We haven't had a WLC thread in awhile.. but while listening to some debates over the weekend I felt compelled to put this under the microscope, and also see how the theists here felt about it. I do think that Craig is a very smart guy and well worthy of his stature, however this strikes me as the nut low in terms of arguments- it also turns out to be his bedrock. So I'm wondering why he would hold to it if its as obviously flawed as I think it is. Let's talk.

On pages 35-36 of The Reasonable Faith Textbook Craig Writes:

"[W]hen a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God."

This surprised me for a number of reasons (and not just because the champion of Christian apologetics is using the reasoning of your common street preacher).

The first thing that I think is fairly obvious is that there are a number of tremendous assumptions being made here about the mind of the seeker. What he really feels, what really motivates him. He also makes the absolute and unambiguous statement that everyone (by logical extension) that does not come to Jesus "loves darkness."

So these seem like pretty serious claims, and ones that would be tremendously difficult (if not impossible) to prove. What's Craigs evidence for these assertions? It seems like his primary argument comes from the book of Matthew:

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For every one that asks receives; and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks it shall be opened (Matthew 7.7-8).



The first thing that struck me about this is, well, its just simple question begging isn't it? This seems to me to be a slightly more circuitous form of:

"How do I know God exists"

"It say so in the Bible"

In my mind this is a bad argument but Craig crosses into offensive in his debate with Keith Parsons entitled "Why I am/ am Not a Christian. Craig asserts that his personal experience is enough to justify God's existence to him.

Fine.

But if Craig can use his personal experience as evidence, why can't atheists who have experienced (in some cases) lifelong search without finding anything be rational in their atheism? This seems like special pleading based on nothing but a bible verse.

So that's it. This went on longer than I thought it would but I'm curious what Christians here think about this. If personal experience is sufficient for Craig to come to his beliefs, then why is it not sufficient for Parsons to come to his beliefs?

I'll first note that I'm not a big WLC fan. That being said...

Who says that they can't? I don't really see WLC making that specific claim (at least in what you've presented here).

The primary claim (which I would agree with) is along the lines of the idea that faith in God is not ultimately a purely logical matter. That does not divorce it from the tools of reason and logic, but it also shows that reason and logic are not sufficient to understand it and to come to it, and that there's a primacy of experience which feeds into understanding it.

You're right that it cuts both ways. Religious people can be rational in their beliefs on the basis of their personal experiences (rationally considered) as evidence in exactly the same way that atheists can be rational in their beliefs on the basis of their personal experiences (rationally considered).

Edit: I want to add that it's possible to be both rational and wrong. So one way to understand WLC's approach is that he's not rejecting that the atheist is rational, simply asserting that the atheist is wrong. And this can be said the other way around as well.

He doesn't but it's strongly implied, isn't it?

If Craig's view is that everyone who hasnt found god "loves darkness." Then all atheism is based on nothing more than God Hatred.

I don't see it that way.

Only if you understand "loves darkness" to mean "hatred." If you understand it to mean something more akin to "against God" then maybe it doesn't come across like a personal insult?

It's obviously not a very good argument. I'm not sure it's intended even to be an argument, I think it's an assertion that is intended to rationalize why it's OK for God to judge the unbeliever, more than anything else. It's an assumption made because otherwise he can't figure out how to justify other elements of his soteriology. Or at least, that is the only reason I can think of for making the assertion.

But in doing so, I think he ends up violating Christian teachings about not condemning others.

Thats not the part I find insulting. The part I find insulting is reducing someone's heartfelt search into nothing more than being "against god"

It comes across as a judgment of someones soul/heart. Which well if his God is real could be a problem for him.

So this part:

I agree with your perspective that it does seem like it's oversimplifying a complex situation. But before proceeding, what do you think it means to "become a Christian"?

I don't know WLC's theology well enough to know what *HE* means by that term. There are some ways of making his statement make sense, but they hinge on understanding "become a Christian" in somewhat particular ways.

I would agree with this. I don't think there is a way (at least on craigs view) to successfully square that circle.

I would say mine is the pretty much the same as the common understanding of "accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Personal Savior".

In what ways can the statement make sense, in your view?

But what does that entail?

