The Testimony of Simon Greenleaf
It isn’t rare in Christian apologetics today to encounter arguments
for Jesus’ resurrection that distance their cases from support by the Bible. I grant that that has its merits. After all, hostile prejudice is
rampant in our secular age to the degree that it hinders the Bible from getting
even a scant hearing. Yet despite mounting
positive support to the contrary, certain teachers still regard the Gospels as if
they carry only secondary weight instead of valuing them as primary documents
that accurately report the events surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion. For this reason I seek to assist in returning
the Gospels to their rightful status as primary histories such as The Works of Josephus.
It was some forty years ago that I discovered
another author using a different method that highlights integrity
as the standard by which the veracity of the characters in the Gospel narratives
can be exonerated. I’m not suggesting credulity
on his part. His additional skill in philosophical-reasoning
to the contrary dismantled rebuttals designed to discredit Jesus’ resurrection.
Notice in note 58 for example that he
not only dismantled Hume’s charge that non-scholars can’t discern whether a body
covered by scars from an excruciating execution (John 20:27) is really the very same “alive-and-kicking”
person who declared, “Peace be with you” (John 20:26),” but also stifled Spino-za’s and Laplace’s
empty charge that Creators of a cosmos are helpless to fiddle with nature’s
laws.
Nevertheless my specific purpose is
to highlight that area of the author’s specialty which distinguishes
truth from deceit by means of testimonial features. I am chagrined to admit the duration of time it
has taken me to fully grasp the core point of the document I am about to identify. For example, I had previously held that if
any person of such great scholarship as the author’s believed Jesus rose
from the dead, then I could surely believe it too! But today I thank God for enlightening me to
the more satisfactory view that God-breathed-Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16) both can, and actually does, show
itself to stand on its own merits as self-evidently valid in its
witness.
I now identify my mystery personality
as Simon Greenleaf, LL.D who served as both Profess-sor and co-founder of Harvard
Law School with fellow Justice, Joseph Story in the mid-1800s. First of all he produced his three-volume Master
Work, “A Treatise on the Laws of Evidence,” which is still valued as a professional
authority on that subject. Yet the work
I am most eager to highlight is his book, The Testimony of the
Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence (1843).
Please bear with me as I offer one further
relevant aside. I also recently discovered
the concept of apologetic argumentation through legal-reasoning in the writings of John
Warwick Montgomery (JWM) who states, “The advantage of a
jurisprudential approach [to making a case] lies in the difficulty of
jettisoning it: legal standards of evidence develop [by refining the
means] of resolving the most intractable disputes in society …
Significantly, both in philosophy and in theology, there [is increasing
interest to] introduce juridical styles of reasoning.” He ends this section by noting that, “Mortimer
Adler at the close of his [journey to embrace God’s existence
appealed to] the legal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Further, JWM elsewhere notes that what makes legal
reasoning particularly important is that by such “rules of evidence, issues
of life and death are necessarily decided.” Indeed it is because of the finality
of legal verdicts that codified standards of legal reasoning adhere to the heavily-travelled
path of refine-ment and clarification so that its codes be deemed as just and trustworthy
as is possible in the face of the sinful (fallen) aspect of human
nature. This is possible only if we
adhere to the straight and narrow path (Matthew 7:13) that alone yields a society that is
acknowledged to be fair and just. Such a
goal is highly vulnerable for the reason that our fallenness chronically
resists the moral and spiritual commitments that are required in
order for rationality to thrive into the future.
You can finish this post complete with footnotes, at my website:www.christianityontheoffense.com/articles
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