I didn’t see that exchange, but I would have to rule out his actually believing that stuff first. Like Keener, who gullibly believes wild tales about ghosts and demons and magic and even makes that an argument for them being true. Keener isn’t lying. He’s just bad at this; and delusion is the consequence.

You’d be surprised how many Christian apologists (especially, oddly, Catholics) “hide” their sincere belief (and paranoid fear) of demons and magic because they know they’ll be laughed at. But as we sink more and more into the Post Truth Era, where even Nazis can be out and proud now, we are seeing more and more “admissions” of these beliefs from Christian scholars.

It’s fair to say they are clinically delusional. But nearly all religious people are. So that isn’t some revelation. There are only two ways to believe Jesus is Lord: to pretend to, to serve some variety of grift or neocon mission; or to be clinically insane. The latter doesn’t make you a bad person.

It’s basically just the same illness as flat earthism or antivaxx or even antisemitism or Red Pill or Scientology or any cult ever. Just tooled to a different structure. But insanity should not be over-read as lunacy—most people with a mental illness, whether OCD or BP or phobia or depression or delusion, are perfectly functional; they aren’t talking to elves and eating grass (see Problems with the Mental Illness Model of Religion).

I initially thought this post was going to be about the distinction between the “minimal facts” approach vs. the “maximalist” approach.

Yeah. The minimal facts approach was driven into a tree by Habermas himself, when he had to admit his minimal facts were not minimal, and he ended up trimming them until they were (from twelve to six to four; and in Licona’s hands, now only three); but that was so far as to no longer produce the desired conclusion. See Paulogia (who covers the McGrew argument as well). Of course I have touched on it many times (see the latest linklist).

As I understand it, roughly, the “minimal facts” approach (associated with Licona) assumes the Gospels are unreliable (for the sake of argument), and pretty much only argues from Paul’s Epistles.

Yes. That’s Licona’s attempt to fix the travesty of Habermas. I debated Licona on it long ago (it was our second debate; the video might still be around somewhere?). It definitely doesn’t work.

But I see how you thought this was the dichotomy I was discussing. But actually I’m working on a completely different axis. It is also true that there is a “maximal” and “minimal” gullibility axis. But I am talking about a “maximal” and “minimal” honesty axis.

Even minimal facts (even Licona’s “three”) is defended with specious manipulation of data and logic (a dishonest approach—whether Licona is lying to himself or his audience, it’s still lying). The alternative (the other side of the axis) doesn’t do that. But it also isn’t maximally gullible either. Sheffield does not gullibly believe too much in the Gospels. He gullibly believes what later Christians said about the Gospels; and his reasoning why is entirely transparent (he isn’t hiding some semantic trick or context or evidence).

So, maybe we could build a D&D alignment table with gullibility across the top and honesty along the side, and in the square for low g and high h are everyone who agrees Jesus didn’t rise from the dead; in the square for medium g and high h is Sheffield; in the square for medium g and medium h is Licona; in the square for medium g and low h is Craig (every third Sunday and first Tuesday of the month) and in the high g / low h square is, again, Craig (every Wednesday that isn’t a Holiday). And so on. McGrew might be in high g / low h or high g / medium h.

On the other hand, if the Gospels more-or-less accurately represent what the early eyewitnesses claim to have seen, then the Christian witness is vastly more detailed and disanalogous to these non-Christian cases.

Correct. This is why the dishonest approach requires selling ideas that aren’t credible, using tricks like Licona uses in my examples above, though there only for authorship. For the resurrection the trick is simply to act like everything in Paul references everything in the Gospels, and therefore the Gospels “aren’t” wildly propagandistic exaggerations and legendary embellishments on what was being said in Paul’s day. I cover this in Resurrection: Faith or Fact? My Bonus Reply.

But I don’t classify McGrew as honest. Again, “dishonest” doesn’t necessarily mean she is aware of it; they are often lying to themselves, but lies are lies. And my experience with her (e.g.) is she always uses tricks, like Licona did. Omitting key evidence that undermines or even reverses her points; playing word games and semantic maneuvering; asserting obviously fallacious inferences with curious overconfidence; and resorting to insults, ad hominem, or manufactured outrage when any of this is called out, to try and change the subject by shooting the messenger, and trick her fans into forgetting the message.

Sheffield doesn’t do any of that. And that is what distinguishes his apologetical approach from theirs.

As I understand it, roughly, the “minimal facts” approach (associated with Licona) assumes the Gospels are unreliable (for the sake of argument), and pretty much only argues from Paul’s Epistles. By contrast, the “maximalist” approach also presumes that the “details of testimony” (DT) premise is true– i.e. that the four canonical Gospels represent what some alleged eyewitnesses claimed to have seen– that the risen Jesus stuck around for a while, had conversations with people, ate with people, let them touch him, and so on, and that the early part of Acts is broadly accurate about the circumstances of persecution in which early Christians made such claims.

