Q&A Panel | UnApologetic Conference 2017

Dr. Craig was invited to speak at the UnApologetic Conference hosted at First Baptist Church Corpus Christi, Texas in May of 2017. At the close of the event Dr. Craig, Mike Licona, and Mark Mittelberg sat on a panel together taking questions from the audience.

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MODERATOR: I want to open the floor for questions. You can start making your way to the microphone if you would like to ask a question. If you have a specific person you would like to address the question to, please let us know that as well. We've already got one. Go ahead.

QUESTION: This is probably for Mike and probably for Bill, too. In the Bible we have the stoning of the woman caught in adultery. They were going to stone the woman caught in adultery. A lot of what I read, a lot of scholars debate whether or not this was an actual text or this was a later addition added by a scribe. I was going to ask what your opinions on this particular matter were and how to deal with questions about that.

DR. LICONA: It’s a great question. And the answer is we don't know a whole lot. What I can tell you is that the majority scholarly opinion right now is that the story of the woman caught in adultery that Jesus said, “He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone” that that was not in the original John. That's why the brackets are there and it says that is not found in the oldest or the most reliable manuscripts. Now that is not to say that the story never occurred. A lot of scholars who think that it didn't appear there in John do think that the story is authentic. But at the end of the day we just don't know. I have a friend who did his PhD – his doctoral research – on this text. He went into it wanting to show that this was in the original Gospel of John, and he came out saying, “I just don't know.” So it's hard to say. Maybe it wasn't in the original Gospel of John. Maybe it was in a second edition of the Gospel of John. I'm reading a story right now by a guy named Sid Phillips. He passed away a couple years ago. He was in World War II, a vet. I started reading it on the plane ride down here. He said, “As I'm going through this and I'm writing this book, some other stories come to mind and I throw it in there. So I go back and I insert these in,” he said. So maybe John wrote the Gospel and then later on he thought, “Oh, I forgot about this story.” And in the second edition he included it. I don't know. Even some people think that the way that this is laid out is more Lucan, and there are some manuscripts where the story is in Luke, not in John. So we just don't know. We just don't know.

QUESTION: Do you believe in Sola scriptura?

DR. LICONA: And by that you are saying what? Because there are a lot of people who may not understand what you're saying.

FOLLOWUP: All of Scripture is God-breathed and there are no errors. I guess the better way to phrase it would be is: What would your definition be of Sola scriptura?

DR. LINCONA: If you're asking me, “Do I believe the Bible is divinely inspired?” I'd say yes. Do I believe it's without any error? I'd say yes. It's without error in all that it teaches and all that it affirms. So that's how I would answer that.

MODERATOR: Dr. Craig, did you want to add anything?

DR. CRAIG: Except that that's not what Sola scriptura means. Sola scriptura is one of the watchwords of the Reformation which means scripture alone is the authority in matters of faith and practice, not church tradition as the Catholic Church held. The Catholic Church placed church tradition on equal ground with Scripture, and the Protestant reformers affirmed Sola – only – scriptura. Scripture alone is authoritative in faith and practice. So that's the proper meaning of the term. You were using it to designate something different.

QUESTION: I really enjoyed your presentation there, Dr. Craig. I really like the aspect of the fine-tuning, and I thought that was fascinating. That was really neat. It seems as our scientific knowledge and understanding is increasing, it seems like scientists are twisting themselves more and more to find explanations beyond what you're saying. I don't know that this is a new one but it seems now that there's kind of this idea that all of this is a simulation. I'm hearing this and reading about this. I think it's baloney but it seems to be an idea that some people are embracing just because it's an explanation without being an explanation. I wonder if you have any thoughts on that.

DR. CRAIG: I think what you're referring to is the idea that the universe is some sort of hologram.

FOLLOWUP: That none of us actually exists.

DR. CRAIG: I think that that's philosophically absurd. As Descartes taught us long ago, I, at least, exist because if I doubt that I exist, who's doing the doubting? I think that Descartes is absolutely right in saying that it's impossible to deny one's own existence because in denying that you exist you affirm that you exist. So I at least exist. Even if the world, as the video says, is a projection of my brain, that I am all that exists, nevertheless that still cries out for some explanation. I think that we would never have good reason for believing such a hypothesis. In order to deny the reliability of our senses that there is a world of external objects around us, we would have to have a very, very powerful defeater of that belief – a defeater that is more powerfully warranted than the belief that the world is real. I cannot imagine what sort of a defeater would fit that condition. So one would never be justified in believing such a thing.

FOLLOWUP: I guess my follow-up question would be: Why do these things persist? I mean, they seem self-evidently ludicrous.

DR. CRAIG: I do think, to be honest with you, that part of this is the popular press’ coverage of science. The popular press does not understand science, and as a result it systematically promotes the sensational, the outrageous, the outlandish because this is what is a headline grabber. I think many professional scientists themselves despair of the way in which contemporary science is handled by the popular press. It's an attempt at having sensationalism. Very often the things that the popular press is touting are not really taken with great scientific seriousness.

DR. MITTELBERG: I would just add to that, on a more personal level, I think a lot of times it's just people are looking for interesting theories that take you up on rabbit trails of philosophical speculation rather than letting the truth get to them. Romans 1 says even though they know what is true they suppress the truth and they look for other beliefs and other theories. I know as I share my faith with people often they will raise what seems like a good objection and I give what I think seems like a good answer. Rather than going, “Oh, OK, that's really helpful,” they realize, “OK, that's not working.” So they throw out something else. And I give what I think is a good answer to that, and they go to the next thing. And about four or five levels into this I sometimes just go, “Timeout. Can I just be really honest with you?” And they go, “Sure.” I say, “I feel like you're working harder at finding excuses not to consider what I'm talking about then you are at finding the truth.” The Bible says we should be lovers of truth. I think that's a good philosophy for anyone whether they believe the Bible or not. Let's love what's real. Let's pursue what's right and what's true. “I think I'm giving you a lot of truth, and it seems to me like you're trying to dodge it.” I've actually asked people, “Can I just ask you honestly – is there some reason you don't want this to be true? Or is there something in your life you're afraid you'd have to give up or change if it is true?” I’ve had people admit to me that, “Well, I know that if I admit God's real or the Bible's true that God's going to want to change my sex life, or he's going to want to change this or that.” I'm going, “You're probably right.” And I'm pretty sure this is the real issue now; not whether we're some projected experiment from some mind somewhere, or whatever their theory was. So I think sometimes it's just a dodge, and I think sometimes we just have to kind of pull it back and get honest and get real with people. Some of them will go with us on that. Again, I think that's helping to remove barriers and get back to the real mission which is to present Christ and the Gospel to them.

QUESTION: Hi, I'm Danielle. I have two questions. One is to follow up on Bible inerrancy and how authoritative it is. I am thinking of the passages in the Bible that said that God actually kills and all that stuff. I'm trying to understand how the Bible is still inerrant and present this God. And if it's not inerrant, there are actually errors even in translation or in the way in which it was produced, how is that fully authoritative in our lives?

