Behind the Scenes with William Lane Craig

that you're joining us i'm here with william lane craig you know him as a leading philosopher and apologist but today we're going to do something a little bit different we're going to take a behind-the-scenes look at the people that have shaped who he is and his experiences in life bill is a friend also a colleague at talbot theological seminary and really appreciate your ministry and your friendship so thanks for coming on the show i'm very glad to be with you sean today we're going to get into some of the stories that maybe people won't know about you but i love if you just begin with your story to faith because i know you didn't start as a believer but ended up becoming one in your teen years i believe it was that's correct i wasn't raised in a christian home or even a church-going family though it was a good and loving home and when i was a teenager i began to ask what i call the big questions in life who am i why am i here what's the meaning of my life uh and in the search for answers i began to attend all on my own a large church in our community only problem was instead of answers to my questions what i encountered there was a sort of social country club where the dues were a dollar a week in the offering plate and the other high school students who pretended to be such good christians on sunday live for their real god the rest of the week which was popularity wow and this really bothered me because i thought here i am so spiritually empty inside and yet these people claim to be christians and i'm leading a better life than they are at least externally they must be just as empty as i am but they're putting on a false front pretending to be something they're not they're just a pack of hypocrites and so i began to get very resentful toward the institutional church for the hypocrisy and phoniness that i saw there and pretty soon this attitude spread toward people in general everybody i thought is a hypocrite they're all holding up a plastic mask to the world while the real person is cowering down inside afraid to come out and be real and so that anger turned toward people in general and i i turned away from them i said i don't need people i don't want people i threw myself into my studies and i was on my way toward becoming frankly a very alienated young man but at the same time in moments of introspection when i looked into my own heart i knew that deep down inside i wanted to love and to be loved just like other people and i realized in that moment that i was just as much a hypocrite as they were because here i was putting on this brave front pretending i don't need people when deep down inside i really did and so that anger turned in upon myself for my own phoniness and hypocrisy and this kind of inner anger just eats away at your insides day after day making every day miserable another day to get through and one day i was feeling particularly crummy and i walked into my high school german class and i sat down behind a girl who is one of these types that is always so happy it just makes you sick and i tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around and i said to her sandy what are you always so happy about anyway and she said well bill it's because i'm saved wow and i said your what and she said i know jesus christ as my personal savior and i said well i go to church and she said that's not enough bill you've got to have him really living in your heart and i said well what would he want to do a thing like that for and she said because he loves you bill and that just hit me like a ton of bricks here she said there was someone who really loved me and who was it but the god of the universe and that thought just staggered me to think that the god of the universe could love me that worm named bill craig down there on that speck of dust called planet earth i just couldn't take it in well i went home that night and i found a new testament that had been given to me by the gideons when they visited our grade school handing out new testaments and for the first time i opened it and began to read it and as i did so sean i was absolutely captivated by the person of jesus of nazareth there was a wisdom about this man's teachings that i had never encountered before but especially there was an authenticity wow about his life that wasn't characteristic of those people in that local church i went to who were claiming to be his followers and i realized that i couldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater well sandy introduced me to other christians in the high school and no matter what they said about god or jesus what i couldn't deny was that these people seem to be in touch with a different plane of reality that i didn't even dream existed a reality that gave a deep meaning and significance to their lives that i really craved so after about six months of the most intense soul-searching that i've ever been through in my entire life i finally just came to the end of my rope uh and one evening about eight o'clock just cried out to god and yielded my life to him and at the same time i felt this tremendous infusion of joy like a balloon being blown up and blown up until it was ready to burst and i rushed outside it was a warm september midwestern evening and as i looked up at the sky i could see the milky way from horizon to horizon wow and as i looked at the stars i thought god i've come to know god and that moment changed my whole life because i had thought enough about this during those six months to realize that if bill craig ever became a christian i could do nothing less than devote my entire life to spreading this message among mankind because if this is the truth if it's really the truth then this is the greatest news ever announced and so