John Lennox, William Lane Craig, and James Tour - Birthday Dinner Q&A

John Lennox, William Lane Craig, and James Tour share a special dinner Q&A on Theology, Origins of Life, Woke Culture & more in celebration of John Lennox's birthday.
Special thanks to Dr. Jim Tour for the production and usage of this video.
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[@george8rhlj]

Thank you profesor John Lennox for all the knowledge you have shared with us. May God bless you today, tomorrow and ever.🙏🙏

[@christines5430]

Three great minds continuing to be used by the Lord to bless and educate so many of us . Perfect dinner guests😊

[@FriendOfChrist]

What a trio!

[@sekateksekate]

I love you guys, Craig, Lennox and Tour. What an honor and privilege to know you in the generation. May Him our Lord Jehovah grace you with health, sound mind even in your latter days as you age fellow Labourers in the Lord.

[@marshallhanny-woko164]

So good to see Sir Lennox.

[@trevconn123]

Some of the greatest minds in today’s time around that table! I am BEYOND thankful to the Lord that he has entrusted such incredible individuals in leading the modern day academic community to Christ! God Bless!

[@markvincent9757]

Great dialogue. I agree Christians need to see the sciences, theology and philosophy complementing one another. These types of knowledge are integrated rather than clear cut separate disciplines.

[@majm4606]

They don't complement each other though. Or at least not currently -- not until we get reasonable evidence of a god.

[@markvincent9757]

@@majm4606 Don't you know there is reasonable evidence for God's existence. No one told you?? Wow.

[@majm4606]

@@markvincent9757 If there was, you'd be here presenting it. These famous theists would present it. Yet what do we instead see? Illogical arguments like... 1. The Cosmological Argument, which often doesn't even conclude with a god (so couldn't be evidence), but definitely has to content with either (a) everything or (b) not everything having a cause. If A, an uncaused god is impossible. If B, god isn't needed because any given thing might be uncaused. 2. The Moral Argument which is just two non-evidenced claims that theists don't really try to prove at all. It claims that (a) objective moral values exist and (b) if they exist they're best (or only) explained by a god. Yet we don't know objective morality exists -- nobody you ask can provide evidence of one single thing being objectively right/wrong independent of opinion/feeling/taste -- so the topic can't be evidence of a god. The mistakes repeated by these theists have in most cases been known hundreds of years. They simply choose to ignore those mistakes. (And the people they sucker into believing are in most cases simply _unaware_ of the counter-arguments.)

[@BiblicalStudiesandReviews]

I watched this on Jim’s channel, but I would have loved to been at that table.

[@mtomiuk8133]

Dr. Craig is a national treasure!

[@midlander4]

Can you set the bar any lower? 😂😂😂😂😂

[@GabrielMoura-qe3il]

He is a legend! Even here in Brazil!

[@midlander4]

@@GabrielMoura-qe3il a legend at lying

[@mtomiuk8133]

I'm glad to hear that. I wish we had people like him in Canada where Christianity is disappearing. Here in 'secular' Quebec, people look down on you if you mention Christianity but Marxist nonsense is fine. In any case, Dr. Craig is an exceptional scholar and a wonderful person by any metric. I have learned much from him ....@@GabrielMoura-qe3il

[@mtomiuk8133]

Sure thing, Yoyo. Get a job!@@midlander4

[@RichLuciano1]

God has graciously given us eight decades of this guy!

[@petercarter8455]

What an honour to sit at feet of three giants. Why are there so few likes.

[@flompydoo9067]

Love these guys

[@aronciruela8617]

John lennox looks adorable when he tries to capture tour in his phone like any gen z would do at @46:15

[@fynix.]

Amazing conversation!

[@josephthomas2226]

3 of the greatest minds in the world. What a treat

[@midlander4]

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@Homme45]

What a discussion?! Fascinating. I really admire watching these folks communion. Especially watching Dr. Bill with his dear wife, Jan, makes me happy.

[@midlander4]

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@pattube]

A world class philosopher - William Lane Craig A world class mathematician - John Lennox A world class scientist - James Tour Contra those who claim Christians aren't intellectual and/or can't give good reasons for their belief in Christianity, these men represent Christians who are intellectual giants in their own respective fields and who offer good reasons to believe in Christianity. In short, Craig, Lennox, and Tour are living examples (living letters to be read by all) of intelligent and reasonable Christian faith. (And many other Christians could easily be added. Such as: Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, Rob Koons, Stephen Meyer, Alexander Pruss, Josh Rasmussen, Bill Dembski, Don Knuth, Juan Maldacena, Robert Marks, Don Page, Fritz Schaefer, Martin Nowak, Jonathan Sarfati, Luke Barnes, etc.)

thanks for record so especial people in this world!!!1

[@RoySamuel]

Wow... great conversation

[@donn07]

I love this video ❤

[@bridgetgolubinski]

Love the video style/editing

[@am7442]

Brilliant.

