William Lane Craig is one of the most popular theologians and Christian apologists today. We actually have a lot of respect and admiration for him. However he, like many other Protestants, falls into some seriously dangerous pitfalls when following Sola Scriptura, to the point of denying core attributes of the God we profess to believe and adore.

Transcript:

Joe:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and before I say anything else, I need to start with this. I love William Lynn Craig. He’s a personal hero of mine, even when I disagree with him as I will be doing very much so today, I’d even suggest that he should be a hero of yours too. Despite his faults, it’s hard to quantify just how many people he’s led to Jesus Christ, but it’s got to be a lot. But perhaps the best almond that can be paid to him is not from a fellow Christian, but from the atheist Sam Harris, who once referred to him as the one Christian apologist who seems to have put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists.

Craig’s not just a great debater, he’s actually a brilliant scholar in his own right. He’s doing important work on a variety of philosophical and theological topics. The website academic influence ranks Craig as the world’s 11th most influential living philosopher, as well as the sixth most influential living theologian. Now, I can’t speak to their precise methodology, but those numbers at least seem roughly correct. They point to the fact this is someone of enormous influence and philosophy in theology and in apologetics and religious debates. But here’s the problem. While Craig is in one sense, arguably the greatest living Christian apologist, or at least up there, his version of Christianity is wonky, which might be a polite way of saying heretical. His views on both the natures of Christ and the nature of God are from the perspective of historical Christianity, heresy and in a way that arguably places him outside of Christianity itself.

And if you think I’m exaggerating about this, allow me to show you what I mean. Now as I make my case, I want to be clear. My aim here is twofold. First, I think this is extremely problematic, not only as a fan of William Lynn Craig, but even if you don’t know who William Lynn Craig is, you should still be worried about this, particularly if you’re a Protestant who believes in solo scripture, because I’m going to argue that the whole Craig Affair shows the impossibility of even the more sophisticated forms of solo scripture. I’ll explain what I mean when I get there. If someone as brilliant and as devout as William Lane Craig cannot arrive at Christian Orthodoxy using scripture alone, what hope do the rest of us have? Moreover, it’s not that Craig is heretical. Despite his belief in solo script Torah, he quite explicitly cites to Sola script Torah as the reason that he views himself as having the authority to reject Christian Orthodoxy on Christology and Trinitarian theology and on the nature of God, I’m going to get to all of that, but just give me time to kind of lay it out piece by piece.

By the way, as I always say, if this is something that you find beneficial, if this is something that you find helpful, I encourage you to go over to shameless joe.com, which is my Patreon and sign up there. One of you in the comments recently asked me to get a fade and I did. So imagine what I do for money. The spoiler is answer your questions every week in a livestream q and a and then have some banter back and forth throughout the week. But still, let’s get to William Lane. Craig’s bad Christology first because even though he professes that he believes in a Jesus who is both truly God and truly, man, when you drill down into it, the truly man part is extremely suspect. Now, why should we care about Christology? Occasionally you’ll get people who ask this, why do we care about the person in natures in Christ and all this? I think there’s a couple answers to that question, but I actually think Craig himself does a good job of explaining why we should care

CLIP:

Currently working on the doctrine of Christ, which is called Christology, and the doctrine of Christ is traditionally composed of two parts. One is on the person of Christ and the other is on the work of Christ. The person of Christ asks, who is Jesus Christ? The work of Christ asks, what did he do on our behalf to win our salvation?

Joe:

So when we’re talking about Christology, the point here isn’t to just be arcane for no reason. We’re talking about one of two things, either who Jesus is or what he’s done, and many Christians understand it’s important to understand what Jesus has done, but I would argue if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ and you don’t care who Jesus is, that’s a big problem. And this is uniquely a big problem in Christianity because unlike other world religions, as Bishop Robert Barron has pointed out, Jesus makes a message front and center about himself. He famously asked in Matthew 16, who do you say that I am?

CLIP:

That’s why Jesus compels a choice in the way that no other founder does. Muhammad to his infinite credit never claimed to be gone. Muhammad said, I’m a messenger. I’ve received a message from God. Moses to his infinite credit, never claimed to be divine. Moses had received the law from God and gave it to the people. The Buddha, to his infinite credit, never claimed to be divine. What he said was, I found a way then there’s Jesus who doesn’t say, I found a way. He says, I am the way. How strange that is. He doesn’t say I found a truth. Let me tell you about it. I am the truth. He didn’t say, Hey, there’s this new mode of life that I’ve discovered. Let me share it with I am the life.

