William Lane Craig is my number 1 all time favorite Christian philosopher and apologist. He is the one Christian Apologist whose views most closely align with my own concerning Arguments for God’s Existence, the methodology of using the minimal facts to establish the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection, Arminian soteriology, Molinism, and many other areas. I scarcely find myself uttering the words “William Lane Craig is wrong about X”. Craig has had the biggest influence on the intellectual role of my walk with Christ, and I was, am, and continue to be blessed by his books, podcasts, and Q&A articles. With all of that said, there are a few areas where I think Craig has missed the mark, and interpreting Genesis 1 is one of those areas.
I have previously written a blog post in defense of “The Cosmic Temple View Of Genesis 1”, which you can read by clicking here. This is the interpretation of Genesis that has been popularized by such Christian thinkers as John Walton (an Old Testament Professor at Wheaton College) and Kenneth Matthews. In a series of blog posts to come, I’ll be addressing different Christians who have different objections to The Cosmic Temple Interpretation. I have decided to begin by addressing Dr. Craig’s issues. Craig’s entire critique comes from two parts of his Defenders class and the transcripts of his lectures can be read here and here. Portions will be quoted initially and then I will critique Craig. I will address his first video in this blog post, and his next video in the next blog post.
Again if you’re not familiar with CTI, read my blog post “The Cosmic Temple View Of Genesis 1”,
Objection 1: Walton Needs To Prove That Genesis 1 Is ONLY Talking About The Creation Of Functions
Dr. Craig says “Today we want to continue our discussion of John Walton’s functional interpretation of Genesis chapter 1. We ended last time by saying that Walton has an enormous burden of proof with regard to justifying his interpretation. He needs to show that Genesis 1 involves only functional creation and not also the creation of material objects at the same time. Otherwise, his view will reduce to the typical literal interpretation of Genesis 1 that God actually brings into being over the course of six 24-hour days the plants, the animals, the dry land, the astral bodies, and so forth. Walton needs to show that all God does during these six days is to assign functions to material objects.”
One of the biggest hangups Craig seems to have with Walton throughout his critiques is his use of the creation verbs bara and asa, the Hebrew words translated as “create” and “made” respectively. A lot of Old Testament scholars and theologians read bara and asa as referring to material manufacturing in Genesis 1. But as Walton points out in his books, and as I pointed out in my blog post “The Cosmic Temple View Of Genesis 1”, there are many areas where bara/create and asa/made cannot possibly refer to material manufacturing and are primarily functionally oriented. Psalm 89:12 says “The north and the south, You have created [bara] them; Tabor and Hermon shout for joy at Your name.” (NASB) North and south are directions. Directions are not material objections. Of course, the places to the north and south are materially existing things, but the directions of these material objects are not themselves material. So, here is one of many examples where “bara” is used of non-material things. God created north and south. Psalm 51 is King David’s Psalm of repentance after he had comitted adultery with Bathsheba and had arranged for the death of Uriah the Hittite. In verse 10, David prays “Create [bara] in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (NASB) Is David asking God to physically manufacture a new blood pumping organ for David? No, of course not, and no one would interpret David’s plea as requesting that God materially manufacture a new blood pumping organ. Rather, in Psalm 51:10, David is asking for God to give him the kind of moral character that is more inclined to do good instead of evil. In other words, David is asking God to change him. David is basically asking “Make me a better person”. So, again, the Hebrew word “bara” is being used to describe a process God does that brings about order and function rather than the manufacture of new material. In Isaiah 65:17-18, God says “For behold, I create [bara] new heavens and a new earth; And the former things will not be remembered or come to mind. ‘But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; For behold, I create [bara] Jerusalem for rejoicing And her people for gladness.” (NASB) Isaiah 65:17-18 is clearly referring to functional creation, not material creation. God created Jerusalem FOR rejoicing and FOR the gladness of Jerusalem’s citizens.
Many other examples of “bara” not being used to refer to physical manufacturing could be cited.
