Interview With William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland Part One

KEVIN HARRIS: Welcome to a very special podcast. We are privileged to have both Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. J. P. Moreland at the same time today. This is the 20th anniversary of the book Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Before we jump into the book – and we're going to look at some of the highlights of the book and talk about some of the background things that went into this writing 20 years – let's talk about your long relationship as friends and colleagues. Dr. Craig, how did the two of you meet?

DR. CRAIG: I had heard of J. P. Moreland for many, many years before I ever had the opportunity to actually meet him in person. In Campus Crusade for Christ circles, the name of J. P. Moreland was legendary! So Jan and I were familiar with this man long before we met him. Now, Jan and I moved to Europe for quite a number of years. We lived in Belgium for about seven and a half years. I can't remember that I ever met J. P. during that time. I'll have to defer to him. I'm not sure I met him before we actually began to collaborate at Talbot School of Theology. J. P. – do you have any recollection of our first meeting?

DR. MORELAND: I don't that's different from yours. I do recall the first time I think I discovered you in person; I believe that it was 1973.

DR. CRAIG: Oh.

DR. MORELAND: At The Institute of Biblical Studies – that's a summer training camp for Campus Crusade, now Cru, staff members. There was an elective on the existence of God. I believe it was taught by J. Edwin Orr, if I'm not mistaken. He was a well-known historian and had almost as many degrees as Bill. I remember sitting in that class. I was the sort of staff member that read Rudolph Bultmann and read atheist literature, and most of my staff friends just weren't into that. So it was a fairly small class. I can remember there was this one guy; every time he asked a question I thought to myself, “Now that is a darn good question.” I was thinking similarly, or else not but I just felt a kindred spirit with him. I don't think that I introduced myself to him at that time, but I made note of who he was, and I recognized that we were just on the same page. It wasn't until his doctoral dissertation on the kalam argument came out that I actually got a copy of it and then poured through it. It was so good. I began to weave it into some of the natural theology that I believe. So he influenced me there. But I don't think it was until the official time that we connected through Talbot that we first met. But believe me, I was acquainted with this fellow, and he stood out to me years before that happened.

DR. CRAIG: Let me ask you a question, J. P. This fellow at IBS – was he wearing a floppy brown hat turned up in the front and a torn off shirt with no sleeves on it and kind of a necklace with a dog bone around his neck?

DR. MORELAND: He was sort of a sophisticated hippie.

DR. CRAIG: That was me! [laughter]

DR. MORELAND: That was you! Yeah, I know. But, you know what? I couldn’t have cared less because the questions coming underneath that hat were pretty good questions. Yeah, you were pretty weird, I got to admit.

DR. CRAIG: I was. Do you remember a Campus Crusade staff member named Martin Morgan?

DR. MORELAND: I can't place that name.

DR. CRAIG: OK. Martin went on to work in Ireland. When we were in Ireland years later after finishing my doctoral work in Birmingham we were working with him in an outreach in Dublin. One afternoon he came home where we were staying. He was so excited. He was yelling, “I know you! I know you! You were that guy at IBS in the hat!” I said, “Yeah, that was me!” [laughter]  It was so funny because he was saying, “Look what this crazy guy that I thought was a loser and a lunatic turned out to be.” And it was really quite a sobering realization. It was so funny.

DR. MORELAND: That is a great story. That is a great story!

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig, if you still have that hat we could probably auction that off.

DR. CRAIG: Ooo. I don't want to give it up! [laughter]

KEVIN HARRIS: Oh, you still have it? OK.

DR. CRAIG: It's on the shelf in my closet. But that was one of the things that I had to give up when I married Jan. She said, “Your appearance puts people off, and you are hindering the Gospel by putting a barrier between you and other people.” Boy, I don't think anything else she could have said would have convinced me to change my attire and appearance. But, for me, that was the trump card. I did not want to do anything that would stand in the way of the Gospel. So that hat has remained on the shelf all those years.

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, my wife made me give up tube socks. That was her contribution. Dr. Moreland, this is not the only project that the two of you have collaborated on. What else have you collaborated on?

