An Excellent Encyclopedia Entry on the Evidential Argument From Evil
...can be found here. The author is Nick Trakakis. Nick is a hot up-and-comer in philosophy of religion. He recently published a monograph with Ashgate Press on Rowe's evidential argument from evil, which displays a command of all the literature on the argument. He has also published a slew of journal articles on it, in which he makes a genuine contribution to the debate. He is therefore an ideal person to learn from on this topic.
Philosophical Gerrymandering and Cumulative Case Arguments For Theism
I've argued that no argument for God, taken by itself, demonstrates theism -- or even makes theism more probable than not. However, this leaves open the possibility that, when taken together, these arguments do demonstrate the truth of theism, or at least make theism more probable than not.
Richard Swinburne is one famous philosopher of religion who takes this approach to arguments for theism[1]. He uses a formula from probability calculus known as Bayes' Theorem to argue in this way. He calls an argument that raises the probability of a hypothesis a good C-inductive argument, and he calls an argument that makes a hypothesis more probable than not a good P-inductive argument. He then considers a large variety of arguments for theism, and admits that none of them, when construed as a deductive argument, constitutes a sound argument for God's existence. However, he argues that a number of them, when reformulated as inductive arguments, each raise the probability of theism at least a little bit. Thus, he thinks that a number of them are good C-inductive arguments for theism. And when taken together, they make theism at least a little bit more probable than not, making the set of arguments taken together a good P-inductive argument for theism.[2]
To illustrate Swinburne's ideas about C-inductive arguments, P-inductive arguments, and cumulative case arguments, consider a simpler example. Suppose we're detectives investigating a murder, and that we know that either Smith committed the murder or that Jones did it. Then we have two hypotheses:
H1: Smith committed the murder
H2: Jones committed the murder
Suppose further that the following constitutes all our evidence, or data:
D1: Smith's fingerprints are on the murder weapon (a gun).
D2: Jones's fingerprints are on the murder weapon.
D3: Smith had a strong grudge against the victim.
D4: Jones disliked the victim.
D5: Jones is a terrible shot.
D6: A somewhat reliable acquaintance of Jones said they talked to Jones at his house at 8pm, which was only 10 minutes before the time of the murder.
D7: Jones lives about an hour from the victim's house.
D8: Smith lives five minutes away from the victim's house.
Notice that no single piece of evidence makes either hypothesis even slightly more probable than not -- i.e., not one of D1-D8, when considered individually, is a good P-inductive argument for either hypothesis as to who killed the victim. However, each one (or at least most of them), when taken individually, raises the probability of the relevant hypothesis at least a little bit, in which case each one (or at least most of each one) is a good C-inductive argument. And when taken together, they do make H1 a bit more probable than H2. In fact, D1-D8, taken together, constitutes a good P-inductive argument for H1. Similarly, even if none of the arguments for God establish the truth or the probability of theism, perhaps they do when taken together. Well, do they?
I've already mentioned that Swinburne thinks they do. Some other examples include J.P., Moreland[3], WIlliam Lane Craig, and Basil Mitchell.
So, for example, suppose our hypotheses are:
H1: theism
H2: naturalism
And suppose our data are:
D1: the apparent contingency of the universe
D2: the apparent fine-tuning of the universe
D3: the apparent irreducibility of consciousness to the physical
D4: religious experiences of various sorts
D5: the existence of morality[4]
What's the probability of H1 on D1-D5? Of course, as everyone in this debate admits, there's probably no way to assign precise numerical values to the pieces of evidence here, whether taken individually or collectively[5]. To be charitable, though, let's say that each of D1-D5 raises the probability of theism at least a bit, and thus each is a good C-inductive argument for theism. Furthermore, let's be charitable and say that, when taken together, the probability of H1 on D1-D5 is a very strong P-inductive argument, raising the probability of H1 to .9 (i.e. 90%)[6]. Do we now have a cumulative case argument based on D1-D5 that makes the posterior probability of H1 higher than that of H2?