for me my call to full-time vocational christian service was simultaneous with my conversion bill this uh girl you mentioned her name is sandy have does she know what you're doing now with your life and ministry have you touched base with her after that season at all well we drifted apart after graduating from high school she went off to illinois state i went to wheaton and we didn't see each other after that but years later many years later i was speaking at bradley university in my hometown of peoria and after i was finished this middle-aged woman came up to me and she held out her hand and i shook her hand and she said nothing she just looked at me and continued to hold my hand and i said i i'm sorry do i know you and she said i'm sandy wow and then it was as though the years melted away and i saw in her face that 16 year old girl that i remembered and it was such a sweet reunion and and she told me that her boys at peoria christian high school were in an apologetics class at that time and their professor was showing videos from my debates wow to train her sons in apologetics and so it was just a kind of the circle of life you know that was so beautiful and we have kept in touch then since that time that is so stunning that a girl with joy and simply says i knew jesus led to this transformation in your life and your ministry i mean it's stunning to think about that now that six months for you that you're asking with this were those apologetic questions or were they more they were not sean i i'm so uh sorry to disappoint people who think i went through this great intellectual search i was convinced this was true just reading the new testament as i say and the ring of truth about it that was undeniable but i read books for example peace with god by billy graham the secret of happiness i read the new testament from cover to cover and was just captivated by it so for me it was a matter of making the transition from the head to the heart uh from from just believing that it's true to making a life commitment uh and i remember telling sandy at the time i said i just can't look five years into the future and see bill craig as a christian and she very wisely said to me don't think about the future bill she said just look at what it today and you decide now whether or not you want to make that commitment and and eventually then i did that's great advice so you didn't start off saying i'm going to do philosophy and apologetics where my dad's story you know was trying to disprove christianity so instantly it had that element to it when did you start focusing on philosophy and apologetics well with respect to apologetics when i did become a christian my junior year in high school i was immediately faced with explaining to my family members and my friends why i had made this radical step so right from the beginning i was involved in giving reasons for christian belief but this was focused and deepened when i went off to wheaton college upon graduation i attended wheaton which is a christian liberal arts college in illinois that has a very strong emphasis on the integration of faith and learning not sticking your brains in one pocket and your faith in the other pocket and never letting them see the light of day at the same time but rather integrating faith and learning to develop a christian veltanxion as they call it a christian worldview and so what was it wheaton that i was seized by this vision of sharing the gospel in the context of giving an intellectual defense of the christian worldview that's that's fascinating and uh when did you join crew right away or how did that fit in because my dad was on crew and my parents are still on crew staff what season was that in your life well when i was a senior at wheaton i wanted to go on to seminary i i knew i wanted to get theological training but my senior year i was in chapel and john guest was speaking in chapel he was a band member of a group called the excursions and he challenged us uh that we had been soaking up for four years had we eaten all of this knowledge and learning and he said it's time to wring out the sponge take a couple of years out of your education and get involved in practical christian ministry and i thought well that sounds like a good idea how could i best do that and for me the answer seemed obvious campus crusade for christ i had heard bill bright lecture at wheaton i was aware of staff members of campus crusade and so upon graduation i um i became a staff member of campus crusade for christ um and spent two years with crusade and it was exactly what i'd hoped it would be wonderful wonderful practical ministry application of what i'd been learning learning how to lead someone to christ how to disciple that person uh in the lord it was a fantastic experience one of the things i've most appreciated about you i've never told you this but obviously first-rate philosophical work but just a heart for the gospel and a basis of why we do this growing up with parents on crew i see the value of that and so let me shift i've heard you talk about sometimes in your life you had some physical challenges when you were younger now i know you exercise both you and i like to to lift and have talked about that at times but you've had some physical challenges that maybe kept you out of sports that maybe god used to get you to focus on debate and other things would you be able to willing to share that's right sure my brother and i both inherited from my mom a genetic neuromuscular disorder called charcoal marie tooth syndrome and this is a neuromuscular syndrome that causes atrophy in the extremities it is progressive it gets worse and worse as you age and um it's incurable uh fortunately it's not fatal it's not like lou gehrig's disease it it mainly affects you