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Media > Reasonable Faith Podcast > A Look at Upcoming Debates and Events

A Look at Upcoming Debates and Events

February 03, 2014     Time: 20:35
A Look at Upcoming Debates and Events

Summary

Dr. Craig discusses a major debate coming up as well as his latest publishing project that has prominent philosophers talking!

Transcript A Look at Upcoming Debates and Events

 

Kevin Harris: Welcome to Reasonable Faith. I’m Kevin Harris in the studio with Dr. William Lane Craig. We are still early in the year, Bill, so let’s talk about some of the things you’ve done recently and some very exciting things that are coming up this year. Just a look back and a look forward. The C. S. Lewis Conference over in the UK back in November?

Dr. Craig: Yes, it was really wonderful. We were in central London at Westminster Abbey and held a conference on the 50th anniversary of C. S. Lewis’ death commemorating his contribution as a Christian apologist. I thought it was remarkable that it was as an apologist that Lewis was being remembered and celebrated – not simply as a literary figure but specifically for his work in defense of the Christian faith. I was very encouraged to see the staff at Westminster Abbey so committed to this. We had dinner one evening with the dean of the Abbey as well as some of his staff, and it was very clear that they want to use Westminster Abbey’s prominence in central London as a tourist site to reach out with the Gospel and to share the good news with people who come and visit there.

So it was wonderful that they were holding this conference. It was attended by around 1,600 people. It was just a magical atmosphere as you can imagine with the bright colors and the lights and the shining brass and the scarlet vestments of the Anglican priests. It was really a wonderful time. On the day after the conference, there was a service held in the Abbey itself for Lewis with a choir that was just like angels singing. We sat right in the central isle as the processional went by. Then the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams gave the homily on Lewis’ contribution and life. They had an unveiling of a memorial stone for Lewis that now is permanently in a section of Westminster Abbey called Poet’s Corner commemorating his contribution.

In addition to that, we were also out in Oxford where Lewis was a professor, of course. I spoke at the C. S. Lewis Society meeting there and had a wonderful time with the Oxford University students interacting about God and abstract objects, which is my current area of research and on which I found Lewis had something relevant to say which was rather a surprise to me. So all in all it was just a great trip, very encouraging, and I thought a good sign of Christianity in Britain not feeling defeated or insular but upbeat, reaching out, and optimistic.

Kevin Harris: C. S. Lewis is more popular than ever. His popularity just continues and continues. He always said that he wasn’t a philosopher but he certainly did engage deep philosophical arguments. He was best known as a great writer. Are there any books of his that you recommend to the layperson?

Dr. Craig: His classic was Mere Christianity which was a series of radio broadcasts on the BBC. I think that would be the one sort of essential Lewis book that our listeners might want to read.

Kevin Harris: While you were in the UK, you were on a radio program there called “Unbelievable?” This was an interaction with Paul Helm. Talk a little bit about that.

Dr. Craig: Justin Brierley, who is a friend of the ministry and works with Premier Christian Radio in the UK, invited me to come on his show while we were visiting London. He said, “I’d like you to have a debate with Paul Helm on Molinism and Calvinism.” And I said, “No, Justin, I am not interested in getting into debates with fellow Christians about in-house issues.” And he said, “Well, then, if not a debate, how about just a conversation where I’ll simply put questions to both of you and you can be on the air at the same time.” I said “All right. That’s fine. I am happy to submit to an informal interview or conversation.” So that is what we did. It wasn’t a debate. There wasn’t a case being presented and counter arguments. It was just a conversation. It went very well. Paul Helm is a personal friend and good Christian philosopher, and we had a very engaging time talking about these things.[1] Of course, these are perennial issues of interest to Christians so the show has generated a great deal of discussion and interest among believers.[2]

Kevin Harris: Can we just go on record, Dr. Craig? Because there is always a clamor for you to debate someone on Calvinism. What you just said and what you said before is, it is really not an area that you want to go to because your outreach and calling are those outside of the Christian faith, not in-house debates. Am I right on this?

