About Faith Lab
Faith isn’t pretending to believe what you know isn’t true. And it isn’t shutting off your brain to keep your heart in the game.
Faith Lab is a podcast where Nate Hanson and Shane Rosenthal sit down with serious biblical scholars to have the conversations most Christians have never been invited into. Each episode brings in historians, biblical scholars, archaeologists, philosophers, and scientists to explain what they’ve spent their careers studying, in clear and honest conversations rather than lectures. The goal isn’t to convince anyone of anything. It’s to show how deep the foundations of the Christian faith actually go.
How It Started
Nate spent over a decade in ministry, serving as a pastor and church planter alongside Francis Chan. But the version of Christianity he’d been handed couldn’t hold up under the weight of his own questions, and eventually he entered a long season of deconstruction.
He launched Almost Heretical, a podcast that gave space to people wrestling with hard questions about God, the Bible, and faith. That show reached more than two million downloads and helped thousands of listeners process their doubts openly.
But the questions didn’t stop at deconstruction. As Nate dug deeper into the historical, textual, and philosophical foundations of Christianity, he found far more substance than he expected. Scholars like Richard Bauckham, N.T. Wright, Tim Mackie, Lydia McGrew, John Lennox, and more opened up a world of rigorous research most people never encounter in church or in the headlines. What he found wasn’t blind faith. It was a faith built on evidence, history, and careful reasoning.
The Conversation
Joining Nate is Shane Rosenthal, founder and host of The Humble Skeptic podcast and author of the forthcoming Luke’s Key Witness. Shane was raised in a Jewish home, became an atheist in college, and eventually came to Christianity through the same kind of scholarly investigation that defines this show. He holds an MA in Historical Theology from Westminster Seminary California and was one of the creators of the White Horse Inn radio broadcast, which he produced for several decades and hosted from 2019 to 2021. He has also written for Modern Reformation, Core Christianity, TableTalk, and many other publications.
Together, Nate and Shane aren’t the experts in the room. The scholar is. But they’ve done the reading, and they ask the questions ordinary thoughtful Christians are actually wrestling with. Faith Lab hosts real conversations that turns serious scholarship into something Christians can actually use to go deeper.
Who It’s For
Faith Lab is for Christians who want to understand more, who have real questions and aren’t satisfied with pat answers. It’s for people who already believe but want to know the foundations are sturdier than a thirty-second sermon illustration. It’s for anyone who’s ever felt like the conversation about Christianity has been flattened and is ready for something with real depth.
If you have questions, want to say hello, or want to tell us what you think, reach out to us anytime.
Welcome to Faith Lab. Christianity is deeper than you’ve been shown.