MODERATOR: Let me restate the question to make sure that we're following. It sounds like what you're saying is if the Bible is true and inerrant and there's passages of Scripture that talk about God commanding people to be killed in the Old Testament, for example, how do we reconcile things like that? Mike, do you want to start by answering that one?

DR. LICONA: Sure. Why would that negate the inerrancy of the Bible?

FOLLOWUP: How would that then reflect the character of God?

DR. LICONA: OK. Well, that could reflect on the character of God. At the very worst, if we couldn't explain some of that, we'd say we may not like the character of God but it wouldn’t mean the Bible has an error in it. It would mean that we have an erroneous view of God. Right? It wouldn't mean the Bible is not inerrant.

FOLLOWUP: It is not consistent in the passages. You can’t have then conflict within the passages.

DR. MITTELBERG: Are you saying like one of the Ten Commandments says “thou shalt not kill” but then if God kills then he's breaking his own commandment? Is that kind of what you are saying?

FOLLOWUP: Yes. In a way it would be a conflict that would show some sort of error within the way we have the Bible right now. And if we accept there are some errors in the Bible then how would that authority be in our lives?

MODERATOR: It sounds like what you are arguing is that it seems inconsistent. Maybe not necessary in error, but it seems inconsistent (from what you're saying) for God to say not to kill and for God to be good but yet on the other hand have passages where he is commanding people to wipe out a particular country and those kinds of things.

DR. CRAIG: Have you had a chance to read what I've written on this?

FOLLOWUP: Yes. It was quasi-clear so I was hoping you would give me an explanation.

DR. CRAIG: On the website, ReasonableFaith.org, Question of the Week #16 addresses this. I try to lay out a model of God and his commands that would make sense of this and would make it consistent. I've never received to date a refutation of this from any atheist or Internet Infidel (that’s what they call themselves). In our dialogue in Australia, Lawrence Krauss raised this issue. In the course of the dialogue he finally admitted that, yes, I had succeeded in showing that there's no inconsistency between God's being all-loving and all-just and his issuing these commands to annihilate the Canaanites. So I'd invite you just to look at that and ponder what I say there and see if it doesn't remove the inconsistency. I returned to that issue around Question of the Week #328 or so and treat it a second time. I don't want to take our time now going into it, but look at what I've said and see if it doesn't make sense of this.^[1]

FOLLOWUP: The other question I had is I'd like to know your opinion on God's relationship with time and how that affects the way we see prayer and how we relate to prayer. So what’s God’s relationship with time, how do we see God . . . ?

MODERATOR: God’s relationship to time, and how that relates to prayer. In other words, if God's outside of time . . . ?

DR. MITTELBERG: I should warn you, he's written like a three-volume book on this. So how much time you got?

DR. CRAIG: Let me say this. I think that prayer changes things not in the sense that it changes God's mind but in the sense that God knew whether we would pray or not, and if we would pray he may have providentially decided to do certain things that he would not have done had he known we would not pray. So in that sense our prayers really make a difference in the course of world history because God's actions can be contingent upon how he knew we would pray. He can know how we would pray whether he's in time or timeless. I think that's not germane to the question. The question is: Does God know how we would act in any situation in which he might put us? I think he does have that kind of knowledge. Using that sort of knowledge then he can providentially order the world so that your prayers really do make a difference.

FOLLOWUP: OK, so let me make sure that I understood that. So no matter if God is outside of time or not, he would in all his knowledge knew that I'm going to pray and he decided based on his previous knowledge of the fact I will pray tomorrow.

DR. CRAIG: No. No, you're talking about foreknowledge. You said his previous knowledge of how you will pray. I'm talking about a very special kind of knowledge. It's knowledge of what are called subjunctive conditionals. These are statements – if-then statements – in the subjunctive mood, not the indicative mood. We English speakers aren't very good with the subjunctive mood, but it would be conditionals like this. If I were rich, I would buy a Mercedes Benz. If I had not pulled out into traffic, I would not have been hit by the oncoming car. If I were to ask the boss for a raise, he would raise my salary. Those are if-then statements in the subjunctive mood. They're called counterfactuals because typically what they envision is not factual. It's a condition that if it were like this then this is the way it would be. So what I'm saying is whether God's in time or out of time, because he's omniscient he knows if you were to pray or if you were in this situation you would pray for this, and so he can set things up so that that prayer has consequences that he would not set up if he knew that you would not have prayed in those circumstances.

DR. MITTELBERG: So in other words, pray.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, prayer makes a difference. That's the bottom line. Prayer makes a difference.

QUESTION: Depend upon who you ask or who you talk to, you'll find out the Earth is so many years old. If you read the Bible, you might literally take it as six, seven, eight, maybe ten thousand years. If you ask a science teacher, they might say two or three million. But every person I talk to, regardless of where they come from, always has some number, random, that's out there. No two people agree. And to follow up with that, you are starting to hear this stuff about the Earth is flat. What's up with all this? I mean, why can't we come up with what the answer is and then be done with it?

DR. MITTELBERG: I'll take the last part there. The Earth is not flat. The only place I've ever seen that is on the Internet. I'll just take the first stab at this. On the very specific, I know a lot of people believe based on adding up the genealogies in the Old Testament which Bishop Ussher did a long time ago. He added up the ages and that's how he got to what is typically called the Young Earth position that the Earth is like eight thousand years old. You may know this but for those of you that don't, there's real problems with trying to add up the age of man alone, never mind the Earth or the cosmos, based on genealogies because in the Bible the way they would record genealogies often they would say so-and-so begat so-and-so but they skipped generations. They would just sometimes hit high points in the different eras of that bloodline. So when it says so-and-so begat so-and-so, it doesn't necessarily mean that was father and son. It may be great-great-great grandfather with great-great great-grandson. So that's a faulty way to add up and determine . . .

MODERATOR: Almost like calling Jesus “the son of David” in a sense.

DR. MITTELBERG: Exactly. It means he’s in the lineage of David, not necessarily (and in that case clearly not) the son-of. Besides all that, there's a separate question how old the Earth is, how old the cosmos is, and so on. I'm pretty sure we're probably all on similar pages on this that we would not hold that Christians need to hold a Young Earth view and that there's a lot of reasons probably not to biblical and scientific, though I don't try to talk people out of it. I guess I'll say one more thing about it and then hand the baton to the other guys. I think one of the problems is Christians aiming their guns at each other and wanting to attack each other over the age of the Earth. I think that's aiming the guns the wrong way. I think our real enemy is not each other and debates on the age of the Earth. I think it's scientific naturalism which tries to say somehow it all got here without God. I think that's the enemy. I think that's where we need to focus our efforts and our energy to defeat this idea that somehow it all came about without an intelligence, without design, without a creator. We would be wise to go after that rather than fighting each other on the age of the Earth.

QUESTION: Dr. Craig, sorry, I'm not much of a public speaker. In your previous presentation you said something that I had a question about. I think I might also have an answer. I just wanted to know how close I was to being right on this. You were saying that if the universe is infinitely old it would basically not have ever reached the present because it would have to cross an infinite gap of time to get there. The question would be how that fits in with an infinitely old God and getting there. Is that because God is outside of time?

