Q&A on Time, the Trinity, and the Moral Argument

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, we have some good questions. Some of these came across Facebook. Some people have been posting some questions for you, as well as some questions that we received here at Reasonable Faith. This first one, Franklin, says,

Dear Dr. Craig, why do you think a B-theory (tenseless theory) of time is incompatible with the incarnation? I know you think events like Christ’s crucifixion are not really done or over with on a B-theory understanding of time. But my thinking is: Why must God be bound to the same way we perceive time so as to relate to the world in that same way? Can God relate to the world via some X-theory of time, or B-theory (tenseless theory) of time perhaps? While we, as finite beings, still perceive the world under an A-theory or a tensed view of time?

We’ve talked a lot about A- and B-theory of time in past podcasts.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. For those who are not familiar with the terminology, let’s just make it clear. According to the A-theory of time, temporal becoming is real. Things really come into being and pass away. The past and the future do not exist but are merely potentialities. Whereas, on the B-theory, past, present, and future are all equally real and temporal becoming is just an illusion of human consciousness. What I claim is that the tenseless theory of time is incompatible, not with Christ's incarnation, but really with his crucifixion and resurrection because on the B-theory of time Christ's crucifixion is still just as real as it ever was. Christ is there on the cross in AD 33 and his resurrection is just the resurrection of a later stage of the four-dimensional space-time entity that is Christ. So it really evacuates, I think, the victory of the resurrection, and it means that the evil of the crucifixion is like a permanent stain in space-time that is never really expunged or done away with. Now, he says maybe you can have some other theory of time, some X-theory of time. Fine. If he's got that, let's hear it. Enunciate it. But the point remains, I think that the B-theory or tenseless theory of time does seem to have these consequences which I think are theologically unacceptable.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Dr. Craig, As I understand it, time, space, matter, and energy began to exist at a finite point in the past. I see time as basically a series of events telling us when those events occurred in relation to each other.

He has two questions.

1. Is my understanding of time correct? 2. If it is correct and time began, does this mean the members of the Trinity didn't have interactions before or outside of (not sure of the correct term) time? Robert from Facebook.

DR. CRAIG: I think that Robert's understanding of time is basically correct. I also accept a relational view of time. It doesn't mean that the members of the Trinity don't have interactions existing timelessly, but it would mean that those interactions are not changing. That's very plausible when you think about God. There's nothing that the Father knows that the Son and the Spirit don't already know. There's nothing that the Father wills that the Son and the Spirit don't already will. Nothing the Father loves that they don't already love. So it seems to me that the persons of the Trinity very plausibly stand in changeless, timeless relationships of knowledge, love, and will, and therefore do have interactions in that tenseless or timeless sense. But they don't have changing interactions.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Dear Dr. Craig, Would you consider yourself a skeptical theist or does it lead to too much skepticism? Perry from Facebook.

DR. CRAIG: Here we definitely need to define our terms. The term “skeptical theism” is a terminus technicus for a certain solution to the problem of evil and suffering. It is the view that we are not in a position to make, with any sort of confidence, probability judgments that God does not have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil and suffering to enter our lives. I think that that claim is almost undeniably true. Given our limits in time and space and our inability to see the future we're simply not in a position to say with any confidence, “You know, it's highly improbable that God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing this to occur.” But, having said that, I hate the name “skeptical theism” and I never use it because I think it has utterly wrong connotations. I am not skeptical at all; rather I'm confident that God exists and that he has morally sufficient reasons for the evil and suffering in the world. Therefore I think this is a very unfortunate term that we ought to put behind us.

KEVIN HARRIS: Question number four:

Dr. Craig, What is your opinion of Max Tegmark's theory named mathematical universe hypothesis? According to this assumption the universe is not only successfully described by mathematics but is itself a mathematical structure. The very existence of something is therefore based on its mathematical coherence. Eli from Facebook

DR. CRAIG: What Eli is getting at here is this incredible and paradoxical coincidence of the application of mathematics to the physical world. It is so difficult to explain why the physical world would be describable by these abstract mathematical structures that someone like Tegmark has reverted to saying maybe the world itself just is a mathematical structure and so of course mathematics applies to the world. Now, while I would agree that the world can be built upon a mathematical blueprint or structure, to claim that the world is a mathematical structure, like a set or matrix or some other geometrical space, I think is to confuse abstract objects with concrete objects. The world in which we live is physical, it is concrete, it is causally connected, and none of that is true of the realm of abstract objects – the mathematical realm. They are not characterized by materiality, physicality, or causal connections. So I think that this is a desperate and implausible alternative with respect to explaining the applicability of mathematics to the physical realm.

