Transcript:

Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist, Trent Horn.

Joining me for today’s dialogue is Paul from Paulogia, though I think I mangled the pronunciation in my previous video addressing some of his topics.

Today, we’re going to talk about the argument who would die for a lie, right? Paul has addressed that on his own channel and has engaged with the evangelical apologist, Sean McDowell, on that question. I’ve also engaged in his work. He engaged mine, and I have a very strict rule on Council of Trent podcast. When somebody rebuts one of my rebuttals, I don’t do any more rebuttals, because that would be an endless, nightmarish loop. Instead, I’d rather just chat with the person.

So here he is. Paul, welcome to the channel.

Thank you so much for having me on. It’s always great to talk to you and the Christians. Absolutely. That’s my favorite.

Sure. Maybe before we get started, maybe give our listeners a little bit of background on yourself and your channel, I guess.

Sure. The slogan of my channel is, “A former Christian takes a look at the claims of Christians.” By that, obviously, I’m inferring that I used to be a Christian. I was an evangelical, raised in Mennonite heritage, though moved on from that later in my life.

I went to a Christian missionary bible college for my formal education there. While I had regular secular jobs, I went on to be a youth leader and a worship leader for many decades, and eventually went to investigate the evidence for myself to see whether that’s a position that I should still hold. And despite desperately wanting it to be true and thinking I was going to defend my faith, I ended up losing it.

That’s kind of the short version. And then a bunch of stuff happened and I started a YouTube channel where I look at the claims of Christians, and here we are.

And here we are indeed. All right, so today I want to talk about a lot of your content, not exclusively, but a lot of your content deals with the question of the resurrection. Did Jesus rise from the dead? And part of that argument, not the whole case, but part of the argument is the question, were the original witnesses, the original people who testified to the risen Jesus, were they sincere in their belief?

And so this gives rise to a common apologetic slogan, if you will, called, who would die for a lie. The idea is that, well, we can see that the apostles were sincere, or at least the original witnesses of the resurrection, those who were preaching it, they were sincere, because they were willing to go to their deaths or they did go to their deaths for this belief.

Now, in criticisms of this argument, I’ve seen that was the point in my original video that you responded to, I would say that this argument can be overstretched, that the evidence for the martyrdom of the apostles is unequal. There is much better evidence for the martyrdom of some of the apostles than for others.

And I think that the core of the argument that you have this sincerity of their belief can be made in the fact that they were willing to suffer. And I think atheists have made rightful criticisms in the lazier approach to the argument, “Well, they were all martyrs.” Well, let’s look at the historical evidence. How good is that?

That’s what I was addressing in my video, and then you had some criticisms and replies, and so we can go through some of that. But I guess, then I’ll throw it to you, you can jump off this, how do you look at the argument dealing with the apostle sincerity, and then what are some concerns that you still have?

Sure. And I do appreciate that you take a more nuanced approach than the churches that I grew up and as an adult attended. I definitely was in a tradition that just went for everyone but John was definitely martyred for their beliefs and presumably had opportunity to recant and definitely didn’t shake their fist at the authorities. And that’s the narrative I received from both bible school teachers and from pulpits. I want to be fair, I may have been bringing some of that to the table myself, but that was definitely what I was led to believe. I appreciate that you take the more nuanced approach.

Yeah. Now, to be fair [inaudible 00:04:36]. Sure. Now, to be fair, when I’m looking at presenting evidence there, I do think based on the weight of tradition and other elements like that, I do believe that the 11 were martyred. I do hold to that belief, but I understand that when you put forward evidence, people are going to be skeptical of different kinds of evidences that you can present. I do agree that some of the evidences are strong enough to put forward to a skeptical audience to look at. I would agree.

For our audience who is listening, I think it’s important to summarize here because you and I could be going a mile a minute, because you can understand this. When someone gets in the nitty gritty of an argument and other people are on the outside, like, “What are you all talking about?” I would recommend [inaudible 00:05:26]. Oh, go ahead.

I was going to say we’re on episode four of this where the audience may not be. They might be joining us for the first time.

