REASONABLE FAITH AND FAITHFUL DISAGREEMENT
William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics entered my life at an interesting time. I became aware of it as an undergraduate studying for a degree in religious studies at a public (and, therefore, secular) university. Though I was a Christian, I didn’t really think there were good ways for one to demonstrate or show to others that Christianity was true. Its truth, I thought, was simply a matter of faith. So, one might, for example, be able to evidence the beauty of the Christian life through the stories of various saints, but one couldn’t really argue for Christianity as such.
My view of this issue started to change when I watched Craig’s debate with Christopher Hitchens at Biola University. Having previously been suckered in by the so-called new atheism, I was well familiar with the biting wit Hitchens often deployed against his interlocutors. I had also heard of Craig at this point, but I didn’t really know anything about him. Based on what certain internet atheists had relayed in the past, I had this impression of him as a kind of academic charlatan; someone who, cloaked in the robe of a couple foreign degrees, just peddled fundamentalist tropes like scientific denialism, brittle biblical literalism, and the like.
For this reason, I’d not watched the debate when it had originally happened. Instead, I stumbled across a video of it well after the fact and, with little to do on that particular afternoon, decided to give it a watch. At the time, I was mainly interested in what I would make of Hitchens’s arguments now that I wasn’t an atheist anymore. But what I found in the debate was wildly surprising. Hitchens’s rhetoric was quite good as always, but it was all flash and no substance! There really wasn’t anything in the way of an argument he made throughout the whole debate.
Moreover, and to my astonishment, this Craig guy seemed to be running circles around ol’ Christopher! Far from a credential flaunter with little to show for it, Craig was saying things that seemed eminently reasonable to me. And so, I wondered what else he might have to say that could be of interest. This led me to purchasing my copy of Reasonable Faith.
When I started reading it I remained prepared to be disappointed. I had seen other purportedly “apologetic” works in the past and found them to range from merely lackluster to almost insulting to one’s intelligence. And yet, as I made my way through the book’s five parts — De Fide, De Homine, De Deo, De Creatione, and De Christo — I found myself increasingly won over. It seemed undeniable, having worked my way through the thing, that it’s at least possible to offer up arguments for the truth of Christianity.
Particularly enthralling to me was the way Craig held theology and philosophy together across the book’s span. For instance, Reasonable Faith walks from the cosmological argument for the existence of some sort of transcendent creator straight through to the specifics of Jesus’s resurrection. What’s being built in so doing is a cumulative case for Christian belief, not some sort of vain, proof-texted rationalization for things. Additionally, when treating the topic of reformed epistemology — that is, as Anthony Bolos and Kyle Scott put it in their Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the subject, the idea “that religious belief can be rational without any appeal to evidence or argument” — he didn’t do so in a philosophical vacuum. Instead, Christian ideas about the witness of the Holy Spirit and personal knowledge of God were specifically engaged to argue that knowing God could be rather like knowing one was sitting in a chair (i.e., not something you have to present arguments to be justified in believing, even if you could present arguments that you are, in fact, seated in the chair).
After reading the book, I developed an insatiable hunger for more of this sort of approach to religious topics. It was quite different to what I’d encountered in my university studies, but it also resonated very strongly with the ways I seemed to naturally approach loci of inquiry. In this way, Reasonable Faith likely fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life. For, before reading it I was thinking about graduate school because I knew I wanted to continue my education somehow. But I was unsure of what I wanted to do with that further schooling.
Reasonable Faith changed things because it started me on a kind of intellectual path. I wanted to know more about what Craig said, so I read and watched more of his materials. But from there I wanted to know more about his interlocutors and those running in similar circles to him, so I started reading even more. And from there I began expanding my engagements wider and wider in the theological and philosophical literature until I realized that maybe what I should be doing with my education is pursuing these questions and topics that so fascinated me.
Further, I realized that I didn’t want to do this in an environment of secular religious studies like I’d done as an undergrad. There was nothing wrong with that work, and I’m still glad that I did it. However, Reasonable Faith played a strong role in showing me that what I was finding myself called towards wasn’t study for study’s sake. Rather, it was study for the sake of others, and particularly study for the sake of the Church. All this led me to my seminary studies and church work which, in turn, led to my PhD and onward to my renewed ministry now. Sure, all of this might’ve happened had I never been exposed to this book. But it’s likely it would’ve taken a pretty different shape.
So, Reasonable Faith really lived up to its title for me: it showed me that Christian faith can truly be reasonable, and in so doing it heavily influenced my life as a Christian scholar. But there’s another thing that Craig’s work showed me which has been highly impactful too. Particularly, in his writings, lectures, and debates I saw how one might effectively engage in reasonable disagreement as well. And this, I think, is something which we’re scandalously short on throughout our lives today.
For example, in going through others of Craig’s works I’ve found that he believes the Third Council of Constantinople erred in teaching that Jesus had two wills, one divine and one human, corresponding to his divine and human natures. As he’s stated in his co-authored Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview as well as his Sunday school class (which he teaches weekly and can be viewed on his apologetics ministry’s YouTube channel), Craig thinks that wills correspond to persons, not natures. Therefore, he suggests that anti-Nestorianism is best maintained by denying Jesus had two discrete wills.
I disagree on this point. It’s not obvious to me why wills should be thought to correspond to persons rather than natures, and I’ve not found any of the points made by Craig (or others, for that matter) on this front to be decisively convincing. The same goes for some of Craig’s other pronouncements, like those about what he calls his neo-Apollinarian Christology or about his social view of the trinity. And yet, Craig typically exhibits sincere charity towards those with whom he disagrees. One won’t usually find the sort of raw polemicist remarks some other philosophers and theologians are known for in his work.
Instead, you’ll find a sincere attempt to grasp what it is the person he’s interacting with means by their claims. In so doing, Craig’s work can often serve as a model for how one might genuinely understand their interlocutor’s arguments or reasons for thinking what they do and yet still disagree. Too often the picture painted by our culture is that if someone disagrees with another person then one of them’s got to be obviously deluded, or self-deceiving, or acting in bad faith, or some other such nefarious thing. But many times, this isn’t what’s going on.
To be sure, you can’t always argue someone into or out of a particular position. This is especially the case if they didn’t argue themselves to their conclusions in the first place! However, as followers of Jesus I think it’s crucial that we be able to engage with people on their own terms rather than on the basis of straw men we whip together in our minds. There’s a need for us to demonstrate that our faith, both intellectually and as it’s made manifest in our lives, is a reasonable thing. And, for my part, Reasonable Faith has been a key part of striving to live a life which demonstrates this fact.
