Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics By William Lane Craig

What is the secular skeptic who loves literature to do with a well-constructed Christian apologetic written for seminary students? Despite William Lane Craig’s assertions to the contrary, I remain convinced that apologia of any kind is always written out of a kind of anguish over God’s belatedness: the divine failure to act in a public, undeniable way. Every Christian apologetic writer and reader must always suffer the written word in place of the deed. Another alternative for them is the illuminating inward turn of the lonely personal experience, the discovery of Jesus or the Holy Spirit with-in, which must always supplant reason. Is faith and reason really compatible as Craig so persuasively asserts? As I read Craig’s ideas I couldn’t help but think of Holocaust survivor Rabbi Leo Baeck, and his devastating critique of Christian theology and its accompanying historical determinisms in his Essay Romantic Religion:

It {Christianity} knows nothing of the great message, which can demand further struggles for the days to come; it only knows only what had been decreed as the universal end. It always feels as if it had been born belatedly. This alone would be reason enough why culture could not have any place in Romanticism; it could only be a completed culture, and that is a contradiction in terms, for true culture must demand ever-new possibilities.

It is thus typically romantic when the Christian Church claims that what is most essential in all events was terminated with a particular occurrence, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and so lets the entire religious ideal be fulfilled once and for all in a single extraordinary existence. This one event becomes the absolute, the unsurpassable event in all history, and whatever comes later can be judged only in accordance with its attitude toward this one event. It becomes the quintessence of religion, that one becomes absorbed in the incomparable event which once occurred and tries to re-experience it. The past is turned into dogma.
This essentially unhistorical attitude toward history is particularly evident in modern Protestantism; indeed, here above all, because a completed story is almost all that remains to it. After it has given up most dogmas, a completed story remains almost its only axiom of faith. The question of the “unique” personality of Jesus becomes for it the question of the very existence of religion. All its exertions and aspirations must be directed again and again toward some kind of historical evidence for this one particular life, to counter the ever-new objections. All its striving and efforts are thus a perpetual restoration, an ever-renewed attempt to present the one event of the past in a fitting style; restoration is, after all, a romantic enterprise. The relation to religion becomes a relation to a story… faith is made dependent upon the certification of a story…the idea of further creative activity…is rejected from the outset… (Leo Baeck From Judaism and Christianity Page 219)

I quote this because I love it so much. It always feels that it was born belatedly. That expresses my sensation with the faith of my Christian youth more eloquently than anything I’ve ever read. A dispassionate observer will note that Baeck has just described Craig who knows the origin of the universe along with the fate of mankind, and his own destiny to immortality, from his own admitted inward personal experience; and yet he must somehow continually strive to know more through a vigorous, ethical, scientific, philosophical, and historically exacting description of a particular story. I’m nearly certain that Christian evangelical apologists like Craig are Romantics—that is in Baeck’s terminology—Gnostics dressed in rationalist finery, and I’m not unmoved by the poetry that moves them, though I have to think that what they really find in the caverns of their inner most selves is not Jesus, but a reflection of their own nature.

One of the great ironies of our so-called “post-modern era” is that Christian Evangelicalism, from Gresham Machen, Francis Schaeffer, and William Lane Craig can be more philosophical than the blissfully vacuous pragmatists of our half-digested secularisms. (The last secularist I talked with was attempting to convince me that aliens created the universe). Evangelicals—characterized by Harold Bloom and other skeptics as “Know-Nothings” can be surprisingly erudite, and thoughtful, and this is particularly true of Craig, though in the end I suspect that most Evangelicals will hardly read him. Alas, secularism too is an easy intellectual target. However, a thoughtfully secular point-by-point rebuttal to Craig can be found here:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/chris_hallquist/faith.html#ch1

Chris Hallquist does a fair job of summarizing and refuting Craig’s perspective, although it should be pointed out that Craig is writing to Evangelical Seminary students, who have most likely never even heard of David Hume. I think its safe to say that that many of Craig’s assertions are developed far better elsewhere. The point must be made again that Craig is speaking to believers, and would probably take a different tone with secularists like Hallquist or myself. A casual Google search of Craig reveals a vast assortment of Christian/Atheist debates, of which Craig is a champion. I’ve never been certain what debates of this sort accomplish, since they tend to only convince the convinced.

