Trent sits down with John deRosa of the Classical Theism podcast to discuss how we can know Jesus was not a myth and how to defend Christ’s resurrection, including from a new objection Trent hasn’t previously addressed in his written works.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn: Hey, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in to The Counsel of Trent Podcast. I am your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker Trent Horn. Today, we’re going to be sharing a special interview with John DeRosa from the Classical Theism Podcast. John was asking me about my new book, Counterfeit Christs, and how to show the real Jesus to atheists who might think Jesus is a pagan myth, that he never existed, or who might have counterarguments to the resurrection that you haven’t heard before. So, very excited for this episode and to share it with you. But I also want to let you know that my new Trent Trax series on abortion is available at Shop.Catholic.com. It’s my one hour bootcamp called How to Win Any Abortion Debate. If you have a conversation about abortion on social media or with friends, especially with everything going on in the news, be sure to check that out online.
Trent Horn: If you are a silver member or higher for The Counsel of Trent Podcast, you get it for free with your membership. That’s available at TrentHornPodcast.com. Just scroll down and you’ll be able to find that if you are a silver member or higher. If not, consider becoming a silver member or higher at TrentHornPodcast.com, or you can get your copy at Shop.Catholic.com. Without further ado, here’s my interview with John DeRosa.
John DeRosa: Trent Horn, welcome back to the Classical Theism Podcast.
Trent Horn: Thanks for having me back, John. It’s always a treat to be here.
John DeRosa: You’ve got a new book since I’ve had you on the show. You are just pounding out the books, it’s incredible. What should readers expect from this new book, Counterfeit Christs, if they pick up a copy?
Trent Horn: What they should expect is a broad survey of the various misinterpretations and heresies related to the person of Jesus Christ. I wanted to write a book that would equip Catholics to defend the basic elements of the identity of Jesus Christ. That he existed, he’s fully man, fully divine, and that he rose from the dead, and that he established one Catholic church. So all of the important elements related to Jesus Christ, the person who is the foundation of our faith. And you can find that in Counterfeit Christs where I do that by going through all of the counterfeits or false views of Jesus people put forward from various other religious groups and non-religious groups.
John DeRosa: I love it. You cover a ton of topics, you survey a lot of different false Christs that people come up with. And here on our show today, we’re going to be talking about chapters four, five, and six, where you discuss counterfeits from atheists. That’s going to be our main topic, but I just want to encourage the listeners, check out the table of contents because Trent goes through a ton of different other Christian views. He goes through the view that Muslims hold about Jesus, tons of different things. He gives you great information for conversations, but let’s talk chapters four, five, and six, counterfeits from atheists. What did you hope to accomplish in writing those chapters?
Trent Horn: Well in these chapters, I wanted to address the view of Jesus that you find among committed atheists. So these are people that frequent atheist blogs or write books on atheism, or host atheist YouTube channels. That their arguments are more aggressive or more targeted towards Christians and de-converting them than you’re going to find among the average non-religious person. Most non-religious people don’t have as their goal to get Christians to stop being Christians. Many non-religious people will say they’re Christians in the sense that they’re a nice person like Jesus is a nice person.
Trent Horn: Rather, among atheists, you find people who argue that Jesus never existed. He’s a legendary myth based off of pagan gods, or that they put forward arguments as a kind of counter-apologetic to show Jesus did not rise from the dead. So, I wanted to address those arguments in this portion of the book.
John DeRosa: Well, I love that you address them, and it’s a big part of what we do on the show. We talk about three pillars of the Catholic Christian worldview, that the God of classical theism exists, that Jesus is our Lord and Messiah, and then that he founded the Catholic church. And what you say here deals directly with that second pillar, talking about Jesus, the authentic Christ that we believe in.
