It's a Killer

To begin this section, Carrier summarizes and belabors a point that I already made, that indeed martyrdom was rare; such that Johnny needs to get his money back on this section for telling people what they would have already read in my own article. We don't get to any beef until Carrier once again resurrects his wounded special plea, putting the cart before the horse by supposing (without any evidence, and hypocritically in light of his raising the bar of demand elsewhere) that Christianity nust have succeeded by recruiting persons already tailor-made -- here, persons who wanted to rebel against the order already. And yet again, we are told that what Christianity offered was attractive (though found much more easily in far less troublesome and troubling factions), so that there was no need to "invent" Christianity to cause more problems than it solved, especially when others held out equitable and more convenient solutions. Since much of what Carrier argues is just the same as in Point 1, and the contrivances there, little more needs be said of those.

Almost comical are Carrier's professions that he is "not aware of any evidence from the first century" of converts actually being disowned (even as he professes to find advice/comfort to such people in Matthew, written even by his reckoning in the late first century). The absurdity is in Carrier raising the bar to extraordinary lengths to avoid the conclusion that the evidence we do have, of the social setting, compels us to make; and that places a burden of disproof on those who special-plead for exceptions, as Carrier does. We know the workings of an honor and shame society; we know how and why sanctions were placed agaist deviants. deSilva describes such a world with these words [36]:

The group would exercise measures designed to shame the transgressor (whether through insult, reproach, physical abuse. confiscation of property -- at worst, execution) so that the transgressor would be pressured into returning to the conduct the group approved (if correction were possible) and so that other group members would have their aversion to committing such transgressions themselves strongly reinforced.

Note that the latter point is especially important, given that Christianity's status as an evangelizing religion (which Judaism, by the way, was not) made it all the more urgent to reinforce the aversion to it.

In light of this, it is indeed an absurdity for Carrier to make the excessive demand for "evidence" of a society behaving exactly the way every scrap of evidence on such societies indicates they would behave. Carrier's retort is the result of frustration at possessing NO negating evidence to speak of; his wish is to merely throw his plea on the court of vague appeal, hoping that modern sentiments of diversity and tolerance will save the image he paints of a world gone by.

Thus as well his appeal to families not YET broken apart in the NT (1 Cor. 7) is misguided. One may as well appeal to the continuance of a marriage in which a spouse is being absued as an indication that things are not so bad in the household after all. Similarly, the inane objection that shunning "never happens in Acts and is not a problem Paul ever had to deal with" -- as if indeed, reporting such things were within Acts' purpose, or as if Paul could give any advice to the persons at fault! Even more amazingly, an appeal is made to 1 Cor. 9:20-23 to claim that Paul "had no apparent difficulty enjoying the company of non-Christians" even as it is patently ignored that Paul's description is that of someone purusing missionary contact, so that 1 Cor. 9:20-23 refers to a time before Paul's non-Christian contacts would be aware of what he believed! Finally, appeal to how Christians were "exhorted to treat outsiders with kindness and humility" is completely irrelevant; how does this reflect on his outsiders treated Christians?? Carrier clearly has neither the knowledge nor the appreciation needed to understand exactly what is going on in the world the Apsotles lived in. Yes, it is NOT hyperbole to say that everyone would perform such sanctions against deviants -- unless they were deviants themselves.

Likewise the subject of vague appeal is the retort that men like Matthew, Paul and Peter could see "positive gains worth far more than any losses" -- oblivious to the point that as believers in the resurrection, they had a basis for doing so. Carrier says that "[l]ove of one's fellow man is a universal attribute" -- even allowing for the rose-colored glasses of humanisn worn here, it would remain that "love" of the sort practiced in this day would mean reclaiming the deviants for their own good and the good of the whole. In a group-centered society, what is good for the group is what is paramount. Hence when the NT speaks of agape love, it refers to the "value of group attachment and group bonding" [Malina and Neyrey, Portraits of Paul, 196]. Agape is not an exchange on a personal level and "will have little to do with feelings of affection, sentiments of fondness, and warm, glowing affinity." It is a gift that puts the group first. When Jesus calls the Pharisees names, or Peter "Satan"; when wishes emasculation on his Galatian opponents (Gal. 5) and shames the Galatians with his rhetoric; this is the love of the ancient world. The best example of agape today is not Mother Theresa, but New Jersey high school principal Joe Clark. Like Clark's disruptive students, the Pharisees were a threat to the well-being of others; so likewise Peter when he made his error. They spread deception and falsehood and kept others from entering the Kingdom of God with their deceptions; or else led people down the wrong path and away from spiritual maturity. In such a scenario, not only is it right and proper, for the sake of agape, to confront and confront boldly; it may be the only responsible thing to do to keep the "disease" or error from spreading and afflicting more souls! So likewise, Carrier's appeal to "love of fellow man" boomerangs upon him.

