My tour began early Monday morning when I was driven 2 hours from Pretoria to North-West University (NWU) in Potchefstroom. Although there are more than 15,000 students there, the campus was clean and had an intimate feel. I spoke to around 100 students and faculty that afternoon pertaining to how Jesus’ historical death provides a decisive refutation of Islam. After a radio interview and another by the school newspaper, I spoke that evening to around 350 students and faculty who had showed up to hear my lecture on the historical case for Jesus’ resurrection, an amazing showing considering it was finals week. I found the students to be very interested and receptive.
Early Tuesday morning I was driven back to Pretoria where I had been invited to deliver a lecture for a colloquium at the University of South Africa (UNISA). The topic was “Do the Gospels contain contradictions?” I was happy when they asked me to speak on this subject, since it happens that I had already been working on a new lecture on this very topic this spring. Only about 10 attended, many of whom were professors. Naturally, there was some push back on my talk. But I’ll only need to make a minor adjustment as a result.
Later that afternoon, we drove 90 minutes away to the University of Johannesburg where that evening I debated Pieter Craffert on the resurrection of Jesus. Craffert is chair of the department of New Testament at UNISA, has written on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection, and was one of the founding members of the New Reformation Movement (NRM), a group on the radical fringe of the theological left that very much resembles the Jesus Seminar in North America. Like the Jesus Seminar of the 1980s and 90s, this group is very influential in South Africa and has made a splash in the popular media, which continues to ignore the responses of conservative scholars. This has created the perception that there are no rebuttals to the views of NRM members. About 250-300 attended the debate and the room was filled over capacity. I thought I won quite handily and the audience members received me well. Craffert’s arguments are quite weak. He’s a postmodernist historian. That’s interesting because the debate over postmodernism raged among professional historians during the past few decades. Although some postmodernists remain, even a few of their leading lights have admitted they have lost the debate and that realism is still the reigning view within the practice of history. So, it was interesting to observe in my debate preparation that Craffert eschews realism, promotes a postmodern approach to history, and regards it as cutting edge thinking when he calls it the “new historiography.” The problem for Craffert, of course, is that there’s nothing new about it, since the debate is practically over and he appears to have missed it! That happens when biblical scholars only read the literature written by their colleagues and rarely interact with professional historians outside the community of biblical scholars.
Wednesday evening, however, was the big event: a 2-on-2 debate at the University of Pretoria with Bill Craig and I on one side and Sakkie Spangenberg and Hansie Wolmarans on the other. The latter two are also founding members of the NRM and are cited regularly in South African newspapers. In fact, they have been known to be quite aggressive and nasty in their remarks about evangelical Christians. We debated on the resurrection of Jesus. They have rejected theism and admit to being panentheists. It was quite an honor to be asked by Bill Craig to be his debate partner, since he is without a doubt today’s best Christian debater. And, although I don’t like to travel outside of North America, it was too much to pass on to participate in a debate (1) with Dr. Craig (2) on the topic of my doctoral research and (3) at the university from which I received my doctorate.
It was originally suggested that we hold the debate in a room which seated 125. It was instead settled that that we would use a nice auditorium which seated around 500. That turned out to be the right decision, since the auditorium was filled beyond its seating capacity before the debate even started. So, the amphitheater behind it was opened and a large screen television was provided for the overflow. Estimates of the number of people in the amphitheater varied greatly from 500-1,200. But it appears there were at least as many people in the overflow as there were in the main auditorium.
Audience members received Bill and I well and the debate went better than I could have hoped. Spangenberg and Wolmarans couldn’t stay on topic and presented some of the weakest arguments I’ve heard to date. They did not appear to be familiar with historical Jesus research. Some attendees had driven 400 miles to attend the event and numerous people approached me afterward expressing their heartfelt gratitude for defending the faith.
Of even more interest have been some of the comments from attendees found online:
“Wednesday marked a somewhat historic moment in South African history with the first (that I know of) international philosophical formal public debate between Christians and atheist/naturalists.”
“[I]t was a David vs Goliath situation. Spannenberg and Wolmarans were so outgunned by the eloquent, logical and well prepared Licona/Craig duo that it made me really ashamed to be South African, but at least I could be proud to be a Christian. These two men demonstrated that Christianity is logical and intellectually tenable. They demonstrated that Christians can be logical, solid and, for lack of a better word, COOL.”
“Thank you to the Americans and the AntWoord team for bringing Christians relief in this dry country. What an example they are to us not to be ashamed of our Lord and Savior. It is particularly sweet that this happened at the University of Pretoria. This is one DVD that I am going to watch over and over again. Thank you!”
“Where Spangenberg just seemed like a typical example of the fire-and-brimstone traditionalists he was railing against, the Americans were calm and collected, which made their arguments so much more digestible and convincing.”
A number of the South African Christian students whom I met were passionate about learning apologetics. So, I imagine that this trip may be the beginning of some apologetics work that must be done there. How important it will be to train others there for work in this type of ministry! DVDs of all the events are forthcoming. So, the church in South Africa will have some resources to start. I’m grateful that a number of students at Southern Evangelical Seminary like Simon Brace had the vision to partner with AntWoord Bediening in South Africa to bring about this tour!
Michael's website can be found at www.RisenJesus.com