John DeRosa: And so I want to throw a bunch of objections at you, Trent, and just get some of the most important points to remember if we have a conversation with someone on this view. Because what I find is these internet skeptics and atheists can be very confident. They can be very bold, very dismissive of religious belief sometimes in tone. And if we have some facts and details at the ready, sometimes that can transform the conversation right away, at least that’s my hope. What do you think about that?
Trent Horn: No, I agree that many atheists take it for granted when they have conversations with Christians. I think many of them think that Christianity is an unintellectual or an anti-intellectual faith, because so many of the Christians that they encounter are simply not well formed in their faith. I know atheists who are really stopped in their tracks and sometimes they marvel when they speak to a Christian who has heard the arguments they put forward. Atheists have a lot of respect for Christians they talk to when a Christian says, “Oh yeah, I’ve read that atheist writer,” or, “I’ve seen those atheist videos or those debates, but here’s a reply to that argument. Have you thought about this?” Or, “I’ve also read this, but here’s my take on it.” To show them faith and reason are not contradictory, but that they go hand in hand with one another.
John DeRosa: I love it. I think that’s our calling here, to be well formed Catholics who are ready and can acknowledge, yeah, you know what? I’ve heard that objection, but here’s what we think. So without further ado, I’m just going to hit you with a few of these that you cover in these chapters, and we want to know. You have some of the best points. Your first chapter, or chapter four in this section, deals with mythicism or folks that say, “Jesus never really existed. He was just a myth.” What are some of the most important points to remember if we have a conversation with someone holding that view?
Trent Horn: The most important point to remember is that this question is not a serious one among academics. In his 2012 book, Did Jesus Exist?, Bart Ehrman says that the view that Jesus existed is held by virtually every expert on the planet. And Ehrman himself, he’s not Christian. He was a former fundamentalist Christian who then later became an agnostic. He teaches at UNC Chapel Hill, and he’s still one of the world’s leading experts on the New Testament documents. So even though he’s not Christian, he’s an expert on the Bible, and he wholeheartedly argues that Jesus did exist. There was a man named Jesus of Nazareth who lived during the reign of Pontius Pilate in Judea in the first century.
Trent Horn: So we need to put that forward and show that when atheists bring these arguments forward that Jesus never existed, they’re really, seriously going against the grain of not just Christian scholarship, but all scholarship. You can point out to them that you guys routinely make fun of Christians who deny the consensus among scientists on evolution or climate change. And you ridicule Christians for doing that, yet you’re going against the consensus among historians, including those who are not Christian. So in doing so, you should put the burden of proof on them.
Trent Horn: Ask them, “Look, how did Christianity get started if there was no Jesus?” And those who are not really well versed in history will say, “Oh, well it’s just a legend that developed over a long period of time.” And you can reply and say, “But that’s not the case because unlike other legendary founders of religions, we have documents that are written close to the lifetime of Jesus that attest that he did exist.”
Trent Horn: So you have, let’s take Romulus is a good example, Romulus and Remus. Romulus is the legendary semi-divine founder of the city of Rome. Claimed to have lived in the eighth century B.C., mid eighth century. But the first source we have about him comes from Quintus Fabius Pictor, who wrote 500 years later. The legends about Romulus or about Apollonius of Tyana, or these other semi-divine savior figure types, they’re written so further after the fact, it’s legend. It’s not reliable. But with Jesus, we have the gospels that attest to his historicity, that if you’re going to say they’re 100% mythical, I’d like to hear a good argument why.
Trent Horn: And second, we have the writings of Saint Paul. And Paul says in Galatians chapter one, he met Peter and the other apostles, and he met James, the brother of the Lord. And brother of course could mean cousin or half brother, but he met the followers and relatives of Jesus. So if there was no Jesus, who were these people? So that’s a point I think it’s important to press upon when you’re giving this argument. Make them bear the burden of proof to explain, why is your view Jesus did not exist, how does that explain the evidence of Christian and non-Christian historical records about Jesus? How does that explain it better than my view?
