Textual Criticism, Top Ten Posts of 2012

How Do Other Ancient Texts Compare to the New Testament? #10 Post of 2012

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

When considering the trustworthiness of the New Testament (NT) documents, the first question we need to ask is, “Have these documents been accurately transmitted to us since they were originally written?”

In order to answer this question about the textual transmission of documents of the ancient world, historians look at the number of existing manuscript copies (MSS) of the original text and they look at the time gap between the earliest existing MSS and the date when the original document was written.  The more MSS, the better we are able to reconstruct the original.  The shorter the time gap, the better we are able to reconstruct the original.  This is referred to as the bibliographical test.

Christians have pointed out for decades that the NT documents are far superior in both dimensions of the bibliographical test.  There are more existing MSS and the time gap for those MSS is the shortest when compared to other documents of ancient history.

Clay Jones, professor at Biola University, has recently updated the data that compares the Greek NT documents (as a group) to other documents of ancient history in an article published in the Christian Research Journal.  Below are the results of his research:

Author Work Date Written Earliest MSS Time Gap Number of MSS
Homer Iliad 800 BC c. 400 BC 400 1757
Herodotus History 480-425 BC 10th C 1350 109
Sophocles Plays 496-406 BC 3rd C BC 100-200 193
Plato Tetralogies 400 BC AD 895 1300 210
Caesar Gallic Wars 100-44 BC 9th C 950 251
Livy History of Rome 59 BC-AD 17 Early 5th C 400 150
Tacitus Annals AD 100 AD 850 750-950 33
Pliny, the Elder Natural History AD 49-79 5th C fragment: 1; Rem. 14-15th C 400 200
Thucydides History 460-400 BC 3rd C BC 200 96
Demosthenes Speeches 300 BC Some fragments from 1 C BC 1100+ 340
Greek NT AD 50-100 AD 130 40 5795

The table illustrates that the Greek NT does extremely well with both the time gap (40 years) and the number of MSS (5795), as compared to all the other documents in the table.  But the situation is even better for the NT because we haven’t yet mentioned all the MSS of the NT in other languages.

Jones reveals that there are over 2000 Armenian, almost 1000 Coptic, 6 Gothic, more than 600 Ethiopian, more than 10000 Latin, more than 350 Syriac, 43 Georgian, and more than 4000 Slavic manuscript copies of the NT.

The only conclusion one can reasonably reach is that we have more confidence in the textual transmission of the NT than in any other document of ancient history.  To question the transmission accuracy of the NT texts we have today is to question all of ancient history.

About the blog

What Is Happening on the Blog in December?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

For those of you who have followed the blog for a few years, you know that every December I re-run the top ten posts of the year. The top ten is solely determined by number of page views, so I am not picking out my personal favorites – just going by the numbers.

While the top ten is re-posting over the next few weeks, I will be writing new material which will start publishing in January.  It’s always possible that I will sneak a couple of new posts in before the end of the year, but I generally like to take a break this time of year.

I want to thank all of you again for subscribing to the blog, whether by email, Facebook, Twitter, or RSS feed. Our readership grew tremendously this year, mostly by word of mouth and links from other sites, and I’m grateful to all of you who have passed along Tough Questions Answered to your friends.

God bless all of you and don’t let Christmas stress you out!  After all, it’s the birth of our Savior we’re celebrating.  What a  wonderful time of year!

Bible Interpretation

Is There Support for Sola Scriptura in the Church Fathers?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Indeed there is.  Here are just a handful of quotes from church fathers that seem to support the supremacy of the Scriptures over all other sources.

Athanasius: “The holy and inspired Scriptures are fully sufficient for the proclamation of the truth.”

Cyril of Jerusalem: “With regard to the divine and saving mysteries of faith no doctrine, however trivial, may be taught without the backing of the divine Scriptures. . . . for our saving faith derives its force, not from capricious reasoning, but from what may be proved out of the Bible.”

John Chrysostom: (as paraphrased by J. N. D. Kelley) “[Chrysostom] bade his congregation seek no other teacher than the oracles of God; everything was straightforward and clear in the Bible, and the sum of necessary knowledge could be extracted from it.”

