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Morality and the Personhood of God: a Moral Argument for the Existence of a Personal God

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Morality and the Personhood of God: a Moral Argument for the Existence of a Personal God LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY MORALITY AND THE PERSONHOOD OF GOD: A MORAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF A PERSONAL GOD A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVIITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THEOLOGY AND APOLOGETICS BY STEPHEN S. JORDAN GOODE, VIRGINIA MARCH 26, 2021 Copyright © 2021 Stephen S. Jordan All Rights Reserved APPROVAL SHEET MORALITY AND THE PERSONHOOD OF GOD: A MORAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF A PERSONAL GOD Stephen S. Jordan Read and approved by: Chairperson: ____________________________________________ David Baggett, Ph.D. Reader: ____________________________________________ Marybeth Baggett, Ph.D. Reader: ____________________________________________ Ronnie Campbell, Ph.D. Date: March 26, 2021________________________________ DEDICATION To my beautiful bride, McKenzie, and our children. Without your love, prayers, and encouragement, this project would not have happened. Thank you for all of the ways that you have supported me throughout the PhD journey. Disney World, here we come! iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Not many worthwhile things are accomplished in life apart from the help of others, and a project such as a dissertation is certainly no exception. For this reason, I have several people that I would like to thank below. First, thank you to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Without Your transforming love, I would be lost and without hope. Second, I would like to thank my wife, McKenzie, for her encouragement to pursue a PhD, and for her unwavering support of my doctoral studies over the past six years. I have said it before, and I will say it again, apart from the grace that made my salvation possible, you are the most vivid representation of grace I have experienced this side of heaven. I love you, and I hope and pray that we continue to live out “our verse” for many more decades: “Glorify the Lord with me, let us exalt His name together” (Ps. 34:3). Third, thank you to my children for giving me countless study and writing breaks over the years. Time spent with each one of you is time well spent. I deeply love each one of you and I cannot wait to see what God does in each one of your lives. Being your “dad” is one of the greatest blessings of my life. Fourth, a special thanks goes to my parents for raising me in a Christian home and for always challenging me to pursue further education. I am also grateful to my Grandma, who has served as a “second mom” to me from the time I was a little boy. Fifth, thank you to Scott Hyland, Jay Hamilton, Tom Donovan, Chris Rocco, and Mike Morris—each of you have supported me in various ways throughout my PhD journey. More than just “friends,” I consider each of you to be “brothers.” I would go to battle any day with you guys. v Sixth, I would like to thank Liberty Christian Academy. There are several administrators who deserve specific mention, including Dr. John Patterson, Tim Hahn, and Jeff Capps. Each of you allowed me to miss time from my regular teaching duties in order to attend PhD seminars over the course of several years. I am grateful to each one of you for this, and for giving me the opportunity to share the truths I have learned in the PhD program with my students at LCA. Seventh, thank you to all of my students over the years. I hope and pray that each one of you will take the truths we discussed in class and apply them each day—all in an effort to fulfill God’s purpose for your lives. Eighth, Dan Merritt is deserving of special thanks. I have told you many times before, but thank you for believing in me at a time when I did not believe in myself. I will never forget your impact upon my life. Lastly, I am grateful to Dr. David Baggett, Dr. Marybeth Baggett, and Dr. Ronnie Campbell, along with the faculty of the Liberty University Rawlings School of Divinity. Dr. David Baggett has served as a mentor to me in many ways over the past few years, and is the one who initially encouraged me to write on the moral argument, particularly the version presented in this dissertation. Thank you for giving me time to write and think, and for your helpful feedback over the years. Even though he did not serve on my dissertation committee, I would like to specifically thank Dr. Gary Habermas. You have been a consistent source of encouragement throughout my time in the PhD program. vi ABSTRACT The concept that God is personal is an important part of religious belief. If God were not personal, it would be odd to think of him as moral or loving; it would also seem counterintuitive to speak of him as One with whom humans can have a personal relationship, One who can be trusted, cares for the people he created, listens to their prayers, acts on their behalf, has their best interests at heart, and so on. In short, to talk of such matters in a sensible manner and to experience them in everyday life seemingly requires that God is personal. Is there evidence that a personal God actually exists? Enter the moral argument. The moral argument, like other classical arguments for God’s existence, is able to provide evidence for believing in God’s existence, but—unlike other arguments, or perhaps better than the other arguments—is able to shed an incredible amount of light on God’s character (i.e., what God is like). For example, in order to account for morality, God must be good, loving, and holy. Additionally, by surveying the moral landscape—specifically, categories such as moral knowledge, moral values, moral obligations, and moral transformation—it becomes apparent that the deeply personal nature of morality points in the direction of a personal source, and most appropriately, a source personal to the highest degree possible. If the moral argument suggests that a personal source is needed in order to account for the personal nature of morality, naturalism is in a difficult position because of its impersonal or non- personal nature. Similarly, Platonism is a non-personal metaphysical system and therefore faces a challenge in accounting for the personal nature of morality. Although there are several belief systems that set forth the notion of a personal God, with some conceptions coming nearer to adequately accounting for what is required of a personal God than others, Christianity uniquely demonstrates that not only is God personal, but that he has always been personal. If the only vii sense in which God is personal is in his personal interactions with human persons, then one could say that God’s personality was frustrated before he created human persons or that God became personal only after he created human persons. To say these sorts of things presents all sorts of theological and philosophical problems, namely, that God is dependent on something other than himself and therefore not self-sufficient. A Trinitarian conception of God, which is a distinctly Christian concept, solves the sorts of problems alluded to above, suggesting that God has always been personal in and through the inner personal relations of the three Persons of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the fundamental reason why the Judeo-Christian God, the God of the Bible, is the best explanation for the deeply personal nature of morality: he is intrinsically personal himself. While there is certainly more involved, there are two key tasks to this version of the moral argument: (1) demonstrate that morality points in the direction of a personal source; and (2) explain how a Trinitarian conception of God provides the best explanation for the deeply personal nature of morality. viii “[T]o expound the thought of God as personal, and to help to restore it to a more living and central place in the experience and witness of Christian men and women, is one of the major tasks of the theologian today.” H. H. Farmer, The World and God “. Personality and Morality go together.” Clement Webb, God and Personality ix CONTENTS DEDICATION ........................................................................................................................iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS........................................................................................................ v ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1 The Rich History of the Moral Argument.............................................................................. 3 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)............................................................................................. 4 William Sorley (1855-1935) ............................................................................................. 5 Hastings Rashdall (1858-1935) ......................................................................................... 6 Clement C. J. Webb (1865-1954)...................................................................................... 6 H. H. Farmer (1892-1981) ................................................................................................ 7 C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) .................................................................................................. 8 H. P. Owen (1926-1996) .................................................................................................. 9 Other Historical Thinkers ................................................................................................. 9 Contemporary Thinkers...................................................................................................10
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