Can we Only Have Belief through the Spirit?: “Only by the Spirit can one believe” … Can this be considered gaslighting unbelievers and a way of compensating for a lack of enough evidence? Please help my pain, I'm struggling.

Q&A question: Can we Only Have Belief through the Spirit?

About the Census: Luke 2: Is there any extrabiblical evidence for the census in Luke 2? I heard it would be a pretty dumb idea to send people to their place of birth if you later want them to pay taxes from their current home.

Q&A question: About the Census: Luke 2

Communion: How Frequent?: My dad thinks that the Lord's Supper should only be observed on Passover because when Jesus said "do this in remembrance of Me,” He meant Passover. Any evidence in Scripture for weekly communion?

Q&A question: Communion: How Frequent?

Prophecy Fulfillment, or Just Staged?: People quote prophecy as evidence of Jesus’ deity. Couldn’t He have deliberately fulfilled some prophecies, such as bribing men to divide His clothes, or purposefully riding a donkey into Jerusalem?

Q&A question: Prophecy Fulfillment, or Just Staged?

God Lied 4 Times??: I’ve recently had someone use Jeremiah 20:7, Matthew 16: 28, the lack of immediate death in Genesis 3, and Cain’s exile in Genesis 4 as “evidence” that God is a liar. How would you respond?

Q&A question: God Lied 4 Times??

The Law of Agency: How do you respond to non-trinitarians who use the "Law of Agency" to dismiss the scriptural evidence for the Trinity in regard to Jesus, etc. claiming He is not God, but simply God's agent?

Q&A question: The Law of Agency

The Doctrine of Inspiration: What evidence and encouragement can you offer a believer who is struggling to trust the doctrine of inspiration? I know that it’s true, but I struggle with doubt.

Q&A question: The Doctrine of Inspiration

Winger defends his call for egalitarians to repent, distinguishing it from Calvinism disagreements because egalitarianism directly harms marriages and church leadership structure. He also calls patriarchalists to repent for teaching women are inherently more easily deceived.

Q&A question from someone who agrees egalitarians should repent but asks if the same applies to Calvinism as a secondary issue.

Why Doesn’t God Just Satisfy Skeptics’ Doubts?: How would you answer someone who says, “If there is a God, He knows what evidence I would need to believe and has not given it to me” and seems to genuinely mean it, not mocking/scoffing?

Q&A question: Why Doesn’t God Just Satisfy Skeptics’ Doubts?

The Best Argument for God: What do you think is the best evidence/argument there is for God?

Q&A question: The Best Argument for God

Disciples Knew they Had the Spirit?: In Acts 19:2, Paul asks the disciples if they have received the Holy Spirt. How would they KNOW they received the Holy Spirit? Was there a type of evidence then that we don’t necessarily see today?

Q&A question: Disciples Knew they Had the Spirit?

1,000 Year Reign: On Earth?: Is there biblical evidence that the 1,000 year reign of Christ as described in Revelation is on Earth? I hear a lot about the 1,000 year reign specifically being on Earth, but I fail to see the word “Earth” anywhere.

Q&A question: 1,000 Year Reign: On Earth?

Winger advises a 16-year-old in an egalitarian church on how to approach leaders: do self-assessment first (Matt 7:5, Gal 6:1), don't become one-sided in critique, acknowledge blessings from women's ministry even if the role is unbiblical, bring SPECIFIC evidence rather than just conviction, and start with encouragement.

Q from 16-year-old who has been studying Winger's Women in Ministry series and wants to discuss egalitarianism with church leaders.

Answered Prayer or Coincidence?: How can I tell if God actually answered my prayers or if the outcome was just a coincidence? Many Christians say God has spoken to or guided them without evidence. How can such claims be tested objectively?

Q&A question: Answered Prayer or Coincidence?

Historical Evidence

4..Here begins the external evidence analysis

27..What is the “internal evidence”?

29..Two common bad examples of internal evidence

34..The strongest piece of internal evidence

The presence of women as the primary witnesses to the empty tomb was an embarrassment to the early church in first-century culture, where women's testimony was widely discredited. What was a liability then is actually strong evidence for historical reliability now — people don't fabricate stories that hurt their own credibility.

The criterion of embarrassment and the women witnesses; Celsius's criticism

Richard Bauckham's thesis in "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" is that names appearing in Mark's gospel identify living witnesses known to the community receiving the text. When Mark names Simon of Cyrene "the father of Alexander and Rufus," and Paul greets a "Rufus" in Rome (Rom. 16:13), this likely connects to the same family — confirming these are not invented characters but real people vouching for the account.

