Monthly Archives: July 2010

General Apologetics, Theology

What Is Christian Faith?

2 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most abused words in the English language is the word faith.  For skeptics, faith is believing in something despite reason.  For some religious folks, faith is simply the expression of positive emotions toward God.  Others claim faith is purely intellectual.

Can we more rigorously define what faith is?  I think we can, and I will call on Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli to help out, from their book Handbook of Christian Apologetics.

Kreeft and Tacelli first differentiate between the object of faith and the act of faith.

The object of faith includes all the things that are believed about God, as communicated by the Bible.  These things that are believed are expressed in propositions (e.g., Jesus is the Son of God).  These propositions, however, are only pointers.  They direct our attention to the real object of faith, God.  If the real object of faith is God, then why do we need all the propositions that capture our beliefs about God?  Kreeft and Tacelli explain, “Without propositions, we cannot know or tell others what God we believe in and what we believe about God.”

The act of faith consists of more than just belief.  There are four components of faith: 1) emotional, 2) intellectual, 3) volitional, and 4) heart.  Let’s look at each of these one at a time.

Emotional faith is “feeling assurance or trust or confidence in a person.  This includes hope (which is much stronger than just a wish) and peace (which is much stronger than mere calm).”  Emotional faith is the weakest component of faith because emotions change so frequently.

Intellectual faith is belief.  According to Kreeft and Tacelli, intellectual faith is more stable than emotional faith.  Strongly held beliefs will tend not to change often.  They cite the definition of intellectual faith from the Baltimore Catechism: “the act of the intellect, prompted by the will, by which we believe everything God has revealed on the grounds of the authority of the One who revealed it.”

Volitional faith is an act of the will.  “This faith is faithfulness, or fidelity.  It manifests itself in behavior, that is, in good works. . . . For the root of volitional faith – the will – is the faculty or power of the soul that is closest to . . . the ‘heart’.”

Heart faith is the very center of a person’s being, the center of their soul.  This is the “I” where the emotions, intellect, and will reside.  “The heart is where God the Holy Spirit works in us. . . . With the heart we choose our ‘fundamental option’ of yes or no to God, and thereby determine our eternal identity and destiny.”

All four of these components of faith work together, with the heart being the intersection of them all.  Faith is, therefore, not just about emotions or intellect.  Faith involves the entire person – every part.

The interaction of the intellect and the will are particularly interesting.  Kreeft and Tacelli describe how they work together:

The intellect is the soul’s navigator, but the will is its captain. . . . The will can command the intellect to think, but the intellect cannot command the will to will, only inform it, as a navigator informs the captain.  Yet the will cannot simply make you believe.  It can’t force the intellect to believe what appears to it to be false, or to disbelieve what seems to it to be true.

We could also add that if the emotions are predisposed against believing, then faith can be thwarted.  This is why purely intellectual appeals to a non-believer may not be effective.  If their emotions and/or will are set against faith, then intellectual arguments cannot bring them to God.  Likewise, purely emotional appeals may appear to work for a short time until that person has time to think about their beliefs and decide they are not reasonable (they have an intellectual problem).  There are even people who will to believe, but their intellect and/or emotions stand in the way.

Christian faith deals with the whole individual, so the takeaway is that the church can never become one dimensional and forget that will, intellect, emotions, and finally the very heart of a person must all express faith.

Archaeology

Who Is Portrayed in the Earliest Existing Biblical Painting?

Leave a comment

Post Author: Bill Pratt

The earliest existing painting portraying a biblical scene was found in a building called the House of the Physician in the ruins of the city of Pompeii, a city destroyed in AD 79 by Mount Vesuvius.  The painting is a striking rendition of the scene from 1 Kings 3 where two women lay claim to the same child and Solomon wisely determines who is the real mother of the child.

According to art expert Theodore Feder, this painting was likely commissioned by a non-Jew living in Pompeii in the time period just before the city was destroyed.  What makes this painting even more fascinating is that Feder thinks he has discovered the identities of two individuals who are in the bottom left of the painting and who are portrayed admiring the wisdom of Solomon.

In a recent article published in the Biblical Archaeology Review, Feder argues that the two individuals shown admiring Solomon are none other than Socrates and Aristotle, two of the most famous Greek philosophers of antiquity.

I believe these two figures are stand-ins for Socrates and Aristotle, introduced as a way of associating the wisdom of Solomon with that of the Greek philosophers. Put another way, their presence in the composition attests to the respect Greek philosophy could accord to Hebrew wisdom. Such a juxtaposition in art of wise men from the two civilizations was unprecedented, has rarely been done since, and is of great cultural and historical significance.

