This is a special bonus post in my Comparing Religions series…\u00a0 I originally wrote it as a section of the post about evidence of fraud, but it seemed to work better thematically as its own post.<\/p>\n
Unfulfilled Prophecies<\/strong><\/p>\n Another point worth considering is the question of false prophecies, that fail to come true on schedule.\u00a0 As the Book of Deuteronomy\u00a0indicates<\/a>, these are one possible sign of a false prophet:<\/p>\n You may say to yourselves, \u201cHow can we know when a message has not been spoken by the\u00a0Lord?\u201d<\/p>\n If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the\u00a0Lord\u00a0does not take place or come true,\u00a0that is a message the\u00a0Lord\u00a0has not spoken.\u00a0That prophet has spoken presumptuously,\u00a0so do not be alarmed.\u00a0 (18:21-22)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n As an example, the Watchtower Society is particularly notorious for a\u00a0history of making false predictions<\/a>\u00a0and then creatively reinterpreting them.\u00a0 For example they claimed Jesus would return to Earth in 1914, and then when that failed to occur decided that that date was when he started reigning “invisibly”, a serious anticlimax.<\/p>\n It would be tedious, and require an entire dissertation, to enumerate all of the examples of failed prophecy among various cults.\u00a0 (To be truly complete I ought to try to examine at least the major religions, but this post will be mainly Christianity-centered.)<\/p>\n (Incidentially, “prophecy” is a much broader concept than predicting the future\u2014a prophet is anyone with a message from God (or one of the gods, in polytheistic religions); and such messages can concern the past or present just as often as predicting the future.\u00a0 The questions “What is God like?”<\/em> and “How should people behave?”<\/em> are central to how prophecy is conceived in Abrahamic religions.\u00a0 So the colloquial definition of prophecy, as “predicting the future” is far too narrow to describe prophecy as classically conceived.\u00a0 Neverthless, prophecy in the Bible certainly does also<\/em> contain numerous predictions\u00a0about the future, and that is the concern of this post.)<\/p>\n Prophecy and Evidence<\/strong><\/p>\n Obviously, if a prophecy comes true in a verifiable manner, that counts as (some) evidence for the religion in question.\u00a0 (How much evidence, depends on a variety of factors, including (1) how certain it is that the prophecy was written down<\/a> before the events it predicted, (2) how unlikely the event was to occur naturally<\/a>, and (3) the degree to which the new prophecy is consistent with<\/a> previous revelations<\/a>, etc.)<\/p>\n Conversely, if a prophecy has not come to pass, this could count as evidence against the religion.\u00a0 It is however important to make a distinction between an unfulfilled<\/em> prophecy, and a falsified<\/em> prophecy.<\/p>\n An unfulfilled prophecy is one that simply has not happened yet<\/em>.\u00a0 For example, the claim of all Abrahamic religions that God will raise every human being from the dead at the Final Judgement has not been fulfilled yet.\u00a0 However, the fact that this has not happened yet does not mean it is not going to!\u00a0 After all, events in the future are not (apart from the prophecy itself) observable in the present.\u00a0 (Of course, the universal resurrection of the dead is quite impossible in a Naturalistic worldview, but here we are discussing religious worldviews in which God exists, and has the power to do miracles.)<\/p>\n Thus, an unfulfilled prophecy does not necessarily provide much evidence or or against a religion, unless there is good reason to think it should already have happened, or that it is impossible for it to occur.<\/p>\n (In Bayesian terms<\/a>, if a prophecy being fulfilled counts as evidence for a religion, a prophecy not being fulfilled always counts as some<\/em> evidence against the religion, so long as there is a nonzero chance that the prophecy could<\/em> have already been fulfilled by now.\u00a0 But under favorable circumstances, for example when the prophecy is plausibly about the distant future, the amount of disconfirmation can be quite small.)<\/p>\n On the other hand, a falsified<\/em> prophecy is one that is definitely not going to occur.\u00a0 (At least, absent some major reinterpretation of what it means.\u00a0 Such reinterpretation is often a logically possibility, but one that must be paid for<\/em> evidentially if the new interpretation is implausible.\u00a0 One should be especially suspicious when the prophet himself engages in creative reinterpretation, since there are obvious self-justifying motivations there.\u00a0 Especially if the prophet tried to convince people to take it literally before<\/em> the events were falsified, and only spins the prophecy after people start complaining it didn’t happen.)<\/p>\n The most common reason for a prophecy to be falsified is if the prophet placed some date or time constraint on the prophecy.