Bill, there's a cross-examination tool for lawyers that is showing up on apologetics and philosophy platforms.

Both Christians and skeptics are using the tool to either strengthen or undermine the case for the resurrection of Jesus.

And it's known as BIC, B I-C, which stands for bias, interest, contradiction, and credibility.

Lawyers often use some form of this method to cross-examine a witness. And I'd like to get you to apply this to your case for the resurrection and see how it holds up. But, you know, first, I think it's interesting, Bill, how a study of law can greatly inform theology and apologetics. For example, you found a wealth of legal material helpful

when you were researching your work on the Atonement in writing the book. Yes, and I think that's because

justice motifs in the Bible are so prominent with respect to our reconciliation with God.

And so the theory of punishment is relevant to the doctrine of the atonement.

And the field of philosophy, the deals most with the theory of punishment,

is philosophy of law.

Now, here, however, I'm skeptical about its

utility. We're not talking here about the philosophy of law, but about legal cross-examination

skills. And the study of history is not like cross-examining a witness. In fact,

historians very often make the point that we cannot cross-examine the witnesses of the past.

And therefore, there's a huge disanalogy here. Some of that might come from Simon Greenleaf's book.

He was a legal expert, everything.

And so you see a lot of comparisons there.

But we'll get into that here in just a moment.

Here's the first term in the acrostic bias.

Does the witness have any motive, relationship, prejudice, or self-interest that might influence

their testimony? For example, aren't you the plaintiff's brother? The goal is to undermine credibility

by showing the witness has a reason to shade the truth. So, do the original witnesses to the resurrection show any signs of bias which would

make them twist the truth as far as we can tell? Well, sure, they were all followers of Jesus

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