Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 03:1 (Apr 2002)
Article: How Not to Critique Legal Apologetics
Author: Boyd Pehrson

How Not to Critique Legal Apologetics

A Lesson from a Skeptic’s Internet Web Page Objections

Boyd Pehrson

It pains me to have to refute what I consider to be, at best, poor scholarship. But I think it highly instructive to see the skeptic in his natural environment and observe his methods and styles of reasoning. I have seen many Christians making similar mistakes whilst undertaking criticism of unbelievers’ ideas, and there is much to learn so that we do not repeat the same mistakes.

We shall here examine Richard Packham’s web page article entitled “Critique of John Warwick Montgomery’s Arguments for the Legal Evidence for Christianity.”1 Mr. Packham’s article is an attempt to dismantle Dr. John Warwick Montgomery’s essay “The Jury Returns, A Juridical Defense of Christianity” published both in his work Human Rights and Human Dignity and in the Cornell Symposium under his editorship (Evidence for Faith: Deciding the God Question). I have not attempted to do a line-by-line critique of Mr. Packham’s objections; I am merely offering some illustrations to show that legal reasoning is far more hospitable to classical Christianity than to Mr. Packham’s skepticism.

What is Legal Apologetics?

In his essay “The Jury Returns” Dr. Montgomery revives the sleeping giant of legal apologetics whose advocates include such renowned jurisprudents as 17th century Dutch legal scholar Hugo Grotius,2 19th century evidence specialist Simon Greenleaf,3 and, more recently, Lord Chancellor Hailsham.4 Dr. Montgomery’s object is to investigate the truth claims of Scripture concerning Jesus Christ by the use of legal reasoning and the laws of evidence. He writes:

The advantage of a jurisprudential approach lies in the difficulty of jettisoning it: legal standards of evidence develop as essential means of resolving the most intractable disputes in society (dispute settlement by self-help—the only alternative to adjudication—will tear any society apart). Thus one cannot very well throw out legal reasoning merely because its application to Christianity results in a verdict for the Christian faith.5

If the earliest documents we have concerning Jesus Christ assert, for example, that he was born in the days of Caesar Augustus when Cyrenius was governor of Syria,6 then Christians should not flinch to subject the Gospel records to objective tests of reliability.

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