A Conversation with Bishop Robert Barron & William Lane Craig | Claremont McKenna College - 2018

[Music] good evening and welcome to a conversation with Bishop Robert Barron and Professor William Lane Craig I'm Michael yeoman I am chairman of the board of the Claremont Center the religion reason to public affairs and for my day job I teach to the Claremont Graduate School in the Department of politics he just got an a to the our Center is proud to sponsor tonight's event with the cooperation of assistance Bishop Barron's were Don Fire Catholic ministries the dr. Craig's reasonable faith [Applause] we extend our special thanks to Claremont McKenna College for the use of this beautiful new facility and to its staff who have done so much to make this evening awesome as most of you know thank you know Bishop Baron a dr. Craig are perhaps the most influential defenders of the truths of the Christian faith on the scene today their books articles public appearances videos and podcasts reach tens of millions of people bishop barons audiences primarily composed of Catholics dr. Craig's primarily of Protestants the Claremont Center was founded in 2014 by three Catholic and three Protestant scholars it occurred to us that someone might wish to bring together two Christian leaders and evangelists to address the many concerns facing the Christian community today taken as a whole in fact we were surprised that no one had already done so not only do we have a packed house here as you see we also live streaming the event to the facilities of word on fire both word on fire and reasonable faith will make videos available through their websites as will the Claremont Center in the upcoming weeks once our new web site is completed and online with that reason I would ask you not to either videotape or or or sound tape the event this evening please no pictures let me say a few words about our two speakers and the two gentlemen on the stage with them who will be moderating their conversation I just in passing as I was going over my remarks rough calculation just so as you know these four gentlemen on my left have authored or edited 81 books [Music] Bishop Robert Robert Baron is the founder of word on fire Catholic ministries in the auxilary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is also the host of Catholicism the groundbreaking award-winning documentary about the Catholic base which aired on PBS he is the best-selling author and has published numerous books essays and articles on theology and the spiritual life his YouTube videos have been viewed over 25 million times and he has over 1 and a half million followers on Facebook ordains in 1986 in the Archdiocese of Chicago Bishop Baron received a master's degree in philosophy from the Catholic University America in 1982 and his doctorate and sacred theology from Catholic University of Paris in 1992 dr. William Lane Craig is research professor of philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University and professor of philosophy at Houston Baptists University is also the founder of the web-based ministry reasonable faith org dr. Craig earned his BA from Wheaton College two masters degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School a PhD in philosophy from the University of Birmingham in England and not content with one he got a second PhD in theology from the University of Munich he has authored or edited over 40 books as well as nearly 200 articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology in 2016 dr. Craig was named by the best schools as one of the 50 most influential living philosophers monitoring tonight's conversation or two of the founders of the Claremont Centre my colleagues dr. Stephen Davis on the far left is the Russell K Pitzer professor of philosophy emeritus at Claremont McKenna College and a senior scholar at the Claremont Centre an expert in the philosophy of religion and analytic theology is the author of over 70 academic articles in some 16 books including encountering evil live options in theodicy Christian philosophical theology and rational faith a philosophers offense of Christianity professor Edward fazer is associate professor of philosophy at Pasadena City College and senior scholar at the Claremont Center he received his BA in philosophy of religious studies from California State College at Fullerton is masters in religion from the claremont graduate school and his doctorate in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara he has authored or edited 11 books and has written numerous academic murders his primary academic research interests are in metaphysics national theology a philosophy of mind and moral and political philosophy his most recent book is 5 proofs of the existence of God published by Ignatius press last year a program tonight will last about two hours first hour will be a conversation on three topics the challenge of evangelization science and faith and advice to Christians living in an increasingly secular world Bishop Baron a dr. Craig will then spend about 30 minutes answering questions from the audience you may submit a question via Facebook Twitter or Instagram using hashtag God conversation one word whether you're here at the event or watching online we'd love to hear from you we'll pick out a handful of the best questions to ask our esteemed guests Bishop Baron and dr. Craig will then spend about 20 minutes questioning one another followed by a few minutes of closing remarks let me again ask you please silence your cell phones and no sound recording video recording the pictures if you please as I indicated earlier the event is being live streamed and will be available or a future consumption online with that thank you all for coming and for watching online we look forward to an exciting evening join me now in welcoming Bishop Baron a dr. Craig I now turn the program over to my colleague professor Davis who will begin the question you well gentlemen let's let's begin as you both know Christianity has always been a religion that believes strongly in evangelism and in converting people to Christ and there's a very good reason for that Jesus himself said in the great commandment that we are to go to all the world and baptize people in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost we live in a time where it looks as if there are fewer and fewer Christians that certainly seems to be true in this country and in many other countries it looks like a time when it's evangelism is getting more and more difficult I remember as a child watching Bishop Fulton sheen a very good Catholic evangelist and we all knew who Billy Graham is but we live in a different time a different era and I'm wondering what advice you got about evangelism some thoughts you've got about evangelism some thoughts about methods evangelism Bishop Baird let's begin with you you know I think we face an enormous set of difficulties today in terms of evangelization one of which is scientism maybe we'll get back to a bit later but this reduction of all now is to the scientific form of knowledge and if that's the case then the proclamation of religious truth strikes people is anomalous at best nonsense it worse if all that's true is what's scientifically true and the proclamation of a different kind of truth strikes people as as odd so I think dealing with that issue is is paramount today there's also the great challenge I would say of what I call a culture of self invention it's my right or prerogative to invent myself so my will determines the truth for me at all levels of life and evangelization is the Declaration of the lordship of Jesus Jesus is the lord of my life well if I am the Lord of my life there can't be two Lords around here you know so in that way what's what's a perennial difficulty in evangelization turning one's life over to Christ is especially challenging today when this sort of ideology of self invention is is all the rage so I think there was two of the things that really specially challenges today in terms of evangelization dr. Craig you want to speak to that I think that there are two aspects to this question that need to be addressed first would be how do we best equip Christians to share the gospel in our culture and then the second would be how do we make our culture more receptive to the gospel when it is proclaimed with regard to equipping Christians to share the gospel more effectively let me just mention a few practical considerations first you should make sure that you yourself are a growing spirit-filled Christian it's not enough just to be religious or be a churchgoer can you say with paul i live yet not i but christ lives in me you're guided and empowered by the Holy Spirit you know Christ only then I think are you really ready to begin to be a witness for him secondly I would encourage you then each of you to memorize a gospel presentation there are many of these available something like the four spiritual laws or knowing God personally whereby you can take an unbeliever step by step through the fundamental points of the gospel and then bring him to a point of decision where you invite him to make a commitment to Christ of his life and I can tell you there is no greater thrill in the Christian life than to sit with someone and pray with him and lead him in making a commitment of his entire life to Jesus Christ combined that gospel presentation with a personal testimony I'd encourage you to take time to write out the story of how you came to Christ how you came to faith in him memorize it and be able to give it in about three minutes people love to hear your personal story and so a gospel presentation combined with your personal testimony will be very powerful in evangelism thirdly I'd encourage you to memorize some arguments for the existence of God the difficulty with so many in our culture today is they think there's no evidence for God's existence and the average Christian can't give him any and so he excuses his unbelief but if you're prepared you can say well I can think of four arguments for God's existence and at that point he's got to say yeah like what and then boom you're off and ready you're ready to go with your arguments for God's existence and I found in sharing with unbelievers oftentimes all you have to do is list the arguments you don't even have to present them just say God's the best explanation why anything exists rather than nothing God's the best explanation for the beginning of the universe God's the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life God's the best explanation for the objectivity of moral values and duties and I found very often just listing the arguments it's sufficient for the unbeliever without even sharing them finally the last point would be then learn some Christian evidences as well not just arguments for God's existence but why I think that the gospel records of Jesus of Nazareth are historically reliable why are these different than mythology or fairy tales and by being thus equipped I think you will be ready to be used of God in the lives of unbelievers that you meet the scripture says always be prepared to give a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the reason of the hope that is in you so preparation is key jump in for a second because this morning I discovered from dr. Craig that we both at a key moment in our lives were very influenced by arguments for God's existence so when you were a young student at a tweet in college and it heard from your professors these things have all been debunked but then you read more deeply in that area and it kind of awakened a new sensibility when I was 14 years old I came of age in the period after vatican ii and we did not put a great stress on things like arguments for God's existence but I was taught one of thomas aquinas his arguments i'm a fourteen-year-old kid catholic going to Mass on Sunday but I wasn't particularly interested in religion but that argument awakened something in my mind and set me on this path which has led me to where I'm sitting right now so I think the appeal to the mind is a very powerful thing and we under played it for a long time and in both our lives it made a big difference these rational arguments but we shouldn't dismiss him but we should incorporate them you're quite right have him in the arsenal yeah follow up I was gonna ask physics Bishop