#939 Arguments and Compassion

Dr. craig’s response

Oh, Steve, I was so overwhelmed to read your letter!  I was both humbled and thrilled at what you had to say, humbled—or, perhaps, humiliated—because my arguments proved to be so utterly ineffectual in persuading you (to think that you were actually less disposed towards Christian belief after talking to me!), and yet at the same time thrilled because of the way Jan’s simple act of compassion touched your heart.

I have a related story of my own to tell that you’ll find interesting. Shortly before his demise, Ravi Zacharias and his wife Margie invited Jan and me to breakfast at a local restaurant. During the course of our conversation, he complained to us about how you were going after him, trying to bring him down. Then he warned me, “Bill, he told me that you’re next on his list. He’s going to be coming after you.” I braced myself emotionally for the predicted onslaught, but it never came. Now I know why. The fact that after 20 long years, you should reach out to me suggests that you are still open to Christian belief.

So in answer to your question (I hope I don’t louse this up!), I should say, “Yes, absolutely, it would have been ‘epistemically responsible for [you] to get down on [your] knees in that moment and accept Jesus.’” That’s because I am not an evidentialist about Christian belief, i.e., one who thinks that Christian belief is rational only if it is based on arguments. Rather as Alvin Plantinga has explained, there are many beliefs we hold which are properly basic, that is, not based on argument, and yet we are perfectly rational and warranted in doing so. For such properly basic beliefs are also among the deliverances of reason. Therefore, it is perfectly responsible epistemically to accept such properly basic beliefs; more than that, as I say, they can be warranted for us and so constitute knowledge. These sorts of properly basic beliefs are grounded in experience and are rationally held unless and until we have some overriding defeater of them.

Now in the case of Christian belief, God does not abandon us to our own devices, to work out by our own cleverness and ingenuity whether or not Christian belief is true. Rather by his Holy Spirit he seeks us out, convicting us of our sin and drawing us to himself. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” and “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself” (John 6.44; 12.32). It is up to us whether we freely respond to his drawing upon our hearts or whether we harden our hearts towards God.

I think that in that moment in which you inexplicably found yourself open to Christian belief, it was the Holy Spirit working through Jan’s words and actions to draw you to himself. This is not just a matter of feelings. Although the experience of the Holy Spirit is subjective, just as the experience of the external world is subjective, the object of that experience is no less real and objective than is the external world.

So had you responded at that moment, “Please lead me in the sinner’s prayer to commit my life to Christ,” I should have been thrilled for Jan to have led you in such a prayer. You don’t need to have all your questions and objections answered in order to rationally place your faith in Christ in response to the Holy Spirit’s drawing. Indeed, I have argued that the inner witness of the Holy Spirit can be an intrinsic defeater-defeater, overwhelming, if not refuting, the alleged defeaters brought against Christian belief. This is all laid out in the chapter on faith and reason in the third edition of my book Reasonable Faith.

In general, what skeptics (or better, seekers) and believers need to understand about Christian belief is that this quest is not a purely evidential exercise. It needs to be approached with a genuine openness to God and deep humility. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4.6). The skeptic who folds his arms and says, “OK, convince me!” is not apt to come to Christian faith.

Personally, if I were you, I should try to suppress my intellectual doubts, in the same way that someone who doubts the existence of the external world or the objectivity of moral values should suppress those doubts. These doubts are self-destructive, preventing you from embracing God’s life-giving presence and miring you in the hopelessness and futility of an atheistic worldview. There is nothing epistemically virtuous about being a skeptic driven by doubts. It’s not really all that difficult to think that one’s doubts are not probative, when you think about all the hyper-intelligent people like Alvin Plantinga, Robert Adams, William Alston, Peter van Inwagen, and a host of others who are committed Christian believers. It also deserves to be said, Steve, that you need not be a Molinist in order to be a Christian! Indeed, in the list above neither Adams nor van Inwagen is a Molinist! So you need not suppress your doubts about Molinism in order to become a Christian. For the rest you may cry out like the man who came to Jesus in Mark 9.24: “Lord, I believe! Help Thou my unbelief!”

I hope that my reply is helpful, Steve. I shared your letter with Jan, and she sends you a warm hug! She also said to advise you not to turn on the television until you understand perfectly how it works!