Argument

Argument from Transformed Lives

Intro

Some Christian conversions change everything. A slave trader writes "Amazing Grace." A Nixon hatchet-man starts a global prison ministry. A Marxist English professor leaves her career to teach Sunday school. A hostile journalist sets out to debunk Christianity and ends up writing apologetics for a living. An atheist Oxford don, dragged kicking into faith, becomes the most-read Christian writer of the 20th century.

These are not isolated stories. The pattern repeats across two thousand years, every continent, every demographic, every starting condition. People who, by every social-psychological metric, should not have changed, change. And the change is not a mood swing. It lasts decades. It costs them careers, families, sometimes their lives. It produces character that prior friends and enemies both recognize as new.

The argument's move is simple: if Christianity is just a useful psychology, this pattern is hard to predict. If Christianity is true, and the Holy Spirit really does regenerate those who come to Christ, this pattern is exactly what we should expect. The transformations are evidence the doctrine they correlate with is true.

Quick reply in conversation: "You can wave off one conversion as psychology. But two thousand years, every culture, every starting point, the same pattern, that needs an explanation."

In full

The argument from transformed lives is an abductive case from biographical-sociological data to the truth of Christian doctrine. The data: a documented two-millennium pattern of Christian conversions producing deep, durable, cross-cultural, doctrine-correlated transformations of character, including a non-trivial subset that resists standard social-psychological reduction (hostile-witness converts, high-cost converts, solitary converts, death-row converts). The claim: this pattern is best explained by the Christian doctrine of regeneration through the Holy Spirit, which predicts exactly this profile of change. Naturalistic alternatives (placebo, social cohesion, cognitive restructuring, evolutionary by-product) explain parts of the pattern but leave significant residue. This page is structured as debate prep: per-premise affirmative case, anticipated objections, numbered rebuttals (1:1), live-cite kit, and tactical notes for engagement with naturalists, comparative-religion objectors, and Freudian-style projection theorists.

Argument structure

Form

Testimonial / abductive inference to best explanation. The argument aggregates many independent biographical reports (testimonial layer) and treats the aggregate as a data set in need of explanation (abductive layer). It is not deductive; it is cumulative-evidential. It is most powerful as one premise in the cumulative case, paired with Argument from Religious Experience (the inner-encounter dimension), Argument from Desire (the longing dimension), and the historical case for the Resurrection (the grounding event). The argument has the advantage of being still being generated: every contemporary conversion fitting the pattern is a fresh data point, available for the inquirer to investigate directly.

P1, Christian conversion produces documented, deep, durable, radical transformations across cultures and centuries

Affirmative case (second-order arguments)

1. The apostolic-era data. The eleven disciples went from fleeing in fear at the arrest of Jesus (Mark 14:50) to public proclamation, persecution, and martyrdom within weeks. Paul went from a Pharisee actively persecuting the church (Acts 8:1, 9:1-2) to its most prolific missionary, suffering imprisonment, beating, and eventual execution for the same gospel he had hunted. This is the foundational pattern; the New Testament documents it with multiple independent witnesses (Luke's narrative, Paul's own letters, the speeches in Acts).
2. The patristic and medieval continuity. Justin Martyr (~150 AD) describes his conversion from Platonist philosophy through encounter with an old Christian teacher (Dialogue with Trypho §3-8). Augustine (~386 AD) describes his protracted conversion through Ambrose, Monica, the tolle lege moment, and the cor inquietum dynamic (Confessions 8). Francis of Assisi (~1206) abandons family wealth after a vision and reshapes medieval spirituality. The pattern is stable: a deep dissatisfaction with prior life, an intellectual-existential encounter with Christian content, a moral-volitional break, a subsequent decades-long sanctification.
3. The modern conversion-testimony corpus. John Newton (slave trader to evangelical hymn-writer, 1748 onward, An Authentic Narrative, 1764); Charles Spurgeon (1850); C S Lewis (gradual, 1929-31, Surprised by Joy, 1955); Whittaker Chambers (Soviet spy to Christian witness, Witness, 1952); Charles Colson (Nixon hatchet-man to prison ministry founder, Born Again, 1976); Lee Strobel (hostile-witness journalist to evangelist, The Case for Christ, 1998); Rosaria Butterfield (lesbian Marxist English professor to Reformed Christian, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, 2012); Holly Ordway (atheist literature professor, Not God's Type, 2010 / 2014); Francis Collins (atheist scientist to evangelical, The Language of God, 2006); Nabeel Qureshi (devout Muslim to Christian apologist, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, 2014).
4. The global-mission data. The 20th-21st century explosion of Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Korea, China (estimated 100+ million Christians), Latin American evangelicalism, and the Pentecostal movement is the largest religious-conversion movement in human history. The conversions occur in cultures with no prior Christian formation and (often) significant cultural resistance. The pattern of transformation is observed cross-culturally with structural consistency (Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, 1996, on the early-church pattern; Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom, 2002, on the modern).

