In this episode, Trent reveals the four living Protestant apologists and thinkers that have shaped his work and helped him become a better apologist.
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Today we’re going to talk about four Protestant apologists who have helped to form me to be the apologist that I am today. These are individuals who have a commitment to truth, a commitment to holiness. I really respect them. Even though I disagree with them on various issues, including issues that are very important, I have still recognized in them valuable qualities when it comes to explaining and defending the Christian faith and Christian morality. I think you’ll see that as well. I’m so excited to talk with my guests today.
Let’s jump right into it. In the number four spot we have Randal Rauser. Randal is a professor at Taylor Seminary up in Canada. He is a theologian. He’s also well-versed in philosophy, especially in epistemology. You go online and you watch his debates and dialogues that he has with atheists. He is tremendous in the skills that he deploys. He’s artful, intelligent, incredibly polite, though he has an advantage in being polite because he’s Canadian and it’s put into their DNA. Even still, a great role model and a good role model when it comes to intellectual honesty and not just putting arguments out there because they sound good, but because they are good, and not just settling for cheap answers.
This is one thing that has always bothered me sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, when I read apologetics, I read different apologists, be they defenders of Mere Christianity or defenders of Catholicism. I always get annoyed when I read someone and it just seems like they haven’t really studied the material in depth and they’ve settled for cheap or easy answers. They’re not confronting the real big objections that are out there, but Randal is very good at that. In fact, he’s written a recent book that gets to the heart of that idea that we have to confront the deepest questions and objections that are out there, sometimes that are manifesting themselves within our own subconscious, our own inner atheist, if you will. So Randal’s going to talk about that. Randall, thanks for being on again for the Council of Trent podcast.
Randal Rauser:
I’m honored to be joining you again, Trent, and thanks for all those kind words. I appreciate it.
Trent Horn:
Of course. Let’s jump right into it then. You have a new book out, and it really feeds into the theme I’m talking about here about qualities I admire in other apologists, especially Protestant apologists. I appreciate how you’re willing to be introspective and not settle for easy answers. I think that flows well into your most recent book. I believe the title is Conversations With My Inner Atheist. Is that right?
Randal Rauser:
That’s correct. Yeah. Right.
Trent Horn:
Tell us a little bit about the book and what does it mean to talk to our inner atheist? Why would you say that’s important?
Randal Rauser:
What it means is, I mean, it’s pretty common. I’m not going to say it’s universal, but it’s very common for Christians to have questions and doubts and to wrestle with them. The idea of an inner atheist is a sort of metaphor for just communicating that introspective spirit within us that often pushes back at things we’re told are true, wrestles with them, and to begin to be more intentional, not just about quashing or silencing the inner atheist within us, that questioning voice, but rather listening to what it has to say. Sometimes I think we will come up with good answers as a result of that questioning process. Sometimes we may continue to wrestle with it, but it’s a matter of just taking that voice seriously and the pursuit of truth that it represents.
Trent Horn:
Do you think sometimes … it’s interesting, we think of these doubts. It’s almost like we kind of personify them sometimes into another person who is distinct from us. I think sometimes, Randal, people almost personify that as like, you know, in the old cartoons, you have the angel and the devil on your shoulder. I think sometimes people think that these doubts, they’re coming from the devil on your left shoulder, I guess, cause the left-handed path is evil or something in the tradition of history. Let’s say it’s that little like devilish person and people think, oh, I’ve got to shut him up and not listen. I think from your work and your book, it seems that these doubts may be coming from a very good place, and maybe they’re going to help us believe something that’s true for better reasons because the reasons we’re using to believe in that true thing aren’t actually really good reasons. What would you think of that assessment?