\u00a0 If the date comes to pass, and the event didn’t occur, and if there is no valid excuse<\/a> for God to pull a fast one and change his plan<\/a>, then whoops it looks like you’ve been following a false prophet!\u00a0 Time to repent and find a better religious guide.\u00a0 On the other hand, a merely unfulfilled prophecy is perfectly compatible with the truth of a religion.<\/p>\n Swords to Plowshares<\/strong><\/p>\n All of this makes it sound like prophecy exists solely for purposes of apologetic arguments.\u00a0 From this perspective, a not-yet fulfilled prophecy is a wash, and may seem irrelevant.<\/p>\n This is a misconception.\u00a0 Just because a prophecy is unfulfilled, doesn’t mean it isn’t important to the present.\u00a0 In fact, if it weren’t<\/em>\u00a0spiritually relevant in some way to the time period before the fulfillment, there would be no point in God revealing it.\u00a0 For example, when Isaiah says\u00a0that:<\/p>\n [The Lord]\u00a0will judge between the nations it is immediately obvious that this prophecy (universal peace) has not yet come true.\u00a0 But that is not the only thing going on in the mind of a reader.\u00a0 We are also struck by the thought that it ought<\/em> to be true.\u00a0 The goal is accepted as valid by the heart, even before the mind rejects it as a fact.<\/p>\n Ending war is precisely the sort of thing that a benevolent God should<\/em> do.\u00a0 And if he has not done it yet, it still tells us something about God that he has promised to do it.\u00a0 And it tells us something about the human race, that we instinctively accept it as an ideal, even as we fall so far short of the reality.\u00a0 This is why the prophet goes on to say:<\/p>\n “Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD.”\u00a0\u00a0(2:5<\/a>)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, the belief in future universal peace can inspire us to be peacemakers in a more limited way today.\u00a0 Even though it will take an act of God to make the reality of peace universal, taking it as the ideal still influences how we see the world of today.\u00a0 (Indeed, it is probably not be an exaggeration to say that the modern international ideal of working towards “world peace” would probably not exist if the Hebrew prophets had never spoken.\u00a0 This ethical imperative still inspires us as moderns, even if many have forgotten its source.)<\/p>\n The Second Coming<\/strong><\/p>\n With this in mind, let us consider Jesus’ own claims about his Second Coming, since this is one of the few skeptical objections\u00a0specific to Christianity<\/em>\u00a0which is worth taking seriously.<\/p>\n The ministry of Jesus intersects prophecy along multiple axes.\u00a0 For example, there is a conversation to be had about the many ways in which Jesus’ ministry fulfilled the prophecies in the Hebrew Bible.\u00a0 This was the topic of some<\/a> previous<\/a> posts.<\/p>\n But Jesus also made some predictions about the future, and the most important one has to do with his return to Earth to judge the world (and to usher in the universal peace between nations we’ve just been discussing!)\u00a0 This is called the Second Coming.<\/p>\n For those less familiar with Christian theology: it is important that this Second Coming does not<\/em> refer to some new incarnation as another human person born subsequent to Jesus Christ.\u00a0 It refers to Jesus himself<\/em> returning to Earth with the same<\/em>\u00a0human flesh that was born of a Jewish girl, nailed to a cross, and which is now immortal and glorified\u2014but still fully human!\u2014in the immediate presence of God.\u00a0 (Whatever that means… Christians do not believe that God the Father literally has a body, so the sense of “presence” here is some mode<\/a>\u00a0other<\/em> than spatial location.\u00a0 In the Lord’s Prayer, “Heaven” is identified as the place where God’s will is perfectly done.)<\/p>\n As it says in Psalm 110, in a verse quoted by the New Testament many times:<\/p>\n The\u00a0LORD says\u00a0to my lord: In Christian interpretation, this passage means: God says to the Messiah, ascend to where I am and rule from there, until some future time when I will make all of your enemies submit to you.\u00a0 This logically implies, that there will be a period of time after Christ ascends to Heaven, but before everyone recognizes him as their Lord.<\/p>\n Jesus on the Timing<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Now obviously, if Jesus really talked about his coming back after an absence, this indicates that he saw at least\u00a0some<\/em>\u00a0chronological gap between his present ministry and that future date.\u00a0 The Gospels also portray Jesus as foreseeing his own humiliation and death.\u00a0 This indicates that he had a far better grasp on reality than the typical first-century Messianic claimant, who expected to overthrow the Romans and set up an earthly kingdom in Judea, along the lines of the\u00a0Maccabean revolt<\/a>\u00a0which took place a couple centuries before.