← Defenders Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript50 lines
- [00:01]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig. Today the Doctrine of Man Part 5. For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org
- [00:18]
Last time we talked about man's being in the image of God and what this means. And I suggested that those who see some sort of a fundamental dichotomy between an ontological or substantial image of God and a functional image of God are guilty of making a false dichotomy. In fact, the reason that man can function in the image of God is precisely because of certain properties that he has ontologically. So it is the ontology that grounds or is the basis for the function. So let's talk a bit more about man as a personal being. We saw that God is the personal, infinite God. That is to say, on the one hand, God is personal, actually tri personal. But on the other hand, God is infinite, necessary, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, perfectly good, and so forth. Insofar as God is infinite, a great chasm separates God from the rest of creation. Man stands on the side of the chasm that belongs to creatures. Man is himself a finite, created thing, and in that respect is like animals, plants, and inorganic substances. He has a hominid body akin to that of the great apes. But insofar as God is personal, man is like God and unlike the rest of the created order. To say that man is in the image of God ontologically, I think, is to say that man is personal. He is a person in the same way that God is personal, and he has the essential attributes of personhood. Though of course, since he's not infinite, he has these attributes to a finite degree, and therefore he can function in certain ways. He can be related to God as God's co regent on this planet in stewarding the earth and its resources. What, then are the attributes sufficient for personhood? Reflection on ourselves as persons suggests that such properties as self consciousness, rationality, and freedom of the will are sufficient for personhood. While higher primates, like chimpanzees, for example, may have a rudimentary consciousness of themselves, they seem to be able to recognize themselves in a mirror, for example, although even this is disputed. And nevertheless, they do not have what philosophers call a transcendental ego. That is to say, the ability to reflect upon one's own mental states, to be aware of oneself as a self, to say, I think, that before anything they believe. Similarly, even though chimps exhibit considerable intelligence, they cannot think abstractly, as is evident from their inability to learn a language despite endless hours of instruction by primatologists. Even if they have souls, they do not have rational souls. Finally, as a consequence, they lack freedom of the will, but rather are causally determined to do what they do. On a Christian view of man, however, we have self consciousness, rationality and free will and therefore are persons in the fullest sense of that word. We are as a result responsible moral agents able to relate to God. What an exalted view of man this is compared to the naturalistic view promulgated by people like La Mettrie and Dawkins. Is there any discussion of man as a personal being?
- [05:11]
Jacob
Jacob, could you just clarify something you said about the primates? They have a soul, just not a rational soul. Because the way I've always understood it, when I studied that is that's what a soul is, to have rationality.
- [05:26]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Oh, well, that's not the traditional view for someone like Aristotle and the tradition that followed him, the medieval theologians, they thought that sentient beings like horses and dogs and cats have souls, but they're not endowed with rationality. They are poorer souls, less richly endowed souls than our human souls, which are uniquely rational. And I'm not taking a position on this. Philosophy of mind is not my area of expertise, but there are contemporary thinkers who would say the same. For example, I heard the great Nobel prize winning neurologist Sir John Ecclesiastical, who is a dualist interactionist, once say that although he doubted that frogs have souls, he thinks that the higher animals do have minds or souls, even if they don't have rationality. And similarly, my colleague JP Moreland, who does specialize in philosophy of mind, would say that animals have souls, though they don't have rational souls. So that's why I said, even if you want to say that chimps do have souls, they don't have rational souls, as is evident from their inability to think symbolically or abstractly because they cannot learn a language. Cody?
- [06:58]
Cody
Yeah, so kind of related to that, I was thinking this discussion kind of reminds me of like the philosopher Boethius and his definition. I think he says like a person is an individual substance with a rational nature.
- [07:11]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Yes.
- [07:12]
Cody
Kind of similar to what you're talking about.
- [07:13]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Yes, that would be the sort of classical Aristotelian concept of a soul or a person. Does Boethius actually use the word person?
- [07:24]
Cody
I'd have to double check, but I believe so. I don't remember the exact quote, but I know when other people talk about his view like, that's how they usually summarize it.
- [07:33]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Okay, good. Yeah, that's in line with what I'm suggesting, this is traditional.
- [07:38]
Cody
Yeah. Because when it comes to the issue of abortion, obviously, because people try to say, well, but like, a fetus isn't rational or anything, but once you understand how these categories work, you'd say, well, no, even though a fetus isn't currently functioning rationally, it's still a rational substance by nature, even if it can't yet actually think at that moment.
