← Defenders Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript15 lines
- [00:01]
A
Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig. Today the Doctrine of God, Part 18. For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org We've been talking about the personal attributes of God. We looked at God's intellectual attributes, his volitional attributes, and today we want to turn to God's moral attributes. And the first of these that we want to address is holiness, the holiness of God. And we want to first begin by looking at some of the scriptural data concerning God's holiness. Number one, then God is the very standard of goodness. God is the standard of goodness. This, it seems to me, is the implication of Romans, chapter 9, verses 14 to 21. Romans, chapter 9, verses 14to21. There he talks about the call of God upon the lives of Jacob and the rejection of Esau. And in verse 14 he says, what shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So it depends not upon man's will or exertion, but but upon God's mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. So then he has mercy upon whomever he wills. And he hardens the heart of whomever he wills. You will say to me, then why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will? But who are you a man to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder? Why have you made me thus? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for beauty and another for menial use? Here Paul says that God's election is based upon God's own sovereign decision. He has mercy upon whom he wills. He hardens whom he wills. And there is no higher court of appeal beyond God. One cannot bring God before the bar of some higher justice to say that this is unjust on God's part. Why? Because God is Himself the highest court of appeal. God is Himself the very standard of goodness and justice and righteousness. And therefore he cannot be brought before any higher court of appeal or any higher bar of justice. God is not answerable to to anyone because he is Himself the standard of goodness and justice. Secondly, the Scriptures indicate that God is absolutely holy. Look at Exodus, chapter 3, verses 4 and 5, Exodus 3, 4, 5. This is the appearance to Moses on the part of God in the Burning bush. And Moses said, I will turn aside and see this great sight why the bush is not burnt. When the Lord saw that he had turned aside, God called to him out of the bush. Moses. Moses. And he said, here am I. Then he said, do not come near, put off your shoes, for from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. The presence of God made that hallowed ground so that Moses is told to take the shoes off of his feet because of the holiness of that place. Leviticus 19:2. Leviticus 19:and verse 2. Say to the people of Israel, I am the Lord your God. You shall. Oh, I'm sorry, that's 18, verse 2 of 19. Say to all the congregation of the people of Israel, you shall be holy. For I, the Lord your God, am holy here. God's command to the people is that his holiness should be reflected in their lives. They should be holy because God himself is holy. And finally, in the very last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation 4, 8, we read. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night. They never cease to sing. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. So God is absolutely holy. And that then is the basis for the holiness that should characterize our lives. Thirdly, God's holiness serves to expose man's sinfulness. God's holiness serves to expose man's sinfulness. Isaiah, chapter 6, verses 1 to 5. Isaiah, chapter 6, verses one to five. This is the vision of God that Isaiah had in the temple in the year that King Uzziah died. I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings. With two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called. And the house was filled with smoke. And I said, woe is me, for I am lost. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts here. The vision of God's awesome holiness creates in Isaiah a deep sense of his own uncleanness and unrighteousness by comparison with God's holiness. So that the awful purity of God serves to expose our own wickedness and inadequacy. And finally, fourth, God's holiness separates man from God. God's holiness separates man from God. Look at the prophet Habakkuk chapter 1 and verse 13a. Habakkuk 1:13a. The Prophet says of the Lord, thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil and canst not look on wrong. God's eyes are too pure to behold evil. He cannot look upon wrong doing because of his holiness. And as a result, we, being wrongdoers and being unholy, are spiritually separated from him. As a result, we cannot abide in his presence. Isaiah chapter 59:1 and 2 express this very well. Isaiah 59:1 2. Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, or his ear dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God. And your sins have hid his face from you so that he does not hear. Here Isaiah says, the problem isn't on God's part. He is omnipotent. He is omniscient. He can hear your prayers. The failing isn't with God. It's that your sin and wickedness have created this separation between you and God so that he does not hear your prayers. So the holiness of God serves to separate sinful man from God's fellowship and presence. God's holiness disperses evil just as light disperses darkness. And they cannot abide together. Any question or discussion then about the scriptural data concerning God's holiness? Yes, James, I can't remember if we covered this last time or not. We studied this. But the question is, you know, is God above the law or is he subject himself to the law? Because if you look at like what Christ said, you know, I didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Yes. You also have other instances in Scripture that where God it seems as he seems as if he is submitting Himself to His own law. Let's hold that off until we get to the next section and then we'll discuss that. Certainly, Jesus as a man was obedient to God's law because he had a human nature and perfectly fulfilled the demands of the law. But the question would be, as a divine person, does God submit to his own law? And I will say something about that more in a moment.
