Questions on Personal Causation, Time, and Christology

Answers to questions on personal causation, God and time, and Dr Craig's current study on the nature of Christ.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question:

Dear Professor Craig, my Bible study in Boise, Idaho is going through On Guard. We have grandmothers, parents, and other couples in the group. Our kids play upstairs while we discuss your book, and during discussion tonight one of the other guys (a computational mathematician) raised an objection to the kalam. It reminded me of your interaction with Wes Morriston on this very objection. Morriston argues that the kalam fails to establish a personal creator of the universe. Instead, for all it shows the cause might be non-personal. His basic idea is that God's timeless intention to create a universe must be sufficient for the effect in which case God's intention to create is timeless and eternal. This is sufficient for a universe that is likewise eternal. If somehow a personal cause could nonetheless cause a universe with the beginning then it's not clear why a non-personal cause cannot do the same. You respond that Morriston fails to distinguish between God's timeless intention to create a temporal universe and God's exercising causal powers to bring about the universe. The actual exercise of the causal powers involves, or is, an intrinsic change to God bringing him into time with the creation of the universe. Thus even though the intention to create is eternal, the actual exercise of the causal powers is a temporal event producing a temporal effect – a universe with a beginning. Your response to Morriston seems to me a bit too quick, however. It fails to appreciate Morriston’s point that there doesn't seem to be a big enough difference between personal and non-personal causes. If the personal cause is atemporal sans the universe, I think the kalam is sound, and so do the others in my Bible study. There is a cause of the universe. But we are not sure whether the cause must be personal. To my mind, the kalam has a better shot at showing there is a personal cause than any other theistic argument, and whether the cause is personal is of utmost importance. All the best. Torrance, United States

DR. CRAIG: Well, thank you, Torrance, for this very thoughtful question. And I am thrilled to hear that you've got all these folks going through On Guard together. Now, I'm rather puzzled by Torrance's objection here. You notice what he says. As I look at the question he sent, the basic idea of Morriston’s objection, he says, is that “God's timeless intention to create is sufficient for a universe that is likewise eternal.” But that's not the question. We're not talking about whether or not a timeless cause can produce an eternal universe. We want to know if a timeless cause can produce a universe with a beginning – one that comes into existence a finite time ago. And here it seems to me that there is a vast difference between a personal cause and a non-personal cause. As the medieval Islamic theologian al-Ghazali emphasized, it is the very function of free will to be able to choose to create an effect without any antecedent determining conditions so that a free agent can spontaneously produce an effect with a beginning even though there are no antecedent determining conditions for that. But a non-personal, mechanically operating cause cannot do that. Either the causally sufficient conditions are there or they are not. If they are there, you will have the universe from eternity, as Torrence said, or you will not get a universe at all. But the only way to get a universe with a beginning from an atemporal, timeless cause is for that cause to be personal – to be a free agent endowed with freedom of the will and therefore able to spontaneously produce a cause with a beginning. So I find al Ghazali’s argument here for the personhood of the first cause of the universe to be quite convincing.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dr. Craig, When you physically die, are you still in time? George, United States

DR. CRAIG: Certainly when we have our resurrection bodies in the new heavens and the new Earth we will be in time because a resurrection body is the paradigm of dynamic activity and change. So clearly we will be temporal in the eschaton when we have resurrection bodies. But what about in that intermediate state in between the death and the resurrection of the body? Are we still in time? Well, there it seems to me that as human beings who lose our bodies in this intermediate state our minds would still be in time because there would still be a succession of consciousness – a succession of thoughts in consciousness. Paul describes this interval, this intermediate state, as fellowship with Christ – to go and be with Christ, he says, and that's far better than this earthly existence. So I think that these people who are in the intermediate state are quite definitely in time waiting for the return of Christ and the eventual resurrection of the body. It's not as though they become timeless. Time continues to pass and would be charted by a succession of the contents of consciousness as they wait for the resurrection of their bodies.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK. Next question,

