I think it matters that Jesus predicted the resurrection beforehand, it was prophesied beforehand, and his followers at the time universally saw the event as a vindication by the Father of Jesus's claims, including the claims that (i) Jesus is the messiah, (ii) Jesus is Lord and Judge of all, and (iii) Jesus is God.  (Of course the last took some time to work out the metaphysical details, but the claim is clearly throughout the NT.)

It may not be readily apparent why the rest of Christianity is logically necessitated by the truth of the resurrection (it isn't as simple as modus ponens, after all), but since all the bits and bobs of Christianity are a deeply interconnected web of thought, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain intellectually a simultaneous affirmation of the resurrection and rejection of the rest.

It seems like over and over again in the gospels the writers call attention to the shortsightedness of the disciples at the time that Jesus foretells his death and resurrection.  This makes them look foolish, which would make it somewhat harder to believe that they merely invented these episodes ex post facto.

I was also chewing on this thread and some of your other threads earlier today.  One of the elements that you seem to be working on quite a bit is the personhood of God (analogically predicated, of course).  It may be that this attribute cannot be gotten from many of the classical arguments for the existence of God.  Many versions of the cosmological argument in particular only go so far.  I am sympathetic to an argument from the theologian Dennis Kinlaw in his book Let's Start with Jesus, that we would not know that God is personal apart from revelation, ultimately culminating in the revelation of who God is in the person of Jesus Christ.  It may be possible to establish his personhood in theory, but historically, our conviction that "he is a who" rather than merely "it is a what" comes from the various theophanies (e.g. to Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and ultimately in Jesus).  Kinlaw argues systematic theology is often conducted backwards, beginning with the classical arguments from natural theology, eventually establishing the possibility of revelation, and finally proceeding to a discussion of Jesus.  Instead, he claims, we should begin with the historical facticity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and work our way outward from this central event thinking through the implications that this event holds for everything else.  You may find this book and this approach in general helpful.  (Or you may not; one never knows.)

Proclus wrote:

It seems like over and over again in the gospels the writers call attention to the shortsightedness of the disciples at the time that Jesus foretells his death and resurrection.  This makes them look foolish, which would make it somewhat harder to believe that they merely invented these episodes ex post facto.

I was also chewing on this thread and some of your other threads earlier today.  One of the elements that you seem to be working on quite a bit is the personhood of God (analogically predicated, of course).  It may be that this attribute cannot be gotten from many of the classical arguments for the existence of God.  Many versions of the cosmological argument in particular only go so far.  I am sympathetic to an argument from the theologian Dennis Kinlaw in his book Let's Start with Jesus, that we would not know that God is personal apart from revelation, ultimately culminating in the revelation of who God is in the person of Jesus Christ.  It may be possible to establish his personhood in theory, but historically, our conviction that "he is a who" rather than merely "it is a what" comes from the various theophanies (e.g. to Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and ultimately in Jesus).  Kinlaw argues systematic theology is often conducted backwards, beginning with the classical arguments from natural theology, eventually establishing the possibility of revelation, and finally proceeding to a discussion of Jesus.  Instead, he claims, we should begin with the historical facticity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and work our way outward from this central event thinking through the implications that this event holds for everything else.  You may find this book and this approach in general helpful.  (Or you may not; one never knows.)

Great! I'm bookmarking that link--the book looks promising. Yes, you're correct, one of my issues with many of the arguments for God's existence is that they can only prove so much. Many object that the cosmological arguments can only get us to, at best, a sort of transcendent force--but not something that is personal. I think proportional causality, coupled with my current belief that the human mind is immaterial, is perhaps a good starting point for viewing the first cause as something which, in some sense, has an immaterial mind. I haven't read a good treatment of Aquinas' work on the Divine Attributes. Feser does a good and pithy job of covering them in TLS and Aquinas. I just got Garrigou-Lagrange's Reality in the mail and am hoping he addresses them. 
 

Alexander wrote:

For the crucial question of "Who is Jesus?":
It's definitely worth going through the way in which thinkers in the Church historically came to affirm increasingly strong and clear statements of Christology.

Can you elaborate on this a bit more? How does later doctrinal development show that Jesus actually claimed to be divine?

RomanJoe wrote:

After reading through NT Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God, William Lane Craig's writings on the resurrection, and Michael Licona's The Resurrection: A New Historiographical Approach, I think Jesus' resurrection is probably historical. Here's my issue: this still doesn't get me to Christianity, let alone Catholicism. How can one get to the belief that Jesus is God, that he established and gave authority to a Church, that this Church has endured to today?

On this post I will focus on the belief that Jesus established and gave authority to a Church, and that this Church has endured to today.

A straightforward basis for that belief is the belief in the divine inspiration of Mt 16:17-19, which I quote below with the 1st half of Mt 16:18 literally translated from the (non-preserved but obvious) original Aramaic into English. (In the Aramaic words spoken by Jesus, both instances of "rock" in Mt 16:18 were "kepha", a masculine name suitable for a man's name. When the text was translated to Greek, by Matthew or the final author, as the Greek word "petra" for a rock is feminine, the 1st Kepha was changed to "Petros", i.e. masculine ending, to make it suitable for a man's name.)

"The Evangelist Matthew" wrote:

And Jesus answering, said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood did not reveal it to you, but my Father in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Rock, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Mt 16:17-19)

Thus, Jesus said that He intended to build a church and promised that "the gates of Hades will not prevail against it". Now, we can ask ourselves two questions about that promise:

1. What is the time span of validity of the promise? For as long as Peter was alive, i.e. until 64 or 68 AD? For as long as any of the Apostles was alive, i.e. until around 100 AD? Or rather the time span of validity must be inferred from the ending of Matthew's Gospel?

"The Evangelist Matthew" wrote:

“And behold, I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age." (Mt 28:20b)

2. What is the scope of the promise? I.e., what does it mean that "the gates of Hades will not prevail against" the Church? The answer is in the passage where Jesus teaches the Jews what the Hades' dweller desires to do:

"The Evangelist John" wrote:

“You are of your father the devil, and you desire to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has not stood in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he might speak falsehood, he speaks from the own; for he is a liar, and the father of it.” (Jn 8:44)

Therefore, if "the gates of Hades will not prevail against" the Church, specifically against a Church that was built on the rock of Peter, that Church will always teach the truth revealed by God without any mix of falsehood. Which is in line with this passage of the Apostle Paul:

"The Apostle Paul" wrote:

but in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth. (1 Tim 3:15)

Last edited by Johannes (8/03/2017 12:17 pm)