DR. CRAIG: Yes.

FOLLOWUP: So being timeless, the same argument would not apply?

DR. CRAIG: Yes.

FOLLOWUP: OK. I guess that was the answer! I did have one other question about what he was saying there. I'm sorry, I honestly didn't go to your presentation, Mark. When the genealogy thing – I get that you can have somebody say so-and-so beget so-and-so and it be an ancestral thing. But it also says so-and-so lived X number of years then beget so-and-so, lived X number of more years, and then died. Wouldn't that tend to indicate that even if it was great-grandfather that it happened 400 years after the birth of the great-grandfather that the great grandson was born?

DR. MITTELBERG: I don't think so because if it's not listing every person then it doesn't matter how long that one lived if there were eight generations of a gap in between. For instance, if you look at Matthew chapter one, you'll see the whole summary of the biblical genealogy summed up, I think is it two or three sets of 14? It's kind of put into a pattern. But even if you give the ages of certain ones, I don't think you can add up to get there.

FOLLOWUP: But the key problem I have with that is that the passages in the New Testament state the people but not (in the same way, anyways) the lifespans. With the other one, it's not the fact that they say he lived X number of years. If it said Methuselah lived 979 years and begat Noah (I know he didn't, but just put a name there), it would still not have any bearing on the timeline. But if he says he lived four hundred years then begat Noah and then lived five hundred seventy-nine years, it would seem to be indicative of a more concrete timeline because it gives you how long it was before birth and how long it was after birth of this other person.

DR. MITTELBERG: But I think there's still the assumption that the next person is always the son-of as opposed to in the lineage of. When you look at comparisons even in the Old Testament between different genealogies there are gaps in all of them. So I don't think it's a good way to get there. But, again, my goal tonight isn't to talk you out of that. I do think it's important though for those of us that grew up with a King James Version of the Bible that says 4004 BC above Genesis 1:1 to know that that is not in the writings of Scripture. That's not Genesis 1a. That is an interpretive idea that someone who at one time published the King James Bible based on Bishop Ussher adding up the genealogies and put that in there. But that's not in the Bible there. The Bible nowhere says how old mankind is or how old the Earth is. But, again, to me I like the kinds of arguments that you heard from Dr. Craig tonight that sidestep what I think is really kind of an intramural debate among Christians in most cases and gets to the evidence that really goes after the idea that somehow this could have all happened without God. That's why I think we need to put our focus there.

QUESTION: What is one of your favorite Bible verses, and why?

DR. LICONA: I don't really have one.

FOLLOWUP: See, that's why I said one of your favorites because I didn’t want to constrain you.

DR. LICONA: John 3:16.

DR. MITTELBERG: It’s the only one he could think of!

DR. CRAIG: When I sign my books, I always inscribe under my signature 2 Corinthians 10:5 which has become a kind of life verse for me. It says, “We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God taking every thought captive to obey Christ.” I see that as my calling.

DR. MITTELBERG: That's often the one. I just signed some books and that's what I put in as well. That's one of my favorites. I think we'd all say in different contexts you have different verses. When you're suffering, you're struggling, you're dealing with personal issues, we probably all turn to the Psalms. Other times you're looking for other kinds of information or help, you turn to other sources. But one other one I often write is John 8:32 that you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. I love that because I'm an apologist but I’m more than that – I'm an evangelist. So I view truth very much as not just something to know and understand and debate and talk about, but as the key to life, as the key to being set free from all kinds of bondages and sin and given new life through the truth in Christ. That's one of my favorites.

MODERATOR: I’ll have to come to Mike Licona’s defense. He's actually memorized the entire Sermon on the Mount. He was quoting portions of it to us as we were walking on the beach talking theology earlier today.

DR. MITTELBERG: That’s why I can joke about it because Mike's written a book about this big about just the biblical stuff on the resurrection. He’s forgotten more Bible than I know.

FOLLOWUP: I have one more question. It's a smaller one but I know everybody has thought about it. What came first - the chicken or the egg? Because, you're super smart and they're people that aren't super smart, but we all think the same thing. You know what I mean?

DR. CRAIG: I don’t know.

DR. MITTELBERG: It was in your video! I saw the chicken and then the egg.

DR. CRAIG: I noticed that, too!

DR. LICONA: I was in Costco about a month ago and coming up to the counter and some guy was purchasing eggs. The cashier said, “Yeah, well, what came first? The chicken or the egg?” “I don’t know.” I said, “Well, I don't think the egg would have gotten there by chance, and I don't think the chicken would have either. So probably God created the chicken who laid the egg.” And they just looked at each other, and then kept going.

MODERATOR: That's a great evangelism tool right there. You ask a philosophical question like which came first, the chicken or the egg? And then you introduce that into a Gospel presentation about God creating the chicken. There you go! A great tool.

QUESTION: This question is for Dr. Craig. We usually have atheists saying that faith and reason are opposites, but I've come across certain Christians who say the same thing. I have a quote here. This person says, “There's simply no proof offered for God that I find convincing except for praxis. I don't need everything to align in either-or fashion to believe in God. Apologetics forces God to be rational according to human terms. God is known, but he is also mystery.” So my question is: How do you respond to Christians who dismiss reason in the life of faith?

DR. CRAIG: I think I would turn to Scripture because these folks would tend to believe what the Bible says. I would try to show them that the practice of Jesus and the apostles in proclaiming the truth of the Kingdom of God was not simply to proclaim it but to give evidence and arguments for it. This is especially evident in the book of Acts. If you go through the book of Acts and see Paul's evangelistic strategy in the Mediterranean cities he would visit, he would go first to the synagogue in the town and begin to argue – and that's the word it uses: “argue” – with the Jews trying to persuade them that Jesus is the Messiah. Then he would go to the marketplace where he would talk to the Gentiles. In one city he rented a lecture hall and for a year gave daily lectures in the Hall of Tyrannus persuading people and arguing for the truth of Christianity. So when you look at the example of Jesus and the apostles I think it just makes it very evident that they were not afraid or reluctant to give argument and evidence in favor of what they believed. Did that mean they didn't trust the Holy Spirit? Of course not. Rather, they trusted the Holy Spirit to use their arguments and evidence in order to draw people to himself.

DR. MITTELBERG: I would just add evangelistically this guy whoever said that has unilaterally disarmed because let's say if this person has a son or a daughter that goes away to school and comes back and says, “I no longer believe in God because it doesn't make sense to me.” What are you left to say? Well, it doesn't really have to make sense. You just have to trust it. You just have to believe it.

FOLLOWUP: You have to experience it.

DR. MITTELBERG: Well, and they go, “Yeah, I grew up with a dad but now I don't buy it anymore.” Well, I think we have a whole lot more to say at that point about why it makes sense, why it's true, where the evidence points, and so on. But if we want to just say, no, it's just a mystical thing then what are you left but to say, “Well, son, I hope you have a mystical experience someday.” Besides the fact that Paul used apologetics, Jesus did. Jesus said, “If you don't believe my words then look at my works, look at my miracles.” I think we just need to do what Jesus did, what Paul did, and in the real world that makes a big difference. It doesn't always win people over but it gives them some reasons to consider.

