Thinking Christian

Book Review

The book is titled Choosing Your Faith In a World of Spiritual Options. Thankfully Mark Mittelberg, who wrote it, knew where to begin, for the first question that’s bound to come up is, Why choose any faith? It’s a good question, but I won’t take credit for it; I borrowed it straight from the title of his first chapter. Why write about choosing a faith? Is it any more relevant than a book about, say, Choosing Your Sword in a World of Knighthood? Well, yes, of course it is. Mittelberg cites evidence that religion’s influence remains strong in North America (if he had ventured into the rest of the world he could have shown the same, even more so).

Faith is a fact of life apart from religious belief. Mittelberg says of atheist extraordinaire Richard Dawkins (p. 11),

Whether the chances are large or small, the important thought to catch here is that Dawkins doesn’t know there is no God—and he even concedes the possibility that some kind of God might actually exist. Rather, he takes it on faith that there actually is no God….

That’s just the way life is. We all live by some form of faith. Which leads us to the central question: Is ours a well-founded faith? A wise faith? A faith that makes sense and is supported by the facts? One that works in real life and is worth hanging on to?

More personally, is yours a faith you’ve really thought about, carefully evaluated, and intentionally chosen—or did you just slide into it at some point along the way?

That question is directed at all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike. The next six chapters expose common ways people choose their faith: pragmatism and relativism, tradition, authoritarian sources, intuition, the mystical approach, and “logic, evidence, and science,” with an emphasis on “I’ve gotta see it to believe it.” Chances are you’re going to find yourself described in one of those chapters or some mix thereof. Chances are especially good if you’ve never given your faith much thought. Faith, after all, is a synonym for belief; and how many of us really pay attention to why we believe what we believe?

So it behooves each of us to reflect on where we’ve come from in choosing our faith. Mittelberg prefers a version of the logic, evidence and science path, renamed the Evidential path in chapter eight:

It’s the one path that tests—and ultimately supports or undermines—all the others. Its two key elements, logic and sensory experience, are God-given tools we must use to gain the vast majority of our information, to test truth claims, and ultimately to decide what to believe.

The other faith paths do not necessarily lead to the wrong destination, but within them there is little or no means of testing, nothing to correct us if, for example, we rely on tradition for tradition’s sake. (“Your parents could be wrong,” he says. I suppose that even applies to my kids’ parents.) Going on,

The Evidential approach tells us logically and empirically that there is one set of truths—based on actual, what is reality—that we need to discover and let inform our choice of faiths. We can use these tools to test traditional teachings, religious authorities, intuitive instincts and hunches, and mystical encounters, so we can know which ones are worth believing and holding on to.

On another thread I’ve been debating whether it’s conceptually possible for God to reveal himself to us just through direct impressions (the sensus divinitatus) such that we could reliably know that the encounter we’re having is with God. Clearly if there’s a God, it’s unreasonable to assume that he could not do that. I’ve had many experiences I would describe that way. For purposes of that discussion, it’s logically sufficient to establish that if there is a God, then God could do that. But that’s a very limited point, for a very limited purpose. (I wouldn’t have brought it up here except I knew it would be brought up for me if I didn’t.)

The fact is that even though I know God can convince me of his reality any way he wants to, nevertheless when I have an experience that seems like God, I want some way to check whether I’m getting it right or if I’m mistaken. We’re not left only to our impressions, as it turns out, nor are we stuck in a morass of doubt where we have nothing to turn to besides tradition, authority, feelings, or the science of the laboratory. All of these have checks and balances coming from a most useful source: objective reality. Mittelberg explores logical, scientific, and historical criteria for choosing one’s beliefs, along with ways to assess the biblical and historical evidences for Jesus Christ.

