Tag Archives: Ontological Argument

Apologetics Leads to True Worship

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Apologetics and worship? Aren’t those mutually exclusive? Christian apologetics, the reasoned defense of the faith, is often seen as rather dry and clinical – a very cold, sterile niche of Christianity set aside for those kinda weird nerds or those that are a little more quarrelsome than they should be. Meanwhile, worship is of the heart, not the head, right? Well, this nerd begs to differ. Worship is certainly more than feelings. I would dare say that many mistake the beat of a good tune for the moving of the Spirit of God, but I digress….

In studying the ontological argument the past few weeks, I have read through quite a few references on it. Most address the validity of it, the objections to it, responses to those objections, and so on. But Doug Groothuis was the only one to remind the reader that this argument for the existence of God was originally part of a prayer. Says Groothuis: “Anselm’s version of the argument was offered as part of a prayer. He earnestly sought to offer an argument to God that would convince “the fool” of Psalm 14 that God must exist. So, the chapel and the study become the same room. The existence of the greatest possible being should compel our worship, since no greater being is possible and we are far lesser beings than this being.”[1]

But is this joining of the study and the chapel unique to this one argument? Hardly. It’s difficult  to really think of the axiological argument (the moral argument), without thinking of the perfect justice of God. And as praiseworthy as that attribute of God is, that also reminds us of how far we fall short of His standard and are rightly condemned by that perfect justice [Rom 3:10,23]. But then we are reminded of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, “once for all” [Heb 7:27], that we may be reconciled to God [2Cor 5:18-21], not because of our own works [Ti 3:5], blind as we were on our own, but only because of God’s grace [Eph 2:8-9]. And we can joyously sing with that former slave-trader John Newton:

“Amazing grace! how sweet the sound!
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.”

The teleological argument (the design argument) has always made such perfect sense to me as an engineer who designs things. How could I not recognize the handiwork of the Master Designer in everything from the grand scale of the finely-tuned cosmos [Ps19:1-2] to the layered mysteries of genetics [Ps 139:14]?  Surely, I recognize the signature of Him whose work astounds me afresh the closer I study it! And then, recognizing the staggering heights of power and knowledge we speak of when we bandy about words like omnipotence and omniscience, what could be more fitting than that beautiful hymn “How Great Thou Art”? ”

“O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works thy hand hath made,
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed;
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
how great thou art, how great thou art!”

The cosmological argument points us toward the necessity of a transcendent First Cause, existing beyond space and time [Col 1:17, 1Cor 2:7]. And when we work through the implications of this, words like “eternal” can’t be uttered quite so flippantly. And we join with that great hymn writer Isaac Watts in humbly approaching our Eternal God :

“Through every age, eternal God,
Thou art our rest, our safe abode;
High was thy throne ere heav’n was made,
Or earth thy humble footstool laid.

Long hadst thou reigned ere time began,
Or dust was fashioned to a man;
And long thy kingdom shall endure
When earth and time shall be no more.”

Of course, worship must be sincere, and cannot be manufactured, but worship flows out of a grateful heart convinced of who God is and what He’s done. A study of apologetics teaches us why we believe what we believe about God,  and the more we study God – His attributes, His past actions, His foretelling of future actions, His statements about Himself and what they mean – the more convinced we will be of His praiseworthiness. We tend to worship unsuitable things all too easily. It is so commonplace in our culture, that here in America, we’ve even named a common quest for fame “American Idol.” But a mind renewed and  informed by a steady diet of God’s truth can put the brakes on that idol factory of the heart, and redirect it toward the only worthy object of worship: God almighty. Yes, our minds must be involved in worship. Learning about God, if understood, necessarily leads to worship; it can do no other. So, as I get ready to leave in the morning for 3 very full days of classes and presentations from some great men of God, I encourage you to love the Lord with all your heart and soul and strength, and – yes – your mind. [Lk 10:27]

*  If you don’t see the humor in the intro graphic above, it may help to know the 2 men in the bottom of the photo are the Christian philosophers William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga. Read my original post on the ontological argument here, to find out why they might worship God as “maximally great”. 😉

[1] Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2011), p. 186-7.

