Truth Unites - William Lane Craig Defends His View on the Historical Adam

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

In this interview William Lane Craig explains his views concerning the historical Adam and Eve, the proper interpretation of Genesis 1-11, and how Christians should respond to scientific claims concerning human origins. He also responds to some common questions about his new book on the historical Adam.   See Craig's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Historic...Also referenced is Jack Collins' book Reading Genesis Well: https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Genesi...   Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus, hosted by Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) author and Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites | One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truth... FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesP... Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Well, hey, everyone, welcome or welcome back to my channel. Truth Unites is a place for theology and apologetics, trying to do that in an ironic way. The word ironic means aiming for peace. And today I'm really excited to be talking with William Lane Craig, who is one of the world's leading Christian apologists and philosophers. And we're going to talk about his fascinating book, In Quest of the Historical Adam. So, Bill, for anyone who's not already familiar, maybe you can just give us an overview of the basic argument of, of the book. All right. The argument, Gavin, is basically twofold. First, that a plausible analysis of the genre of Genesis 1 to 11 shows that this is a sort of mytho history that commits us to the historical reality of Adam and Eve as universal human progenitors of mankind, but that need not be taken in a literalistic way. The second thesis then is that the idea that there was an original human pair from whom all humanity descended is compatible with the best scientific evidence today if we locate that pair somewhere around 750,000 years in the past. Okay. One of the things I really appreciated about your book is the sense of honesty and sincerity to follow the evidence wherever it leads, both biblical and scientific. Did you ever feel anxiety in the process of your study, and how did you work through that?

Well, I think you know how anxious I did feel about this. I was pressing the envelope on these issues and felt very uncomfortable. about it and had deep misgivings and doubts about what I was going through. And the way I basically dealt with it was by talking with other people whom I trusted and could be open with. And as you know, Gavin, you were one of those. I really bared my heart to you when we were at the Creation Project conference at Trinity, and we had a good discussion. I also went to the executive director of reasonable faith and one of our board members as I was approaching the conclusions that I was drawing to and ran it by them and said, what do you think? Am I off-based? Does this make you uncomfortable what I'm coming to? And they gave me their blessing and approval to keep following

the evidence as I saw. And I have felt good about the outcome now. Yeah, that's awesome. You start off the whole book by talking about what is at stake with having a historical Adam and Eve. Could you summarize a little bit of what you see is at stake with this issue? For those who accept the doctrine of original sin, which says that all of us are culpable and guilty for Adam's sin, the historical atom is absolutely essential to that doctrine because obviously we cannot be held culpable for the sin of a fictitious person that never took place. Now, for me, that isn't a very important consideration because I don't think the doctrine of original sin in that sense is clearly taught in Scripture. Rather, for me, the crisis that it occasions has to do with your doctrine of inspiration and your doctrine of Christ.

What I mean by that is that if it is correct that Scripture teaches that there was a historical Adam and Eve, and yet there wasn't, then you're going to have to revise your doctrine of inspiration in some way so that scripture can be inspired even though it teaches falsehoods. And you're going to need to revise your doctrine of Christ in such a way that Christ, even though he was divine, could hold false beliefs. Because I think Jesus clearly believed in the historical Adam and Eve. And so if there was no historical Adam and Eve, I think it's going to cause real reverberations in one's theology

in terms of inspiration and the doctrine of Christ. One of the claims we hear very frequently is that population genetics makes it impossible for there to be a single pair at the start of the human race. How much is that your concern in terms of what you're trying to address with this book? Initially, that was a major concern that prompted me to undertake

this study. A few years ago, I was visiting Trinity Western University and had a chance to meet and chat with Dennis Venema, who has claimed that it is virtually impossible scientifically for there to have been an original human pair from whom all humanity descended. And I thought, given my biblical commitments, how am I going to do with this? I have got to find some way of addressing this scientific question. But in the course of my research, Gavin, I found that this problem just evaporated. And the reason is that if you place Adam and Eve earlier than 500,000 years ago, then there's no problem with population genetics. The population that exhibits the kind of genetic divergence that our current population does

could have descended from an original human pair so long as that pair lived at least 500,000 years ago. And since that was the conclusion I was coming to independently, simply on the basis of archaeological and paleontological evidence, the challenge of population genetics just evaporated. And Dennis Venema himself came to admit that he was mistaken in thinking that such a pair could not have existed prior to 500,000 years ago. Would you say your deepest concern with this book is deciding which is the correct view among different views of Adam and Eve held by Christians,

or is your deepest concern to combat secular and revisionist attacks on Adam and Eve? It would be the latter. As I say, the study was really motivated by an attempt to make plausible, what I take to be the biblical view, that all human beings are descended from a primordial human couple that Genesis calls Adam and Eve. And so I wanted to offer a scientifically plausible defense of that thesis. Okay, yeah.

