What do you mean by "God"? : Part 1 - Aseity

In honor of my 10th post and just to shake things up a bit, I thought I would go into a small series of articles attacking the question of Apologetics from a different angle. Often times, people already have an idea in their head of what they think Christianity is and what we mean when we say "God." Often times, this idea is wrong. Over the next few posts I'd like to take a look at what a biblical definition of God entails and what implications can be drawn from this. If you're already a Christian, my hope is that these posts will help you gain a better understanding of God and incite the awe and worship that such knowledge naturally brings about. If you're not a believer, I would still encourage you to read the articles carefully. Not only will this help you avoid misrepresenting the Christian worldview and committing the embarrassing straw man fallacy, but I hope that by doing so you can begin to appreciate how this is a religion that values the rational mind, rather than a mere blind faith that requires you to check your brain at the door.

A-what-y?
As I mentioned, people often have very different ideas of what should constitute as "God." There are, however, several aspects generally agreed upon that are considered necessary attributes of any being trying to claim this title. Perhaps the most important of these characteristics is the attribute of "aseity." Don't feel bad if you're unfamiliar with the term or have never heard it before. In fact, even my spell checker doesn't recognize the word (which I find oddly amusing). Here's a breakdown for you. It's a two part latin term comprised of a (from) and se (self), with the suffix -ity to denote the property. 1 These phrases combined gives us the attribute of being self-generated or self existence. To put it more precisely, "the absolute self-sufficiency, independence, and autonomy of God." 2 What this means is that when we use the term God, we should be referring to an entity that does not rely on anything else. Something that is whole, complete and eternal all on it's own. The notion of something existing entirely in and of itself can be a difficult one to grasp, and indeed impossible to understand completely with our finite limitations. However, it should be noted that this is not logically in-congruent, but as we'll see shortly, necessary for there to be anything else at all. 

Defining God
Before I continue, I would like to take a quick side step to address an important issue to these upcoming posts. At this point, some of you may be thinking "Well, you can define God how you want, but not everyone will define God that way and you can't force your definition on others." In some respects that's true. Many people over the years have had different ideas in mind when they thought of "God." The danger of this sort of question is that in some ways, it begs the question by presupposing God to be an abstract concept that people get to create on their own. The purpose of this discussion is not to look at how people would create the idea of God, but whether or not God actually exists, and if so, what properties that deity would have. To illustrate the problems with arbitrarily choosing how to define God, think of how this would work on a more every day scale. For instance, take the phrase "I think Jeremy is roughly 6 foot 2 and has wings." Now, part of this statement is actually true and the other part is (sadly) false. The reason you could probably guess that this second description was in error, even if you've never actually met me before, is because you recognize that this is not an attribute possessed by something with a human nature. In the same manner, when looking to the concept of God, we should be trying to discover at least some of what would be the natural state of affairs for a being with the nature of divinity. In this case, we don't get to randomly choose characteristics and qualities of God that are appealing to us. Rather we should be trying to determine what characteristics best fit the profile of something that would be creator and sovereign of the universe.

The Un-Caused Cause.
So what does the attribute of aseity have to do with an all powerful creator of the universe? Well, to explain this we're going to look at what is perhaps the most popular (and convincing) argument for the existence of God. This argument is called the Kalaam Cosmological Argument, or sometimes the Causal Argument. Stated in it's most basic form the argument goes like this:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause. 3

This is pretty straightforward, but it leaves us at an interesting place. What would be necessary to be the cause of the universe? This argument is based off of what's known as the Law of Causality, that being the idea that every effect has, necessarily, a prior cause to it. It's perhaps easiest to picture as a line of dominoes. One domino falls because the one before it hit it. Let's let the dominoes in this scenario represent any event in life. Logic then dictates that this event had a prior cause, which also must have had a prior cause, which also had a cause and so on. If we were to continue ad infinitum into the past of pre-requisite prior causes, we would end up with what's referred to as an infinite regress; a big red flag in philosophical terms. If this were the case, then we would be left with no actual starting place to get the law of causality moving. Let's go back to the dominoes. If you continually add one more domino before the current one in this fashion, and kept going infinitely into the past always adding one more domino, you would never actually have a starting place to begin the process of knocking them over. What this tells us is that if we actually observe one domino falling, then we must accept that at some point, one domino fell without having a domino prior to it. This domino must, of it's own accord, have had the necessary characteristics to cause this first event.