from the elbows to the fingertips and from the knees to the toes uh and so over the years this has become more and more advanced uh my hands now look like some 90 year old man's all you know arthritic looking and atrophied my calves have shriveled terribly so right from youth this was an inhibition and i walked funny and so other children would make fun of me and call me names and uh mock me because of this and this caused deep hurt and i think probably contributed to that alienation that i described earlier um one of the psychological effects of this was that it gave me an intense drive to succeed i i remember for example one day in junior high school since i wasn't in athletics i didn't care about sports the teacher gave us a math problem where we had to figure out something about baseball scores and part of the problem said that every game played was a single game and i i went up to the front and i said what does it mean to say it's a single game and the teacher said to me standing in front of the rest of the class well bill i would think any red-blooded american boy would know that and a girl one of the popular girls sitting in the front said gee bill even i know that wow and i felt so humiliated and inside what i thought was i'll show them someday i'm going to become something and they won't be able to laugh at me anymore now remember i was a non-believer at the time and so it seemed that in academics i could succeed where i couldn't say in sports and so uh i pursued academics i think largely or at least partly because of the self-worth that it gave to me it enabled me to have a sense of self-worth and a good self-image because i could i could accomplish something as well and so as a result of charcoal marie tooth i'm extremely goal oriented uh sean i even get a sense of accomplishment when i empty the shampoo bottle in the shower finally that's so interesting yeah just very goal-oriented and this has pluses and minuses to it obviously you know it can make you achieve a lot but it can also tend to make you insensitive and to run over other people and so after becoming a christian i had to learn how to temper this by really realizing that my worth is to be found in christ and his love for me and not in what i can accomplish or achieve that's really powerful i appreciate your your honesty and just vulnerability sharing about these things it's it's moving and it's it's encouraging as well one thing i would love to know is who are the people that most influence you and this could be philosophers it could be a friend it could be a professor like when you think of the top maybe two or three people who are they and in what ways did they influence you i think that my mother was one of the greatest influences upon my life not only physically as i've just described but she had an incredible curiosity and would take us children to every factory and manufacturing plant in the little iowa town we were i was raised in in order to see for example how milk was bottled how pickles were made how cardboard boxes were done we went to the big hydroelectric dam across the mississippi during cupcake and just everything she would feed that curiosity that intellectual interest in me and my parents told me as a young boy anything that will contribute to your education we will pay for and they were as good as their word they they paid for anything that i wanted that would contribute to my education and so that sense of curiosity also from my mom a sense of individuality and non-conformity that has served me very well in going against the crowd and being willing to be reviled or or mocked my mother always emphasized to be an individual to not go with the crowd to stand up for yourself you know there was an easter egg hunt in the neighborhood she would tell me to run in the opposite direction of all the other children to find the eggs i mean that was the kind of individualism that she instilled into me and it was reconfirmed by my father as well who was a very upright honest good man i mean my parents belong to the greatest generation you know the generation that won world war ii and and he modeled for me that kind of integrity that i if i might just be permitted one story please before we be before i became a christian my family would sometimes on holidays attend that church that i eventually went to interesting and one day we were sitting as a family in the pew and it turned out to be a communion service and row by row they were inviting people to go forward and take communion and i thought what's going to happen when it gets to our row you know my dad isn't going to want to do this and sure enough when it got to our row the usher said would you like to go forward and my father looked at him and said no we don't care to partake we'll just sit here and i said dad can't we just go forward and he just looked at me you know and kind of silenced me with a look and i just sat back and gritted my teeth and there you know in front of everybody else going forward we were the one family that refused to take communion wow you know that that sunday and that was a kind of integrity even my father's unbelief had it was it was an unbelief with integrity and that stood me very well sean when later in life i became a christian and had to stand with integrity for what i believe and not compromise in the face of the pressure of the crowd so my parents were tremendous influence on me sandy i've already mentioned through her i became a christian and then my wife jan has been unbelievable in the partner she's been to me she's been the wind beneath my wings i told her early on in our marriage honey i can do anything if there's just one person who really believes in me wow and she later told me that at that moment she resolved that i will be that