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In this episode you’ll hear my modernized version of William Ellery Channing‘s 1821 lecture “The Evidences of Revealed Religion.”
It’s about the rationality of believing in divine revelation on the basis of miracles, so it’s about what can be known about God by divine revelation (“revealed religion”) as opposed to what can be known on the basis of ordinary experience and reason alone (“natural religion”).
It’s a worthy little piece of Christian apologetics on the topic of miracles, reports of which have always been central to Christian claims, ever since Jesus himself said,
If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
John 10:37-38 (NRSV)
and ever since the apostles preached about this remarkable
…man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know.
Acts 2:22 (NRSV)
As Channing says, most people everywhere have believed in the possibility and even the reality of miracles, and the idea that it can never be rational to believe a miracle-report is both recent and dubious. But of course, not every miracle-claim is worthy of belief! Why then, should we think that the miracles reported in the New Testament should be believed? Channing has some deep insights on this issue.
And at the start of this episode I introduce you to the very exciting new UCA podcast! You’ll hear a fascinating snippet from an early episode as well as some of the vision of its extraordinary host and producer Mark Cain. Be sure to subscribe at the line below!
Links for this episode:
Restitutio podcast 368 Introducing the UCA Podcast (Mark Cain)
Unitarian Christian Alliance Podcast
trinities podcast 281 – Introducing the Unitarian Christian Alliance
Channing, “The Evidences of Revealed Religion” (pp. 220ff)
John 3:2
David Hume’s Chapter 10 “Of Miracles” (original text, modernized text, audio book)
Dr. Timothy McGrew’s article “Miracles“ in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Dr. Timothy McGrews’s historicalapologetics.org
George Campbell and his A Dissertation on Miracles
William Paley and his A View of the Evidences of Christianity
Sir Issac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
This week’s thinking music is “I dunno” by grapes.