Augustine: “It is to the canonical Scriptures alone that I am bound to yield such implicit subjection as to follow their teaching, without admitting the slightest suspicion that in them any mistake or any statement intended to mislead could find a place.” (emphasis added)

Augustine: “He [God] also inspired the Scripture, which is regarded as canonical and of supreme authority and to which we give credence concerning all the truths we ought to know and yet, of ourselves, are unable to learn.”

Augustine: “Scripture has a sacredness peculiar to itself. . . . But in consequence of the sacred writing, we are bound to receive as true whatever the canon shows to have been said by even one prophet, or apostle, or evangelist.”

Augustine: “There is a distinct boundary line separating all productions subsequent to apostolic times from the authoritative canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, . . .  [for] the authority of these books has come down to us from the apostles . . . and, from a position of lofty supremacy, claims the submission of every faithful and pious mind. . . . In the innumerable books that have been written latterly we may sometimes find the same truth as in Scripture, but there is not the same authority. Scripture has a sacredness peculiar to itself.”

Aquinas: “We believe the successors of the apostles and prophets only in so far as they tell us those things which the apostles and prophets have left in their writings,” and “it is heretical to say that any falsehood whatsoever is contained either in the gospels or in any canonical Scripture.” (emphasis added)

From these few quotes, we can see that at least some of the tradition seems to support the idea that the tradition is subordinate to Scripture.  The Reformers, therefore, were not merely inventing a new doctrine that had no support from the church fathers themselves.  I think this is an important point.

Existence of God, General Apologetics, Philosophy, Religion, Resurrection

What Are the Roles of Faith and Reason in Christianity? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1 of this series Philosopher Edward Feser demonstrated that reason, not faith, brings us all the way to the conclusion that Jesus is divine.  Once we arrive here, where do we go?

Feser explains:

Suppose you know through purely rational arguments that there is a God, that He raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and therefore that Christ really is divine, as He claimed to be, so that anything He taught must be true; in other words, suppose that the general strategy just sketched can be successfully fleshed out.

What would follow?  Faith, or belief, enters and takes center stage.

Then it follows that if you are rational you will believe anything Christ taught; indeed, if you are rational you will believe it even if it is something that you could not possibly have come to know in any other way, and even if it is something highly counterintuitive and difficult to understand.  For reason will have told you that Christ is infallible, and therefore cannot be wrong in anything He teaches.  In short, reason tells you to have faith in what Christ teaches, because He is divine.

We have faith in Christ and what He teaches because of who He is.  Because He proved himself to be divine by resurrecting from the dead, we believe Him.  That is faith.

Does every Christian follow the process that Feser describes, reasoning through philosophy and historical evidence to the conclusion that Jesus is divine?  Obviously not.  Most Christians believe because they have received it on authority from someone else who does understand the arguments.

There may even be more than one link in the chain to get back to someone who understands the arguments, but this hardly matters.  What matters is that there are theologians and philosophers and other scholars who do understand the arguments, so even the person who does not understand the reasons for his faith still indirectly bases his faith on those reasons.

This is no different than anything else we come to believe in life.  For the vast majority of things we each believe we have received on authority from someone else.  Feser gives a parallel in science.  “The man in the street who believes that E=mc^2 probably couldn’t give you an interesting defense of his belief if his life depended on it.  He believes it because his high school physics teacher told him about it.”

Continuing alone these lines Feser further argues:

Most people who believe that E=mc^2, and who believe almost any other widely known and generally accepted scientific proposition, do so on the basis of faith in exactly the sense in question here.  They believe it, in other words, on the authority of those from whom they learned it.  Everyone acknowledges that this is perfectly legitimate; indeed, there is no way we could know much of interest at all if we weren’t able to appeal to various authorities.

So these are the roles of reason and faith in Christianity, a far cry from the story that atheists tell.  Some of you may be complaining at this point that you know Christians who disavow this approach, who truly do have blind faith, who say that reason has no place in their belief system.  Feser’s final words on this topic are a propos:

I do not doubt that there are and have been Christians and people of other religions whose theory and/or practice does not fit this understanding.  But I do not speak for them, and neither did Aquinas and the other great thinkers of the Western religious tradition.  And if the ‘New Atheists’ are serious about making a rational case for atheism, then, as I have said, they should be taking on the best representatives of the opposing point of view – not blabbering on for hundreds of pages about the dangers of ‘faith’ as an irrational will to believe something in the face of all evidence, when this is an attitude that the mainstream Christian theological tradition has itself always condemned.

