Volume One of Dr. Craig's Systematic Philosophical Theology Part One

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, Bill, after at least four years of work, Volume 1 of your Systematic Philosophical Theology is being released in the UK and due to be released in the U.S. in March of this year from Wiley-Blackwell Publishers. We'll unpack some terms like “systematic” and the importance of systematic philosophical theology just a little bit later in this podcast, but you must be pretty excited about this release.

DR. CRAIG: I really am. It's been a long wait, and I am so excited to see the book finally appear.

KEVIN HARRIS: We want to take the next several podcasts and discuss the contents of Volume 1. But I know that people are interested in the whole venture: the genesis of the project, your writing process, finding a publisher, and so on. Let's start at the beginning. When did you decide that it was time to start writing and publishing this multivolume work?

DR. CRAIG: It was after I finished my work on divine aseity, and I thought at that time that this was a project that I should tackle. Several people were instrumental in encouraging me to undertake this. The first time I heard or conceived of a systematic philosophical theology was in conversation with my doctoral mentor John Hick when I was working under him at the University of Birmingham. I asked Professor Hick what his next project was going to be, and he said that he was thinking about writing a systematic philosophical theology. I was so struck by that. I had never heard of such a thing. It seemed to me like an incredibly creative and helpful project. Well, Hick never in fact undertook that project, but that was tucked away in the back of my mind ever since that day. Jan really encouraged me to undertake this project, and begin to do it. J. P. Moreland, my colleague out at Talbot, was instrumental in helping to place the book at Wiley-Blackwell. He had recently published his book The Substance of Consciousness with Wiley-Blackwell and had contacts with the editorial staff, and so he strongly encouraged them to take a look at my proposal. And they did so, and wound up giving me a contract for the whole multivolume series, which was just extraordinary.

KEVIN HARRIS: Did you plan for it to be four or five volumes, or did that emerge after you outlined everything?

DR. CRAIG: I knew that it would be probably five or more volumes when I began the project because I've been teaching on this material for years in my Defenders lectures and so I have a good idea of the breadth of the subject matter that needs to be covered in such a systematic theology. So when I began I thought this is probably going to take me 8 to 10 years to complete, and it'll probably be at least five volumes.

KEVIN HARRIS: You decided to release each volume as it was completed rather than the whole set. Is that right? Did you want to do it as each volume was completed? Most of the time people will put out an entire set, and then when it's all done they'll put it out there.

DR. CRAIG: That was a decision that I reached with Wiley-Blackwell. I didn't know whether I should wait until the whole thing was done and then try to get a contract on it, or try to get a contract on just the first volume. The advantage of having the whole book completed or the whole series completed is that the publisher then knows exactly what they're getting, and they can commit to doing it. And you can revise the earlier parts that you might have changed your mind about by the time you get to the last volume or so. The disadvantage of that is that it takes so long and you have no assurance of ever finishing it, in fact. Death or illness could intervene and this project might be aborted. So the idea of doing it piecemeal – volume by volume – was attractive because then at least you're producing something, you're getting it out there, and that will be there permanently. The difficulty is finding a publisher who would commit to such an enormous project. I think that was what was so extraordinary about Wiley-Blackwell was on the basis of the proposal and the referee reports they were willing to commit to doing the entire series and issuing one volume at a time. So that was the approach we decided to take.

KEVIN HARRIS: I would think it would be less taxing to just compile all your work into these volumes, but it looks like you've done additional reading and added some new material to your existing work. Talk about how that happened.

DR. CRAIG: I did not want this book to be simply a compilation of previously published essays and excerpts from books. I wanted this to be cutting edge material, and so with respect to every topic I deal with in these volumes I am updating the discussion to take into account the current work, even work that isn't published yet that is still forthcoming that colleagues have made available to me. I think this makes the book much more valuable because it will be fresh, new material that's been rethought. It's deeper, and it is more cutting edge.

