Craig Keener, author of Christobiography and one of the most cited New Testament scholars alive, walks through the historical case: why the gospels are ancient biography, what living memory does for reliability, his documented miracle research, and how faith survives real doubt. He also tells the story of how he left atheism. Find more of his work at craigkeener.com.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/craig-keener

Gupta is the Julius R. Mantey Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary and the author of Paul for the World. He joins Shane Rosenthal and Nate to work through what Paul's gospel actually was, where "I'll fly away" theology came from, and why he thinks C.S. Lewis got heaven wrong. The short version: Paul preached newness of life and a renewed creation, because we were made for heaven on earth.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/do-christians-go-to-heaven-pauls-gospel

In this solo episode, Nate traces the first thousand years of Christian thinking about the cross: Irenaeus on Christ reliving the human story to get right what Adam got wrong, Athanasius on why a deathless God dying is the real scandal rather than how long it lasted, and Gregory of Nyssa's fish hook image of death swallowing divinity and choking on it. Together they form the Christus Victor vision, a framework that answers the questions the guilt-and-payment model struggles with.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/early-church-view-of-the-atonement

New Testament scholar Lydia McGrew lays out what she calls the "reportage model," the case that the Gospel authors were close to the facts, always trying to get them right, and highly successful. She walks through the two big categories of evidence, from name statistics that later fiction writers could not fake to undesigned coincidences, the subtle puzzle-like fits between Gospels that are hard to explain any other way.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/are-the-gospels-historically-reliable

This episode traces the chain link by link: Irenaeus remembering the old bishop who taught him in Smyrna, Polycarp's letter to the Philippians written around 110 to 115 AD, his friend Ignatius writing the same faith from a different city, and the day an 86-year-old man chose death in a Roman stadium over cursing Christ. If Christianity was invented later, Polycarp is the problem with the timeline.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/who-was-polycarp

In part 2 of our conversation, Wright walks through what actually happens between death and resurrection, why the ascension means Jesus reigns rather than departs, and how salvation stretches to the rescue of the whole creation. If he is right, death, grief, and the church's mission all start to look different.

New here? You can start with part 1.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/nt-wright-do-christians-go-to-heaven-when-they-die

Wright, one of the world's leading scholars on early Christianity, covers why women as the first witnesses is a detail nobody would invent, what resurrection actually meant to first-century Jews, and why the differences between the gospel accounts strengthen their reliability instead of undermining it. Get Surprised by Hope and God's Homecoming.

This is part 1 of the conversation. When you finish, listen to part 2.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/nt-wright-did-jesus-rise-from-the-dead

New Testament scholar Caleb Friedeman compared them against 95 other ancient biographies, and the pattern he found runs the opposite direction from the legend theory. In this conversation he lays out the four marks of historical intent ancient biographers left in their birth stories, why two differing genealogies don't add up to fabrication, and the detail in Luke 2 that quietly points to Mary as his source.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/do-the-gospel-genealogies-contradict-each-other

New Testament scholar Caleb Friedeman compared Matthew and Luke to 95 other ancient biographies and found the average biographer wrote 360 years after his subject's birth, while the gospel writers worked within decades, close enough to talk with people who knew eyewitnesses. He also walks through the two genealogies, the census in Luke, and why two accounts with different details are not the same thing as a contradiction.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/do-the-gospel-birth-narratives-contradict

In part two of our conversation, Bible Project co-founder Tim Mackie walks through how the biblical authors crafted narratives with intentional gaps, layered patterns, and riddles that unfold across entire books. We get into why "inerrancy" might be the wrong word, what Jesus actually did when asked about marriage and divorce, and why Tim says the Bible is an epic narrative pointing to a person rather than a rule book.

New here? You can start with part 1.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/tim-mackie-the-bible-isnt-what-you-think

Tim Mackie, co-founder of The Bible Project, walks through how the biblical authors used design patterns, repeated keywords, and narrative "hyperlinking" to build meaning across the entire Hebrew Bible. From the word "good" threading through Genesis to the way sin crouches at Cain's door like the serpent in the garden, Tim shows why treating the Bible like a rule book or a textbook misses what these ancient literary artists were actually doing.

This is part 1 of our conversation with Tim. When you finish, listen to part 2.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/tim-mackie-how-to-read-the-bible

Rebecca McLaughlin, author of Confronting Christianity, joins Faith Lab to ask whether Christian faith can stand up to serious scrutiny. The conversation covers the historical reliability of the Gospels and their eyewitness roots, women in the early Christian movement, moral critiques of the church that quietly borrow Christian values, and the problem of suffering through the story of Lazarus. Rebecca also explains why Christianity has always made public, testable claims that invite investigation rather than shut it down, and why deconstruction so often follows questions that were postponed instead of engaged.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/rebecca-mclaughlin-confronting-christianity

Shane Rosenthal, host of The Humble Skeptic podcast, joins the show to trace how faith got detached from evidence: what pistis meant to Aristotle and to the first Christians, how the Christian West forgot its arguments once everyone around was Christian, why Hebrews 11:1 is about a title deed rather than a blind leap, and how Jesus answered John the Baptist's doubt with eyewitness testimony instead of shame. It goes a long way toward explaining why so many people deconstruct today. You can find Shane's work at humbleskeptic.com, and check out his recent video on whether archaeologists have discovered biblical Bethsaida.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/blind-faith-shane-rosenthal

In this first episode of Faith Lab, Nate tells the whole story: burning out while planting churches in San Francisco with Francis Chan, losing his belief in the resurrection, and then noticing that the skeptical explanations required a blind faith of their own. He shares what changed when he finally engaged the historical scholarship for himself, from the eyewitness texture of the earliest sources to the creed Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15, and why Faith Lab exists to test whether Christianity holds up under honest scrutiny.

Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/support

Read the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/deconstruction-led-me-back-to-christianity