Isaiah 57:19 – “Creating the praise of the lips. Peace, peace to him who is far and to him who is near,’ Says the LORD. and I will heal him.” (NASB) — Praise is not material. It involves material, sure, vocal cords and sound waves. But praise itself is a non-physical thing. Not to mention that Ancient Israelites wouldn’t have known about sound waves.
Isaiah 45:7 – “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.” (NIV) – While we know that light is physical, the ancients did not. The ancients did not know of photons. They did not believe that light was physical, so when God says that he creates light, they wouldn’t have interpreted that as referring to the creation of anything material. Darkness is certainly not, by anyone’s reckoning, a material thing, yet the text says that God creates that as well. This verse also says that God “creates disaster”! Disaster is not a material thing! Sure, disaster always involves material (e.g collapsing buildings, injured people, et. al.) but disaster itself is not material. A hurricane on Earth is considered disastrous, but hurricanes on Jupiter is no big deal. If no one is suffering or receives a detriment of any kind, can we really say that X is a disaster?
These are just 5 examples of Bara (i.e The Hebrew word translated as “create” in Genesis 1) not referring to the material manufacturing of anything. Instead, all 5 of these examples have to do with order, fuction, and purpose. God baras Jerusalem to be a place of joy (Isaiah 65:18), He purifies David’s heart to better obey His will (Psalm 51:10), etc.
So, from the Old Testament usage of “bara”, we can see that it does not have to, have to, have to, refer to material creation (i.e bringing something from material non-existence to material existence). That said, there are places in The Old Testament where it does have to mean material creation, and there are also places where it is ambiguous. But seeing that a purely functional orientation is possible opens up the possibility that Genesis 1 is not describing material creation.
Whether or not Genesis 1 is describing material creation or not, we’d have to look at how it is used in Genesis 1, and we’d have to be careful to read the text as the original author and audience would have understood it, not reading the text through our modern western lenses. As I explained in my blog post “Hermenuetics 101 – Part 3: Understanding The Cultural Context”, this is the proper way to interpret the biblical text. As Paul Jordan, my hermeneutics teacher at Five Point Church said, “we need to step into the sandals of the ancient author” or as Michael Heiser often says in The Naked Bible Podcast, “we need to have the Israelite in our head”.
When you look at Genesis 1 through the eyes of an ancient, you can see that they would not have understood several of the days to have involved God physically making anything. Ancient Israelites wouldn’t have understood light and darkness on day 1, nor the sun, moon, and stars on day 4 to be material objects. We recognize them as material objects. We know that the sun is a gigantic, burning ball of gas 93 million light years away. We know that the moon is a huge rock 239,000 miles from Earth. We know that the stars are burning balls of gas like our sun billions of lightyears from our planet. However, the ancients did not. The ancients consider them to be what the text says they are; “lights” and they did not consider light to be physical. They didn’t know about waves and photons. So, if Craig insists on Genesis 1 being a material view of origins, he’s faced with a problem. He has to admit that God didn’t actually make anything on day 1 and day 4. Either that, or he has to interpret celestial bodies the way modern science understands it, but that’s reading modern concepts into an ancient text, and as I pointed out in “Hermeneutics 101- Part 3: The Cultural Context Principle”, we need to read the biblical text the way the original author and audience would have understood it. So, if Craig insists on Genesis 1 being an account of material creation, he is faced with a dilemma; either say God didn’t create anything on days 1 and 4 or resort to concordist hermeneutics.
Space does not permit a thorough look at the biblical text here, but I go into a defense of the CTI it in my blog post “The Cosmic Temple Inauguration View Of Genesis One” and you can also read John Walton’s books for even more depth.
That functional ontology is what the text is focused on is powerfully evident by the Ancient Near Eastern creation myths as well as the text of The Bible. However, Craig objects that Walton needs to show that only functional creation is present in the text, rather than not both material and functional. In other words, like the little girl in that meme, Craig is asking “Why not both?”