Trent Horn: My view is more parsimonious in that it’s just simpler. There was a Jesus, and he commanded and sent forth these apostles to go and found this new religion, this new church. It’s just simpler and it makes more sense. You seem more committed to the view Jesus did not exist because maybe that’s just one… I wouldn’t say this, but I think they maybe committed to the view because it’s a nice dig into Christianity that they’re already opposed to.
John DeRosa: It is a very nice dig, but you just gave us a very nice answer, Trent. I kind of like that. It’s almost like we’re doing a two step here. If you get this objection, Jesus never really existed, first step, remind that person, hey, just so you’re aware, this is not a serious position held among academics. And I love the analogy you draw because people are emotionally attached to those ideas like climate change and evolution. What would you say if you heard Christians and people questioning those? You might point to the consensus. Well, the consensus of historians is on our side.
John DeRosa: That’s the first step, and then the second step, you dig into that evidence. How did Christianity arise? Point to the gospels. Point to Saint Paul and ask them, “Hey, well what better explains this?” I love that, Trent. I think we’re going to use that in conversation if we get into a discussion with a mythicist. [crosstalk 00:09:47] But I got to throw something else at you. Yeah, that was awesome.
Trent Horn: Sure. Let me just add in, yeah, one more thing I want to add though is, don’t let them get away with saying, “Well, prove Jesus existed outside of the Bible.” And say, “But why? Why should I?” “Well, you can’t trust the Bible.” “Why not?” The reasons they give would undermine all of ancient history. Because they might say, “Well, it has miracles in it.” So does Tacitus, so does Herodotus. Most ancient historians describe the miraculous. Does that mean we have no idea what happened in ancient history? At the bare minimum, you could take the New Testament, strip out the reports of miracles, and get that Jesus was a man who preached the coming of the kingdom of God, was reported to have performed miracles at least. That he died by crucifixion and his followers believed he rose from the dead.
Trent Horn: Those are all non-miraculous facts that even atheistic scholars admit to, but I believe that the Christian gospel, the full revelation of God, explains them. In that what Christians describe happening to Jesus, like his resurrection, really did happen. They might also say, “Well, the Bible is biased.” [crosstalk 00:10:52]
John DeRosa: Oh, I was just going to hit you with that. I was going to say, they’re going to say two things. They’re going to say one, what you just said, prove Jesus outside of the Bible because of miracles. And the other thing is, well, those aren’t… it’s not a neutral source because the writers are biased. That’s awesome, yeah, go for that.
Trent Horn: But nobody is completely objective. In the ancient world, most ancient historians wrote at the leisure of the courts that they served. So the Jewish historian Josephus was a Jewish revolutionary fighter who was adopted essentially by the Flavian court. So his writing does have bias in it, he has a very… he has a pro-Roman and a pro-Jewish bias to the point of overlooking some historical flaws in Judaism related, you know, he makes the claim that the Old Testament, there’s no variations in it whatsoever. Even though there are manuscript variations. All ancient historians have bias, everybody has a bias. The question is, what are the root facts in their document? If you throw away stuff because it’s biased, you couldn’t do any history at all.
John DeRosa: I love it. Folks, this is the kind of information you’re going to get when you listen to Trent Horn and when you pick up a copy of Counterfeit Christs. You’re going to be ready to tackle these objections in conversation. Let’s go to another one, Trent, because after that discussion, they may say, “Okay, maybe Jesus existed.” But then they’ll claim he was kind of just a rip off of gods of other religions. Going off that myth theory, they’ll say, “There were so many pagan gods who were resurrected from the dead and did miracles, and so forth. Like you just said, a lot of ancient writers mentioned miracles. Jesus was just another story like these.” What are some important points to remember if that point comes up in conversation?
