Doctrine of Creation:

Views that deny creation involve a dualistic or a monistic view of reality. In Dualistic thinking, God is confronted with some substance outside himself that is eternal and uncreated that is equally ultimate so that you have at least two metaphysical ultimate realities. For example, in primitive mythology, the creation myths of Israel’s neighbors, these myths typically oppose the creative principle over against some sort of created chaos (unformed matter, primordial sort of stuff) which god shapes and which other gods are born out of. In Genesis, everything else that exists is born out of god.

In Platonism, you have god as an architect that looks to the uncreated forms and shape matter into the different things based on the pattern of the forms, but this demi-urge is not the creator of the forms of this material stuff.

In Gnosticism, the material realm is thought to be evil, but the immaterial realm is good; these were opposed in an ethical struggle (Manichaeism).

--Dualism denies the sovereignty of God, no creation ex nihilo, tends to depreciate the material world, salvation is often of the soul but not the body, typically denies the physicality of the incarnation, can result in either extreme of asceticism or antinomianism.

MONISTIC: All of reality is one, early materialism is an example. In pre-Socratic philosophers Greek thinkers held to a materialistic view of reality. This materialism comes to expression in modern times in Marxism

PANTHEISM (type of pantheism): Regard the world as divine (Plontinus, ancient Greek philosopher-held that God is the undifferentiated one, but that this one begins to emanate out of himself different sorts of reality and these emanations are declining until our world emanates; Spinoza also held to this view ; Hinduism)

--It is really atheistic, there really isn’t any person called god, you worship the universe, no creation of the world, matter is either absolutized, or else matter is turned into illusion; man is denigrated because human beings are matter in motion, the only religious practice left is not worship, there is just mysticism where you feel one with nature or reality as a whole.

CREATIO EX NIHILO: Gen. 1:1 The author of Genesis differentiates his narrative from the creation narratives of all his neighbors by this terse statement; heavens and earth (all of physical reality), there wasn’t any single word for the universe; the word bara is only applied to God, and it doesn’t presuppose any material substratum (this is how later authors in the Bible took Gen. 1:1). However, many modern readers will take v. 1 not as an independent clause but as a subordinate clause: In the beginning when God created the heavens and earth which doesn’t sound like creation ex nihilo, it makes it sound like god is confronted with a primordial chaos; fortunately this issue has been discussed and the interpretation of Gen. 1:1 as a subordinate

clause is quite untenable and the traditional view has become widespread again for the following reasons:

1) There is no reason to think that bereshith (beginning) cannot be used at the beginning of a sentence to indicate an absolute beginning in time (see Is. 46:10-bereshith is used to indicate absolute beginning). This is also supported by the earliest OT translations which translated this an absolute beginning. The Masoretic text (the earliest Hebrew text with the vowel points). The Masoretes were early scribed who added vowel points to the text and these would tiny dots and dashes around the consonants when you would speak the text orally, and the way they vowel pointed Gen. 1:1 was to indicate an absolute beginning.

2) The grammatical syntax of v.1 does not suggest that we should take it as a subordinate clause. Those who do say this could appeal to Hos, 1:2 in support of their position. However, Claus says that it is illegitimate to appeal to Hos. to interpret Gen. and when you look at the author of Gen. he doesn’t use a subordinate clause, he instead uses an infinitive clause to express a circumstantial idea.

3) You cannot determine based upon theological arguments whether or not the author is trying to express creation ex nihilo or not because we do not know the author’s theology. We must do an exegesis of Gen. 1to determine what the author means.

4) When you do carry out an exegesis of Gen. 1 what you discover is that 1:1 has no parallel in ancient creation stories and the usual form of ancient creation myths had the following form: When blank was not yet or did not yet exist (circumstantial clause) then God did blank (what God did to bring order out of that state). We do find this construction in Gen. 2:5-7. What the author of Gen.1 did was take this typical construction and use it in v.2-3 in Gen. 1 but he prefaced it with v.1 so that v.1 stands outside and precedes this typical formula and therefore, it acquires monumental importance which distinguishes it from all other creation myths in the surrounding cultures.

5) The style of the author of Gen. favors taking v.1 as the main clause because it would be out of harmony with the author’s style to arrange the first three verses in one complete sentence.

6) The heavens and the earth doesn’t just mean the world as we know it, it means all of physical reality.

This doesn’t quite settle the issue of creatio ex nihilo because we still need to ask what the relationship of v.1 is to the rest of chapter 1. One might say that in the beginning God created the ‘stuff’ out of which he formed the universe (chronological relationship); but it has been objected: 1) the heavens and the earth doesn’t just designate the totality of things but an ordered cosmos as well, and 2) the creation of a chaos would be a contradiction in terms for a Hebrew thinker and v.1 should be a title for the whole chapter, and then the act of creation begins with v.2 in which case your back to saying maybe this isn’t creation ex nihilo after all. RESPONSE:

The first verse cannot merely be a title or heading because in the Hebrew v.1 is connected to v. 2 by the Hebrew word ‘and.’ In Hebrew, whenever you have ‘and ‘ followed by a non-predicate say a subject and that is followed by a verb then the material before the ‘and’ is something that always supplies background information for the next verse. V.1 thus provides background information for v.2-3.

WHAT ABOUT THE TENSION BETWEEN V.1 and V.2 THEN? One could say that this tension is the result of the author prefixing v.1 in front of the traditional formula in v.2. Moreover, you can take the scope of v.1 to be universal and then in v.2 you have a dramatic narrowing of the focus to Earth. Tohu wa bohu doesn’t describe a primordial chaos in the Greek sense of confusion and chaos; rather, to say this in Hebrew means that it is an uninhabitable waste (a desert can and is described in exactly these terms), and what you have in the succeeding verses is how God turns this uninhabitable waste into a place for man to live. This could presuppose a tremendous time gap between v. 1and v. 2

Some of them thought of the world being created out of primordial beasts and the sun and stars were worshipped as deities and what you have in Gen.1 is a sort of de-mythologizing where God created them simply as lights.

THE STAR OF BETHELHEM: E.L. Martin (Part 3 Series 1)

INTERPRETATIONS OF THE REST OF GENESIS 1:

How would the original people who read Gen.1 have understood it?

http://www.pcahistory.org/creation/report.html

THE LITERAL INTERPRETATION (Calendar Day, 24 hour interpretation):

1) God created 6 to 10 thousand years ago. It reads the texts in a prima facie way. That could be thought to be an advantage of the view. However, considerations of literary genre are absolutely essential. Genesis 1-3 are intended to be historical on some level (i.e. Adam and Eve Lk. 3:38, Rom. 5:12-19). On the other hand the Genesis narrative is meant to symbolic and metaphorical in some respects; Adam is the Hebrew word for man, in Genesis 2 we clearly have anthropomorphical descriptions of God walking in the garden and looking for them. Thus, some argue that the historical events happen but they are described in mythopoeic terms, however, Gen. 1 is difficult to classify as poetry, hymn, or straight forward prose either, it has parallelisms for example. If Gen. 1-3 is a historical poetic genre (historical-poetic genre using figurative language to describe historical events) it would be making unwarranted demands upon it to interpret it literally.