- [11:05]
B
Yes, Eduardo, a question. So as God's holiness separates darkness from his light, what I understand is that then Jesus Christ brings us to him, but He Himself said, no one comes to me except the Father drops him or them to Me. So am I understanding that right, that
- [11:29]
A
Jesus Christ is the mediator between God and man?
- [11:32]
B
Yeah, absolutely. But as you commented, his holiness separates us from him because we are sinners. But then Christ himself, being part of the Trinity, he brings us to helps us as a.
- [11:47]
A
Yes. The scripture says that we have redemption through the man Christ Jesus, that by taking on human flesh and dying in our place, he makes atonement for our sins so that that breach between us and God can be healed and we can be forgiven of our sins and thus have fellowship with a holy God. Indeed, as we'll see in a moment, we in Christ are constituted righteous and declared to be righteous, just like God. So we'll say something more about that in a moment.
- [12:23]
B
Thank you very much.
- [12:25]
A
Yes, Glenn, you said that God is the standard of holiness. Yes. And so. Well, the standard of goodness. Standard of goodness. So you've got these atheists that are always bad mouthing God and they're very abusive toward God and his character, like Sam Harris just goes on a rant, you know, and tells us how terrible God is. So this would be somewhat of an answer, right, to that. Yes, I do think that's correct. I think Paul, based on what he says in Romans 9, is that no one can indict God for wrongdoing. No one can cast aspersions on God's character because God is himself, the standard of right and wrong. There is no higher court, no higher bar of justice to which appeal can be made before which God could be brought. So I think Paul would say to Sam Harris, who are you a man to answer back to God. God is himself the highest court of appeal. Now that raises some really interesting questions, as we'll see in a moment. But at least I think that that is the implication of that passage in Romans 9. All right, well, let's take a look then at a systematic analysis of this attribute. And. And here, as has already been suggested, we confront what is called the Euthyphro Dilemma. The Euthyphro Dilemma is named after a character in one of Plato's dialogues named Euthyphro. And the dilemma basically goes like this. Does God will something because it is good, or is something good because God wills it? If you say that something is good just because God wills it, then that makes good and evil arbitrary. God just makes up what is right and wrong. And he could have declared that hatred is good and love is evil. And then we would be morally obligated to hate one another and to try to do one another harm. And that seems crazy. That Good and evil, right and wrong are just arbitrary like that. So it can't be the case that the good is just, whatever God wills. But then if you say no, God wills what is good, then the good is independent of God. God lives up to the standard of goodness. What is good and evil is independent of God. And God always wills the right thing. He always wills the good thing. And in that case, God isn't the standard of justice and goodness. There's something beyond him to which God must conform. He has to, in order to be good, declare or command things in line with what is good independently of him. And so the Euthyphro dilemma has the implication that God cannot be the source of moral goodness. Either the good is independent of God and God just does what is good, or else good and evil are purely arbitrary and made up by God. Christian philosophers, however, have exposed the euthyphro dilemma as a false dilemma. The two alternatives, despite first appearances, perhaps are not exhaustive. It's not as though you have to choose between A or not A. This is like choosing between A and B. And there can be a third alternative, C. And in fact, in this case, I think that neither of the two alternatives