Dr. Craig, Is it possible for things or places to be haunted? I used to think this was silly because I can think of no way for a non-physical entity to attach itself to a physical thing. But then I think about the non-physical soul being attached to our physical bodies and I ask what's the difference? Thank you, sir. Dan, United States

DR. CRAIG: The secular philosopher Gilbert Ryle once characterized the soul as the ghost in the machine. So he, like Dan, also thought of a ghost and the soul as being rather similar. I think that Dan is right that insofar as the soul inhabits a physical body and even moves that body and senses the world through that body, there isn't any problem with the notion of an immaterial being being associated with physical objects. The problem is that there aren't any such thing as ghosts. There are such a thing as souls, but there are not spirits of the dead that continue to linger on Earth and haunt places. So I think Dan is right that there isn't any problem with a non-physical entity being involved with physical objects. It's simply that the Bible teaches that when we die our souls go either to Hades or to Paradise as we wait for the resurrection of our bodies. But the spirits of the dead are not haunting places. Now, having said that, I should though add that I also believe that the New Testament does teach the reality of demonic spirits; that is to say, unembodied demonic spiritual beings who could well be involved in what are mislabeled as hauntings or thought of as ghosts. These demonic spirits are definitely not spirits of the departed dead. They're not ghosts. They would be more like fallen angels which are immaterial intellectual substances. And I don't think we should dismiss that as just idle superstition. For that reason, I advise people to stay away from any activities involving the occult lest they entangle themselves in these demonic spirits.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dr. Craig, Is it possible for a God that is both intrinsically and extrinsically changeless to create and interact with an ever-changing series of events and still remain changeless intrinsically and extrinsically? In other words, can a timeless God create an effect that is temporal and still remain timeless, or is a timeless God only able to create eternal effects? David, United States

DR. CRAIG: If David will look at my work on divine eternity he will see that I argue that since the moment of creation God must be in time because God cannot remain intrinsically and extrinsically changeless while he is causally related to things that are themselves constantly changing. So, for example, at the moment of creation God acquires a new relation that he did not stand in before because there was no before, namely the relation of coexisting with the universe or of being the Lord of the universe. This is a new relation, and so God changes extrinsically in his relations at the moment of creation. Similarly, I would say that God even changes intrinsically in non-essential ways in virtue of being causally related to the things in creation. He now creates one event and then a moment later he creates the next event and then a moment later the next event so that God's causal relations with the created things are constantly changing as these things are changing. And that would involve, I think, intrinsic change in God in his exercises of causal power. Also, if you think about God's omniscience, at every moment, God would be changing intrinsically in his knowledge of what is happening now. He would know, for example, at a certain moment now it is 3:00, and then he would know it is now 3:01, and then it is now 3:02. And that is an intrinsic change in God's knowledge. So while God would be omniscient in knowing all truths at any moment at which he exists, he would have changing knowledge as past tense truths become true, present tense truths then become false, and so on. So I do think that if God is causally related to changing things – changing events – that he himself cannot exist timelessly.

KEVIN HARRIS: One more question today. He says,

Dr. Craig, My friend is trapped in a loop. He said that science has shown that the only reality that exists is physical reality. I know that is false, but I don't know how to explain that to him. Saying that science has shown that the only reality is physical is like putting your cart before the horse. Can you please help me with a demonstration of why his position is false? Karim, Luxembourg

DR. CRAIG: I think that perhaps the quickest way to show that this is false is to explain that science itself is up to its neck in the existence of mathematical and other abstract objects which are non-physical. This was a point that was made very forcefully by the American naturalist philosopher W. V. O. Quine. Quine, as a naturalist, was only committed to the things that modern physical science obligated him to believe in. For him, his metaphysics was simply an extension of the natural physical sciences. Quine, despite his naturalism, was not a materialist or a physicalist because he believed that the truth of science committed himself to the reality of immaterial mathematical objects like numbers and sets and matrices and equations and things of that sort. Science is just permeated with mathematics, and yet clearly mathematical entities are not physical entities. It's so interesting, this question from Karim, that in the case of someone like Quine and other contemporary Platonists, it is precisely modern science that makes them believe in non-physical realities. It is because of modern science that they are not materialists or physicalists.