Joe:

This is why Jesus takes the disciples up all the way to the region of Esea Philippi, just to ask them two critical questions, not about his teaching, not about his actions, but about his person who he is. He asks First, who do men say that the son of man is? And when they give the answers and they’re all over the place, he then asks, but who do you say that I am? And as a question, each one of us is compelled in some way to answer. Now, in his great defense lane, Craig gives in some ways a good answer to that question. When asked about Jesus being a hundred percent God and a hundred percent man, he’s going to nuance that, but affirm that he believes in the full humanity and full divinity or maybe the very humanity in the very divinity of Christ,

CLIP:

We’re often taught that he was 100% God and 100% man. Is that logically

Problematic? I think the problem is that that is misleading Kevin, and I think that Godfrey did a good job of explaining what he meant when he says Christ is fully God and fully man. He doesn’t mean he’s a hundred percent God and a hundred percent man, which would be a contradiction rather. He means he has a complete divine nature and he has a complete human nature. And in that sense, he was fully God and fully man. But the creeds actually use a different expression. They say Vemo truly God and truly man. And I think that’s a better and less misleading way of expressing the fact that Christ had two complete natures human and divine to say he was truly human and truly God.

Joe:

So here’s where we are going to agree on basic Christology. Christ is one person. He’s a divine person, and this is something that often throws people. He’s not a human person. He’s not a human being in the strict sense, but he does have a full human nature and he has a full divine nature. So what does that mean? Now, look, there’s no way around getting into some deep waters and actually using our intellects to try to better understand Jesus. That’s a good thing, but I admit it can be a little bit of a stretch. See, here’s my best explanation. At a simple level, person refers to who you are, nature refers to what you are. So there’s one who when we’re talking about Jesus, he is one person. There are not two actors, Christ, that God who’s maybe roommates in the same body with Jesus the man.

No, that’s not it. And so when you hear people talk about the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, and they’re treating them as two separate people, no, Jesus is the Christ. This is one person, one actor, one agent, one who if you will, but this who has two completely distinct unmixed aspects to who he is. He is on the one hand fully God and on the other hand fully man and who he is. Another way of saying that is what he is. What he is is truly God. What he is is also truly man. So far, I think William and Craig would agree with everything I’ve just said. The problem is if you were to press him or press the early Christians about what it means for Jesus to be fully human or truly human, they’re going to give very different answers to those questions.

So even though on paper he’s affirming the full humanity of Christ, in reality he denies it. We can look at that by asking a few more specific questions starting here, did Jesus have Jesus have a human mind and a human soul? Now, maybe you’ve never thought about that question, totally understandable, but scripture and 2000 years of Christianity have said, yes, he does. And this matters. I mean this comes up actually over and over again in theological debates, but you see glimmers of this directly on the pages of scripture, for instance, at the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus says, my soul is very sorrowful even to death, remain here and watch with me. He’s obviously talking about his own soul, seemingly his human soul. He’s not just saying the second person of the trinity in his divinity is really tired right now or sorrowful or overwhelmed, no, he’s talking about this human experience, this extremely human experience of overwhelming sorrow that he’s feeling and he refers to it at the level of his soul.

Saint Augustine in one of his commentaries on John talks about how this is part of what it is for Jesus to be truly man, that he’s not man as being flesh alone. In other words, when we see Jesus is fully God and fully man are truly God and truly man, we don’t mean that. He just has a human body that would not be you are not just a body. And so if Jesus is going to take on all of humanity, he can’t take on just a body because that’s not the fullness of humanity. He’s like us in all things, but sin that includes things like a soul, that includes things like a mind and as we’re going to see intellect and will. So Jesus to take on the fullness of our humanity has to have not just a human body, but also a soul. As Augustine says, as man consists of flesh and soul.

So in Christ there is a complete humanity for he would not have assumed the baser part the body and left the better behind the mind or the spirit, the soul seeing that the soul of man is certainly superior to the body. Why would he take on our human body and not our human soul? And then he asks, since then there is entire manhood in Christ. What is Christ the word? And man, he is both the divine logos and also truly man, what is the word? And man, well, if you were to say it another way, you’d have to say, well, you’ve got the divine logos. You have a human soul and of a human flesh. And then he says, keep hold of that for there have been no lack of heretics on this point. That recipe, if you were that Christ is made up of divine logos, human soul, human body, heretics get parts of that wrong.

