How Gary Habermas Discovered the Minimal Facts of the Resurrection

Interesting. It was like a little kernel back then in your mind, and then now fast-forward, you are the foremost resurrection expert, and you have developed, you've closed the circle, so to speak. And so we are in the Easter season, Dr. Habermas, and of course every Easter skeptics like to trot out, you know, all kinds of alleged problems with Christianity and the Bible.

The Minimal Facts Approach to the Resurrection

But you have developed an apologetic that really bypasses a lot of those issues, and it goes directly to the heart of the Gospel, to the Resurrection. It's called the Minimal Facts of the Resurrection.

So before we get into the facts themselves, can you tell us how you came up with the idea of the Minimal Facts in the first.

Place? Yeah, very much so. They came out of my doubt, and then I developed them in my PhD dissertation on the Resurrection. Now at that stage it was still very much like a kernel of light, like as if to say, here's four things you need to consider for the Resurrection, and one of them is, and that was the Minimal Facts argument.

So it was something that I just had spent, it was just budding in my mind. But it actually started beforehand, and I can remember the day it happened, and I still have the notes that I wrote that night.

And I was sitting in a chair, I'd been married and, you know, moved away from my folks, and I was going, finishing up with my schooling, and I thought to myself, what about Objection X against the Resurrection?

And this one really worked on me. Back in the days when I really wasn't, I didn't have all the facts readily marshaled, you know, at hand, and ready to pull out. And I thought, what about this objection?

And I said to myself, all the following things about the New Testament would have to be false for this theory to be true. And I made a list, and I started numbering them, one, two, three, four. I remember I got quite a long list, like 20-some reasons.

Because, see, what I was doing was not believing the Bible was as strong a source as my Christian friends thought it was. I'd say, well, what about Jesus' appearance? And then the comeback is, well, yeah, but Jesus showed himself as a body, and he ate in front of the disciples.

And then I would come back and argue with myself, and I'd go, that's Luke, you can't trust Luke. Luke's not an early source, not a good source, we don't know who the author is. So I would argue with Luke, I would argue with myself, but I would still put that down on my list.

And I would say, okay, for this theory to be true, Luke would have to be wrong when he says this. Paul would have to be wrong when he says this. So-and-so would miss the boat when they said they saw this, but they really didn't.

Independent Sources and Skeptical Confirmations

And I came up with a list of reputations that could be satisfied by people who did not believe the Bible was inspired, or maybe didn't even believe it was reliable. I still had a list of objections. And then I started thinking, well, that's amazing that these guys are not Christians, and they're giving me this data.

They're saying, well, A is a horrible argument, B is a horrible argument, C is a horrible argument, D is pretty good. And somebody else would say, E is pretty good. And someone else would say, G is pretty good.

And I started putting these ones together that people were saying were very good, and I wonder why they were good for critics. And I would go back and look, and it's because, you know, there's five sources for this thing.

Or to use a rather new example, Bart Ehrman gives 12 independent sources that Jesus was crucified. Now, Paul Meyer, who retired from Western Michigan University, professor of ancient history, Paul Meyer says many things in the ancient world are ported because of one source, and two sources often make a fact infallible.

Well, using that rule, it would be kind of amazing that a fellow who calls himself an atheist leaning toward agnosticism, Bart Ehrman, would say that there are 12 independent sources for the Resurrection.

I'm sorry, for the crucifixion of Jesus. So, Bart doesn't believe the Resurrection. But that's how I would start doing this. I'd say, oh, well, everyone's going to grant me the death of Jesus, right? And I would start checking, yeah, everyone grants.

Charting Consensus Among Critical Scholars

Now, it took a lot of time to do this. In fact, I came up, I had charts, they're still in my file cabinet. I had charts, Rudolf Bultmann, you know, the Bart Ehrmans of those days, and Rudolf Bultmann's the left of Bart Ehrman today.

He's a real, you know, skeptic, skeptic. And Bultmann would be on my list, and Paul Tillich, and all these skeptical names. And I would put facts across the top of the list, and the names down the left hand side.

And I would say, do these guys allow these things? And I'd say, yes, no, yes, no. And when there was a yes, I would put, you know, I would tie it into a chart. And I would say, oh, that's Bultmann's book, such and such, page 32.

And so after a while, I noticed that there were certain facts everybody was leaning toward, and that's the birth of the minimal facts, me answering my own objections, and wondering why critics were willing to admit things.