Anticipated objections

1. "All religions produce conversion stories, Islam, Buddhism, Alcoholics Anonymous. There is nothing distinctively Christian here."
2. "The genre is selection-biased. Failed Christians do not publish. Spectacular successes get books; quiet de-conversions and stalled lives do not."
3. "The historical evidence is faith-friendly and not independently verifiable. Augustine's Confessions is theology, not biography."
4. "Conversion is psychology, not metaphysics. Even the most dramatic change tells us about brains, not gods."

Rebuttals

1. Other-religion conversions exist; the comparative question is whether the patterns are equivalent. They are not. Christian conversion has been studied cross-traditionally and exhibits distinctive marks: (a) a documented multi-decade durability that AA "dry drunk" relapse rates do not match; (b) a doctrine-correlated character profile (specifically Christian theology, not generic spirituality, produces the effect); (c) a cross-cultural consistency that culturally-embedded religions (folk Buddhism, ethnic Islam) do not show when transplanted. The argument is not that only Christians convert; it is that the Christian pattern is distinctive and that the distinctive features need explanation. Failure mode: flattening all conversion data into one undifferentiated heap, ignoring measurable differences.
2. The selection-bias charge is partial truth, partial overreach. Yes, biographies select for success; no, this does not dissolve the pattern. Independent sociological work (Putnam & Campbell, American Grace, 2010; Stark, The Rise of Christianity, 1996; Jenkins, The Next Christendom, 2002) measures aggregate effects without selection-bias of memoir publishing. The aggregate effects (reduced addiction, increased charitable giving, increased marital stability, increased subjective well-being) are real and robust. The biographies illustrate; the sociology counts. The objection survives only if both data sources fail, and both do not. Failure mode: dismissing biography because of selection-bias while ignoring the corroborating sociology.
3. The historical evidence is variable in quality but converges across independent sources. Augustine's Confessions is theological autobiography; it is also corroborated by his letters, his sermons, and the testimony of Possidius. Paul's conversion is reported by Luke (Acts 9), retold in Paul's own speeches (Acts 22, 26), and presupposed by his letters (Galatians 1:13-17; Philippians 3:5-7). Modern conversion accounts have independent witnesses (Colson's wife, business partners; Strobel's pre-conversion atheist friends; Butterfield's academic colleagues). The convergence-across-independent-witnesses is the standard test for historical reliability, and the conversion data meets it. Failure mode: holding the conversion data to a higher evidentiary bar than other historical claims of the same period.
4. "Conversion is just psychology" is question-begging. It assumes naturalism and reads the data in that frame. The argument from transformed lives is precisely that the data resist a pure-psychology reading: the depth, durability, cross-cultural reach, doctrine-correlation, and resistance to control conditions are not what a pure-psychology account predicts. To say "it's just psychology" is to assert the conclusion the argument is challenging. The honest naturalist must show the data fit naturalism better than they fit Christian theism, and the case for that is precisely what P3 contests. Failure mode: assuming naturalism and calling the assumption an argument.

