Here we will briefly consider those places where we will not be addressing The Case Against Christianity for various reasons that are indicated.

We will not address Chapter 1, as we find little that needs any argument.

On Chapter 3, and the matter of the Resurrection, we need not go into great detail. Much of what Martin offers up has already been addressed either by myself, Glenn Miller, or Ryan Renn, and thus we need only bring forward a few select grievances and observations of his. Much of what he writes has been lifted uncritically from various liberal scholars. (For example, he accepts Dieter Georgi's proposition that Paul's 1 Cor. 15 formula may not indicate that the tomb of Jesus was empty, because an empty tomb is not mentioned!)

Perhaps one of the most amazing paragraphs in all of CAC is this one [74]. I need not comment; it speaks for itself in terms of what desperate degree Martin is willing to venture in order to avoid any conclusion in favor of Christianity:

...(T)he believer in Jesus' alleged resurrection must give reasons to suppose that it can probably not be explained by any unknown laws of nature. Since presumably not all laws have been discovered, this seems difficult to do. The advocates of Jesus' resurrection must argue that it is probable that Jesus being restored to life will not be explained by future science utilizing heretofore undiscovered laws of nature. Given the scientific progress of the last two centuries, such a prediction seems rash. People are kept alive today in ways that only a few years ago would have seemed impossible. It is not implausible that restoring life to some people will be medically possible in the future. But, it may be objected, Jesus is supposed to have been restored to life without the benefit of modern medical technology. Still, breakthroughs in medical knowledge could make it understandable how on rare occasions people can come back to life without such technology.

Such speculations are the backbone of Martin's chapter on the Resurrection -- and with such speculations as these, we are not far from the likes of Von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods and Thiering's pesher method of re-interpreting the Gospels.

On Chapter 5, on the Incarnation, we will offer only these brief comments. With the Incarnation, we move from the court of hard data and plunge into the realm of the ethereal and theoretical. Can we "prove" the Incarnation was real? Not by means of test tubes can this be done; not even by hidden camera. Not even by pointing to Jesus' miracles: As with the Resurrection, what Jesus did might serve to validate his claims to divinity, but they cannot absolutely prove them in the sense that one proves that two apples and two make four. Nor is it likely that we can achieve a full explanation of how the Incarnation works that will be satisfactory to our modern sensibilities: Modern definitions of mind, brain, personality, etc. are quite different from those of the first century, and these again are somewhat different from those held by the makers of the great creeds of the church. At best we can achieve a reasonable facsimile of what the Incarnation exactly involved; and thus in one sense Martin's chapter on the Incarnation is quite deficient, for he does not even bother to analyze first-century ideas of what constituted a person or a mind -- not that we would expect even Martin's 36-page treatment of the subject to be adequate.

Martin's Chapter 8 is on possible Christian responses to his arguments. We agree that many of these approaches are worthless (such as Bultmannian "believe even without evidence" solutions). We feel that rationalism and in some cases a moderate fideism is a sufficient response, for Martin has utterly failed to make his case.

We will not address Martin's appendix on the Divine Command theory, as such is out of our purview. On atonement see here; the penal theory of atonement best fits the bill, though we have changed our position since originally writing this in a way that makes many of Martin's objections, i.e., about finite sin and infinite punishment, moot. What does remain:

1. He asks why it was necessary for God to sacrifice His Son, when He could have simply sent sinners to hell for eternity.

   Hey, if that's what Martin prefers, he can have it....

2. Martin also misunderstands the satisfaction theory as having to do with offenses against God's "pride" -- it is not pride that is at issue, but holiness.
3. Finally, Martin wonders whether another Incarnation would be needed to pay for sins done after Jesus lived and died; as God is of course a timeless being, when sins were committed in relation to Jesus' life is irrelevant. This also leads into the answer to the standard one about people who lived before the time of Jesus, which we address here.