Questions on Evangelism, the God Particle, and the Atonement

Dr. Craig takes questions on the necessity of evangelism, how God sustains everything into existence, and how sins were atoned for by Christ before his crucifixion.

DR. CRAIG: Hello! This is William Lane Craig. I'm really excited about our spring campaign for strategic partners of Reasonable Faith. We are offering as a free premium two books, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus and The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus, both of which were previously available only in editions that cost literally several hundred dollars a piece. And now, because these books are being reprinted, we're able to offer them free to you for anyone offering a sustaining campaign gift of $75 monthly on an ongoing basis. If you're unable to give that much, we have many other fine premiums at lower levels like $50 a month, $30 a month, but this top award is so extraordinary, so unprecedented given the previously unaffordable and exorbitant price of these books that I really do hope you'll take advantage of it. This is my scholarly work done at the University of Munich on the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection, and I think it will be a real benefit to you if you can get a hold of it. So I hope you'll participate in this year’s spring campaign.

KEVIN HARRIS: On occasion, we’ll get some questions on Facebook. We’ll ask some of our Facebook friends if they have a question for you. We have a few here that we’ll run past you. This one says,

Dear Dr. Craig, I was raised in a church that taught we should be very aggressive in witnessing and winning others to Christ, but I'm not an aggressive person. In fact, despite my love for Christ, I don't think I've ever won anyone to Christ. It's not that I don't want to. I just don't seem to have those kind of opportunities. It would be rewarding to use the apologetics knowledge I've acquired, but I wonder if I'll ever evangelize anyone. Any suggestions? Darren

DR. CRAIG: I want to say to Darren that I really understand the difficulty. He wants to share his faith in Christ but simply lacks opportunity, and therefore he's missing out on one of the most exhilarating experiences of the Christian life, and that is to actually lead another person to place his faith in Christ and then to disciple that person and see him grow in his relationship with the Lord. This is an exhilarating experience in the Christian life, and it's tragic that Darren is missing out on that. I think what he needs to do is to be very intentional about putting himself in situations where he can share his faith. It often doesn't come naturally. To try to share your faith can seem awkward and off-putting at times, but if he could do something, for example, like go on a mission trip with his church or an evangelistic outreach on the beach or in some other place, that would put him in a situation where he has opportunities to share his faith, and you never know what the Lord is going to do. So I would highly recommend to Darren not to expect these opportunities to come to you in the normal course of life but rather, on the contrary, to seek out some opportunities by being very intentional about being involved in some sort of outreaches or campaigns where he will have the chance to share his faith.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dear Dr. Craig, On various social media I often run into the objection that the resurrection cannot be affirmed due to the discrepancies in the resurrection accounts. Should I argue that we can know the broad facts despite differing details, or should I try to harmonize the accounts in the Gospels? Charlotte

DR. CRAIG: I think, Charlotte, that the most important thing to do is to defend the basic historicity of the accounts. The basic historicity of the facts like the empty tomb, the postmortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples' belief doesn't depend upon whether it was still dark when the women went to the tomb or the names of the women visiting the tomb. Emphasize to those you share with that historical scholars are not troubled by these sorts of discrepancies in the secondary details, but they want to see if there is a common historical core that belongs to these different sometimes divergent accounts. So that would be the most fundamental point to emphasize. At the same time, however, where you can offer a solution then I think you should do so. And very often it's easy. For example, it's been said that the postmortem appearances of Jesus are irreconcilable with each other. But in my own published work I think I show very easily how you can order these appearances, first in Jerusalem and then in Galilee, and then back in Jerusalem again. So it needn't be an either-or. It can be a both-and. But the most fundamental point to communicate is that discrepancies and the secondary details of a narrative do not in the mind of historical scholars disqualify or falsify the historical core of the narrative.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dear Dr. Craig, After reading your question of the week number 877, I realized that I'm in the same boat as Jason. I don't think I've ever had a specific answer to prayer in my life. This may be because I don't pray very specifically. I was taught we are not to test God, so I don't tend to ask for specific things. However, do you think I should? Would it be appropriate to ask God for some specific thing to ensure I'm allowing him to be active in my life? Tim