2) Another strength of the literal view is Ex. 20:9-11 which reflects back on the days of Gen. 1 and speaks of them as a literal week. However, what the Exodus chapter is talking about is the pattern set down in Gen.1 of God’s laboring on the six creative days and resting on the seventh,

and the pattern is the same that Israel should observe in its work week but that doesn’t mean that because the pattern is the same that the Gen. 1 days are meant to be literal calendar days. Notice that the fourth commandment speaks of the Sabbath day is a ‘sign’ between God and Israel and refers to the seventh day as the day of God’s Sabbath rest but in Gen. 1 the seventh day is not a 24 hour period of day with an evening and morning (God is still in His Sabbath rest) so then why should the other days be taken as literal 24 hour days (Ex. 31:12-17). Moreover, in Gen. 2:4 we have the word yom used clearly in a metaphorical way referring to the whole creative process as ‘a day.’ Also, the phrase in Gen. 1:5 ‘there was evening and morning one day’ the word there is also used in the book Zech 14:7 where it refers to the day of the Lord which clearly not meant o be a literal 24 hour day.

3) Defenders of the literal interpretation will often claim that when the ordinal number is used with the word yom such as first day, second day, third day, and so on it always refers to a literal 24 day. However, this isn’t a very convincing argument because there isn’t any grammatical rule in Hebrew that says yom followed by an ordinal number has to refer to a 24 hour period of time; this may merely be an accidental coincidence that this is what we find in Hebrew usage elsewhere. But in fact, the claim is false anyway because we do have examples when yom is used with an ordinal number and yom doesn’t mean a literal 24 hour day (Hos, 6:2). The third day represents the time of God’s restoration and healing after having been wounded and rent by the Lord’s judgment. Another passage that is relevant here is Lk. 13:32 where Jesus uses the third day at some point in the future. All that side, the literal interpretation is really missing the point, the point is that a literal 24 hour day can be used as a literary metaphor for a longer period of time; even if yom means a 24 hour day that doesn’t address the question of whether a 24 our day can be used metaphorically for a longer period of time; take the word arm, it can have 2 senses (the appendage attached to your shoulder, it can also mean a concealed weapon) and often the Scriptures will use the word arm metaphorically by saying the arm of the Lord as a limb but that doesn’t meant that God has literal limbs, rather it is a metaphor when it is applied to God that means that God’s power was with them. So if you could show that everywhere arm is used it means limb, that doesn’t mean that it can’t metaphorically for something else.

4) There are indications in the text itself that the six consecutive 24 hr days are not intended by the author. For example, the phrase it was evening and it was morning is not used in the 7th day which suggests that this day is still continuing which opens the door for the other days being taken as non-literal days as well. Something interesting also occurs on the third day as well; it doesn’t speak of God miraculously creating fruit trees and plants bearing seed ex nihilo but says let ‘the earth’ bring forth these things and we know that this would take years if not centuries. So, what the literalist defender would have to say is that the author of Genesis is imagining a film being run on fast-forward which sounds implausible. Moreover, notice that throughout that evening is mentioned before morning and suggests a sacramental or symbolic usage that points forward to Israel’s way of reckoning Holy Days and months for example, Sabbath and Passover would always being on the evening before the next day; Why start with evening on the first day?

How could there be any evening that day if there was no previous day on which there was light!? Moreover, the fourth day only appears on the 4th day then how can the previous days have been 24 hours of time if there wasn’t any Sun to measure the 24 days. Moreover, the 6th day when God creates Adam and Eve appears to involve more than 24 hours because in Chpt.2 the activity that was described had to have taken more than 24 hours (naming animals, realizing that he is alone, falling asleep, Eve’s being created, when Eve is created Adam says this ‘at last’ is bone of my bones which connotes a period of time such as when Jacob ‘at last’ leaves Lebon after serving him for 14 years, and again the phrase ‘at last’ when he finally departs this life after seeing his son Joseph).

5) This is not deny that the literal interpretation is ridiculous but we needn’t say that this is the only interpretation such as some who hold to this view and maintain that any others who do not hold this would are heretical, or not Christians, or not saved. In any case, there were Church Fathers such as Augustine, Origen, and Justin Martyr took these days non-literally and this has never been a test for orthodoxy.

VARIOUS NON-LITERAL INTERPRETATIONS:

THE DAY-AGE INTERPRETATION: This has been held by a number of church fathers and commentators that says that the days represent long periods of time so that God created created the world over 6 ages of creation. Although this is a possibility I don’ think there is anything in the text that suggests we have 6 consecutive ages of equal duration is something that is read into the text that is sometimes prompted by modern science; in any case, it is not as if though God’s creation of certain forms of life waited until the previous age was over. This is not to say that there aren’t any indications that the days are non-literal but it is to say that there isn’t any indication that these are six ages of equal duration.

THE DAY-GAP THEORY: The days are 6 consecutive periods of time but they are separated by indefinite periods of time but it is only on each of the 6 days that God creates life letting life propagate for some indefinite period of time between the days. However, there is nothing in the text that clues us in or gives us good reason to think that this was the case. Insofar as this is motivated by science it does a poor job anyway because science doesn’t tell us that life appeared instantly in six periods of time.

THE LITERARY FRAMEWORK VIEW: This was first enunciated in the Middle Ages and has found a number of proponents today. On this view, the author is not interested in specific chronology, rather the days are a sort of literary framework on which the author can hang his account of creation. There is a kind of structure to Genesis in that the first three days God forms the domains for a certain life form and then on the second three days He creates the occupants of the space or domain. This fits very well with the poetic parallelism that Gen. 1 exhibits overall and that was common in Hebrew poetry. Thus, the days are not chronological but are thematic, or a type of literary framework that the author hangs his account of creation on. Craig is a little

skeptical about the domains and the occupants because the 3rd day doesn’t fit very well because vegetation is a kind of occupant. Nevertheless, this view doesn’t take the chronology seriously at all, and yet surely the listing of the days does seem to have some sort of chronology to it. The author of genesis wanted to create a creation story that would contrast with his neighbors by giving a sort of natural account of God creating these things and he could do this through the literary framework of a week but this week wouldn’t be literal.

THE ANALOGOUS DAYS INTERPRETATION:

This would say that the days are metaphorical that are meant to be analogous to chronological days. This view takes the chronology more seriously than the literary framework. It would say that the days are meant to be metaphors for God’s creative activity but there is a kind of sequence or chronology in which God did things in a certain order.

THE GAP-INTERPRETAION:

Scofield-Reference Bible made this view popular. It says that there is a gap between v1. and v.2 and that all of the fossil life were of a world that existed prior to gen 1:2 which fell under God’s judgment and what is described in v.2 There doesn’t seem to be anything in the text to support this view, and the text seems to be describing the initial creation of the world with no indication of a repeat and as far as it is motivated to mesh with science it does a terrible job.

THE REVELATION DAY INTERPRETATION:

This would hold that the six days in Gen.1 are not days of creation, rather, they are days on which God revealed to Moses what He did. It is a description of God’s creativity activity not of creation days per se. However, there isn’t anything in the text to suggest that these are days of revelation rather than days of God’s creative activity.

