William Lane Craig is one of the most famous apologists for theism online. This is despite his rejection of an orthodox view of inerrancy, as Craig denies Genesis 1-11 as a historical narrative. Thus, we consider WLC to be a false teacher. In a recent appearance with Alex O’Connor, an atheist YouTuber, Craig attempted to nuance the commands to wipe out the Canaanites.
So the burden here would be to show that in issuing this command God does something that contradicts his perfectly just and loving nature, and my argument is that that’s very difficult to show because he doesn’t wrong anyone I think in this, in particular. The difficult case here is the children and what I would say is first that God has the right to take anyone’s life whenever he wants to. Unfortunately children die all the time in infancy and so if God wants to end the life of these Canaanite children early, prematurely that’s his prerogative.
But then secondly on my theology, these children go immediately to heaven. They go to be with God and therefore come to know a life that is more glorious and more happy than anything conceivable and certainly far better than if they had been allowed to live and be raised in such a corrupt and evil environment as they were in.
So it was actually a tremendous blessing to these children for them to be killed and go to heaven and be with God.”
William Lane Craig argues that God was loving Canaanite children as opposed to executing judgment on them. It’s a bizarre and unconvincing way to nuance a less palatable part of Scripture better defended with the sentiment that the Canaanites deserved it. This naturally leads to a debate on abortion and why abortion would be wrong.
William Lane Craig tells atheist "the reason that abortion is wrong is not because it's bad for the victims" and in fact, confers "a great good" upon them.
— Protestia (@Protestia) March 21, 2024
Do you agree?
See the story and transcript at https://t.co/XwKoR30fT7 pic.twitter.com/YOikelTwOo
Yes, absolutely. I mean what it would do, it would rob the child of the goods of this finite life that he would have enjoyed had he lived 50, 60 years or so. But in place of that, it gives him an eternal life of incomprehensible joy and and happiness which far outbalances the loss of those finite goods.
So the reason that abortion is wrong is not because it’s bad for the victims. The reason it’s wrong is because it transgresses a divine command. It’s homicide and God has commanded us not to commit homicide in the absence of some overriding moral justification like a policeman or a soldier who needs to take life in order to save life.
The fate of pagan children is one many Christians have, but the example of William Lane Craig highlights how it impact the abortion debate. The Bible does not state that dead babies of unbelievers go to Heaven where there is evidence that the dead babies of believers enjoy this fate.
Logically if dead babies all go to Heaven then they are not victimized by abortion but statistically saved through it which would make these premature deaths a perverted evangelism strategy.
However, if these babies are condemned following the murder by their mother, the need to end abortion becomes all the more pressing and what folks in Big Eva call pre-Evangelism.
This debate is far too complicated to fully flesh out right here, but Craig’s sentiment is offputting because of the perverted conclusions we see on earth from adopting it.
HT: Protestia
2 Responses
I don’t know ray, I think his response in the video was reasonable.
It’s not reasonable because Scripture does not make the fate of dead infants clear and I think there’s good reason: we either give baby murder, and similar things, a pass because we can assume they go to be with the Lord (I would say we’ve been doing this) OR, if we assume they go to the lake of fire, we stop having kids altogether because we’re afraid we may put our babies’ fates in jeopardy just by conceiving them (because they can then die). WLC looks at God as just a big if-then statement in Excel. He’s full of false teaching.