Randal Rauser:
Yeah, I think that that’s right. I think that people often … I remember the old Warner Brothers cartoons where they would have the little devil and then the little angel, one on each shoulder. It is often like that, that we think of this as just a negative voice that you have to defeat rather than to listen to. I think sometimes that voice does raise some very significant things we have to consider, like Biblical violence, right? What did we do with the fact that God often appears to command or to commend actions that we would probably consider to be immoral, perhaps even crimes against humanity in other contexts. That voice challenges us to really wrestle with that and figure out how we resolve the tension.
Trent Horn:
That’s right. It’s interesting because I cover that in the last two chapters of my book, Hard Sayings, a Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties. When I read these passages, I do feel that voice, that inner atheist speaking really loudly in a way. I like in your book, in the Conversations With My Inner Atheist, another approach is that when our inner atheist or these doubts emerge, we don’t even necessarily have to have the right answer in response. We could say, well, they’re doubts, but there are other possible avenues to explore to overcome an objection or an argument. In my book I talk about, well, these passages endorsing Biblical violence could be literal. What are their implications? Someone who doesn’t think about listening to the inner atheist may just cling to that no matter what, but maybe if you listen to that inner atheist, it’ll up a whole new path, like maybe these passages are not literal descriptions. We don’t need to go down that path any further. You can check out my book for more on that.
I think it’s important, then, that we use this to open up our ability, to think more clearly about the faith and not to settle for easy answers. Settling for easy answers leads into my second question, which relate to the concepts of straw manning and steel manning. I think that that comes up with not just listening to our own inner doubts we have, but also the objections we hear from other people. How does straw manning and steel manning work into that? I think it also ties into talks with your inner atheist too.
Randal Rauser:
Yeah. Straw manning is a term that refers to an informal logical fallacy. What it means is when people want to respond to a position against their own view, and what they do is they respond to the weakest version of that objection and act as if that’s a strong version of the objection. That is what we would say a Pyrrhic victory. In other words, it’s a victory that is won at the cost of real intellectual honesty because just as we would want other people to treat our views in their strongest form, so we should treat and respond to their views in their strongest form. Steel manning is the opposite. It is an intellectual virtue in which we commit to presenting the objections of other people in the strongest form possible. Certainly that is something I’m trying to do in that book when I give voice to the inner atheist and let that voice express its objections in the strongest form possible.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, because I’ve read other apologetic works where the believer talks to the unbeliever and the unbeliever is not really well equipped in those conversations. I appreciate in your work, in Conversations With My Inner Atheist, the quote, unquote inner atheist, or the doubts we have, they articulate sometimes some hefty objections. I think sometimes, Randal, people are scared to look at objections and arguments because they may think, but what if I don’t have the answer to my inner atheist? How do you think Christians should handle doubts they may have, but to do so in a healthy way?
Randal Rauser:
Yeah. It’s a great question. I think the first thing we have to do is we do have to recognize that there is some degree of risk here, but it is a risk that I think is worth taking in pursuit of truth, and that we can trust the Holy Spirit as we do it prayerfully and thoughtfully to lead us into all truth. I would want to say as well that it should never just be an action that we undertake in our own ivory tower. It should be a communal enterprise, that we share our concerns with other people, let them speak into our life, that no person is an island unto themselves. As we wrestle through this, it shouldn’t be alone. As best we can, we should try to do it in community.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. I think sometimes people, and it’s interesting when I look at deconversion stories from atheists and other individuals, I think sometimes pride becomes a motivating factor, especially when it’s the deconversion of someone who previously was an apologist. For our listeners to understand, I think both Randal and I would agree some of the fiercest critics we have to deal with on the internet or people who launch objections to the faith aren’t just former Christians, they’re former Christian apologists, people who maybe went and studied this in grad school or have read a lot of books on the subject and called themselves apologists at one point. I think, Randal, sometimes these individuals, you get this attitude that, well, if I can’t come up with the answer to this problem or objection, then there must be no answer. As you said, we should approach this in more of a communal way.
