Thank you for sharing this inspiring story of your journey to faith, Sean! I, too, have found Richard Bauckham’s work to be quite helpful, particularly his “God Crucified,” in Jesus and the God of Israel (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), which I’d commend to our readers. As for N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), it is the best development of that third line of evidence for Jesus’ resurrection which I include along with the empty tomb and post-mortem appearances of Jesus, namely, the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection, without which the Christian movement would not have come into being. What is most surprising about Wright’s massive book, from my point of view, is how much is left unsaid. He fully unfolds that third line evidence but says very little about those other two independent lines of evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, so that a complete case is all the more compelling.
Let me say as well how impressed I am that your friend and parents should refer you to the work of Christian scholars on these subjects rather than to popular level treatments. It’s a sad fact that not only most unbelievers, but even most Christians, are largely unaware of the body of work of Christian scholars on such subjects. Of course, not everyone is ready to jump in the deep end, as you did, but it’s important that people eventually graduate to reading such work. How great, too, that you have profited from the remarkable Greer-Heard Forums, which have featured exchanges between scholars such as Wright and Crossan or Carroll and me! I am so glad that Plantinga’s work is next on your list and would commend to you his Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), which I think you will find not only intellectually stimulating and but also spiritually uplifting.
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