THE FOCUS ON PALESTINE VIEW: (John Sailhammer) When the Bible talks about the Earth that is the same word that means the land, what it is really talking about is the land of Israel, this narrative isn’t about the creation of the world, therefore the focus is much much narrower. The Garden of Eden or Israel.

WHICH OF THESE VIEWS IS CORRECT? The answer to that question is I don’t know. What we have in Genesis is not meant to be a literal report of what God did in 6 literal days because it involves metaphor, symbol, and poetry. Genesis 1 is a very subtle chapter that is open to a wide manner of interpretation and it is simply wrong to insist on one dogmatic interpretation. This issue has become far too divisive. Once you move away from the literal interpretation you realize that Gen. 1 doesn’t tell us how God made any of these things. What this means is that when we get down to modern science the Christian can follow the evidence wherever it leads. God says let the earth bring forth vegetation and fruit trees, and the same thing with living

creatures (which seems to suggest that this was not a creation ex nihilo). Well what is the best interpretation of the evidence.

WHAT IS CREATIO EX NIHILO? God creates some entity x at some time t:

God creates x at t iff God brings it about that x comes into being at t, t is the first moment at which x exists, and there isn’t any state of affairs of x existing timelessy in the actual world; this means that creation is not a change because there isn’t any enduring subject because there isn’t any object x which goes from a state of non-being to a state of being; there is no property of non-being. To say that God creates x out of nothing is to say that there is no pre-existing material stuff out of which x is made. Things that are created have an efficient cause but there wouldn’t be any material cause. It is not that at t God is creating at t, but that x comes into being at t. It is possible that there could be timeless beings that God sustains in being such as the number six as a thought in God’s mind that He has timelessly thought about. This serves to distinguish creation from conservation, when God creates at t, God brings it about that x comes into being at t. This doesn’t necessarily mean that God exists at t, or that His action takes place at t, rather God brings it about that x comes into being t and this can be timeless.

While it is true that as you trace physical time (time measured by clocks) to near the beginning of the universe becomes so dense and collapsed that physical measures of time become impossible, but there would still be time in this more metaphysical time characterized as the measure of duration of before and after; as long as there is change, there is time; so the universe could come into time at t=o which would be the singularity which is the boundary of time, and not really in time.

ARGUMENTS FOR CREATIO EX NIHILO:

Historical Background: In ancient Greek philosophy the world was thought to be eternal. According to Aristotle, the Earth lay at the center of the universe and it was surrounded by spheres that held in them the various heavenly bodies like the moon and the Sun and the planets and the outer most sphere held all the fixed stars which don’t wander and God was thought to be outside this system which eternally exists and the soul of the outer most sphere contemplating God, began to produce motion in the spheres so God is the object of desire of the souls of these spheres and they are in eternal circular motion out of eternal contemplation of God. The early church fathers realized that such a doctrine of creation was incompatible with CREATIO EX NIHILO. Some of them began to criticize Aristotle and began to give arguments for creation ex nihilo. John Philopopas(sp?) was one of the earliest of these, lived in Alexandria in Egypt and began to produce arguments against the impossibility of the universe having an infinite past. When Islam swept over and conquered Alexandria in the 7th century it absorbed the Christian philosophy so that in the middle ages these arguments for creation came to be right at the heart of Islam doctrine; Al-Ghazali (11th cent.) wrote a book called the incoherence of the philosophers where he presents arguments to show that universe is finite in the past, and this whole movement

came to be known as kalam (speech) came to denote the statement of a point of doctrine. In the Middle Ages, in Muslin Spain, Muslims and Jews rubbed shoulders, the Jews could read Arabic and Hebrew and the arguments of kalam began to propagate in Jewish thought and begin to propound them in Judaism. Then the Christian theologians read these Jewish authors which brought them back into Christian thought (Bonaventure, Locke, Kant). This was lost to Christianity from 4th cent.-11cent.

--Prior to John in Alexandria there were Jewish writings such as Babylonian Talmud-Rabbinical opinions; Jerusalem Talmud-Rabbinical opinions; Mishnah-contains a lot of rabbinical rules but these writings aren’t philosophical, they are biblical and legal commentary esp, in the after math of the destruction of the Temple.

--There isn’t any other religion in the world that holds to creation out of nothing outside the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition.

TRISTRAM SHANDY PARADOX: Before you count any number there would always be another number that you would have had to have counted first. There will always be an infinite number of numbers prior to any number that you would have had to have counted first.

He writes his autobiography so slowly that it takes him a year to record the events of a day so the longer he lives the more writing is accumulating. But isn’t the number of years and the number of days that he writes and is alive is the same given that he has always been writing and will never cease writing. This indeed is logically consistent, but it is metaphysically absurd; think about it, the longer Tristram Shandy writes, the farther he falls behind (for every year that he writes there have been 365 years of living) so that the longer he goes on he approaches a state at which he falls infinitely far behind. What if you turn it around, what if Tristam Shandy has been writing his autobiography from eternity past? In that case he will have lived and written for an infinite number of years and infinite number of days which means that Tristram Shandy will have recorded and infinite number of past days, but where would those days be? If it takes him a whole year to write down the events of a single day the most recent day he could have recorded in the present will be a day one year ago (he couldn’t have recorded a day yesterday or three weeks ago because it takes him a whole year to record one day) so the most recent recordable day would be a day one year ago. Suppose he has been writing for two years, where is most recent recordable day? Since he is recording consecutive days of his life, that means that a day after a day two years; for three years it will be a day two days after three years ago and so and so; the longer he has been writing the more the days he can have recorded recede into the past. What if Tristram Shandy has been writing for infinite years? Where will be the days that he has recorded? They will be days infinitely distant from the present. But that raises the question: How can you traverse the distance between an infinitely distant past day and the present day? How could a day that was once present have receded into the infinite past? It is impossible. No matter how far back you go you will never find the most recent recordable day because it will already be a day that is in the infinite past. But since it is impossible to traverse an infinite

distance it would be impossible for Tristram Shandy to have done such a thing. What this shows is not that it is impossible to write an autobiography slowly which means that the impossibility doesn’t lie in the task itself, it us therefore lie in the notion of an infinite past.

THERE IS AN EVEN DEEPER PARADOX: Let’s suppose that Tristram Shandy is writing the autobiography of another immortal person so that there isn’t any problem about the days receding into the infinite past, and let’s suppose that Shandy finishes this autobiography in 2006 and he is able to do this because he has had an infinite number of years. But, if Shandy is able to finish the autobiography by 2006, why isn’t he able to finish by 200, or ten million years ago, since by then an infinite number of time had already elapsed so that the biography should have already been completed; what this seems to imply is that no matter how far you back into the past you would never find Shandy finishing the biography because he would have already been done; but if it at no point in the past do you find him finishing then it isn’t true that he has been writing from eternity.

OBJECTION: (J.L. Mackie, Sobel) There is no problem because from any point in the past you pick it is always a finite distance to the present and there is no event in the past that is infinitely distant from the present. RESPONSE: This commits the fallacy of composition. It is true that every finite part of the past is a finite distance but that doesn’t imply that whole infinite past can be traversed, the question isn’t how can any finite part of the past be traversed it is how can the entire infinite past be traversed?