Lydia McGrew has written several posts on this methodological divide among Christian apologists, also discussing some in-between approaches (like WL Craig’s “core facts” approach). She also accuses WL Craig of misconstruing the distinctions between the approaches, leading to what she sees as Craig’s mistaken praise of Dale Allison’s work. (Craig seems to think Allison’s arguments help the Resurrectionist case. I think McGrew is right that they don’t help it.)

Here’s one of her main posts: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2021/11/on-minimal-facts-case-for-resurrection.html

In part 3 of that series (which I’ve skimmed), McGrew also praises Licona for being more careful than some other scholars in specifying what is and isn’t granted by most scholars, criticizes Gary Habermas for repeatedly being sloppy so as to falsely insinuate that the scholarly majority supports Resurrection-friendly premises (though she doesn’t accuse him of intentional dishonesty), and she admits her own maximalist argument involves premises NOT granted by most scholars.

Also it sounds to me like McGrew helps the case to accuse her of an anchoring bias, as she admits she made early arguments which greatly overestimated how many Resurrection-friendly premises were granted by most scholars. I think she should get off the Resurrectionist train. But I appreciate her growing acceptance of how the scholarly majority does not support many of her premises, even though she thinks the scholarly majority is mistakenly skeptical. I respect her willingness to explicitly retract statements she’d made in an earlier publication, which is a practice that should be praised and made more commonplace (especially in such a highly biased field as religious apologetics).

It’s a little like the difference between a creationist who thinks most biologists have abandoned evolution vs. a creationist who recognizes most biologists accept evolution but thinks the biologist consensus is wrong. One of these views is a lot less out-of-touch with reality than the other is, though of course both are badly wrong.

I’ve also read McGrew’s more recent post, where she clarifies the distinction and argues WL Craig has misunderstood it. She also discusses what she sees as its advantages: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2025/10/on-maximalism-and-dale-allison-david.html

Basically I agree with both sides here– about the other side’s disadvantages. If the MFA is accepted, then the vagueness of the Epistles (e.g. 1 Corinthians 15) is damning. My understanding is that Dale Allison, among others, has powerfully shown that there are many analogues to the claims of eyewitnessing Jesus’ Resurrection– ghost visions (e.g. grief hallucinations), visions in non-Christian religions (widely rejected by Christians), and so on. (I’ve read Allison’s old Resurrecting Jesus which discusses grief hallucinations and suchlike, but not his more recent book, which sounds like an expansion on this line of thinking.)

On the other hand, if the Gospels more-or-less accurately represent what the early eyewitnesses claim to have seen, then the Christian witness is vastly more detailed and disanalogous to these non-Christian cases. McGrew calls out WL Craig and some others for being impressed by scholarly agreement on the claim that the disciples believed they’d witnessed the risen Jesus– given that *what* most scholars agree on is extremely vague/minimal, so much so that it doesn’t make the Resurrection stand out from dozens of non-Christian visions that Christians generally don’t find impressive.

It seems to me McGrew is right about this. The problem is, she’s wrong to think there are good reasons to believe that the Gospels represent early testimony of more highly detailed & tangible Resurrection appearances. The Gospel witness is vastly weaker than she believes it is.

In one sense, the honesty I see in her posts on the divergence of her premises from scholarly majority views (and willingness to admit prior error on this point) suggests that she is more like the relatively honest apologists such as Sheffield, though Sheffield seems more associated with the minimalist approach whereas McGrew is a maximalist.

As I see it: The MFA has the advantage that it argues from the more-reliable Pauline epistles (whose details might well NOT be all made up), but its disadvantage is that the Pauline epistles are extremely vague– such details are easily compatible with hallucination, delusion, etc., and indeed do not even clarify for sure whether (1) the “appearances” were waking or sleeping, (2) the “appearances” were visual or non-visual, or (3) only one apostle had an “appearance” at a time vs. all twelve saw him at one time, and also (4) contain no mention of conversations or eating with Jesus, etc. By contrast, the maximalist approach has the advantage that IF the Gospels are true then the details are so rich that it’s very hard to explain away as hallucinations or suchlike– BUT there is overwhelming evidence that the Gospels are extremely unreliable to begin with (and indeed the Resurrection appearances are on even worse grounds than most other parts of the Gospels).