John Walton explicitly admits in his books that, theoretically, it could be both. Just as if my Dad said “I create a safe environment for my family”, theoretically, that could mean that Ron Minton is a carpenter and built the physical house we live in in addition to meaning that he makes sure the doors and windows are locked at night, the cabinets is stocked with food, and we have heat and air conditioning for the appropriate seasons etc.. However, while we have good reason to believe that functional orientation is the focus of God’s creative activity in Genesis 1, we have no reason to believe that material orientation is in focus. The latter has to be demonstrated. Walton argues that if the ancients understood existence to be defined in terms of function (and they did), and if day after day in the Genesis 1 account concerns functions (and it does), then the burden of proof is on the one who insists that there is still a material element alongside the functional. It is Craig who bares the burden of proof, not me or Walton.
Objection 2: ANE Texts Assert Material Creation
Continuing with the assumption that Walton bares the burden of proof in showing that Genesis 1 is not about both material and functional creation, Craig writes “Can he sustain this burden of proof? Let’s first look at ancient Near Eastern cosmology. Walton claims that when we look at ancient Near Eastern creation myths we find, ‘people in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties, but by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system.’ But does the evidence support this claim? I think that the answer is clearly no. Walton points out, ‘Nearly all the creation accounts of the ancient world start their story with no operational system in place. Egyptian texts talk about a singularity – nothing having yet been separated out. All is inert and undifferentiated.’ Creation often begins with the primeval waters out of which dry land or gods emerge. You’ll recall that when we discussed creatio ex nihilo we saw that the typical form of these ancient creation myths was “When ____ was not yet, then ____.” This is the type of form that Walton identifies in the myth of the founding of the Babylonian city of Eridu. This is what this ancient text says:
No holy house, no house of the gods, had been built in a pure place; no reed had come forth, no tree had been created; no brick had been laid, no brickmold had been created; no house had been built, no city had been created; no city had been built, no settlement had been founded; Nippur had not been built, Ekur had not been created; Uruk had not been built, Eanna had not been created; the depths had not been built, Eridu had not been created; no holy house, no house of the gods, no dwelling for them had been created. All the world was sea, the spring in the midst of the sea was only a channel, then was Eridu built, Esagila was created.
…….The descriptions of the primordial world in pagan myths were therefore not the descriptions of material objects according to which plants and animals and buildings and people all existed but merely lacked a function. Rather, they are descriptions of a state in which distinct material objects of these sorts do not exist at all.”
Dr. Craig here is assuming that creation is a material activity, that existence is material, so that when The Babylonian Founding Of Eridu says that no house had been built, no reed had come forth, and so on, it is saying that these things are materially absent. But notice that in this creation myth, there is material already present! Namely, the seas. “All the world was sea” the text says. Where does the sea come from? The text doesn’t say. The sea is already there when the activity of creation begins. If this were a material account, shouldn’t we expect it to begin with no material? Yes. Since it does begin with material, that indicates that maybe, just maybe, material is not the focus of the account.
In Ancient Near Eastern thinking, the sea was a chaotic world, a world of non-order, a crazy place. In Enuma Elish the symbol of chaos is the goddess Tiamat who personifies the sea. As Old Testament Scholar Michael Heiser wrote “In the ancient world, the original (‘primordial’) chaotic conditions of creation were often portrayed as a monstrous dragon. This is reflected in stories from ancient Babylon and Israel’s closest neighbor, Ugarit (ancient Syria, just north of Israel). In the literature of ancient Ugarit, the god Baal battles Yamm, who is portrayed as a chaotic, churning sea and a terrifying sea dragon named Tannun or Litanu. These terms are equivalent to the Hebrew words in Psalm 74:13–14: ‘You divided the sea (ים, yam) by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters (תנינים, tanninim) on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan (לויתן, liwyatan).’”1
What can we infer from the fact that ANE thinking was that the sea equaled a condition of chaos? Well, is material is already present, and the state of the world is chaos, then creation would be bringing order out of chaos? In other words, creation would be an activity of giving functions to that which have no function.
