
Abstract This chapter shows how English Christian evidentialists of the early eighteenth century utilized historically and empirically based arguments to refute the skeptical views of deists who rejected the divine origin of the Bible and denied the historicity of biblical miracles. The chapter describes the biblical criticism developed by Baruch Spinoza (which English deists of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries appropriated), and then describes how anti-deist Christian writers such as Charles Leslie and Nathaniel Lardner used historical evidence to defend the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection and the gospel narratives. The chapter surveys the deists’ critique of biblical morality and English Christian evidentialists’ responses to that critique—especially their response to the skeptics’ claim that the ancient Israelites’ divinely ordered slaughter of the Canaanites was immoral. The chapter concludes with a study of Joseph Butler, whose Analogy of Religion became the most influential eighteenth-century work of anti-deist English Christian apologetics.
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 0 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Average | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Average | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Average |
