Why Christianity Fails (The Testimonial Case)

Sam26

Why Christianity Fails (The Testimonial Case)

Christianity doesn’t treat the resurrection as a side issue. It treats it as the load bearing claim. Paul says it plainly: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). If that claim doesn’t hold as an event in history, the system doesn’t merely lose a doctrine, it loses its foundation.

Christianity stands or falls on a single historical claim: that Jesus of Nazareth rose bodily from the dead. I want to keep this thread narrow. I’m not starting with the assumption that miracles are impossible, and I’m not trying to settle theology by opinion. I’m asking a more basic question: is the testimonial evidence strong enough to justify belief in a bodily resurrection as knowledge, rather than as conviction?

The question here is epistemological because it’s a question about the difference between belief and knowledge. People can be sincere, transformed, and willing to suffer, and still be wrong. Conviction doesn’t settle standing. When a claim is treated as a historical event, it’s the kind of claim where we normally ask what supports it, how the support is transmitted, and what would count as correction if it were mistaken. Since Christianity carries the resurrection forward primarily through testimony, the natural way to test its standing is to examine the testimony by the same criteria we use elsewhere when testimony is asked to carry serious weight.

In my book From Testimony to Knowledge I lay out simple criteria for evaluating testimony. Testimony isn’t a weak route to knowledge. Most of what we know comes through the reports of others. The issue isn’t whether testimony can ever justify belief. The issue is what makes testimony good evidence, especially when the claim is weighty. In Chapter 2 I give five criteria that strengthen testimony: number, variety, consistency, corroboration, and firsthand character. In ordinary life, when these criteria are present, testimony can be strong. When they’re missing, testimony can still produce conviction, but conviction alone isn’t the same thing as justificatory standing.

For clarity, I’m not ignoring the usual Christian supports for the resurrection. Christians typically appeal to a cluster of considerations: the Gospel narratives as witness reports, Paul’s summary in 1 Corinthians 15, the empty tomb tradition, appearance traditions, the transformation and persistence of the early disciples, the rapid emergence of the movement, and, in some cases, philosophical arguments about probability or warrant. My plan is to take these in turn and ask how they fare when measured by the criteria for strong testimony.

Here’s how I’m going to run the discussion. I’ll take each criterion in turn and ask a focused question.

Firsthand character: How much of the resurrection claim rests on direct eyewitness testimony that we can identify, and how much is secondhand report?

Corroboration: What independent confirmation do we have for the central claims, confirmation that doesn’t simply repeat the same tradition in another form?

Consistency: Do the accounts substantially converge on the crucial features without requiring harmonization to make them fit?

Variety: Do we have testimony coming through diverse, independent contexts that would normally reduce shared scripting and group reinforcement?

Number: How many independent lines of testimony do we really have once we separate sources from repetition?

My contention is that the resurrection testimony is weaker than Christians often assume when it’s measured by these criteria. It may sustain belief within a tradition, and it may support participation in a religious life. But the question is whether it has the strength required for the bodily resurrection of a man to be treated as a historical event known to have occurred.

Christianity stands or falls on a single historical claim: that Jesus of Nazareth rose bodily from the dead. — Sam26

I probably won't be contributing much to this thread, but . . . you do know that millions of people call themselves Christians today who don't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, despite Paul? Are they mistaken to do so, according to you? Or is it possible that your version of what Christianity involves is too traditional, given the very active, living presence of this religion in our culture? I wonder how many contemporary liberal and progressive Christian theologians you've actually read.

Sam26

I probably won't be contributing much to this thread, but . . . you do know that millions of people call themselves Christians today who don't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, despite Paul? Are they mistaken to do so, according to you? Or is it possible that your version of what Christianity involves is too traditional, given the very active, living presence of this religion in our culture? I wonder how many contemporary liberal and progressive Christian theologians you've actually read. — J

Thanks for the comment. You’re right about the sociological fact: many people today call themselves Christians who don't believe in a bodily resurrection. I’m not denying that, and I’m not trying to argue against every Christian belief system.