I'm sure you see the connection now. The Kalaam argument leads us to the conclusion that if there is any event at all, at some point prior there must have been one thing that existed and had the power of causality all on it's own. This would be what Thomas Aquinas referred to as the "un-caused cause," which brings us back to the concept of aseity. It's clear that we have a universe, and that stuff happens in it. Because of this, we should then accept the fact that something had to have the property of self-existence in and of itself in order to bring about the rest of creation. For this reason, the attribute of aseity becomes one of the necessary characteristics of anything to which we would want to ascribe the tile of God. It's easy to see how this one characteristic alone will rule out many (though not all) of the world's religions in how they view what it means to be God. For me, this becomes one of the most amazing and awe-inspiring attributes of deity for the Christian faith. Not only because such a being must (out of necessity) exist on it's own, but also because this being goes one step further to reach out to the finite creation He started. In one of the earliest encounters of human beings with the divine, Moses asks God for a name which he can use to explain to other people who this God is. His simple reply echoes with all the power and authority of what we would expect an un-caused, self existent foundation for the entire universe to use as His own description.

Then Moses said to God, "Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you.' Now they may say to me, 'What is His name?' What shall I say to them?" God said to Moses "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"  Exodus 3:14, NASB


1 - Wikipedia - Aseity
2 - Meriam-Webster Online Definition - Aseity
3 - Reasonable Faith - In Defense of the Kalaam


Todays Recommendations

 Recommended Reading
On Guard - William Lane Craig 
There's little dispute on who to go to as the authority on the Kalaam argument. Dr. Craig's book on basic Apologetics will help you explain this and many other arguments for the existence of God to other people in a clear and understandable fashion.

Recommended Listening
The Best of the Kalaam - Reasonable Faith
A look at the highlights and best defenses for the Kalaam argument, again by Dr. Craig. Like I said, he really is the "go to" guy on the subject...

Before the Beginning - R.C. Sproul, Ligonier Ministries
A video lecture by R.C. Sproul on the attribute of God's aseity and it's implications. A little dated in it's presentation, but the information is still excellent.

Today's Challenge
Take a moment to stop and think about what would be necessary to be a cause of the universe. What other characteristics can you think of that would have to be used to describe God? Think of the Kalaam argument and what it would take to be an external, eternal, all powerful cause outside of creation. 

Contradiction: It's the Law!

If you find this picture upsetting, untrue or even the dreaded "intolerant," then I would encourage you to keep reading. Before you do though, it might be a good time to stop and ask yourself why it's offensive to you (or if)? Please realize that the intent of the picture is not to offend, but merely to illustrate a point. The main point here is that in our culture's attempt to not upset anyone, we've distorted certain notions about religion and spirituality so that all religions are seen as equally viable and any criticism is seen as bigoted or oppressive. The simple fact of the matter, however, is that not all religions are true. In fact, the truth even goes beyond that. The simpler fact of the matter is that all religions can't be true. If one continues to assert such a claim, we would not only be inconsistent within our own worldview, but we would be trying to violate one of the basic laws of logic, the law of non-contradiction.

What is the law of contradiction?
The law of non-contradiction is one of Aristotle's Laws of Logic. These laws are the Law of Identity, Law of Non-Contradiction and Law of Excluded Middle. Don't let the long titles intimidate you. These are actually things that you use everyday and probably don't give them much thought. In this post, I'll just focus on the second law, that of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction stated simply is that "A" and "not A" cannot both be true at the same time, in the same manner. To make it more clear, just pick some random proposition or state of affairs to fill in for "A." For example: "The universe is expanding" and "The universe is not expanding" cannot be simultaneously accurate. Either the universe is expanding, or it's not. We can disagree and debate on which we think is true, but it wouldn't make any sense to try and assert both. This is a foundational concept to how we think and is an example of what's known as a First Principle. In fact, this law is so inescapable, that you would have to use the law in order to discredit it. To deny the law of non-contradiction, you would have to state that the law is false, which is to say that it's not true rather than true (not A rather than A), which is itself an exemplification of the law and therefore circular...       Is you're head spinning yet?

Why can't they all be true?
So, what does all this have to do with religion? Well, first, I think it would help to get away from the term "religion," as it comes with a certain amount of cultural baggage all on it's own. At the heart of every religion, is a worldview that seeks to describe the metaphysics of what our world is like, so this may actually be a better place to start from. If you're unfamiliar with worldview philosophies, check out my previous post here. From this point, it becomes simple. Simply identify the claims of a particular religion (worldview) and then see if they violate the law of non-contradiction. If these claims differ, then we know that they can't both be true. This works in widely general claims, such as "does God exist?," which would be a shared claim of the great monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) but rejected by Buddhism, Jainism and Atheistic beliefs. It shows up best however in the specific claims of each worldview, such as Jesus' claim to be "the way, the truth and the life." and the sole path to reconciliation with God. John 14:6 Since no other religion makes this claim, we know that it's either true, or false. Again we can debate over which one it is, but one thing that we can be certain of is that it cannot be both true and false. Every worldview and religion in the world makes a claim to have the truth. What the second law of logic tells us is that every such claim axiomatically excludes everything else. For this reason, every religion cannot be true and in fact, denies all others in the process. In doing so, our modern notion of "tolerance" becomes not only impractical, but impossible on a fundamental basis.

