Reasonable Faith and Faithful Disagreement

KEVIN HARRIS: We got a note from Dr. Aaron Brian Davis who is Fellowship Engagement Director and Theologian-in-Residence at the Lutheran Church of the Nativity in Arden, North Carolina. As an academic, he works mainly on topics in systematic and philosophical theology as well as ethics. He's written a review of your book Reasonable Faith and has invited you to take a look at his review. So we're going to do that. I want to chase one quick rabbit before we go to the article. From Dr. Davis' bio, he's also an editor and contributor to the book Disability Theology and Eschatology: Hope, Justice, and Flourishing. Here's a quick description of the book:

Christian theology looks forward to a consummation of all things in which hope, justice, and flourishing will finally prevail. All creation will be perfectly united to God as its Creator, and all shall be well. But what does this mean for disabled people? The typical Christian answer through history has been that disability will not exist in the world to come. The advent of disability theology has given us reasons to doubt this answer. In response, Disability Theology and Eschatology: Hope, Justice, and Flourishing gathers together essays from established and emerging scholars alike to provide an extensive look at what it might mean to imagine disability as a part of humanity’s ultimate ends.^[1]

Now, I haven't read the book so I don't know what the contributor's arguments are but my first reaction is that indeed disabilities or physical handicaps will not be in the new heaven and the new earth. Any thoughts on disability theology?

DR. CRAIG: I have to confess that I've never heard of this before. It's extraordinary to me. At first blush it sounds incompatible with the resurrection body which Paul describes as glorious, powerful, imperishable, incorruptible. It's really hard to imagine people in the new heavens and the earth who are dealing with multiple sclerosis or other sorts of disabilities. So my initial reaction is skepticism. I think that for the disabled, the prospect of a world to come in which there will be complete healing and restoration is a tremendous hope to look forward to and not something you would want perpetuated for eternity.

KEVIN HARRIS: Again, I just kind of wanted to chase that rabbit a little bit since he is a contributor. Perhaps we can speak with him further on that; what it's all about. But in the meantime, we're going to look at some excerpts from the review that he wrote about Reasonable Faith^[2]. He writes,

William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics entered my life at an interesting time. I became aware of it as an undergraduate studying for a degree in religious studies at a public (and, therefore, secular) university. Though I was a Christian, I didn’t really think there were good ways for one to demonstrate or show to others that Christianity was true. Its truth, I thought, was simply a matter of faith. . . . but one couldn’t really argue for Christianity as such.

It sounds like he entered the university with a faulty yet common definition of faith.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, this idea that faith has to be a sort of blind, arational, criterionless leap in the dark is something that we would well be rid of. There is absolutely no incompatibility with having good reasons to believe in what you commit yourself to in faith. Faith is a way of trusting or a way of committing oneself, and that can be quite a rational thing to do.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next he writes,

My view of this issue started to change when I watched Craig’s debate with Christopher Hitchens at Biola University. Having previously been suckered in by the so-called new atheism, I was well familiar with the biting wit Hitchens often deployed against his interlocutors. I had also heard of Craig at this point, but I didn’t really know anything about him. Based on what certain internet atheists had relayed in the past, I had this impression of him as a kind of academic charlatan; someone who, cloaked in the robe of a couple foreign degrees, just peddled fundamentalist tropes like scientific denialism, brittle biblical literalism, and the like.

For this reason, I’d not watched the debate when it had originally happened.

Bill, I hate to tell you this, but there has, in fact, been a concerted effort to smear your name and prevent you from getting a fair hearing. It looks like in Dr. Davis' case it worked.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I think that among the sort of internet infidel crowd I'm regarded as either an idiot or a charlatan. Now, I can't be an idiot because my academic credentials are too good, and therefore it follows that I must be a charlatan – that I don't really believe the things that I say; that I'm an impostor. This attitude was very clearly expressed by Lawrence Krauss in our debates in Australia. I'm very pleased to say that by the end of that debate tour, Krauss came to me and said to me, “I want you to know that my impression of you has really changed.” He said, "I think that you really do sincerely believe the things that you say." I sort of laughed, and I said "Well, I guess coming from you that's high praise, and so I'll accept it." So I could still be an idiot, but at least I sincerely believe the things that I say, and therefore I'm not a charlatan!

KEVIN HARRIS: Aaron did eventually see the debate. He decided to give it a watch.

At the time, I was mainly interested in what I would make of Hitchens’s arguments now that I wasn’t an atheist anymore. But what I found in the debate was wildly surprising. Hitchens’s rhetoric was quite good as always, but it was all flash and no substance! There really wasn’t anything in the way of an argument he made throughout the whole debate.

