In the companion volume to this, The Resurrection in Retrospect, Peter Carnley focuses on the inadequacies for faith in Jesus Christ of an approach to his resurrection purely as an event of past historical time. The Reconstruction of Resurrection Belief articulates an alternative understanding of resurrection faith as essentially a response of trust based upon a knowledge by acquaintance with the living presence of Christ today. This book seeks to articulate an understanding of the nature of resurrection faith in the language of today, with as much logical coherence as possible, in the hope that it may have some traction in the increasingly secular world of contemporary scientific materialism. It faces the key challenge of seeking to explain how the claim that the animating Spirit of the Christian community that Saint Paul spoke of as "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:2) may be justifiably identified in faith today as "the living presence of Jesus of Nazareth."
