Video Transcript: The Question of Divinity

Henry Reyenga - Hi, I'm Henry Reyenga and with me is Dr. Roy Clouser. And I  don't know if you noticed, but throughout the history of philosophy, the many  times the discussion of God comes up is very interesting. So even with Plato,  you see, you know, whatever he we mean by God, the form, you know, all of  those things is brought up, but you go through the history of middle and  Christian history, Middle Ages, you know, the modern times, this question of God is still the question of God is coming up at major universities. So, what's, what's  the skinny on that? Why is God brought up in philosophy? Again, and again, and again?  

Dr. Clouser - Well, because it's a fascinating idea, at least, even for people who  say they don't believe in God, and I take them at their word. Okay. It's still looms  as a possibility, which they have to deal with in some way. Why is it a little it's a  possibility? Because I don't think there's anybody now who would say they have  a proof that God doesn't exist. Okay. They haven't gotten an argument that  would conclusively show that right, what the people who are atheists are trying  to do is either ridicule, the belief as blind faith, leap into the dark, right, which it's  not, right. Or they're trying to say, well, it's highly improbable, that there's such a  being, right. In my view, that's all irrelevant. It's got nothing to do with it. People  who believe in God, believe in God, because they experience God. It's an  experience report, not a theory, it's not a hypothesis, then we try to justify it with  reasons. That's the route of trying to prove the hypothesis is true. It's not a  hypothesis. 

Henry Reyenga - So what you're saying is, listen to this leaders. The hypothesis  theory of God in the end of the day, is not something that we should go after  proving if the truth of the experience 

Dr. Clouser - it's not a hypothesis at all. We experience God and there's a lot of  different ways to experience God. Some people have very strange experiences,  they feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, overwhelm them. They feel a oneness  

with God, they, they experience visions, and so on, right. And I'm not denying  that any of that. But most people don't experience that what most people do  experience is when they when they read or hear the Gospel, it becomes self  evident to them, that that's the truth about God from God. Right? That's  experiencing God too. Because when you experience the gospel message, as  from God, that's one sense in which you hear God speak with your ears. But  

Henry Reyenga - so whether someone's experiences the feeling of the Holy  Spirit or the Holy Spirit's presence, others experience some evidence of God  just by his word. Well, I 

Dr. Clouser - think every Christian does that. Okay, that's the one of the word the one experience that's common to them all interesting, okay, is seeing the word  to be the truth and truth about God from God, then, then that's, that's one sense  of experiencing God we have, we have other senses as well. I'm not dismissing  any of them. Right. That's the common one. And that's the one that's important,  because it interprets, gives us the key to interpreting any other experience, we  bring it into conformity with what's taught in the Word. So I believe in the  primacy of the Word of God.  

Henry Reyenga - So to sum that first point up, the word of God, and the self  evident experience of the Word of God is true. And that God Himself keeps his  promises. And the truth of this addresses salvation of sin, salvation, redemption  or meta narrative. That in a sense guides our life. That's really the the seeing in  the sense.  

Dr. Clouser - That's right. And then other other experiences as we go through life will be what we would expect. If this were the truth about God, and they tend to  confirm. And then it's also possible to have experiences that don't tend to  confirm it when we when we suffer when tragedy occurs to people that we love  and so on. We're tempted to think well, maybe this shows I was wrong but if we  stick with it, we find Well, God never promised that it would be a bed of roses. If  you're a believer. There's no promise like that. This He hasn't gone back on  anything. And we will find comfort again in his word and through His Spirit. So is  really confirming experiences.  

Henry Reyenga - So let's go over to that. Things that sort of put the arrow as to  there is no God. Many people say, well, the existence of evil shows us that, how  could a good God, create a world where bad things happen to good people? I  mean, we've heard this. That is a problem of God for many people. How do you  say to that?  