Moreover, and to my astonishment, this Craig guy seemed to be running circles around ol’ Christopher! Far from a credential flaunter with little to show for it, Craig was saying things that seemed eminently reasonable to me. And so, I wondered what else he might have to say that could be of interest. This led me to purchasing my copy of Reasonable Faith.

The debate with Hitchens seems to always catch the algorithms of YouTube. It keeps it at the top of the searches. So it continues to make quite an impact.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. And what's remarkable about this is that I almost didn't do the debate! When Craig Hazen invited me to debate Christopher Hitchens at Biola, I declined because I figured that Hitchens would simply use his purple prose to make rhetorical denunciations of God as being like a North Korean dictator and all the rest. And I just didn't want to participate in an event like that. So I said to Craig, “Get somebody else to debate Hitchens. I don't care to do it.“ Well, they tried to find other people and were unsuccessful. He finally came back to me, and he said "Bill, please do this debate. The students are already on the hook for a $12,000 honorarium that they have to pay to Hitchens whether he does the debate or not. So we need you to step in and do this." So I reluctantly agreed, and it turned out to be, I think, one of the most fruitful decisions I've ever made because, as you say, because of Hitchens’ reputation so many people have watched that debate and been surprised at how well the Christian side does in this contest.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Davis next writes that he was “prepared to be disappointed” when he began your book. He had found apologetics books “lackluster” and “insulting”, as he put it, in the past, but you won him over big time. He writes,

Particularly enthralling to me was the way Craig held theology and philosophy together across the book’s span. For instance, Reasonable Faith walks from the cosmological argument for the existence of some sort of transcendent creator straight through to the specifics of Jesus’s resurrection. What’s being built in so doing is a cumulative case for Christian belief, not some sort of vain, proof-texted rationalization for things.

Bill, you've had to explain the importance of a cumulative case multiple times, but Aaron read your book and he got it.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. It presents a case that begins with a study of the human predicament that we face if there is no God, and then argues that, in fact, there are good reasons to believe that God exists, and that he has decisively revealed himself in the person of Jesus of Nazareth by raising him from the dead. As Aaron noticed, there's a nice integration in the book between philosophy and theology because I structure the book using the traditional loci of theology like doctrine of God, doctrine of creation, doctrine of Christ, and so forth. It's the same structure that I am using in my systematic philosophical theology, but in Reasonable Faith I use that structure in order to build a cumulative case for Christian theism.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next he says,

Additionally, when treating the topic of reformed epistemology — that is . . . the idea “that religious belief can be rational without any appeal to evidence or argument” — he didn’t do so in a philosophical vacuum. Instead, Christian ideas about the witness of the Holy Spirit and personal knowledge of God were specifically engaged to argue that knowing God could be rather like knowing one was sitting in a chair (i.e., not something you have to present arguments to be justified in believing, even if you could present arguments that you are, in fact, seated in the chair).

What do you think about that analogy? One can present arguments that one is sitting in a chair but one doesn't need to do that in order to justify that belief.

DR. CRAIG: That's exactly right. You could give testimonial evidence and photographic evidence of your sitting in the chair, but it's also something that you can know in a properly basic way. It is grounded in your experience. This idea of properly basic beliefs is one that I'm afraid the popular secular community still doesn't really understand. The idea is that these beliefs are rational. They are part of the deliverances of reason. But they are not inferences from some set of deeper beliefs that we hold. Rather, they are part of the very foundations of a person's system of beliefs. And they're not arbitrary because they're grounded in one's experience, and one is perfectly rational in holding these beliefs unless and until you have a defeater of those beliefs. So the question will be: Do we have defeaters of our Christian experience of the witness of the Holy Spirit and the knowledge of God?

KEVIN HARRIS: Then he writes,

After reading the book, I developed an insatiable hunger for more of this sort of approach to religious topics. It was quite different to what I’d encountered in my university studies, but it also resonated very strongly with the ways I seemed to naturally approach loci of inquiry. In this way, Reasonable Faith likely fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life.

. . .

Reasonable Faith changed things because it started me on a kind of intellectual path. I wanted to know more about what Craig said, so I read and watched more of his materials. But from there I wanted to know more about his interlocutors and those running in similar circles to him, so I started reading even more.

I can relate to this in so many ways. The only way to describe it is he got electrified.

DR. CRAIG: Oh, this is so humbling and so gratifying to think that this young man's life and the trajectory of his life was changed through reading this book. Truly, books can have that sort of life-changing significance for those who are serious readers. I think that reading Stuart Hackett's book The Resurrection of Theism, which first introduced me to the kalam cosmological argument, was similarly life-transforming for me and fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life to set me on the path that I continue to pursue today.

