Tag: William Lane Craig

A Facelift Proposed on the Doctrine of Inerrancy

God guided the circumstances in which the biblical literature was divinely inspired, and God approved the final product

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The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is just a little older than my Christian faith. It was relatively new when I first read the Bible in college and when I first asked Jesus to be the Lord and Savior of my life. I have wrestled with the idea of inerrancy from the beginning of my Christian life until now.

It isn’t that I don’t think the Bible is the “word of God”. It isn’t that I don’t have a “high” view of the reliability, integrity, and divine nature of the Bible. It isn’t that I don’t think the Bible was inspired by God and should be relied on as His word to us to follow.

I believe all these things, but I have issues with statements on inerrancy that seem to push what the Bible says about itself beyond what it says.

Finally, I have found some similar thinking in two of the great Christian thinkers of our time: Mike Licona and William Lane Craig. In his blog, Risen Jesus, Licona introduces a paper to the world that he wrote and presented at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological society.

In the paper, Licona cites Craig in support of a new proposal on inerrancy. First, though, he explains some of what is problematic with the Chicago Statement. I am not going to restate the points he makes here. You can read the paper, CSBI Needs a Facelift, yourself, but I will summarize it for those who don’t have the time or inclination to read the original (though it isn’t long).

Licona starts with the two main verses that provide the inspiration (pun intended) for the doctrine of inerrancy: 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:20-21. At the center of this are the words “God-inspired” or “God-breathed” which are English translations of the Greek word, “theopneustos“.

Licona traces the history of the use of the word, theopneustos, prior to the 3rd Century. The word was not often used, and it was used in very diverse contexts. Licona quotes a commentary on 2 Timothy, stating, “Theopneustos does not have enough precision to go beyond the basic idea that the Scriptures came from God.” and he concludes:

Therefore, 2 Timothy 3:16 does not contribute as much to our discussion as we may have first thought. So we should be cautious not to read more into it than Paul may have intended.

The 2 Peter 1:20-21 text speaks of prophets who were “carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Licona observes that the Greek word translated “carried along”, pherō, is also used by Philo “to describe how prophets received revelation from God, during which time they had ‘no power of apprehension’ while God made ‘full use of their organs of speech.’ Josephus likewise used this word to say that “God’s Spirit put the words in the mouths of the prophets” (quoting Licona, who paraphrased Josephus).

The 2 Timothy passage and the 2 Peter passage express different ideas and give rise to different pictures of how God speaks to/through people who authorized the writings of the Bible. some writings purport to be prophetic and some do not expressly adopt that attitude. The Chicago Statement assumes that both passages mean the same thing, but most biblical scholars disagree with that conclusion.

Licona goes on to summarize some phenomena in the text of the Bible that suggest a “human element in Scripture”. Licona concludes from this, “Although [the human element] does not challenge the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture, it does challenge the concept of inspiration imagined by [the Chicago Statement].”

These issues with the ambiguous meaning of the Greek words and the very different images of God working to convey His “Word” through people (God-breathed and carried along by the Spirit), can be reconciled with a “new” paradigm, says Licona. This paradigm was suggested by Craig in 1999.

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Who Has the Burden of Proof on the God Proposition?

Who has the burden of proof may depend on our end goal.

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Michael Egnor published a provocative article posted on Evolution News & Science Today: Theists vs. Atheists: Who Has the Burden of Proof? Egnor’s comments follow a debate he had with Matt Dillahunty, who is, perhaps, the most popular atheist voice speaking out against religion today.

Egnor claims Dillahunty “didn’t fare well” and demonstrated “no real understanding of any of the ten classical proofs of God’s existence”. It seems that Dillahunty’s big position in the debate was that theists have the burden of proof, so there is no real need for him to assert a position; he can sit back and take pot shots at theist’s arguments and call it a win.

I didn’t watch the debate, so I am just parroting Egnor’s characterization on my way to making a different point. Dillahunty did recently attempt to undress William Lane Craig’s favorite argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, so perhaps he isn’t quite as derelict in his opposition as Egnor makes him out to be. (Though, again, it’s just taking pot shots at positive arguments.)