Randal Rauser:
Yes, definitely, and to recognize as well that there is always going to be a place for mystery. It’s less about having every question answered than having the posture of willing to continue to wrestle, which is why I love the fact that the church is grafted into Israel. The word Israel comes from the fact that Jacob was willing to wrestle with the angel through the night. He received this name Israel. As we are willing to wrestle with God as well through a process of questioning and journeying and wrestling with doubt, it’s not less pious. That is actually a sign of our devotion and piety or commitment to God and to his church, that we’re willing to wrestle with the hard questions.
Trent Horn:
Amen to that. I love what the catechism says that, when we talked about the Holy Spirit guiding us. In paragraph 157 of the catechism, it says faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed trues can seem obscure to human reason and experience, but the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives. Then it has this quote, 10,000 difficulties do not make one doubt. You may be going through doubts, maybe things that you struggle with, but the very next paragraph of the catechism in 158 says faith seeks understanding. I think as long as we seek that understanding and do it in an intellectually honest way, not making straw man arguments, but steel manning the arguments of those who disagree with us and vigorously pursuing the truth, that will be good for our faith and the faith of other people. Randal’s been an excellent model for that. Definitely check out his work. Randal, where can people get a copy of this book and learn more about you?
Randal Rauser:
Well, as with so many things in life, you can buy it at amazon.com, and you can also find me online at randalrauser.com.
Trent Horn:
All right. Thank you so much, Randal, for being with us today.
Randal Rauser:
It’s been a delight. Take care.
Trent Horn:
Number two on my list is sort of a shared spot. These two individuals have a shared history when it comes to doing Protestant apologetics. One would be Greg Koukl, who is with Stand to Reason. What I appreciate about Greg is that he focuses not just on the what, not just on the answers, but something that I’ve tried to really bring to Catholic apologetics in the past seven to 10 years that I’ve been doing it, but the how. It’s not just about having the right answers. You need to have the right questions.
If you listen to me talk about how to defend the faith, you’ll know I quote Koukl a fair amount. I love the way he does it in his book Tactics. He talks about how, when you ask questions, you aren’t in the hot seat, you’re in the driver’s seat of the conversation. I’m really indebted to Greg Koukl and Stand to Reason for their approach of using the Socratic method to advance apologetics, as well as their ambassador approach. They show you you don’t just need to have the right questions, the right answers. You need the right approach. You need a gracious approach. Second Corinthians 5:20. St. Paul says, therefore we are ambassadors. Stand to Reason has this whole ambassador curriculum.
Now, the number two spot, as I said, was shared. It will be shared with Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason, and Scott Klusendorf, who was previously with Stand to Reason, but is now president of the Life Training Institute. Scott is one of the best pro-life apologists out there in the country, hands down. I’ve learned so much. If you know me, when I go and teach people about pro-life apologetics, I always teach them trot out a toddler. Get focused on the one issue. Trot out a toddler is Scott’s toddler, if you will. It’s his brainchild, his brain toddler. I’ve learned so much from him. When it comes to being an apologist, I really cut my teeth on pro-life apologetics, and to learn that well, I studied a lot of Scott’s methods. Scott was a mentor to me and a mentor also to Stephanie Gray, who you know that I’ve collaborated with, who does a great job. I’m glad that he’s able to join us. Scott, welcome to the Council of Trent podcast.
Scott Klusendorf :
Trent, great to be with you, my friend. How are you?
Trent Horn:
I’m doing well. It’s really a treat to be able to talk with you and other Protestants that have formed me. It was a neat trip down memory lane when I was reading through your bio and seeing the previous books that you had written. When you read a book, you think about you pick up a book sometimes in your library, and you have a flashback to the first time you picked up that book, going all the way back. I remember reading articles at Stand to Reason that went back when you were with Stand to Reason, you had written. One that really moved me to become a pro-life apologist and engage heal, because people always say to me, Trent, how do you handle people on the radio about abortion? How do you keep a cool head? I say, well, look, it’s prayer and practice and patience, but you need to have a particular approach. The article that you wrote that really moved me towards this way of engaging the issue of abortion was the Vanishing Pro-life Apologist. It’s a classic. When did you write that, back in 1995? Maybe it was a while ago.
