Ask Timothy McVeigh. He may have thought he committed the perfect crime by avoiding eyewitnesses, but he nevertheless landed on death row due to the circumstantial facts that pointed toward him as devastatingly as any firsthand witness could have. Having already considered the persuasive evidence for the empty tomb, and eyewitness accounts of the risen Jesus, now it was time for me to seek out any circumstantial evidence that might bolster the case for the Resurrection. I knew that if an event as extraordinary as the resurrection of Jesus had really occurred, history would be littered with indirect evidence backing it up. That quest took me once more to southern California, this time to the office of a professor who masterfully blends expertise in history, philosophy, and science.
J. P. Moreland's dark-gray hair, silvery mustache, and gold- rimmed glasses make him appear a little older than his fifty years. Yet he is brimming with energy. He spoke in animated and enthusiastic tones, frequently leaning forward in his swivel chair to emphasize his points, actually bouncing a bit at times, almost as if he were going to leap out and throttle me with his arguments. "I love this stuff," he exclaimed during one brief break-the only time during our conversation when he stated the obvious. Moreland's highly organized mind works so systematically, so logically, that he seems to effortlessly construct his case in complete sentences and whole paragraphs, without wasted words or extraneous thoughts, ready for proofreading and printing. When my tape recorder would stop, he would pause, give me time to slip in a new cassette, and then pick up exactly where he had left off, without missing a beat. While Moreland is a well-known philosopher (with a doctorate from the University of Southern California) and is comfortable navigating the conceptual worlds of Kant and Kierkegaard, he doesn't dwell exclusively in the abstract. His background in science (he has a chemistry degree from the University of Missouri) and mastery of history (as demonstrated by his excellent book Scaling the Secular City) anchor him in the everyday world and prevent him from floating into purely ethereal thinking. Moreland, who also has a master's degree in theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, currently is a professor at the Talbot School of Theology, where he teaches in the master's program in philosophy and ethics. His articles have been published in more than thirty professional journals, such as American Philosophical Quarterly, Metaphilosophy; and Philosophy and Phenomeological Research. He has written, coauthored, or edited a dozen books, including Christianity and the Nature of Science; Does God Exist? (a debate with Kai Nielsen); The Life and Death Debate; The Creation Hypothesis; Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality; Jesus under Fire; and Love Your God with All Your Mind. Sitting down with Moreland in his small but homey office, I already knew that circumstantial evidence is plural rather than singular. In other words, it's built brick by brick by brick until there's a sturdy foundation on which conclusions can be confidently based. So I began our interview with a point-blank challenge: "Can you give me five pieces of circumstantial evidence that convince you Jesus rose from the dead?" Moreland listened intently to my question. "Five examples?" he asked. "Five things that are not in dispute by anybody?" I nodded. With that Moreland pushed his chair back from his desk and launched into his first piece of evidence: the changed lives of the disciples and their willingness to die for their conviction that Jesus had risen from the dead.
"When Jesus was crucified," Moreland began, "his followers were discouraged and depressed. They no longer had confidence that Jesus had been sent by God, because they believed anyone crucified was accursed by God. They also had been taught that God would not let his Messiah suffer death. So they dispersed. The Jesus movement was all but stopped in its tracks. Then, after a short period of time, we see them abandoning their occupations, regathering, and committing themselves to spreading a very specific message-that Jesus Christ was the Messiah of God who died on a cross, returned to life, and was seen alive by them. And they were willing to spend the rest of their lives proclaiming this, without any payoff from a human point of view. It's not as though there were a mansion awaiting them on the Mediterranean. They faced a life of hardship. They often went without food, slept exposed to the elements, were ridiculed, beaten, imprisoned. And finally, most of them were executed in torturous ways. For what? For good intentions? No, because they were convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had seen Jesus Christ alive from the dead. What you can't explain is how this particular group of men came up with this particular belief without having had an experience of the resurrected Christ. There's no other adequate explanation." I interrupted with a "Yes, but . . ." objection. "Yes," I agreed, "they were willing to die for their beliefs. But," I added, "so have Muslims and Mormons and followers of Jim Jones and David Koresh. This may show that they were fanatical, but let's face it: it doesn't prove that what they believed is true." "Wait a minute-think carefully about the difference," Moreland insisted as he swiveled to face me head-on, planting both of his feet firmly on the floor. "Muslims might be willing to die for their belief that Allah revealed himself to Muhammad, but this revelation was not done in a publicly observable way. So they could be wrong about it. They may sincerely think it's true, but they can't know for a fact, because they didn't witness it themselves. "However, the apostles were willing to die for something they had seen with their own eyes and touched with their own hands. They were in a unique position not to just believe Jesus rose from the dead but to know for sure. And when you've got eleven credible people with no ulterior motives, with nothing to gain and a lot to lose, who all agree they observed something with their own eyes-now you've got some difficulty explaining that away." I smiled because I had been playing devil's advocate by raising my objection. Actually, I knew he was right. In fact, this critical distinction was pivotal in my own spiritual journey. It had been put to me this way: People will die for their religious beliefs if they sincerely believe they're true, but people won't die for their religious beliefs if they know their beliefs are false. While most people can only have faith that their beliefs are true, the disciples were in a position to know without a doubt whether or not Jesus had risen from the dead. They claimed that they saw him, talked with him, and ate with him. If they weren't absolutely certain, they wouldn't have allowed themselves to be tortured to death for proclaiming that the Resurrection had happened . "OK, I'm convinced on that one," I said. "But what else do you have?"
