Would man really write the Bible if he could?

I will attempt to keep this brief, but this question was brought to me and I was prompted to answer it. When considering Bibliology - the theology of the scriptures - we will draw upon inspiration, inerrancy, origin and the very revelation of the text. When we examine this then we can draw a conclusion as to the nature of the very text and whether or not it was in fact God breathed.

As we do this we come across the point of who Christ claimed to be. As C.S. Lewis put it,

"You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse...Let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." [1]

So as one justly and diligently reads the Scriptures you cannot deny the fact that Christ claimed to be God. So given that point one must then ask the question posed in the title, Would man really write the Bible if he could?

As Lewis S. Chafer, founder and former president of Dallas Theological Seminary wrote, "It (the Bible) is not such a book as man would write if he could, or could if he would." [2] In other words,

"Man would not write the Bible, for in doing so he has created a message of the perfect Son of God who condemns all men. Since God will judge sin, no rational man would write a book that would be self-condemning." [3]

Furthermore man could not write the Bible if he would because of the simple limitations on human understanding. It would be most impossible for an imperfect creature like man with limited rational capabilities to conceive of an unlimited God who is certainly most-powerful with his accompanying eternal attributes.

So to answer the question, above, I would say no, man would not write the Bible if he could for the reasons above. That point given, then the author of the Scriptures had to be God himself. As Scripture attests, "All scripture is God-breathed..." (2 Tim. 3:16)

1. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: MacMillian Company, 1952), 40-41.
2. Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology (Dallas: Dallas Seminary Press, 1957), 22.
3. Elmer L. Towns, Theology for Today (Mason: Cengage Learning, 2008), 46.

Gary Habermas - The Case for the Resurrection

Possible Worlds: An Answer to a student

Here is an answer I gave to a student of mine asking about what a possible world is meant to mean in regards to philosophy, enjoy!

Colin,

Whenever you hear someone talking about possible worlds its important to know exactly what they mean, so I am glad you asked about this. I am by no means an expert so I will take some aid from Dr.Craig on this as he evaluates the way Alvin Plantinga sets up his version of the Ontological Argument.

First off when we speak of possible worlds we don't mean planets or universes rather we mean to speak of a maximal description of reality, or basically the way reality might be. Plantinga and others use a huge conjunction of p&q&r&s..., whose individual conjuncts are the propositions p,q,r,s...Thus a possible world is a conjunction which comprises every proposition or its contradictory, so that it yields a maximal description of reality - nothing is left out of such a description. By negating different conjuncts in a maximal description we can arrive at different possible worlds, see below for examples of such possible worlds:

W1: p&q&r&s...

W2: p&-q&r&-s... (this is actually supposed to be a negation symbol but gmail won't let me put in the correct symbol)

W3: -p&-q&r&s...
W4: p&q&-r&s...

...

...

...

Now only one of these descriptions will be composed of conjuncts all of which are true and so this will be seen as the way reality actually is, or the actual world.

It is also important to keep in mind that these possible worlds have to have conjuncts that must be capable of being both true individually and together. For example the proposition that the "Prime Minister is a prime number" is not even possibly true, for numbers which are abstract objects cannot be conceivably identical to a concrete object like the Prime Minister. Therefore there is no possible world in which the Prime Minister would be a prime number. However, if you were to say that "John McCain is the President of the United States" though this is false in the actual world (where all the conjuncts are true) this could be true in some maximal description of reality having this relevant proposition as one of its conjuncts (p&-q&-r&s&John McCain is president&...) Now it is similarly to say that "God exists" is true in some maximal description of reality. Now below you will find Plantinga's ontological argument using God as the greatest conceivable being (maximally great being), it is genius how he comes to his conclusion, the conclusion he uses as his reformed epistemology that states that belief in God is a properly basic belief, it is from this argument that we can come to see why he says this:

Plantinga's Ontological Argument:

1. It is possible that a maximally great being exists.

2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.

3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.

4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, this it exists in the actual world.

