Why People do Believe in God

Why Should People Believe in God?

It is a fact that sizeable numbers of people have, rejected their ‘belief’ in God. They ‘by their unrighteousness suppress the truth …For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools’ (Rom. 1:18, 21–22). Scripture holds these folk—idolaters all—wickedly responsible for denying and perverting their knowledge. Yet, they are not only to be loved as God loves them (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8) but also to be hated as God hates them (Pss. 97:10; 139:21). Wherever he went, Paul got into trouble because he rebuked idolatries of all kinds and successfully overthrew them.

What shall we do when we meet the wholly secular mind? We, of course, shall declare the gospel. If I understand the ‘presuppositional’ disciples of Cornelius Van Til aright, they hold this to be the only ‘apologetic’, i.e. proof of the truth of ‘the Faith’ available to us. There is, they say, no common ground of agreement we can find to mount a programme of evangelistic or pre-evangelistic encounter with unbelievers. The effect of the fall has rendered their minds incapable of considering the saving truth of the gospel. Arguments are unavailing. We must simply proclaim the truth and leave the rest to the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit.

If, however, secular-minded unbelievers will not consent to hear the gospel, is there anything else one can do? Certainly. If we can at least get their attention (as Jesus did in His interesting parables and as Paul did at Athens) by speaking first of matters not apparently part of a distinctly Christian doctrinal system, we may cause them to listen to some gospel too.

The classical arguments for the existence of God are latently in the Scriptures, sometimes almost explicitly stated. Therefore, to present them is really to speak from logical-spiritual ground that is uncompromised. As the witness speaks, and if his homework has been done well, several good things may happen to the unbeliever also.

In the first place the garden-variety secular listener will likely come to see for the first time in his life that evangelical Christianity is not what he thought it to be—a superstition or a device for gaining social benefits or a spooky bit of a magic for small-minded fanatics. This may come as quite a shock to him, sufficient shock either to anger or humble him. The listener may at least begin to doubt the certainty of his smug atheism and to feel a bit foolish. Carl Sagan might possibly have had a bad night had he encountered John Gerstner (who was an aggressive Christian apologist) in the next seat of a trans-Atlantic flight to Paris. In other words, sound arguments can teach unbelievers a bit of respect, even if they do not initially convince. St Augustine, himself, says his mind was turned toward Christianity by meeting a persuasive argument for the existence of souls, and it did not even come from a Christian source, but from pagan Platonic philosophers.

Unbelievers may have more than one kind of obstacle to belief, susceptible to more than one kind of help from those who sincerely desire to win them over. Some years ago, a practicing Christian psychologist addressed the students and faculty of Wheaton College on the question of whether or not psychology can be used to convert unbelievers to Christ. He said, in sum, no, not as such. However, many people are not fully sane and some are not sane at all. The gospel addresses a person’s rational understanding. He will therefore remain lost until some degree of sanity is restored. Otherwise he cannot even discern the gospel when he hears it. If psychological counselling or psychiatric treatment can return him to sanity, then the gospel power can operate in him and he may be saved.

In a similar way, if a ‘professing-himself-to-be-wise’ person, who has rejected native belief in God, will stand still long enough while I present some arguments for God’s existence, good things may happen to him. Firstly, he may open his mind just a little to the idea that God is. The moment he does so, his conscience will again operate to produce shame for his guilty unbelief. In the second place, while the unbeliever listens to my arguments, I shall also be declaring some of my own faith and reporting some of God’s Word. Logical arguments need not be separated from scriptural truth and Christian testimony. The listening unbeliever therefore is ‘dangerously’ close already to being under gospel power. ‘Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ’ (Rom. 10:17).

A third thing will occur too. I shall be strengthening my own faith if I have troubled to make myself ‘ready’ (1 Peter 3:15) to give answer to those who inquire. G. P. Fisher, quoted above, goes on to say: ‘The arguments for the being of God do not originate this faith: they justify at the same time that they elucidate and define it. They are so many different points of view from which we contemplate the object of faith. Each one of them tends to show, not simply that God is, but what He is. They complete the conception by pointing out particular predicates brought to light in the manifestation which God has made of himself.’

