This course gathers a wide range of Engage the Faith Q&A episodes and topical teachings from The Historic Faith. Many lessons feature David Bercot answering submitted questions about Scripture, early Christian writings, baptism, the atonement, Sabbath and Sunday, head covering, church leadership, politics, church planting, and practical kingdom living.
Other episodes include conversations with Finny Kuruvilla, Dean Taylor, and interview material about David Bercot’s journey into the historic faith. The course also develops a substantial series on critical thinking, showing how to avoid proof-texting, presentism, tertiary-source dependence, and common fallacies when studying Scripture and Christian history. The lessons do not move through one single textbook-style argument;
instead, they preserve live questions, careful answers, and several focused mini-series that help students compare modern assumptions with the New Testament and early Christian witness.
This opening Q&A introduces the Engage the Faith format and centers on David Bercot’s work with the Gospel of Matthew. The discussion includes early Christian interpretation, questions about anger and insults in Matthew 5, and what Bercot says he has learned while rereading the ante-Nicene writers.
- How did early Christians understand parts of the Sermon on the Mount?
- What does Jesus’ warning about calling a brother a fool mean?
- What did Bercot find surprising while studying Matthew with early Christian sources?
Finny Kuruvilla answers questions related to his course A Grace Worth Saving, with attention to Calvinism and the doctrines of grace. The sample includes discussion of limited and unlimited atonement, Calvinist categories, and concerns about how sovereignty language can affect the reading of Scripture.
- How should the doctrines of grace be evaluated?
- What is the difference between limited and unlimited atonement in Calvinist discussions?
- How can believers discuss Calvinism in a careful and charitable way?
David Bercot answers questions connected to his Future Things course. The discussion warns against overconfident end-times timelines while still taking seriously persecution, the man of lawlessness, and preparedness for Christ’s return.
- How should Christians think about persecution before Jesus returns?
- Why can end-times timeline setting become spiritually dangerous?
- How should believers stay faithful without becoming passive?
David Bercot and Dean Taylor respond to questions about voting, politics, and Christian citizenship. The discussion emphasizes that Christians may care about issues such as abortion, borders, health care, and public life while still viewing the kingdom of God, not worldly politics, as the answer.
- How should Christians talk about political issues with others?
- What does it mean to see the kingdom of God as the answer to human problems?
- How can knowledge and conviction be joined with love and wisdom?
Finny Kuruvilla addresses questions about church planting, evangelism, and kingdom building. The sample includes attention to letters of recommendation, New Testament examples, and early Christian evidence for receiving believers in an orderly way.
- How should Christians think about church planting and kingdom building?
- What New Testament evidence exists for letters of recommendation?
- How did early Christians handle communion and reception between churches?
David Bercot answers submitted questions on baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The sample highlights early Christian flexibility on immersion and pouring while stressing that baptism was treated as a real washing and not a trivial ritual.
- How did early Christians practice baptism by immersion or pouring?
- What should Christians do when conscience or circumstances affect the mode of baptism?
- Why does Bercot object to treating baptism as only a token sprinkling?
This Q&A discusses Christianity’s influence on the founding of America and related open questions. The sample includes a critique of calling America a Christian nation and a response to prosperity teaching through the Sermon on the Mount and early Christian teaching on wealth.
- Was America founded as a Christian nation?
- How should Christians respond to the wealth and health gospel?
- What do Jesus and early Christians teach about wealth and contentment?
This Ask David Anything session gathers questions from students who have been challenged by David Bercot’s material. The sample includes discussion of early Christian writers, orthodoxy, Ignatius on church leadership, and how to understand unusually strong language in early sources.
- How can readers know which early Christian writers were considered orthodox?
- How should Ignatius’ language about church leadership be understood?
- What role do Eusebius and early writers play in identifying historic Christian teaching?
This Ask David Anything session includes questions carried over from prior discussions and new audience submissions. The sample addresses women’s head covering, modesty, and the question of using the name Jesus rather than a Hebrew form.
- Was head covering connected only to headship or also to modesty?
- Should Christians say Jesus or use a Hebrew form of the name?
- How should claims about Bible history and wording be checked?
David Bercot gives an update on his Romans commentary and discusses Augustine’s influence on later Christianity. The sample covers free will, Adam’s sin, Augustine, Pelagius, and the need to consider early Christian teaching before later theological systems.
- How did Augustine affect later Christian teaching?
- What did early Christians mean by free will?
- How should believers think about Adam’s sin and human fallenness?
This live Q&A marks a hosting transition and continues broad questions for David Bercot. The sample includes a discussion of whether Christians should move to the country or city, noting that early Christians often carried the gospel into cities rather than withdrawing from them.