But the point made is that "love" also drove the apostles to give up their worldly goods; and so it would, but Carrier avoids the question, "What motivated this love?" His answer seems to be that "love" was its own motivator -- which given what it really meant in this time, is a patent absurdity. Otherwise, Carrier once again retorts, hypocritcally, to speculation: That the apostles may have been failures in their trades; that they may have been "on the take" (though he also says, out of the other side of his mouth while keeping the rhetorical advantage of the accusation, that they "probably despised money" and didn't steal it). Of course, since social mobility wasn't that simple for these people, it is absurd to suggest that they may have "found an easier job". In other words, the evidence does not cooperate with Carrier, so he must speculate endlessly. Actually, Peter and John have the appearance of being successful fishermen (they have more than one boat); Paul certainly had an excellent education, and being a Roman citizen as well, shows every indication of being a man of (or with access to) some means; but of course in a world of ready excuses, perhaps Carrier will tell us that that was simply made up. Paranoia is an essential part of "critical history" after all.

In another act of stunning hypocrisy, Carrier criticizes me for quoting Fox on persecution. First, he says, Fox in this quote discusses events in the 3rd and 4th century, not the 1st -- this, even as Carrier from the other side of his mouth (see Point 5) quoted Fox to address the same period. Not that a single thing changed about the agonistic nature of this society in the intervening period; the same social conditions adhered from 1st to 4th century. Second, Carrier pulls his belt up for a round of gall as he says that "Fox does not in fact demonstrate this"; in other words, Fox does not leap over the arbitrarily-set bar of "evidence" that Carrier has demanded. Again: to argue that the "evidence does not support any kind of culture-wide 'shaming' of Christians" is a sham: The social evidence does indeed support such a case, and Carrier is evading the matter by complaining that there is not enough literary evidence, which is simply not needed; any more than we need literary "evidence" to know that an antebellum plantation owner would consider former slaves to be inferior beings. Indeed, someone who claims the opposite is who must provide evidence for exceptions, and this, Carrier does not and can not do. It is not enough to simply say, dismissively, that perseuctions and shaming were "not representative of the way Christians were normally treated in the first century." It remains that Carrier creates an artifical distinction between my description of "rejection by family and society" and what he describes as Fox's position, of "the existence of social tension between pagans and Christians within the same community or even the same family". Just what is it that Carrier thinks "rejection" consists of? "Social tension" implies a rejection, of beliefs held by the person with which one is in tension. It implies actions which are "rejectory" as a result. Let it speak for itself that Carrier resorts to the despairing counsel that, i.e., Thessalonians only speaks of persecution in the past tense and not to a "persistent cultural problem"; or that Phil. 1:27-30 only speaks of "specific adversaries" -- as if the thesis required the persecution to last 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or that these collectivists would suddenly change their minds and do an about-face! So what reason does Carrier want to suggest for the alleged creasing of future deviance labelling and resistance by these people? Did they get bored and go use their Playstations?

Readers should also be aware of a certain equivocation game played here by Carrier. He claims that "the values of Christians were very close to the moral ideals of Greco-Roman philosophers, legendary sages, and revered Rabbis". He has of coruse already told us that these persons were also part of a "despised elite" that Christianity's potential converts would reject; but leaving aside that gross inconsistency for a moment, let us ruminate on the use of the words "values" and "moral ideals". Carrier dangles a red herring here; "values" and "ideals" are broad terms that can refer to practically anything. Where Carrier obfuscates is on the point that Christians did reject critical and essential values and ideals of their neighbors; that they DID share certain moral values and ideals is utterly beside the point. Indeed they rejected that most critical value of piety -- honoring the Roman gods, "the guardians of the stability of the world order, the generous patrons who provided all that was needed for sustaining life" [deSilva, 46]. A person who undermine the stability of world order will not catch any sympathy points simply because he also agrees that you should not commit adultery. And please note further that I say nothing of that, as Carrier indicates, they were persecuted for "moral values" -- it is indeed the "theological doctrines" on which the difference was seen and my case is built. The "theological doctrines" of Christianity are the very thing that made their beliefs most offensive. (On the same basis, the claim of my misuse of 1 Peter 2:11-18 is erroneous.) This is an error Carrier continues to commit throughout this point of response.

Misguided as well is the point offered that "strength of evidence" is not given as a reason to endure persecution. Why would it be? The strength of evidence is a given for the NT authors and their hearers; furthermore, "be glad to suffer because Jesus really was resurrected" isn't even a coherent argument. There is no correlation between suffering and the evidence, and the appeal to reward is rhetorically the most relevant and effective response. I cannot help but wonder why Carrier thinks "assurances that the evidence was irrefutable" ought to come up. We would expect these only if there was some doubt to begin with. If anything, their lack of presence shows that no assurance was needed. In such cases, assurances of apocalyptic hope -- an aspect of Christianity that would indeed be beyond all evidential range -- is exactly all we would expect. Assurance is only given where it is needed.