This term mytho history has come up, and I think some people have some confusion about that, and they hear that word, and for them it's the same as myth. So could you define what is mytho history, and how is that different from just myth? Well, first let's talk about what myth is. I am not using the word myth in the popular sense that it has in our culture today. For example, when people talk about the myth of the low-calorie diet or the myth of the self-made man, those understandings of myth are not the understanding that classicists and folklorists use. For the folklorist, a myth is a sacred traditional narrative that attempts to ground the institutions and values in a contemporary society in events in the primordial past.

And I think you can see that given that folklorist definition, that's exactly what Genesis 1 to 11 tries to do. It grounds things like Sabbath observance, the miseries of life, pain in childbearing, and diversity of human languages and so forth in these events in the deep past. But this type of literature is not pure myth akin to some of the ancient Egyptians or Mesopotamian myths because Genesis' one to 11 has an interest in history. And this is evident from the genealogies that structure the primeval history and that transform the primeval narratives into a primeval history. And so the great, Assyriologist Torquil Diakopson coined this term mytho history for this unique literary genre that has a definite historical interest in real people and real events, but then clothes them with the figurative and sometimes fantastic language of myth.

Interesting. This whole area of the genre of Genesis 1 through 11 seems like one where there's a gap between lay Christians and the scholarship. Are there any ways that lay Christians can learn more, any resources you'd recommend to better understand what the scholars are talking about with respect to genre of those early chapters of Genesis. Well, there are some really good books like that. For example, John Collins, an Old Testament professor, has a book called Reading Genesis Well, in which he talks about how it's so important to understand the kind of literature that you're reading if you're to are in,

to interpret it correctly. And I think every layman understands this. When the layman reads the Psalms, he knows that this is poetry. And that when the psalmist says, let the trees of the wood clap their hands before the Lord, the psalmist doesn't think the trees have hands. This is poetic imagery.

Or when we read the book of Revelation, we understand that it's full of symbols And that these represent nations and alliances of nations and things in the form of monsters and creatures. And so the layperson is already, I think, sophisticated enough to understand that different kinds of literature need to be read in different ways. And so what one needs to help him to do is to look at Genesis 1 to 11 and say, what kind of literature is this and how should it be interpreted? And I think John Collins' book would be a good place to begin, reading Genesis well. I'll put a link to that book as well in the video description for anyone watching this who wants to take a look at that. How common is it among evangelical Old Testament scholars to interpret Genesis 1 through 11 in a non-literal way?

It's very common, Gavin. This was one of the things that rather amused me as I was coming to my conclusions talking about. mytho history. And that is just one commentator after another says the same thing, but he won't use the word myth because he is afraid of the misunderstandings that will engender. And so they will use euphonisms rather than mytho history. For example, Gordon Wenham, uses the phrase proto-history to describe Genesis 1 to 11. John Walton uses the expression imagistic history. John Collins uses the word worldview history.

J.I. Packard talked of archetypal history. So we're all talking about the same thing. But I felt that we owe it to our lay people to be strict. straightforward with them and not mince words and say what we mean, but then define our terms very clearly to try to prevent misunderstanding. And so that's why I took the rather bold tact that I did in the book of saying that Jacobson gave a plausible genre analysis of this literature. It's mytho history. One of the criticisms out there that I think reciprocée, upon a misunderstanding is people have a concern of anti-supernaturalism, as though there's a desire

to move away from the miraculous elements in the text or something like that. But you're arguing that the text itself encourages us not to read everything in a literalistic way. The long lifespans, God walking in the garden, things like this. Could you walk through some of those examples of of what you see like that in Genesis 1 through 11? Sure. It seems to me that there are clues in the text itself, that the author didn't intend for all of this to be read in a literalistic way. For example, when the author says something in his narrative that contradicts what the author

himself believes, that suggests he doesn't mean it literally. And you just gave, I think, a showcase example. And that's these anthropomorphic descriptions of God in Genesis 2 and 3, where in contradiction to the view of the transcendent creator in chapter 1, in chapters 2 and 3, God is described as a humanoid being of 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. hideout. I don't think that the pentatucal author plausibly took these descriptions literally. These are anthropomorphic descriptions of God that are not meant to be literally interpreted. Now, another tip-off or clue would be when the author says things that flagrantly contravene common sense and what would have been common knowledge at the time. For 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.