Scott Klusendorf :
Well, it was 1990. I want to say it was first published in ’98, 1998. Yeah, that was a interesting time in pro-life circles because we were looking at an entire wing of the pro-life movement that wanted us to reshape our messaging away from the status of the unborn, to how abortion adversely impacts women. Now, you and I know, Trent, that there’s nothing wrong with talking about that, but that’s a second order argument, not a first order argument. Abortion is not wrong because it adversely affects women. It’s wrong because it intentionally takes the life of an innocent human being. That’s the main argument we need to advance, and the Vanishing Pro-life Apologist was an attempt to reframe the debate back where it needs to be, on the status of the unborn.
Trent Horn:
What would you say then is your most important tip? I guess you would say your most important tip then would be to focus on that one question. What are the unborn? To draw an analogy, when people say, well, abortion is wrong because look at these negative effects it has on post-abortive women. To me, that’s like saying, well, directly killing civilians in war is wrong because look at the post-traumatic stress disorder it causes in soldiers that do that. That’s true, but the main reason it’s wrong is because it’s wrong to directly kill an innocent person. I guess that’s your main tip, you always say in your talk, stay focused like a laser on that one question, and pro-life apologists make their mistakes when they don’t do that.
Scott Klusendorf :
Absolutely. In fact, let me give your audience the three most important words for being an effective pro-life apologist, and they can write these down if they want, but I think they’ll be able to track with them pretty easy. Word number one, syllogism. Now, some of your listeners may be going, wait a minute. What on earth is that? Well, a syllogism is simply premise, premise, conclusion. Word number two, syllogism. You want to guess what word number three is going to be? I think, you know.
Trent Horn:
I think I know.
Scott Klusendorf :
Yeah. Now, why would I say this? Trent, you know this because you’ve done as many debates as I have in recent date. Our opponents love to change the topic. We’ve got to keep the main thing, the main thing. If we stayed glued to our pro-life syllogism, we’re in the driver’s seat. What is our syllogism? Premise one, it’s wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Premise two, abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Conclusion, therefore abortion’s wrong. Now, as you know, maybe our syllogism is mistaken. Maybe there’s something wrong with it, but our opponents cannot just change the topic or call us names. They’ve got to show us where that argument goes wrong. You’ve done very well in your books and in your debates, we have good arguments for establishing the truth of that syllogism and our ability to keep the main thing, the main thing is what we need to do. The main thing here is the status of the unborn.
Trent Horn:
I remember in preparing and learning to be a pro-life apologist, I’ve studied lots of different people’s debates. I listened on audio CD. The great debate you had up in Canada. It’s still sold on Stand to Reason’s website.
Scott Klusendorf :
Is it really?
Trent Horn:
I saw it there. I mean, I don’t know if it’s still in the supply bin or what. I wanted to try to find an MP3 of it, but it was you versus two Canadian pro-choice, they sounded like student debaters. What I love is that your advice is perfect. We have to stay focused on the main thing. In that debate, when I first watched it, it gave me the insight of you have to be crisp, clear, and efficient in your response and always get back to that main thing. I remember it was a guy and a girl, and the girl, she was always in a weird kind of hyperactive, flustered state and talking to you. Mr. Klusendorf, would you say that abortions have always happened? For most pro-life apologists you might get off the track. Well, yes they have, but you know, and you start to fritter around, but you had just this ace reply. You said, yes, as has rape and slavery. That doesn’t mean that it’s right. Bam, and that’s something that we have to hone in our skills as we get engaged in these. Now, in conversations, we shouldn’t necessarily be as blunt or sharp with people who are honest seekers, but you see there’s something that we have to be efficient in our replies to stay on the main thing.
