While its companion volume, The Resurrection in Retrospect, addresses the inadequacies of an approach to the Resurrection of Christ 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. In the hope that it may have some traction in an increasingly secular world of contemporary scientific realism, Carnley demonstrates an understanding of the nature of Resurrection faith in the language of today, with as much logical coherence as possible, and explains 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.'

In 2003 the British New Testament scholar N. T. Wright published The Resurrection of the Son of God, arguing vigorously that the Resurrection of Christ should be handled purely as a historical event - subjected to historical reason and critical-historical research. This book critically examines Wright's arguments. Peter Carnley demonstrates the flaws in the view that the Resurrection should be understood essentially as Jesus' return from the dead to this world of space and time in a material and physical body. Carnley argues that the Resurrection of Christ is a "mystery of God", which must necessarily be appropriated, not by reason alone, but by faith. Evidence relating to a past occurrence can be known only retrospectively. Yet Easter faith has to do with apprehending in the present a concretely experienced reality - which Saint Paul called "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:2). An epistemology of the identification of the Spirit in faith as the living presence of Christ will be found in the companion volume to this book: The Reconstruction of Resurrection Belief.