That Solomon was painted along with Socrates and Aristotle was a testament to the great respect that the Hebrew Bible was afforded as a book of wisdom in the 1st century Roman empire.  Feder concludes his article with this statement:

In selecting an episode from the Hebrew Bible, the patron departed from the canon of classical religious subject matter and elevated one from the Scriptures of a people whose influence at the time was spreading throughout the empire and would one day, in its Christian formulation, pervade it.

Atheism, General Apologetics, Theology

Does the Size of the Cosmos Render Man Insignificant?

18 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

That is the popular view among materialists (those who deny the existence of anything but the material world).  They beg us look at the sheer immensity of the universe and then look at the tininess of the human race in contrast.  The idea that man is special, that man holds a privileged seat in the cosmos is simply ridiculous, they claim.

The arch-materialist Carl Sagan (as quoted from The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World by William Dembski) had these thoughts on the matter:

Because of the reflection of sunlight . . . the earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world.  But it’s just an accident of geometry and optics. . . . Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.  Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.

Does the size of the universe relative to man render him insignificant?  Maybe if you’re a materialist, but not if you’re a Christian.  Scripture declares that God has created man in his image, that man indeed has a special seat of honor in the universe.  Theologically, Christians recognize that the materialist argument fails.  Scientifically, works like The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery demonstrate that the earth is unique in its ability to support advanced life and to enable scientific discovery.

As Dembski points out, G. K. Chesterton wrote one of the most memorable responses to the materialist claim of man’s insignificance in his classic work Orthodoxy.  Here is Chesterton speaking of the materialist Herbert Spencer:

He popularized this contemptible notion that the size of the solar system ought to over-awe the spiritual dogma of man. Why should a man surrender his dignity to the solar system any more than to a whale? If mere size proves that man is not the image of God, then a whale may be the image of God. . . . It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree.

What the size of the universe tells us is how awesome God is, not how insignificant man is, for man has always been spatially smaller than what surrounds him (e.g., whales and trees).  As Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.”

Evil, Pain, and Suffering, Free Will, Sin

Why Does a Good Creature Choose Evil?

9 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Since the Fall, we know why people choose evil – we are all born with original sin that saturates our soul.  The Fall, however, does not explain why Adam and Eve, or even Satan, used their free will to choose evil, to reject God.

This question may never be answered this side of heaven with any certainty, but William Dembski offers some interesting thoughts about the subject in his latest book, The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World.  Here is Dembski’s stab at this persistent mystery:

Perhaps the best we can do is offer a psychological explanation: Precisely because a created will belongs to a creature, that creature, if sufficiently reflective, can reflect on its creaturehood and realize that it is not God.  Creaturehood implies constraints to which the Creator is not subject.  This may seem unfair (certainly it is not egalitarian).  The question then naturally arises, Has God the Creator denied to the creature some freedom that might benefit it?  Adam and Eve thought the answer to this question was yes (God, it seemed, had denied them the freedom to know good and evil).

As soon as the creature answers yes to this question, its will turns against God.  Once that happens, the will becomes evil.  Whereas previously evil was merely a possibility, now it has become a reality.  In short, the problem of evil starts when creatures think God is evil for “cramping their style.”  The impulse of our modern secular culture to cast off restraint wherever possible finds its root here.

Interesting thoughts.  The creature, in effect, thinks that God is holding out on him, that what God has offered is not as good as what it should be.  Out of humanity, only the man Jesus was ever content with what God gave him, which is why he is the model we are all to emulate.

Intelligent Design

What is Intelligent Design?

25 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

I’ve been reading Donald Prothero’s book Evolution, which is a book meant to show how powerful the evidence for evolution is.  Prothero, a professor of geology, certainly seems to know a lot about fossils, but he seems to know remarkably little about intelligent design (ID), a theory he maligns early in his book.

Here is Prothero’s take on ID: “Reading the ID creationists closely, you find that they don’t offer any new scientific ideas or a true alternative theory of life competing with evolution.  All they argue is that some parts of nature seem too complex for them to imagine an evolutionary explanation.”

Really?  Is that what ID is?

Perhaps a better way to answer this question would be to ask ID proponents themselves to define ID, since they are the ones proposing the theory.  I know it sounds crazy and Prothero certainly doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but let’s try any way.

According to the website of a leading ID organization, the Discovery Institute, below is a definition of ID.  I will copy the entire definition here for your convenience, although you can go to the site yourself and read it there.

Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system’s components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.

This definition is quite different from Prothero’s definition because it claims that ID is a positive scientific program that is studying the informational properties of certain features of the natural world.  To say that ID is merely arguing that “some parts of nature are too complex to imagine an evolutionary explanation” is a gross distortion.  The first thing one should do when debating an idea is to correctly define that idea.  Let’s hope other writers who participate in this debate take a little more care than Prothero.

Philosophy, Theology

Can Words Describe God? Part 2

6 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In the last post, we talked about how equivocal God-talk is self-defeating and how univocal God-talk lowers God to the level of a finite being.  The only solution seems to be analogous God-talk.  So how does analogous God-talk work?

