Faith Lab
Nate Hanson
Christianity is deeper than you've been shown.Nate Hanson digs into the parts of Christianity most of us were never shown: the evidence for Jesus, the strange spiritual world of the Bible, miracles, the first Christians, and true stories of people Jesus changed. Short episodes, grounded in serious scholarship. Earlier episodes feature conversations with scholars like N.T. Wright, Tim Mackie, and Craig Keener.Nate was a pastor, spent most of a decade deconstructing, and came back through scholarship.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going at faithlabshow.com/support.
Episodes
Craig Keener: Why the gospels hold up as history
Our best source on Alexander the Great was written 450 years after he died, and historians trust it. Mark was written about 40 years after Jesus. So why are the gospels the only ancient texts we're told to doubt?Craig Keener, author of Christobiography and one of the most cited New Testament scholars alive, walks through the historical case: why the gospels are ancient biography, what living memory does for reliability, his documented miracle research, and how faith survives real doubt. He also tells the story of how he left atheism. Find more of his work at craigkeener.com.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/craig-keener ★ Support this podcast ★
Nijay Gupta: Is the gospel just a ticket to heaven?
Most of us were handed a gospel that works like a ticket to heaven: believe, die, fly away. New Testament scholar Nijay Gupta says that was never the headline of what Paul preached.Gupta is the Julius R. Mantey Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary and the author of Paul for the World. He joins Shane Rosenthal and Nate to work through what Paul's gospel actually was, where "I'll fly away" theology came from, and why he thinks C.S. Lewis got heaven wrong. The short version: Paul preached newness of life and a renewed creation, because we were made for heaven on earth.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/do-christians-go-to-heaven-pauls-gospel ★ Support this podcast ★
What the first Christians believed about the cross
The hardest critiques of the cross, like "he was only dead for a day and a half" and "anyone would take that deal," all target one version of the gospel. The earliest Christians were teaching something bigger.In this solo episode, Nate traces the first thousand years of Christian thinking about the cross: Irenaeus on Christ reliving the human story to get right what Adam got wrong, Athanasius on why a deathless God dying is the real scandal rather than how long it lasted, and Gregory of Nyssa's fish hook image of death swallowing divinity and choking on it. Together they form the Christus Victor vision, a framework that answers the questions the guilt-and-payment model struggles with.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/early-church-view-of-the-atonement ★ Support this podcast ★
Lydia McGrew: The Gospels are more reliable than you think
Most Christians were taught to trust the Gospels without ever being shown why they should. The historical evidence is stronger than you think.New Testament scholar Lydia McGrew lays out what she calls the "reportage model," the case that the Gospel authors were close to the facts, always trying to get them right, and highly successful. She walks through the two big categories of evidence, from name statistics that later fiction writers could not fake to undesigned coincidences, the subtle puzzle-like fits between Gospels that are hard to explain any other way.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/are-the-gospels-historically-reliable ★ Support this podcast ★
After the apostles died, did the faith survive?
After the apostles died, did the faith survive? One man nearly answers that question by himself. Polycarp was born around 69 AD, just 35 years after Jesus, personally knew people who had personally known Christ, and his own words still survive on paper.This episode traces the chain link by link: Irenaeus remembering the old bishop who taught him in Smyrna, Polycarp's letter to the Philippians written around 110 to 115 AD, his friend Ignatius writing the same faith from a different city, and the day an 86-year-old man chose death in a Roman stadium over cursing Christ. If Christianity was invented later, Polycarp is the problem with the timeline.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/who-was-polycarp ★ Support this podcast ★
N.T. Wright: Do Christians go to heaven? (part 2)
Most Christians assume the story ends with leaving earth for heaven. N.T. Wright says the New Testament tells a different one: resurrection, new creation, and God coming to dwell with his people.In part 2 of our conversation, Wright walks through what actually happens between death and resurrection, why the ascension means Jesus reigns rather than departs, and how salvation stretches to the rescue of the whole creation. If he is right, death, grief, and the church's mission all start to look different.New here? You can start with part 1.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/nt-wright-do-christians-go-to-heaven-when-they-die ★ Support this podcast ★
N.T. Wright: Did Jesus rise from the dead? (part 1)
Did Jesus actually rise from the dead? The resurrection is a historical claim, and most people have never heard the evidence historians evaluate. N.T. Wright walks through the case and explains why the standard skeptical alternatives keep falling apart.Wright, one of the world's leading scholars on early Christianity, covers why women as the first witnesses is a detail nobody would invent, what resurrection actually meant to first-century Jews, and why the differences between the gospel accounts strengthen their reliability instead of undermining it. Get Surprised by Hope and God's Homecoming.This is part 1 of the conversation. When you finish, listen to part 2.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/nt-wright-did-jesus-rise-from-the-dead ★ Support this podcast ★
Caleb Friedeman: Why the genealogies don't match
Matthew and Luke don't give us the same family tree for Jesus, and the census in Luke has been called a historical invention. So why would anyone still trust the birth narratives?New Testament scholar Caleb Friedeman compared them against 95 other ancient biographies, and the pattern he found runs the opposite direction from the legend theory. In this conversation he lays out the four marks of historical intent ancient biographers left in their birth stories, why two differing genealogies don't add up to fabrication, and the detail in Luke 2 that quietly points to Mary as his source.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/do-the-gospel-genealogies-contradict-each-other ★ Support this podcast ★
Caleb Friedeman: Were the Christmas stories history?