They’ll say he’s either not fully divine or he is not completely human. He doesn’t have a human mind, doesn’t have a human body, and he says, these heretics expelled from Catholic truth have denied this, but nevertheless, they still persist like thieves and robbers who enter not by the door to lay the snares around the fold. Now, notice how Augustine talks about this. His view is that people like he gives the example of the apollinarianism who deny that Jesus Christ has a soul. He says they are heretics and not only heretics, he refers to them using the language of John 10, the passage he’s commenting on as thieves and robbers who are destroying the flock of Christ. Now, notice as well, he’s going to explain why he acknowledges, look, the arians say Jesus is the divine word and he has human flesh, but they deny that he has a human soul, and as a result he says they take away Christ’s reason by losing their own.

In other words, some of the Alin argued, well, there might be some kind of human, some kind of soul in the body of Christ that he can have animal affections, he can have emotions, he can have the ability to metabolize all these things that are powers of the soul, but he doesn’t have rationality. So he has an animal, soul and the divine logos because they have to have some way of saying, if you’re not going to say Christ as a human mind and a human soul, then how does he experience anything in the body? Because we can understand the connection between mind and body. We can understand the soul body connection, in which case I process information I’ve received through my senses and then spiritually can make sense of it through this faculty of the soul. Look, I’m doing a lot of anthropology here. I realize maybe you’ve not thought about a lot of this, and I’m sorry that some of this is deep waters, but this is important to get straight.

Your body doesn’t think on its own, it doesn’t feel on its own. All of that is experienced through you at the level of your soul. And so if you deny that to Jesus Christ, how do you make sense of him feeling anything or experiencing anything in this human way? And the apollonian had to come up with some other idea, and so some of them would come up with the idea that maybe he had an animal soul. And so the difference between that and a human soul, it doesn’t have rationality. And so Augustine makes the quip that they’ve taken away Christ’s reason at the price of their own that this is an irrational view and Augusta is not alone on this. If you go to the East, St. Gregory Nazi Unen warns about this in very concrete terms. He has a letter where he warns about the nature of this, and he says, if anyone has put his trust in Christ as a man without a human mind, he’s really bereft of mind and quite unworthy of salvation, strong words for that which he has not assumed, he has not healed.

I’m going to quote that line again because this is a very famous line in Patristic thought, what Christ has not assumed he has not healed. So let’s make sure we get this straight. The reason Jesus takes on our humanity is to heal our humanity. So if you think healing took on part of our humanity, then you only think he healed part of our humanity. The flip side being that which is united to his godhead is also saved. This is absolutely crucial to our understanding of the incarnation and of the cross. This is how the early Christians made sense of why Jesus became man. If he is going to do these things for us, we should understand why and one of the reasons why at the very heart of the reasons why even is to heal this problem of sin by becoming like us in all things but sin.

And so Gregory says, if only half Adam fell, like if he only fell bodily and not spiritually, then that which Christ assumes and saves maybe half also. But if the whole of his nature fell, that is if Adam felt the level of body and soul, it must be united to the whole nature of him that was begotten and so be saved as a whole. So that’s historic Christian thought. This is the belief of the Catholic church. It’s the belief of the Orthodox church. Mainstream Protestantism believes all this as well if they’re deep enough in history to have even kind of thought about these questions, but then take William Lane, Craig’s views on this and he is an apollon or a neo apollon if you prefer, and that’s not me just throwing that out as a pejorative. He acknowledges that he is.

CLIP:

We’ve been looking at a proposed model for understanding the deity and humanity of Christ. I suggested first that we need to affirm with the council of Chasin that Christ has two complete natures human and divine. Secondly, I suggested last week that we can think with a pollin of the logos, the second person of the Trinity as being the soul of the human nature of Jesus Christ. In virtue of the union of the logos with the flesh, Christ’s human nature becomes complete so that he has a complete human nature as well as a complete divine nature.