5. If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.

6 Therefore, a maximally great being exits.

According to Craig most philosophers don't even argue about premises 2-5, they agree if God's existence is even possible, then he must exist. The arguments are over whether there is warrant for believing that a maximally great being exists which is premise 1. People complain that its a logically incoherent statement like a married bachelor. I don't see how a maximally great being is even remotely incoherent. Most detractors of the first premise will say things like the concept of "a most perfect island" or "a necessarily existent lion" also seem prima facie coherent concepts but I hope you see how this is grossly misunderstood. A most perfect island isn't truly that, what if I wanted softer sand, more alcohol in my drinks, a brighter sun, more palm trees. The same goes for the lion, for if it was possible that a lion could exist in every possible world that description of the lion wouldn't be true of a lion at all. By contrast when Plantinga speaks about maximal excellence he is referring to intrinsic maximal values, for example omniscience is the property of knowing any and all truth, its impossible to know anymore truth, but when thinking about an island as I said above you could always add different things to make it better, those things are subjective. Also a material thing cannot transcend all of space-time, density and or temperature, however, a maximally great being, if it is immaterial (metaphysical), could transcend such physical limitations and so be conceived as necessarily existent. 

One then might say how do we know this being transcends physical limitations making it a metaphysically necessary being? Well we covered the necessity for a being outside of the physical world when we touched on the Cosmological arguments and hopefully your on board there (I hope you are comfortable defending the premises of those arguments, that article from Dr. Craig should have helped a little). Here is an argument Dr. Craig offers from a conceptualist point of view for God's existence:

1. Abstract objects, such as numbers and propositions, are either independently existing realities or else concepts in some mind.

2. Abstract objects are not independently existing realities.

3. If abstract objects are concepts in some mind, then an omniscient, metaphysically necessary being exists.

4. Therefore, an omniscient, metaphysically necessary being exists.

As premise 2 states we can defend this by asking ourselves if the number 7 exists independently of a mind, I would have to say it most certainly doesn't. It also goes to note that abstract objects don't exist in causal relations, for example, the number 7 doesn't cause anything at all, this should help when defending the cosmological argument and showing the necessity of a metaphysically necessary being as the agent which acted in causal relation with the creation of the universe. So if number 2 is true then according to 1, 3 has to follow as the explanation therefore the conclusion follows logically from the premises.

Also, keep in mind as we understand the concept of God He is in an immaterial existent mind, or a metaphysical being, which shows where we get the description of the mind in premise 3.

I hope this stuff helps. I love how Dr. Craig speaks about the use of these theistic arguments when he writes, "theistic arguments need not be taken like links in a chain, in which one link follows another so that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Rather they are like links in a coat of chain mail, in which all of the links reinforce one another so that the strength of the whole exceeds that of any single link."

Bottom line, when used as a whole argument for the existence of God, the Cosmological argument, Ontological argument, Moral argument, Teleological argument and so on can be employed to make an effective case for theism. Once we break the bonds of disbelief in God then we can present the gospel in its entirety to a lost soul or souls that need to hear the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I hope this helped you and didn't confuse you, it was confusing to me in the beginning (what am I saying, it was confusing me while I was typing it!!!) but stick with it and hopefully you can see how it makes sense.

Let me know if I can help in any other way, your questions help me to continue to grow in my understanding of the nature and existence of our Heavenly father.

God Bless little brother!

p.s To answer your question... the possible world does have to be logically coherent...hopefully I answered that in the above response...I guess I could have just said yes to your question and that would have saved you a lot of time reading this, oh well, it was fun typing!

The heavens declare...

This morning just thinking about the vastness of space I was reminded what the psalmist wrote when he said, "The heavens declare the glory of God..." -Psalms 19:1 ASV 

But what might this mean exactly? I mean can't the universe explain its own-self just fine? We don't need to look at the galaxies and posit the glory of God, we can see the glory of naturalism!

Sadly, this is how most people are taught in universities and school campuses around the country. The universe is eternal (even though modern cosmology has resounded that the universe had a beginning a finite time ago), even if its not eternal, the universe could have caused itself to come into being. This statement is mind numbingly absurd. It would raise a few questions that must then be answered by the person claiming this position:

1. Can nothing cause something?

2. What was causally prior to the universe?

3. How could something immaterial (the pre-existing universe) become material (the current universe)?

4. Is the universe itself all-powerful and personal?

There are surely more questions for the naturalist raising these points about the universe’s "ultimate bootstrapping trick"[1] as Daniel Dennett pointed out, but they can wait until we hear them respond to these first.

