The Michael Knowles Show - Bill Maher & Chris Distefano Jesus DEBATE

Episode Date: March 2, 2024

Michael Knowles reacts to the exchange between Bill Maher and Chris Distefano on the historical and religious significance of Jesus Christ. Who won? Find out!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Who cares if Jesus lived? It's whether he's then died and was reborn and is, you know, up in heaven with his father who's really him. Factual evidence that he existed is kind of overwhelming. The factual evidence that he existed has always been underwhelming. If I told you factual evidence about Alexander the Great, you would believe me. I can't go there with you. It's just, you know, it's silly. My producers tell me that Bill Maher and Chris DeStefeyfell.

have just had a major debate on the nature of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is from the club random podcast, not usually the place you turn to for theology, but maybe we found it. So Mr. Marr, Mr. DeStefano, take it away. I believe in Jesus, by the way. We'll talk about that. Oh.

I'm reading the Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. It's convincing evidence. What do you think? I throw people out of the club here? We believe in whatever you want. I didn't. I went to Catholic school my whole life. After reading this book, Case for Christ by Lee Strollable,

the factual evidence that he existed is kind of overwhelming. I'd like to see that because the factual evidence that he existed has always been underwhelming. Hold on put a pause here. So they're not just arguing over the nature of Christ. They're arguing over his existence, seriously? That is unfortunate because I think the evidence for his divinity is quite clear. But I didn't think anyone really argued seriously that Jesus never existed. He's attested to everywhere.

You have histories written of him within living memory, many of them, from Christian and non-Christian sources. The historical events laid out in the New Testament are well attested to. the people referenced are well attested to, including obviously non-Christian, Roman and Jewish people. It's just so, I don't even know how to engage with that. Okay, keep going. In fact, it's- We're a case for Christ. Give me a shot by Lee Stroval. This is based on what, archaeological finds? Archaeological finds. Two ones?

Theological finds? What are theological finds? Bill, ready for this? Yeah. the if I told you okay if I told you factual evidence about Alexander the Great you would believe me okay but

even still it's a it's a silly point because who cares if Jesus lived it's whether he's then died and was reborn and is you know up in heaven with his father who's really him that's the part that was there okay so I guess he Milmar is conceding the point basically or he is at least pointing out well yeah it doesn't matter if there's a guy named Jesus just a random guy named Jesus

That's not. The question is, is he who he says he is? So I think wisely moves off of this very silly argument. He's making that the man never lived. And we've got pretty irrefutable evidence that the man lived. So, okay, he moves on and he says, well, is Jesus the Christ? You know, is he the son of God? Keep going. That's the part where the rubber meets the road. Maybe he existed. I agree. That's absolutely possible. He may have existed. But according to case for Christ, independent sources who didn't know each other who wrote about him within 20 years of his death talked about these miracles happening as in real time okay well again and Alexander the great biographers the earliest one was like a hundred years after he died Chris I'm going to have to

burst your bubble now because here I have to spit a couple of facts at you that are kind of I'm going to under, okay. It's Hollywood. There's only two sources in the Bible. There's the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Put a pause here. Like, he goes, there's only two sources in the Bible. There's the four gospels.

Well, hold on, wait. I think to the liberals and the atheists, sometimes one plus one equals four. I don't know. So the two he just named are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Keep going. There's also another guy, Joseph is who wasn't accepted, but read the case for Christ. Not in the Bible. Okay.

But there's also a book. is itself an anthology. They found some few decades ago the Dead Sea Scroll. Hold on. Put pause here. Hold on. He's, is Bill Maher excluding St. Paul? He's counting the Gospels, but he's excluding St. Paul. He's excluding James. He's excluding Peter. He's excluding. He seems to be excluding a lot of the New Testament, to say nothing of, obviously, of the Old Testament. Keep going. They found some few decades ago the Dead Sea Scrolls. Right. Which were other books that were just basically edited out. So right away, we know a person decided what constituted the Bible

and just some stuff wound up on the cutting room floor. So we know we do know who established the canon of the Bible, but it wasn't a person. This isn't like a secret. You know, this isn't like you have your opinion and I have my opinion and who knows. We know of the church councils and we know that the church in council codified the canon of the Bible and we know. We know that the church in counsel codified the canon of the Bible, and we know the books that were included, we know the books that were excluded, and we actually know why the books that were excluded, we're excluded, and we can date to a pretty near and narrow margin of time when those books were written. And by the way, if you've ever read some of the books that were excluded from

the canon of the Bible, the conclusion you will have is not that the church father, well, not one person, I know what Bill Maher is talking about, but not that the church fathers and the bishops were trying to pull one over on us, but you will recognize their wisdom because the books that were excluded, by and large, were totally kooky and came much later and were illogical and not credible. Next one. Keep going.

