Is there Good Evidence for Group Appearances of Risen Jesus? (Paulogia Opening Statement)

Written Debate between Dr. Andrew Loke and Paulogia

Previous Entries:
Dr. Andrew Loke’s Opening Statement

I. Introduction

First, allow me to apologize to everyone reading that I’m not educated enough to merely have a face-to-face conversation about this with Dr. Loke. If I had not squandered my life in decades of youth ministry and music ministry, believing in the truth of Christianity for what Dr. Loke considers to be bad reasons, but instead had the simple foresight to know that I would one day reject the claims of Christianity and subsequently act upon that provision by enrolling in a Ph D program for which I could not sign the statement of faith and then earn a doctorate… we could end this debate in a few-hour live stream. But because of my personal failures – and not because of an arbitrary, violable, personal policy – this discussion will be a multi-month, sporadic missive in a format that appeals to the narrowest possible audience. I’m sorry.

Next, a reminder that it is tradition in a formal debate for each party to present an opening statement as their personal case for or against the proposition, and subsequent rounds are used to directly address the opponent’s opening. As such, while I will reference Dr. Loke’s opening for illustrative purpose of his previously established arguments, my work in refuting it directly will begin in the next round. Nor will I be spending any time re-adjudicating prior disagreements – related or unrelated – with my debate opponent.

Instead, allow me to use this time as intended: to elucidate why there is not good evidence for group appearances of risen Jesus. (Henceforth, “group appearances”^[1].)

II. Justification

At its core, this is an epistemological debate about justification.

Is there good evidence for group appearances of a resurrected Jesus?

When one asks if there is good evidence to support a claim, they are asking if the claim is well supported, well corroborated. All other hypotheses or considerations aside, with the information available is the warranted conclusion that “the claim is true” over “the claim is false” or “we don’t have sufficient information to make a determination”?

An “inference to the best explanation” may or may not be well-supported with evidence. Before the first clue about a murder is discovered, the best explanation is that it was perpetrated by someone the victim has had sex with. Would this statistical trend justify immediately charging, arresting and sentencing the husband? Obviously not. There is insufficient evidence to convict this suspect, even if he is the primary suspect. “Best idea” is not the same as “well supported”.

Justification for a claim is also separate from the truth of a claim.

I could be fully justified in believing that my car is still where I parked it, even if it has in fact been stolen without my knowledge. Someone in the 5^th century would have been fully evidentially justified in thinking the sun moved while the earth stayed stationary, despite geocentricism being factually incorrect.

At the same time, I could be correct in guessing that there is an even number of jelly-beans in a jar, but my claim is not justified with evidence. Or from the example above, if the husband did actually commit the murder… that doesn’t mean the police are currently justified in pressing charges.

Intuitions aside, greater ramifications aside, alternate explanations aside… are group appearances of resurrected Jesus well-supported? Well-corroborated? Is there good evidence?

II.2 What is Good Evidence?

Evidence is one of those concepts that most presume to understand innately, but few can clearly articulate their instinctive conceptualization. Despite having built their entire disciplines upon the notion of evidence, few modern science journals, history societies or law reviews even bother to formally define the term beyond a sentence fragment in the proximity of “the concrete facts used to support a claim”^[2].

The Harvard Law Review of the 19^th century elucidated with greater satisfaction. “When one offers ‘evidence,’ in the sense of the word which is now under consideration, he offers to prove, otherwise than by mere reasoning from what is already known, a matter of fact to be used as a basis of inference to another matter of fact.”^[3]

Fortunately, these professions have spent centuries refining the nuance of best evidential practices, and we can leverage those lifetimes of experience today.

From the legal profession, we learn that evidence must have relevance, materiality, admissibility, probative value and weight.^[4]

• Evidence is relevant if it has any tendency to make a fact more-or-less probable than it would be without the evidence.^[5] If evidence is equally likely to establish two opposing inferences, it is irrelevant.^[6]
• Evidence is material if it contributes to proving a fact that is of consequence. That is, there must be a relationship between the evidence and the matter in dispute.^[7]
• Evidence is admissible when it is of such a character that the court is bound to accept it to be evaluated by the judge or jury.^[8]
• The probative value of evidence is the degree to which it proves a fact or facts.^[9]
• The weight is the extent to which evidence is credible, persuasive and significant in convincing the adjudicator(s) of a dispute to accept or reject a claim.^[10]

And when dealing with evidence in the pursuit of truth, the field of law also operates with a number of best-practices that are advisable to follow in our evaluation of group appearances.

