God, I Never Heard of You!

Kevin Harris: This question is from the Netherlands.

Hello, Dr. Craig. I would like to start off by thanking you for all you do to spread faith. It is truly admirable and exactly what many of us need in today's world. I was baptized but grew up in a relatively agnostic family, and I've always been taught by others around me, in a sense, to defy the Christian religion and establishing a relationship with God. I would like to find more faith, but it has been very difficult because I can't answer these questions.

And he gives three questions that he has. Bill, let's take them.

Dr. Craig: Okay, let's take them one at a time.

Kevin Harris: Okay. Number one,

It's estimated that about 12% of all humans that have ever lived were Christians. Does this mean that more than 100 billion of the humans created by God are suffering eternal agony and despair? And why would our creator desire this?

Dr. Craig: It does not mean that, Joshua. The easiest way to see that is to think of Jewish people who lived prior to the time of Christ. People like Abraham and Moses had no faith in Christ, and yet they were saved because they responded to the revelation that God had given them. Similarly, for pagans that have never heard the Gospel, the Bible says that God has revealed his eternal nature, his power, and deity in the things that have been made, and that the demands of his moral law are written on the hearts of all men so that all persons know instinctively what God requires of them. And I think that the Bible teaches that if someone will respond in faith and repentance to this general revelation in nature, then God will apply to him the benefits of Christ's atoning death even if he does not have a conscious knowledge of Christ. He would be like someone who suddenly finds himself heir to a fortune from a rich uncle he never knew that he had. Similarly, many of these pagan persons who do respond to the revelation of God in nature and conscience, I think, can be saved.

Kevin Harris: His second question is similar. It says,

Many humans are raised in circumstances where the idea of believing in our God is strongly rejected. What happens to these people?

For example, he mentions again all those who lived before the incarnation of Jesus.

Dr. Craig: If people reject God's general revelation in nature and conscience and refuse to believe in God or refuse to repent and ask him for forgiveness, then the Bible says they are self-condemned. In fact, in Romans chapter 1, Paul says, "They are without excuse because what can be known about God is clear to them because God has shown it to them in nature and conscience."

Now, that's not the end of the story. There's a great deal that can be said further about this. For example, I've defended the position that anyone who rejects the light of God's general revelation in nature and conscience and so finds himself condemned would not have accepted the Gospel and believed in Christ even if he had heard it. And therefore, no one can complain that his condemnation is the result of historical and geographical accident. Everyone who wants, or would want, to be saved will be saved.

Kevin Harris: He's got one more question.

Is it sinful to believe in God's creation and the incarnation of Jesus but still struggle with certain parts of the Bible that conflict with my reason? Thank you very much. I wish you all the best. Joshua.

Dr. Craig: Thank you, Joshua. I think that very few doctrines need to be believed in order for you to be saved and find redemption and forgiveness in Christ.

For example, when I was a non-believer and struggling with the Gospel, I found it just impossible to believe in the virgin birth. I had had high school biology, and I knew that Mary alone didn't have the Y chromosome that would beget a male child. And so the virgin birth just seemed inconceivable to me.

But the high school girl who had shared with me the Gospel said to me, "Bill, don't worry about the virgin birth. The question is, do you believe in God and in Jesus? You should respond to that and let those other things take care of themselves later.”

And I thought, well, yes, I do. I do believe in God and the proclamation of Jesus, his death and resurrection. And so I eventually became a Christian. Then it was only sometime later that the question of the virgin birth just didn't seem so troubling anymore. A God who is capable of creating the entire universe could surely create a Y chromosome to bring about the virginal conception of Jesus. And so it just no longer was an issue for me.

So I would encourage you to postpone, or put to one side, those other issues that you're struggling with, so long as you are ready to believe in God, in Jesus' death and incarnation, in his resurrection from the dead, and place your faith in him. Then let those other issues be dealt with in time.

Kevin Harris: Another question from the UK.

Dear Dr. Craig, I have a question regarding Calvinism. Now, I'm not a Calvinist, but I understand you aren't either, but a Molinist. I understand the problem of God unilaterally determining everything, particularly in matters of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, is troubling to the Scriptures, particularly in places like 1 Timothy 2:4, which states, "God desires all people to be saved." For then it seems like God could have determined everyone went to heaven but chose otherwise. So it seems like libertarian free will must be necessary.

However, some Calvinists appeal to compatibilism. Can you explain what the problem with this appeal is? I've never been able to properly understand compatibilism, as it seems to affirm both determinism and free agency, which to my mind would make it a contradiction. But perhaps I'm missing something.

Thank you very much, John, UK.

Dr. Craig: Well, John, I think you have correctly understood compatibilism. As the name suggests, compatibilism is the view that freedom of the will is compatible with being determined. So your choices can be free even though they are completely determined.

What that would imply is that God could unilaterally determine everything that happens, and yet the compatibilist would still say that your actions can be freely chosen. And I agree with you. I think this is an implausible and absurd view. If things are determined in that way, then I am not truly free. And to call me free in that case is just a semantic trick.