- [08:01]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Very good, Cody. Thank you. That's a wonderful clarification. I think you're absolutely right. One of my pro life friends put it this way. The fetus is not a potential person. The fetus is a person with potential. Francis Beckwith, is that. Who said that? Frank Beckwith, I don't recall. He's a Christian philosopher at Baylor University. And I think that captures it quite rightly.
- [08:28]
Unidentified Female Participant
So is there a difference between, say, the secular view of a soul versus a biblical view, which to me entails more of an afterlife?
- [08:38]
Dr. William Lane Craig
That's unclear. The question you're raising is the immortality of the soul. Is the soul naturally immortal? Does it naturally survive the death of the body? Now, certainly that's what Plato thought. The Greek tradition was that because the soul is immaterial, it isn't affected. In fact, it's liberated when the body dies. The body is like a prison house of the soul that drags it down by its passions and physicality, and so the soul is set free by the death of the body. But it's not entirely clear that that is the biblical view. A good many people would think that immortality is something that has to be bestowed by God even on the soul, much less on the body. That it doesn't have a natural propensity to survive the death of the body, but it can survive the death of the body by the gift of God that God sustains it in being. I don't have a position on that because I've not studied it. I certainly do believe that the soul does survive the body. In fact, I'm going to say something about that in a few minutes, God willing. But whether it does that by a natural propensity or a supernatural gift of God, I don't have a dog in that fight. Yes, Taylor.
- [10:15]
Cody
So you mentioned something about that primates or chimps can't be able to use language in order to talk.
- [10:24]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Yes.
- [10:24]
Cody
I remember going back to college and hearing from an anthropologist and seeing a video of a bonobo trying to communicate through, like, sign language. Have you heard of this?
- [10:33]
Dr. William Lane Craig
And, oh yes, in my study of the historical atom, I've been reading A lot about human origins and the differences between animals and man, so as to try to discern where in history human consciousness first emerged. And one of the striking things that has come out of these experiments trying to teach chimps language, whether a spoken language or sign language, because after all, they may not have the vocal cords for enunciating words, but you could teach them sign language, which is a language just as much as oral languages. They can't master it because they can't learn syntax. They cannot learn how to put signs and words together so as to form coherent sentences. And so it's generally agreed now among these primatologists that even if chimps can learn, for example, if they press this yellow button, they'll get a banana, or if they press this orange button, they'll get an orange. They cannot discourse in language about bananas and oranges.
- [11:52]
Jacob
Thank you.
- [11:55]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Okay, Bruce,
- [11:58]
Bruce
just a couple of things tacking onto the last thing you mentioned. There were some studies done with humans that if they get exposed, that if the developing person gets exposed to a certain language, they have a propensity to learn it, even if they get raised in a place where it's a different language. And so there's something happening that's supernatural, but in the supernatural.
- [12:26]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Well, or God given, a God given endowment. I mean, we don't need to say it's a miracle, I think.
- [12:32]
Bruce
No, but it's that proclivity, that capacity. So in connection with the second point, connection with what the soul is, I think you have to be careful of identifying the soul only with rationality or the brain. If you get brain damage, you don't lose your soul. So the mind informs the soul, but gives expression to the heart.
- [12:55]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Okay, now, but I haven't identified the soul with the brain.
- [12:59]
Bruce
No.
- [13:00]
Dr. William Lane Craig
So certainly I would agree with you that someone can suffer terrible brain damage so that they're no longer able to think rationally, or maybe they suffer a terrible personality change and so forth. But that's not to say, as Cody reminded us, that they are no longer a rational substance, a rational soul. They've just been incapacitated because the apparatus they used to think has now been seriously damaged. And I mentioned Sir John Eccles a moment ago. In this same talk that Eccles gave that I heard, he compared the brain to a piano. He said, just as the pianist uses the piano to play music, the soul or the mind uses the brain as an instrument for thought. And if the instrument is damaged, you will not be able to produce beautiful music. It will be discordant. Similarly, if the Brain is damaged, there will not be coherent thought because the instrument that the soul uses for thought is impaired. So you're quite right in drawing our attention to the distinction between the brain, which is this glob of fat in your skull, and your soul, which survives the death of your body. There was one other point that you made right at the beginning that I wanted to comment on. What was your first remark? Do you remember? Oh, yes, learning language. This is another intriguing thing I mentioned, that despite thousands of hours by these primatologists to teach chimps language of some sort, of they can't learn it. And yet you can take the most primitive savage, the most uncivilized aboriginal, put him in a cultured situation, and as you said, Bruce, he'll learn the language. He'll even learn Polish, as difficult grammatically as that might be. In fact, my colleague Josh Swamidass has pointed out to me the remarkable fact that, that you can take primitive man and put him in a modern environment, modern culture, and he'll get along just fine. He'll learn how to learn the language, he'll learn how to adapt. And a great example of that would be the Indian Squanto, who meant the Pilgrims when they came to Massachusetts. And Squanto was in effect, a Stone Age person. The Indians never got beyond Stone Age tools, didn't even have the wheel. And yet Squanto was able to learn the language. He was able to go to England and work as a servant and butler and then eventually, finally did go back to his native people. But despite his primitive origins, he had these innate capacities that Bruce talked about for language and for culture. It's quite extraordinary when you think about it. And very, very different than animals. Yes, Red shirt. Oh, okay, we'll get to you, George.
