Dear Friends of Reasonable Faith,
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Here in the United States we are beginning a year-long celebration of the 250th anniversary of our nation. The other nations of the world can be glad, indeed, that today the world’s most powerful superpower is a nation that is a democratic republic deeply influenced by Christianity and committed to the values enunciated in the Bill of Rights. Can you imagine the nightmare if it were instead China or the former Soviet Union?
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This past month I traveled, along with Jan, to Talbot School of Theology for the first time since the pandemic hit in 2020 to deliver a series of lectures there and to speak at a conference on campus. Extracted from my forthcoming volume IIb of my Systematic Philosophical Theology, these lectures on natural theology contained cutting edge work on the six arguments for the existence of God that I have defended:
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- the argument from contingency,
- the kalām cosmological argument,
- the argument from the applicability of mathematics,
- the argument from the fine-tuning of the universe for embodied, conscious agents,
- the moral argument from the objectivity of moral values and duties, and
- the ontological argument for a maximally great being.
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I must say that I really enjoyed being in the classroom again with these zealous students at Talbot! Our Executive Director Michael Lepien video-recorded all six lectures, and these will be rolled out one at a time on YouTube over the coming months. They provide a great preview of my forthcoming volume.
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Dr. Craig with his students at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, La Mirada, CA.
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One of the students in the class shared with me something that astounded me. He explained, “I work with middle school students. These kids turn to AI to answer all their questions. Even though we know that AI cannot really think, nevertheless they trust what it tells them. Well, thanks to the work of scholars like you, the Internet has now been so shaped by defenses of the Christian faith that if you go to AI and ask it, ‘Does God exist?’, it will return the answer, ‘Yes. That is the most logical view.’ So your work is helping to shape the attitudes of a whole new generation of young people.” This just took my breath away! I have always wanted to shape culture in such a way as to make the Gospel a viable option for people, but I never in my life ever anticipated that this would come through impacting AI! It gives me an entirely new appreciation of the work that we at Reasonable Faith are doing. As Michael Lepien put it, “We’re training AI!”
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On that encouraging note, let me share with you about some of the social media engagements we had this past month. One of the most exciting was an interview with a podcaster named Yadi in Indonesia. He welcomed me on the air by explaining how much he appreciated my work and what a big fan he is. I responded that I was glad to have the opportunity to be of help to brothers and sisters in Indonesia. He then said, “I’m not a Christian. I’m an ex-Muslim atheist.” Talk about having to shift gears! He shared with me several of his doubts about Christianity, and the podcast turned into a wonderful witnessing opportunity. I explained to him that for many ex-Muslims atheism is a sort of halfway house to their becoming a Christian. They first need to be cleansed of the pollution of Islam before they are ready to turn to Jesus. I encouraged him to do so, and he responded, “Pray for me.” I’m sure that he would appreciate it if you were to offer a prayer on his behalf.
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I also did an interview with a podcaster in Serbia on the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. He asked questions based upon the challenges that he often hears from unbelievers in Serbia, a formerly communist country in eastern Europe. For example, “Why do you consider the [burial] narrative about Joseph of Arimathea to be historically reliable? We don’t even know where Arimathea was—so why assume it wasn’t just a made-up place?” We wound up having a really substantive discussion of the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection that went much deeper than your usual popular level discussions. I hope that the Lord will widely use this recording.
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Eric Metaxas of “Socrates in the City” interviewed me for his program. He was just blown away by what I had to share about the historical Adam and the archaeological signatures for modern cognitive behaviors hundreds of thousands of years ago. It took him entirely off script! He exclaimed, “I’ve never heard anything like this from any theologian!” I said, “That’s because theologians are not only ignorant of philosophy but also of contemporary science. They are not trained in seminary in physics or biology or paleontology. But if we’re going to do a responsible job with the Doctrine of Creation, we have to be informed about the scientific worldview.”
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Kevin Harris and I also recorded some terrific Reasonable Faith podcasts. Readers of this newsletter know that I am currently studying the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. So Kevin put together a series of short clips from my friend Gavin Ortlund on the subject of the Eucharist. Well, that really got me going, and we did a fascinating podcast on the subject of the Real Presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord's Supper. Gavin says that he believes in it (though there is some doubt, given how he defines it), whereas I do not. I never dreamt before I began this study that I would get so excited about the doctrine of the sacraments! But I am! The other podcast that we recorded was on a video of Alex O’Connor’s conversation with ChatGPT on the argument from contingency for the existence of God. It was remarkable how Alex, an unbeliever himself, gently led ChatGPT to conclude that the most logical conclusion is that there is a transcendent, metaphysically necessary being that is properly called God, who is the explanation of why anything at all exists. It was living proof of what that student at Talbot told me about AI today. Alex finished his podcast by saying, “Well, I guess I’ll see you in church!” Let’s hope that that was not just a facetious comment!