person and she has been over the years uh she has made it her goal to make me as effective as i can possibly be in the lord's work and so i owe an incalculable debt to her bill that's really powerful i want to unpack that a little bit there's a little bit of a whistling sound coming um from your side i'm not sure what it is if there's a way to turn turn down a little bit we'll just we'll keep going it is what it is um i i i that that sounds good right there i've heard my my father say he came from a pretty broken background he said he'll say to me son i never imagined that a woman could love a man the way your mom loves me and i get teary-eyed thinking about it it sounds like that she plays that same role in your life and the times you might not be as motivated or discouraged she is that person that shapes you would you talk about just how she does that and what that looks like in your relationship well one very very practical way sean uh is that she was trained as an executive secretary she could type like 120 words a minute on an ibm's electric typewriter and so she has typed both of my master's theses both of my doctoral dissertations all of my books all of my articles that i published up until very very recently when now i can do them with dictation software myself but that would be just one very practical way in which she has been a help to me and even today she will say to me give me the grunt work i'll do it if there's somebody that needs to be called i'll call them if there's some word processing thing to do i'll do it you spend your time on the important stuff let me do the grunt work and so just in very practical ways she lightens my burden not to mention the fact that she's a great cook and hope maker and the mother of our children i mean just uh she's a proverbs 31 woman that's that's amazing i love to hear that let's uh try for a minute if you don't mind let's try taking your headphones out now just for a second and see if the whistling stops we may have to put them back in but just okay unplug them for a second it could be feedback oh you know what that actually uh that won't work now i'm hearing my feedback that's okay put him back in and we'll just we'll for whatever reason is we'll keep going we can hear you there's just a little faint whistling in the background um so we'll we'll keep going um but the headphones stop me from having uh the feedback that i think we need um well let's let let's keep going here um okay am i coming through can you hear me all right bill yes uh i'd be curious about the books that most influence you and they could be books obviously the bible is an answer that is obviously huge in your life but even over a career what book was pivotal to you changed your thinking right formative in some sense yeah i would say it was reading edward john carnell's book an introduction to christian apologetics uh while at wheaton i took a course called conflicts in biblical christianity and for that course i read carnell's book and i had never read anything like this before in my life in this book carnell was asking questions like what is truth how do we test for truth how do we know that christianity is true and these were the kind of questions i was interested in and so it was really carnell that catapulted me in in this direction and carnell was interesting he was himself a wheaton grad oh he had earned doctorates in both philosophy and theology wow and i thought wow if i could ever do that someday that would be a dream come true but i never imagined that i actually would but carnell set that example in goal for me that's really fascinating uh to to see that influence so you don't hear him cited as much is it because he maybe didn't publish in an academic book that his research would have been a part of some of the 60s and 70s philosophical revolution did that maybe play a role in it i think that's right carnell died i think in 1968. okay he was a professor at fuller seminary um so he belonged to the era of carl henry and uh aachengay and um gordon clark and cornelius fantille and that generation was just completely eclipsed by the revolution in christian philosophy that's taken place since around 1967 or so that makes sense that that's powerful i in class i believe it was philosophy religion i had you in my master's program the mayfield program at talbot so this is probably 17 16 17 years ago you started off by sharing a story of how you deal with failure related to if i remember correctly your doctorate in theology yeah would you be willing to share that story and just kind of the lesson that you took away from it yes briefly um when i finished my doctoral dissertation under wolfhard pollenberg at the university of munich i had to take oral examinations in theology and i didn't know how to prepare for these so i sought to have an appointment with professor palmenberg over and over again but sean german professors are like little demigods compared to their students students are like dirt under their heels wow and her professor doctor couldn't be bothered to meet with me and so i was never able to get an appointment with him to learn how to prepare for this oral exam and so i thought well i'll go to his assistant going to events and i asked heavens how should i prepare for this exam and he said oh forget about it and well i wasn't that said no no come on now how can i prepare for this and he said well pollenberg always asks questions only over his own writings so master everything he's written and you'll be prepared well that sounded like good advice to me so over the next few months i read literally or virtually everything that pollenberg had ever published and take took notes on it and memorized it and so forth and so i went in to this exam and sat down with professor pollenberg