WHAT DEGREE OF CERTAINTY DO THEY CLAIM TO SHOW?
The conclusion of Phase 1 of the case by Habermas and Licona is this:
(C2) Jesus rose from the dead.
Do Habermas and Licona attempt to prove this initial conclusion? Here is what they say on this matter:
Can Jesus' resurrection from the dead be proven? The answer may vary depending on one's definition of what constitutes proof. When it comes to any event that occurred in antiquity, the historian attempts to decide the matter with some degree of historical certainty. (CRJ, page 30)
This seems entirely reasonable, but leaves the question unanswered as to how certain they think they can show their initial conclusion to be.
They imply that the level of certainty is something less than 100% certainty:
When it comes to history, we can only speak of probability, not 100% certainty. However, do not be discouraged that in historical terms Jesus' resurrection cannot be established with absolute certainty. (CRJ, page 31)
Again, this is perfectly reasonable, but doesn't specify the degree of certainty they think they can show (C2) to have.
In Chapter 1 of CRJ, Habermas and Licona claim that the evidence for (C2) is very strong:
Christians should be delighted to find that the evidence for Jesus' resurrection is extremely compelling, even when using only a small collection of strongly attested historical facts to support the event. (CRJ, page 28)
At the beginning of their discussion of the concept of "reasonable historical certainty", Habermas and Licona ask the question "Can Jesus' resurrection from the dead be proven?" (CRJ, page 30). Because this is their opening question, that suggests that they believe their case for (C2) shows that this conclusion has "reasonable historical certainty".
At the end of their discussion about "reasonable historical certainty", they clearly imply that their case shows that (C2) has this level of certainty:
Therefore, when it comes to proving any historical event, we must remember that we are looking for whether we can ascertain with a reasonable amount of certainty that the event occurred. ...
...for the Christian, there is a difference between knowing that Jesus rose from the dead with reasonable historical certainty and living on the personal assurance that Christianity is true....The historical certainty we have of Jesus' resurrection only reinforces that God's Spirit has indeed spoken to us. (CRJ, page 33, emphasis added)
Now we just need to figure out what the phrase "reasonable historical certainty" means.
WHAT IS "REASONABLE HISTORICAL CERTAINTY"?
They get more specific in relation to a "spectrum of historical certainties":
In historical inquiry, professional historians talk in terms of the strength of probability that an event occurred. In fact, we can think in terms of a line graph with a full spectrum of historical certainties. (CRJ, page 31)
No probabilities are assigned to this line graph, but we can reasonably estimate probabilities for each category in the graph. The category that is in the exact middle of the line graph is "Uncertain", and given that the category immediately to the left of it is "Somewhat Doubtful" and the category immediately to the right is "Somewhat Certain", it is clear that "Uncertain" means about a 50/50 chance of being true, which is a probability of about .50.
On the far right end is the category "Very Certain", which implies something less than absolute certainty, and given that this graph represents levels of historical certainty, "Very Certain" is presumably somewhat less than 100% certainty. We may reasonably assign about a 95% chance of being true to a claim that is "Very Certain", which is a probability of about .95.
That gives us a range from about .50 to about .95 between "Uncertain" and "Very Certain". The other categories between these two categories are evenly spread out between "Uncertain" and "Very Certain". Since this range includes a difference of .45 probability, we can reasonably assign a range of .15 probability between each category starting from "Uncertain" and ending at "Very Certain". There are also three evenly spaced categories to the left of "Uncertain", so we can also assign a range of .15 probability between those categories:
Habermas and Licona specify what they mean by "reasonable historical certainty" in relationship to the "spectrum of historical certainties":
In reference to Jesus' resurrection, we are inquiring to see what we can know with reasonable historical certainty when historical inquiry is applied. Where does "reasonable historical certainty" start on our graph? This is a somewhat subjective question. We would place it somewhere to the right of "somewhat certain" and continue on to the "very certain" point of the spectrum. (CRJ, page 32)
Given the probabilities I have assigned to these categories of historical certainty, I would interpret this to mean starting a little higher than a probability of about .65 and ending with a probability of about .95. So, I take it that by "reasonable historical certainty" Habermas and Licona are indicating a range of probabilities from about .70 to about .95.
Therefore, I take their claim to show that Jesus rose from the dead has a reasonable historical certainty to mean that they can show that their initial conclusion (C2) has a probability somewhere between about .70 and .95. In short, they imply that (C2) can be shown to have a probability of at least .70.
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