Joe:

I want to make sure that you understood what he was saying there. He’s saying with the Pollin who he cites explicitly that Christ does not have a human mind and a human soul. Instead, his human nature is the union of the divine logos, the second person of the Trinity who’s existed from all eternity having his own soul, his own rationality. This is going to be partly due to his own bad Trinitarian theology. We’re going to get into that later. These two are very much connected with each other that Christ supplies, as it were, the rationality for this animal body. Now, if you think I’m being unfair to him, I want you to continue to hear him in his own words. In a q and a in 2023, he says, one of those persons of the trinity, he means here became incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth.

He has a soul only in virtue of his incarnation. That is to say the body’s soul composite that is Jesus’s concrete. Human nature has a soul. It is a human soul in virtue of it being united with a hominin body, but I maintain his soul was not merely human but also divine. So notice he’s seemingly mixing together whether this is a human soul or the divine logos, this thing that if you remember what I was saying before, Caldon is very clear. This is not a mingling of nature that would be heretical and then referring again to himself as a nepo Christian, he says on my neopolitan, Christology, Christ’s soul is the logos the second person of the trinity. Well, here’s the thing. The second person of the trinity, the logos is uncreated. So one of two things is possible. Either he has an uncreated divine intellect and not a human soul, or he has an uncreated divine intellect and a created human soul.

It cannot be both of those. There’s no way to mix those two things together and kind of 50 50, his intellect, both sides agree that he has divine intellect. We’ll actually get into that because it gets a little more complicated on Craig’s side, but certainly traditional Christians would believe Christ is fully the second person of the Trinity, but also has a created human intellect just as he has a created human hand that this is all part of the incarnation. Something is made that did not exist before. That includes both the body of Christ but also the human mind of Christ, the feelings of Christ, the emotions, right? All of that stuff is created in the incarnation. Craig denies part of the incarnation. He claims that part seemingly he claims that part didn’t happen. He says explicitly that Christ does not have a merely human soul as on the traditional Orthodox Christology, he says that explicitly he rejects Orthodox Christology on the incarnation of Christ.

That is a bad sign if you’re following him as a Christian. He doesn’t think Christ fully came in the flesh. When John warns in one John about those who deny the incarnation as antichrist, he partially denies the incarnation. That’s what’s happening here. Now, granted, it’s on a more technical point, if you want to put it that way, than someone who just says Jesus never came bodily, but the fact that he came bodily but not spiritually would be just as heretical and just as wrong. Craig goes on to say this thing that he said in that clip I just played that allegedly the logos, the second person of the Trinity completes the human nature of Christ by giving the body of Christ the property’s sufficient for a rational soul. That soul because it belongs to a human being, he says, may be truly called human but not merely human.

Now, that’s just wrong. I don’t know another way to put that because you’ve now blended the two unblended natures of Christ. So you have Christ seemingly without a human soul or with some weird demi God soul that’s parts human, part divine, and he’s calling it a human soul because it’s giving animation to his human body, but it doesn’t become a human soul automatically because of that, I want to be very clear. Otherwise a pollin would be right, and the whole reason a pollin is condemned as a heretic is because that doesn’t work. Now, Craig acknowledges that a pollin was condemned. He had to do an episode called Does Dr. Craig have an orthodox Christology? And if you’re have in an episode saying, am I a heretic on Christology? I don’t know. That’s not a good sign. But he says that a Pollin’s original view was that Christ didn’t have a complete human nature.

He had a human body, but he didn’t have a human soul, and Craig thinks he can get around that because he realizes there’s a problem with that because it means that Jesus isn’t really truly human. He’s partially human. That calls into question the reality of the incarnation and also the effectiveness of Christ’s death on our behalf since he doesn’t share our nature what human nature is not just bodis, it’s also the position of a human soul. Craig wants to have it that he shares our body but doesn’t share our soul. That is a problem if we want our souls to be saved.

Again, Craig thinks he can get around this by making a human nature out of a divine soul and a human body, but that is exactly where a pollin tried to go and was condemned as a heretic for it, that you can’t just say, well, the logos can supply the rationality, self-consciousness, freedom of the will and so forth, but that’s what he wants to argue. In other words, that Christ has a divine will. He doesn’t have a human will. We’re going to get into all of that, and he says when he brought these properties to the animal body, the human body, it completes it and makes it a human nature. So notice again, he’s doing the exact same thing a pollin did of trying to take to make a human taking an animal’s sensation, rationality or lack of rationality, an animal’s soul basically. He doesn’t call it a soul, but all of the aspects of an animal, combining that with the divine logos and trying to make a human nature out of it that it doesn’t work, that’s not the incarnation.

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