Q&A on Confronting Harsh Treatment, Nothingness, and The Trinity
December 01, 2013 Time: 21:03
Summary
A philosophy student claims Dr. Craig is treated with disdain in his class. Also, questions on 'nothingness', God's attributes and evil, and the Trinity
Transcript Q&A on Confronting Harsh Treatment, Nothingness, and the Trinity
Kevin Harris: Questions are just busting out of the mailbox, Dr. Craig, and these are from all over the world. We have some from Switzerland, from Brazil, from the UK, from China, from South America, Canada. This first one is from a reader who identifies himself as a philosophy student. He says, “Hello, Dr. Craig. The first time I heard about you was in my introduction class to philosophy. The entirety of your cosmological argument surprised me because it took less than a page. Your argument was the shortest and most despised argument in our class. My philosophy professor briefly discussed it and from that point on I was hooked on the arguments for the existence of God.”
Dr. Craig: That’s a good result, anyway.
Kevin Harris: “Anyway, I’ve been reading books by atheist philosophers, talked to atheist philosophy professors, and atheist friends. In books and conversations I’ve found that you are probably the most hated Christian philosopher on earth, no joke.” Well, Bill, I don’t know what to say.
Dr. Craig: I know, my gosh.
Kevin Harris: “Here, whenever I mention your name, I see faces of disdain and extreme hatred. Being that I’ve experienced this in my life I wanted to ask how you deal with the thought that many think of you as an imbecile philosopher and a fool for believing in Christ.”
Dr. Craig: Well, when I teach my students at Talbot School of Theology who are Christians I tell them that until you are ready to be thought of as a fool for Christ’s sake you are not really ready to be used fully by God. Paul says that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, and the foolishness of the Gospel that we preach is, in fact, the wisdom of God.[1] And so I think that one simply realizes that if you stand up for Christ you’ll be thought of as a fool, and that’s all right because we don’t want to seek the praise of men but rather we seek the praise of God. Now I don’t think that one needs to be concerned that one is, in fact, an imbecile because imbeciles don’t get articles accepted into The Journal of Philosophy. If I were an imbecile then somebody needs to inform the editorial staff at the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science that they ought to quit accepting manuscript submissions from imbeciles. So I’m not concerned with these allegations, and I wear them as a badge of honor.
Kevin Harris: Bill, I want to know if there’s a balance to this because there’s a tendency to sometimes think that you’re not doing it right, you’re not doing the Christian life right, unless you’re heaped with scorn. Yet that’s not always been the case in Christian history and it’s certainly not the case with you.
Dr. Craig: No, it will depend on the cultural context in which you find yourself – won’t it Kevin? – how your work is greeted by your peers. My main point is that one should not make academic respectability your primary goal. You shouldn’t let this become an idol that stands above faithfulness to Christ and service to the Kingdom. Now if, as we try to do first-rate scholarly work, we achieve academic respectably, wonderful! That is so much the better. But if we’re derided as fools because of our Christian commitment that doesn’t matter because ultimately, as I say, our praise comes from God and not from men. So we need to aim at first-rate scholarship in our work, but then leave the reception of that work, whether or not we achieve academic respectably, in God’s hands.
Kevin Harris: He goes on to say, “Here are some personal questions: who are your favorite atheist philosophers?”
Dr. Craig: Well, let me rephrase the question to “Who my favorite non-theist philosophers are” because I think it’s very difficult to find any atheist philosophers – philosophers who would claim that they have a good argument against God’s existence. Typically they will be agnostic or non-theist. I think my favorite non-theist philosophers would be Graham Oppy, J. Howard Sobel, and probably my friend Quentin Smith. These men are all doing really good work, they’re scary-smart, and I respect what they write and find it serious cause for reflection.
Kevin Harris: Number two, he says, “What do you think about the thought that atheists and Christians cannot be friends?”
Dr. Craig: I think that’s incorrect.[2] It’s certainly true that, I think, someone who doesn’t share that deepest love that you have for God and for Christ is going to never really be as close to you as someone who is united with you in that deep love and commitment. But nevertheless you can have friendships, be cordial, you can do things together, enjoy each other's company even if on the deepest existential level there is a lack of commonality there. That will certainly be true. But I certainly think that you can be friends. And I am friends with some of the atheist philosophers I know.
Kevin Harris: He says, “Who are your favorite Christian philosophers, theologians and historians?”