Baron a follow-up question yeah you mentioned what I think he referred to as a self actualization holder is that am I getting the self definitional definition right now um so what I wanted to ask is what you maybe elaborate on that and what you think the origins of that might be where it came from and how Christians might respond to it and is it something that can be responded to in a rational way or is it below that level it's it's something deeper going on no I think it's it's both and if I were trace it more intellectually go back to someone like Nietzsche in the 19th century or the will power and will is more important than than value than truth it comes up in the 20th century thirdly and sarra know we're in Sartre existence precedes essence so my freedom comes first but I determine Who I am and those were high level philosophical debates in the 19th and 20th centuries but they trickled down seems to me so there's the intellectual side through all kinds of classrooms and so on it trickled down so that now it's the common philosophy of a lot of younger people way of trying to bail mana to say in any area of life that you take seriously you tend not to adopt that sort of philosophy what I mean is if you're really serious about playing the piano or swinging a golf club well you're not gonna say it's just a matter of my will I'll play any way I want any golfers to tell me how that goes right so when you really care about something you want to submit your freedom to certain norm but some when it comes to religion or the ultimate values we say owner known don't do that you decide what they are but see that makes life dull the same way it makes your golf poor it makes your panel playing poor when your will and freedom are paramount I think especially in the area of religion that when we submit ourselves to these great values and they shape our freedom then we begin to live in a couple of minutes we have left I'd like to get Jesus into the picture here's here's hell let's let's imagine a thought experiment with somebody knocks on your door and says well I'm from a foreign country I'm very interested in the religions of this country I don't know anything about Christianity you tell me please what Christianity is now I don't know about you guys yeah but was me obviously I don't know where the conversation would go and what how long it would last but I know very well what my first line would be it would be let me tell you about this person whose name is Jesus now I'm wondering whether either of you guys want to riff on that I think evangelism crucially involves telling people about Jesus Christ well that's what I meant when I said to have a gospel presentation uh and we've actually had that experience Steve my wife Jan meant some people in the grocery store from Switzerland and she got striking up a conversation with them and invited them over to our house and we began to talk about Christ and they told us our friends said when you go to the United States Americans will have you over and want to tell you about Jesus and so they were waiting waiting for this very receptive so when you share something like again I go back to the four spiritual laws the third laws if Jesus Christ is God's solution to man's predicament which is sin and alienation and through him we can know and experience God's wonderful plan for our lives so absolutely focus on right all right and that's where your personal testimony yeah obscene come in and share how how we change your life all right if my interlocutors spoke Latin by any chance I would say I would say Dave's fit homo would homo fear at David yeah so the church fathers and they repeated over and over again when they were asked to sum up Christianity said that they said God became human that humans might become God meaning sharers in God's nature and that was their way of summing up the whole of Christianity God became one of us that we might be drawn up into God's life so that's telling the story of Jesus if you want the details then look at the story of Jesus but that's the essence of Christianity I would say is deification the Greek fathers talked about theosis right becoming deified I think that's the that's the goal and there's no there's no greater humanism on offer there never has been there never can be a greater humanism on offer than it God wants to draw us up into his own life that's Christian Bishop as a presbyterian I have noticed watching some of your programs which I love that you put great emphasis on beauty as a way of drawing people to the church yeah and I'm just wondering whether you'd want to talk about that that's we know that that's not to exclude rationale or gates which you are very good at but I'm wondering if you would like to talk about that a bit I would because I you know the three great transcendentals the Philosopher's told us the good the true and the beautiful right wherever you find being you're gonna find those three things and a lot of our theology is focused on the good think of the moral life and so on a lot of us focused on the true but I think especially today in our postmodern time the good and the true can be non-starters for a lot of people cuz if I say to you now here's the way you ought to behave let me tell you what's the good life people's fences you might say look I got the truth that you need to know they get defensive but the beautiful I think is just a little bit more winsome for a lot of people I'm not gonna tell you what the thing yeah I'm not gonna tell you how to behave yes but just look at this let me just show you some and as a Catholic I would say no we can draw in the green aesthetic tradition look at the Sistine Chapel I'm gonna tell you yet what I think your honor behaved but look at that let me explain it to you listen to Mozart Mass listen to Beethoven's seventh symphony look at the work of Mother Teresa sisters in the beautiful I think could be a winsome way in toward the good and the truth when the good the true can and send up the hackles you know they're good any last thoughts from either of you on evangelism before we turn it over to Ed well I said that the second point is to make our culture more receptive to the gospel even if Christians are sharing their faith more readily if argon if our culture is increasingly hostile that's going to cause a resistance and it seems to me that we need to identify those factors shaping American culture which make it hardened to the gospel and I can think of three things one would be we need to impact the American University American University is the most important institution shaping Western culture and if Christianity can have a place of respect at the university this will help to reshape our future teachers future lawyers future judges and so forth the second thing would be the entertainment industry although academics like to think that we're the ones who shape culture I have a deep suspicion that in fact it's really film and music and television that shapes our culture and these industries are so filled with anti-christian values of sexual promiscuity hedonism and selfishness that we need a new generation of Christian filmmakers and musicians and so forth who can help to impact this area for Christ and finally I think we need to reform the u.s. judiciary we are living under a judicial system that has sanctioned a holocaust against babies in utero or decades now resulting in the loss of millions of lives a Supreme Court that on the basis of five judges has redefined marriage in such a way that traditional marriage no longer has as part of its essence that it's heterosexual religious liberty and civil liberties I think are under threat and I think that president Trump's appointment of neo gorsek is perhaps a bellwether that there is possibility here or real change over the next eight years in our judicial system and if this happens I think it could have a tremendous impact in making American culture more sympathetic and open to the gospel okay and it's all yours second table I think Bishop bear I don't know if we should baron we've got five minutes left in this segment is that right okay yeah so maybe Bishop Baron wanted to speak the same sorry yeah yeah I'd say this that Christians have to know of ism appropriate rhythm between what I call hunkering down and going for it we do have to hunker down sometimes when the culture becomes very Hospital and we have to learn our own stuff and there's where the study of the faith comes in the study of the scripture the great philosophical and theological traditions the artistic tradition here I think of of the young Carol Voigt I would go back to the thirties when the Nazis overrun opposed what they do he and his friends hunker down and they recited together the great works of Polish literature which are much more than polish literature they carried him anyways that the Christian faith and and they hid behind locked doors and close windows and and they were many of them were killed during that time they hunkered down but then fast forward several decades and now that young kid grown up to be hope john paul ii boldly comes forth and and prompts a revolution you know when he gives that famous speech in 1979 and victory square in poland and the people would just begin to chant we want God we want God I would I find so powerful there is it was the young kid that hunkered down and learned and preserved the great tradition who was then able to bring it forth you know so to know that rhythm when I was coming of age we were all on go out and meet the culture go out and meet the world that's fine but if you don't hunker down and learn the tradition you've got little to bring to the world and soon you just become a sort of echo a faint echo so the hunkering down but I think of the great Boston theologian Karl Barth who said were not meant to live behind Chinese walls with the way he put it were meant to go out we're an evangelical community so that's the rhythm and it's hard to get right the rhythm of drawing in and learning and studying and praying and preserving and then going out with confidence meat all right so we're gonna turn now to address the topic of science and faith for for a few minutes and Bishop Baron had mentioned scientism as an ingredient of the hostility to Christian that exists in modern Western society scientists I'm the idea that science alone gives us knowledge we could characterize as a key ingredient of the new atheist criticism of religion which you've both spoken about in your work so you get in Richard Dawkins of course the idea that Christianity has been falsified religion and generals been falsified by Darwinism that Darwinism provides a superior explanation scientific explanation to anything that religion can afford you find in Lawrence Krauss the idea that physics can give us an answer the question where why anything exists at all rather than nothing and so forth but it's not just New Atheists another aggressive critics of religion you take this sort of view we find this really in the culture at large I think even in writers and just the average man on the street who doesn't necessarily viscerally hostile for religion but buys this idea that there's some conflict between science and religion so what I want to ask is how do we get to this point why is it that people have this idea where did it come from and how can it be rooted out I want to turn I want to put that question first to Professor Craig and then Bishop Baron consider I think you're absolutely right ed and saying that our culture remains deeply scientistic and modernist in its heart and I think it is the lingering vestige of a movement in philosophy during the 1930s and 40s called positivism which championed a verification principle of meaning which said unless something is scientifically provable then it is meaningless and therefore theological talk ethics aesthetics these are all cognitively empty they are meaningless because they can't be scientifically verified and I think the scientism that persists on the popular level is the lingering shadow of this defunct positivism and I say it's defunct because among philosophers this was shown to be untenable decades ago and it's very easy to see just ask yourself take the proposition you should only believe things that can be scientifically proven and that be scientifically proven obviously not it's just a mere