When you look at chapter 8, when Noah's flood returns the earth to its primordial condition, it takes over 150 days for the floodwaters to drain away so that the mountaintops become visible. And that suggests that this creation narrative in Chapter 1 is figurative. Also in the same narrative, he describes sunset and sunrise as occurring before the creation of the sun, which contravenes common sense. or again, when he creates the vegetation and the fruit trees, the author says that God said, let the earth bring forth fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind and so on. And it was so the earth brought forth fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind.

Now, I don't think that the author imagined this like a film being run on full. fast forward, where the trees would sprout out of the ground, grow to maturity, blossom, and bear fruit in 24 hours. So that again suggests that we're dealing here with a figurative narrative. And then the third clue, in addition to those two, would be when you have inconsistencies. That suggests that something less than literal interpretation is intended. And there are quite a number of inconsistencies between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 concerning the order of the creation of the plants, animals, and man. And I think that the Pentateuchal author just wasn't bothered by these, because either narrative was fine, either order was great. It was a figurative account of

creation, as I've already suggested. One of the things I've thought about a great deal is the church's sluggishness to respond to Copernicus. and the rise of heliocentrism and their appeal, many, you know, the reformers, Calvin and Luther, for example, to Psalm 104, 5, which says the earth shall not be moved, and Psalm 931 and so forth. Do you think there are dangers in interpreting the Bible too literalistically? Oh, I do. And your example of geocentrism is a prime example of that historically. And I think that we are already, Gavin, long overdue for a comparable revision with regard to the age of the universe and the figurative narrative of creation. Yeah. One of the other points of, I think, misunderstanding for some has been these terms literary atom and historical atom.

and some seem to have thought that if there's a literary atom, there's not a historical atom. But those two things aren't at odds with each other. So could you unpack what those terms mean? Yes. The literary figure is the figure in a story. The historical figure is the person who actually live. The illustration I give in the book is the Roman general Pompeii. whose life is described by Plutarch in his famous lives of famous Greeks and Romans.

The Pompeii that Plutarch describes is the literary Pompeii. The Roman general that actually lived is the historical Pompeii. And what we want to know is, is the literary Pompeii pretty close to the historical Pompeii? And we think, yes, it is that Plutarch was a good. good historian, a good biographer, and that therefore the literary Pompeii does resemble closely the man who actually lived and wrought. So that's the difference. But these two can come apart. For example, if I say, well, we do this all the time with Greek and Roman mythology, we say something like this was his Achilles heel, or boy, he really opened a Pandora's

box, or that this is a Trojan horse. And we don't mean to commit ourselves to the historical reality of those things, but they are simply literary figures or events or devices that we can use. So they can come apart, but they don't necessarily have to. Okay. This next question is a bit self-indulgent because it concerns my great interest, which is St. Augustine. But I was so interested you referenced origin and Augustine right at the start of the book. And I've been very interested, of course, in Augustine and how he can help us. Could you say anything

about the relevance of pre-modern exegetes of the early chapters of Genesis? How do they play in? I think that the value of these early patristic authors is that their figurative interpretations of the narrative cannot have been motivated by modern evolutionary science because they lived 1,500 years prior to Darwin. And yet, in some cases, they didn't take the narratives with a sort of wooden literality. And so that really evacuates the charge that is again made over and over again, I think, without understanding, that someone like me is imposing modern science on the text, that my conclusions are driven by modern evolutionary science rather than an honest attempt to exegate the text as we have it. Yeah. And it's been fascinating for me, for Augustine,

he's very open-minded, not just with Genesis 1, but with Genesis 2 and 3 as well in terms of how he takes the details. So that might be of interest to people to look into that a bit. Why don't we talk about the scientific evidence and the second half of your book just a bit? You are summarizing evidence for wanting to place Adam and Eve relatively early on, far back. Now, when these other hominin species are mentioned, such as Neanderthals, many Christians already feel alarmed by that. Could you just, maybe we can broach this by saying, why should Christians be open to listening to the scientific claims here?