Existence of God, General Apologetics, Philosophy, Resurrection

What Are the Roles of Faith and Reason in Christianity? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

A typical accusation of atheists toward Christians is that we only believe what we believe because of blind faith.  In other words, we have no rational reasons for believing in God or believing that Jesus died for our sins.  The person who believes in fairies or unicorns is no different than the Christian belief in God.

Richard Dawkins makes this point dozens of times in his book The God Delusion.  Here is one example: “Christianity . . . teaches children that unquestioned faith is a virtue. You don’t have to make the case for what you believe.”  And elsewhere: “Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument.”

Is this a fair characterization of Christianity?  Is it totally based upon blind faith with no justification whatsoever?  As we’ve mentioned about Dawkins before, he avoids, at all costs, actually engaging with the best of Christian thought.  So, what has been the Christian answer to the question of faith vs. reason?

For this answer, we turn again to Philosopher Edward Feser.  In his book The Last Superstition he takes on this atheist misconception.  Feser describes what the traditional Christian account of the roles of faith and reason are.

First, we start with reason.  According to Feser, “Pure reason can reveal to us that there is a God, [and] that we have immortal souls.”  By using philosophical arguments, we can conclude these two things.

However, Christians claim to know much more than just that God exists and humans have immortal souls.  They claim to have actually received revelation from God.  Does faith come into the account now, after we have established by reason that God exists and humans have immortal souls?  No.  “For the claim that a divine revelation has occurred is something for which the monotheistic religions typically claim there is evidence, and that evidence takes the form of a miracle, a suspension of the natural order that cannot be explained in any other way than divine intervention in the normal course of events.”

By reason alone, we know that if God exists, then miracles can occur, because of God’s very nature (creator and sustainer of laws governing nature).  The God that we have arrived at by reason is a God who can suspend the laws of nature.  To what miracle do Christians point?  The resurrection of Jesus.  Feser reminds us, “If the story of Jesus’s resurrection is true, then you must become a Christian; if it is false, then Christianity itself is false, and should be rejected.”

Is this where faith comes in?  No.  Feser explains that “the mainstream Christian tradition has also always claimed that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical event the reality of which can be established through rational argument.”  So, the historical evidence of the resurrection of Jesus builds upon the philosophical argumentation that God exists and that humans have immortal souls.  The philosophy comes first, and the historical evidence second.  Please note that so far, we have only discussed reason, and faith has not yet entered the picture.

If the historical evidence for the resurrection is overwhelming, then there are “rational grounds for believing that what Christ taught was true, in which case the key doctrines of Christianity are rationally justified.”

Feser takes us back through the argument again, and it is worth reviewing:

The overall chain of argument, then, goes something like this: Pure reason proves through philosophical arguments that there is a God and that we have immortal souls.  This by itself entails that a miracle like a resurrection from the dead is possible.  Now the historical evidence that Jesus Christ was in fact resurrected from the dead is overwhelming when interpreted in light of that background knowledge.  Hence pure reason also shows that Jesus really was raised from the dead.  But Jesus claimed to be divine, and claimed that the authority of His teachings would be confirmed by His being resurrected.  So the fact that He was resurrected provides divine authentication of His claims.  Hence reason shows that He really was divine. . . .  At every step, evidence and rational argumentation – not ‘blind faith’ or a ‘will to believe’ – are taken to justify our acceptance of certain teachings.

In part 2 of this series, we will move to the role of faith.

Bible Interpretation

What Does Sola Scriptura Mean?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you call yourself a Protestant Christian, then you’ve probably been taught at some point that Protestants believe in the principle of sola Scriptura.  If you are Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, then you have been taught that you deny the principle of sola Scriptura.

If we are going to have this intramural disagreement, we might as well all get straight on what we are disagreeing over.  So what does sola Scriptura mean anyway?

