Faith on Trial by Pamela Binnings Ewen Page B

objective standard and have therefore established rules governing the offer of evidence to prove a fact or an assertion.
    This book sets forth for the reader’s consideration the evidence that is available to support a case for the testimony of the witnesses—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That evidence is then tested to see if it would stand up in a court of law. My purpose is not to diminish the rich message of the four Gospels or to reduce it to the shallowness of a few facts. But the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, if they can be established to be historical fact under the rigorous standards of proof required in a court of law, provide us with a rational basis for belief in something beyond the physical world—the key to understanding the revelation and value of the full message.
    If the testimony of the four Gospels can be established as true, then the value from that truth far exceeds the beauty of the quicksilver melody of Mozart’s music.

Chapter One
■ The Key Questions ■
    (The Issue and the Standard of Proof)
    T he life spirits of two small boys abandoned their bodies on a warm summer night in 1996. The children were five and six years old. A bloody nightshirt, a serrated bread knife, the wrong words spoken in a frantic telephone call to the police all led to the conviction of their mother for the murders.
    Darlie Routier was to all appearances a normal, loving person in the prime of her life. The cumulative impact of evidence, which was solely circumstantial, was enough to overcome an initial presumption of innocence in the case. Circumstantial evidence is the type of evidence that requires the use of reason to reach a conclusion. In the Routier case, no eyewitness ever appeared to support any portion of the prosecution’s story, and yet she was convicted, sentenced to die by injection, and now waits on death row. Even advances in DNA raised on appeal have not changed the status of the jury’s decision as of this date. Her family believes in her innocence; they maintain hope that somehow, some way, she can still be proven not guilty. The burden of proof has now shifted, however; at this point, without the introduction of relevant new evidence, she will face the executioner. 1
    Darlie Routier, like many others, was convicted solely on circumstantial evidence. Do you think her family would still hold on to hope if an eyewitness had testified at the trial? If a person of credible character, whose testimony was corroborated appeared before the court to say, “I saw her kill them. I watched as she raised the knife over and over and stabbed each one”? What if two such witnesses appeared to so testify? In such a case, even with one eyewitness, surely with two, all hope of innocence would be extinguished for her husband, her mother, and her friends. Testimony from a credible eyewitness is almost impossible to overcome.
    The Routier case was built on “knowable facts.” This young mother would not be on death row if the case were built on speculation or theories. The occurrence of an event such as murder is provable by putting together a case based on evidence that is shown to be reliable in a court of law under objective standards provided to protect the integrity of the proof.
    Today, in the new morning of the twenty-first century, we face a situation where knowable facts regarding an event so important that it could change each of our lives have been greatly obscured. The evidence to support the truth of these facts is stronger than the evidence presented in the Routier case, stronger than that required to send a young woman to her death. And yet today this evidence is being all but ignored.
    The facts, if they are shown to be true, would establish that a person of human appearance, living on this earth, died and then came back to life—fully and completely. This is the cornerstone of the Christian religion. Yet these facts have been ripped apart by theory and speculation, intellectually dissected