The Faith Junket

Even more amazing is Carrier's intolerable "exegesis" of Hebrews 11, which he says explains why "hope should he trusted without evidence" and does not give "any reference to having strong evidence as the reason for persevering." Obviously Carrier still adheres to Twain's definition of "faith" as "believing what you know ain't so"! On the contrary: When Hebrews 11 says that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" it very much indicates evidence as a reason for persvering. The list of persons in Hebrews 11 that follows offers examples of people who had been given undeniable proof of God's existence and power. "Faith" here is a matter of trust in a God who has demonstrated His ability to be a worthy patron, and the examples are those of clients who, knowing this ability, trust in God's record as a patronal provider. Hebrews 11:1 therefore is telling us that faith (trust in our patron, gained by conviction based on evidence) is the substance (the word here means an assurance, as in a setting under, a concrete essence or an abstract assurance) of things hoped for (this word means expected by trust, which is something earned!), and the evidence of that which is not seen, which in context means we expect, based on past performance, continuing favor from our patron, who has already proven Himself worthy of our trust by example, and this trust is our confidence in the fulfillment of future promises.

Update 5/05: Carrier sticks his feet in his mouth wholesale on this one, for he is unaware that the above is a summary of a much larger article, which we will now reprint below, and thus there is incredible irony in his claim that readers won't check my claims on this for themselves. But he replies that "Hebrews says the heroes of the Old Testament were not given evidence sufficient to prove what they hoped for or were promised would transpire" which is nothing more than the standard Skeptical canard. His specific replies:

• For Abel and Enoch, blind faith had to come first, rewards after (11:4-6). False! Abel was the son of Adam, a man who had walked and talked with God in the Garden of Eden. In other words, Abel had reams of evidence for trusting God. The life of Enoch is unknown to use in the OT, other than that he "walked with God," but if the author of Hebrews accepted apocryphal accounts of his life, this was a guy who talked with God like we talk on the phone, and had so much evidence for trust it amazes.
• Noah could not yet see evidence of a coming flood, but trusted God anyway (11:7). Noah could hear the voice of God, however, as Hebrews also says; Genesis even says that God gave him specific instructions. In other words, he had evidence for his trust.
• Abraham went where he was told, despite having no idea where he was going, and no proof it would be worth it (11:8-10). He also heard the voice of God before he went where he was told. Evidence. So likewise Sarah, and by the time of the putative sacrifice of Isaac, he had been given victory in battle and seen Sodom and Gomorrah judged. Evidence.

So despite Carrier, in every case, the example is of someone trusting God, following evidence confirming that God was a party capable of doing what He said he would. Indeed, Carrier is forced to admit that:

The point is not that these people had proof of God's power, but that they didn't have proof that God would use that power as they hoped.

So Carrier shoots himself for our sake yet again: He admits that they WERE given proof -- and so his complaint cannot be that they were not given evidence at all, but that he believes that the evidence they were given was not sufficient to accept! Of course a Skeptic like Carrier would consider this "specious" but that is beside the point. The point rather is that evidence for trust was indeed the paradigm, and that proof of some sort (even if Carrier thinks it inadequate) comes before faith. Carrier strains mightily to get around this by decrying the quality of the evidence, but in so doing, merely shoots himself in the foot.

And now for that entire article:

It's time for a little quiz, folks. Let's offer four samples for focus:

1. A "faith healer" named Benny Pophagin offers to heal Joe of his lumbago. Benny lays hands on Joe and prays, but the lumbago remains. Benny waves Joe away, saying, "This is your problem. You don't have enough faith."
2. A Christian faces several objections to his beliefs that he cannot answer. He says, "I don't care what people say, I still have faith."
3. Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard "contends that the scriptures included in the Bible verify that the Christian belief system is based on a leap of faith, not on tangible proof." This is because Christianity involves paradoxes offensive to reason.
4. The famous skeptic Mark Twain said, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

Can anyone guess what is wrong with this picture? The answer is that all four of these examples offer an incorrect definition or understanding of what Biblical faith is all about. Twain's own definition does correctly (with some negative, polemical spin) embody the way "faith" is understood by far too many today -- but it does not match the Biblical definition of that word, and as the first two examples suggest, "faith" is a badly misunderstood concept in the church at large. Out third and newest example, brought out in a recent discussion forum by a Buddhist with a rather limited understanding of and concern for Christianity, shows how at least one philosopher, though due some credit, because of his lack of understanding came to a false conclusion about what faith was. We will look at this in more detail below (and we assume here that the representation of Kieregaard's position is correct).

Our prime resources for this essay are three works we have come to find extremely useful of late: Malina's The New Testament World; Malina and Neyrey's Portraits of Paul: An Archaeology of Ancient Personality [87, 167] and deSilva's Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity [95ff]. These books offer us a glimpse into the ancient world of the early Christians and an understanding that their "faith" was understood as anything but a matter of believing against the grain as our examples suggest.

The Greek word behind "faith" in the NT is pistis. As a noun, pistis is a word that was used as a technical rhetorical term for forensic proof. Examples of this usage are found in the works of Aristotle and Quintiallian, and in the NT in Acts 17:31:

Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

If you are used to thinking of "faith" in terms of our first two examples, this will assuredly come as a surprise. The raising of Christ is spoken of here as a proof that God will judge the world. However, if we think about the missionary preaching of the book of Acts, this makes perfect sense and teaches us a certain lesson. Here is more food for thought: Is there anyplace in the NT where we can find someone giving their "personal testimony"? The answer is yes -- but it is in Phil. 3, where Paul gives his personal testimony about his former life, when writing to fellow Christians. He does not use it in a missionary setting to unbelievers.