the dean and one other faculty member and the questioning began and pongenberg began to ask questions in his i had to respond i don't know wow and i could feel my doctoral degree slipping away like sand through my fingers and there was nothing i could do to stop it it was the most terrifying horrible feeling i'd ever had and at the end of the exam pollenberg asked a couple of condescendingly easy questions as if to come down to my level my humiliation was complete well i i was just crushed i was devastated we believed that god had called me to do this doctorate in germany and it provided marvelously all the way to do so and now i had failed and was going home in defeat and uh well i learned a lot of lessons out of that but one of the the things that one of our friends advised us about was don't make a decision right away what to do about this give it some time to heal in germany if you fail the exam once you can take it again in a year's time and i knew after thinking about it i had to do it again otherwise i would spend the rest of my life second guessing what would have happened if i had taken it again and so i knew i had to risk it and so that first year back in the states teaching at trinity evangelical divinity school i spent every spare moment i had preparing for this exam in systematic theology back in munich i spent more time preparing for that exam than i did preparing for my lectures in my classes i really neglected my teaching responsibilities to prepare for this exam well finally uh the next august then a year after you know coming home i went back to munich and um i had a stack of notes about a foot high on systematic theology from the ancient uh church fathers to contemporary theologians on every aspect of systematic theology doctrine of god doctrine of christ doctrine of sin doctrine of salvation doctrine of the church and here's one thing that i learned by the way preparing for that i i discovered that i had been woefully under prepared by my seminary education in the united states wow uh i think that the training that we give at our american seminaries in systematic theology is like elementary school compared to what german students get and so i learned more about systematic theology during that year of preparation than during my entire seminary experience and i walked into pollenberg's office it looked just like it had before there was the dean there was pollenberg there was one of the other faculty members and he began to ask questions and to my absolute joy the answers just rolled off my tongue just fluidly easily uh effortlessly there was only one question that tripped me up that i couldn't answer and that was why hegel's um christology entailed the death of god my goodness that one i didn't know um and so i pottenberg awarded me a magna laude wow on my um my exam and my my degrees and so i came out of there i was dancing on air sean it was such a victory uh and i learned so much about theology as a result of failing that exam but then the spiritual lesson that i learned was just as important i had always naively thought that if you're a christian walking in the center of god's will you cannot fail wow now that may sound very naive but i had a rather nuanced understanding i thought there would be trials of course tribulations but if you're walking in the center of god's will god will see you through those trials and you'll come out victorious in the end what i learned sean is that god's will for your life can include failure that's powerful it could be god's will that you fail and he will lead you in the fullness of the holy spirit into failure because god has things to teach us through failure that we could never learn through success um and that was the case for me that's a that's a great lesson i i love that that's really encouraging again let me i'm going to try on your volume if you don't mind turn it down a little bit it might cut back a little bit of a just kind of a background frequency that's coming through now those those notes that you took if i'm not mistaken have become the basis of your defender series right that's that's exactly right that's that's pretty awesome um another question for you uh do you have a favorite book in the bible or favorite story in the bible that just motivates you well i've always really enjoyed the book of colossians there paul warns about the dangers of philosophy and shows how it is through christ that we find the fullness of god in human form and that all these other religious efforts to reach god apart from christ are ultimately futile and unavailing and so colossians has been a book that i've greatly appreciated that is that's really fascinating i don't know that i've ever heard somebody say that was their favorite book so that's that's that's interesting on the flip side you mentioned how you deal with failure what about success you've had some pretty high profile opportunities being invited on the ben shapiro show sharing the stage with jordan peterson uh how spiritually do you deal with success and try to stay grounded faithful well you know paul says let no man think more highly of himself than he ought to think but to think with sober judgment and when i think with sober judgment sean i am acutely aware of my shortcomings and limitations and insignificance and so in that sense uh one is one is humbled by how little one knows the more you learn the more you realize how little you know and i have right here on my desk beside me under the glass a picture of isaac newton perhaps the greatest physicist who ever lived and i want to read you the inscription from newton's principia he says i do not know what i may appear to the world but i myself seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary whilst a