The hard part about positing the universe as the cause for itself is that you would have to answer the question why anything or everything doesn’t just pop into existence out of nothing. Why for example hasn’t an elephant popped into being right now out of nothing to smash my computer? By the way if this happens, I will be converted immediately!

The truth is this sort of thing has never happened in all of history so why should the universe be any different?

Instead I think it highly probable and logical to posit an external first cause of the universe. Well what should the nature of the first cause look like? I will let the professionals answer this one for us, Dr. Craig take it away:

“This transcendent cause must therefore be changeless and immaterial, ... such a cause must be beginningless and uncaused ... this entity must be unimaginably powerful ... Finally, and most remarkably, such a transcendent cause is plausibly to be taken to be personal.”[2]

As Craig points out the nature of this cause must embody a varying amount of traits all of which we know do not exist when speaking in reference to the known universe, therefore positing the universe as the cause for itself continues to remain an absurdity to those who seriously consider the question on the origins of the universe.

As I stated in the beginning here, “the heavens declare the glory of God” and in the description given by Craig one can certainly see the glory of this first cause loud and clear in the very nature of what most perceive God to be.

---

[1] Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell (New York: Viking, 2006), 244.

[2] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2008), 152.

The Moral Argument from our 5 senses

Here is an addition to the Moral Argument in reference to skepticism about our five senses (touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing) and skepticism about our moral sense (Justice, Greed and etc.). This is in objection to the stance of Atheistic Moral Platonism.

Moral Sense:

1.     If a moral sense can exist necessarily without persons, then God does not exist

2.     Moral senses cannot exist necessarily without persons.

3.     Therefore, God exists.

Five Senses:

1.     If our five senses can exist necessarily without persons, then God does not exist.

2.     Our five senses cannot exist necessarily without persons.

3.     Therefore, God exists.

The ultimate question is, are these two arguments and there conclusions more plausible than their denials?

If you think about Justice as a moral sense, can Justice itself be Just? Of course not! Justice is merely a distinction of persons. It requires a person to be Just to deliver Justice. But Justice cannot by itself be just, for if it could then other senses such as love, greed and so forth would be independent entities embodying some sort of physical-metaphysical body which is an absurdity. Therefore moral senses require persons in which to exist.

Think next about our 5 senses. Can touch do anything without a hand or a body? Can taste do anything without a mouth or a liquid or food? It is true that senses cannot exist necessarily out of their own nature because without persons the five senses simply do not exist.

We could say, "well obviously this is true because I didn’t hang out with taste today" or "I didn’t go on a run with greed earlier", but the question remains is the existence of moral sense and the five senses more plausible based on Atheistic Naturalism or on Theism? Can the natural evolution of species account for the moral sense of justice? Did these things merely evolve simultaneously to meet together in the form of Homo sapiens? According to William Lane Craig, he sees William Sorley answer this question thusly, 

“it is far more plausible to regard both the natural realm and the moral realm under the hegemony of a divine Creator and Lawgiver than to think that these two entirely independent orders of reality just happened to mesh.”[1]

---

[1] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2008), 179.

Absolutes and Faith?

What if the Bible were 100% accurate or true in the regard to all physical reality? What would this do to the idea of Faith?

Wolfthart Panneberg basically said that the basis for faith in Christianity could be found in the reliability of the historical Christianity itself. Basically truth can be known plausibly with the facts of the past or within history.

This got me to thinking about the following, what if the Bible and its facts were 100% true in all known physical reality, would it remove faith altogether? What faith does it take to believe in something that is an absolute, at least physically speaking?

In this case it would seem that absolutes would nullify the concept of faith altogether.

In reference to scripture, this is not to say that scripture cannot be inerrant, but it must take into account both physical and spiritual realities to be fully inerrant.

If scripture were only spiritually true then that too would nullify our necessity for faith and belief because it (scripture) would simply become incomprehensible as a whole. How could we perceive fully of something we cannot experience temporally.