What becomes of tolerance?
So how should we as rational human beings strive to coexist in light of this fact? Our current culture wants to define tolerance as "respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world's cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. 1 " While this may seem noble and understanding, because of our logical first principles it can't actually be lived out. This manner of definition essentially dictates that we cannot critique any religious worldview or even claim it as false. The twist here is that this type of tolerance becomes a narrow method of universal acceptance and any dissent is immediately seen as wrong and highly criticized. See the law of non-contradiction at work? Our culture's current view of tolerance ironically becomes the most intolerant view of all. So, how can we then be tolerant towards our fellow human beings? I suggest we go back to what was until very recently, accepted as the traditional view of the term. That being a fundamental respect for an individual, despite a complete disagreement or criticism of their worldview (rather than respecting all worldviews at the expense of the person). This classical definition is still buried in how we use the term when under non-political contexts. For example, you only tolerate something if you disagree with. If you accept an opposing view, you're no longer tolerating it, but believing it.

There is a way to be respectful yet still firmly disagree in today's culture, but it's not by allowing or accepting any ideology as it comes down the road. All religions claim a particular view of the world, and therefore deny the truth of all others. Even the modern mantra of "coexist" and "tolerance"set themselves up as the only method of respect and oppose (often vehemently) any contradictory view. If you disagree with someone, realize that it's the worldview you're disagreeing with and don't attack the person who holds it. We should be able to analyze and critique a philosophy independent of the individual. In fact, if someone is running down a cliff on a belief system that could cause harm, true respect would be to try and help that person see the flaws of their worldview, rather than assuming a standpoint of "tolerance" and allowing them to continue. The law of non-contradiction will not allow an all-accepting notion of tolerance to exist. Therefore we are left with the fact that not only are all religions not the same, but it's impossible for them all to be true. If nothing else, I hope that recognizing this becomes a step in the right direction that opens the door to the discussion so that we can then determine which religion, if any, is correct. This engagement should therefore not be seen as intolerance, but a worthwhile attempt at discovering the inescapable truth.

1 - Tolerance.org, Tolerance definition on the about page.

Today's Recommendations

Recommended Reading
True for You, But Not for Me - Paul Copan
A good starter for christian Apologetics which spends a great deal at the beginning fleshing out the implications of our cultural notions of tolerance and relativism.

Recommended Listening
Refuting Religious Pluralism - Dr. Phil Fernandes
Sadly, I haven't actually listened to this yet, but it comes from a highly recommended site, Apologetics 315.

Recommended Research
Can My Truth Be Different from Yours? - Walk Good Blog 
Good article on truth and an application of the law of non-contradiction. 

Today's Challenge
 Over the next few weeks see how many times you can notice the law of non-contradiction being overlooked for the notion of tolerance. It happens more than you think. Think of some responses to point out what's contradictory, yet with gentleness and respect for the individual making the claim. Greg Koukl's Tactics would be a great resource if your having trouble with the conversational side of the issue.

The Thin Ice of Faith Without Facts

When you read the word "faith," what do think that means? How would you define it? Do you change it's meaning depending on whether or not it's relating to a religious matter? What does faith in any one particular religion mean? Why does it matter what you believe in as long as you believe it whole heartily? Ok, enough rhetorical questions. Hopefully I've at least got you thinking, which is of course, at minimum, the goal of this blog. So on to the main event. Take a quick look at the picture here... go ahead and laugh. There's a reason that we find it funny because no one (I hope) would actually take up the offer to walk out onto thin ice after such a clear warning, no matter how much the rest of the sign coaxed. In addition to being amusing, this also serves as a great set up to discuss some key concepts of what it means to have faith and why it's even more important to know what that faith is in.

If I only had Faith...
At the heart of this discussion is the definition of the word faith. Once this word was looked at with admiration and respect, but lately the culture has distorted this notion and many recognize the word to mean something completely opposite to what it once was. If you type "faith definition" into Google, you can practically see the skid marks of the alarmingly sudden shift between the two definitions provided:

1. Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
2. Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

The first definition often has an underlying basis for this trust. The second definition clearly spells out a belief without (or even in spite of) such proof. While many would look approvingly at someone who claimed this first manner of faith in a particular person or object, the moment someone tries to apply it to a question of a religious nature, we perform connotative Aikido and suddenly this quality seem foolish. But when you think about it, this move doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. As discussed (often) in prior posts, all religions make claims on the nature of world. When you claim faith in a particular religion, what you're really saying is that you believe those claims to be true. For that reason, these claims should have a logical support and grounding in our surroundings. Otherwise, you end up having a misguided faith or even believing in something that goes counter to what we all experience everyday. Now I hope we all agree that this manner of faith is unreasonable, but when talking about spiritual matters most people will only have this definition in mind. Some would even promote this definition as a virtue. If you try to engage in a meaningful conversation while this is running through someone's head, you've already lost.  In light of this, I prefer to use the "trust" when talking about what I believe as it holds closer to the original position more clearly (and also illustrates a traditional biblical view of the term). In fact when we use the word in the second way, we often make a distinction by qualifying it with the addition of the word "blind." This should be a clear indication that original meaning has been distorted. Despite this fact however, many people still believe that a blind faith is all that's needed.