great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me oh if newton could have that sense of humility and and his own ignorance how much more is that true of me and so that that right there next to my right hand on my desk is a reminder of the need for that kind of humility that's a wonderful way to uh just daily remind yourself of somebody obviously as great as isaac newton is how you've been doing this for a few decades how do you stay motivated wha what does it take like you ever feel like you're burned out sometimes or oh motivation work for you um i think for motivation sean to be candid is that i love what i do i i am pursuing my passion uh i don't think i'll ever retire because i'm already doing what i want i i'm just completely free to do whatever i want to do and this is what i want to do and so my i i don't even study topics that i think are important i study topics that i'm passionate about and so when you're following your passion it's easy to stay motivated now a few years ago i began to lose some motivation and i said to janna i feel like i'm i'm losing my motivation um i used to be able to study from morning until night without a break and it wouldn't be a problem but now i find that in the afternoon i'm kind of worn out and i just don't want to work anymore and i think i'm losing my motivation and she said to me you're not losing your motivation she says you just need to have a different schedule and so she arranged it so that in the morning when i'm fresh that's when i would do my heavy philosophical work then immediately after lunch i would do lighter more popular level work and then from about four o'clock until six o'clock in the evening when my brain is fried i would do interviews with sean mcdowell and uh that don't require a great deal of intellectual effort and that completely restored me uh just having that schedule change uh restored my energy levels and motivation so that i'm able to go full bore now until six in the evening when jan and i have supper together i love hearing that story it was fun to see the two of you together in israel a couple years ago and just see the partnership and love and just you know there's so much to be said for that she's just giving you the right advice at the right moments i mean just what a blessing from the lord through her do by the way for those of you listening if you have some personal questions uh for dr william lane craig just about how he studies people that have influenced him not apologetic questions we can come back to that another time but if you have questions you've always wanted just to ask him put him in and i will do my best to address those the comments but one question i've never asked i've always wondered is do you have doubts about your faith sometimes do you ever doubt and just think am i crazy did a man really rise from the dead and if so how do you address those well i think that every christian has doubts well i let me back up every thinking christian has doubts anybody who holds to a position will ask himself is my position really true could i be deceived could i be wrong and here sean i find it important not only to maintain one's personal devotional life so that the witness of the holy spirit will bear a testimony to the truth of god in your heart but also to have those arguments and evidence to review and i will be entirely candid and honest with you when i look at these arguments for god's existence that i have defended in debates or in publications and i weigh them i look at these things and i shake my head and i said these are really good arguments these really are convincing uh and this was a real source of strength for me during my historical adam study i i really struggled with this whole thing about the existence of a historical atom and how we're to understand um that that subject i i went through real doubts about this uh and and i was always able to to fall back on the evidence for the existence of god and the resurrection of jesus and i was so thankful for that that my faith had a firm rational foundation that could explore doubts like the historical adam honestly uh without walking away from the faith or losing one's faith well i heard you working through the historical animat there's sometimes where you said something effective i'm not really sure what to do with this it makes me a little nervous or unsettled and you were sharing that publicly and i thought clearly you've thought through the implications of doing that right how what was the reasoning and basis for sharing that before you came to conclusions it was it showing vulnerability honesty what was the thinking behind how you approached well what it was sean unfortunately was an impromptu discussion with joshua swamidas in which josh was prompting me to say why why are you struggling with this bill for josh this is fun it's great oh talk about all these different views and here i was agonizing over these questions and so this agony kind of came out in the interview as to why i was struggling so and it had to do with christology because it seemed to me pretty clear that jesus of nazareth believed in the historical adam he refers to him and and eve as well now if jesus is divine that means he's omniscient and therefore can hold no false beliefs as a philosopher i understand that many theologians don't but if jesus believed there was a historical atom and in fact there was no such person that means jesus held false beliefs that he was therefore not omniscient and therefore he was not divine and that just completely undermines the entire christian faith and so this historical adam question took on a proportionality that seemed holy out of size with the issue itself now unfortunately an atheist podcaster picked up this interview with swamidas and made it sound like i was saying