My point is narrower. I’m taking “Christianity” in the sense that is historically and doctrinally central to the tradition’s own proclamation, and on that point Paul’s conditional matters. If someone treats the resurrection as symbolic or non-bodily, they may still find Christian practices and moral teaching meaningful, but they’ve shifted the kind of claim being made. That shift is precisely what I’m trying to keep visible. It doesn’t settle anything by itself, but it changes what needs to be justified. A metaphor doesn’t require the same testimonial support as a claim about what happened in history.

So no, I’m not saying liberal or progressive Christians are “mistaken to do so” in a moral sense. I’m saying that if the claim is no longer a bodily event in history, then the question I’m asking in this thread isn’t aimed at that version of Christianity. This thread is about the bodily resurrection as a historical claim, because that’s the version that is most often defended as something that can be known and proclaimed as fact.

And I agree that liberal and progressive theologians are part of the living landscape. But notice what their move often is: they reduce the evidential burden by relocating the claim, from “this happened” to “this means,” from event to symbol, from history to existential interpretation. That may be a coherent religious posture, but it’s no longer a claim that stands or falls on testimony in the same way. In that sense it supports my framing rather than refutes it.

the question I’m asking in this thread isn’t aimed at that version of Christianity. — Sam26

Fair enough, as long as we can agree that they really are different versions of Christianity, not a correct or authorized version and a series of heresies.

And I agree that liberal and progressive theologians are part of the living landscape. But notice what their move often is: they reduce the evidential burden by relocating the claim, from “this happened” to “this means,” from event to symbol, from history to existential interpretation. That may be a coherent religious posture, but it’s no longer a claim that stands or falls on testimony in the same way. — Sam26

Right, as regards the resurrection, for instance. The life and teachings of Jesus, though, probably do need an evidentiary basis. I'm not aware of a Christian theology that allows that an actual person named Jesus of Nazareth never existed . . . but who knows, maybe there is.

Sam26

↪J

:up:

Sam26

Post 2: Firsthand Character

Conviction is always present in a system of beliefs, but conviction alone isn’t enough to justify a belief. In other words, sometimes people claim to know, but this use of "I know..." is not epistemic, it's an expression of a conviction.

In my last post I laid out five criteria for strong testimony. I’m going to start with the one that matters most here: firsthand character.

In ordinary life, testimony is strongest when we can say, with some clarity, who is reporting, what they claim to have experienced directly, and how that report reached us. The point isn’t that secondhand testimony is always useless. We rely on it constantly. The point is that as the claim becomes more weighty, and as the event becomes more unusual, the difference between “I saw” and “someone said” starts to matter a lot. And it matters even more when the chain between the event and our sources is long.

So here’s the question for the resurrection: How much of our evidence is identifiable firsthand testimony, and how much of it is tradition about what others claimed to see?

A few observations to keep the discussion focused:

Paul is early, but he isn’t giving us direct eyewitness narratives of the events in Jerusalem. He gives a summary of what he “received” and “passed on,” plus his own claim that he experienced an appearance. That matters, but it isn’t the same thing as multiple named eyewitnesses giving independent reports we can examine.

The Gospel narratives are our main source of appearance stories, but the witness layer is hard to isolate. They’re written as narratives, not as signed statements from named witnesses. Even if they preserve earlier testimony, the question remains: how much of that testimony can be traced and identified as firsthand, rather than as communal tradition shaped in the process of transmission?

When Christians say “there were eyewitnesses,” what do we actually have access to? Do we have the witnesses themselves, their independent reports, and the conditions that normally allow cross checking? Or do we have later reports about witnesses?

Even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that the Gospel accounts are firsthand, that concession barely strengthens the case. Firsthand character is only one criterion. A firsthand report can still be weak if it comes to us through an opaque chain, if it can’t be cross checked by independent lines, and if the normal mechanisms of correction are missing.

And the stakes here matter. In ordinary life, two or three reliable witnesses may be enough for an everyday event, especially when the event fits comfortably inside what we already know about the world. But the bodily resurrection of a dead man is not an everyday event. The claim carries far more weight than the cases where we’re content with a thin testimonial base, and that means the supporting testimony has to carry more of the stabilizing features we ordinarily rely on: independence, corroboration, and exposure to correction.