To be fair to “Jesus” (read: the Gospel authors), the (conservative) Pharisees would have been institutionally generally in league with the powerful against the weak, insisting on an ethos that no one ever lived up to and they just routinely ignored the violations of by the powerful, etc. And I think you could even argue the liberals showed their hypocrisy by remaining in a movement with such folks and not disavowing them. I can see a radical critique that went scorched earth for the rhetorical purpose of shaming them.

But, of course, not only should one probably still name one’s targets (say “Shamaites” and then critique the liberal Pharisees the same way King critiqued white moderates), and make distinctions.

You know, like Dr. King did.

The one actually living up to the good and ignoring the bad.

Your conclusion is correct.

But it’s even worse because your starting premises, for example, are repeating modern (kinder, wiser, less insane) reinterpretations of what’s actually in the NT, not what’s actually in the NT.

For example:

Focusing on personal conduct and the condemnation of hypocrisy is common to all religions and philosophies and is not meaningfully new. But it became worse under original Christianity because it was made sour: “personal conduct” meant primitive taboos and sex shaming and submissiveness to abuse and other toxic ideas of what’s good (this was actually a substantial backwards move relative to secular values at the time); while “hypocrisy” was only a cudgel for attacking outsiders, a lever for trying to get people to adopt their primitive taboos and sex shaming and submissiveness to abuse and other toxic ideas of what’s good over the “other guy’s.”

Moreover, their hypocrisy-shaming and toxic behavior-policing was “innovatively” tied to threats of violence and murder. When the character Jesus attacks Orthodoxists for hypocrisy, not only is he being a bigot (by attributing the behavior of a few to the many) and a toxic prude (by expecting levels of perfection that are literally impossible, so as to justify shaming and threatening everyone when they fail), he links it directly with them all being hacked and burned to death for their “sins.”

Because Christianity is fundamentally about violence-displacement, rather than ending violence: Christians are not asked to actually forgive and treat sinners well; they are being told not to bother fighting or hating them because God and his angels will sate their vengeance and bloodlust by slitting their throats and setting them on fire, “just you wait.” Which is why we end up now with, for example, people gleefully cheering the abuse, torture, and murder of innocent immigrants and their defenders without having to actually abuse, torture, and murder them, thereby allowing them to boast of how peaceful and forgiving they “personally” are.

All Christian demands to be forgiving and kind in the NT are attached to “because it won’t be long; we’ll fuck their shit up, you just leave that to us.” The Sermon on the Mount is an insane apocalyptic creed based on “let them beat and rob you because it’s just for a few years, so you can suck that up; we’ll napalm them in due course, and then you get to inherit paradise forever; and hey, what’s being abused for a few decades to an eternity in paradise, m’iright?”

It’s not actually the peace and love message it has been “smoothed over” into since the Enlightenment.

Similarly:

[the] “What defiles you is what comes out of your mouth” line as a reminder that the thing you should put absolutely ahead of everything else is your conduct.

That’s very sweet. But it’s a modern retcon.

The original message was this:

Blasphemy or talking back will damn you, so you better fucking watch your mouth. While, who cares about germs? You’re going to die anyway. Your flesh is shit. So why care about worldly things? Just obey. And then you’ll get a ticket to the glorious New Reich where all your enemies will be crushed under your feet and you’ll get free healthcare forever.

Moreover, this was in response not to secular wisdom about “hey, eat anything you want, no harm no foul” (which is pseudoscientifically naive anyway; obviously, things you eat can harm you, and washing hands and dishes is kind of important, indeed even morally necessary) but to bizarre primitive taboos, and they are just saying, “God still hates all that weird stuff—I mean, shrimp, really you deserve to die for eating that, you vile moral monster, and oh god, death penalty for cross dressing too—but he’ll give you a pass if you sign this contract and agree to obey in utter submissiveness.” God will clean your slate does not actually mean there will be no dirty slate (this is all over Paul’s discourse to the Romans). That breaking “old covenant” taboos will no longer “defile” you was technical religious terminology not for “it’s okay” but “Jesus is detergent for that.” God will give you a pass if you are in on the spell, because he’s been sated by its blood magic.

And like all cults, Christianity hijacked common morals every group has (take care of your parents, don’t steal shit, be reasonably humble) and stuffed in there a bunch of bogus morals (“sexual immorality…lewdness…envy…folly”) to try and get them the same status of obedience and control, and then hyped up even the common morals (whereby almost literally “anything” counts as theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, slander, etc.) to create a system of abuse, shame, and dominance.

And none of this is ever philosophically justified. The character Jesus never explains why some things are good and some bad, and some things will be excused and some won’t; just that they are bad and will or won’t be excused (based entirely on insider-outsider status, not common humanity or even common sense). It’s all based on ancient notions of god’s weird taboos that enrage him, and his susceptibility to blood magic to calm him down.