is correct, but they're not exhaustive. The correct alternative is to say God wills something because he is good. God wills something because he is good. That is to say, God is the standard of goodness. God is what Plato called the good. He is by his very nature, fair, loving, kind, compassionate, truth telling, loyal and so forth. He has all of these virtues as part of his essence. And therefore these goods are anchored in the being of God. And they are goods because they are God's properties, God's virtues. God is the good and he determines the standard of goodness. So the good is not something that is independent of God, to which God conforms. Nor is the good based in God's will in his arbitrary decision. But rather God himself is the good, and he is that way by his very nature. So when God gives moral commands to us, these are expressions of his perfectly good nature. And these then become our moral duties. So that right and wrong, moral obligation and prohibition are based in the commands of a just and loving God. So good and evil is determined by God's nature and then right and wrong. Our moral duties are anchored in God's will, which is an expression of that nature and therefore not simply arbitrarily chosen. Now what that would suggest then in response to James question is, is that God is not beneath the law. That would be the view that God somehow conforms to an independent moral law that exists apart from him. Rather, here I think the philosopher Immanuel Kant made a very helpful distinction between acting from duty or acting according to duty. Acting from duty or acting according to duty. God issues moral commands to us that constitute our moral duties or obligations. So we act from duty. Duty or obligation is imposed upon us. And when we do these things, we do our duty, we act from duty. But when God does them, it is not as though he is acting from duty, because presumably he doesn't issue commands to himself. Right? So he doesn't have any moral duties in a literal sense, but because of his perfectly good nature, he acts in accordance with what would be moral duty. We act from duty. But God, out of his very nature, simply acts in accord with moral duty. But he doesn't literally have moral duties because he doesn't issue commands to himself. And commands are the source of our moral obligations. Obligations arise as a result of moral imperatives. Thou shalt do this, thou shalt not do that. And these moral imperatives come from a qualified authority, namely God, who is goodness itself. So this view of the relationship between God and the good is sometimes called divine command morality. That is to say, our moral duties are based in the commandments of God. To us, they constitute our duties, but those commands are not arbitrary. That would be a sort of voluntaristic divine command theory which some Christian thinkers have held. But the majority would say no. These commandments that he gives are expressions of his own essence. So that it is impossible that God could have commanded, say, that hatred be good and love be evil, because that would be to contradict his very essence. He is by nature loving. And so to issue such a command would contradict his nature, which is logically impossible, as we've seen any discussion about that relationship between God's goodness and his commandments. Okay, Kurt has a question over here.
- [21:05]
C
How then do you respond to those who do charge God with the very thing that you said he can't do, which is give an immoral command? When in the message today, Paul was talking about Joshua, where they were commanded to commit genocide basically against the people? Well, they were commanded to wipe out everything within the city walls of Jericho. And the objection that I hear about this divine moral command is you have the Old Testament replete with such commands, where they were to slaughter every living thing, child, woman, pet, whatever. So what is the response then to that?
