I see that in a recent ETS event Al Mohler said,
Would God give inaccurate information in a revelation to us? No. But in revelation he would give us information that we can see, can hear, and can know.
A few questions pop into my mind.
- Is revelation always and only about giving information? Is God’s act of revealing always and only about giving information?
- Can something have information content without being information?
- Who is us? If we take the Old Testament, for example, to be an instance (or a collection of many instances) of divine revelation to Israel, would they find the same information content in the text that we do? Is finding information in a text at all relative to the context/setting of the one reading the text? Is all information found in a text intended by the giver of the text? If the text we have can be taken as an instance of God’s revelation (and not just the “record of revelation” as some are prone to say), does the information content of God’s revelation always match entirely and totally with the information found there?
- Is it possible to find/detect information in a text that was not there originally, or is not part of what the originator intended?
That God does not intend to trick people, I do not doubt. Well, at least not usually, though those occasions in scripture seem to be instances of God assisting people in their self-delusion.
Pingback: Divine Information | Bandits No More