DR. CRAIG: I want to say to Tim that I do believe in specific prayer, and it is so encouraging when you pray very specifically for something and then you see God deliver that to you. That is tremendously encouraging. Of course, our prayers should always be tempered with the prayer that Jesus offered in the Garden - nevertheless not my will but thy will be done. But I do think that Tim again is missing out on this wonderful experience of seeing God answer your prayers by his lack of specificity. So if there is something specific that you feel that constrained to pray about, I would encourage him to do so.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dr. Craig, My family and I got into a big argument about praying before a meal in a restaurant or in public. I said I thought it was showy and makes people uncomfortable and therefore often rubs me the wrong way. Since there is no specific biblical command that we are to pray before every meal that I know of, I usually just dig in. Can you settle this argument for us? Bruce

DR. CRAIG: Well, I can't settle the argument for Bruce and his family but I can share that in my own experience I don't see anything the matter with praying publicly before a meal. I was very convicted many years ago when I sat down with a non-Christian philosopher to have lunch and with him right across the table from me I didn't feel free to bow my head and say a silent prayer before my meal. And to my astonishment, before he began to eat, he bowed his head in some sort of silent meditation before proceeding to eat. And I was so ashamed because I thought here is this non-Christian philosopher who is not embarrassed to have a moment of silent meditation before he eats, and I was too embarrassed to thank God for the gift of this meal. Since then I have felt rather open about having prayer in restaurants before meals, and I see other people doing this as well which makes me think that at least in American culture that this is a socially acceptable procedure. That may not fly in some very secularized European cultures. But I think in the United States, at least, this is very commonly accepted to engage in a quiet verbal prayer before eating.

KEVIN HARRIS: It really shows gratitude, too, doesn't it? We take our meal for granted sometimes. I mean, we could be in a situation where we're going hungry.

DR. CRAIG: And it does depend on your motivation. I mean, Bruce said it's showy. Well, if someone is doing it for the purpose of showing off then that really is pharisaical, isn't it? But if it's done out of gratitude, as you say, and my experience is that it usually almost always is, then that seems quite appropriate to thank God.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dear Dr. Craig, When the Scriptures say that God sustains everything or that all things are held together by him, what does that mean? Would this predict we should make perhaps a scientific discovery that show a non-natural force that keeps the universe intact? Mark

DR. CRAIG: I don't think that this would be something that would be scientifically discoverable, although it would mean that the laws of conservation of energy and matter are not enough to ensure that metaphysically the universe endures from one moment to another. This would be a metaphysical sustaining in existence and therefore not something that would be scientifically detectable. The idea here is that God not only brings something into existence at the beginning of its existence but then he acts on that thing to keep it in existence moment by moment for as long as it exists. And were he to withdraw this sustaining power the thing would be annihilated. So creation and annihilation are the two opposite ends of the pole. After creating something, many theologians think that God conserves that thing in being for as long as it exists.

KEVIN HARRIS: That reminds me. We haven't talked about Peter Higgs, who just died.

DR. CRAIG: I just heard that.

KEVIN HARRIS: He was 94 years old and awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 2013. Of course he's famous for the Higgs boson particle that we've talked about – the God particle. I was just going to ask you about that – that God particle. It sounds similar to what is being asked here in that they're looking for this particle that holds everything together.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, though in this case, as I emphasize, we're talking metaphysics, not physics, where with regard to the Higgs boson and the Higgs field that permeates everything you're talking there about something is clearly physical and therefore physically detectable as Mark was asking about.

KEVIN HARRIS:

Dear Dr. Craig, Do miracles violate the fine-tuning argument? If the universe was tuned to such an extreme degree that a minor tweak here or there would cause the whole thing to collapse then how can God physically intervene and apparently nudge those finely tuned laws without destroying the universe? Thank you for your time. Dan, United States

DR. CRAIG: I think Dan has a misunderstanding of the fine-tuning. The fine-tuning refers to the very, very precise values of the fundamental constants and quantities in the universe like the gravitational constant or the ratio between the mass of the neutron and the proton. Those precise values are not affected when God acts in history to, say, part the Red Sea or raise someone from the dead or perform some miraculous healing. Those are macroscopic effects wrought by God that cannot be explained in terms of the natural causes at the time and place in question. But none of those involve God's nudging those finely tuned constants and quantities. They all remain the same throughout. It's just that God will bring about effects that cannot be brought about by the natural causes operative at the time.

