Field kit
Kalam, J.E.T.S., Columbo — the words the course uses, in plain English.
An early formula Paul received: died, buried, raised, appeared.
Dated by a wide range of scholars to within three to five years of the cross. It names witnesses. It is the oldest Christian preaching we have in writing. The historians-NT short treats it as the second documentary layer: not enough time for a resurrection myth to develop.
See also Textual criticism, Patristic citations, Minimal facts
A reasoned defense of the faith, not an apology for it.
From the Greek apologia — a defense in court. 1 Peter 3:15 is the charter: be ready to give a reason, with gentleness and respect. It is not about winning rooms. It is about clearing ground so the gospel can be seen.
A completed, endless collection — not ‘keep counting,’ but ‘already infinitely many.’
A potential infinite can always add one more. An actual infinite is a finished set with infinitely many members. The Kalam argument says an actually infinite series of past events cannot be traversed: you would never arrive at tonight. Abstract math can talk that way. A real history of yesterdays cannot.
See also Hilbert’s Hotel, Kalam cosmological argument
The original document as it left the author’s hand.
Lost to time, as with nearly every ancient work. The question is whether we can get close. For the New Testament, we can — the gap from events to copies is decades, not centuries, so the original had little room to vanish into rumor.
See also Textual criticism, Bibliographical test
If thoughts are only survival chemistry, they are not aimed at truth.
C. S. Lewis, later sharpened by Victor Reppert: a logical conclusion is not the same kind of thing as a brain event caused by physics. Natural selection rewards what works, including useful falsehoods. A worldview that undercuts trust in reasoning undercuts itself. Consciousness — what it is like to see and suffer — sits in the same neighborhood and is not solved by a scan.
See also Naturalism, Soul / dualism
God Himself bearing sin so He can forgive without calling evil good.
The center is Isaiah 53 and 1 Peter 3:18: the righteous for the unrighteous. The ‘cosmic child abuse’ charge treats the Son as a third party. The gospel says the Son lays His life down (John 10:18) and that the God who is wronged is the God who pays. Forgiveness absorbs a cost. It does not deny one.
See also Theodicy / defense, Gospel
A hunger this world cannot finish is a clue, not a proof.
Lewis called it Joy: a desire that survives getting what we asked for. Innate appetites usually have matching foods. This one has no indoor satisfaction. That does not replace the empty tomb. It explains why the tomb is news to a man and not only to a museum. Augustine: restless until we rest in God.
See also Moral argument, Faith
Not a surviving spirit or a living memory. A transformed physical body — which is why an empty tomb is required.
The first Christians did not claim Jesus’ spirit survived or that His teachings lived on. They claimed His physical body was raised and entirely transformed. A strictly bodily claim creates a historical requirement: a vacant grave and a missing corpse. Stack that with the crucifixion, and the empty tomb stops being a religious story. It becomes the central historical artifact that demands a factual explanation.
See also J.E.T.S., Minimal facts, Swoon theory
The person who makes a claim owes a reason.
‘Prove God’ is often a demand that you carry their claim (‘there is no God’) as well as your own. Columbo puts the burden back where it belongs.
How many copies, how early, how well do they agree?
One of the three classic tests of a document’s reliability (with internal and external evidence). The New Testament leads the ancient world on this test: thousands of Greek manuscripts, a gap of decades rather than centuries, and a text whose variants do not hide the story. Versions and church-father citations multiply the witness still further. Do not treat ‘24,000 copies’ as a magic number — explain why volume helps: more copies mean more small differences and more ability to recover the original.
See also Textual criticism, Autograph, Patristic citations
Details that hurt the author’s case are less likely to be invented.
Women as first witnesses. Peter’s denials. The crucifixion itself. Legend-makers polish. The Gospels leave the awkward parts in.
Ask questions until the claim has to carry its own weight.
Greg Koukl’s tool: meaning first, then reasons, then an alternative. Named for the detective who asked one more question on the way out the door.