Dr. Clouser - I think that's the best argument against believing God. Okay? So  it's important to see why it doesn't work. Okay, so tell us about that Okay. classic way to put this argument is the way that ancient pagan writer named Porphyry,  put it in a book called against the Christians. And he says, Look, if God is the  being with all and only perfections, so God is all good, all powerful, then, okay,  that's number one. Number two premise. If God is all powerful, then God is not  all good. Because if he has the power to stop undeserved suffering, and doesn't, then he is because he doesn't want to stop it. He's not all good. If God's all  good, then he's not all powerful, because he has the power to stop it and  doesn't. And if he wants to stop it and doesn't, if he's all good, he mustn't have 

the power to do it. Right? So God is either not all powerful or not all good. And  therefore there's no God. That dates from about 250 to 250 AD,  

Henry Reyenga - AD. Okay, so now we're all sitting here. So now you got us  Professor Clouser. Okay. What do you do about that one?  

Dr. Clouser - God is good. And God is powerful in exactly the way scripture  teach. Not, it's not for us to make it up that God must be maximally good and  maximally powerful. Where maximal means as good as possible to as many  people as possible God never promised that. Okay, What He promised was to  be good to human beings, in the sense that he offers them love, forgiveness and everlasting life. He did not promise nothing bad would ever happen. Okay, that's  so that'll but a lot of people settle. But it's not that. Because it means that the  standards by which we judge one another, we cannot apply to God. God is  bound to His promises. The biblical term for that is covenant. He's made a  covenant with human beings, the covenant of salv of redemption, is that he  demands of us our love and faith and obedience. And he offers his love,  forgiveness, and everlasting life. And God is faithful to His promises and to  everything that he promised. But we're not, we're not. Right? We're not  warranted in taking some other idea of goodness, like to be as good as possible  to everybody possible. If that were true. If any child once fell and skinned their  knee, then there'd be no God. Nobody ever, ever thought that, not believer ever  thought that so people that wrote the Bible didn't think that.  

Henry Reyenga - I can see how, when you feel the evils been done to you, I can see how people feel that why did God let that happen?  

Dr. Clouser - Of course, of course, that we all have experienced that. And the  answer to that is that there is no answer. If I ask, why did God allow this terrible  tragedy to occur here? And I'm grief stricken because of it, he could have  prevented it? Yes. And sometimes he does. The right. There are times when  God prevents things amazingly, but not always. How does he choose? I don't  know that, nobody does. That's hidden in the depths of the mystery of the  meaning of God, why things are made the way they are? We can ask that  question on a global scale. We could say, If God can make heaven at the end,  when Christ returns, why didn't he just start off with that skip all this. I don't know but no other no other ism knows either. No other religion, no other religion or  Ism, I mean, other religions try to explain this. If you take materialism. It's  everything is generated by pure matters. All right, why is it all this way. Nobody  knows. From any point of view, whatever. 

Henry Reyenga - What would you say it's true, then that some of the other  philosophies like materialism, there it's a mystery whether would even be any  good? Oh, sure. I mean, in some ways with the God, as revealed in the Bible  God has revealed in the Bible, he didn't have to create any good whatsoever if  he didn't want to right but he does. And he does.  

Dr. Clouser - And that's what why Paul calls the goodness of God a mystery that we can not plumb the depths of its unsearchable riches, we can't really  understand or know, there, there is no answer to the question, why did this awful thing have to befall me now? Neither is there an answer to the question? Why  does God the Creator of the Universe offer us a covenant of love, forgiveness  and everlasting life in His Kingdom, in which there is no grief that Earth can put  upon us that heaven cannot cure? There's no answer to that either. Why should  he do that? Right? Well, I don't know, again, that's hidden in the mystery of the  being of God, that we can't know. Or it's good news.  

