Standards for Revelation

There remains, then, only to discern what, if any, are the words of the designer to humanity. I do not pretend to have a sufficient list of criteria, but I hope to present here a preliminary list of necessary criteria for judging between what are the words of us and what could be the words of one above us. A true "scripture" must at least be...

1) ...completely true.

I argued for this point previously. If it is at some point false, then we--presumably--have no standard but ourselves to judge which parts are true and which are false. If we set ourselves up as a reliable standard, then there is no sense in going this route at all.

2) ...internally consistent.

This is demanded by the first requirement. If something is internally inconsistent, that is, it is self-contradictory, then it must necessarily be false at that point, because one of its two claims must be false.

3) ...externally consistent.

Our hope is that the scripture is written by one who is knowledgeable about the world we live in. He would then be qualified and capable of writing about this world without error. We therefore expect such a scripture to be consistent with what is true in our world. This standard is somewhat dangerous to apply, because we ourselves have judgments about this world which are not always completely correct. So if I disagree with a scripture, and I disagree because I am wrong about the world and it is right, can I really say that it is wrong about the world?

4) ...authoritative.

We seek words from one who designed our world, from one who knows it intimately. His knowledge of the world is not dependent upon that of others; it is self-sufficient. When these words claim, "This is so," then we should not be surprised when we do not see, "This is so because this great thinker has said that," or, "This is so because we see that and that are so," but simply, "This is so," because he has no need to appeal to any other standard but himself.

The Desirability of Revelation

Before my extended absence and my couple digressions onto other loosely related topics, I was examining what conclusions can be drawn after having admitted that all of the world before us exhibits form which seems to require its design by some intelligence. Supposing this, there is actually very little that can be concluded with any confidence. I suggested the possibility of direct revelation from the intelligence.

I can imagine many would shirk at such a suggestion, preferring pure reason and universal experience to the words offered of one or more people. We recognize that in our world, the words of people are unreliable. There is a thing called lying, and because such a thing is possible we cannot always trust everything that everyone says. The mere fact that two people may say two different things which are exclusive of one another is sufficient proof of this. There are a lot of "scriptures" out there, and they can't all be right, and there's no way of knowing whether the authors are lying or not, so there's no good reason to trust them. However, it should also be noted that pure reason and experience are deceptive as well. Over the ages, philosophies inspired by reason have been just as multitudinous as religions inspired by the words of others. We recognize that appearances can be deceiving because appearances, too, can lead us to contradictions. There is nothing more or less perfect about reason--on this criteria alone--than about revelation, yet philosophy has for a long time hoped and assumed that it is.

Consider, however, the words of the intelligence, if there are any available. For convenience, I will refer to the intelligence in the singular masculine. When talking about an intelligent designer, we have implicitly assumed that this intelligence is qualitatively similar to that shared by human beings if not quantitatively. One peculiar feature of this intelligence is the ability of communication, that the ideas of one intelligent being can be shared with another such being. I may at times use the concept of "words" interchangeably with "ideas" as used in the preceding sentence; do not be surprised by this. Therefore, communication between an intelligent designer and humanity is at least not inherently impossible.

Now, the words of the designer are either fully true, at some point false, or have no truth value at all--that is, it is a collection of words either with no meaning or it is purely subjective. I am hesitant to say this last option is a real option to be considered, but for the benefit of the doubt I'll let it stand. Whatever the case, in all but the first option, these words would be inadequate for our purposes. We desire truth. If the intelligence's words are at some point false, then to find truth we would need a measure by which to judge his words; the best candidate, it seems, is the reason and experience of man, and if we go with that, we may as well have trusted that from the beginning. If the intelligence's words have no truth value at all, then of course they will be worthless for finding truth. Supposing his words are false or foolishness (or even true), this still provides us with some small glimpse into the nature of the intelligence that we are dealing with. Namely, we know that he is unreliable. If he is unreliable, is there any reason to suppose that that which he shaped will be more reliable and more knowable than he? Yet it was the reliable nature of the patterns of the world that led toward an intelligent designer in the first place. The argument is loose, I concede, but on the surface our limited assumption of an intelligent designer seems more consistent with his being reliable.

