#128 Christian Faith

Dr. craig’s response

I think I can help shed some light on these questions, Tom, so I’m glad you asked them. After reading my answers you will hopefully see that the Christian faith is not at all incoherent but truly helps us make better sense of the world.

First, terms like “loving” and “caring” do not imply finitude. There’s no reason to think that an infinite being cannot be caring or loving. Maybe you’re confusing “infinite” with “indeterminate,” thinking that an infinite being can’t have specific properties. But that’s not what “infinite” means in this context. To talk of God’s being infinite just means that God has such superlative properties as necessity, self-existence, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternity, moral perfection, and so on. In fact, God’s being morally perfect entails that He is loving and caring (Question #123)! As for God’s being a “He,” Jesus taught us to think of God (who as an incorporeal being has no gender) under the metaphor of a Heavenly Father and, hence, a “He,” because this metaphor conveys both loving parental care as well as parental authority.

Second, absent any evidence for reincarnation or pre-existence of the soul, there’s no reason to think that you existed prior to your conception. Since you began to exist, it follows that you must have had a cause of your coming to be, since, as you say, something can’t come into being out of nothing. That needn’t have been God; perhaps it was just your parents. On a naturalistic worldview you have a finite beginning and a finite end, as you put it; you face inevitable extinction. But the Christian faith holds that you have a finite beginning but no end: you will exist forever.

Third, the Christian faith offers a coherent view of life’s purpose. The purpose of life in general is, in the wonderful words of the Westminster Catechism, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. You are a personal being , made in God’s image, and it is in relation to the personal God that the fulfillment of human existence is to be found. God is infinite goodness and love, and you will find your deepest longings met in Him. This does not mean that we are, as you say, necessary beings. God does not need us for His own fulfillment; as the supreme good He finds that in Himself. We are created not for God’s benefit but for ours, that we might experience the joy of personal relationship with Him. In freely creating us for our good, God is glorified as self-giving love.

Fourth, your claim that one can know only “what is going on in the finite present of each of our first-person experiences” will, as you seem to realize, ultimately bog down in an effete and self-refuting scepticism. In fact, it would reduce human existence to almost the lowest form of animal life, a slug-like existence that simply takes in and mindlessly reacts to current sense impressions. It is the glory of man as a rational being that we can reflect on our experience and come to know the world in which we live. There’s just no reason to agree with the sceptic that we have no knowledge of the world. The sceptic should be more sceptical of his scepticism! The nerve of scepticism is cut once we realize that the sceptic is presupposing that in order to know some proposition p, we must know that we know that p. Not only is that an implausible demand on what knowledge is (I can know something without knowing that I know it) but, worse, the sceptic cannot justifiably place this demand upon us, since he, as a sceptic, cannot claim know that in order to know p, one must know that one knows that p! The sceptic thus presupposes knowledge in his denial of knowledge. For more on the subject of religious epistemology, I highly recommend Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief.

It’s my sincere hope that these answers to your questions will bring clarity to your understanding of the Christian faith and help you move another step closer to knowing God through Christ.