In April 2002, the well-respected Oxford University philosophy professor Richard Swineburne defended the truth of the Resurrection at a high-profile gathering of philosophy professors at Yale University. Swineburne used Bayes Theorem, a broadly accepted mathematical probability theory and tool to defend the truth of Christ's resurrection.

In a New York Times interview, Swineburne said, "For someone dead for 36 hours to come to life again is, according to the laws of nature, extremely improbable. But if there is a God of the traditional kind, natural laws only operate because he makes them operate." Swineburne used the Bayes Theorem to assign values to things like the probability that God is real, Jesus' behavior during his lifetime, and the quality of witness testimony after his death. Then he plugged the numbers into a probability formula and added everything up.

The results? There's a 97 percent probability that the resurrection really happened.

That's nice to know. It's one more tool in the tool kit of ministry. But the truth is that you and I don't really need that. The church doesn't really need that information. Because we have our own formula.

It's the Easter Formula: R+ET+F=LE. The Resurrection plus the Empty Tomb plus Faith equal Life Eternal. That's the Easter Formula.