assertion which you're free to reject and so it was realized that the verification principle of meaning was self refuting and therefore could not be held and so this kind of verification ISM and scientism has been abandoned among professional philosophers but it is shocking how it lingers in certain scientists that you've named as well as in pop culture quite right it's a philosophical position so it's self refuting as dr. Craig says I mean it's the one thing you can't say about a philosophical position is that it's it's outlawed by by philosophy I mean so it turns on itself scientism and I think where it comes from as the success of the science scientist have been remarkably successful and then the attendant technology has been so useful to us that we just buy a basic instinct say well this is it this is verifiable this is right in front of me I can use it but see go right back to to Plato you know we all read in in philosophy 101 Plato's Republic and the escape from the cave you know there's these different levels of knowledge and the space simply at the level of sense experiences to stay at that level of seeing shadows in the wall of the cave they're real and important but there's a there's a far greater dimension of reality beyond what can just be seen and measured empirically and I think in some ways we've just locked ourselves into that very narrow if mr. mo logical space and the great thing that Plato recounts it's a kind of like a conversion story what's it like when you were able finally to escape from the cave and come to higher levels of perception philosophy for example is just a different way of seeing the world it's seeing a different level one of my great mentors Cardinal Francis George of Chicago used to say the collapse of philosophy in many ways has produced a problem because now there's a binary option in the minds of many there's science which is obviously true and verifiable then there's religion which is not scientific therefore it must just be a bunch of nonsense when there was a mediating discipline of philosophy that was not scientific but was rational he was at oh okay I understand that and it it opened the door toward a rational consideration of religion and I've always felt that's right but we've locked ourselves in the cave and maybe because of the success of the sciences putting an average man of our intellectual life that's what I worry about with the scientism is because the buffer itself the Charles Taylor talks about we just locked ourselves in and any sense of a transcendent dimension is law I think Edie fessor has shared the most powerful illustration of said I've just got to share with the audience he says imagine that you have got a super duper metal detector that is so highly honed that it will detect any metal it is absolutely fantastic and can you imagine someone using this you know I've not found any wooden objects using this thing I don't think wood exists there aren't any wooden objects because of this metal detector that's like natural science it's a great tool for exploring the physical world but that doesn't mean that there aren't mines ethical value spiritual things it's like you're a metal detector that's a brilliant example it's the best I've heard well now both of your comments leave me to ask the follow-up question what then is the relationship between science on the one hand and apologetics and theology on the other should we say that the methodology of apologetics and of what used to be called fundamental theology should be something independent of science is it lie in philosophy alone or the science as science have something to say to apologetics into theology is it a mix can we apply both methods but what's the relationship between them and I guess we go to Bishop Baron first and then yeah you're you're pointing to them the problem of faith and reason to put it more generally and you know the Catholic tradition certainly and dr. Craig holds us as well of course that both come from the same source God ultimately both lead back to God and so when they're properly construed there's no conflict between them reason carries you to a certain point and then there's this wonderful surrender of the spirit that we call faith which is not insisting on this is not in for a rational it's super irrational right it's not lower than reason no self-respecting Christians should ever accept things that are lower than reason that's the merely superstitious that's what what prejudice people believe but faith super irrational that goes beyond what reason can grasp on its own that's not an Constable reason but it's a compliment to it and and the best analogy I have for that is is coming to know a person if you're coming to know a person you use your reason and all sorts of ways don't you your own observations your own analysis talking to people that know that person you might Google that person find their background etc and you come to know them through conversation reason plays a very important role and and if you were never using your reason in coming an old person that would be a problematic however there comes a point in any really deep friendship where that person is now going to open her heart for you and tell you something that you would never have done on your own observation or from a Google search or from other people it's a self disclosure and at that point you've got to make a decision do I believe her or not do I accept it now if she say something that's totally out of step with what your reason is told you you might not accept but if it's congruent with it but going beyond it and you've learned to trust that person you're likely to say yes I believe you to my mind that's a very close analogy to of the play of faith and reason when it comes to God we use our reason all sorts of way understand God and to use the sciences sure and philosophy of course there comes this moment when I'm faced with a choice do I accept what God has disclosed to me from his own heart and that acceptance above reason not below it that's faith you know so that's the general answer to kind of the faith reason maybe you say more about science that's the general response yes yeah I think that in apologetics what we want to avoid it is god of the gaps arguments where we say science can't explain this therefore God did it and God gets gradually squeezed out as science advances rather here's the way I would put it science can provide evidence or a premise in an argument leading to a conclusion of the theological significance science can provide evidence for a premise in an argument leading to a conclusion of theological significance so for example in the alarm' cosmological argument the second premise is the universe began to exist now that is a religiously neutral statement that can be found in any textbook on astronomy and astrophysics and one which enjoys a good deal of scientific support and so one is not using God of the gaps reasoning you're using evidence to support a premise in an argument that has a theistic conclusion okay so we've been talking about science and faith in a very general way there are also those specific issues that come up where the the question of the relation between science and religion or CERN so some examples famously there's this idea in modern times that Darwinism that Darwin's account of evolution by natural selection is somehow incompatible essentially incompatible with the claims of Christian theology so what what should a Christian one quest we might address would be what what need a Christian believe about human origins and how can it be reconciled or should it be reconciled with what modern biology tells us that's one question other question arises has to do with the specific origins of modern science in the Western context it arose in a Christian context why is that probably the standard narrative is that it arose as a reaction against Christianity and that science is essentially a rejection of superstitions that be that Western culture had been in thrall to for the Middle Ages on the other hand there's another NER that says no that there's no accident that science arose in Crete in Christian context as opposed to an Islamic context or a Chinese context or what have you and that there's something in Christianity itself that lends itself science so these are a couple issues there are many others and so what might you say to some or any or all of these questions or maybe some other ones that you think are especially important where science and paper well maybe I'll take the second one first about the origins of science I believe this is a very important thing because modernity as it were has to trot out that story over and over again like a myth of origin that the sciences and then liberal politics you might say emerged out of this long Twilight Struggle against backward-looking Christianity and so you hear that over and over again in the culture it's like we have to tell that story to ourselves over and again but I think that's so much nonsense I think it's quite right to say that the modern physical science is emerged where and when they did because of a Christian intellectual matrix what I mean is this I think there are two basic things you need to get scientists off the ground you need the view that the world is not God the world is divine or the world itself is sacred you're not going to analyze it an experiment on it and so on you're going to worship it or your reverence the world is not God secondly the very mystical intuition that the world in every nook and cranny is intelligible um anyone intelligent design here I'm talking about something more fundamental the intelligibility of the world any scientist of any stripe physicists chemists biologists psychologists goes out to meet a world that she is confident is going to be intelligible it'll correspond to an inquiring mind there's some intelligibility that corresponds to a questing intelligence but see that's a very strange and mystical thing if you think about it why should that be the case so take those two things now what's the condition for their possibility I would say the great doctrine of creation the world is created it's not divine it's not sacred not there to be worship it's a creature and if it's created it's marked in every corner by intelligibility we say in the beginning was the word and through that word all things came to be it means God metaphorically spoke the world into being I think here of um of Joseph Ratzinger Pope Benedict the sixteenth who love to reflect on our little strange word to recognize recognize the truth I recognize it so I think again what's already been thought into it but I think that is not the least bit accidental but out of this Christian thought matrix the first of Natural Sciences in the West physical sciences emerged and so it's not a story of great conflict I think it's a story of great mutuality witness to by the fact that almost all the great founders of the modern sciences were people of authentic religious faith so I think we need to tell that story over and over again because the culture is constantly telling the other myth of origin with respect to the first question concerning the biological theory of evolution um what I tell unbelievers who ask me about this is that there are indications in the text of Genesis 1 itself that this is not intended to be a literal consecutive 24-hour creation week and that therefore we do not need to interpret this along these sorts of literalistic lines and once you give up that notion then it really doesn't tell you anything about how God created life-forms on this planet indeed when he creates the vegetation it's very interesting on the 4th day he says let the earth bring forth vegetation bearing seed after its kind and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind and it was so the earth brought forth vegetation and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind now unless we're to envision this like a film being run on fast-forward where the apple tree suddenly Springs out of the dirt and grows up and turns into a big tree and the apples pop out on it well then this must have taken a good deal of time so I don't think the author of Genesis 1 is imagining that his narrative is like a film running on fast-forward and once you get a notion of a literal 24 hour day creation week then all bets are off