We see this same thing in Genesis 1. As I pointed out in my blog post “The Cosmic Temple Inauguration View Of Genesis One”, we have good textual reasons to believe that Genesis 1:1 is not the beginning of matter, energy, space, and time. Rather, since Genesis 1:1 lacks the definite article, it should be translated “When God created the heavens and the earth”. Translating it this way would turn Genesis 1:1 from an independent clause to a dependent clause, dependent on verse 2. Verse 2 then becomes a circumstantial clause. Verse 3 then becomes the main clause, meaning that verse 3 is God’s first act of creation. “When God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God hovered over the surface of the waters. Then God said ‘let there be light!'” Hey, look at that! Material is already present when God shows up to start creating! The Earth and the sea are already there! If this were an account of material origins, why doesn’t it begin with no material? Also notice that the ocean is mentioned; again the common symbol of chaos in the Ancient Near Eastern mindset.2
What all of this implies; the fact that (1) material is already present (sea) and that (2) the material that is present is commonly understood in the ANE to be a non-functional chaotic condition, heavily implies that The Founding of the Babylonian City of Eridu and Genesis 1 are about functional origins, not material origins.
Besides The Founding Of Eridu, other ANE texts heavily emphasize functions over materials. The most blatant is The Egyptian Papyrus Insinger. The Egyptian Papyrus Insinger is from the Ptolemaic period. Although the manuscript comes from the first century after Christ, the material within the manuscript dates much earlier, to either the second or third century before Christ. Approximating closely to the climax of this document, the document describes eighteen lines of the creative handiwork of the god.
He created the succession of Generations so as to make them live.”3
Here, the functional nature of the creation text is overwhelmingly evident. The god is said to have created summer and winter. Why? For the rising and setting of Sothis. Moreover, seasons such as summer and winter aren’t material objects. He created food for the sake of living creatures. He created the constellations. Why? So that those on the earth should learn from the constellations. The god is said to have created remedies to end illness, wine to end affliction. It says he created death for the purpose of punishing the impious man. Every line in this creation text is loaded with functional ontology. The creation of these things was functionally oriented towards a purpose. Summer and Winter for the rising and setting of Sothis, food to nourish creatures, constellations so that Earthlings could learn the messages of the stars, and so on and so forth. Notice that it begins with “He created light and darkness…” Again, remember that the ancients didn’t know that was composed of photons. So there’s no creation of anything physical going on in the first line.
The Egyptian Instruction of Merikare is also pretty clear in its functional ontology. This text says;
The Instruction Of Merikare, like The Egyptian Papyrus Insinger, is not concerned with answering the question “What came into being? What order did everything come into being?”, rather it’s concerned with answering “Why did our god make these things?” and both Insinger and Merikare answer those questions. Isn’t it reasonable to think that Genesis 1 might do the same? Not “What order did Yahweh physically bring things into existence” but “What purpose did Yahweh make X, Y, and Z?” These do appear to be the questions those in the ancient world were asking.
Objection 4: How Could Things Exist For Eons Without Functioning?
William Lane Craig goes on to say “When it comes to Genesis chapter 1, for this text to feature only functional creation we must imagine that the dry land, the vegetation, the trees, the sea creatures, the birds, the land animals, even man were all there from the beginning but they just were not functioning as an ordered system.” Correct. This would be an entailment of Walton’s view.
“But such a view is implausible (not to say ridiculous). It would require us to take as literally false all of the statements about the darkness, the primeval ocean, the emergence of the dry land, the earth’s bringing forth vegetation and fruit trees, the waters bringing forth sea creatures, the earth’s bringing forth animals, and God’s making man.” — Not so. Craig is here begging the question in favor of material creation. If the text meant to say that days 2, 3, and 5 are about the material creation of these entities, then, of course, the CTI would contradict the text, but that is the very issue being debated. When Genesis 1:11 says “Then God said, ‘Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.’ And it was so.” is the text saying that God is creating the very first land plants for the very first time in a material ontology? Or, is it saying that God is decreeing that the function of the land will be to produce food for the Earth’s inhabitants? Walton and I have argued for the latter. But Craig merely assumes the former.