- [16:31]
So, Bill, would you agree that one implication of the image of God doctrine is, is that objects or creatures that bear that image are more valuable than objects that do not have the image of God?
- [16:46]
Absolutely.
- [16:47]
So that a Spanish philosopher named Miguel de Unamuno, you may know the name, 100 years ago he said a human soul is worth all the universe. So one person is worth more than the entire non human universe.
- [17:02]
Yes. I had not heard that Unamuno said that, but Frederick Copleston, the famous historian of philosophy, said exactly the same thing. And it really struck me when he said one human being is worth more than the entire material universe. Taken together, that's extraordinary. And the source of that moral value, that intrinsic value of human beings is the image of God. Yes.
- [17:28]
Unidentified Female Participant
Yeah.
- [17:28]
Cody
Where are you getting the Attributes of personhood from. Are they coming from Scripture or is it from observing how humans are different from the rest of creation?
- [17:38]
Dr. William Lane Craig
This is a good question. It's the latter, not the former. I'm not turning to Scripture to try to see attributes of personhood. The Scripture isn't a philosophy book. One of the striking things about Genesis 1, 26 and 27 that is generally agreed upon by commentators is, is that the image of God is never defined in the text. It just says we're created in God's image and according to his likeness. And no attempt by the author is made at all to explain what this means. So if we want to understand what it means, it seems to me we have to turn to philosophical theology. And so what I said was reflection on ourselves as persons reveals that properties like self consciousness, rationality and freedom of the will are sufficient for personhoods. You and I are persons. We know that we can begin with that as our given that I am a person. And then I can ask myself, well, in virtue of what am I a person? And it would seem to me that these properties would be among those that are what make us persons and are sufficient for personhood. And this is then consistent with Scripture. Though I wouldn't pretend that this is the result of proof texting. Yes, there was another question.
- [19:06]
Unidentified Female Participant
Not a question, just verse that comes to mind, Ecclesiastes 3:11, which says he has made everything beautiful in its time, he has put eternity in man's heart yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. And I think about that's a pretty big difference between us and animals is that God's put eternity in our heart. And even though animals are alive, I don't think they have any comprehension of eternity.
- [19:37]
Dr. William Lane Craig
No. And it's hard to know exactly what is all comprised in that phrase that he's put eternity in man's heart. What does that involve? I'm not sure, but clearly you're right. It's meant to set us apart from the rest of the animal creation. Steve,
- [19:59]
Jacob
I guess two things, two scriptures. It says, an honorable man without knowledge of the Holy One, Christ is as the beast of the field. And then the other one is while we're defining personhood, we don't by ourselves how we introspection and what we know of persons. The Bible says now we see through a glass darkly. We don't, but then we'll see clearly and we'll know ourselves as we're known. So we really can't see our image so we really don't know.
- [20:28]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Well, you've got to read the verse in context. I mean, I think Paul is not addressing the question there of what it is to be a person when he says we see through a, in a glass darkly or in a dim mirror. So I think that this method of analysis is quite legitimate. It's called phenomenology. You reflect on the phenomena of what it is to be a person and I think that's perfectly legitimate. And of course it's open to debate. But it seems to me that that's something that's acceptable.
- [21:07]
Jacob
I agree. It's good. I was just saying can't go too far on the conclusions. You can't do a second deduction from him.
