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With Mike Licona
71 Plays3 years ago
Today we are joined by historian and academic Mike Licona to discuss his specialist topic, the resurrection of Christ. Although we'd expect our secular society to dismiss such a miracle, Mike shows us that the supernatural is a real part of more people's lives that we might expect.
Michael R. Licona, Ph.D. is associate professor of theology at Houston Baptist University and president of Risen Jesus, Inc. He is the author of several books, including The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (IVP Academic) and Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? What We Can Learn From Ancient Biography (Oxford University Press). Visit Mike’s web site and YouTube channel.
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Transcript
Introduction to Pep Talk Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Well hello everybody and welcome to another exciting edition of Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast from the Solar Center for Public Christianity. My name is Andy Bannister and I'm joined as ever by my effervescence, I'm running out of adjectives on this show, co-host Christy Mayer from the other end of the country down in London. Christy, how is life at your end of the UK today?
00:00:32
Speaker
Oh, it's doing well, thanks. Apart from the miserable football results last night, which I can't remember commenting on. I never knew that, do that. But Germany would be hungry. Very sad. But apart from that... For the next 35 minutes, we're going to have to use the word soccer if we reference sport, because we are joined, I guess, on pep talk today.
Introducing Guest Mike Licona
00:00:48
Speaker
We are joined all the way from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where football means entirely something else. We are joined by Mike Licona. Mike, welcome to pep talk. Well, thanks, Andy. First thing, great to be with you both.
00:01:00
Speaker
Mike, you wear a whole number of hats, but you are the author of many, many books.
Mike Licona on Jesus' Resurrection
00:01:05
Speaker
You are an associate professor of theology at Houston Baptist University, and you also head up and run an organization called Risen Jesus, which is probably the best way for people to find you, which is a nice kind of link in, right, to the kind of thing that you are perhaps most famous for. You are an expert on the resurrection, right? This has been your era of sort of study and passion for some time now, right?
00:01:28
Speaker
It has been since probably around, well, 1997. Now, it'd be great to have you on the podcast because, of course, resurrection is central to Christian faith.
Discussing Resurrection with Skeptics
00:01:42
Speaker
But I meet many Christians who are almost sadly a bit nervous about talking about the resurrection, right? Because it's a miracle. They don't know what to do if their friends say, well, what do you mean resurrection? Did people stay?
00:01:53
Speaker
dead. You've been thinking about these things for a long time, you've thought about them a very high academic level, you're also a brilliant communicator at a more popular level. So I suppose at that latter end of the spectrum, how can Christians perhaps begin to get a bit more confident in talking about the resurrection with skeptical friends? What ways that we can talk about the resurrection that are compelling and persuasive?
Resources for Understanding the Resurrection
00:02:16
Speaker
Well, one thing a believer can do is simply read up on this. So there's plenty of books on the resurrection. I've written one, a very large one, The Resurrection of Jesus, a New Historiographical Approach. I've written one on how to speak with Muslims on the fate of Jesus called Paul meets Muhammad.
00:02:39
Speaker
Gary Habermas and I have co-authored one together, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, which is a fairly, very easy read. Bill Craig, William Lane Craig has one, The Sun Rises. I mean, there's many books out there on the topic. So that's one thing you can do. You can watch debates. I've been engaged in several debates on the resurrection of Jesus. You can see those on my YouTube channel, Mike Licona.
00:03:10
Speaker
Gary Habermas has been in several debates. So has William Lane Craig. So you can watch debates on the topic. You can read books on the topic. I've got some lectures on the topic on my YouTube channel. So plenty of material out there for them to become anyone who's interested can become more than familiar with the material.
00:03:29
Speaker
Thanks. I'm sure we'll put some links up on when this goes up online. How would you I mean resurrection when we when we talk about that and often for us as Christians and we hear that word, I think we can often think, gosh, this is just a huge piece of theology.
00:03:44
Speaker
And I have absolutely no idea how to go about sharing this with my next door neighbor. How would you go about even starting a conversation on the resurrection with someone you meet at the supermarket or your next door neighbor? What would you want to kind of bring out and help them to see?
Casual Conversations about Resurrection
00:04:04
Speaker
Well, that's a good question, Christy. I have to give a broad answer. I used to be in the martial arts.
00:04:12
Speaker
be an instructor with Taekwondo. And so it's like someone saying, well, what do you do if a person punches at you? Well, there's just a thousand different things you could do. And what anger are they coming from? Are they just throwing a haymaker punch? Are they throwing a straight punch? What kind of punch is it? Where are you at the time? All kinds of things that are, and same thing with this. How do you get in a conversation on the resurrection of Jesus?