Live-cite kit

• Scripture: Acts 9:1-19 (Paul on the Damascus road); 2 Corinthians 5:17 ("if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation"); 1 Timothy 1:12-17 (Paul "the foremost of sinners"); 1 Peter 1:3-9 ("born again to a living hope").
• Scholarly: Augustine (Confessions 8); William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902, lectures 9-10 on conversion); Rodney Stark (The Rise of Christianity, 1996); Rosaria Butterfield (The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, 2012); Lee Strobel (The Case for Christ, 1998).
• Aphorism: "I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see." (John Newton, 1772)

Tactical notes

• Lead with one specific story, the one most likely to land for this listener. For a skeptical journalist: Strobel. For a literature professor: Butterfield or Ordway. For a Marxist: Chambers or Colson. For a scientist: Collins. Specificity beats survey.
• Move from the specific story to the pattern: "and that is not isolated, here are five more across very different starting points, and here is the sociological aggregate."
• Do not over-promise on individual cases. Some converts relapse; some testimonies turn out shallow. The argument is cumulative, not individual. Concede the failed cases and point to the aggregate.
• Avoid the trap of "and you too should convert". The argument's job at this stage is evidential: this is data that needs explanation. The personal invitation comes later, in a different register.

P2, A non-trivial fraction defies standard social-psychological reduction

Affirmative case (second-order arguments)

1. Hostile-witness converts. Lee Strobel set out to refute Christianity for his atheist wife's sake; he ended up writing The Case for Christ. Antony Flew, after a 50-year career as the most prominent academic atheist of his generation, shifted to deism in 2004 against the gravitational pull of his entire intellectual reputation. C S Lewis was actively atheist, then theist-reluctantly, then Christian-reluctantly, on his own account "the most reluctant convert in all England." The hostile-witness pattern strains social-psychological accounts because the social-psychological pressure on these converts pointed the opposite direction.
2. High-cost converts. Rosaria Butterfield lost her academic identity, her partner, her community of feminist English-department friends. Converts from Islam (Nabeel Qureshi; many anonymous in closed-country contexts) face family rejection, social exile, and in some jurisdictions execution. Cross-cultural missionaries lose family and country. The conversions occur despite costs that the standard social-reward model says should prevent them. The "religion as community" account does not explain conversions that destroy community.
3. Solitary converts. Some conversions occur in isolation, with no community present to provide social reinforcement: a person alone with a Bible in a prison cell, in a hospital bed, in a closed country with no church to join. The standard social-cohesion account predicts conversion to track community membership; it does not predict conversions that precede and create community. The solitary cases are anomalous on the social-reduction model.
4. Death-row converts. Karla Faye Tucker and multiple documented others underwent Christian conversion on death row, where the conversion produced no social, material, or escape benefit. The conversion often cost the convert relationships with prior criminal associates and produced testimony against their own former lives. The "conversion as benefit-seeking" account predicts none of this; the "conversion as encountered grace" account predicts exactly this.

Anticipated objections

1. "Hostile-witness conversions are dramatic-narrative selection bias. Most atheists do not convert; you cite the rare cases that did."
2. "High-cost conversion is explained by personality. High-openness types, traumatic life events, identity-crisis windows, the explanations are psychological, not metaphysical."
3. "Death-row conversion is poorly controlled. Chaplains exert pressure; converts seek favor with parole boards; the data are contaminated."
4. "Solitary conversion is rarer than you claim. Most 'solitary' converts have prior cultural exposure to Christianity, which is its own kind of social formation."