If you take "become a Christian" to require only some of form "following" of Jesus (meaning, certain actions), then when you take it in context with the first half of his statement:

It becomes a failure to simply do what it takes to be/become a Christian. And the rejection of that act of "following" (either up front, or at some point during the pursuit) becomes a statement of "wanting nothing to do with God" because it's a cancellation of precisely the thing that there is "to do with God."

I must confess I don't exactly know what you mean here... I THINK its this:

Following Jesus entails you do X
Sam doesn't do X
Therefore Sam wants nothing to do with God.

If that's correct, then how do we solve for X without creating a no true scotsman?

Alternatively, could there be no other reason for not following "x" than "not wanting anything to do with God? This strikes me as dismissive.

Not quite. It's slightly more tautological.

To be a Christian, you need to do X.
Doing X is how you interact with God.
Choosing not to do X is choosing not to interact with God.

It's creating a narrower view of what it means to be a Christian. Consistent with the first half of that sentence, it doesn't place any emphasis on creating paritcular theologies (argumentation), but rather puts the emphasis on doing (being?) something, and that this doing (being) is the way that interaction with God occurs.

To make a somewhat silly example: There's a kid in front of you. To show love to the kid means to hug him. But you don't hug him. It doesn't really matter how much desire you express in wanting to show love to kid. It's very simple. Go hug him. Whatever excuses you can come up with (he smells like he needs a diaper change) are all kind of hollow. There's something to do if you really want to show love to the kid, and you just need to do it if that's really what you want to do.

It comes down to what it means to "want to do something with God." It's like saying "I want to hug the kid but..." <it doesn't really matter what follows>.

Just fyi, you are no longer discussing anything remotely like WLCs views.

Can you elaborate (to the best of your ability) how WLC might respond to "What does it mean to become a Christian?"?

I'll add one more comment regarding the view I've presented:

What is "the Earnest Seeker" looking for that hasn't been provided (under the idea that to become a Christian simply entails certain behaviors)?

Not sure why I'd do that.

Here's the quote in the OP from WLC:

You are arguing about how to interpret the bolded, but the context is all there preceding it. There's similar references in the rest of that chapter. The idea that everyone already knows that Christ is Lord is central to his epistemology.

Thanks, thats clearer now.
To make a somewhat silly counter, what if I had some sort of communicative disease? Wouldn't the greater act of love be to NOT touch the child?

Thats sort of the point, I consider it dismissive to say "The only reason you didn't do x is y" I just don't see how that could be definitively true.

I would also restate my 'no true scotsman' problem.

Just for the record, I missed the part of Aarons OP where he said to elaborate on how WLC might respond. I think our conversation is interesting as a hypothetical, but I agree with zumby that WLC has made it pretty unambiguous.

That would be the same thing, but in the completely opposite direction. To become a Christian means to mentally assent to a certain claim. And this mental assent is all that is needed. All of the other mental *stuff* doesn't really matter. Just take this statement as true.

I don't really see how this would parallel something having to do with God.

I think you're not quite clear on what the 'true scotsman' is. The true scotsman fallacy is the following:

"A Christian wouldn't do X."
But person Y is a Christian, and he did X.
"Well, no TRUE Christian would do X."

The structure of the argument establishes a certain condition to be met, and then upon finding someone who meets that condition, the condition is changed to reject that someone.

In this case, there's no shift in the definition. Instead, you're actually inserting a different condition Z that you're trying to somehow use to change the fact that X hasn't been met.

If you're providing the view as "This is what I, Aaron W, think about this issue" then go nuts. But its not WLCs view and shouldn't be prevented as such. Craig is quite explicit about meaning it in the same sense that OP and well named interpret it e.g. he continues

Reason and evidence are never the reason an atheist rejects the truth of Christianity. The Holy Spirit draws everyone near and the atheist willingly rejects Him.

Craig is pulling the classic true scotsman:

WLC: A seeker will believe in Christ
Sommerset: But Y is a seeker and doesn't believe.
WLC: Well, no true seeker would not believe.

This really isn't what *I* think about the matter. It's just a paritcular view of Christianity ("To be a Christian means to follow Jesus"). I admitted that I don't really know how WLC defines what it means to be a Christian.

Does he narrow his description of "the Christian message" anywhere?

Okay. (But that's detached from the particular tangent I went down.)

Yeah that's fine as long as we're all clear that it's your own personal tangent.