"Where are the autographs?"
"Nowhere? Then how can you say that you have the perfect Word of God."
Let me rephrase the argument this way.
A man asked an abandoned child, "Where are your biological parents?"
"Don't know? Then you must never say that you have parents"
Absurd? But that's how the dean of FEBC presents his argument for the inspired apographs. Remember what he said: apographs must exactly be like the autographs in order to claim that the Word of God is infallible and inerrant. Read previous posts.)
So the dean asks, "How can a non-existent authority serve as our final authority? An authority must be existent, tangible, available right now, at this time, or else it can be no authority at all."
When the pope speaks ex-cathedra, he issues a bull. This is the bull from the FEBC dean.
An authority be "existent, tangible, available right now, at this time" in order that it may be authoritative.
If that's the criteria to go by, then the invisible and intangible God would fail as an authority in the eyes of the dean.
God is existent to be sure. He is also omnipresent -- available right now. But God is not tangible. He is not visible.
Question: Is God's authority in anyway diminished because He is neither tangible nor visible?
For Bible-believing Christians, God's authority is absolute even though we can neither see nor handle Him.
For the FEBC dean, God's authority is diminished because in his bull, he states that for an authority to be authoritative, it must be "existent, tangible, available right now, at this time."
