Interview with William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland Part Two

KEVIN HARRIS: Welcome to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. It’s Kevin Harris. Hopefully you heard part one of our interview with Dr. Craig and Dr. J. P. Moreland. Now let’s check out part two.

The book is dedicated to Dallas Willard and Stuart Hackett. Beneath their names in the front you quote Hebrews 13:7, “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” Apparently, Dr. Craig, these men had great impact on the two of you.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. The person to whom I dedicated the book was Stuart Hackett who was my college professor of philosophy and then later my colleague and department chair at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School after I finished my doctoral studies in philosophy. Hackett's book, The Resurrection of Theism, changed my life. I bought this book one week before graduating from Wheaton in a book sale at the college bookstore. I read it then that summer. I had been taught at Wheaton that there are no good arguments for God's existence – that all of the arguments had been refuted. While that didn't seem right to me, I thought surely my highly intelligent professors of theology know what they're talking about when they say that these arguments are not cogent. So I just accepted that. Then I read Hackett's book. Here he was laying out an argument for God's existence that I thought was just compelling and refuting every conceivable objection that one might raise against it. The argument that was the centerpiece of Hackett's case I later discovered to be the kalam cosmological argument. It was because of Hackett's book that I determined when I did my own doctoral work in philosophy I had to write on this argument to settle my own mind as to whether or not Hackett was right that this is a sound argument for a Creator of the universe or not. So that book was really formative for me and my philosophical development. I had the privilege then, as I say, for seven years of teaching at Trinity with Stu. I got to know him and his wife, Joan; a wonderful Christian couple. It was a pleasure to dedicate the book to Stuart Hackett.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Moreland. Dallas Willard?

DR. MORELAND: By the way, I had read Hackett's book as well. I recognized that this is a thorough, careful philosopher who develops an argument over a long space of time. He was systematic – I really admired him. I just wanted to add to Bill's statement. Well, I graduated from Dallas Seminary in 1979. My wife, Hope, and I came to Southern California to teach at the Crusade Seminary – the International School of Theology. I was thinking about graduate work, and I ended up deciding to do an M.A. in philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. It was close, and it happened to have a really good department. And as a resident the tuition was very low. So I went there, and I was getting my M.A. It was toward the end, and I wanted to go on for the PhD., and they were pressuring me to stay. They were throwing fellowships at me. I wanted to see if I could study under a Christian, if possible. Well, I was reading Christianity Today. I turned to the last page and there was something on discipleship. I read this article and I thought I agree with this. This fellow has thought this through. I looked down, and he was a professor of philosophy at USC. I couldn't believe it. So I called him and I said, “Pardon me, sir, Dr. Willard, but you don't know me. I'm at UC Riverside, and I want to go on for a doctorate, and I wonder if you wouldn’t mind if I came in and visited with you and asked you some questions.” So we scheduled an appointment. I drove to his home. I walked in, and I was kind of checking his library out to see if I saw some old familiar friends. There was J. Gresham Machen over there. So I was thinking . . . I said, “I hope you don't mind, but do you mind me asking just a few questions? Do you believe in the triune God of Christianity?” He said, “Oh, yes, I certainly do.” And I said, “Do you believe that the Gospels are historically reliable and that Jesus rose bodily from the dead and there's good evidence for that?” He said, “Yes, J. P. I settled that question decades ago, and I do think that.” “Do you believe in a hell?,” I said. He said, “If you want to know if I am a historically committed Christian and an evangelical Christian, the answer is yes, I am.” And so I ended up applying and getting a full fellowship to go to SC. He was my mentor. After I graduated, he and his wife, Jane, took Hope and me under his wing as kind of, actually as one of their kids. So we developed a very close relationship with them until he passed away. We got to know each other's families. I have great admiration for his commitment to Christ. He shaped me a great deal.

KEVIN HARRIS: Some of our chapter directors are curious about the editing process that went into this. This is a big book. I'm sure there's a lot of proofreading and editing. For a book like this you want everything to be just right. So, Dr. Craig, maybe you can start with this. What was the editing process for the book?

DR. CRAIG: Since we wrote our respective chapters independently of each other, we were each responsible for the proofreading of those chapters. We tried to stay out of each other's hair. As I say, of course, we did read each other's chapters and comment, but then it was up to each individual. I don't remember that there were any particular difficulties with the editing process. As I recall, at least, InterVarsity Press was just a dream to work with. There wasn't any of this sort of interference you get from some editors where they think they know how to express better than you do what you're trying to say. So they try to rewrite it and insert things without even telling you sometimes. But with InterVarsity at that time, I found the editing process to just be impeccable. Is that your recollection, J. P.?

