The Good Book Blog, a resource from the faculty of Talbot School of Theology, features articles that explore contemporary ideas from the perspective of the Bible â the âGood Bookâ â including topics such as apologetics, biblical studies, theology, philosophy, spiritual formation, ministry and leadership. Find out more about what sets Talbot apart and how it prepares Christian leaders through its degree programs.
Dear Dr. Craig, Thank you for all your work in Christian Philosophy and Apologetics as it has influenced my walk with Christ tremendously. You're the reason I have decided to study Philosophy at my college (Miami University of Ohio to be exact!). My question for you concerns your proposed model of the Incarnation. The model you propose agrees with the principle "That which is not assumed is not saved." So, The Logos assumes a human nature and all that that entails. But, I'm a bit puzzled because it seems to me that an essential part of being human is also to be contingent. It is literally apart of the very essence of a human to be contingent. If this is true then it seems that Christ must also assume a contingency in order to redeem us since that too is apart of "That which is not assumed is not saved." But, this obviously seems incompatible with the nature of God which is to be necessary. So, how exactly does the Logos assume contingency? ...
Hello dr. Craig! I would like to thank you for your work,you really helped me a lot! I write you in time of great doubt and spiritual struggle. For years, my faith is going up and down and it is really exhausting. I do find your arguments very persuasive but this is where I hit the wall- the problem of evil ...
I came to Christ as a last resort after a year-long quest to find God back in 1975. With two thriving evangelical churches just a few blocks from my doorstep, why did I explore the Christian faith last instead of first? The cool factor, of course! I was a long-haired, pot-smoking keyboard player in a rock band. Eastern and New Age religion were âspiritualâ and cool â Christianity definitely was not ...
What Did the New Testament Authors Really Care About? The easiest way we know to answer that question is to pick up Matt Williamsâs and Ken Berdingâs (editors) book: What the New Testament Authors Really Cared About: A Survey of Their Writings. The second edition has just been released by Kregel in an attractive full-color format with some added materials ...
... Deeper than the recent history, we seem to be pushing against the same thing that Martin Luther identified as the theology of glory. Luther recommended to us the contrast of the theology of the cross ...
Hello Sir, I have read a big deal of your work and I am really inspired by you and your work. But there is this one question that greatly troubles me; I always had it in mind since I was very young but having solved a lot of questions, I am concerned about this simple question that I am not able to solve or find a satisfactory answer from a scholar. I need your views on why God will send people to hell on the basis of their Religious beliefs. A person who sincerely researches on Religion and Theology trying to find if a God exists and if so, what Religion and fails to identify the right Religion, why is he to be punished? A person arrogantly denying the right Religion while knowing the truth might deserve to be punished somehow but what about the one trying his best but failing ...
When speaking to seminary »ÆčÏÊÓÆ”s from all across the U.S., Iâve been noticing an increasing discomfort in students regarding their ability to preach and teach effectively from the Old Testament. Part of this is because the Old Testament comprises so much of the Bible, and there just isnât enough space in a degree program to adequately cover all of the Old Testament (especially a degree that doesnât concentrate solely on the Old Testament). The Old Testament is packed with a wide variety of genres and covers such an expansive amount of history ...
El gran pensador cristiano, Francis Schaeffer afirmĂł que el cristianismo como sistema de pensamiento no empieza con Cristo como Salvador sino con el infinito y personal Dios quien creĂł el universo. Dios es la explicaciĂłn de la realidad y la fuente de todo lo que existe. Por lo tanto, en Dios, y en su revelaciĂłn, la Biblia, encontramos las respuestas a las mĂĄs grandes preguntas de la vida y un testimonio claro de la grandeza de Dios ...
You know that part of your Bible where the gold leaf on the pages still looks pretty fresh? Some of the pages might still even be stuck together. Or, more au courant, the portion you rarely scroll to on your phone or iPad ⊠Thatâs right, for most of us itâs that part of the Bible starting right after Psalms and going all the way to Matthew. A lot of prophets big and little, and a good bit of Israelâs Wisdom traditionâbut it just doesnât get a lot of air-time in most evangelical churches or personal Bible-reading. Now, Iâm the first to admit that last claim stems from my own highly subjective internal polling data, and Iâm glad to be proven wrong; but I donât think I am, because I know a good bit of itâs true in my own life ...
