Two Views on the Resurrection

Audio Available

2007-02-27T16:51:00.000-08:00

The audio recording is now available through iTunes University. Click here.

Open Forum

2007-02-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

What is your general reaction to the dialogue between Dr. Marcus and Dr. Habermas? If significant questions come up at this point, I will separate them into separate posts for discussion.

Our Role in Faith

2007-02-20T19:10:00.000-08:00

Another question. At one point Dr. Marcus made a comment that went something like this: "You cannot convince yourself to believe. It is a gift." Here's the question: how much of faith is a gift and how much is it something we are responsible for? Do we recieve faith or do we choose faith?

Pastoral Question

2007-02-20T19:08:00.000-08:00

I will present to you the same question I asked Dr. Habermas and Dr. Marcus: If you had someone in your pastoral office who you became convinced was not going to believe without evidence/data, what would you tell them (especially if you are inclined toward Dr. Marcus' perspective)? If you had someone in your office who you became convinced was not going to believe no matter how much evidence/data you gave them, what would you tell them (especially if you are inclined toward Dr. Habermas' perspective)?

Where to Park?

2007-02-19T15:29:00.002-08:00

I've had a couple of emails asking about where to park. I'd suggest the Bryan Center parking garage. You can find more info here. The Divinity School is on the other side of Duke Chapel from the Bryan Center parking lot. Thanks for all who have RSVP'd.

Lunch Lecture

2007-02-17T18:41:00.000-08:00

Just in case you didn't notice, Dr. Gary Habermas will be presenting a lecture in room 0016 Westbrook of the Divinity School during lunch on Tuesday (about 12:20-1:20). Free pizza will be available. The lecture is titled: "The Resurrection of Jesus and Current Scholarship." This is a great chance to get to know Dr. Habermas before the dialogue that evening with Dr. Marcus. We hope to see you all there.

Thanks to all who have RSVP'd. This is a great help. If you haven't done so yet, email us at resurrectiontwoviews@yahoo.com.

Is this a Debate?

2007-02-15T06:32:00.000-08:00

In one of the RSVP emails I came across someone saying something like: "I'm RSVPing for the debate between Marcus and Habermas." Is this a debate? Well...not exactly. We're trying not to make this a debate but rather to make it a dialogue. As I said in an earlier post: we think that Marcus and Habermas are going to have enough shared langauge to make a dialogue possible and yet enough difference to make it interesting. If we've made this look like a debate by the title of it, "Two Views on the Resurrection," well...its hard to advertise something that deals with subtle differences in a compelling way. Or at least we're primarily expecting subtle differences. And yet none of us have really read much that Habermas has written or that Marcus has written so we really have no idea what will happen in the dialogue. And then there's the unknown factor of audience participation at the end. So we expect it to be interesting, but we're not trying to make it a formal "debate." If you want a debate, you'll have to wait for Hillary and Pataki.

Questions for Marcus & Habermas

2007-02-14T15:00:00.001-08:00

What questions do you hope Dr. Marcus and Dr. Habermas will answer next Tuesday night?

RSVP?

2007-02-13T11:48:00.000-08:00

We've had a couple of questions about what the RSVP is all about. Can people come if they have not RSVP'd? ABSOLUTELY!

The RSVP is to help us guage whether we need to move to a larger room. Last year we expected 300 for an event we planned between Richard Hays and Bart Ehrman. We got over 500 people! We don't expect a crowd this large this year. But we just wanted to be ready if needed.

So please RSVP to help us prepare, but if you haven't RSVP'd, come anyway.

RSVP at resurrectiontwoviews@yahoo.com.

Press Release - Two Views on the Resurrection

2007-02-08T03:52:00.000-08:00

Contact: Nick Mumejian
ngm2@duke.edu.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 6, 2007

Professors to discuss views on the resurrection of Christ
Dr. Joel Marcus from Duke Divinity School and Dr. Gary Habermas from Liberty University to Dialogue

DURHAM, NC— On Tuesday, February 20, at 7:00 p.m., professors from Duke Divinity School and Liberty University will dicuss the resurrection of Christ, and their differing views on its historical and theological significance. The dialogue will take place in Room 0016 of Duke Divinity School, and admission is free.

The discussion will feature Dr. Joel Marcus Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, Duke Divinity School, and Dr. Gary Habermas, Distinguished Research Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy and Theology, Liberty University.

“The claim that Jesus rose from the dead is the center of the Christian faith. This claim has historical, theological, and practical ministry implications. I think the resurrection is related to each,” said Habermas.

“Jesus' resurrection was central to early Christian self-understanding,” said Marcus. “Precisely because it was so important, the New Testament accounts of it are a mixture of historical memory and theological reflection.”

Dr. Gary Habermas (PhD, Michigan State University) is distinguished professor and chair of the department of philosophy and director of the MA program in apologetics at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Over the course of his career, Dr. Habermas has done extensive research and writing on the topic of the resurrection of Christ. He is author or editor of over 27 books including Resurrected? An Atheist & Theist Dialogue, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and Dealing with Doubt.

Professor Joel Marcus teaches New Testament with an emphasis on the Gospels and the context of early Christianity in first-century Judaism. Jewish by birth, he has been a Christian for the past thirty years and an Episcopalian for the past twenty-five; the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, therefore, is an issue of existential as well as scholarly interest to him. His work attempts to fuse historical and theological concerns. His previous books include two monographs on Mark and the first part of a two-volume commentary on the same Gospel in the prestigious Anchor Bible series (Doubleday, 2000).