"Another piece of circumstantial evidence," Moreland went on, "is that there were hardened skeptics who didn't believe in Jesus before his crucifixion-and were to some degree dead-set against Christianity-who turned around and adopted the Christian faith after Jesus' death. There's no good reason for this apart from them having experienced the resurrected Christ." "You're obviously talking about James, the brother of Jesus, and Saul of Tarsus, who became the apostle Paul," I said. "But do you really have any credible evidence that James had been a skeptic of Jesus?" "Yes, I do," he said. "The gospels tell us Jesus' family, including James, were embarrassed by what he was claiming to be. They didn't believe in him; they confronted him. In ancient Judaism it was highly embarrassing for a rabbi's family not to accept him. Therefore the gospel writers would have no motive for fabricating this skepticism if it weren't true. "Later the historian Josephus tells us that James, the brother of Jesus, who was the leader of the Jerusalem church, was stoned to death because of his belief in his brother. Why did James's life change? Paul tells us: the resurrected Jesus appeared to him. There's no other explanation." Indeed, none jumped to mind. "And Saul?" I asked. "As a Pharisee, he hated anything that disrupted the traditions of the Jewish people. To him, this new countermovement called Christianity would have been the height of disloyalty. In fact, he worked out his frustration by executing Christians when he had a chance," Moreland replied. "Suddenly he doesn't just ease off Christians but joins their movement! How did this happen? Well, everyone agrees Paul wrote Galatians, and he tells us himself in that letter what caused him to take a 180-degree turn and become the chief proponent of the Christian faith. By his own pen he says he saw the risen Christ and heard Christ appoint him to be one of his followers." I was waiting for Moreland to make this point, so I could challenge him with an objection by Christianity critic Michael Martin. He said that if you count Paul's conversion as being evidence for the truth of the Resurrection, you should count Muhammad's conversion to Islam as being evidence for the truth that Jesus was not resurrected, since Muslims deny the Resurrection! "Basically, he says the evidential values of Paul's conversion and Muhammad's conversion cancel each other out," I told Moreland. "Frankly, that seems like a good point. Won't you admit that he's right?" Moreland didn't bite. "Let's take a look at Muhammad's conversion," he said with confidence in his voice. "No one knows anything about it. Muhammad claims he went into a cave and had a religious experience in which Allah revealed the Koran to him. There's no other eyewitness to verify this. Muhammad offered no publicly miraculous signs to certify anything. "And someone easily could have had ulterior motives in following Muhammad, because in the early years Islam was spread largely by warfare. Followers of Muhammad gained political influence and power over the villages that were conquered and 'converted' to Islam by the sword. "Contrast that with the claims of the early followers of Jesus, including Paul. They claimed to have seen public events that other people saw as well. These were things that happened outside their minds, not just in their minds. "Furthermore, when Paul wrote 2 Corinthians -which nobody disputes he did-he reminded the people in Corinth that he performed miracles when he was with them earlier. He'd certainly be foolish to make this statement if they knew he hadn't." "And your point?" I asked. "Remember," he said, "it's not the simple fact that Paul changed his views. You have to explain how he had this particular change of belief that completely went against his upbringing; how he saw the risen Christ in a public event that was witnessed by others, even though they didn't understand it; and how he performed miracles to back up his claim to being an apostle." "All right, all right," I said. "I see your point. And I'll admit, it's a good one." With that I gestured for him to go on to his next piece of evidence.
In order to explain his next category of circumstantial proof, Moreland had to provide some important background information