| Dear Friends of Reasonable Faith,
As the pandemic drags on, Reasonable Faith continues to flourish through our various outreaches all around the world. At our semi-annual (remote) Board meeting this past month, we reviewed the numbers, and all the aspects of the ministry are growing. This year we hit for the first time 4 million monthly engagements, largely due to our expansion in Latin America. Between January and July we had more than 46 million impressions on our two YouTube channels alone. In April our monthly Facebook engagements topped 2 million. Our Reasonable Faith podcast draws well over 100,000 people every month. We now have 165 active local Reasonable Faith chapters around the globe, up from 143 last July. And despite the coronavirus pandemic, giving during the first half of 2020 is actually up over last year! Thank you for your faithfulness!
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| Every week I’m engaged in outreaches via social media. Even though our Defenders class has not met in months, Jan and I continue to film and podcast my weekly lessons on Christian doctrine, which are viewed by thousands throughout the world. In fact, we’ve been able to complete the Doctrine of Man and have now embarked on a new section of the course, namely, the Doctrine of Salvation. This past month I did quite a few interviews in connection with my new book Atonement and the Death of Christ. An exemplary interview was conducted by Sean McDowell for his podcast. Sean had actually read the book twice and so was able to interact with it thoroughly and substantively. I also did interviews with Janet Parshall on her radio show, Janet Mefferd on hers, and my friends at Remnant Radio on their show. I also did interviews with Jordan Hampton for his podcast, with Clay Kraby for his podcast Reasonable Theology, and for a podcast program called Clear Lens. Cameron Bertuzzi had me back on his podcast “Capturing Christianity” to respond to a collection of 14 short video clips which has been viewed some three million times on YouTube as “the best atheistic arguments.” When you watch these, you’ll be scandalized by the caricatures and superficiality of these clips by prominent secularists. It’s really pretty pathetic. Also last month I recorded several conversations via Skype with Kevin Harris for our own Reasonable Faith podcast. We really enjoyed doing it remotely, and I suspect that this will be the wave of the future for us, saving as it does on travel costs and giving us the ability to stay current with events going on in our culture.
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| On July 15 I was able to deliver the completed manuscript of my forthcoming book In Quest of the Historical Adam to Eerdmans Publishing Company to begin the editorial process. They’ll soon establish a production schedule for the book, which will give me an end date when the book can be expected, Lord willing, to appear in print.
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| I’ve actually finished the first draft of the Prolegomenon (Introduction) to my projected Systematic Philosophical Theology. What is systematic theology? As theology, its subject matter is God and things considered in relation to God. So, for example, theological anthropology, as contrasted with secular anthropology, will consider man insofar as he stands in relation to God. What, then, makes theology systematic? It seems to me that there are four characteristics that make a theology systematic:
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| 1. It is organized or structured, typically according to certain themes.
2. It draws upon both authoritative Scriptures as well as all relevant secular disciplines.
3. It aims at completeness, enunciating at least the broad outlines of a worldview.
4. It offers and defends, insofar as it can, a logically coherent formulation of its worldview.
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| In the Prolegomenon I try to spell out exactly what systematic theology, philosophical theology, dogmatics, fundamental theology, apologetics, philosophy of religion, and analytic theology are. I argue that there is no substantial difference between Christian philosophy of religion and Christian systematic theology, since the Christian philosopher, as much as the Christian theologian, has the right to draw upon all his basic sources of knowledge, including Scripture, in his work, and because a systematic theologian must engage in philosophical analysis if he is to write a theology that is truly systematic. Unfortunately, precious few in our day engage in this multi-disciplinary task!
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| Similar to my Defenders lessons, my Systematic Philosophical Theology will be organized along the lines of the classic loci communes, or chief topics of post-Reformation Protestant theology, such as Doctrine of God, Doctrine of Creation, Doctrine of Man, and so forth. Since Scripture determines the normative content of the Christian faith, my opening locus is Doctrine of Scripture, and I’m now reading on that subject. I’m surprised that this topic is one of the most underdeveloped areas in philosophical theology. One of the major issues is the relation between Scripture and divine revelation, and I’ll be defending the view that the Scriptures are God’s propositional (that is, linguistic) revelation to us. Another important question is how we know that a purported divine revelation really is from God.
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This coming month, along with continuing to do social media interviews, I’ll be filming five short films with Aaron Patterson, who produced our short film “The Absurdity of Life without God,” which has now garnered 1.5 million views on our YouTube channel. So these have the potential to reach a lot of people! And, of course, I’ll be using this time of sequestration to immerse myself in the Doctrine of Scripture!
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| For Christ and His Kingdom,
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Dear Dr. Craig,
I am writing to you both as an enormous thank you, and as a testament to the impact of your work and ministry. I was raised in a Christian home in Somerset, MA, and considered myself a very conservative evangelical. After high school, I moved to Kennesaw, GA, and began working for the Cobb County judicial system. It was here where my Christian convictions were challenged for the first time. The challenges I found myself up against hurled me into a bit of an existential crisis and sent me desperately searching to justify every belief I had ever held. This led me to youtube, where I found a host of "drcraigvideos" and was introduced to your exceptional philosophical approach to the Christian worldview. I had interacted with many popular, apologetics-style resources before, but none had ever struck me as intellectually satisfying--at least, not as your work did.
I discovered your resources back in 2011 (I was 21 at the time) and have since put myself in the way of being a student of everything Dr. Craig. I have read almost all of your books, listened to every one of your podcasts (maybe 2 or 3 times), and have gone through each series of your defenders class. I have even been able to attend some of your classes in person at JFBC. Your work and ministry lit a fire in my heart and has been the means of clarity for God's calling on my life. There is a deep burden I sense to play a part in revolutionizing the way our church members understand their Christian convictions--especially for greater effectiveness in evangelism.
I am currently on staff at a church in Vicksburg, MS, and am pursuing a BA in Religion with the intent of pursuing a graduate degree in Philosophy. Every day I am afforded the opportunity to influence our church's ministry decisions with the many insights from your work in philosophy at the foundation (e.g., the most strategic approaches to children's ministry, student ministry, our small groups, and how we can train our congregation to be more disciplined in their thinking). I have turned many of my coworkers on to your work and have seen the same excitement and fire ignited within them that I felt all those years ago.
I say all this not to boast (except in the Lord), but to speak to the reverberating effect that your ministry is undoubtedly having all over the world. Just in my own sphere, hundreds of lives are being influenced, even if but a little, because of the resources, discipline, and the dedication of you and the Reasonable Faith team. I am so thankful to be alive in a time where Philosophers such as yourself and the many others (Alexander Pruss and Alvin Plantinga being two of my favorites) can share such a wealth of knowledge so accessibly. I am anxiously awaiting your new book on the historical Adam and Eve and, even more so, your Systematic Theology.
Thank you for your life-long dedication to closing the gap between the heart and the mind and for the impact you have had on me personally. Sincerely, Josh Arruda P.S., My family and friends regularly refer to me as a Dr. Craig fanboy, and in one sense, I can't deny it. But I am much more so a seeker of the truth, and time and time again, your work seems to unveil it most accurately.
-Josh
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