. . . the witness of
the Holy Spirit [is] self-authenticating, and by that notion I mean (1) that
the experience of the Holy Spirit is veridical and unmistakable (though not
necessarily irresistible or indubitable) for the one who has it and attends to
it; (2) that such a person does not need supplementary arguments or evidence in
order to know and to know with confidence that he is in fact experiencing the
Spirit of God: (3) that such experience does not function in this case as a premise
in any argument from religious experience to God, but rather is the immediate
experiencing of God himself; (4) that in certain contexts the experience of the
Holy Spirit will imply the apprehension of certain truths of the Christian
religion, such as “God exists,” “I am reconciled to God,” “Christ lives in me,”
and so forth; (5) that such an experience provides one not only with a subjective
assurance of Christianity’s truth, but with objective knowledge of that truth;
and (6) that arguments and evidence incompatible with that truth are overwhelmed
by the experience of the Holy Spirit for the one who attends fully to it . . . As
I read the New Testament, it seems to me that for both Paul and John the
fundamental way in which a believer knows the truth of the Christian faith is
by the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. When I say “the Christian faith,” I do
not mean fine points of doctrine such as infralapsarianism or amillennialism,
but rather the belief that one has been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ,
or some rough equivalent. Thus, Paul tells us that every Christian believer is
an adopted son of God and is indwelt with the Holy Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8:9;
Gal. 4:6). It is the witness of God’s Spirit with our spirit that gives us the
assurance that we are God’s children: “For you did not receive a spirit that
makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of Sonship. And by
him we cry ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit
that we are God’s children” (Rom. 8:15-16). Paul does not hesitate to use the
term plērophoria (“complete confidence, full assurance”) to indicate the
surety that the believer possesses as a result of the Spirit’s work (Col. 2:2;
1 Thess. 1:5; cf. Rom. 4:21; 14:5). (William Lane Craig, “Classical Apologetics,”
in Stanley N. Gundry and Steven B. Cowan, eds., Five Views on Apologetics [Counterpoints:
Bible and Theology; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2000], 29-30)