Like his friend (and author of the foreword to this book) Lee Strobel, Mittelberg writes on a very accessible level. I recommend this book highly for the seeker in your life (including yourself, if you are that seeker). For church study groups, it could provide good discussion material for assessing various worldviews. (Mary Jo Sharp recently recommended this book for the same purpose.) I especially appreciate that Mittelberg emphasizes how to think about spiritual questions rather than telling us what to think. Of course he lands on his own solid conclusion: that faith in Jesus Christ is an excellent choice, the only one that makes good sense. But he gets there through a thoughtful path that should help readers think thoughtfully about their own paths.

Choosing Your Faith In a World of Spiritual Options by Mark Mittelberg. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008. 254 pages plus endnotes. Amazon price US$13.59 hardcover.

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An open letter to the apologetics community:

Dear Colleague:

We have work to do if Christianity is going to reclaim the intellectual high ground. Chances are it’s not entirely the same work you’ve been doing.

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Book Review

Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 has just posted a telephone interview we did together recently. Brian’s website is one of the best for an abundance of resources and training in apologetics. I really appreciate his taking time to do this interview.

One of our main topics was strategies for apologetics. It seems to me that the apologetics enterprise (the apologetics industry, so to speak) is well advanced in its answers to questions about the faith, but that when it comes to connecting that to everyday needs of church and culture, it has some catching up to do. We have good answers, but we’re not delivering them effectively. I’ve been working on this with pastors and worldview ministry leaders for the past year or so, and what we’re hearing from pastors confirms what I’ve been sensing.

There are exceptions. The Truth Project is the finest example I’ve seen. William Lane Craig, though one of the most academic of all apologists, has nevertheless set up a structure for groups to study and learn together in local communities. BreakPoint has its Centurions program. Summit Ministries and Wheatstone Academy have excellent conferences for young people. Ratio Christi, out of Southern Evangelical Seminary, is on an excellent track.

There are others like these, more than I could list here. I want to focus on one of my favorites, though: Gregory Koukl and Stand to Reason. Koukl hosts a weekly talk show on KBRT radio in Los Angeles, reaching nationwide through the AFR network and by podcast (all accessible from that last link). The show is about current issues in philosophy, theology, and ethics; but there’s a subtext. Listening to Stand to Reason, you don’t just learn answers; you learn how to answer. Rush Limbaugh famously warns his listeners, “Don’t try this at home!” Greg Koukl says, “Do try this at home—and in your workplace, the restaurants you visit, in fact, everywhere you go!”

Better than that, he has published a very strategic book on how to do it. It’s titled Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions. Now, I admit to a bit of awkwardness saying Tactics is strategic; the terms are supposed to mean different things. Here’s how it makes sense: the tactics in the book are tactical; the book itself is strategic.

It’s also highly entertaining, readable, and informative. Wait—scratch all that; too many syllables. The book is fun. It’s filled with stories—both successes and failures—from the author’s own experience. I’m making the book required reading for my teenagers this summer. I have no doubt they’ll enjoy it.

Tactics is strategic in that it makes practical apologetics accessible to any Christian. It isn’t primarily about the answers. If you’re old enough to remember the TV detective Columbo you’ll instantly connect to Koukl’s main model: you don’t have to know all the answers if you know how to ask the right questions. There are just three kinds of questions, two of which are easy: What do you mean by that? and How did you come to that conclusion? The third category of question, the kind that can lead a person toward a logical conclusion, takes a bit more study and practice, but it’s an accessible sort of study and practice, as Koukl presents it.

His advice is intensely practical for real-life situations. One example: what do you do if you’re a college student and the professor puts you on the hot seat to defend your faith? Koukl’s first rule is as strategic as you could ask for:

Never make a frontal assault on a superior force in an entrenched position…. The man with the microphone wins. The professor always has the strategic advantage. It’s foolish to get into a power struggle when you are out-gunned.

So what do you do? Cower? Duck and run? Pray for the bell to ring and end class? Not much hope there; I’ve never heard of a college with bells. No, you turn the question back to the professor. How do you do that? I’d rather let the author answer that question; he can do it much better than I. Register on the Stand to Reason website, then go here and look for the January 29, 2006 podcast. Better yet, buy the book.