None of this proves the resurrection false. But it does locate the issue. Christianity asks this testimony to bear an enormous load: the bodily return of a dead man. If the evidence is going to reach the level of knowledge rather than conviction, the firsthand character of the testimony matters, and it matters in combination with the other criteria.

Sam26

Post 3: Corroboration

Conviction can be sincere and widespread, but that doesn’t give a claim justificatory standing. Corroboration is one of the main things that does.

By corroboration I mean independent confirmation, support that doesn’t just repeat the same report in another form. In ordinary life, testimony becomes strong when it isn’t trapped inside a single chain. When different lines converge, especially lines that don’t share the same incentives, the same community pressure, or the same source material, then testimony starts to earn standing.

So here’s the question for the resurrection: What independent corroboration do we have for the central claims, corroboration that doesn’t depend on the same Christian tradition simply restating itself?

A few clarifications so we don’t talk past each other:

Repetition isn’t corroboration. If one text depends on another, or if multiple accounts draw from the same underlying tradition, we may have multiple tellings, but we don’t yet have independent confirmation.

“The Church says so” isn’t corroboration. It may explain how belief was preserved, but it doesn’t supply an independent check on whether the event occurred.

Later belief doesn’t corroborate the original event. A movement can grow quickly and still be wrong about what happened at its origin. Growth can show conviction and social power. It doesn’t, by itself, confirm the event.

Hostile or neutral sources matter here. In ordinary cases, corroboration is strongest when it comes from sources that aren’t invested in the claim, or even resist it. That doesn’t mean they have to agree with everything, but it means the report is exposed to pressure that can correct it.

So I’m putting a straightforward challenge on the table:

What independent corroboration do we have that Jesus’ tomb was found empty?

What independent corroboration do we have that multiple people, in different contexts, experienced bodily appearances, rather than visions, dreams, or interpretive experiences?

What independent corroboration do we have for the timing and circumstances, beyond the internal Christian reporting itself?

If your answer is that the corroboration is mostly internal, that’s not an automatic refutation. But it is a diagnostic feature. It means the resurrection claim is being asked to stand on a narrow evidential base, and that makes the other criteria, firsthand character, consistency, variety, and number, carry far more weight than they would in an ordinary case.

Tom Storm

↪Sam26

Forgive my meandering response. From what I read, that all seems fair and seems to come down to “a book says a thing”. I wonder though, even if there were a couple of witnesses would this resolve the matter? How would we establish, centuries later, if a given witness is truthful or mistaken?

As I said on a different thread, isn’t it generally understood that, resurrection aside, there are no eyewitness accounts of whoever it was who inspired the Jesus story? Was it one person or more than one? Or are the mythicists right in saying it is all fictional? I am inclined to think there may have been some historical origin to the story. But it's accepted that Muhammad was a real historical person, and that does not mean he literally cut the moon in two or rode a flying horse.

The Gospels were written many years after the events they describe by anonymous authors and survive only as copies of translations of earlier copies. The names attached to them were applied later by church tradition. I was taught this, not by atheists, but by Christian lecturers, who were not fundamentalists.

You know the old C. S. Lewis “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” argument? many have found it interesting that he left out a fourth option: Legend.

Sam26

Forgive my meandering response. From what I read, that all seems fair and seems to come down to “a book says a thing”. I wonder though, even if there were a couple of witnesses would this resolve the matter? How would we establish, centuries later, if a given witness is truthful or mistaken?

As I said on a different thread, isn’t it generally understood that, resurrection aside, there are no eyewitness accounts of whoever it was who inspired the Jesus story? Was it one person or more than one? Or are the mythicists right in saying it is all fictional? I am inclined to think there may have been some historical origin to the story. But it's accepted that Muhammad was a real historical person, and that does not mean he literally cut the moon in two or rode a flying horse.

The Gospels were written many years after the events they describe by anonymous authors and survive only as copies of translations of earlier copies. The names attached to them were applied later by church tradition. I was taught this, not by atheists, but by Christian lecturers, who were not fundamentalists.

You know the old C. S. Lewis “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” argument? many have found it interesting that he left out a fourth option: Legend. — Tom Storm

Thanks, it's not meandering, it’s actually very close to the point of the thread.

