Investigate the resurrection like a historian

If you have ever walked away from a conversation about the resurrection feeling like something important was left unsaid — like the real questions were never quite reached — you already understand why this course exists.

The resurrection is the hinge on which historic Christianity turns. It is also one of the most scrutinized claims in all of intellectual history, examined by philosophers, historians, theologians, and skeptics across two millennia. And yet most of the conversations people actually have about it — in churches, on campuses, around dinner tables — never come close to engaging the actual historical evidence, the actual scholarly debate, or the actual strength and weakness of competing explanations. We trade talking points. We talk past each other. We leave with our prior convictions intact, whatever they were, and nothing examined more deeply than when we began.

I built The Risen Question because I believe you deserve better than that — and because I believe the evidence deserves a more careful hearing than it usually gets. This course is not a devotional. It is not a quick tour of familiar arguments. It is a structured, methodical investigation that begins where every honest historical inquiry must begin: with the question of how we evaluate evidence from the ancient past, and what assumptions we bring to that task before we ever look at a single source. We work through the crucifixion, burial, and empty tomb in their first-century historical context. We assess the New Testament documents and early Christian creeds with the same source-critical tools historians apply to any ancient text. We examine the post-resurrection appearances and the remarkable transformation of the early disciples — including the hard cases of Paul and James, two men with every reason not to believe. And then we give the naturalistic alternatives their fullest, fairest hearing — because they deserve it, and because a conclusion reached only by ignoring the competition is worth very little.

What I want for you at the end of this course is not a feeling. I want you to be able to sit down with a thoughtful skeptic, or with your own deepest doubts, and reason through the evidence carefully, honestly, and without flinching. Confidence without intellectual humility is arrogance. Humility without the willingness to reach conclusions is evasion. This course aims for the narrow, worthwhile space between them. I think you are ready for it. I hope you will join me.