Questions on Theistic Evolution, The Logos, and Future Sins

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, we have questions from all over the world, and we want to ask you to respond to some of these. This is from Thomas in the United States.

Dr. Craig, would you please answer this question. Are you or are you not a theistic evolutionist? Yes or no would suffice. Greg Koukl asked you this question, and I did not believe your answer was clearly stated. You said essentially that you wrote in your Search for the Historic Adam one way things could have occurred, but does not necessarily reflect what you believe. If I misinterpreted, please clarify this for me. Thank you, Thomas.

DR. CRAIG: All right. Thomas wants a “yes” or “no” answer so I will say “no.” My position is that I am agnostic about theistic evolution, depending on how you define it (which Thomas unfortunately didn't do). But I remain open-minded. I am willing to follow the evidence where it leads. What I have said is that I don't think theistic evolution is in any way incompatible with the Bible, so any reservations that I would have about theistic evolution would be, not theological, but they would be scientific – that in some way the theory is scientifically deficient. So the answer is “no.” I remain agnostic.

KEVIN HARRIS: An anonymous question came in. He says,

If Logos Christology is wrong, how should we understand Jesus as the Logos in John chapter one? What does Logos mean in John 1?

DR. CRAIG: The difficulty with so many of our questions is that they don't define their terms. They don't tell us what they mean by, say, “theistic evolution” or here, “Logos Christology.” But I think what he is referring to is my argument that the idea that the second person of the Trinity is eternally begotten by the first person of the Trinity is not a biblical doctrine but is a later theological development that is rooted in the Logos Christology of the early Greek Christian apologists. These thinkers thought that, based on John 1, the Logos was sort of the mind or the intellect of God and that it proceeded forth from the mind of God the Father and became a distinct person who then became incarnate as Jesus Christ. This Logos was in some ways a kind of second-tier deity, not fully as divine as the Father. I think that this doctrine is incorrect. It has deleterious consequences and, as I say, it's not biblical. What John 1 is talking about is the Logos as it plays a role in so-called Middle Platonism. I wrote about this in my book God Over All. There's a lengthy exegesis of John 1 there. In the work of Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish Egyptian philosopher contemporaneous with the New Testament, the Logos is sort of an intellectual principle within God. For John, this is, I think, the second person of the Trinity. John does not say that the Logos proceeds forth from the Father or that he's begotten by the Father. He says that he is in the bosom of the Father and then he came into the world – became incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth. So in the proper sense, of course we all affirm Logos Christology insofar as you are a trinitarian and you believe in multiple persons in the Godhead. But that does not commit you to this later doctrine that the second person of the Trinity is begotten or proceeds from the first person of the Trinity.

KEVIN HARRIS: This next question you used as Question of the Week #794, but maybe you can give us a little sneak preview. It says,

Dr. Craig, My pastor said all my sins were forgiven past, present and future. Therefore, can a born again Christian actually commit sin? Michael from the United States

DR. CRAIG: Here I have to respectfully disagree with Michael's pastor. It's often said that God forgives all your sins past, present, and future. But if you have a theory of time according to which temporal becoming is real and things actually come into and go out of existence, there are no such things as future sins. They have not yet been committed, and therefore you cannot be guilty of sins that you have not committed. And if you cannot be guilty of sins you haven't committed, neither can you be forgiven of those sins that you have not committed. So I think that the Scripture teaches as we sin and we bring these before God in confession and repentance, God forgives us. The promise of 1 John 1:9 is that if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This means that we need to keep a short account with God as we go through life. We shouldn't allow sin to accumulate in our lives. We shouldn't try to sweep it under the rug, but the minute we sense that we have acted in an unethical way, a way displeasing to God, we need to confess it, repent of it, claim God's forgiveness, and be cleansed of it, and move on. I don't think that God has already forgiven your future sins because I don't think you're guilty of those sins because you haven't committed those sins.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dear Dr. Craig, What do you think of the “it from bit” hypothesis? It seems to me that it allows for reality to come from nothing. As soon as there is nothing, there is the set containing nothing, or the empty set, or zero. As soon as we have zero, we have the set containing zero or one. The set containing zero and one is a set with two elements or two and so on and so forth. Once you have numbers, you can have binary logic, and the real world is only a subset of the set of logical possibilities. Thanks in advance. Juan from the  United States

DR. CRAIG: Well, where I differ with Juan is that I am not a Platonist. I am an anti-realist when it comes to abstract objects, in particular mathematical objects like numbers and sets. What Juan's argument is really trying to prove is not that something can come from nothing but that it's impossible logically to have nothing because you would always have at least these mathematical entities. And I don't accept that these mathematical entities exist. It seems to me that these are simply useful fictions. And I certainly do not agree with Juan that the real physical world is a subset of the set of logical possibilities. The real physical world is not an abstract object. It's a concrete object, and therefore completely distinct from this realm of abstract mathematical objects. So I have a quite different metaphysical outlook than Juan does.

KEVIN HARRIS: This question from Joshua,

Hello, Dr Craig. I have a question related to the kalam cosmological argument and the tensed theory of time. These two seem to be intertwined. How does it make sense to say that the universe or time began to exist? Only things that are in time have a beginning, but time is not inside of itself for that would be absurd. So how can one say that time began to exist? This also seems to imply that time is atemporal which would be an argument for the tenseless theory of time. Joshua in the U.S.

DR. CRAIG: Well, now, that would not be an argument for the tenseless theory of time. To say that time is atemporal is a contradiction and therefore cannot be true. But in answer to his question, I think we simply need to have an adequate definition of what it means to begin to exist. And I would say that for some entity x, x begins to exist if and only if x exists at some time t and there is no time prior to t at which x exists. That seems to me to be a good definition of “begins to exist.” Or, in more simple terms, x begins to exist if there is a first time at which x exists. And that definition would apply to time itself. Time begins to exist if there is a moment of time at which time it exists and there is no moment prior to that at which time exists. In contemporary cosmology, there simply isn't any problem with thinking that space and time themselves began to exist.

KEVIN HARRIS: Another question from the United States,

Dr. Craig, Thank you for your work from which I've benefited greatly. I have a question regarding your current stance on the ID movement, especially after your release of your In Quest of the Historical Adam (which I've read). Would you still place yourself within the intelligent design camp holding to a partial evolutionary framework in reference to neo-Darwinian theory that holds common descent for all organic species, placing the beginning of man in the species Homo erectus? Or would you abandon the intelligent design position altogether? Could you perhaps explain more how your position relates to ID or the different ways that your position could relate to ID? Thank you very much for using your gift of philosophy to the benefit of the church. A faithful listener. Will

DR. CRAIG: For listeners who aren't familiar with the abbreviation, ID stands for “intelligent design.” I certainly am a proponent of the argument for intelligent design, particularly based upon the fine-tuning of the universe. I think on the basis of the fine-tuning of the universe for embodied conscious observers like ourselves, we certainly are rational in inferring that there is a transcendent, intelligent designer of the universe. My work on the historical Adam only has to do with human development. It really says nothing about where Adam and Eve came from. It simply identifies them, not with Homo erectus as Will says, but with Homo heidelbergensis who was the most recent common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. My position in that regard really isn't any different from Casey Luskin's who works with The Discovery Institute who would also place Adam very far in the primordial past as the ancestor of these twin human species.

KEVIN HARRIS: Very good. Good questions, good answers as usual, Bill. We’ll see you on the next podcast.

DR. CRAIG: Thank you.^[1]