New Testament scholars Mike Licona and Dale Martin debated whether or not Jesus considered himself to be divine here.
First, I think that Licona’s case
that Jesus believed that he was divine was far better than the counter-case
made by Martin.
Second, Martin distinguishes
between three Jesuses: “the historical Jesus,” “the real Jesus,” and the “the Jesus
of the past.”[1] He
takes “the historical Jesus” to refer to the Jesus that can be (re)constructed
using historical methodologies. He takes the “real Jesus” to be, well, the real
Jesus, independent of what historians tell us about him—and explicitly says
that he believes the real Jesus is the second Person of the Trinity. I am not quite sure how Martin intends to
distinguish “the real Jesus” from “the Jesus of the past”; in any case, he
contends that the latter is a figure that is entirely inaccessible to us who
now occupy the present moment, for the past is forever gone. If you find
yourself shaking your head in confusion then do not fret—it is not your fault,
it is Martin’s. The simple fact of the matter is that Martin is deeply confused
here. His distinctions, especially between “the real Jesus” and “the Jesus of
the past,” are obfuscatory and/or unintelligible. True, historians cannot hope
to find out all the facts about Jesus, but that does not mean that their
historical reconstructions are not about the real flesh and blood Jesus who
lived and preached approximately two millenia ago in Palestine. On Martin’s
view, the “historical Jesus” must refer to a set of true propositions about the
real Jesus that can be arrived at through historical methodology. So on Martin’s
view, historical Jesus scholars, when seemingly writing articles and books
about Jesus, are not actually writing about Jesus, but about a set of
propositions! But surely this is
absurd. The real Jesus simply is the historical Jesus who simply is the Jesus
of the past—to state otherwise is just to engage in sophistical obfuscation. It is noteworthy that the prominent historical
Jesus scholar John P. Meier makes distinctions similar to, and as problematic
as Martin’s. William Lane Craig does a good job of refuting Meir’s philosophy
of history here
(and let us be honest, what Martin and Meier are doing here is not history, but
(bad) philosophy of history!).
Third, I note that Dale Martin is a
Christian. Having listened to quite a few of his Yale Open Course lectures, I
would have guessed that he was secular (in some of his lectures he makes claims
such as (roughly) “the evidence is certainly not sufficient to
establish
the Christian faith”). However, to my surprise, he made clear in the
opening
address of this debate that he self-identifies as an Episcopalian Nicene
Creed-believer.
It is apparent from what he says in this debate that he believes in
Christianity although he thinks that the historical evidence fails to
establish
crucial Christian doctrines like the divinity and resurrection of
Christ. As someone who takes a very evidence-based approach to religion,
I would say that that he is being irrational here. He should not
be a Christian if that is what he believes. One should follow the
evidence
wherever it leads. If to one's mind one’s evidence does not sufficiently
establish some
proposition P, then one should not believe P. I find Martin’s
self-characterized
“postmodernist” position, to be, like those of scholars John Dominic
Crossan
and Rudolf Bultmann, utterly irrational. One should follow the evidence
wherever it leads. If, as Martin believes, “the historical Jesus”
probably did
not believe that he was divine, then Martin should not be a Christian!
Fourth, Martin’s historical
methodology is flawed. This is apparent when he is discussing whether Jesus saw
himself as the Son of Man, and Licona’s evidence thereof. Licona presented a
pretty compelling case from multiple independent sources that Jesus took
himself to be the Son of Man (an allusion to the figure in Daniel 7:13). Martin
seems to believe that this evidence is defeated. He believes that those
passages where it is ambiguous that Jesus is referring to himself with the “Son
of Man” locution, and where he may be referring to some other future person (an
idea I find wholly implausible), are more probably authentic than the ones
where he is clearly referring to himself. And this, he seems to think, defeats
the evidence for Jesus’ taking himself to be the Son of Man. His motivation for believing this is the
criterion of dissimilarity.The criterion of dissimilarity states the following:
(COD):
If a New Testament author A states that Jesus expressed some
proposition P that is not
consonant with the Jewish tradition of Jesus' time or the early Church
that followed him, then A's statement to this effect is evidence that
Jesus did in fact state that P. [2]
Since Martin believes that it was consonant with the New
Testament authors’ agendas to have Jesus be the Son of Man, then the fact that
there are some verses where it is not clear that Jesus is using the title to
refer to himself, is, by (COD), evidence of the authenticity of these verses.
Now, even if we grant all this, I do not see how Martin gets from
(1)
There are verses where Jesus does
not explicitly identify himself as the Son of Man, but where he may be
referring to some other future person, and the criterion of dissimilarity is true,
To
(2)
The verses where Jesus
explicitly identifies himself as the Son of Man are not authentic.
Indeed, even if the verses where Jesus does not explicitly
identify himself as the Son of Man are authentic, and there is no good reason to
doubt that they are, this does not imply (2). So how is Martin concluding
(2) from (1)? Well, it seems that Martin is illegitimately applying the
criterion of dissimilarity in a negative fashion. That is, it seems that he is
using the criterion not to try to confirm some proposition, but to disconfirm
some proposition. The negative principle is as follows:
(COD*): If a New Testament author A states that Jesus expressed some proposition P that is
consonant with the Jewish tradition of Jesus' time or the early Church
that followed him, then A's statement to this effect is evidence that
Jesus did not state that P. Because of (COD*) he believes that
(3)
The New Testament authors’ stating
that Jesus claimed to be the Son of Man when it was consonant with the
teachings of the early Church--where early Church teaching includes the
agenda of the Evangelists--is disconfirmation
of the proposition that Jesus claimed to be the Son of Man.
So it seems that he is relying on
(1) and (3) to get to (2). But the problem is that (3), and the principle
undergirding it—viz., (COD*), are false. Indeed (COD*) is an absurd principle. To take an example, just
because Holocaust survivors record something unfavorable to the Nazi regime,
that does not mean that that very fact is disconfirmation of what they said.
Just because some one states something that is consonant with one’s agenda is
not a strike against what that person is saying. So (COD*) is false; (COD)
may not be legitimately applied in a negative fashion. Therefore,
Dale Martin’s case that Jesus did not consider himself the Son of Man fails.
[1]
Cf. ~43:00.
[2]
Just to be clear, in this post I take the standard line in confirmation theory
that a proposition E confirms a proposition P iff Pr(P|E) > Pr(P).
Likewise, I take E to disconfirm P iff Pr(P|E) < Pr(P).