Why Only One?

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The Olympians by Nicolas-André Monsiau
The Olympians by Nicolas-André Monsiau

After presenting in Honduras on the evidence for intelligent design in the genetic code, and thus the necessity of a Designer of DNA (God), one observant lady asked a good question that evening. How do we know there’s only one designer? In other words, while the argument from design can bring us from atheism to theism, what’s to say polytheism isn’t really the best explanation? She’s right – the teleological argument from design that I was presenting can’t tell us if there were multiple designers, only that the design we observe required some designer. But it is quite common for any man-made project to be divided up among a design team. In fact, on almost every project I’ve worked on in my career as an engineer, I’ve simply been one member of a design team, dealing with my area of knowledge. So does the idea of a “divine design team” of gods bear up to scrutiny? I don’t think so, and here’s why.

Part of the strength of the case for the God of the Bible is the interlocking nature of the evidence. While the evidence from design doesn’t address this particular question, other line of reasoning do. First we have to look at the law of causality: everything that begins to exist has a cause. Anything that fits in this category is considered contingent because its existence depends on something prior – its cause. A design team of angels or “lesser gods” responsible for the design we see in different natural objects would simply be an intermediate link in the chain of causation. They might be immediately responsible for the objects we investigate, but if we go back far enough, we must eventually arrive at something that does not need a prior cause because it has always existed. They would ultimately need to trace back to a non-contingent source, which we would then call God.  Even if God delegated the design of nature to a “design team” and did no specific design Himself, He would still be causally responsible for whatever was designed by them.

But one might ask if there could be multiple non-contingent beings. Let’s follow that line of reasoning. To be non-contingent (or metaphysically necessary) requires eternal existence in order to not have a prior cause.  A necessary being cannot  not exist, hence the title “necessary”. So this being can never cease to exist without all of reality that is contingent on him ceasing to exist at the same time. Therefore, no other being or group of beings could be more powerful than the one in question. For if any other being(s) could control or change the subject being, then its actions would be contingent on their actions, and he would turn out to not be a necessary being after all. For these reasons, you can’t have more than one non-contingent being in any possible reality. It’s also worth noting that the axiological argument shows that God exists due to the existence of objective moral values, which have to come from a source beyond humanity to truly be objective. But if multiple non-contingent beings existed, there would not be a single source for the objective moral values we observe. This is not to say that those values couldn’t have been established by consensus of a group of deities, but that does seem to multiply assumptions needlessly. I don’t know that we could say the axiological argument alone is sufficient proof of God’s uniqueness, but I would count it as contributing evidence.

But could we have necessary beings in different “dimensions”, “parallel universes”, or some other concept of separate but coexisting realities? This is basically just an updated idea of henotheism, the idea of locally supreme deities, applied to more abstract regions than the original geographical ones. If a god were all-powerful in his dimension, but limited to that dimension, then he wouldn’t really be necessary, even in that dimension. He would be, in effect, a caged deity contingent on that dimension’s existence and the higher deity who established that dimension. A truly necessary being must transcend all possible worlds/dimensions/realities to not be contingent.

In the end, we come to the conclusion that if God exists, He must be a non-contingent necessary being in any possible reality. We can look at the teleological argument (from design) and the various cosmological arguments (from causality) to see that God exists. Then we can look at the axiological argument (from morality) and ontological argument (from being) to see that polytheism is false and the Bible is correct when it says that “there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.“[1]

[1] 1 Corinthians 8:4-6, NASB.

The Ontological Argument

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The ThinkerLast week, I reviewed some key terms in logic as a prelude to looking at logical arguments for the existence of God. This first one is a philosophical rationale called the ontological argument. Ontology is simply the study of existence, or reality. And so the ontological argument is a line of reasoning based on the very nature of existence.