<\/p>\n But it is sometimes claimed (especially by certain biblical scholars) that Jesus made a point of predicting that his return would be\u00a0soon<\/em>, within a single generation; and that when this failed to occur the Church retrospectively changed their understanding.\u00a0 This is a serious accusation, and if true would significantly affect the New Testament’s credibility.\u00a0 It is true that there are a few passages in the Gospels which can be interpreted as making such predictions.\u00a0 But this interpretation is not simple, seeing as there are also a great many passages indicating the opposite.<\/p>\n In fact, in most of his parables about the subject, Jesus usually implies that the Bridegroom’s or Master’s return will take\u00a0a long time<\/em>, and that many people will get tired of waiting.\u00a0 Again and again, he makes a point of saying that the timing will be a surprise:<\/p>\n \u201cTherefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.\u00a0 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming,\u00a0he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into.\u00a0 So you also must be ready,\u00a0because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.\u201d\u00a0 (Matt 24:42<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n and that not even\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0could predict the date:<\/p>\n \u201cBut about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0(Mark 13:32<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A More Problematic Passage<\/strong><\/p>\n But what about the passage in which Jesus says:<\/p>\n \u201cTruly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.\u201d (Matt 24:34<\/a>)\u00a0?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In his essay \u201cThe World\u2019s Last Night\u201d,\u00a0C.S. Lewis interpreted this as a rare example of Jesus being in error, writing that:<\/p>\n It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n but he suggests it is nevertheless compatible with Christian theology because:<\/p>\n The one exhibition of error and the one confession of ignorance [i.e. Mark 13:32]<\/em> grow side by side.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n However I do not accept St. Lewis’ interpretation as a valid solution to this problem.\u00a0 Yes, Jesus did confess ignorance (at least with respect to his\u00a0human knowledge<\/a>), but the appropriate response to ignorance is to remain silent, not to make a bold and possibly erroneous prediction!<\/p>\n It is true that in orthodox\u00a0Chalcedonian theology<\/a>, Christ is regarded as being fully human as well as fully divine.\u00a0 His human nature was just like ours in every way but sin.\u00a0 And ignorance is not the same thing as sin.\u00a0 Thus, even though Christ was God and therefore knew everything with respect to his divine omniscience, it does not follow that he knew every fact according to human modes of knowledge<\/em>.\u00a0 (Presumably an infinite number of facts can’t fit into an ordinary human brain, at least in this life, even if that human brain is fully united with the divine Logos<\/a>.)\u00a0 Anyway, St. Luke tells us quite explicitly that Jesus “grew in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52<\/a>) as a child, and growth in wisdom implies learning.<\/p>\n However, none of this leads me to think that Christ could have made a major blunder of theology with respect to his public teaching.\u00a0 After all, Christ’s words were guided by the Holy Spirit, even more so than in the case of an ordinary prophet, seeing as he was filled with the Spirit “without measure” (John 3:34<\/a>).\u00a0 Christ’s teachings in the New Testament have spiritual authority; and thus it would be a major, major problem for Christianity if Jesus had given an untrue prophecy, especially about such a central point.<\/p>\n My Preferred Explanation<\/strong><\/p>\n I would rather explain this passage with reference to its full context.\u00a0 \u00a0All of the verses just quoted are contained within a discourse called the\u00a0Olivet Discourse<\/a>, which begins with a question asked by the disciples on the\u00a0Tuesday<\/a>\u00a0before the Crucifixion.\u00a0 There are three different versions of this speech in different gospels.\u00a0 Notably, in St. Matthew’s version<\/a>, the disciples’ question has two parts (numbers and brackets mine):<\/p>\n Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings.\u00a0 \u201cDo you see all these things?\u201d\u00a0he asked.\u00a0\u201cTruly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another;\u00a0every one will be thrown down.\u201d<\/p>\n As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives,\u00a0the disciples came to him privately. \u201cTell us,\u201d they said,<\/p>\n (1)<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cwhen will this happen, [i.e. the Destruction of the Temple]<\/em><\/p>\n (2)<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0and what will be the sign of your coming\u00a0and of the end of the age?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It can be seen that these are two separate questions, and that (whatever the disciples might have thought when they asked them) the correct chronological answers two these two questions are also quite different.