As Christians, we're very familiar with Peter's famous words in 1. Peter 315, where he exhorts us to

always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.

And yet, even if we want to be prepared, we often don't feel like we're prepared to explain

our faith to unbelievers.

And that's especially true when it comes to apologetic conversations, where we can so easily

feel intimidated and unsure of how to respond to various challenges to Christianity.

Whether that's related to the findings of modern science, the problem of evil,

the trustworthiness of the Bible, or the bodily resurrection of Christ.

My guest today is renowned apologist William Lang Craig, and in our interview he models

how to respond to common arguments against Christianity that we often hear, but often don't know how to respond to.

Craig is a research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and at Houston Baptist

University. He's well known around the world as one of his generation's most effective

Christian apologists and has authored or edited over 30 books, including Reasonable Faith, Christian

Truth and Apologetics from Crossway. Let's get started.

Well, Dr. Craig, thank you so much for joining me today on the Crossway podcast. Good to be

with you, Matt. So I want to start very simply

and kind of take the ultimate question here that we want to start our conversation with. How

would you define the task of apologetics? The task of apologetics is to explain the rational

justification for the Christian worldview.

So what do you mean by justification?

What would be the grounds rationally for believing the content of the Christian religion?

And so in your book, though, you say something kind of surprising. You write that in most

...