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

Today, an excurses on Natural Theology, Part 5.

For more resources from Dr. Craig, go to ReasonableFaith.org.

It may seem strange to have begun an excursus on natural theology by arguing that we don't

really need arguments for the existence of God in order to believe rationally and even know

that God exists.

But we've seen that in fact arguments for God's existence are not necessary because God

can be known to exist in a properly

basic way through the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit.

But to say that arguments for God's existence are not necessary in order to know that God

exists or that the great things of the gospel are true, is not to say that there are not also

arguments that are sufficient for the knowledge of God.

And in fact, I would agree with Alvin Plantinga that even though belief in God and the

great truths of the gospel are properly basic, still there are arguments and evidences that are sufficient to warrant belief

in the existence of God and in the great truths of the gospel.

And so today we want to begin to look at some of these arguments for God's existence.

And the first argument is the argument from contingency. And we have an outline

for this for you. If you don't have one, raise your hand and Marian will get it to you.

Sometimes this is called the Leibnizian cosmological argument. I discuss this argument in this book, On Guard, and then also in a deeper way in the

book Reasonable Faith.

And we'll be looking this morning at the version as it's laid out in On Guard.

I have always been impressed by the mystery of the existence of the universe. I remember

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