No, we don't. For to truly assess the posterior probability of a hypothesis, one has to include in the data pool *all* of the evidence that has a bearing on the hypotheses in question; to ignore the other evidence is tantamount to philosophical gerrymandering: artificially limiting the range of relevant evidence in order to ensure the conclusion you want. It would be analogous to arguing above that Jones probably committed the murder by just presenting D2, D4, and D6 of the data presented there, and suppressing all the rest.
But it turns out that there is a lot of data that appears to conflict with theism that needs to be added to the data pool before we can properly assess the hypotheses. Some of this evidence includes:
D6: massive amounts of apparently random and pointless suffering
D7: massive religious diversity
D8: empirical studies on the ineffectiveness of prayer
D9: the apparent hiddenness of God
D10: evolution
But once we throw in this data, it's no longer clear whether H1 (i.e., theism) is more probable than H2 (i.e., naturalism): even if the probability of H1 was about .9 on D1-D5, it sinks down to about .5 (i.e., 50%) when we evaluate it on D1-D10. At worst, H1 is lower than .5 on the total evidence.
So it seems to me that cumulative case arguments for theism fare no better than the same arguments taken singly.
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Footnotes:
1. See especially his classic book, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). In this post, I refer to the revised edition (1991). An extensively revised edition was released in 2004. A popular-level presentation of the main ideas in that book can be found in his book, Is there a God? (Oxford: OUP, 1996).
2. While this is roughly correct, technically it isn't quite right. In at least the original edition, Swinburne argues for the weaker claim that, taken together, the arguments for theism he endorses give theism a probability of at least .5 (50%), or thereabouts. He then argues that (what he dubs) the Principle of Credulity applies to religious experience -- i.e., like ordinary perceptual and memory experience, religious experience enjoys prima facie justification (it's "innocent until proven guilty"). But since he thinks he's shown that theism isn't improbable on the evidence (i.e., it's not less than 50% probable), then the prima facie justification of religious experience isn't undercut, and thus religious experience of God justifies theism. In an appendix in the 1991 version of the book, he considers the new "fine-tuning" version of the design argument, and concludes that with this new piece of data, theism is indeed more probable than not, in which case there is a decent P-inductive, cumulative case argument for theism. I haven't read the newest edition of Swinburne's book, but I believe he is even more optimistic about the cumulative case for theism is if anything even stronger than he thought in his 1991 version.
3. Moreland's views here are a bit more optimistic than Swinburne's. He thinks that there are a lot of sound deductive arguments for theism, and that several versions of the design argument are good P-inductive arguments all by themselves. Thus, the function of a cumulative case for theism isn't primarily to make theism more probable than not, but rather to (i) provide a finer-grained conception of the identity of the God established by the arguments (e.g., to rule out deism), and (ii) to strengthen a theistic case already made strong by most of the arguments taken by themselves. See his "rope" analogy of theistic arguments in his debate with Kai Neilsen (Does God Exist? The Great Debate), as well as his remarks in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (co-authored with William Lane Craig). William Lane Craig seems to endorse this view as well. This comes out especially in his discussion of the arguments of natural theology in his popular-level debates, as well as the co-edited book on the Christian Worldview just mentioned.
4. It should be pointed out that although at least some theists take moral arguments to support theism, Swinburne does not -- indeed, he doesn't even think they make good C-inductive arguments for theism. For he takes moral truths to be necessary truths, akin to mathematical truths (e.g., 1+1=2), in which case they would exist even if God did not. See his discussion of this in his chapter on moral arguments in his The Existence of God (1991).
5. For example, Swinburne says this explicitly in the final chapter (not the appendix) of The Existence of God (1991). Plantinga says this in Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: OUP, 2000).
6. This is of course extremely generous. For not even Swinburne thinks the probability is this high even when you add more theism-friendly pieces of data (see footnote 2, where I mention that Swinburne thinks the data give theism a posterior probability of around .5). Plantinga more-or-less agrees with Swinburne's assessment. See Plantinga's section on the Problem of Dwindling Probabilities in Warranted Christian Belief, where he argues that inductive arguments for theism aren't sufficiently strong to render religious belief epistemically appropriate.
