"Seven Heresies of William Lane Craig"? Dr. Craig Fact Checks!

Kevin Harris: Well, Bill, there’s an AI photo of you on a little graphic that’s been circulating called “Seven Heretical Teachings of Dr. William Lane Craig.” I can’t locate the source, but I’ve seen it on several platforms, and we’re going to look at this little heretical laundry list. But before we do, the term “heresy” gets thrown around a lot online, often as a synonym for “any view I disagree with” but how do we actually define heresy? And, of course, that brings up who has the authority to declare something heretical.

Dr. Craig: I think that is an enormous problem here. As we go through the list, we’ll see that many of these so-called heresies are just things that don’t fit the author’s theological framework. Usually, heresies would be defined in terms of the great ecumenical councils, such as the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Chalcedon. Someone who contravenes the teachings of those councils would be said to be a heretic. But I have to say, as a Protestant who thinks that these councils do not have ultimate authority, who thinks that ultimate authority is lodged in inspired Scripture, I think that even the declarations of these ecumenical councils need to be assessed in terms of their faithfulness to Scripture. And if they are unscriptural, then I do not think anyone is obligated to believe in them.

It’s ironic that I noticed that missing from this list is the one heresy that would probably be a genuine heresy with respect to what I think. And that is that I am skeptical about the Nicene doctrine of the procession of the persons of the Trinity. The Council of Nicaea holds that the second person of the Trinity – Christ – is begotten in his divine nature from the Father; not simply in his human nature, but that in his divine nature, he proceeds eternally from the Father. And that makes the second person of the Trinity a contingent being rather than necessary and self-existent. And so I have real questions about that element of the Nicene Creed. And yet, ironically, that one is not mentioned on the list.

Kevin Harris: The first charge targets your Neo-Apollinarian model of the incarnation and the idea that the divine Logos supplies the rational willing center of Christ’s human nature rather than Christ possessing a separate human soul and will. If you would, expand on that definition, and then we’ll see what the critics say in this little publication.

Dr. Craig: The idea here is that in order to have a genuine incarnation and not just the indwelling of God in a person akin to demonic possession or the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in us, there needs to be some sort of common constituent linking the divine nature and the human nature of Christ. And so the proposal here is that the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, is the human soul of Jesus Christ. And thus the Logos is truly God in the flesh.

Kevin Harris: So the headline charge is Neo-Apollinarian Christology. Critics say that by having the Logos take the place of a human soul or mind, you’re reviving a heresy condemned at the First Council of Constantinople in 381, that Christ doesn’t have a genuinely complete human nature. You said you affirm Chalcedon’s one-person, two-natures formula, and that Christ has a complete human nature. Walk us through how those two claims fit together, why you think your view escapes the ancient condemnation of Apollinarius rather than merely relabeling it.

Dr. Craig: This is a charge on which I have to plead not guilty. Apollinarius’ mistake was saying that the Logos replaced the human soul of Christ so that Christ did not have a human soul. The view that I and several others have defended is that the Logos is the human soul of Jesus Christ. The difference here is between a replacement thesis and an identity thesis. Those are not the same thing. For example, if I say that Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain, I’m not saying that Samuel Clemens somehow replaced Mark Twain. I’m saying that they’re identical. They’re the same person. Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain. So there’s a difference between a replacement thesis and an identity thesis. My claim is different than Apollinarius in that I affirm that Christ did indeed have a human soul, and that that soul was identical to the Logos.

Kevin Harris: And then there’s the second charge following from the first. By locating will and rationality in the person rather than in each nature, you end up affirming one will in Christ, not two, which critics call Monothelitism, rejected as heretical at the Third Council of Constantinople in 681. And your concern is that two wills belonging to two natures risks two willing subjects effectively. Expand on that if you would.

Dr. Craig: All right. It seems to me that the will is a function of a person, not of a nature. Natures don’t will things. Persons will things. And so if Christ has two wills, it seems to me that that makes him two persons. And that is the heresy of Nestorianism, which was condemned. So, I don’t think that this very late council, which is generally regarded as one of the least authoritative of the ecumenical councils, got it right in affirming Dyothelitism instead of Monothelitism. It seems to me that the correct view is that Christ has two complete natures, but he is one person and therefore has one will.

Kevin Harris: Is this a philosophical dispute about what a “will” even is? Did they intend something different?

Dr. Craig: Yes, I think it is. If you redefine what the will is in such a way that, say, the human nature has certain rational faculties, then I don’t have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the idea that there are two willings going on in Christ: one a human willing and one a divine willing. I do not see how you can have that conception of will without having two persons.