Analogous God-talk ultimately tells us what God is like, but it does not describe him exactly as He is.

How does this work?  According to Geisler, “The definition of the attribute applicable to both God and creatures must be the same, but the application of it differs, for in the one case (God’s) it is applied without limits, while in the other (humankind’s) it is predicated with limitations.” (emphasis added)

Take the example of goodness.  The definition of good is “that which is desired for its own sake.”  Now, when we take that concept of good and use it to describe God and man, we retain the same definition.  But when we apply it (predicate it) to God, we apply it in an unlimited way.  God is unlimited good, whereas man is limited good.  God is good infinitely while man is good finitely.  God is to be desired for his own sake absolutely, while man is to be desired for his own sake relatively.

Another example would be the concept of being.  Geisler says, “Likewise, being may be defined univocally as “that which is,” but this univocal concept is predicated of God and creatures in an analogous way. God is “that which is” infinitely; a creature is “that which is” only finitely. Or, more properly, God is Existence and creatures merely have existence.”

Geisler further explains:

Generic concepts are univocal when abstracted, but analogical when asserted of different things, as man and dog are equally animal but are not equal animals. Animal is defined the same way (say, as “a sentient being”), but animality is predicated differently of Fido and of Socrates (c. 470–399 B.C.). (Socrates possesses animality in a higher sense than Fido does.) Likewise, both the flower and God are said to be beautiful, but God is beautiful in an infinitely higher sense than flowers are.

While this tells us nothing directly about the similarity between God and creation, it does inform us about the difference between an infinite being and a finite being. For if beauty means “that which, being seen, pleases,” then the pleasure of the beatific vision of God is infinitely greater than the pleasure of viewing a flower.

What about all the concepts of God that are applied negatively, such as eternal (non-temporal), uncaused (not caused), and immutable (not changing)?  The reason these concepts are negated is because their definitions contain limits or imperfections.  God, as an infinite (not limited) being, cannot be limited by any concept when it is applied to Him.  Time, causation, and change are all concepts which would make God dependent on something else – they all limit his being.  Therefore these terms must be negated.

Here is the bottom line.  We can never describe, with language, exactly who God is, but we can say what He is like.  We can take finite concepts and apply them to God in an infinite (unlimited) way.  That is the best we can do using human language.

An additional point needs to be made.  Some people find analogous God-talk to be difficult to understand (it can be more abstract that some people are comfortable with), and so they brush it aside and collapse their language back to univocal God-talk.  The danger, of course, is that when you start talking about God as a finite being, then you are lowering him to a creature.

Mormon theology is the poster child for univocal God-talk gone wild.  God is created, God is material, God is in time, and so forth and so on.  The Mormon God is not transcendent, is not infinite, is not uncaused –  he is just like the rest of us, a creature.  Is this the God that is presented in Scripture?  I think not.

Philosophy, Theology

Can Words Describe God? Part 1

3 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Recently some of my skeptical friends who frequently comment on the blog raised a very important issue: how do we use language when talking about God?  Is God so transcendent that our words communicate nothing about him?  Is the Christian God so “other” that words completely fail us?

There seem to be three options about God-talk.

First, that it is equivocal (totally different from the way God really is).  According to theologian Norman Geisler in his Systematic Theology. Vol. 1, “Equivocal God-talk leaves us in total ignorance about God. At best, one can only feel, intuit, or sense God in some experiential way, but no human expressions can describe what it is that is being experienced.”

This option has several problems.  Geisler clarifies, “First, it is self-defeating, since it affirms with human language about God that we cannot affirm anything about God. Religious mystics certainly write books about God. In brief, any attempt to express the equivocal view about God implies that some non-equivocal language about God is possible.”  Total agnosticism about God, in other words, is self-defeating, as soon as the agnostic says anything about God.

“Second, the Bible declares that God can be described in human language. Indeed, Scripture as a whole is an attempt to inform us about God and to evoke a response from us.”  Equivocal God-talk is totally contradicted by Scripture, where the writers clearly believed they were communicating truths about God.

“Third, there is a continual and consistent tradition in orthodox theology from the earliest centuries to the present that assumes human language can express truth about the transcendent God. This is manifest in the great confessions, creeds, and councils of the Christian church, to say nothing of all the theological treatises of the great Fathers of the church from the second century to the present.”  The history of the church demonstrates that even the earliest believers thought they could use language to talk about God.

For these reasons, equivocal God-talk must be rejected.

The second option for God-talk is that it is univocal (totally the same as God really is).  This view claims that the words we use can be applied directly to God, in the same exact way we would apply those words to finite creatures, such as human beings.