Henry Reyenga - Well, in some ways, the sovereignty of God thing for some has told us follow like, so God is not bound by the very creation that he put together  in some ways. No, when he was bound by his own promises. Oh, yeah. Right.  But I mean, we'd like to bind him in and make him all yes way and we'd like to  take the traits of the very best in philosophy. And then put that back, I'll give you  an example. Okay, so we've got this. King David. He sins with Bathsheba, we  read about that in Samuel, and then he has the wife he commits adultery with  killed on the front lines. Her husband, her husband, Uriah, the Hittite. Okay, and  then the big reveal comes where, you know, Nathan, the Prophet says, You are  the man and ready, then he comes to the realization. Then, you know,  Bathsheba's pregnant. And then at this point, he the baby doesn't live. David's  hoping the baby he repents, he's hoping the baby will live, because he knows  God is kind. He's thinking this is gonna happen. The baby dies anyway. And  what about the skeptic? Who says, So God would kill a baby? To show David  something? I mean, that doesn't seem right. So what kind of God would do that? 

Dr. Clouser - Well, God appoints the day of death, of death of every person. And that doesn't make doesn't make God a murderer, who's in charge of the  universe, God. So God's in charge of our coming to sure, are sure, as far as the  child is concerned, the child has everlasting life, too, because it's covered by the covenant. And although it never grew up and had a normal life, it will be raised  the last day and join all the rest of the saints in heaven. So it's not all bad, right? 

 Henry Reyenga - I see that. But you can see how, though, humans, anthro

Dr. Clouser - if you anthropomorphize God, but you treat God just like another  human, then you can come out with all kinds of negative judgments you're not  entitled to. He's not just another human. And God isn't bound by the laws of  morality and justice, the way we are, he's built those into creations are real laws. For us, for us, we're really responsible if we violate them. And God enters that  picture only insofar as he's made promises, and he swears by himself to keep  them. And so we can hold him responsible for what to fulfill his promises. But  then, that's what the author of Hebrews goes through that long list of all the  people who trusted God, and didn't see it fulfilled yet, but it was, and they were  justified in trusting, because God does fulfill his promises. That's the message.  

Henry Reyenga - So let's just talk about the word completion. The word  complete. Now, philosophically, when, you know, God says, you know, I look at  God gives us what's good to him. This one is complete. Not what the Greeks  would define as the attributes of perfection.  

Dr. Clouser - That's right. The Greeks use the term perfect to mean maximal  degree, the maximal instance of some quality that makes the thing better to  have it than not. okay. So, the maximal degree of goodness, the maximal degree of wisdom, the maximal degree of knowledge, power, justice. So mercy, right,  right are all perfections. The Jewish way of using the word perfect means  complete or completely. So when Jesus says to His disciples, you be perfect as  your Father in heaven. Oh, yeah, that seems like Greek. It but it's not. He's not  saying to them, you should have the maximal degree of all the good qualities.  That would. That's not what he's saying. He's saying you should be as faithful to  your end of the covenant as God is to his ends of the covenant. He's not  implying that God is to be thought of as a being, with all only these platonic  perfections. That's a pernicious theory that's been brought into Christianity, and  done a lot of harm.  

Henry Reyenga - So, when you study God in philosophy, various philosophers  throughout the centuries have come up with arguments for the existence of God. Okay, like the cosmological argument. The cosmological argument goes like  what?  

Dr. Clouser - Well, that argues from characteristics of the world around us to  God. 

Henry Reyenga - Okay, so if the characteristics are orderly, then there must be  an orderly creator who made  

Dr. Clouser – something like that. many versions of it, 

Henry Reyenga - I get what's the ontological argument? 

Dr. Clouser - The ontological argument is, was the one cooked up by Saint  Anselm. And it says that, if God is defined as the most perfect being, then you  can't deny that God exists, because the most perfect being would have perfect  existence along with everything else. So if you say, the most perfect being  doesn't exist, you contradict yourself, you say, the most perfect being that exists  doesn't exist, and therefore it must exist. And a lot of people think that's nothing  but a verbal trick. Yeah. And a lot of other people thought no, there's something  really serious because it's actually in our mind. Yeah, it's, it's without appeal to  the nature of reality at all. Just thinking about it, you can know that it must be  true.  

