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Dr. William Lane
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These are links to articles and essays which appear elsewhere on the Internet. This material is NOT on our website. Because the Academy lists material from other websites on the Internet does not imply acceptance or approval of the comments or opinions expressed by the author of the material. Nor is the Academy responsible for any misrepresentation of the facts included. It is your job to be a critical reader. Posted on October 19, 2005 Introduction and resources by Byron Barlowe, Editor/Webmaster, Leadership University Who is William Lane Craig? Lecturer, author, arguably the world's top Christian debater, seminary professor, double-doctorate holder, husband and father. All of these and more. Perhaps most important to him (although he would be loathe to receive the praise), Craig is a model of humility and love for truth, professional excellence, integrity and openness. Just ask David of Vancouver, British Columbia. David wrote to this Web site, "I've heard Dr. Craig as a frequent speaker at university debates and outreaches." Upon meeting David recently, this editor and Dr. Craig heard how he had been touched intellectually and spiritually through Craig's writings. For years, says David,"I did not connect religion or Christianity with my life problems. There was a total disconnect." But Craig's argumentation smashed through his intellectual barriers and he placed his faith in Christ for eternal salvation -- in the same way that Craig testifies that he did to wrap up each of his high-powered debates. "He's my spiritual dad," said David. Craig's detractors also consider him to be highly influential. Mark Smith, originator of the Contra Craig Web site (www.jcnot4me.com/Items/contra_craig/contra_craig.htm) writes pointedly, "Wake up, fellow Atheists…we as a group need to...honestly face the fact that Craig is kicking our collective [fanny] and we're apparently too dumb [as a group] to even know it!" The Skeptical Christian Web site asserts, "William Lane Craig is, in our opinion, the best living Christian apologist." Associated Press reporter Richard Ostling asks wryly, "There's ample intellect with William Lane Craig of California's Talbot School of Theology, God's defender in God?" Dean Zimmerman, Rutgers University, wrote, "Talbot's renowned research professor of philosophy, is 'one of a kind.' He's good at addressing large general audiences and taken very seriously by people who work in metaphysics." One thing is clea r, from atheist debating opponents like Dr. Quentin Smith to secular observers to Christian apologetics fans, Dr. Craig commands respect. Articles by (and About) William Lane Craig: Does the Balance Between Saved and Lost Depend on Our Obedience to Christ's Great Commission?: As a follow-up to my middle knowledge solution to the problem of Christian exclusivism, I ask whether the problem does not recur in another form under that solution: is it not the case that the balance between saved and lost depends upon the degree to which we Christians obey our Lord's Great Commission to bring the gospel to every nation? If so, then is not that conclusion as morally objectionable as the claim that people's eternal destiny hinges upon the historical accidents of the time and place of their birth? I argue that such a conclusion does not follow because, given divine middle knowledge and providence, it may not lie within our power to bring about a better balance between saved and lost. Endorsements of Dr. William Lane Craig: A very short list of kudos and testimonials of the impact Dr. Craig has made and continues to make. This page will keep growing. Should Peter Get A New Philosophical Advisor?: This article responds to William Hasker's critique of my article "Does the Balance between Saved and Lost Depend on our Obedience to Christ's Great Commission?" I argue that while Hasker succeeds in exposing a mistake in my argument, it does not prove fatal. On the contrary, Hasker's refutation misconstrues certain key counterfactuals, which turn out not to be counterfactuals of creaturely freedom under our control. The objection to the middle knowledge solution therefore remains undefeated. A Few Minutes with Dr. William Lane Craig - Interviewer / John D. Martin: Personal and engaging interview of Dr. Craig for student site Boundless.org. Craig shares his perspective issues on today's campuses, social pluralism and philosophical pluralism, the best apologetics arguments, a word to charismatic and Pentecostal believers, even suggested reading. Does the Problem of Material Constitution Illuminate The Doctrine Of The Trinity?: Michael Rea and Jeffery Brower have offered a provocative new model of the Trinity on the analogy of the Aristotelian solution to the problem of material constitution. Just as a fist and a hand can be distinct