Scott Klusendorf :
Yeah, I think you’re right. In fact, in debate, sometimes it’s best to put your bullet points up front, put your strongest, most succinct responses, right up front to clarify things, then explain yourself. Too often what people do is they get into a lengthy explanation where you’ve got to wait for the punchline. You don’t have that option in debates as you full know.
Trent Horn:
Right. the last thing I want to ask you then, in your book, The Case for Life, which is a great resource on pro-life apologetics. In your book, The Case for Life, and it was written primarily for Protestants, which is kind of why I wrote my book Persuasive Pro-life, I said, I wish there was a case for life that had a little bit of a Catholic flavor to it. I know it had a Protestant audience to it because there was a whole chapter trying to show, hey, we should work with Catholics. It was a chapter on cobelligerence. Tell us a bit more about that.
Scott Klusendorf :
There tends to be, in some Protestant circles more than Catholic circles, this idea that we shouldn’t work with people of differing faiths. I think that’s a huge mistake. I have benefited greatly from Catholic thinkers like Robert George, Patrick Lee, Hadley Arkes, Francis Beckwith, as well as benefiting from your own book, Trent. My view has been I will work with anybody who wants to help me save children. The only requirement I have is I must never be asked to give up a central doctrine of my faith to do it. I’ve never been asked to. Nobody has ever said to me, you have to defend Catholic teaching against the reformation before we let you speak at this Catholic pro-life event. That has never happened, ever. Nobody’s ever asked me to do that. My view is this. We can admit that there are differences in our traditions, and there are. We don’t need to pretend that there aren’t. However, we agree that innocent human beings should not be intentionally killed.
If you think for a common parallel here, think of California right now. There’s brush fires everywhere. The state is on fire like crazy. Imagine, just to throw out a name, that you were living in Julian, California, up near Mount Palomar, and a brush fire is approaching your residents. You have neighbors that are willing to help you form a bucket brigade to put the fire out, and your neighbor is not like you. He’s not Catholic, he’s actually a Muslim. Your next neighbor is an atheist. The one two doors down is a Jew, and the one down the street is a liberal Protestant. Do you care what their theological beliefs are when there’s an immediate need to save human lives? No, you form a bucket brigade. If it’s not wrong for Protestants to work with Catholic selling insurance, why is it wrong to work with them to save children? That’s my basic argument. We can be true to our doctrinal distinctives, and as long as we’re not being asked to sacrifice those, I will work with anybody willing to help me save children.
Trent Horn:
I love the chapter in your book. You say that it’s inconsistent for the Protestant who won’t work with a Catholic to save children from abortion. The odds are that Protestant, if his own child was dying, is not going to ask the paramedic if he’s been saved. He won’t do that if it’s his own child in danger. He probably will work with whoever he needs to. Then if that’s the case, he should be able to work with other people in order to save the children. Then we can talk about our disagreements. I remember actually the last time we hung out in person was at the G3 conference in Atlanta, which is a well-known conference, a Calvinist conference. You yourself would describe yourself as a five point Calvinist, right?
Scott Klusendorf :
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. But even there, we hung out and we had dinner the night before the conference. You said it’d be great if I co-taught the pro-life section of the event that you were doing as a breakout. I wish I could go back in time and could have had my flight changed. If I had known that, I would have taken a later flight and done that, because we can work together and do that even if we have varying theological beliefs, because the main thing is the main thing, that there are 850,000 children aborted in this country every year. I think it was Greg Cunningham who said this? We are an army of part-time volunteers against a full-time army of individuals who are setting out to end these children’s lives. We need all the help we can get. I’m always grateful for your help. You’re doing so much good training. Where can people learn more about what you’re doing?