According to Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie in Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences,

By sola Scriptura orthodox Protestants mean that Scripture alone is the primary and absolute source of authority, the final court of appeal, for all doctrine and practice (faith and morals). . . . What Protestants mean by sola Scriptura is that the Bible alone is the infallible written authority for faith and morals.

Geisler and MacKenzie claim that sola Scriptura implies several things:

First, the Bible is a direct revelation from God. As such, it has divine authority, for what the Bible says, God says.

Second, Scripture is the sufficient and final written authority of God. As to sufficiency, the Bible—nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else—is all that is necessary for faith and practice. In short, “the Bible alone” means “the Bible only” is the final authority for our faith. Further, the Scriptures not only have sufficiency but they also possess final authority. They are the final court of appeal on all doctrinal and moral matters. However good they may be in giving guidance, all the church fathers, popes, and councils are fallible. Only the Bible is infallible.

Third, the Bible is clear (perspicuous). The perspicuity of Scripture does not mean that everything in the Bible is perfectly clear, but rather the essential teachings are. Popularly put, in the Bible the main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things.

Fourth, Scripture interprets Scripture. This is known as the analogy of faith principle. When we have difficulty in understanding an unclear text of Scripture, we turn to other biblical texts, since the Bible is the best interpreter of the Bible. In the Scriptures, clear texts should be used to interpret the unclear ones.

There are several misconceptions about sola Scriptura that can be cleared up with Q&A.

1. Does sola Scriptura exclude all truth outside of the Bible?  No.  Geisler and MacKenzie write:

This, of course, is untrue, as is revealed by Luther’s famous quote about being “convinced by the testimonies of Scripture or evident reason” (emphasis added). Most Protestants accept the general revelation declared in the heavens (Ps. 19:1) and inscribed on the human heart (Rom. 2:12–15). However, classical Protestantism denies any salvific value of natural (general) revelation, believing one can only come to salvation through special revelation.

2. Does the sola Scriptura idea of perspicuity mean that the whole Bible is clear? No.  Only the teachings essential to salvation.

3. Does sola Scriptura mean that all church traditions – creeds, councils, church father writings – should be ignored?  No. Geisler and MacKenzie explain the role these things play for Protestants:

This is not to say that Protestants obtain no help from the Fathers and early councils. Indeed, Protestants accept the pronouncements of the first four ecumenical councils as helpful but not infallible. What is more, most Protestants have high regard for the teachings of the early Fathers, though obviously they do not believe they are without error. So this is not to say that there is no usefulness to Christian tradition, but only that it is of secondary importance. As John Jefferson Davis notes, “Sola Scriptura meant the primacy of Scripture as a theological norm over all tradition rather than the total rejection of tradition.”

Hopefully we have cleared up some of the more popular misconceptions about sola Scriptura. Now we can focus on disagreeing on what we really disagree on!

Bible Interpretation

What Training Do We Need to Interpret the Bible?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Let’s get some facts out on the table about the Bible.  The Bible is composed of some 66 separate documents that were written approximately between the years of 1500 BC to AD 100 in two primary languages (Hebrew and Greek), and produced in cultures and historical contexts that are radically different from ours.

All of these elements make it difficult to interpret the biblical texts correctly: 1) the fact that we are dealing with many documents written by many different authors, 2) the fact that these documents were written in foreign and ancient languages, 3) the fact that the cultures that produced these documents are very different from ours, and 4) the fact that we are far removed from the historical contexts of these documents.

If a Christian wanted to overcome all of these obstacles to understand the Bible, what disciplines must she master?  Christian philosopher Tom Howe puts the question this way:

Does this imply that in order to understand God’s Word one must be competent in the biblical languages, in Hebrew and Greek culture and customs, in the history of nations and people who have interacted with Israel and the church; that the interpreter must be a competent philosopher of history, philosopher of language, philosopher of science, metaphysician as well as an accomplished theologian?

Howe’s answer to the question is both “yes” and “no.”  First, let’s look at the sense in which the answer is “no.”  Howe answers:

If by “to understand the Bible” one means the capacity to grasp and receive the message of salvation through Christ which is the aim of the Word of God, then the answer is emphatically, No! The nature of man, having been created in the image of God as a rational creature, seems to be a sufficient prerequisite to hear, understand, and receive the message of salvation through Christ.