entities composed of a common matter and yet numerically the same object, so the persons of the Trinity can be distinct entities (persons) composed of a common "matter" (the divine essence) and yet numerically the same object (God). I express doubts about the degree to which this analogy sheds light on the doctrine of the Trinity due to the disanalogy that neither God nor the Trinitarian persons are to be thought of as composed of any sort of stuff and to the model's lack of explanatory power as to how a common matter can be simultaneously imbued with seemingly incompatible forms to constitute one object. Other Craig Articles & Essays: Existence of God The Caused Beginning of the Universe: A Response to Quentin Smith: Quentin Smith has recently argued that (I) the universe began to exist and (II) its beginning was uncaused. In support of (II), he argues that (i) there is no reason to think that the beginning was caused by God and (ii) it is unreasonable to think so. I dispute both claims. His case for (i) misconstrues the causal principle, appeals to false analogies of ex nihilo creation, fails to show how the origin of the universe ex nihilo is naturally plausible, and reduces to triviality by construing causality as predictability in principle. His case for (ii) ignores important epistemological questions and fails to show either that vacuum fluctuation models are empirically plausible or that they support his second claim. Read in Chinese: http://occr.christiantimes.org.hk/art_0003.htm Creation and Big Bang Cosmology: Recent discussions have raised the issue of the metaphysical implications of standard Big Bang cosmology. Grünbaum's argument that the causal principle cannot be applied to the origin of the universe rests on a pseudo-dilemma, since the cause could act neither before nor after t=0, but at t=0. Lévy-Leblond's advocacy of a remetrication of cosmic time to push the singularity to - involves various conceptual difficulties and is in any case unavailing, since the universe's beginning is not eliminated. Maddox's aversion to the possible metaphysical implications of the standard model evinces a narrow scientism. Standard Big Bang cosmogeny does therefore seem to have those metaphysical implications which some have found so discomfiting. Read in Chinese: http://occr.christiantimes.org.hk/art_0040.htm Historical Jesus Rediscovering the Historical Jesus - The Evidence for Jesus: Five reasons are presented for thinking that critics who accept the historical credibility of the gospel accounts of Jesus do not bear a special burden of proof relative to more skeptical critics. Then the historicity of a few specific aspects of Jesus' life are addressed, including his radical self-concept as the divine Son of God, his role as a miracle-worker, his trial and crucifixion, and his resurrection from the dead. The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus: An examination of both Pauline and gospel material leads to eight lines of evidence in support of the conclusion that Jesus's tomb was discovered empty: (1) Paul's testimony implies the historicity of the empty tomb, (2) the presence of the empty tomb pericope in the pre-Markan passion story supports its historicity, (3) the use of 'on the first day of the week' instead of 'on the third day' points to the primitiveness of the tradition, (4) the narrative is theologically unadorned and non-apologetic, (5) the discovery of the tomb by women is highly probable, (6) the investigation of the empty tomb by the disciples is historically probable, (7) it would have been impossible for the disciples to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem had the tomb not been empty, (8) the Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb. Divine Omniscience 'Men Moved By The Holy Spirit Spoke From God' (2 Peter 1:21): A Middle Knowledge Perspective on Biblical Inspiration. Scriptural inspiration has traditionally been understood by Christian theologians to be plenary, verbal, and confluent. But how is the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture compatible with Scripture's being a truly divine-human product? How can one hold to the verbal inspiration of the whole of Scripture without lapsing into a dictation theory of inspiration which, in effect, extinguishes the human author? A theory of divine inspiration based upon God's middle knowledge is proposed, according to which God knew what the authors of Scripture would freely write when placed in certain circumstances. By arranging for the authors of Scripture to be in the appropriate circumstances, God can achieve a Scripture which is a product of human authors and also is His Word. Such a theory is compared and contrasted with similar views expressed by Lessius and Wolterstorff. Tachyons, Time Travel, and Divine Omniscience: For philosophers in either field, philosophy of science and philosophy of religion are too