Trent Horn: Well first, what I would say is I would ask the person, how do you know that’s true? How do you know that other ancient gods did the exact same things that Jesus did, or near the exact same thing, and that the story of Jesus was borrowed from them? Most of the time, they’ll be parroting claims they heard from other atheists. They won’t have actually done the original research for themselves, which of course atheists would eviscerate Christians for doing the same thing. For just parroting other Christians instead of actually going back to the documents to read it for themselves.
Trent Horn: So the first thing that I might do is, you can point out that these parallels don’t exist. You can say, “Okay, so are you saying Jesus, the story of Jesus, is just like the story of those other pagan deities? How do you know what these other deities, like Horus or Mithra, or Osiris or Dionysus did? How do you know that one, these pagan deities actually did these things? Most of them are made up. You can search online, there’s a whole review of the movie Zeitgeist, which a lot of these arguments comes from the documentary Zeitgeist. And that review is written by an atheist showing it’s inaccurate, and I cover a lot of it in my book.
Trent Horn: So for example, Zeitgeist borrowing from the amateur Egyptologist, Gerald Massey, says that the Egyptian god Horus had 12 disciples, was baptized by Anup. Then Anup was later beheaded, and all these details that mirror the New Testament. But that’s just not true, it’s not in the Egyptian historical records, it’s just… it’s false. Another example might be Kersey Graves. A lot of these outlandishly false details come from an 1876 book called The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors. And in there, Kersey Graves is the author. He writes saying things like Attis of Phrygia was crucified and rose from the dead, even though that absolutely did not happen.
Trent Horn: There are names of gods in there that never existed in the ancient world. In fact, on the atheist website infidels.org, they say, “Do not trust Kersey Graves’ work. We have it here as a historical curiosity.” But some atheists, many atheists who put forward the pagan myth theory do, and they do so at their peril. Second, what I would show is that the parallels that do exist are so strained, they’re in the words of Samuel Sandmel, parallelomania. There’s no copying going on here. Here’s a few examples. First, some people say that the Roman god Mithra was born of a virgin like Jesus, but he wasn’t. He emerged fully grown from a rock. Or, people will say that the Greek god Dionysus turned water into wine just like Jesus. That’s not what happened.
Trent Horn: In the stories of Dionysus, either someone leaves water at a Dionysian temple that becomes wine, usually through trickery. Or, when Dionysus does it, he turns, he makes water… sorry, he makes water taste… he makes wine taste like water in a lake. So he makes a lake turn into wine that tastes like water, so he can get a water nymph drunk and rape her. And that’s completely different from Jesus at the wedding of Cana, who takes water and turns it into superior tasting wine. So the only thing in common in the stories is the wine, but that’s it. So it’s a stretched difference there.
Trent Horn: The final two points I would bring up would be, number one, that even when there are parallels, how do you know it’s the Christians doing the borrowing? The stories about the Roman god Mithra or Apollonius of Tyana were written hundreds of years after the time of Jesus. So if there’s borrowing, it’s people taking from Christianity. And then finally, the biggest point I would point out is even if there were similar stories, you have to remember the first Christians were Jews, fiercely monotheistic Jews who hated paganism. The Jewish historian Philo tells us that the Jews rioted in Jerusalem because Pontius Pilate installed golden shields that had a blasphemous inscription on them.
Trent Horn: So you think also about how the Jews, you know, they thought Jesus committed blasphemy and wanted to execute him for claiming to be God. These are really the same people who are suddenly going to go whole hog in on pagan deities? I don’t think so.
John DeRosa: That was a great number of points, Trent. And part of what I’m getting from this conversation is, if you’re going to engage with these skeptics on Christ and Jesus and these questions, then we got to do our homework, too. Because if we do a little bit of our homework beforehand and we have these points laid out, we’re going to be able to present things to them and have them consider things where they’re not just going to be able to stomp all over us with these slogans. So just to summarize, those are some great points. One, you got to ask them, how do you know that that’s true that there was borrowing? These exact parallels don’t exist, or a lot of times, they’re just very strained and spurious.