that the deity of christ stands or falls on the existence of the historical adam and that's not at all what i think as you'll read in the book what i explain is let's imagine a worst case scenario let's imagine that there was no historical adam would jesus be convicted then of having held a false belief and i give an argument as to why that's not true based upon a distinction that is very common in philosophy between accepting a proposition p and believing a proposition p and what i suggest is that jesus of nazareth accepted the proposition that there was a historical atom even if the divine logos the person christ is did not actually believe it uh and i think that that answers the objection and in fact there are some things about that model of the incarnation then make it a more plausible model than one in which one would say that jesus did not accept any false beliefs for example jesus says the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds or he talks about the moon giving its light when in fact the moon as we know is not luminous and what we can say is i think very plausibly the incarnate christ during the state of humiliation accepted those common beliefs but the logos the divine son of god did not believe those false beliefs and therefore it doesn't impugn his omniscience now that's the worst case scenario sure it shows in fact you can defend the deity of christ even given the worst case scenario but then the whole rest of the book is devoted to showing that it's perfectly scientifically plausible to believe that there was a historical atom when is that book coming out well i don't know i've already returned the copy edited proofs to erdmans they're scheduled in january to send me the print proofs and then once i return those then within a few months they should have it bound and published so maybe sometime in the spring i hope good hope we can have it on and help have you on and help spread the word uh for you well i'd be happy to talk about it with you here's a quick question i've heard you answer this before you can probably do it in 10 seconds when is the beard coming back never never i think in general a person with a gray beard looks so old and haggard and worn i just don't want to have that image so it won't come back okay here's one a couple people asked about what's your personal personal devotion prayer or bible study approach like um well i typically get up in the morning about 5 30 and i spend time in prayer for myself for jan for our children and then for the various events of the day and the work of the ministry and the staff of reasonable faith and then i will read a portion out of the greek new testament i want to maintain my new testament greek and so i find the best way to do it is to do my devotional reading in the new testament in greek and so currently i'm reading the gospel of mark in the past i've sometimes also read a commentary in connection with what i'm reading uh and a page out of the church fathers that's awesome um oh i just missed one here it said oh what what do you do for fun my work is fun um i love what i do and so that is my fun but uh in addition to that on the weekends i enjoy gardening um i go out and as jan puts it i commune with the weeds uh i take out my frustrations and stress by yanking weeds you know so i pull them all over the yard and so i i will spend so every saturday morning out in the uh out in the garden out in the yard hoeing and weeding and cutting and trimming and things of that sort and that's a great outlet i really enjoy that and you still enjoy exercising and lifting as you can yeah i i do exercise and i have to say sean as you probably have found that if it becomes habitual it actually can be enjoyable i mean at first i just hated it it was just pure discipline dr montgomery who was my church history professor once put it so well he said whenever i feel like exercising i go lie down until it goes away that's sort of the way i felt but if you can make it a habit then after a while it just becomes routine and it actually does feel good and you can enjoy it so yeah i i do that jan and i also enjoy going out to eat uh when we can and um when we travel we love to go sightseeing if we're in turkey for example we'll go sightseeing in istanbul or when we're in china visit the great wall um or uh in italy you know go to the coliseum or or saint peter's cathedral we really enjoy sightseeing and so um we we like to do that too when we can that's that's awesome i le i love hearing that here's a couple about the program what's what's unique about the m.a philosophy program that you've been involved in for a long time with jp moreland at talbot why should somebody consider doing that program okay well i don't think there is any other ma level program that has the caliber of faculty that we do at talbot m.a programs are sort of a dying breed people typically go right from their ba into a phd program and they may just sort of throw in the m.a as a kind of throwaway degree but at talbot the m.a is our terminal degree because we don't want to give out cheap phds we want to prepare students four phd programs at the top secular universities by giving them a stepping stone to a terminal degree at one of those schools and so we have a very highly developed uh curriculum and excellent faculty that routinely places our graduates in phd programs all around the united states and abroad the other couple of things that should be mentioned is the the christian emphasis at talbot you will be getting a christian worldview a christian perspective on philosophy and the faculty in the department are committed to certain philosophical distinctions distinctives like the value of natural theology arguments for the existence of god the objectivity and dis and no