about how God brought about biological complexity and so I tell folks and I mean this quite sincerely that I have about current evolutionary theory our scientific doubts not theological doubts my reservations about the current theory biological evolution would be based upon the inadequacy of the explanatory mechanisms but I have no theological or biblical objection to the theory so as a Christian you're open to follow the evidence where it leads who can be open-minded and and followed that evidence and I remember sharing once with a kid in Ireland about the gospel and he he said don't you have to believe that the world was created in six days to be a I said you believe that to be a Christian and he threw his hands in the air and said hallelujah this kid had been prevented from giving his life to Christ because he thought he had to jump through the hoop of young Earth Creationism in order to become a Christian and he was so happy to hear that he didn't have to do that so you know albin planning us and it's really the evolutionist who's in the Box here the naturalist rather because if naturalism is true then evolution has to be true there isn't any other source but the Christian can be open minded about it and we can follow the evidence where it leads here's one really quick question we've just got two minutes left there is in biology a group of people called the origin of life Society and of course originally the idea is we've got rocks and galaxies and maybe planets and so forth and now we've got we've got the inorganic and now we've got the organic would it be a problem for Christians if they could come up with a plausible way of explaining how the inorganic led to life now whether they can do that is a very good question and I sort of hope they can't but at any rate would that be a problem for Christians if they had a plausible story and we just got one minute left so one minute no I I don't think so I and I think the bottom line from a let's say Christian anthropological standpoint is that I think we have to hold about human beings there's more to us than simply the biological or the material yeah there's something in us I'll call what you want soul consciousness spirit mine but something which is not reducible to the merely biological or physical now how you account for that that's another question but the question I agree with dr. Craig of evolution itself and the biological development of the species I leave that to the specialist I think we do have to hang on to something like the soul something that's non reducible to the merely physical there's a bottom line but in terms of the of the development of things I agree follow the evidence that that's offered to so yes we're gonna turn it over to you know Steve for the next segment we'll do it a little bit differently this segment only ten minutes we're gonna ask each of our panelists here to speak for five minutes about this topic what advice would you give the Christians like the people we see out there living in an increasingly secular world and it certainly seems unless all signs mislead this country is going to be a secular of some of the most secular countries in Europe and and teaching in secular academia as I do it's you certainly see this all the time how should Christians deal with that this world should we fight against it should we go along with it what should we do I've forgotten which one I was supposed to begin with I think Bill it was gonna be you okay I want to admonish you tonight to dare to live counter culturally when I was growing up in the 60s and the 70s everyone talked about the counterculture I think Christians ought to be the genuine countercultural people we need to dare to be different you've all heard the story about the Frog slowly being boiled to death in the kettle that's the danger I think that we face in our society American society and culture is so poisonous to Christian faith that if you feel comfortable in American culture there is something wrong with your discipleship frankly a Christian who is committed to following Christ seriously ought to feel very uncomfortable in this culture particularly with its materialism and consumerism and focus on the acquisition of of goods and I hope that you young couples here tonight won't make it your focus too a big house and fancy car and nice furniture and those sorts of things the world values but will instead focus on living for Christ and using your resources as good stewards of the Lord's work our culture is permeated by sexual license and promiscuity and I think as Christians we must preserve the sanctity of the marriage relationship that we do not have sexual activity before or outside of the marriage bond that God has established for us and that is living counter culturally today and then finally just the superficiality and the banality of American culture which is so focused on celebrities and sports and entertainment and so forth I would encourage you as a Christian to go beyond that and to think deeply about the important issues of life like you're doing here tonight by attending this sort of event that is already being countercultural the second thing I'd like to encourage is to train your children carefully to be Christians in our culture we mustn't children over to our public grade schools and high schools to be raised we need at home and this is especially you dad's you need to be teaching your children why they believe in what we believe from a young age simple at first but then with increasing sophistication as they grow older otherwise we are in danger of losing our youth we will lose the next generation and none of you I think wants that to happen so be very intentional about training your children in what and why we believe as we do as save amen to to follow vet Justino your last point about the young people this is a passion of mine because this problem of the nuns they call it now in the technical language is not the N UN s but the N o n s those who mark no religion or none when they asked what their religion is and that number is is increasing dramatically the one that always gets my attention is among Catholics thirty and younger now it's 50% claimed to be knows to have no religion that's heartbreaking and that's a very troubling thing for our whole not just the church but for the whole culture I think so I agree with that I mean to really be attentive to our kids here's a couple of things I would add one is what I called the Augustinian anthropology so the single greatest statement of Christian anthropology is on page one of agustín's confessions right Lord you've made us for yourself therefore our heart is restless until it rests in thee I think every sermon of Billy Graham had that basic structure bruce springsteen said it everyone's got a hungry heart right you can see it echoing up and down the the high and low culture across the centuries there's a longing in us which is a longing for God CS Lewis calls that joy that that's strange even at the best moments of life maybe especially in the best moments of life our times of greatest joy and achievement and friendship and so on it's at those moments that you realize the hungry heart that there's still something more that I want right and don't don't let that hungry heart be suppressed because one of the marks of secularism I think is just that is to say oh didn't cover that over don't pay attention to that that's just too old you know some psychological hang-up no that's what makes us most alive is to follow that hunger and it presses the mind onward that's why I'm against the new atheist because the netha that are opening up the mind they're shutting down the mind scientism shuts down the mind naturalism shuts down the mind and don't shut down the heart but longing for the good and for the true and the beautiful religion is meant to to make the spirit soar our heart is restless get in touch with the restless heart and teach your kids that too that when they experience that that's an experience of the call of God you know and only God can satisfy that hunger so I think that's really important in our own spiritual cultivation and then this relates very much to what dr. Craig said to Hans arose von Balthasar one of my favorite contemporary theologians said the Saints are the best theologians and evangelists and that's dead right I think I mean we're we all speculate theologically about things but the best theologians are the Saints the ones who are in love with Christ and live out of that love and they have a radiant power don't they that's why we surround them with light in our depictions of them they have a radiance so be a saint if you want to evangelize the culture be a saint be holy give your life to Christ and let people see it so the hungry heart and be a saint or two bits of advice I would have so both of you are very prominent Christian apologists and what role just to round out this segment what role do you think that apologetics traditionally you know foundational discipline within theology which has perhaps been neglected until the work of writers like yourselves what role does it play in this evangelization that you're discussing starting with Professor Craig maybe briefly and then Bishop Baron briefly I think we're living in an age in which there is a Renaissance of Christian apologetics and people in our churches are demanding training in apologetics it's not coming from the top down it's coming from the grassroots and this is very encouraging to me it seems to me the training and apologetics is useful for at least three purposes the first one is shaping culture we need to shape our culture as I say so as to make the acceptance of the gospel something more than a logical absurdity and apologetics can help to shape a cultural milieu in which the decision to follow Christ is a rational thing for a thinking man or woman to do people may not become Christians because of the arguments but the arguments can give them permission to believe when their hearts are moved secondly I think that apologetics is useful to the Christian believer in times of doubt and struggle there have been so many Christians who have come to me or emailed reasonable faith who said I was I had walked away from my faith in college or I had walked away from Christ and then I saw a video of a debate or I read a book and it has reenergized their faith and they have come back strong to Christ and living for him and so when we're going through difficult times of doubt or questioning rehearsing the arguments and the evidence can be a strengthening part of the Christian life to help us to persevere and then finally I do think it is useful in evangelism people say people never come to Christ through arguments just Falls it's just not true we get emails every week a reasonable faith from people who say I saw your videos on the ontological arguments or the cosmological argument and they've come to know Christ through these it's just astonishing so within a minority of people who are intellectually seeking and have genuine difficulties apologetics is one of the means that the Holy Spirit uses to draw people to himself we should burn to give some remarks just I'll tell you a quick story this is now maybe 10 years ago at the height of the new atheist thing and I was being interviewed by a radio interviewer from Canada and he was being kind of tough with me and belligerent and you know rehearsing all the Hitchens arguments and I'm fighting back and at the end he said well my father at least will you admit that that Christopher Hitchens got you Catholics thinking about these things for the first time so I plan to let my annoyance you know sink in and then I said to him you know I I'm the very inadequate representative of a tradition that goes back to origin and Tertullian and Thomas Aquinas trust me we didn't need Christopher Hitchens think about it but but I'll say this in a way and I mention that dr. Craig earlier today Hitchens did I think in God's providence perform a service because the new atheist precisely in their extremism and in their rhetorical you know overkill did wake Christians up and remind us of the need for apologetics when I was coming of age as a post conciliar of Catholic we were down at apologetics Paul Jenks was rationalistic it was defensive it was anti ecumenical it wouldn't bring anyone to cry I mean oh I heard all