Right. I would recommend watching Paul’s previous dialogues with Sean McDowell. Sean, he’s actually the son of Josh McDowell, the author of Evidence Demands a Verdict. He was a very famous Protestant Christian apologist. Sean is a nice guy, very smart. I like a lot of his work. He focuses on defending mere Christianity. And so Sean was actually challenged with this, like, “Well, how do you know all the apostles died?” For his dissertation, Sean decided to do a definitive look at the fate of the apostles. I always mess up the title of the book, but I’m pretty sure it’s called The Fate of the 12 Apostles.

I think that’s correct, yeah.

Yeah. The Fate of the Apostles or The Fate of the 12 Apostles. And he wrote that as his dissertation, later released it as a book. He and Paul have discussed this. And I basically would agree with Sean that all of the apostles … and of course, we have to define what that term means; I would put it to the 11 disciples who became Apostles, Paul of Tarsus and James, the brother of Jesus … were willing to suffer for belief in the resurrection for publicly preaching or being publicly associated with the Christian movement.

And I think there’s good evidence for four of them, for Peter, Paul, James, the brother of Jesus, and James, the son of Zebedee, being willing to accept death as a consequence of publicly having this witness. That’s where it comes to, and you’ve had some criticism of McDowell and of myself, so feel free to move us forward from the summary I’ve given.

Well, while I think I would like to spend most of the time on the willingness to die part, because I think that’s where the meat and the interesting part is, just for the sake of wrapping up the previous chapters, I don’t disagree with the four that you listed. Maybe James, son of Alphaeus, I might disagree. And Sean has also lowered his confidence on that one in particular because the only source for that is the Book of Acts.

You mean the son of Zebedee.

Sorry, son of Zebedee [inaudible 00:07:38]. We have so many Jameses. Yes, I have to get that straight.

Yes, that’s going … and each of us could easily mix up our Jameses here.

Pardon me. Yes, absolutely, and actually, because a little bit torn by that you were accepting that James is the brother of Jesus, and maybe we’ll get into that, maybe not.

Yes, because even among Christians, there is an argument about whether James, the brother of Jesus, is identical to James the Lesser, or James, the son of Alphaeus. There are three Jameses described in the New Testament, so everyone will have to bear with us as we sort through our Jameses here.

I do think that James, the brother of Jesus, was part of Jesus’s related kin. I in particular hold a view that the Protestant biblical scholar, Richard Bauckham holds, which is that James would’ve been Jesus’s half brother, that Joseph was from a previous marriage. Of course, that’s a whole different subject, but that he was related kin to Jesus, did not believe in him during his ministry, and then Jesus appeared to him and then he became one of the apostles. He became one of them who were preaching this. In any case, so you agree-

And I don’t mean to sidetrack. When I was a Protestant, of course I believed James was also the half brother, because it was only through Mary, because God was actually the father. It’s just weird semantics and we don’t need to get into that. But if we’re going back to the four-

Yeah, step sibling, half brother [inaudible 00:09:08]. The four, we kind of agree that that would be-

The four, so James, son of Zebedee, the only source is the Book of Acts. I tend to not put it elevated quite as high as those other ones, though the narrative in Acts is so sparse of details, it is tough for me to again say that that martyrdom necessarily meant it was for what he believed necessarily. It is very sparse in the details, so it’s tough to pinpoint that.

Just for our audience, we’ll keep them running along with us. In Acts chapter 12, so we’re talking about James, the son of Zebedee, the brother of John the Apostle, that we read in Acts 12, it says, “About that time Herod the king” … This would be Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, who was involved in the infancy narratives … “About that time, Herod the Great laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.”

What’s interesting about this passage is I do think that it’s very good evidence that James was put to death. What I worry is that if it were a long, drawn out narrative with many elements to it talking about his valiant martyrdom, some people will call that a legendary accretion. What’s interesting is the fact that it is so brief would make it less likely to be a Christian interpolation or accretion and more just a note of something that did historically happen, but people might disagree. I think the strongest case a critic might make would be, why was James killed [inaudible 00:10:49].

Right, and that’s [inaudible 00:10:52]. And then we get to Peter and Paul. I of course dispute that Paul was a firsthand witness in the sense that he could attest to the resurrection. I don’t think that what Paul’s vision was … and we don’t need to go there necessarily … but he’s in the same category as the other 12 that you want to talk about.