There is really no way to make any worthwhile moral philosophy out of this. That’s why everyone has to constantly “reinterpret” the text to have said something else. Because what it actually said was insane.

As a Buddhist, I find the pacifism, the focus on personal conduct, the forgiveness, the condemnation of hypocrisy, etc. etc. all quite useful. There’s a lot to learn.

Here’s the problem.

I read the “What defiles you is what comes out of your mouth” line as a reminder that the thing you should put absolutely ahead of everything else is your conduct. Some handwashing ritual doesn’t make you better (just, potentially, more prudent). It’s being kind with your words and deeds that is salutary.

But I grant that it’s not only possible but fairly reasonable to interpret Jesus as saying, “No, blasphemy and swearing will make you sick because demons”.

Let’s pretend for a second both of these are live interpretations.

How do you pick?

You pick based on your existing moral intuition.

Which needs to be developed anyways.

Which means the tradition can only be helpful to you after you’ve done the personal work, and read diverse sources and concepts to make sure you’re not making undue assumptions or going with the first idea that seems compelling.

Secularists and liberal Christians alike can read the book and get good stuff out of it, and consciously bin the bad.

But you can do that with anything.

I think Christianity stands on its own as a respectable moral code as can be gleaned from the New Testament and doesn’t require divine inspiration to be useful.

Not really. That’s a modern myth. The actual morals of the NT are a bit lousy, including sexism and homophobia, pro slavery and fascism, self-destructive pacifism and submissiveness. The Gospel Jesus is actually an asshole. And his teachings are actually naive, shallow, and unworkable. Everything you think is actually good is actually pagan, and was better argued and more sophisticated and mature in their writings. To make the world a better place, we had to scrap the entire actual architecture of Christianity and replace it with pagan philosophy.

But otherwise, yes, Christians need literalism because anything less eats itself into oblivion, and they either need the emotional comfort of all the prejudices and villainy they are using Christianity to prop up as righteous, or need the vain and naive immortality they desperately want it to ensure them—or both.

And it works fine for them until the moment it touches reality since these are obviously fictional stories that weren’t intended to be history. It’s a theology book that uses child-level allegories and parables to get the medicine down. These people find it amazing that every good story in the Bible teaches theology like that’s not strong evidence they’re fictional.

But these people are only believers because they want the reward of Heaven and wouldn’t do any of this if it’s not true. That’s why they say atheists can’t be moral because they themselves aren’t moral people and are simply playing the long game so they can get the best reward at the end. It’s weaponized selfishness to get unruly kids to obey.

Almost every story in the Bible is about how you need to have faith that your elders are right about God and always obey so everything will work out. But if bad things happen to you, it’s because you disobeyed God or lacked faith. Unless you’re like Job and are merely being tested precisely because you are doing everything right.

But if you actually read the Bible, the only reason most of them obey God is because he contacts them directly and does a little magic to prove he’s the real deal. So it sounds to me like this religion has working magic and we should be expected proof before we do squat for God. But no, we’re told that the only proof we get are the stories in the Bible which are literally true and if that’s not good enough to convince you, tough nuts, you’re burning in Hell.

But for what purpose? If a moral system is only good because you trust that it came from the guy who created reality and he wants you to behave a certain way to make him happy, is it really a good moral system? I think Christianity stands on its own as a respectable moral code as can be gleaned from the New Testament and doesn’t require divine inspiration to be useful.

I think if more people were kind to others they’d find their lives would vastly improve. Forgiveness, empathy, and humility are wonderful traits that bring their own reward. Heaven could be on earth if we all followed Jesus’s teachings. The Bible doesn’t need to be true and it’s not. You can tell which parts are historical and nobody talks about them because there’s no magic and God never shows up. People only like the obviously fictional stories that they wish were true because they want to believe in magic.

But these people aren’t true Christians. They’re Old Testament Christians, who want New Testament forgiveness for themselves and Old Testament vengeance for their enemies. They prefer the strict rules and theocracy of the Old Testament and only use Jesus as proof that the Bible is true. Because if Jesus came back from the dead then he must be God and he vouched for the Old Testament so that means it’s all true.

That’s why they’re obsessed with the Gospels being true. They don’t care about the parables or religious metaphors embedded in the stories since they only pay lip service to that stuff. They want the gospels to be the honest testimony of four independent eyewitnesses who saw Jesus come back because faith isn’t enough for them. They need proof.

The Bible isn’t just a religious text to them. It’s the answer key to life containing all history, science, medicine, morality etc; which is all literally true if you know the hidden meanings and don’t take it all as literally true.

That’s a good point.