those things growing up well in way thank God for Hitchens and Dawkins and sam Harris because they woke us up and said get with it you know we dropped all the weapons and so when they came after us a lot of Christians weren't able to respond I think I'm sitting next to one of the heroes I think of this great Renaissance and revival but I think that's been a great thing for the Christian churches so I'm Pro apologetics all right so we're gonna move on now to our next segment which is Q&A based on questions submitted by our audience members we want to thank all of you who submitted questions we had a lot of questions and unfortunately we'll be able to address all of them we're gonna try to get through as many as we can and Steve Davis is gonna start us off with the first question Bishop Baron do you think that Catholics and Protestants joining to battle secularism will bring them closer together yeah I was I've been involved in [Applause] yeah I've been involved in a lot of ecumenical conversations over the years and I love the questions of the sixteenth century you know so the Reformers raised all these objections and Catholics responded and I find those questions fascinating so I love debating them but at the end of these ecumenical conversations I almost always say to my Protestant interlocutors you know we could discuss this til the cows come home but we got a common enemy today which is a very aggressive secularism and so our priority should be right now not debating justification and all that we should talk about God and talk about Jesus Christ and talk about eternal life and and we can come together and and fight in a common struggle against against that enemies so yes I think it's it's a call of our time it'll be edster in next but I should have said that came from Sean and that question came on Twitter okay good all right so our next question is from Carol via Facebook and this one is addressed to both of you and the question is what would you say is your favorite argument for God and I think we'll go with professor Craig alright first my favorite argument is the kalam whatever begins to exist has a cause the universe began to exist therefore the universe has a cause what could be more simple but while this is my favorite argument I must confess that it's not necessarily the most effective of the arguments I find that the moral argument is far more effective because you can shut your eyes to the evidence of contemporary cosmology you can ignore the fine-tuning of the universe but every day you get up you answer by how you live the question do you think other people have intrinsic and objective moral worth so this argument is existentially inescapable and I think it's the most powerful Bishop Aaron yeah I mean for me when I was teaching theology full time I loved the ontological argument I think it does have validity if it's properly presented but I hardly ever do that in an apologetic setting because I think it's too complex to lay it out properly so I use some version of the argument from contingency a lot and I think that has a good deal of traction the Kalam argument and in some ways is a modality of that but the things exist but not self-explanatory they exist only through appeal to an extrinsic cause we can't go infinitely back with caused causes there must be a first uncaused cause I usually give some some quick version of that argument to get some traction with people and I found over the years that does have a lot of apologetic effectiveness so I'd say in itself the ontological argument but the contingency argument is one that I like best this one comes from Allison on Twitter and it also has addressed to both of you besides you two men who else you see as effectively doing this work of evangelism today there's no one I'm joking I'm sure there are lots of people doing this least robles books case for christ case for faith and now even the movie the case for Christ has reached hundreds of thousands of people Lee told me he's lost count of the number of people that have come to Christ through his books Robby Zacharias has a ministry that has a worldwide reach emphasizing apologetics and evangelism Gregor Cocles ministry stands to reason is excellent and if you've ever seen Greg's book called tactics it's a wonderful book about sharing your faith effectively with non-believers now I'm sure I'm forgetting something I hope I just not slighted any of my friends but I mean there are many others Frank Turek Hugh Ross a Tim Keller deserves mention here his books the reason for God and his videos have had a tremendous influence so there are lots of folks that thank God are engaged in this kind of ministry and I'll mention a couple on the captain's side Peter Kreeft I think yes yeah absolutely apologist evangelist I think two of Robert Spitzer is out this way he's in Anaheim does wonderful work with cosmology and the sciences from a very smart very high level apologetics I would say those are a couple that come right to any mind good alright so we turn to a question from Ben via Instagram and this is once again addressed to to both of you the question is which thinkers or theologians have most influenced you we'll start with Professor Craig and then move to Bishop Baron the greatest influence on me has been the American Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga I thank God to have lived during the time at Alvin Plantinga was writing and flourishing I think this man will go down as a lightness in the history of philosophy every area that he's touched the problem of evil the nature of necessity the ontological argument religious epistemology he has broken new ground and advanced the discipline and at the same time he has been a a beacon that has served as a rallying point for hundreds of other Christian philosophers to come out of the closet to be involved in professional societies professional journals academic presses and Plantinga has greatly greatly influenced me in both his writing and content and also in the example of his gracious Christian life for me historically its Thomas Aquinas is the biggest impact he changed my life when I was a kid and I spent most of my life studying him and writing about him so acquaintance is certainly I say st. Agustin and the older I get the more I appreciate Agustin I read the confessions as often as I can you know so he had a huge impact on me among more contemporary people I mentioned GK Chesterton was a very important player in my own intellectual development also John Henry Newman from the 19th century again someone very involved in what we call today probably apologetics and so on I'm a big fan of CS Lewis and a big impact on me among my teacher is a fellow from Catholic University called Robert Sokolowski wonderful professor I had a bit there like Alvin planting it for you that he he modeled for me kind of a Christian gentleman and his thought had a big impact on me those are a few that come to my mind this one comes from Betty on Twitter and against for both of you what would you identify is the number one thing Christian should study today to be prepared for the next several decades well we're talking I assume here Steve about the average Christian layperson and not someone who wants to go into a area of specialization an academic field and I guess is the question in terms of the most important for evangelization or just for it that isn't what Betty has to say what would you identify as the number one thing Christians should study today to be prepared for the next several decades it's gonna sound obvious but I would be the new testament yeah where Christians are sadly biblically illiterate and I think that Christians need to get past simply reading the Bible and to begin really studying the Bible and there are wonderful helps Bible dictionaries commentaries and things of this sort to help us go deep into the scriptures and that would be the most important thing okay that we can do yeah let me follow up on that because I think that gets overlooked sometimes mm-hmm we talked about apologetics but evangelization declaring the lordship of Jesus you can't do that apart from the story of Israel because say Jesus Christ is Lord means he's the culmination of this great story he's the fulfillment of Torah and temple and prophecy and so on he makes no sense apart from Israel you know okay look at the first evangelists doing their work Paul and the very first Proclaimers of the Christian message they tell the story of Israel because he's the the climax of it and so without that we're not going to evangelize and that's why Jesus becomes in our culture very often a sort of guru or a sage or a teacher of timeless truths but he's the he's the fulfillment of Israel and until we get that right we're not going to get him right so I I think that's correct vatican ii the catholics know you know called for a biblical revival and in my judgment it hasn't happened it's it's one of the the unfulfilled promises of vatican ii so I would say yeah if Catholics could pick up their Bibles and and read them and study them that's key for evangelization with this idea get any traction that what Christians need to study like in the University or something would be science because we need a lot more crazy scientists and we need a lot more Christians who are educated in the sciences yeah I think that's right something I've been doing recently because you know the studies are showing number one reason the young kids are leaving science and religion are incompatible number one reason so yeah I've been when I give talks now and I go out to Catholic parishes I'll say how many here are involved in the sciences you know raise your hand doctors nurses or you know physicists chemists and a lot of hands go up is it they are now and I'll say you get out there we need you scientists who are still coming to Mass you be in the front lines because the kids are leaving they don't get this connection and you'll make it better probably than I will so I think that's a very good point that the study of the science is is I want to pick up on something though the Bishop Baron said Steve about this and that is that the link between the sciences and theology is philosophy and so it is not enough just to study yeah science in textbooks you read things for example like special relativity theory general relativity theory these involve deep philosophical questions that aren't discussed in the science textbooks and so the key issues in relating science to religion or theology will be philosophical and so you've got to get some training in that that third discipline as well okay all right art our next question is a tweet it's not from whom you think oh yeah Feynman that's with the tweeted oh ha ha ha ha reader in Jeeva this is via Twitter and it's from Alex and it's a two-part question what do you consider the best argument against Christianity and how would you respond to it and I will leave that to whoever wants to go first this is directly well I think the best argument against God is the problem of evil and I want to be careful with this because no way the argument is not rationally all that strong but it's it's got enormous emotional power and I think for a lot of people that's a very persuasive thing that sorry how could he go all good God permits I'm glad to have it that was not scripted I think that's one of the people in my experience struggle with the most is the viscerally felt problem of suffering again I say it from a logical standpoint I don't think it's a very persuasive argument yeah but it's an emotionally powerful argument for people so engaging them around that I think is an important one I don't know what to say yeah this is just a very difficult question I agree with you that the force of the problem of evil is just emotional as a intellectual problem I think it's been solved largely through the work of Christian philosophers today one of the unsolved objections that troubled me was the challenge of what our platonism that is to say that there is a realm of uncreated necessarily existent eternal abstract objects like numbers sets and other mathematical entities possible worlds properties propositions and so forth and this called into question God's being the sole ultimate reality and the creator of all being outside himself and I did not know how to answer that objection it troubled me for many