14: The logical coherence of the doctrine of the Trinity
15: The logical coherence of the doctrine of the Incarnation
16: The logical coherence of the doctrine of the Atonement
17: The logical coherence of the doctrine of the Hell
18: Responding to objections to God’s knowledge of the future
My favorite chapters in this book are the ones by Mark Linville on evolution and morality, and the chapter by Robert H. Stein on historical criteria and methodology. This is not an introductory book, this book is an intermediate-level book. You want to read the two Jim Wallace books and the Lee Strobel “Case For” books before you tackle this one.
Much of the book is philosophy and philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Well, I guess everyone knows that I hate non-STEM disciplines, and I only read philosophy because it’s useful for Christian apologetics. If you are like me, and think that only STEM disciplines have value, then this book is for you. You will be able to make use of it in your case-making adventures. It. Works. This is the stuff that gets William Lane Craig invited to all the best universities to debate against all the best atheists. And he beats them all up with it, too.
The verdict seems unanimous. From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.
But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be true. From the many popular notions about the crusades, let us pick four and see if they bear close examination.
The four myths:
Myth #1: The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world.
Myth #2: Western Christians went on crusade because their greed led them to plunder Muslims in order to get rich.
Myth #3: Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives.
Myth #4: The crusades taught Muslims to hate and attack Christians.
Here’s the most obvious thing you should know. The Crusades were defensive actions:
In a.d. 632, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were all Christian territories. Inside the boundaries of the Roman Empire, which was still fully functional in the eastern Mediterranean, orthodox Christianity was the official, and overwhelmingly majority, religion. Outside those boundaries were other large Christian communities—not necessarily orthodox and Catholic, but still Christian. Most of the Christian population of Persia, for example, was Nestorian. Certainly there were many Christian communities in Arabia.
By a.d. 732, a century later, Christians had lost Egypt, Palestine, Syria, North Africa, Spain, most of Asia Minor, and southern France. Italy and her associated islands were under threat, and the islands would come under Muslim rule in the next century. The Christian communities of Arabia were entirely destroyed in or shortly after 633, when Jews and Christians alike were expelled from the peninsula.6 Those in Persia were under severe pressure. Two-thirds of the formerly Roman Christian world was now ruled by Muslims.
What had happened? Most people actually know the answer, if pressed—though for some reason they do not usually connect the answer with the crusades. The answer is the rise of Islam. Every one of the listed regions was taken, within the space of a hundred years, from Christian control by violence, in the course of military campaigns deliberately designed to expand Muslim territory at the expense of Islam’s neighbors. Nor did this conclude Islam’s program of conquest. The attacks continued, punctuated from time to time by Christian attempts to push back. Charlemagne blocked the Muslim advance in far western Europe in about a.d. 800, but Islamic forces simply shifted their focus and began to island-hop across from North Africa toward Italy and the French coast, attacking the Italian mainland by 837. A confused struggle for control of southern and central Italy continued for the rest of the ninth century and into the tenth. In the hundred years between 850 and 950, Benedictine monks were driven out of ancient monasteries, the Papal States were overrun, and Muslim pirate bases were established along the coast of northern Italy and southern France, from which attacks on the deep inland were launched. Desperate to protect victimized Christians, popes became involved in the tenth and early eleventh centuries in directing the defense of the territory around them.
If you asked me what are the two best books on the Crusades, I would answer God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades by Baylor professor Rodney Stark and The Concise History of the Crusades by Professor Thomas F. Madden. If you get this question a lot from atheists, then I recommend you pick these up. Anything by Rodney Stark is useful for Christians, in fact.
What started you on his journey of studying faith and reason?
How would you define the word “faith”?
Are faith and reason compatible? How are they related?
How can reasonable faith help us to avoid the two extremes of superstition and nihilism?
Who makes the best arguments against the Christian faith?
Why are angry atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens more well known than better-informed academic atheists?
Does the Bible require Christians to give the unbeliever reasons for their faith?
How does faith spur Christians to think carefully about the big questions in life?
Should the American church prod churchgoers to develop their minds so they can engage the secular culture?
When talking about Christianity intellectually, is there a risk of neglecting the experience of being a Christian?
Which Christian apologist has shaped your thinking the most?
Which Christian philosopher has shaped your thinking the most?
Does the confidence that comes from apologetics undermine humility and reverence?
If you had to sketch out a 5 minute case for Christianity, what would you present?
Can non-Christians use their reason to arrive at truth?
Are there cases where atheists must affirm irrational things in order to remain atheists?
Can the universe have existed eternal, so that there is no need to explain who created it?
Even if you persuade someone that Christianity is true, does that mean they will live it out?
There is also a long period of questions, many of them hostile, from the audience of students (55 minutes).
Haven’t you said nasty things about some atheists? Aren’t you a meany?
What do you make of the presuppositional approach to apologetics?
Can a person stop being a Christian because of the chances that happen to them as they age?
Why did God wait so long after humans appeared to reveal himself to people through Jesus?
Can a person be saved by faith without have any intellectual assent to truth?
How do you find time for regular things like marriage when you have to study and speak so much?
How would you respond to Zeitgeist and parallels to Christianity in Greek/Roman mythology?
Do Christians have to assume that the Bible is inerrant and inspired in order to evangelize?
If the universe has a beginning, then why doesn’t God have a beginning?
Can you name some philosophical resources on abstract objects, Platonism and nominalism?
How can you know that Christianity more right than other religions?
Should we respond to the problem of evil by saying that our moral notions are different from God’s?
Define the A and B theories of time. Explain how they relate to the kalam cosmological argument.
How can Christians claim that their view is true in the face of so many world religions?
What is the role of emotions in Christian belief and thought?
Can evolution be reconciled with Christian beliefs and the Bible?
When witnessing person-to-person, should you balance apologetics with personal testimony?
Is there a good analogy for the trinity that can help people to understand it? [Note: HE HAS ONE!]
How can Christians reconcile God’s omniscience, God’s sovereignty and human free will?
This is a nice introductory lecture that is sure to get Christians to become interested in apologetics. As you watch or listen to it, imagine what the world would be like if every Christian could answer the questions of skeptical college students and professors like Dr. Craig. What would non-Christians think about Christianity if every Christian had studied these issues like Dr. Craig? Why aren’t we making an effort to study these things so that we can answer these questions?
It is really fun to see him fielding the questions from the skeptical university students. My favorite question was from the physics student who sounds really foreign, (at 1:19:00), then you realize that he is a Christian. I do think that Dr. Craig went a little far in accommodating evolution, but I put that down to the venue, and not wanting to get into a peripheral issue. I’m also surprised that no one asked him why God allows humans to suffer and commit acts of evil.
If you are looking for a good basic book on apologetics, then I would choose “Is God Just a Human Invention?” by Sean McDowell and Jonathan Morrow. And you can even be part of a reading group that Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 just announced, that I will be participating in. We will all be reading the book together, chapter by chapter, and lots of people will be available to answer your questions.
William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.
Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity… In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until assuming his position at Talbot in 1994.
He has authored or edited over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology; and God, Time and Eternity, as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology, including The Journal of Philosophy, New Testament Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy, and British Journal for Philosophy of Science.
William Lane Craig is, without a doubt, the top living defender of Christianity. He has debated all of the most famous atheists, including Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, etc. as well as academic atheists like Quentin Smith, Peter Millican, etc. if you search this blog, you’ll find many debates posted here, sometimes even with snarky summaries.
WINTERY KNIGHT 