But Peter and Paul, if they were both killed under Nero, and the story that [inaudible 00:11:23] tells about Nero is correct, that he was looking for scapegoats for the fire, that it’s tough to imagine that Nero cared one lick what they actually believed because he was using them for political purpose and to save his own skin. It’s tough to say that that actual death is the same guarantor that I was taught in Sunday school, shall we say. So that leads us to-

I do want to return to Peter.

… James, the brother of Jesus.

Let’s put a pin in there. I do want to go back to Peter and Paul because maybe we’ll go in reverse order. We can talk about martyrdoms, then we’ll get to the willingness to die part. But you can go ahead with James, the brother of Jesus. We can return to Peter and Paul in a little bit.

Well, and James the brother of Jesus, I believe we have really good attestation that he was killed by political forces. I think you would agree with that.

Yeah. Yes.

There seems to be wide discrepancy on the how and some of those narratives, and I think you agree that that almost doesn’t really matter here, that the core of the three different stories, I think Hegesippus was one, and I forget what the others were.

I think the other would be [inaudible 00:12:32]. Right, so James, the brother of Jesus, what makes … because the other problem here is when people say, “Well, we’re the apostles martyred?” The martyrdom of the apostles is not described in the New Testament. Well, I would say at least it’s not directly described. I do think that the martyrdom of the apostles is indirectly referenced in passages in John or second Timothy that were written after those events took place and are reflecting back on them.

James, the brother of Jesus, we would have three sources there. In the Christian tradition, we have the chronicler Hegesippus in the second century, and then Clement of Alexandria, who’s late second century, early third century, and they describe … That’s the Christian sources.

The non-Christian source would be the Jewish historian, Josephus or Josephus. And he’s describing in his book The Antiquities, he says this. I think it’s in book 20. He says that the procurator, so the guy who had Pontius Pilate’s old job, this new guy was Festus. Festus was now dead. Albinus was but upon the road, so he assembled a Sanhedrin of judges. Jesus ben Ananias, the high priest, assembled the judges, the Jewish judges, brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others. When he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.

What we see here is I think when you have … What’s interesting here, once again, similar to the James, the son of Zebedee issue, most scholars agree. There’s another reference to Jesus in book 18 of The Antiquities that has a longer reference to Jesus, but many people believe … Nearly all scholars believe at least parts of that were added later, where Josephus says that Jesus was the Messiah. I read one Christian who tried to defend all of it. It was very gutsy.

Oh boy. Wow. Okay.

I’ll have to send that you.

That’s interesting.

You’ll get a big kick out of it. But most scholars agree that it’s at least partially interpolated, if not the whole thing.

Now, this part, most scholars agree, most, not all, but most agree, they consider it authentic, because once again, it’s brevity, that if a Christian were adding it, he’d add more heroic elements, he’d lather it on. It’s very, very brief.

Right, and that is what you get in those other Christian traditions is like, “He was tossed off a cliff and then stoned,” but you get some of those kind of traditions-

Now, I don’t think it’s-

… happening.

Yeah, there’s some more details that are added in Hegesippus and Clement, but I don’t think that some of them are necessarily contradictory.

For example, the detail about James being thrown from the temple, I don’t think that that’s a fantastic addition that contradicts Josephus because the Talmid, which is a collection of Jewish writings from the first few centuries after Christ, talks about the punishment of stoning and how it was carried out.

And actually, what they did was they would take people on a scaffold or a high platform and throw them off the scaffold onto the stone pavement, and then if they were still alive, somebody standing on top of the scaffold would throw stones onto him, so that part, I actually don’t think it’s that contradictory if-

Well, and I wasn’t bringing that up. I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I was bringing it up to say it was a contradiction anyway. I’m on board with that these are three harmonizeable, even within my threshold, accounts, that they have enough … But what I’d like to focus on is that for me it’s clearly, again, once again, a politically motivated, if not entirely, at least in part, reason for killing him, versus that it’s purely ideological, that this whole thing wasn’t entirely because he was claiming that Jesus rose from the dead.

Yeah. I mean, I guess I could see that as the claim, like, “Well, he’s starting a rival sect that dilutes our power.” That may be part of it. It’s just very hard when you have in the ancient world that politics and religion and ideology are incredibly interwoven. We have that a lot more separated today.

