Thinking Matters Journal

William Lane Craig is one of the world’s foremost Christian philosophers and apologists. He has authored over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology, and Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus. For over thirty years Craig has engaged in dialog with many notable skeptics, including Anthony Flew, Quentin Smith, Richard Taylor and Kai Nielson. Throughout his career he has been known for presenting the gospel with clarity and cogency, yet without sacrificing depth. Gary Habermas, Distinguished Research Professor at Liberty University, has said: “of scholarship, no contemporary Christian apologist surpasses Bill Craig.”1

Recently, Bill was in New Zealand for a speaking tour that began with a forum at Victoria University. His visit included two debates in the North Island, which each attracted over a thousand attendees, and lectures hosted by Thinking Matters Tauranga. Following his time here, he kindly agreed to discuss with us some of the issues relevant to defending Christian truth-claims. Our questions are in bold; Bill’s answers are in normal text (some speech has been cleared up for readability purposes).

What do you find are the most pressing intellectual challenges for Christians in the Western world, looking both within the church, and outside it?

Well, I think that the most pressing challenge would be responding to religious pluralism. There seems to be an overwhelming conviction that there is no objective truth about matters of religion—that matters of religion are just expressions of personal taste, and that therefore to claim to have the truth about any particular religious view of the world is seen as bigoted, dogmatic, and intolerant. And I think that the most pressing thing that the church needs to be able to do today is to be able to respond to this religious pluralism.

At a deeper level I think this religious pluralism flows out of an underling scientific naturalism that permeates Western society—a naturalism which says that the only way to get at truth is through the scientific method, and since religion is not open to the scientific method (or at least is perceived not to be open), therefore religion is not a source of knowledge or truth but merely of personal taste and opinion. And so that would be the even deeper, more underlying problem that needs to be addressed: the scientific naturalism that leads people to think that matters of religion are just matters of taste.

You have said that you are not very worried by the New Atheists2 because they have shallow academic roots. Nonetheless, they are seeming to have an impact on popular culture. Given this, what do you think is the best way to respond to them?

Well, I think the best way to respond is to be better than they are at what they’re doing. That is to say, to write better material that is more in-depth, that is more substantive, and that addresses the issues more responsibly than they do; and to do it in a way that is charitable, and civil, and not to respond in kind with the sort of vociferous and angry rhetoric that characterizes much of their writings. I think we need to love them, at the same time that we refute their views in a very substantive way.

Looking at popular apologetics: you’ve stressed the importance of Christians getting into universities and getting degrees. Obviously Plantinga’s The Nature of Necessity3 has had a big impact in academia—but couldn’t you say that Lewis’ Mere Christianity4 has also had a great impact at a popular level?

Yes, obviously the work of C S Lewis has had just an incredible impact for the cause of Christ, and for awakening a thirst for apologetics; and not only among the popular imagination, but also among scholars as well. I think reading Lewis has motivated many young students to seek a career in philosophy, or in some field of apologetics, and so in one sense they have gone on to do better work than Lewis himself did by standing on his shoulders and being inspired by his example.

So his work was, I suppose, still academically responsible compared to maybe the New Atheists who don’t have that springboard?

Well, it’s almost of an entirely different genre, you know? Lewis, he tended to appeal to the literary type via the imagination, and to the artistic impulse of people, and the moral impulse as well I think. Less so to the scientific side of scholarship, I think; so there is a little bit of a disconnect there between Lewis’ approach and the approach of say someone like a Richard Dawkins.

You’ve said that apologists should be philosophers first—what about people like Tim Keller5 who’ve had an enormous impact, but are more scholar-pastor apologists?

Well I would say that he’s one of the intermediaries who helps to take this material and bring it down to the man in the street; and certainly the role of the intermediary is a vital role. I am so thankful for people like Lee Strobel6 and Ravi Zacharias7 and Tim Keller who serve to take this material and make it accessible to the man in the street.

Obviously there has been a rise in apologetics programs offered at universities; however, at the local church level, do you think more work needs to be done to encourage and foster efforts to acquaint believers with apologetics?