KEVIN HARRIS: Continuing, he says,

Further, I realized that I didn’t want to do this in an environment of secular religious studies like I’d done as an undergrad. There was nothing wrong with that work, and I’m still glad that I did it. However, Reasonable Faith played a strong role in showing me that what I was finding myself called towards wasn’t study for study’s sake. Rather, it was study for the sake of others, and particularly study for the sake of the Church. All this led me to my seminary studies and church work which, in turn, led to my PhD and onward to my renewed ministry now.

I think that's important – study for study's sake versus study for the sake of others. Have you had similar motivations?

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. I can really identify with Aaron's attitude here. For me, my primary calling as a Christian is to serve Christ and to see his Kingdom furthered and expanded. So I've often told folks I'm a philosopher because I'm a Christian. It is because of the calling that I sense on my life from God that I've pursued these philosophical studies. I would like to add one thing about what Aaron says, and that is I think it's valuable to have this combination of secular and Christian studies. In particular, I think it's good to have a strong foundation laid through studying under Christian professors like those at Talbot School of Theology which will give you a good framework in which to pursue further studies. Then what you do is you go on from there to the finest secular universities like Cambridge or Oxford or Duke or USC or wherever, and you do then your terminal degree at a top secular institution. And that will give you a good combination of both Christian and secular education.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next up, Aaron says,

So, Reasonable Faith really lived up to its title for me: it showed me that Christian faith can truly be reasonable, and in so doing it heavily influenced my life as a Christian scholar. But there’s another thing that Craig’s work showed me which has been highly impactful too. Particularly, in his writings, lectures, and debates I saw how one might effectively engage in reasonable disagreement as well. And this, I think, is something which we’re scandalously short on throughout our lives today.

. . .

Instead, you’ll find a sincere attempt to grasp what it is the person he’s interacting with means by their claims. In so doing, Craig’s work can often serve as a model for how one might genuinely understand their interlocutor’s arguments. . . . Too often the picture painted by our culture is that if someone disagrees with another person then one of them’s got to be obviously deluded, or self-deceiving, or acting in bad faith, or some other such nefarious thing.

That's quite a compliment, Bill. He's taking to heart your encouragement to represent a person's work charitably – to be charitable.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, that's right. He talks not only about reasonable faith but reasonable disagreement, and this was not something that I anticipated that he would get from my work or the book. I'm flattered and thrilled that he has. I can be a harsh critic sometimes of views that I disagree with, but I think it's always important that we treat the person with the respect and charity that Jesus Christ would have us exemplify.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's his conclusion. He says,

To be sure, you can’t always argue someone into or out of a particular position. This is especially the case if they didn’t argue themselves to their conclusions in the first place!

I want to stop right there for just a minute. I hear both of those contentions quite often. You can't argue someone into a position – and, to be fair, he said you can't always argue someone into a position.

DR. CRAIG: Right – “always.”

KEVIN HARRIS: And especially if they didn't argue themselves into the position. I hear that a lot. Do we have to downplay an intellectual approach in order to reach some people?

DR. CRAIG: I think that certainly is true. I think that sometimes Christian apologists can be overzealous in going immediately to sharing arguments and evidence when the other person isn't interested in that or these sorts of approaches wouldn't work with him. I think you only advert to apologetic arguments when your interlocutor either has questions or objections to what you're sharing with him. But our goal is not to win arguments. Our goal is to win people, and with many people it may not be necessary or useful to appeal to apologetics.

KEVIN HARRIS: He continues in his conclusion,

However, as followers of Jesus I think it’s crucial that we be able to engage with people on their own terms rather than on the basis of straw men we whip together in our minds. There’s a need for us to demonstrate that our faith, both intellectually and as it’s made manifest in our lives, is a reasonable thing. And, for my part, Reasonable Faith has been a key part of striving to live a life which demonstrates this fact.

That's a real sweet note to end on, but as we conclude he's talking about two different modes of presenting a witness for Christ. One perhaps purely intellectual and one, as he says, as it's made manifest in our lives. I see both of those as so intertwined it's difficult for me to separate them sometimes.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. But I think we can often sense with the person we're talking to that it would be inappropriate to advert to apologetic arguments and evidence. For example, someone who is really hurting emotionally and is bitter with God or bitter with the Christian church for what he or she has suffered perhaps needs a loving listening ear, a sympathetic person, more than arguments in answer to the problem of evil and suffering, if you see what I mean. So I do think we need to be sensitive to the person that we're interacting with in meeting them where they are and not trying to impose our agenda on them. Now, I would like to say in conclusion that Aaron Davis has gone on himself to be a very fine Christian philosopher. He hosted a panel discussion at last year's Evangelical Philosophical Society on my book Atonement and the Death of Christ, and his insights into that book and vicarious punishment were illuminating to me. They really directed my attention into new avenues, and so I'm grateful to Aaron Davis for his own work in the philosophy of religion.^[3]