QUESTION: I have a lot of questions but I know there's a lot of people behind me so I’ll keep it kind of short. Obviously I just graduated from the university recently and I studied biology, and so my question is going to be about biology. I know it might be attacked for a lot of questions, but God does make sense. I believe in God. I know we have proof. A simple one is the conscience. Every civilization in history has had a conscience. They've had morals and stuff. But my question is in regards to Genesis 1 and 2. I'm very familiar with Ken Hamm and Ray Comfort, but I'm also very familiar with Richard Dawkins and all these other guys. A lot of times they both make sense. But it's kind of hard to trust . . . and it's not even about the age of the Earth but trust evolution and how it goes into the Bible, for example Adam and Eve. I know through the fossil records we have a lot of proof of us changing over time through certain species and things like that. But the Bible just says we were created as human being and that was it. Then we see a lot of – I'm going to keep it short – we see a lot of things that I feel I want to say contradict but kind of go against science and evolution but also the Scripture, if that makes any sense. It is like Adam and Eve, the Flood of Noah, and about the past, for example, the dinosaurs. My question is: how do we make sense of all that with Scripture and science and how do we make a decision?

DR. CRAIG: That is an enormously wide-ranging question. Let’s try to limit it a little bit to the question of biological evolution since that's your area. I am persuaded that once you give up the idea that Genesis teaches that the world was created in six consecutive 24-hour days then it doesn't say anything about how God brought biological life forms into existence. Whether he used means, whether he did it by fiat (immediately), it just doesn't say. All it says is God said “Let there be and it was.” My short answer to you would be this. As a biologist I would say follow the evidence where it leads. Stay true to your Christian convictions, and then be skeptical of what you hear. Chase it down and follow the evidence where it leads, and I think that you'll be alright.

DR. LICONA: J. I. Packer is an evangelical highly regarded Christian theologian. He was one of the three guys involved in crafting the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy which is one of the most conservative positions on the Bible and describing it in terms of its inspiration and authority. Packer has publicly said that Genesis 1 in its entirety is a quasi-liturgical celebration of the fact of creation and is not meant to be understood as a description of what we would have seen had we been hovering above the chaos. He goes on to say that, “Were the Tree of Life and the Tree of Good and Evil actual trees in the Garden?” He said, “I don't know. Trees were poetic devices used in that sort of literature.” He even goes so far to say, “Was there a serpent who tempted Eve in the Garden?” He said, “I don't know.” He said, “Maybe not. Maybe. We don't know.” He said, “But the underlying message in Genesis (that God created and that we have fallen), that's what's important.” Oh, and he also said about evolution – he said, “Genesis doesn't say anything one way or the other in terms of evolution.” When I heard Packer say that, wow, here is one of the most conservative evangelical theologians out there who is making this kind of statement. So that just kind of freed me up, and I said, “Wow, if a conservative, highly regarded Christian theologian can say that, I don't need to dig in and embrace any particular view in terms of creation whether it's Old Earth, Young Earth, or theistic evolution or whatever.” What's important is that God created.

QUESTION: Thank you for the opportunity to ask a question, probably to Dr. Mittelberg. Some of the issues that you brought up were kind of what I was going to ask about. I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. My dad is a Southern Baptist pastor there. I grew up really needing to have a good grasp on the fullness of what I believed. But I've noticed a shift in how we evangelize which is why we're here talking about apologetics. Certainly it used to be that you could appeal more to the ethos and people understood their need for God. Now it's more of that idea that there is no God and I hate him. What Ravi Zacharias talked about – that philosophical pre-commitment to “There just can't be a God because I need my life to be like this.” I was wondering what you would attribute that shift to. Certainly I know that the Gospel is an offense to people who are lost, but what would you attribute that shift to, and how do you overcome that idea when people are so lied to and the truth is offensive and that so much so that they're more willing to believe that extraterrestrials are the higher power? That's one thing I've encountered several times. “I can't accept that it's God. It could be aliens.”

DR. MITTELBERG: I like what John Lennox says. People ask me if I believe there could be extraterrestrial life. He goes, “Yeah, I believe in one big one.” I'm actually tomorrow morning in my main session going to talk about the drift of the whole culture toward secularism. I don't know that I give a lot of reasons. I don't break down a lot of how it happened as much as what's happening and how we need to respond to it as apologists and evangelists. Certainly the culture has drifted further and further away from a Christian worldview. I think a lot of that has to do with going way beyond what the founders of the country intended with separation of church and state to the point where it's separation of the citizen from the whole idea of God and having many people who run our schools and our universities being committed secularists that what you get taught often in school situations and secular universities is an anti-theistic view. I think that's all had its effect. But I would quickly add that we don't usually, at least in our individual efforts to reach friends or family members for Christ, we don't evangelize a culture. We evangelize individuals. It was interesting when you said you grew up in Salt Lake City and you said your dad – I thought you were going to say he led a Mormon Church there with all of his wives and you have a very large family, I suppose. The reason I bring that up is to say, because I shared my faith with many Mormons, and when you talk to most Mormons they do have a higher view of Scripture. They of course have a broader canon of what they consider to be Scripture. But you can appeal to Scripture. So a lot of the apologetics you would do there would be more of a traditional biblical apologetics thing. That's not what John was saying or Luke or Jesus. So I think it is a person-relative approach. If you’re talking to someone that already believes the Bible and they believe in God, you don't need to give them philosophical proofs for the existence of God. You're just covering territory you already agree with. So the nature of apologetics and really persuasion in general is to figure out where a person is now and where they need to be, and then take them from point A to point B. If point A includes a high view of Scripture then start with Scripture. But if point A doesn't even believe in God then you're going to have to do some other things to point to the existence of God. So I think on a practical level that would be my main advice – to try to relate. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9, “I’ve become all things to all people. To the Jew, I'm like a Jew. To those outside the Law, I'm like one outside the Law.” Whatever it is, wherever they are coming from . . . I think what he’s saying is to establish common ground with them so that I can bring them to the point of trusting in Christ.

QUESTION: My question is how can we help people understand the fact that we all have free will and also the fact that God knows all of our choices beforehand?

DR. CRAIG: Do you think that there's an incompatibility between God’s foreknowing everything and there being free will?

FOLLOWUP: I don't think so, but how can we make other people understand that?

DR. CRAIG: One thing you can do is to show how it's logically fallacious to think that because God foreknows the future therefore everything happens necessarily. What you would do is show them an argument that would go like this.

1.  Necessarily, if God foreknows X, then X will happen.
2. God foreknows X.

Then ask: what follows from those two premises? If they think that what follows from that is that necessarily X will happen then they have committed a logical fallacy. That, in fact, does not follow from those two premises. All that follows from those two premises is that X will happen, but X will not happen necessarily. X could fail to happen, but if it were to fail to happen then God would have foreknown differently. There's those subjunctive conditionals again that are so important. From God's foreknowledge of the future you can know what will happen but it doesn't mean that it will happen necessarily. It could fail to happen, but if it were to fail to happen then God's foreknowledge would have been different. Therefore his knowledge of the future is entirely compatible with contingency and freedom and possibility and so forth. It's a huge error on the part of certain theologians called Open Theists who think that in order to preserve the contingency and openness of the future you have to deny God's foreknowledge of the future. That's a logical mistake.