Kevin Harris: The author in this graphic is apparently appealing to ecumenical councils that Catholic, Orthodox, and most Protestant confessions treat as binding articulations of orthodoxy. How do we view the councils of church history? Do they leave room for interpretation, or do we strictly adhere to them?

Dr. Craig: Oh, this author is much, much narrower than that. He is affirming as heresies things that are permitted by the ecumenical councils. So he’s much narrower. But as I’ve already explained, I think that as Protestants who believe in sola scriptura, that Scripture alone is our ultimate authority inspired by God, we have to judge even the ecumenical councils by the teaching of Scripture. And if they do not have the support of Scripture, then we’re free to believe them if we want to, but we’re also free to abstain from believing anything that they would pronounce that is not supported by scriptural teaching.

Kevin Harris: Well, you know, I think the author of this graphic is showing us his true colors. The next charge is your defense of Molinism, the idea that God has middle knowledge of what every possible free creature would do in any circumstance, which preserves libertarian free will. Reformed critics say this makes salvation ultimately depend on human choice in a way that undercuts God’s sovereign decree and looks more like Semi-Pelagianism than a Reformed account of grace. Is that a fair characterization of Molinism in light of Reformed thinkers?

Dr. Craig: Here I think you’re right. We do see the narrowness of this author’s perspective if he thinks that Molinism is a heresy. The Catholic Church investigated Molina’s teaching over years and finally the Pope determined that both Molinism and its opposite, the Thomistic view, are acceptable doctrines in the Christian church. It’s an open question. Now, Molinism is more like Semi-Pelagianism in the sense that it affirms human freedom as opposed to universal divine determinism like the Reformed view. And if we’re calling people heretics, I would say that the Reformed view of universal divine determinism is bordering on heresy much, much more than Molinism because it makes God the author of sin.

Kevin Harris: Next up, charge number four says that you downplay original sin or at least its traditional implications, namely inherited guilt, total depravity. Review for us your actual position on how Adam’s sin affects the rest of humanity. And do you think inherited guilt as classically formulated is itself biblically or philosophically defensible?

Dr. Craig: Again we see here the narrowness of this author because no ecumenical creed has pronounced on the doctrine of original sin. And so, for example, the Eastern Orthodox Church doesn’t accept the doctrine of inherited guilt, the imputation of Adam’s sin to every one of his descendants. The Eastern Orthodox do accept the corruption of human nature as a result of Adam’s sin, but they do not accept the doctrine of original guilt imputed to every descendant of Adam.

So again, this is a view on which Christians have a variety of viewpoints. My own position that I’ve defended in volume three of my Systematic Philosophical Theology is that neither the doctrine of original guilt nor the doctrine of a corruption of human nature somehow passed on biologically is biblical. I don’t think the Bible teaches either one of those. But what I am happy with is a view that was propounded by Thomas Aquinas according to which Adam and Eve in their prefall condition had a superadded gift of divine righteousness, superadded grace. I would identify this with the indwelling and fullness of the Holy Spirit. And this superadded grace enabled them to control their bodily passions and desires in such a way as to live sinlessly.

But when they disobeyed God and fell into sin, they lost this superadded gift of grace. They, as it were, quenched the Holy Spirit. They were no longer filled with the Holy Spirit, and as a result, they became unable to control their bodily impulses and passions that lead to sin. So human nature, I would say, is not depraved but it is deprived. It is deprived of the superadded grace that Adam and Eve had prior to the fall. And that’s why our bodies seem so out of control, why we have such difficulty with the lusts of the flesh and so forth, is because the rational soul is not fully in control of bodily passions in this postfall state. And so that would explain the transmission of sin from one generation to the next as well as the universality of sin among humanity. But it does so without appealing to the doctrines of the imputation of original guilt or a corruption of human nature.

Kevin Harris: Up next, this person does not like your view of God’s being timeless sans creation but entering into time at creation. He says that this attacks God’s immutability.

Dr. Craig: This is ridiculous. The Bible itself presents God as existing in time. He who was and is and is to come. Before the mountains were brought forth, wherever thou hast formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Psalm 90:2. So it’s just really beyond the pale to say that someone who believes that God is in time is heretical.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, I think we’re figuring out here that this graphic implies that anything that disagrees with Calvinism is a heresy. Charge six is your rejection of limited atonement and unconditional election, core planks of five-point Calvinism. You argue that these doctrines make God the author of evil by decreeing some people’s damnation. Calvinists would respond that you’re the one compromising divine sovereignty by making God’s saving purposes contingent on creaturely response. Are these disagreements strong enough to be categorized as heresy? I mean, even though in online battles some non-Calvinists certainly dish it out and accuse Calvinists of heresy as well, especially when it comes to God’s being the author of evil. There’s some real battles that go on.