- Should Christians choose city or country life to avoid evil influences?
- What example do the New Testament and early Christians give about cities?
- How should church and family needs guide relocation decisions?
This lesson appears to contain the same transcript sample as Episode 011. It repeats the hosting transition and the discussion about city and country life, early Christian witness in cities, and finding a church a family can embrace.
- Should Christians move away from cities to avoid worldly influence?
- What did early Christians do in urban settings?
- How important is finding a faithful church when deciding where to live?
This Q&A covers questions on Passover, baptism, Sabbath, and the reliability of early Christian writings. The sample includes baptism age questions and discussion of how post-Nicene boundaries affected language about the Trinity.
- Can a child be baptized too young?
- What evidence is there from the early church about baptism age?
- How should readers evaluate early Christian statements about the Trinity?
David Bercot answers questions on Sunday and Sabbath observance, laying on of hands, sola Scriptura, the beard, and head covering. The sample especially stresses that nobody interprets Scripture without some interpretive framework and argues for looking at Christians closest to the apostles.
- How did early Christian Sunday and Sabbath practice compare with later customs?
- Is sola Scriptura ever practiced without interpretation or tradition?
- Why does Bercot look to early Christians when interpreting difficult passages?
This fast-moving Ask David Anything session addresses many submitted questions. The sample includes reasons for leaving a conservative Anabaptist church, the Recognitions of Clement, storing treasure in heaven, care for widows and widowers, and other practical questions.
- What is a good reason to leave a church group?
- What is a bad reason to leave a church group?
- How should Christians think about storing treasure in heaven?
- How should the church care for needy widows and widowers?
This focused session addresses whether the early Christians taught Christus Victor, penal substitution, or both. Bercot distinguishes Christ’s victory over Satan, ransom, sacrifice, and suffering in our place from the claim that God punished Jesus instead of us.
- What did early Christians teach about the atonement?
- Is Christus Victor too narrow to describe the full early Christian view?
- Do early Christian quotations prove penal substitution?
This follow-up episode answers questions raised by the previous atonement session. The sample clarifies that, in the early Christian model described here, Christ’s death was not a sacrifice to Satan and also addresses Old Testament sacrifices, Isaiah 53, the Septuagint, and the final dwelling place of the righteous.
- Were Old Testament sacrifices offerings to Satan?
- How should Isaiah 53 be read in relation to the atonement?
- What role does the Septuagint play in interpreting disputed Old Testament wording?
- Did early Christians teach heaven or a new earth as the final dwelling of the righteous?
This lesson begins a series on arriving at truth through critical thinking, especially in the study of Scripture. Bercot stresses prayerful study, the Bible as the ultimate source for knowledge of God, awareness of bias, and the need to handle passages on faith, works, grace, and obedience honestly.
- How can Christians study Scripture with critical thinking rather than gullibility?
- Why is it difficult to begin with a truly blank slate?
- How should seemingly conflicting passages about faith and works be approached?
This lesson reviews principles for interpreting Scripture and then explains the danger of relying on tertiary sources. It argues that responsible historical research must return to primary sources, especially when asking what Christians near the apostolic age believed.
- What is a primary source?
- Why are tertiary sources not enough for historical research?
- Why do early Christian writings matter for understanding early Christian belief?
This lesson introduces presentism, defined as judging the past through present-day attitudes and experiences. Bercot applies the concept to Christian history, including questions about early Christian soldiers, mercy toward converts, and the difference between biblical commands and applications of biblical principles.
- What is presentism?
- How can presentism distort Christian judgments about the past?
- How did early Christians handle soldiers who came to Christ?
Although titled as a spotting fallacies lesson, the supplied sample repeats the same presentism material as Episode 020. It discusses judging the past by modern assumptions and uses the example of early Christian soldiers to distinguish direct commands from applications of principle.
- How can modern assumptions affect our reading of early Christian history?
- What is the difference between a direct New Testament law and an application of a principle?
- Why should Christians be cautious when criticizing earlier believers?
This lesson begins a closer look at fallacies as misleading, dishonest, or unsound arguments. The sample discusses why fallacies can be persuasive, then gives examples involving faulty authority, ad hominem attacks, and circular reasoning.
- What is a fallacy?
- Why can fallacies persuade people even when they are unsound?
- How does circular reasoning appear in Bible-version or church-identity arguments?
This lesson continues the fallacies series and explains that unsound arguments can still be highly effective. The sample focuses on the red herring fallacy, where irrelevant or slightly relevant material distracts from the real issue.
- What is a red herring argument?
- Why are fallacies often effective in debates, lawsuits, and public arguments?