DR. MITTELBERG: I try to sum it up by saying God fully foreknows what I will freely do.

DR. LICONA: Hey, Bill. I had an idea I'd like to run it past you and see what you think. Of course there's no perfect illustration, but let's suppose that I video recorded the Super Bowl and I know the end result. Now when I go back and I watch the Super Bowl, each of the players had complete free will in what they were doing. And the coach, “All right, let's punt it rather than going for the field goal for the Falcons at the end.” Bill and I both live in the Atlanta area, so he knows what I'm talking about. So I know what they're going to do, but they had total free will in the process to make that. But before I watch it on the DVR, I knew what they were going to do. So just having foreknowledge of what they're going to do doesn't impact the fact that they had free will.

DR. CRAIG: I think that's right, Mike. Knowledge isn't a causal factor in this, is it? Whether you knew what the end of the video was or you didn't know what the end of the video was doesn't affect what the people on the video do. They do whatever they want freely, and your just knowing about it doesn't change anything really.

QUESTION: I’d like to address my question to the three of you. You touched on a little bit with what Dr. Licona mentioned earlier about the digging. With the knowledge that you guys have and the scientific community that is against you, is there anything in particular that provokes you? For instance, Ravi Zacharias, I believe, wrote a book as a response to Sam Harris' A Letter to a Christian Nation: The End of Faith; I believe he wrote a book called The End of Reason as a response to that book. Is there anything in particular nowadays that provokes you – or, not provokes you, but stumps you – in a way where you believe it requires a response? Because I think you guys covered a lot of ground from the work that I've seen. First of all, I admire a lot of what you do because I think a lot of Christians believe that – not a lot of Christians, but sometimes Christians think – that the Christian community, we check our brains at the door. And when we listen to you guys defend our faith, I think that's something that helps my faith as well. Is there anything that nowadays stumps you, and how do you react to it? What is the thought process, or what does that look like in your world when people of your intellect get stumped?

MODERATOR: I don’t think Dr. Craig has ever been stumped, so Mark, why don’t you take that one?

DR. MITTELBERG: It happens to me all the time. I just call Dr. Craig and get the answer. I don't know about stumped, but I will acknowledge readily that for me (and probably for most apologists) the hardest thing is when it has to do with personal suffering. When someone's going through something that just doesn't seem right, it's not fair. It's “Where is God in this?” And the answer is: We live in an unfair world where bad things happen to good people, where things are not right, where the books have not been balanced in terms of justice, and so on. For me that's the hardest thing. It's usually a Q&A like this where we're almost out of time and we go, “We'll take one more question” and that's always a mistake because it's always some heart-rending story about some horrific thing that happened in someone's life and we're going, “OK, we got 90 seconds” and there's just no way. There's nothing I can say that's going to fix that or make anyone feel good about it or make it right. I think we have a lot of good things and we've all written and talked about the problem of evil and pain and suffering. I think the Christian worldview gives the best answers, but ultimately there's not an answer that solves it or makes it go away and certainly that makes the pain go away. So for me that's what feels the most like being stumped – wishing I could say more to make it better or make it go away.

DR. CRAIG: I understood the question to be: Is there something that provokes us into a response? When you first asked that, I thought “no” because my work tends to be proactive rather than reactive. I work on subjects that are of interest to me and that I'm passionate about, whether anybody else is or not. I just spent over 12 years working on the relationship between God and abstract objects like numbers which is not a vital burning concern to very many people. But, as I thought about your question, it occurred to me actually that my current work is in a sense the result of provocation. And what it is is this. I have been, for many years now, very disgruntled with my fellow Christian philosophers because of their weak, thin doctrines and defenses of the atonement. I have been wondering, “Where is a robust defense of the coherence and truth of the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement?” Instead, all I get are these watered down thin atonement theories by other Christian philosophers. And New Testament scholars, some of them, too, like N. T. Wright, have been just as bad. I have been really provoked in my spirit, I think, to work on this subject. So for the last year I've been devoting myself full time to a study of the doctrine of the atonement. I have to say that this has been unexpectedly rich and rewarding. I thought I understood the doctrine of the atonement until I began to do this study, and new vistas and insights and depths have opened up to me that I never suspected were there. I am so excited about the current work that I am doing on the atonement and anxious to begin publishing on this.

DR. LICONA: I have a lot of unanswered questions. There are things that bother me. They worry me. I think one thing I've learned, and I learned this from Gary Habermas (a mentor of mine) – I would come to him and I'd say, “What about this and what about this?” And he'd say, “Did Jesus rise from the dead?” “Yeah.” “OK. Well, why is that bothering you?” “Yeah, but there's debate today amongst scholars on who wrote Matthew. Did Matthew actually write the Gospel of Matthew?” “Well, Mike, did Jesus rise from the dead? If Matthew didn't write Matthew, would Christianity still be true if Jesus rose from the dead?” “Yeah.” “Well then, why is it bothering you so much?” Bart Ehrman, we've had five debates, he and I. He would point out all these different contradictions and errors in the Bible, and I said, “Well, I don't grant those to you, Bart, but if Jesus rose from the dead then Christianity is true even if it were to be the case that some things in the Bible aren't.” And he agreed. Well, what's the big deal then? So that's the response that it has provoked for me. I've used these. So, yes, I have a lot of unanswered questions. Yes, there are some things in the Bible that trouble me, honestly. I don't like to read the Old Testament. But I've learned to put things into perspective. If Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true. Period. And that helps me keep the main thing the main thing. So I don't worry about a lot of these things anymore. They don't really bother me nearly as much because it's all in perspective. Now, I've studied the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and I'm thoroughly convinced that it happened. So these other things just don't bother me.

QUESTION: I have a few questions, but I'm going to narrow it down to the old Law. Who decided that was no more – the old Law?

MODERATOR: The Old Testament Law – who decided that is no more?

DR. MITTELBERG: Oh, I thought she was talking about ObamaCare!

MODERATOR: Has the old Law been abolished? Is it that we just don't follow it anymore? Obviously we're not sacrificing goats and these kinds of things. How do you answer that? What's happened to the Old Testament Law?

DR. CRAIG: In the book of Acts, the Jerusalem Council that was held by the mother church in Jerusalem decided that they would not impose the yoke of the Law upon the Gentile converts to Christianity. They said just abstain from things strangled and from blood and sexual immorality and you don't need to obey the rest of the Law in order to be a Christian. The question would be: Is this a decision that the Jerusalem church just invented out of thin air? Or did this reflect the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth himself? In the Gospels there's some indications that Jesus himself thought that he was the fulfillment of the Law when he said it's what comes out of a man that defiles the man, not what goes into his mouth. Mark comments, “Thus, he declared all foods clean.” That is to say, Mark interprets this as abolishing the distinction between clean and unclean foods.