Well, of course it does—I mean that goes without saying, I think—but I am nevertheless very encouraged by the amount of interest I see in the grass roots from people in churches all around the country. They are asking for this material. It’s not coming from the top down; it’s not as though the pastors are trying to push this material on people—it’s quite the opposite: the people in churches are asking and demanding for training and teaching in these areas, and pastors I think are the ones who need to get with the program and start feeding people what they need and desire in this regard. Speaking of course in a North American context—I can’t say—

Well I think you’re probably right—it’s similar in New Zealand. I saw your writeup on your site of your impressions of your New Zealand tour,8 and I think you were pretty much spot on, especially about how we are culturally disengaged.

What about Christians who are thinking about a career in apologetics? Often we have kind of a romantic view of what it’s like. What kind of maturity and character is required, do you think?

Yeah, I think that’s true: that sometimes young students do have a romantic view. I’m not always encouraged when I meet some young fellow that says, “I want to become a Christian apologist”—and you speak to him and you kinda get the impression that what he wants to do is have the limelight, and go out and debate people and defeat them, and get a big name for himself in the Christian speaking circuit; and I don’t think they understand sometimes the amount of preparation that needs to go into doing this responsibly, in terms of getting a doctorate, mastering some foreign languages, reading and study—and then also, as you said, the character development. There are tremendous pitfalls in this area of public ministry, that come with pride and egoism and other sorts of sins of the heart that we have to really be aware of. So we need to be mindful of our spiritual formation as well as our academic formation.

A lot of Christians won’t ever be able to become a Richard Swinburne or an Alvin Plantinga.9 They can’t devote many years to study. What would you recommend for these kinds of people?

Well, I would say then if they can’t do that, then they need to give up that ambition, because they’ll never reach that goal unless they are willing to take the time and the effort to put in years of study, to doing doctoral work, and so forth. Instead, then, they should think of themselves as perhaps one of the intermediaries we talked about before, who can help to bridge the gap between the Plantingas and the Swinburnes, and the folks in the street.

Are there any things that you wish you knew before you started apologetics that you now know?

Well, I think perhaps the only thing that I could think of would be to realize the importance of training Christians in being able to defend their faith. My burden and heart’s beat has been for evangelism, and so most all of the speaking I do is before secular audiences on university campuses—that’s where I feel my calling is. But I have come to see in recent years how vitally important it is to also be involved in equipping the church, the body of Christ, to be ready to give a defense. So I think that perhaps that would have been good for me to have understood more clearly earlier on: that this is also a vital part of the role of the Christian philosopher and theologian.

I see a third edition of your book has just been released, and I’m really impressed with the tools and resources available. Do you have any plans for further publications?

Well, I want to put out a little book that will be kind of a Reasonable Faith10 for lay people. Reasonable Faith is really not an introductory book; it’s a semi-popular book designed for seminary students or university graduates, and so I want to do a similar book, but really with the cookies on the bottom shelf—so to speak—so that the average Christian who couldn’t understand Reasonable Faith would be able to give some arguments for why he believes in God, and to give a defense why he believes that Christ is God’s Son, and that Christianity is the truth. So that’s a project I’m working on now to bring to completion.

Thanks very much for your time, Dr Craig. It’s been great to be able to talk to you.

1. ↑ Cited from Between Two Worlds, ‘Reasonable Faith’ (http://theologica.blogspot.com/2008/07/reasonable-faith-third-edition.html; retrieved July 16, 2008).
2. ↑ “New Atheist” is a term used to describe outspoken atheists such as Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Daniel Dennet (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea), Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything), and Sam Harris (Letter To A Christian Nation).
3. ↑ Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford University Press, 1979).
4. ↑ C S Lewis, Mere Christianity (originally published in the 1940s; San Francisco: HarperOne, 2001).
5. ↑ Referring specifically to Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (USA: Penguin Group, 2008).
6. ↑ Lee Strobel is a popular-level apologist, perhaps most famous for his book The Case for a Creator. He also has an online ministry called Investigating Faith.
7. ↑ Ravi Zacharias is another popular-level apologist, who recently wrote The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists. See Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
8. ↑ William Lane Craig, ‘Down Under’ (http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6433&autologin=true [free registration required]; retrieved July 16, 2008).
9. ↑ Both Swinburne and Plantinga are eminent Christian philosophers who interact with secular philosophers in the academic arena.
10. ↑ William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, Third Edition (Crossway Books, June 2008).