On February 25, 2022, William Lane Craig’s ministry, Reasonable Faith, posted on their YouTube channel a 4-minute, 15-second response by Craig to what he believes are my views on God’s extradimensionality. Since the posting, I have been asked by many people to clarify whether Craig’s assessment of my views is correct. Not knowing what Craig said, I visited the posting, watched it, and posted a paragraph-long response on the comments page that accompanied the video clip.1 You can watch Craig’s video here, and here is the paragraph I posted:
I have never said or believed that God is constrained by dimensions. The Bible declares and the space-time theorems prove that God is the author and creator of space and time dimensions. Therefore, God is not subject to and in no way is constrained to the space-time dimensions he creates. What I have written in my book, Beyond the Cosmos, is that astronomers and physicists now possess evidence that more dimensions of space and time exist than length, width, space, and time. In Jeremiah 23:24 God declares, “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” This Bible passage and several others state the doctrine of God’s immanence, that he continuously operates everywhere in the dimensions that he creates. Therefore, in our context of being constrained to the dimensions of length, width, height, and time, God is both extradimensional and transdimensional (both immanent and transcendent). As I explained to Bill and to J. P. Moreland when they first brought up the issue of Beyond the Cosmos, I did not get to choose the title and subtitle. While the point of God’s extra- and transdimensionality was repeated throughout the book, the subtitle for the first edition of the book was “the Extra-Dimensionality of God.” When we bought back the rights to the book from the original publisher and published an updated third edition through RTB Press, we changed the subtitle to what we wanted in the first place, “the Transdimensionality of God.” In the second and third editions of the book, I did take Bill’s advice to repeat much more frequently throughout the book God’s simultaneous extra- and transdimensionality.
As you can imagine, there is an important background story to Craig’s comments and my response. That story begins in November 1997, when I was invited to speak at the annual national Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) conference. I was asked to address the topic of general revelation and, in particular, how designs in nature reveal God and his attributes. I wrote a brief paper that summarized the key points and evidence that I had published in my book The Creator and the Cosmos, 2nd edition. In my talk I described a few of the discoveries in astronomy, physics, and geology that had occurred since the publication of my book that strengthened the case for science revealing God and his handiwork. In advance of the meeting, I sent my paper and book to three theologians/philosophers that the ETS had asked to give a written and a verbal response at the meeting. Those three were Thomas Oden, J. P. Moreland, and William Lane Craig.
Tom Oden was the first to respond. He essentially agreed with my paper and book and added many insightful comments on the fine-tuning/design argument for God. J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig followed. However, they surprised me and the audience in that they made no comments about my paper or The Creator and the Cosmos. Instead, their papers and talks focused exclusively on another of my books, Beyond the Cosmos, and what they thought was the book’s premise: that God is constrained by the extra space-time dimensions discovered by physicists. I was allowed a very brief verbal response in which I explained to the audience that the space-time theorems prove that God is the Creator of all space-time dimensions and, therefore, cannot be subject to them. I also said that in Beyond the Cosmos I had repeatedly addressed both God’s extradimensional and transdimensional capabilities.
Subsequent to the conference, the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society published my paper and the three response papers. I was later contacted by the editor of Philosophia Christi, Craig Hazen, who was present to hear my brief response to Moreland and Craig at the ETS meeting. He told me that Philosophia Christi would be publishing my paper and the three respondent papers that were presented at the ETS meeting plus an introductory article by Douglas K. Matthews and a summation article by Millard Erickson. Hazen asked if I would write a brief response to Oden, Moreland, and Craig’s responses to my ETS paper.
I wrote a response to the three respondents and sent all three what I wrote in advance of publication, offering each an opportunity to write a response to my response. All three said that they were satisfied with my response and saw no need to write anything further. Ever since 1998, Reasons to Believe has made all six of the Philosophia Christi articles available at reasons.org.2