- How can a listener stay focused on the real issue?
This lesson covers three more fallacies: misuse of analogy, the fallacy of etymology, and shifting the burden of proof. Bercot explains that illustrations do not prove truth, word roots do not automatically determine first-century meaning, and those making claims carry the burden of proof.
- Why does an analogy not prove a theological claim?
- What is the fallacy of etymology?
- Who carries the burden of proof when a claim is made?
Jason Willis hosts this Ask David Anything episode, beginning with listener comments used as examples for identifying fallacies. The sample then turns to questions about Roman Catholic influence, original sin, war, oaths, the Trinity, predestination, and practical issues such as education.
- What fallacies appear in common theological objections?
- How should claims about Roman Catholic influence be evaluated?
- Where did some later views of original sin, war, oaths, and the Trinity develop?
- How might kingdom Christians think about homeschool curriculum?
This lesson reviews many fallacies already covered and adds further examples such as definition, post hoc reasoning, and slippery slope arguments. The sample uses historical and practical illustrations to show how definitions can be manipulated and how change should not automatically be assumed to produce disaster.
- What is the fallacy of definition?
- Why does one event following another not prove causation?
- When does a slippery slope warning become a fallacy?
This first lesson on believer’s baptism begins a historical and scriptural examination of infant baptism. Bercot explains that he once defended infant baptism but now works through New Testament baptism accounts chronologically, emphasizing repentance, hearing, belief, and baptism.
- What evidence does the New Testament give for believers being baptized?
- Are any infants clearly shown being baptized in the New Testament?
- How should baptism accounts in Acts be examined?
This lesson continues the chronological case for believer’s baptism and moves into early Christian evidence after the New Testament. The sample includes quotations from Barnabas and Hermas and addresses why a famous Irenaeus passage should not be treated as proof of infant baptism.
- What do early post-apostolic sources say when they describe baptism?
- How do Barnabas and Hermas describe those being baptized?
- Does Irenaeus provide clear evidence for infant baptism?
This lesson moves into the third and fourth centuries and explains three practices that affect how baptism evidence should be read: emergency baptisms, baptism of small children, and coexistence of different practices. The sample discusses Tertullian, Cyprian, plague conditions in Carthage, and the spread of infant baptism in North Africa.
- What were emergency baptisms in the third and fourth centuries?
- How should Tertullian’s comments on delaying baptism be understood?
- How did Cyprian justify infant baptism?
- Did believer’s baptism disappear when infant baptism appeared?
Bercot revisits and refutes arguments he made in a 1994 tape defending infant baptism. He addresses covenant arguments, 1 Corinthians 10, original sin, and explains why his later study of early Christian sources led him away from practicing infant baptism.
- Why did David Bercot change his mind about infant baptism?
- Do covenant arguments establish infant baptism?
- Does 1 Corinthians 10 support baptizing infants?
- What problems arise from saying infant baptism removes Adam’s inherited stain?
This interview material explores David Bercot’s emphasis on the kingdom of God, the early Christians, and the need to anchor the search for historic faith in the New Testament. The sample includes advice to begin with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew and Luke and then use early Christian writings as a witness to how the faith was lived.
- What does a simple gospel message look like in light of early Christianity?
- Where should someone begin when exploring the historic faith?
- Why should the New Testament remain the anchor when reading early Christian writings?
This interview segment compares early Christian emphasis on lived faith with later theological battles and developments. The sample discusses the Apostles’ Creed, Origen, Constantine, Augustine, Pelagius, original sin, predestination, and how the church’s message changed over time.
- How did early Christian priorities differ from later theological debates?
- What impact did Constantine and Augustine have on later Christianity?
- How does Bercot describe the contrast between early Christian life and later watered-down faith?
This interview material recounts Bercot’s journey from being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness to searching for the historic faith. The sample describes his reading of early Christian writers, the conviction that their lives challenged his own, and suggested starting points such as the Didache, Letter to Diognetus, Tertullian’s Apology, and Minucius Felix.
- How did David Bercot begin searching for the historic faith?
- What early Christian writings does he suggest for beginners?
- How did the lifestyle of the early Christians challenge his own life?
This episode focuses on questions about Easter and argues that Easter, originally called Pascha, was not a pagan holiday but an early Christian observance connected to the apostles. The sample discusses Polycarp, Irenaeus, the word Easter, Pascha, Easter eggs, and the Easter Bunny with attention to primary and later sources.
- Is Easter a pagan holiday?
- What did early Christians call the celebration now often called Easter?
- Is it wrong to use the word Easter instead of Pascha?
- Where do customs such as Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny appear to come from?