DR. MORELAND: We edited together a book with Routledge on philosophical naturalism [Naturalism: A Critical Analysis] where we gathered together a pretty high level group that contributed to a critique of philosophical naturalism. We co-edited that and wrote the introduction. Then we also collaborated on a book called The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. That's pretty fairly well known. So that was another work on which we collaborated. And then there were a number of books that came out of the EPS Apologetics Conference or papers that were read that came out as popular works for the general public that were apologetic in nature. He and I were a part of a number of those together. If I may say, the reason I have so admired and loved Bill both as a fellow soldier in the Lord but as just a friend is two things. The first is that he got the fact that as a Christian philosopher one of our very first duties to Jesus Christ was to make a rigorous contribution to our profession. I think everybody who's called to do a job has an obligation to do that job well for Christ's sake. I admired him for wanting to elevate the standard. He's kept me on my toes over the years, and I've appreciated that a lot. The other thing was that even though he saw philosophy as having value for its own sake, there was no doubt that this gentleman was committed to the Great Commission and evangelism and pre-evangelism and building disciples that were confident about their faith. That's what my life has been about. So those were two things that, at the level of deepest held values, Bill and I have shared for decades together. That plus we’ve been really able to be open with one another when we've needed to just talk about our personal lives and so on. There's just been a great respect and friendship between us. No spirit of anything but collegiality. No competition, none of that. I think both of us have (it’s awkward to say, but) a fairly humble heart. We both recognize this isn't about us. It's about something much bigger than we are, and that's the source of our meaning in life. That's one of the reasons why we found it quite easy to collaborate on projects because we both were about the same thing. That was a fundamental issue that meant a lot, I think, to both of us.

DR. CRAIG: I'd like to add that the department of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology which J. P. helped to found reflects the commitment to those same two values. I wanted to be associated with a department like that. Back in 1994 when J. P. invited me to begin to teach part-time at Talbot, I began to do so. Up until the pandemic, every year I would be involved in teaching out at Talbot because it's such a wonderful community of scholars committed to philosophical excellence and to the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Moreland, how did the idea of writing Philosophical Foundations come about? Did one of you approach the other to broach the subject? How did that happen?

DR. MORELAND: Good question. I had, you might say, just a passion and sort of a vision among my published works to have some of them be written for the Christian community that elevated their game but wasn't so far above that they couldn't read it. So I made a distinction between my academic published work – Scaling the Secular City and other books – but I wanted to see an intro text that was directed to Christians and the development of a philosophically-informed Christian worldview that was, if I just may say, more thorough and rigorous than anything that had been out there but would still be accessible to people who were interested in this sort of thing. I approached a colleague about doing this together. We began to work, and over the next few years I was able (because I had a sabbatical) to write, I don't know, somewhere around 13, 14, 15 chapters. This brother, for various reasons, was not able to continue with the project. So the very first person in my mind, and had I known him when I started with the project would have been my first choice, was Bill. So I contacted him. I said, “Look, this is what we've got going. Can I send you some of the stuff I've written? Would you be interested?” Well, he said, “Let me pray about it” and in about two seconds later he said, “I'm in.” We were on the same page about the type of book it would be. It just came about that way. I must say that Bill really would have been my first choice if I'd known him at that point. I just didn't know him well enough to announce that. But it worked out. I believe that in the providence of God, because this book had an impact in people's lives that are just far beyond what I would have imagined, to be really honest with you. There's obviously some kind of a divine hand on this thing. It's over my head, and I think Bill would say the same thing in the impact it’s had. I have no clue how this has happened, but we're sure grateful. God had a providential role in bringing us together to write this book. I believe that this was on God's mind, and that he wanted us to do this together. He providentially brought about the conditions where we were able to develop the book.

KEVIN HARRIS: I'm curious of what the process was of writing the book. I suppose that the two of you got together, maybe outlined everything and then filled it in. Dr. Craig, do you want to address that first?

DR. CRAIG: No, it wasn't like that. By the time J. P. approached me about this book, he had already written the bulk of the book. He simply needed someone else to fill in certain other areas that he did not want to write on himself. Principally, they were the chapters in philosophy of religion. So we largely wrote independently of each other. We, of course, read the other person's chapters and commented on them, but we didn't interfere with the writing of the other person. J. P. wrote most of the chapters. I did the chapter on logic and reasoning, and then I did a chapter on the philosophy of space and time which was very near and dear to my heart because of my work on divine eternity. Then I did all of the chapters on the philosophy of religion.

DR. MORELAND: Bill also did a chapter in the epistemology section.

DR. CRAIG: Oh, yeah. I forgot.

DR. MORELAND: On religious epistemology.

DR. CRAIG: Right.

DR. MORELAND: So it was probably 60/40, maybe 65/35. But it was in that ballpark. We both made substantial contributions. But what this says is that we just trusted each other. I can only recall maybe one area where we disagreed. We don't agree about Platonism. So when we wrote that chapter I wanted to give Bill full sway to write whatever he wanted to write. I had already written a chapter in metaphysics where I talked about this. So what we decided to do when he was writing this in context of God's aseity is that he developed his chapter and then what I would do is I'd plug in an objection and then he would respond to it, and then I would come up with maybe another one. It ended up being a very nice exchange back and forth. In fact, it wasn’t like we were trying to get one another. If I felt like I could polish his response and help it, or he my statement of something, we did that. I think that that was maybe the only area where we needed to kind of team up. It turned out that that was actually a blessing in the book. It worked out just very nicely.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Moreland, as I recall, you had a bumper sticker that said, “I break for universals.”