John DeRosa: And then additionally, the Jews were monotheists, so it’s highly implausible that they’re going to just embrace all of this syncretism of these random gods coming in and borrowing from those stories. So, great summary. We got to do our homework so we can present that just like you did to us.
Trent Horn: And also, when we conjoin the first thing we talked about, this doesn’t make sense because the timeline for legend to develop is too soon. So that would be like if you knew a friend and he died, and then you went to the movies and you saw Justice League, don’t, it’s terrible. But you saw Justice League and Superman comes back to life, quote unquote. Oh, maybe my friend came back to life because I saw this movie about Superman coming back to life. Well, no, you’re not going to think that. Now, legends about individuals deriving from other sources do happen, but over many, many generations, over hundreds of years. Once again, because the historical documents related to Jesus were written so soon after his death, you don’t have time for legend to infiltrate and take over the main historical core of the story.
John DeRosa: Wow, just add that on top of our case already. We are ready to deal with these objections, Trent, and if people get your book they’re going to be even more ready. But I want to go on to one more that’s covered in these counterfeits from atheists. This one might be surprising to people that atheists would raise this point, but sometimes skeptics say that the early Christians didn’t believe Jesus bodily rose from the dead. They weren’t actually even claiming that, they were talking about spiritual resurrection. Jesus rose in their hearts or in a heavenly realm, or something foreign. What can we say in response to this type of objection? It’s a little different.
Trent Horn: Right, and you’d wonder why an atheist would make it. And they make it because it explains all the data without a miracle. They can just say that the apostles had grief induced hallucinations of Jesus in heaven, and the real Jesus rotted away in a tomb, and he wasn’t really divine. So that can be explained in a naturalistic hypothesis far better than a bodily resurrection because the hallucination still doesn’t explain the empty tomb. Or, it only does in a very ad hoc way when you add a bunch of other elements in that don’t really fit there. So when this comes up, I would bring up a few points. First, I would ask them, “Well, what does the evidence say? When you go to the gospels, that’s not how the gospels describe the appearances of Jesus. They make it very, very clear that Jesus had a physical appearance to people.”
Trent Horn: So then they’ll respond, “Well, those are legends that developed far later.” Okay fine, then why don’t we go back earlier to Saint Paul? Did Saint Paul believe Jesus rose from the dead in a bodily form? Well first, he was a Pharisee, and the Pharisees believed in a bodily resurrection. You don’t say in first century Judaism that spirits rise to heaven. When someone dies, their spirit goes down to the underworld, which people usually pronounce Sheol, but in Hebrew it would be more Sheol. It goes down to the underworld to Sheol, when the resurrection would come at the end of the world and the resurrection is bodily. And Paul was a Pharisee, Pharisees believed in bodily resurrection.
Trent Horn: Yet he talks about this with Jesus, and in first Corinthians 15, Paul combines… he talks about the resurrection of the dead and Jesus’ resurrection. And that because Jesus rose from the dead, we know we will rise from the dead. And also, conversely because we will rise from the dead, Jesus rose from the dead. They’re the same kinds of resurrection. So if we are going to rise bodily at the end of the world, and that’s connected to Jesus’ resurrection, his resurrection has to be bodily as well. Now, the retort the skeptics will make is they’ll say that Paul talks a lot about how flesh and blood won’t inherit the kingdom. Or, he talks about a spiritual body, that we’re going to get spiritual bodies like Jesus’ spiritual body.
Trent Horn: Paul does not use the word spiritual. He doesn’t talk about the pneumatikos, the spiritual body, as being something that is immaterial. Spiritual body for Paul doesn’t refer to a thing’s substance, it refers to its orientation. And you can point to passages in Paul’s writings where he talks about how the spiritual man is judged by no one. That doesn’t mean he’s talking about ghostly people. It’s like how I say the Bible is a spiritual book. It’s not made out of ethereal matter, it’s oriented to heaven. Flesh and blood won’t inherit the kingdom because if you’re oriented towards earthly thinking, you can’t receive God’s grace.