This is an incredibly important point.  Howe is saying that the message of salvation through Christ is understandable to any human being because we are made in the image of God as rational creatures.  Thus no training is necessary to understand the central thrust of the Bible.  The Bible is perspicuous, or clear, according to Francis Turretin, “in things necessary to salvation [so] that they can be understood by believers without the external help of oral tradition or ecclesiastical authority.”

What about the rest of the Bible that is not so clear?  Howe mentions that even the Apostle Peter claims that some things that the Apostle Paul wrote were hard to understand (2 Pet 3:15-16). If a person wants to immerse themselves in all of Scripture, not just the clear parts, they are going to need to be equipped.  Howe argues that

the interpreter needs to apply all the skill and training that he or she can bring to the task. We not only strive correctly to interpret God’s Word, but to endeavor accurately to proclaim it to those desiring to hear and to defend it against those who would, in our view, corrupt it. To this end, the interpreter must endeavor to become equipped in many different areas of knowledge all of which relate to the task of interpretation.

This, my friends, is why we rely so heavily on the scholars who immerse themselves in Hebrew and Greek, who become experts on ancient history, who soak up all of the cultural information they can relevant to the biblical texts, who become adept philosophers.  These scholars provide us with English translations of the Bible, with commentaries chock full of historical context and language notes, with dictionaries that illuminate ancient culture.

If you want to correctly interpret all of Scripture, you need training.  For those of you who have neither the ability nor the desire for that training, God has made clear those parts necessary for salvation, and for that we are eternally thankful!

Philosophy

What Comes First? Epistemology or Metaphysics?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Actually the answer is neither, but we’ll get to that soon enough.  Why ask this question in the first place?  Because philosophy is a discipline that builds one layer upon another (just like many other disciplines), and since philosophy provides a foundation for all of the sciences, it is extremely important to understand where to start.

To examine this issue of the order of philosophical disciplines, we will refer to Tom Howe’s helpful notes on the subject (some of which are captured in his book Objectivity in Biblical Interpretation).  So what comes first?  Howe’s answer may surprise you, but the answer is . . . reality.  What is reality?

Simply put, reality is that which is. Notice that the characterization of reality is not, “what is.” To characterize reality as “what” implies that reality is basically some identity, or essence. When one asks, “What is it?” one is inquiring about the identity or essence of the entity in question. But, there are many identities in reality. That is to say, reality consists of many essences, or “whats.” But all essences have at least one thing in common, namely, that they exist. Therefore, reality at its most basic level is not a particular essence, or a group of essences. Reality is that which exists, or, as we have phrased it, “That which is.”

So the first thing we look at is that which exists, or reality.  Any philosophy that skips this step will go off the rails quickly.  The next question that must be answered after we’ve looked at that which exists is, “What is that which is?”  This is the discipline of metaphysics.  According to Howe, in metaphysics we are “inquiring into the nature of reality.”

After we examine the nature of that which exists, we may then move on to the next question in philosophy: “How do we know that which is?”  Howe writes, “Epistemology is the discipline that addresses [that] question . . .”  He continues:

Epistemology does not begin with itself and attempt to justify the existence of the extra-mental. Rather, epistemology must begin with the assumption that knowledge is a fact. If knowledge is not a fact of existence, then no one would be able to investigate its possibility, because any investigation necessarily assumes the fact of knowledge. Knowledge is a fact to be investigated, not a mere possibility to be actualized. If knowledge was not a fact to be investigated, then there would be no possibility of knowing this.

So there is our answer.  The order of disciplines in philosophy is 1) reality (that which is), 2) metaphysics (what is that which is?), and 3) epistemology (how do we know that which is?).  Virtually all of the confusion in modern philosophy is due to the fact that it has started with epistemology instead of reality and metaphysics.

Descartes got the ball rolling when he started his philosophical investigations by asking how he could know anything instead of first looking at that which exists.  Modern philosophy, following Descartes, never has answered the question of what the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge are, and they never will.  Why?  Because knowledge depends on reality, not vice versa.  A philosophy that starts with epistemology and that skips reality and metaphysics is doomed to ask questions that can never be answered.