[@justaguy328]

52:36 It's funny that Dr Craig gives a shout out to the "drcraigvideos" videos channel lol. I didn't know that it wasn't his channel to be honest hahaha. I thought that was his clips channel.

[@ReasonableFaithOrg]

It originally started as someone else's channel, but it was donated to the ministry several years ago. - RF Admin

[@johnholiver2003]

An interesting observation: Notice how these men of Jesus shine with an aura of joy and lightness, whereas any atheist public speakers seem miserable and grumpy?

[@yoyomauricio]

Such a rich conversation! Thank you for this. Also is the young guy with the dark bags under his eyes okay????

[@user-ug5rb6qi4r]

It funny that Dr Craig always restates the question. Probably from years of teaching in which case everybody in the room may not have heard the question.

[@SAMBUT]

in the beginning God that statement at the end

[@isaiahceasarbie5318]

Lovely people!

[@midlander4]

Awful people

[@gregjones2217]

Larry, Moe and Curley ride again.

[@ProphetGreg94]

The secular academy is a den of lions. That’s why aggressive prayer and the power of God is needed. I greatly appreciate Christian philosophers. But every now and again we need a prophet like Elijah for dark hours such as this in those arenas.

[@philipbenjamin4720]

Bill Craig makes comment on whether human beings who don't believe can have cognitive understanding of Christian truths. He says that he believes that people do not need to have special illumination of the Spirit in order to understand Christian truth claims. He says that the difference the Spirit makes relates to the openness of our heart to embrace such truths. Before I respond to that let me lay some groundwork. The bible says that all people (believers included) have fallen minds - they are 'flesh'. If relationship with God is Mind to mind - and therefore governed by our minds - we are in big trouble - since it means that none of our experience of God is authoritative (in being received by fallen minds). But that isn't the situation - our minds can only think - thinking isn't RELATIONALLY knowing either a person - or God. We are: mind - intellectual body - physical will - volitional conscience - moral 'heart' - emotional (I realise bible translations use the word heart differently - to encompass a few of the elements I am listing) spirit - relational. Note the last item - the way we experience Jesus - whether as Word or as Spirit - is RELATIONAL - Spirit to spirit (Rom 8:16). We never receive God as data - instead our relational experience of the Jesus who is Word and Spirit BECOMES words (just as our friendship with a person can lead us to make a speech about them with some confidence). Our spirit is not flesh - it is not fallen (it is different to our soul - see Luke 1:46-47, Heb 4:12 and 1 Thess 5:23 where the two are mentioned in the same place - proving they are separate - and note that Heb 4:12 explains that the word of God divides what is soul from what is spirit - proving that one is fallen and the other is not - looking across scripture we can conclude that our spirit is all that makes us alive to God - whereas soul - which includes our minds - and is therefore flesh - is all that makes us alive). This RELATIONAL experience of God bypasses our minds - but has the effect of INFORMING and when necessary CORRECTING our minds. This doesn't mean that our minds play no part in our relationship with God. Our minds can draw logical inferences as long as the foundations for those inferences is relationally received. For example if a person relationally receives the fact that Jesus is God - the only means of knowing God - they can logically conclude that Allah is not God. And our minds may be able to notice where our Spirit to spirit revelation of God has been affected by the flesh - for example if we believe that we have been shown that X is the case and also that X is not the case - our minds help us to know that both of these things cannot be true. But the key issue is that when it comes to spiritual truths we cannot have faith in any conclusion of our mind which isn't confirmed by Spirit to spirit experience. On the question of the RELATIONAL understanding of non-believers Romans 1 says that non-believers are no less able to receive spiritual truths revealed by the Holy Spirit to their spirit than believers (The Spirit convicts the non-believer of sin, righteousness and judgement as much as he convicts believer - John 16:8-11). Romans 1 tells us that the divine qualities of God are RELATIONALLY revealed to all human beings in creation - leaving us without excuse (it must be relationally revealed since qualities of character are never RATIONALLY revealed - I cannot prove rationally that a person is kind - or that God is kind). So then - returning to Bill's comments about non-believers and their ability to understand - he WAS correct in saying that a non-believer can understand the truth as well as a believer can but he wasn't correct in saying that they can COGNITIVELY understand it - since spiritual truth is relationally received. When it is received - if for example someone relationally receives God being holy - they can then make a statement with their mind such as "God is holy" but their understanding of the meaning of that statement depends at all times on their continuing RELATIONAL memory of God's holiness. (And similarly when another person hears it they may think they understand the statement - they may for example think of holiness as about God's intolerance for free, knowing, and wilful wrongdoing - and his love/want for all the conforms with his nature) however they don't "understand" the statement unless they have THEIR OWN relational experience of GOD'S holiness - instead of something less than that - such as for example experience of a human version of holiness - or merely some kind of intellectual conclusion about what holiness must be about).