KEVIN HARRIS: Question number five:

Dear Dr. Craig, what is your take on the ideas of Peter van Inwagen?

Two things he wants to know.

On van Inwagen’s account of the general resurrection being given in materialist terms, and on his account of material constitution (namely that only living things and philosophical atoms exist).

Wow.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah I'll be very brief here. Peter van Inwagen is a celebrated mathematician who taught at the University of Notre Dame. He is a Christian, but he's also a materialist about human beings. He is not an anthropological dualist who believes in soul and body. He believes that we are just our living bodies. We are animals, in effect. This makes it very difficult to explain the resurrection of the dead. How is it that this animal body which I'm identical with can go out of existence and then be recreated at the second coming of Christ so that it's the same animal body rather than just a duplicate? Well, van Inwagen’s solution to this (which I've been reading about just this week, by coincidence) is to say that it's possible that God, when a person dies, snatches away the real body and puts in its place a sort of duplicate of it so that it appears that that's the body that decays and rots away whereas in fact the the real body is kept by God until the day of of resurrection. While this might be a logical possibility I think this is just utterly, utterly implausible and not at all in accord with, I think, Jewish views of the resurrection of the body. If you want to read a good critique of van Inwagen's account of the general resurrection from his materialist standpoint look at William Hasker's book, The Emergent Self. In the final chapter on survival after death he has a very fair-minded critique of van Inwagen here. Now the second question concerns another metaphysical thesis of van Inwagen’s that is very novel. He thinks that the only material objects that exist are either things that are alive (living things) or else fundamental particles that are not composed of tinier particles. So he doesn't believe that there are such things as chairs and tables and buildings and automobiles and things like that. He only thinks there's just all these fundamental particles that are arranged in chair-like or table-like ways. I don't have any grief on this issue, frankly. I don't know what to make of it. I'm a common sense sort of guy, and so unless I see really powerful reasons to think that chairs and tables and so forth don't exist, I'm going to go with my common sense beliefs. So van Inwagen would have a good deal of explaining, I think, for me to be persuaded that his view is correct. But, having said that, this is not an issue that I've studied at all and therefore I'll just leave it an open question that our listeners can explore if they wish to. He's written a book called Material Beings in which he lays out this view.

KEVIN HARRIS: I think the two of you shared the platform at Southern Evangelical Seminary.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, and we have just completed a book together actually on abstract objects – whether or not they exist. Another of van Inwagen's metaphysical theses is that he believes that abstract objects exist. He believes there are numbers and properties and shapes and things of that sort even though they don't do anything. They don't have any causal effect upon the world. They're not needed to explain why things are the way they are. He doesn't think that for example a green book is green because it exemplifies the property of being green. So he has all of these metaphysical abstract entities in his ontology that are metaphysically idle – they don't really do anything. So van Inwagen is sort of like the common man's image of what a philosopher is like – someone who's got these bizarre metaphysical theses that he actually believes and defends. And yet he argues very persuasively for them.

KEVIN HARRIS: Question number seven.

Hello, Dr. Craig. Thank you so much for your patience with me in answering my question. It strengthens my faith more than you know. I have a problem. The way that I think about the dynamic between the moral argument and perfect being theology feels awfully circular. When the moral argument is made it posits God as the grounding of objective moral values and duties. In order to do this, however, the point has to be made along the way that God, by definition, is morally perfect. However, in order to argue that God is morally perfect one must argue that there is some sort of moral objectivity which such a person believes to be grounded in God. Though I can't clearly put my finger on it it seems that some sort of circularity exists between perfect being theology and the moral argument. In order to prove the moral argument you must use perfect being theology, and in order to prove perfect being theology you must assume that God grounds objective moral value which is assuming that the moral argument is true. This irks me as these two positions are among my favorite to hold. Help me to think what mistake I'm making here. Greetings from Texas. Caden.

