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Questions About Concrete Objects, God's Greatness, and the Virgin Birth

June 17, 2018     Time: 10:25
Questions About Concrete Objects, God’s Greatness, and the Virgin Birth

Summary

Dr. Craig receives questions on God's being a concrete object, maximal greatness, and the Virgin Birth

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig, we have some questions. You've elaborated further on this question on the question of the week, so we'll direct everyone there to ReasonableFaith.org and go to the archives – question of the week.[1]

My name is Joshua Pelletier, and I was moderating and forwarding the questions to be asked at your recent debate with Dr. Erik Wielenberg. I apologize for not being able to talk to you or introduce myself, as it was approaching 10pm and you were needing to leave. However I did manage to get a photo together and your autograph in my copy of "On guard." Thank you.

Out of many questions that people submitted, I had submitted seven questions for you, but due to the time, not all of them were asked. One of the questions that was popular and was in the queue, was the concern of how God can be a concrete object. I think people generally were wondering how an all-powerful, immaterial being could be a concrete object. Could you please elaborate on this?

DR. CRAIG: Sure. I know this is a question that many have asked. A concrete object in this philosophical context does not mean a material or physical object.

KEVIN HARRIS: It's not made of cement, in other words.

DR. CRAIG: Or anything else physical. It’s concrete as opposed to abstract. Although there isn't any universally accepted definition of abstract objects, philosophers have a good idea of what paradigm examples would be. They would be things like numbers, sets, and mathematical entities, properties, possible worlds, propositions, fictional characters, and so forth. What is it about these things that makes them abstract? The most accepted answer is that they are essentially causally effete. That is to say, they have no causal powers. They are essentially impotent causally. Obviously, God is not abstract in that sense. God, though an immaterial being, is endowed with causal powers and therefore counts as a concrete object. So a person cannot be an abstract object in that sense. A person has causal capacities, can affect things in the world, and therefore is paradigmatically a concrete object even though he is an immaterial entity.

KEVIN HARRIS: This did come up in the debate with Wielenberg, didn’t it? I mean just you touched a little bit on abstract objects and Platonism.

DR. CRAIG: His view is moral Platonism. He believes that moral values are abstract entities. I contrasted that with theism which does not posit some sort of abstract entity as the Good but posits God, a concrete object, as the Good. As I say, what makes God concrete (and this would be universally agreed among philosophers who debate this subject) is that God has causal powers.

KEVIN HARRIS: This next question is from Jack in the United States,

In the modal varieties of ontological arguments for God, is what constitutes a maximally excellent being (to use the terminology of Plantinga’s first premise) the same in every possible world? In other words, is God the maximally excellent being of the same nature in every possible world?

DR. CRAIG:  The short answer is “yes.” Plantinga defines maximal excellence in terms of omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection, and God possesses those properties essentially. So he has them in every possible world.

KEVIN HARRIS: The next question from Barry in Canada.

Dr. Craig, if your theory is true that God ordered the destruction of Canaanite infants because of a threat of assimilation of pagan practices and values among his people, then why kill the infants? Why not adopt and train the Canaanite orphan infants in Yahweh's moral standards?

DR. CRAIG: Well, we can only speculate on that, but one would say it probably wouldn't have worked out so well. That, on balance, it was better that these infants be killed and go to heaven then that they'd be allowed to be adopted and raised inside Israelite culture. God knew that that would not have been something that would have a good result.

KEVIN HARRIS: This question from Xavier in South Africa:

Dear Dr. Craig, I've been sharing with an atheist friend of mine. He was raised in a Christian house but abandoned faith to pursue a more quote “scientific” unquote understanding of everything. After two years of sharing with him the cosmological, ontological, and moral arguments along with many more answers to questions he had, he finally conceded in saying, You know what? Maybe you're right. Maybe there is a God. But based on the suffering, I could never praise him. Now for me this is not a question on suffering as I feel that has been answered so many times on your website. Rather, I want to ask this. If someone concedes that there might be an ultimate being but finds reasons to not praise said being, what might be the logical response? I don't even want to propose Pascal's wager as that opens a whole other can of worms. I really feel like we've made progress and I don't want to give up now just because of some tenacious view he might hold. I, too, view myself as somewhat of a Molinist, and therefore I see value in keeping at it. I'm just sticking at what an ultimate being would be – worthy of being praised.

DR. CRAIG: Well, I certainly thank Xavier for his tenacity and sharing with his friend and in continuing to pursue him and in alleviating these doubts. Now, notice that Xavier shared with his friend not only the cosmological argument but also the ontological and moral arguments. It seems to me that there we have the answer to his question as to why an ultimate being would be worthy of being praised. If all you had were the cosmological argument, that says nothing about the moral character of the Creator. He could be an absolute stinker for all we know and therefore wouldn't be worthy of praise. But if you've got the moral argument and the ontological argument in place (as apparently he does) then that gives you automatically a being who is the paradigm of goodness himself, who is morally perfect. It gives you the greatest conceivable being. A perfect being, and therefore a being worthy of worship. So I think that in what Xavier has already achieved in convincing his friend of the moral and ontological arguments, he has given him more than sufficient grounds for praising and worshiping the being demonstrated by those arguments.

KEVIN HARRIS: It sounds like the emotional problem of evil, too. Xavier is saying he's saying, I admit, it looks like there's a God, but I don't like him for allowing suffering.

DR. CRAIG: That's a well-taken point, Kevin. I answered the question at face value, but the deeper question may well be the emotional problem of evil that needs to be removed by his friend.

KEVIN HARRIS: As they continue their dialogue. Apparently they've had this dialogue for a long time.

DR. CRAIG: It sounds like it.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question says,

Hi, William. In a video of you and Bishop Robert Barron you explained how you couldn't be a Catholic because you simply don't believe in what they believe. One example is that you don't believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. But in a debate with Christopher Hitchens you say that as a Christian you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. What's your distinction between Immaculate Conception and virgin birth?

DR. CRAIG: Now, it's important to understand, I did not say I don't believe what Catholics believe. I said I don't believe everything that Catholics believe. I do believe, for example, that Mary was a virgin. I believe in the virginal conception of Jesus – that Jesus was conceived without a human father. But the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is not the same thing as the virginal conception. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is a Catholic doctrine about the conception of Mary, not Jesus. Mary. The idea is that Mary herself was conceived without original sin, hence immaculately. Therefore, in being born of a human woman, Jesus was not tainted with original sin because Mary was miraculously preserved from that. As I say, there's no biblical warrant whatsoever for this doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and therefore I do not hold to it.[2]

 

[1]                      See Q&A #570, “Is God a Concrete Object?” at https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/is-god-a-concrete-object (accessed June 18, 2018).

[2]                                  Total Running Time: 10:25 (Copyright © 2018 William Lane Craig)