Running on Blind Faith
So what happens if we continue to see faith as merely believing what we want or hope is true without any support for this manner of blind fervor. To illustrate just how dangerous this can be, let's go back to the frozen lake above. Let's say there are a total of two possible scenarios with two possible forms of faith. The first scenario will be someone who sees the frozen lake and walks out onto a sheet of ice that's well frozen, thick and solid. Now imagine if this person has checked the temperature, tested the ice and even visits this lake every winter without falling into the icy waters. This person would then have good reasons to "trust" that the ice will support him. This is a good example of the first definition of the word faith. Now suppose another person takes the modern definition and blindly walks out onto the ice without any prior knowledge or checking of the surface. What happens? Well, nothing really. He ends up being just as safe and supported as the first individual. He's perfectly okay in spite of his blind faith.

Onto the second scenario. What if the ice is too thin and can't support the full weight of a person? Well, if someone blindly walks out onto the lake with a blind faith in it, the obvious outcome is an ensuing swim in the freezing water. But what happens when this person claims a solid and noteworthy "faith" in the ice? What if they just hope and believe and convince themselves with all their heart that the ice will support them? They may really like the idea that the ice can support them. They may even just be going out onto the ice for the sake of curiosity. They may possibly see "ice walking" as a great experience that everyone should try, at least once. What happens when someone with a fervently hoped for "faith" (as illustrated by number 2 above) steps out onto the ice? Simple answer, they fall. Ultimately, it won't matter how much they hope or like the idea of a solid sheet of ice. Reality will always catch up in the end. It's for this reason that what you place you're faith in is ultimately the most important factor.

Frozen feet?
At this point you may be thinking "Well the safest option here would be not to go out onto the ice at all." In the scenarios presented above, I would agree with that. If we are unsure or don't have sufficient reasons to believe the ice is solid, it makes sense to not go out onto the lake and risk the potential danger. When you engage in this manner of agnosticism, you try to play it safe by not testing the water. You may not even care about faith and claim that it's not important to you. If you're standing on a shore looking at the ice, this actually makes a lot of sense. But the major problem with such a stance comes when you realize that we're not on the shoreline. We are all already on the ice. You're in this world and playing the metaphysical game whether you like it or not. If you're on the ice already, the real question then becomes "Is the ice you're on a solid patch or a brittle one?

Like the grounding problem, we return to this notion that we all have to base our lives on something. That something should be carefully considered given what's at stake. It could be that we're all on thin ice and just waiting to fall into nothing. It could be that everyone is on a solid sheet of ice and will end up fine in the end no matter what type of faith was placed on the surface. But what if that wasn't the case? What if there was only a single safe spot on the whole lake that you could stand? Wouldn't you want to know where that safe spot was and get there quick before it was too late?

In the end, it doesn't matter how much you might want to believe in a particular religion if that religion is in actuality thin ice. You can hold to it all you want but you're still not going to be safe. Likewise, you could be blindly following a worldview with a good foundation and just be lucky enough to be on solid ground, but that seems like a poor way to respect such a faith. You could throw your hands in the air and say that it's not important and give your life to chance. I would strongly recommend against this as it's an extremely dangerous route to take. So go ahead and check out your feet to see what it is you're trusting in. In an area of such importance, you should have some pretty solid reasons for believing the way you do. Much like Pascal's Wager, this illustration is not necessarily a case for the legitimacy of any one particular claim, but rather an attempt to bring to the foreground the severity of what's at stake. We should examine carefully the various worldviews in order to find out what's true, not merely what we like. If we are on shaky ground, it could collapse at any time. Why wouldn't you look for the safe place to stand? Even more importantly, if we do find a safe patch, wouldn't we want to help everyone else see that they can be safe also? The more we can understand this worldview, the more we can place our trust (faith) in it as the truth and help other people to see the reason for the hope we have within us before they fall. 1 Peter 3:15




Today's Recommendations

Recommended Reading
Faith is Not Wishing - Greg Koukl
Since it would be impossible for me to adequately cover that concept of faith and what a biblical view of it should be, I'm going to refer you to someone much more qualified. Check out this great resource by Greg.

Recommended Listening
Is the Bible a Science Book? - Straight Thinking Podcast, RTB
Not entirely relevant to the topic at hand, but it does address some previously covered topics about how one should and should not read the Bible in regards to scientific discoveries.

