|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:8, ESV).
Not too long ago, I wrote an Interruption on my Top Five Christian Authors, but I left one out.
Let me introduce William Lane Craig, author of the books Reasonable Faith and On Guard! and about two or three billion other books!!
Both Reasonable Faith and On Guard were written over 20 years ago and can be updated by reading Craig’s other books and by visiting his website at www.reasonablefaith.org.
William Lane Craig is the world’s most sophisticated defender of God by using the “Kalam Cosmological Argument” for the existence of God. To become more highbrow intellectually on this argument, listen to this podcast entitled William Lane Craig: Kalam Cosmological Argument.
Or read another Interruption in which I discuss William Craig and the Kalam argument. To sum up the argument, simply put (and scholars who can’t just “simply put” write huge books on the topic) it goes as follows. . .
- Everything that begins to exist has a cause
- The universe began to exist
- Therefore, the universe has a cause
Okay, I’m at my “link” limit for an Interruption and have given you about an hour’s work following them all, so let me briefly explain why I love William Lane Craig. As a leading theologian and philosopher, he has also learned to follow the leading of God’s Spirit.
In his book On Guard, Craig describes the time when he was at a crossroads in his theological and philosophical studies. I’m encouraged by this exchange with his wife. . .
My wife said to me, “Well, if money were no object, what would you really like to do next?” I replied, “If money were no object, what I’d really like to do is go to England and do a doctorate under John Hick.” “Who’s he?” she asked.
“Oh, he’s this famous British philosopher who’s written extensively on arguments for the existence of God,” I explained. “If I could study with him, I could develop the cosmological or Kalam argument for God’s existence.”
The next evening Jan handed me a slip of paper with John Hick’s address on it. “I went to the library today and found out that he’s at the University of Birmingham in England,” she said. “Why don’t you write to him and ask him if you can do a doctoral thesis under him on the cosmological argument?”
What a woman! So I did, and to our amazement and delight, Professor Hick wrote back saying he’d be very pleased to supervise my doctoral work on that subject. So it was an open door! The only problem was that we had to have all the money for all of my years of study in the bank before we could be accepted.
We then made an appointment with a non-Christian businessman whose family had supported my wife on Campus Crusade staff, and we laid out for him what we believed God was calling us to do. And this non-Christian businessman gave us—not loaned us—he gave us all of the money we needed to do the doctoral degree under John Hick.
I love a book and an author who can prove God’s existence intellectually and practically!
Amen! to intellectual and Amen! to practical!