Scott Klusendorf :
Well, they look us up at prolifetraining.com, prolifetraining.com, or they can go to our social media pages on Facebook. We are on Instagram, Life Training Institute. I have an Instagram page. I have a Facebook page. You can also look me up there if you want, but I agree totally, Trent. We can acknowledge our theological distinctives, we can acknowledge we don’t agree on key doctrinal issues, but we are committed to human beings being image bearers, and we have a duty to save image bearers from unjust killing. I’m really glad that I get to partner with you in that endeavor. I’m very grateful for your good work doing that. You’ve made a real difference and I’m glad I get to stand in the trenches with you.
Trent Horn:
The number one Protestant role model, unfortunately, could not be on the podcast today, but that is William Lane Craig. Hopefully we’ll have him on for a future episode, but he’s done groundbreaking work in philosophy when it comes to defending the Kalam cosmological argument. He’s done great work defending the historicity of the resurrection. I think Dr. Craig, what’s interesting, what makes him the most famous are not his written works, which are excellent, but it’s his debates. I think when people watch his debates, when Catholics come to know William Lane Craig, they kind of go through a cycle with him. I tweeted about this a few months ago. It starts when you’re first getting involved in apologetics. This was how it was for me when I was invited by my Catholic friends in high school to their life teen youth group.
I wanted to investigate the claims of Christianity. so I looked up the best atheists and the best Christians online. The one Christian that popped up over and over again was William Lane Craig. Now, this was before you had YouTube sharing his debates, but I was able to download MP3 versions of Dr. Craig’s debates with numerous atheists. I was just amazed by so many things. First, his delivery. He had done high school debate previously. Dr. Craig delivers his points with a lot of poise. He’s polished. He’s practiced. He doesn’t go in there like some kind of bumbling fundamentalist. It’s not just that he has slick delivery. He is a genuine philosopher. When I’ve seen atheists online saying William Lane Craig is not a real philosopher, I often say to them, why don’t you read Craig’s works on the tensed theory of time and the tenseless theory of time, the works that he has published. A lot of them only know Craig from his YouTube debates. They haven’t read his academically published work.
What makes Craig so fascinating and unique is that he combines both a very intelligent analytic philosopher with being a brilliant and skilled communicator. It’s very hard to find both of those put together. When Dr. Craig has been invited to debate other well-known atheist academics, he ends up destroying them, but he does so in a gracious way because these atheist academics are usually hapless when it comes to communicating, and their arguments are actually fallacious or they are unsound, they’re bad arguments. Dr. Craig is this razor-sharp intellect, really great at pointing them out. What I said is that for a lot of Catholics, when you start to get into your faith and defend it, you see William Lane Craig’s debates on YouTube and you’re just blown away, and you think this is the greatest Christian apologist ever.
Then you start learning about more of this work and you see the conflicts it has with Catholicism, like the fact that Dr. Craig denies divine simplicity, that God has no parts, sorry, that William Lane Craig has kind of a strange view of God’s relationship to time. He believes that God is timeless, sans creation, but when God creates the world, he becomes temporal. He’s no longer timeless. Other more serious things would be that Craig denies that Christ had two wills, a human and a divine will. Craig has embraced kind of an ancient heresy called monothelitism. He also rejects the trues of the Catholic faith as well. He actually has a great dialogue with Bishop Barron about what he reveres about Catholicism, but also what obstacles he has towards Catholicism.
We will start thinking he’s the greatest apologist ever, and then they kind of veer into he’s a heretic. Why would you ever listen to anything he said says? Even taking all this into account, I think the appropriate middle ground is this. William Lane Craig has some quirky and even false ideas when it comes to philosophy and theology, but he’s done tremendous work when it comes to building up the kingdom. He has done excellent work at helping people come to see that atheism is false, that God exists, and that God raised Jesus from the dead. If it weren’t for him, I might not be a Christian today. It was his debates and his writings that helped me to overcome those objections to mere Christianity. I had to overcome those objections first, before I was able to assess the case for Catholicism. So I have a debt of eternal gratitude, so to speak to Dr. Craig.
