Reasonable Faith

Kevin Harris: Several people have called our attention to a satirical YouTube video that features you. In fact, it's surprising a lot of people have called our attention to a satirical YouTube video that features you. It is from Lutheran Satire and stars two animated Irish characters named Donall and Conall, who humorously confront well-known people. These videos are entertaining and produced to present Lutheran doctrine in a clever way, and you're one of their latest victims.

First, let's just deal with the popular meme that they bring up: that you look like the former lead singer of Van Halen, David Lee Roth. None of us knew that until you shaved your beard off, Bill, but at least you look like a rock star.

Dr. William Lane Craig: I remember several years ago, when I was out at Talbot School of Theology for a philosophy colloquium, my colleague Professor David Horner brought two photos to the event: one of David Lee Roth and one of me. Honestly, Kevin, they looked like identical twins. I was absolutely stunned at the resemblance between the two of us, and since then, a number of people have commented on that as well.

With regard to the satirical Donall and Conall program, I want to say right at the beginning how much I appreciate the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Whereas other Lutheran synods, like the Lutheran Church in America, for example, have compromised theologically, the Missouri Synod has stood steadfast in defense of biblical truth and orthodox doctrine and has shunned the temptation to lapse into neo-liberal theology. I really appreciate and salute what these fellows are doing.

Kevin Harris: This video, "Donall and Conall Meet William Lane Craig," has only been out about a month, and it already has over 77,000 views and over 6,000 likes. We're going to check out the first clip now. By the way, they refer to anyone with whom they disagree as "Patrick." I think it comes from a video they did on Saint Patrick, that they disagreed with him on his view of the Trinity. So they call you Patrick throughout the video. Here's the first clip.

Guest (Male): Okay, Patrick, tell us a bit more about your rejection of young earth creationism.

Oh, I'm not David Lee Roth. I'm William Lane Craig.

Has anyone told your face and hairline that, Patrick?

Well, nevertheless, I find young earth creationism to be an embarrassment. I mean, to suggest that the earth is only 6,000 years old is intellectually indefensible. It flies in the face of all the best scientific evidence.

Okay, Patrick, but if a Christian believes the Bible is in fact the infallible, inerrant Word of God, and if the Bible asserts that the earth is in fact young, shouldn't that trump the consensus of the scientific community concerning the age of the earth for said Christian?

Kevin Harris: Well, so young earth creationism is apparently going to be the topic, Bill. What about their scientific consensus versus the Bible contention?

Dr. William Lane Craig: Ask yourself this question, Kevin. Suppose that the Bible taught that the earth is a flat disk surmounted by a firmament like an inverted bowl resting on the horizon, in which the sun, moon, and stars are engraved. It's often been alleged that this is what the cosmological worldview of the Old Testament is.

Now, suppose that were the case. Is the Bible-believing Christian forced to sacrifice his intellect and to affirm that the earth is flat and that there is a hard canopy over the earth in which the sun, moon, and stars are embedded? I don't think so. I think in a case like that, you need to re-examine your interpretation of the scripture to see if you haven't perhaps misunderstood them.

Or if you haven't, then I think this is going to force you to revise your doctrine of inspiration in order to accommodate the truth. Believing that the world is only 10,000 to 20,000 years old, Kevin, is really just about as bad as believing in a flat earth.

Kevin Harris: Your animated character gives an answer to their last question in this next clip. Here is clip number two.

Guest (Male): Ah, but this is where you've gone wrong. The Bible doesn't teach that the earth is young. You see, while Genesis 12 and beyond is indeed literal history, Genesis 1 through 11 isn't intended to be seen that way. It's intended to be seen as another genre known as mytho-history.

What the heck is mytho-history, Patrick?

It's the B-side to Runnin' with the Devil.

No, mytho-history is stories that reflected a certain truth of how the Israelites understood their origins as a people. But these stories aren't depicting real events.

That's begging the question, Patrick. Patrick, begging the question is a logical fallacy that is committed when a proposition which requires proof is assumed without proof.

For example, let's say Conall and I are debating which of these is your greatest album.

I'm not that guy.

I say it's Eat 'Em and Smile, Patrick.

But I say it's Fair Warning, and to make that case, I say Fair Warning is the best album because it has the best songs. Now, because an album is simply a collection of songs, all I'm really saying here is Fair Warning is the best collection of songs because it's the best collection of songs. Behold the circular logic here, Patrick.

So, if I wish to make a compelling case that Fair Warning is indeed the best album, I can't simply assume the songs are the best. I'd have to provide some evidence for that claim. Does that make sense, Patrick?

Yeah, I'm not into rock music. I mostly just listen to really smug barbershop quartet.