often viewed as mutually irrelevant disciplines. As a result, insights acquired in each field may not be appropriated by philosophers working in the other field. This is unfortunate because sometimes the problems can be quite parallel and a consistent resolution is required. One especially intriguing case in point concerns, in philosophy of science, the possibility of tachyons and time travel and, in philosophy of religion, the relationship between divine foreknowledge and human freedom. It is rarely appreciated by discussants of these respective issues that the problems are quite parallel and that insights garnered in the resolution of the difficulty in one discipline may have provocative implications for the solution of the parallel problem in the other field. Christian Particularism Politically Incorrect Salvation: Contemporary religious pluralism regards the traditional Christian doctrine of salvation through Christ alone as unconscionable. The problem seems to be that the existence of an all-loving and all-powerful God seems incompatible with the claim that persons who do not hear and embrace the gospel of salvation through Christ will be damned. Closer analysis reveals the problem to be counterfactual in nature: God could not condemn persons who, though freely rejecting God's sufficient grace for salvation revealed through nature and conscience, would have received His salvific grace mediated through the gospel. In response, it may be pointed out that God's being all-powerful does not guarantee that He can create a world in which all persons freely embrace His salvation and that His being all-loving does not entail that, even if such a world were feasible for Him, God would prefer such a world over a world in which some persons freely reject His salvation. Furthermore, it is possib le that God has created a world having an optimal balance between saved and lost and that God has so providentially ordered the world that those who fail to hear the gospel and be saved would not have freely responded affirmatively to it even if they had heard it. "No Other Name": A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation Through Christ. The conviction of the New Testament writers was that there is no salvation apart from Jesus. This orthodox doctrine is widely rejected today because God's condemnation of persons in other world religions seems incompatible with various attributes of God. Analysis reveals the real problem to involve certain counterfactuals of freedom, e.g., why did not God create a world in which all people would freely believe in Christ and be saved? Such questions presuppose that God possesses middle knowledge. But it can be shown that no inconsistency exists between God's having middle knowledge and certain persons' being damned; on the contrary, it can be positively shown that these two notions are compatible. Divine Eternity God, Time, and Eternity: Is God's eternity to be construed as timeless or temporal? Given that the universe began to exist, a relational view of time suggests that time also began to exist. God's existence "prior to" or sans creation would not entail the existence of time if God in such a state is changeless. But if God sustains real relations with the world, the co-existence of God and the world imply that God is temporal subsequent to the moment of creation. Given the superiority of a relational over a non-relational (Newtonian) view of time, God ought to be considered as timeless sans creation and temporal subsequent to creation. The Special Theory of Relativity and Theories of Divine Eternity: Contemporary analyses of divine eternity often make explicit appeal to to the Special Theory of Relativity in support of the doctrine of divine timelessness. For example, two fundamental tenets of Leftow's theory, namely, (i) that temporal things exist both in time and in timeless eternity and (ii) that the timeless presence of all things to God in eternity is compatible with objective temporal becoming, depend essentially upon the legitimacy of the application of Einsteinian relativity to temporal events in relation to God. I argue that the first of these rests upon category mistakes, presupposes a reductionist view of time, and seems incompatible with a tensed theory of time. The second involves the same conceptual mistakes, but also hinges upon a particular interpretation of STR which, though widespread, is by no means the most plausible. Debate Transcripts Featuring Craig and World-Class Opponents: The Craig-Smith Debate - Does God Exist?: William Lane Craig vs. Quentin Smith in 2003, Harvard University with annotations by William Lane Craig. The Craig-Bradley Debate - Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?: William Lane Craig vs. Ray Bradley 1994, Simon Frasier University (Vancouver, B.C., Canada), with annotations by William Lane Craig. |
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