Fisher Manual of Christian Evidences Chapter 7

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I am leading a guided reading of the Manual of Christian Evidences by George Park Fisher. It is freely available online and will serve as a base for discussing Christian apologetics throughout this series. The chapters are short and readable. I encourage you to join in by reading the chapters and commenting with your thoughts. When I discuss the book, I will be citing page numbers from the edition linked above.

Chapter 7

Fisher argues in this chapter that the Pauline epistles point to the truth of the resurrection. Against the notion that Paul’s experience of Jesus were all visions, he notes that Paul himself distinguishes between a physical manifestation of Christ and visions he had (42-43). Paul’s testimony also helps exclude the notion that the disciples were all merely hallucinating, for Paul is acknowledged to have been antagonistic towards Christianity. Thus, it would be very difficult to come up with some reason for him to share the same hallucination the Disciples and others allegedly experienced on such a theory (44-45).

There is a lot packed into a short space here by Fisher. Another interesting element of his argument is that Paul helps set the framework for when and how many visions and appearances of Jesus occurred. That is, by noting the many appearances and to whom and when they occurred, Paul helps outline the times of the appearances. Importantly, this includes the appearances ending at a finite point in time. Fisher notes that this also goes against the hallucination theory, for there would then be no explanation for why the visions would just cease, and all at the same time (45).

The arguments Fisher provides here are the briefest forms of many important points, but that doesn’t discount the value of this chapter. It provides an excellent overview of how to look at the Pauline corpus with an eye for apologetics.

Links

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Apologetics Read-Through: Historical Apologetics Read-Along– Here are links for the collected posts in this series and other read-throughs of apologetics books (forthcoming).

Dead Apologists Society– A page for Christians interested in the works of historical apologetics. There is also a Facebook group for it.

SDG.

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