Granted, as we look back through history, we don't see obvious signs of delusion in Jesus. But what about people who were directly interacting with him? What did they see from their much closer vantage point? "Some people who were on the scene in the first century would vehemently disagree with you," I pointed out to Collins. "They did conclude that Jesus was crazy. John 10,:20 tells us that many Jews thought he was 'demon-possessed and raving mad.' Those are strong words!" "Yes, but that's hardly a diagnosis by a trained mental health professional," Collins countered. "Look at what prompted those wordsJesus' moving and profound teaching about being the Good Shepherd. They were reacting because his assertions about himself were so far beyond their understanding of the norm, not because Jesus was truly mentally unbalanced. And notice that their comments were immediately challenged by others, who said in verse 21, 'These are not the sayings of a man possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?'" "Why is that significant?" I asked. "Because Jesus wasn't just making outrageous claims about himself. He was backing them up with miraculous acts of compassion, like healing the blind. You see, if I claimed to be the president of the United States, that would be crazy. You'd look at me and see none of the trappings of the office of president. I wouldn't look like the president. People wouldn't accept my authority as president. No Secret Service agents would be guarding me. But if the real president claimed to be president, that wouldn't be crazy, because he is president and there would be plenty of confirming evidence of that. In an analogous way, Jesus didn't just claim to be God-he backed it up with amazing feats of healing, with astounding demonstrations of power over nature, with transcendent and unprecedented teaching, with divine insights into people, and ultimately with his own resurrection from the dead, which absolutely nobody else has been able to duplicate. So when Jesus claimed to be God, it wasn't crazy. It was the truth." However, Collins' appeal to Jesus' miracles opened the door to other objections. "Some people have tried to shoot down these miracles that supposedly help authenticate Jesus' claim to being the Son of God," I said, pulling out a book from my briefcase. I read him the words of skeptic Charles Templeton. Many illnesses, then as now, were psychosomatic, and could be "cured" when the sufferer's perception changed. Just as today a placebo prescribed by a physician in whom the patient has faith can effect an apparent cure, so, in an early time, faith in the healer could banish adverse symptoms. With each success the healer's reputation would grow and his powers would, as a consequence, become more efficacious. "Does this," I demanded, "explain away the miracles that supposedly back up Jesus' claim to being the Son of God?" Collins' reaction surprised me. "I wouldn't have a whole lot of disagreement with what Templeton wrote," Collins replied. "You wouldn't?" "Not really. Might Jesus have sometimes healed by suggestion? I have no problem with that. Sometimes people can have a psychologically induced illness, and if they get a new purpose for living, a new direction, they don't need the illness anymore. The placebo effect? If you think you're going to get better, you often do get better. That's a well-established medical fact. And when people came to Jesus, they believed he could heal them, so he did. But the fact remains: regardless of how he did it, Jesus did heal them. Of course," he quickly added, "that doesn't explain all of Jesus' healings. Often a psychosomatic healing takes time; Jesus' healings were spontaneous. Many times people who are healed psychologically have their symptoms return a few days later, but we don't see any evidence of this. And Jesus healed conditions like lifelong blindness and leprosy, for which a psychosomatic explanation isn't very likely. On top of that, he brought people back from the dead-and death is not a psychologically induced state! Plus you have all of his nature miracles-the calming of the sea, turning water into wine. They defy naturalistic answers." Well ... maybe. However, Collins' mention of the miracle of turning water into wine brought up another possible explanation of Jesus' amazing feats.