KEVIN HARRIS: There are probably lots of examples here, but maybe a few examples off the top of your head of some new insights or additional material that you discovered during this process that you can pass along.

DR. CRAIG: Sure. In Volume 1, in particular, I think differentiating carefully the different fields of theology was very helpful to distinguish systematic theology from biblical theology from historical theology and from philosophical theology, and then to talk about the relationship between systematic philosophical theology and philosophy of religion. For me, as a philosopher and theologian, that was very important to get these different disciplines straightened out because one of the things that makes this work unique is its integration of biblical, historical, and philosophical theology into one systematic whole. There's virtually nothing else like that in the current market. Also in Volume 1, in the locus on faith, the notion of some Christian philosophers that saving faith does not involve belief in certain truths was really surprising to me and was the source of a great deal of reflection. In order to have saving Christian faith, do you have to believe, not simply in Christ, but believe certain truths about Christ? It was quite a surprise to me to see a number of Christian philosophers say that faith does not imply belief. Then in Volume 2A, the material on divine omnipresence (God's relationship to space) was very new and provocative. And the material on divine goodness was also very thought-provoking. In Volume 2B, the realization during my hospitalization for COVID-19 was game-changing – that the claim of those who deny the Trinity is based upon an anachronistic attribution of the modern relation of identity to ancient authors who in fact had no grasp of the modern relation of identity. These Unitarian thinkers mistakenly interpret statements like “The Son is God” or “The Father is God” to be identity statements, and exposing that error, I think, was a major insight for me in the section on the Trinity. So those are just a few of the new insights that came to me in the course of writing these volumes. I have to say that I feel like I'm a student again. I'm learning new things every month as I study for these different theological loci, and so it's been an exhilarating experience to have these new insights and new thoughts.

KEVIN HARRIS: By the way, we've talked about the covers of some of your books. I like the red and black design of this cover. Did you have any input on the design here?

DR. CRAIG: I did. I felt for a long time that authors ought to take some ownership of the covers on their books to make sure they're really attractive. So if you look at some of my books, like In Quest of the Historical Adam, or Atonement and the Death of Christ, or God Over All, they have beautiful paintings or woodcuts that are illustrative of the cover. And for this one Wiley-Blackwell made a number of proposals. I, like you, really liked the red and black. I love the bright contrast, and I like the sort of authoritative, substantive look to it. It's not frivolous in any way. This is a real classical look. The different covers will have different colors. We are going to use red for Volume 1, then blue for Volume 2, and then green for Volume 3. So when they're on the shelf it will present a very nice visual image in your library to have these color-coded volumes.

KEVIN HARRIS: Very striking. I'm looking here. Volume 1 is only $65. That's very affordable for a volume like this. Is that the price?

DR. CRAIG: That is correct. I was just astonished to learn that just this November. I was telling people that this book would be at least $135 because the print run on academic books is typically very small. Because they're not profitable, the prices have to be very high. But Wiley-Blackwell made this decision all on their own. They want this book to sell, and so they have put this really low price on a hardcover book. This is not a paperback. This is a hard cover. So I'm just thrilled that they're making it available at a $65 price.

KEVIN HARRIS: I was looking through the table of contents and on the dedication page it’s dedicated to Jan. That's kind of a no-brainer there, I would think.

DR. CRAIG: It was. I've dedicated books to her before, but how could you do it to anyone else when this is your life's work that she has helped me with and encouraged me so strongly to write. That had to be the person to whom it was dedicated.

KEVIN HARRIS: You've been in demand for interviews. I doubt those slowed down. You've been talking about the release of this. You've listed four basic characteristics of systematic theology. Can you synopsize those for us?

DR. CRAIG: Yes. What is characteristic of systematic theology is:

1. It is organized or structured typically according to certain themes.
2. It draws upon both authoritative Scriptures as well as all relevant secular disciplines.
3. It aims at completeness, enunciating at least the broad outlines of a synoptic worldview.
4. It offers and defends, insofar as it can, a logically coherent formulation of its worldview.