And just some stuff wound up on the cutting room floor. I get it. Council of Nicaea. I get it. Council of Nicaa, yes. 325A.D. That's when they decided the Christian religion. I agree with you. Right. I'm with you on that. I remember that. So there are a lot of councils that decided a lot of questions.

questions. You know, a driving reason for a council is to establish the truth of a matter that is in dispute. So there are councils that debate and come to conclusions on the nature of Christ, councils that come to conclusions on the nature of the canon, questions that come to conclusions on, anyway, all sorts of things. But it's, yeah, it's not just that one, it's not just that the Council of Nicaa, you know, creates Christianity or something. I don't think that's quite what he meant to say, but if he did say it, that's not, that isn't accurate. I'm with you on that. But I'm telling you, read this book. That's Emperor Constantine. Shout out Constantine, Turkey, all that. Well, the first one, the first.

Constantinople. Well, the first one to change the Roman Empire to a Christian empire. They decided. So that's not true either, actually. The edict of Milan allows for toleration of Christianity, but it doesn't formally make Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire. And Constantine's great, though. Love Constantine. Keep going. To a Christian Empire. They decided all the holidays. Took three centuries. I get it. Okay. But here's the important point. Let's do it. There's only these five sources. A little bit more to kill on that set. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Jeff. I'm wrecked right now. Put a pause there. Again, there are more

because there are the epistles and there's St. Paul, obviously, who wrote so much of the New Testament. Keep going. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Good boys. Not contemporaries of Jesus, not even close. Matthew? Who have paused there? Do you know who Matthew is? Part of the historical critical school that was so influential in the 19th century was to say that

none of the people who supposedly wrote the Gospels and the epistles are actually the people. because sometimes you do get pseudonymous writing, you know, writing where they purport to be one person, but they're not really that person. But it seems reasonable to me to attribute the gospels to the people who purportedly wrote them. And even if we're not talking about people who had a particularly close terrestrial relationship with our Lord,

let's say in the case of Luke, it's not like these guys fell out of the sky. We can trace their lineage. We know who they spoke with. We know the lineage. Forget about the New Testament for a moment. Just even the early church fathers, the saints who were disciples of this guy,

who were disciples of that guy, who go back. You know, we can trace these things. I mean, this is one of the amazing things about the Catholic Church, which to me is a sign of its divine institution, is that you can trace the bishops like all the way back. They go right back to Peter and you can trace them

with considerable clarity. Keep going. So they lived from 70 to 110 years after him. I understand. No, no, no, no, from 40 to 70 years. But they got their information. The put a pause there. The, Bill Maher is saying that because, you know, we have evidence that the, the Gospels were written 30, really more like 32, 80 years after the resurrection, that these people lived 30 to 80 or 100 years after the resurrection. That isn't true. It would have been written, and presumably these people weren't just born and then started writing. And frankly, it could have been written even earlier. I mean, you see, like in the case, we're talking about the spread of Christianity here in the

empire. You see Christianity arrive in Armenia seven years after the crucifixion. And two apostles die there, which is how Armenia came to be converted to a Christian country even before the edict of Constantine already referenced. Okay, keep going. They got their information from Josephus who lived about 10 years after Jesus. So already we're into a game of telephone. Put a pause there. Already into a game of telephone. What are you talking about, man? So I love that DiStefano here is referencing the historian Josephus, who obviously is not a Christian source or he's not in the Bible. This is a game of telephone. I don't know. If I wrote a book today, about the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

Do you think I would have some credibility on that? Do you think my memory would be clear enough? Because that was 16 years ago. Bill Maher is saying, well, 10 years after the event, you know, it's just a total game of telephone. Who could possibly remember? Are you kidding me, dude? We're talking about 2014.