00:04:41
Speaker
It just depends where you are, who you're speaking with. For me, most of my conversations happen in lectures or debates, or when I'm flying on an airplane, I'll be sitting next to someone and there you are for the flight, right? They're gonna be sitting there, I'm gonna be sitting there, and so I say to them, hey, how's it going? I live in the Atlanta area, and so I'm flying out of Atlanta all the time, and it's the busiest airport in the world, and Atlanta's a great place to live if you fly a lot because it's the hub
00:05:09
Speaker
for Delta. And it's like the joke we have here is everybody's going to heaven or hell, but no one's going to get there without first going through Atlanta. And, um, so, um, you know, you sit next to someone and, Hey, what do you, you know, why are you headed to San Antonio? Say we're going to San Antonio, Texas. Well, what's going on there? Oh, you got work there. What do you do for a living? You know, you talk to this person for maybe 10 minutes, get to know them. And this was natural for them to say, well, what do you do?
00:05:36
Speaker
Well, I'm a New Testament historian. I teach New Testament at Houston Baptist University. And I focus mainly on historical issues, what we can prove about Jesus, especially his resurrection, the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Boom. There it is. I've just introduced the topic. And sometimes it's like throwing out some, you know, you're fishing and you're throwing out the bait and sometimes they grab it and they say, hey, well,
00:06:04
Speaker
Really? There's evidence? Like what? Now you're in the conversation. And sometimes they go, oh, and then they just turn away. And then it's like, cool. Now I can read the rest of the trip. So, um, you know, that's how I do it.
00:06:20
Speaker
I think the other thing that's great about that, I love those kind of airplane kind of conversations. Cause you say, if you spend the first five, 10 minutes building rapport with the person there, then likely to turn to you. I remember when I was sort of new and into apologetics that, you know, and didn't know half the stuff that I know now, I actually found reading a, reading a good book can be helpful. Cause again, on airplanes, like often comes that moment, if you've already started a conversation, Oh, you know, what are you reading? And to sort of say, well, I'm reading this book by this guy called Mike Lacona.
00:06:44
Speaker
and he's an expert on the resurrection, and it's really interesting. You know, you're in, you can use the book you're reading, right, to do the same thing if you're not off to give a lecture.
Addressing Skeptic Responses
00:06:55
Speaker
But Mike, what would you say are some of the kind of pushbacks that you hear? Because obviously, you know, you raise this kind of stuff, you raise the resurrection. What are some of the challenges? Is it just the old kind of, well, you know, dead men stay dead? Are there other things that, you know, when you have particularly those more lower level, well, higher level in the case of airplane,
00:07:14
Speaker
conversations that people throw. The first one's free. I'm here a week. What are some of the responses that people will throw back at you? A lot of them. And one that you've just said comes often. And even that one's given in the academic. On the academic level, it's just stated differently. Just saying, well, historians can only look at natural things. And like Bart Ehrman would say,
00:07:42
Speaker
A miracle by the very definition is the least probable explanation, and historians must choose the most probable, therefore they can never choose a miracle. So, I mean, it's the same kind of thing as saying, well, when people die, they stay dead. They don't come back, you know, from the dead. And to that, I would just say, well, you're right. They don't come back from the dead by natural causes. We know that from science. But there is nothing scientific
00:08:09
Speaker
anti-science that would say, well, God raised Jesus, or that Jesus came back from supernatural calls of some sort. So, you know, we've got enough background knowledge to suggest that there is more to reality than just what we see. And then I'll usually, I'll bring up four lines of evidence. You know, there's well-evident, near-death experiences where a person dies, they have an out-of-body experience, and
00:08:35
Speaker
You know, in many cases, they obtain accurate information. They could not have otherwise known. And these things can be corroborated. So I might give an example or two of that. You have veridical apparitions. That is, a person sees. They see a spirit being, someone of a dead person appearing before them. And that apparition imparts accurate information to that person. They could not have otherwise known. I can give some examples of that.
00:09:04
Speaker
extreme answered prayer. Now, any of us who have been a Christian for a while understand that, you know, we can cite a number of answered prayers. But there are some answered prayers that are just so amazing that to claim coincidence would seem to be the least plausible explanation. And we might have a handful of those if we've been a Christian for a while that we can mention. So we can mention extreme answered prayer. And then, of course, there's paranormal phenomena
00:09:32
Speaker
which as a Christian, I interpret some of that as demonic. So even if you don't want to interpret it as demonic, there's just paranormal information out there. It's very believable because of the evidence for it. So I've experienced it myself. And when you experience some of those things, you just can't deny it. Many people haven't experienced it.