Least surprising thing I have ever heard. Nevertheless, Genesis 1 through 11 is simply a collection of stories. So all you're really saying here is this collection of stories is mytho-history because the stories are mytho-history. So to avoid begging the question, you'd have to actually provide some evidence for this claim. Can you do so?

Kevin Harris: Okay, so they have your character define mytho-history, and then they define begging the question, which they accuse you of. And by the way, Bill, I've known you for over 20 years and I've never known you to like smug barbershop quartet music.

Dr. William Lane Craig: Actually, I do like barbershop! But they're quite right in saying that you need to provide evidence for your genre analysis of any piece of literature. Unfortunately, they have misrepresented my answer to that question.

To give an analogy, Richard Burridge is a New Testament scholar who has classified the Gospels as closest to the genre of ancient biography. How did he arrive at this conclusion? Burridge did this by looking at paradigm examples of ancient biographies, like Plutarch's *Lives* of famous Greeks and Romans, and then making a list of the family resemblances exhibited by them, which he then was able to show that the Gospels also exhibit.

They have the same family resemblances, and that enabled Burridge to convince most New Testament scholars today that the Gospels do most closely resemble the literary genre of ancient biography. This is exactly the same method that I adopt in my book, *In Quest of the Historical Adam*. I'm able to identify ten family resemblances that are characteristic of myth, and then I show in great detail in the book how Genesis 1 to 11 exhibits eight out of ten of these family resemblances. That supports the genre analysis that these chapters are, in some measure at least, quasi-mythical.

Kevin Harris: Speaking of family resemblances, here's this next clip. They play an excerpt from your interview with Gavin Ortlund, who they also think looks a little like you. Here is clip number three.

Dr. William Lane Craig: Oh, I don't think Gavin looks like me at all, but it is funny. Talking about family resemblances in the context of this David Lee Roth bit is rather ironic.

Guest (Male): Can you do so?

Of course. Consider this. In chapters two and three, God is described as a humanoid being, forming man out of the dust of the earth and blowing into his nose, and doing surgery on Adam to take out a rib, and walking in the garden in the cool of the day, calling to Adam in his hideout. I don't think that the Pentateuchal author plausibly took these descriptions literally. These are anthropomorphic descriptions.

Why are you being interviewed by a younger version of yourself, Patrick?

Now stop that. But more importantly, Patrick, God walks around with Abraham in Genesis 18 and wrestled with Jacob in Genesis 22, both of which you have already conceded are not mythological anthropomorphizing, but real historical events. So how does the author of Genesis himself indicate that what happens in the garden is mythological anthropomorphizing, but the later stuff is actual history?

Kevin Harris: You know, I think it needs to be said at this point, Bill, I don't think the writers have read your book, *In Quest of the Historical Adam*. I know that this is a brief satirical video, but comedy or not, if the goal is to teach, then the writers should be familiar with what you've written. You've addressed a lot of this. Anyway, they give examples of anthropomorphic descriptions in Genesis 18 and 22, apparently to rebut that these descriptions only occur in Genesis 1 through 11, Bill.

Dr. William Lane Craig: The point that they're trying to make here is not entirely clear. I mean, surely they would agree that these anthropomorphic descriptions of God in Genesis 2 and 3 are not to be understood literally. So what exactly is their point?

Well, if I understand them, it seems to be that what is described in Genesis 2 and 3 is a theophany, or an appearance of God in physical form, such as we have in Genesis 18 to Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre. Now, in the book, I give two reasons why I think that the narratives of Genesis 2 and 3 are not describing a divine theophany.

First, the language of theophany is missing. It does not say, for example, that "Then the Lord appeared to Adam, saying," etc., etc. But secondly, some of the narratives cannot possibly be theophanies because Adam isn't even conscious at the time to be appeared to. For example, when God puts Adam to sleep and does surgery on him to construct Eve, Adam is not even conscious, and so he cannot be seeing an appearance of God. Rather, I think these are plausibly anthropomorphic descriptions of God and therefore to be taken figuratively and not literally.

Kevin Harris: Next up, they play another excerpt from your interview with Gavin. Check it out, clip number four.

Guest (Male): Well, then how about this example? The Pentateuchal author could not have believed that the primordial waters of creation described in Genesis 1 to 3 would have drained away in just 24 hours.

Patrick, the waters at the Red Sea also can't split in half, yet you're fine with that being actual history. So can you please explain what from the actual text of the Bible indicates that the scientifically implausible stuff happening post-Genesis 11 is miraculous, but the scientifically implausible stuff happening before that is mythological?

Kevin Harris: Well, so God could have supernaturally drained the water, Bill.

Dr. William Lane Craig: I think the answer to their question is easy, Kevin. In the story of the parting of the Red Sea, God's causal activity is described. God causes the Red Sea to part. But in Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 to 3, there is no causal activity on the part of God mentioned at all. The waters simply drain.

