Where Was God?

Transcript Where Was God?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: We calculate that the human species Homo sapiens have been around now, Carl Sagan thought perhaps 200,000 years, I would say 100,000. In order to believe the Christian message, you have to believe this. For those 100,000 years, people were born, died – usually, many of them, in childbirth, life expectancy perhaps 20 years, 25. Earthquakes would have been terrifying. Tsunamis, volcanoes, mysterious events. War, famine. That was our life for tens of thousands of years. On and on it went. Now here is what you have to believe. You have to believe that heaven watched that for 98,000 years and after 98,000 years decided it may be time to intervene. And the best way of doing that would be to have a filthy human sacrifice in a very remote part of Palestine. And the news of this has still not penetrated to the rest of the world, and I don’t think will be believed when it does, and isn’t believed by me, and can’t be believed by thinking persons. Thank you.

Kevin Harris: There is a great book out. Dinesh D’Souza has written What’s So Great About Christianity? Dr. Craig, that has gotten him a lot of speaking engagements and debates. He debated the famous New Atheist guy Christopher Hitchens in New York last October. I want your comments on a really tough question that Christopher Hitchens brought up. In fact, Dinesh said that at the time he really didn’t have much of an answer so he kind of ignored it. But he has thought about it since. Let me read to you what Dinesh says [1]:

This is classic Christopher Hitchens, by the way. I haven’t heard this debate but what do you think? Pretty good question?

Dr. Craig: No, I don’t think it is such a brain teaser myself. It seems to me that Hitchens, as you would expect, has a really deficient view of divine providence and sovereignty over the whole of human history. I think that as Christians we want to say that God is providentially directing a world of free creatures in such a way as to maximize the number of persons to come to know him freely and to bring them into his Kingdom. And from the very creation of man, God was known by man at first. Adam and Eve and their children knew God. The Scripture says that God’s existence and nature is evident in the creation around us and that his moral law is written on our hearts. So from time immemorial people have known of the existence of God and of his moral demands on us. So it is not as though God was unknown to primitive man. Quite the contrary, God was clearly revealed in nature and in conscience. Moreover, God is so directing the development of the human race so that in the fullness of time, as Paul says in Galatians, he would send forth his Son to redeem humanity. [2] This required the preparation of the nation of Israel, which required the calling of Abraham out of modern day Iraq and into the land of Israel. So all of this time is preparatory – it is preparing the ground for the calling forth of Jesus, his Son. Paul in the book of Acts in chapter 17 in his address on Mars Hill says something very interesting that connects with this question. He says there that,

According to Paul, the whole development of the human race is under the providence of God with a goal toward achieving the maximal knowledge of God. I think we see the marvelous plan of God unfolded in human history.

Kevin Harris: Can we make a case that Christ’s arrival and the work of the prophets and so forth even prior to Christ was at a crossroads perhaps of history and the world?

Dr. Craig: Yes. When you think about the geographical location, for example, of Israel at the crossroads of the three great continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, it was ideally situated for the Gospel eventually to go out from there and to fill every corner of the globe. It is wonderful to study the history of the expansion of Christianity. Kenneth Scott Latourette was a church historian at Yale University and he wrote a five-volume work called A History of the Expansion of Christianity. Reading this is just an awe inspiring story of how Christianity grew from seemingly absurd beginnings to fill the entire globe today. What Latourette says is that the growth of Christianity in the world is literally without precedent. It is the largest, most successful movement in the history of mankind that the world has ever seen. This is, as you say, because of the preparation that went into it. The Roman peace, the Pax Romana, the system of Roman roads, the Greek language which was prevalent throughout the area. All of this was prepared for the fullness of time, as Paul says, for Christ to be brought into the world. Now we are seeing the fruit of it as twenty centuries later this is the largest religion in the world today – some one-third of the population of the world at least claims adherents to the claims of Christianity.

Kevin Harris: I have often said that I am glad that the Bible wasn’t written in modern times. Matthew could be writing it on a computer and accidentally hit delete [laughter] or it crashes or something.

Dr. Craig: Yeah, or even earlier. Suppose it had been written, or not written but supposed it had been revealed in 20,000 BC. Well, what a mess that might have been. We simply have no way of knowing by human speculations how the history of the world would have looked as a result.

Kevin Harris: It would be a big burden to bear, wouldn’t it, to say it should have been in the year . . .

Dr. Craig: Yeah, it should have been then. Yeah, how are you going to prove something like that. Here is another thought for reflection, Kevin, that I think is very sobering. When you look at the exponential growth in the population of the world, what you discover is that this initial segment of the human race that existed over these tens of thousands of years in time this becomes an utter triviality compared to the total population of the world which has heard the Gospel and will have the opportunity to respond fully to Christ. Do you see my point? That initial segment on the curve compared to the whole as the curve exponentially rises in world population, it will turn out that really the percentages are quite reversed. Rather than the 2% getting the revelation after the 98% has gone by, it will be the 2% that went by compared to the 98% which has the opportunity to hear and believe in Christ. [4]

Kevin Harris: That about the toothaches kind of got me there. There is nothing worse than a toothache.