<\/p>\n Regarding (1)<\/strong>, the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 by the Romans, which is indeed within one generation (the Jews conventionally reckoned a generation as being 40 years long, and Jesus died around 30-33 AD).\u00a0 So this part of the prophecy is actually a spectacular success.<\/p>\n (Many of Jesus’ subsequent predictions also seem to have come true: that Christians would go on to be persecuted, that the Gospel would be preached to all nations, that many false prophets would arise, and that “wars and rumors of wars” would go on during all this time, as they always do.\u00a0 However, the emphasis of this part of the speech is more about Jesus forewarning the disciples about the problems they will face, rather than gratifying the disciples’ curiosity about the exact shape of future history.)<\/p>\n Regarding (2)<\/strong>, Jesus has not yet returned, so there’s been a delay of at least 1988 years, as of the time of this blog post.<\/p>\n And we can give up any idea of an “invisible” coming, or coming in an obscured way as some other historical person, seeing as Jesus is pretty explicit that his Second Coming will be totally obvious to everyone when it finally happens:<\/p>\n \u201cAt that time if anyone says to you, \u2018Look, here is the Messiah!\u2019 or, \u2018There he is!\u2019 do not believe it.\u00a0 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders\u00a0to deceive, if possible, even the elect.\u00a0 See, I have told you ahead of time.<\/p>\n So if anyone tells you, \u2018There he is, out in the wilderness,\u2019 do not go out; or, \u2018Here he is, in the inner rooms,\u2019 do not believe it.\u00a0 For as lightning\u00a0that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming\u00a0of the Son of Man.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So to fully answer both of the disciples’ questions, Jesus needs to provide two different chronological answers, and in fact Jesus gives both correct answers<\/em>\u2014the answer to\u00a0(1)\u00a0<\/strong>is “this generation shall certainly not pass away”, while the answer to\u00a0(2)\u00a0<\/strong>is that nobody has any clue when it will happen, not even the Son himself!\u00a0 Unless we interpret these as two separate answers, it is difficult to read the text as even being consistent with itself<\/em>, let alone history.<\/p>\n Indeed, the account in Luke’s Gospel does seem to anticipate a chronological gap between\u00a0(1)<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0(2)<\/strong><\/strong>,\u00a0with a pivot at the verse which says:<\/p>\n Jerusalem will be trampled\u00a0on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n which seems to suggest an unknown interval of time, and which separates the predictions related to the Destruction of the Temple from the predictions related to the End Times (although not from the sayings about timing).<\/p>\n It is true that the chronological answers to\u00a0\u00a0(1)<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0(2)<\/strong> are not clearly organized in the Gospels as we have them.\u00a0 The\u00a0Synoptic Gospels were most likely written before the Destruction of the Temple (arguments to the contrary tend to be based on the Methodologically Naturalist\u00a0assumption<\/em> that predictive prophecy is impossible).<\/p>\n Jesus himself may have been grouping the two events thematically, as two examples of Tribulation\/Judgement.\u00a0 Not unlike how the prophet Isaiah likes to talks about the Resurrection and the Return from Exile in conjunction with each other.\u00a0 Both are showing history more from God’s perspective, rather than from a human perspective.\u00a0 (We already knew what the human perspective looks like!)<\/p>\n It seems probable that the disciples themselves were confused by this, and did not clearly distinguish Jesus’ words about timing with respect to their proper referents.\u00a0 The fact that the Church preserved four different accounts of Jesus’ life, in which the wordings of the same sayings are often slightly different, acknowledges the reality that Jesus is a historical figure and that our knowledge of his life is mediated through human witnesses.\u00a0 Human witnesses often do not recall the exact<\/em> words that somebody spoke, but rather the gist of what was said.<\/p>\n (This does not, I think, contradict any Christian doctrines about divine inspiration<\/a> of the Gospels.\u00a0 The Christian version of inspiration is that the Holy Spirit guided the writing process so as to reveal the truths he wanted to reveal; and that every single part of the Bible is, in this sense, the word of God; and thus authoritative and Christ-revealing.\u00a0 It does\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0mean that all the truths in Scripture are always exposited in an equally clear and manifest fashion, without obscurity.\u00a0 Nor does it mean that the documents are in no way<\/em> limited by the human perspectives of their authors, or somehow not subject to the vicissitudes of the textual\u00a0copying process<\/a>.