The apt comparison to Genesis 1 would be Genesis 6, when the flood waters of Noah's flood drain away. Noah's flood returned the earth to its primordial condition with the seas covering even the mountains. And in Genesis 6, it took months on end for the flood waters to drain away and the mountains to appear. There is no reason to think that the author, in discussing the primordial waters at the beginning, thought that they drained away at some sort of breakneck speed supernaturally caused by God.

Kevin Harris: And here is the next clip, which begins with your animated character.

Guest (Male): Look, I don't know why you ridiculous young-earthers can't see this. We know the creation account isn't literal because the Pentateuchal author himself knew it wasn't literal.

No, I'm saying the Bible must teach that the earth is billions of years old because we know the earth is billions of years old.

Look, obviously the Bible wants us to know that the Adam referenced in Luke's genealogy is the mythological Adam, but the Adam Paul mentions in Romans 5 is of course the historical Adam born approximately 750,000 years ago. Jump!

Kevin Harris: That is not the first time you've been buzzed, Bill. Lawrence Krauss brought a portable buzzer to your debate series in Australia. But what do you make of that clip, the begging the question and the whole bit?

Dr. William Lane Craig: Yeah, I think it's just a series of misrepresentations, clever one-liners that would need to be discussed in a serious way. This isn't serious criticism.

Kevin Harris: Couple more clips we'll look at. Here's the next one. We'll go to mytho-history again.

Guest (Male): Come on, this is just common sense.

I don't know, Patrick. My common sense says that mytho-history is not actually a kind of literary genre that the Bible itself employs. Rather, it's a category you made up to separate the biblical stories you find embarrassing to take literally from the ones you don't. Hmm, what say you to that, Patrick?

Kevin Harris: Well, Bill, they seem to indicate that you coined the phrase mytho-history.

Dr. William Lane Craig: Well, this is like saying that you just made up the genre of poetry to describe the Psalms, or you made up the genre of apocalyptic literature to describe the book of Revelation, just because you're embarrassed by the literal interpretation of that literature. And that would be obviously wrong. Rather, those who do literary analysis use criteria to classify literature according to various genres, like poetry, apocalyptic literature, ancient biography, epistolary literature, and so on and so forth.

I first heard the categorization of Genesis 1 to 11 as mytho-history from the Old Testament scholar Bill Arnold. And Arnold got it from a very eminent assyriologist named Thorkild Jacobsen. As I read Jacobsen's work, it seemed to me that it was a brilliant analysis of this kind of literature, which is a fusion of real events, real people that actually occurred, that lived, but then they are described in the very figurative and mythological language which is characteristic of myth. So I think, like Arnold, that Jacobsen's genre classification is quite compelling.

Kevin Harris: The final clip now. It begins with your character answering their last question. Here is your cartoon answer.

Guest (Male): Well, I say you need to just learn philosophy and physics. I'm way too smart to believe in a young earth. And if you're telling me I have to read the Bible the same way that dweeb from Answers in Genesis does, well then I might as well jump! Jump! Go ahead and jump into the sky!

Kevin Harris: Okay, well, it ends with what else, a Van Halen song. Bill, the main writer is part of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, as you mentioned earlier. My research into it indicates that they officially hold to a young earth, although they don't have an official position on the age of the earth.

They do encourage their pastors and leadership to teach young earth creationism, but from what I've read, they also recognize that many in the synod do not agree with a young earth position. But if you'll wrap it up for us, one thing I'm curious about is what it's like for you to be satirized? Are you flattered? Are you amused? Do you feel a little attacked, or what are your emotions there?

Dr. William Lane Craig: Well, I had hoped to have a good laugh at myself in this video. I remember when I was a boy, my father once told me, "Don't be afraid to laugh at yourself." He said the comedian Jack Benny had made a fortune making fun of himself. And so that's not a problem.

But honestly, I just didn't think this video in particular was very funny. In fact, that last clip, I think really crossed the line. It was downright insulting. I think that the problem here, Kevin, is that there are very serious issues at stake that will impact our churches and youth. I think these fellows are doing a disservice by not seriously engaging with these really difficult questions. They are going to be in danger of alienating our youth by thinking that biblical fidelity requires a commitment to young earth creationism, which I think is a terrible mistake.

Kevin Harris: Hey, just one quick word before we go. If this podcast has encouraged you, I want to encourage you to consider giving back. Reasonable Faith is a completely listener-supported ministry, and your donation helps us do what we do each year, whether that's Dr. Craig's writing of his systematic philosophical theology, our animation videos on the attributes of God, or the podcast you just listened to. Help us reach more people with the truth of the Christian faith by partnering with us today. Just go to reasonablefaith.org and click donate. Every gift makes a difference. And thank you very much.