Online Course on the Old Testament
This looks to be a great course on the Old Testament at Yale. It comes complete with a syllabus and lectures in both audio and video formats. I imagine it's worth browsing around there to find other classes in various disciplines. Isn't it great to know that you can now sit in on courses at Ivy League universities at home in your pajamas, and at no monetary cost to yourself?
The Trouble With Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology In A Nutshell (Draft)
Plantinga rightly points out that classical foundationalist accounts of properly basic beliefs are inadequate -- not enough beliefs count as properly basic. Unfortunately, Plantinga goes too far -- too many beliefs count as properly basic on his account. He wants to widen the circle of properly basic beliefs so as to allow belief in God to count as properly basic, but he can't do so in a way that's plausible.
To see this, recall the inductive procedure Plantinga recommends for generating criteria of proper basicality: a person considers actual and hypothetical circumstances in which a belief of a certain type is formed. In each considered circumstance, the person asks herself whether the belief is rational (i.e., properly basic or properly based) or irrational (i.e., improperly basic or improperly based). If that type of belief is judged to be neither irrational nor rational-but-properly-based, then the belief is judged to be properly basic (at least if it is judged to be so in enough actual and/or hypothetical circumstances).
But at this point, a worry arises: whose judgements do we include with respect to this process of determining which beliefs are properly basic? This worry gives rise to the following dilemma: Either the Christian community limits its group of judgers to, well, the Christian community, or they allow others to judge. If they choose the former, then the worry is that this is arbitrary: there seems to be no principled way to say that other communities can't play the same game. So, for example, suppose atheists choose to limit their judgers to those within the atheist community. Suppose further that, when they go through this process of judging which beliefs are properly basic, they come to judge theistic belief to be something other than properly basic. Then by parity of reasoning, we should say that the atheists are just as much in their epistemic rights in saying that belief in God is not properly basic for them as Christians are in saying that it is properly basic for them. The same goes for every other community -- Muslims, Mormons, primitive island tribes, etc. This entails a radical form of relativism about rationality -- one which many Christians and non-christians will see as unpalatable and implausible (e.g., do Christians really want to say that atheists are reasonable and blameless in their denial of God's existence? Do people, whether Christian or not, want to say that what counts as rational is relative from community to community?).
On the other hand, if they allow other judgers to judge which beliefs are properly basic, then the worry is that belief in God probably won't be judged to be properly basic. In fact, a number of Christian philosophers (e.g., James Sennett) and atheist philosophers (e.g., Keith Parsons) argue that the least arbitrary criteria for proper basicality include the following two: (i) the belief is universally held, and (ii) the belief is such that a recognizable human life is impossible without it. So, for example, belief that there are material objects, that there are other minds besides our own, that there is a past, that memory is reliable, etc., meet these criteria; they are therefore plausibly construed as properly basic beliefs. But on this account, belief in God is not properly basic, since belief in God is neither universally held nor necessary for a recognizable human life.
In short, we have no good reason to think that belief in God is properly basic, and we have good reason to think that it isn't. For we either allow only Christians to judge which beliefs are properly basic or we don't. If we do, then we get an implausible version of relativism about rationality. But if we don't, then belief in God probably won't be judged to be properly basic.
This is a rough paraphrase of an objection raised by a number of philosophers. James Sennett is an example of a Christian philosopher who raises this sort of objection (see his book, Modality, Probability, and Rationality: A Critical Examination of Alvin Plantinga's Philosophy). Keith Parsons is an example of an atheist philosopher who raises this sort of objection (see his essay in the philosophy of religion textbook, God Matters).
I'll get around to replies to this objection based on Plantinga's recent externalist construal of proper basicality in a later draft of this post.
To see this, recall the inductive procedure Plantinga recommends for generating criteria of proper basicality: a person considers actual and hypothetical circumstances in which a belief of a certain type is formed. In each considered circumstance, the person asks herself whether the belief is rational (i.e., properly basic or properly based) or irrational (i.e., improperly basic or improperly based). If that type of belief is judged to be neither irrational nor rational-but-properly-based, then the belief is judged to be properly basic (at least if it is judged to be so in enough actual and/or hypothetical circumstances).