• Hearsay testimony is when a witness testifies about something that another person told the witness.^[11](In legal jargon, “any out-of-court statement offered for the truth of its contents.”^[12]) Because the “other person” cannot be cross-examined, may have been misunderstood, or may have been deliberately relaying false information for a myriad of possible reasons, most modern court systems — including U.S. Federal Courts^[13] — decree hearsay to be generally not admissible. It is not considered good evidence for the material claim.
• Evidence of a person’s character or character trait (Character Evidence) is not admissible to prove that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character or trait.^[14]
• Where Collusion is suspected of similar testimony from different sources, it destroys probative value and possibly renders it entirely inadmissible at the mere “air of reality” to the accusation. It is such a serious consideration that it is up to the Plaintiff to disprove the possibility of collusion. Collusion may be deliberate or inadvertent. For example, unintentional collusion may occur through a witness viewing media reports or merely hearing other people’s stories.^[15]

II.3 Historical Evidence vs Legal Evidence

Some may object to leaning so heavily on legal terminology and standards for a historical question, but the epistemological principles and best-practices for evaluation still apply.

Rather than witnesses, historians have primary sources (original documents or artifacts). When a document is interpretation of another document or tradition, historians call it a secondary source instead of hearsay. Rather than say that hearsay is inadmissible, a historian would say that a secondary source is less valuable than a primary source.

Just like legal claims, historical claims are held in degrees of confidence proportional to the evidence supporting them. That ancient claims have less available evidence simply means that we lower our confidence in them, it does not and should not mean that we lower our standards to accommodate.

III. The Exhibits – Ancient Documents

In Dr. Loke’s book, he lists the ancient Christian sources he would put forth as documentary evidence to support his claim. “Aside from Paul’s letters, other documents in the first and early second century—such as the Four Gospels, Acts, 1 Clement, Letters of Ignatius, etc.—also claimed that various people witnessed the resurrected Jesus.”^[16]

As Dr. Loke spends most of his words on Paul’s letters, let’s consider the others first.

III.2 The Four Gospels and Acts

The author of Mark records no post-resurrection appearance stories at all, so it is not relevant to this discussion. By my count, the author of Matthew records two post-resurrection group appearances^[17], the author of Luke-Acts records three^[18], and another three recorded by the author of John^[19].

A glaring problem with offering the gospels as evidence is that there is significant doubt as to who the authors are. While church tradition upholds Matthew, Luke and John as the writers, this would represent a minority view among modern New Testament scholars, with broad dissent even among resurrection-affirming evangelical Christian scholars.

For example, in a work referenced many times by Dr. Loke in his book, scholar Richard Bauckham admitted, “That the texts of our Gospels are close to the eyewitness reports of the words and deeds of Jesus — runs counter to almost all recent New Testament scholarship. As we have indicated from time to time, the prevalent view is that a long period of oral transmission in the churches intervened between whatever the eyewitnesses said and the Jesus traditions as they reached the Evangelists. No doubt the eyewitnesses started the process of oral tradition, but it passed through many retellings, reformulations, and expansions before the Evangelists themselves did their own editorial work on it.”^[20]

To avoid confusion and accusation, allow me to be clear that Bauckham holds firmly to traditional authorship, as does Dr. Loke. It is within the realm of the possible that they are correct, but the point here is that even this staunch defender acknowledges his minority position. Rightly or wrongly, leading scholars who have studied the issue professionally do not believe that we know the identity of the people providing this so-called testimony.

Imagine you are in a jury, and someone with a bag over their head takes the stand and starts telling stories. This person doesn’t give their name, never claims to be a witness to the stories, and the court officials are generally uncertain of the identity of the person. How much evidentiary weight are you going to give his tales? I would hope it would be very little. Indeed, no modern court would allow such an event to occur. These are not the markers of good evidence.