Have you ever seen a stage hypnotist give water to someone they've put in a trance and then suggest to them that they were drinking wine? They smack their lips, they get giddy, they start feeling intoxicated, just as if they were swigging a cheap Bordeaux. British author Ian Wilson has raised the question of whether this is how Jesus convinced the wedding guests at Cana that he had transformed jugs of water into the finest fermented libation. In fact, Wilson discusses the possibility that Jesus may have been a master hypnotist, which could explain the supposedly supernatural aspects of his life. For instance, hypnosis could account for his exorcisms; his transfiguration, during which three of his followers saw his face glow and his garments shine as white as light; and even his healings. As evidence, Wilson cites the modern example of a sixteen-yearold boy whose serious skin disorder was inexplicably healed through hypnotic suggestion. Perhaps Lazarus wasn't really brought back from the dead. Couldn't he have been in a deathlike trance that had been induced by hypnosis? As for the Resurrection, Jesus "could have effectively conditioned [the disciples] to hallucinate his appearances in response to certain pre-arranged cues (the breaking of bread?) for a predetermined period after his death," Wilson speculated . This would even explain the enigmatic reference in the gospels to Jesus' inability to perform many miracles in his hometown of Nazareth. Said Wilson, Jesus failed precisely where as a hypnotist we would most expect him to fail, among those who knew him best, those who had seen him grow up as an ordinary child. Largely responsible for any hypnotist's success rate are the awe and mystery with which he surrounds himself, and these essential factors would have been entirely lacking in Jesus' home town . "You have to admit," I said to Collins, "that this is a rather interesting way of trying to explain away Jesus' miracles." There was a look of incredulity on his face. "This guy has a whole lot more faith in hypnosis than I do!" he exclaimed. "While it's a clever argument, it just doesn't stand up to analysis. It's full of holes." One by one, Collins began to enumerate them. "First, there's the problem of a whole bunch of people being hypnotized. Not everybody is equally susceptible. Stage hypnotists will talk in a certain soothing tone of voice to the audience and watch for people who seem to be responding, and then they'll pick these people as their volunteers, because they're readily susceptible to hypnosis. In a big group many people are resistant. When Jesus multiplied the bread and fish, there were five thousand witnesses. How could he have hypnotized them all? Second, hypnosis doesn't generally work on people who are skept'ics and doubters. So how did Jesus hypnotize his brother James, who doubted him but later saw the resurrected Christ? How did he hypnotize Saul of Tarsus, the opponent of Christianity who never even met Jesus until he saw him after his resurrection? How did he hypnotize Thomas, who was so skeptical he wouldn't believe in the Resurrection until he put his fingers in the nail holes in Jesus' hands? Third, concerning the Resurrection, hypnosis wouldn't explain the empty tomb." I jumped in. "I suppose someone could claim that the disciples had been hypnotized to imagine the tomb was empty," I offered. "Even if that were possible," Collins replied, "Jesus certainly couldn't have hypnotized the Pharisees and Roman authorities, and they would have gladly produced his body if it had remained in the tomb. The fact that they didn't tells us the tomb was really empty. Fourth, look at the miracle of turning water into wine. Jesus never addressed the wedding guests. He didn't even suggest to the servants that the water had been turned into wine-he merely told them to take some water to the master of the banquet. He's the one who tasted it and said it was wine, with no prior prompting. Fifth, the skin healing that Wilson talks about wasn't spontaneous, was it?" "Actually," I said, "the British Medical journal says it took five days after the hypnosis for the reptilian skin, called ichthyosis, to fall off the teenager's left arm, and several more days for the skin to appear normal. The hypnotic success rate for dealing with other parts of his body over a period of several weeks was 50 to 95 percent." "Compare that," Collins said, "with Jesus healing ten lepers in Luke 17. They were instantaneously healed-and 100 percent. That's not explainable merely by hypnosis. And neither is his healing of a man with a shriveled hand in Mark 3. Even if people were in a trance and merely thought his hand had been healed, eventually they would have found out the truth. Hypnosis doesn't last a real long time. And finally, the gospels record all sorts of details about what Jesus said and did, but never once do they portray him as saying or doing anything that would suggest he was hypnotizing people. I could go on and on." I laughed. "I told you it was an interesting explanation; I didn't say it was convincing!" I said. "Yet books are being written to advance these kinds of ideas." "It's just amazing to me," Collins replied, "how people will grasp at anything to try to disprove Jesus' miracles."
Before we finished our interview, I wanted to tap into Collins' psychological expertise in one more area that skeptics find troubling. "Jesus was an exorcist," I observed. "He talked to demons and cast them out of the people they supposedly possessed. But is it really rational to believe that evil spirits are responsible for some illnesses and bizarre behavior?" Collins wasn't disturbed by the question. "From my theological beliefs, I accept that demons exist," he replied. "We live in a society in which many people believe in angels. They know there are spiritual forces out there, and its not too hard to conclude that some might be malevolent. Where you see God working, sometimes those forces are more active, and thafs what was probably going on in the time of Jesus." I noticed Collins had referred to his theological beliefs and not his clinical experience. "Have you, as a psychologist, ever seen clear evidence of the demonic?" I asked. "I haven't personally, but then I haven't spent my whole career in clinical settings," he said. "My friends in clinical work have said that sometimes they have seen this, and these are not people who are inclined to see a demon behind every problem. They tend to be skeptical. The psychiatrist M. Scott Peck wrote a bit about this kind of thing in his book "People of the Lie." I pointed out that Ian Wilson, in suggesting that Jesus may have used hypnosis to cure people who only believed they were possessed, said dismissively that no "realistic individual" would explain a state of possession "as the work of real demons." "To some degree, you find what you set out to find," Collins said in response. "People who deny the existence of the supernatural will find some way, no matter how far-fetched, to explain a situation apart from the demonic. They'll keep giving medication, keep drugging the person, but he or she doesn't get better. There are cases that don't respond to normal medical or psychiatric treatment."