DR. MORELAND: Yes! [laughter]

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig has one that says, “I don't break for universals.” [laughter]

DR. MORELAND: Yeah, that’s right!

DR. CRAIG: But I’ve never hit one! [laughter]

DR. MORELAND: Well, that’s the way it goes. You know, I live in California. I actually pulled into a gas station once, and I was filling my car and I had “I break for universals” around my back license plate. This other guy is filling his car with gas and he says, “Hey! Hey! What do you mean ‘I break for universals?’” And I said, “Oh, it’s a long story.” And he says, “No, tell me what it is.” I said, “Well, there are these things that are sort of objects outside of space and time, and because of that you can't actually run over one of them. So the idea of trying to break because you're seeing one on the road is kind of an absurdity. It's meant to be a joke.” He says, “Oh, I thought it was maybe one of those sexual things where you were kind of, you know, you are a universal.” [laughter] So people misunderstand. It was funny.

KEVIN HARRIS: The title of the book is thought-provoking in and of itself because it suggests that there are philosophical foundations at the base of the Christian worldview. Some people balk at that. We've had people literally push back during some podcasts saying that the foundation is the Bible, the Scripture, not philosophy. Two things. How did you come up with the title? And how do you respond to objections like that? Dr. Craig?

DR. CRAIG: J. P. came up with the title as I recall. But it seems to me that the answer to the question would be that there are both philosophical and theological foundations to a Christian worldview. Obviously you have theological foundations laid in Scripture for a Christian worldview, but that doesn't answer all of the fundamental questions that are raised by these theological doctrines. Therefore there are also philosophical foundations that will include, for example, certain metaphysical theses like the existence of God, the reality of the soul, the objectivity of moral values. Then there will be epistemological theses to which one will be theologically committed like the objectivity and knowability of truth. So there are both theological and philosophical foundations that go to make up a Christian world and life view.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Moreland, do you ever run into that objection that you're founding your faith on philosophy rather than the Scriptures?

DR. MORELAND: Yes. With regard to the book, I think just to fill out Bill's answer which I agree with, I think you could simply add that our book is already hernia-inducing, so you can't cover both of these aspects adequately in one book. The fact that we chose to focus on one aspect implies nothing about our valuing the other. It was a limitation that we didn't want to do a two-volume set. So that’s the reason we zeroed in on this particular aspect. But I think that this objection tends to come from certain kinds of sort of old school Reformed thinkers who were along the lines of, say, Cornelius Van Til or Greg Bahnsen or people like that that thought that giving evidence somehow placed something over the Bible's authority. I just respond by saying that when you're within the faith the Scriptures are clearly my ultimate authority in that if something contradicts the Scriptures it's false. But being within the faith, it does not follow that it is not helpful to growing in one's faith that there are appeals to argument and evidence that strengthen the grounding for your confidence in the authority of the Scriptures. Paul appeals to all kinds of things in the book of Acts. He persuades people. He appeals to literature from pagan writings about God. The prophets in the Old Testament use kind of a causal argument that the finite deities are not real because they say, “Look at this effect. It's massive. Now how can that puny little god you worship (by the way, when he falls over you got to prop him back up again), how is that going to explain all of this?” The implicit assumption is that cause is not adequate to explain this effect. That's obviously what they're getting at, but it's not explicitly stated. The field of philosophy can help make that explicit so you gain greater insight into the text. If you're outside the faith then I think it's entirely biblical, both through the Old and New Testaments, to provide evidence and argumentation and things of that sort that are extra-biblical to help answer people's questions and deflect some objections that might be holding them up. This seems to be the way the apostles practiced evangelism. And it seems to be important for discipleship as in Colossians where Paul is thoroughly familiar with the sort of the pre-Christian Gnosticism in Colossae. He uses that in his writings to say, “That pleroma you got there? I got good and bad news. The good news is there is a pleroma, a mediator between God. But it's not that hierarchy of things you got in there. It's Jesus.” So he takes their own philosophy and relates Jesus to it when it's appropriate. I think that's what Bill and I were doing, especially his section on the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. He's merely trying to use the tools of philosophy to unpack and to clarify and to rule out errors in people's attempts to systematize a biblical picture of God. There philosophy is just a tremendous source of help. It isn't an either-or there, in my opinion, in so many ways.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK. Let’s stop right there for today. If you thought part one was good, wait until you hear part two next time. By the way, if you have not downloaded the Reasonable Faith app, make sure you do that. Go to ReasonableFaith.org. You can download it and have instant access to all the resources from Reasonable Faith right there on your device. While you are at  ReasonableFaith.org, please consider giving a financial gift to the work of Reasonable Faith to help us continue to produce great content like this that reaches the world. Thanks so much. We’ll see you next time on Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig.^[1]