Indeed, one will find nowhere in the NT an example of missionaries, or anyone, giving their personal testimony. This is for good reason. The ancients conceived of personality as static; the way you were born is the way you stayed. Personal change was not a focus, because it was thought impossible. This is why the church remained suspicious of Paul even after his conversion, and until Barnabas (who probably knew Paul previously) testified on his behalf.

But note well: The following is not the sort of thing one will find in the NT:

Acts 2:48-52 And Peter arose and said, Men and brethren, I testify to you that whereas I formerly smoked mustard leaves, drank wine, cursed daily, and smelled moreover of fish, when the Lord Jesus Christ entered my heart I became clean. Now I no longer smoke, I no longer drink, my language is no longer filthy, and I bathe daily. Praise the Lord!

On the contrary! Here is what we do find in the missionary preaching of the NT:

Acts 2:22-36 Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved...Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear... Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.

Peter's primary appeal here was threefold: He appealed to the evidence of the wonders and signs performed by Jesus; he appealed to the empty tomb, and he appealed to fulfillment of OT prophecy. In short, his appeals were evidentiary. One of course might wish to dispute the validity of the evidence, but in context this is beside the point. The point is that Peter grounded belief in Christianity on evidence -- or, as the definition of pistis in Acts 17:31 would put it, proofs.

Now before you re-read various passages on "faith" in this light, bear in mind two things. First, this does not necessarily mean abandoning personal testimony as a form of witness. Changed lives may be, and often are, appealed to as proofs of the Christian faith, and in our individualistic society which has lost a sense of history (to the point where many people cannot even name our Vice-President), such appeals may actually be better in some contexts than an apologetic for the empty tomb.

Second, note that in very few cases is this form of pistis, as meaning a proof, in view. The meaning does give us a clue as to the nature of other meanings. It is often used as a noun to refer to the Christian "faith" as a set of convictions. In far many more cases the meaning intended is in the sense of faithfulness, or loyalty as owed to one in whom one is embedded for service (in this case, the body of Christ). This now leads to an expansion of the pistis concept as derived from deSilva. As deSilva shows, the relationship between the believer and God is framed in terms of an ancient client-patron relationship. As God's "clients" to whom he has shown unmerited favor (grace), our response should be, as Malina and Neyrey frame it, a "constant awareness" of prescribed duties toward those in whom we are indebted (God) and the group in which we are embedded (God's kin group, the body of Christ). This "constant awareness" is the expression of our faithfulness of loyalty -- in other words, this is our pistis, or faith. "Faith" is not a feeling, but our pledge to trust, and be reliable servants to, our patron (God), who has provided us with tangible gifts (Christ) and proof thereby of His own reliability.

We now update this essay with some further considerations, with specific reference to the modern idea of a "personal relationship with Jesus" that is the modern staple of evangelism. Given the above data, the actual description that fits an authentic faith is not a personal relationship, but a patronal relationship. Modern sentiments that call Jesus our "friend" and suppose that we ought to talk to God as to our best buddy are, in this context, clearly misplaced. John MacArthur once lamented over a story of someone who said he spoke to Jesus every morning while shaving. He asked the person, "Do you keep shaving?" The casualness with which we approach a relationship to the Almighty is decidedly far from what the ancients would have perceived; indeed, the client seldom if ever spoke to or saw the patron (here, the Father) and had even limited contact with the broker (here, Jesus); thus Jesus' admonition to make requests of him hardly signifies a constant appeal for every possible need to be met as we desire!

In addition, the "personal relationship" paradigm shatters upon the point that the "personal relationship" as we know it is a modern phenomenon. Malina notes in The New Testament World [66] that in a collectivist culture, people "did not know each other very well in the way we know people, that is, psychologically, individually, intimately, and personally." People were not considered "psychologically unique worlds" to each other; personal idiosyncracies obviously existed, but were considered unimportant and uninteresting. (Modern persons, Malina notes, would think such people were rigid or highly controlled, or fearful of others; which bespeaks the bigotry and misunderstanding of those Skeptics who i.e., say Paul is an obsessed personality, or that he and others acted in a highly controlling manner.) The bottom line for us here is that the "personal relationship with Jesus" model is an anachronistic product of our own times, a remaking of God and Jesus in our own image.

With this in mind, we now turn to a study of specific examples of "faith" in the NT, and how they are misunderstood -- and we will close with a revisit to our three examples above.

With a form of pistis used over 240 times in the NT, it will not be possible to examine every instance of it. But it is enough to highlight some of the more obvious examples.

Matthew 8:5-10 And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed... When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

We see the definition of "faith" in terms of loyalty to, or trust in, a deserving patron, exhibited quite clearly here. The centurion knew of Jesus' miraculous abilities (v. 8). His faith was not "blind" but based on the evidence of Jesus' past works. He considered Jesus worthy therefore of his trust and came to him for help.

