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The Supreme Court Appointment

November 03, 2020
The Supreme Court Appointment

Summary

Dr. Craig shares thoughts on the recent Supreme Court appointment and what it means for the future of the USA.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig, you survived the storm! You had the remnants of the hurricane come through town and kind of knocked you back to the stone age for a while there with a loss of electricity.

DR. CRAIG: Oh, it did! 36 hours without electricity. So we kept that refrigerator and freezer shut and didn’t open it. I had to go to the church to do my work because we had no Internet. It knocked down trees in the neighborhood, too. Electrical lines were down. It was difficult to even get out of our neighborhood because we had to take such back circuitous routes. It was amazing that this Hurricane Zeta so far from the coast could have such an impact, but these winds were fierce.

KEVIN HARRIS: If we were superstitious we would blame it on 2020, I guess. It's been kind of par for the course. We have in place right now something that’s very meaningful to us at Reasonable Faith, and that is the matching grant that we do every year. It's an opportunity for people to double their impact. We appreciate people who pray for Reasonable Faith, for you and Jan, for all the freelancers, and everyone involved, and to bless this ministry financially. The matching grant – Bill, someone has put into place a matching grant. Whatever you give, they double.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. And we've been able to raise a $300,000 match this year which is the highest we've ever done before. The reason for that is because Reasonable Faith is embarking on this monumental new project of establishing a William Lane Craig Center for Christian Philosophy, Theology, and Apologetics that we hope to affiliate with an accredited Christian university or seminary which will offer a full curriculum of courses based on my work at the M. A. level, at the B. A. level, and then certificate courses for laymen who aren't interested in pursuing a formal academic degree. This is going to cost us about $120,000 a year for the first two years to establish such a center. So this year the matching grant is extra important because this is all over and above budget – this money that we need to raise.

KEVIN HARRIS: Very good. How exciting! A legacy for Reasonable Faith.

DR. CRAIG: That's the intention. The idea here is to have a legacy that will last for years and years to come after I'm no longer active. This idea of a curriculum and a center with accredited courses is just a wonderful way of preserving a legacy of a lifetime of work.

KEVIN HARRIS: Very good. There's someone who wrote something on Facebook that I wanted to relate to you. Bill Gingras said,

This was the dedication by William Lane Craig to J. P. Moreland for the book Time and Eternity. I suppose it was when J. P. was struggling through his bout with anxiety. This is beautiful and such beauty is far too rare but I have come to expect beautiful things from such a beautiful man as William Lane Craig. No doubt the beauty is due to the powerful work of God on Dr. Craig's willing heart. Thank you, Dr. Craig, for your kind encouragement, and to you also, Dr. Moreland, for proving him right.

What you wrote in the prelude is, “For J. P. Moreland, Colleague and Friend, ‘a mighty man of valor . . . and the LORD is with him’ (1 Sam. 16:18)”. As I understand, just quickly, J. P. is doing much better these days.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. He has fought off three different types of cancer in his body and is continuing to teach and be active. He is irrepressible. He truly is like one of David's mighty men that were so fabled in the monarchy in Israel. It's a privilege to be partnered with him at Talbot School of Theology.

KEVIN HARRIS: Kyle Barrington wrote this on Facebook,

I am convinced that Dr. William Lane Craig has, together with his wife Jan, rescued an entire generation from the allure of atheism and the plight of Christian anti-intellectualism. I am one of those people Dr. Craig rescued. Without his work I would have returned to atheism. Without his work I would have never developed a direction for my life. Without his work I would have never picked up a book to read in my leisure time. Without his work, I would have never taken seriously the great commission. Dr. Craig, I and likely millions of others are eternally indebted to you. You don't know it, but without you faithfully obeying Christ some of us would still be wandering aimlessly in the hell of nihilistic absurdity. Thank you for everything.

Now, Bill, I know it's very humbling for me to read that to you, and it's difficult to respond. But I did want to pass that along to you.

DR. CRAIG: Well, thank you. I hadn't seen either of those Facebook posts, and that post is so meaningful to me. I would that it were true because we are living in a time of increasing secularization, a time when those who claim no religious affiliation is constantly going up, and sometimes I just feel so ineffectual in stemming this tide. But we're doing all we can, and this podcast with you is one of those endeavors.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we're recording this we are on the cusp of the presidential election, and some significant things have happened this year. Can I get you to comment on for a little bit – I'm sure that you've watched the appointment of Amy C. Barrett to the Supreme Court and also the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. What kind of shift do you see here going on?

DR. CRAIG: You know, President Trump liked to say that the 2020 election was more significant than the 2016 election. I don't think that that's true at all. The 2016 election gave him the opportunity to appoint three Supreme Court justices instead of Hillary Clinton appointing those three justices. The difference is like night and day and is going to be felt for generations to come. Her confirmation – Amy Barrett's confirmation – I think is tremendously significant in tipping the balance on the court. Ginsburg was one of the most liberal pro-abortion, anti-marriage justices that was on the court. By all accounts Amy Barrett is a strict constructionist in the mold of Antonin Scalia. We hope that she will vote in the way that Scalia did, that she will be a strict constitutionalist. A lot of people like to say that the court has had a conservative majority for many years. I think that is a modern myth. That is not at all true. No court which chooses to reaffirm again and again Roe v. Wade – abortion-on-demand – or which dares to redefine traditional marriage so that it is not essentially a heterosexual union is not a conservative court. The fact is that the swing votes like Anthony Kennedy and now unfortunately John Roberts has tilted the court to the political left. Now with the death of Ginsburg and the appointment of Amy Barrett it is very possible that the balance will finally shift to a conservative majority. One can only hope and pray that some of these gross injustices will be eroded and perhaps rectified.

