William Lane Craig’s favorite philosopher, debate and books

From his Reasonable Faith podcast. (H/T Chris)

This man is by far the greatest defender of Christianity operating today… maybe the best (mortal) ever. If you can think of an atheist, he has probably debated him. The debate he calls his “favorite” carried me through my undergraduate degree – I printed out the transcript and kept it in my binder. I was a big fan of Leadership University then, so I had all of their Craig debates, plus I was ordering tapes from Integrated Resources.

The book he names “An Introduction to Christian Apologetics” by E.J. Carnell, was also my first book on apologetics, given to me by a Young Life youth pastor. I had the purple 1948 edition. Mine got to be in such a bad state of disrepair that I had to photocopy the entire book in order to save the binding, which was falling apart.

9 thoughts on “William Lane Craig’s favorite philosopher, debate and books”

Very interesting. My first book on apologetics was “What’s so great about Christianity” by Dinesh D’Souza. I’ve read it multiple times and have referenced it often in my blog posts. The second book I read was “On Guard” by Bill Craig, which is my favorite apologetic work. The third was the compilation book “God is great, God is good” and that is a fantastic book! I wouldn’t recommend it to beginners because it’s an advanced book.

I would like to read the book by E.J. Carnell, it sounds interesting. It’s funny that you had to photocopy the entire book!

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Wintery Knight says:

08/26/2011 at 10:13 AM

The Carnell book was mostly about the law of non-contradiction and using logic to test beliefs. I wouldn’t recommend it today, because we have so much better!

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1. Jared says:
  
  08/26/2011 at 10:48 AM
  
  Oh OK. Yeah, there are much better books available today.
  
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Not my first but my favorite book on apologetics is “Reconstruction of the Christian Revelation Claim: A Philosophical and Critical Apologetic,” by Stuart Hackett. (Yes, it is more of a philosophical defense than a scientific one.) I audited one of Hackett’s classes at TEDS (Deerfield, IL) while there in the late 80s and was intrigued by Hackett’s intelligence and godliness. (Do you know any other Christian philosophers who, as part of his/her devotions, reads through the *Greek* NT at least once/yr ?) After leaving TEDS I got more involved in personal study of Christian philosophy and apologetics and got all 3 of Hackett’s books as a result. He also had a free “e-book” out at one point on Ethics (esp. ‘meta-ethics’: the grounding of ethical belief in the existence of God). It was very good, but I no longer have it and don’t know where to get it.

FWIW, Craig knew of and later worked with Hackett and had very nice things to say about him in the following article. (http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6007)

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