CONTINUING CREATION (CONSERVATION): (Col. 1:16-17; Heb. 1:3; Acts 17:28; God is conceived to be not only the Creator of all things that exist outside Himself, but also upholds all of reality in its being in two sense: Conservation & Concurrence (God agrees with the causal power of things in the world). A thing is created iff it is created at that time t, but then continuing creation can’t be a literal type of creation because otherwise it would literally mean that God is creating every moment anew which is occasionalism-there aren’t any really causes in the world (i.e. God causes everything to happen on occasion of some event); this would mean that nothing endures as the same thing from one moment to the next. There is a different person at every instant of time, there would just be a series of replicas. We could reinterpret creation by denying that creation isn’t about a things coming into being but that would sacrifice too much. Thus, we need to say that conservation is not a type of creation properly speaking. What is the difference? The difference doesn’t lie in God’s power, and it isn’t in God’s action because both involve bestowing existence. Creation involves a entity’s coming into being at a certain moment. Let’s pick some entity e and some time t, and God creates e at some time t, this means that God brings it about that e comes into being at t (def: creation). Something comes into being at t when: 1) e exists at t, 2) t is the first time at which e exists, 3) e’s existing at t is a tensed fact (tells how something is related to the present), 4) there is no state of affairs of e existing timelessly in the actual world.

DIVINE PROVIDENCE:

God rests after creation in the sense that He has created all of physical reality and He doesn’t re-create it over and over again, but new things do come into being through secondary processes.

On a B-theory of time: time begins at t=o and ends at some time t(n) in the future; all events in time exist, and what is present is a subjective matter of your consciousness, to say that God created the universe at t=0 on this view doesn’t mean that the universe came into being at t=0 because all of the moments are equally real and in this sense the universe doesn’t come into being because there aren’t any tensed facts.

--Conservation does presuppose a subject which is preserved from one moment of its existence to another (this is the chief difference between creation and conservation); In reaction God does not act on a subject rather he constitutes a subject, in conservation God acts on a subject to preserve it in existence over time.

God conserves e iff: God acts upon e to bring about e’s existing from some time t<t* Thus, creation is instantaneous where conservation occurs over an interval of time.

DIVINE CONCURRENCE: God is the cause of everything that happens in the world (but not the only cause); in the absence of this concurrence by God no effects would be produced. Concurrence does seem to follow from Conservation because has to conserve e in all of its particularity; so let’s suppose ‘e’ is a piece of cotton and it is brought into proximity with a flame and is conserved, and the cotton becomes black and smoldering, God has to conserve the cotton in it particularity it has to have properties that change which means that God is not just the cause of the cotton existing so that in the absence of the God’s concurring with natural causes these causes really wouldn’t be efficacious; Daniel’s friends in the fiery furnace (God miraculously ceased to concur with the causal power of the flames); the difficult thing about this doctrine is that God also concurs with the effects of the world that relate to evil, but although God may concur with the physical causes he doesn’t concur with moral properties of evil that attach to murder say. He is not responsible for the acts themselves because he doesn’t produce the secondary chain of causes that free agents produce in evil acts but God doesn’t concur with their decision, but he permits and concurs with the causes because he has morally sufficient reasons. A miracle would be an absence of concurrence, but this is not always the case as with the resurrection. Lastly, if God failed to concur with secondary agents then there would no longer be any free will.

DIVINE PROVIDENCE: Not about how God brought the universe into being, but about how God governs the universe: Ordinary providence (traditional law like behavior in the universe, non-miraculous) & Extraordinary providence (aspects of God’s providence that cannot be explained by appeal to natural laws); God’s extraordinary providence has atrophied recently.

ORDINARY PROVIDENCE: D.A. Carson: (1) God is the creator, the ruler, and possessor of all things; (2) God is the ultimate cause personal cause of everything that happens; (3) God’s election of His people; (4) God as the unacknowledged source of good fortune or success.

HUMAN FREEDOM: (1) People face a multitude of divine exhortations and commands; (2) People are said to obey, believe, and choose God; (3) People sin and rebel against God; (4) People sins are judged by God; (5) People are tested by God; (6) People receive divine rewards; (7) The elect are responsible to respond to respond to God’s initiative (although God unilaterally elects His people it is up to Israel to respond and they are responsible for doing so; (8) Prayers are not mere show pieces; (9) God literally pleads to repent and be saved (Ez. 18:31).

Central Puzzle is reconciling God’s sovereignty with human responsibility:

Romans 9:Paul is not trying to narrow down God’s election, but he is actually broadening it. He is saying to Jews that because of their heritage they cannot claim to have some kind of a privileged position with respect to God’s election so that if God wants to include the Gentile dogs that that is God’s privilege, and that therefore the Jew cannot complain if God wants to include the Gentiles. Whom has God chosen to be saved; those whom God has elected to save are those whom have faith in Jesus (In Galatians Paul says that those who have faith in Jesus are those who are the true heirs of Abraham). Israel stumbled at this because they sought to be saved by works, but the Gentiles have placed their faith in Jesus. That is why Paul can go on in Chapter 10, to quote Joel therefore whoever calls upon the name of the Lord can be saved. Thus, God’s primary object of election is a corporate body, and it is secondarily individual.

CALVINISM (one could have called it Augustinianism): Strong view of predestination as a choice of God, and everything that happens is caused by God, and human freedom is a kind of voluntarism but that willing is from God, not from me. Everything that happens happens as a result of God’s decree therefore, everything that happens even before the Fall, and things after Fall like a squirrel burying his food as decreed by God. Calvin’s view is driven by God’s providence whereas Luther thought our freedom was driven by sin after the Fall. God unilaterally determines everything that happens in the world, human beings will what they do but they are not free to will what they will.

ARMINIANISM (Jacob Arminius wasn’t really an ‘Arminian’-he felt very uncomfortable with the Calvinistic determinism of Luther and Calvin, and Richard Miller has shown in his work that Arminius was the conduit for Molinism, Ariminius was really a Molinist)-This view today is understood to mean that God bases his decrees on his foreknowledge, rather than basing his foreknowledge on his foreordination like the Calvinist (the reason God foreknows what will happen is because God foreordains it). Well I think you can see that this emasculates God’s sovereignty because it his foreordination doesn’t add anything to what will happen based on his foreknowledge; divine providence becomes a fifth wheel. If God didn’t foreordain the future, it would still happen.

LUTHERAN VIEW: Bound in things above but free in things below; things relating to God are wills are bound (depraved, sinful no ability to choose God), but in things below whether I choose read jello or yellow jello Luther would say that it is up to me.