Henry Reyenga - Okay, well, so what about this Pascal's Wager deal? I mean,  that's another.  

Dr. Clouser - That's not an argument for the existence of God. It's an argument  that tried to show that belief in God was not irrational.  

Henry Reyenga - Okay. So how does the wager go?  

Dr. Clouser - It goes like this. If you have, if you believe in God, and you're  wrong, you haven't lost anything. Right? But if you believe in God, right, you've  gained infinity. You have infinite gain, You have eternal life, right? Okay. If you  don't believe in God, then there's nothing to gain. You don't gain anything, right?  And if you're wrong, you have an infinity of loss. So the choice is between  everything to gain and nothing to lose. And everything's losing nothing to gain.  So which is the rational choice? So Pascal was saying, not that that shows that  belief in God is is a true belief, right. But that it's a rational belief that right his  friends will be attacked by a critic saying that's not even rational. We don't even  have to bother with them. Right? So sure it is it's rational. A lot of people mistake it to be a proof, a basis for belief in God, he never said that. He didn't think that  was true. Pascal was the side that I just named before. Yeah, of saying that. You see the truth, intuitively it is self evident. He says, We know truth not only by  reasoning, but also with the heart, right? And reason must trust these intuitions  of the heart and base all its reasoning upon them, such as the first principles of  number, time, space, and motion. Therefore those to whom God has given  religion, by intuition, are blessed, and justly convinced. So he he's not saying the wager argument is (unintelligible). He's a feeling  

Henry Reyenga - he's saying that look, you experienced God. But it's rational.

Dr. Clouser - it's, yes.  

Henry Reyenga - It's like, I'm not trying to argue that this proves I prove it's  rational,  

Dr. Clouser - in that, in that respect, he had the same position actually is Kelvin.  But Kelvin doesn't phrase it by referring to self evident axioms, but but likens it  to normal perception. Right? If we were asked, How do we know scripture  comes from God? It's just the same as if we were asked, How do we tell black  from white, light from dark, sweet from bitter, right, Scripture bears on the face of it such evidence of its truth, as to white and black of their color, sweet and bitter  of their tastes. That's Kelvin, 

Henry Reyenga - so would Dooyeweerd agree with all that? Oh, yes. So  Dooyeweerd's, does Dooyeweerd have an argument for the existence of God?  Because he said that we won't do that. 

Dr. Clouser - if, if we apply the laws of logic to God so as to prove his existence.  That means that God's very being is subject to those laws, that God's not the  creator of if God the creator of the laws of logic, they don't apply to He's being,  because he existed without them, he brought them into existence. So  Dooyeweerd said to me whatever can be proven, would thereby not be God.  Whatever you can prove using those laws is not the creator of those laws.  

Henry Reyenga - So, Christian philosophy then would not have a high regard for logical arguments for the existence of God.  

Dr. Clouser - That sounds paradoxical. But it's true. Because so many Christians have tried to prove the existence of God. It sounds like it's a laudable project. It's after all, it's complementary to God, right? You're affirming God's existence. But  in a way, it's demoting God for being the creator of all the laws, including laws of 

logic, to being one more creature subject to the laws and therefore to prove or  disprove. And that's, that's a serious mistake.  

Henry Reyenga - Well, there you go, everyone, you're now gonna dive into  some of the historic philosophic questions of God, the problem of evil  understanding of the arguments for the existence of God, which gives you a  framework to now say, Ooh, you know, I see what Christian philosophy is like,  it's really, so Christian philosophy has really comes down to faith that comes out  of the self evident. Yes, God is my Lord and my, my Savior and my God. 

Dr. Clouser - You don't have to import God into theories to make things work, but knowing that God is the creator of it all and that no one part of it reduces to  another that gives you a method system an approach to go at things.  

Henry Reyenga - Very good. Till next time