Knowing vs. Showing: A Critique of William Lane Craig’s on Our Knowledge of the Truth of Christianity

William Lane Craig, in his book Reasonable Faith and several other works, offers a sharp contrast between knowing Christianity is true and showing it is true. He contends that the only way we know this truth is by a direct experience of the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit; while we show (but do not know) this truth by way of evidence and reasoning (apologetics). I would respectfully submit that this thesis is wrong on several levels. It suffers from seven major problems. (1) The Content Problem. The thesis attempts to explain how x (“Christianity”) is known, but it is extremely vague about what x is. We see a critical dilemma here – If he allows Christianity to be defined in simple generalities (“I am saved”, “God exists”, etc.), he is not dealing with an adequate definition of Christianity. However, if he provides an adequate set of propositions which are known to be true by the Christian, his “top-down ” derivation (from general to specific) seems to be impossible