It is beyond the scope of this opening statement to demonstrate the significant weaknesses in the case for eye-witness authors. What is material here is acknowledgement of the authorship controversy. Since the identity cannot be established with any level of certainty, it is impossible to have confidence that we have direct testimony rather than inadmissible hearsay. Without such confidence, they simply cannot be put into the category of good evidence.

Of course, the problems with the group appearance reports in Matthew, Luke and John do not end with their hearsay status. A fact thus-far uncontested by Dr. Loke is that all three of these documents use the book of Mark as a primary source… to the extent where around 90% of Mark appears in Matthew and Luke almost word-for-word in the original Greek. This is evidential collusion beyond any reasonable doubt, rendering these sources useless and inadmissible as independent corroboration of each other where they overlap.

Despite this obvious general collusion, the eight group-appearance pericopes in the gospels still somehow completely fail to corroborate each other in any way. These are eight different stories each with different locations, times, characters and events. It’s almost as if the gospel writers were working with a common tradition of a general notion that Jesus appeared to people, but no common tradition about the details of these encounters to draw from.

Dr. Loke tacitly acknowledges this problem in his opening^[21] when he speaks of “corroboration of the motif of ‘group appearance’” rather than actual corroboration of details.

III.3 Other Ancient Documents

Dr. Loke frequently lists 1 Clement and Letters of Ignatius among the ancient documents that he feels corroborate resurrection appearances.

Unfortunately, Dr. Loke fails to specify a reference to the passage in 1 Clement that he is thinking of. Other apologists point to 1 Clement 42:3, so perhaps this is what he means?

Having therefore received a charge, and having been fully assured through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and confirmed in the word of God with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth with the glad tidings that the kingdom of God should come.

The passage is speaking about unnamed apostles (see 1 Clement 42:2) – not the first-hand knowledge of Clement – making this hearsay, even if the passage were relevant. Which it is not. 

The passage acknowledges merely that these anonymous people were assured of something, not that they saw something. Even worse, Clement blatantly calls out the “word of God” and “assurance of the Holy Ghost” as the reasons for this assurance. An actual experience claim is nowhere to be found here.

Dr. Loke does, however, specifically reference Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrneans 3 in his book, a passage which is translated as follows…

When, for instance, He came to those who were with Peter, He said to them, “Lay hold, handle Me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit.” And immediately they touched Him, and believed, being convinced both by His flesh and spirit. For this cause also they despised death, and were found its conquerors. And after his resurrection He ate and drank with them, as being possessed of flesh, although spiritually He was united to the Father.

At this point, I have no reason to doubt the scholarly consensus that this letter is among those actually written by Ignatius. Ignatius did later fall victim to the church’s propensity for writing forged (pseudepigraphical) books in dead men’s names, just like Peter, Paul, James, Jude, Judas, Pilate and so many more.

While this passage clearly references group appearances of resurrected Jesus, the trouble with treating this passage as additional corroboration for the alleged group appearances is that Ignatius is clearly quoting Luke 24:39 and referencing the events found in that chapter. Ignatius also quotes the gospel of Matthew in Smyr 6.1 and other works. (As a side note, Ignatius quotes Matthew and Luke but doesn’t mention the authors’ names… exactly as one would expect if the authors were anonymous until later tradition.)

In this context, Ignatius isn’t an external corroborative source any more than Dr. Loke’s book serves as external corroboration for the passage in Luke. Both are non-witnesses merely repeating what someone else wrote before them.

Neither Clement nor Ignatius serves as good evidence for group appearances of resurrected Jesus.

III.4 The 1 Corinthians 15 Creed

If past interactions with Dr. Loke are any indication, most of the substance of this debate will be around the veracity and circumstance of 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, so it’s probably worth presenting here for the record.

³ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. ⁶ After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸ and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

From similar usage elsewhere of the Greek phrase translated “for what I received”, New Testament scholars believe that portions of this passage (roughly, those highlighted in purple) are Paul quoting a creed – a formal statement of beliefs that would be memorized and recited repeatedly – that would have been well-known among Christians prior to Paul’s conversion. I am willing to grant this interpretation. It’s the first-century equivalent of a Facebook meme.