For decades, scholars have claimed that ancient birth narratives were never meant to be taken as history. Then one scholar went and actually read the ancient biographers, and what he found in their own writing doesn't fit the story we've been told.New Testament scholar Caleb Friedeman compared Matthew and Luke to 95 other ancient biographies and found the average biographer wrote 360 years after his subject's birth, while the gospel writers worked within decades, close enough to talk with people who knew eyewitnesses. He also walks through the two genealogies, the census in Luke, and why two accounts with different details are not the same thing as a contradiction.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/do-the-gospel-birth-narratives-contradict ★ Support this podcast ★
Tim Mackie: The Bible isn't what you think (part 2)
There's a story in Genesis where Noah gets drunk and something terrible happens with his son Ham, and the Bible never tells you what it was. That gap is not a mistake. Tim Mackie says it's a design choice, and learning to read it changes the whole book.In part two of our conversation, Bible Project co-founder Tim Mackie walks through how the biblical authors crafted narratives with intentional gaps, layered patterns, and riddles that unfold across entire books. We get into why "inerrancy" might be the wrong word, what Jesus actually did when asked about marriage and divorce, and why Tim says the Bible is an epic narrative pointing to a person rather than a rule book.New here? You can start with part 1.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/tim-mackie-the-bible-isnt-what-you-think ★ Support this podcast ★
Tim Mackie: How the Bible actually works (part 1)
Most of us were taught to believe the Bible, but almost nobody was taught how it actually works. Why does Genesis repeat the same words over and over? Why do later stories echo earlier ones in ways that feel too precise to be accidental?Tim Mackie, co-founder of The Bible Project, walks through how the biblical authors used design patterns, repeated keywords, and narrative "hyperlinking" to build meaning across the entire Hebrew Bible. From the word "good" threading through Genesis to the way sin crouches at Cain's door like the serpent in the garden, Tim shows why treating the Bible like a rule book or a textbook misses what these ancient literary artists were actually doing.This is part 1 of our conversation with Tim. When you finish, listen to part 2.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/tim-mackie-how-to-read-the-bible ★ Support this podcast ★
Rebecca McLaughlin: The best arguments against Christianity
What if the strongest arguments against Christianity actually lean on ideas Christianity introduced in the first place? Rebecca McLaughlin has spent her life listening to the smartest objections to the faith, and she's convinced the hardest ones look very different up close.Rebecca McLaughlin, author of Confronting Christianity, joins Faith Lab to ask whether Christian faith can stand up to serious scrutiny. The conversation covers the historical reliability of the Gospels and their eyewitness roots, women in the early Christian movement, moral critiques of the church that quietly borrow Christian values, and the problem of suffering through the story of Lazarus. Rebecca also explains why Christianity has always made public, testable claims that invite investigation rather than shut it down, and why deconstruction so often follows questions that were postponed instead of engaged.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/rebecca-mclaughlin-confronting-christianity ★ Support this podcast ★
Shane Rosenthal: Is faith supposed to be blind?
For most people, faith means believing without evidence. But the word the New Testament writers actually used, pistis, was the ordinary Greek word for trust, and trust is something you have reasons for. Blind faith came later.Shane Rosenthal, host of The Humble Skeptic podcast, joins the show to trace how faith got detached from evidence: what pistis meant to Aristotle and to the first Christians, how the Christian West forgot its arguments once everyone around was Christian, why Hebrews 11:1 is about a title deed rather than a blind leap, and how Jesus answered John the Baptist's doubt with eyewitness testimony instead of shame. It goes a long way toward explaining why so many people deconstruct today. You can find Shane's work at humbleskeptic.com, and check out his recent video on whether archaeologists have discovered biblical Bethsaida.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/blind-faith-shane-rosenthal ★ Support this podcast ★
I hosted a deconstruction podcast. It led me back to Jesus.
Nate spent eight years hosting Almost Heretical, a deconstruction podcast with millions of downloads. Then following his doubts all the way through led him somewhere he never expected: back to Christianity.In this first episode of Faith Lab, Nate tells the whole story: burning out while planting churches in San Francisco with Francis Chan, losing his belief in the resurrection, and then noticing that the skeptical explanations required a blind faith of their own. He shares what changed when he finally engaged the historical scholarship for himself, from the eyewitness texture of the earliest sources to the creed Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15, and why Faith Lab exists to test whether Christianity holds up under honest scrutiny.Faith Lab is free and listener-supported. Help keep it going for five dollars a month: faithlabshow.com/supportRead the full write-up: faithlabshow.com/deconstruction-led-me-back-to-christianity ★ Support this podcast ★