DR. MITTELBERG: And then in Acts 10 you have the vision of Peter before he goes to Cornelius' home where that's confirmed through visions from God showing that the dietary laws were no longer.

FOLLOWUP: But did that also eliminate all the other ones as far as tattoos, piercings, haircuts, clothing, and all of those others like you find in Leviticus?

DR. CRAIG: Well, certainly the decision of the Jerusalem Council shows that because they imposed very minimum requirements on the Gentiles.

FOLLOWUP: Were they the ones that imposed those laws to begin with?

DR. CRAIG: No. These were the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem like James.

FOLLOWUP: They're the ones that set those Old Testament Laws?

DR. CRAIG: No, no. They lived by them. These laws were inherited from their fathers.

FOLLOWUP: What gave them the authority to say no longer do you have to live by those laws? If they did not put those laws in place – if it was God-breathed – then what gave the Jewish leaders the right to say no longer do you have to live by those laws?

DR. CRAIG: That's exactly what I was saying. Did they come up with this out of thin air? Or was it due to the teachings of Jesus, the Son of Man, who said that he had authority to do this sort of thing. I suspect, and I'm sure you'd agree, that the action of the early church is reflecting the historical Jesus on this because he is the only one who had the authority to revise the Old Testament Law.

DR. MITTELBERG: I think it is clear that many of the Old Testament Laws for the Israelites were to keep them as a distinct nation until the coming of the Messiah.

FOLLOWUP: It is just because it doesn’t say it plainly in the New Testament that Jesus told the leaders you don't have to do that and here's another way to do it. I guess people assumed that man got rid of that.

DR. MITTELBERG: The biggest way – you have the sacrificial system of the Old Testament and when Jesus came it was announced, “Here's the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” and that he is the ultimate sacrifice as the book of Hebrews makes very clear. So I'd say in the biggest way the whole sacrificial system became obsolete when the Son of God, the Lamb of God, died once and for all to pay for all sins. Then I think God providentially allowed that whole sacrificial system to end with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD. But I think there's a variety of answers of how God communicated this.

FOLLOWUP: These are things that are asked of me, and I would like to be able to give them a plainer answer the way you've explained it. That makes sense. My other question is: are there any other writings on Jesus' life before his ministry but after he hits like twelve or thirteen years old? Are there any records of his life other than what's not in the Bible?

DR. LICONA: You mean before he was like 12?

FOLLOWUP: When he was a teenager and in his twenties because he didn't become a minister until he was like thirty.

DR. LICONA: That's a good question. Nothing that would be reliable. You've got the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that has some really weird stories about Jesus. One is he was working with his dad as a carpenter and his dad cut a plank too short he was like, “I am not going to make any money off of this.” And Jesus said, “No problem, Pop.” And he goes over and he stretches the plank to the right thing. So there's nothing reliable. But it really shouldn't surprise us, and the reason being is because all four Gospels are either ancient biographies or they share a lot in common with the genre of ancient biography. An ancient biography – the purpose of biography according to Plutarch (not the guy in The Hunger Games, but the real Plutarch who lived in the first century and the early second century), he said the reason, the purpose, behind biography is to illuminate who the main character is. What kind of a person are they morally and their ancestry. I mean, who is this person? And they want to reveal the character of that person. So typically what would happen in an ancient biography (most of them that have survived we can see) it talks a little about the person's ancestry and then it launches right into the inauguration of the person's public life, be that politics or the military or as a philosopher, teacher. So there's very little in most biographies about a person's childhood. So it shouldn't surprise us at all that there's very little about Jesus’ childhood. It has his ancestry. You've got the genealogies in Matthew and Luke. Mark starts off by pretty much saying Jesus is the fulfillment of prophecy and he's divine. Then you've got John that comes out and says he's God amongst us. God incarnate. So you've got that, and then *boom* all four Gospels just launch right into Jesus’ public ministry.

QUESTION: This question is directed at Dr. Craig. I’m actually glad that you explained subjunctive conditionals because my question is about Molinism. The only proof verse that I'm familiar for that conditional is Genesis 18 – Abraham asking God if there's a righteous person in the city, if he will spare it. And God's response is that depending . . . how do I question my question? God answers knowing what he will do, but I'm not familiar with other verses where he knows what other people will do given their free will. So are there other proof verses for God knowing what other people would do given a different situation?

DR. CRAIG: One of the most famous passages is in (I can't give you the exact citation, I think it's 2 Samuel^[2]); it's the story of David who is holed up in the city of Keilah, and he's being pursued by Saul. David gets a divining device called an ephod, and asks the ephod, “If I stay at Keilah, will Saul come down and attack the city?” And the ephod says, “Yes. Saul will come down.” And then David asks the ephod, “If Saul comes down and attacks the city, will the men of Keilah turn me over to Saul?” And the divining device says, “Yes. They will turn you over.” Whereupon David flees Keilah with his men, and as a result Saul does not come down and therefore the men of Keilah don't turn David over to Saul. So what the ephod was giving David was not knowledge of the future. Saul didn't come down. They didn't turn him over. It was giving him knowledge of these subjunctive conditionals: “If you were to remain in Keilah, Saul would come down. And if Saul were to come down, the men of Keilah would deliver you over to him.” Knowing those truths then David flees the situation so that none of it comes to pass. That's a great example in Scripture of this kind of divine knowledge of these subjunctive conditionals.

FOLLOWUP: I have another question for you. I've noticed that you've given an answer that kind of contradicts what John Lennox says. Given if Jesus' bones were to be discovered, and Lawrence Krauss asked John Lennox what it would take for him to disbelieve or not believe in Christianity, Lennox responded with, “If they found Jesus' bones.” But I've heard you say in a video that based on the shifting sands of evidence and the self-authenticating experience that you would still believe. But I feel like that's also the same case that a Muslim can make. So how can Christians make their argument better than that of a Muslim to an atheist?

DR. CRAIG: Wow. You really opened a huge can of worms here. The question that you posed is usually a gotcha question that's intended to embarrass rather than to ask a real point. They want to get you to admit that you would still believe in the resurrection of Jesus even if they found the bones of Jesus and found his remains, and, “Ha. Ha. Look at how irrational he is.” This is nothing but a gotcha question. But the people who pose these gotcha questions are usually so inept that they misstate the question so that you can easily elude it. What you're thinking of is one such answer that I gave where they did not ask correctly, “If they found the bones of Jesus, would you still believe in the resurrection?” Instead they say something like, “If archaeologists were to find some bones and they thought that these were the bones of Jesus, would you still believe in the resurrection?” I said, “Yes. I would sooner believe the resurrection than that they had correctly identified the bones.” But of course if they were the bones of Jesus it would follow then that Jesus is not risen from the dead. That's trivial. That's tautologous. So that's absolutely correct. The question would be: Would we ever be justified in thinking that we have discovered the bones of Jesus. I think that's highly, highly improbable that one would ever be in such a situation. Now, how does this make you any different than the Muslim or the Mormon who has a mystical burning in the bosom or something of that sort? I don't think that those folks are irrational in appealing to such an experience. I think that you are perfectly justified in accepting your religious experience as a properly basic belief unless and until you have some kind of a defeater for thinking that that experience is delusory. I think in the case of Mormonism and Islam there are such defeaters. There are very good defeaters for thinking that Islam is not true and that Mormonism is a hoax, but I don't think that there are comparable defeaters for Christianity. So I think that I am perfectly justified in believing in Christianity on the basis of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit in a properly basic way in the absence of any defeater of that experience. That is different from the case of the Muslim or the Mormon.

