1 hr 14 - Creation Ex-Nihilo
Evan Fales mentions that Creation Ex-Nihilo, a doctrine of classical theism, is not as supported by Genesis 1:1 as Christians have historically thought. It's arguable that the more accurate translation is not that God created the heavens and earth, but that God is creating the heavens and earth (or as I've heard it, fashioning, implying pre-existing material).
1 hr 16 - Imago Dei
Fales claims that Paul says that the image of God is something humans lost, except Jesus, due to original sin. (If this is accurate, then doesn't that mean Paul repudiates the immaculate conception? If Mary is without original sin, then Paul should say Jesus and Mary are the only humans who've kept the image of God.) Fales claims that Paul says that while man is made in the image of God, women are made in the image of man. I'm not sure that's the correct interpretation of 1 Cor. 11:7. If that verse does imply that the Imago Dei doesn't apply to women, but only to men, then that sounds strange and misogynistic. But Paul has egalitarian verses elsewhere (assuming the authorship is indeed Paul in those cases).
"These are not clear and
perspicuous. The Bible itself is a defeater of many aspects of Christian
faith in which people presume that they know what God's Word is, and
there's good reason, from the Bible itself, to believe that they do
not."
1 hr 27
Evan Fales suggests that if we give a skeptical theism response—like that of Stephen Wykstra—then that leaves us clueless as to the balance of goods and evils that God aims for. If God can allow massacres, genocides, mass deception, disease, starvation, and so on, then all bets are off. God can allow basically anything. For all we know, God could allow Christianity to develop as an enormous hoax. But if I have to admit that this is possible, then this provides an internal defeater for Christian belief, says Fales.
Fales suggests that Ezekiel 20 and Isaiah 55 suggest that God would be capable of this. I'm not exactly sure what Fales has in mind, but my guess is the following:
Isaiah 55 says (NRSVUE):
"so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it."
When someone speaks the truth, they don't know how people will respond. Speaking the truth is good for its own sake, meaning that even if people respond poorly, it still makes sense to speak the truth.
But when someone speaks for the purpose of generating an effect, then they don't care about the truth of what they are saying as long as it generates the desired effect. It appears that God is saying here that God speaks power, not truth, in this way.
Since God knows for sure that speaking the truth will not convince everyone, in what way will the words of God accomplish God's purpose?
So these are some ways the Bible provides defeaters for Christian belief.
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