Rebuttals

1. The objection concedes the move it is trying to deflate. Yes, most atheists do not convert; that is irrelevant to the argument. The argument is not that most atheists convert; it is that some convert against the gravitational pull of their commitments, and the cases need explanation. Rare-but-anomalous is the standard structure of evidential argument: rare planetary motions confirmed Newton; rare double-slit results confirmed quantum mechanics; rare hostile-witness conversions warrant a Christian-theism inference. The "but most don't" reply mistakes the argument as statistical when it is evidential-cumulative. Failure mode: conflating "rare" with "negligible."
2. The personality / trauma explanation is partial and does not cover the content. Yes, conversion correlates with high-openness personality and with life-crisis windows; these are real predisposing factors. But they do not explain why the resulting commitment is specifically Christian with specifically Christian doctrinal content. A high-openness traumatized person could end up in any number of frames (Buddhism, Marxism, addiction, despair, generic spirituality). The pattern of resolution into Christian commitment with Christian fruit is the data point. Personality opens the door; it does not specify what walks through. Failure mode: explaining the predisposition and pretending to have explained the content.
3. The death-row contamination charge is partly right and does not dissolve the data. Yes, parole-seeking false conversions exist and should be screened out. But the genuine cases survive screening: converts whose conversion brought them no parole benefit, who maintained their testimony through execution (Tucker), who were converted after their cases were terminal, who refused to instrumentalize their conversion for legal gain. The screened data set is smaller than the raw, but it is real, and it consists of conversions that produce character change without any naturalistically-credible reward. Failure mode: using the existence of false cases to deny the existence of genuine ones.
4. "Prior cultural exposure" does not explain conversions in cultures without prior Christianity. Chinese house-church Christians convert in contexts with no prior cultural-Christian formation; their conversions cannot be explained by Western-cultural diffusion. Sub-Saharan African converts in animist starting contexts convert into Christian frames their cultures did not pre-supply. The cross-cultural data show conversion patterns that are not reducible to "Western Christian cultural water." The cross-cultural consistency despite radically different cultural starting points is precisely the data the Holy Spirit cross-cultural account predicts. Failure mode: assuming all converts begin in cultural-Christian water.

Live-cite kit

• Scripture: John 3:1-8 (Nicodemus and the new birth, sovereign and surprising); Acts 9:1-19 (Paul, hostile-witness paradigm); 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 ("not many wise, not many mighty"); Romans 5:6-10 ("while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us").
• Scholarly: Lee Strobel (The Case for Christ, 1998); Antony Flew (There Is a God, 2007, with Roy Abraham Varghese); Nabeel Qureshi (Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, 2014); David Garrison (A Wind in the House of Islam, 2014, on Muslim-background-believer movements).
• Aphorism: "Christ did not die for the deserving but for sinners, that the gift might be of grace and not of reward."

Tactical notes

• Use the hostile-witness move early with skeptical audiences. It bypasses the "you're just predisposed" deflection because the cited cases were predisposed the opposite direction.
• For high-cost cases, be concrete about the costs: Butterfield lost the partner, the community, the tenure trajectory. Specificity defeats the "it's just personality" abstraction.
• For the cross-cultural argument, name the geographies: Korea, China, Nigeria, Iran, Brazil. The cross-cultural pattern is data the listener can verify outside the conversation.
• Do not weaponize death-row stories. They are heavy data; they deserve sober handling. Lead with them only when the conversation is already serious about the question of grace.

P3, On naturalism the pattern is anomalous; on Christian theism it is predicted

Affirmative case (second-order arguments)

1. The naturalistic alternatives have explanatory gaps. Placebo and social-cohesion accounts predict conversion effects in any community-strong religion; they do not predict the specifically Christian content correlation (theological-liberalism failure case: when Christian communities drop the orthodox content, they lose the conversion effect). Cognitive-restructuring accounts predict short-term change; they do not predict multi-decade durability on the scale the data show. Identity-and-narrative accounts predict effects in proportion to peer-pressure and social-support; they do not predict solitary-conversion or high-cost-conversion cases. Each naturalistic account covers a slice; none covers the whole.
2. The Christian doctrinal framework is predictive. Christian doctrine claims: (a) the Holy Spirit regenerates the convert (John 3:3-8); (b) the new birth produces real, observable fruit (Galatians 5:22-23); (c) sanctification is a multi-decade process (2 Corinthians 3:18); (d) the work continues across cultures because the Spirit is not culture-bound (Acts 2; Galatians 3:28); (e) the work can occur in solitary, costly, hostile-witness contexts because grace is sovereign (Romans 9:14-18; John 3:8 "the wind blows where it wishes"). If this framework is true, the exact pattern observed is what we should predict: deep, durable, cross-cultural, doctrine-correlated, sometimes-defying-social-context transformation. The fit between prediction and data is striking.
3. Cumulative fit with the historical case for the Resurrection. If the Resurrection happened, the transforming presence of the risen Christ in the lives of His people is exactly what we should expect. The argument from transformed lives is a consequence of the Easter event. The two arguments mutually reinforce: the Resurrection grounds the conversions; the conversions corroborate the Resurrection. The combined case is stronger than either alone.
4. The "ongoing testimony" character of the data. Unlike most historical arguments, this one is still being generated daily. Every contemporary Christian conversion exhibiting the same pattern is a fresh data point. The argument is not closed in the past; it is renewable in the present, available for the inquirer to investigate themselves by finding and interviewing converts in their own city. This availability-for-investigation is a strong feature of the argument that most theistic arguments lack.

