Christianity's early beliefs and practices, this three-part series argues, look little like the faith practiced today, and it sets out to trace that gap and the arguments it has caused among scholars and believers. The series builds its case around a single question: what does it mean to have faith, especially a faith often defined as belief without evidence, or even against it? It draws a line between two kinds of biblical scholars, the apologist who reads the material to fit existing conviction, and the neutral scholar who tries to work free of institutional bias, noting that many scholars start in the first camp and move toward the second as the evidence pushes them. Along the way it takes up the line "God made men, men made religions" to frame religion as a human construct shaped over time rather than a fixed inheritance. Across its three parts, the series keeps returning to the friction between inherited doctrine and what the historical record actually shows.