DR. MORELAND: Oh, absolutely. And I think that one of the reasons that that worked out so well is that Bill and I both like to make clear the structure of each paper we write. We like people to be able to follow our argumentative process. We both like to have a lot of divisions and subdivisions and sub-subdivisions. So we were both on the same page with that, and so we were both able to write chapters that were like each other in that respect. In terms of the structural layout of the chapters, we were just automatically on the same page. We decided that we would have a chapter summary at the end of each chapter and maybe a basic checklist of some of the key terms that were used in that chapter and an extensive bibliography. So really the editors, all they had to do was to put this together. Our styles of writing were pretty similar in this, to really tell you the truth. There was very little difficulty. They were just so helpful in servants of the process. It was a very good experience. As was, by the way, the very important revised edition of our book that, in my opinion, was substantial. It did not simply correct things that were maybe a bit outdated in the earlier version, but we added a lot of extra material and reorganized some things. It is a different book in a whole lot of ways. And they were very helpful with us.

DR. CRAIG: I want to second that because we haven't really talked about the revised edition of this book. It wasn't so much correcting things. I think J. P. and I consistently hold largely the same positions. But the extensions of the first edition with additional argument. J. P. added further chapters on the philosophy of mind. One of the most important chapters for me was adding a chapter on the doctrine of the atonement. There are three big doctrines philosophically in Christianity, and that is the Trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement. I had worked on the Trinity and incarnation when we wrote the first edition and so I had chapters there. But I had not worked on the doctrine of the atonement. So even though I was aware that the classic Reformation doctrine of the atonement was under vehement assault, even by other Christian philosophers in our day, I did not feel equipped to write a chapter on it. That was remedied in the second edition. By then I had completed my book on atonement and the death of Christ and was able to give a robust defense and articulation of a Reformation theory of the atonement. From my point of view, that really helped to complete and fill out the section of the book on the philosophy of religion.

KEVIN HARRIS: The book's been out for 20 years now. Have either of you been able to gauge the impact of the book? Any personal stories or feedback that you received that you remember? Dr. Moreland, you kind of hinted at this earlier that you noticed that there's been quite an impact.

DR. MORELAND: I'll say a word. I think Bill might be a good person to ask on that. But as I see it, the book is accomplishing exactly what we hoped. I believe that it has become sort of the place to start, the go-to book with people that really want to get in deeply as Christians to philosophy. Now, I don't mean it's the place to start if you haven't read anything in philosophy. There are intro texts that might be better. But for those who've been around the group for a while and they want to dive in deeper and kind of get an exhaustive deep dive into this subject, this is pretty much it. I've had emails from people who said that it saved their faith. It answered questions. I think one of the things that I've received when I've spoken most is what this did for people is to role model that Christians are not afraid of questions; that, in fact, we welcome them. All we ask is to have a level playing field. That's it. That's really the only thing we ask for – just a fair chance to make our case. A lot of people in the church are afraid of questions and think they're all smoke screens for emotional issues. I know some of them are, but there are still the questions there at the end of the day and need to be answered. People, I think, have seen us perhaps role model that in the book – that if we make a claim, we don't just assert it but we take on the best problems against it as we can find. That role-modeling of how a Christian person who wants an intellectual life should live life I think has been a great encouragement to people. Bill, I'd like to hear from you on your experience.

DR. CRAIG: I am aware from emails and so forth that the book has been very widely adopted as a textbook in Christian colleges and seminaries. For many Christian students who take an intro course in philosophy, this book has become their introduction to Christian philosophy. And that is very gratifying. The ironic thing about that is that I, at least, have never used the book as a textbook. I've never assigned it in any of my own classes.

DR. MORELAND: I haven't either.

DR. CRAIG: I wonder, J. P., is that the same for you?

DR. MORELAND: Yeah, I've never used it.

DR. CRAIG: It is really more for undergraduate and seminary students, not for the kind of students that J. P. and I teach at Talbot which are graduate-level students. But it has been very widely adopted on that undergraduate level, and translated into other languages. For example, it's in Brazil in Portuguese where it's caused quite a ripple. And it's also in Korean in South Korea. I think there are some other languages, as well. So it's having actually a worldwide impact through these translations.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's another question from some of our chapter directors. Were there any major areas of philosophy that you intentionally left out of the book? Dr. Moreland, do you want to begin that?

DR. MORELAND: Yes. I think philosophy of law and political philosophy are extremely important, but I don't think they're fundamental. I believe metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory are fundamental. Those are then applied to issues in philosophy of religion and so on. I think that while these are important, I think that we wanted to try to get at these underlying ground level basic branches of philosophy that are really at the root of a Christian worldview and its overall truth and justification. That was our thinking there. But, yes. Some would probably add aesthetics. That doesn't happen to be a huge interest of mine, but those would be some things that would come to my mind. Bill, do you have any thoughts about that?

