Notes for the University Student Forum Sabbath School class of the Loma Linda University Church that I’ll be leading the discussion for, along with Andrew Roquiz (1st med student at LLU), later this morning.  It comes from my lecture notes for “Introduction to Philosophy” and “Doctrinal Studies” classes at Pacific Union College.

1. Existence of God: Theistic Arguments
   1. Ontological argument: deductive; a priori (begins with an assumption and then proceeds to prove that assumption)
      1. Ontos = being/existence
      2. Anselm of Canterbury (11^th C): “If we could conceive of a Perfect God who does not exist, then we could conceive of someone greater than God himself which is impossible. Therefore God exists.”
      3. Rene Descartes (17^th C)
         1. God, by definition, is that being that is absolutely perfect.
         2. It is more perfect to exist than not to exist.
         3. Thus, to conceive of God (a being that is absolutely perfect), it is necessarily to conceive him as existing (because to conceive of God as not existing is self-canceling).
         4. Thus, to say “God does not exist” is to contradict oneself.
         5. Thus, the sentence “God exists” is necessarily true.
      4. David Hume’s response (18^th C)
         1. It’s always illegitimate to move from a pure definition to a statement of fact about reality.
         2. Definitions are only about the relation between meanings and as such are purely representations of logic and of linguistic conventions.
         3. Statements of fact are always based on observation.
      5. Immanuel Kant’s response (18^th C)
         1. Being is not a real predicate.
         2. Illustrations of “the guessing game” & the “imagine the rose”
         3. Thus, “God exists” doesn’t say anything.
      6. Conclusion: Ontological proof, as an exclusively a priori argument, is completely based on thought. It doesn’t require any experience or observation. As such, it may convince one of its logical consistency, but will not necessarily produce faith.

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The following is an excerpt from a presentation I made at the English Ministry of the Loma Linda Korean Seventh-day Adventist Church on March 8 on “Adventism in the Changing World.”

Ellen White received her “Great Controversy” vision in March 1858 and began writing what turned out to be the four-volume work entitled Spiritual Gifts.  Then in 1870, she revised this set and re-titled it Spirit of Prophecy.  Then in 1888 to the end of her life, she revised the four volumes of Spirit of Prophecy into the five-volume Conflict of the Ages series. 

The first chapter of the first volume of each of the three sets contains the account of the fall of Lucifer.  Each tells the basic story of how Lucifer rebelled, deceived many other angels, and was expelled from heaven.  But how God relates with Lucifer in each of the three accounts is radically different.

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The following is a synopsis of the first of the three-part presentation I made for the English Ministry of the Loma Linda Korean Seventh-day Adventist Church on March 7-8.  The theme of this weekend seminar was “Adventism in a Changing World.”  The title of this presentation was “Change: The Adventist Constant.”  The other two were:  “Ellen White: The Embodiment of Change” and “Change: Adventism’s Gift to the World.”

Introduction

I understand your church has been engaging in a lot of discussion about the Adventist identity with the idea of reclaiming the Adventist identity and reviving the original zeal for mission.  I think it is very important to know why we are who we are and why we do what we do.  I think it is also important to be clear about our identity, because it has much to do with our mission and calling in the world.

The difficulty with trying to reclaiming our historic identity, though, is locating the “when” of that identity.  When we try to “reclaim” our identity, how far back are we supposed to go back?  Was there a “golden age” in Adventist identity that we need to emulate?  What exactly do we mean by the Adventist identity, to begin with?

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On February 9, I had the privilege of preaching at Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, located just 10 minutes northeast of Loma Linda.  My good friend, Larry Kirkpatrick who is the pastor of the church, invited me to preach that day.  Larry has a thriving website called:  GreatControversy.org.  We may take different approaches to Adventism on several issues, but he is a trusted friend whose ministry I respect and whose passion for God and Adventism I admire.   I spoke from Mark 1:16-20, a message entitled “He Saw.”  Mentone’s website has the audio version of the sermon online.

It’s been a thrilling ride—reading through Bart Ehrman’s new book, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer.  Released on Feb. 19, the book is Ehrman’s latest “assault” upon literalistic readings of Scripture and fundamentalist Christian approaches to life’s big questions.   As he discusses major biblical approaches to suffering, Ehrman weaves in his personal story of how he went from an Episcopalian upbringing to the fundamentalist phase at Moody Bible Institute to the evangelical phase at Wheaton to a more sophisticated, nuanced practice of Christianity at Princeton to his life-altering experience teaching, for the first time, a course on the problem of suffering in Scripture at Rutgers which ultimately led him down the path of agnosticism at around age 40.  Now a veritable rock star in the field of New Testament and Early Christianity, he is currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

The book was an amazingly fast read for me.  I basically needed two sittings to finish the 278-page book published by HarperOne.  It was a fast and thrilling read because I, like Ehrman some 20 years ago, am teaching a course called “God and Human Suffering” for the first time and confronted with similar challenges he faced both pedagogically and existentially.  I entered into the course with many questions and am about to conclude with many more—thanks in part to this book.  So the real need I’m facing now deepened the level of interest I had in the content of the book.  Another reason why I found the book such a fun, exciting read was Ehrman’s uncanny ability to write in such a simple yet provocative manner.  He writes so clearly and powerfully that I found myself drawn in just by the writing style.  I also found the book a compelling read because it unapologetically offered a view of God and Scripture that directly challenged the conventional—certainly some of my own readings of Scripture and understanding of God.  But probably the biggest reason was that Ehrman raised the same questions that I saw in the biblical text and the problems that I found in the theistic explanations for evil and suffering in the world. In short, though I ultimately come out on the side of theistic existentialism rather than his agnostic/atheistic existentialism, there isn’t anything substantive that I would take out from the book.

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