The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Habermas and Licona - Part 6: Three Standards of Evidence

THREE DIFFERENT STANDARDS OF EVIDENCE

There are at least three different Standards of Evidence mentioned by Habermas and Licona in CRJ.

First, there is the Preponderance of Evidence standard used in civil lawsuits:

The standards of evidence [in legal matters] do not require that the case for something is irrefutable. Such 100% certainty is only possible in the rarest of circumstances. Rather, the standard requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases and proof that makes the truth of an accusation more probable than not in civil cases. (CRJ, page 32)

In civil cases, showing that the preponderance of evidence favors the accusation is sufficient to establish the truth of the accusation.  In such cases the accusation has been shown to have a chance greater than 50% of being true, or of having a probability of greater than .50.

Second, there is the somewhat more demanding standard of evidence put forward by the NT and Jesus scholar Graham Twelftree, quoted approvingly by Habermas and Licona:

Twelftree sets the standard for belief that something was really said or truly happened at the point when the reasons for accepting it significantly outweigh the reasons for rejecting it.   (CRJ, page 33)

Showing a claim to have a probability of .51 would meet the Preponderance of Evidence standard used in civil cases, but showing a historical claim to have a probability of .51 would fall short of Twelftree's Standard of Evidence because the reasons in favor of that claim would not "significantly outweigh" the reasons for rejecting it.

But, in terms of probability, how much stronger would the evidence need to be for a claim to pass Twelftree's Standard of Evidence.  It seems to me that if a claim could be shown to have a 55% chance of being true, then the evidence for that claim would "significantly outweigh" the evidence for rejecting it.  In any case, it is clear that if a claim could be shown to have a 60% chance of being true, then the reasons for that claim must "significantly outweigh" the reasons for rejecting the claim.  So, we may reasonably infer that Twelftree's Standard would be satisfied if a historical claim could be shown to have a probability of .60 or greater.

Habermas and Licona have defined "Reasonable Historical Certainty" as applying when evidence shows that a historical claim has at least a somewhat greater likelihood than "Somewhat Certain".  In Part 5 of this series, I argued that this may reasonably be understood as applying to cases where the evidence shows the historical claim to have at least a 70% chance of being true, that is, a probability of .70 or greater.

We now have at least three different Standards of Evidence that could be applied to the evaluation of historical claims:

WHICH STANDARD IS USED BY NEW TESTAMENT AND JESUS SCHOLARS?

The case for (C2), the conclusion of Phase 1 of the case for the resurrection of Jesus by Habermas and Licona, attempts to show that the claim (C2) has a "reasonable historical certainty" which means (C2) is at least somewhat more likely than "Somewhat Certain", which we may reasonably interpret to mean that (C2) can be shown to have a probability of at least .70.

 

But what about the Standard of Evidence used by New Testament and Jesus scholars?  The "Minimum Facts Approach" taken by Habermas and Licona is based in large part on a few historical claims that are such that "they are granted by nearly every scholar who studies the subject" (CRJ, page44), or that "nearly every scholar accepts them" (CRJ, page 44), or that "they are considered historical by virtually all who study the subject" (CRJ, page 46).

Suppose that most of the NT and Jesus scholars that Habermas and Licona survey use the Preponderance of Evidence standard, and those scholars accept a historical claim when the evidence makes the claim more likely to be true than not. If this is the case, then we could not legitimately infer from "nearly every scholar accepts" the claim that Jesus died as a result of crucifixion that this claim has "reasonable historical certainty".  The fact that nearly all scholars agree that the probability of this claim is greater than .50 does not provide strong support for the concusion that nearly all scholars agree that the probabilty of this claim is at least .70.  Such a conclusion would follow ONLY IF most NT and Jesus scholars used the "Reasonable Historical Certainty" standard of evidence suggested by Habermas and Licona.

Similarly, suppose that most of the NT and Jesus scholars that Habermas and Licona surveyed use the Twelftree Historicity Standard.  In that case, we could not legitimately infer from "nearly every scholar accepts" the claim that Jesus died as a result of crucifixion that this claim has "reasonable historical certainty".  The fact that nearly all scholars agree that the probability of this claim is at least .60 does not provide strong support for the concusion that nearly all scholars agree that the probabilty of this claim is at least .70.  Such a conclusion would follow ONLY IF most NT and Jesus scholars used the "Reasonable Historical Certainty" standard of evidence suggested by Habermas and Licona.

I don't know which of these three Standards of Evidence are used by most NT and Jesus scholars.  I strongly suspect that Habermas and Licona also don't know which of these three Standards of Evidence are used by most NT and Jesus scholars. It seems likely that a significant portion of such scholars use each of these Standards of Evidence, so it might not be the case that most NT and Jesus scholars use the same Standard of Evidence.  Furthermore, the standard used by a specific scholar might well vary depending on the sort of historical question at issue, so specific scholars don't necessarily always use the same Standard of Evidence for all of the historical questions they investigate.  I suspect that a significant portion of these scholars are not aware of the specific Standard of Evidence that they use, and that they would hesitate to fully endorse one of these Standards of Evidence.