The arguments we are about to examine are all ancient; as asserted earlier, some even appear in the Bible. Modern theologians are not in full agreement as to their value. This I judge to be because we bring a recent world-view to the problem. As these arguments were developed over the years, say from Anselm (eleventh century) to Calvin (sixteenth century), they were not employed by themselves to convert non-theists to belief in one true God. Rather, everyone in Christendom endorsed the creeds: ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.’ This sort of ‘pre-evangelism’ was not particularly needed. The arguments were not formulated as demonstrations or proofs for some unprejudiced, critical court of review. Rather, St Thomas and the others held, there was cause for affirming the existence of God quite independently of creed or Bible. God is knowable in the sense of knowing that He is, by virtue of information drawn from the world that God made. The tool for mining the treasure, it was held, is natural reason. Until recently, however, ‘reason’ included much more than what we usually call ‘reason’ today. Our very word logic is an old Greek word meaning word in the first place. In these authors, still read today, reason includes about all the arts of persuasion, including deductive and inductive processes and much more besides. In the kjv New Testament of 400 years ago ‘reason’, ‘reasoning’, and the like, still translate words meaning to discuss, to dispute, to argue, give exposition, build a case, and similar. Neither Anselm nor Thomas supposed that pure logic, as we conceive it today, would convince people indisposed to believe. There were not then or now any faith-compelling syllogisms—not even faith-compelling miracles (John 12:37–41).

The most we can claim for these arguments is, given the kind of beings people ought to be, the evidences of natural light are such that people ought to give assent to the fact that God is. We will assess how much more the arguments tell us about God as we treat them.

The church Fathers took over these proofs from ancient philosophers, and some proceeded to set too much value on them. The age of scholasticism (tenth to fifteenth centuries) similarly made too much of them. The Reformers received this natural theology also, but following the Scriptures, they incorporated it into Christian doctrine, rather than treating it as something merely preliminary to or in addition to scriptural revelation. It is something for Christians to employ as Christians, not merely as fodder for dialogue or debate with unbelievers.

In a well-known passage Calvin says:

The final goal of the blessed life …rests in the knowledge of God. Lest anyone …be excluded …he not only sowed in men’s minds that seed of religion [awareness of God] …but revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe. As a consequence, men cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see him. Indeed, his essence is incomprehensible; hence, his divineness far escapes all human perception. But upon his individual works he has engraved unmistakable marks of his glory, so clear and so prominent that even unlettered and stupid folk cannot plead the excuse of ignorance.

Calvin then devotes a page to exposition of Psalm 104, Hebrews 11:3, Psalm 19 and Romans 1:19, 20 and adds:

There are innumerable evidences both in heaven and on earth that declare his wonderful wisdom; not only those more recondite matters for closer observation of which astronomy, medicine, and all natural science are intended, but also those which thrust themselves upon the sight of even the most untutored and ignorant person, so that they cannot open their eyes without being compelled to witness them.

It is clear that while Calvin thought education might help one to see God’s message in the natural world, no one is so bereft of ‘reason’ as to be unable to read the essentials of the message.

For any theologians who may read these lines, I cannot but express the opinion that Calvin would have been both puzzled and angered by the odd reluctance of some Calvinistic presuppositionalists in apologetics to see value in employing natural ‘revelation’ in evangelism, granting its limitations. After all, every truth as well as the Truth has power. And some truths of ‘natural light’ are also the Truth of God’s revealed Word.

How God has Revealed Himself to Mankind

The title of this chapter has to do with the Bible, as such, only in a fractional way. True, God has told us of Himself through the Scriptures and the Scriptures have a unique place in the history of revelation. Yet there were many people who received a saving knowledge of God before there was a syllable of written Holy Scripture (Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abram). Even at the present time there are whole communities of Christian believers wherein only a small minority can read. Yet they have received saving knowledge of God from missionaries and others who have preached the Word to them. Granting that the Bible is now our chief source of knowledge of God, our purpose is to set forth by what variety of means God has made Himself known to people in times past and perhaps presently. To put the matter another way, granting the Bible conveys all the perfect information we have about God, where did the writers learn these things? Further, we are interested in the clarification of the connection of such matters with our belief in God.

Already the language of this chapter has brought us into collision with several theological opinions, for there are many varieties of modern theology which say that even though there must be divine revelation if there is to be salvation, this has nothing at all to do with information about God. The recent books on my shelves specifically treating the problem of the relation of knowledge of or about God to revelation and to the Bible fill several feet of shelf space. I have read most of them and have learned that the majority of these theories assert in one way or another that revelation is an event or ‘constellation’ of events wherein God meets (as event) or speaks directly as Person to person or a group of people. No information is imparted. The Bible is the witness of the people who experienced these ‘revelatory events’. Lectures and books on doctrine from this perspective provide very little information about God, though there are thousands of words. One of the authors says we learn from the Bible mainly in that we must listen carefully as we read Scripture and obey—that is all. Yet he says nothing specific about what one learns therein about God.

The niceties of this argument promise to occupy nimble wits in a rather fruitless debate for another generation, for after more than fifty years of it, the sometimes fierce exchanges seem unabated. This philosophers’ game has given us the ‘God-is-Dead’ movement (of late unlamented memory) and confusing theology in both liberal and conservative churches. As believers in the full trustworthiness of Scripture, should we then take up again where we were before our generation entered this cul-du-sac? I think so.