The recognized list of books the church reads as Scripture.
Canon means rule or measuring rod. The New Testament list was recognized by apostolic origin, agreement with the faith already preached, and wide use in the churches. Councils published that recognition. They did not invent the books. Nicaea was not the vote. Thomas and Judas fail the tests by being late and by preaching another Jesus.
See also Textual criticism, Inspiration and inerrancy
Is it good because God wills it, or does God will it because it is good?
A false fork if God is the good. His commands do not invent goodness from nowhere, nor report a law above Him. They express His nature.
See also Moral argument, Image of God (imago Dei)
Is Christ the only way, one way among many, or are all paths equal?
Jesus’ own claim is exclusive. That is not unkindness. If He rose, He is in a position to know. If He did not, none of this matters.
Life-permitting values of the constants occupy an unimaginably small region of possible values.
This is not a vibe. Gravity, the cosmological constant, and the strong force have to sit in narrow windows. The anthropic principle tells us observers will find themselves in such a universe. It does not explain why one exists.
Trust based on knowledge, not a leap into the dark.
Biblical faith is not believing without evidence. It is entrusting yourself to what the evidence and the Word have shown. Hebrews 11:1 is conviction, not wish.
God shown in the world (general) and in Scripture and Christ (special).
Romans 1: the things that are made. Hebrews 1: the Son. Apologetics often starts with general revelation so that special revelation can be heard.
News: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and was raised.
Not advice. Not a self-help ladder. The creed in 1 Corinthians 15 is the gospel in a paragraph. Apologetics serves it. It does not replace it.
Leave the edges of the field so the vulnerable can work with dignity.
Leviticus 19:9–10 told Israel not to harvest to the last stalk. The poor and the sojourner could gather what remained. That is not passive welfare. It is a design in which labor itself becomes the engine of compassion — owners make room, workers keep their dignity.
See also Labor command
A fully occupied infinite hotel that can still take endless new guests — the picture of why an actual infinite cannot be real.
Imagine every room full. A new guest arrives. Everyone shifts one room down, and room 1 is free. Endless coaches of new guests can be housed the same way. That is a useful trick in set theory. As a picture of the past, it is a contradiction: a ‘full’ infinity of yesterdays that can still take more. The short on Week 1 uses it to show why time itself needs a first moment.
See also Actual infinite, Kalam cosmological argument
The appearances were grief-induced visions, not a bodily Jesus.
Hallucinations are private. The creed reports groups, skeptics, and a bodily claim (ate, touched). Grief does not convert enemies like James and Paul on cue. Hallucinations also leave bodies in tombs — they cannot carry a strictly bodily claim.
See also Bodily resurrection, J.E.T.S., Minimal facts
The ‘devotion to destruction’ commanded against specific Canaanite cities.
Herem is a ban: something given over to God by being removed from ordinary use. In Joshua it is judicial and local, after Genesis 15’s long warning, not a standing order for the church. Rahab shows the door was faith. Do not export it into modern war, and do not let a meme replace the narrative.
See also Theodicy / defense, Inspiration and inerrancy
Human beings are not accidents: physical flesh with a spiritual dimension, made to reflect the Maker.
If a Moral Lawgiver exists, we are not random biological accidents. The Week 3 short’s dual nature — flesh plus a spiritual dimension — is the old Christian claim that we are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–27). That is load-bearing for the darkness question: if we are only animals, violence is the strong surviving; if we are made, evil is a real rebellion against a design. The image is not a proof of God on its own. It is what the Lawgiver claim implies about us.
See also Moral argument, Soul / dualism
Scripture is God-breathed, and therefore trustworthy in what it affirms.
Inspiration is the doctrine. Inerrancy is a consequence many evangelicals draw. You can begin with historical reliability before you arrive at a full doctrine of Scripture.
Jerusalem, Enemy attestation, Testimony of women, Sunday worship.
Four converging lines for the empty tomb. None is a proof by itself. Together they make ‘the body was still in the tomb’ the harder claim. They sit on top of a prior point: the claim was bodily, so a vacant grave is a historical requirement, not a metaphor.