This is the sort of "faith" also exhibited by other people who come to, or are brought to, Jesus for healing. The man with palsy, the woman with the issue of blood, Jairus, the blind man (Matt. 9), the Syrophoenician woman (Matt. 15) -- all came knowing of Jesus' abilities to heal. Their actions were based on evidence and proof. Of course one may argue that their trust was misplaced and that Jesus was a charlatan, but contextually that is beside the point. Our point is that faith is not "blind trust."

Matthew 17:19-20 Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

This passage is one of the leading "make hay" passages for charlatans like our Benny Pophagin. Not healed? You needed more faith! But understand instead "faith" as loyalty and "unbelief" as disobedience. So what is the implication? Matthew 17:21 ("Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.") is missing from the best mss. of Matthew. It's parallel, Mark 9:29, shows textual data indicating that only "prayer" was part of the original (see here). Wherein then lies the disciples' disobedience and disloyalty? It is in lack of prayer, and a false perception that the gift of exorcism was something inherent in themselves rather than being conveyed through them by God. (Note that the exorcism is preceded by a note that the scribes were questioning the disciples [Mark 9:14-16] -- most likely challenging them to perform an exorcism. We find a parallel lesson in Luke 10:17-20: "And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." This is a firm caution against pride and focus on self, and a loss of concentration on the real power behind the ability to exorcize demons.)

A similar lesson may be drawn from Matthew 21, in which Jesus states, "Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." This needs to be combined with our comments elsewhere: No Jew would recognize such statements as giving believers carte blanche to ask to have mountains turned over (see more here). This is simply a way of emphasizing God's commitment, as a patron, to bless and show favor to the believer -- who would be expected not to ask for silly or selfish things in the first place, no more so than any client in the Roman world would be foolish enough to ask his patron to give him a million bucks to blow on video games. A person with pistis does not knowingly ask for that which God would not or does not will, and does not ask for something to happen if it is against God's will. In Jewish thought, God was sovereign. Nothing happened that God did not permit or cause. "Early Jewish teaching did celebrate God's kindness in answering prayer, but rarely promises such universal answers to prayer to all of God's people as the language suggests." [Keener, 245] Only a small number of sages were considered pious enough to ask for and receive whatever they wanted -- and that piety was their key indicates that they weren't going around asking for just anything they wanted (like Hanina ben Dosa, and Honi the Circle-Drawer), but only what they supposed to be in the will of God. "Such a call to believing prayer supposes a heart of piety submitted to God's will..."

Limitations upon what we may receive are clearly set by the context. The Lord's Prayer instructs us to pray for daily needs (Matt. 6:11) -- it does not say, "Give us this day a Rolls Royce." Earthly children ask for bread or fish (7:9-10) which are "basic staples in the Palestinian diet" that were provided to children on a regular basis. We can ask for "good things" (7:11), a term which sometimes referred to prosperity generally, but also "referred to agricultural produce that the righteous would share with others (Test. Iss. 3:7-8)." Neither the Jewish nor the Roman client-patron background would understand the mountain-moving phrase as literal permission to request whatever our selfishness desires -- or to expect something to be given to us contrary to the will and desire of the patron.

Mark 4:39-40 And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?

By now it should be easy to see that Jesus rebukes the disciples for a lack of trust and loyalty, which by this time he should have justly earned from them, having already shown his miraculous powers and wisdom.

Mark 6:5-6 And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.

We've seen a lot of skeptics quote this verse lately, saying that it indicates that Jesus was a charlatan who (like our modern "faith healer" Benny) needed people to have "faith" and excused away ability to heal real diseases as a lack of faith. The word "unbelief" here is apistia, meaning a lack of pistis. In light of our better understanding of pistis, the problem is indeed not with Jesus but with the lack of loyalty and trust by those who reject Jesus. Like the ungrateful client in the client-patron relationship, the people rejected Jesus as a patron in spite of his acts of grace, thereby dishonoring him. (Note how this affects the meaning of Mark 6:4: "A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.") To reject a gracious act was the height of dishonor. Jesus could not heal these people not because of a lack of power, but because of ingratitude and a rejection of his gracious patronage! A rejected patron could and would never force his gracious gifts upon a client who didn't want them!

Finally we look at this most-often abused use of pistis by skeptics who prefer the Twain definition:

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

"There, see! The evidence of things not seen. Blind faith. Case closed." Try again! The list that follows offers examples of people who had been given undeniable proof of God's existence and power. Pistis here is a matter of trust in a God who has demonstrated His ability to be a worthy patron, and the examples are those of clients who, knowing this ability, trust in God's record as a patronal provider. Hebrews 11:1 therefore is telling us that faith (trust in our patron, gained by conviction based on evidence) is the substance (the word here means an assurance, as in a setting under, a concrete essence or an abstract assurance) of things hoped for (this word means expected by trust, which is something earned!), and the evidence of that which is not seen, which in context means we expect, based on past performance, continuing favor from our patron, who has already proven Himself worthy of our trust by example, and this trust is our confidence in the fulfillment of future promises. Blind faith? Not in the least! It is faith grounded in reality.