- [21:47]
A
If you look on our website, reasonablefaith.org I have a couple of questions of the week where I wrestle with this issue and What I try to do there is to defend an ethical theory that would allow God to be perfectly good and all powerful and yet to issue these sorts of horrifying commands, such as to go in and kill everyone in the city, men, women and children. And. And I think that the theory that I've laid out here allows us to understand that because if God is the source of our moral duties, that means that God could command a person to do something which in the absence of a divine command would have been sin. But given the divine command, it now becomes the right thing for that person to do. So if the armies of Israel, for example, had just decided on their own to go in there and slaughter the people, people that would have been wrong. It would have been, say, murder or war crimes. But given a divine command, they now have a moral duty to do that, and therefore they have the obligation to carry out that command, horrifying as it might be. So God doesn't have the ability to command a person to sin, but he has the ability to command a person to do an action which in the absence of a divine command, would have been sin. Now the question then is, is it incompatible with God's nature as an all loving, compassionate being to issue such a command? And I would say in this case, no. Because these Canaanite tribes that God commanded the armies of Israel to drive out of the land and those who tried to remain behind and fight were to be exterminated, were incredibly wicked. For 400 years, the Bible says, God had stayed his hand of judgment upon these Canaanite tribes because he says to Abraham, the iniquity of the Canaanites is not yet complete. So he allowed his people Israel to languish for four centuries in Egypt until the iniquity of these Canaanite tribes became so ripe for judgment that God then used the armies of Israel as his means of visiting judgment upon these peoples for their wickedness. So he did nothing unjust. He in commanding the extermination of the adults, at least in these Canaanite tribes, because they were incredibly wicked and deserving of judgment in the same way that centuries later God would use the pagan armies of Babylon to invade Israel and bring judgment upon his own people for their wickedness and evil. Now the really difficult problem then, it seems to me, is the children. How is it consistent with God's nature that he would command that these Canaanite children be killed? Well, here what I would say is that God doesn't wrong these children in taking their lives early. God has the right to give and take life as he sees fit. No one can say to God, you should have let me live longer. I have a claim on a long life. Many people do die in infancy. And it is God's prerogative when to terminate a person's life. So he has the right to take the lives of these Canaanite children whenever he wants to. Moreover, if you believe as I do, and I think as Jesus did did in the salvation of children, small children, then by bringing the deaths of these children early, God ensured their eternal salvation. In other words, he conferred upon them an incommensurable good, eternal life, knowledge of Himself. Whereas if these children had been allowed to live, especially in Canaanite culture, they would have been infected with the same poison as the adults and most of them would have been lost. So their deaths would actually mean their salvation. And those children, once in heaven, would be grateful that God had issued such a command to the Israeli armies to wipe them out. So it seems to me that there isn't anybody that God has wronged in this case. The adults deserve the punishment. The children are delivered from evil and given salvation for an eternal life. So that they simply no one is wronged in bringing about the command. So it's not inconsistent with God's compassionate and loving nature to issue such a command. One more thing I would like to say. Why would God do this? I think that by issuing so horrifying a command, God gave an object lesson to the people of Israel about the necessity of separating themselves from pagan gods and peoples in a way that they could not have learned otherwise. The whole system of the Old Testament law is based upon separating things, not eating certain foods. Some things are clean, others are unclean. Don't mix linen and wool. Other things are not supposed to be mixed over and over again. These ritual laws in the Old Testament emphasize not mixing things, but separating them. These were meant to be object lessons to the people of Israel to that they were set apart for God as a peculiar people, holy and dedicated to Himself. And as such they were not to mingle or compromise with the pagan peoples of Israel's neighbors. And I think that this horrifying command to go in and drive out these Canaanite tribes and to exterminate any that tried to to stay behind was an object lesson that God gave them about the importance of being this separated people, holy and dedicated and set apart to the Lord. And we know that even this lesson in the end wasn't infallible. That in fact they fell with tiresome repetitiveness into the error of absorbing the worship of the gods of their pagan neighbors and intermarrying with Canaanites and other people. So even this lesson didn't infallibly produce its result. But it does seem to me that that would give God a good reason to issue such a command. So that would be my defense of these commands. It seems to me that there is nothing here that is incompatible with God's being all powerful and all loving. And moreover, that it fits in with the divine command theory of ethics, where whatever God commands you to do becomes your moral duty to do. Do you want to follow up on that? I know that was a mouthful, but the question was a big one and important.