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Systematic Philosophical Theology
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I am genuinely excited to say that I have (metaphorically speaking) begun to put pen to paper and am writing up the results of my research on the Lord’s Supper. It seemed to me that the logical place to begin was with the narratives of the last supper in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The “Lord’s Supper” is the rite we observe in the church today that is based upon the “last supper” that Jesus ate with his disciples prior to his arrest. That meal was clearly a celebration of the Jewish Passover, in which Jesus invested the elements of the meal, particularly the bread, with a brand-new significance from what it had in Judaism. “This is my body,” he said, as he handed pieces of the bread to his disciples. One of the most interesting and curious questions that I am trying to answer is why, given the analogy between the sacrificial lamb of the Passover and Jesus’s body given in sacrifice on the cross, Jesus turned to the bread rather than to the lamb to represent his body. I find this almost astonishing! Why didn’t he distribute the flesh of the lamb to his disciples, saying, “This is my body, which is for you”? This question is so puzzling that some New Testament scholars have gone so far as to suggest that Jesus celebrated the Passover without a lamb! But most scholars don’t even ask the question! Maybe this is another one of those questions that mainly occurs to philosophers.
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|  | Last Supper, wall painting by Leonardo da Vinci, 1495–98, after its restoration was completed in 1999; in Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.
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My work on the current Volume V was temporarily disrupted by my receiving the proofs of Vol. IIb from the Wiley-Blackwell production team in India. They had apparently sent them to me back in May with a request to return them with corrections by May 20, but I never received them! So I had to drop everything to try to correct and return these proofs as rapidly as I could. Unfortunately, I found that the copy editor had adopted an entirely different system of formatting the footnotes for this volume in contrast to the previous volumes and, moreover, did so inconsistently. So the proofs were a real mess. Fortunately, the production team decided that they would themselves redo the formatting to bring this volume into conformity with the style in the first two volumes. So that saved me a lot of work (at least until they return the reformatted proofs to me). Meanwhile, I proofread the text and sent the production folks a long series of corrections. In any event, it’s encouraging to see this volume moving forward. It should be published by the end of the year.
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May those of you with us in the northern hemisphere enjoy a wonderful summertime!
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For Christ and His Kingdom,
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Dr. Craig, I simply wanted to express my deepest gratitude for your influence in my life and ministry. I am a Southern Baptist pastor in a small town in Mississippi and have, since I was young, been extremely inquisitive. About 5 or 6 years ago, a friend told me about your debates and I began watching them one day when I was sick and had time to watch them. Then, about two years ago, I discovered your podcast and have been listening faithfully ever since! Your work scratches that "inquisitive itch" that I have always possessed!
I've read your book, "Reasonable Faith", as well as other books in which you've written articles like "Jesus Under Fire" and works discussing the different approaches to apologetics. I've also been introduced to a world of other apologetics organizations and resources...I cannot adequately express the value that these resources, especially the "Reasonable Faith" organization, have given to both my ministry and to my personal effort to love God with all of my mind. My faith has been strengthened and I have been better equipped to prepare our congregation, especially the college students, to deal with the attacks that will come against their faith.
The congregation has heard sermons on "The Absurdity of Life Without God", the different cosmological arguments, the "Problem of Evil", and the historical reliability of both the Gospels and the Resurrection - just to mention a few. I never miss an opportunity to discuss an apologetics issue when, as I am preaching through passages or books, the issues arise. I also use your "Defenders" class podcasts and transcripts like I would a systematic theology textbook in preparing sermons (I recently did this in preparation for discussing the Atonement in Hebrews 2:5-18).
I have also personally benefitted from your work as an insatiable love for learning has been awakened in me. You often comment that an interest in apologetics leads to an interest in learning and reading in general, and this has definitely been my testimony. When I finished my Master of Divinity degree, I never thought I would pursue any further education, but as a result of your work, and others like it, I have recently begun looking into Ph.D programs in Philosophy and/or Apologetics at seminaries around the country.
The most important consequence of your work for me, though, is that I am better equipped to transmit the faith to my two girls (now 3 years and 3 weeks old) in such a way that they will not waiver when it is challenged! In short, you tell a story about how, after seeing a particular evangelical speaker lead thousands to Christ through a more "existential" method, you wondered if all of your scholarly work was in vain. You then had a friend tell you that one day, all of the people who came to Christ at those conferences would need what you had to offer. I am one such person. Thank you so much! And keep up the good work! In Christ,
-Drew
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