With these things in mind, let's now look back at our four case examples and see where they go wrong.

1. A "faith healer" named Benny Pophagin offers to heal Joe of his lumbago. Benny lays hands on Joe and prays, but the lumbago remains. Benny waves Joe away, saying, "This is your problem. You don't have enough faith." As Mark 6:5 shows, Benny is full of bologna. Anyone who trusts God already has all the "faith" they need. What Benny misses is the central truth that this trust is not something giving us carte blanche to get everything we want. What we do get remains in the patron's good grace.
2. A Christian faces several objections to his beliefs that he cannot answer. He says, "I don't care what people say, I still have faith." Our Christian probably does have "faith" even by the right definition -- but it needs to be grounded in something firm and not held blindly. We'll do #4 next, then skip back to #3 as it requires a more detailed treatment.
3. The famous skeptic Mark Twain said, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." Like our friend Benny, Twain dipped a little too heavily into the Oscar Mayer on this one. "Faith" is believing what you know to be true and trustworthy. Once again, one may argue about whether the evidence is indeed trustworthy, but contextually it remains that true faith is far, far from blind.
4. Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard "contends that the scriptures included in the Bible verify that the Christian belief system is based on a leap of faith, not on tangible proof." This is because Christianity involves paradoxes offensive to reason. We need to actually have a closer look at what Kirekegaard (if our Buddhist source represented him correctly, which it does seem that he did not -- see here) incorrectly regarded as paradoxes, due to his lack of education in relevant fields. Our Buddhist forum member put this forward first:

   1. The idea that a God could be transformed into a man, more specifically Jesus, is a paradox. "Christian dogma, according to Kierkegaard, embodies paradoxes which are offensive to reason. The central paradox is the assertion that the eternal, infinite, transcendent God simultaneously became incarnated as a temporal, finite, human being (Jesus). There are two possible attitudes we can adopt to this assertion, viz. we can have faith, or we can take offense. What we cannot do, according to Kierkegaard, is believe by virtue of reason. If we choose faith we must suspend our reason in order to believe in something higher than reason. In fact we must believe by virtue of the absurd."

   If this was Kierkegaard's understanding of the Trinity, it was badly misinformed. Via the concept of Wisdom/Logos this "paradox" disappears; what was incarnated was a temporal, hypostatic extension of the transcendent God, not the transcendent God Himself. There is no call to suspend reason; indeed, the most "reasoning" Greek philosophers came up with essentially the same ideas, as did other great minds in the ANE. #2 takes a little more doing:

   2. The idea that Abraham could be commanded to kill his own son by the same God whose commandments include 'thou shalt not kill', is a paradox. "Using the example of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac (Gen. 22:1-19), Kierkegaard suggested that God called Abraham to violate moral law in slaying his son. For Kierkegaard, Abraham's willingness to "suspend" his ethical convictions epitomized the leap of faith that is demanded of everyone. Kierkegaard believed the incident proved that "the single individual [Abraham] is higher than the universal [moral law]." Building on that conclusion, the Danish philosopher offered this observation: "Abraham represents faith.... He acts by virtue of the absurd, for it is precisely [by virtue of] the absurd that he as the single individual is higher than the universal." "[I] cannot understand Abraham," Kierkegaard declared, "even though in a certain demented sense I admire him more than all others."

   Kierkegaard was misplaced in two respects. First, he was clueless about the actual meaning of "Thou shalt not kill" in Hebrew. (See further for our Buddhist opponent's cognitive-dissonance dodge of this point; Glenn Miller also has relevant material here and here.) The "faith" here is Abraham's loyalty to God, and an expectation, based on the evidence of his previous dealings with YHWH, that God will either stop the process or return Isaac to life. In contrast, our opponent had but emotion to offer as a response:

   Abraham's choice of action was irrational. Why did he listen to God, and begin to sacrifice his own son? As a father, i can tell you that i would have refused, offered myself instead, and would have even contemplated killing myself before harming my son. In fact, i would have taken a run at God himself if he tried to harm my son.

   It is a well known and understood thing that we don't bring harm to our own children, no matter who tries to tell us otherwise. It is our sacred duty to protect our children. It is one of the central moral themes of mankind. To do harm to a child, our own child, is the most heinous crime on earth, and a mortal sin in the eyes of God, under any other circumstances.

   So, given all of that, why did Abraham do what he did? There can be only one answer. He took a leap of faith. He put his faith in God above all the things he knew, the difference between right and wrong, the duty of a father to protect his children, and even his belief that the God he knew wouldn't do such a thing.