I’m so grateful for that, not just for what he’s done to build up my faith, but in being a role model for me in how to build up the faith for others. He tries very hard to read the other side and to know the other side inside and out. I try to do that the same with my case, to be gracious, even with opponents. It’s a very hard thing to do, but to go into debates knowing that you are here to present the truth, not to take underhanded jabs at other people, to always be professional about it and to be prepared. In fact, when I go out and do debates, I really take a lot of notes from how Dr. Craig does them. Now, I’ve tried to improve on the method.
For example, as a genuine criticism, I think some of Dr. Craig’s approach when he does debates, they can feel a little bit robotic, like the way that he presents and speaks in his tone. Whenever I give advice for public speaking, I always tell people, don’t talk at the audience, talk to the audience. Sometimes he has this inflection in his voice. It’s sort of funny. I have here actually a video of him doing a presentation. He actually does a debate in Germany, in German because he learned German during his grad studies. He’s still fluent in it. When you listen to him speak, actually, whether it’s German or English, you can notice the same cadence and rhythm and how he gives his public lectures. Here, take a listen. Here’s Dr. Craig giving a talk in English. This is part of his opening statement in his debate with Sean Carroll.
William Lane Craig:
… provides significant evidence in support of premises in philosophical arguments, for conclusions having theological significance. For example, the key premise in the ancient Kalam cosmological argument that the universe began to exist is …
Trent Horn:
Okay, that’s Craig in English. Then this is a talk that he gave when he was on a tour in Germany, I think about four years ago.
William Lane Craig:
[foreign language, 00:30:27].
Trent Horn:
You may notice he has a little bit of a sing song approach when he gives his lectures or gives his presentations, which is actually good. That’s far better than being monotonous in your delivery, but he’s an excellent public speaker, excellent communicator. When he does debates, he is incredibly prepared. There’s only a few debates where he’s done poorly. In the vast majority of his debates, he is exceptionally prepared, far more than his opponent. That’s been a lesson, an example to me as I’ve learned and tried to do debates, to follow that similar kind of preparation.
It’s not for your ego, and by the way, I think Dr. Craig, he’s so genuine and humble. You can tell with him, it’s not about his ego. It’s not about him. It’s about Jesus Christ. He’s always pointing people to Jesus. He doesn’t want to lead it over to himself. That’s why whenever I go to events and people say to me, Trent, I love your work. Your books are great. Or, oh, your debates are awesome. The first thing that I respond to is I simply say, praise be to God. When somebody says to me, your book changed my life, your book led me to God, I always want to turn it back to God. I say, praise be to God that he used my writings.
Praise be to God that he used this to bring you into his kingdom, because that’s for all of us as Christians, whether you’re an apologist or not, when you start believing your own hype, when you think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread, that’s when you’re going to have problems. When people praise you, throw it back to God and say, praise be to God, how he’s given us talents and gifts and opportunities. Praise God for how he works in all of our lives. I praise God for how he’s worked through William Lane Craig’s life to bring me and other people into the kingdom of God. I’m just so grateful for that.
Here’s a clip from his interview with Cameron Bertuzzi, where he gives advice on how to do debates. You’ll see it’s actually pretty similar to the advice that I’ve given in previous podcast episodes when people will ask me for advice on how to do debates. Of course, Dr. Craig has done many more debates than I have. The reason I know this advice is because of him. As Thomas Edison said, I only see so far because I stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s some of his advice when it comes to doing debates, which is one of the most famous things Dr. Craig is known for.
William Lane Craig:
I first of all, read the work of my opponent. I read what he has written on these subjects. Then having done that, I prepare responses to the objections that he raises in his published work and will most likely raise in the debate. I craft these responses so that they are very brief, very pithy and can be quickly delivered because in a debate situation, time is so precious that you’re battling the clock all that all the time.