KEVIN HARRIS: Oh, by the way, Bill, I know that you're busy writing and wondered where you were in your writing and study these days. What topic are you on?

DR. CRAIG: Well, I am very pleased to say that I have now finished volume three of my systematic philosophical theology, and I have actually commenced writing volume four which is on the doctrine of Christ. So I am studying specifically the person of Christ. The central issue here will be the incarnation – how do you make sense of the biblical claim that Jesus Christ is both God and man? How do you put together these two so diverse natures as divinity and humanity in a single person? So I've been reading a lot of the church fathers lately, between the Council of Nicea and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 which issued the definition of faith that in Christ there is one person who shares two complete natures. Chalcedon means to exclude two errors on either end. They want to exclude any view that would divide the person of Christ into two persons – to say, well, there's a human person and there's a divine person. Chalcedon says, no, there is only one person who Christ is. And then the other error is those who would blend the natures of Christ into one and say that in Christ there is just one mixture of divinity and humanity together. Chalcedon says, no, there are two distinct natures – one divine and one human, and each of these natures is complete. Now, Chalcedon doesn't tell us how to do this. All it does is kind of set down these boundary markers for legitimate christological speculation. It tells us that anyone who wants to have an orthodox christology (or doctrine of Christ) must neither divide the person nor confound the natures. And so long as you observe those boundary markers, your christological speculation will be legitimate. So that's what I'm exploring right now – the writings of these church fathers leading up to and following the Council of Chalcedon. One of the new things that I've learned is that following the Council of Chalcedon, the Roman Emperor Justinian issued an edict, On the Orthodox Christian Faith, in which he sought to clarify the teachings of the Council of Chalcedon. In this document which was then ratified at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, Justinian inaugurates what has now come to be known as compositional christology; that is to say, that we are to think of the union of the two natures in Christ in terms of composition. This has become a heatedly debated topic among Christian philosophers on the contemporary scene. Thomas Flint, a very fine Christian philosopher, distinguishes two different models of compositional christology. On one of them, the second person of the Trinity acquires his human nature as a part, so the second person the Trinity goes from being a simple entity to being a composite entity composed of the divine nature and the human nature. The other compositional model says, no, the second person of the Trinity and his human nature are both parts of some larger composite entity that is made up of the divine nature and the human nature. The remarkable thing that Flint apparently was unaware of, and I've never seen anybody mention before, is that this compositional christology is already anticipated in 551 by the emperor Justinian in his edict On the Orthodox Christian Faith. Now, to let the cat out of the bag, I want to say that I think compositional Christianity is a wrong road. I think it's a rabbit trail that leads nowhere and has serious problems. But I was so intrigued to find that this was not only expressed by the emperor Justinian as an explication of Chalcedon but that it was actually ratified by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, which I think is very disturbing. So those are just some of the things that I am thinking about and working on right now. It is fascinating. It is stimulating, and I look forward every day to working and wrestling with these issues.

DR. CRAIG: Hello! This is William Lane Craig. I'm really excited about our spring campaign for strategic partners of Reasonable Faith. We are offering as a free premium two books, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus and The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus, both of which were previously available only in editions that cost literally several hundred dollars apiece. And now, because these books are being reprinted, we're able to offer them free to you for anyone offering a sustaining campaign gift of $75 monthly on an ongoing basis. If you're unable to give that much, we have many other fine premiums at lower levels like $50 a month, $30 a month, but this top award is so extraordinary, so unprecedented given the previously unaffordable and exorbitant price of these books that I really do hope you'll take advantage of it. This is my scholarly work done at the University of Munich on the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection, and I think it will be a real benefit to you if you can get a hold of it. So I hope you'll participate in this year’s spring campaign.^[1]