But at this point, a worry arises: whose judgements do we include with respect to this process of determining which beliefs are properly basic? This worry gives rise to the following dilemma: Either the Christian community limits its group of judgers to, well, the Christian community, or they allow others to judge. If they choose the former, then the worry is that this is arbitrary: there seems to be no principled way to say that other communities can't play the same game. So, for example, suppose atheists choose to limit their judgers to those within the atheist community. Suppose further that, when they go through this process of judging which beliefs are properly basic, they come to judge theistic belief to be something other than properly basic. Then by parity of reasoning, we should say that the atheists are just as much in their epistemic rights in saying that belief in God is not properly basic for them as Christians are in saying that it is properly basic for them. The same goes for every other community -- Muslims, Mormons, primitive island tribes, etc. This entails a radical form of relativism about rationality -- one which many Christians and non-christians will see as unpalatable and implausible (e.g., do Christians really want to say that atheists are reasonable and blameless in their denial of God's existence? Do people, whether Christian or not, want to say that what counts as rational is relative from community to community?).
On the other hand, if they allow other judgers to judge which beliefs are properly basic, then the worry is that belief in God probably won't be judged to be properly basic. In fact, a number of Christian philosophers (e.g., James Sennett) and atheist philosophers (e.g., Keith Parsons) argue that the least arbitrary criteria for proper basicality include the following two: (i) the belief is universally held, and (ii) the belief is such that a recognizable human life is impossible without it. So, for example, belief that there are material objects, that there are other minds besides our own, that there is a past, that memory is reliable, etc., meet these criteria; they are therefore plausibly construed as properly basic beliefs. But on this account, belief in God is not properly basic, since belief in God is neither universally held nor necessary for a recognizable human life.
In short, we have no good reason to think that belief in God is properly basic, and we have good reason to think that it isn't. For we either allow only Christians to judge which beliefs are properly basic or we don't. If we do, then we get an implausible version of relativism about rationality. But if we don't, then belief in God probably won't be judged to be properly basic.
This is a rough paraphrase of an objection raised by a number of philosophers. James Sennett is an example of a Christian philosopher who raises this sort of objection (see his book, Modality, Probability, and Rationality: A Critical Examination of Alvin Plantinga's Philosophy). Keith Parsons is an example of an atheist philosopher who raises this sort of objection (see his essay in the philosophy of religion textbook, God Matters).
I'll get around to replies to this objection based on Plantinga's recent externalist construal of proper basicality in a later draft of this post.
Why Mainstream Historical Jesus Scholars Think Christianity is False
An Inference to the Best Explanation: Jesus as a Failed Eschatological Prophet
(Summary case. For an example of the case spelled out in some detail, read this piece by Dale Allison and this series of posts.)
Since the publication of Albert Schweitzer's magisterial The Quest of the Historical Jesus in 1906, the mainstream, middle-of-the-road view among historical Jesus scholars (e.g., E.P. Sanders, Geza Vermes, Bart Ehrman, Dale Allison, Paula Fredriksen et al.) is that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet. This is because this view best explains the various bits of tradition about Jesus that we have most reason to think are authentic better than any competing hypothesis about those bits of tradition. Here's a sampling of data the hypothesis naturally explains:
D1. Jesus' central teaching was about the coming of the Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven, which is a thoroughly eschatological concept in ancient Jewish literature.
D2. John the Baptist preached a message of repentance to escape the imminent judgment of the eschaton. Jesus was his baptized disciple, and thus accepted his message -- and in fact preached basically the same message.
D3. Many (most?) of Jesus’ “Son of Man” passages are most naturally interpreted as allusions to the Son of Man figure in Daniel. This figure was an end of the world arbiter of God’s justice, and Jesus kept preaching that he was on his way (e.g., “From now on, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Matt. 26:64). Jesus seems to identify himself with this apocalyptic figure in Daniel, but I'm not confident whether this identification is a later redaction. Either way, it doesn't bode well for orthodox Christianity.