It's not... 10 years is not that long. Keep going. Bill, yes. I want to make you let you make a point. But let me just quickly, the game of telephone, yes, I agree with you that point. But the game of telephone, in Jesus' times, according to Lee Strobe in the case of Christ, was the simple fact of we're playing the game of telephone. There's 10 people here.

The game of telephone, as we know it today, is you say something in my ear and then it goes around 10 times, and by the time it gets to you, it's something radically different. This game of telephone, this ancient game of telephone was. But you tell it to me, then the third guy confirms what you said before it goes to. to the fourth guy, so there's a level of checking, checks and balances. Chris, you're working too hard. If you want to believe this, believe it. You don't have to convince me or... I'm just... But of pause here. This is a total surrender from Bill Maher. He's got really nothing to say here. So he says, hey, he plays this apathetic character. Bro, what do I care?

What are you trying to persuade me of something for? I don't know, man, because we're having a conversation. I don't know, because we're on a talk show. Don't you usually try to persuade people of things and we come to conclusions? But Bill Maher is totally lost at this point. He's got nothing. And he realizes that DeStefano is sharper on this issue and has more information on this issue than he does. So then he plays this apathetic game, bro, what do you care so much? What do you? I don't know, Bill, because we're having a conversation and you seem to disagree with me. And so we're trying to figure out whose view is right. Also, because you're a human being and I care for you. And I think it would be better for you to believe

true things rather than false things. Okay, man, whatever. I don't know what's the guy's trying to talk on a talk show. Keep going. You don't have to convince me or... I'm just convinced me of case for Christ. Or construct this scaffolding to which you hang this belief. Just believe it.

It's all good. Don't come to me and when you die at St. Peter's. I'm not getting you in. But, you know, I can't go there with you. It's just, you know, it's silly. Well, I'm just saying it's nice the idea to believe in something. I'm just trying. Trying it on for size.

Here's also what's very interesting. And then I'll leave this subject. Excuse me. I think I've bored the audience with this before. What do you think? Barbara in Milwaukee gives a... They turned this off. When they turned this off

when they found out, I wasn't Ellen. Yeah. Like, that's the kind of audience we have. Your audience is great. So... You think they'll like me? St. Paul. Good guy, St. Paul.

Hold on him. So he finally remembers St. Paul. He forgets the guy who writes with Most of the New Testament, there's only four sources in the New Testament, only two sources, and they're four evangelists. But now he remembers St. Paul. Okay, keep going. Good guy, St. Paul, aka Saul, and the capital of Minnesota.

Is the other source of the Bible. There's Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. I said the two names out of order, because that's the order in the Bible. The first gospel, Mark, is 70 AD. Jesus dies in 33. So that's 40 years almost after he died. Okay, so not contemporaries. Paul comes before the gospel writers. He's writing around the year 50 in the 50s. Okay. So he's much closer to Jesus's time. So you'd think he would know more about Jesus than the people who came later.

But actually... Hold on. Hold on. Also, I mean, St. Paul meets Christ after the crucifixion and the resurrection. And famously on the road to Damascus knocked off a horse. So he is an apostle, you know, the last of the apostles, but he's not an apostle in the same way that the other apostles were who actually spent time with him, or the disciples of those apostles who had firsthand accounts of our Lord's sojourn on earth before the crucifixion and the resurrection. Keep going. But actually, St. Paul knows almost nothing about Jesus. He barely conceives of him as something that, as a person who lived on earth. There's no details about his life. like they are in the Gospels. So the people who came. Right, because he met him after the crucifixion and the resurrection. It's a totally different, not a totally different experience, because it's one God and one Christ. But it's a rather different experience from the experience of the apostles. And so you might even take Bill's logic here and apply it to the Gospels.

Why do we have four different Gospels? These are people who all spent roughly the same amount of time with the man. And so why do we get four different perspectives? It tells us something about the person of Christ, and it tells us something about us in our relationship to God. So then why does Christ knock Saul off the horse on the road to Damascus? We get another perspective there. We get now, first of all, an apostle to the Gentiles, but we also get a new perspective of our Lord after he's taken on his glorified body, after the resurrection, and a very valuable perspective.