If he is reliable, then his words are to be trusted above all else. Having been the designer of this world, his knowledge of the world would be extensive and complete; he could not be deceived in this regard. I suspect that no one is really afraid that, if an intelligent designer chose to speak with humanity, that he would somehow get his words all wrong. The real fear is that humanity, upon reception, has changed these words around, or that humanity calls revelation that which is not at all. This is the root of the distrust of "scriptures." If we could be confident in finding some imparting of words from the designer to the designed, then in those claims, at least, we may be assured of having found answers to these uncertainties. Our hope is that, if the designer has chosen to give any words at all, its words are sufficient for living in this world, since he would, after all, know the world well enough to know what was sufficient for life in it.

What I Believe About Origins

Since there has been some request for this, I will lay forth the extent of my convictions regarding the origin of our world. I feel, though, that in part doing so now is putting the cart before the horse, so to speak, and therefore I share my views only after this exhortation. Origins is a hotly contested topic, and it is often a make-or-break view to hold. As such, I sense the temptation arising to first hear the particulars of my view, compare it against the particulars of your own views, evaluate how closely the two are in agreement, and afterwards attribute me credence in proportion to my agreement with you on this one issue. Put simply, if I make a claim about how we came to be, and you think it's preposterous to even think that way, you will call me crazy and assume everything else I say is crazy, too. This is common practice, and often the principle holds true, but I claim it is not always that simple, and I request that you hear me out even so.

What do I believe? I believe the Bible is inerrant as originally written, and I furthermore believe that the Bible as we have it is close enough to its original writing to be relied upon. Inerrancy means that it is true and free from error in its primary purposes--to demonstrate the character of God and His relationship to His world--and in its secondary purposes, including describing historical events. Therefore, anything which God's Word says is true must be, and any claim which contradicts His Words must be false.

We begin with Genesis 1, which says that God created the heavens and the earth. Right away we see that the world is a creation of God's, and is therefore subject to Him. It came into being, it is temporal, it is finite, it is not eternal, it is not co-existent with God, and furthermore it is not the same as God. The account goes on to describe how features of the world were created, and five evenings and mornings occurred between them, and after the sixth evening and morning we are told God rested from His work. Many claim that the use of days is figurative in this passage, and could actually refer to eons; the use of the word, not to mention the emphasis placed on evenings and mornings, seems to rule out this possibility from critical analysis. Many claim that the whole passage is figurative, such as the poetry found elsewhere in the Bible. There is poetry in the Bible which should be read as poetry; if you compare this passage with other poetry, you see that they are not at all the same in style. The Genesis account is written much like the history accounts. So yes, I hold to six-day creationism.

I am a little less concerned about the particular age of the world, that is, the amount of time spanning between the beginning of history and now. Whether God created the world or the world created itself has incredible theological and philosophical consequences which cannot be taken lightly. A couple thousand years, on the other hand, don't add up to that much. From what I understand, the estimate of 6,000 years was derived from genuine Biblical scholarship, and for that I tend to prefer that estimate.

As was hinted, I hold that God is eternal, and by eternal I mean not only that which is without beginning nor end, but that which is atemporal: God does not flow with time, as we do, but transcends time itself. In the act of creation, God created time itself with a definite, historical beginning. The created world is finite, and God alone is infinite. The finite is separate from the infinite--not to say that they have no communion between them, but they are not the same essence.

When humankind was created, we were created in the image of God, possessing many His qualities in a finite instantiation. We were without sin but not incapable of sin, with the freedom to choose either dependence upon our Creator or rebellion against Him. Having chosen to assert our own authority over our lives, we became enslaved to this decision, and thus humanity is fully separated from God.

While this is probably not the "scientific" beliefs you were expecting to hear, I nevertheless consider these truths to be of the utmost importance in understanding ourselves and the world around us.

Returning to "scientific" beliefs, some time following all of this, God caused a great flood to cover the earth. Now, there has been not a little speculation about the nature of the earth prior to man's fall, between the fall and this flood, and following the flood. I suspend judgment on much of these details. However, I will say that this flood was a catastrophe the likes of which was never seen before or since, and would naturally cause great changes to the earth. Regarding the ark which Noah was commanded to build and fill with the creatures of the earth, it seems reasonable to suspect that Noah brought on board a pair from every high-level classification of animals, and from these the mechanisms of speciation have produced the diversity we find today. As for the dinosaurs, a lot could be explained by simply claiming, "They were not permitted on the ark and so became extinct in the floodwaters." There is no indication of this at all, so we are led to believe that the extinction must have happened either prior to the flood or after it, but not as a result of it.

I am sure you will not be satisfied with the account I have laid forth. However, as I said at first, I did not want to lay all of this out all at once at this time.