“But when I changed those lenses—trading my biases for an attempt at objectivity—I saw the case in a whole new light. Finally I allowed the evidence to lead me to the truth, regardless of whether it fit my original presuppositions.” 

Strobel writes this in reference to the story of James Dixon, the young man who was accused of shooting a police officer but later acquitted of the crime. Because of an anonymous tip from one of his sources, Strobel uncovers the truth—the officer was shot by an accidental discharge of his own illegal pen gun, and he allowed Dixon to stand accused of the crime to protect his job. Strobel allowed the evidence to lead him to the truth in Dixon’s case, and he uses it as an example of how he intends to do the same as he investigates the validity of Christianity.

“Christianity was likewise based on certain historical claims that God uniquely entered into space and time in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, so the very ideology that Christians were trying to promote required as careful historical work as possible.” 

Dr. Craig Blomberg makes this statement as he walks Strobel through the evidence that proves the gospels were based on eyewitness testimony and written with an eye toward historical accuracy. Blomberg argues that without historical accuracy surrounding the miraculous events of Jesus’s life, there would be no reason for people to buy into the central tenets of Christianity so soon after Jesus’s death. In other words, Blomberg argues that historical accuracy was necessary to proving to Jesus’s contemporaries that he was who he claimed to be.