It would seem the bottom line point would be this: Some things can be explained in regards to the scripture physically, some spiritually and some by both, but they cannot be explained 100% of the time in both realities of understanding, otherwise we would become as God, knowing and understanding all things or better said we would be omniscient.

The statement and thought that God is good (in particular, always good) can be misunderstood if you merely think of God as being good in physical reality. This can take away from the truth that God is good. You must take into account the idea that God is good as a whole, and by that I mean God is good all the time whether physically observable and or spiritually observable. To say that God is not good because the little girl dies of cancer is to discredit and apply the potential for God’s divine goodness to physical reality alone. God is still good, but in this case Spiritual reality maybe be better equipped to explain and nurture the true goodness of God in that particular instance. Again in each circumstance one must weigh whether or not God’s goodness is observable to them physically and if its not then we should simply defer to the divine and attempt to understand his plan outside our observable reality. If we take this approach God would maintain his status as all knowing, all-powerful and always just and good. 

The Human Predicament

Well, this morning I just wanted to touch on something that if you're an Atheist or a Christian or really anything professing a faith should be concerned about (yes I am saying Atheist's have faith based reasons for believing what they do).


The question is what happens to us when we die? Where do we go? Do we cease to exist?


The way you answer this question should have a dramatic impact on how you live your life.


We as humans, according to a Naturalistic (atheist) worldview, are merely a chance directed by natural selection evolved from a primordial soup on a distant planet in a vast, possibly infinitely regressing and expanding universe. I say possibly here because most scientist still agree with a cosmic singularity of the universe, namely the Big Bang.


The end result of this is you are here on earth existing for maybe 100 years, and then you are going back into nothingness. But that fate doesn't just await you, it awaits the entire planet, which, as is theorized by most scientist, will ultimately end up in a heat death where the planet will simply grow cold and disintegrate spreading our cosmic garbage across the ever expanding universe into infinite space.


What does this sort of view lend to your ultimate significance, value and purpose of life. In truth it lends nothing to any of the afore mentioned aspects of life.


1. In regards to Ultimate Significance, basically what does it matter if you find a cure for cancer, or help to bring peace into the middle east, if your life and ultimately the lives of other generations and the earth itself cease to exist in the future the question is left to be answered, "So What?" Why bother, it all goes to nothingness.


2. In regards to Ultimate Value, what does it matter if you try to life a morally upright and correct life. Who determines your right and wrong, if everything is relative then my goods are just as right as yours are even though you don't agree with my anti-hot dog policy, you have to accept it because its my truth and its right to me. Either way what does that matter, when I will leave this world and cease to exist, why shouldn't I do as I please, steal, cheat, rob, kill. It makes no difference what I do since I will not be held responsible in the next life for anything I do here on earth I merely go the way of Hitler and Ghandi, into nothing.


3. Lastly in regards to Ultimate Purpose, if we are nothing more than "electro-chemicals" as Richard Dawkins puts it then we aren't special at all. We have no purpose or importance, we are just a random chance occurrence and our lives will end the same way they started back to non-existence, where is the purpose in living a life like that?


Bottom line is this, without God and Immortality our lives lack all the significance, value and purpose they need for making this present life worth living and fighting for.


As French Mathematician and Physicist Blaise Pascal puts it in his Wager Argument, "...when the odds that God exists are even, then the prudent man will gamble that God exists. This is a wager that all men must take-the game is in progress and a bet must be laid. There is no opting out: you have already joined the game. Which then will you choose--that God exists or that he does not?"


According to William Lane Craig, "Pascal argues that since the odds are even, reason is not violated in making either choice; so reason cannot determine which bet to make. Therefore, the choice should be made pragmatically in terms of maximizing one's happiness. If one wagers that God exists and he does, one has gained eternal life and infinite happiness. If he does not exist, one has lost nothing. On the other hand, if one wagers that God does not exist and he does, then one has suffered infinite loss. If he does not in fact exist, then one has gained nothing. Hence, the only prudent choice is to believe that God exists."


This point of view on God has become known as a "Properly Basic Belief" on which Alvin Plantinga has based his Reformed Epistemology.


So which will you choose?


I have chosen the first and the "Properly Basic Belief." I have nothing to lose and eternity to gain, which do you have?