years and finally I made that the focus of my research and I spent the last 13 years working on that and I have come to intellectual peace about this issue and have written a pair of books in which I lay out Christian perspectives on Platonism and the challenge it poses to divine SAT so that's not a problem now either that one hears it well I got to follow it and follow up on the bow up on this yeah okay well I'll let you go ahead with your follow-up but then I'll follow up on your father up on the prep there's a follow-up on the problem of eel I actually agree with what the two you said about the problem of evil has an intellectual problem and is a moral problem I was once asked by a working man who was in the parish where I was I was working I am an ordained minister but I only worked about a year in the parish before becoming an academic he had been diagnosed with lupus disease for which then and I think still today there's no known cure and eventually he did die and he asked me the question why did this happen to me now he wasn't intellectually prepared to ask the problem of evil question but nevertheless that's a question that's part intellectual party motive I guess I could ask well how would you respond to something like that well there's two there's the pastoral level and I you know worked in parish work for a long time worked in seminary training students and so you wouldn't you know begin with intellectual clear correlation with something there there's there's a way and that's that is not to trivialize it all that Paschal law traits is extremely important I go back to the standard Augustinian solution of God permitting evil to bring about a greater good now what that greater good is we can sometimes get a glimpse of but typically not and we see this little tiny swath of space and time that we take in what God's ultimate purposes are we can't see but there's a faith move there that's its faith it's also grounded in philosophy a philosophical perception that God is permitting this suffering for a purpose of his own which is a good purpose and to help people move into that space there's an intellectual side of it but there's also this experiential side of it and help them to inhabit that space of confidence in God's providence I think that's the challenge it's both intellectual and pastoral that's where I would try to move somebody yeah yes that's exactly what I would have said too is that we're not in a position to answer questions like that because of our cognitive limitations our limitations and time and space God's allowing you to have lupus the sufficient reason for why he permitted that might not emerge until hundreds of years from now perhaps in another country because of the ripple effect that it sends through history and you can give some analogies for this like in chaos theory scientists have shown that the palpitation of a butterfly's wings on a twig in the jungles in West Africa can set in motion forces that eventually caused a hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean and yet no one looking at that butterfly would be able to predict such an outcome we're overwhelmed by that sort of complexity and so we can't expect to be able to see God's morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering that he does in our lives but we can bear that suffering and courage and faith in him knowing that we have good reasons to believe he exists and that there awaits us on the other side of life a glorious eternity of joy that will so overwhelm anything we've suffered here that they will be reduced to just an infinitesimal moment in comparison to this eternal joy that we will have with God in the afterlife yeah my own follow-up was to by way of narrowing the question a bit so you were asked you're both asked earlier what was your favorite argument for the existence of God so if we reframe this current question I might want to ask what would you consider the most formidable if any objection to your favorite argument for God's existence and how would you respond to that should I go first I said the Kalam cosmological argument I don't think objections to the first premise have any intellectual substance I think you're intellectually compromised if you assert that something can come into being uncaused from nothing so it will be criticism of the second premise and I think that there the best response is simply to say well you know the action infinite is just really funny it's just really weird and that's just the way it is and just live with it you how about the premise that the actual infinite number of things cannot exist and therefore the past can't be actually in front right and one can point out all of the bizarre results if an actual infinite number of things could exist and I think that the best response for that is just to bite the bullet and say yeah it's just the way it is and then with regard to the scientific evidence the appeal to ignorance is always available to the naturalist what we just don't know enough that maybe science will overturn the applecart of the Big Bang Theory and the second law of thermodynamics and restore an eternal universe after all alright Bishop Aaron yeah I find with the contingency argument I deal with a lot on the my internet ministry and when you get some smart people we really get in there want to argue with you those mites say no I I buy it logically there has got to be some sort of starting point some some ultimate explanation for the to be of contingent things but why couldn't we say it's just matter or it's just energy so what you're calling God I'll just call matter that's always been there and just assuming different forms and so on and of course the problem with that though is that matter is by its very nature contingent you know so I would use the classical philosophical language and say it's by its nature potential best to say matter never exists as such but men are always in a particular form or configuration or speed or intensity or color or position or whatever which means that it needs to be explained why is it this rather than that why is it this intensity rather than that this color rather than at this position rather than that etc so the appeal to to matter or energy as such is not going to solve the problem just postpones the problem so that's how I I think when the more thoughtful people start engaging around contingency that's the way the argument often goes for me moreover if matter began to exist then it cannot be necessarily yeah but an even like with the kalam in mind some of the people say well it's not really matter coming into being from nothing but rather this hyper intense a concentration of matter which then by its energy explodes right then it retracts and what you always have is this concentration of matter ah but you don't always have it yeah I know that's been that's a boundary to time and space so it's not always there is one of the question I was gonna ask you in our in our interconnection time so we'll come we'll come back I've tried to be supportive of your we will revisit that Steve has this one also from Twitter from Thomas also for both of you should Christians still spend time on Catholic Protestant debate or focus elsewhere well it's early it's just it's just priority as I said I think the priority now is engaging in a common enemy but I think the questions are still there good ones they're legitimate ones and yeah because the truth matters you know when I get on what's coming of age we were so into what I call humanism 1.0 which was let's get along with each other and God knows I support that I want us to get a law you know but we almost we bracketed the intellectual question yeah as though they don't really matter and you know deep down we're all nice people and so overly cares but I think I care I think the truth matters and there are substantive differences and accounts of justification of salvation of the Eucharist of the Eucharist the sacraments etc the nature of the church the papacy I mean so yeah I think we can and should engage those questions but there's a kind of prioritization now of of a common enemy that has to be fun yeah I think had you invited me to come here this evening to participate in a Catholic Protestant debate I wouldn't have come I don't have any interest in internation battles between Christians but that doesn't mean that when we teach systematic theology in our seminaries or in my Sunday school that I don't lay out the different perspectives from Reformed Lutheran Roman Catholic Orthodox and then give some assessment at the end as to which I think is the more plausible position so I think that there's certainly room for teaching on these things but I doubt that public debates at this time is a useful exercise yeah it's funny I said the very same thing when we were discussing this as all I'd love to be on with William Lane Craig but I remember I said but let's not make it into a 16th century to be because I don't think that's the what's this a 13th century 13th century debate I'm favorite no is I agree with you on that yeah well our our next question comes to us from Colleen via Facebook and the question is many young people are leaving Christianity how can we keep them in the faith and I will put that too this is put to both of you but whoever wants to take that first feel free for some of those that are leaving it may be too late I would prefer to talk about how can we prevent this from happening and that was related to what I said about training your children we mustn't give our children over to the youth pastor or the youth ministry at the church and expect them to disciple them we need to do it and especially fathers need to do it not mothers the father's are instructed in Scripture with the admonition and instruction of the children and to see a male figure who believes in Christ who has given his life to Christ and then his teaching as to his children is a tremendous example for the children to follow and I think this kind of instruction in the home is the best way to prevent children from leaving the faith eventually let them confront the objections for in the home before they confront them in the grade school or the high school and then they won't be caught off guard so we're actually developing children's materials at reasonable faith to teach children on the attributes of God for example and to give them a more grounded Christian faith yeah I agree I'm sort of heading them off at the pass is a good thing that we should be involved in as preventive work the studies are very clear when they ask young people why are you leaving as I say number one science and religion so I think that's got to be addressed one of the major ones too is always the church's sexual teaching so especially today this is a major obstacle for people how could you be so cruel to a gay person or a transgender person and so the perception that the church is is negative toward people and their their self-determination that's a major issue Brandin hell because we've done some of what's another one that the young people often yeah the notion of God which we talked about a lot in our afternoon session confusion about God I would say is an issue that comes up in the in the surveys yeah that's right good thank you biblical interpretation so we touched on some of the scientific things but violence in the Bible that comes up a lot how could God be so cruel and so violent and so genocide all at cetera et cetera so those are some things that we're facing that the young people say prompt them to leave so I think you've got to engage that with them I think answer some of them questions we may have three or three minutes okay we may have asked something to this effect already Noel on Facebook asks what book has most changed your life and let's leave the Bible out of the equation yeah other other book besides the Bible I think for me it was the book the resurrection of theism by Stuart Hackett as Bishop Baron shared in college I had been taught that there are no good arguments for God's existence the only kind of apologetic we had was a kind of negative apologetic from Fran a Schafer that if Christianity were not true then human life and culture go down the drain and all you're left with is despair but it didn't give you any positive reason to think that God actually did exist and upon graduation I came across