LUIS MOLINA: Portuguese Catholic Counter-Reformer of the late 16th and early 17th century. He had the view that the central teaching of the Reformation was that human beings have no freedom. Sought to draft a model of human freedom and divine sovereignty that wouldn’t compromise on either. He was a Jesuit, an order of priests that is highly intellectual and a strong missionary zeal. Molinism eventually died out and has been rediscovered by certain evangelical philosophers like Alvin Plantinga. The simplified version goes like this: God knows what every possible person would freely do in any possible set of circumstances God might place them in, and therefore by choosing to create certain persons and choosing to place them in certain circumstances he knows exactly what they will freely do; and that provides the key to his providence by creating the circumstances and the persons in them, knowing exactly how they will behave, God can so plan a world of free creatures so that they will do freely His ultimate will so that God’s purposes will be accomplished through the free decisions of creatures. On the one hand it affirms human freedom because these circumstances we are talking about are freedom permitting circumstances, but on the other hand because it is God who chooses whom to create and what circumstances to put them in is ultimately in control.

IT SOUNDS LIKE DEISM: This view would allow God to have such sovereign control of history to get people to do certain things such as get Pharaoh to do certain things. This doesn’t require an interventionist God but it doesn’t exclude miraculous acts either; it leaves it an open question as to what God will do in the actual world. This gives God a sovereign control over the world that doesn’t necessitate miracles.

ARE ANSWERS TO OUR RESPONSES FOREORDINATION OR GENUINE ANSWERS?: This is a false dichotomy, they are genuine answers but they weren’t surprising to God because of His knowledge and thus it is all foreordained, the response can be preprogrammed bu tit would not have happened if you wouldn’t have prayed.

Salvation is entirely of God who provides sufficient grace, but this grace is extrinsically efficacious such that human freedom is not overridden, but that grace is not intrinsically efficacious such that it will not be met with an affirmative response in every case; it becomes extrinsically efficacious when it is met with a free creaturely response. This would glorify god in that God sovereignly decrees who will be saved and who will not and these circumstances include any givings of grace (promptings of the Holy Spirit, gifts of grace, wooing, etc. ) and God knows who would respond. The initiative comes wholly from God’s side, and there is nothing that the human person does to merit salvation, but it does require a human response.

WHAT IS MIDDLE KNOWLEDGE: Explanatory tier or moment (not temporal):

1) Natural knowledge (essential to God, God cannot lack this: necessary truths, God has knowledge of an infinite number of possible worlds) [A possible world is maximal description of reality]

2) Middle knowledge [feasibility] (not only knowledge of all necessary truths, but the truth of all subjunctive conditionals about how people would freely act in all circumstances / not in the indicative mood; Is Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy somebody else did (indicative mood); If Oswald hadn’t shot Kennedy then somebody else would have (subjunctive mood)). These are not essential to God’s knowledge because they depend upon the knowledge of free creatures. This means that certain worlds that are possible in God’s natural knowledge are infeasible given God’s middle knowledge. The truth of the subjunctive counterfactuals determines what worlds are feasible.

_____DIVINE DECREE______________________________________________________

3) Free knowledge: completely contingent, not essential to God, based upon God’s free decree, this will include knowledge of everything that will happen in the actual world (past, present, future)

COULD BE, WOULD BE, WILL BE

What about Scriptures that sound like God doesn’t know things until they happen? Those passages are anthropomorphic ways of telling the story, but in fact, God really does know all along.

It is up to God whether I find myself in a world in which I am predestined (divine sovereignty); But it is up to me whether I am predestined in the world in which I find myself (human freedom).

BIBLICAL PASSAGES: 2 Cor. 8, The story of Saul and the Ephod

THE PASSAGES ON ELECTION CANNOT BE DECIDED BY A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF GREEK: They can be read corporately or individually, so you have to ask yourself which one makes more sense of the broad scriptural data such as Rom. 9-10 where corporate election does the job.

-The Calvinist could adopt Molina’s scheme because not all the possible worlds in God’s middle knowledge has to be or is world’s with free creatures in them.

-In any circumstances that god places a person in God always wills the good, but He knows that people will not always do the good, and so He permits them to do this because by way of His middle knowledge He knows that such evil is necessary to achieve an outweighing good. Everything that happens in the world is either directly willed by God, or permitted by God. Moreover, on Molina’s theory of concurrence God acts in the world to produce the effects of the free choices of people. This makes Molina very different from Thomas Aquinas because on Aquinas’ view God acts on the agent (on His will) to turn His will this way of that. Molina maintains that God acts with the agent to produce the effect. This is called simultaneous concurrence. HOW DO CALVINISTS AND ARMINIANS REACT TO THIS? The Calvinist

will say that this diminishes God’s sovereignty. Why? Because God doesn’t determine how someone will freely act in whatever circumstances they are placed in. This is charge is unwarranted because it is logically impossible to make someone freely do something. Thus, God’s omnipotence isn’t compromised. The Arminian on the other hand will say that this compromises human freedom since people are put in circumstances and God knows how they will act. This too seems unwarranted because these circumstances are freedom permitting. Thus, Molinism provides us with a nice balance between God’s sovereignty and human freedom.

God’s knowledge is like a barometer. The barometer doesn’t determine the weather, the weather determines the reading of the barometer, but the barometer will never be wrong.

In the Westminster Confession they reject middle knowledge.

MIRACLES: The collapse of belief in Biblical miracles occurred during the 19th cent., the roots of this skepticism go further back to David Hume and Spinoza who defined a miracle as a violation of a law of nature which is to win by definition since miracles are summaries of what happen so that to violate what happens probably is a contradiction. Instead, we should define miracles as an event which lie beyond the productivity capacity of the natural causes at any time and place.

1670Tractatus Theological Politicus (Spinoza)-Spinoza attacked vehemently the biblical conception of miracles. He argued that miracles are impossible.

Argument 1: Nothing happens contrary to the eternal and unchangeable order of nature (Argument against the possibility of a miracle).

Since God is the creator of the natural laws in the universe and since everything that God wills is characterized by eternal necessity and truth there must be an eternal necessity about the laws of nature that God has decreed. The laws of nature flow from the being of God by a necessity of his own perfection and divine nature. So, for God to will that something happen contrary to the laws of nature, would be to will contrary his own nature. The laws of nature are necessary expressions of his own unchangeable nature, and therefore everything that happens flows from an eternal necessity of the nature of God that is expressed in the laws of nature.

RESPONSE to 1: Spinoza was a pantheist, he thought that nature and God are identical. But, we must ask whether on a theistic view miracles are possible where God is distinct from the nature. And it seems like there is no reason to think that the laws of nature flow from necessarily and unchangeably from the being of God, indeed, God freely willed their coming into being, and moreover, God could have created an entirely different set of laws in different world, and he could have provided different initial conditions. Given God’s transcendence and sovereignty there is no reason to think that the laws of nature are necessary and eternal, but rather, are contingent upon the will of God which means that it is up to God whether He performs an event which is beyond the productive capacity of nature.

Argument 2: Miracles wouldn’t count as evidence against the existence of God; Spinoza attempted to produce all of his conclusions with mathematical certainty. But, if miracles could occur, they would overthrow the laws of nature and then nothing would be certain anymore and therefore we would be reduced to skepticism; far from leading to belief in God, they will undercut the laws of nature by rendering the laws of nature uncertain but the laws of nature are what we use to infer to a designer, and therefore to God.