Dr. Craig: I do think it would be heretical to affirm that God is the author of evil, but Calvinists will attempt to avoid that inference by denying it. The question will be whether or not they’re successful in doing so given their affirmation of universal divine causal determinism. As for the doctrine of limited atonement, this is the doctrine that Christ did not die for all people, but only died for the elect. He only died for the sins of the church. And I think that doctrine is clearly unbiblical. 1 John chapter 2 says that Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not for our sins only but for the sins of the whole world.

As for unconditional election, I accept unconditional election. I think that’s true. But I hold that election is primarily corporate in nature and only secondarily individual. That is to say, what God has elected is a body of people, a group of people, a church. And those who choose to have faith in Christ become members of this corporate body and in that sense can be said to be elect in virtue of their identification with the elect corporate group. And I think that that makes the best sense of the teaching of the Bible concerning unconditional election.

Kevin Harris: Finally, charge number seven claims that you’re open to the unevangelized being saved through their response to general revelation, responding to the light that they have without ever having heard the gospel explicitly and that this undercuts the necessity of explicit faith in Christ for salvation. Many of our listeners are aware of your response and views on this, but review it if you would.

Dr. Craig: I think it’s very clear that the Bible does not require explicit faith in Christ in order for a person to be saved. Just think of people in the Old Testament who lived prior to the time of Christ. Abraham and Moses and King David were not saved through explicit faith in Christ. Rather, they were saved because they responded affirmatively in faith to the light that they had.

And so I think that God will judge people on the basis of the light that they do have. And in the case of general revelation, all persons are responsible for believing at least that there is an eternal and powerful creator of the universe who is the source of the moral law that is written on the hearts of all men. And God will judge them on the basis of how they’ve responded to that light of general revelation.

Notice what Jesus himself said. He said that “anyone who acknowledges me before men will be acknowledged before the angels of God.” But he did not say, “anyone who does not acknowledge me before men will not be acknowledged before the angels of God.” What did he say? He said, “Anyone who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” So, anyone who acknowledges Christ will be acknowledged before the angels of God. Anyone who denies him will be denied before the angels of God. But there are persons who have never heard of Christ and therefore never denied him and therefore who may well be acknowledged before the angels of God on the basis of their response to the light that they do have.

Kevin Harris: As we wrap it up today, it’s maddening how these little circulating graphics can just be absorbed by someone who glances at it. By the way, it’s a really good AI picture of you.

Dr. Craig: I wondered about that. So, they kind of aged me, didn’t they, in this thing?

Kevin Harris: I think so. Yeah. And I hate when that happens.

Dr. Craig: When I saw that, I thought, “Is that how I look?”

Kevin Harris: Usually, when I do an AI picture, just experimenting, it makes me look a lot better than I do. But sometimes no. Now it’s our fault if we just assume that the slick photo and well-designed graphic is telling the truth or skipping the nuances of someone’s view. So I suppose that all of us must guard against these things and know the difference between essential and peripheral doctrinal issues.

Dr. Craig: Oh yes. I think that is so true. For me, I don’t call something a heresy unless I think it separates a person from salvation. In order to be a heretic, you have to believe something so seriously wrong that it separates you from salvation. And when you think about it, there are very, very few doctrines that are below the cutoff line, so to speak. I think the doctrine that God exists, the deity of Christ, that Christ died for our sins, that he rose from the dead, all of those have to be believed. If you don’t believe those things, you don’t make the cutoff line. But for most other doctrines, even though they’re true, they’re not such that you have to believe them at the expense of losing your salvation.

Kevin Harris: Dr. Craig has just hit a milestone. He just published his 1,000th question of the week. The question of the week is a very popular feature on the Reasonable Faith website. And just in case you’ve never clicked on it, once a week, Dr. Craig picks out a question he’s received and gives an answer. He just answered his 1,000th question. And you can check out all the past questions of the week as well. We’ve got them archived. Really great resource, very educational. And so, what was the 1,000th question of the week? Well, you’ll have to go to ReasonableFaith.org and check it out. As you know, from time to time, we do a podcast on some additional questions that Dr. Craig has received. So, be sure and listen for your question – it may come up.