this book by Stewart Hackett called the resurrection of theism and which Hackett was defending all of these traditional arguments for the existence of God and presenting against them so powerfully the objections that when I would read the objections I thought oh well that's it he'll never be able to answer that and then he would dismantle the objections and that for me was absolutely revelatory and I think caused me to take a fork in my life that has changed my life and my entire ministry because of my commitment to the value of so-called natural theology you know I'd say mine would be Thomas Merton seven story mountain okay when I was a kid so I discovered Aquinas when I was about 14 or so and started reading and thinking about religious matters then it when I was about 16 I read this wonderful autobiography by a man who was you know very much a man of the world and the secularist and so on and then becomes first a Catholic and then eventually a Trappist monk so this radical giving of his life over to the Lord and and the story is told in this in this very kind of romantic way it's a story about someone falling in love with God and that book filled in a lot of the gaps for me you know so acquaintance was opening up the the intellectual dimension and then Merton filled in a lot of the emotional and experiential side of it and I would say that book probably set me on the path toward the priesthood so I'd say the seven story Mount wonderful yeah where you gonna introduce the next section or was I have fermer okay I will introduce you so you could introduce all right go ahead all right now we are going to spend 20 minutes with Professor fazer and me is completely staying out of things and we are going to allow these two gentlemen to ask questions and answer them ask questions of each other and Bishop Baron I think we'll start with your first question to dr. Craig yeah good thank you I appreciate this opportunity I mentioned he'd say I first discovered you and the great debates with with Hitchens and Dawkins and I remember the Sam Harris debate especially at Notre Dame was oh it was a strong one a powerful one here's my question to you and and you know I admired so much the way you handle the the aggressiveness of the atheist was there ever a time in those debates where they said something that that caught you sure were you said like yeah that that's a legitimate point or I never thought of it that way it was there ever a moment where they they got to you a bit or made you think about something in a fresh way well not in the debates that you mentioned yeah those were not great but I remember I debated the humanist philosopher Austin desi at Purdue University and desi had a number of objections that I hadn't anticipated and the key to successful debating is preparation to successfully anticipate the arguments of your proponents and then prepare briefs to respond to them and I had nothing on these objections from desi and so just had to wing it and so that was a real challenge that was one of those it was one of the objections and I can't remember anymore it had I think to do with philosophy of mind actually which is not my area of specialization you see it was based upon arguments against the existence of God using arguments that materialists and reductive physicalists would use in the philosophy of mind to deny the reality of the soul or the reality of the mind and except he was used to say there is no immaterial mental substance God and so it was a different approach that caused me to have to go back to my study and I thought if I ever debate desi again I'm going to be ready the next time and so we had a rematch at the University in Fresno and it meant much better yo guy just say this the very first time I think I ever saw you many years ago it was debate that was hosted by William F Buckley yes good job Dominic Crossan right what I forget over here at that well Buckley did two of my debate but it was somebody who was arguing in a very scientistic way yeah that was that was at khun's Peter a day and I remember he said well name me one thing but the sciences cannot adjudicate and you rattled off like eight things doesn't like this and you see his face bawling and then Buckley though said put that in your pipe and smoke it the first time I ever saw you in a debate go that was a very good impression yeah Buckley was a hoot yeah he said to us I'm a Christian but not a very good one the reason and in the debate with John Dominic Crossan backstage in the intermission he had little drink whiskey's and things like this and he got on the airplane you know with philosophy but so it was really a hoot having him if some of you younger folks don't know William F Buckley I mean sort of the father of American political conservatism and just very urbane brutish sort of accent and so he moderated two debates and a host of a show that lasted an hour of serious conversation between two people and the show was on for 35 years firing one hard to believe how it happened today I'm intrigued by your desire to appeal to beauty in evangelism and this seems to me like a good idea but I wouldn't know how to do it ah I don't think it's enough to just sit point to the Chartres Cathedral or the Rose window and Notre Dame or something I don't think that that is going to draw people to Christ is what can we do in our evangelism that would use beauty in some way to help present the gospel well I mean first of all I would say it does there's all kinds of examples of it working think of the famous Paul Claudel experience precisely with that North rose at Notre Dame seeing it converted him now I mean he moved then more fully into the experience of Catholicism but it was seeing that window and I think by a kind of alchemy if the transcendentals are related to each other that the beautiful leaves of the good into the true but I think it affects something in the soul that stirs something in the soul that leaves you you have an example I like to use his his Brideshead Revisited you know where it's really a story of someone coming to the church symbolized by the manor house of Brideshead but Charles Ryder is the narrator is like a lot of nuns today or secularists today you know kind of a cool rationalist but it was the beauty of the house that first drew him and then once in the house he was drawn into the challenge of the church's moral life and then to its intellectual life so maybe I see it as a doorway it's an opening of a door into the fullness of Christianity and look at all the Baltazar writing I mean all is is predicated upon the primacy of the beautiful and then he traced it from Irenaeus all the way up through Agustin and and Salman and to John of the Cross and on to the 20th century someone like CS Lewis he uses all all people that use the beautiful or the glue as a way in Luther was so uneasy with the theologian Laurier had widened only the theologian crew chose and as I read Baltazar who who commences the project with glory on purpose I think is an answer to that he thinks that is a way that we can start the can you put those some shoe leather on that for me I mean I'm trying to think of practical applications maybe church architecture sure the things you're thinking of that our buildings are ugly and well that's another not but when I was a distinguished send to the divine no quite right when I was a student in Paris a doctoral student I used to give tours at no Troodon yes and I would gather every Wednesday at noon and I'd come in the microphone and say there's a tour in English at noon and we always got a large crowd and I would evangelize using the Cathedral now I couldn't do it ostensibly it was all very clandestine we were told in fact don't talk about religion just talk about how tall the building is but but I wouldn't do that I and I would use it to evangelize yeah points of the different dimensions of the building and you know it's telling truths but but I wouldn't leave the the beautiful husk behind and now we have the truth it's the beauty of the building itself spoke the truth but it was your addition of speech to that that made it all communicate that wouldn't distress I mean you know the cathedrals of Europe though beautiful art largely empty and yeah they become tourist spots but right it's not as though they are being especially effective in bringing people people forgot how to read them right yeah but I like your idea of the of using it to explain oh yeah like that the transcendence of God yeah and and when I think of heaven I think quite readily of the North Rose window because it was meant to evoke that with all these meditations on the number eight the North Rose is all these permutations and combinations of eight which for the me evils was the number of akut above eternity because it stood outside seven which stood for the completed cycle of time and then the way the window was configured and the and the the beauty of it was meant to evoke the beauty of heaven and that's what we're aspiring you know to and that window speaks more powerfully to me than really any aesthetic theory that I could articulate that window says it to me more powerfully so I think I I think it it in fact works in many cases you can see in people's autobiographies you know your turn like my turn when I first heard about you I told the story today it was a student at the North American College in Rome when I was bemoaning the fact that that we were so bad we Christians at battling the new atheist and he said well have you heard about this William Lane Craig fella and at the time I had not and I said oh you got to watch him he really can do it so I did and was very attracted to his approach and what struck me was it here's a here's a Protestant here's an evangelical but who's using what I identified as a very Catholic approach to use natural theology I would say and especially God argumentation which is associated probably more with people like Thomas Aquinas and others and that's what really struck me was well here's a Protestant but using a rather Catholicism method so I've always been intrigued by that relationship between you and and Catholicism I know through Geisler you had that training in in Tomah yeah that's who I was trained under automa so you you had your natural theology yeah you didn't exposure to it so that leads to my question which is I was thinking of asking well why aren't you a Catholic I thought to be a little too blunt you know [Applause] so maybe I just rephrase it this way is what if anything is there in Catholicism but especially but gals you were attracts you were says yeah that's that's really worthwhile and then maybe what in Catholicism most sort of puzzles you and concerns you Wow I suppose the most attractive thing would be the ancient history of the church and this long great tradition that extends all the way back to the Greek apologists and the Church Fathers but there are so many things that Roman Catholics believe that I just don't believe and I couldn't become a Catholic even if I wanted to because I just don't believe those things you know I don't believe that Mary was immaculately conceived or ascended into heaven or assumed into heaven I I do think the justification is a forensic declaration on God's part and I have real well boy I'm starting to talk about all these differences now that I like but so you know I just I want to I want to defend and champion the mere Christianity that is common to Catholics Protestant Orthodox and Coptics and it's been a thrill for me to meet Orthodox Christians around the world Coptic Christians who say we're using your material we're thankful for reasonable faith and my heart rejoices in seeing that even if I feel very comfortable in being a Protestant myself I appreciate that and I am very sympathetic to to the kind of mere christianity approach i think it's very useful today and i've been very influenced by by lewis so I very much sympathize with that I was intrigued by the sort of Catholicism element at least the apologetic strategy yes and and that is true I appreciate the great apologists of the past and and the I've often said that my approach is a classic approach of doing natural theology and then Christian evidences you know Aquinas had the signs of credibility that would attend the truths of faith and these were miracle and fulfilled prophecy well the resurrection of