FOLLOWUP: Does Mike have anything to say about that?

DR. LICONA: Bill said it. I believe it. That settles it.

QUESTION: I just have two more questions. They are real short. One of them is if someone wants to be saved or if they are saved, if they're being tormented or mentally tormented by perhaps their sins or something, how do they trust in God or have faith in God that they've been forgiven or that they have been saved or taken care of or have faith? How does one deal with that? A Christian. If they're dealing with sin or if they become a Christian because of their sin, how do they deal with trusting in God that they've been forgiven or that they are saved?

DR. MITTELBERG: I'm not sure I'm understanding the full import of the question but if someone comes to God and trusts him, part of what that entails is realizing “I'm a sinner, and Jesus died on the cross to pay for those sins.” And, as it says in 1 John 1:9, if I confess my sins he is faithful and just to forgive those sins and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. So I think the very process of truly becoming a Christian is acknowledging the problem (which is my sin) and the solution which is Christ's sacrificial atonement on my behalf. I don't know what I'm missing in the question.

FOLLOWUP: I guess, how do they apply it? The believing of it. To live it out. And not wallow in the sin or be held back.

DR. MITTELBERG: When someone truly becomes a Christian, I believe at that point the Holy Spirit indwells them and changes them. Part of becoming a Christian is repenting, which means turning away, turning around, saying “I no longer want to go my way. I want to go his way.” I think the Holy Spirit enables that in us, and I think the course of our life – the general course of our life – changes at that point. But that doesn't mean it's perfect, and we still fall, and we still struggle at various points. I think we just go back and take that back to God in faith like we did at the beginning and say, “I'm still struggling with this. I blew it. This is sin. I acknowledge it. I thank you again that your atonement covers it, and that I'm forgiven through Christ.”

FOLLOWUP: Thank you. I had one more short question. How does a Christian deal with making decisions about having a wife or dating or finding someone. I know the secular world says just date around. A Christian might say God will provide you The One. And some will say dating in your church, or something like that. How should someone view it?

DR. MITTELBERG: It’s probably a longer answer. It's kind of the “How do you find God's will?” question. There's whole books that I can recommend by Dallas Willard. Why don't you come talk to me afterwards on that one.

MODERATOR: The young lady – that’ll be the last question. We have about 5 or 10 minutes at the very most. That’ll be our last question.

DR. CRAIG: You are doing what Mark said not to do, right?

DR. MITTELBERG: Yeah. That young lady's going to have a really tough question there!

MODERATOR: The pressure is on now, right?

DR. MITTELBERG: I think we just cut off that lady and just not let her.

MODERATOR: I know the young man in front of her, and I'm sure that question is not going to be easy.

QUESTION: Jesus, whenever he was in front of Pilate, he made the statement, “For this reason I was born and for this reason I came into the world to testify to the truth.” The truth, we've talked about it a lot here tonight, it undergirds everything that we talk about and believe in. In 2016 Oxford's word of the year was “post truth.” I see in our society that we're getting further and further away from truth and truth claims and really believing in just reality. So as we go forward with apologetic arguments, making reasoned arguments, how is this going to affect attempting to make reasoned arguments with a culture that's becoming more and more shying away from truth claims and actually reality itself. Do you all see that?

DR. LICONA: You hear about it. The stuff with truth, it seems to me it applies more to moral issues. I'll be honest, when I lecture on college campuses (and I do that quite often) I talk on things like the resurrection of Jesus, the historical reliability of the Gospels, things like that. I just don't get those kinds of objections. “Well, we just can’t know.” “There is no such thing as truth.” That doesn't come up. In fact, I don't think it's ever come up from a student in those kinds of lectures. I suppose if I spoke on abortion or same-sex marriage, it would probably come up quite often.

DR. CRAIG: I think Mike is absolutely right about this. The idea that we live in a postmodern culture that doesn't care about objective truth is a myth invented by youth pastors and perpetrated in our churches. As Mike indicated, what people are relativistic and pluralistic about is religion and ethics. But they're not pluralistic and relativistic about technology and medicine and science. But you see, that's not post-modernism. That's modernism. That's old line verificationism which says if you can't verify it by your five senses then it's just a matter of personal taste or emotional expression. I think we live in a culture that remains at its heart deeply modernist, and therefore it is imperative that we not lay aside our best instruments and weapons of logic and argumentation in favor of just sharing our narrative or appealing to people's felt needs. It is imperative if we're to commend Christianity in our culture that we present it and defend it as objectively true.

DR. MITTELBERG: Just kind of a basic apologetic principle that is almost cliche but I think it's worth putting out there, and that is that even when people argue these things, they will argue that we live in a post-truth culture. And you ask them, “Is that true?” And if they say it is true then they’ve refuted themselves already. It's just these are often self-defeating kinds of statements. “All truth is relative.” Well, is that truth relative? Either way they lose. So I think sometimes we just need to point out the incoherence of what they're even trying to say.

MODERATOR: A good time for a commercial for tomorrow morning at 9:00. You're going to be talking on understanding the secular landscape, if I'm not mistaken. It will really play into what you're getting into as well.

DR. MITTELBERG: I understand Bill's not going to be here so I'm going to tell some Bill Craig stories!

QUESTION: First, I want to say thank you for what you guys do. A lot of your work has really helped shape my life and ministry and I'm very grateful for that. One of my questions is kind of a bit of a follow-up to something I've heard in your class, Dr. Craig, in Defenders. As I'm sure you would agree that God is a maximally great being, so it would be logically impossible for God to sin. Given the incarnation, Christ could not have sinned. I've heard you use the illustration that it would be like suppose a man on a diet who thinks there’s a chocolate cake in the fridge and still refuses to, but little did he know perhaps his wife took the cake to work or something. So the cake is not in the fridge, so he could not have even if he wanted to. Yet, he still refrained. From my understanding of free will, it is more appropriately a question of the ability to freely will a thing and not just carry out the action. To give a quick illustration that I like to use, if my arm were tied down to a chair, although it was physically impossible to lift it up, I could still freely will to lift it up. So it wouldn't affect my will. That being said, what would you say in regards to Christ's ability or lack of ability to sin? Not just that he couldn't sin, but would you go as far as to say it was even logically impossible that he could even will to sin in the first place?

DR. CRAIG: Yes, I think it's logically impossible for Christ to will to sin because he is divine. He is God. But he could still be really tempted in his human nature because he could feel the allure of temptation. He could feel the allure of sin, but then he had to resist that given the strength that he had and that God provided. So I think the temptations of Jesus were real, but in fact it's impossible that he could have succumbed to them. And he still freely resisted them, as you say, because nothing causally determined him to resist. He resisted of his own power and will.