Trent Horn: Finally, I would just cap it off by pointing to where Paul talks about, our bodies will be changed to be like Jesus’ physical body. In Philippians three 20 through 21, Paul says, “We await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change, change our lowly body to be like his glorious body.” In Romans 8:11, Paul says, “If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his spirit who dwells in you.”
Trent Horn: So here, Paul is making it clear that when we rise from the dead, our bodies will be physically transformed just like Jesus’ body was glorified and transformed. Without a bodily resurrection, Paul’s hopes for the general resurrection of the dead, bodily resurrection of Jesus I should say, doesn’t make sense of Paul’s hopes for the general resurrection of the dead at all.
John DeRosa: That’s an awesome case. I think it’s clearly the best explanation of the evidence, and I love how you led off with it, ask them a question. Say, “You know what? What do you think the evidence says? Let’s look at the evidence together and see how it can be best explained.” And folks, what Trent is doing here is awesome, because that could take years of study and conversation to see, okay, I say this. What are they going to say back? Oh, what examples can we say back? And you’ve done a lot of that hard work for us already so we can be fully prepped with these great examples that you’re giving us, Trent. So that’s huge, and I think just knocking out those three things, if we’re confident as Catholics, that we can defend that Jesus existed against mythicism. We can defend the authentic Christ of history against the idea that he’s a made up ripoff of pagan gods. And we can answer this thing about the spiritual body, I think we’re ready to go out and have some conversations.
John DeRosa: Of course, you’re not going to convince everybody on the spot, but we don’t need to be afraid. We do that bit of homework, study up on what you just said, I think we can have this conversation. I think all Catholics can have these conversations, don’t you?
Trent Horn: Amen, but I think what helps is having the tools, so I want to make the load lighter for people. And that’s why I’ve compressed and condensed the evidence in an easy to read way in my book, Counterfeit Christs.
John DeRosa: Beautiful, beautiful. Hey Trent, if we have time, I want to throw one more objection, recent objection, at you that I’ve heard from counter-apologists who are trying to explain the evidence for the resurrection in a different way, a naturalistic way.
Trent Horn: Okay.
John DeRosa: So this will be the last objection, and then I’ll ask folks where they can go to find out more about you. But apologists often say, here’s how it goes, here’s how they set it up. They point out that apologists often say that the tomb was empty, and one of the evidences for this is that if the tomb wasn’t empty, then when the apostles started preaching, they just could’ve produced the body and proven them wrong. Apologists often claim, like myself, that well, if Jesus’ tomb was still in the body, why didn’t the people just go look at it and say, “Here, you’re preaching false news. It’s not good news, it’s false news. His body is still right here.”
John DeRosa: And here’s what the counter-apologist says. They say, the objection goes, “Apologists are being way too hasty here. The disciples didn’t begin preaching until weeks after the crucifixion. If people were to attempt to retrieve the body then, it would be unrecognizable.” So there wouldn’t have been a point for them to go dig up a body that you couldn’t even say, “This is definitely Jesus.” It would have been unrecognizable. So this undercuts the apologist’s apparent evidence for the empty tomb. How can we respond?
Trent Horn: Sure, I would respond to that in numerous ways. First, this would not undercut the evidence for the apostles themselves. Many times I bring up the empty tomb, the point of the empty tomb that if Jesus’ body were still there, mostly that’s to confirm the veridical nature of the apostles’ visions of a bodily Jesus who appeared to them. That if the apostles had experienced an appearance of Jesus in an embodied form, they might think, maybe I was really hallucinating even though it felt really real to me. So one gut reality check for them would be to go to the tomb for themselves to see if they were hallucinating or not.
