Existence of God (part 28)

Discussion

Question: About the inner witness of the Holy Spirit – some Christians believe it is irresistible, but what you are saying is that the Holy Spirit is an influence that we can choose to listen to or ignore.

Answer: That is correct. Here my Arminian slip is showing! I do not think that the witness of the Holy Spirit is irresistible. It seems to me that God allows freedom of unbelief. That is why some people go to hell. I think that the reason that some people go to hell is because they willingly separate themselves from God forever. I do not think they go to hell because God does not give them an irresistible witness of the Spirit, but he does give that just to the elect. It seems to me that this is in accord with biblical teaching. I will not defend that now, but when we get to the Doctrine of Salvation, we will talk more about this – the doctrine of election and so forth. You are quite right – that is what I have said. I am presupposing that the witness of the Spirit is not irresistible.

But having said that, let me back off of that a little bit and say the defense of the view that belief in God is properly basic doesn’t depend on that. A Calvinist could offer this same religious epistemology, and, indeed, many do. So while I would disagree with the Calvinist as to whether this is irresistible or not, I think we would both agree that this is the source, ultimately, of our knowledge of Christianity’s truth, and it is a properly basic belief grounded in the witness of the Spirit. If you disagree with me about its being irresistible, that is fine; it doesn’t need to affect what the discussion here is about.

Question: Predestination is throughout the Bible – he chooses and chooses. How does that associate with this, where you are saying you are choosing?

Answer: We will talk about this later when we get to that section of the class. But let me just give a little thumbnail sketch of what I would say. Certainly the Bible does teach predestination and election. The question is – whom is it that God has predestined and chosen to be his people? It seems to me, when you read Romans 9 and 10, the answer to that is: those who have faith in Christ Jesus! Those are the ones who are predestined to justification, glorification, and the rest. If we think of predestination as primarily a corporate notion – God has elected anyone who puts his faith in Christ Jesus – , then anyone who places his faith in Christ Jesus is part of the elect. So it is up to you whether or not you want to be part of the elect. Then, in a secondary sense, you can say, “Yes, I am predestined by God to be saved because I am part of this corporate group.”

Question: [asks how this relates to Muslims and the Islamic religion]

Answer: I am not sure I understand the question. What I have argued so far in the class has just been for the existence of God in a kind of generic monotheistic sense. There is a Creator and Designer of the universe, a ground of being of the universe, and a source of moral values.3 Muslims would resonate with all of those arguments that I have given. Here I am claiming that it is the God of the Bible who bears witness to our Spirit that he exists. So this is more specific. I think the Muslim would probably say something very similar to this about Islam. They would say Allah has a self-authenticating witness of his spirit that bears testimony to the truth of Islam. We have a sort of standoff here between the Christian and the Muslim in making these competing claims. I will say something more about that in a minute because that is an objection that someone might raise to this view – what about the Muslim, or the Mormon who says he knows the book of Mormon is true because when he reads it he has a “burning in the bosom?” Doesn’t that show that this is all just subjective? I will say something about that in a minute. But the arguments that I gave are consistent with a sort of generic monotheism. Here I am arguing that through the witness of the Holy Spirit we can know specifically that the God of the Bible exists and that, therefore, the God of the Qur’an does not.

Question: Could you speak to the Demas version of believers where, at one time, they accepted these evidences but later rejected them?

Answer: All of these theological questions are very important and controversial. This question would be: what about a person who claims to have been a Christian – claims that he has tasted the Holy Spirit and known God – and then walks away from it and apostatizes and throws Christ out of his life? There are really two views about this. The one view is that he wasn’t really regenerate in the first place. He wasn’t really born again – he just had an emotional experience or went forward at an altar call, but he never really had that inner witness of the Holy Spirit. The other view would be that that person really was a regenerate Christian, he knew the Holy Spirit, but because of sin in his life he hardened his heart against the Holy Spirit and finally cast Jesus Christ out of his life and committed apostasy. This is what the author of the book of Hebrews warns about in chapters 6 and 10 – about those who have tasted the goodness of the Lord and the power of the Holy Spirit and the age to come, and then they commit apostasy. On that view they have lost their salvation. They have thrown Christ out of their life.

