In our review of Jesus Seminar member Robert Miller's book we laid guilt at Miller's door for thinking and representation errors that would earn 10 to 20 in any other context. We'd now like to take a closer look at Miller's diatribe on Christian apologetics in the last chapter. There's a simple pushback to the main theme of this chapter, and that Miller doesn't see it demonstrates further lacking of critical thinking skills on his part. We can lay out the basic in even his first analytical paragraph on apologetics:

Apologetics exist only because there are people who reject, doubt, or simply do not share a given belief. An apology for a belief is essentially a response to whatever casts doubt on it or questions its truth. The root meaning of the word "apology" is "defense," and something can be defended only if it is, or is perceived to be, under attack. A good amount of apologetics is intended to refute the thinking of those who challenge the truth the belief being defended. By its very nature, apologetics presupposes a context in which there are insiders and outsiders (for example, those who share the belief being defended and those who do not).

Miller is laying the ground for a psychological tour de force in which he wants to tar apologetics as a dishonest enterprise. But hold on a minute. Let's back up and rework that paragraph. Apologetics here is of course a defense against disbelief in a certain point of view, that is, that Christianity is false. But an "apologetic" can be constructed for any position -- not just for Christianity, but for other religions (Islam, as he points out; see below), for political views ("we need to lower taxes"), for social views ("save the whales!"), for what to eat for dinner ("cut down on fat and you'll be a lot healthier"). Now instead of reading Miller's paragraph in light of specific defenses of Christianity, let's read it (and later paragraphs) in terms of something else -- in fact, let's go "over the top" to make a point. Let's pretend that Miller is talking about "Holocaust deniers" versus advocates of the traditional historical position:

Now do we make ourselves clear? Miller is doing nothing more that casting out a dominant relational paradigm -- that is, adversarial relations on points of view, on any subject -- and using Christian apologetics as the subject, and doing this in order to play a ridiculous psychological game to suggest that apologists are dishonest. Once we generalize or change the context, it becomes clear what Miller is doing, and it's just a dishonest tactical game on his part. We'll show this further by going through his continued comments and inserting in brackets, as above, the "Holocaust" position (or where needed, replacing references to Christianity with references to the Holocaust).

By now Miller's uncritical fans may be objecting that there is no comparison between the Holocaust denial issue and the Gospel stories. Well, isn't that the very question at issue? Miller's diatribe is nothing more than a smug and presumptive polemic that assumes that he is already right and that the opposition is fooling themselves. By space in this chapter Miller spends much less time actually defending his views, and as we also saw in the review, either avoids or misrepresents (intentionally or otherwise) arguments against his views. We say that Miller is laying all this out as a psychological boost for himself, which he needs because he knows he hasn't won the arguments that have to do with the actual data. In short, he has a long way to go before he has the right to start psychoanalyzing the opposition from the perspective of one who has won the battle.

Miller next lays out a brief "apology for Islam" noting several major positive arguments for Islam's authenticity. He admits it is just a rough accounting of such arguments, and asks, "..even if this apology were laid out with far greater knowledge and skill than I can manage, how convincing do you think it would be to Christians?" Well, doesn't that beg the question to begin with? It's not "knowledge" or "skill" that makes the day; it's accuracy and coherence, ability of an explanation to fit the data. This is just Miller trying to stake the high ground for himself as one who has supposedly already "won" the debate and assumes that his view has been vastly proven. No, what it really is, is a confidence game from someone who has lost the battle and has no other way to shore up his self-image. And yes, that's as much a psych-game as the one he pulls.

Miller then spends a bare two pages of text on how the story of the Resurrection in the four Gospels would look to an "outsider". His major focus is on how the Gospel stories are different. He does rightly note that an "outsider" (actually, anyone!) would have to ask why the four stories have so many differences. He suggests: "Perhaps you conclude that the early Christians couldn't keep their stories straight, or that nobody knew what actually happened [i.e., details were forgotten or lost]...Or maybe you would conclude that the differences are indications that the stories were never meant to be taken literally." He then supposes that "insiders" would either not notice the differences, or not regard them as inconsistencies. And that's all he thinks we might come up with as "insiders".

Well, how about some other ideas? How about oral tradition as a reason for variations? How about selection from a vast store of data-accounts for the purpose of making a thematic point which varies among writers? How about compositional restraints? How about target audience as a reason for differences? What about contemporary literary practices as an explanation? Miller as usual has loaded the psychology cart without even saddling the evidential horse. Boiling it all down to simple matters of "would you believe," i.e., the story of Mormon origins, is nothing but a dodge to avoid dealing with the complex issues of evidence for and against. I would suggest that Miller is simply incapable of such complex analysis, and that is perhaps why he finds the easy "vote on it" methods of the Seminar so appealing. No need to invoke more complex arguments! Give me my answer in a can, please, to go!

Little wonder, then, Miller scrambles right back on the psychoanalysis train. (He'll get back to some actual arguing later; see below.) Let's do our subbing again to make our point.

