Philosophy of History (CS151) establishes a theory of history and then applies it to a historical investigation of the resurrection of Jesus. It provides an extensive and detailed consideration of the many issues related to historical investigation—including the uncertainty of historical knowledge, the influence of one’s worldview in historiography, the historian’s right to investigate miracle claims, burden of proof, and arguments to the best explanation. The course then walks through this strictly-controlled historical method to investigate the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. You’ll learn the relevant biblical and non-biblical sources which are identified and evaluated according to their historical reliability. Finally, the course weighs two prominent hypotheses that account for the historical bedrock according to the historical method set forth above. The bodily resurrection of Jesus is shown to be a near-certain historical probability, and thus, a solid basis for one’s faith in God—a faith that produces an eternal hope in the resurrection life.
“Historiography is the study of the philosophy of history and historical method” (source)
“‘You think that the text itself has no meaning intrinsic to it. It’s only the meaning that the reader brings to the text.’” (source)
“heterogeneous.’ And what we mean by heterogeneous is we want people from different backgrounds to agree on these things” (source)
“the Christian worldview does provide the best view of reality, the most plausible and unified theory of reality” (source)