What I’ve been talking about so far is the first half of the book. The second half is a guide to logic. Maybe that sounds rather academic. Not the way Greg Koukl handles it, though. There’s just one tiny trace of Latin in there: “reductio ad absurdum.” He explains it in English, though, even giving it a new name: “Taking the Roof Off.” It goes like this:

Some points of view, if taken seriously, don’t actually commit suicide [his term for internally contradictory positions---another example of his speaking English when he discusses logic], but they work against themselves in a different way. When played out consistently, they lead to unusual—even absurd—conclusions….

This tactic makes it clear that certain arguments prove too much. It forces people to ask if they can really live with the kind of worldview they are affirming. Those who are intellectually honest will think twice about embracing a view that ultimately leads to irrationality….

The key to dealing with moral relativism, for example, is realizing that for all the adamant affirmations, no one really believes it, and for a good reason: If you start with relativism, reality does not make sense. It is significant that those who want to practice relativism never want relativism practiced toward them.

The “roof” he refers to is a cover the person erects “to protect himself from considering the consequences” of contradictory attitudes within. Do you think you could learn how to take the roof off? I think you can, with guidance from a book like Tactics. It will take practice, of course; the author is honest about his own fumbles and stumbles along the way. It will take some study, too. Koukl’s “Ambassador Model” includes knowledge, wisdom, and character. Though this book (quite appropriately) focuses on just one of these—handling interactions wisely—his overall message includes all three.

There’s a DVD/CD-based training series available to go along with Tactics. I haven’t obtained a copy yet, so I can’t comment on its quality or effectiveness. I certainly support the concept, though: making apologetics accessible. Tactics is good strategy.

Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Gregory Koukl. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009. 207 pages. Amazon Price US$10.19.

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Hardly anybody ever mentions it, but two of the most well-known verses in the Old Testament have significant apologetic implications, lending support to the Bible’s supernatural origins. One of them I’m sure will be a surprise to many readers here; the other might also.

I will preview the argument before telling you which verses they are. In brief form it goes like this.

The ancient Hebrews’ conception of God and his relation to his creation was vastly different from that of others in the Ancient Near East. From a philosophical perspective it has been exceedingly successful for millennia since then: it was, in that sense, very highly advanced philosophy. Such uniquely prescient and enduringly successful thinking is not explained by any prior tradition, for there is no indication of advanced thought leading up to it either among the Hebrews or in any neighboring culture. Did it come from nowhere at all? Or did it come by revelation from God?

Or:

The ancient Hebrews were astonishingly advanced metaphysical thinkers. They produced a monotheism that stood in complete contrast to all other systems of thought at the time, that still works philosophically, and that today remains coherent within its own framework. How did these Bronze Age nomads and farmers accomplish that?

I have often heard it asked, “why should we look to ancient Bronze Age or Iron Age nomads/sheepherders/farmers for wisdom? What could they possibly say to us who have the advantage of so much more knowledge and science?” Good question. How could they have known anything at all that would stand the test of centuries of inquiry? But our two “overlooked apologetics verses” have done that. They are, as I said, very familiar:

Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Exodus 3:13-14a “Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”

The creation account in Genesis is astonishingly different from all other creation stories. Quoting from page 32 and following of Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration:

Genesis is quite unlike the Mesopotamian cosmogonies [accounts of the origin of the cosmos], for instance, which are intertwined with theogonies—accounts of the origins of the gods. In them, we are not told so much about how the universe came about—the origin of the worlds is really accidental or secondary in ANE [Ancient Near East] accounts—but how the gods emerged. And in addition to the fact that these Mesopotamian cosmogonies are really concerned with the ancestors of the gods and how they got themselves organized, they do not even identify these gods as creators. So when it comes to the elements of the universe (the waters/deep, darkness), a deity either controls one or is one….