Dr. Craig: I have certainly learned from and admired Alvin Plantinga so much over the years. I dedicated my three books on God and time to Alvin Plantinga for both the way he has modeled Christian philosophy for us as well as for the quality of the work that he has produced. So he would be right at the top of the list. I might also mention people like Robert Adams, William Alston, Peter van Inwagen, Steve Evans. All of these folks are people that I read with great profit. I always come away from their work with some sort of added insight. In terms of theologians, I can’t say that I really do have a sort of favorite theologian because I often find that theologians are lacking in the philosophical tools to do really good work in systematic theology. And so there really isn’t any theologian that I guess I look to or follow. Among historians, my greatest familiarity would be with New Testament historians, and there I certainly enjoy reading the work of people like John Meier and Jimmy Dunn. Dale Allison is really a very fine historical Jesus scholar. Those would be some of the people that I would admire and learn from.
Kevin Harris: Who is your favorite radio and podcast guy? [laughter]
Dr. Craig: Is that on the question sheet? [laughter]
Kevin Harris: How many languages do you speak?
Dr. Craig: Well, I only speak actually three which would be English, French, and German. But I have a reading ability in New Testament Greek, and I’ve had Latin. I even had Hebrew in seminary but I’ve lost it. I’ve really not kept up my Hebrew.
Kevin Harris: This next question is from an unbeliever in Switzerland, Pascal – funny name for an unbeliever – he says, “I’m sure there’s something wrong with the following argument, Dr. Craig, but I can’t see what; maybe you can help me out.” I’ll give you this quick syllogism:
1. It’s logically possible that nothing exists.
2. Everything that exists exists contingently.
3. God, if he exists, exists necessarily.
4. Therefore, God does not exist.
He says, “I’m an unbeliever myself but the question of God never quite leaves me alone, which is probably why the German philosopher Robert Spaemann has called God the immortal rumor.”
Dr. Craig: Well, I’m glad that the question of God continues to trouble Pascal, and I hope that he will read the works of his names sake, Pascal – The Pensees, which are the explorations of a non-theistic thinker about the deepest questions in life and about the existence of God. I hope that Pascal will continue on his search. I would say with respect to the argument – first, it has at least one superfluous premise. Premise (1) is “it’s logically possible that nothing exists,” and then if you jump down to (3), “God, if he exists, exists necessarily.” Well, therefore it would follow that God does not exist because if God exists necessarily he exists in every possible world, and therefore it’s not logically possible that nothing exists. On the other hand, if you begin with premise (2), “everything that exists exists contingently,” and then go to (3), “God, if he exists, exists necessarily,” well, then it follows that God does not exist because God isn’t contingent and you’ve already said that everything that exists exists contingently. So either premise (1) or (2) is superfluous to the argument. You can run the argument using either (1) or (2) but you don’t need both. So what I would say is wrong with the argument is I think (1) and (2) are both false. I don’t think it’s logically possible that nothing exists; in fact, I think that the state of affairs of there being absolutely nothing is impossible. And similarly, I think it’s impossible that everything that exists exists contingently.[3] I think that there must be a metaphysically necessary being which serves to explain why there is something rather than nothing and why contingent beings exist. So I would say the only true premise in this argument is the third one: that God, if he exists, exists necessarily.
Kevin Harris: This next question from Brad: “Dr. Craig, my question is actually fairly simple. Does the existence of evil in a moral sense and hell in a spatial sense refute or at least alter the common view of God’s omnipresence? The hell argument is the most obvious as it’s typically described as a place of eternal separation from God. Evil, however, is an even more interesting argument against this view for me. It’s often described, even by you from time to time, not as its own entity but simply an absence of good. If God were all-present his goodness would also be all-present, fully permeating all of creation. By this I mean that there would be no place in which God’s goodness was absent. I think that would undermine the possibility of evil because God would be omnipresent as well as omnipotent and immutable. Could you share some light on this for me?”
Dr. Craig: I think that the problem here is that Brad is thinking of God’s omnipresence as being the view that God is everywhere in space and therefore no matter where you go, whether you go to hell, wherever you go in creation, there isn’t any place where God isn’t there. But traditionally God’s omnipresence is not understood in terms of God’s being everywhere in space. God transcends space, and therefore he’s not to be thought of as existing in space. He’s not in this room or in the microphone or inside of the chair, for example. Rather, omnipresence means that God is causally active at and cognizant of every point in space. So God knows what is going on in hell, and he causally sustains the inhabitants of hell in existence so that they’re not annihilated and cease to exist. Similarly, every place in the universe, even where there is evil, God is causally active there and he is cognizant of what is happening there. So as long as we don’t think of omnipresence in terms of God’s being diffused throughout space, but understand it simply as God being cognizant of and causally active at every point in space, then I don’t think any problem arises.
Kevin Harris: You’ve often said, don’t think of it as a gas or an ether that fills out space.