Truth

How Do We Know Truth Is Absolute, Unified, and Objective?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Tom Howe, in his book Objectivity in Biblical Interpretation, makes the case that there is unity, objectivity, and absoluteness in truth.  To start his explanation, he quotes Mortimer Adler from his book Truth and Religion:

1. The human race is a single biological species, renewed generation after generation by the reproductive determinations of a single gene pool. Hence, man is one in nature— that is, in specific nature. All individual members of the species have the same species-specific properties or characteristics.

2. The human race being one, the human mind is also one. The human mind is a species-specific property found in every individual member of the species, the same in all, being subject to variations in degree. This precludes the notion that there is, within the human species, a primitive mind that is characteristically different from a civilized one, or an Oriental mind that differs in kind from an Occidental one, or even a child mind that differs in kind, not just degree, from an adult mind.

Howe observes that

These two theses, along with a third, are propounded by Adler for the purpose of attempting to identify the necessary basis for a world community in the face of cultural diversity. That basis, as Adler articulates it, is the unity of truth.

Adler explains that

To affirm the unity of truth is to deny that there can be two separate and irreconcilable truths which, while contradicting of one another and thought to be irreconcilably so, avoid the principle of noncontradiction by claiming to belong to logic-tight compartments.

From here, Howe continues by claiming

the principles of the unity of man and the unity of truth demonstrate that there was not a “Hebrew” mind or a “Greek” mind or an “ancient” mind such that truth among those cultures at those periods of time were somehow different than truth today. On the contrary, truth is the same for all ages and among all peoples. The issues relating to men and God were the same issues with which we struggle today, because man is one race and one mind. The differences, then, between these ancient cultures and our modern culture is not the nature of man, or of truth, but are the social and cultural expressions of the same truths.

Given the principles of the unity of man and the unity of truth, is it possible to deny that truth is absolute or that truth is objective?  Howe thinks not:

For someone to claim that there is no such thing as absolute truth is to assert that it is absolutely true that there is no absolute truth. All such relativistic assertions are self-defeating and false. Likewise, for someone to claim that there is no such thing as objectivity is to count on the objective meaning of this very claim, which is likewise self-defeating and false. Truth is unavoidable. Likewise, objectivity is unavoidable.

To deny absolute truth or objective truth is self-defeating, for the very person who denies the absoluteness and objectivity of truth believes that their statement about truth is absolutely and objectively true.

Existence of God, General Apologetics

What Is the Existential Argument for Believing in God?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In the last post, I mentioned an interview with Christian philosopher Clifford Williams about his book Existential Reasons for Belief in God. One of the most interesting aspects of the interview is Williams’s description of some of the existential needs that are common to most people.

I gleaned 10 existential needs from the interview and from a sample of his book on Amazon (he lists 13 needs in chapter 2 of his book, but I couldn’t see all of chapter 2 without buying the book):

  1. the need for cosmic security
  2. the need for meaning
  3. the need to feel loved
  4. the need to love
  5. the need for awe
  6. the need to delight in goodness
  7. the need to live beyond the grave without the anxieties that currently affect us
  8. the need to be forgiven
  9. the need for justice and fairness
  10. the need to be present with our loved ones

What Williams does with these needs is build a simple argument for believing in God:

  1. We have existential needs (such as those listed above).
  2. Faith in God satisfies these needs.
  3. Therefore, we are justified in believing in God.

Williams add the following points to explain his argument:

This is not an argument purporting to explain why we have certain needs and desires. That would be an evidential argument. The existential argument for believing in God does not appeal to evidence; nor does it offer an explanation of why we have the existential needs. It gives a different kind of justification for believing in God than evidence-based justification—a need-based justification. The question the book deals with is, Is this different kind of justification legitimate?

I have not read Williams’s book, but I am quite intrigued by his approach.  He is dead on target with his recognition of common existential needs of human beings.  Just looking at the list of 10 needs above, I can say that I feel all of these needs, especially the need to be forgiven. And it is also true, for me, that God satisfies all of these needs for me, although some more than others at this point in my life.

What about you?  Do these needs resonate with you?  Do you find Williams’s argument compelling?

A Christian Apologetics Blog