Someone says the Council of Nicaea rewrote the faith. Someone else says the Bible promises God will never give you more than you can handle. One claim is aimed at Christianity and the other is repeated inside it. Both sound certain, and both deserve the same test before you believe them or pass them on. Over the next hour or so you will build a habit for testing them: go wide before you settle, return to the text, put your conclusion where it can be corrected, and look honestly at what you were hoping to find. The material comes from a Jude 3 Project conversation between Lisa Fields and Esau McCaulley, who at the time taught New Testament and early Christianity at Northeastern Seminary in Rochester, New York. You can work through it alone or with a group, in one long session or two shorter ones. You will need a Bible, a pen and one real claim.
Begin with a claim you already carry
Write down one claim about the Bible, Christian history or Christian teaching that you have heard and half believe. It can be a criticism of the faith or something Christians commonly say. Under it, note three things:
- Where you first heard it, as specifically as you can remember.
- How confident you are that it is true, on a scale of 1 to 10.
- Whether you have ever repeated it to someone else.
Keep this page. You will come back to it at the end.
For groups: collect a few claims aloud without debating them yet. Steer toward claims that can be checked against a passage or a document. The Bible says God helps those who help themselves works well. A vague feeling about the church does not, at least for this exercise.
Read what the Bereans did
Turn to Acts 17:11, which describes how the Jews in Berea responded to Paul’s preaching: “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”
- Who was doing the teaching, and who was doing the checking?
- What two things does Luke say the Bereans did, and in what order?
- What did they search, and how often?
- What exactly were they trying to find out?
Acts 17 is narrative. Luke describes what the Bereans did and calls it noble without turning it into a command. The command form appears in 1 John 4:1: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” Together the two passages show testing as both commended and required.
The Bereans also tested an apostle, and they did it gladly. Eager reception came first and searching came second, and the two did not cancel each other out. That pairing is the posture to keep in mind through everything that follows.
The four movements
1. Go wide before you settle
Start with a quick ranking. Suppose you knew nothing about your claim’s topic. Put these in the order you would actually read them, then circle the one you would trust most:
- A popular video on the topic
- A short entry in a Bible dictionary
- A classic, widely cited study of the subject
- A fifteen-page journal article
- A short introductory book
- A friend’s confident text message
Now compare your order with McCaulley’s. He advised skipping the search engine and beginning with a reputable Bible dictionary or theological encyclopedia. You read the short entry, follow the works it cites to an article, then a short book, then the classic studies. His summary: “start small work towards introductions, and then work towards specialized literature.” Where did your list differ, and why?
He is candid about the pace this takes. On topics worth his time, he said, “you’ll almost never find me come to a conclusion about anything in like a day, a week, or a month.” He also says ordinary readers do not need his training, only this: “it takes patience and wide reading.” Proverbs 18:17 makes a similar observation: “He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him.” Proverbs describes wise patterns rather than guarantees, and this one is easy to recognize. The first voice always sounds right until someone else speaks.
Do this: Name two sources on your claim beyond where you first heard it, including at least one reference work. If you cannot find any, write that down. That tells you something too.
2. Return to the text
McCaulley defines the key distinction this way: “A primary source is when you’re dealing with an argument, you’re dealing what the person actually wrote or said.” A sermon about Romans is secondary. Romans is primary. He calls the habit “the patient return to the text,” and he says many confident arguers have never made it: “They know what they’ve been told to say about the primary sources.”
A small moment in the conversation shows a step that comes before reading. McCaulley asked what the Nicaea conspiracy theories actually claim. Lisa Fields offered a guess, then stopped herself: “I don’t want to quote it wrong.” You cannot test a claim you cannot state accurately.
Do this: Write your claim as one precise sentence. Find the specific verse, passage or document it depends on, and read the whole surrounding paragraph or chapter, not just the line people quote.
3. Put it where it can be corrected
Before reading on, list two or three things that would make you trust a book by an author you have never heard of. Then set your list beside McCaulley’s checks.
His first check is public review: “If you wanna be considered a scholar, you have to submit your stuff to public review by sending it to journals, sending it to university presses, and sending it to reputable publishers.” He expected critics to point out his own mistakes “because I’ve now submitted myself to public review.” His second check is the opponent a claim chooses: “are they engaging in the best presentation of Christianity, or are they engaging in the caricature?” Lisa Fields added a third: “Don’t just see the letters behind the name, but research the letters behind the name.” In other words, confirm that the school is real and recognized.