DR. CRAIG: OK. Well, I've got good news for Caden because I think he can hold these two perspectives consistently. What he's failing to do is to make a very important distinction between the order of being and the order of knowing. In the order of being, God is primary and grounds the moral values and duties that derive from God. But in the order of knowing we first become acquainted with moral values and duties through our moral experience and then we infer to God as the source of those moral duties and values that we find in our experience. So just distinguish between the order of being and the order of knowing. In the order of being, you begin with God as primary. In the order of knowing, you begin with your own experience as primary and infer to God.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Dear Professor Craig, My question is about our attitude toward animals. I am specifically interested in how exactly Christians – Orthodox, Catholics, and those Protestants who are really Christians – justify slaughtering and eating animals. I've been a vegan for some time now, and I am a Christian (a true Christian). I'm not a Mormon or anything like that. It is not clear to me why we Christians collectively do not raise our voice against injustice and cruelty to animals the same way we justifiably fight against killing unborn children, for example. Animals have the ability of near-human intelligence, especially compared to children. They can feel and understand emotions. They are able to love. They feel pain and suffering. And they are completely powerless compared to us humans. In other words, we can do to them what we want. Doesn't Christianity teach us compassion, love for those who are weaker, respect for life? Professor, this really bothers me. If you can answer my question it would help me a lot. God bless you.

This is from Jan. I don't think this is your Jan.

DR. CRAIG: No. Hardly. This is not an issue which I have looked at in any depth. But since I am definitely carnivorous I guess I need to say something about why I'm not a vegan. I suppose the reasons would be that I don't think that animals are moral agents. I think she's completely wrong in saying that they have the ability of near-human intelligence. That is certainly not true. My studies of the historical Adam made that very clear to me. There are light years that separate us from chimpanzees, for example. And even in that case we don't eat the chimpanzees. So it's just not clear to me that there is any sort of immorality and injustice in eating animals. Now, I certainly do believe that we shouldn't have cruelty toward animals. I think it's wrong to torture animals and to have slaughtering that would be torturous in that way. So I do think that the way in which we slaughter animals does need to be humane. But I'm not persuaded that it would be immoral to eat them. We seem to have been made for that. Eating meat is extremely healthy whereas veganism is very unhealthy, I think. It's the way we've been constituted. I would also say that while Christianity teaches us compassion and love for others, for the weak, of respect for life, that's with regard to human beings. There's nothing in the Bible that would suggest that you shouldn't eat meat. On the contrary, the Jews slaughtered and butchered their animals in the temple and the tabernacle. So I don't think you can appeal to Christianity's ethic of compassion toward other human beings as a basis for not eating animals. So I guess I would just say I haven't seen anything that in my mind would cause me to think it's wrong to eat meat.

KEVIN HARRIS: Question number eleven.

Hi, Dr. Craig. I have a question about the Trinity. I know that the Trinity is basically saying that God is a multi-personal being or that there are three persons in one God. But even though they are persons, not beings, but still at the end of the day there are three. What is the difference between three separate beings (like in polytheism)? What I mean is that it does not matter – person or being. At the end of the day there are three. Doesn't it mean it is still some kind of polytheism? Thank you. Armando from Indonesia

DR. CRAIG: I don't think that it does imply polytheism, Armando. I would invite you to look at my chapter on the Trinity in my and J.P. Moreland's book Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. The difference between a tri-personal being and three separate deities or beings is that in the one case you have one spiritual substance (one soul, as it were), and in the other case you have three spiritual substances (three souls). And that's obviously quite different. So I would say that God is a soul which is so richly endowed with rational faculties that he has three centers of self-consciousness rather than merely one as you and I do.

KEVIN HARRIS: Final question today.

Dear Dr. Craig, What would compel one to move from philosophical theism to some sort of organized religion, or simply: why even think God has interacted at all with creation? Background: a philosophical theist, I love Christianity but I feel I don't have any rational warrant to think God has sought a relationship with his creation at all. So therefore it would be begging the question to affirm Christianity. James in the U.K.

DR. CRAIG: Well, I'm just delighted that James believes in God and that he loves Christianity. What I would want to invite James to do is to look at the evidence for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus – his personal claims and teachings, and then especially his resurrection from the dead. One wouldn't expect there to be any sort of historical evidence for so extraordinary an event as that. But in my doctoral work at the University of Munich I discovered that, in fact, the wide majority of New Testament scholars today are agreed on the basic facts underlying the inference to the resurrection of Jesus. So I’d encourage James to look at my book, The Son Rises, as a case for the resurrection, or to look at my book Reasonable Faith (the chapter on the resurrection), as well as the claims of Christ. I think that can help him to move beyond mere theism to the beauty of Christian theism.

KEVIN HARRIS: Some good questions today! Bill, as always, good answers.

DR. CRAIG: Thank you, Kevin.

KEVIN HARRIS: We’ll see you on the next podcast.^[1]