Biola’s Christian apologetics graduate program sponsored an “Exclusive Evening with William Lane Craig” on Saturday, August 28, where more than 100 people filled a sold out café banquet room to hear Biola’s Research Professor of Philosophy.

The pensive mood was animated by the enthusiasm of the honorary speaker. “Bill Craig has a winsome excitement about whatever he touches,” said Craig Hazen, the founder and director of Biola’s graduate program in Christian apologetics.

In 2009, Biola’s Christian apologetics department sponsored the infamous William Lane Craig v. Christopher Hitchens debate to an at-capacity crowd of more than 4,000 people and several thousand more watching via the web. Now devoted followers of Craig’s apologetics ministry, many of them packed into a Saturday evening banquet room to get a behind-the-scenes look at his thinking and arguments.

The evening presented a privileged view of how one of contemporary Christianity’s sharpest apologist and philosophers responds to objections against his arguments. On the debate and lecture circuit, Craig is often known for his defense of the so-called “Kalam Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God,” which seeks to argue for the existence of a Divine Being based on the evidence for a finite origin of the universe.

“It says something rather extraordinary about the state of Christian interest in apologetics when you have diverse types of people come out to a Saturday night dinner and a lecture on a heady topic like this,” Hazen observes.

People came from all over the immediate area, including some who drove 300 miles to attend this paid event. Craig used his seasoned expertise to deconstruct a range of counterarguments that have been offered through various online outlets by some of Craig’s most animated critics.

“I figured that I had basically dealt with virtually all of the objections that critics might raise,” Craig said. “Alas, however, I discovered that I had been unsuccessful in covering all the bases. For what I’ve come to realize is that some objections are so squarely, so off the wall, so bad, that I could have never anticipated them.”

Attendees were also treated to a crash-course in basic rules of logic and gained wisdom about how to detect logical fallacies. It was a first for William Lane Craig, according to those that work closely with him, for him to seriously consider and respond to so many popular, online objections to the Kalam argument in a single lecture.

The banquet was the climax of an energetic, fruitful week for William Lane Craig and the apologetics department, where he and other Biola faculty were plenary speakers in a West Coast apologetics conference tour from San Diego area to Northern California.

To learn more about such events or to inquire about Biola’s apologetics graduate and certificate programs, please contact apologetics@biola.edu or visit www.biola.edu/apologetics. Information is also available about media content regarding the August 28 lecture or any other William Lane Craig CDs or DVDs.

Written by Joseph Gorra, Christian Apologetics. Jenna Bartlo, Media Relations Coordinator, can be reached at (562) 777-4061 or through email at jenna.l.bartlo@biola.edu.