[@markfullbrighton5070]

It's a shame that the supposed "best" theist thinkers still avoid debating Jeffery Jay Lowder. After watching Lowder absolutely destroy Phil Fernandes, Kevin Vandergriff, and Frank Turek in a debate, it's no wonder why William Lane Craig has been shitting his pants at the thought of debating Lowder since the late 1990s.

[@philipbenjamin4720]

There is a misunderstanding about faith in traditional church circles (due to Pharisaism). If you ask a person the following question - "should a Christian be able to experience the presence of God all the time?" - you will most often be told "No - that's where faith comes in - faith is about trusting that a God we don't always experience is with us even when we don't experience him". But that's not what faith is - I can prove that it is not. If there were times in the Christian life where a person wasn't able to experience God's presence, leading/teaching, and empowering how would that person be able to obey God any better at such times than they were before they believed? Christian faith therefore NEVER involves trusting that God will be true to some element of his character which we have either yet to experience - or we are not currently experiencing. Another thing that I believe we don't understand well - while we will often hear a bible teacher tell us that we are only able to relate to God through the cross we aren't as strong in our understanding of the converse - that God relates to us ONLY IN THE CROSS. The cross is God's full and final revelation of himself this side of eternity. And finally I believe - also due to Pharisaism (a refusal to welcome and rely on God's Spirit) we also don't understand that all relationship with God - which delivers us from our fallen understanding of both God and ourselves - ALWAYS involves responding to what is always GOD'S initiative. The cycle of the cross is the incremental revelation of character of God - in this exact order - his holiness > justice > mercy > grace (these being the principal elements of his character - other elements of God's character - for example his patience - are sub-expressions of these principal elements). Unless we RECEIVE the element of God's character which he chooses to reveal to us - which involves acknowledging its consequences for us - even when those consequences are dire and without any YET revealed hope - we don't get to experience the next element of God's character. We experience these elements in this order (never in any other order) during the conversion process and also during sanctification. The entire Christian life is ONLY the cross. This is why Christ is the stumbling stone - because there is no way to come to know God except by DYING with Christ (receiving God's holiness and justice) in order to rise with him (receive God's mercy and grace). If God never expects us to relate to him except on the basis of experience what then is faith? Faith is two things: - accepting things that have been revealed to us RELATIONALLY as evidence of God - instead of limiting what we conclude about God only to rational conclusions. - trusting that the God whose character we have ALREADY experienced will remain true to his REVEALED character in circumstances where he hasn't chosen to reveal to us his intention (the way in which circumstances relate to either our welfare - or to God's glory). (I came up with this definition of faith based on my experience of what faith is - however I then realised after writing it that the two components I say here are part of Christian faith are exactly the two the bible says - in Hebrews 11 (they are stated in the opposite order in the verse): Hebrews 11:1 ESV Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. I believe that the above ideas and the conclusion I therefore reach about faith provide an answer to both John Lennox's problem in explaining faith to his colleagues (he can explain to his colleagues that instead of the word faith being confined to RELIGIOUS belief - it instead relates to RELATIONALLY acquired belief - in the case of Christianity what is received Spirit to spirit - so for example faith in God is the same as faith that there is love - we don't trust that there is love without evidence - but it's also true that we believe there is love only as a result of RELATIONALLY experiencing it - not by being able to prove rationally that it exists). And Bill can also show how the ideas about faith which some are presenting to him - that faith can be about PUTTING FAITH in someone either who we don't know - or whose character we don't trust - or who doesn't exist - may be a kind of trust - but it isn't related to Christianity - since Christian faith always involves having belief which is limited to what one has already experienced.

[@matthewstokes1608]

TLC…!

[@TheProdigalMeowMeowMeowReturns]

Awwnt. Not ant

[@gr8god4u]

False converts produced always via a sinner's prayer which is man's word not God's Word. Please repent of such as you will be held accountable for this method not authorized by God's Word.