For reasons beyond the scope of this opening, I similarly grant that the Apostle Paul is the genuine author of 1 Corinthians. It is one of the so-called “undisputed” letters of Paul^[22]. Further, I grant for sake of this discussion that Paul sincerely believed what he was writing in this letter.

It’s worth noting that Paul himself does not claim to have been part of a group appearance, so this passage is not put forward as first-hand testimony toward the debate topic at hand.

As someone who has read this far, you’ve likely already identified the primary evidential problem here… at very best, Paul is telling us what someone else told him. At very best, this is hearsay.

But this situation is so much worse than hearsay, because Dr. Loke and other apologists are advocating that Paul is passing along a recitation that was already firmly established in the greater Christian community at large. 

Christian scholars love to propose that perhaps Paul received it directly from someone mentioned in the list, but that’s based on nothing more than speculation and the affirmation it would give to their preferred conclusion. On the contrary, I find this conjecture to be highly improbable. Why would a witness to resurrected Jesus pass along a third-person memorized secondary-language creed about themselves that anyone could recite, rather than regale Paul with the detailed story in their own words?

Literally anyone in the Christian community could have taught Paul the creed. While we’re just imagining scenarios, it’s equally plausible that Paul first overheard this creed during his time hunting and persecuting the church, from some unsuspecting believer he later stoned to death.

Reciting this creed doesn’t even live up to the usual kind of hearsay that is tossed out as inadmissible. It’s not even hearsay. At face value, Paul’s quotation is no more attestation to the veracity of the information in this creed than my recitation of Humpty Dumpty is attestation of the egg-repair skills of the king’s horses.

Of course, Dr. Loke wants to plead his case beyond the face value. That the documents themselves – hearsay all – are merely the tip of the evidential iceberg.

IV. Inferences

In tacit acknowledgement that the direct documentary evidence is insufficient to justify acceptance of group appearances, Dr. Loke dedicates huge portions of his resurrection word-count to arguments from inference, a form of circumstantial evidence.

Inference is “a rule of logic applied to evidence in a trial, in which a fact is ‘proved’ by presenting other ‘facts’ which lead to only one reasonable conclusion – that if A and B are true, then C is.”^[23]

For reasons known only to my interlocutor, Dr. Loke’s go-to example of sound inference^[24] is as follows…

1. All humans pee and poo.
2. The disciples were human.
3. Therefore, the disciples peed and pooed.

If we are flexible enough with premise one to include all possible forms of solid and liquid waste removal, then these premises are factually true and the conclusion is the one and only reasonable conclusion. The argument is both valid and sound.

If Dr. Loke’s purpose is to demonstrate that “good” inferences from fact are possible, then he is preaching to the choir with his trivial example. But not all attempts at inferring are created equal. As Loke himself acknowledges, reliability of an inference “depends on the validity and the quality of the evidence of supporting the inference”. This is certainly true, and an area where Dr. Loke’s arguments persistently fall short, as we’ll discuss. 

Legal inferences “may not be based only on imagination, speculation, supposition, surmise, conjecture or guesswork”^[25] and “cannot flow from the nonexistence of a fact”^[26].

But in addition to requiring facts, these facts must lead to only one reasonable conclusion to create an evidential inference. Unfortunately, I find many of Dr. Loke’s so-called inferences to be of this form…

1. Many celebrities have public Twitter accounts.
2. Jennifer Lawrence is a celebrity.
3. Therefore, Jennifer Lawrence has a Twitter account.

As of the time of writing, despite the factual nature of the two premises, Jennifer Lawrence has no public Twitter account. In logic, any argument that can produce a false conclusion with true premises is called an invalid argument.

We will be exploring which of Dr. Loke’s so-called inferences fail to be backed with facts, fail to be valid, or fail on both accounts.

IV.2 Loke’s Inferences

Outlined in his book, his video presentations on the topic and his opening statement for this debate, Dr. Loke puts forth that these eight inferences raise the hearsay of the ancient documents to the level of “good evidence” for group appearances. They are, as follows in his own words…

1. Many ancient people were highly skeptical of bodily resurrection in general.
2. The resurrection of Jesus was foundational to the Christian faith.
3. The early Christians were willing to die for it.
4. People could check out if there were indeed ‘groups of eyewitnesses.’
5. Paul assumed responsibility and cared about his reputation with his known audiences in Corinth, and the costs of false confirmation would have been high.
6. The Corinthians knew at least some (if not all) of the ‘eyewitnesses’; Paul was appealing to public knowledge.
7. Other early documents also claimed Jesus’ resurrection and group appearances, and there is independent corroboration of the motif of ‘group appearance’.
8. “Solid” evidence involving group(s) would have been required to generate widespread belief of BODILY resurrection among Jesus’ followers in the first place.