You’re correct that, at a certain level, we’re dealing with texts, and you’re also right that “a couple of witnesses” wouldn’t automatically settle anything centuries later. That’s exactly why I’m not treating this as a courtroom fantasy where we just add two affidavits and call it knowledge. The question is whether the kind of testimonial support we have, taken as a whole, is strong enough to bear a bodily resurrection claim. And part of what makes it hard is what you said: we don’t have direct access to witnesses, we have chains of transmission.

On the mythicist question, I’m not going to make that the center of this thread, because it’s a different argument. You can grant a historical Jesus and still deny that the resurrection testimony reaches justificatory credibility, the Muhammad story is such an example. A real founder doesn’t make miracle reports automatically credible. So, I’m not relying on “Jesus wasn’t real.” I’m asking whether the testimony for a bodily resurrection is strong enough even if we assume some historical origin.

On the Gospels, the anonymity and the gap in time matter here, not because “anonymous” means “false,” but because it complicates firsthand character, traceability, and corroboration. If we can’t identify the witness layer with confidence, and if our documents are late and mediated, then the testimony is structurally less able to meet the ordinary tests of reliability and correction. Again, not a refutation by itself, but it’s a real constraint on how much standing the claim has.

And yes, the “Legend” option is relevant. It’s one of the ordinary alternatives that testimony has to be able to resist if it’s going to rise above conviction. Legends don’t require fraud. They require time, transmission, interpretive pressure, and communities that preserve meaning even when details shift. That’s why my approach isn’t “liar” or “lunatic.” It’s: what does the testimonial record look like, and does it have what we need to treat a claim like this as known? My answer would be no.

Sam26

Post 4: Consistency

Conviction can be sincere and stable, but sincerity doesn’t settle standing. One of the things that strengthens testimony is consistency, not in the sense of word for word agreement, but in the sense of stable convergence on the features that matter.

I’m not arguing that every discrepancy makes a report false. Real witnesses differ. They notice different details. They tell the story differently. In ordinary life, that doesn’t automatically discredit testimony. The question is what the differences look like, and what they do to the claim’s ability to stand without constant repair.

So, here’s the question for the resurrection: Do the accounts substantially converge on the crucial features without requiring harmonization to make them fit?

A few clarifications so we don’t talk past each other:

Consistency isn’t sameness. I’m not looking for identical phrasing. I’m looking for stable agreement on the load bearing elements: what happened, to whom, where, when, and in what kind of mode.

Some differences are minor, some aren’t. Differences about incidental details may not matter much. Differences about the structure of the event, the nature of the appearances, the timing, or the witness list do matter, because they affect what kind of claim is actually being made.

Harmonization is not the same as convergence. If the accounts need to be combined, smoothed, or reinterpreted so they can be made consistent, that itself tells us something about the strength of the testimony. Strong testimony usually doesn’t need a later strategy of repair to keep it stable.

Legend is a live alternative here. Not “fraud,” not “mass delusion,” but ordinary development over time as stories are told, retold, and shaped to carry meaning. Consistency, in the relevant sense, is one of the things that can block the “legend” drift. If the record doesn’t block it, then “legend” remains a serious contender.

So, I’m putting the question plainly: when we read the resurrection accounts, do we find a stable, convergent core that stands on its own, or do we find a pattern that requires later stitching?

Even granting a stable core, “Jesus died, the followers proclaimed he was raised, and there were claims of appearances,” the consistency question turns on what happens when we ask for recoverable particulars. When we move from proclamation to narrative detail, the resurrection tradition shows a pattern of variation that matters, who goes to the tomb, what is encountered there, what is said, where the appearances are centered, and the sequence of events. These aren’t merely stylistic differences, because they shape what kind of claim is actually being made and how well it can stand without later stitching. None of this proves fabrication. But it does mean that the testimony, as it has reached us, is less able to block the ordinary alternatives, development over time, legend drift, interpretive reshaping, without relying on harmonization to stabilize it. And when the claim being asked to stand is a bodily resurrection, that dependence on repair is a weakness under the consistency criteria.

Tom Storm

A real founder doesn’t make miracle reports automatically credible. So, I’m not relying on “Jesus wasn’t real.” I’m asking whether the testimony for a bodily resurrection is strong enough even if we assume some historical origin. — Sam26

Absolutely and it's clear that this is your argument. No problem there.

