Retracing Christianity as a Historical Faith The Christian faith
isn't an obscure belief system with Jesus as a mythological
figure. Rather, Christianity is based entirely on real space-
time history; in the words of Francis Schaeffer, its central
figure is an actual man who "hung on a cross in the sense that,
if you were there that day, you could have rubbed your finger on
the cross and got a splinter on it" (The God Who Is There,
InterVarsity Press, 1968). Therefore, when you consider the
Christian faith, you also have to examine its historical claims
of truth. Archaeologists, historians, and other researchers have
closely scrutinized the historical events of Jesus' life and the
Bible as a whole and continue to do so. Although some skeptical
archaeologists have been quick to discount historical accounts
of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, actual findings
have proven that they're credible. In fact, a century of
archaeological discoveries underscores the fact that the more
evidence that researchers u