Recommended Research
Reasonable Faith Q&A #298 - William Lane Craig
A short look at Pascal's Wager by Dr. Craig. Again, maybe not exactly on topic, but still worth the read. Especially if you've never looked at Pascal's Wager before.

Today's Challenge
See if you can find or even come up with on your own a different (and probably better) illustration for the importance of what you believe in. Take it to test with friends and family and see if it makes sense to others. Good Luck!

"Say's Who?"

In a continuation of the previous post on the importance of grounding, let's take a look at what makes a good source of authority. As I hope the grounding problem illustrates, it's important to have a fixed point or frame of reference that you can use as a standard. Whatever that standard happens to be then becomes the ultimate source of authority that everything else logically finds as it's foundation. Now, since I can't seem to go two weeks without giving you the etymology of a word, it may (or may not) interest you to know that the word "authority" derives from the Latin Auctoritas, which loosely translates as invention, advice, opinion, influence or command 1 . It's typically used to refer to an ability to exercise power over and above another. In philosophical terms, however, this word is made distinct from mere power plays to a claim of legitimacy, or justification in the assertion of such power. So with this in mind, let's take a look at the question "What is a good source of authority to base your beliefs about the world on."

"Who's To Say?"
Pretend you're walking down the street and find a strange object lying on the ground. You're not sure what it does, or how it works, but it's got lots of fun looking levers and gears all over it. How would you find out the purpose and nature of this object? You could attempt to figure it out for yourself through a laborious effort of trial and error. Another option would be to ask all your friends and see what they think about it. In this more modern age, you'll most likely just Google it. But what if this item was so unique that even the almighty internet lacked an explanation. What if at the end of the day, all you had were all these conflicting conjectures about this mysterious object. Some parts may be obvious to you and there may a general consensus among your friends, but there are other parts of this strange relic that you just can't figure out. The next step should be fairly straightforward: find out who made it and just ask them how it works. Seems simple enough, but what if you finally managed to get a hold of this person and he tells you that he would love to help you, but unfortunately, he can't make it to you to explain it. Your heartbroken curiosity is soon excited again as he tells you that he has the instruction manual and will send it out to you free of charge.

Okay, so I'm sure you've made the connection by now, but in the pragmatics of discourse I'm bound by necessity to spell it out anyway. If we have a universe, that we can't completely explain or discern the purpose of, we need to ask the creator. By the simple virtue of being the author of the object, the one who created it therefore is the ultimate source of authority for that object (see what I did there?). I realize I'm skipping over the debate about whether or not there even is a personal, transcendent creator of the universe, but for the moment let's at least accept it as a mere possibility 2 . If this was indeed a loving god, it would naturally follow that he would provide us with this instruction manual to the world we inhabit. Especially if that manual contained information not only on this finite side of the scale, but also on the vastly more important and impactful infinite side to come. This shouldn't come as a surprise to many people because what we find at the core of almost every major religion is a religious text of some fashion or another claiming to be the definitive Word of God. But if that's the case, how can we judge which of these books is truly endorsed by the highest source of authority?

Why a Book?
At this point you may be wondering why this creator bothers with an instruction manual rather than just coming down and talking to us face to face. There are actually many good philosophical and theological reasons as to why this would be the case. One of my person favorites is touched on in C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters,  as the senior demon instructs his nephew, "Merely to override a human will (as His [God's] felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. 3 " An entire post could be devoted to this topic, but for now I'd like to just leave you with a more practical reason. If you've been following the line of thinking that led here, the importance of an objective source is paramount. If God visited everyone at one point, we would all have varying individual experiences that would change over time. If He merely spoke to certain individuals, the nuances of the message could get "lost in translation" and become merely subjective (as semiotics illustrates). Also, it would then be easy for free will agents to distort this word as they saw fit for their own personal gain. The solution? An objective document that contains meaning and messages that can then be referred to by everyone and endure through various cultures and times. Again, this should not come as a surprising concept, as even our founding fathers saw the necessity of writing down a declaration that would then become the foundation that this country rests on. So now we come back to the main problem; that almost every major religion claims the sole authority of a true text. How do we then discern which is correct?

Why Should I Trust the Bible?
Okay, since it would impossible (and tedious) to go over every religious text on a blog, I'm gonna focus on the one that seems to be the most influential. After all, it makes sense that we should start at the top of list and the Bible is arguably the most accepted and/or critized religious script of all time. Also, because this blog is already running long, I'm merely going to lay out the basics of each point and a little bit of information to support why the Bible meets the criteria. You could spend a whole college semester or write an entire book (and many have) on any one of these topics, but my goal here is just to inform you that the arguments are out there. Please refer to the reference section below for links to check out the sources for yourself.