Anticipated objections

1. "The prediction-fit is post-hoc. Christians predict what they observe and then claim the observation confirms the prediction."
2. "Other religions make analogous predictions about their converts. The 'predictive doctrine' move is not distinctively Christian."
3. "Ongoing testimony is still self-report and self-report is unreliable. Converts have strong incentives to report ongoing transformation that may not be there."
4. "You cannot ground the argument on the Resurrection because the Resurrection is itself disputed; you are running two unproven arguments together to make them look like one."

Rebuttals

1. The prediction is not post-hoc; it is encoded in pre-data scripture. The Christian doctrine of regeneration and sanctification is laid out in texts written in the first century, long before the conversion-data corpus accumulated. John 3, Romans 6-8, Galatians 5, 2 Corinthians 3 specify the prediction. The two-millennium data set is the test of the prediction, not the source of it. This is the standard structure of confirmed prediction in any domain: theory specifies, data confirms. The "post-hoc" charge would have force only if the doctrine were formulated after the data accumulated; it was not. Failure mode: ignoring the chronological order of doctrine-then-data.
2. Other religions make different predictions, and the comparative data show Christianity uniquely fits its own predictions at the observed scale. Buddhism predicts liberation through extinction of desire; the data show Buddhist meditators report quietude but not the same character-transformation profile. Islam predicts submission through external observance; the data show observance-effects but not the specific regeneration-profile of new birth. Hindu bhakti predicts loving devotion; the data show devotional effects but not the cross-cultural-conversion-from-zero pattern of the Christian movement. The predictions differ; the resulting data differ correspondingly. The Christian prediction-data match is the strongest of the comparison. Failure mode: treating "all religions make predictions" as if all predictions were equivalent.
3. The self-report problem is real and is mitigated by external corroboration. Yes, converts have incentives to report ongoing transformation; this is why the argument does not rely on self-report alone. It relies on observable external markers: Putnam-Campbell measurement of religious-community outcomes; biographical witnesses (former friends, family, business associates) who confirm or deny the reported change; longitudinal studies tracking marriage, addiction, charity, and crime rates among converts; cross-cultural sociological work. The external-corroboration layer is what gives the self-report layer evidential traction. Failure mode: treating "self-report is unreliable" as if it were the only data source.
4. The cumulative argument is methodologically standard, not circular. When two independent lines of evidence point at the same conclusion, citing both is strengthening, not double-counting. Historians do not refuse to cite multiple converging witnesses on the grounds that "the witnesses agree, so they cannot all be evidence." The Resurrection has its own independent historical case (empty tomb, post-mortem appearances, origin of the disciples' belief). The transformed-lives argument has its own independent sociological-biographical case. They converge on Christian theism. Convergent independent evidence is the strongest evidential structure in any domain. Failure mode: demanding each argument stand entirely alone, which would also undermine standard scientific and historical reasoning.