- [21:13]
Dr. William Lane Craig
All right, yeah, I'm not claiming some sort of certainty for these conclusions. All right, let's go on to talk a bit about man as sinner now in relationship to God. Of course, man is separated from God in virtue of his his sin. But that's not destructive of man's being in the image of God. Man is still a personal being, still in the image of God, even though his relationship with God is ruptured because of the fall into sin. So in his state of original righteousness, or perhaps better put, in his original state of innocence, there's an open and free flowing relationship between God and man that is unobstructed by sin. But then in man's fallen state as a sinner, the relationship between God and man is severed. There's an obstacle now, namely man's guilt and evil, that prevents him from being related to God in the way that he was created to be. He now finds himself alienated from God and estranged from God in this fallen condition. But then finally in the state of grace, man finds his relationship with God restored through Jesus Christ. Now in the state of grace, man is able to experience the relationship with God that he was created to have, albeit a relationship of a flawed and fallen creature, but nonetheless still forgiven and redeemed and regenerated in Christ. When the New Testament speaks then of being conformed to the image of Christ, this is a different category from the image of God. This has to do with our sanctification. Insofar as we are in Christ and are being sanctified by his indwelling Holy Spirit and bearing the fruit of the Spirit, such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and so forth, then we become like Christ and so we come to bear his character ourselves. Any thought thoughts on man as a sinner or in a state of grace? Yes. Back Here in the rear.
- [24:01]
George
So I've been wondering as you were talking, I have a three and a half year old son and I've wondered when is the first sin as an individual? So for example, like the idea of sin being missing the mark, falling short and is missing the mark the difference between like intentionally missing the mark and unintentionally missing the mark. And so I wonder like, because if someone, so if children are to die, for example, when do they have the capacity so to speak, to say, I'm actually a sinner, for example, and I'm condemned or in need of grace. Does that question make sense?
- [24:50]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Oh, that's a great question. And it's obvious that little children often miss the mark. We don't talk about the terrible twos for nothing. You know how badly little 2 year olds can miss the mark. But the question you're raising is, are they culpable for missing the mark in that way and therefore judged by God for these sins, if you call them sins. And I'm inclined to say based upon Jesus attitude toward little children, that they are not culpable when they miss the mark as youngsters who haven't yet arrived at a mature consciousness of a moral agent. When you look at the way Jesus regarded children, the disciples tried to brush them off and dismiss them. And Jesus said, let the little children come to me, for such is the kingdom of God. And he said, if you do not receive the kingdom of heaven like one of these little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And then he talked about how their angels constantly stand before God regarding his face. Jesus had a very positive attitude toward these little children and thought of them as exemplifying the sort of faith and trust that is necessary in order to be a member of God's eternal kingdom. So I think that these little children, when they do wrong, are not held culpable for this wrongdoing. That will not come until they arrive at what's often called the age of accountability. That's a popular phrase, it's not a scriptural one, but I think the concept is scriptural, that they will reach a point of moral maturity where now they will be held responsible by God for the wrongs that they do.
- [26:57]
George
And would you say that that age of accountability is different for every individual?
- [27:02]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Surely it is. When you think of the differences among children at the rate at which they mature, surely you can't say, okay, it's when they reach age 6 or age 7, it will be different with different children according to the rate at which they Mature.
- [27:20]
George
And so this question leads me to wonder about the presentation of the gospel with kids. So that's why it's like, if they aren't a sinner, accountability. Yet what do you think about that in terms of, like, if you were to say, okay, this person has become a sinner now, for example, if this is their age of accountability and now the appropriateness of the presentation of the gospel to an individual.
- [27:50]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Yeah, that's a great question. And I would say Christ died for their sins. He died on the cross to cover the sins of all mankind, including those who would come after him, including these little children, should they grow up and begin to commit sins for which they're culpable. So he is their savior, at least potentially, if they will place their trust in him. And so I think if the child has arrived at a point that he can genuinely understand right and wrong and that he's done wrong and that he needs to be forgiven for that wrong, it's entirely appropriate to share with him the gospel that God will forgive him based upon Jesus death on the cross.
- [28:41]
George
No, thanks for explaining that, because I was also curious too, because I wonder about this. About people with disabilities, for example.
- [28:50]
Dr. William Lane Craig
Yes, exactly.
- [28:51]
George
I was thinking of that culpability stuff. So that's what I was curious about.
- [28:55]
Dr. William Lane Craig
I was thinking of the same thing as you described, the different rates at which people mature. Some never mature. Some are severely retarded mentally and never will reach more than a kind of childlike or infantile status. And I think that God loves and has compassion upon those who are severely mentally impaired in that way. Well, I think this is a good point at which to close our class. Next time we will turn to the question of the nature of man. And we'll look fairly closely at anthropological terms that are used first in the Old Testament and then in the New Testament to describe the nature of man. Terms such as body, soul and spirit. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for the chance to have been together this morning. We rejoice in the opportunity to sharpen one another through conversation and dialogue. And now we pray that you would go with us and guide us and strengthen us. Help us to live lives that are pleasing to you in every way. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
- [30:16]
The copyright for the preceding material is held by Dr. William Lane Craig. For more go to reasonablefaith. Org.