Jesus is the premier New Testament miracle and although as a medieval theologian who lacked the historical method he couldn't give evidence for the historicity of the resurrection we are much better situated today we have better grounds historically for believing in Jesus resurrection than these early medieval 's and Church Fathers did who didn't have the historiographical tools to to study these things so I I'm very much in sympathy with the framework of that approach what-what-what are Catholics doing in this area to train their people I'm familiar with what's going on in the of angelical subculture but what's happening in the Catholic world to train people in these things we've talked about tonight not enough honestly not as true and I was a seminary rector for a long time with seminary professor for a long time rector for three years I would always try to bring an apologetic element into my teaching when I became rector I said I was in charge I said well could I ask everybody here the Bible people systematic people the moral theologians I said I'll tell you exactly what's bugging especially young people today and I went through the list of the things I said could you bring an element of this into your instruction so that they are not just learning the you know history of systematic theology and so on but they know how to use it to address the concerns of people today and and I got pushback from the faculty because that old prejudice against apologetics that that's oh we're beyond catechism here we're beyond that well as ships going under you know we better get with it so I would say honestly not not enough I've tried to jump into the breach in some ways but the work that I'm doing and I found I think is you have to that when do you do it in this public way you bring it out people they respond yes and even though YouTube I told the story before that when I first started doing videos on YouTube I didn't know people could make comments well I discovered quickly and you know 95% of them are negative people not writing to say oh god I love you about father Barron and what a wonderful argument so but but I came in time to appreciate that very deeply because your people would never darken the door of a church but yet I had him there I was able to get some traction and all right well what do you object to exactly and let's have a conversation so and then the numbers began to increase as people got interested as they have in yours so I think that's a very encouraging sign if we do it this apologetics in a public way people will respond but I think we're not doing nearly enough in the Catholic Church I see let me ask you this can you give us any prognostication of what's the future of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States yeah well there's been a lot of statistical studies and we're we're we're flourishing still because of a large immigrant population in our country so a lot of the Filipinos and and Hispanics of course who've come into our church are keeping it sort of going if if we took all the immigrants out of the equation we'd probably be at more European levels in terms of participation mass attendance the numbers are hovering around 20 25 percent and that's even with the large immigrant population if you took that out I'm afraid we'd be down to that sort of 10 percent range that you find in Europe so that's a discouraging thing it is true today that what's the status on the Catholic Church six or leaving so that's a disquieting thing to be sure and the bishops certainly are aware of that I've been arguing for a long time it ought to be our number-one concern now having any said that and I don't want to gainsay any of it it's also as you look more broadly around the Catholic Church so not just in the West but you see this this burgeoning growth in Africa you see burgeoning growth in Asia and Latin America so we can get a sort of myopic Western view of things we get started down but Christianity and also in the Protestant forms too is is burgeoning in many parts of the world so that gives me hope when I was doing this catholicism series some years ago this documentary i made a point of going all over the world and one of the most memorable for me anyway visits was to namu gongo which is outside of in Uganda where we celebrate the Ugandan martyrs every year and the June the third and 500,000 people come to that spot and that's where Charles lawang go was martyred so here's this young man put to death brutally 1886 anyone watching would have said well there's the end of Catholicism in Uganda and now 500,000 come and and these hundreds of millions so I take great hope from that looking more globally at Catholicism though in the West it's done hard times what about in the area of vocations again we're okay we're holding our own in our country what I find interesting now I was from Chicago now I'm out here in LA the big cities have a heart of time with vocations you look in New York Chicago LA the numbers to be very low but you go to La Crosse Wisconsin you go to Wichita Kansas go to Grand Rapids Michigan you'll find huge numbers of seminarians where they're still I think a strong Catholic culture in place and the family life is still focused on on the faith so we're holding our own invocations but go other parts of the Catholic world and they can't build the seminaries fast so it depends on how you're looking any other questions that you either of you only let's the other guy can we have a okay here is it maybe it's a little too personal but really about your spiritual life how do you pray I'm just curious what's your ayah we know you might as an intellectual we know you as a man of the mind and books but it was curious I don't consider myself a great prayer warrior yeah I tried to begin each day with prayer I wake up at 5:30 a.m. each morning and I go out into the office and pray for myself that I would be submissive and obedient to God's will that he would convict me of sin I pray for my wife pray for my children and and their families and then for our special needs such as I mentioned stands to reason earlier Melinda Penner who is a key staff worker there fell just before Christmas and is now in a coma with serious brain injury pray for Melinda pray for upcoming speaking engagements that I would be congenial talking to Bishop Barrett needs of that sort and then I'll have after that a time of Bible reading and then read two pages out of the church fathers and over the years I have read all of the anodizing fathers and them to the nice and post nicing fathers reading two pages yeah a day and if I have time I'll look at operation world you know that mission handbook it's a mission handbook that on each calendar day it has a different country of the world and it shares the demographic profile of that country religiously and offers points of prayer and how the church is doing there and so I'm a pray about those things so that's sort of how my prayer life looks I appreciate that what about you I never know we wake up about the same time I wake about 5:30 and I do a holy hour we call it in the Catholic Church that pretty much every day I go to my Chapel in my residence time the Blessed Sacrament there and pray in the presence of both segments for an hour well I pray the the office of the church so that every priest is obliged to pray the Liturgy of the hour so call largely made up of the Psalms and other readings from the father's and from the scripture so I pray my way through the office of readings we call it and morning prayer often pray the rosary during that time as well but a lot of it is is just being in the presence of the Lord one of my heroes is Fulton sheen it was mentioned earlier and Sheen you know was deeply interested in the ecumenical conversation and was the great advocate in the twentieth century of the Holy Hour for Catholics to pray before the buses eklund but a number of his Protestant friends were so intrigued by those that they said we want to give an hour prayer in the presence of the of the scripture and so they in in the presence of the by it the open scripture they would spend an hour and it was a it was their way of participating what Sheen was talking about but I I take Sheen seriously try to do an hour of prayer every morning before I start my day my we are just about out of time we will give each speaker up to five minutes to give some kind of closing statement maybe advice to the people here anything you want to say and and we need to be done by we I purposely left this this open I didn't prepare anything for this part of the eat the evening it's been a very rich day you know we spent the afternoon a three-hour academic symposium I gave a brief paper and dr. Craig responded and then he gave a paper in which I responded then the table sustained the conversation and it was it was a wonderful experience I mean I I'm in academic by training I've been drawn now more into this administrative work with as rector now as Bishop but I love that opportunity and I love the fact that we had Protestants and Catholics speaking about some pretty deep things we talked about the nature of God and my talk and then about atonement theology and penal substitution Jesus dying for our sins and so on so very rich conversations and I was just very uplifted by that experience uplifted to by seeing all of you and it's a great thing it's a Saturday night isn't it and in Claremont that we get this number of people to come out to listen to two speakers on Christianity and to seek a deeper understanding of the Lord I think that's a that's a beautiful thing to see and so I guess I would just again encourage all of you to be evangelists in your daily lives yes part of it is is is a formal study of the faith and to and to give an account of what you believe but a lot of us just the texture of your life the very beauty of your life as a follower of Christ has this radiant power so I would encourage everybody if we don't do it it won't get done you know we can't just wait around for other people to do it but there must be a daily conviction to to evangelize so anyway that's the end of my little sermon edits it's encouraging for me to see you here and I found the whole day very uplifting experience let me just mention that I think all of you here are familiar with the problems we've been having in Santa Barbara and Montecito of the very area where the bishop ministers and you can't get there by car you can't get there by the car so the bishop is going to take helicopter getting to get back for a big Mass on Sunday right tomorrow yeah with Archbishop Gomez we're gonna helicopter back up cuz shut down okay so yeah I pray for the good people up there I think it's 18 have been confirmed killed and these are poor people that just recovered from the fires that awful Thomas fire that that haunted everyone for about a month and we just got over it and then this this rain fell and this horrific mudslide so a lot of suffering people up there so yeah do pray for them no I too did not prepare any sort of final remarks I would just share my heart with you that I'm very concerned about the direction that our country has been going in over the last few decades I feel as though I live in a different America than the America that I knew growing up as a boy and I'm convinced that if Catholics and evangelicals can mobilize together to help reshape our culture that we can reclaim a lot of ground that has been lost to secularism and unbelief and so I would echo the admonition to live attractive lives of holiness and love and Christian commitment and to work together to be salt and light in our culture in a moment the four of us are going to walk out that way I want to say that our two speakers both have to hit the road and and but at any rate before we start doing that let's thank our two speakers for tonight

Channel: ReasonableFaithOrg

Views: 80,387

Rating: 4.8854055 out of 5

Keywords: William Lane Craig, Christianity, God, Jesus, Theism, Atheism, Philosophy, Theology, Science, Faith, Protestantism, Protestant, Catholicism, Catholic, Evangelism, Apologetics, Arguments

Id: C8aHQbNASXk

Length: 115min 22sec (6922 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 26 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/tbelite88]

The round table debate between Craig and Bishop Barron on Divine Simplicity is magnificent