The Outsider Test for No Faith and A Response to Dr. Craig Blomberg

This is a response to some of the thoughts Dr. Craig Blomberg kindly offered to John and to DC in general. In this post I also include a brief thought about John's "Outsider Test" applied to the position of atheism (or any brand of nontheism, if you'd like).

Before I begin addressing Dr. Blomberg's post, I would first like to comment on John's outsider test for faith, which expresses to a believer to test his or her worldview from the point of skepticism (not atheism). As such, John has defined clearly that his proposed method should be attempted by the religious, but since the test presumes agnosticism, it would seem logical for the atheist to satisfy that particular worldview from skepticism.

Three good categories of questions for atheists from the skeptical point of view should be:

1) If atheism is true, can the atheist justify this? Can he prove the nonexistence of God? If the atheist claims he is not burdened with such proof, is this properly justified?

2) Since God is not the source of morals, where do morals come from, if they in fact exist with any ties to reality whatsoever?

3) Has the atheist properly analyzed and rejected all definition of God (or gods) offered by the various faiths? What is the atheist's reasons for rejecting these Gods and the faith claims of the major religions? Should the atheist consider the possibility of a God or Gods of a definition that is either not yet known or not yet in wide acceptance?

John and I discussed these questions (and many more) on our trip to the conference of the Evangelical Society last month. Even at the ETS, the two of us spoke and listened to William Lane Craig, Paul Copan, Gary Habermas, and many other well-known Christians, and were challenged by the tough questions they posed. There's no better way to take the "outsider test" for "no faith" than to discuss our position with the greatest scholars outside of our own views and test our positions against theirs. I would invite all skeptics reading this blog to not only continue to challenge the tenants of faith, but also to listen and seriously consider the critiques offered by the best of those outside us who are willing to hold civil discourse.

Who knows? Some of you may join us in the future in jumping into the "lion's den" of the brightest outside your points of view at welcoming conferences such as the ETS! You may even make a friend or ten, as we did, and nothing can be better than to have a friend with whom you can constantly share important challenges but maintain the kindness that comes with an honest analysis of truth beyond the character and particular beliefs of the person with whom you disagree.

One of these important figures outside of our worldview, Dr. Craig Blomberg, offered a testimony in response to John's call for critique. In the spirit of analyzing truth, I will offer my own thoughts to what Dr. Blomberg has written.

I find it interesting that Dr. Blomberg regards theistic evolution and Old-Earth Creationism as valid positions. I would, however, wonder what his view of man is - particularly of Adam and Eve - and whether it is consistent with this position. Did God create humans separately, and if so, why all the extra hullabaloo with the slow, painful evolution of the "lower" animals? And if man is God's pinnacle of this mode of creation, in what way did God breathe life into Adam and Eve, who are described in Genesis as beings who are created and life-breathed from the dust as both male and female, separated by Adam's rib, and from whom all humanity has descended? I have never seen a consistent perspective; since I am not interested in creation vs. evolution, I have not read many perspectives (especially Theistic Evolution), so I would be interested in hearing how his view is consistent with his belief in Scripture.

I find it interesting that, as a Lutheran, Dr. Blomberg quotes C.S. Lewis: 'First, there will be three surprises in heaven: who’s there, who’s not there, and there I’m there! Second, there are only two kinds of people in the world—those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “thy will be done.”' For Dr. Lewis' first point, I've always wondered - even while I read him as a Christian - why there should be any surprise at all that one is in Heaven. As a Lutheran, I'm certain Dr. Blomberg would agree that the grace of God is an undeserved gift sent free from consideration of the depravity of the believer, but Lewis does not look at this from a worldly point of view - he looks at it from the point of view of being in Heaven. If one is to hold to the eternal security of the salvation of believers through the effect of God's sovereign will and grace, one should not at all be surprised in a heavenly position.

Furthermore, Lewis' second point holds some troubling theological concepts. Ultimately, I do realize that it is the Reformed position (such as Luther's) to maintain that the bondage of the will to sin is what damns the sinner, but ultimately, the sovereign choice of God, according to e.g. Romans 9, is what decides the fate of the damned. Ultimately, the pots made for common use destined for wrath that Romans 9 describes do not make themselves; God is the potter, man is the clay, and Paul is explicit and clear about this when he illustrates with the example of Pharaoh: "for this reason I have raised you up." So, ultimately, Christ would say to those on both his left and right hand side: "My will be done."

This is the Bible's solution to the problem of evil that troubles Dr. Blomberg, and I would wonder how he would respond to this Reformed interpretation that Luther shared. Ultimately, evil action was decreed by God for the purposes of demonstrating His wrath and justice, as the potter/clay analogy demonstrates. Although the Reformers make clear that man is the autonomous source of this evil (so as to save God from directly working it), it is ultimately God's decree of man's bondage to sin through the fall of Adam that causes evil, and man by no power of his own choice - due to his totally depraved nature, of which Dr. Blomberg agrees - can free himself from this predicament. This even blocks the free choice of Christ, made clear by Luther in "Bondage of the Will," and in John 6, in which the throng of 5000 witnessing the miracles of Christ are whittled to twelve somewhat befuddled disciples through Christ's declaration that none may come to Him unless it is first granted by the Father.

Evil itself is even created by God, as Isaiah 45:7 declares (and before anyone harps on the "calamity" translation, the Hebrew in question is used elsewhere to describe every sin in the Ten Commandments, and fits the contrast between "peace"- which translates "peace with God" and is contrasted with the sense of "evil" implied, since calamity does not contrast properly in the context of the verse). I would be interested in seeing how this is reconciled with a good God and a God of love as described elsewhere Biblically; even resorting to the necessity of God's desire to demonstrate His justice, as Paul does in Romans, can't work, because it seems quite inconsistent logically with another part of God's identity as described in the Bible.

On his question of atheistic evolution and morality, doesn't the point Dr. Blomberg raises commit the (logical) genetic fallacy? Why can't evolution produce moral beings from nonmoral beings, just as it produced beings that lived (even partially) on land versus beings that lived in water?

I am interested in the Christian response to what I have written - and even the Skeptic response, since I know that John challenges (even as a fellow nonbeliever) my Reformed view of the Bible versus an Arminian view. I appreciate the civility shown in my earlier posts, and am looking forward to a like lively and respectful discussion following this post.