Now, when it comes to indirect evidence (such as inference), in order to be relevant it must directly contribute to an evidential chain where the conclusion is the proposition being evaluated.

Unfortunately, Dr. Loke’s proposed inferences are not in this form, drawing direct connection from premise to conclusion. So, in this section I will do my best to steelman Dr. Loke’s points (the best that this mere non-PhD-holder can comprehend them) into the most charitable formations toward supporting the debate’s proposition.

IV.3 Corinthian Verification

As I understand it, Dr. Loke’s first four alleged inferences are to work together in concert to create a cumulative case for group appearances.

1. Many ancient people were highly skeptical of bodily resurrection in general.
2. The resurrection of Jesus was foundational to the Christian faith.
3. The early Christians were willing to die for it.
4. People could check out if there were indeed ‘groups of eyewitnesses.’
5. Therefore, groups of people saw resurrected Jesus.

But this conclusion obviously doesn’t follow. Here is one possible formulation that creates an approximate evidence chain (not a full syllogism) from Loke’s premises to Loke’s conclusion.

1. The members of the Corinthian church were Christians.
2. The resurrection of Jesus was foundational to the Christian faith.
   1. To have Christian faith meant believing in the resurrection.
   2. Therefore, members of the Corinthian church believed in the resurrection.
3. Many ancient people were highly skeptical of bodily resurrection in general.
   1. Members of the Corinthian church were ancient people.
   2. Therefore, members of the Corinthian church were skeptical of bodily resurrection in general.
4. The early Christians were willing to die for the Christian faith.
   1. Therefore, members of the Corinthian church were willing to die for the Christian faith. (from 1 and 4)
   2. Therefore, members of the Corinthian church were willing to die for the resurrection. (from 2 and 4a)
   3. Therefore, the resurrection is a life-or-death matter to the Corinthian church.
5. Because members of the Corinthian church were skeptical of resurrection (3b), but also believed in the resurrection (2b), they had to become convinced of the resurrection for some reason.
6. People accept life-or-death matters only for personally-verified, actually-true good reasons.
   1. Therefore, the Corinthian church accepted resurrection only for personally verified good reasons. (6, 4c)
   2. The only good reason to accept resurrection is group appearances.
   3. Therefore, the Corinthian church accepted resurrection because of personally-verified, actually-true group appearances. (6a, 6b)
   4. Therefore, personally-verified, actually-true group appearances are a life-or-death matter. (6c, 4c)
7. People could check out if there were indeed ‘groups of eyewitnesses.’
   1. People who can check out a life-or-death matter, do check out the matter.
   2. Therefore, the Corinthian church checked out groups of eyewitnesses. (6d)
8. To be personally-verified, people must actually speak to eyewitnesses.
   1. The Corinthian church actually spoke to groups of eyewitnesses.
   2. Therefore, group appearances are personally-verified.
9. To be actually-true, the eyewitness cannot be lying or mistaken.
   1. The eyewitnesses were not lying.
   2. The eyewitnesses were not mistaken.
   3. Therefore, group appearances are actually-true.
10. Therefore, groups of people saw resurrected Jesus.

I’m sure Dr. Loke will not be shy in pointing out where this logic path fails and misrepresents his argument, but for the time being it’s the best we have. The handful of lines in grey are Dr. Loke’s premises. The purple lines are show-the-work connections. And the lines in red are problematic inferences or freshly inserted inferences that would be needed to arrive to the conclusion.

