Questions on time, Hilbert's Hotel, and the Resurrected Body

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig, we always love to put you on the hot seat. We are going to do it again today. We’ve got some good questions we received from listeners and viewers. This question says,

Dr. Craig, The following are two time related questions that I had on my mind recently. One: is the nature of time necessarily immutable? Or could the nature of time change in some fundamental way at the return of Christ? Two: If you are interested in possibly sharing, did your 13 years of studying God’s relation to time influence your personal and/or professional time management practices?

DR. CRAIG: In response to the first question, the nature of anything is immutable. If something changes in its nature then it undergoes an essential change and so ceases to exist. So his first question is: Could the time that we live in and experience be replaced by a different sort of time in the new heavens and the new earth after the return of Christ? I do think that's certainly possible. We may have no idea of what time would be like in the new heavens and the new earth, but I see no reason at all to think that it couldn't be different in some way. Now, as for the second very practical question, I have to say, no, my study of divine eternity and time didn't do anything to influence my time management practices other than demand that I be extremely efficient in my study and writing so as to get through this monumental research project.

KEVIN HARRIS: I think that the philosophical term for that time management system is “Jan” at least to a big extent. We all know that. Question number two:

Dr Craig, In the first philosophical argument for the second premise of the kalam – the proofs and defenses – we try to invalidate the existence of an actual infinite by illustrating different situations in which absurdities result. One example is Hilbert's Hotel where we are shown that you cannot have an infinite number of rooms due to contradictions that result from different operations. Why does this prove that there can be no actually infinite qualities in any situation rather than only prove that rooms in a hotel are the sort of things that cannot be of an actually infinite quantity. Objects can be removed, standing in contradiction to Cantorean set theory, so it makes sense that they cannot be actually infinite. But we cannot remove or divide time. Items in the set of past events. So it seems to be a different kind of thing. How can we translate the findings of a thought experiment applied to objects to time?

DR. CRAIG: I think that the reason that the conclusion can be generalized is because there's nothing about the illustration of a hotel that is peculiar to the argument. Indeed, I provide numerous different illustrations that are arbitrarily chosen to show the absurdity of an actually infinite number of things. So these are not limited simply to rooms in a hotel. With regard to the series of past events, we can imagine, for example, taking mentally every other event into the past and comparing that with all of the events in the past and asking which one is the greater series. And it turns out that they're exactly the same. And that's the same situation that you have with Hilbert’s Hotel and moving guests around with regard to events in the past. You just do it as a thought experiment.

KEVIN HARRIS: Question number three:

Hello, Dr Craig. If I'm not mistaken you have stated before that salvation is not confined to a specific denomination of Christianity. As a fellow Protestant, my question to you would be whether the other main denominations (like Catholicism and Orthodoxy) would agree with that statement or declare that salvation can only be obtained through their view. Take, for example, the Catholic view of justification. It is written in Trent that one who does not believe that good works merit an increase of grace shall be accursed from God. In no way do I want to discount the multitude of things that we agree on, especially in the current political and cultural climate, but are we naive to think that we all agree that each other are saved? Thank you for your time and ministry, James

DR. CRAIG: I think the answer, at least for Catholicism (I can't speak for Orthodoxy; I don't know it well enough), the contemporary Catholic attitude is that Protestants are what they call separated brethren – that they are indeed recipients of salvation and so forth, but they just don't understand that they need to be part of the institutional Catholic Church which is the body of Christ on Earth. So Catholics would say it would be only in the case of someone who recognizes that the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church of God, the body of Christ, and who refuses to join it that would be condemned. But for Protestants like James and me who don't recognize the Roman Catholic Church as identical to the Church of Jesus Christ or the body of Christ, we would be regarded as brethren, but separated brethren.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Hi, Dr. Craig. As I was reading through the book of Romans I couldn't help but notice the close relationship between justification and adoption especially after recently finishing your work on the atonement. I was forced to dig a little deeper into the forensic nature of adoption as well. The term “adoption” that is used by Paul has a Greco-Roman background that lines up well with the penal substitutionary theories of the atonement because adoption was also a legal procedure that took place in the ancient world. My question: Is there any connection between justification and adoption in this forensic sense? Or am I simply reading too much legal stuff into the text? Mike