See also Minimal facts, Bodily resurrection, Sabbath-to-Sunday shift
Whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe began; therefore it has a cause.
Revived by William Lane Craig from medieval Islamic kalam. The fight is over the premises, not the logic. The cause of space and time cannot itself be spatial or temporal.
See also Leibnizian / contingency argument, Nothing, Actual infinite, Hilbert’s Hotel
Contingent things need an explanation. The universe is contingent. God is a necessary being.
Why is there something rather than nothing? An infinite chain of contingent causes never arrives at a sufficient reason. A necessary being does.
See also Kalam cosmological argument
Six days of work that reflect God’s own active nature. Given in Eden, not invented after the Fall.
Genesis 2:15 puts Adam in the garden to work it and keep it before anyone sinned. The curse of Genesis 3 is toil and thorns — friction on an assignment that was already good. Companion teaching names this the labor command: spend six days reflecting the Maker, then rest.
See also Gleanings
Objective moral duties make more sense if they are grounded in a good God.
If some things are really wrong, consensus and evolution cannot generate obligation. They can describe what we do. They cannot tell us what we ought to do. The Week 3 short’s picture: the boil at injustice is an inner compass you did not install. Driving on the right is a convention. Exploiting the innocent is not. An objective law needs a transcendent Lawgiver — and if He exists, we are not accidents, and evil is rebellion rather than weather.
See also Euthyphro dilemma, Relativism, Image of God (imago Dei)
Habermas’s method: use only data granted by a wide critical consensus.
Death by crucifixion, the disciples’ experiences of the risen Jesus, the conversion of James and Paul, and the empty tomb (J.E.T.S.). The bodily resurrection best fits the cluster. Use only the evidence even skeptics accept — a cold-case file, not a faith slogan.
See also J.E.T.S., Bodily resurrection
Not a violation of nature by a chaotic god, but a sign from the Author of nature.
Hume said uniform experience is against them. The whole question is whether Easter is the exception. You cannot use the conclusion as the premise.
Not a thin sort of something. Not a quantum field. Not a vacuum.
When physicists say ‘nothing,’ they often mean a physical system with laws. That is a subject, not an absence. Out of non-being, nothing comes. If things could begin with no cause, you would see horses appearing in living rooms.
See also Kalam cosmological argument, Actual infinite
A first-century imperial edict making tomb desecration a capital offense.
Acquired in 1878, this marble slab carries a Caesar’s decree: violating a tomb is a capital crime. Dating and the exact occasion are debated, but the edict itself is the kind of political reaction an empty-tomb controversy in Judea would produce. The crucifixion short treats it as archaeological corroboration of the scandal, not as a fifth Gospel.
See also J.E.T.S., Minimal facts, Swoon theory
Nature is all there is. Miracles are ruled out before the evidence is heard.
If you start there, the resurrection is impossible by definition. That is a worldview, not a finding. Ask whether the rule is earned.
A maximally great being cannot be a mere idea.
Anselm: a being than which none greater can be conceived must exist in reality, or a greater could be conceived. Plantinga’s form: if a maximally great being is possible, He exists necessarily. It is a real argument and a bad opening card. Use it when someone says ‘God’ is a nonsense phrase, then return to the public case.
See also Kalam cosmological argument, Theism
Fatal fluid around the lungs and heart. The medical name for ‘blood and water’ in John 19:34.
John records a spear thrust and an immediate flow of blood and water. Medically that tracks pleural effusion (fluid around the lungs) and pericardial effusion (fluid in the sac around the heart). The Week 9 investigation short names the same sign as cardiac rupture. Either reading is the signature of a body already dead, not of a man about to revive. The swoon theory does not survive it.
See also Swoon theory, Minimal facts
The church fathers quoted the New Testament so often we could rebuild the text from their letters.