Obviously something rather important to the whole New Testament. But if he's saying, well, why do we have these different perspectives? well, then rewind and ask yourself, why do we have three synoptic gospels and the gospel of John? Why do we have four gospels, period? Is it possible that those different perspectives add something to our understanding of our Lord? Even the way Bill talks, he says, he conceived of Christ. Well, okay, that's assuming that an atheist view, that's assuming the non-Christian view. Because the way I would say it is Christ knocked Saul off a horse, that it wasn't Paul

just having a daydream of what Jesus might have been like, but that our Lord is a real person who really appeared to him, that he really was resurrected on the third day and then sojourned on earth for another 40 days and then ascended into heaven and a seat at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. The conception thing here, okay, if you're beginning with the premise that Christianity is bogus, I guess I can see how Bill could arrive at some of these views. But if you're not, if you keep even a slightly open mind that it might be,

real. I think it probably explains more the actions of St. Paul and the other apostles. Keep going. So the people who came later know more than the person who wrote earlier. Just some food for thought. But, okay,

I understand. But he does acknowledge at some point, right? Paul, aka Saul, knows that Jesus existed. Right? He talks about him. He talks about, I'm saying he conceives him as a godhead. He doesn't

have this, it's not the narrative that's in the Gospels of Jesus went around and he did miracles and he did stuff and everybody loved him. Okay, but give it a pause here. Yeah, right. It's a different narrative from a man's different experience and point of view. But even among the Gospels that you have the three synoptics are rather different from the gospel according to St. John. I mean, the gospel according to St. John opens up, in the beginning was the word, the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God. That's a rather different perspective than beginning just with the human genealogy of Christ. Even the different genealogies tell you something, give you a new perspective on the man.

But Christ has two natures in a hypostatic union. He's fully God and fully man. She's say, well, the Gospel of John opens up in this really heady way, just speaking of God and the nature of the relation of God to the divine logic of the universe. Yeah, right. Of course, man. Yeah, and the epistles of Paul have a add another layer of perspective

to that as well. Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's not, the books of the New Testament are not Xerox copies of each other. Keep going. It's tough and everybody loved him and he gets quoted a lot. He makes speeches. Bless it are the meek. You know, he has adventures, he goes into the desert.

It's a whole thing. But what about... And then at the end it's a whole drama with, you know... Right, yeah, but a pause there. Right. Isn't that an argument that it's real? I mean, Bill's argument here is these people just wanted to write a story, and an argument against it is that their stories are different. But this would be like Chesterton's argument for the reality of, even Tim Keller made this argument, the late Protestant preacher, that

it reads like journalism. You know, the gospels read like journalism. And so they differ in certain little tiny details because of different perspectives. But St. Paul isn't setting out to write great work of fiction. He's writing of his experience, and his experience was different than the experience of the apostles. The other apostles, keep going. Paul doesn't know any of this, all the stuff that the gospel writers obsess about it. Paul certainly knows about the crucifixion and writes about it. It's a little strange. But maybe, but Paul, it's okay for Paul to be somebody who maybe, there was a lot of people who didn't like Jesus back there. You know, it's okay. What's okay is that Some people believe in other people, Joan.

That's what's okay. It's like, that's you. Yeah. I'm not trying to put it on you. I'm just saying what I believe. I know. I know. I'm wearing a corduroy shirt.

My mother got me for Christmas and I feel confident. Is that really? Your mother got you? Yes. You ever been to Japan? No. Should we go? No.

All right. Enough about Japan. I don't care about Japan. I like Bill Maher. There's something about him I like. He's just so wrong. And when he senses that he's starting to lose, he just kind of falls into apathy. It's funny because he seems to be, he seems to

consider his sparring partner as the one who's close-minded and stubborn and not going to change his mind. But it's really Bill in the end who comes out and he just gives up. And he says, okay, well, enough of your evidence, enough of your arguments, I'm just not going to change my mind. You believe what you believe, I believe what I believe. It's okay. Who cares? What do you care. He gives up on that. I mean, that's obstinacy. You can't get over it. You can only lead a horse to water and then see if, you know, God himself knocks you off the horse.