00:09:58
Speaker
You go to other countries like third world countries, a lot of people experience paranormal phenomena. In the West, they don't experience it a whole lot. I think there's some reasons for that, but that's a different matter.
Spiritual Dimension & Resurrection Plausibility
00:10:09
Speaker
So I can bring up all these different reasons for thinking there is a spiritual dimension of reality, and that renders something like the resurrection of Jesus possible.
00:10:20
Speaker
such an encouragement to hear, Mike, because I think often, particularly in the UK and perhaps in the States and continental Europe to some extent, we after like the Second World War, you know, obviously after Lisbon earthquake, after so many historical events that have happened, we're just living in such a closed universe where it is purely kind of driven by scientific materialism and trying to kind of help
00:10:47
Speaker
people to see that actually we live in a world that is just suffused with more than what we can see and taste and hear and touch.
00:10:58
Speaker
And are there other ways that you'd go about? So it sounds like thinking about the paranormal, opening people up to that spiritual dimension. What has this looked like for you in conversations with people that you know and love? Are there other routes as well that you might bring in to show that actually resurrection makes the most sense in an open universe? How would you go about
00:11:25
Speaker
pushing and probing and nudging. Would you say that that's the main kind of point of connection in our society today, considering the paranormal? Well, Kristy, I find there's going to be varied reactions. So some are going to be quite open to it. Some have experienced it themselves. So, for example, I had a debate with Matt Dillahoney a few years back.
Impact of Debates on Skeptics
00:11:49
Speaker
It's been my most viewed debate on my YouTube channel. It's got over 600,000 views on my channel alone.
00:11:55
Speaker
and well over 100,000 views on Matt's channel. There was one skeptic who sent me a private message and said that he has had, in that debate, I mentioned some of these paranormal phenomena that I said a couple of minutes ago. And a skeptic contacted me via email and said, or email or Facebook, I forgot which and said, he had experienced something like that. And it really scared him. And he remains afraid of these kinds of things to this very day.
00:12:25
Speaker
And I said, well, how do you think that fits into an atheistic worldview? He says, well, I don't think it does. So that can have some impact by sharing these things. Now, on the other hand, if you look at the comments on my YouTube channel, under the Matt Dillahunner debate, you'll see 99.9% of them are atheist trolls who mocked me for those kinds of things. In fact, someone pointed out to me the other day that
00:12:52
Speaker
my wiki page on Wikipedia, my entry there, which I don't really have any control over. In fact, a year or two ago, somebody got on and just changed a bunch of things and then a friend of mine and then my wife tried to change some things and both of them got banned.
00:13:14
Speaker
and were prohibited from changing things. And recently someone just added to it that I believe in ghosts and the efficacy of Ouija boards. So, you know, I tell a story about someone in that debate who had a Ouija board and she had studied witchcraft. Her mom was a witch. Her grandmother was a witch. And some really amazing stuff happened with this. But, you know, skeptics will spin this thing in such a way as to make you try to look foolish and gullible.
00:13:44
Speaker
But for anyone who's experienced this kind of stuff, it's just undeniable. So yeah, some people are open to it, some people aren't. So I just don't get hung up on those things and just let the Lord work in any way he wants to. I think you're right.
00:14:02
Speaker
that I think there's more of an actual, even here in the West, I think there's more of a sort of low level appreciation of sort of spiritual things than people sometimes like to let on. I still remember when I moved to
00:14:15
Speaker
I'm in the UK now, but before then was in Canada. I remember when I moved to Canada in 2010, a very secular country, so I was led to believe. And my first year there was in Vancouver, got a small flight from Vancouver to Vancouver Island. And the in-flight magazine on this small kind of internal flight, eight-page magazine, six of those pages were devoted to ghosts. You know, how to know if your house has one, how to get it on your side, all this kind of stuff. I remember reading and thinking, this in secular Canada.
00:14:44
Speaker
So I suppose my question would be, so if we run across this kind of stuff, or I've had friends say to me they were talking to colleagues at work and their colleague brought up,
00:14:52
Speaker
supernatural and stuff. I think it's more of a sloshing around. How do we then connect that to the Gospel? Because I think one of two things happens, right? I think either Christians get so frightened that, gosh, this stuff is demonic therefore I actually need to almost jump on it so hard. I actually scare my non-Christian friend, cut it off, or they just run the other way and have no idea how you would bridge from that to the
00:15:14
Speaker
to the Gospel. So, you know, so suppose that these kind of themes come up in a conversation, what's the connecting point across then to the Gospel and the resurrection? Well, I mean, that's another question like, well, what happens if someone goes to company? What do I do? What kind of cake, you know, and all that. So, I mean, I would just say, OK, yeah, well, I think there's significant evidence out there that suggests there is a spiritual dimension of reality.
