The Minimal Facts Argument
Build the resurrection case using only the facts that even skeptics admit.
Grounded in the research on the minimal facts approach
Mid-70s: the survey
Gary Habermas, a philosopher at Liberty University, starts cataloguing what scholars actually publish about Jesus' resurrection. Over decades he tracks thousands of academic sources, German, French, English, conservative to radically skeptical. The idea is simple but ruthless: stop arguing from a Bible they don't trust. Find the historical claims so well-evidenced that even atheist and agnostic scholars concede them, then build the whole case on that floor.
The two filters
A claim only makes the cut if it clears two bars. One: it's strongly evidenced, multiple lines, early sources. Two: it's granted by the near-unanimous majority of scholars who study the field, including the skeptics. That second filter is the trick. You're not asking your opponent to believe your book. You're handing them facts their own side already signed off on, so they can't dodge by attacking biblical inerrancy.