RESPONSE: This argument has two assumptions which have typically not been held: 1) An argument for God’s existence does not have to demonstrated with mathematical certainty; and 2) God’s existence is inferred from natural laws. The first assumption may have characterized Aquinas and Spinoza, but for the most part this is not the case even for people in Spinoza’s day. As for the second assumption, that might be true of certain kinds of design arguments; but not all design arguments are based on the order of the natural laws? No. There are cosmological, moral, logical, etc. arguments. In any case, is this argument even if true; would miracles land us in skepticism? No, well Spinoza is assuming that miracles are violations of a law of nature, and a violation of the laws on such a definition would overthrow the laws, but if we think of miracles simply as naturally impossible events given the natural causes operative at a specific time and place then a miracle wouldn’t show that the laws of nature no longer operate; on the contrary it would show that God has intervened. Swinburne says that just because a scientific anomaly occurs (something that can’t be explained by the laws of nature) scientists don’t overthrow or abolish the laws of nature, rather, the counter-instance must occur repeatedly whenever the conditions for it are present; if an event were to occur that wasn’t the result of any known natural causes, then we will not simply abandon the natural law at that point, in order to that you would have to have the event occur again and again and again whenever those conditions are present, and of course for a miracle this is not the case. If the original formulation of the law is successful in predicting phenomena and it continues to be successful in the future, then even if a particular even cannot be naturalistically explained the law of nature will not be abandoned. Swinburne writes:

‘We have to some extent good evidence as to what are the laws of nature, and some of them are so well established and account for so many data that any modifications to them which suggest to account for the odd counterexample would be so clumsy and ad hoc as to upset the whole structure of science. In such cases the evidence is strong that if the purported counterinstance occurred it would just be taken as an anomaly (violation of a law) but you wouldn’t overthrow the law.’

Unfortunately Swinburne retains this talk of a miracle as a violation of a law, but if make this adjustment it seems that his point is correct about science won’t be overthrown by a miracle. In

fact, Spinoza’s fear that miracles would destroy natural laws is quite unjustified; if you took it seriously, then it would itself be an impediment to the development of science because you never then could discover anything new, anything different from the laws of nature as presently understood ; Spinoza assumes that we have the final formulation of the laws of nature and that they are incapable of revision which is unscientific.

Argument 3: The laws of nature wouldn’t suffice to demonstrate the existence of the theistic God. Maybe some lesser being did it like an angel or demon.

RESPONSE: One could concede the point, but point out that typically, miracles are not seen as proofs for God’s existence, but rather, things like the cosmological, teleological, moral, etc. argument were used whereas miracles would play the role of showing that this God who has already been demonstrated to exist has intervened to speak through these particular revelation s of Himself in history; so it didn’t get you theism, it would get you a specific brand of theism; thus miracles were seen as confirmations of God’s specific revelation.

Moreover, the religio-historical context is what gives us a clue as to its ultimate source. A miracle without a context is inherently ambiguous, and therefore it is only when a miracle takes place in a religio-historical context that is charged with significance that the proper interpretation of the miracle will become clear. The miracles of Jesus are significant in this way because they aren’t anomalous and arbitrary events but rather, they are events that occur as a climax to Jesus’ own unparalleled life, and teachings, and radical personal claims, and the ultimate revelation of God to mankind; the signs he performed were signs of the in-breaking of God’s kingdom and is frought with significance.

Lastly, Spinoza’s concern with lesser beings such as angels and demons would most naturally fit as furniture in a universe that is theistic anyway. It would be a very strange sort of atheism that attributed Jesus’ resurrection to angels and demons.

Argument 4: W hat we call a miracle is an event according to an unknown law of nature. A miracle is a work of nature that is beyond our understanding.

RESPONSE: This is not an objection against the possibility of miracles, but rather, against the identification of a miracle. Most of our doubts to purported miracle stories has to do with this worry. However, we are not hopeless. When miracles occur in a significant religio-historical context, when a miracle occurs at a momentous time, or when the miraculous event doesn’t occur again and again, when the miracles are various (exorcisms, nature miracles, healing, resurrection) then the claim that all of them are the product of natural causes becomes implausible. Lastly, notice that this objection (unlike Hume’s) does not spring from the nature of historical testimony, but rather, it concerns a reliance on the ignorance of the natural processes involved in death; that is, it punts to the hope of present ignorance being vindicated by future knowledge of the natural processes pertaining to death showing us that there is in fact a natural cause that could bring someone back from the dead. However, as they did back then, we have a

very good (even better) understanding today of the natural impossibility of a dead person coming back to life, and so in all probability, if such an event occurred, it must be a miracle.

DAVID HUME (1738 Of Miracles): Attacked the identification of a miracle. 2 pronged attack (If then, but in fact):

1) In principle: Miracles cannot be identified even granting certain concessions.

2) In fact: Given our actual evidence, we in fact cannot identify the occurrence of a miracle. The evidence for miracles is so weak that it doesn’t even amount to a probability (Hume gives 4 reasons).

But aren’t miracles are infrequent?

You can’t use frequency as a theory of probability (proton decay in their nuclear facility); scientists are spending millions of dollars, and investing thousands of man hours in order to detect an event of a proton decaying and yet this has never been observed so that if you have frequency probability for this project, you would have 0. This is especially evident when you are dealing with a free agent, a free agent can choose something precisely because it is rare. Suppose that I go to a car lot of 100 cars 99 of which are black, 1 is red, you can’t just use frequency to calculate the probability that I will buy a black car is 99/100. Besides, isn’t it highly probable that in order to vindicate the radical claims of His son that God would pick an event that is singular and infrequent in order to make that event highly probable.

The background information includes things like the origin of the universe, the fine-tuning, etc.

SWINBURNE PUTS IT AT 97%; however, Craig doesn’t use Bayesian Probability because how can you show that God would want to raise Jesus from dead, but what we can say is that it isn’t greatly lower than .5; rather what Craig uses is inference to the best explanation.

SEE MY SECTION ON THE PROBLEM OF MIRALCES UNDER PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION FOR A RESPONSE TO SPINOZA AND HUME.

--ANGELS AND DEMONS: It concerns a realm of creation in addition to the space-time universe that we inhabit. Creatio ex nihilo thus encompasses both spiritual and physical realms.

Angel in Old Testament Mal’akh and in the New Testament ‘Angelas’ which both mean a messenger. This word doesn’t always apply to angels, it is also used on human messengers as well. In general, the word for angel is used to describe a higher order of being, a spiritual realm of beings that dwells in the very presence of God and who serve as mediators between man and god. Creation is composed of a dimension of reality that consists of this spiritual and unseen realm who are endowed with powers and abilities that are far in excess of our human powers.

Evil angels (demons) also exist: Matt. 25:41

An angel is not a dead Christian. All the angels in Scripture are portrayed as men but we shouldn’t actually think that they are men because they are spiritual and incorporeal.

IS THERE ANY MENTION OF A HIERACHRY OF ANGELS? A little.

WHAT REASONS ARE THERE TO BELIEVE IN ANGELS?: Heb. 1:14 (Why did God Create angels?: They serve Him, and it for the sake of the salvation of humankind; Angels also serve as God’s mediators in this world; they serve to glorify God)

We should be careful not to think that God cannot speak without a mediator.