“Notice that Walton cannot say that these things can’t exist apart from an orderly system, for the moment that you say that then the functional creation view collapses into the traditional view of a six-day creation – actually bringing these things into being over those six days.” — Why can’t these things exist in a material sense apart from an ordered creation? Isn’t it possible for a house to exist in a material sense without it functioning as a home for a family? Isn’t it possible for a college to exist in a material sense (libraries filled, curriculums made, teachers hired) but not exist in the functional sense until students show up and professors start lecturing? Craig seems to have a hard time breaking free from his cultural presupposition that existence = material and creation = material. I see no reason to think that the stars, the plants, and the animals, can’t be existent in the material category of ontology, but non-existent in the functional category. Of course, it’s important that we understand what is meant by the term “functional”. If you misunderstand that phrase, you’ll misunderstand Walton’s argument, and the quote from William Lane Craig below shows that he does indeed misunderstand it.
William Lane Craig writes “Just how bizarre Walton’s interpretation is becomes evident in his statement that the material creation of the biosphere may have gone on for eons prior to Genesis 1:1 and then at some point in the relatively recent past there came a period of seven consecutive 24-hour days during which God specified the functions of everything existing at that time.” — Why is this bizarre? Unless, of course, Craig is assuming that creation is a material act and therefore ought to be observable.
“Walton either begs off answering the question or he admits that the answer is that the world before those seven days would have lacked only humanity in God’s image and God’s presence in his cosmic temple.[7] In other words, everything looked exactly the same except that the people who existed then had not yet been declared by God to function as his vice regents on Earth, and God had not yet specified the cosmos to function as his temple. An eyewitness would not have observed, and they did not observe on his view, any change whatsoever in the world as a result of that creative week.” — Again, I don’t see what the issue is supposed to be. If this is purely a Temple inauguration, why think that if someone jumped in a T.A.R.D.I.S and traveled to the creation week, that he’d see anything spectacular happening on the planet?
During the discussion period of William Lane Craig’s Defenders class, one of his students makes a comment and Craig responds by saying “I think you’re raising a really good point. It’s kind of related to an earlier point, I think. It is very difficult to see how these functions could be assigned to things that were wholly non-functional. It didn’t have, for example, working parts. I agree. I think that’s right. The view is so bizarre that I wonder sometimes have I misunderstood him?” (emphasis mine)
Yes, Dr. Craig has definitely misunderstood Dr. Walton. As I said above, to understand the argument for the CTI, you have understood what the term “function” means. Craig indicates he takes Walton to mean that, for example, the sun is functioning because it’s burning and producing light and heat, animals are functioning because they’re running around eating and fighting and reproducing, and so on. This is evident in his statement “It is difficult to see how these functions could be assigned to things wholly non-function. It didn’t have working parts.” Of course, the sun and stars had all their working parts, so they were obviously functioning! Silly Walton.
By “function”, we do not mean scientific function, but an anthropologically oriented function. That is to say, function in related to how the created things serve humanity. This is especially evident on day 4; “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.’ And it was so.” (Verse 14, emphasis mine). The purpose of the sun, moon, and stars are to mark time “seasons, days, and years”. That is their function. They function for humanity. They help us keep track of signs, seasons, days, and years.
John Walton explicitly stated this in The Lost World Of Genesis One. Walton wrote “Again, we point out that these are not scientific functions. In this regard, it should be noted that the fourfold description of functions (signs, seasons, days, years are pertinent only to humans.”.4 Function is defined as functioning for something, in this case, humans. Things cannot function for humans if there are no humans. Therefore, humans must be materially existent before things can function for humans. In this light (pun not intended), it makes perfect sense to say that the sun existed in a material sense for billions of years but did not exist in the functional sense.
Objection 5: But Materials Are Mentioned!
William Lane Craig makes reference to the chart John Walton provides on page 42 of The Lost World Of Genesis One showing a large number of places in The Old Testament where Bara is used. Craig admits that some of the examples mentioned are indeed not material objects such as Psalm 51:10 where the Psalmist asks God to create a pure heart in Him, north and south in Psalm 89:12m etc. However, Craig says that these are the exceptions, not the rule. And he says “The three objects of bara in Genesis 1 – the heavens and the earth, the sea creatures, and man – are all clear cases of material objects.”