It is true that Dillahunty relies heavily on the position that he has no burden to prove the negative: that God doesn’t exist. Egnor claims this is because positive atheist arguments are “few and weak” (before putting up a strawman argument in caricature of Dillahunty’s favorite argument based on “Divine Hiddeness”, which I don’t intend to address either).

Egnor may be right, basically, in his assessment of Dillahunty’s position, though not very winsome in stating it. Of course, I wouldn’t characterize Dillahunty as winsome either. Much less so.

What caught my attention about the article wasn’t in the article at all. It was a comment about the article to the effect that anyone who is interested in truth has the burden of proof. That comment, I believe, deserves some attention.

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How Not to Look for God: An “Unapologetic” Argument for God

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In two previous articles attempting to make an “unapologetic” argument for God, I have just been ramping up to make the argument. I still haven’t gotten there yet, and I am still just getting started.

That’s right. I am still working on getting to the starting line. Maybe I will still get there.

I say, “unapologetic”, rather loosely, in case you are wondering.  I am not being apologetic in the sense of apologizing for anything. Apologetics has nothing to do with being sorry, of course. It means to provide a defense, and it specifically describes the effort of providing a defense for Christianity.

The word, apologetics, derives from the Greek word, apologia, which means “a speech in defense” or a “verbal defense” or a “well-reasoned reply”. The world is used in Peter 3:15 as follows:

“Always be prepared to give an answer [apologia] to everyone who asks you to give the reason [logos] for the hope that you have.”

I am using “unapologetic” as a kind of play on words. I am not giving a typical apologetic argument for the existence of God, and I am not being apologetic about doing that.

I previously made the observation that we all start with axioms, premises on which we support our positions for and against God, but we are incapable of proving those axioms. We consider them “self-evident”, but that is, frankly, just another way of saying that we can’t prove our starting premises” we have to assume they are true, and we go from there.

We take our fundamental premises on faith, essentially. This includes everyone, even in science.

As an example, consider the scientist, like a few I have heard, who says that science is the only way to know truth and all truths can be revealed by science. That premise cannot be scientifically proven. Therefore, you just must take it on faith.

Ironically, that statement is also self-contradictory. If science is the only way to know truth, and the statement itself cannot be proven by science, then even if it is right, it is wrong! (Echoing John Lennox here.)

I recently heard the astrophysicist, Michael Guillen, say similarly that science does not prove anything absolutely. As an example, he says we could posit that ravens are always black. Every raven the modern world has ever encountered and documented may be black, but that doesn’t mean that every raven that ever existed and every raven that will ever exist is always black.

To make the claim that all ravens are black is to go beyond science. We can only verify the blackness of all the ravens we can find and the ravens that other people have documented, but we can’t verify the blackness of the ravens that were never documented or the ravens that have not yet existed.

William Lane Craig talks about the philosophy of logical positivism championed by people like AJ Ayer in the 1940’s and 50’s. Logical positivism, or “verificationism”, as Craig calls it, was claimed that consideration of the existence of God is meaningless because it is not verifiable by the five senses. The book, Language, Proof and Logic, was a kind of “manifesto” of this view, says Craig,

Verificationsim was used by Ayer to nix anything metaphysical. According to this view, a statement is only meaningful if it is capable of being empirically verified. Since metaphysical statements are beyond the reach of empirical science, they cannot be verified. Metaphysical statements were, therefore, dismissed out of hand. According to Craig,

“Ayer was very explicit about the theological implications of this verificationism. Since God is a metaphysical object, the possibility of knowledge was ‘ruled out’ by our treatment of metaphysics. Thus, there can be no knowledge of God.”

Do you see the problem with this view? One only need ask, “Is that statement capable of being empirically verified?”

Ayer’s view was built on an axiom he could not prove, and which could not be proven by the methods he arbitrarily limited according to the premise he assumed. His view could not even stand up to itself!

Craig says the collapse of verificationism was “the most philosophical event of the twentieth century”. The verification principal was not only unscientific; it was self-refuting. “The statement, ‘You should only believe what can be scientifically proven cannot, itself, be scientifically proven.’”

In the previous “unapologetic” articles, I claim that we all have to take certain things on faith, especially our starting premises, which are the tools by which we view and explore the world, but not all of those starting premises are created equal. Some of them cannot even stand up to themselves!

