| Dear Friends of Reasonable Faith,
This month I continued my flurry of appearances on social media while beginning my new writing project of a systematic philosophical theology.
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| Public appearances on social media have now taken the place of in-person speaking engagements during this time of social distancing. In addition to recording my weekly Defenders podcast, I had another appearance on Cameron Bertuzzi’s “Capturing Christianity” podcast, describing at Cameron’s request the books I’ve written over the years, both scholarly and popular. These fall mainly into eight areas:
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| (1) the cosmological argument for God’s existence,
(2) the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection,
(3) divine omniscience, including God’s foreknowledge and middle knowledge of free acts,
(4) divine eternity and God’s relationship to time,
(5) divine aseity and God’s relationship to abstract objects,
(6) the atonement of Christ,
(7) the historical Adam, and finally
(8) my signature books Reasonable Faith and On Guard.
What a privilege it has been to study and write about these great themes!
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WATCH: Dr. Craig Breaks Down Nearly EVERY BOOK He's EVER Written!
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| The following week I was back on Cameron’s show again, this time with the brilliant atheist philosopher Graham Oppy, to discuss the applicability of mathematics to the physical world. Although I had floated this argument with success in my debate with Alex Rosenberg some years ago, it was only this spring that I completed an in-depth look at the argument on the basis of Eugene Wigner’s masterful essay “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences.” The question that drove Wigner is, how does one best explain the incredible accuracy with which pure mathematics enables us to describe the phenomena of physics? Wigner concluded that it was “a miracle” which we neither understand nor deserve—in other words, a mystery. But I maintain that the best answer to Wigner’s question is that a mathematical mind, a.k.a. God, has designed the physical universe to operate according to the blueprint He had in mind, so that mathematics’ applicability is quite literally miraculous. I was very pleased how well the argument held up in dialogue with Oppy, who was finally reduced to saying that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, an outlandish claim, in view of natural laws’ evident contingency.
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WATCH: Does Math Point to God? William Lane Craig + Graham Oppy
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| I also did an interview with Seacoast Church in San Luis Obispo, California, on various apologetics questions and a similar interview with a high school ministry in College Station, Texas. In view of the recent defection of certain Christian musicians and worship leaders who are popular among Christian youth, I think that training in the defense of the faith is more crucial than ever for our high school and even middle school students.
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| I then appeared with biologist Joshua Swamidass on his “Peaceful Science” podcast describing my work on the historical Adam. We had a very frank discussion, which some atheist podcasters are trying to twist to their own ends. For example, in describing why the study of the historical Adam is important, I point out that Jesus probably believed in the historical Adam, so that if we deny that Adam was historical, we seem to ascribe false beliefs to Jesus, which would be incompatible with his deity. This is no great admission on my part: it’s just to say that the question is a lot more important that at first appears.
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| The last week of the month I did an interview with Kerigma, the publisher of my books in Spanish, particularly The Only Wise God, which has just appeared in Spanish. We had a great discussion, which was simultaneously translated into Spanish, and I later heard that social media all over Latin America exploded with discussion of the interview. We’re so excited to be expanding the reach of Reasonable Faith into Spanish-speaking Central and South America! Finally, I had a private Zoom call with members of our Reasonable Faith team about my recently concluded work in defense of the historical Adam. It was not merely a wonderful time of interaction but also a great way to build camaraderie and unity among the far-flung members of our staff.
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I announced last time that I have now sent my proposed book Quest of the Historical Adam to a publisher for consideration and have turned to a new multi-year project: a systematic philosophical theology summarizing my life’s work. Some of you may ask, what in the world is a systematic philosophical theology? Very few of these things exist; in fact, you could count them on the fingers of one hand. A systematic theology is a topically organized presentation of Christian doctrine in a logically coherent package. It’s what I teach on a popular level in my Defenders class. A systematic theology will explain doctrines like: divine revelation, the attributes of God, the Trinity, the person and work of Christ, creation and providence, salvation, the Church, and the last things.
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But a systematic theology is so much more than just a summary of biblical teaching on these topics. Rather it reflects on their careful definition, logical coherence, and rationality. That’s where the “philosophical” part comes in! Over the last half century or so, there has been a renaissance of Christian philosophy in the Anglo-American world, and Christian philosophers have applied the tools of philosophical analysis to traditional Christian doctrines to help articulate and defend them. So my projected work will be an integrative work, drawing upon both the Bible and philosophy to present a coherent and biblical Christian worldview.
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The opening section of any systematic theology is typically called “Prolegomena” (which just means “Introduction.”) In my Prolegomena I want to define and explain the relation between various disciplines like biblical theology, systematic theology, fundamental theology, philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and analytic theology. This is important because these various disciplines are differently understood. To give just one example, many scholars used to distinguish between philosophy of religion and philosophical theology by claiming that the former, as philosophy, could not appeal to divine revelation as a basic source of knowledge but only to secular reason, whereas the latter, as theology, assumes the truth of divine revelation and seeks to formulate revealed doctrines. That way of looking at things is not correct, I think, and most Christian philosophers today reject such a dichotomy. There is just no reason why the Christian philosopher of religion should pretend that he does not know what he knows on the basis of divine revelation and formulate his views like a secularist! The Christian philosopher has every right to appeal to all his basic sources of knowledge in thinking about religious topics. That makes the Christian philosopher of religion and the Christian theologian indistinguishable.
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For Christ and His Kingdom,
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Dear Dr Craig,
I wanted to briefly write to express my thankfulness for your ministry. You have been a blessing to my faith. I am an MD-PhD student from Melbourne, Australia. Over the last five years I have been learning Apologetics primarily through your ministry. You would be interested to know that over the last three weeks I have run an Apologetics course at my local church. The first session was on "Does God exist?", the second session was on "Objections to God's existence" and the third session on "Jesus' resurrection". I used your animated videos before explaining the content in more detail. It was received with wonder. I am so sad that Christians know so little about Apologetics. That was part of the reason why, perhaps, I was so nervous presenting. Many of the Christians I am around do not value the intellectual side of Christianity. Nonetheless your ministry helped me incredibly. I do want to ask what future animated videos you have planned? I heard you recently say you are preparing one on the Applicability of Mathematics. I would love to see one on Evolution. I feel there is a need for that. I would love to financially contribute to one of your planned animated videos, so please get in touch.
Kindest regards,
Roshan
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