Kevin Harris: And we've got another one.

Hello, Dr. Craig. I'm a young Christian looking into Calvinism. I'm not a Calvinist, but I was recently reading John Murray's Redemption Accomplished and Applied. In the section on the extent of the atonement, he compared 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 and Romans 6:8. In 2 Corinthians, it states that if one died for all, then all died. In Romans 6:8, it says that if we died with Christ, we believe we shall also live with him. My question then is, how is a universal atonement possible if all who Christ died for died, 2 Corinthians 5:14, and all who die will be raised with him in Romans 6? Jack.

Dr. Craig: Even someone like Murray has to distinguish between redemption accomplished and redemption applied, as the title of his book indicates.

When Christ died on the cross, he accomplished redemption in that he died for the sins of all persons who have ever lived and ever will live on this planet, so that his sacrificial and atoning death is sufficient for the pardon and salvation of every human being.

But what was accomplished on the cross is applied over time historically as people come to believe in Christ, repent, and give their lives to Christ. Then the redemption that was accomplished on the cross is applied to them.

What that means is that the redemption at the cross is potentially efficacious for all people, but it does not become actually efficacious until it meets with the free decision of the human will to have faith in Christ.

And so I think this very distinction between redemption accomplished and redemption applied suggests that Christ's substitutionary death is potentially valid and efficacious for all people, but that it requires repentance and faith to be actualized in the lives of individual people.

Kevin Harris: Next question.

Hi, Dr. Craig. I believe I committed the unforgivable sin, apostasy, Hebrews 6:4-6. I was a Christian as a child until I became an atheist at 11 or 12. During the time I was an atheist, or agnostic, undecided, I still prayed to God and went to church a bit, but it didn't formally materialize until I was 26 when I officially considered myself a Christian. However, I had a brief Gnostic phase before I went back to Christianity. I'm 27 now. Am I still saved? Damon.

Dr. Craig: Well, Damon, I think it's impossible for me to answer whether you were saved before your agnostic phase, but you had not crossed the line and committed apostasy, which would make it impossible for you to come back. The fact that you came back to faith indicates that you had not crossed that line of no return and so are still saved.

But it might well be the case that you never did know Christ during those youthful years and as an agnostic, and that it was only when you came back to Christ at 26 years of age that you were actually born again and began your Christian life.

So whether we date the moment of your conversion earlier or later really doesn't matter. You can still confidently believe that you are saved and on your way to heaven.

Kevin Harris: One more question today, Bill.

Dear Dr. Craig, I'm a scientist, and you have given me significant resources to bolster my faith for many years. Despite being raised in the Christian faith, I didn't really fully understand what the new heavens and new Earth entailed. Nor did I initially grasp the promise of a bodily resurrection. But orthodox belief does promise that we will be physically resurrected to dwell on the planet Earth.

My question is simple. It has been estimated that 117 billion people have lived on the planet Earth since its creation. We obviously have no idea what percent of humans are granted eternal life. But if the road is indeed narrow and we say, for the sake of argument, 10% of people are resurrected, that would still be 12 billion people. This would mean the new Earth would contain at least 30% more people than it currently contains. And if procreation still occurs in the new creation, it would of course be higher.

Is it not reasonable to consider the physical constraints of the planet Earth into our resurrection theology? Can a new Earth truly hold a seemingly endless amount of people?

This question struck me after reading N. T. Wright's book Surprised by Hope. When I truly started to contemplate what a new Earth would look like, the numbers became an obstacle for me.

While this question might seem pedantic or myopic, I haven't come up with a way to dismiss the number problem that comes when you consider how long humanity has and will endure before the second coming.

Dr. Craig: Well, Keith, I think the key part of your question is the question, "Is it reasonable to consider the physical constraints of the planet Earth in our resurrection theology?" And I would say a decisive “no” to that question.

There is no reason whatsoever to think that the new Earth is going to be similar to the Earth that we presently inhabit. The promise of a new heavens and a new Earth is that this order will be done away with, and there may be a new order operating according to different laws of nature, so that there just wouldn't be any problem in having a huge number of people living on the new Earth in the eschaton.

So I think you need to let your imagination be stretched a little bit by how new this renovated and radically revised new creation is going to be.

Dr. Craig: Hello, this is William Lane Craig. As we bring our spring campaign to a close, I'd like to encourage you to still partner with us in the work we're doing at Reasonable Faith. And as a gift of appreciation for your support, we'd love for you to have either one or two volumes of my Systematic Philosophical Theology. If you commit to $50 a month for a year, then you can choose one of these volumes. If you choose to donate at $100 a month for a year, then you can choose two of the volumes as your premium. So this is the last chance to participate in the spring campaign and to get one or more of these volumes free of charge for your participation. Thank you for helping us to celebrate our 20th anniversary of Reasonable Faith. And we're all looking forward to what the Lord will be doing over the next 20 years.^[1]