Since Craig utilizes what is called “offensive apologetics,” he does not address the secular objection to the problem of Evil in light of God’s existence. Instead he presents the existence of God as an objective value for good. This can be demonstrated by the meaninglessness of divine absence. Craig is at his best when discussing the absurdity of life without God. He writes:
If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies, then what ultimate meaning can be given to his life? Does it really matter whether he existed at all? It might be said that his life was important because it influenced others or affected the course of history. But this only shows a relative significance to his life, not an ultimate significance. His life may be important relative to certain other events, but what is the ultimate significance of any of those events? If all the events are meaningless, then what can be the ultimate meaning of influencing any of them? Ultimately it makes no difference.

Hallquist points out correctly that each event is not given “ultimate” meaning by the next moment. The value of a thing may not have anything to do with what eventually happens to it. But Craig wittingly appeals to the most basic human desire of immortal completeness. I remain convinced that this is the superlative attraction of our various Plato inspired religions, which is a kind of spilled over poetry. It is Craig’s strongest argument, and it is in fact the least rational. The mundane world of this-ness, a world bereft of dualisms, with no spiritual other, is unthinkable to the Christian. The fundamental difficulty is apprehending this world, its tyrannies and injustices, without a spiritual remedy. The role of this comprehension is—and has always been the secular humanities. The entire function of Ethics and Philosophy from Socrates to Lyotard is predicated upon the acceptance of the human condition, in its entire frail splendor, which is ultimately rejected by Craig and nearly all of Christendom. Craig’s assurance that he will transcend becomes the basis for how he will employ his ethics, science, and philosophy, not how he will subject himself to them.
Still, I am not unmoved by Craig’s analysis, but I would gently point out that when we love, sacrifice, and toil with ethics, without affirming our immortality, or God, our moral struggles and uncertainties take on their own poetic transcendence. Some philosophers (Socrates as the ultimate example) accepted their eventual death, and still took their precious time in this world to try to understand what it means to be “good.”

Furthermore, Christians are not immune to ethical bewilderment, even in their divine assurance, especially since the entire sublime function of the New Testament, Augustine, and Luther, as I read them, is to replace the moral law of the Old Testament, with a man.

But then my approach to the Bible tends to be literary and it should be pointed out that neither Hallquist, nor Craig are sensitive to the characters of Yahweh or Jesus, but only in showing or denying their existence. Jesus is absent entirely from Craig's moral arguments, as is Satan. Meaning to him is based upon immortality and God's existence, which in the end are the same thing. God and the resurrected Jesus are fused into a gigantic metaphor for a human who will live forever, provided he can get the story right.
Craig does not shy away from good philosophy, and I am impressed with his proof for God’s existence, which makes up the Kalam Cosmological argument, so reminiscent of Locke and a strong misreading of Augustine. I also agreed with much that he had to say regarding the disciplines of History and Science. His "intelligent design" apologetic is as strong as any I've read, though I find the genre incredibly speculative and subjective. The book takes a turn in the area of New Testament Miracles with proofs that are often begging for clarification. It occurs to me after reading Hallquist’s objections to Craig that some Christians and Atheists are oblivious to metaphor in the Bible.

Craig Blomberg co-wrote Chapter 6 on the Historical Reliability of the New Testament, and I found myself blinking every other paragraph. He does a fair job of outlining the basic components of modern New Testament research, but he falls far short in his proofs on the historical reliability and harmonization of the various accounts.
Craig is somewhat more persuasive in the subsequent chapters on Jesus’ resurrection and his self-understanding. I tended to agree with him on many fine points, but his over-all conclusions bewildered me. I recommend this book because it is well written, and Craig is a thoughtful Christian.