"This is a very common Christian experience, that persons who have come to know Christ and experienced His life-changing power have an assurance, deep down, that their sins are forgiven, that they have eternal life, that they are quote-unquote "saved" and going to be with God in heaven for eternity. That doesn't mean they don't have doubts, but they do have this deep-seated fundamental assurance, and I think that that is borne by the witness of the Holy Spirit to you."
What on earth could this "deep-seated fundamental assurance" be if not certainty? How can you have this assurance and yet have doubts too?
Craig has claimed that the Christian can know Christianity to be true due the self-authenticating inner witness of the Holy Spirit. This immediately runs into the challenge of epistemic hypocrisy. The Christian would never accept that the Muslim or Mormon has a self-authenticating inner knowledge of the truth of their religion. So how can the Christian make such a claim for themselves without being a hypocrite?
Craig's answer:
"Now certainly, Mormons will speak of something similar, a burning of the bosom when the Book of Mormon is read, but I would say that whereas we do not have defeaters for the witness of the Holy Spirit, in the New Testament sense, we have overwhelming defeaters for the truth of Mormon belief. For anyone interested, read a book on Mormonism, its history, doctrine, and Joseph Smith -- I think that there is just no chance that Mormonism could be true."
But then it follows that not only should the Christian believe that there are no defeaters for Christianity, but that they should be certain that there are no defeaters for Christianity. But surely such certainty is irrational on the part of the Christian, as there are a host of potential defeaters for Christianity, from problems of evil, divine hiddenness, disturbing Bible passages, the man-madness of Christianity, the lack of supernatural verification of Christian doctrines, and so on.
The point is it's not enough for a Christian to merely believe that there are no defeaters for Christianity. For the Christian to have an assurance of salvation, and that they are not committing epistemic hypocrisy when they reject competing assurances of members of competing religions, they must have certainty that all of the potential defeaters for Christian belief are really not defeaters after all. But surely these are issues to be investigated. The Christian must say that investigation is not necessary to know the truth. But again, the Christian would never accept a Muslim or a Mormon saying that investigation into Christianity is not necessary. So again, the Christian falls into hypocrisy.
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