But at that time, I mean, maybe there’s a political subtext, but when you read what Josephus says, he just says they formed an accusation of them as breakers of the law, which is interesting because a lot of critical scholars believe that James, the brother of Jesus, the really critical scholars will say, “Oh, he didn’t believe what Paul taught. He just wanted to be a faithful Jew. Jesus wouldn’t have believed in Paul’s gospel. James was trying to preserve, adhering to the Torah.”

To me, it seems really interesting that he’d be accused of being a breaker of the law if he had a reputation for being this upstanding Jew who kept the law, wasn’t a troublemaker like Paul. To me, it seems like the biggest law he would’ve broken to incur stoning would be something like leading Israel to worship false gods, which would really tie into preaching that Jesus was the resurrected Messiah. I guess that’s how I would look at it.

But I think we can both agree that that’s speculation and an argument from silence if push comes to shove, right?

Well, I think that all of us are going to make these kinds of inferences. Well, what do we think is most probable for these different reasons? And we’re going to have to assemble our evidence because it doesn’t clearly say that it was because of political factions or the Jews were worried about their power being diminished, even though Josephus talks about those motives sometimes. I think that what people have to do when you look at this is look at the context, what kind of punishment was carried out, what kind of accusations were made, and you’ll make different inferences based on that.

From my perspective, I guess, even those four, and I’m sorry to step on you there.

That’s fine.

For me, those four, I’m expressing why I prefer actually your willingness to die. I actually think that is a stronger place to go.

Sure. Well, let’s then-

… than even this martyr number, because for me, if I grant those four, I still have problems with them as a guarantor that it was because of what they believed.

Sure.

I guess we can maybe move on then to willingness, if you’re willing to put a pin there.

Well, could we finish up Peter and Paul-

Sure.

… and then we’ll go to willingness to die. That would be nice, I think. McDowell says this, and I agree, and I think most scholars hold to this, like Bart Ehrman and others, hold to the view that Peter and Paul were martyrs, that they had been killed because of their belief in Christ.

There’s going to be a separate question, of course, about whether they were allowed to recant or not, because usually to be a martyr you have to like, “Okay, I’d rather die than give up my belief in Christ.” But I think it’s pretty clear from the evidence, which we even have, I mentioned earlier about the New Testament, John 21:18 through 19, Jesus talks about how when Peter is older, they will stretch out his hands and someone will carry you where you do not wish to go, and many commenters see that as a reference to him being a martyr.

And of course, John’s gospel was written after Peter’s death, so he would have knowledge of that. And then similar, in second Timothy, puts Paul in Rome knowing that he’s going to die. And most scholars think second Timothy wasn’t written by Paul, but it was written later after he died. This was someone who would’ve had knowledge of that.

But going to … I’m trying to think. I had a pin in earlier … Peter and Paul, Nero, Tacitus. I think a lot of this goes down to … Let me bring up here why they were … They were killed under … because you have, for example, James was killed by Herod. You have threats of persecution by the Jewish authorities. You also have threats from the Roman authorities that would start with the persecution under Emperor Nero.

And so there’s two relevant parts from Tacitus in book 15 of the Annals. He talks about Nero, the great fire at Rome in 64, in AD 64. Did he do it? Did he not do it? And so it says, “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.” He goes on, mentions where the name comes from, mentions Pontius Pilate.

But here’s the part I find interesting that I should have included in my previous video for you to reply to, and I guess I can get your reply to it now. At the end of it, he says something interesting, because you were saying, well, Peter and Paul, they just got caught up because Nero had to put a scapegoat on somebody. He had to blame somebody else for the fire.

Tacitus is interesting though, because he says this. He says, “Accordingly,” referring to Christians, “An arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty. Then upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city as of hatred against mankind.” It seems like Tacitus is saying that the persecution against Christians, it might have started a bit with Nero, but most of it seemed to be convicting people of having a belief system that was dangerous to the state essentially. I don’t know if we can just call them Nero’s scapegoats. What do you think?

I think if you are the head of state looking for scapegoats, if that part can be accepted as truthful, the two most prominent members of that are going to be the people you want to have the most public display. And again, it’s very difficult to put ourselves in the place of someone from 2000 years ago, very difficult. But if politics are politics, it just seems incredibly unlikely to me, and other Christians like Jonathan McClatchy agree with me, that you are going to, at that point, even care.

Let’s say John, Pe... Read more on Catholic.com