Interviewer:
Do you memorize these responses? Do you memorize them or, is it-
William Lane Craig:
I typically don’t memorize them. I prepare what are called briefs, like a legal brief. Then I file these briefs. When the opponent gets up and he raises, say, the problem of evil, I just reach into my notebook and pull out that brief. Then I’m ready to speak from it. The briefs serve as notes for speaking. In my rebuttal speech, I will simply go through a series of these briefs, responding to his objections or his arguments for his point of view. I’ll prepare both briefs, which are responses to his arguments for his view, and then briefs in answer to his anticipated objections to my view.
Interviewer:
Is this what you would recommend to apologists who are getting into debating atheists? Is this the same kind of method you would suggest they use?
William Lane Craig:
Yes, absolutely. For anyone who wants to have this kind of ministry, preparation is going to be critical. Then what they need to do as well is they need to get some experience. They need to take a course on debating techniques, and then they need to do mock debates before they ever go into a public debate. Otherwise they risk losing and dishonoring the gospel.
Trent Horn:
This is the exact same advice that I’ve given other people who’ve asked me that want to get into debates, and it’s what I followed as well. Now, I don’t do as many mock debates. What I will sometimes do is I will map out arguments. I will put an argument out there and I’ll try to devise in my head what kind of objections can be raised against it, or I might email it to other people and say, hey, how would you knock down this kind of argument?
Now, I will say that Dr. Craig is right, that if you have no experience in the debate realm whatsoever, you’ve got to get experience in some way. Otherwise if you just start out there … it’s always going to be rough when you start. I mean, I’ve grown since I did my first formal debate at the University of New Mexico, like eight years ago, I’ve grown a lot since then. Even when I did my first formal debate eight years ago, whether it was at the University of New Mexico or my debate with Dan Barker here in San Diego, I had done debate-like environments before that, because I traveled for a few years with Justice For All, a pro-life organization. We would do an open microphone. It’s kind of like a combination of dialogue and debate. We had a seminar called from debate to dialogue. We wanted to teach people to dialogue, not debate, but when we did these open microphone sessions on university campuses and talked to students about abortion, it would kind of turn into a debate format pretty quickly. I learned to think on my feet really quickly in that environment. I’m very grateful to the people at Justice For All for giving me that opportunity. In fact, I’ll probably have them on the podcast hopefully soon to share our inside stories of what that was like.
Once again, I think Dr. Craig gives great advice here, and he’s a great role model in that regard. Everyone on this podcast that I’ve talked to so far, Randal, Scott, also tying into Greg Koukl with Scott’s work at Stand to Reason. The point here is to show that with our Protestant brothers and sisters, we have differences, and they are very important differences we have to talk about. We must talk about the nature of authority, the nature of salvation, the nature of the Eucharist, the nature of the church. These are important things we need to talk about, but it’s also really important to be able to unite together, to bring people to the knowledge of the fundamentals of our faith, to help people come to know that God exists, that abortion is wrong, that Jesus rose from the dead, and that Christianity is true.
We need to get people to these fundamental truths and get as many people as we can to them, and then we move from the next step to have that dialogue amongst our brothers and sisters in Christ on these important elements of theology. We can have this cobelligerence that Scott Klusendorf talked about where we fight alongside one another against a culture of death, against a secular culture, but then also have times we’re face-to-face having civil dialogue about these important issues that divide Christians so that we can all eventually have unity in the one church that Jesus Christ established.
Once again, a big thanks to the Protestant theologians, apologists, and philosophers that have been on the show today, grateful for your work. Thanks for everything you’ve done to form me. I know that there are many Protestant listeners to this podcast who disagree with me on theology, but if I’ve been able to form you when it comes to making the case for life or the case for God, I’m grateful that God was able to work through my writings and my debates to be able to help you do that. Thank you all so much for listening, and I hope you have a very blessed day.
If you liked today’s episode, become a premium subscriber at our Patreon page and get access to member only content. For more information, visit trenthornpodcast.com.