tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post6406681400957400988..comments2024-03-28T19:56:42.305-05:00Comments on Alexander Pruss's Blog: Inspiration and inerranceAlexander R Prusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-18179538530113588692009-03-25T08:26:00.000-05:002009-03-25T08:26:00.000-05:004. God is Love and God is Truth, Scripture says. ...4. God is Love and God is Truth, Scripture says. Leaving aside the metaphysics of divine simplicity, the very least that the claim that God is Love had better entail is that God is never unloving. By parallel, God is never untruthful.<BR/><BR/>5. If one is persuaded by the sorts of considerations that sceptical theists bring up, and if one thinks that God can lie, then I think one will get the conclusion that on any particular occasion where God is speaking, the probability that he is telling the truth is inscrutable. But, if so, then it's not clear that anything he says can be trusted, which is absurd. (This might be more a reductio of sceptical theism.) Note, too, that then one cannot even reason: "God said p to me. Therefore, it's good for me to believe p." For suppose I choose not to believe p. Then, quite likely, God knew that I would or would likely not believe p, and whatever his speech act was trying to accomplish might well have depended on my <EM>not</EM> believing its content. Once we allow that God can lie, we're in grave danger of undercutting the foundation of revealed religion.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-90985504700680538122009-03-25T07:56:00.000-05:002009-03-25T07:56:00.000-05:001. Lying is always wrong. Kant got that right, an...1. Lying is always wrong. Kant got that right, and so did the Christian tradition. (See Newman's discussion in an appendix to the <EM>Apologia</EM>.) Veracity is foundational for distinctively human community. To lie is to directly act against the basic good of community.<BR/><BR/>2. To lie is to solicit trust while simultaneously betraying that trust. One of the central messages of the Old Testament is that God is utterly trustworthy. He does not betray.<BR/><BR/>3. If, per impossibile, it were sometimes permissible to lie, this would only be to avoid some great evil rahter than to achieve some positive good, and only if all the morally unproblematic ways of avoiding that great evil were exhausted. But such a condition would not be satisfied in the case of an omnipotent being. One lies to manipulate people to act a certain way. But in a pinch God can get people to act a certain way simply by directly willing that they act that way. (Granted, then they perhaps will not be <EM>freely</EM> acting, but that's OK: God has no duty to let us always act freely.)Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-14867446523455393632009-03-25T04:41:00.000-05:002009-03-25T04:41:00.000-05:00You write I think the right concept of divine insp...You write<BR/><BR/><I> I think the right concept of divine inspiration will make God a full author of the text (so is the human author, of course; I am not here addressing the interaction of the two authorships). Sometimes it happens to an author that the text asserts something that the author did not assert. I doubt this can happen in the case of an omniscient and omnipotent author. If it cannot, then anything that the text asserts is asserted by God. Moreover, it seems central to Christianity and Judaism that God does not lie. Hence, the text only asserts propositions that God believes to be true. But the only propositions that God believes to be true are propositions that in fact are true. </I> <BR/><BR/>I am inclined to accept something like this line of argument, however I have one concern. Couldn’t it be argued that a perfectly good being could lie if there was sufficiently justifying reasons for him doing so. I am thinking of a kind of analogue to the problem of evil here. If this is the case then it would follow not that whatever scripture teaches is true but rather that its either true or if its not its something we should believe.Matthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04354340839915905028noreply@blogger.com