FOLLOWUP: Though he couldn't have willed otherwise?

DR. CRAIG: He could not have willed otherwise, but he still freely willed to resist them, as your illustrations attempted to show.

FOLLOWUP: Perhaps a deeper philosophical question: in knowing how to engage with atheists and knowing how to point out logical fallacies, what is the appropriate way to argue with your spouse without having given in to that temptation of pointing out logical fallacies or ad hominems but really trying to communicate? And I'm asking for a friend, not for me.

MODERATOR: We know that’s not true! [laughter]

DR. MITTELBERG: We haven’t let Laten answer any of the questions yet. I think he should answer them.

MODERATOR: That hit way too close to home, brother. My wife said not two nights ago, “I'm debating a debater.” That is the most practical thing when you are philosophically-minded or theologically-minded and a debater, as the people on the stage, that sometimes you tend to treat the closest ones to you with that same kind of reaction. What I'm learning with my own wife, and I’ll just say this, is sometimes just shut up. Make sure she knows that she's heard. That’s what most people, myself included, all of us want to know: “Am I being heard?” Sometimes being able to restate what somebody says – even in debates, it's the same way. When you can restate the other person's position, and they go, “Yes, you understand me. I don't even care anymore if you disagree with me. As long as you finally understand me, that's just wonderful. I’m heard.” So much of my debates or my issues with marriage or anybody else in the debate world, theology world, is if I just stop long enough and stop trying to debate them and stop trying to argue with them, stop trying to win the argument and win the relationship by truly engaging with them as a person and letting them know they've truly been heard. It makes all the difference in the world and in both worlds. That's what it really does.

QUESTION: I just had to come up here because when you started asking about the Law it really sparked an interest and passion of mine and something I've explored very deeply in the Lord. I've been asking him why is it that as Christians we don't honor the Sabbath day as a rest, and why is it that the Law – where did it go? When I started looking at it, in Ezekiel it says when the Lord is talking to Ezekiel about the new covenant he's saying that he writes the Law on our hearts and that we have hearts of flesh. I see that in the Ten Commandments. When Moses was given the Ten Commandments, it was a heart of stone. The Israelites could not honor the Law because they had hearts of stone. So God gave us hearts of flesh through Jesus Christ living in us. That's what it means to be Spirit-led. If we are led by the Spirit of God we will not sin against the Law. I also have this concept of . . . as spiritual Jews, why is it that we don't honor the spiritual feasts? Those are God's feasts. He says that those are God’s feasts. He shows himself through the Jewish people. Those are the roots of Christianity and of our faith, like God showed his nature, his character, who he is through them. I don't know that there's so much a question as a burning desire for people to explore it for themselves and ask God these questions as to why. Because I think you'll be surprised by the answer.

MODERATOR: Let me just summarize the question to say: Why do we not still honor (for the most part, many of the churches and Christians) the Sabbath and even some of the feasts of the Old Testament?

FOLLOWUP: Right. And your argument about Peter. It says that Peter was hungry. Did God use that example because Peter was hungry, and so it made sense for him to show food? As Gentiles being clean or unclean? So that's something that's kind of up to debate. I mean, you can't just make an assumption about that.

DR. MITTELBERG: Well, on that one I think it's clear that . . . he may or may not have been hungry, I don't remember that being mentioned, but one way or another I don't think that negates what was said. In fact, he saw the vision, I think it says three times in a row, to really make clear “stop calling unclean what I have called clean.” I think it both was literal about lifting these dietary laws that were part of the distinctive identity of the Jewish nation, but more than that “I'm saying don't call people unclean that I'm calling loved by God.”

FOLLOWUP: But those foods, if you look at the research, they are not good for your body. Your body doesn't receive them well still to this day.

DR. CRAIG: I don't think that's true. There's nothing the matter with eating pork or lobster. I think we need to celebrate . . . I'm surprised that this has come up here, frankly. I think we need to celebrate the fact that we're under grace and not under Law.

FOLLOWUP: I’m not saying we are under the Law. I’m just saying there is nothing wrong with God's Law. He's perfect.

DR. CRAIG: There's nothing wrong with God's Law?

FOLLOWUP. There's nothing wrong with God's Law.

DR. CRAIG: No, but the Bible does say the Law was our taskmaster, Paul says in Galatians, to kind of temporarily teach us like a schoolteacher until Christ should come. But now we're not under the Law anymore. As you said, we are under the new covenant where Jeremiah says, “I will write my laws on their hearts.” Jesus, when he celebrated the Last Supper, inaugurated that new covenant. He said, “This cup is my blood of the covenant which is shed for many.” So he thought of his death, symbolized by the Passover feast, as being the inauguration of this new covenant that would take the external Law away and internalize God's Law in our heart so that the full requirements of the Law are met by those who live a life for Christ under grace. But we don't need to keep feasts and Sabbath days and things of that sort anymore because we're under grace. And remember that was the question that the Jerusalem church faced in Acts 15. All of these Gentile converts that were coming in unexpectedly – do they have to become Jews in order to become Christians? Do they have to convert to Judaism in order to be Christian? And they decided, “No, we're not going to lay the yoke of the Law on these people. We couldn't bear it ourselves, and we're not going to put it on them either.” They just set minimal requirements. Then this flood of Gentile converts has come in. What Laten talked about in his seminar this afternoon – while the hardening has temporarily come upon Israel, this flood of Gentiles from around the world has come into the Kingdom of God. Eventually Israel will return and be saved. But I think we need to celebrate what a marvelous change there's been in that we're not under Law anymore.

FOLLOWUP: I don't see it as being under the Law. I just said that I feel like if you are led by the Spirit of the Lord you're not going to sin against the Law. And Jesus came as a heart intention of the Torah. He showed God's heart in the Law. So I'm not saying that we're supposed to keep . . . I guess it was more of a question like . . . I don't think it's mutually exclusive that the old covenant can't exist, like the Law can't exist with Jesus. He is the fulfillment of the Law. He came as the Torah. He was “the Word made flesh.”

MODERATOR: I think that's a good thing to close on in talking about apologetics and understanding of why we're doing what we're doing with evangelism and helping people to come to salvation and to understand also that when we're talking about the Law (even, for example, the Law of the Old Testament, “Thou shalt not steal” for example) – are we trying to say that we're not under the Law so we can all just go out and steal and take whatever you want. Obviously not. What the point is is that salvation doesn't come because you refrain from stealing. Salvation is not going to come because you refrain from eating pork. Salvation is not going to come because you do all these dietary laws. In other words, salvation is not going to come no matter how good you think your works are. But there are some points, I think, that's been brought up that there are some things that are wise for you to consider. Taking a day of rest, for example, throughout the week. Doing certain things that the Scriptures prescribe that are beneficial to you, but distinguishing that from the way in which we're saved. We're not saved through pursuing the Law but through pursuing Christ. And in pursuing Christ we are trusting in his righteousness. And that's why we're really here – to celebrate the righteousness of Christ.

Give a hand to our panel. Thank them for being here.