- [29:54]
C
How does that, though, absolve God from the actual, the acts of the Israelis? When I could say, and you could say, and people have said throughout the centuries, I'm commanded by God to enslave these people or to kill these people,
- [30:11]
A
I would say that it doesn't absolve God from what the Israeli armies did. On the contrary, they were his instrument. They were God's doing these things by the instrumentality of these armies. They were his means of judgment. Just as in the Count of Monte Cristo when Edmond Dantes seeks vengeance upon the three men who sent him into prison unjustly, he doesn't think of doing this out of personal animus or vengeance, but he sees himself as the tool of God, the instrument of God to bring about God's justice on these three men for their wickedness. In the same way, the armies of Israel are God's instrument by which he brings judgment on these people in the same way that the pagan armies of Babylon centuries later were the instrument by which God judged His own people. Now, the question you ask is one that people always ask. Well, what about someone, a jihadist, right? Muslim terrorists who say God has given us this command to kill innocent men, women and children in the name of Allah. What about that? Doesn't this justify that? Not at all. Why? Not because the Muslim has the wrong moral theory, but because he's got the wrong God, right? God hasn't issued those commands. He's worshiping a false God, a God whose character is. Is vastly different from the God described in the New Testament. So I actually think that the Muslim moral theory is correct, so long as it's a divine command theory that's rooted in God's nature and not in his will. Islam tends to be very voluntarist. I think in Islam, Allah could act even contrary to his own nature. His omnipotence trumps everything but insofar as the theory I've described is a divine command theory, that's not where I find fault with the jihadist. It's that he's got the wrong God. And of course, this underlines all the more emphatically the importance that we're sure that we're worshiping and serving the right God. Because if you're not, you could be led into all manner of wickedness and terrible evil.
- [32:34]
D
George, one problem with the analysis is that we're told in several places in Scripture, God is not a respecter of persons, or God is not partial toward one person over another. So if you have two six month old children, one Israeli, one Canaanite, why would God treat them differently? And then my second point is, what do you think, Bill, about the argument some people have made that the descriptions of the genocide of the Canaanites in the Old Testament.
- [33:05]
A
Let me just interrupt because both you and Kurt have used the word genocide. And that is a pejorative label that opponents of the biblical view put on this. This is not genocide. It is not like what Adolf Hitler tried to do in the Second World War. Exterminating of people. The command to the Israeli armies was to drive the Canaanite tribes out of the land. What he was doing was destroying these kingdoms as nation states by divesting them of the land and giving it to Israel. It was now their land. And this is what's so important to these Middle Eastern people. It's the land. Even today when you go to Israel, Jews talk about going to the land. That's what they refer to Israel as. So what was important here was that these tribes were now being divested of the land. They were being destroyed as nation states by being driven out. And it was only those that remained behind to fight that were to be killed and exterminated. There was no command to pursue these people and chase after them and wipe them all out. On the contrary, those who fled, fled, weren't hunted down. They appear later on in the scripture. So this isn't genocide. This is a command to drive the people out of the land and then only to kill those who remained behind in the land. Now that's terrible enough and horrible enough in itself, but it's not genocide. That's a real mischaracterization of this.
- [34:48]
D
So the two questions I had were, first of all, the description is that God is not a respecter of persons. He is impartial.
- [34:54]
A
Yeah, let me say something to that, George, first, because the time is waning and maybe you can save the Second question for next week. That's a verse from James where he's talking about differentiating between rich and poor. And we shouldn't treat people with partiality because of their importance or their richness and stuff. But I mean, Romans 9 says, God will have mercy on whom he has mercy. He will have compassion on whom he has compassion. So God is not under obligation to prolong anybody's life just because he's Israeli or to take anybody else's, because he's not. And I think we have to say that it's up to a sovereign God, how many years he gives us on this planet until he terminates our life. But I want to add this. God's will is that for every human person he creates to be saved. And so he wants to create a world in which sufficient grace for salvation is offered to every created person. And the only reason that anyone would have failed to attain heaven and eternal life is because they freely reject God's grace and his every effort to save them. So God is not partial in that sense. He bestows his grace, sufficient grace for salvation upon every person that he creates and wants every person to be saved. Now, I'm sure you've got a follow up, but we're out of time, so save it for next Sunday and we'll continue this discussion. Let's bow our heads for a benediction. May you keep the commandments unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this will be made manifest at the proper time by the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or ever can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. The copyright for the content of this recording is held by Dr. William Lane Craig. For more go to reasonablefaith.org.