DR. CRAIG: That's so interesting, J. P., to hear you say that. Because, as I mentioned, I left out of the first edition any discussion of the doctrine of the atonement. But when I did treat that in the second edition, philosophy of law became absolutely central to that because it is in the philosophy of law that the theory of punishment and competing theories of justice are most discussed.

DR. MORELAND: Right.

DR. CRAIG: So in the second edition we do at least dip our toe in the water of some philosophy of law.

DR. MORELAND: Yes. Thank you. That's right. That's right. Good.

KEVIN HARRIS: I think that if you do a third edition you guys are going to have to do something on artificial intelligence because everybody's going crazy over that. Dr. Moreland?

DR. MORELAND: Well, yes. There's just so much confusion about it. Actually in our book there is a fair amount about it in the section, especially the revised version, where there's a fairly well-structured section on the nature of consciousness and then the nature of whatever it is that has consciousness. The different forms of artificial intelligence – there's more than one – are actually rooted in a computational theory of mind where the brain is essentially viewed as a computer. That would be what some call machine functionalism. If you understand functionalism and its limitations then I think it becomes pretty clear that artificial intelligence, which is just a specific version of a certain form of functionalism, has got the same problems that face machine functionalism in general. So, for example, John Searle wrote a famous thing called The Chinese Room Argument. It's widely used in philosophy of mind. We have a discussion of it and a discussion of some criticisms of it in Philosophical Foundations. But Searle’s main point in writing that was to come against a strong AI. Phil mind and AI are really . . . AI is really just an extension of topics of philosophy of mind, and I think those are pretty well covered in our book although I don't deny that it would be a good idea to specifically have a chapter on that because it's become almost – well, it is a thing – and I would agree that that might be an important thing to do.

KEVIN HARRIS: What you're saying is that this book will give you a good philosophical foundation to engage artificial intelligence.

DR. MORELAND: Well, who would have thought? [laughter]

KEVIN HARRIS: The book begins on philosophy and logic. Dr. Craig, I believe you treated these. Why start there? Why is it important for followers of Christ to engage in those topics?

DR. CRAIG: What Greek is to the New Testament scholar, logic is to the philosopher. It's part of the toolkit of his trade, and without proper mastery and understanding of these tools one will not be able to be effective in doing good philosophical analysis and argumentation. I do think this is an area where very many popular level books on apologetics and logic are quite weak. I've noticed that popular level books on reasoning tend to focus on informal fallacies like begging the question or ad hominem arguments. But what I think is critical is that our students learn first and foremost the basic rules of inference that govern sentential or propositional logic. There are only about nine of these basic rules of inference that govern all of reasoning, and so it's just, I think, vitally important that the students master these rules of inference in propositional logic. But then I also wanted to give them a taste at least of modal logic – the logic of possibility and necessity. The great Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga has said that every theologian needs to put in some measure of study of modal logic. That's quite a recommendation, and so that was an important part of the book. Then finally I wanted to include something on counterfactual logic which is so critical for the later discussion of middle knowledge and the doctrine of Molinism which has to do with these subjunctive conditional statements like “If I were rich then I would buy a Mercedes.” These counterfactual conditionals, or subjunctive conditionals, have a rather different logic than indicative conditionals do. So that needed to be covered as well. So it just is a kind of primer to acquaint the student with these fundamental tools that will then be applied throughout the remainder of the book and throughout the field.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Moreland, I hesitate to even bring this up because we will be here all night. But everyone's curious about mind-body dualism. You wrote the chapters, the sections, on that. There are plenty of people I'm sure watching this interview who haven't yet gotten the book. Maybe you can briefly speak to the question of what mind-body dualism is and what position you take in the book.

