Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig. Today, an excurses on natural theology, part two.

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

Last time we began an excursus in natural theology or arguments for the existence of God.

And the first topic that we wanted to undertake is the proper basicality of belief in God.

This is not an argument for God's existence, rather it's the claim that you can know that

God exists, have a perfectly

rational belief in God without any sort of arguments for God's existence.

Now last time I shared with you something about properly basic beliefs, that beliefs which

are appropriately grounded can be taken in a properly basic way.

It is perfectly rational to hold these beliefs even though we may not be able to argue

for the truth of these beliefs.

Important examples would include things like belief in the reality of the external

world or belief in the reality of the external world or belief in the reality

of the past. These are sorts of things that you can't prove on the basis of argument and

evidence, but you are perfectly rational to hold in a properly basic way as rooted in your

experience. And what I argued then was that belief in God, in the biblical God, is appropriately grounded

so that belief in God can be taken in a properly basic way.

And I want to look first at the role of the Holy Spirit in believing in a properly basic

way in God's existence and in the great truths of the gospel.

I would argue that fundamentally the way in which we know that God exists and that Christianity

is true is by the self-authenticating witness of God's Holy Spirit. Now what do I mean

by the self-authenticating witness of God's Holy Spirit? Well let me mention six points

...