On the Gospels, the anonymity and the gap in time matter here, not because “anonymous” means “false,” but because it complicates firsthand character, traceability, and corroboration — Sam26

Yes. For me, it has always been a question of whether we have good reason to accept these stories and my answer has always been no. Setting history aside, there are many contemporary accounts of Indian gurus healing the sick or performing miracles. But does that mean people are actually healing the sick or performing miracles? No.

And yes, the “Legend” option is relevant. It’s one of the ordinary alternatives that testimony has to be able to resist if it’s going to rise above conviction. Legends don’t require fraud. They require time, transmission, interpretive pressure, and communities that preserve meaning even when details shift. — Sam26

Yes I think this is well phrased.

I think it is useful to identify that religious stories are not necessarily generated by malevolent people seeking to manipulate others and lie abotu truth claims. Intersubjective communities build stories and traditions over time.

Even granting a stable core, “Jesus died, the followers proclaimed he was raised, and there were claims of appearances,” the consistency question turns on what happens when we ask for recoverable particulars. — Sam26

I know this is a different strand, but I don’t understand how the resurrection is supposed to be useful in the first place. Let’s assume it is true. Why would an immortal god enact a primitive blood sacrifice and ruin a weekend just to free people from rules he himself created? Why not simply appear and set people straight? It seems unnecessarily convoluted: if the goal is to guide or save humanity, there are far clearer ways to communicate or intervene. The story reads less like a practical solution and more like a patchwork of old religious myths woven into a narrative.

Sam26

I know this is a different strand, but I don’t understand how the resurrection is supposed to be useful in the first place. Let’s assume it is true. Why would an immortal god enact a primitive blood sacrifice and ruin a weekend just to free people from rules he himself created? Why not simply appear and set people straight? It seems unnecessarily convoluted: if the goal is to guide or save humanity, there are far clearer ways to communicate or intervene. The story reads less like a practical solution and more like a patchwork of old religious myths woven into a narrative. — Tom Storm

The resurrection is supposedly God's stamp of approval on Jesus, that he's God. It's also supposed to solve the problem of sin, etc.

There are plenty of reasons someone might reject Christianity besides the weakness of the testimonial evidence. For instance, why would an omniscient God create human beings knowing in advance that many would reject him and end up in hell? That isn’t a small side issue. It raises a moral and philosophical problem about divine goodness and foreknowledge, and it forces Christians to explain why a world with that outcome the world is a perfectly good and all-knowing creator would choose to bring into existence.

Ciceronianus

↪Tom Storm

Lewis also failed to note that Jesus never claimed to be God in the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The claim is made only in the Gospel of John, which scholars believe was written much later than the others.

Tom Storm

↪Ciceronianus

Yes, fair point.

Richard B

In my book From Testimony to Knowledge I lay out simple criteria for evaluating testimony. Testimony isn’t a weak route to knowledge. Most of what we know comes through the reports of others. The issue isn’t whether testimony can ever justify belief. The issue is what makes testimony good evidence, especially when the claim is weighty. — Sam26

In Chapter 2 I give five criteria that strengthen testimony: number, variety, consistency, corroboration, and firsthand character. — Sam26

For roughly 1500 years humanity believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. Supposedly, some folk named Aristotle and Ptolemy rationally demonstrated this geocentric claim. For 1500 years their knowledge was handled down as gospel. I can’t imagine how many folk, from different areas of the world consistency spreading the same message over and over again that the Earth is the center of the universe, sometimes explaining the rationale argument sometimes just blindly repeating the words. I guess what can be passed down can be what is the case or what is not the case.

Outlander

The problem with anything that becomes the de facto "way to live" is due to the fault of the human species, not the ideology.

There was a time when people would only hire Christians over the local pagans. Fear of discipline, honor not rooted in animal or "naturalistic" order (ie. law of the jungle AKA "if I steal or kill and get away with it, it's right"), among other things. So, people being people, guess what. They lie. Overnight everybody was "Christian." And ironically, not long after, nobody really was.