This is a funny issue, Gavin, because some young earth creationists believe in the full and true humanity of Neanderthals. They have no trouble with it at all. other Christians hear it, and they immediately think you're arguing for common dissent from the apes or something of that sort. And I think that what we can help people to understand is that Neanderthals were just as fully human as we are. They had the same sort of cognitive capacities and even larger brain size than Homo sapiens. In fact, over the last 10,000 years, the brain size of Homo sapiens has actually been shrinking. So Neanderthals were just as intelligent, and they exhibited the same sort of cognitive behaviors that ancient Homo sapiens did.

And so they were people. They were our cousins. They just were a little bit different than us in that they had heavy brow ridges. They were stouter, kind of stockier. They had large noses. Some of these characteristics may have been derived characteristics because they lived during ice age climates in really harsh, cold climates where they had to eke out a living. And I think it's just almost immoral for us to write these people out of the human race

and dehumanize them when really they were. like us. Yeah, you draw attention to a lot of the evidence in favor of that in terms of cave paintings, for example. Could you talk about some of that evidence that you think indicates these various hominence species were fully made in God's image? What paleo-anthropologists have identified are a number of what they call archaeological signatures of modern cognitive behavior.

things that would indicate symbolic, abstract thinking, planning for the future, technological innovations. And you discover that these archaeological signatures go hundreds of thousands of years back into the past. And they are being driven ever further into the past by ongoing archaeological discoveries. For example, just last year in 2020, a piece of twine was discovered by archaeologists. This twine had been made from the fibers of a gypsum tree where they took the inner bark from the tree, and then they twisted the filaments clockwise, and then they twisted other filaments counterclockwise to make a three, pli cord of string. And the archaeologist who identified this said this was before Homo sapiens came on the scenes. Only Neanderthals were around at that time. And they said the ability to

manufacture cordage like this is indicative of mathematical reasoning that would be comparable to language ability. When I read this, my breath was just taken away. We're talking about here people that have mathematical reasoning capacity and linguistic capacities. And I think we dare not dehumanize them and say that these are not real people. What about practices like burying the dead? Does that come in at all in terms of this timeline? Well, this is also one of the most interesting because it could, it could indicate some kind of religious. beliefs. Neanderthals in particular seem to be prone to bury their debt, not to just do house

cleaning in the cave, so to speak, and throw the carcass outside or dump it into a pit. Rather, the body was carefully buried, and sometimes it was interred with certain goods, certain artifacts that archaeologists have discovered. Minimally, this shows that they've very, valued the bodies of the deceased and cared for them and didn't treat them just like garbage. And it may have even been indicative of some sort of religious belief, perhaps in immortality. We just don't know. There's so much we don't know, but it's certainly consistent with that. And so that is another one of these factors that archaeologists look for, is proper burial of the dead.

Yeah. So you're identifying Adam and Eve as members of the species, Homo-Hidalbergensis. Could you unpack a little bit of what time frame that is and why you put them there particularly? I became convinced as a result of my scientific studies that Neanderthals were human beings, just like us. Well, or almost like us, you know, some anatomical differences. And so if Adam and Eve are the progenitors of every human being that has ever lived on this planet, a position that I believe I'm biblically committed to, that means that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens alike are the descendants of Adam and Eve. And so Adam and Eve had to come first.

And that would put them somewhere around 750,000 years ago, before the Neanderthal line and the Homo sapiens line diverge. And this most recent common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens is usually called Homo Heidelbergensis or Heidelberg man. And he had, again, a cranial capacity, a brain capacity that is within the modern range and is associated with tool use that showed an incredible skill, and also with behaviors that evinced modern cognitive capacities, like group big game hunting and so forth.

And so I think it's very plausible to identify Adam and Eve with a member of this species as the most recent common ancestor of Neanderthalds and almost apians. Okay. How would you evaluate a view like this? Suppose someone said on the basis of Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 that we need a historical atom, a real figure named Adam on a historical fall. But they're not certain that Adam is the biological progenitor.