But, enough of that. I need to get to the point of this article.

It seems axiomatic that, if one wants to determine whether God exists, and if one is sincere in making that determination, one will not start with a premise that will inevitably result in the logic that God does not exist.

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Thoughts on Reason and Faith Inspired by Charles Darwin and Dr. William Lane Craig

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The main hall of Natural History Museum. This view includes the Statue of Charles Darwin (by Sir Joseph Boehm.)

In Dr. William Lane Craig’s book, Reasonable Faith, he addresses the role of reason, or the lack thereof, in faith. At one point, he responds to a somewhat common position – that we don’t need reason; we just need to preach the Gospel – this way:

“Now, there is a danger…. Some persons might say, ‘We should never seek to defend the faith. Just preach the Gospel and let the Holy Spirit work.’ But this attitude is unbalanced and unscriptural, as we shall see in a moment. For now, let us just note in passing that as long as reason is a minister of the Christian faith, Christians should employ it.”

While just preaching the Gospel isn’t necessarily wrong, we shouldn’t abdicate the use of philosophy, logic or reason in support of the Gospel. Of course, there is another, danger: an unwarranted and non-critical confidence in human reason.

An atheist, scientist recently took issue with Dr. Craig and the statement quoted above. He astutely noted that Craig’s suggestion that reason should be employed only if reason “ministers” to (supports) Christian faith implies that Dr. Craig believes reason should not be used if it doesn’t support the Christian faith. In a recent podcast, Dr. Craig confirmed that is exactly what he meant.

For the atheist, scientist, the suggestion that reason should take a backseat to faith is anathema. Reason is the highest standard, the “magisterial” standard, of arbitrating truth for the materialist who doesn’t ascribe to the Person of God, the supernatural or metaphysical reality. No surprise there of course.

For the atheist/materialist, there is no higher standard of proof for determining reality than human thought.

As important as I think sound human reasoning is, I agree with Dr. Craig. I have long held that the human capacity to reason should not be given such a magisterial place in a material world. By that, I mean that a materialist’s confidence in his own capacity to reason is utterly misplaced if he is right about materialism.

It’s an interesting conundrum. A materialist has no choice but to rely on his own capacity to reason on a materialist worldview. He has no other tools in the toolbox, but this tool is not adequate for the job required of it. Let me explain.

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Determinism and Free Will: Or Is It Free Won’t?

Science suggests that the decisions we make are actually prompted by brain activity before we are conscious of making the decision.

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Do we have free will? Modern science seems to suggest that we do not have free will. This is what I learned watching an episode in a series on science that was hosted by Stephen Hawking on Public Broadcast Television.

In one experiment designed to test question whether humans have free will, the subjects were told to choose to push a button and to note the time on the clock at which the decision was made. At the same time, the subject’s brain waves were being monitored for activity. Over and over again, the brain waves registered activity before the subject was conscious of the decision being made to take the action.

The experiment demonstrated the following sequence: (1) a brain signal occurs about 550 milliseconds prior to the person’s finger moving; (2) the person is aware of his decision to move his finger about 200 milliseconds prior to his finger moving; and (3) the person’s finger moves.

This was interpreted as evidence by Hawking that we don’t have free will. The decisions we make are actually prompted by brain activity before we are conscious of making a decision. The conclusion is that we are responding to some prior stimuli and only think that we are making independent decisions.

This experiment was only one experiment in a series of experiments that demonstrate such things as the cosmological constants that that we learn in physics and the apparent indeterminism that we appear to see in quantum mechanics. Each experiment, however, that to the conclusion that our world and even we are determined by natural laws in an endless stream of cause and effect.

Ancient Greeks might have called it fate. Modern science calls it determinism. We have even have a religious term for this apparent phenomenon: predestination.

I think that skepticism of what we think we know is a good thing. The Apostle Paul seems to agree when he encourages people to “test everything”. Therefore, I dug a little deeper and found that the scientist who first conceived and conducted these experiments, Benjamin Libet, actually came to the opposite conclusion.

Scientific experiments like this often seem hyper-theoretical, but they can have some practical application. As I dug deeper and sought greater understanding of what is going on in these experiments and what it means for you and I, I find some interesting applications to our struggles with sin.

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