D4. The earliest canonical writing (I Thess): Paul taught of an imminent eschaton, and it mirrors in wording the end-time passages in the synoptics (especially the so-called "Little Apocalypse" in Mark, and the subsequently-written parallels in Matthew and Luke).
D5. Many passages attributed to Jesus have him predicting the end within his generation (“the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15); “this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Mark 13:30); “truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes” (Matthew 10:23); “Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.” (Mark 9:1); "From now on, you shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds..." (Matthew 26:64)).
D6. A sense of urgency permeates the gospels and the other NT writings. E.g., the disciples must hurry to send the message to the cities of Israel before Daniel’s “Son of Man” comes; Jesus' statement that even burying one’s parents has a lower priority; Paul telling the Corinthians not to change their current state, since it’s all about to end (e.g., don’t seek marriage, or to leave one's slave condition, etc., since the end of all things is at hand; and on and on, all the way through the NT corpus).
D7. Relatedly, Jesus and Paul taught a radical "interim ethic" (e.g., don’t divorce, radical forgiveness, don’t judge others, love one’s enemies, etc.). This makes sense if they believed that the eschaton would occur within their generation, and that all needed to repent and prepare for its arrival.
D78 Jesus had his disciples leave everything and follow him around. This makes sense if Jesus believed that he and they were to be God’s final messengers before the eschaton.
D9. Jesus gathered twelve disciples, which is the number of the twelve tribes of Israel. He also said they were to sit on twelve thrones and serve as judges of the twelve tribes of Israel. This reflects the common expectation that at the end of days, all twelve tribes would return to the land. The twelve are a symbolic representation of restored Israel.
D10. There is a clear pattern of a successive watering down of Jesus’ prediction of the eschaton within the generation of his disciples, starting with Mark (widely believed among NT scholars to be the first gospel written), and continuing through the rest of the synoptic gospels. By the time we get to John, the last gospel written, the eschatological "kingdom of God" talk is dropped (except for one passage, and it no longer has clear eschatological connotations), along with the end-time predictions, and is replaced with "eternal life" talk. Further, the epistles presuppose that the early church thought Jesus really predicted the end within their lifetimes. Finally, this successive backpedaling continues beyond the NT writings and into those of the apocrypha and the early church leaders, even to the point where some writings attribute an anti-apocalyptic message to Jesus. All of these things make perfect sense if Jesus really did make such a prediction, and the church needed to reinterpret his message in light of the fact that his generation passed away, yet the eschaton never came.
D11. Jesus’ base followers were all considered to represent the “bottom” of society in his day: the poor, sinners, prostitutes, outcasts, tax collectors, lepers, and the demon-possessed. This is perfectly in line with the standard apocalyptic doctrine of the reversal of fortunes when the kingdom of God comes: “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first”.
D12. Jesus performed many exorcisms, which he explicitly identified with the in-breaking of the kingdom of God on Earth and arrival of the final eschatological events ("But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of Heaven has come upon you." Luke 11:20). In relation to his exorcisms, Jesus spoke of Satan being cast out of the heavens ("I watched Satan falling from heaven like a flash of lightning." Luke 10:10), and of tying up and plundering Satan ("No one can enter a strongman's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strongman; then indeed can the house be plundered." Mark 3:27). Satan and his minions were being cast out of power and bound up, and the power of the arrival of God's eschatological kingdom on Earth was taking its place. As Dale Allison emphasizes, "These are very strong statements. It is not just that the devil is meeting opposition but rather he is being routed--as people expected him to be in the latter days. So are we not invited to believe that Jesus . . .given his eschatological convictions, associated the defeat of Satan in his ministry with Satan's expected defeat before the eschatological coming of the kingdom?" Allison, "The Eschatology of Jesus", p. 280).
