Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Christ, Part 35.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

In our lesson on the resurrection of Jesus, we have surveyed the biblical data concerning Jesus' resurrection,

and we have also looked at the history of thought concerning the event of Jesus' resurrection.

So now we come to some assessment of which view of the resurrection is the correct view.

And we want to talk here about both the fact of the resurrection as well as the meaning

of the resurrection.

The earliest Christians thought that the meaning of the resurrection was bound up with the

facticity of the resurrection.

Paul said, if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is futile and you are still in

your sins.

But as we saw, many modern theologians think that the resurrection can still be a meaningful religious

concept even if it did not occur historically. And so we want to look at not only the fact

of the resurrection, but the meaning of the resurrection. Now, when we talk about the fact of the

resurrection of Jesus, there are, I think, at least

two ways to come to a knowledge of the truth of Jesus' resurrection from the dead.

And we might call these the existential way and the historical way.

The existential way of coming to know the truth of the resurrection is through having a personal experience of the risen Lord oneself.

When you think about it, this is the way in which the vast, vast majority of Christians down through history have come to believe in Jesus' resurrection.

The vast majority of Christians have never had the education or the library resources or the leisure time

to conduct a historical investigation of the evidence for the resurrection.

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