PART III:
THE ORIGIN OF
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
Now we come to the third fact to be explained: the very origin of the Christian faith. Everybody knows that Christianity sprang into being midway through the first century AD, but that raises the obvious question: Why did it come into existence? What caused this movement to begin? Even skeptical New Testament scholars recognize that the Christian faith owes its origin to the earliest disciples’ belief that God had raised Jesus from the dead. In fact, they pinned nearly everything on this belief.