PLATO’S 3rd Man Argument: Plato believed that something had to be the mediator between the Forms and the physical instantiations of the, because there couldn’t be any kind of direct contact. What about what mediates between the perfect and the imperfect, and then what about the mediator of the mediator between the perfect and imperfect and so on. Since angels are part of creation, if god can’t act immediately on His creation but requires angels as a mediator, then this would also create an infinite regress.

THE NATURE OF ANGELS: They are created beings (Col. 1:16), but they are not part of the spatio-temporal realm; There are innumerable angels (Dan. 7:10, Heb12:22); These angels appear to be of different orders and ranks (Dan. 10:13; Jude v.9); These beings are very powerful (2 Thess. 1:7; 2 Kings 19:3; Ps. 103:20). They are immaterial incorporeal spirits (Heb. 1:14; 2 Kings 6:8-17).

THE ABILITIES OF ANGELS: Not bound by physical limitations (Acts 12:5-10); They have great wisdom (2 Sam. 14:20); They are capable of assuming human form (Judges 13:8-20; Mk. 16:5-6; Heb 13:1-2).

ARE THERE INSTANCES OF THE PRE-INCARNATE CHRIST IN THE OT? No, the noly place in the NT where we have an indication of a vision of Christ (prior to his incarnation) by someone in the OT relates to Is. where in the Gospel of John it says that Is. saw the glory of Christ; but this wasn’t a vision of an angel, he saw the Lord. I don’t see any Scriptural grounds for thinking that the ‘angel of the Lord’ was Christ himself and when you think about it that would be very strange because the incarnation takes place through the birth of Jesus in 1st century Palestine and having multiple incarnation of Jesus prior to this seems very bizarre. Moreover, the ‘angel of the Lord’ isn’t very clearly distinguished from God; there is an ambiguity where it is almost as if God himself is present; I take it that the ‘angel of the Lord’ is God’s representative and therefore stands in gods place and is appropriately spoken of as the ‘Lord says this…’ but why think this is the second person of the Trinity. Moreover, there are references to the ‘angel of the Lord’ in the NT after Christ has become incarnate which makes it sound like it is a different individual.

WHEN WERE ANGELS CREATED? We don’t know if it was prior to Gen. 1, or simultaneous with the creation of the physical world. We just don’t know. Same with the origin of demons.

THE WORK OF ANGELS: They minister to the people of God (Heb 1:14; 1 Kgs. 19:5-7; Mtth. 4:11; Lk. 22:43; Ps. 91:10-12); They are guiding the destiny of nations (Dan. 10:13-20); Angels serve to execute God’s justice (2 Kgs 19:35; Acts 12:23; 2 Thess. 1:7-8; Rev. 16:1) They will gather and accompany Christians at the second coming (Matt. 24:29-31; Matt. 25:31; 1 Thess. 4:14-17; 2 Thess. 1:7-8); The role of angels in the giving of the law in the OT (Ps. 68:17; Acts 7:53; Heb. 2:2

GUARDIAN ANGELS?: When Jesus says that ‘There angels always behold the face of my Father in heaven ‘ is the only Sciptural support for this notion (Matt. 18:10).

2 ANGELS THAT ARE NAMED: MICHAEL (Dan. 10:13-21; Dan. 12:1-2 1; Thess. 4:16 Jude v.9)

GABRIEL (Dan. 8:18, Dan. 9:21; Lk 1:19-26)

SATAN AND DEMONS: Jn 8:44 (refers to Satan as a liar); Eph. 2:2 (Satan is referred to as the prince of the power of the air) 1 Pet. 5:8 (Satan is called your adversary the Devil); Rev. 20:2, Gen. 3:4 (That dragon, the ancient serpent); Jn 14:30 (Satan is referred to as the ruler of this world) ; Mtth. 12:24 (prince of demons); 2 Cor. 4:4 (god of this world); 1 Thess. 3:5 (refers to Satan as the tempter); These proper names given to Satan reveal something to us about his nature and work

THE ORIGIN OF SATAN: Scripture has very little to say about this. Almost nothing in extra-biblical writing also. There are a lot of popular ideas that have currency in the Christian church which are founded in Scripture. Fundamentally though, we can say that Satan is not some sort of uncreated evil being that is lodged against God in a dualistic manner. Scripture affirms that all things outside of God were created by God (Col 1:15-16) Why would God create a Satan? Many people have sought to explain the origin of Satan as some sort of angelic being that fell away from God and the relevant prooftexts for this are:

(Is. 14:12-15)-The word daystar (Venus) (translate Lucifer in Latin) and Lucifer was given to the name of Satan. However, this is a taunt of the King of Babylon who was unrighteous and fell under the judgment of God (v.3), not a description of ‘Lucifer’ being an angel falling from the presence of God. There isn’t any NT passage that looks back on this and interprets it in terms of the origin of Satan either.

(Ez. 28:12-19)-This is talking about the city of Tyre (v. 11) not the origin of Satan. There is not NT reference or interpretation of this in terms of Satan either.

(Lk. 10:18)-Reaction of Jesus when the disciples come back from their mission trip where Jesus says I saw Satan fall from heaven like lighting; but this might be referring to the fall of Satan in

terms of the disciples defeating the demons in their mission trip; Jesus was saying this was a defeat for Satan.

(Rev. 12)- Presented as an end times event, the beings here are already evil before they are cast down, not a primordial pre-Fall scenario.

SOME ACTUAL BIBLICAL SUPPORT:

-2 Pet. 2:4 (The author does believe in some sort of angelic fall and these fallen angels are imprisoned in tartarus, but perhaps there are others on the loose) .

-Jude v. 6 (Angles who didn’t keep their proper position, they fell away and have come under God’s judgment)

-1 Tim. 3:6 (Is this talking about the devil as the source of condemnation or is it the same kind of condemnation that the devil gets; if the latter, then this suggests that Satan’s sin has to do with vaunting pride and ambition).

-1 Tim. 5:21 (‘The elect angels’ and by implication non-elect angels which would fit in with the notion of falling away).

A plausible view would be that God originally created all of these heavenly invisible realms populated by angelic beings and that they were created at a certain distance from God to allow freedom to rebel which would be the origin of evil which would then be mediated to the Garden of Eden so that Satan and demons are in fact fallen angels.

CAN PEOPLE SIN IN HEAVEN?

Question:

Dear Dr. Craig,

I was in attendance at one of your lectures in Baltimore around 2 years ago at the conference Two Tasks. I appreciate the tireless work you are doing. May God continue to strengthen you, while deepening your personal relationship with Him.

There is one question that is related to the problem of evil that has not been resolved in my mind. This question has chronically baffled me, and I feel leaves me intellectually vulnerable in defending Christianity.

One way to open up the issue is with the following question:

HOW DOES GOD GUARANTEE THAT THERE WILL BE NO EVIL AMONG THE SAVED IN HEAVEN?

Some possible answers are sketched below. This is a product of my own thinking, influenced by lay research into the subject. Skeptics have posed the problem as well. . . .Please help me decide which is the best, most biblical, most philosophically coherent answer, or point out an alternative that I have not thought through.