Hello Dr. Craig First of all I apologize for my English, I'm French and it may be that you are obliged to decode some of my sentences. Thank you for the work you do, I'm studying neuropsychology and I especially like your site resources. Furthermore, when you come to France? You must know that here, many university students are becoming interested in apologetics and your work are not for nothing. I am writing because I am interested much in free will and I currently work on the implications of the B-or-A theory of time. I agree with you that joining the A theory is a prerequisite for free will ...
Dear Dr. William Lane Craig, I would like to first off thank you for all the work and encouragement you brought to me when I was a Christian. It's only been about two days since I openly claimed to be agnostic and I guess it's weak and fresh enough to be torn away, but Dr. Craig, something destroyed my faith. As a former Christian who loved science, I made it my goal to show that Christians were not scientifically illiterate, so I began reading books by Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, then I ventured into evolutionary biology. I knew about Richard Dawkins and how anti-theist his views were, but I assumed that as long as he was writing biology it wouldn't do any harm. In a very slow and progressive way, I began to simply accept Darwin's Theory of Evolution and Human Evolution. But then I realized a HUGE problem with Human Evolution and Christian theism ...
Charlie Trimm, Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, released a book last year on the exodus and God as a warrior. Following is an interview with the author ...
Dear Dr Craig, I have a reservation regarding the Ontological argument as you defend it. You identify the first premise, it is possible that a maximally great being exists, as the controversial one. You defend it as being more plausibly true than false with two sub-arguments. The first of these is that the notion of a maximally great being seems to be coherent, and that this implies such a being is possible. The second is an appeal to the other theistic arguments; that their plausibility shows that it is at least possible for a metaphysically necessary being to exist. We can argue against the first sub-argument, that the notion of a maximally great being seems to be coherent and is thus possible, in the following way. This sub-argument requires that conceivability, or conceptual coherence, implies metaphysical possibility. But we have a good reason for thinking that this is false ...
Joanne Jung (Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Talbot School of Theology) recently finished writing Character Formation in Online Education: A Guide for Instructors, Administrators, and Accrediting Agencies and it will be released on October 13, 2015. We wanted to learn more about this book, so we had Joanne respond to some questions ...
Dear Dr. Craig Hi I'm an Australian who converted to Christianity about a year ago after reading Richard Dawkinsâs book 'The God Delusion'. Ever since I read the book I became interested in Christianity and so after 3-4 months of research I came to the conclusion that Christianity is the most probable worldview, hence this is why I'm a Christian. Over the last year I have continued to search for answers to my greatest questions by reading the works of people like you, Ravi Zacharias, Alvin Plantinga, John Lennox, Hugh Ross, Timothy Keller and many others. In all my many hours of research I have yet to find a direct answer to the question I'm about the pose ...
In Philippians 3:8, the apostle Paul compares his religious credentials to knowing Jesus. The difference could hardly be more emphatic: âknowing Christ Jesus my Lordâ is of âsurpassing value,â but Paulâs past success is like ÏÎș᜻ÎČαλα (skubala). ÏÎș᜻ÎČαλα is commonly translated as rubbish, refuse, or garbage, but sometimes more strongly as dung, in both ancient and modern translations (Vulgate, Tyndale, KJV, NET). Some have suggested another four-letter translation, stronger than dung. While teaching Greek, I used to say that ÏÎș᜻ÎČαλα is the closest thing to a swear word you can find in the New Testament - and I was repeating something that I had heard or read quite a few times. C. Spicq's Greek lexicon even suggests that ÏÎș᜻ÎČαλα should be rendered crap. But is it true? Is ÏÎș᜻ÎČαλα a swear word, or maybe a rude word? Or is it unobjectionable?