Second- and third-century writers cited the New Testament constantly in their own work. Popular round numbers run past a million quotations; the load-bearing point is Bruce Metzger’s: even if every manuscript vanished, we could reconstruct nearly the entire New Testament from those citations. The historians-NT short treats this as the third documentary layer, beside manuscript volume and the early creeds.
See also Textual criticism, 1 Corinthians 15 creed, Bibliographical test
Under uncertainty, the cost of ignoring God is not symmetrical.
Pascal did not prove God. He argued that finite loss against infinite loss makes seeking the rational posture when the evidence feels unfinished. Faking belief does not win the bet. The wager also cannot choose among religions. It only refuses permanent delay, after the case for Christ is in view.
See also Faith, Burden of proof
The claim that there is no objective truth — which cannot meet its own standard.
‘There is no truth’ is offered as a truth. Moral relativism still wants some things to stay wrong. Ask what they mean, then whether the claim applies to itself. A useful test from the Week 3 short: is this claim a traffic rule (driving on the right — it really does change by country) or a law (exploiting the innocent)? Relativism treats the second as if it were the first.
See also Moral argument, Euthyphro dilemma
Not mere order, and not mere complexity — information with a function.
A crystal is ordered. A pile of parts is complex. DNA is both complex and specified. That is the kind of thing minds produce.
The claim that Jesus fainted and later revived in the tomb.
Roman crucifixion included a spear thrust and a death certificate to Pilate. Blood and water from the side is pleural and pericardial effusion — fatal fluid, not a faint. A half-dead man would not have launched a resurrection movement. Even Strauss, who rejected miracles, rejected this.
See also Pleural / pericardial effusion, Minimal facts, Bodily resurrection
Jewish believers moved their gathering from Saturday to the first day of the week with remarkable speed.
For centuries the Saturday Sabbath was a non-negotiable identity marker. The earliest church, still Jewish, began gathering on Sunday — the day they claimed they found the tomb empty. Week 9 treats that cultural whiplash as sociological evidence: a shift that large does not happen without a massive catalyst. J.E.T.S. already uses Sunday as one of four lines for the empty tomb. Constantine did not invent the day; Paul is already on it in the 50s.
See also J.E.T.S., Minimal facts, Bodily resurrection
Some claims die by their own rules.
‘There is no truth.’ ‘You should never judge.’ ‘Only science gives knowledge.’ Ask whether the statement can survive its own standard.
You are not merely a brain. Persons think, intend, and endure.
If consciousness is only chemistry, reason and moral duty are afterimages. Moreland and others argue that the soul is the better fit for what we already know about ourselves. The Week 3 short’s dual nature — flesh plus a spiritual dimension, made in a divine image — is the same claim in moral-argument clothes.
See also Image of God (imago Dei), Moral argument
The science of recovering the original wording from surviving copies.
We do not have the autographs. We have an embarrassment of copies. Variants are mapped, weighed, and published. Essential Christian beliefs are not hanging on a disputed spelling. This is the first of three documentary layers the historians-NT short walks: volume, then early creeds, then the fathers’ citations.
See also Autograph, Bibliographical test, Patristic citations
There is a personal God who created and can act in the world.
Distinct from deism (a distant watchmaker), pantheism (God is the world), and atheism. The arguments of weeks 1–3 describe a theistic God before the Gospels name Him.
A theodicy claims to explain God’s reasons. A defense only shows evil is not a disproof.
Plantinga’s free-will defense answers the logical problem of evil. The evidential and existential problems need presence, not just a syllogism. Christ crucified is not a footnote to that.
One God in three Persons — not three gods, and not one actor in masks.
Being is what God is. Person is who God is. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are each God, and they are not three gods. The pattern is already in the baptismal name, John 1, and the worship of Jesus. Nicaea fenced that pattern against a created Son. Analogies (water, shamrock, roles) break. Do not lead with them.
The set of answers you live by about God, the world, good, and us.
Everyone has one. The question is whether it can bear the data of beginning, design, moral law, and history without cutting pieces off.