Further, Yahweh simply speaks, thereby creating; in other ANE cosmogonies, deities struggle to divide the waters. Also in Genesis 1, the astral bodies are not gods (as in ANE accounts) but are creations.…

Gerhard von Rad makes the powerful point that Israel’s worldview, as reflected in Genesis, drew a sharp demarcating line between God and the world. The material world is purged of any quality of the divine or the demonic….

In Genesis, we read of something marvelously different than in [Ugaritic cosmogony], with its gods and hostile powers (darkness, the waters/the deep): “These cosmic monsters are no longer primordial forces opposed to the Israelite God at the beginning of creation. Instead, they are creatures like other creatures rendered in this story.” Genesis 1 depicts a “divine mastery” over these forces….

In contrast to ANE myths, there are no rivals to the Creator in Genesis [chapter] 1—let alone preexistent matter…. There is no cosmic dualism or struggle at all.

There is more but I think you can see the point: the Genesis view of God and creation is starkly different from all other views of cosmic origins and of deity. This point extends beyond ANE cosmogonies. I believe it is the case that no other independently developed creation account is even remotely similar to that in Genesis. In all other accounts, either the material world is pre-existent along with the gods (there is something like this even in Plato), it is an emanation of some god or gods, or it is illusion.

Genesis is significant simply for its utter uniqueness. There’s something there that begs for explanation. But the argument I’m presenting is not just that.  There is more to be said. It will fit better, however, once we have look at our second “overlooked apologetics verse.”

We need to approach the Exodus passage through the route of a question. How are humans known? From where do we derive our identities? The answer is, through relationships. First of all we’re known by our families. “Who is your father?” was the question in the ANE; today we’re still identified through our family names and our family heritage. We’re identified by our relationship to maleness and femaleness. As we grow and develop, our personalities are formed in relation to our relatives, our friends, even our foes or (if your school experience was like many) tormentors. Our identity is tied also to the land, also a relational matter (“Where are you from? What nationality are you?”) and to our work (“What do you do for a living?”).

How are gods known in myth? In exactly the same way: by relationship to one another and to the created order, and by what they do. Their identities too are relational.

And so it is with identity in every case. It is always relational. This is what makes Yahweh’s answer in Exodus so remarkable. In biblical culture much more than today’s, a person’s name and identity were wrapped up together with each other. God was known to the Hebrews by many titles, most of which had to do with his role or way of relating to creation: The Almighty, the Lord of Hosts (Armies), The Provider, and so on. But in Exodus Moses was apparently asking for something more: God’s actual name, which would reveal his full identity, his full relatedness. God consented to answer. And to what relationship did he point? “I AM WHO I AM.” He pointed to himself. No other relationship could be adequate to identify him. He was (and is) just who he was (and is).

Down the centuries since then much has been said about monotheism. Much philosophical and theological work has been plowed into exploring what it must mean that there is one God. Now for apologetical purposes we cannot assume that monotheism is true; that would be begging the question most illegitimately. But we can examine its implications: what if it is true? This kind of examination has been done for centuries. One of its most solid conclusions is that God is “self-existent.” He is what he is, without reference to any other being whatever. He is being itself. Blogger niwrad put it this way:

What theology calls “God,” metaphysics refers to as “Being.” And what we call the “universe” or the “cosmos” is simply the “universal existence” or “manifestation” of Being. The universal existence is everything that exists….

In metaphysics it is important to conceptually distinguish between the verbs “to be” and “to exist,” although in everyday language this difference doesn’t matter very much. The verb “to exist” (from the Latin “ex-sistere“) etymologically means “to stay outside.” Thus a thing exists when its principle or “sufficient reason” or cause stands outside itself. This is precisely the situation for all the things in the universe. On the other hand, the ontological verb “to be” has a nobler and more powerful meaning than the verb “to exist,” and for this reason it should be applied to the principle or cause of all that exists, i.e. Being, the First Cause.

