Behind the Scenes at Reasonable Faith

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig, there are so many things going on behind the scenes at Reasonable Faith and also in some upcoming podcasts that we are going to be talking about. We are going to be talking about the Supreme Court and the state of Texas. That is something I know that has really gotten your attention. And some other great topics that are going to be coming up in the next few weeks. But in the meantime, some behind-the-scenes things going on at Reasonable Faith. I guess we could start with the new animated series that we've added to our repertoire.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. To round out the animated videos that Zangmeister makes for Reasonable Faith, we're having one that is a Gospel presentation. I had the tremendous privilege of doing the voice over myself for this video. It is a nice explanation of how one can come to know Christ as one's personal savior, and it ends with a prayer of invitation for someone to commit his life to Christ. So it's a very appropriate climax to the series of animated videos that we've done on the chapters in my book On Guard.

KEVIN HARRIS: It just occurred to me just as you were speaking there that something significant has happened with Defenders as well as you’ve come to the end of that series. You taught through it.

DR. CRAIG: It took us seven years to get through that entire Defender series. You finish with a tremendous sense of accomplishment and gratitude and a journey completed together with the folks in the class. So now that whole thing has been video recorded. It's on the website under the Defenders 3 series. In the live class (which we are not video recording now) I'm beginning the series over again. We are going through the doctrine of revelation this coming Sunday. I'll be talking about general revelation and its relationship to the arguments of natural theology. Defenders is still going on but we're not live streaming the current classes.

KEVIN HARRIS: September is here. In fact, we're in the middle of September and the book release is scheduled on Adam and Eve.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. That's right. The book In Quest of the Historical Adam has finally made its appearance. This has been a long time in coming. The book has been in press for well over a year partly because it has so many figures in it. It has something like 45 illustrations, charts, drawings, photographs. So there was a lot involved in the production of the book. But, oh, it's a handsome volume. Eerdmans has done a first-rate job with this book. It comes out to well over 400 pages in length and, as I say, is abundantly illustrated with footnotes at the bottom of each page and plenty of white space for eye-pleasing reading. I'm just thrilled that the book is finally hitting the bookstands.

KEVIN HARRIS: We've got a couple of podcasts coming up in the next few weeks where we'll be discussing that. Not only the book, but what people are already saying and what they're talking about.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. It's already stirring up conversations.

KEVIN HARRIS: You have been ranked in philosophy and theology. The rankings that have just come out. Talk about those rankings and the honor that's been bestowed on you.

DR. CRAIG: Several weeks ago I received an email from an anonymous source at the organization AcademicInfluence.com which is an organization that uses artificial intelligence and various algorithms to calculate the influence in the academy of scholars in various fields. He informed me that I might not be aware that I am ranked as the 10th most influential philosopher in the world over the last three decades from 1990 to 2020. I was absolutely stunned by this. What made this so significant was that this is not based on subjective opinions but it's based on this objective algorithm that is computed using, for example, the number of citations of one's work in other publications and so forth. As if that weren't enough, someone then on Facebook messaged me the following week and said, “Did you look at how they rank the theologians in the world? You're number three in the world among theologians over the last three decades right behind Alister McGrath and the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.” And so I thought, “Oh, my goodness! This is just unbelievable!” It's beyond my wildest dreams. I've always wanted to make an impact for the kingdom of God. I wanted my life to influence people for Christ. To have these rankings as one of the most influential philosophers and theologians over the last three decades is more than a dream come true. It's beyond my wildest dreams, honestly.

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, congratulations from everyone. I want to re-emphasize, like you said, this is an algorithm. This is an objective measurement that measures impact and your writing and things like that. It's not just somebody who got together in a room and kind of decided.

DR. CRAIG: That's right. You said it correctly. It measures impact or influence. This is by no means a ranking of one's brilliance or greatness as a philosopher or creativity or anything like that. This is a measure of influence or impact. For that I'm very, very grateful.

KEVIN HARRIS: Wow. A couple more things that are going on behind the scenes. One, I thought you might want to reflect on the death of Bishop Shelby Spong. You had a chance to interact and to debate with him several years ago. He just died.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I have not had a lot of interaction with John Shelby Spong except for that debate I did several years ago at Bethel College on the resurrection of Jesus. There are a couple of things that I could say with respect to him and the debate. First of all, in reading his work in preparation for the debate I was surprised at how strong an argument he gives concerning the transformation in the earliest disciples and the need for some sort of explanation of that. As our viewers probably know, for me the evidence for the resurrection is like a three-legged stool. One leg would be the fact of the empty tomb. One leg would be the postmortem appearances. The third leg would be the transformation in the earliest disciples or the origin of their belief that God raised Jesus from the dead. I have to say that I have never heard a more powerful statement of that third leg (of the transformation in the disciples) than John Shelby Spong’s and how that cries out for an explanation. Now the irony, of course, was that Spong wouldn't give the explanation that the disciples themselves gave – namely that the resurrection of Jesus is a literal historical event. But he was just left as a result with a question mark – with a mystery. He can't explain the transformation in these earliest disciples. And so, although Spong used the traditional orthodox language of the resurrection of Jesus (saying, “I believe Jesus is risen from the dead”) what students need to understand is that he invests that kind of traditional language with a totally different meaning. He did not, in fact, believe in the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, that there was an empty tomb and a risen body. Spong denied all that. And I think that that was one of the things that I was most disturbed about with him – was frankly his misleading use of orthodox language rather than coming clean with laypeople and saying what he really thought. After the debate there was a very interesting conversation that Jan and I had with him where he said to us straightforwardly, “Well, really I'm just a mystic.” That was John Shelby Spong. He didn't believe in this stuff literally. He didn't believe in orthodox Christian doctrines or the doctrine of God. He just believed in mysticism – that God was some ineffable “other” that one might approach in mystical experience. That was really the brand of his Christianity.

KEVIN HARRIS: In a nutshell, very liberal.

DR. CRAIG: Oh yeah. Yes.

KEVIN HARRIS: As you say, students be aware of what you're going to get if you read. But he sadly passed away just a few weeks ago. I guess we can get to the big thing and that is the continued writing of your systematic theology.

DR. CRAIG: It's coming along really well. I've completed the sections on divine simplicity and divine omnipresence. Now I'm working on divine omnipotence and trying to update my knowledge of the literature on this topic. I still have about three more of the attributes of God to go after this – divine goodness, divine incorporeality, divine omniscience – but I'm hoping to finish this section and volume one by next June.

KEVIN HARRIS: Finally today, looking at YouTube I think we're going to have to change the name of YouTube to BillTube because you are just everywhere on there with so many interviews. I know that you're continuing to get some interview invitations.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. That's due to the pandemic. Since I don't travel and speak anymore, I've just been inundated with these requests for social media interviews and podcasts. I have done these all over the world. It's been so much easier for me not to have to travel through the airport and take a flight somewhere but in the privacy of my office where you and I are podcasting right now I can do interviews with people in the Ukraine, in Latin America, in the Middle East. I did one with a fellow in Cairo just the other day. So it has really been a wonderful means of outreach to the whole world by being able to do these remote interviews.

KEVIN HARRIS: Very good. We’ll look forward to those, and we’ll look forward to the next podcast.^[1]