In his response to William Lane Craig, Michael Jones of Inspiring Philosophy said; “Even Michael Hesier would agree with Walton that when it comes to man, it’s verb dominated. It’s about man being called to image God. Craig is just sort of assuming that that’s basically the object there. So, I think he’s missing the point here at what Walton is trying to get at. He sees in his English Bible, materials. Ok, so if I see materials than it’s obviously got to be about manufacturing those materials. But then he ignores that right after, it talks about how these things are going to function in relation to their purpose, to borrow language from D.A Clines.” 5
Michael Heiser who says regarding the syntax of Genesis 1:26-27 “We think of imaging as a verb or function. That translation makes sense. We are created to image God. To be His imagers. It is what we are by definition. The image is not an ability we have, but a status. We are God’s representatives.”6 When Heiser looks at the syntax there, he notices that it’s very verb dominated. God is calling man to be the image of God. It is not that God is a materially manufacturing man as of an image of Himself.
Objection 6:
Craig says “Apart from the possible case of Israel, none of the objects of bara in the Old Testament are existing things that are merely given a new function. Of the objects on the list, none of them (except perhaps Israel) is an already existing object which is then simply assigned a new function.“
Wut?
Craig says “Walton opines that the reason the functional interpretation of Genesis 1 is ‘never considered’ by other scholars (itself a telling admission) is because they have been misled by ‘cultural influences of our material culture.’” — Yes, Craig. Just like you. That’s literally the whole point.
Craig says “Such a claim impugns the credibility of scholars of the ancient Near East. I suspect that the reason that no one else has so interpreted the text is because it is such an obvious misreading of the text.” —
Walton isn’t saying “Scholars are just so dumb, they can’t see in the text what I see” or anything like that. Nor is he saying that scholars are biased against the functional creation view. Rather, Walton is saying that the idea that bara and asa in Genesis 1 might not be referring to material creation never even occurs to them because they are so entrenched in a culture that has a material ontology and, therefore, views creating as bringing something from material non-existence into material existence. Indeed, I had to wrestle with this idea before I could accept it because I found it so hard to think of existence/creation in ways someone 4,000 years ago in the middle east would. I am a product of my cognitive environment, so I had to, as Yoda would say “unlearn what I had learned”.
Earlier in the video, Craig admitted “well there are exceptions where bara doesn’t mean creation out of nothing” (paraphrase) and I’m just like “That’s the whole point!” That’s what Walton is saying. There are times bara could mean material creation, the problem is that there is never a time it necessarily has to mean that. It’s ambiguous. But there are times where it necessarily cannot mean material creation (e.g Psalm 51:10, Psalm 89:12, Isaiah 45:7, Isaiah 65:18,), so Kenneth Matthews and John Walton would say “Okay, then it’s not about material creation. It’s about assigning functions.”
If you have places where it can’t possibly mean material creation, and you never have a time where it has to mean material creation, and there’s plenty of ambiguity in between, you’re likely going to conclude that Genesis 1 is likely not material creation. Especially when functions are explicitly stated day after day after day.
“Then God said, ‘Let the land produce vegetation [i.e the function of the land should be to produce vegetation]: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it [i.e the function of the vegetation is to produce food], according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds [i.e The function was assigned just as God commanded]. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.” – Genesis 1:11-13
“And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.‘ And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.” – Genesis 1:14-19 (emphasis mine)
Conclusion
This is the end of part 1 of this 2 part article. It seemed appropriate to have a two-part blog post to address a two part video. In the next blog post, I will adress the rest of Craig’s criticisms of The CTI view of Genesis 1.
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NOTES
1: Michael S. Heiser, “Slaying the Sea Monster of Psalm 74”, Academic Editor, Bible Study Magazine — https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/bible-study/slaying-the-sea-monster.html
2: ibid.
3: Translation from Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature (Berkley: University Of California Press, 1980), 3:210-11
4: John Walton, “The Lost World Of Genesis 1”, page 64, IVP Academic.
5: IP & Christian Idealism’s Response to William lane Craig’s Critique of John Walton — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-MHgNzbbEg
6: Michael Heiser, “The Unseen Realm: Recovering The Supernatural Worldview Of The Bible”, Lexham Press, 2015, page
