As an apprentice in apologetics I am constantly surprised at the level at which William Lane Craig, of Reasonable Faith, engages his intelligence and his discipline in the pursuit of logic and reason. It causes me a to become necessarily sober. I may experience an intellectual “high”at times in my life because I can logically solved an issue I had been wrestling with or I have a revelatory notion about a current logical fallacy I was working through. After listening to this interview I realize that I am years away from thinking through all the thoughts about God that can and need to be logically ingested, processed, and shared. This encourages me as there are new frontiers of thought that I haven’t breeched yet.
We can look to the 16th Century Molinism (Middle Knowledge of God) by Luis de Molina, and then at all the philosopher for the last 3,ooo years ( Plato, Aquinas, Augustine, etc..), and we can easily see that we are standing on the shoulders of intellectual giants and we have no intellectual superiority over ancient philosophy. We may have more information and technology but that has not translated in to an ultimate or perfected philosophy. It has been the opposite, with the emergence of Post-Modernism it appears we have philosophized ourselves into irrelevancy. It is a good indication that logic is not dependent upon environment, culture, era, or education; logic is transcendently objective, therefore if you can logically explain a proposition without breaking any laws of logic or committing any fallacies then you have a logical argument ad infinitum. In contrast, science alone can change its knowledge base of truth from experiment to experiment without committing any integral infractions. This can create an unstable foundation to establish truth, not to mention that science has to presuppose logic, truth, order, and intelligence in order to even make any claims of truth about existence and the universe (I digress).
It makes me so thankful that I am saved by Grace and not on my own physical or intellectual merits. I know the limitations of my temporal existence and my intellectual capacity, and I could never ultimately comprehend all the necessary thoughts on my own time or understanding. Also I have the necessary pursuit of staying alive, providing for my family which takes away time that I could be thinking.
It is so intriguing to ponder about these things. I have previously rationalized thoughts about God in my own prejudiced understanding of my worldview or personal philosophy. These were born from my experience and environment, but there are other necessary and logical complexities of philosophy that have not enter my mind. William Lane Craig inspires me. He does have 2 doctorates to my none, so I’m doing okay. Ha!
It simply reminds me we need to always be learning and wrestling with our thoughts and experiences to understand Our relationship with God, others, and the universe more succinctly.
In this video, which I think may be the most exhaustive interview that I have ever watched (or listened to) on the topic of the God and our existence, Dr. Craig explains the points of view from Theism circumspectly and varying disciplines of Christendom without showing or displaying his own philosophical bias. He will at times indicate which he thinks is correct, or is more logically sound, but his language is even and without negative inflection to ideas he personally dismisses.
I have left this interview knowing that I will go back in time and review it again.
Robert Kuhn did a marvelous job navigating the questions with real time analysis that was fair, challenging, and productive. He asked legitimate questions without malice or agenda. It was a pleasure watching two highly intelligent men having a meaningful and engaging conversation about the biggest questions of our existence. It is the quintessential dialogue with mutual respect and dignity.
There are no barbs, no agendas, and no egos. It is how people should interact with these topics, but we are so emotionally charged with our own perspectives that it is hard to see the other side. I don’t think that very many people have the patience to actually engage at this level because it takes years of intellectual discipline to think about and express such deep thoughts.
The Precipice of Wes 