This is a continuation of a conversation with Dale Rye at the TitusOneNine blog.
1. Dale, we’re on the same page, of course, about the importance of exploring the factual basis for an expert’s opinion. We both recognize that the expert’s conclusions are only as good as his / her facts — some of which might not be explicitly stated, but instead are implicit in the expert’s training and experience.
2. That’s why I have difficulty accepting the conclusions of the Church Fathers. The conclusions we have, are largely those of people who (so far as we know) weren’t present at the crucial events. In forming their opinions, those people had to rely on hearsay accounts of unknown reliability. We all know the problems associated with that.
(Yes, I know an expert is allowed to rely on hearsay, but only if it’s of a kind accepted as reasonably reliable in the expert’s field.)
3. Conversely, the people who were present at the events, so far as we know, left little or no reliable record of their factual impressions, nor of their own opinions.
It’d be fascinating to get Pilate’s version of what happened at Jesus’s trial, for example, but that’s not likely ever to happen.
Tradition says that at least two of the gospels (Matthew and John) were written by apostles who were present at many of the events in question. But that tradition itself is a matter of opinion, based on factual accounts of unknown reliability.
4. And let’s not leave out the question of qualifications. Let’s assume arguendo that John the son of Zebedee wrote the Fourth Gospel, or at least told others what to write. We still have no reason to think he was present at the creation of the universe. Neither is there any reason for us to be confident about his qualifications to opine about what happened then. (In John’s case, there’s also the matter of possible bias to consider.)
5. An analogy comes to mind. Historians and historically-minded doctors sometimes try to psychoanalyze famous personages. Practically every recent president has gotten this treatment.
These analysts often never met their subjects in life. They usually base their work mainly on the recollections of others who did know the people in question, and on the available written documentation.
Historical speculation of that kind is often fascinating. We might even provisionally accept such speculation as a matter of personal belief.
But for really important matters, when there’s a lot at stake, we insist on getting a lot more confidence in the basis for the expert’s conclusions.
This is certainly true in the modern era, when the historical record we have is orders of magnitude more complete than anything we have reason to think the Church Fathers had. How much more true must it have been in the patristic era.
6. Here’s another analogy. Suppose that a murderer pleads an insanity defense, in the hope of escaping the death penalty. (The Andrea Yates tragedy comes to mind.)
The prosecution team tells the judge that they will put a psychiatrist on the stand. The say the psychiatrist will testify that the defendant was sane at the time of the murder.
Will a competent defense team just sit back and passively allow the psychiatrist’s testimony? Not a chance. They’re going to insist on delving, not just into the psychiatrist’s training and experience, but also into how he knows the facts he claims to know about the defendant.
Is the judge going to let the defense team conduct such an inquiry? I sure hope so. There’s too much at stake to passively accept the psychiatrist’s conclusions without critical scrutiny of its factual basis. If, for example, it turned out that the psychiatrist never even met the defendant, let alone interviewed her, the judge probably wouldn’t let him get anywhere near the jury.
7. In the realm of religion, the orthodox ask us to make a pretty important decision: To accept their assertion that Jesus of Nazareth was the LORD God in the flesh. As in the case of the psychiatrist, there’s too much at stake to passively accept the conclusions of the experts without first delving into their factual basis.
I find, when I do that delving, that I must decline to accept the conclusions of the experts about Jesus’s divinity. I can’t argue with the fact that billions of people have accepted their conclusions (just as billions of people have accepted the claims of Islam and other “revealed” religions).
But I cannot for the life of me understand how, in accepting those conclusions, they could get past the problems described above.
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