Wow, now, let's generalize this and frame it for the fallacy it really is. In any given context, we have two points of view (or more, but we'll leave it at two for simplicity). Now either one or the other view is right, or both are wrong. Both can't be right. Now if the two viewpoints collide, and it ends up that no one changes their mind, what other alternative is there but that 1) the arguer for the right view was unpersuasive (for whatever reason); 2) the arguer for the wrong view was reasoning incorrectly or not accepting the truth? This is how it always works when points of view collide. So then, let's drop those words right back in Miller's lap:

Well, isn't that just too bad. Here's the real problem, we think: Miller himself was a "true believer in the power of apologetics" and is now projecting his own former inability to argue competently on everyone else who now does apologetics. That's why he's left with this bald psychology game of "insiders/outsiders" adversarial language and "its function is to support what the audience already believes." Well! What is the function of any argument for a point of view? Let's get serious here: Isn't "dishonesty" and "manipulation of data and facts" something any person with a point of view -- yes, even a Holocaust affirmer, unfortunately, though obviously deniers are the real criminals in that venue -- CAN do? Don't many arguers from all views prey on audience ignorance and distort data? Do most audiences for any view have the time or the desire to check back on what these people say? Anyone can create "elaborate apologetics" to maintain a point of view. And the answer is not endless psychoanalysis, but dealing with the data. When Miller gets beyond misreading his opponents and misreporting what they say, and actually dealing with their arguments, then we can give him some air time and some respect. Until then he's just playing games.

Miller's fans will now say, "Well, yeah, but he spends the next few pages dealing with arguments about the Gospels, what about that?" That he put the psych-cart before the evidence-horse sure tells us enough of how well Miller thinks he did with his actual arguments, and when analyzed in content the conclusion is borne with wings. All of his "arguments" are devoid of interaction with competing scholarship. Miller begins with the correct conclusion that the Gospels were written for Christians -- people who already believed. This is not controversial or disputed; even evangelical scholars agree on this (see Bauckham's The Gospels for All Christians) and no theorist I know of has ever said that the Gospels were intended to convert others. This is simply a social reality of the period -- a collectivist society was composed of "ingroups" and "outgroups" and every "ingroup" had "insider" information that was not shared with "outgroup" members. It simply wasn't done. Therefore Miller is erring from the get-go when he asks whether a Jew or pagan outsider would have read these texts and been convinced of the Resurrection. They were never intended to.

Miller then focuses in on Matthew's gospel. His major focus is on Matt. 27:51-53 and the arguments he makes are refuted here. Not one word is said about any of the factors we lay out; Miller simply plays the usual "gee golly" card that surely the earthquake, resurrected saints ("large numbers" of them -- how "large" and why? how and where would historians of the day notice it? why would they believe the witnesses? why is your "golly gee" mentality effective on Paul? what about the constraints of composition and the ancients as "high context" and not needing repeated mention of such events? what of that "firstfruits" in 1 Cor. 15:20 refers only to things sacrificed?), etc. would have gotten other people's attention as well and been recorded. With only this uni-dimensional sucker punch, and with absolutely no survey of or dealing with relevant scholarship or pertinent questions, Miller concludes that it was all made up (not selected) by Matthew to illustrate a prophetic fulfillment that never happened. Take the easy solution, and be done with it.

Miller then spends a few pages tarring Matthew further on the assumption that the event is fictional, gives a brief nod to the Marcan priority hypothesis (no idea of oral tradition as a common source, as oral tradition specialist Albert Lord thought of the Gospels? -- however, he does include a completely unsubstantiated psycho-evaluation of Matthew's motives for making the story different), and throws together a full package of assumptions in a whirlwind conclusion (i.e., dates of the Gospels, the allegation that the Gospels are "faith documents" -- don't even look for a discussion of the Gospels as narrative biography). You would think that evangelical scholarship has never seen any of this before, and Miller deals with none of what is offered, other than a single footnote about William Lane Craig. He makes hash in another footnote of that the tombs are opened when Jesus dies, but the people do not leave the tombs until after his resurrection -- this, he says, "makes no sense" -- why not??? He doesn't explain at all, he just asserts that it "makes no sense" as though it were obvious! He closes with one page's worth of psychologization ("Empty tombs don't prove anything, except to insiders") and the same misreading of Matthew 28:17 we have covered here. Insiders and outsiders? Miller has yet to step "outside" his box; he is still sitting in the corner of it whimpering, unable to deal with the actual arguments presented by the "insiders" and seemingly unable to even represent them properly. This is why he has to resort to crude psychologizations, conspiratorial readings of things like book titles, and baseless, generalized accusations of dishonesty and bias. In our review we came to the conclusion that Miller was a manipulator who avoided the real arguments because he couldn't handle them. His screed on apologetics verifies our conclusion and shows Miller to be little more than a server of fast-food scholarship.