William Lane Craig on Creation

This is an interesting series Craig has been doing on Creation. I respect him quite a bit for this one in particular. He got quite a bit of push back from members of his audience. Very interesting to hear that he favors a mytho-historical interpretation rather than any type of local events that are historical etc.

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Thanks for sharing this, Joel. And if I’m not mistaken, these appear to have been uploaded as recently as August of this year? Current stuff. And it sounds like he’s got lots of audience that are far removed from their own comfort zones in taking on board what he has to say. It takes a lot of courage to speak as he does in such a venue. Kudos to Mr. Craig!

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Yeah - and to remark a bit more on that … He refers to Walton a bit, in approving though qualified references. I’m sure any appeal to Walton at all puts one in dangerous waters in a lot of venues - if they know who Walton is at all.

WLC took pains in your video clip above to identify with one young questioner’s challenge that the Bible doesn’t leave room for anything less than a universal interpretation for things like the flood. WLC agreed and concludes that therefore one needs to revisit just what the doctrine of inerrancy means given that it is plain that a global flood didn’t happen in the way that YECs want. But he does agree that the Bible describes it that way. I liked his conclusion at the end of this clip, where WLC concludes that people …

try to save literal truth by localizing it, and I’m not persuaded that that’s legit. I think it’s better to say that we’re dealing with a genre of literature that doesn’t need to be pressed for a kind of wooden literalism.

Go WLC! One doesn’t need to expend much effort poring over scriptures to observe the breakdown of general YEC exegetical approach here. There is obvious hyperbole in various places (that are not the commonly agreed genres of poetry or praise) where historical narrative is in full play. How often do we read of this or that king or of locusts having their deadly influence “over the whole earth” when it very obviously was never meant to mean over the planet as we would understand that today. And yet the YEC approach of “well … it’s what the Bible plainly says” simply fails them at all those points. And on their insistence that everything is either 0% or 100%, only one point of failure is needed for their approach to be exposed for what it is.

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Yikes! I put this in another post, having missed this one on the same link, so will move my comment here and close it.

I was listening to the video of William Lane Craig, and he brought up that the YEC view requires a radical change in how we view biblical inspiration, as it makes scripture teach false concepts. As I understand it, he states that the cosmology, geology, biology and linguistic ideas held in the young earth model have been falsified, proven false, so to hold that scripture teaches them is to say that the Bible teaches untruth. Therefore, if you hold that scripture is true in all it teaches, the literalist interpretation must be either be wrong, or it accepts the inspiration of false teaching. Therefore,we must look at other possibilities, and the mytho-historical view seems to be the best candidate.
This of course is nothing new, but I felt it helps clarify the thought process in my mind. The audience obviously struggled a bit with this in the question and answer period, which was interesting to see. While the whole thing is worth watching, if pressed for time, the exchange at around 17 minutes gives a good idea of his position, where he speaks of the high cost of holding a young earth view.

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It does make me curious as to the setting for these lectures. A seminary or university class perhaps? He seemed to know the audience members by first name.

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Looks like it’s part of his Defenders online class. Here’s the landing page on his website:

No idea where they’re being hosted, but he’s streaming them every Sunday (afternoon in the UK, morning in the US). He streams them on Facebook as well.

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He’s pretty brave. I wonder if those stances have lost him some supporters.

Interesting–I felt the pain of those guys asking him about the Bible being incorrect–and the pain of WLC in discussing it with them. It’s not an easy topic to discuss, but we all do grow through that.

It appeared that both he and the questioners responded with grace. I’ll have to look at some more in the series, …but 27 and counting is a lot of videos.

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