The Case For Christ

miracles - walking on water, raising the dead. These things,
they say, just don't happen. That's naturalism, which says that
for every effect in the natural or physical world, there is a
natural cause."
"Yeah, but isn't that the way people typically live their lives?"
I asked. "Are you saying we should be looking for supernatural
explanations behind everything that takes place?"
"Everyone would agree that you don't appeal to supernatural
causes if you don't have to," Boyd said. "But these scholars go
beyond that and say you don't ever have to. They operate under
the assumption that everything in history has happened according
to their own experiences, and since they've never seen the
supernatural, they assume miracles have never occurred in
history.
Here's what they do: they rule out the possibility of the
supernatural from the beginning, and then they say, 'Now bring
on the evidence about Jesus.' No wonder they get the results
they do!"
I wanted to turn the tables a bit. "All right, then how would you
proceed?" I asked.
"I would grant that you shouldn't appeal to the supernatural
until you have to. Yes, first look for a natural explanation. I
do that in my own life. A tree falls-OK, maybe there were
termites. Now, could an angel have pushed it over? Well, I
wouldn't go to that conclusion until there was definite evidence
for it.
So I grant that. But what I can't grant is the tremendous
presumption that we know enough about the universe to say that
God - if there is a God-can never break into our world in a
supernatural way- That's a very presumptuous assumption. That's
not a presumption based on history; now you're doing
metaphysics.
I think there should be a certain amount of humility in the
historical investigation to say, 'You know what? It is just
possible that Jesus Christ did rise from the dead. It's just
possible that his disciples actually saw what the gospels say
they saw.' And if there's no other way of accounting adequately
for the evidence, let's investigate that possibility.'
That, I think, is the only way to give the evidence a fair
hearing."