This option also has problems.  Geisler explains, “First, how can our understanding of God be entirely the same as God’s (i.e., univocal)? Our understanding and expressions are finite, and God’s are infinite, and there is an infinite gulf between finite and infinite. As transcendent, God is not only beyond our limited understanding, but He is also beyond our finite expressions.”  Because God’s nature is understood to be infinite in being, we cannot use finite language to capture exactly who God is.

“Second, the Bible makes it clear that God is far above our thoughts and words. As the prophet Isaiah aptly put it, “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ ” declares the LORD. “’As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts’ ” (Isa. 55:8–9). For a mortal human being to know as God knows, he would have to be God, since only God knows infinitely.”

For these reasons, univocal God-talk must be rejected.

That brings us to the third option, that God-talk is analogous (similar to the way God really is).  This seems to be the only alternative if we are to avoid self-defeating skepticism (equivocal God-talk) on the one hand, and avoid lowering God to the level of finite beings (univocal God-talk) on the other hand.

In the next post, we will discuss in more detail what analogous God-talk is and how Christians use this kind of language to speak about God.

Morality

Why Don’t Kids Pay Attention?

4 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Researchers report that there is a correlation between how much time kids spend in front of video games and television, and their ability to focus in school.  Here is an excerpt from the article:

Elementary school-age and college-age participants who exceed two hours per day of screen time are as much as twice as likely to be above average in attention problems.

In addition, the researchers “conclude that TV and video game viewing may be one contributing factor for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children.”

Why does playing video games and watching TV cause attention problems?  The report explains:

If we train the brain to require constant stimulation and constant flickering lights, changes in sound and camera angle, or immediate feedback, such as video games can provide, then when the child lands in the classroom where the teacher doesn’t have a million-dollar-per-episode budget, it may be hard to get children to sustain their attention.

Some food for thought.  Our 12-year old son plays video games, but we are now requiring that for each hour over one hour daily that he wants to play, he must read for the same amount of time.  Anybody else have ideas about how to limit screen time for kids?

Existence of God

What Explains the Changing of the Universe?

81 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Everything around us is changing, moving from one state to another in time.  My son was less than 5 feet tall two years ago, and now he is greater than 5 feet tall.  The grass in my yard is growing every week so that I have to cut it.  The paint on my house is fading.

Now, all of these things that are changing are moving from one state to another.  What could move a thing from one state to another?  It doesn’t seem like the thing itself could do that, all by itself.

Food, air, and water contribute to my son’s changing height.  The sun and water grow the grass.  The environment acts on the paint to cause it to fade.  My son cannot be the sole explanation for his change, nor can the grass or paint change themselves.  These things all have the potential for change, but there is always something external that acts on that potential to make the change occur.

It doesn’t stop there, though, because food, air, water, the sun, and the environment also need an explanation for why they change.  They cannot actualize their own change either.

So, what we have is a universe full of changing things that each need an explanation for that change.  Said another way, we have a universe full of potentialities, all of which need things to actualize them.

The universe, though, is the sum total of all these changing things.  It is the sum total of all time, space, and matter.  If everything in the universe is changing, then logically the universe is also changing.  What, then, is the explanation for the universe changing?  It cannot change itself, as we’ve seen.  There must be something outside of it, and that something cannot be in time, in space, or material.  The theist responds that God is outside time, space, and matter, and is therefore a great candidate for the explanation of the changing of the universe.

One last thing, if the explanation for the changing of the universe is also changing, then it also needs an explanation.  But Christians have always held that God is unchanging.  Therefore, God is the immaterial, nonspatial, eternal, and unchanging Source of all change.

Here is the argument in a syllogism:

  1. Everything that changes needs an explanation for that change outside of itself.
  2. The universe is changing.
  3. The universe needs an explanation of its change outside of itself.

Note: Credit for this form of the argument goes to Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli in their book, Handbook of Christian Apologetics.

Evolution, Intelligent Design

California Science Center Settles Lawsuit with Pro-Intelligent Design Group

Leave a comment

Post Author: Bill Pratt

You may recall that in January of this year, we posted about the California Science Center, a public institution, reneging on the screening of a pro-intelligent design (ID) movie.  The Discovery Institute, a pro-ID organization, filed a lawsuit when the Science Center refused to turn over all documents related to the cancellation of the screening.

On June 14, the Discovery Institute reported that the Science Center has settled the case, agreeing to pay all attorneys’ fees, and releasing all of the documents that should have been released in the first place.

All I can say is that the California taxpayers should be furious at the leadership of the Science Center for wasting their money over something so silly.  If they had just gone ahead with the screening, all of this could have been avoided, but the pro-Darwin side is so angry with anyone who disagrees with the Darwinian story that all kinds of pressure was placed on the Science Center to shut down the screening.

As I asked before, what are they afraid of?  Let everyone make their case and stop censoring those who disagree with you.