The Case for Historic Christianity by Ed Wharton
For a group frequently asking for more resources and their own package
Amazon blurb:
Historical Christian Evidences is an exciting approach to proving the claims of Christianity. This has been fairly well established in the enthusiasm which the subject has generated among an inquisitive and increasingly large public who wants to know if Christianity is hoax or history.
Be careful not to predict that the electricity of this “new approach” will power out soon after the newness is gone. Historical evidences for Christianity is not new; not at all. This particular method of producing faith in Christ is some two thousand years old. It is precisely the approach which was used by the Gospel writers and Paul and Peter to prove the claims of Christ to be the Son of God. The New Testament writers made no arguments from either philosophy or science for the sonship and deity of Jesus. Neither was their approach one of emotional subjectivism, that is, of following after their feelings as an evidence of their claims. But in the calm and objective style of men who knew from either eyewitness experience (as the apostles) or from painstaking research (as with Luke) that what they were recording were the facts in the case, they wrote their accounts in the verifiable context of history.
In point of fact, historical evidences is the case for Christianity which originated with the apostles. In an age which demands historical certitude we are but rediscovering the apostolic method of bringing the gospel to an unbelieving world. It is actually something of a wonder that the very method used by the New testament writers to prove the genuineness of the Christian religion has been so often relegated to a small and insignificant chapter.
Christianity is belief in Christ as the Son of God with power to raise the dead and judge the world. This belief rests squarely on Christ’s own historic life and resurrection as presented in the New Testament. It is therefore necessary to view the New Testament as a reliable record of facts providing a credible ground of evidence for belief. I have thus attempted in this course to provide sufficient reason for accepting the New Testament as historically reliable (hopefully without becoming theologically heavy), and then by an appeal to the facts as they are recorded I have attempted by systematic reasoning to reproduce the apostles’ case for belief.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."