Dr. Craig: You are exactly right, Kevin. My burden and my calling is to help to reach a secular society with the Gospel. Here what C. S. Lewis called “mere Christianity” is so relevant. Mere Christianity for Lewis was the central cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith which are affirmed by all of the great confessions of Christendom both Calvinist and Arminian and represent the common ground on which we stand. It is those truths that I want to defend in public debate. I want to help reach a secular world with the Gospel. Now, one thing that C. S. Lewis said that was very helpful, I thought, in relation to this is that mere Christianity, he said, doesn’t represent your stopping place. This is not where you rest. He said mere Christianity is like the hallway, or the entrance way, to the building. It is off of the hallway that you find various rooms. It is in those rooms that you find the fireplace, the reclining chair, the sofa. These are the rooms where you ultimately end up in, and these represent the different specific doctrinal confessions and denominations of Christendom. I certainly do have views on those subjects that would put me in one such room. But those aren’t the issues that I am interested in debating. I want to be in the public arena out in the hallway debating these central truths of the Christian faith. It would be a distraction, I think, to be debating other people in the various rooms.

Kevin Harris: You are in the hall and it seems like there are some doors on the side of the hall keep opening up saying, “Bill, come on in here.” You gotta stay in the hall.

Dr. Craig: If you understand your calling. I think that is right.

Kevin Harris: So, 2014. Give us a rundown.

Dr. Craig: Kevin, the most important project for me in 2014 is to complete the book I’m doing on God and abstract objects. I have been writing this book on divine aseity now for well over a dozen years, and in 2015 I have been invited to deliver the Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham in England and my subject will be “God and Abstract Objects.” The lectures then will be published. So that gives me a kind of deadline, an end date, for completing this project. So my goal is to finish my book and my work on divine aseity – God and abstract objects – in 2014. In order to accomplish that, I am really pulling back on my speaking schedule for this year so as to allow maximum time for writing and research. So I won’t be traveling as much this year. I think I have only one debate scheduled for all of 2014, for example, because the priority for me is completing this book.

Kevin Harris: It sounds like a daunting task here. A lot of research and you are going to pour a lot into it.

Dr. Craig: Yes, it has been. To be in a single project for over twelve years is just an enormous undertaking. But I am nearing the home stretch now, Kevin. A good deal of the book is already written. I have written quite a number of chapters on it. Only a few remain to be completed. Then the whole thing will need to be revised and put into the final polished form. So it is certainly doable. I can finish it in 2014, God willing.

Kevin Harris: A lot of my friends, your friends, a lot of philosophy geeks are so excited about your work on this and will be waiting enthusiastically for this book. What about the average Christian that may not quite get the importance of working through God and abstract objects?

Dr. Craig: As you know, Kevin, in my publishing ministry I try to work on two levels. I try to publish top scholarly work in the finest secular peer reviewed journals and with academic presses.[3] But then I will take that same material and distill it down for the average man in the street. So, for example, in my work on divine eternity I published God, Time, and Eternity as well as two books, The Tenseless Theory of Time and The Tensed Theory of Time (and then actually a forth one called Time and the Metaphysics of Relativity). All of these were published with academic presses. But then I distilled all of that material down to a lay level and published it in the book Time and Eternity with Crossway. I have the same project in view with regard to my work on divine aseity. There will be a scholarly book that will be written first. Then after that is completed I will simplify it and summarize it and distill it and put it out in a form that will be accessible to the intelligent layman.

Kevin Harris: We’ve said before, we’ll say it again that really it is unfortunate that we say dumb it down, but what we mean is to be more accessible to those who have not maybe been educated in some of the more technical language. So there will be two different forms of that. If you don’t know anything about woodworking, you are going to have to learn all the terms to become a good workworker.

Dr. Craig: Yes, that is true in any discipline, isn’t it? Every discipline has a specialized vocabulary that is familiar to people who work in that area, whether it is insurance, or stock broking, or being a businessman, or a doctor. And the same in philosophy. So what it requires me to do is to write in such a way that someone who isn’t familiar with this specialist terminology and technical arguments can grasp and appreciate the concepts and the importance of what is being discussed. I think it is vitally important to the Christian faith. It seems to me that it is non-negotiable, theologically, that God is what Brian Leftow has called “the sole, ultimate reality.” That is to say, he is the only uncreated thing. Everything else that exists is created and depends upon God for its existence. So I think a defense of divine aseity or self-existence is vital to theism and to Christianity in particular.

Kevin Harris: If anything, the layperson interested in the topic should get a good grasp on the difference between abstract and concrete objects and things like that. So this will build on that and go further. The future of Christian apologetics and Christian theology is really going to involve this topic.

Dr. Craig: I think so. One thing that encourages me is that this is a relatively new field. Someone pointed out to me the other day that there have been only three book-length treatments of this subject published. So this is very new. I am plowing new ground here. I think that gives me the opportunity to make an original contribution to the discussion.

