Christ and Crossan
(The following is an edited email correspondence.)
I have heard a very small part of a debate that Crossan had with William Lane Craig about The Historical Jesus. Crossan sounds dangerous. He obviously does not believe in the inspiration or inerrancy of Scripture.
Please, can you direct me to some of your writings, or the writings of others, that could help a layperson like myself to provide some kind of a response to a person who is influenced by Crossan's views?
There is Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? which is the debate with William Lane Craig.
But the more useful books would be those that positively deal with the historical reliability of the Bible, whether or not they interact with Crossan. This is because there are many people like Crossan attacking Scripture, and their theories sometimes vary slightly, sometimes widely. So the preferred strategy is to learn the positive historical evidences for the Bible, and then if you need to, read about the direct refutations for a specific person.
Some of the books that you might read include:
Jesus Under Fire
Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment
Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels
F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
Norman Geisler, A General Introduction to the Bible
I am just writing down the books that come to mind at the moment, so you might want to investigate further, as there might be some even better or more relevant choices.
This is the historical and empirical approach. However, the way to quickly shut down the whole range of attack would be for you to attack historical and empirical arguments themselves. Make Scripture the logical starting point of your intellectual system, and interact with your opponent on this basis. But get to the root of your opponent's opposition against you by going straight for his epistemology. That way, you will completely and immediately shut him down, logically forbidding all kinds of anti-biblical arguments at one stroke.
For this, I recommend my Ultimate Questions, Presuppositional Confrontations, and Apologetics in Conversation.
Recommended:
Vincent Cheung, Ultimate Questions
Vincent Cheung, Presuppositional Confrontations
Vincent Cheung, Apologetics in Conversation
Gordon Clark, God’s Hammer: The Bible and Its Critics
Gordon Clark, Christian Philosophy
Gordon Clark, A Christian View of Men and Things