DR. CRAIG: I don't think Mike is reading too much legal stuff into the text at all. He is absolutely right that not only is justification in Paul a forensic term – and for those who don't understand that, what that means is that justification means God's declaring you to be pardoned of your sin and he imputes to you the righteousness of God. But it doesn't mean there's an instant moral transformation in your life. It's very like a legal pardon where a criminal who is pardoned by the governor or the president becomes forensically innocent. He is not guilty. His condemnation is reversed or annulled, and he is now legally guiltless. But that doesn't mean he suddenly becomes a virtuous person. That's the forensic concept of pardon and justification. Mike is quite right that there's a number of other motifs that also draw on this legal terminology, like adoption. You don't biologically become the child of someone else in virtue of adoption, but you do become legally their child and therefore heir to their estate because of this new change or switch in your legal status. Another one that Mike would be interested in looking into would be citizenship. In the New Testament, we become citizens of God's kingdom. This is also a legal status where even though you may not be ethnically or nationally part of a certain group, you can become a citizen. There's a number of these legal motifs all connected with justification and the benefits that accrue to us as redeemed persons that are contained in the New Testament.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Dear Dr. Craig, My question is only hypothetical and asked out of curiosity. We all know and believe that Jesus died and rose again, but if he had not died back in the early first century would he still be alive today? I believe he had a perfect body as did Adam before the Fall. He never did sin and was born supernaturally, so I have no reason to think he had a fallen body unless it compromised his ability to be the perfect sacrifice for atonement. Thank you, Lawrence.

Interesting.

DR. CRAIG: You may think Lawrence's question is just crackers. If Jesus hadn't died in the first century, would he still be around today? But actually I think it's a really good question, and my answer to Lawrence would be, no, he would have died naturally because he was mortal. He was just like us. He had a mortal body. So I do not think that Jesus had some kind of an immortal body during his earthly life. That was a measure of how far he had condescended to take on our human state. But here's the extra wrinkle that's especially interesting. I think that Adam was mortal prior to the Fall. As a result of my work on the historical Adam, I have changed my mind about Adam's status prior to the Fall. It seems to me that the Scriptures teach that Adam, in virtue of being created out of the dust of the Earth, had a natural, mortal body, and that the death that he was warned of by God should he sin was spiritual death. And that's why Adam and Eve didn't just fall over dead when they sinned. They died spiritually. They experienced spiritual alienation from God and hence their shame and their hiding from God. But they didn't drop over dead. That's also why in the Garden there is a Tree of Life. Why would you need a Tree of Life to confer immortality if you are naturally immortal prior to the Fall? And so once Adam sins, God drives him out of the Garden lest they eat the Tree of Life and achieve immortality in that way. So it seems to me that Adam and Eve were created with natural, mortal bodies, that the consequence of their sin was spiritual death and separation from God, and that therefore Jesus Christ being fully human like us also had a mortal body. Therefore, had he not been crucified or executed in the first century he would have died after a natural lifespan.

KEVIN HARRIS: When I read that question, a couple of things occurred to me about Jesus’ body. The Scripture says he was hungry on a couple of occasions, and also said that apparently he was tired – so tired in the boat that the storm didn't even wake him up. Whether or not a glorified body gets hungry or tired is just speculation.

DR. CRAIG: And, of course, we're overlooking the most obvious, and that is that he died! He was mortal, so he could be killed. So I think you're quite right in all of those ways. It shows that Jesus fully identified with our humanity.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Dear Dr. Craig, You recently said, “I don't think that the reason God is good and all-powerful is because he stands in some exemplification relation to an abstract object Goodness or All-powerfulness.”

That’s a quote from you there, Bill.

Could you explain the reason God is good or all-powerful or all-knowing within your anti-realism framework? How can these predications we make of God be true if we reject realism, including an Aristotelian realism with regard to God's essential properties? I'm struggling to see how we wouldn't be left with something akin to a truthmaker account of divine simplicity ala Brower. Thank you for all you do. Your work has been instrumental in my theological and philosophical development. Jonathan

DR. CRAIG: I fear that Jonathan is over-philosophizing about these things. When we ask why the dog is brown, it explains nothing to say that the dog stands in an exemplification relationship to a colorless abstract object beyond time and space. Or if we ask “Why is Davante Adams fast?” it doesn't help to give some sort of exemplification account to Fastness. The dog is brown because he reflects certain of the light spectrum – certain facets of the spectrum. Davante Adams is fast because he's well-built and muscular and can move down the football field in a short amount of time. I just don't think that you need to try to provide these sort of metaphysical accounts. I don't think they really explain anything, and I don't think they're necessary. So when he says, “How can the predications we make of God be true?”, well, the way they're true is that they correspond with reality. It's true that God is omnipotent because God is omnipotent, and it's true that he's omniscient because he is omniscient, and nothing more, I think, needs to be said.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Hi, Dr. Craig. I hope your systematic philosophical theology project is going well. The question I'd like to ask has caused me much confusion. In one of your Defenders classes (which I am extremely grateful for) I recall you explaining the meaning of the word “is.” I believe you distinguish between using “is” as a means of identifying as something and “is” as a means of possessing a property. I apologize if I got that distinction wrong. You proceeded to use the example “God is love.” I think this is a widely misunderstood topic as I speak from personal experience. I always was under the impression that when we say “God is love” we mean that wherever love exists, God is present. Is this a misinterpretation of 1 John 4:8? Is love merely a property held by God in a perfect fashion, or is love some sort of a manifestation of God himself? In Christ's love, Christian, Talbot School of Theology.