   Readers will wish to note Miller's responses to this line of thinking -- among them: priority to God over man; the primacy of loyalty and personal sacrifice in the mind of the ancients (which we, in individualistic selfishness as displayed above, have lost); the amount of time that passed within which there was assuredly interchange between Abraham and Isaac (which practically guarantees that Isaac's role became one of self-sacrifice -- he was old enough to know and understand what was going on, as well as put up resistance if he wanted to!). In short, our opponent has the entire scenario read in the wrong, which is the natural result of relying on a philosopher (however competent) rather than, or without input from, relevant scholarship. The opponent continues:

   So what kind of faith did Abraham demonstrate when he chose to obey God and kill his only son, in spite of the fact that he knew it was morally wrong? There is only one kind of faith that fits the bill; blind faith.

   This is false on several counts, for we have noted that there is no moral contradiction: the cited command is of no relevance, and Isaac clearly was a willing participant. Abraham's faith was not blind, but based on evidence: note therefore Abraham's repeated statements of confidence: "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you." The true scenario is as Miller notes: The OT passage itself focuses on Abraham's priority loyalty to YHWH--cf. Jesus' words in Matt 10.37: "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me". As is standard practice with God, when we 'give up' the good things in our lives to Him, we almost always get them back again with blessings. Miller's comment fits hand in glove with our understanding of the meaning of "faith". Another forum member put it well:

   The term "blind faith" is often used as an insult to the intelligence of one who has any kind of faith. I invite you to read the account of Abraham and discover if he had any reason to trust God's word by virtue of His previous actions. Probably the most amusing of those actions was the birth of Isaac to 90 year old Sarah, who laughed the previous year at the idea. This was certainly a sign of God's power to 100 year old Abraham.

   Blind faith would by like trusting in your dog to save your soul. You have no reason for this belief, no written records, no writings dated thousands of years back, no lives changed, nothing. Christianity is hardly blind.

   Another said:

   God had promised him a son in his old age, and God delivered, at a time when it was impossible for old men and their wives to have babies.

   In fact, if you follow a biblical anthropology, there is no such thing as a blind leap of faith, because the first man woke up out of the dust of the ground and met his creator on a daily basis in the Garden of Eden. This establishes that God is involved in His creation from the beginning in self-revelatory ways that doesn't require a blind faith at all. So Abe knew about this God, and had on ongoing relationship with him for YEARS before God tested him. Blind faith? No way.

   Kierkegaard had his political/social context to which he was reacting. I suspect he would be singing a different tune were he alive today in NA.

   In response to these points, our opponent repeated his emotional appeals, and added this sort of thing re the definition of "kill":

   Let me get this straight, you are claiming that Kierkegaard's credibility is blown, because he wrongly defined the word 'kill'? Are you for real? That is the most ridiculous crap you have brought forward yet. A five year old child can accurately define 'kill'. It means 'render dead'. Something was once alive, now it's not, and something was responsible. And you're trying to suggest that Kiekegaard somehow got this wrong? I suppose now you are going to point me to a foreign root of the word 'kill' in Arabic or Sumerian or some other exotic language to try to prove your point? Give me a break, it's pathetic.

   I replied to this methodology of playing with words (mixing up meanings of "kill") thusly:

   Yes, it is indeed pathetic the way cognitive dissonance leads people to stick their heads in the sand and avoid actual answers. Funny, usually it's the True Believers who are accused of that...

   Kierk was no expert in Hebrew language or culture, and it would not be hard to discredit a person on a particular point (you burn the excessive strawman of discrediting him as a whole, undoubtedly because of severe cognitive dissonance and high frustration you are experiencing) when they step out of their field of knowledge.

   And tried to excuse away the evidence of the late birth of Isaac with a dipsy-doodle:

   As for Abraham, his story is dramatic in the fact that he was made to wait until the age of a hundred before having a child. His belief in God was already put to the test by being made to wait so long. The fact that God turns around after waiting so long to give Abraham his promised son, and then demands his son be sacrificed serves to add further drama to the test of faith he underwent.

   Not one word of this controverts the point that the late birth nevertheless was one piece of evidence upon which Abraham based his trust. This opponent was engaging distraction tactics by emphasizing "drama" and ignoring the point of the argument. In short, Abraham's faith was not "blind" at all.

In conclusion: If you as a Christian have held one or more of these views of faith, we offer this in humbleness as a corrective. Your faith does not have to be, and was never intended to be, a blind trust -- not in God, and not as something you hold even in opposition.

Carrier further appeals to examples of Paul and Tertuallian; but Tertullian is well beyond the critical years I am dealing with, and so is an irrelevancy (as Carrier believes, for some reason, I am not aware!). The example of Paul, as noted above, can hardly be assumed (despite Carrier's blatant hypocrisy) to be typical, and unless we know what Paul thought before his conversion, and exactly why he rejected Christianity, using him as an example is an exercise in ribald speculation and circular reasoning. It also does not occur to Carrier that Paul's lack of fear of death was a result of his conviction of the facts -- as before, he uses "after" evidence illicitly to prove something about "before".

On the other hand, Carrier neglects the evidential aspects of Paul believing based on "unlocking of secrets in scripture, and the working of miracles within the church community." Of course as one who begs the naturalist question, he would "blow off" the latter as the workings of ignorant gullibles; and the former, rests not just on the OT texts but on historic facts about Jesus (in Jewish thought, the event called out the text, not vice versa; see here). It may also be noted that the resurrection is one of the appeals made in missionary preaching in Acts, though Carrier glibly forgets to note this.