1. Is the book we have today what was originally written?
This one is kind of important. After all, we're claiming that this book came from God and was written by people who were lead by Him to deliver His word to everyone else. If later on down the road, the text is changed, then we would have no idea what the correct instruction manual should look like. Like many other works of literature from the ancient world, we do not have the original manuscripts that comprise the Bible. I happen to think that this is actually good thing, but there are those who then question how we can support the belief that what we have now is accurate when we no longer have an original document to compare it to. There are two major criteria that historical scholars use to verify the accuracy of an ancient work where the original is no longer available. Let's take a look at how the world's three best accounted works of ancient antiquity hold up under these standards. These are the writings of Sophocles (496-406 B.C.), Homer's Illiad (900 B.C.) and the New Testament (NT) (50-100 A.D.). The first criteria is the time frame between when the original document was actually written compared to our earliest known copy. In the case of Sophocles, there's a gap of 1400 years. Homer's Illiad runs laps around that one to come to a final time span of 500 years. Sitting at the finish line waiting on the others to catch up, we have the NT manuscripts having a gap of only 50-100 years (there's some dispute over the earliest possible date, but 100 years is the general consensus of the latest possible time). This is still within the potential lifetime of the some of the original authors! The second criteria is the number of manuscripts that we have for each. Again, at third place we have Sophacles with 193 surviving manuscripts. The next contender, Homer, slides in with 643 copies. This is an amazing amount of surviving texts when you think about it. So how does the NT fare? We have over 5, 686 copies with which to verify the accuracy of the text 4 .  That's almost 10 times more than the next best accounted work of literature in the ancient world. Many of these original manuscripts can even be viewed online at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, whose made it their goal to digitally photograph this work. When compared to other ancient works, if we discredit the bible that we have today as being accurate to the original texts, then we must also consider all other ancient works as laughably insufficient and discredit much of our early history department.

2. Is what was written reliable?
"Okay," you may be asking, "so we have what they originally wrote, but why should we trust these guys?" Many people argue that these authors of the NT were either not intending to recite historical events, or simply created these stories. In situation like this, it's important to understand the value of context and the type of literature these originally documents claim to be. In the beginning of Luke and in 1 Corinthians we see that the gospel writers clearly intended their words to be treated as literal firsthand eyewitness accounts Luke 1:1-4 1 Corinthians 15:15. In this regard, it seems unfair to assert that they must have been writing mythology or merely intended it to be a fictional religious narrative. In addition, due to the early dating, we lack the necessary time gap for a mythology to arise out of the claims of the early apostles. This is especially compounded by the fact that these early accounts reference several specific individuals and places. All the first century skeptic had to do to disprove these accounts would be to ask these people if what the apostles claimed was true. In fact, these early writer's actually encouraged this type of inquiry 1 Cor 15:3-8 .  Furthermore, by checking the accuracy of what information we can confirm, this lends credibility to these authors as being reliable witnesses of what they were attesting to. Within the book of Acts, we see a great amount of very specific cultural, political and environmental details that lead to the conclusion that Luke was an incredibly precise and reliable witness of what he reported. Also, by referencing these independent eyewitness testimonies, we can cross examine them to obtain a very accurate accounting of the original events.

3. Is it endorsed by God?
At the end of the day, this is the question we're seeking to answer. Anyone can write a book and claim it's from God, but if the big guy himself wanted to endorse such a text, how would he do it? The only way would be to provide evidence of His approval by layering the texts with some level of supernatural elements. I'm not saying that the Bible is magic or that the scripture can be used to invoke fantastic events. I am saying that by examining the history of the Bible's construction and it's effects, we should see God's influence on every page. For this final point, let's look at six lines of evidence to support God's supernatural stamp of approval. Again, there's too much to explain here, so I'll give them in bullet point form with links to additional material.

• Prophecy - The bible is full of many prophecies that have been fulfilled with incredible accuracy. No other religious text has a tract record as impressive. RtB - Fulfilled Propechies
• Unity - Despite covering a range of 66 books by 40 authors, ranging from peasants to kings, over a span of 1600 years, the Bible can be seen as a cohesive narrative with one central theme that doesn't contradict the core doctrines. ChristianAnswers.net - Biblical Congruency 
• Addressing the Big Questions - The Bible doesn't just claim to be an authority of some esoteric knowledge that only affects people interested in that sort of thing. It's a source of incredible relevance to all the questions that have been the concern of every generation and culture.In fact, it's usually at the very center of these debates.  Please Convince Me - The Christian Worldview as the Best Explanation
• Historically Accurate - We've already touched on this one, but if God were to give us a book, it wouldn't make sense for that book to be full of errors. The Bible is still one of the leading authorities of ancient culture and is constantly being confirmed by new archeological discoveries. Be Thinking - Historical Reliability 
• Changes Lives - I realize that many texts claim to be transformative in peoples lives, and most of them are. This is not a definitive proof, since this alone is not sufficient to show God's touch on the scriptures, but if this were lacking it would be a proof against God's influence. I think it's undeniable that the Bible has had an amazing impact on people's lives. No link is needed here, just ask people.
• Survival - This is one of the biggies. There is no other document that has been more scrutinized, more criticized or more attacked then the Bible. This alone should be a major clue. After all, if it were worthless, why would there be so much fervor to discredit it? Despite this, the Bible is still strong and widely believed. That couldn't happen unless there was a supernatural ring of truth in it's pages.