DR. CRAIG: Here Christian helps to identify these two different meanings of the word “is.” One is the “is of identity.” So, for example, when I say “Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens” that is an “is of identity.” The other is the “is of predication.” When you say something like “Tom Brady is a great quarterback” you are ascribing to Tom Brady the property of being a great quarterback, or you're applying that predicate to him. So the question is: When John says “God is love” how are we to understand that? Well, it's clearly not a statement of identity. He's not saying that love is God. Rather, it seems to me that he's saying that God is essentially loving – that this is an essential property of God. Now, that doesn't exclude that when we experience love in human relationships that somehow this is manifesting God, but I don't think that's what the statement means. It seems to me that it's an “is of predication.”

KEVIN HARRIS: Got this question from Jack. It's short and sweet. He says, “What are the essential beliefs required for salvation?”

DR. CRAIG: Well, this is really difficult because I think that this is relative to your time and place. For example, for people living at the time of Abraham, they didn't have to believe in Jesus Christ or his substitutionary atonement. Christ had not come. There wasn't even the promise of a Messiah, and there was no law either. The law of Moses hadn't been given. There was no system of Levitical sacrifices. So what they had to believe was very minimal. Genesis and Paul say that “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” That is to say, Abraham believed the revelation that God gave to him, the promise of land, an heir, and posterity, and this was reckoned to him as righteousness. So what Abraham had to believe to be saved was very different from what someone today would have to believe. For someone living in the post-Christian era, I think that it would involve a response to God's natural revelation in nature whether he's heard the Gospel or not, to believe that there is an eternal creator of the universe whose moral law is written on our hearts and to whom we are responsible and culpable for our sins. But then for someone who's heard the Gospel then I think more is demanded. Paul says, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.” I think Paul would say that these are not merely sufficient but necessary conditions for salvation for someone who has heard the Gospel. So belief in the deity of Christ and in his historical resurrection, it seems to me would be essential to salvation for someone who's heard the Gospel and understood it, as well as belief in Christ's death on the cross for your sins. So you would have to believe that God exists, that you are morally culpable before God for the sins that you have committed, that Christ is God incarnate, that he died for your sins, and that God raised him from the dead, and that by placing your faith in Christ you appropriate the benefits of Christ’s atoning death. Those would seem to me to be the real essentials of salvation, but only for someone who has fully understood and heard the Gospel.

KEVIN HARRIS: Couple of more questions. This says,

Hi, Dr Craig. Writing from Costa Rica. While studying Paul's speech in Antioch of Pisidia about Jesus' fulfillment of the prophecies in the Old Testament [he quotes Acts 13], it strikes me: Why do you not use Jesus’ fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies as an argument in favor of the existence of God and particularly on the truth of Christianity? By the way, I'm really enjoying the Equip courses.^[1] Thanks for making this incredible resource available for free. I continue to be amazed by your ministry. Thanks. Alonso, Costa Rica.

DR. CRAIG: Thank you, Alonso, for that letter and question. I'm so delighted that you found these Equip courses and are going through them. The only reason I haven't appealed to Old Testament prophecies is because I haven't worked in this area. We all have to pick areas of specializations to work in, and this was not one that I chose. Interestingly enough, after I finished my work in Birmingham on the kalam cosmological argument, I actually did consider applying for a Lady Davis Fellowship to go to Hebrew University in Israel and to work on this question of Old Testament Messianic prophecies, but it never came to pass and I wound up going to Germany to work with Pannenberg on the resurrection of Jesus.

KEVIN HARRIS: Final question today.

Dear Dr. Craig. I'm Lucas. I'm 15 years old, and I live in Brazil. I learned that there are at least 10 different interpretations of so-called quantum physics (which I'm extremely layman of, by the way). My question is this: Of these 10 possible interpretations, is there one that is harmful to the Christian faith in terms of the existence of God? I would like you to know that because of your work guided by the Holy Spirit my faith has been growing more and more and believe it or not I started studying the English language because of you. Lucas in Brazil.

DR. CRAIG: Very good, Lucas. I think you are so wise to master the English language and become fluent in English because the resources available to you in English are just vastly, vastly greater than what you'll find in Portuguese. So you are very wise to embark on this language learning project. In terms of your question, I can't think of any reason to think that any of these 10 alternative physical interpretations of quantum theory would be inimical to the existence of God. God is not a physical entity and therefore he is not described by the equations of quantum mechanics. He transcends the physical world. So I just can't see any significance for God's existence in the adoption of any of these alternative physical interpretations of quantum physics.

KEVIN HARRIS: I want to remind our viewers to check out the Question of the Week that you write. It drops every Monday at ReasonableFaith.org.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I just want to say what a privilege it is to receive these questions, to hear the way in which people are interacting and reflecting on these questions and this material and wrestling honestly with them. It is to their commendation. I really appreciate all of our readers who look at the Question of the Week and then those who submit questions themselves. Thank you.^[2]