Live-cite kit

• Scripture: John 3:1-8 (the new birth predicted); Galatians 5:22-23 (the fruit predicted); 2 Corinthians 3:18 (the multi-decade process predicted); Ephesians 2:1-10 ("you were dead, He made you alive"); Titus 3:3-7 ("for we also once were foolish ourselves").
• Scholarly: Robert Putnam & David Campbell (American Grace, 2010); Rodney Stark (The Rise of Christianity, 1996; The Triumph of Christianity, 2011); Alister McGrath (The Twilight of Atheism, 2004); Philip Jenkins (The Next Christendom, 2002); William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902).
• Aphorism: "By their fruit you will recognize them." (Matthew 7:16)

Tactical notes

• For the "post-hoc" objection, anchor the prediction in first-century scripture explicitly: "Paul wrote this in the 50s AD. The data set we are talking about extends two thousand years. The prediction is older than the data; the data confirm the prediction."
• For the comparative-religion objection, invite the comparative inquiry: "If you think Buddhism or Islam makes the same prediction at the same scale, let's look at the data. The comparison favors the Christian case; I'll show you the studies."
• For the self-report objection, lead with the external-corroboration layer, not the self-report layer. Putnam-Campbell first, biographies second.
• Do not run this argument alone in a setting where the Resurrection is fresh in the conversation. The transformed-lives argument is stronger paired with the historical case; deploy them together when the audience is ready.

Conclusion

The cumulative weight of biographical-sociological data of Christian transformation is best explained by the Christian account of regeneration through the Holy Spirit. Two thousand years of conversion data, across every continent and demographic, with deep, durable, cross-cultural, doctrine-correlated, sometimes-defying-social-context character change, is anomalous on naturalism and predicted by Christian theism. The argument is best-explanation, abductive, cumulative with Argument from Religious Experience, Argument from Desire, and the historical case for the Resurrection. Its distinctive strength is its availability: the inquirer can investigate the data directly by finding and interviewing converts in their own city. The transformations are not just history; they are still being made.

Master objections to the argument as a whole

1. "The argument from transformed lives is just survivor-bias dressed up as evidence." Reply: the argument explicitly addresses selection-bias and points to independent sociological data (Putnam-Campbell, Stark, Jenkins) that bypass the memoir-publishing filter. The biographies illustrate; the sociology counts. The argument survives because both layers exist.
2. "All religions claim transformed lives; the argument proves too much." Reply: the comparative data show distinctive features in the Christian pattern (cross-cultural reach, doctrine-correlation, hostile-witness cases, multi-decade durability). The argument does not claim only Christians transform; it claims the Christian pattern is uniquely well-explained by the Christian framework.
3. "Conversion is psychology, not metaphysics; the argument confuses categories." Reply: this is question-begging. The argument is that the data resist a pure-psychology reading, and the burden is on the objector to show the data fit naturalism better than Christian theism. Asserting "it's just psychology" assumes the conclusion.
4. "Even if the data are anomalous on naturalism, you have not ruled out other supernatural explanations (generic theism, deism, other religions)." Reply: the argument warrants the conclusion of a transforming supernatural agency operative in Christian conversion; the identification of that agency as the Holy Spirit of Trinitarian Christianity uses additional considerations from the Resurrection case, the comparative-religion case (Christian God is the Only True God), and the doctrine-correlation data.

Tactical opening / closing

Opening line: "I want to show you a pattern. Two thousand years, every continent, every starting point, the same kind of change in the same kind of way. And I want to ask you: what explains the pattern?"

Closing landing strip: "The data are still being made. There is a convert in your city right now whose life four years ago does not match their life today, and the difference correlates with specific Christian doctrines they would not have predicted to be life-changing. The argument does not force the conclusion; it raises the question. The question is whether the pattern is best explained by the doctrine it correlates with."

