T APPEARS TO ME THAT, IN YOUR response to the issue of absolutes, you are demonstrating a logical fallacy. The Bible is virtually your only source of information about God. You say God is sacred and has spiritual and moral authority. But you get your proofs for this from the Bible itself, which you say came from him. You also say the Bible shows God's character and consistency. And how do you know what His character and consistency are really like? Well, you know because you read it in the Bible, which, again, you say comes from Him.

"Do you see how this argument is flawed? You are quoting the Bible to prove itself, in effect. This is circular reasoning.

"You say that we need to 'take the Bible as our compass-point of authority, as against the many and contradictory voices sounding all around us.' All your arguments are from this point of view and work well for someone who already believes in God. But how does one make an argument so someone who is skeptical about the Bible's authority can accept it as logical?"

For several years I have been answering questions for Bibleinfo.com, which operates out of the Upper Columbia Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in Spokane, Washington. Three types of services are available.

1. One may go to Bibleinfo.com on the Web and bring up and read any of the more than 300 Bible subjects discussed. (The writer of the above comments had read the discussion on absolutes.)

2. One may make a phone call and talk personally with a counselor.

3. One may submit by mail a question on a particular subject and receive a personal answer discussing what the Bible says about it. I have been working in this third category, and one day received the comments and questions that began this article from a woman named Sharon, reacting to the discussion on absolutes (not written by me, incidentally).

Her question echoed a problem that had been a challenge for me personally. Now I was confronted with the task of tackling the issue in the discussion with someone who did not have the same orientation, faith, beliefs, or convictions I had.

What follows is an expanded version of my response to Sharon. (I've also modified her comments somewhat to sharpen her points.)

Dear Sharon:
I wish to respond to four of the points you raise.

1. You said: "It appears to me that, in your response to the issue of absolutes, you are demonstrating a logical fallacy."

Logically, you are quite correct. The fact is that Christians often appear to beg the question, taking for granted that the evidence presented is self-evident, needing no proof. One example I ran into on the Web went as follows:

Bill: "God must exist."
Jill: "How do you know?"
Bill: "Because the Bible says so."
Jill: "Why should I believe the Bible?"
Bill: "Because the Bible was written by God."

This kind of "circular reasoning" used to bother me--just as it bothers you now. We shall come to that a bit later. But first, a word on logic.

There are times when we have to be suspicious of logic. I think many of us have seen two people, strongly differing with each other, presenting their diametrically opposite viewpoint with great convictions, as happens in courts of law all the time.

There are all kinds of "logical" arguments used by lawyers, debaters, orators, politicians, and others to persuade hearers, but which may be false and misleading. As Charles Kettering said, "Beware of logic. It is an organized way of going wrong with confidence."

Not that we negate logic. Far, far from it. But logic has its limitations. We must sometimes go beyond logic. As Sir Philip Sidney so perceptively observed, "Reason [logic] cannot show itself more reasonable than to cease reasoning on things that are above reason." And as the fourth-century church father Ambrose observed, "God does not expect us to subject our faith to Him without reason, but the very limits of reason make faith a necessity."

Because reasoning appears logical does not make it right or true. Logic itself may be at fault.

2. You raise the issue of circular reasoning in the following comments: "The Bible is virtually your only source of information about God. You say God is sacred and has spiritual and moral authority. But you get your proof for this from the Bible. You also say the Bible shows God's character and consistency. But how do you know what his character and consistency are really like? Well, you know from what you read in the Bible. So do you see how this argument is flawed? You are 'begging the question' so to speak."

Perhaps you can help me here. How else can one get to know about God--the real God--except from the Bible? Would it be through myth? Legend? Philosophers? Mere human reasoning, brilliant and learned though it may be? The various branches of science?

Not any one of these has anything but fantasy or human speculation--or "logic." In the case of mathematics, for example, we have quite solid logic. It does demonstrate a progression, a rationality that would suggest a mind behind it. Witness the beauty, the elegance, the logic of the periodic table, for instance. But it has nothing to say about God, as such.

A group of army officers was sitting around talking. One of them, an atheist, stated defiantly that he'd been raised by the scientific method, and that no one had ever been able to prove to him scientifically that God exists. Just then, to his embarrassment, the chaplain joined the group. "I overheard your argument and am quite interested in it," the chaplain said, "because it is so close to a problem of my own. I was raised by the theological method, and no one has been able to prove to me theologically that an atom exists."

"But whoever heard of finding the atom theologically?" the atheist protested.

"Exactly!" responded the chaplain.

You remember Job asked, "Can you by searching find out God?" (see Job 11:7). No matter how penetrating and comprehensive our minds may be, no matter how deeply we sink the philosophical shaft, or how far we range in the fields of science--from the minutest atom to the ponderous worlds in boundless space--we can only answer Job, "No."