Even accepting all of Dr. Loke’s speculative inferences as valid (which I do not, a topic for future rounds), in order to elevate them to good evidence, he will need to justify, demonstrate and corroborate that…

• general skepticism in the world somehow translates to specific skepticism of the Corinthian church
• people are convinced of life-and-death matters exclusively and only through personally-verified, actually-true reasons (despite many examples of people accepting life-or-death matters for dubious or false reasons)
• group appearances were the specific reason the Corinthians believed in resurrection (despite many examples of resurrection-believers for other reasons)
• every life-or-death matter is automatically investigated to the fullest extent possible (despite many examples of uninvestigated-but-possibly-investigated life-or-death matters)
• members of the Corinthian church found and spoke to eyewitnesses
• it was impossible for said found eyewitnesses to be lying
• it was impossible for said found eyewitnesses were not mistaken

Or perhaps Dr. Loke will connect the dots from premises to conclusion through some alternate route. Either way, I look forward to his response.

IV.4 The Pauline Guarantee

Dr. Loke paired his next two points (high costs of being wrong, and Corinthian familiarity) together to argue why Paul’s hearsay (which alone strikes it from good evidence admissibility) claim of group appearances somehow ascends to the level of near Cartesian certainty. Indeed, in his opening, Loke boasts, “It is implausible that Paul thought he was correct yet made a mistake on this issue.”^[27]

I find it plausible that on any given matter that I could make a mistake. That you could make a mistake. That the smartest-human-on-earth could make a mistake. Or at least possess only partial information and would revise the position in light of new evidence. The brightest minds in history have had areas where they were mistaken or incomplete. But not Dr. Loke in assessing the epistemology of 1^st century Paul the Apostle. For him, a mistake is “implausible”.

I will save a cataloging of Dr. Loke’s speculative interpretations, evidential flaws and overly charitable assessments for future rounds as applicable. For today, all that needs to be pointed out is that while one can reasonably assess what someone believes or values based on their actions, you cannot determine whether that belief is true based solely on their actions. The actions prompted by a belief are the same, whether the belief is true or false.

For example, a photo of a life-valuing person stepping into the street can tell us they believed it was safe to do so. But the photo alone cannot tell us if it was actually safe. Even if the person appears to be looking one direction or the other.

I anticipate Dr. Loke will line up his special-pleading qualifiers… “Paul was evidently not an imbecile” (as if intelligence prevents wrong views), “the early Christian movement was a network of close communication” (as if close networks automatically promote accurate information), “he cared about his reputation”^[28] (as if no prideful person has lied or been misled), and so on.

If he does, keep in mind that he will be attempting to use inadmissible character evidence (that a person acted in accordance with a character or trait on a particular occasion) to prop-up already-inadmissible hearsay evidence. While this isn’t a court of law, what is rejected as bad evidence in a sophisticated arena (court) doesn’t somehow become good evidence in a written debate on a blog.

IV.5 Other Documents and Motifs

I’ve already explored the lack of independent documents corroborating group appearances. In future responses I shall press upon Dr. Loke’s epistemologically-timid, desperate appeal to mere motifs… perhaps with a Star Wars-related illustration.

IV.6 “Solid Evidence” was Required

When asked about the role of apologetics (arguments and evidence) in convincing non-believers, famous Christian apologist Dr. William Lane Craig’s responds, “I think that the fundamental way in which we know that Christianity is true is through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.”^[29]

Dr. Loke has yet to demonstrate how this would have been different for early Christians, but merely asserts that “some ‘solid’ evidence such as the disciples eating and drinking with Jesus together as a group would likely have been necessary to start the widespread agreement among them that a resurrected corpse was what they witnessed.”^[30]

The phrases “such as” and “likely have been necessary” tacitly acknowledge that group appearances are merely one possible evidential line that could produce this belief. To be evidentially relevant, an inference must lead to a single conclusion… not merely be consistent with multiple competing conclusions. (Not to mention, not merely speculation, supposition, conjecture or guesswork.)

This debate is about whether we can be justified in accepting that group appearances happened. Maybe 1^stcentury Corinthians were evidentially justified in that belief, maybe they were not. We have no insight. That they were convinced is of no evidential value.