Augustine's classical formulation

"Late have I loved You, beauty so old and so new, late have I loved You. And see, You were within and I was in the external world and sought You there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which You made. You were with me, and I was not with You. The lovely things kept me far from You, though if they did not have their existence in You, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, You put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after You. I tasted You, and I feel but hunger and thirst for You. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is Yours." , Augustine, Confessions 10.27.38 (c. 397-400)

Newton's "Amazing Grace" formulation

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see." , John Newton, "Amazing Grace" (1772)

Connection to Scripture

• John 3:1-8, the new birth
• Acts 9:1-19, Paul's Damascus-road conversion
• Acts 22:1-21; 26:1-23, Paul's retold conversion
• 2 Corinthians 5:17, "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation"
• Ephesians 2:1-10, "you were dead in your trespasses"
• Ephesians 4:17-32, "put off the old self, put on the new"
• Galatians 5:22-23, the fruit of the Spirit
• Romans 6, "shall we who died to sin still live in it?"
• Romans 12:1-2, "be transformed by the renewing of your mind"
• Philippians 3:7-14, Paul's "I count all things as loss"
• Colossians 3:1-17, "set your mind on things above"
• 1 Timothy 1:12-17, "of whom I am foremost"
• Titus 3:3-7, "for we also once were foolish ourselves"
• 1 Peter 1:3-9, "born again to a living hope"
• 1 John 3:14, "we have passed from death to life"

Patristic / scholarly note

Classical / patristic / medieval:

• Augustine (Confessions, 397-400), the paradigm conversion narrative of the Western tradition; the cor inquietum dynamic and the tolle lege moment
• Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho, c. 155), conversion from Platonism through an old Christian teacher
• Gregory of Nyssa, on the epektasis of the converted soul's continued stretching-forward
• Bernard of Clairvaux (On Loving God, c. 1126), the four stages of love as conversion-progression
• Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II q. 109-114), the theology of grace as ground of transformation

Modern:

• John Newton ("Amazing Grace", 1772; An Authentic Narrative, 1764), the slave-trader-to-evangelical paradigm
• Jonathan Edwards (A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, 1737), the Great Awakening conversion documentation
• William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902, lectures 9-10), the secular-academic conversion study
• C S Lewis (Surprised by Joy, 1955), the reluctant-convert classic
• Charles Colson (Born Again, 1976), the Watergate-to-prison-ministry case
• Lee Strobel (The Case for Christ, 1998), the hostile-witness journalist case
• Rosaria Butterfield (The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, 2012), the high-cost academic-Marxist case
• Holly Ordway (Not God's Type, 2010 / 2014), the literature-professor case
• Francis Collins (The Language of God, 2006), the atheist-scientist case
• Nabeel Qureshi (Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, 2014), the Muslim-background-believer case
• Rodney Stark (The Rise of Christianity, 1996; The Triumph of Christianity, 2011), the sociological case
• Robert Putnam & David Campbell (American Grace, 2010), the U.S. religious-outcomes data
• Philip Jenkins (The Next Christendom, 2002), the global-South Christianity expansion data
• Alister McGrath (The Twilight of Atheism, 2004), the late-modern conversion-pattern analysis
• David Garrison (A Wind in the House of Islam, 2014), the Muslim-background-believer movement data

Critics / alternative accounts:

• Sigmund Freud (The Future of an Illusion, 1927), conversion as wish-fulfillment psychology
• Ludwig Feuerbach (The Essence of Christianity, 1841), conversion as projection
• Sociological-reductionist tradition (Durkheim, Weber on religion-as-social-cohesion)
• New-atheist tradition (Dawkins, Hitchens) on conversion as cognitive-error or community-pressure
• Buddhist tradition's diagnosis of conversion as still-attached longing rather than enlightenment

Inference rules used

• Inference to the Best Explanation, Christian regeneration as best explanation of the conversion-data pattern
• Cumulative-case reasoning, multiple independent biographical and sociological lines converging on a single explanation
• Predictive confirmation, first-century doctrinal predictions confirmed by two-millennium data set

See also

• Argument from Religious Experience, the inner-encounter dimension; sister argument
• Argument from Desire, the longing dimension; sister argument
• Argument from Purpose Meaning and Hope, the existential-fit case; cumulative
• Christian God is the Only True God, the comparative-religion case; needed for the move from "transforming agency" to "Holy Spirit of Trinitarian Christianity"
• Moral Argument, parallel structure of moral-data to moral-source
• Pragmatic Argument, Pascal and James on the practical-decision frame
• Augustine, the paradigm conversion narrative
• C S Lewis, the reluctant-convert classic
• Arguments, master index