Dr. Craig: Yeah, that’s for sure, but you know that’s just part of the problem of evil. That really doesn’t have anything to do with God’s inactivity in these prehistoric times because people in the third world today who still don’t have access to dental care suffer miserably with toothaches. [5] That is just part of the natural evil that we deal with in a universe that is run by natural law. There is nothing peculiar about that that is different from, say, cancer or leukemia or automobile accidents or things of that sort that we in civilized society still suffer from. That is a quite separate problem.

Kevin Harris: Actually I think ancient dentistry was probably a lot worse than ancient toothaches. [laughter] Think about that.

Dr. Craig: Yeah, that’s right. Let me fix it for you – BAM! – with a rock.

Kevin Harris: Ancient man probably didn’t eat as much candy as modern people do; maybe that didn’t have the cavity problem, but nevertheless . . .

Dr. Craig: But again though, the point here I think is that one needs to see that the problem of suffering is a quite different problem than the problem of God’s seeming inactivity during these prehistoric times leading up to the founding of the nation of Israel and all of the rest of that.

Kevin Harris: Seems that Hitchens wants to take the benefits of what has come out of the Christian worldview – of care and advances and even the scientific method – and then point the finger at God for it not having occurred long ago.

Dr. Craig: That is an interesting point. It is true that modern nursing and hospitals and so forth are largely the product of Christian concerns.

Kevin Harris: I mean, Jesus said that the Kingdom of God would grow like a tree and pretty soon it is so big that the birds of the air can come and raise their young. So Jesus put into motion it seems to me a lot of the benefits that we have today and a lot of the things that plague us are because we don’t adhere to that.

Dr. Craig: Very much so. This was another point that Kenneth Scott Latourette made in his book – the social benefits of Christianity over the ages in terms of things like democracy and the university system, education, literacy, nursing, founding of hospitals and leper colonies, care for the insane and the mentally disabled. All of these are the result of Christian initiatives. So it is really through the transforming power of God in the lives of Christians that many of these wonderful benefits have been brought to the human race.

Martin Luther, I think, made the point that when we pray to God to, say, fix something, what God will do is send a plumber or to change the analogy he will send an electrician or he will send a doctor. So he doesn’t necessarily heal all of these things miraculously. Rather, what he does is he gives people the power to explore creation through science and medicine and he gives us doctors and he gives us electricians and plumbers and so forth which help to better the lot of the human race through unfolding the natural God given abilities and talents that God has given the human race.

Kevin Harris: Even atheists can’t swallow that, Bill. They still don’t think that is spiritual enough. God ought to be doing all this direct intervention. We as Christians fall into that as well. It is his. It’s his stuff.

Dr. Craig: Yeah. It’s his nature. That’s right. You know, think about it, Kevin. Really, seriously reflect on this. Suppose that instead of allowing man through the exploration of nature, through science and ingenuity and invention and discovery to find modern medicine and electricity and plumbing and things like that. Suppose instead that God just miraculously zapped prehistoric man with these sorts of things. Well, mankind would remain in a state of infancy and retrograde idiocy because all of these modern benefits and discoveries would never come about. So although, on the one hand, this suffering and pain is difficult, it is agonizing, nevertheless it is the means by which man grows into a morally mature and responsible and wise being as opposed to someone who is immature, infantile, and helpless.

Kevin Harris: The Bible spends a whole lot of time talking about wisdom, doesn’t it? Get wisdom, get wise, get wise.

Dr. Craig: Yeah. That’s right. Over and over again in the Proverbs. Get wisdom. Get understanding. There again sometimes we as Christians punt to God on this. They say or pray, “God, show us what to do. Reveal to us what to do.” When I think, God is saying to us, “Haven’t I given you enough wisdom for you to decide what to do? Use your God given wisdom to make these decisions.”

Kevin Harris: That is big. I think another thing that Paul said kind of illustrates this as well, Bill. And that is, Paul says that God comforted us through the sending of Titus. In other words, rather than a direct comfort from God, which Paul I think did experience, we can experience as well, God didn’t always do that. He used Titus as a comfort.

Dr. Craig: How interesting. I’ve never thought of that verse in that way, Kevin, but you are absolutely right and that is right in line.

Kevin Harris: “Well, it is not spiritual enough – why didn’t God directly somehow give him a quiver in his liver or something?” Because God uses people.

Dr. Craig: Yeah, and when you think about it, again, I just want to emphasize this leads to the maturation of the human race by doing it this way in the providence of God. [6]