ability of truth the objectivity of moral values uh mind-body dualism all of these would be philosophical distinctives that the faculty agree on and teach in our classes and so students will be equipped i think in a christian world and life you when they come away from talbot and then i guess the last thing that i would mention is it's quite remarkable that all of the faculty in the philosophy department at talbot have either pastoral or missionary experience they have been the pastors of churches or they've been staff members with campus crusade for christ they are involved or have been involved in ministry and this pastoral heart is reflected in their teaching and in their classes bill i think i've told you this i did my undergrad at biola loved it did my doctorate at southern baptist but that m.a phil program my wife who you know stephanie my high school sweetheart she said during that three years she saw more transformation in my life just my confidence my beliefs my understanding of faith than any season in my life so wow any of you watching this you've thought you know what i've gone back to master's program thought about studying apologetics so that's a biola or the m.a phil program we now have a full distance program come side with me and even more importantly come study with uh william lane craig if i can ask you two more questions one is just fun which is what's your favorite movie boy that's really hard because there's so many right at the top of the list i officially stumped william lane craig just for the record let it be stated that i got him although that wasn't well it's from a a wealth uh or an uh abundance of riches uh i i think ingrid bergman was fantastic and so i love movies like notorious and casablanca and gaslight boy in the movie gaslight there's a scene where she looks at her husband who's been deceiving her trying to drive her crazy and if looks could kill oh man the look that she gives at him would be a man slayer it's really remarkable so i like these old ingrid bergman movies the maltese falcon is another great movie with humphrey bogart and peter laurie and sydney green street i i love that movie uh and then you know the bridge over the river kwai is a very moving film that is a ethical film that i really enjoyed too so those would just be a few that come to mind those are great examples final question that people ask me almost almost daily i'll get a tweet or an email or somebody like today young man asked me from canada he's in grade 11 he said i want to be an apologist maybe you want to go to biola what advice do you have for me what i can do now as a younger kind of aspiring apologist so what advice would you give to younger apologists to be effective well now if he's if he's really that young i think he needs to embark on a college prep program in his high school uh and maybe even his junior and senior year take ap classes that would prepare them for college uh i kind of sloughed off in high school in some respects and i wish i hadn't i i would encourage students at that age to to really bite off as much as they can chew and take that good college prep curriculum while they're in high school i would supplement it i think with some study of logic as early as they can i have a little textbook for children called introduction to logic that is very suitable for eight to eleven year old uh kids uh and people of all ages uh and i would recommend that um i supposed to most of all sean i would not emphasize the academic preparation as much as i would his spiritual preparation he needs to be sure he's read the bible from cover to cover he understands old and new testament contents he has some understanding of christian doctrine i would say work through a book like bruce milne's book know the truth which is a very good survey of christian doctrine i think he needs to be really grounded theologically um even before he begins to plunge into philosophical studies that's great advice actually remember you gave me that advice uh similar when i was at talbot i was getting the m.a phil and you said well you getting a theology degree too you and my dad both encouraged me to get an ma uh theology and it has served me very well oh good there there's a whole bunch of more questions people have but i definitely want to respect your time this has been so interesting thanks not only for your ministry and friendship but just coming on and sharing some stories and giving us some insights about about your life now hang on before you disappear i want to make sure those of you join us hit the subscribe button because we have some other interviews coming up including eric johnson with the mormon research ministry there's a new book out by some scholars called the lds gospel topic series and some scholars have been addressing issues like the book of abraham the plural wives of joseph smith dna studies and we're going to take a look at some of the biggest challenges and problems to the mormon faith today and how they're responding to it you won't want to miss that next week if you've thought about studying you're spurred on today to study the m.a phil or apologetics program please consider joining us at talbot at biola there's information below or if you're not ready for masters we have a certificate program we'd love to kind of walk you through some formal training which would be a great opening step uh thanks so much for joining us wonderful wonderful questions and thanks again dr craig for coming on my pleasure

Channel: Dr. Sean McDowell

Views: 16,712

Rating: 4.9802957 out of 5

Keywords: William Lane Craig, testimony, ministry, writing, books, speaking, debates, story, advice, suggestion, apologist

Id: qe1mUms7rtE

Length: 59min 35sec (3575 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2020