If you were to ask me what do I think – I tend to believe the latter. I think that if you take these warnings in Hebrews seriously, it suggests that a person, a born-again Christian, can commit apostasy and throw Christ out of his life and lose salvation. That is why I said earlier that the witness of the Holy Spirit isn’t indubitable, it is not irresistible, we can grieve the Holy Spirit through sin, we can quench the Holy Spirit by refusing to submit our lives to him, and, I think, ultimately, the Scripture teaches that you can cast the Holy Spirit out of your life by committing apostasy and renouncing Jesus Christ. The Scripture has very stern warnings about that. But again, I want to repeat, one’s views on the question of “eternal security” or “perseverance of the saints” doesn’t affect whether or not [belief in] the God of the Bible is properly basic. Whichever view you take, you can still maintain on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit that someone who has the witness of the Holy Spirit and attends to it can know with confidence that Christianity is true because the Holy Spirit gives him assurance that it is true.

Question: Would Romans 1:18-20 fit into this or would that just be saying God is providing external evidence?

Answer: That is a good question. How do we interpret Romans 1:18-20? This is where Paul talks about how, ever since the creation of the world, God’s eternal nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived through the things that have been made, so that people are without excuse. The question here is – and this is subtle – is Paul endorsing natural theology in Romans 1? Is he endorsing a kind of cosmological argument or a design argument, saying that when people look at the world around them, they can see there had to be a cause of all this, that there is obviously a designer of this? That would be one way to interpret it.4 Or is he saying that the circumstances of being in the creation are the circumstances that ground a properly basic belief in God, so that they aren’t inferring, “There must be a designer of this” or “There must be an adequate cause of this,” but rather that just being in the circumstances of the created order, one forms in a properly basic way the belief in God. That is the exegetical, or interpretive, question here.

 My own point of view is that I think that Paul probably is talking about arguments of natural theology here, frankly. In Acts, when Barnabas and Paul are preaching in Lystra and the people say, “The gods have come down from heaven!” and are going to sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas, they restrain them in saying that the God who made the Earth and the heavens has not left himself without a witness. The word there suggests “evidence” – he hasn’t left himself without evidence. He has given you seasons and fruitful times of the year, and so forth. Paul seems to be saying on which basis that you can infer that God exists. When you look at extra-biblical literature like the Book of Wisdom, which is an apocryphal Old Testament book, it has passages in it that sound almost like Romans 1 and make it very clear that the author there is talking about making an inference from the creation to the existence of a Designer and Creator. It may well have been the case that Paul even knew this Old Testament work and had it in mind when he wrote Romans 1. So while this isn’t a slam dunk, it is not an open and shut case, I do incline toward the view that what Paul is talking about in Romans 1 is the validity of natural theology.

We went through several arguments prior to this, arguing that there are sound reasons to believe that God exists. But at the same time, I think that the Scripture also teaches that you do not need those arguments. You can know that God exists, and particularly you can know that the biblical God exists on the basis of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.

Question: Are you saying the only way you can lose your salvation is through blaspheming the Holy Spirit? It is not like other sins in your life – if you sin too much, you may lose your salvation. Are you saying the only way you can lose your salvation is only if you turn around and say, “I don’t believe anymore?”

Answer: That is correct. I am not talking about backsliding here. What I am talking about is a person who deliberately commits what the Bible calls apostasy, someone who says, “I reject Jesus Christ. I refuse him. I cast him out of my life!” If you do not think there are people like that, then read the epistles of Paul. He gives examples, people like, I think it was, Demas and others that he says “are in love with the world and have left me.”5 There are serious warnings in Scripture about apostasy, and I take them at face value.

Discussion

Question: This is sort of having the right tool for the job in your spiritual toolbox. If you are witnessing to a university professor, appealing to the Holy Spirit may not be the right tool to convince him. Whereas if you are witnessing to an elderly woman, she may not be interested in hearing the material evidence but would be moved in hearing about the Holy Spirit. It is useful for Christians to have a wide variety of resources that they can appeal to to most effectively witness.

Answer: I couldn’t agree more! I think that is absolutely right. These things are audience- relative so to speak. What may be appropriate for one person isn’t for the other.

Question: I watched a program about the Shroud of Turin.7 They are positive in their conclusion that it cannot be proven not to be authentic. They are still struggling with it, but to watch this program is very supporting for someone who is trying to find evidence for Jesus Christ.

Answer: Yes, the Shroud is an incredibly intriguing artifact. I think I may have said it in this class before, but I think what really needs to be done is for these carbon dating tests to be rerun because those who dispute them claim that they were done on a patch that was later added to the cloth and therefore isn’t part of the original. So they really need to be redone in order to authenticate or disconfirm the age of the Shroud. I heard, too, that the Shroud is going to be on display now. The Church of St. John the Baptist in Torino is putting it out again in the next couple of weeks. If anyone wants to see it, now is your chance to go to Italy!

[Q&A: another comment about the television program on the Shroud of Turin]