Gary Michuta - Hostile Witnesses: How the Historic Enemies of the Church Prove Christianity

Table of Contents

Hostile Witnesses

H OW THE H ISTORIC E NEMIES OF THE C HURCH P ROVE C HRISTIANITY

G ARY M ICHUTA

Hostile Witnesses

H OW THE H ISTORIC E NEMIES OF THE C HURCH P ROVE C HRISTIANITY

2016 Gary Michuta

All rights reserved. Except for quotations, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, uploading to the Internet, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Published by Catholic Answers, Inc.

2020 Gillespie Way

El Cajon, California 92020

1-888-291-8000 orders

619-387-0042 fax

catholic.com

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible , Revised Edition 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

All quotations from the Greek Septuagint will be indicated by the Latin LXX and are taken from Brenton, Lancelot Charles Lee. The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament: English Translation. London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1870.

Quotations from early Church Fathers are taken from James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885). Those which are taken from the Ante-Nicene Fathers will be noted by the abbreviation ANF; those taken from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers will be noted by the abbreviation NPNF.

Talmudic texts taken from Jacob Neusner, ed., The Babylonian Talmud: A Translation and Commentary , copyright 2011 by Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

978-1-68357-001-1

978-1-68357-002-8 Kindle

978-1-68357-003-5 ePub

Acknowledgements

I would like to give special thanks to Bobby Hesley and Paul Thomas for their helpful suggestions and contributions. Without their advice and support, this book would have missed its target. My thanks also goes to my friends Jim Anderson and William Albrecht for their translation expertise, and to Daniel Egan, Bob Salmon, Robert Corzine, and Michael Aquilina for their encouragement and insights. A special thanks goes to Todd Aglialoro for steering my manuscript in the right direction and to Kerry Beck for making this book possible. I would also like to thank Jeffrey Rubin for his hard work and expert advice. Most especially, Id like to thank my wife Christine and my children, Paulina, Daniel, and Jennifer, for their love and support. Finally, I would like to dedicate this work to my beloved brother Raymond Michuta. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.

Introduction

The Witness Selection Program

What I have written, I have written. Those were the words of Pontius Pilate after directing that a sign be affixed to Jesus of Nazareths cross. On it was inscribed, Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews, written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. The Jews protested, saying that the sign ought to read, He said, I am the King of the Jews. But Pilate would not be moved.

The sign Pilate authorized didnt reflect his own beliefs about Jesus. As prefect of the Roman province of Judea, he certainly didnt have the authority or the desire to proclaim anyone king. He did, however, wish to send a message: this is what happens to pretended kings. For those who believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah King, the placard proclaimed the truth. For the Jews who didnt believe, it was an insult and a warning. For Pilate, it was a useful tool to send a message.

If, centuries later, Pilates sign were the only record in existence about Jesus, we could still deduce a few things about the one who hung on a cross at Calvary: his name was Jesus; he was from the town of Nazareth; and his execution was the result of a controversy over his kingship. Despite its intended purpose to ridicule, to warn, and maybe even to incite anger, the sign still says something true about the events that led up to Calvary. Pontius Pilates sign, therefore, is a hostile witness.

T HE P RAISE OF E NEMIES

The Psalm says, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you have perfected praise, because of your enemies (Ps. 8:2 LXX). Not only do the righteous praise Christ because of his enemies, but his enemies offer their own kind of praise. Their praise doesnt come in the form of a compliment or some other sort of honor; it comes from the simple admission of the truth. Pilate affirmed the truth when his involvement in Jesus condemnation unwittingly produced the inscription. And thats the curious thing about some of the historic enemies of the Church. When they were confronted with something about Christ or his Church that was too obvious to deny, they were forced to do one of two things: either concede the point and repackage it to suit their own purposes, or attempt to explain it away. Regardless of which action they took, the result remains the same: they still attest that theyve encountered something about Christ or his Church that was real and needed to be dealt with. In other words, they attest to the truth.

We call these unwitting corroborators of the truth hostile witnesses . They are, as the phrase suggests, witnesses who were hostile to Christ, his Church, or some aspect of his Church. Their testimonies are the best kind of evidence because they cant be said to reflect bias in favor of the Faith or the Churchquite the opposite, in fact. Yet despite their probative value, these hostile testimonies havent been plumbed for all they are worth.

D IRECT AND I NDIRECT E VIDENCE

Christian apologists naturally focus most of their attention on direct evidence in favor of their beliefs drawn from primary source material such as the New Testament, the early Church Fathers, and a few extra-biblical sources. But indirect evidence can attest just as powerfully to a given fact or event. To see how direct and indirect evidence works together, lets look at a situation that weve all encountered at one time or another: sitting in a traffic jam.

If you are stuck in a traffic jam, there are two ways you can find out what is causing the delay. You can learn about it by direct testimony (for instance, you can turn on the car radio to listen to a traffic report or look for a warning on your GPS), or you can observe the cars ahead of you. If you see cars and trucks in the distance all moving from your lane to the right lane, you know that there is an obstruction in your lane and that youll also need to move to the right. The traffic report is direct evidence. The evasive action of the cars ahead of you is indirect evidence.

Hostile witnesses sometimes provide direct evidence. They may speak directly about Jesus, where he lived, what he did, how and when he died, and so on. This information is very valuable. Indeed, historical Jesus research focuses almost exclusively on such statements. The real value of hostile witnesses, however, is when they provide indirect evidence. When confronted with some brute fact that was contrary to their belief system, they are forced to deal with it just as we were forced to take evasive action in our traffic scenario. And just as the change in traffic patterns signals the presence of an obstruction and its location, the evasive actions of our hostile witnesses signal to us some truth about Christ and his Church that they are attempting to avoid.