They think perhaps you can have Adam as a sort of federal head in the way that Christ is not biologically our head. So they're wanting to maintain a historical fall, historical atom, but they're considering that as a possibility. How would you evaluate a view like that? Now, this view has become, I think, very popular because it enables you to have Adam exist in the very recent past, say only 10,000 years ago. And Adam and E were just a couple selected out of a much wider population of thousands of, thousands of, of people. And I have three fundamental objections, Gavin, to this point of view, and I'll just sketch them here. They're laid out in the book. Number one is that the purpose of the primeval

history is to show God's universal interest in mankind, all of humanity, not just a select elected few. If that were God's interest, just a select elected few, he could have begun the book of Genesis with the call of Abraham in chapter 12. But all commentators agree that the reason you have this primeval history prefixed to the rest of the book of Genesis is to show that this is God's universal plan for mankind, and that that plan has not been destroyed by human sin, but rather that through Israel, the blessings of God will come to all of humanity. finally, as God originally intended. The second reason would be that when you compare Genesis 1 to 11 with the ancient myths of Mesopotamia

and other nations as well, what you find is that it's a very common mythological motif to explain the origin of humanity. It's deep-seated within us to want to understand where did we come from, where did human beings come from. And I think that Genesis 1 to 11 is of that genre and shares that same concern. It wants to give an account of the origin of humanity. And then the third reason would be that the narrative itself, taken at face value, doesn't contemplate people in addition to Adam and Eve. It says explicitly of Adam, there was no man to till the ground. And that there was no one who could be found to be an appropriate helper to Adam until God created Eve.

And then she was given the name, the mother of all living. So while I'm perfectly happy to say Adam was a federal head of the human race, I'm not at all happy with denying the universal progenitorhip of the biblical Adam and Eve. And in this sense, I'm very conservative. I am adamantly insisting on the universal progenitorship of Adam and Eve as one of the central theological teachings of the primeval history and I think of Paul as well. Yes. Okay. Let's talk about the kind of refurbishment that, if I understand correctly, you envision for Adam and Eve, I'll just quote, from page 376 here, where you speak of a, quote, radical transition affected in the founding pair that lifted them up to the human level, and that plausibly involved both biological and spiritual

renovation, end quote. So could you flesh that out a bit? Would Adam and Eve have looked like other members of this hominin species? Would they have been more intelligent? How much do you see a sort of lifting up there? Yeah. Well, of course, this is all speculative. Gavin, and I am simply assuming here that they had pre-human ancestors. I'm not advocating for that, but I'm just assuming they had pre-human ancestors, and that then God would cause some sort of a genetic regulatory mutation, the main effect of which would not be their external appearance, but it would be their cognitive capacity, their brain and central nervous system, which could now become the seat for a rational soul.

And that he would infuse into them a rational soul at that point, having prepared their brain and biology to be the instrument of such a rational soul. So late in the book, I defend body-soulism. I don't think that we are just material beings. I think that we have this immaterial part called the soul. or mind, and that it isn't until the rational soul is infused into this hominine body, that you have a true human being. And the principal result of that will be this increased cognitive capacity that will involve rationality, intentionality, self-consciousness, freedom of the will, and moral agency. Okay. So is it right to say that in the details of

how you're envisioning that. You're not necessarily insisting upon that, but you're proposing that as one way it could be understood? Very much so. This is just a speculation. Here's how it could have happened. That's all. It's just a speculation. Right. Okay. But the point, if I may, the point is that this speculation is fully consonant with the scientific evidence. Right, right, okay. Suppose that the paleoanthropological evidence required us to go even further back. Suppose we found cave paintings from a million, over a million years ago or something like this. Would it then be necessary to revise the proposal to even earlier?

Yes, I think so. In fact, this is what's happened to the folks at the ministry reasons to believe. they had a historical atom about 50,000 years ago. And under the pressure of the archaeological evidence of increasing antiquity, they have revised their model now to have Adam and Eve be about 180,000 years ago. I think that's still too modest, and we need to go back further still. But these dates are all malleable and subject to revision based upon the scientific evidence. And so that's why I say at the end of the book that this quest is going to be ongoing and that it could well be that these archaeological signatures will be pushed further and further into the past. I think that that's certainly the trend is we're really becoming surprised at how far into the deep past humanity extends.