The auxiliary verb “to be” is, logically and linguistically, the more important verb, as a consequence of its ontological supremacy. Every other verb, as well as any word or logical term whatsoever, presupposes the verb “to be,” and is, as it were, its consequence or effect.

That’s a very clear introduction to a very technical discussion, ending in the conclusion, God is he who is, to whom the verb to be applies uniquely. “I AM WHO I AM.” It couldn’t be said any better than that.

Whether a technical discussion like niwrad’s is clear to you is not as important for our purposes as this: advanced philosophical reflection concludes that a Bronze Age sheepherder’s name for God is as accurate a name as could possibly be advanced for a monotheistic God. The name of God Moses delivered was God being self-identified in terms of himself, for nothing but God himself is adequate for him by which to identify himself. God IS (from his first-person perspective, “I AM”). The verb to be there is the only one that suffices to describe the pure Being of God.

It would have been easy for Moses to tell the Israelites, “I was sent to you by God, and his name is ___. (Fill in the blank with any name of your choosing, or with a title like The Lord.) He didn’t do that. He said, “I AM has sent me.”

God’s name, his revealed identity, I AM WHO I AM, has never failed from within the context of monotheistic thought. It has stood many centuries’ test of philosophical and theological coherence.

This ties back to Genesis 1:1: God created the heavens and the earth from nothing. Besides himself, nothing was. There was God as pure Being, the totality of all reality. Creation had to be ex nihilo—from nothing (no preexisting matter, no material cause)—if there was to be any creation at all.

There is much I must leave unsaid about these philosophical and theological reflections upon God, and I do not suppose that what I’ve written in these prior paragraphs will be adequate or even understandable in this bare form. Suffice it to say that a very large body of literature has tested conceptions of what God must be like in his being, if there is one God; and although this literature exceeds the Old Testament in technical depth and complexity, and though we learn further aspects of God’s holy character from other biblical revelation, with respect to the being of God, the whole of all these years of reflection amounts to nothing more than footnotes to “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” and “I AM WHO I AM.”

I will recap the argument here.

1. The idea of monotheism entails certain metaphysical and theological implications.

2. These implications have taken centuries to sort out and to refine, so that we can legitimately take it today that the art of thinking on monotheism has reached an advanced stage.

3. These centuries of work have confirmed the insights of the author of Genesis and Exodus on God’s self-existent eternal nature.

4. Genesis and Exodus are unique in their statements on these matters. No other ancient cosmogony or theology has had a view remotely similar to that of the books of Moses.

5. The question then is, from where did they derive an insight that would so successfully anticipate such advanced thinking, and endure for more than three thousand years?

Or in short: they did pretty well for simple Bronze Age farmers, coming up with metaphysical insight that would stand for more than three millennia. I think they had help.

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Coming to Chesapeake, VA, on March 13!
The Answers 2010 Regional Apologetics Conference

With a lineup including several nationally-known speakers, a debate, and two sessions that I’ll be leading.

From the conference website:

The Answers -
Questions come at us from every angle: our friends, our relatives, even ourselves. These questions ask, “Does God Really Exist?”, “Is the Bible trustworthy?”, “Why does God allow so much suffering?” The questions are difficult, and they’re important. Now, it’s time to get The ANSWERS.

This conference is designed to help Christians answer these questions and more. Parents, teens, college students, home-schoolers, new believers, and pastors: EVERYONE can come here to get The ANSWERS. Experts from all over the country are gathering here to answer questions related to: atheism, Islam, Creation vs. Evolution, the Bible, the Resurrection, Pop-Culture phenomena like the Da Vinci Code, and more. Some of the speakers include best-selling author Mark Mittelberg, nationally renowned scholars Dr. Michael Licona and Dr. Craig Hazen, and former-Muslim Christian evangelist Dr. Nabeel Qureshi. The evening will conclude with a live debate between international debater David Wood and atheist author John Loftus on the topic “Does God Exist?” Seating is very limited, so sign up early to make sure you are here to get the ANSWERS!