Note: Below, I use the pronoun “we” as a short-hand for the saved/elect.

Answer 1: There is NO free will heaven. The saved are immutably good and have no choice nor temptation to sin.

Rebuttal: Can lack of free will coexist with love of the saved towards God. (If answered yes, the free will defense of evil crumbles.) How would love not be diminished or extinguished without free will?

Answer 2: There IS free will in heaven--we have the capacity to choose evil. But in our glorified body and regenerated nature, we abhor evil (no evil desire), and therefore never choose it. To back this up, consider God, who is free, despises evil, and is one of supreme love. Perhaps free will must be narrowly defined as having the ability to choose something, but not whether one would ever choose it because of one’s nature.

Rebuttal: If this is the case, why does God not create Adam such that he has no desire towards evil in the first place? Also, how is Adam’s pre-fall nature different from the one characterized in answer 2?

Answer 3: There is NO free will in heaven. However, we can not consider heaven inisolation from the earthly decision that led to eternal life. We had free will on earth, and God simply permanently cemented that freely chosen (salvifically efficacious) decision to accept Christ upon mortal death. Love still exists in heaven because God affirms the free-willed decision to follow God while on earth. (This is a tenuous underdeveloped train of thought).

Thank you very much.

Gary

Dr. Craig responds:

We’re simply speculating when it comes to questions like this, so there may be more than one plausible answer. Insofar as sceptics are concerned, it’s up to them to prove some sort of incoherence here, which would be very difficult to do.

My own inclination is for a view along the lines of (3). God has created us at an “epistemic distance,” so to speak, which allows us the freedom to rebel against Him and separate ourselves from Him. This world is a vale of decision-making during which we decide whether we want to live with God forever or reject Him and so irrevocably separate ourselves from Him. As discussions of the so-called “Hiddenness of God” have emphasized, God could have made His existence overwhelmingly obvious, had He wanted to. During this life, we “see in a glass darkly,” as St. Paul put it; but someday we shall see “face to face” (I Cor. 13.12). Medieval theologians liked to talk of the “Beatific Vision” which the blessed in heaven will receive. There the veil will be removed, and we shall see Christ in all of His loveliness and majesty. The vision of Christ, the source of infinite goodness and love, will be so overwhelming as to remove all freedom to sin. I like to think of it like iron filings in the presence of an enormously powerful electromagnet. They would be so powerfully attracted to the magnet that there is simply no possibility of their falling away. So with the blessed in heaven.

Something like this may have already occurred with angelic beings. Originally created “at arm’s length” from God epistemically, they had a time to choose either for or against God. Those who chose for God were then sealed with the Beatific Vision, so that no further fall is possible. Fallen angels are Satan and his minions.

I find this a satisfying account of the matter. But the doctrine of middle knowledge affords a version of (2) that is viable as well. One could hold that God via His middle knowledge knew exactly which persons, if saved and glorified in heaven, would freely persevere in grace, even though they would retain the freedom to sin. It’s not that they have a different nature than others; it’s just that this is how they would freely choose. God has chosen to create a world in which all the saved are precisely such persons. Hence, everyone in heaven will freely persevere. They could fall away but they just won’t. Interestingly, creating a world like this could involve God’s having to put up with a lot of otherwise undesirable features of the world, such as vast amounts of natural and moral evil. Perhaps only in a world like that would all those who come freely to know God and His salvation be a person who would freely persevere in heaven. This view would have obvious relevance to the problem of evil.

My own preference remains for (3) simply because it seems right to think that the unalloyed vision of Christ would be something so overwhelmingly attractive that freedom to resist it would be utterly removed.

NATURE OF DEMONS: They are spirits (Matt. 8:16; Lk. 10:17-20; Rev. 16:14); They have intelligence, they have minds, they are cunning (Acts 16:16-18; 2 Cor. 11:3. 13-15, Rev. 12:9) They are malevolent (Matt. 12:43-45;) They are unclean and evil spirits (Mk. 1:27; Mk. 3:11; Acts 8:7; 1 Jn 3:8; Jn 17:15; Matt. 6:13) ; They form supernatural dominions, ranks, and powers (Eph. 6:12; Jude v.8-10; 1 Jn. 5:19); These demons know their own end (Matt. 8:29; Matt. 25:41); They are endowed with supernatural strength (Mk 5:1-4; Acts 19:13-16); They must submit to Jesus name ( Mk 5:7-13; Lk 10:17; Acts 19:13-15)

SWINE EVENT: The demons had no idea that being cast into the swine had no idea that they would perish; so Mark’s readers would read this with a smile because Jesus outfoxed the demons by sending them into the swine which then go mad and rush down the bank and drown after falling off the cliff; Pigs were unclean animals in Jewish religion.

ARE MENTALLY INSANE PEOPLE POSSESSED BY A DEMON? Well, hard to say, unless someone has been fiddling around with the occult. Moreover, apart from 2 examples in the OT of a spirit troubling someone (the spirit that troubled Saul and the trouble that Job experienced) there does seem to be an unusual outbreak of this during the ministry of Jesus; it is the same with miracles, they are clustered around great redemptive events. In our Western culture demons get the best of us through materialism, narcissism, pornography, post-modernism, etc but in non-western culture you hear more stories of demon possession. Paul saw pagan deities as demonic sorts of creatures.

CAN A CHRISTIAN BE POSSESSED BY A DEMON? Hard to say. Christians certainly can be oppressed by a demon but perhaps not possessed (James-God tempts no one).

CAN SATAN READ OUR MINDS OR PUT A THOUGHT IN OUR MINDS? Hard to say. Perhaps because it seems that the only way unembodied minds could communicate would be through telepathy.

THE WORK OF DEMONS: They are involved in tempting the servants of God (1 Thess. 3:5; 2 Cor. 2:11; 1 Tim. 3:6-7); They blind the minds of unbelievers (2 Cor. 4:3-4;2; Tim. 2:25-26 ); he seeks to destroy the word of God (Mk. 4:15); Satan reigns in people’s hearts (Jn. 13:27; Mk 1:32; Lk 9:42); Satan accuses believers (Rev. 12:10); He harasses God’s servants (1 Thess. 2:18; 1 Pet. 5:8) The way in which Satan snatches the word from someone’s heart is through biblical criticism.

THE DESTINY OF DEMONS: They are defeated beings (Jn 12:3; Col. 2:15) Theiry ultimate destiny is the Lake of Fire (Rev. 20:10; Matt. 25:41); Demons know their end.

WOULD THERE BE SIN IF THERE WERE NO DEVIL? We don’t the answer to that, but in principle, I don’t see why couldn’t have chosen to disobey God in the same way Satan disobeyed God. However, you could never say the devil made me do it.

HOW SHOULD THE CHRISTIAN REACT TO THE REALITY OF DEMONS?: A healthy respect but not a fear; an awareness of demons but not a morbid interest (resist the devil and present ourselves to God (James 4:7); We should watch and pray (Matt. 26:41); Take up the shield of faith which is the word of God (Eph 6:16).