Given the unclarity and uncertainty surrounding the use of these different Standards of Evidence by various NT and Jesus scholars, I think we must reject the following claim by Habermas and Licona:

...most scholars, even skeptical ones, grant that some things are true in the Bible. When they do agree, the point they accept must be pretty well established by available historical data. (CRJ, page 46)

 

Most scholars do grant or accept some historical claims in the Bible, but the acceptance of such a claim by "nearly all scholars who study the subject" does NOT show that the claim is well established by available historical data.  That is to say, many, perhaps most, such scholars might not use the "reasonable historical certainty" Standard of Evidence in order to determine which historical claims in the Bible to accept. It might well be the case that most such scholars use the weaker standard of either Preponderance of Evidence or the weaker Twelftree's Historicity Standard.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE USE OF A WEAKER STANDARD OF EVIDENCE

Suppose that most NT and Jesus scholars use the Preponderance of Evidence standard when determining whether the historical claim "Jesus died as a result of crucifixion" is a true claim.  If so, then agreement between "nearly all scholars who study the subject" accepting this historical claim would tell us only that most such scholars believe this claim has a probability greater than .50.

If we are inclined to follow the opinions of these scholars on this historical question, we might then reasonably conclude that the available historical evidence shows that the probability that "Jesus died as a result of crucifixion" is greater than .50.  This inference will not be of much use to Habermas and Licona.  That is because the death of Jesus by crucifixion is just a necessary condition of Jesus rising from the dead, the conclusion of Phase 1 of their case.

In order to get to the conclusion (C2), they need to also establish that Jesus was alive and walking around a few days after he was crucified.  That claim will in turn depend on other historical claims, such as that "Jesus' disciples sincerely believed that Jesus rose from the dead and that they saw Jesus alive sometime after he had been crucified and buried". 

Suppose that nearly all scholars who study the subject accept the historical claim that "Jesus' disciples sincerely believed that Jesus rose from the dead and that they saw Jesus alive sometime after he had been crucified and buried".  Suppose, again, that most of these scholars use the Preponderance of Evidence standard to determine whether to accept this historical claim.  We can infer from this consensus of scholars only that the available historical evidence is sufficient to show that the probability of this historical claim is greater than .50.

In order to determine the probability of Jesus rising from the dead, we must determine the probability that it is BOTH the case that "Jesus died as a result of crucifixion" AND that "Jesus' disciples sincerely believed that Jesus rose from the dead and that they saw Jesus alive sometime after he had been crucified and buried." To do this we must multiply the probabilities of these two historical claims.

Using the opinions of the relevant scholars, we can only assume that the probability of the first claim is at least .51 and that the probability of the second claim is at least .51.  The probability of BOTH of these historical claims being true is at least .26 which is about one chance in four.  The probability might be higher,  but we cannot determine that it is higher, assuming that most of the relevant scholars accept a historical claim when it has a probability of greater than .50.

Now, even if we grant these alleged "facts" about Jesus and his disciples, it does not follow that Jesus was actually alive sometime after his crucifixion and burial, nor does it follow that his disciples actually saw a living and physically embodied Jesus after his crucifixion and burial.  This "fact" only makes it probable to some degree that Jesus was actually alive sometime after his crucifixion and burial.  

Let's be generous and say that if both of these historical claims were true, the probability that Jesus rose from the dead  would be .70.  

This is clearly not sufficient to show that (C2) has a probability of at least .70, because we must multiply the probability of BOTH of the key historical claims being true times the probability of (C2) being true on the assumption of those two key historical claims being true:

.26 x .70 = .18

Based on these assumptions, we could only infer a probability of about .18 for (C2), which is clearly well below the target probability of .70 implied by Habermas and Licona in claiming that the resurrection of Jesus could be shown to be somewhat more likely than "Somewhat Certain".  Two chances in ten is much less likely than seven chances in ten.

Similar reasoning can be used if we assume that most of the relevant scholars use the Twelftree Historicity Standard to determine whether or not to accept a historical claim in the Bible.

The two key historical claims could be inferred to each have a probability of at least .60.  We would multiply those probabilities together to get the probability that BOTH of those claims were true:

.60 x .60 = .36

If we again assume that the truth of these historical claims would make the probability of (C2) about .70, then we would need to multiply the probability of BOTH key historical claims being true times the probability of (C2) assuming those claims were true:

.36 x .70 = .25

Given these assumptions, the probability that Jesus rose from the dead would be at least .25, but we could not infer that the probability was higher given that most relevant scholars would accept the two historical claims if the probability of those claims was at least .60.

A probability of .25 is clearly still far short of the target probability of .70 that is implied by the "reasonable historical certainty" standard that Habermas and Licona claim that (C2) can be shown to have.

THE CASE FOR (C2) FAILS EVEN IF MOST SCHOLARS USE THE "REASONABLE HISTORICAL CERTAINTY" STANDARD OF EVIDENCE

Because of the need to multiply probabilities, even if we knew that most of the relevant scholars used the "Reasonable Historical Certainty" standard of Evidence, we could still not show that the probability of (C2) would reach the target probability of at least .70.

The probability of BOTH key historical claims being true would be determined by multiplying the probabilities of those claims.  If the relevant scholars would accept a claim if the evidence for the claim shows that the claim had a probability of at least .70, then we could only infer from acceptance of nearly all scholars who study the subject that each key historical claim had a probability of at least .70:

.70 x .70 = .49

So, the probability of BOTH key historical claims being true could be inferred, in this case, to be at least .49.  This probability would then need to be multiplied times the probability that (C2) would have assuming that the two historical claims were true:

.70 x .49 = .34

Once again, the probability of (C2) can only be inferred to be at least .34, which is significantly less than the target probability of .70.  Three chances in ten is significantly less than seven chances in ten.  Thus, even if we very generously grant the (questionable) assumption that most of the relevant scholars use the "Reasonable Historical Certainty" standard laid out by Habermas and Licona, they would still not be able to achieve this level of certainty for this conclusion of Phase 1 of their case:

(C2) Jesus rose from the dead.