In 2004, academics around the world were abuzz with the news that famed British atheist philosopher and professor Dr. Antony Flew had converted to theism.  An article in Philosophia Christi definitively broke the story, after a couple of premature announcements in other places.  Evangelical philosopher and apologist, Dr. Gary Habermas, had interviewed Flew and had himself played an influential role as friend and conversation partner over the years in bringing Flew to this dramatic change of mind.

Now we can read Flew telling his own story, with the help of writer Roy Varchese, in Doubleday’s 2007 release There is A God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.  The book is an easy read, interweaving autobiography and philosophical reasoning.  Central to Flew’s conversion is the centrality and probability of the big-bang theory as key to the origins of the universe and the concomitant need for a highly intelligent agent to have precipitated the “bang.”  Flew stresses that his overriding approach to life has not changed—he has always tried to follow logic and reason to adopt those views that seemed to him most likely.  It’s just that now, with the resurgence of intelligent design arguments in a number of areas of academic inquiry, the likelihood of a God who created the universe seems greater to Flew than the probability of the arguments for atheism that he once espoused.

So what does all of this have to do with Jesus?  At age 84, Flew insists that he has not converted to Christianity.  But at the beginning of Appendix B, he writes the following:  “In point of fact, I think the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honored and respected whether or not its claim to be a divine revelation is true.  There is nothing like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul.  Virtually all the argument about the content of the religion was produced by St. Paul, who had a brilliant philosophical mind, and could both speak and write in all the relevant languages.  If you’re wanting Omnipotence to set up a religion, this is the one to beat” (p. 186).

Extraordinary testimony!  My next post will take the story one remarkable step further.