Dr. Craig: That’s exactly right.
Kevin Harris: Next question: “Dr. Craig, I just listened to the most recent podcast.” By the way, somebody wrote us earlier, Bill, and said they can’t get any work done because they’re listening to the podcast all the time. You have to set aside time.
Dr. Craig: That’s not good.
Kevin Harris: He says, “I just listened to the most recent podcast. I encounter a lot of pop culture atheists and a lot of what they say is stuff like: ‘God does not exist, you just want him too,’ or, ‘You just think he exists,’ similar to the theory of mind argument. So what you’re telling me, though, is that these thoughts are not actually circulated or discussed within the philosophical community. I mean, in the philosophy classes I took in college we talked about the problem of evil and morality in regards to the existence or non-existence of God, but never this pop stuff. My question is this: do I really need to give attention to these arguments or should I just concern myself with the problem of evil and ethical arguments?”
Dr. Craig: The difficulty in answering this question is that I’m not sure which arguments he refers to. The assertion “God doesn’t exist, you just want him to,” or, “You just think God exists,” isn’t an argument; that’s just a personal aspersion. Now his reference to the theory of mind argument makes me think that perhaps what he’s thinking of would be the claim that human beings are hard-wired to believe in agents out there in the world. That we have what’s sometimes called a hyperactive agency detection device wired into our brains so that we see agency and personhood where it really doesn’t exist. And certainly that argument is very much discussed, and I think needs to be dealt with. There are Christian philosophers who are working on that kind of argument. Indeed, I have said, Kevin, when people ask me, where I see the next generation of challenges issuing from, I’ve said I think it’s going to come from the realm of neurobiology and all the claims of neurotheology that attend it.[4] So I think that if there are young Christians who want to go into science or work on issues of philosophical significance for the Christian faith, work in the classic mind-body problem with some specialization in neuroscience would be very, very helpful and cutting-edge.
Kevin Harris: Next question says, “Dear Dr. Craig, I am a believer whose faith has not only been strengthened but revolutionized through studying your popular works. Though trained as a scientist I am a layperson in philosophy, and the way I think about Christianity has been given new dimensions through your writings. Thank you so much for your ongoing work. My question: I’ve always viewed God’s essential attributes as distinct from one another but Dr. Geisler’s essay shows how one essential property of God gives rise to others in a very interconnected way. That is, God’s immutability implies his eternality, his pure actuality implies that there is only one God, his immortality implies his indivisibility, and so on. I find this interconnectedness of God’s attributes delightful as there is a perfect consistency between all of his attributes, as outlined in the essay. But there is one essential property of God that does not seem to be derived from any other, and that is his triune nature. If that property of God cannot be derived from other essential properties then the question that immediately follows is: well, why are there three persons in the Godhead and not two, nine, or fifty-six. So my question to you is this: is there a way to derive God’s triune nature from his other essential properties, and if not, why is that property seemingly disconnected from all the others?”
Dr. Craig: I’m afraid I disagree with Jason and with Norm Geisler in thinking that God’s attributes are all mutually interconnected in this way. Although this is a view that’s often claimed, I don’t see how it can be successfully put though. It seems to me that things like omnipotence and omniscience and eternality and aseity and necessity and so forth are not all mutually entailing. So I don’t see them forming this sort of tight package that a Thomist does. Indeed some of these I would just disagree with. For example, I don’t think that God is immutable in the way that Thomists think; that he is utterly unchangeable in every respect. Nor that God is pure actuality in the way Thomists believe, that God has no potency to be or do other than as he is or does. So I don’t see that the attributes of God do form this tight package. I would say that they are simply essential attributes of God. And as Jason notes, the Trinity is not something that you can derive from these other attributes. I don’t know of any way that you could prove that a being that is eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, necessary, and all the rest, has to be triune. I can’t imagine how that would be done. So it seems to me that this is simply an essential property of God along with his other essential properties – that’s just the way God is – and it’s not part of a package of mutually entailing attributes.
Kevin Harris: Bill, there are so many of God’s attributes that we can recover from just doing a conceptual analysis and just working it out philosophically. It seems like the Trinity is not one of those; that, for the most part, it is revealed.
Dr. Craig: Yes, that’s what Thomas Aquinas himself thought. Aquinas didn’t think that you could give any sort of arguments for the Trinity that would be philosophically compelling even though he thought you could prove these other attributes of God that Jason mentioned. So he felt that although there are plausibility arguments that could be made for the Trinity to show it’s a plausible doctrine, it’s not something that is derivable from the other attributes of God, and I would agree with Aquinas about that.[5]