[From The Answers 2010]

Not mentioned in that front-page promotion from the conference website: several breakout session speakers, including myself. I’ll be speaking on Postmodernism and “Does Faith Make Sense In an Age of Science.”

There’s still room for you! If you’re anywhere within range, don’t miss this great event.

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I’m part of a network of apologists and worldview ministry leaders who are beginning to do some work on how our ministries could be more effective, especially in churches. We’re just beginning this behind-the-scenes strategy work. You could help set our direction by telling us how we’re doing right now. If you’re a pastor or church lay leader please mention that, since your thoughts are especially important. If we’re not serving your needs, we’re not doing our job.

Please pass this around, because we (the apologetics community) really need to hear from you:

• Is apologetics relevant in your church?
• Would most of your church members answer that question the same way you just did?
• Are apologists meeting your church’s needs?
• Do you get the sense that we (apologists) are there for you and for your church?
• Does it seem that most apologetics ministry something that takes place in its own world separate from church-level Christianity?
• What could apologists do to serve your needs better?

We really appreciate your input. Thank you!

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Book Review
Readers of this blog may be familiar with Dr. William Lane Craig’s work; we’ve discussed him more than once. A prolific author, Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and a frequent debater on the truth of Christianity. His recent revision of Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Third Edition) represents a state-of-the-art presentation of evidences and arguments in support of Christian belief.

It includes some potential surprises for some readers. Did you know…

• That “all of the various traditional arguments for God’s existence find prominent, intelligent proponents, who defend these arguments in books published by the finest academic presses, in articles in professional journals, and in papers presented at meetings of professional philosophical societies;” in contrast to, say, the mid-1960s when TIME magazine asked, “Is God Dead?”
• That science and philosophy both strongly indicate that the universe had a beginning—for which science can provide no explanation?
• That the progress of skeptical thought has a history of its own—it has been contingent on various currents of thought, and is not (as some have supposed) the necessary result of scientific thinking?
• That apologetical thinking and research has a history, too—it didn’t time-warp from Thomas Aquinas to Josh McDowell?
• That Jesus Christ understood himself to be Messiah and to be Divine—and that this can be demonstrated from even that tiny portion of the New Testament that skeptical scholars acknowledge as genuine?
• That the tide of New Testament scholarship has turned in the past few decades, and now the majority of scholars, believers and skeptics alike, acknowledge that the New Testament can be trusted in its accounts of several basic facts regarding Christ’s life, death, and even his post-death (resurrection) appearances?
• That (related to that) a strong case for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ can be made just on the basis of information that even skeptical scholars consider to be trustworthy?
• That Christians may reasonably and rationally be assured that the faith is true, even apart from extra-biblical apologetical evidences?

For some readers these things may be a surprise, and for others they may be provocative. I can’t (and won’t try to) explain and defend them all here. Craig covers them carefully over the course of 400+ pages of material. Before considering evidences for the Resurrection, for example, he devotes entire chapters to philosophical questions surrounding miracles and historical knowledge. (Are miracles possible? Could reports of miracles ever be credible? Can we genuinely know any of what really happened in history?). The book is intended for seminary-level study, and includes extensive documentation through footnotes (not endnotes, thankfully) and chapter-by-chapter bibliographies.

I owe it to you to develop at least one point further here: that Christians may reasonably and rationally be assured the faith is true, apart from extra-biblical evidences. Craig makes the important distinction between knowing it is true, and showing it is true. Following Alvin Plantinga in Warranted Christian Belief, Craig says that the proposition “God exists,” can be properly basic. A belief B is properly basic if some person S can reasonably and with good assurance take B to be true, apart from an evidential foundation of other assured beliefs that imply B.

Properly basic beliefs include those that are

self evident or incorrigible…. For example, the proposition, “The sum of the squares of the two sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse” is self-evidently true [well, to some people]. Similarly, the proposition “I feel pain” is incorrigibly true, since even if I am only imagining my injury, it is still true that I feel pain.