Hello Dr. Craig. I must say that I began my travels as an agnostic, and after watching a multitude of your debates, reading your book Reasonable Faith, and reviewing your website, I confess to be impressed by the breadth and depth of your research. I have come to accept Christianity. In fact, much of the apologetics I use now to help others understand what I had trouble understanding I learned from you! So thank you for that. Now, as of recent, with the legalization of gay marriage across the United States, someone pointed out to me that the Bible says that to resist the authorities would be directly against God's wishes. To support this, he showed me Romans 13 verses 1-7. The verses seem to suggest that authority is placed by God, and we are to obey them because disobeying would be akin to disobeying God ...
âPrince of peaceâ is biblical language. In other words, it derives from its use in the Bible as a descriptive title with a very specific context. The title âPrince of Peaceâ is used of the Messiah in Isaiah 9:6. It is, thereforeâaccording to Christian orthodoxyâa reference to Jesus Christ. This is an extraordinarily honorific title. It denotes the full realization of messianic hope. In the Christian Scriptures it alludes to human reconciliation with God, and only by extension to the realization of peace within the human community. The agent, of course, is the Prince of Peace ...
Dr. Joseph Hellerman, Professor of New Testament at Talbot School of Theology, talks about his volume on Philippians in the Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament series ...
It is commonly claimed that when Jesus used the phrase âI amâ (áŒÎłÏ ΔጰΌÎč, ego eimi), he was making a direct reference to the name of God in the Old Testament, YHWH. There is some truth to this, but I want to suggest three important caveats to this claim: âI amâ (áŒÎłÏ ΔጰΌÎč), by itself, is not a code for the name of God; âI amâ is only intended to refer to deity in some of Jesusâ sayings; Paying too much attention to the âI amâ part of the sentence distracts readers from paying attention to the rest of the sentence.
Hi Dr Craig. I've heard you say, on the topic of marriage, that you are an "essentialist" on the nature of marriage- that is, marriage has a certain intrinsic nature which is not merely a social construct. As a natural law theorist who thinks the moral law is grounded in what it is to be human, this gratified me immensely. On the other hand, you are also well-known for your nominalism on the topic of abstract objects, which I take to be the denial that there are real universals in any sense (either Aristotelian or Platonic). My question is how these positions can be made consistent. As far as I know, to an essence just is a universal, so to affirm that marriage has an essence seems in direct contradiction with the idea that there are no such things as universals. Since I don't think you would permit so obvious a contradiction, either my account of essence or my understanding of your nominalism must be at fault. I would be much gratified if you could elaborate, as I think it would help me better understand your position on abstract objects ...
Dear Doctor Craig, I have recently thought myself into a theological dilemma, which, to be perfectly honest, I find somewhat frightening. I look forward to your analysis: I do not want to say or even think that God's existence might be purposeless, but I'm having a hard time not coming to that conclusion. Consider: purposes do not lie within themselves. Purposes depend upon an external factor, or judgment. Does the purpose of a tree lie within that tree's mere existence? No. The purpose of the tree becomes known only after observing the tree with various other things, i.e. the bird nesting in its branches, the shade its leaves provide on a hot summer day. Therefore, it follows that for one to assert a /purpose/ for God implies that there remains something outside of God, thus making God God ...
Have you ever wondered what theology and ice cream have in common? Some Zondervan authors shed some light on the matter, and our very own Dr. Joanne Jung chimes in.
Weekly Q & A with Dr. William Lane Craig: ... I have found your descriptions of omni-temporalism and middle-knowledge have challenged some of my assumptions, but instead of finding this irritating or threatening I am grateful to have had my horizons extended, and I am very interested to know more. I suspect I shall have to track down a copy of your book "Time and Eternity" for a detailed explanation, but I wondered if you could find the time to provide a short answer? ... But I am finding the idea of omni-temporalism much harder to get my head around. If God didn't create time then who did? Also aren't temporal beings in a sense controlled by time? As you point out, God would still has his perfect knowledge of the past, but does omni-temporalism lead to a belief that God is under the control of time? ... are these valid thoughts to ponder as I weigh a-temporalism and a tense-less B-theory against omni-temporalism, or have I misunderstood the debate?
Biola University