McCaulley limits his own test: “Just because a university press published it, it doesn’t mean that it’s right. It just means that is scholarly.” These checks tell you whether a claim has earned a hearing. The verdict still rests on the evidence. Correction also applies to your own side. McCaulley observed that “we might hold to a truth of something that is true, but we might have had bad arguments.”
Do this: Write the strongest objection to your claim in a form a thoughtful opponent would accept as fair.
4. Examine what you are hoping to find
McCaulley turned the test inward: “not only do we have to be careful of the motives of other people, we have to be careful of our own motives.” He described people discarding weak argument after weak argument until one lets them do what they already wanted, because “people will keep finding arguments until they find it.” Lisa Fields described the pattern from the inside: “when I go and do what I want to do and then try to look at scripture, I’m kind of gonna find a loophole.”
McCaulley pointed to God’s warning to Cain in Genesis 4:7: “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.” In context, God is warning one man about anger that is heading toward murder. Applying the verse to how desire shapes our reading goes beyond that scene. The principle beneath it stays close to the text, though: a desire you do not master will master you.
He applied the same honesty to pain. People hurt by a church sometimes conclude the faith is false, and the hurt is real. He suggested asking yourself, “am I reading this because I’m mad at my pastor,” and then the other half: “Or am I really persuaded by the evidence?” Both can be true at once. What you want to know is which one is doing the deciding.
Do this: Privately, finish this sentence: If this claim turned out to be true, it would mean I could… Then finish it again for the claim being false. You do not need to share either answer.
A worked example to try together
McCaulley described a critic online who spent about fifteen minutes attacking the saying that God won’t give you more than you can handle. He answered, “That’s not a principle of Christian theology. It’s a catch phrase.” The saying makes a good practice case because both its critics and its defenders tend to skip the text.
Start by stating it precisely: God never allows a believer to face more than they can bear. Then read 1 Corinthians 10:13: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” Next read 2 Corinthians 1:8, where Paul says of trouble in Asia, “we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life.”
Readers weigh these passages in more than one way. Many Christian interpreters take 1 Corinthians 10:13 as a promise about temptation and the way of escape God provides, so it does not cover every kind of suffering. Others note that the Greek word translated temptation can also mean a trial or testing. On that reading, the saying is a rough paraphrase of a real promise that God sustains his people. Now read 2 Corinthians 1:9-10, where Paul explains what the crisis taught him and who delivered him. Test both readings against those verses. Does Paul’s experience overturn the saying, refine it, or fit it? Lisa Fields offered her own wording: “God will put more than you can bear, but he’ll never put more on you than he can bear.” Test her wording against the same verses.
For groups: give this about twenty minutes. Have half the group argue for the saying as fairly as they can before anyone responds. The skill you are practicing is restating a view accurately before you answer it.
Questions for discussion
- When you meet a surprising claim about faith, what is your actual first move? How did it compare with the ranking you made?
- The Bereans received Paul eagerly and still checked him. How do openness and testing relate in your own habits?
- McCaulley asked people who abandon a belief, “well, what have you actually read?” How would you answer that about a belief you hold firmly, or one you have let go?
- Think of an argument you have used for something you believe is true. Would it survive the objection you wrote in the third movement?
- Which claims do you find easier to let pass without checking: ones that support what you already think, or ones that challenge it?
- McCaulley named Jesus, the Holy Spirit, your pastor and your own desires as places to turn. Which of those do you tend to leave out when you weigh a claim?
For groups: questions 5 and 6 go deeper when people speak from experience. Let anyone pass. If someone mentions being hurt by a church, do not debate whether the hurt was justified. Thank them and let them decide how much to say.
This week
Take the claim you wrote down at the start and work through one movement per sitting over the next several days. Find two sources beyond the first. Read the primary text in full context. Write the strongest fair objection. Finish the two sentences about what you hoped was true.
Then return to your original page, rate your confidence again, and write one sentence explaining the new number. Ask whether you would repeat the claim now, and in exactly what words. Sometimes the honest result is a smaller, more careful sentence than the one you started with.
If you want to close in prayer, Psalm 139:23-24 fits: “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” The psalmist asks God to do the fourth movement for him, which is a fair admission that none of us does it perfectly alone.