D13. Jesus’ trip to Jerusalem for the Passover Celebration, and his subsequent activities there, are best explained in terms of his apocalyptic message and his perceived role in proclaiming it. Jesus went to the temple during the Passover Festival, and spent many days teaching about his apocalyptic message of the imminent coming kingdom of God. The apocalyptic message included the idea that the temple in Jerusalem would also be destroyed.
D14. Jesus caused a disturbance in the temple itself, which appears to have been a symbolic enactment of his apocalyptic teaching about the temple’s destruction.
D15. Jesus’ betrayal by Judas Iscariot, and Jesus’ subsequent arrest, is best explained in terms of Judas’ betraying to the religious authorities (the Sadducees and the chief priests) Jesus’ teaching (to his inner circle of disciples) that he would be the King of the Jews in the coming Kingdom of God.
D16. Jesus was executed on the charge of political sedition, due to his claim that he was the King of the Jews. His execution was therefore directly related to his apocalyptic message of the imminent coming of the kingdom of God.
D17. The fact that not just Paul, but also all the other NT authors believed the end would occur in their generation makes perfect sense if Jesus really did make such claims
D18. The fact that the early church believed the end would occur in their lifetime makes perfect sense if Jesus really did make such claims
D19. Consider also E.P. Sanders’ argument: the passages that attribute these predictions to Jesus and Paul satisfy the historical criteria of multiple attestation (and forms), embarrassment, earliest strata (Mark, Q, M, L, Paul’s earliest letters, the ancient “Maranatha” creed/hymn) etc., thus strongly indicating that these words go back to the lips of Jesus.
D20. Jesus’ parables: virtually all explicitly or implicitly teach a message about an imminent eschaton.
D21. Jesus’ “inversion” teachings (e.g., "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first"): a common theme among Jewish apocalypticists generally. The general message of apocalypticists is that those who are evil and defy God will not get away with it forever. The just are trampled, and the unjust prosper; thus, this situation needs to be inverted – as it will be when the “Son of Man” from the book of Daniel comes to exact God’s judgment at any moment.
D22. The fact that the first generation church didn’t write biographies about Jesus, but instead the second generation church wrote the gospels composed of bits of sayings attributed to him, would make sense if his followers believed that the End would occur so quickly (based on Jesus’ teachings) that such a task would be pointless.
D23. The earliest Christians believed that Jesus' putative resurrection was (to use Paul's terminology) the "first fruits" of the general resurrection of the dead at the end of time. This is an agricultural metaphor. When farmers reaped and ate the first fruits of the harvest, they would then reap the full harvest the very next day -- the "general" harvest was "imminent", as it was "inaugurated" with the reaping of the first-fruits. Similarly, the earliest Christians believed that the final judgement and the general resurrection were imminent, given their belief that Jesus' resurrection was itself the inaugurating event of the general resurrection and the end of all things. Thus, there is a continuity between the beliefs of the early Christians and the beliefs of many Jews of his time: Jesus' resurrection was fundamentally construed in these eschatological terms.
(This is just a sampling. For more, see, e.g., this piece)
But suppose all of this is wrong -- or at least wrong in the one respect that Jesus didn’t mean “this generation” in the way it seems. Still, Jesus did say that the end would come soon, and his apostles said that these were “the last days” etc.
Furthermore, consider:
D24. Certain relevant data in the book of Revelation:
-The author is talking about events within his day
-He attributes a quick return to Jesus -- one that would occur in his day.
-Using the cipher language of gematria, he names Nero as “the Beast” (in ancient languages such as Hebrew and Greek, letters served double-duty as numbers. Thus, it was common to refer to someone without actually saying their name by stating the number that the letters in their name adds up to). Well, Ceasar Nero’s name adds up to 666, and he was ruling and persecuting the church during the time that the book of Revelation was written. In fact, some manuscripts of the Book of Revelation have the number read ‘616’, which turns out to add up to a slightly less formal version of Nero’s name!), thus clearly indicating that the end was supposed to be imminent.
-But it’s been about 2,000 years since then, in which case the author of the Book of Revelation was flatly wrong.