KEVIN HARRIS: Barrett is a strict constructionist, as you point out. Does that mean she leans away from using the court to legislate policy and things like that, but just interprets it?

DR. CRAIG: Yes, that's exactly right. She will want to ask what was the intention of the original founders of our government in establishing the Constitution. Scalia was famous for saying, “I don't think the Constitution is a living document. It looks pretty dead to me.” It had an original meaning, and that's what the justices are tasked to interpret – not to try to update it in light of modern concerns. Now, of course, it needs to be applied to new situations but you don't, as you put it, legislate from the bench by inventing rights and privileges that didn't exist. For example, the way in which the Court read into the American Constitution the right to abortion-on-demand is just fanciful. It is outrageous to think that the original founders could have had in mind a right to privacy that would include the right to abortion-on-demand. This is something that needs to be settled by the people and not by five lawyers who have been appointed to the Supreme Court.

KEVIN HARRIS: That's kind of the elephant in the room, too. Do you have any thoughts on what you think might happen with Roe v. Wade?

DR. CRAIG: You know, this became so clear in the hearings for Justice Barrett, didn't it? The objections by the opposition were not based on her lack of qualifications or judicial inexpertise or incompetence. They were explicitly based on policy considerations – that she would overturn Roe v. Wade. Or that she would undermine Obamacare. There wasn't even an attempt to mask the fact that they were voting on her based on policy considerations rather than her qualifications to be a justice of the Supreme Court. And to my mind, I can only say I hope that she does overturn Roe v. Wade. I sincerely hope and pray that the Court will say this was bad law. This was bad constitutional law and that therefore this issue needs to go back to the states to decide on a state-by-state basis. It is interesting. I noticed with some surprise that Ruth Ginsburg actually condemned the boldness of Roe v. Wade because it promoted divisiveness. She said it would have been better if this had been decided on a state-by-state basis. She said this in March of 1993. So Ginsburg believed that if this had been left in the hands of the states then gradually state by state abortion would have been legalized in the United States gradually. But what happened was this was imposed by these five justices on the Supreme Court and as a result it has served to promote divisiveness, and this issue has never died ever since 1973 when the Court approved this abortion ruling. So I'm not confident that she's right that if it were returned to the states that there would not be significant resistance to abortion-on-demand in various states. I think the fact that state after state has tried to pass laws restricting abortion-on-demand and that the Court has struck them down again and again shows that there is considerable sympathy among the American population for pro-life stances. In fact since Roe v. Wade, public opinion has really changed so that, according at least to the surveys that I've seen, the majority of people do take a pro-life stance today. I think the advance of science and inter-uterine photography of the developing fetus in the womb has just made it increasingly difficult to deny the fact that we are dealing here with a human being – an autonomous human being – who, as a human being, has inherent human dignity, moral worth, and intrinsic human rights – the first of which and most fundamental of which (according to the Declaration of Independence) is the right to life.

KEVIN HARRIS: In conclusion today, that might be a nice segue into especially our Democrat friends who say, “Follow the science; believe the science” when it comes to COVID. When it comes to the pandemic, we need to follow the scientists. But yet the same people are saying, “Well, yeah, but when it comes to abortion ignore the science.” There's kind of a glaring contradiction there.

DR. CRAIG: A glaring contradiction! Even Ginsburg herself was on record as saying that at the end of the day it's the woman's body and therefore she has the right to control it and have abortion on demand. And that is scientific poppycock. The idea that the developing fetus is a part of the woman's body, akin to an appendix say, is biological nonsense. This is an autonomous human being that is growing inside the womb of the mother and which will eventually be born and become an adult member of the species if it is not terminated first. So this is a slogan that is used by pro-abortion-on-demand advocates, but it has absolutely no scientific merit. So I'm absolutely convinced that this is not a sectarian or religious issue. This is a scientific and philosophical issue. There are two questions which control here. Number one: Is the developing fetus a human being? And two: Does a human being have intrinsic moral value? The first is a scientific question; the second is a philosophical or ethical question. It seems to me that the answer to both is “yes.” It is indisputable that the developing fetus is a human being – a member of the human species in the early stage of its development. And, secondly, human beings do have intrinsic moral value and therefore inherent human rights that are guaranteed, as I say, in the Declaration of Independence. So this is not an issue that is religious in nature although certainly Christians have been at the forefront of the pro-life movement. This is a philosophical and scientific question which I think powerfully supports the fact that the life of the unborn has intrinsic moral worth and therefore cannot be terminated without some sort of sufficient, justifying, overriding moral consideration such as saving the life of the mother should she die in childbirth.

KEVIN HARRIS: Once again we want to remind everyone that whatever you give for the ongoing work of Reasonable Faith during the month of November and December will be doubled by a matching grant up to $300,000. You can go to ReasonableFaith.org and give there. We certainly appreciate your giving and your prayers. Take advantage. Whatever you give will be doubled up to $300,000 during the month of November and December. Dr. Craig will see you next time.[1]

 

[1]           Total Running Time: 18:16 (Copyright © 2020 William Lane Craig)