Trent Horn: I know if my dead best friend showed up in my office right now, I would go to her tomb, her casket. And if it was empty, I would certainly have many questions, and I would be much more inclined to believe I’m not hallucinating. And since Jesus is reported to have appeared to the disciples just a few days after his crucifixion, they could go to the tomb themselves and see that he’s there and it’s clearly Jesus. He hasn’t decomposed beyond recognition at this point.
Trent Horn: Second, now if it were the authorities who went to try to quash the Christian proclamation, first, the body could still be recognizable even six to eight weeks after it’s been interred in the tomb. We have to remember that Jesus was wrapped in various burial cloth, that would’ve helped to preserve the body. It’s laid in a rock tomb, so it’s not like a lot of maggots and bugs are going to get to it. It’s not interred in the earth, it’s in a rock tomb. And so of course it’s still going to decompose. The body is going to undergo autolysis and decompose on its own, but it may still be recognizable.
Trent Horn: Things that cause bodies to become disfigured over time, decomposition really depends on environment. If you’re buried in the earth, it’s different than a rock tomb. Also, temperature. I’ve been to Jerusalem in March and April, and it’s very temperate. 2000 years ago, the climate was probably much cooler. So it actually would’ve been a very cool environment away from light or other things to further decompose the body, almost like a mausoleum. Jesus would, at the very least, you could still tell his stature, his general facial structure. You would see the crucifixion marks in his body. I mean, other people would be crucified, but how many crucifixion victims are going to have been buried in a tomb to be preserved?
Trent Horn: Most of the other people who had been crucified probably would have been buried in mass graves. Now, some might’ve been put in tombs. We do have another criminal who was found in a tomb, Yehonatan. But there would be enough evidence there to at least give plausibility that this is Jesus. Now, I will give them this. That if they paraded Jesus’ corpse out, if the resurrection didn’t happen, the authorities paraded his corpse out, some people would still choose to believe. They would still believe and just say it was a hoax. But here’s the problem, a good number of people would have abandoned the faith at that. Or, at the very least, the apostles would have had to come up with a counter-apologetic to this, to say in… Paul would’ve written it in his letters, or John would write in his letters. The church fathers would say, “The Jews claimed to produce the body of Jesus, yet it was not truly him.”
Trent Horn: They would have to come up with an explanation for that behavior, and yet they don’t do that. At the very least, the authorities could do this. Even if people didn’t believe them, there would have to be a counter-apologetic found in the New Testament and patristic writings, yet we don’t see that. What we see in the New Testament and in church fathers like Justin Martyr is simply that the other side, the Jews claim the body was stolen. That’s it, which lends evidence to the fact that the tomb was empty. So I think this kind of counterargument on the enemy attestation evidence for the empty tomb doesn’t succeed.
John DeRosa: Trent, those were some powerful points you just gave us. I also want to plug the episodes you did on your podcast with Michael Licona, Dr. Mike Licona. He defends the empty tomb very well, gives us a nice way to remember that evidence that you just went through. So, those are great as well. Thanks so much for joining us again on the Classical Theism Podcast. Just give folks some insight, brief insight. What are you currently working on? I know you’re turning out books like every other month now, but what are you currently working on? And let us know where we can go to find out more about your work, and then we’ll say goodbye.
Trent Horn: Certainly. Well, I’m offering my podcast, three episodes a week, at TrentHornPodcast.com. For premium subscribers, they get access to bonus content like our study series, our Trent Trax, which are hour long audio productions that go in-depth on certain issues, usually topical ones like the recent abortion bans. And I have one coming up called How to Win Any Abortion Debate, that’s available there for premium subscribers or for purchase at Catholic.com. So I’m doing that, I am also writing a book with a coauthor. It’s called Why Catholics Can’t Be Socialists. So it takes this issue of economics and morality, and approaches it from a Catholic perspective.
Speaker 1: If you liked today’s episode, become a premium subscriber at our Patreon page and get access to member only content. For more information, visit TrentHornPodcast.com.