Cold-Case Christianity (Updated & Expanded Edition): A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels

by J. Warner Wallace

A SMALL NUMBER OF CONSPIRATORS

THOROUGH AND IMMEDIATE COMMUNICATION

A SHORT TIMESPAN

SIGNIFICANT RELATIONAL CONNECTIONS

LITTLE OR NO PRESSURE

the most significant claim of the alleged apostolic eyewitnesses was their assertion related to the resurrection.

But

I started to doubt the reasonable nature of the alleged “Christian conspiracy.”

let’s investigate the possible “Christian conspiracy” considering the five principles for successful conspiracies I’ve already described.

The number of conspirators required to successfully accomplish the Christian conspiracy would have been staggering.

Let’s limit our discussion to the twelve apostles (adding Matthias as Judas’s replacement).

This number is already prohibitively large from a conspiratorial perspective, and to make matters worse, none of the other characteristics of successful conspiracies existed for the twelve apostles.

The apostles had little or no effective way, for example, to communicate with one another in a quick or thorough manner.

the apostles would have been required to protect their conspiratorial lies for an incredibly long time.

To complicate matters further, many of the disciples were complete strangers to one another prior to their time together as followers of Jesus.

Remember, successful conspiracies are unpressured conspiracies. The apostles, on the other hand, were aggressively persecuted as they were scattered from Italy to India.

I can’t imagine a less favorable set of circumstances for a successful conspiracy than those faced by the twelve apostles.

None of these eyewitnesses ever recanted, none was ever trotted out by the enemies of Christianity to expose the Christian “lie.”

These men and women were either involved in the greatest conspiracy of all time or were simply eyewitnesses who were telling the truth. The more I learned about conspiracies, the more the latter seemed the most reasonable conclusion.

The Martyrdom Traditions of the Apostles

Before I move on from this discussion of conspiracies, I want to address an issue sometimes raised related to the relationship between martyrdom and truth. History is filled with examples of men and women who were committed to their religious views and were willing to die a martyr’s death for what they believed.

The original eyewitnesses,

knew firsthand if their claims were true or not.

They didn’t trust someone else for their testimony; they were making a firsthand assertion. The martyrdom of these original eyewitnesses is in a completely different category from the martyrdom of those who might follow them. If their claims were a lie, they would know it personally, unlike those who were martyred in the centuries to follow. While it’s reasonable to believe you and I might die for what we mistaken...

A healthy skepticism toward conspiracy theories is an important tool to include in our callout bag.

the notion of a “Christian conspiracy” is simply unreasonable.

If it is unreasonable for the resurrection to be the product of a conspiracy,

Let’s be careful not to unreasonably embrace conspiracy theories related to secular issues, while simultaneously trying to make a case against the alleged conspiracy of the apostles.

Detectives quickly learn the importance of documenting and tracking key pieces of evidence.

If the evidence isn’t carefully handled, several questions will plague the case as it is presented to a jury.

Was a particular piece of evidence truly discover...

How do we know it was actu...

How do we know an officer didn’t “pla...

These kinds of questions can be avoided if we respect and establish the “chain of custody.” Every crime scene contains important pieces of evidence, and these items of evidence must eventually be delivered to a ...

Those who are skeptical of the New Testament Gospels offer a similar objection based on the chain of custody.

at the Council of Laodicea in AD 363.

early Christian leaders first identified and codified the canon of the Christian Scripture, the official list of twenty-seven books and letters known as the New Testament.

To trace the New Testament Gospels, we need to identify the original eyewitnesses and their immediate disciples, moving from one set of disciples to the next until we trace the Gospels from AD 33 to AD 363.

Of all the documents written by Christians in the first and second centuries, the texts we care about most are those in the canon of Scripture.

We would be wise to have at least some understanding of the identity of the students and disciples of the apostles and some mastery of their writings.

Many of these men (like Polycarp, Ignatius, and Clement) became known as the “early-church fathers.”

They led the church following the deaths of the apostles, and their letters and writings are widely available online and in print form. The earliest works of these church fathers are often interesting and enriching. They are worth our time and effort, particularly as we make a case for the New Testam...

When is enough, enough? When is it reasonable to conclude something is true? When is the evidence sufficient?

In legal terms, the line that must be crossed before someone can conclude something is evidentially true is called the “standard of proof” (the “SOP”). The SOP varies depending on the kind of case under consideration. The most rigorous of these criteria is the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard required at criminal trials.

The Escalating Standard of Proof

“Some Credible Evidence”

“Preponderance of the Evidence”

“Clear and Convincing Evidence”

“Beyond a Reasonable Doubt”

It’s not possible to remove every potential uncertainty; that’s why the standard is not “beyond any doubt.” Being “beyond a reasonable doubt” simply requires us to separate our possible and imaginary doubts from those that are reasonable.