The first premise, or basis for this argument, is that it is at least possible that a maximally great being exists. This isn’t about what’s probable at this point – just what’s possible. It’s also not about whether we can know whether this being exists or not (epistemology), but simply about whether it could exist (ontology) . Now let’s define some terms. A “maximally great being” can be defined as a being possessing omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection. Omniscience is knowing all truth and only truth. Omnipotence is the ability to cause any effect not logically impossible. It is necessary, or noncontingent, existence. Moral perfection is the highest degree of moral attributes such as love, mercy, justice, etc. Where attributes conflict (i.e. mercy vs. justice), this being possesses the greatest compatible degree of each, such that any more of either trait could be considered an introduction of imperfection (i.e. the best possible combination). There is nothing self-contradictory about this concept. It is not like a square circle or a married bachelor. It is simply the spectrum of characteristics we observe in human beings extrapolated to a maximum value.

Premise 2 is that if it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world. By “possible world”, we do not simply mean another planet, but rather any alternate reality with its own forms of matter & energy, laws of physics, existence or nonexistence of life, and even existence or nonexistence of space-time itself. The set of all possible worlds would be a set of all possible versions of reality; each with one, and only one, variable different from all others. For instance, one possible world may have a slightly different gravitational constant that results in the collapse of any conceivable universe, or the impossibility of the universe ever forming. Another might have every physical variable identical to the reality we are familiar with, but with a history where Hitler won WWII. This set of possible realities is necessarily immense (practically infinite) to address every possible physical and historical alternative.

Premise 3 proposes that if a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world. This one isn’t a very intuitive step, so let’s look at it a little closer. If a maximally great being in a possible world is indeed omnipotent, then all else in that possible world is contingent, or dependent on its existence. If it is morally perfect, then it is capable of making conscious decisions, of exercising free will. In that case, this being could’ve chosen not to create anything, but simply to exist, alone. So if a maximally great being exists, there is a possible world such that only that being exists. This would then be the minimum qualification for a possible world. This being is then the one variable in common to all, that cannot be negated without eliminating that world from the set of all possible worlds. Therefore, Premise 3 logically follows, and the maximally great being exists in all possible worlds.

Premise 4 states that if a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world. What applies to the set as a whole applies to all members of the set. In logic, this is called “dictum de omni”, or the law about all – whatever is universally true of a subject must be true of everything contained in that subject. The actual world is contained in the set of all possible worlds. Therefore, premise 4 logically follows.

Premise 5 simply adds that if a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists. Not too controversial. The actual world is what exists as opposed to possible worlds that only could exist. Anything shown to exist in this actual world therefore has actual existence.

From these 5 premises follows the conclusion that a maximally great being exists. At this point, we’ve simply concluded that some being with certain characteristics necessarily exists, but what do those characteristics tell us? A necessary or noncontingent being can exist outside of space and time and is therefore immaterial. An omnipotent being could create, or cause all contingent elements of reality to exist. An omniscient being would be capable of designing the incredibly complex and very interdependent “system of systems”  we recognize as our universe. A morally perfect being would have the authority to issue decrees, judge behavior, and reward or punish as appropriate. This description aligns remarkably well with the biblical description of God, which leaves the reader with the choice of trying to refute the argument or admitting the existence of God and dealing with the consequences. Choose wisely.

Resources:

Reasonable Faith, 3rd Ed., (Crossway Books, 2008), by William Lane Craig, Chapters 3 & 4. Craig’s interpretation of Alvin Plantinga’s refinement of St. Anselm’s ontological argument was a major part of my giving this argument another chance after discounting it for years. My only departure from Craig is that in premise 3, I’ve tried to justify the jump from existence in a possible world to existence in every world without resorting to the modal logic used by Plantinga and Craig.