Those would be the components that go to make up this systematic theology as well.

KEVIN HARRIS: You touched on this earlier. You've said that systematic philosophical theologies are rare, at least on the contemporary scene. I'm thinking back, too. Most of the time if you're in seminary or you’re ordering books, it's just systematic theology.

DR. CRAIG: Yes.

KEVIN HARRIS: Expand on that some more. Why is it rare when you add in the philosophical part?

DR. CRAIG: Medieval systematic theologies were very philosophical. One thinks, for example, of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae. But on the contemporary scene, systematic theologians tend to be biblical scholars or historical scholars (The History of Dogma). But they do not generally have a philosophical education. So there are very few contemporary systematic theologians who have written a systematic philosophical theology. Probably the closest example would be the scattered volumes of Richard Swinburne which sort of act as a de facto systematic theology but was never really compiled into a unity. It wasn't really synthesized. It's just these separate individual volumes covering a range of Christian doctrine.

KEVIN HARRIS: How did you decide what topics to include and what to leave out? That sounds to me like the hard part. I'd be scratching my head forever trying to narrow it all down.

DR. CRAIG: I was guided in my choice of theological topics by my preparation for my oral exams in systematic theology at the University of Munich. I obtained the study notes of theology students at the university for these oral exams in systematic theology. It laid out the classical so-called loci communes (or common places, or chief themes) of systematic theology such as revelation, God, creation, man, Christ, salvation, and so forth. I thought I would write a systematic theology that would use the loci communes as the template for my various volumes. In each of these loci, what you discover is that philosophical issues arise in every one of them. They are just bristling with interesting philosophical questions, especially the doctrine of God. So in exploring each of these I would simply look into those principal questions that are debated among Christian philosophers in the literature today.

KEVIN HARRIS: Being that this is a sizable project, I'm curious how much time you devote to it during your work week. At least in Volume 1, how much time you devoted to that? Did you designate time every day or only on specific days? And are you still maintaining that particular discipline?

DR. CRAIG: I have quit traveling and speaking. I still record these podcasts with you and do some other social media interviews on occasion. I write a question of the week every week. But for the most part, this is a full-time endeavor. From the time I get to my office in the morning until the time that I'm finishing up in the evening, I spend it working on this systematic philosophical theology. It's really become something of a magnificent obsession for me. It's filled my time. But, as I say, it's been so exhilarating that one doesn't get tired of it. But it's something that I'm still passionate about.

KEVIN HARRIS: Have you projected a timeline? How much longer do you think before it's completed? Do you have an idea?

DR. CRAIG: I am very encouraged with my progress, and so I'm hoping to finish Volume 4 soon, and then I would say Volume 5 should be written in two years. So I will finish ahead of schedule, I think.

KEVIN HARRIS: Talk about the importance of theologians writing their systematic theologies down through the ages. Obviously, this is a great service to the church.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. Think, for example, of Thomas Aquinas. His systematic theology has become determinative for the Roman Catholic Church and hence for hundreds of millions of Catholics throughout the world. Or think of John Calvin and the importance that his Institutes of the Christian Religion has been for Protestant theology. In our own century, Karl Barth, the Swiss theologian, has had enormous influence on the church because of his Church Dogmatics. So you're right. These systematic theologies, though written for academics, really have a profound impact upon the church as a whole.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK. Let's stop right there for today. On the next podcast, Dr. Craig continues talking about the release of Volume 1, and it begins by addressing some people's concern with what they think is perhaps an overemphasis on philosophy when it comes to works on the Bible. So be sure and join us for the next podcast. Thanks for blessing Reasonable Faith with your prayers and financial support. I think you’ll agree it's an important work and a tremendous resource for the world today. Give online at ReasonableFaith.org, and watch the website for when Volume 1 of Dr. Craig’s Systematic Philosophical Theology will be available in your area. I'm Kevin Harris, and we'll see you next time on Reasonable Faith with Dr William Lane Craig.^[1]