Bill Pratt | January 16, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt Let’s briefly cover some historical background. The Roman emperor Vespasian ruled from A.D. 69 -79; his reign ended with his death. Writing about Vespasian some 25 years later, the Roman historian Tacitus reported a famous incident where Vespasian is said to have miraculously healed two men – one blind and one lame. This miracle [...]
Bill Pratt | December 22, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Very few skeptics with whom I’ve interacted have actually investigated the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ (there are some exceptions, but they are few in number). The typical response is to dismiss all miracle accounts as either impossible or so improbable as to not be worth researching – [...]
Bill Pratt | September 23, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1 of this series Philosopher Edward Feser demonstrated that reason, not faith, brings us all the way to the conclusion that Jesus is divine. Once we arrive here, where do we go? Feser explains: Suppose you know through purely rational arguments that there is a God, that He raised [...]
Bill Pratt | September 20, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt A typical accusation of atheists toward Christians is that we only believe what we believe because of blind faith. In other words, we have no rational reasons for believing in God or believing that Jesus died for our sins. The person who believes in fairies or unicorns is no different than [...]
Bill Pratt | August 3, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1 of this post, Tim Keller presented historian N. T. Wright’s analysis of Jewish and Greco-Roman attitudes toward an individual resurrection. Would the ancient world have accepted the story of Jesus’s resurrection without serious skepticism? According to Keller, Wright’s research indicates that the Greco-Roman world would not have been [...]
Bill Pratt | August 1, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt A common claim of resurrection skeptics is that the people who lived in first century Palestine and the surrounding Roman Empire would believe just about anything. They would have easily embraced the story of Jesus’ resurrection without thinking twice. So, for the early proponents of Christianity who thought they really saw [...]
Bill Pratt | July 29, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Bart Ehrman and Mike Licona locked horns once again over the resurrection of Jesus on the Unbelievable? podcast last April. The two scholars discussed various elements of the New Testament that historians could use to reconstruct the life of Jesus for much of the radio show. In the final segment of [...]
Bill Pratt | April 21, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Re-post from April 12, 2009 We celebrate Easter because it commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians believe that Jesus was killed by crucifixion on a Friday and then actually came back to life on the following Sunday. Some may ask, “So what?” Why is it important that Jesus rose from the [...]
Bill Pratt | December 10, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt You would think this question would be pretty easy to answer because the gospel message is something that Christians talk about all the time. However, it is difficult to find the gospel explained in one place within the Bible. There is, however, one passage where the gospel is defined, and that [...]
Bill Pratt | August 26, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt One of the most compelling apologetic arguments for the truth of the resurrection of Jesus is the fact that most of his closest followers were martyred for their beliefs. Since these followers would have had first-hand knowledge of whether he actually did come back from the dead, their willingness to be [...]