Well, let me just ask a few general questions here at the very end. Suppose someone is working on this issue and they come to a point where they feel a tension or an apparent contradiction between what they understand scripture to teach and what they're understanding from the scientific evidence. How would you counsel them to work through trying to resolve that tension? I would say that one has to have a firm commitment to the truth of both scripture and science. All truth is God's truth. And so ultimately, these cannot be in conflict. And so what one will do is look at the scripture to see if there's a different way of interpreting it than the way in which one has done so up to this point. And for me, that's what happened with the identification of this genre of mytho history.

I first heard it from Bill Arnold at those creation project conferences we attended. and it was like the light went on in my mind when I heard him explain this. The other thing you can do is to challenge or revise the science. And that's what, for example, our friend Joshua Swamadas has done with regard to the challenge allegedly posed by population genetics. It turns out that, in fact, this isn't a challenge at all if Adam and Eve are earlier than 500,000 years. And so through this painful and difficult process of looking at one's hermeneutical approach to scripture and the best scientific evidence, you will hopefully be able to come to some sort of a concord.

Yes. You mentioned Josh Swamendos. I meant to ask you this earlier. How would, how does your proposal differ from Josh's proposal? I know you have a lot of common ground as well. Yeah, Josh and I see ourselves as kind of like brothers or confere in this field. He calls his proposal a recent genealogical atom, and my proposal, an ancient genealogical atom. So I think the main difference between us is going to be the matter of date. Is Adam very, very early, or is he relatively recent? And to my mind, that is an issue that is, I don't want to say trivial, but I'm saying almost unimportant scripturally in terms of early or late. I think that theologically not much hangs on whether Adam is early or late.

It seems as though the two of you would have different understandings of interbreeding, you know, how the descendants of Adam and Eve are breeding with non-humans potentially, is that right? Yes. Now, the way Josh meets the challenge of population genetics is he says that the descendants of Adam and Eve interbred with these organisms, these hominins, outside. the garden. Remember, he thinks that there were thousands of these hominins outside the garden, and that Adam and Eve's descendants, when Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, began to interbreed with them. And since these other hominins had evolved from common ancestors with apes, they carry all of that genetic information with them from these primate ancestors, and that then gets incorporated into the lineage of Adam and Eve, and that way he can meet the challenge of population genetics. I don't have to appeal to interbreeding because I put Adam and Eve so far back

in the past that they don't need to interbreed with anybody else. And I argued that they probably wouldn't have interbred with non-human hominence because I think given their modern cognitive capacity and behavior that would have been revolting to them and their descendants. and they would naturally tend to self-isolate into their own community. And so we both try to meet the challenge of population genetics, but in very different ways. Josh, through interbreeding with these hominins and I, by placing enemies so far back in the past,

that there's plenty of time for this genetic divergence to develop over time. Okay. Well, I want to say, I have one more question. And I just want to state my gratitude for what you're doing in this book because I think it's helping people envision one way that it's possible to maintain a traditional view of Adam and Eve and situate that in relation to the best of the scientific evidence. And I think that's so helpful and it's so fascinating too. By the way, I read your book. I had my flight delayed in the Dallas airport for about eight hours. And I had your book with me.

And so this was about a month ago. And so even though my flight was delayed, it wasn't that bad because it was fascinating to work through it. So I think people will find it really interesting to read. But let me ask one last question. Suppose someone is working on this issue and they're having the anxiety that we referenced at the beginning. And they're really questioning their faith. They're wondering, gosh, how do I make sense of this? And it's making them uncertain about the gospel.

How would you counsel them? and how would you help them walk through that experience? One thing I would just absolutely insist on is that they not give up on things like daily prayer, Bible reading, worship in a community of Christians. They need to remain fully engaged in their Christian life and not start to pull back because of their doubts. doubt I'm convinced is never just an intellectual battle. It's a spiritual battle as well, and they need to nurture that relationship with God because it will be the witness of the Holy Spirit to them that will help them to persevere. And then I think another thing they can do is to talk to trusted people with whom they can share these confidences and doubts honestly, and to enlist their help, in discussing the issues and praying for them and so forth.

And then finally, to avail yourself of the many excellent resources that are being published on this area today, that I think will be of great benefits. So those would be, I guess, three things that I would suggest. Okay, great. Well, let me encourage everyone to buy the book, read the book. I think people find it absolutely fascinating and really, really hopeful. So, Bill, thanks for writing it and thanks so much for this conversation. Thank you, Gavin.

I thank you personally for what you've met to me, as well as for giving me the chance to lay out some of the content of the book in this interview.