paul? What about James?" The evidence comes in from a variety of aspects. And you know, as an historian, that's what an historian wants. An historian wants a lot of evidence coming in from different angles, from enemies, from believers. You've got two skeptics who were enemies. You've got the Jews admitting the tomb is empty. You've got women who are not supposed to be good witnesses and they're seeing Jesus at the tomb and grabbing him. I mean, there's a lot of data here that say that this man—and that's why I think Christians are Christians, because this is the key fact in the Christian faith.

Dr. Anthony Flew: Well, I think it's worth going back to the thing I said earlier on, that how you rationally respond to these things depends very much on what your previous beliefs were. And if your previous beliefs were Jewish beliefs, believing in the coming of a Messiah and so on, deriving from the Mosaic tradition, then it seems to me all this sort of thing becomes for you very reasonably persuasive.

Dr. John Ankerberg: But the thing that wasn't persuasive for those guys is that this fellow also claimed to be the Son of God. Now, Kent in his book said Paul never said anywhere in the New Testament that Jesus was God. I would challenge Habermas. The critics say, you know, show me where Jesus claimed to be God. You've got five strands of data that you can go and Jesus shows up saying he's the Son of God, Son of Man, in all five strands. You want to go that direction?

Dr. Gary Habermas: Yeah, I think we have both. I think we very clearly have Paul saying he believed Jesus was Son of God. But here I would say we've got data that predates Paul. A huge question today is what was Jesus' Messianic self-consciousness, or as we'd say today in the West, who did he think he was?

And what critics do here is they don't—they don't like the Gospels as much as they like Paul, as we've said several times. Paul's evidence is the best. But they do like passages in the Gospels that meet certain critical criteria. And in several of those passages, you've got Jesus claiming to be either the Son of God or the Son of Man.

And I would just say as a footnote, Son of Man was Jesus' favorite title for himself. But it is apparently taken—his usage of it is apparently taken from Daniel 7:13 and 14. He virtually quotes Daniel 7:13 and 14 twice when he stands before the high priest. Now here's an example: you have to have a reason he dies. Why did the Romans do what they did? Why did the Jews want the Romans to do it?

In Mark 14:61 to 64, the high priest says, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?" Now notice the question, "Are you the Son of God?" Jesus responds in the Greek, *ego eimi*. His first comment is, "I am." Secondly, he chains the Son of Man question to a—Son of God question to a Son of Man answer. He said, "Henceforth you'll see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, and he's going to judge you."

Now, the high priest should have said, "Oh no, you said Son of Man. I asked for a Son of Man—no, he knows right away when Jesus says 'Son of Man,' that's a claim to be a deity. And by the way, that phrase 'coming with the clouds,' that phrase occurs dozens of times in Scripture; it is always a reference to God. So Jesus says, "Yes I am," to Son of God. He says, "I'm the Son of Man. I'm going to come and judgment." And at that point, the high priest says, "All the rest of you witnesses can go home, we got you. He said blasphemy."

So there's an example. You have the so-called Q sayings, statements that are in Matthew and Luke but are not in Mark. And whatever you call that, they're in the Gospel. In one of those passages, Matthew 11:27 and its parallel in Luke, Jesus says, "No one knows the Father—no one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son and those to whom he will reveal them."

Mark 13:32, he claims to be the Son of Man. And the reason critics find this very hard to explain away, again it's the principle what historians call the Principle of Embarrassment, that Jesus says, "That day or hour knows no one, except the Father, not even the Son." Now if you're claiming to be the Son of Man, why do you say you don't know something? That's the embarrassment. As one British theologian says, if the church were just trying to make Jesus say he's a Son of Man, well just have him say it; don't make up this problem about he doesn't know the time of his coming. But in that passage, he calls himself the Son of Man.

These are some of the senses that Jesus seemed to have thought of himself as deity. And Paul clearly calls Jesus deity. He calls him God on a few occasions, and his two favorite titles are Lord and Christ. And I'll just say real quickly, "Lord" in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, "Lord" is the translation of Jehovah. So Paul, who quotes the Septuagint, has got to know that, and he calls Jesus Lord repeatedly.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Wrap this up where you're at here in terms of I think Son of God, Son of Man, if it's there and you have a resurrection, you put those two together, here's what?

Dr. Gary Habermas: Well, yes. I think Jesus—you have some authentic verses that even critics appreciate where Jesus calls himself the Son of God. You've got some authentic verses where he called himself the Son of Man. Paul's our earliest witness; he calls Jesus the Son of God, he calls him Lord, he calls him Christ.

By the way, Romans 1:3 and 4, Paul says the resurrection proves all these things. So that's your point you just raised a moment ago. Yes, in the New Testament, the resurrection is God's stamp of approval on who Jesus thought he was. Now, in our 1985 debate, Tony made the comment that if Jesus was raised from the dead, this is the best evidence that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. And I think that's pretty close to a quote.

Now, of course he doesn't believe in the resurrection, but I'm saying if the resurrection occurred, that's why people think Jesus is Son of God, because only God—the presumption is only God can raise the dead. And if he raises this man, he can't be a heretic. What he said about himself must be true.