KEVIN HARRIS:Next question,

Hello, Dr. Craig. In your response to question number 881 you said "as a maximally great being, God must be essentially loving. But it belongs to the very nature of love to give oneself away to another. But then who is that other to whom God gives himself essentially in love? It cannot be any contingent being. Therefore, there must be multiple persons within the very being of God. God is not a lonely monad as unitarians believe but rather is a multi-personal being." My question is: How exactly can one person within the triune Godhead give oneself away to another since each person being divine lacks or needs absolutely nothing? It seems to me the concept is a bit incoherent. I find it more persuasive to say that God is a maximally loving being because he is willing to give himself away to his creation such as human beings. John 15:13 teaches that greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. God did exactly this for us. However, I recognize this act of greatest love doesn't explain why God is a multi-personal being. Maybe this property is just a brute fact about God. Blessings to you and the Reasonable Faith ministry. Sam, Canada

DR. CRAIG: All Sam's argument about God's being willing to give himself to created persons such as human beings shows is that God has a disposition to be loving, but it wouldn't show that God is actually essentially loving, particularly if there are no created human beings in a world in which God creates nothing. Are we just to say that God is not loving? It seems to me as a maximally great being he must be loving in such a situation, and I think that the error of Sam's argument is to think that love is based upon some sort of need. He says each trinitarian person being divine lacks or needs absolutely nothing, but true love is not based upon having a lack or a need. On the contrary, it is an overflow of the fullness of being willing the good of another. In Christian theology this interflow of divine love among the persons of the Trinity even has a technical name. It's called perichoresis which is the complete interpenetration of these three trinitarian persons in terms of their knowledge, their will, and their mutual love. What the Father knows, the Son and the Spirit know. What the Son wills, the Father and the Spirit will. What the Spirit loves, the Father and the Son love. So there is a complete interpenetration among these three persons of the Trinity that is not based upon any need or lack in God but simply in the perfection of his own being. Being a perfectly loving being, each trinitarian person gives himself in love to the other trinitarian person. I find this to be a very persuasive argument, frankly, for the existence of multiple persons in God.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question is short and sweet. "What is the soul?" It's from Carol in the United States.

DR. CRAIG: I thought of taking this question for a question of the week and giving a two-word answer: "You are!" A soul is an immaterial, self-conscious, personal agent endowed with intentionality and freedom of the will. I'm talking about a rational soul now such as we are. So that would be how I understand what a soul is. The notion here is that human beings are constituted by a soul and a body, at least in this lifetime.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Hi, Dr. Craig. Greetings from Brazil. We hope you come back here soon. My question is on the doctrine of penal substitution. How does the classic Reformed perspective on the atonement (which emphasizes God's retributive justice demands) address Mark 2:1-12, Matthew 9:1-8, Luke 5:17-26? I understand that Jesus forgave the paralyzed man's sin on the basis of his authority to do so. He can forgive sins because he is God and he has mercy on whom he has mercy. I don't see how in this case the forgiveness of the paralyzed man's sin is dependent on any sacrifices to appease God's retributive justice demands. Under the Reformed view of penal substitution, it looks like the demands of God's justice were not satisfied given that Jesus had not been crucified by that time. How were the paralyzed man's sins atoned for? Your brother in Christ, Israel, Brazil.

DR. CRAIG: I would say that the paralyzed man's sins were atoned for in the same way that the sins of the people in the Old Testament who offered the animal sacrifices in the tabernacle and temple were pardoned of their sins. Their sins were atoned for on the basis of Christ's self-giving substitutionary death on the cross. So the sins that were committed prior to that atoning death were, as it were, provisionally forgiven waiting for that atoning death to take place that would decisively expunge people's guilt and redeem them. So these Old Testament sacrifices, I think, can be aptly compared to a credit card. They offer a credit card payment for one’s sins that then is finally decisively paid for by the Lamb of God when he offers his life on the cross. And the same would be true of the paralyzed man's sins. They are forgiven by Jesus' authoritative decree. Jesus has the authority to forgive sins, but in the same way that God doesn't just forgive sins without satisfaction of his divine justice, neither was this paralyzed man's sin forgiven in the absence of the satisfaction of divine justice. So if we understand that God is essentially loving and essentially just he will forgive us because of his love, but the demands of his justice have to be satisfied in order for that divine pardon to be made available to us.^[1]