Kevin Harris: Your one scheduled debate that is coming up – we’ve done podcasts on Sean Carroll. You’ve always been complementary of him and his work. So let’s talk about this exchange – when, where, what, how. Coming up is the Greer-Heard event scheduled Friday, February 21.

Dr. Craig: This is held in New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in New Orleans. For several years now they have been putting on these endowed forums featuring scholars on both sides of important questions. The topic this year is “God and Cosmology.” So this will feature a debate on that subject Friday evening between me and Sean Carroll who is a cosmologist at Cal Tech. Then the next day there will be four response papers to the debate by two scholars on the naturalistic side and two theist scholars. Then there will be discussion with the audience. Eventually, this forum will be published in book form.

Kevin Harris: “God and Cosmology” is the topic of the debate. The last couple of months have also seen you on some major news outlets. Talk a little bit about the event with Fox News[4] and some of the media appearances that you’ve made.

Dr. Craig: We’ve had the opportunity to begin to break into more national media, which I am very grateful for. As you know, Kevin, one of the purposes of Reasonable Faith, and one of the reasons that we founded this organization, was because of the need for an intelligent, articulate, and uncompromising yet gracious voice in defense of biblical Christianity in the public square.[5] Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get into these media outlets because I think the media rather enjoys having extremists and empty-headed Christians as representing our side.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, it creates clash and drama.

Dr. Craig: So it is not easy to get a Christian philosopher booked on one of these programs. But increasingly we are building some relations like this. So I have had that opportunity to go to New York. It was really fun to meet Lauren Green for the first time. She is very gracious. We just hit it off super. She was an excellent interviewer. She had obviously looked at the book A Reasonable Response because her questions showed that she had knowledge of its contents and was able to ask me specifically about things in the book. So we had a very good conversation. We are hoping that this will be just one more door opening for us to get into other outlets as well.

Kevin Harris: Round out the year for us, Bill.

Dr. Craig: Right. The week after the Greer-Heard forum, I have another really interesting opportunity in Chicago. It is the central division meeting of the American Philosophical Association. I have been invited to give a paper there on my work on God and abstract objects. The respondents to the paper will be Jody Azzouni, who is a very prominent philosopher at Tufts University and has written a great deal on the subject of abstract objects, and then the philosopher of mathematics Christopher Menzel from Texas A&M University will be a commentator on the paper. Then we will throw it open to questions. So this is a professional meeting of philosophers and a chance for me to explain and defend my work before a community of my peers. So I am really looking forward to that event.

Later then in the spring, in March, I’ll be doing a course for Biola University in Atlanta and also an event at the University of Georgia.

In April, I’ll be at Yale University for a couple of days speaking there.

Then in July Jan and I have the opportunity to go back to England. Premier Christian Radio, whom we’ve mentioned before, is hosting an apologetics conference in Central Hall, Westminster. This is the great auditorium across from Westminster Abbey where my debates with Lewis Wolpert[6] and Stephen Law[7] were held. There will be an apologetics conference held there reaching out to Christians in the UK to try to give them training. So we are really looking forward to going back there again.

Then in July we have a really nice opportunity in the Philippines. We are partnering with several mega-churches in Manila to put on an On Guard conference. This will be similar to the one we did in Oklahoma last year where we will not just have a potpourri of speakers on random topics, but rather we will train these Filipino Christians in the arguments that are in the book On Guard. Every conferee will get a copy of the book free and then will hear workshops on how to present and defend and use these arguments in defense of the Christian faith. To do this conference we will be using not only myself but also Abdu Murray, Frank Turek, and Greg Koukl. So it will be fun to be teamed up with these colleagues in doing this conference in Manila. I think this could have a tremendous impact in the Far East and in the Middle East, as well. Because these Filipino Christians go out all over central Asia and the Middle East as house servants, as maids, as construction workers. They form that working class in many of these Muslim countries. These Filipino Christians, I think, have a tremendous opportunity to be sharers of the Gospel as they go out into these environments. So it is a real privilege to have input into their training. We are hoping for several thousand people to be at this event in Manila.

So that is the first half year that is scheduled so far. Later in the year in November, of course, we will be back at the Evangelical Philosophical Society conference and apologetics conference. But that second half of the year is largely unscheduled. As I said earlier, I am hoping to devote most of my time to completing this book on abstract objects. But there are still some very good speaking engagements as well that are on the calendar.

Kevin Harris: Next time let’s talk about the Sean Carroll event that is coming up in February. Dr. William Lane Craig on Reasonable Faith.[8]

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