DR. MORELAND: Let me back up and say very quickly that this has become one of the central issues of today. Because, as one person put it, once the Bible died, God died, and once God died, man died. So now the fundamental question that's being asked today is, “What is a human being?” or “What is a human person?” Every field seems to have its own answer to it. I've been doing a lot of reading lately in postmodern constructivism. The fundamental problem at root with that whole movement is a completely misguided understanding of what a human person is. So the mind-body problem is really a host of several problems, but it is essentially: What exactly is consciousness? Is it immaterial? Is it physical? What is the thing that has consciousness? Is it a soul or an ego of some sort? And if so what kind of a substantial entity is it? Or is it some kind of physical object like the whole organism or the brain or a region of the brain? This is so important today, but you got to be real clear because this has become a dominant field in philosophy for a long time and so it's got its own literature. There are very fine distinctions that have been made for a long time so that if you say “He's a reductionist,” there are at least seven different kinds of reductionism. If a person says they're a reductionist, I have no idea what they're talking about unless they clarify it. And then there's what's called non-reductive physicalism, and I don't know what that means. Nancey Murphy is supposed to be a big non-reductive physicalist, and I kind of paneled off against her at an EPS conference (Bill was there; we had a panel of Swinburne and Ravenscroft and a number of others) and I said to her during a break, “Nancey, for the life of me, I don't understand what your non-reductive physicalism is. Are you a functionalist or are you a property-dualist?” She said, “I’m actually a property-dualist.” Well, boy, you could have fooled me. The point I'm making is that non-reductive physicalism is an ambiguous claim. It needs to be clarified, and Christians who are deeply interested in theological anthropology, the tools that have been developed in philosophy of mind are extremely helpful. In fact, this means so much to me that a former colleague and now professor, Brandon Rickabaugh, and I have what I would consider to be a magnum opus coming out this spring with Wiley Blackwell. It's going to be a 400-page book and it's going to be called The Substance of Consciousness, thanks to Bill suggesting that title to us. The subtitle is, “A comprehensive defense of contemporary substance dualism.” I am proud to say that our section on this, which was expanded and reorganized, I think makes very clear this whole field in something like five, six or seven chapters. I am very proud of our book in this regard. I think it does a really good job of giving people kind of the big picture and the terminology.

KEVIN HARRIS: There's so much that we could talk about in this book and for the 20th anniversary. Dr. Craig, maybe you can summarize something very important that has come up. The two contrasting views that you have on the version of Platonism that Dr. Moreland defends and then you being an anti-realist about abstract objects. Was there a lot of discussion back and forth on this, and what are the two views in a nutshell?

DR. CRAIG: The two fundamental views could be divided between realism and anti-realism. The realist says that there actually are abstract objects like numbers and propositions and properties and possible worlds and sometimes maybe even works of art or works of literature are regarded as abstract objects, whereas the anti-realist says these things don't really exist. It can be convenient to talk about these things and we can say truths about them but it doesn't commit us to their objective mind-independent reality. As J. P. mentioned this was, in fact, the one and only issue on which we disagreed in the first edition of the book. In the section on divine aseity it is so funny because I wrote one paragraph, J. P. wrote the next paragraph refuting me, I wrote the next paragraph responding to him, and he wrote the final paragraph refuting me. And we just left the issue unresolved. That was before I did my in-depth work on the doctrine of divine aseity. I worked on this for 13 years, and by the time it came around to revising the second edition I think I was able to rewrite that section in such a way that we could both be happy with what it said. It basically lays out the different versions of realism that are available and the different versions of anti-realism that are proffered today. It offers a kind of taxonomy of various views and invites the reader to explore these and see which one he finds most plausible.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK. We're about to run out of time, but as we wrap up I wanted to ask the two of you what you're currently working on. Dr. Moreland, let’s begin with you.

DR. MORELAND: I've just had about, I think it's now nine articles published or will be published in journals. Some of them came out of my book, but I did about three or four new ones. I've been working really on a couple of things. One is advancing my understanding of topics central to our defense of the soul. That has taken me into certain theories of colors and color perception that are more scientific in nature. I've also been doing some related work on ethical non-naturalism which, depending on which person you're talking about, we might just say is the attempt to sustain objective moral rules or principles (maybe duties, maybe) and intrinsic value without God. I just had an article published after extensive work on Russ Schaefer-Landau and his views on this. I've been working on areas that kind of beef up this whole enterprise of natural theology and engaging in theological and philosophical anthropology. Those have been central to my recent work.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig?

DR. CRAIG: There are a good many people doing philosophical theology in our day, but almost no one (in fact, I would say no one) has attempted to write a systematic philosophical theology. At Jan's encouragement, this is the project that I began to work on about two years ago. I am in the midst of writing a systematic philosophical theology. I've completed the prolegomenon to the series. A locus on the doctrine of Scripture. A locus on the doctrine of faith. A very large locus on the doctrine of God, including the attributes of God and the Trinity and an excursus on natural theology with various theistic arguments. Currently I'm writing the locus on the doctrine of creation. This has been so fascinating because it has taken me into scientific origin of life and evolution of life studies. Just today I was working on the section on evolutionary biology and how best to integrate contemporary evolutionary biology into a Christian world and life view.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig, any chance on the two of you ever collaborating on another book?

DR. CRAIG: I think that J. P. and I are both open to the possibility, but I have to say that for me this systematic philosophical theology is a 10-year project at least. It has become an obsession. So until I can get that thing out of the way, I doubt that we'll be collaborating on anything major in the future.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let me speak for everyone, and tell both of you: Thank you. Thank you for not only writing this book together that has had such meaning and impact on so many of us, including me, but also your individual ministries, your role-modeling as friends and colleagues. We appreciate the two of you being here today. Let's do it again.

DR. CRAIG: OK. It's been a pleasure.

DR. MORELAND: It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.^[1]