I do not see from where in 2 Cor 12:6-10 Carrier gets some ideas about Paul's conversion experience. The text has nothing to do with any of that; and it is absurd to expect Paul to say something like, "I'm not worried because I have a ton of evidence" unless Paul is writing to people who gave him reasons to be worried, which by my thesis, was a foregone conclusion on the opposite direction. Carrier is absurdly expecting Paul to anticipate his objections 2000 years later.

Just as mysterious is why Carrier thinks I take 1 Peter 3:16 "out of context" since I only cited it without explaining what application I was making of it. Since I said nothing about what these passages meant in terms of my thesis, Carrier has no business to say that it "actually says the opposite of what Holding claims" to begin with. I use these as mere testimony of some persecution happening, and of Christians being under the watchful eye of their neighbors, and that is what 1 Peter 2:12 is cited for. 1 Peter 3:16 asks the question, started as is rightly said in 3:13 with, "Who will harm you if you are zealous for what is good?" -- a question that makes no sense unless there is harm that could be done, and in any event, Carrier admits that 3:16 does speak of persecution (but is not by any means "denying this was the norm," since it says nothing about frequency or depth of persecution; and anyway, it is likely that the "he" in v. 13 is a reference back to the Lord in v. 12: "For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil." -- not to other people.)

Once again: Expecting "strength of evidence" to be an appeal in the letters of the NT is a red herring. No such appeal will appear unless there is actually some doubt about the evidence. Doubts appear where assurance of afterlife reward and final fate is concerned, and these are indeed inaccesible matters. A fallacy further is this remark:

One continual theme in these passages is that those who suffer ought to suffer because Christ did, and Christ is the best of men, the ideal all should emulate.[10] Yet we know from the Gospel stories (and the predicted fate of the messiah in scripture, as examined in Chapter 1) that Jesus was not persecuted because his values were unpopular, but for precisely the opposite reason: they were immensely popular, and it is only the wicked elite who attack him, and in so doing are charged as hypocrites. Hence Jesus was not executed because his values were despised, but because the elite had rejected the popular values of justice and compassion that Jesus represented and upheld. By being called to emulate him in their persecution, the message conveyed is that Christians are being persecuted by the same sorts of hypocrites who reject popular values (e.g. 1 Thess. 2:13-16), not by a society cherishing different values.

The error here is simple and to the point: Carrier confuses reaction with reason for the reaction. This is an absurdity anyway, since (for example) it would imply that Christians could never suffer because they disbelieved in the Roman gods! Jesus never would have had such a problem in Judaea; so obviously, whatever passages Carrier refers to (he cites none) cannot mean, "be sure and suffer for the same reasons Jesus did." This is not even legitimate if it is collapsed into the broad category of, "suffer because of offending the establishment" -- the confusion of act and cause remains the same.

In summary: Given Carrier's argument, one would think that 1 Cor. 15 ought to say, "If we don't have a social-moral ideal, your faith is in vain." Carrier's entire retort here is blemished by his equivocation on what "values" are in view in my argument; and it is completely undone by the appeal to unevidenced diversity.

In close here, point on footnotes. It is said in Point 2:

Holding claims to find evidence Paul executed Christians in Philippians 3:6, but I don't see how--in the passage he cites, Paul gives a list of his qualifications in parallel structure, such that the context does not fit that of Maccabees, which never uses either relevant word in the way Holding implies anyway: diôkô is used 11 times in 1 and 2 Maccabees, always in the sense of "chase," not in any context relating to persecution (1 Mac.Ý3:24, 4:9, 4:16, 7:45, 9:15, 11:73, 12:51, 15:39; 2 Mac. 2:21, 2:31, 5:8; all are military actions); and zêlos appears only 4 times, none in any context relating to persecution (1 Mac. 2:27, 2:54, 2:58, 8:16).

Carrier hasn't understood well yet again. The word I have in mind is indeed zelos, and I say this not in reference to persecution, but in terms of the depth to which Paul went in persecuting the church. The 1 Maccabbees verse in view is 2:54, "Phinees our father in being zealous and fervent obtained the covenant of an everlasting priesthood." Phineas of course was so zealous that he killed people; he was used as an example for the Maccabeean revolters to follow; and thus Paul's use of the word shows that he too was willing to kill (though I nowhere say that this proves that he did). The rest of the comments in this retort miss the point and require no comment.

Last, in Note 9, let it speak for itself that Carrier commits the rather outrageous error of calling John's apocalypse, "Revelations"! The addition of the S to the name is an error made by KJV Onlyists and village atheists, but is certainly not one we would expect from a Ph. D. candidate pretending to be an expert in Christianity!

The Shameless Mercenary

In case you're wondering....

Carrier's response to my eighth point had 7094 words. From his rate sheet here we find that he charges "6 cents per word written" for this type of work. Assuming that Johnny didn't ask for a rush job, that means that Richie was paid $425.64 for his response to this section. More on why we make a note of this later.