Okay, so I realize that it's a bit like drinking water from a fire hose. If you get nothing else from this particular post, I hope you can at least see that when Christian's claim the Bible as the inspired word of God and therefore sufficient to use as a foundation for faith, that this claim is not made in a vacuum. There are excellent reasons to believe God, both in a general sense, and the God of Christian scriptures specifically. We all are basing our life on something, whether you've looked at that foundation or not. Are you basing your beliefs on personal feelings and desire? Does your life revolve around a subjective authority that easily changes due to popular opinion? Or do you take your life seriously enough to find an objective, well evidenced, fixed foundation that can actually support the entire structure? Matthew 7:24


1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auctoritas
2 - I feel I should note that this is more than just a simple assertion. There are many good reasons to believe in the existence of such a being. For a look at some of these arguments, visit Peter Kreft's Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God.
3 - C.S. Lewis - Screwtape Letters, Chapter 8 
4 - By the last account I heard, this number has actually gone up to 5,842 as more manuscripts are discovered. I didn't have a source for this information so I didn't want to post it. 

Point 1 
http://carm.org/manuscript-evidence
STR Article - Is the New Testament Reliable
Point 2
Please Convince Me - Is the NT Archeologically Verifiable?
Historical Details in Acts - Thomistic Bent
Point 3 -
Apologetics 315 - Articles on Trusting the Bible
Stand to Reason - No Lost Book of the Bible


Today's Recommendations

Recommended Reading
Cold Case Christianity - J Warner Wallace
A cold case homicide detective takes the skills he learned cracking unsolved mysterious to test the verifiability of the Gospels as eyewitness to the case of the resurrection. A very good defense for many of the common objections to trusting the Bible as the authority of God. 

Recommended Listening
The Authority of the Word of God - Amy Orr-Ewing, Ravi Zacharias Ministries
Great podcast on the reliability of the Bible compared to other sources. 

Recommended Research
I think I've given you enough websites to check out... happy researching!  

Today's Challenge
Look at one of the three points for why we should trust the Bible (or one of the final 6 for point 3) . Pick which one you find most engaging and really study it. Visit the provided links and do some research of your own. Also be aware of the criticism provided by opposition and be ready to address those concerns. You don't have to be an expert in everything, but find a field you enjoy and go a little deeper in that area.

Grounding Problem

Something I've noticed lately in regards to the various debates and arguments flying around regarding the nature or existence of God is that many people on the opposing viewpoint often suffer from what I call a grounding problem. When someone makes a claim about an objective truth (and the existence of God is without a doubt the most important objective truth claim), there needs to be some manner of authority to which that person is basing this claim on. As any good architect can tell you, however, not all foundations are created equal and much of what we see and hear today is pretty far from solid ground. For this post, I'd like to take a brief look at the grounding problem in our culture and hopefully get you asking the question "What are your beliefs grounded on?"

You're Grounded

In any other arena, this may be a bad thing. When dealing with philosophical argumentation or a belief system, it's vital. Grounding in this sense is simply the foundation or final authority that a claim or belief rests on. Almost every conversation eventually breaks down in the two major question of "Who says?" and "By what authority?" It's for this reason that it's helpful to be able to identify what a statement is using as it's base and then try to verify whether or not that foundation is solid. Often times, however, many claims end up grounding themselves merely in the personal desires of the person making the claim. In the words of the 17th century Philosopher, Mathematician and Theologian Blaise Pascal "People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive. 1 ” When dealing with a subjective claim such as the best flavor of ice cream, this sort of personal appeal is completely justified. If, however, the claim is an objective one, such as "Does God exist?" the answer to that question needs to be based on something objective as well. When people try and support an objective claim with a subjective opinion, they end up falling into relativism. 

Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air 

Relativism is very pervasive in our culture today and many people who fall into this trap aren't even aware that they've reached this mindset. It occurs whenever an objective truth is made to be completely dependent on the individual. More commonly it's expressed in the phrase "That may be true for you, but not for me." If the issue being discussed is a metaphysical claim (statements about the nature and substance of things) then the issue is objective in nature and therefore cannot be relegated to the field of personal opinion. They are either true, or false regardless of whether or not you accept them or have even give them consideration. The question "Does God exist" is not a question about whether or not you want there to be a God, or even whether or not you like this particular deity. It's the same as asking "Is there coke in the fridge?" Saying that it may be true for one person, but not another becomes absurd. If one person says that there is a coke in fridge, and another denies this claim, we don't nod our heads in a sagely manner and declare both to be correct. When it comes to a simple matter such as this, we often just go to the fridge and open the door because we no that there either is or isn't a coke. Unfortunately, when dealing in questions that extend beyond our physical world, there is no cosmic fridge that we can quickly look into verify the truthfulness of either particular claim, but this doesn't leave either side off the hook for needing to support their claim. No matter which side of the question you fall on, everyone needs to base their claims on something else. But are all foundations created equally? 

A House Built on Sand

The obvious (and correct) answer is "no" as illustrated clearly in Matthew 7:24-27.  So what do you base your beliefs on, and is it a solid foundation? When asked to support a worldview, everyone needs to draw a line somewhere at what they use as the ultimate grounding for authority. As previously mentioned, for most people, this becomes the current ideals or standards of the culture. For others it's based on personal feelings or preferences. But these are not foundations of a solid or static nature. Cultures change, and indeed our own emotions hardly ever stop oscillating to some extreme or the other. When you try to base truth on something that shifts and moves along with culture, it becomes utterly meaningless. To illustrate this point, picture yourself traveling down the highway in the back of a bus or car with no windows. When everything you see is moving and changing along with you, then it's hard to judge if you're even moving at all. If, however, you're given a window to see outside the vehicle and look at an object beside the road that's not moving, your own movement and speed becomes immediately obvious. In this respect, the search for meaning or truth should be a search for this fixed point that we can gauge everything else on. 

So here we come to the problem that I find cropping up in debates and discussions about God or morality. More often than not, the opposing side will not (or cannot) base a claim on any fixed authority beyond a cultural preference or personal emotion. Some atheists readily acknowledge this fact and succumb to the notion that without an objective authority, there is no such thing as meaning or objectivity in the world. But does this really fit the way we look at the cosmos? It seems to be filled with purpose and design. Our movies and books are filled with stories that seek to discover meaning and fill this earth with more than just material matter. There seems to be a desperate need in everyone to find fulfillment in something beyond themselves, what C.S. Lewis called an "Argument From Desire." 2 Despite this, it seems to me that people are desperately trying to avoid this notion of an objective, fixed point beyond ourselves. The obvious reason is that by doing so, they will have to admit of some authority to which we are accountable. Try as they might, however, people can't avoid this truth. To illustrate this point, take a look at this anecdote from Apologist and Theologian, Ravi Zacharias:

"I remember lecturing at Ohio State University, one of the largest universities in this country. I was minutes away from beginning my lecture, and my host was driving me past a new building called the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts.
He said, “This is America’s first postmodern building.”
I was startled for a moment and I said, “What is a postmodern building?”
He said, “Well, the architect said that he designed this building with no design in mind. When the architect was asked, ‘Why?’ he said, ‘If life itself is capricious, why should our buildings have any design and any meaning?’ So he has pillars that have no purpose. He has stairways that go nowhere. He has a senseless building built and somebody has paid for it.”
I said, “So his argument was that if life has no purpose and design, why should the building have any design?”
He said, “That is correct.”
I said, “Did he do the same with the foundation?”
All of a sudden there was silence.
You see, you and I can fool with the infrastructure as much as we would like, but we dare not fool with the foundation because it will call our bluff in a hurry."

I hope that by now we can agree that there is indeed a solid ground with which everyone needs base the facts on, unfortunately time and space doesn't allow me the chance to expound on what the best foundation may be, so I'll pick that up in the next post (check out the recommended listening for a good idea of where I'm going). In the meantime, keep an eye and an ear out for what people use to answer the questions of "Who says?" and "By what authority?" By seeing what people use as a foundation for their beliefs, it's easier to see whether or not the belief or worldview is solid. 

1 - Blaise Pascal - 1623 - 1662 
2 - C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity 
3 -  Ravi Zaccharias

Today's Recommendations 

Recommended Reading
Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,  Gregory Koukl and Francis Beckwith 
A great book on how moral relativity can quickly fall apart under the weight of it's own claims. 


 Recommended Listening
Who's You're Authority - Bulletproof Podcast - Bret Kunkle
Podcast comparing some of the world's most popular religions and their claims to authority.


Recommended Research 
Fixed Point Foundation 
An apologetics ministry that provides debates and articles to equip people with good defenses for their belief. Also, in regards to the topic, I liked the name... 

Today's Challenge
Ask someone "Why do you believe what you believe?" Really sit back and try to understand what and where their final authority is. If it's relativistic in nature, don't beat them over the head with it, just ask them some simple questions about whether or not an objective truth can be based on something non-objective.