Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Over the next few weeks I'm going to look at some rather severe problems with Dr. Gary Habermas's interpretations of more liberal New Testament scholars, as represented in Volume 1 of his magnum opus on the resurrection.
Regular viewers know that I have a lot of criticisms of the Minimal Facts Argument for the resurrection. In many of these I'm discussing the epistemology of the argument--e.g., the mistaken idea that acknowledging that the disciples had *some sort of experience* that led them to believe that Jesus was risen is automatically helpful to the argument for the resurrection, aside from the details of their experiential claims.
lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2021/11/on-minimal-facts-case-for-resurrection.html
But in this short series I'm targeting something else: Since so much of the appeal of the MFA depends on stating that even liberal scholars grant this or that, and since the basis for this is often Habermas's review of written articles and books by these scholars, it's a big problem if he's misunderstanding those scholars in an overly optimistic fashion. Unfortunately, that's exactly what we find, repeatedly. This happens, unfortunately, so often, and reveals so much difficulty correctly evaluating and representing what the liberal scholars are saying, that a rule of thumb is this: If Dr. Habermas says or writes something about what "even the Jesus Seminar grants" or "even this skeptical scholar grants" that sounds surprising or too good to be true, you should be cautious about accepting that claim.
It gives me no pleasure to have to say these things, but I think it's important to do so, if for no other reason than that the Minimal Facts Argument is so popular in apologetics.
But this means that in the series I will probably be using words and phrases like "egregiously inaccurate" or even "careless." If you honestly think that this will simply be angering, or if you think that this must stem from some bad motive such as a desire to engage in personal attacks, I would seriously suggest that you not bother watching the series. But I would like to think that there is some openness to consider such intra-Christian criticisms soberly and fairly.
Over the next few weeks I'm going to look at some rather severe problems with Dr. Gary Habermas's interpretations of more liberal New Testament scholars, as represented in Volume 1 of his magnum opus on the resurrection.
Regular viewers know that I have a lot of criticisms of the Minimal Facts Argument for the resurrection. In many of these I'm discussing the epistemology of the argument--e.g., the mistaken idea that acknowledging that the disciples had *some sort of experience* that led them to believe that Jesus was risen is automatically helpful to the argument for the resurrection, aside from the details of their experiential claims.
lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2021/11/on-minimal-facts-case-for-resurrection.html
But in this short series I'm targeting something else: Since so much of the appeal of the MFA depends on stating that even liberal scholars grant this or that, and since the basis for this is often Habermas's review of written articles and books by these scholars, it's a big problem if he's misunderstanding those scholars in an overly optimistic fashion. Unfortunately, that's exactly what we find, repeatedly. This happens, unfortunately, so often, and reveals so much difficulty correctly evaluating and representing what the liberal scholars are saying, that a rule of thumb is this: If Dr. Habermas says or writes something about what "even the Jesus Seminar grants" or "even this skeptical scholar grants" that sounds surprising or too good to be true, you should be cautious about accepting that claim.
It gives me no pleasure to have to say these things, but I think it's important to do so, if for no other reason than that the Minimal Facts Argument is so popular in apologetics.
But this means that in the series I will probably be using words and phrases like "egregiously inaccurate" or even "careless." If you honestly think that this will simply be angering, or if you think that this must stem from some bad motive such as a desire to engage in personal attacks, I would seriously suggest that you not bother watching the series. But I would like to think that there is some openness to consider such intra-Christian criticisms soberly and fairly.
