| Dear Friends of Reasonable Faith,
2021 is just flying by! Can you believe that the first quarter is already past? My time just seems to pass so quickly because we have been so busy.
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| I also did an interview with my former student and collaborator Mats Selander, who is part of an apologetics ministry in Sweden called Apologia that is really doing great work. We had 300 people from Sweden joining us live for the podcast on the question, “Why Did Christ Have to Die?” My talk and the Q&A afterwards were all done in English, and I just stand in awe of the mastery of English that these Swedish students exhibit. To make the talk and the Q&A even more accessible, Mats is having them translated into Swedish, so that both versions will be available on YouTube. A couple days later I did an interview with students from my ancestral country, Scotland. They’re at the University of Dundee and call themselves “The Free Speech Society” because free speech is under such attack in the UK at present. It was great fun to be with them and to sort out as best I could their Scottish accents!
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| Finally, the last week of the month I had the tremendous privilege of recording the voiceover narration for our next Zangmeister video, which is a presentation of the Gospel to cap off our marvelous series of Zangmeister animated videos. I just loved having the opportunity to do this particular narration myself, since it is the greatest message of them all, the Gospel of Christ! It was fun working in studio with the Zangmeister’s son Jonathan to get just the right expression, emphasis, and pacing of the script. We’ll let you know when the final video is released.
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Because I’ve been working more rapidly over the past few years, I now find myself working simultaneously on writing projects in four different areas: divine aseity, the atonement, the historical Adam, and systematic philosophical theology. The last is my focus at present, but because it takes time for one’s published work to appear and percolate through the reading audience, I find myself still called upon to address previous areas of study.
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So one of the projects I’m engaged in is a short book with the Christian Platonist philosopher Peter van Inwagen in Routledge’s Little Debates about Big Questions series. Van Inwagen is a brilliant metaphysician from the University of Notre Dame and so a formidable sparring partner. Still, I think he gives short shrift to various alternatives to Platonism, and I hope to have exposed some shortcomings in his case for abstract objects.
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A second project arising from my work on the atonement is an extended dialogue with the prominent New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III on my theory of the atonement in my Atonement and the Death of Christ (Baylor University Press, 2020). The dialogue is appearing in installments of Ben’s blog at www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/. In introducing the dialogue, Ben writes
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It’s been a long, long time since I’ve read a good book on the atonement. . . . As it turns out, my old friend Bill Craig the polymath philosopher and apologete has now provided a very readable book that is well-researched and well-argued throughout. It’s the best current book I know of on this subject. I’ll be recommending it to anyone who will listen. One of the things that makes this book distinctive is that Bill ably deals first with the exegesis, then with the history of interpretation, then with the philosophical and logical aspects of the doctrine of atonement. Not many scholars could juggle all three of those balls without one of them falling on their heads. Bill seems to manage it with ease. . . . In the dialogue that follows in subsequent blog posts you will see some vigorous discussion on various points, but I find Bill’s basic case to be compelling. This is one of those books that I would say--- sell some of your older books and buy this one. It’s definitely a keeper.
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It's a privilege to discuss these issues with an esteemed biblical scholar, and our small points of disagreement only serve to spice up our exchange!
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My third project is occasioned by my recent work on the historical Adam In Quest of the Historical Adam, which is forthcoming (September?) with Wm. B. Eerdmans. The editor at the Catholic intellectual periodical First Things got wind of the book and has invited me to write a major article summarizing the results of my research, which would be scheduled to appear roughly at the same time as the book. So I’m slowly trying to distill the contents of a 400-page book down to article length!
You might think that these projects are a distraction from my overriding priority and fourth project, which is my systematic philosophical theology. But in fact they help to keep me fresh by providing periodic respite from that gigantic task. Near the end of a long day, after struggling to understand the subtleties of arguments for and against divine simplicity, it’s really nice to have a break and to work on something completely different!
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With respect to my systematic philosophical theology, I finished the first draft of the section on Faith and have moved on to the heart of the project, the doctrine of God. I’m beginning with a discussion of the divine attributes. Because of my previous work, I was able to finish fairly quickly the sections on divine necessity and divine aseity. Now I’m working on a less familiar area involving a large literature, namely, divine simplicity. There is a lot to digest here, so every day I’m just reading, reading, and pushing forward. In a future Monthly Report I’ll share some of my thinking with you.
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We’re pleased to say that our full color, 45-page booklet explaining our proposal for an Academic Center in Christian Philosophy, Theology, and Apologetics is now finished and ready to share with prospective universities and seminaries. The booklet includes statements of our purpose and strategy, core values, and descriptions of 72 accredited courses at the BA and MA levels, along with bio-sketches of our 26 professors who will develop the courses drawn from my work. The booklet also includes personal information on my career, publications, and debates and on Reasonable Faith and its worldwide reach. During the coming months we shall be approaching various institutions with the hope and prayer that one of them will be interested in having such a Center affiliated with it. We certainly appreciate your prayers on behalf of this endeavor!
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| For Christ and His Kingdom,
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Hi Dr. Craig - I hope this message reaches you. I've been an atheist by default until I reached 6th form (last 2 years of high school equivalent in the US) where my Philosophy teacher introduced me to the Kalam argument, the teleological argument and the contingency argument amongst other things.... This led me to being an agnostic leaning into deism for the past 10 years or so- During the pandemic lockdown with lots of spare time on my hands I looked back into philosophy and into my spirituality... Whilst doing this I found some of your work and debates against Hitchens at Biola et Al This led me to a deep pusher towards theism and giving me some meaning in my life in a time where I was feeling pretty nihilistic (family tragedies from covid being one reason); I can't say I'm fully there but I feel much more in tune with my spiritual side and even began regularly praying for the first time in my life and it has brought me to some semblance of peace. So I'd like to thank you for you works and dedication to apologetics, philosophy and Christ.
May God bless you,
Casey
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