| Dear Friends of Reasonable Faith,
Our work for the Lord just continues to flourish, as I’ll describe below. We praise the Lord for His goodness!
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| It’s hard to believe, but we are now entering the home stretch of our third run-through of our Defenders class. This month Jan and I begin recording Doctrine of the Last Things, which truly is the last things for Defenders 3.
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Dr. Craig filming in his home office.
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| This past month the Christian philosopher Kelly Clark arranged for me to speak via Zoom to a group of young Turkish philosophers on the kalām cosmological argument. Doubtless most all of them are Muslim. Ever since our speaking tours of Turkey several years ago, students there have been avidly following Reasonable Faith. In fact, Kelly told me, “You’re the most popular philosopher in Turkey!” Jan and I video recorded my talk in advance so that our media coordinator Gabe Jones could outfit it with helpful visuals for non-native English speakers. We then showed the video along with our two animated Zangmeister videos on the kalām cosmological argument (watch #1; watch #2), before taking live questions from the group. Just as Catholics often ask me, “Why aren’t you a Catholic?” these students wanted to know, “Why aren’t you a Muslim?” It makes me proud as a Christian to take a bold stand for Christ before these students.
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| I similarly did a Q&A with students in India at a Christian conference being held there. These fellow believers are so dear, striving to be a light for Christ in a very dark environment, so I love to be an encouragement to them. Also Ryan Pauly, who is just an excellent interviewer, featured me on his podcast on the question "Why Did Jesus Have to Die?" Paul Lyndon, who is a Reasonable Faith local chapter director in Gloucester, England, also interviewed me for his podcast, which I very much enjoyed. I also recorded a batch of Reasonable Faith podcasts with Kevin Harris this past month. We have lots of interviews scheduled for March that I’m really looking forward to.
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I just can’t believe it, but I finished the chapter on Doctrine of Faith of my projected systematic philosophical theology before February came to a close and have now moved on to the Doctrine of God, the very heart of Christian theology. Last time I shared with you some of my reflections from the first part of my chapter on faith about the nature of faith. Let me now share a bit about the theme of the second half of the chapter on the rationality of faith.
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In dealing with the rationality of Christian faith, philosophers have helpfully distinguished between epistemic justification and practical justification.
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- Epistemic justification has to do with providing “truth-directed reasons” for faith that are sufficient for a rational person to believe. (A truth-directed reason aims at establishing the truth of the belief in question.)
- Practical justification has to do with providing non-truth-directed reasons that are sufficient for a rational person to believe.
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You might think that all reasons to believe must be truth-directed. But many Christian philosophers have argued that even if you lack grounds for thinking Christian claims to be true, nevertheless you might be justified on practical grounds in believing such claims.
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Proponents of practical arguments claim that we are sometimes within our rights in holding beliefs for which we lack epistemic justification. A common illustration is the belief on the part of someone suffering from stage 4 cancer that he will come though all right. Having such a belief may actually be conducive to his survival in view of the health benefits of such an optimistic attitude. Therefore, even though his belief that he will survive his cancer may not be epistemically justified and in that sense be irrational, still he is practically justified in believing such a thing.
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Examples of practical arguments for Christian belief are Pascal’s famous Wager and William James’ “Will to Believe.” Both of them argue convincingly, I think, that Christian belief can be practically justified and therefore rational for someone even if he is not epistemically justified (that is, doesn’t have sufficient evidence for the truth of Christian belief). Such a person is justified in taking what is called a “doxastic venture”: believing even in the absence of sufficient evidence.
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Painting of Blaise Pascal, circa 1690; artist unknown.
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William James, "The Will to Believe"
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Epistemic Justification
Of course, it’s all the better if Christian belief can be shown to be epistemically justified as well. Traditionally, Christian philosophers have defended various arguments of natural theology and Christian evidences on behalf of Christian belief in order to show that faith is epistemically justified. As you no doubt know, I myself think this endeavor is highly successful. But a revolution in Christian epistemology has occurred in the late twentieth century. Led by Alvin Plantinga, many Christian philosophers, I among them, think that while such arguments are sufficient for Christian belief, they are not necessary in order for Christian belief to be epistemically justified. I think that Christian belief may be epistemically justified on the basis of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, Who testifies to us that various Christian claims are true.
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 | William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga
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| There are so many issues to discuss here, but let me focus on just one point. In dealing with potential “defeaters” of Christian belief (like the problem of suffering), Plantinga asks whether some belief itself may not have sufficient warrant to overwhelm its potential defeaters. For example, imagine a situation in which a person is accused of a crime which he knows from memory that he did not commit. Moreover, the evidence is solidly stacked against him, such that an impartial jury of his peers would convict him of wrongdoing. Is he himself obligated to believe on the basis of the evidence in his own guilt? Obviously not, if the warrant for his memory belief is greater than the warrant conferred by the forensic evidence! In such a case the warrant for his memory belief overwhelms the evidence lodged against him.
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Applying this condition to Christian belief, Plantinga suggests that perhaps the warrant conferred by the witness of the Holy Spirit is itself sufficient to turn back the alleged defeaters brought against Christian belief. In that case, your Christian belief is what Plantinga calls an “intrinsic defeater-defeater.” I argue that this claim is quite scriptural. It is inconceivable that God could ever will that one of His children should turn against Christ and commit apostasy.
Now many, if not most, of us will doubtless say that we do not enjoy so powerful a witness of the Holy Spirit as to ground Christian belief as an intrinsic defeater-defeater. But keep in mind that the testimony of the Holy Spirit can vary in intensity as the circumstances require. Most of us have extrinsic defeaters of the defeaters brought against Christian belief, that is to say, good apologetic arguments and evidence, and therefore we have no need of an overwhelming witness of the Spirit. But someone in a disadvantaged situation, such as a university student in the old Soviet Union who had no access to apologetics, may be vouchsafed a more powerful witness of the Holy Spirit, enabling him to persevere even in the face of unanswerable defeaters. God is faithful and will supply what His children need to persevere in faith.
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Finally, work on the development of our academic center continues right on schedule. We now have a prototype of the brochure describing the center which we can use to present the vision of the center to a prospective host university. This full-color brochure includes statements of the purpose, strategy, core values, and distinctives of our proposed center, three curricula consisting of scores of courses in Christian Philosophy, Analytic Theology, and Apologetics, an incredible array of philosophers and theologians who have agreed to develop the courses offered by the center, a description of the many outreaches of Reasonable Faith, and graphic displays of my books and many debates over the years. As soon as the brochure is finalized, our approach to prospective institutions may begin!
Thank you for partnering with us.
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| For Christ and His Kingdom,
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I created this account just to say this: I've looked through dozens of videos of you debating and generally explaining how God must exist and Jesus must be his son. After watching many videos of you and studying the topic in great detail I have become a Christian. I just wanted to say thankyou to you with all my heart and keep spreading the good news!
Alan
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