V. Conclusion

If you will allow me to dip one last time into the pool of evidence-evaluation wisdom found in the courts of the world, the nature of this debate reminds me of the Briginshaw Standard: that “more convincing evidence is necessary to meet the standard of proof where an allegation is particularly serious, or unlikely to have occurred.”^[31]

Just a few verses down from the much-discussed 1 Corinthians 15 creed, Paul writes about the importance of resurrected Jesus’…

¹⁷ And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. ¹⁹ If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

As resurrection appearances are meant to support Jesus’ resurrection, and Jesus’ resurrection is the most important linchpin for Christianity, and the truth of Christianity determines the forever fate of our eternal souls, it would seem the topic of this debate is safely in the category of “particularly serious”.

At the same time, with such a resurrection unheard of in a naturalistic worldview, and only once-in-history under a Christian worldview, it’s safe to call group appearances “unlikely to have occurred” under any belief system.

If ever there was a case that calls for the “particularly serious” and “unlikely to have occurred” Briginshaw Standard asking for “more convincing evidence”, it’s this one. 

But what kind of evidence is put forth for group appearances? 

Hearsay. Character evidence. Collusion. Speculation. Conjecture. Quality of evidence so poor that it isn’t even admissible in the lowest of courts in the smallest of small-claims cases.

If the eternal fate of every soul in the universe hinged on justifying group appearances, we should expect an omniscient, omnipotent benefactor to do better.

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Footnotes

^[1] I’m aware that my footnote attribution style is all over the map and that this will likely cause great consternation in my academically-minded OCD readers out there. Apologies.

^[2] Oldham, Davis: “Evidence” (English 101 & 102) Shoreline Community College

^[3] Thayer, James B. “Presumptions and the Law of Evidence.” Harvard Law Review (1889): 143.

^[4] “The Legal Concept of Evidence” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

^[5] United States “Federal Rules of Evidence”, House of Representatives. 2004 Edition. p 3.

^[6] Sankoff, Peter, LLM. “Probative Value”, 2020

^[7] Supreme Court of Canada. R v Gill, 1987 CanLII 6779 (MB CA), (1987) 39 CCC (3d) 506 (MBCA) 

^[8] admissible. (n.d.) West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. (2008). 

^[9] Jaksa, William, “Probative vs Prejudicial”, 2021

^[10] “Weight of the evidence” Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute.

^[11] Bala, Nicholas and Anand, Sanjeev. Youth Criminal Justice Law, 3/e

^[12] Stewart, Hamish, et al, Evidence: A Canadian Casebook, 3d ed (Toronto: Emond Montgomery, 2012) p129

^[13] U.S. Federal Rules of Evidence: 801-03, 901 

^[14] U.S. Federal Rules of Evidence. Rule 404. Character Evidence

^[15] O’Connell, Stuart. Similar Fact Evidence: Collusion. Oct 2017.

^[16] Loke, Andrew. Investigating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies) (p. 8). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

^[17] Matthew 28:6, 28:17

^[18] Luke 24:15, 24:36 and 24:50. Acts 1 repeats the Luke 24:50 story, but as this is the same author writing in a sequel work, this would not count as external corroboration.

^[19] John 20:19, 20:26 and John 21

^[20] Richard Bauckham. “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (2nd Edition).” Apple Books.

^[21] Loke, Andrew. Dr. Andrew Loke’s Opening Statement vs. Paulogia March 2021.

^[22] “Virtually all scholars agree that seven of the Pauline letters are authentic: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.” Bart D. Ehrman. “Forged.” Apple Books. Chapter 3

^[23] “Inference.” The People’s Law Dictionary. 1981-2005. Gerald N. Hill and Kathleen T. Hill 23

^[24] “The inference that the apostles must have peed and pooed is warranted given that it is based on elementary biological consideration.” Loke, Andrew. Dr. Andrew Loke’s Opening Statement vs. Paulogia March 2021.

^[25] Cothran v. Town Council of Los Gatos (1962) 209 Cal.App.2d 647.

^[26] Eramdjian v. Interstate Bakery Corp. (1957) 153 Cal.App.2d 590.

^[27] Loke, Andrew. Dr. Andrew Loke’s Opening Statement vs. Paulogia March 2021.

^[28] Ibid.

^[29] Craig, Dr. William Lane. What Role Does the Holy Spirit Play In Apologetics?

^[30] Loke, Andrew. Dr. Andrew Loke’s Opening Statement vs. Paulogia March 2021.

^[31] Lacey, Andrew. “Still Unsure about Briginshaw?” November 2019.