And so, no matter which way you slice it, the “statute of limitations” has run out on Jesus and his apostle’s claim for an imminent end. But if so, then by OT standards, Jesus was quite simply a false prophet, in which case he’s not a person that a reasonable and ethical person should follow. In fact, the Bible itself tells us that God doesn't want us to listen to or follow false prophets. So, for example, here's a statement attributed to God in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 18:21-22):
"You may say to yourselves, "How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD ?" If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him."
And here's another:
"The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart." (Jeremiah 14:14-15)
It needs to be emphasized that this line of reasoning isn't controversial among mainstream, middle-of-the-road NT critics. I'm not talking about a view held by the Jesus Seminar, or earlier "radical" form and redaction critics like Norman Perrin. Rather, I'm talking about the kinds of considerations that are largely accepted by moderates who are also committed Christians, such as Dale Allison and John P. Meier. Indeed, conservative scholars of the likes of none other than Ben Witherington and N.T. Wright largely admit this line of reasoning. Why are they still Christians, you ask? I'll tell you: by giving unnatural, ad hoc explanations of the data. For example, Meier gets around the problem by arguing that the false prediction passages are inauthentic (i.e., Jesus never said those things; the early church just put those words on the lips of Jesus, and they ended up in the gospels); Witherington gets around the problem by saying that what Jesus really meant was that the imminent arrival of the eschatological kingdom might be at hand(!); Wright gets around the problem by adopting the preterist line that the imminent end that Jesus predicted really did occur -- it's just that it was all fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem (Oh, really? So are we also to think that since he's already come again, he's not coming back? Or perhaps there will be a *third* coming? But even putting these worries aside: why does Paul tell various communities very far *outside* of Israel about the same sorts of predictions of an imminent end that would affect *them* -- one that, like the one Jesus talked about, involved judgement, destruction, and the gathering of all the elect? And again, what about the author of Revelation's detailing the end-time judgment, which includes the Roman Empire *outside* of Israel, during the reign of Nero?). Are you convinced by these responses? Me neither. And now you know why nobody outside of orthodox circles buys them, either.
To all of this, I say what should be obvious: you know, deep in your gut (don't you?) that such responses are unnatural, ad hoc dodges of what we know to be the truth here: Jesus really did predict the end within the lifetime of his disciples, but he was simply wrong.
Notice that the claim here is different from one often confused with it, viz., that Jesus happened to say some things that could be interpreted as asserting that the end would occur in his lifetime. This isn't the claim I'm making. Rather, it's the much stronger one that Jesus was an eschatological prophet -- the end time message was what he was all about. It wasn't tangential to his central message; it was his central message: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!"
Putting it all together, we get the following argument for Jesus as a failed apocalyptic prophet:
Let:
H1= the hypothesis that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet of an imminent eschaton.
H2= the hypothesis that Jesus is the Son of God of orthodox Christianity.
And let D1-D24 be the data sketched above. Then the argument can be expressed as follows:
1. H1 is a better explanation of D1-D24 than H2. (i.e., simpler, wider explanatory scope, more conservative, etc.)
2. If H1 is a better explanation of D1-D24 than H2, then H1 is more probable than H2.
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3. Therefore, H1 is more probable than H2.
I'd like to mention a related point. If the mainstream scholars of the historical Jesus are right and the points above are correct, then it looks as though this line of reasoning undercuts Craig’s abductive argument for the resurrection of Jesus. For it seems extremely unlikely that a god would resurrect a false prophet (recall, for example, the passage from Deuteronomy above). In any case, it would have been interesting to see how William Lane Craig would have responded if Bart Ehrman brought up this point in their debate on the resurrection of Jesus (Ehrman himself is a proponent of the "eschatological prophet" account of Jesus. See his book, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium (OUP, 1999)). See also Dale Allison's Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet, E.P. Sanders' The Historical Figure of Jesus, Paula Fredriksen's From Jesus to Christ, Fredriksen's Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, Geza Vermes' The Changing Faces of Jesus, and of course Albert Schweitzer's classic The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Shorter defenses by Allison can be found here and here. For a sample case spelled out a bit in popular form, see this series of posts on Ehrman's book mentioned above.
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