\u00a0 The Bible is divine words and human words at the same time, and neither authorship negates the other.\u00a0 This means that the Bible is not always the book that Fundamentalists want it to be.\u00a0 But I very much doubt that having that<\/em> book would have been good for us!)<\/p>\n Another Verse<\/strong><\/p>\n As for the similar sounding verse in Mark 9:1<\/a>:<\/p>\n And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I would interpret this verse as referring, not<\/em> to the Second Coming (nor to the Transfiguration<\/a> which immediately follows, as the guy who divided up the Bible into chapters<\/a> apparently thought) but rather to Jesus’ Resurrection and the inauguration of the Church, which was indeed the establishment of God’s kingdom in Christian theology.<\/p>\n Jesus overcoming human sin and death, appearing to chosen witnesses, and sending the Holy Spirit to soften human hearts, does not seem like\u00a0quite<\/em> as much of an inconsequential anti-climax as a hypothetical coming in 1914 that didn’t seem to change anything for anyone.\u00a0 But then I would say that as a Christian, wouldn’t I?<\/p>\n Weighing Evidence<\/strong><\/p>\n Since this is a series about comparing evidence for different religions, the question must be raised: to what extent should these sorts of rationalizations count as plausible explanations to skeptics, or for those in non-Christian traditions?<\/p>\n Here, I think it is important to get over the idea that a problem in biblical theology must\u00a0either<\/em> be a killing blow which refutes the religion entirely; or else<\/em>\u00a0it is no big deal and can be safely ignored after one accepts a pat explanation.\u00a0 It is possible for an apparent theological discrepancy to provide some\u00a0mild<\/em>\u00a0evidence against a religion, if there are plausible-sounding explanations, but those explanations also seem a bit contrived in other respects.\u00a0 To determine how significant the problem is, one would then need to consider the rest of the cumulative case for the religion.<\/p>\n So it is perfectly possible for me to admit that some verses of the Bible provide some evidence against Christian doctrines, without immediately throwing the whole system overboard.\u00a0 Instead one has to accept some things on the credit of the system as a whole.\u00a0 I hope I am showing the same courtesy to the non-Christian religions, by not over-emphasizing isolated difficulties, but instead trying to assess what seem to be the key issues.<\/p>\n It would be quite astonishing if there were\u00a0no<\/em>\u00a0difficulties to get over in the interpretation of any text which is thousands of years old, and which purports to reveal the intrusion of something from outside the spacetime continuum.\u00a0 If there were no\u00a0difficulties, that would\u00a0itself<\/em>\u00a0be a difficulty, since it would be the mark of a human-made religion with no sharp corners or untidy edges.\u00a0 (Quantum mechanics is weird, why shouldn’t theology be too?)<\/p>\n Descent of the Spirit<\/strong><\/p>\n OK, somebody might say, but even if you can get over the fact of Jesus’ own predictions, it’s still<\/em> true that he didn’t fulfill all of the Messianic prophecies, or any of them in the particular way that the Jews were expecting.\u00a0 The Jews expected the Messiah to set up an earthly kingdom.\u00a0 Jesus didn’t.\u00a0 Even if you can get over the comments about “this generation”, isn’t this still an ad hoc<\/em> attempt to get over the embarrassing problem that Jesus never fulfilled half the stuff he was supposed to do?\u00a0 The swords were never all beaten into plowshares, and it doesn’t look like our nuclear missiles are going to be reforged into tractors anytime soon either!<\/p>\n I agree that this delay may seem strange to a person who is not themselves<\/em> caught up into the story of Jesus.\u00a0 \u00a0But I do not think it is so arbitrary as it might seem at first.\u00a0 Even in the period between Jesus’ Resurrection and his Ascension to Heaven, it was still hard for the disciples to give up the idea of an immediate earthly kingdom:<\/p>\n After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them\u00a0over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.<\/p>\n On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command:\u00a0\u201cDo not leave Jerusalem, but wait\u00a0for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.\u00a0 For John baptized with\u00a0water,\u00a0but in a few days you will be baptized with\u00a0the Holy Spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nand will settle disputes for many peoples.
\nThey will beat their swords into plowshares
\nand their spears into pruning hooks.
\nNation will not take up sword against nation,
\nnor will they train for war anymore.\u00a0 (2:4<\/a>)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n\u201cSit at my right hand
\nuntil I make your enemies
\na footstool for your feet.\u201d\u00a0(Psalm 110:1<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n