God is a spirit. He can never be found scientifically, even logically. He is outside the realm of science, and He does not always act in accordance with our fallacious logic. Think of the results of the search for God anciently by the cerebral Greeks. That was the best humanity could do. And what horrible caricatures of God they were!

Recall the story of Helen Keller, totally blind and deaf, and seemingly unreachable. As far as our understanding of God is concerned, He is spiritually as inaccessible to us as the vast fields of knowledge were inaccessible to Helen Keller. She could never have learned on her own.

Anne Sullivan had to take Helen's hand, and there at the pump, with Helen's hand under the flowing water, trace on her hand the letters W-A-T-E-R. Thus the dawn of understanding began to break in Helen's mind. In the same way, God has to take our hand, as it were, and guide us into a knowledge of Himself.

So how is He found? Because He is a spirit, beyond the access of our human faculties, He has to reveal Himself to us. There is no other way. And He has chosen to do this primarily through the Bible, the higher logic that overrides circular reasoning. Were God to determine He could not be anything but that which was logical in human terms, He could never reveal Himself to us. He had to do it the way He did because it was the only way. He had to say, Here I am. This is what I am like. I am not like the gods of the Egyptians, the Canaanites, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans.

There is no other way we humans could have known this. It had to be done by circular reasoning--what you call "logical fallacy." But God used a higher logic.

And then, Sharon, God decided to take another (supreme) step. Perhaps He thought something like this: I am still not satisfied with what I have done to show Myself to humankind. Putting it in writing, even working it out to a degree in the lives of willing humans, is not enough. Humanity needs something more visible, more personal--something that will wholly, completely, show what I am like in character. So I will send them my Son. He will be my supreme effort to show them what I am like. He will be an empirical demonstration.

And so that Son, Jesus Christ, said to His disciples, "He who has seen me has seen the Father-God" (see John 14:9).

3. You ask: "How do you know God has character and consistency?" The God of the Bible is the Creator. (We are going to have to state this as an absolute. Time and space do not permit otherwise.) You learn something of the character and consistency of a writer or artist by their work. If it is obscene, chintzy, sloppy, and so on, it tells us something.

So we learn something about the character of the Creator by that which He has created. Ponder the consistency of the seasons, night and day, the totally predictable movement of the stars. That is consistency. And nature, in spite of sin and humanity's success at ruining it, still has great beauty. I have seen much of the world, and beauty is all around.

In fact, there are three things that philosophers who deny the existence of God have problems explaining: goodness, truth, beauty. Why do they exist? How do they exist? People generally recognize and appreciate these qualities, and in a general sense agree which things are good and true and beautiful, even though they themselves may not be good and true. Where do these perceptions come from? We do not create them; they are independent of us. But they did come from somewhere.

Someone has observed that God has to be a good God to allow evil to exist. A tyrannical god would quickly annihilate any system opposing his own. The fact that the God of the Bible would allow a system challenging and endangering His to continue long enough to demonstrate its evil character proves He has to be fair, patient, transparent. In other words: good.

4. "You say [in the online discussion of absolutes] that we need to 'take the Bible as our compass point of authority, as against the many and contradictory voices sounding all around us.' All your arguments are from this point of view, and work well for someone who already believes in God. But how does one make an argument so someone who is skeptical about the Bible's authority can say it is logical?"

Skepticism is not necessarily bad, but it must be balanced by honest openness. It is difficult to enter a closed, locked door. In fact, logic itself has problems doing so. Without a willingness to investigate, one can never arrive at truth. For the locked mental door tells of prejudice, stubbornness, intolerance, and more. So in this area we can but ask for an open mind.

Very few who are skeptical about the Bible bother to really take serious time to examine it fairly, unbiasedly, thoroughly. I believe it was Bertrand Russell, a vocal opponent of Christianity, who, on one occasion, admitted he had read the Bible very little.

Really, how fair is this? Sometimes people who have this attitude, after truly and honestly examining the Bible, become believers.

C. S. Lewis, for example, was an agnostic who took the time to examine Christianity and became a believer. Toward the end of his life the British philosopher C.E.M. Joad, who had been antagonistic toward Christ and Christianity, experienced a dramatic transformation and before his death became a zealous follower of Jesus.

Those men were highly intelligent, logical thinkers, but they were won over by the higher logic of the Bible and Christianity.

So, Sharon, while there will ever be biblical perplexities, as there are problems in every area of knowledge, in my own mind I have been able to resolve the question of circular reasoning. And I'm intellectually as well as spiritually convicted that in spite of what may appear to be begging the question, the Bible is absolutely dependable.

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Thomas A. Davis, now retired, was an associate editor of the Adventist Review. He writes from British Columbia, Canada.