00:15:42
Speaker
And no doubt, some of those reports, some of the reports we have are poor. And some of them we have are quite good. And then I might just give them one and say, look, if there is a spiritual dimension of reality, you know, that renders something like the resurrection of Jesus plausible. And indeed, we have some very good historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.
00:16:06
Speaker
And then they might say, well, like what? Well, then I'm in the conversation now and I can present some simple case for the resurrection or depending who I'm talking with, I can present a very simple case or a more sophisticated case for the resurrection of Jesus.
00:16:21
Speaker
Mike, you've so much got a fascinating stuff you shared in the last 16 minutes, and we've got sort of three or four minutes left. And I thought, great questions that I'd love to sort of ask as we come in for a landing. There's another aeroplane-related pun there for you. You shared that story of that conversation with on the aircraft. I know you've also had loads of these kind of conversations with people. As you look back on,
00:16:47
Speaker
I won't embarrass you. We're saying how many years of talking about resurrection things. Are there kind of other stories that, you know, in your mind, as highlights the way God has worked in surprising ways as you brought these things up in conversation? Any kind of sort of stories that you're happy you'd like to share with us as we as we as we bring this towards the close? Sure. I mean, I've got countless stories that I could give. The very first time I spoke on a college campus, it was
Resurrection Lecture & Jewish Attendee Impact
00:17:12
Speaker
at St. Leo's University in Virginia Beach at a naval base called Damnet.
00:17:17
Speaker
and in Virginia Beach. And I lectured on the resurrection of Jesus. They brought me in to lecture, give like a two and a half hour lecture on the resurrection of Jesus. And the students were active military, retired military, reserve, spouses of military. And so very eclectic group. All right. And
00:17:40
Speaker
And at the end, during the Q&A, this one guy says, so if the resurrection evidence is so good, then why don't Jews today believe it? And before I could answer it, a girl in the front row said, well, I'd like to answer that. I said, well, go ahead. And she said, well, I'm a Jew. And what you said today would offend many Jews. And then she went on to say in her Jewish family, the
00:18:04
Speaker
Her mom would say, you are never to mention the name Jesus in this house. And she said, when I joined the military, I had some friends that took me to church. It was kind of neat, but I really didn't understand what was going on. But now that you've explained evidence for the resurrection, I believe Jesus is Messiah. And I want to know, how can I be a Christian and maintain my Jewish heritage? That's the very first time I lectured on the resurrection of Jesus on a college campus. It's like, that's pretty cool.
00:18:31
Speaker
I mentioned the Matt Dillah honey debate. Well, I was in Chicago a year and a half ago and a guy came up to me and he said, Hey, I want to thank you. I was a militant atheist when you debated Dillah honey.
Conversion Story: Atheist to Christian
00:18:41
Speaker
And I, I used to go online and really put down Christians. And now, you know, I look at it, I watched your debate. I became a Christian as a result. And now I talked to skeptics using the same arguments you used during that Dillah honey debate. And one other thing I just mentioned, like I said, I could go on and on and on.
00:19:00
Speaker
I used to have a group called the Dream Team, and we'd get together over two weeks, and we'd talk about stuff, and there was a Muslim in that group. And a few of us would just share the evidence for the resurrection, and I went, and I ended up debating Shabir Ali, and the Muslim attended that debate.
Nabeel Qureshi's Conversion Story
00:19:18
Speaker
And then afterward, this Muslim and I continued to talk, but especially talked with another one member in a group whose name is David Wood. You may have heard of David Wood. And anyway,
00:19:28
Speaker
Sooner or later, this guy became a Christian and he ended up getting into full-time Christian ministry and writing some best-selling books. His name's Nabeel Qureshi. So, you know, apologetics has some really good things. The evidence for the resurrection is very good. It's persuasive to many people. I'm a Christian today. I remain a Christian because the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is quite strong.
00:19:53
Speaker
Mike, thank you so much for your time and for your wisdom and for your stories. As ever, I feel like we could carry on. I'd love to hear more about how the law has been powerfully setting up these conversations for you. Thanks so, so much for joining us, Mike. Thank you to you, Andy Bannister, too, and to our wonderful listeners as ever. This is all we have time for in today's episode of PepTalk, but we'll be back in a couple of weeks' time with our next guest. Thanks so much for tuning in and see you soon. Bye. Bye.