Named eyewitnesses in Mark as evidence of historical reliability; Bauckham's thesis

Salome is present at the death scene and the empty tomb, but absent from the burial scene (only the two Marys watch where Jesus is laid). This inconsistency would have been smoothed over in a fabricated account. The simplest explanation is she wasn't there for the burial — a subtle but significant mark of historicity.

The inconsistency of Salome's appearances as evidence of historical accuracy rather than legend

The Digesta (summary of Roman law, ~500 AD appealing back to Augustus) states that "the bodies of those condemned to death should not be refused their relatives" for burial — and this was the general rule, not the exception. Ehrman presents a selective picture by quoting only sources showing executions without burial, ignoring Roman legal provisions that allowed it.

Roman law (Digesta) as evidence that burial of crucified persons was permitted and practiced

Deuteronomy 21:22-23 required that anyone executed by hanging be buried the same day so as not to defile the land. According to Dr. Craig Evans, the Sanhedrin was specifically tasked with ensuring proper burial of executed persons in Jerusalem to maintain ritual purity — meaning even the enemies of Jesus had religious motivation to bury him promptly.

Jewish law and Sanhedrin practice as evidence for burial; Deut. 21:22-23 and the purity argument

Philo's "Against Flaccus" (§83) records a Roman governor in Egypt allowing crucified persons to be taken down and given to relatives for burial during a festival — showing there were documented exceptions to any general policy of leaving bodies on crosses, and that burial was sometimes permitted on special occasions across the Roman world.

Philo's "Flaccus" as evidence of Roman burial exceptions for crucified persons

The Book of Revelation extensively exalts Jesus as Alpha and Omega, First and Last, worthy of worship — but when Michael appears (Rev. 12:7), he receives no such fanfare. The contrast between how Jesus and Michael are treated in the same book strongly suggests they are distinct beings, with Jesus occupying an utterly different category of glory.

Revelation's contrasting treatment of Jesus and Michael as evidence they are distinct beings

Apologetics — rigorously engaging the hard questions of the Christian faith — saved Winger's own faith when he was seriously doubting in his 20s. His guest Jonathan Mclatchie makes the case for a "maximal data argument" for the resurrection, as opposed to the more common "minimal facts" approach, arguing it is more compelling because it involves far more lines of evidence.

Introduction: apologetics as faith-saving; maximal vs. minimal facts approach to the resurrection

David Hume's objection — that miracles are by definition the least plausible explanation because they go against uniform experience — is circular: it uses the rarity of miracles to discount all testimony to miracles, then cites the lack of accepted testimony to miracles as proof they don't happen. Paley's response: if God raises Jesus specifically to vindicate his messianic claim, we would not expect that resurrection to be a repeatable event — so non-repetition is not evidence against it.

Hume's objection to miracles and Paley's response; the circularity in Hume's argument

The Christological trilemma (Lord, Liar, or Lunatic — associated with C.S. Lewis, likely originating with G.K. Chesterton) is built on the historical evidence that Jesus made both messianic and divine identity claims. He cannot have been lying — he made his violent death by the very authorities whose power he claimed to supersede a core part of his mission, which an impostor would never do. Mark 8's double rebuke (Peter rebukes Jesus; Jesus rebukes Peter as "Satan") shows this is not a later invention.

The Christological trilemma: Jesus's self-claims were not those of a liar or madman

Gender-Segregated Seating — No Historical Evidence

The sermon's claim that men and women sat on opposite sides in the Corinthian assembly, with wives shouting questions across the room to husbands, has no credible historical or archaeological support.

Peppiatt's Quotation-Refutation Theory on 1 Corinthians 14:34-35

[Lucy Peppiatt](logosres:LLS:9781498201476;ref=bible.1Co14.34-35) (now [Peppiatt Crawley](logosres:LLS:9781498201476;ref=bible.1Co14.34-35)) argues vv. 34-35 are not Paul's words but the Corinthians'

Status-Seeking as the Primary Issue in 1 Corinthians — Not Merely Order

Pastor Brett Landry's reading — that the Corinthians' primary problem was status-seeking and self-promotion, with disorder being the symptom rather than the disease — represents the dominant scholarly

Podcast Q4: The Segregated Seating Problem (Impact 7/10, Reconsideration 8/10)

"You described a scenario where men and women sat on opposite sides and wives were shouting questions across the room. I looked into this and couldn't find archaeological or historical evidence for ge

Commentary: One Flesh Cannot Be Hierarchy

Ardavanis says: > "This beautiful picture of men and women, a groom and a bride... this is the central metaphor in all of the Bible... complementary yet different sexes that come together in union pa

Commentary: "Counter-Cultural" Is Not a Truth Test — And His View Is Also Cultural

Ardavanis suggests that his complementarian view is counter-cultural, implying that its friction with modern culture validates it. But culture is not how we measure truth. A view being unpopular does