God is the ultimate authority. When people want justification for their actions or beliefs, they will have to appeal to some kind of authority. For non-Christians, they will try to appeal to their senses, but then they use their senses to validate their senses…a vicious circle.
For Christians, we appeal to the Creator as our authority. Romans 1 tells us that the God of Creation has revealed himself so that none are without excuse.
The author of this blog entry uses a pretty good analogy…even though he says, it’s not a very good analogy.
“It’s not a great analogy, but think of parents dealing with their children. The child keeps asking “Why?, Why? Why?, and finally the parents say “Because I said so”. And now it’s become a test of parent’s authority. The child asks “Well, why do you have authority?”, and the parent replies “My authority is my authority, and I don’t have to justify it to you.” If a parent doesn’t have to justify him/herself to their child, does God? If He did, who would He appeal to to authorize His authority? Would he look beyond Himself? If He did, would He still be God?”
(A) 1.) A very simple and practical question to keep in mind that you can ask whenever you’re debating someone about worldviews is…
“By what authority do you say this?”
“By what authority do you assert that?”
“By what authority should I believe what you’re telling me?”
2.) Let’s say an unbeliever claims that he believes it’s alright for him to engage in premarital sexual intercouse. I’m going to want to find from him how he made that ethical judgment, how he came to that conclusion. So I ask him “By what authority do you say that?”, and I tell him that the Bible condemns it in “this passage” and “that passage” and so on. One way or another I think this will lead him to say either (1) that there is no God, or (2) the Bible is not the Word of God. In defense of his ethical point…
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