Dr. Habermas will also be giving a introductory lecture from 12:20-1:20 in room 0016 of the Divinity School titled: The Resurrection of Jesus and Current Scholarship.

A blog for the event can be read at http://resurrectiontwoviews.blogspot.com. Groups and individuals are asked to RSVP at resurrectiontwoviews@yahoo.com.

This event is sponsored by Duke Chapel, Duke Divinity School, Duke Socratic Club, Navigators, and The Interfaith Dialogue Project.

For more information, please contact Nick Mumejian at ngm2@duke.edu.

Discussion

2007-02-07T14:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a question open to our readers. What do you think will be the most fruitful part of this dialogue between Joel Marcus and Gary Habermas?

A Couple of Questions

2007-02-07T13:53:00.000-08:00

I received this email today and thought I'd answer it here on the blog just in case others have similar questions. Here's the email:

"Just curious who put this together and why, which one of the speakers you jive with, if this is part of something bigger/ongoing or a one-off event, if there are other such dialogues taking place elsewhere, etc, etc...basically, whatever you've got! :)"

Here's my answer:

The Duke Socratic Club is the primary organizer of this event. The Duke Socratic Club exists to bring together various perspectives in dialogue on a range of topics for the sake of the Gospel. Last year we brought together Richard Hays and Bart Ehrman for an event on issues raised by the daVinci Code. We were approached after that event by an individual who was willing to fund bringing some different scholars in to dialogue with Duke from a more "conservative" perspective. I put "conservative" in quotes because in a number of ways, I suspect that these "conservative" scholars and Duke have more in common than dissimilar. We chose Gary Habermas because he is a well respected scholar in NT studies and one of our group members was friends with him. We choose Joel Marcus as a Duke representative based on a suggestion from Richard Hays (none of us had yet had Joel Marcus in class). We think there will be enough commonality between Marcus and Habermas to provide a common language for dialogue but enough difference to make the conversation interesting and fruitful. Most of us don't know enough about either Marcus or Habermas to know whether we "jive" more with one over the other. We will probably all find aspects of both to be helpful. Our events try not be pre-judged or polemic. We attempt to provide space for real dialogue and learning from one another. This is not to say that we attempt to ignore differences. Real differences exist between people and views. But we believe that the most constructive thing to do is to have conversation around the differences.

We try to plan a number of events each semester. Here is a schedule of events coming up:

Two Views on the Resurrection
Joel Marcus (Duke Divinity School) & Gary Habermas (Liberty University)
February 20 @ 12:20-1:20 – Gary Habermas: “The Resurrection of Jesus and Recent Scholarship”
February 20 @ 7:00-8:30 PM – Two Views on the Resurrection Dialogue (Marcus & Habermas)
Blog: http://resurrectiontwoviews.blogspot.com/
RSVP at resurrectiontwoviews@yahoo.com

Homosexuality Discussion Group Series
Sacred Worth & Socratic Club Co-Sponsors
February 14 @ 12:20-1:20 – Eugene Rogers:
February 15 @ 12:20-1:20 – Discussion Groups

March 7 @ 12:20-1:20 – Richard Hays: What Makes for Peace and Upbuilding? Dealing with Our Differences in the Homosexuality Debate
March 7 @ 1:30-2:30 – Discussion Groups Part I
March 8 @ 12:20-1:20 – Discussion Groups Part II

April 11 @ 12:20-1:20 – Organizer’s Dialogue
April 11 @ 1:30-2:30 – Discussion Groups

The Jesus Seminar?
March 27 @ 12:20-1:20 – Mark Rutledge (Associate Member of the Jesus Seminar)

Sacraments & The Emerging Church Movement
March 20 @ 12:20-1:20 – Ed Phillips & Tim Conder

Race and the Divinity School
BSU (Black Seminarians Union) AME Connection (African Methodist Episcopal) & Socratic Club Co-Sponsors
February 22 @ 6:00-8:30PM – Dinner & Discussion Groups

Joel Marcus, Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins

2007-02-03T08:46:00.000-08:00

Degrees: B.A., New York University

M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D, Columbia University-Union Theological Seminary, New
York

Marcus teaches New Testament at Duke Divinity School with an emphasis on the Gospels and the context of early Christianity in first-century Judaism. Jewish by birth, he has been a Christian for the past thirty years and an Episcopalian for the past twenty-five; the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, therefore, is an issue of existential as well as scholarly interest to him. His work attempts to fuse historical and theological concerns. His previous books include two monographs on Mark and the first part of a two-volume commentary on the same Gospel in the prestigious Anchor Bible series (Doubleday, 2000). He has also published a collection of Good Friday sermons entitled Jesus and the Holocaust: Reflections on Suffering and Hope (Doubleday 1997).

RSVP

2006-12-02T05:06:00.000-08:00

If you're planning on coming to Two Views on the Resurrection, please RSVP us and let us know how many people will be joining you or your group. This will help us with the logistics of the event. RSVP by sending us an email at resurrectiontwoviews@yahoo.com (you may have to cut and paste this email address into your email) with the number of people coming in the subject line.

Up and Running

2006-12-02T04:44:00.000-08:00

This is the official blog of the Two Views on the Resurrection Dialogue that will take place at Duke Divinity School on February 20th, 20007. The dialogue partners will be Dr. Joel Marcus (Duke Divinity School) and Dr. Gary Habermas (Liberty University). More details are soon to come.