Steven Davis

This essay is a response to Michael Martin’s “Why the Resurrection Is Initially Improbable,” Philo, Vol. 1, No.1. I argue that Martin has not succeeded in achieving his aim of showing that the Resurrection is initially improbable and thus, by Bayes’s Theorem, implausible. I respond to five of Martin’s arguments: (1) the “particular time and place argument”; (2) the claim that there is no plausible Christian theory of why Jesus should have been incarnated and resurrected; (3) the claim that the Resurrection accounts in the New Testament are unreliable; (4) Martin’s assumptions about how one establishes the initial probability of Resurrection; and (5) the use Martin makes of Bayes’s Theorem to discredit belief in the Resurrection.

Christian Philosophical Theology constitutes a Christian philosopher's look at various crucial topics in Christian theology, including belief in God, the nature of God, the Trinity, christology, the resurrection of Jesus, the general resurrection, redemption, and theological method. The book is tightly argued, and amounts to a coherent explanation of and case for the Christian world view. While the work is written from a broadly Reformed Protestant perspective and the author does not avoid controversial topics, the aim is to present a 'merely Christian' world view (to adapt slightly C. S. Lewis's famous term). That is, Stephen T. Davis attempts to write as much as possible from the perspective of the broad centre of Christian understanding.

It is rational for those who believe that Jesus was raised from the dead to believe that he was bodily raised from the dead. However, this is not the same as resuscitation. The concept of “spiritual resurrection”, popular with some New Testament scholars, is rejected as vague and inconsistent with Scripture. It is argued that bodily resurrection was what Paul believed, and that the New Testament accounts of the resurrection appearances present a unified picture. It is further argued that Jesus’ resurrection is an example of “bodily transformation”. Jesus’ resurrection body was numerically identical to his pre-mortem body.

Theists typically believe the following two propositions: God is omniscient, and Human beings are free. Are they consistent? In order to decide, we must first ask what they mean. Roughly, let us say that a being is omniscient if for any proposition he knows whether it is true or false. Since I have no wish to deny that there are true and false propositions about future states of affairs, omniscience includes foreknowledge, which we can say is knowledge of the truth value of propositions about future states of affairs. For example, I believe the proposition ‘Davis will wear shoes tomorrow’ is true today, and if it is true today, i.e. if I will wear shoes tomorrow, an omniscient being knows today that it is true – and, if this being is eternally omniscient, he knew it millions of years ago.

In this age of theological pluralism, even within Christianity, is there good reason to affirm the incarnation of Christ as expressed in the Creed of Chalcedon? To affirm as much is to commit oneself to what is called a maximal christology, as opposed to the many minimal christologies available today. It is argued that the New Testament picture of Jesus is unified and consistent. The purpose of the incarnation is to show what God is like, to make it possible for human beings to know God, and to defeat God’s enemies. To accomplish as much, Jesus had to be truly human and truly divine. Four indications that Christ was divine are considered: his willingness to forgive sins, his reference to God as Abba, his willingness to speak “with authority”, and his implicit claims to be divine.

Social Trinitarianism is a family of views that bear some resemblance to each other in a way that distinguishes them from other Trinitarian accounts. In this paper, we address recent objections by Carl Mosser against ST, objections which have not received much attention by defenders of ST. Mosser claims that proponents of ST offer a narrative that is historically inaccurate, employs concepts of personhood and perichoresis that are incompatible, upholds dubious hermeneutical assumptions, and is unable to preclude Mormon theology within its fold. We argue that all four criticisms fail, especially for a specific version of ST: Perichoretic Monotheism.

This chapter discusses the general resurrection. It first establishes that classical mind/body dualism — a theory seen in Plato and Descartes — is not the Christian position. Temporary disembodiment, which is the theory of life after death and the interim state held by most theologians, is discussed. The nature of the disembodied interim state, the reunification of body and soul at the Parousia, and the nature of the gloried body are also explored. It is argued that contrary to certain philosophers, this overall picture of the general resurrection is coherent. Christian theologians differ on whether the new glorified body consists of the same matter as the pre-mortem body, but both theories are possible. John Perry’s arguments against survival of death are answered.

There has often been an adversarial relationship between the “search for the historical Jesus” and the Church. But Christian belief and practice must be correctly related to Jesus, so the search is important to Christianity. It is argued that the New Testament picture of Jesus is basically accurate and reliable. Paul’s statements about Jesus are examined. It is significant that Mark’s picture of Jesus was convincing to Matthew and Luke. Jesus’ self-understanding in the Gospels is examined, and it is argued that he implicitly claimed to be divine.