Category: persecution

[Editor’s Note: This blog was originally a single article. For the purposes of reposting it at Crossexamined, it has been divided into two parts. Click here for part 1.  [Excerpt from Part 1:] In this article [series], I . . . discuss the evidence that the apostles did in fact encounter hardships, dangers and persecutions on account of their Christian convictions. [In part 1] I survey the evidence for a general context of persecution (what may be called the indirect part of the case). [In Part 2] I will . . . proceed to argue that the apostles in particular voluntarily submitted themselves to danger, hardship and persecution on account of their conviction of the gospel’s truth. The Persecution of the Apostles — Evidence from the Apostolic Fathers   We now…

The argument from Christian persecution was developed most fully by William Paley, in his 1794 book, A View of the Evidences of Christianity.[1] Indeed, Paley devotes the first nine chapters of his book to defending the thesis “that there is satisfactory evidence that many professing to be original witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct.”[2] This proposition, if true, goes a long way towards establishing that the early apostles — that is, those who were purportedly witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection — were sincere in their conviction that they had encountered the raised…