Craig suggests (following Plantinga still) that belief in God may be properly basic:

Man has an innate, natural capacity to apprehend God’s existence even as he has a natural capacity to accept truths of perception (like “I see a tree”). Given the appropriate circumstances—such as moments of guilt, gratitude, or a sense of God’s handiwork in nature—man naturally apprehends God’s existence…. Neither the tree’s existence nor God’s existence is inferred from one’s experience of the circumstances. But being in the appropriate circumstances is what renders one’s belief properly basic; the belief would be irrational were it to be held under inappropriate circumstances. Thus, the basic belief that God exists is not arbitrary, since it is properly held only by a person placed in appropriate circumstances.

He goes on to speak of two ways of knowing Christianity to be true: through the work of the Holy Spirit, and through argument and evidence. Concerning the first:

I mean that the experience of the Holy Spirit is veridical and unmistakable … for him who has it; that such a person does not need supplementary arguments or evidence in order to know and to know with confidence that he is in fact experiencing the Spirit of God; … that such an experience provides one not only with a subjective assurance of Christianity’s truth, but with objective knowledge of that truth….

This may appear to run the risks of being circular or a potential source of self-deception on the part of the believer. Understood properly, it is most assuredly not circular. It is not, after all, an argument; it is much more akin to a perception. Can my perception that there is pain in my toe be circular? Hardly. Could I be deceived about that pain? I could be fooled, yes, regarding the source of the pain. Amputees can feel pain in limbs they no longer even have; it’s called phantom pain, and it’s quite common. If, however, I have an unmistakable personal experience of God, and if (a) my interpretation of that experience is not defeated by other knowledge and (b) other knowledge such as may be available to me supports that conclusion, then I am rational to take it to be an unmistakable experience of God. (A defeater is some argument or information that, if true, tends to refute a belief or to reduce confidence in it.) The amputee’s knowledge that he has no right foot is a defeater for the belief that his right big toe is actually hurting.

Craig acknowledges there are potential defeaters for the conclusion that an experience of God actually comes from God. Someday, he says, he may write a book to show that they do not in fact successfully undermine the Christian faith. This is not that book; rather it is his extensive compilation of positive information (evidence and argument) that supports the conclusion that God exists, that Jesus Christ claimed to be his Son, and that he validated that claim by his resurrection from death.

The point of all this is to put apologetics, belief, and rationality in proper perspective. Millions throughout history have believed in Christ without studying apologetics, and they have not made irrational decisions. God does not necessarily work through evidence and argument, although in the right context, evidence and argument may rationally and profitably be employed. One or their purposes is to address possible defeaters to the conclusion that one is experiencing God. Another purpose is on the second side of the know/show coin. I do not expect my experience of the Holy Spirit to persuade you, the unbeliever, that God exists and that Jesus Christ is his Son (Craig does not expect that either). I cannot show you, in a way that you will be able to take in as your own knowledge, how it is that I know God through my experience. I can, however, use evidence and arguments to show you that the existence of God is plausible, even more plausible than his non-existence.

That last clause counts for a great deal, by the way. Even as committed a Christian apologist as Craig will not claim he has a proof for God’s existence. He presents multiple overlapping and complementary lines of argument for God’s existence and for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Each of them individually makes Christianity more plausible (in my opinion) than competing worldviews. They do not constitute proof, though taken together, they make a very strong case for Christ indeed.

I must leave my other provocative bullet points hanging without further discussion, at least on this post. I expect I will come back to some of them in a future post, or that commenters will lead us to pick up one or more of them here. I strongly encourage you to read Reasonable Faith. Christians, you will gain considerably in your knowledge of God and his work in the world. Your faith will increase as you see more clearly how well founded it is. Questioners or skeptics, you will be able to interact with Craig’s arguments, and see for yourself whether, in light of the most current scholarship, Christianity is indeed a Reasonable Faith.

Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics by William Lane Craig. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008. 415 pages including index.Amazon Price US $17.16.

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