All you have to do is say a sentence and basically live without being blatantly and overtly terrible (which people, especially con men, were literally doing all day everyday anyway) and you're "Christian" (according to 99% of people). "Judge not lest ye be judged" seems to intrinsically allow that, in hindsight. Murphy's Law was not consulted, I fear.

Sam26

Post 5: Variety

Conviction can spread even when the evidence is thin. One of the things that keeps testimony from collapsing into group reinforcement is variety.

By variety I mean diversity in the lines of testimony: different contexts, different audiences, different pressures, and different routes of transmission. In ordinary life, testimony is stronger when it doesn’t all come through the same social channel or the same interpretive community. Variety matters because it helps separate what’s being reported from what’s being carried along by shared expectations and shared identity.

So here’s the question for the resurrection: Do we have genuinely diverse and independent streams of testimony, or do we mainly have one community preserving and repeating its own founding story?

Volume isn’t variety. Repetition isn’t independence. And a single community can preserve a tradition and also shape it, even when nobody is trying to deceive. When the same circle supplies the report, the meaning of the report, and the setting in which it’s repeated, the conditions for drift are present.

Astorre

Christianity stands or falls on a single historical claim: that Jesus of Nazareth rose bodily from the dead. I want to keep this thread narrow. — Sam26

Since you insist on keeping this topic narrow, I have a counter-question for you: Why do you think Christianity rests solely on the assertion that Christ is risen? What is the basis for this?

To clarify this question, I will share some of my research on this topic.

The early Christians anticipated the imminent return of Christ and the resurrection of all the dead (1 Thessalonians 4:13–17: "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first"; Mark 13:30: "Truly I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away until all these things take place"). When this did not occur (the so-called "delay of the Parousia" – from the Greek parousia, "coming"), a theological crisis arose. It was resolved by introducing a Platonic approach into Christian practice: resurrection will come later, but for now there is a body and soul, which separate after death. Although initially there was no dualism of body and soul in the main sources.

I wrote about this in detail here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/16096/the-origins-and-evolution-of-anthropological-concepts-in-christianity/p1

Thus, the problem of the resurrection was resolved back in the 1st-2nd centuries AD, and since then it hasn't particularly bothered anyone or hindered the development of religion.

From this, I conclude that you can prove, even with the utmost precision and consistency from the perspective of modern science, that the resurrection never happened, yet this has no bearing whatsoever on the existence of Christianity or its failures. Any believer covers up any logical contradictions with an adaptation: "God decided so", and "it is His will", and "you are not given to know". This is not news.

This is where my question to you, which I formulated at the beginning, arose: Why should the proof of the absence of the resurrection, no matter how strict it may be, suddenly dissuade a believer from his faith?

Astorre

↪Tom Storm

Tom, some time ago, I wrote to you that I'd be keeping an eye on you (or, more accurately, your atheism). I have a question for you: Why doesn't an atheist miss a single thread about Christianity?

I've actually noticed this. This message isn't a complaint, but rather a tease, so please don't take it seriously. :razz:

At the same time, I'd like to ask you personally: do you think atheism differs from indifference? My working hypothesis is that it does. Atheism is more of an "anti-religion" than simply "non-religion." An atheist always needs to be convinced of atheism, whereas someone who is indifferent doesn't. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Esse Quam Videri

↪Sam26

Thanks for the very well-written OP.

I'm curious how you think your argument would land with the historian Dale Allison. Are you familiar with his book on the resurrection?

My understanding is that Allison would largely grant everything that you said with regards to the weakness of the testimonial case for the resurrection, but would push back is on the implicit assumption that if a claim fails to meet public historical standards of testimonial knowledge, then that belief lacks adequate epistemic warrant simpliciter.

He seems to argue along the following lines:

(1) The resurrection is not an inference to the best explanation
(2) The resurrection is a singular event that resists historical capture
(3) Belief in the resurrection arises from a convergence of factors, not historical evidence alone

With regards to (3) specifically he seems to say that belief in the resurrection is more akin to committing to a total vision of reality or interpreting history through a larger horizon. He often frames belief as a reasonable risk in light of the moral vision of Jesus, the coherence of Christian hope and the way the resurrection belief "fits" into a total viewpoint, etc.

What are your thoughts on this type of approach?

Why Christianity Fails (The Testimonial Case)

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