When I was in college this view was convincingly purveyed to us as krisis theology, also called existential and dialectical theology. In the process of time it was named neo-orthodoxy. It all seemed very reasonable at the time and we learned the key words: eschatological, infinite-qualitative gulf, confrontation, encounter, witness to revelation and at least a dozen more. Then we heard of philosophers named Jaspers and Heidegger and theologians Barth and Brunner, then Tillich, all Europeans. The American teachers who followed them, at least in part, were credible and serious social-theological thinkers—most importantly, Reinhold Niebuhr, a truly original thinker. More recently we have John Macquarrie and many more to read.

These men and their very numerous disciples differ in many and important ways. Several appear to have orthodox views of the Trinity and the Person of Christ, though I have not found one who teaches a doctrine of atonement which regards Christ’s work as a propitiation of divine wrath or even centers redemption in the cross as objective reconciliation, much less propitiation of divine law or wrath.

They seem all to agree that there are no objective, factual, revelatory data (propositions) about truth in the Bible …—even though when it suits their purpose they use the Bible the same way the rest of us do. It has not lost its appeal to many.

About mid-twentieth century John Baillie, Dean of the faculty of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, admirer of Brunner, authored a survey of recent views of revelation in which he said:

Throughout the greater part of Christian history …the distinction between revealed and natural or rational knowledge [was commonly made] and an intelligent schoolboy could have told you what the distinction was. He would have explained to you that there are two sharply contrasted ways in which men have gained knowledge of God and things divine—by the unaided exercise of their own powers of thinking, and by direct communication from God Himself. If instead of the schoolboy you had consulted a learned theologian, you would have received very much the same answer.

After going on to show that even rationalist philosophers took this view of the matter, Baillie pointed out that the Reformers maintained that on account of ‘the corruption of human nature …human reason was now so damaged an instrument as to yield little or no reliable knowledge of things divine’.

The same distinction held generally (with exceptions) through the nineteenth century. Presently almost all theologians refer to any knowledge of God among mankind, whether derived from ‘natural’ sources, and apprehended by innate human powers (natural light), or knowledge of God derived from supernatural sources (revelation) as revelation. The former is designated general revelation and the latter special revelation.5 Though one might wish the older, more precise distinction was preserved in present-day theological discourse, the newer is frequently employed in the pages to follow.

To say that God has revealed Himself is not to say that He has exposed Himself. We do not mean that any man, or angel with eyes which transfer impulses from fleshly organs to a fleshy brain, ever has seen that infinite and eternal Spirit whom we call God. ‘[Y]ou cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live’ (Exod. 33:20) and ‘No one has ever seen God’ (John 1:18). Granting that certain biblical persons had very special meetings with God (Isaiah, Moses and Paul, among others) and that these disclosures of God are rightly called revelations of a special sort, it is in full keeping with the usage of language and a sound theology to employ reveal and revelation of the making known of truth, fact and information. Revelation in this sense of the word may be a statement of a fact (‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’) or announcement of abstract truth (‘Righteousness exalts a nation’). It may take the form of a command (‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’), or of a narrative of past events (the book of Chronicles), or a prediction (‘Your God shall come’). Sometimes it is reflection of the human author on spiritual experiences (‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want’).

That God should make Himself known to mankind is antecedently probable. More than one version of the following story illustrates the intrinsic probability of revelation by such a God as the Bible describes. A certain woman from a tribe that had never heard the gospel before listened as the missionary told the grand story. Afterwards she was heard to say: ‘I always thought there ought to be a God like that.’ The felt need of people everywhere witnesses to the need for a divine revelation.

That there is something in a person which renders revelation not only helpful, appropriate and possible but also necessary, if we are to be fully happy, is illustrated by a story. Helen Keller was blind and deaf and without the sense of smell from the age of two years. In the process of her training she came to the place where she could receive messages and respond with words. After this point in her training (it has been reported) she was told of God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Her immediate response was, ‘I always knew He was there but I didn’t know His name.’ As is generally known, while Miss Keller never became a particularly devout Christian, she was a believer.

According to the Bible, from the time of the fall in Paradise, and ever after, God has sought to make Himself known. The very framework of the Bible, from the story of the dispersion of the human race at Babel, after the Flood, through the story of Abraham and on to the end, is the theme of God’s providing both redemption and revelation for mankind. Let us look to the story of the means and modes God employed, together with an estimate in each case of the content, distribution and values of each.

Let us try to think of ourselves as living in a time before a word of the Bible had been written. Let us agree, since God is the kind of Person He is, that it would be entirely in keeping with His character to communicate with the creatures whom He made to be like Himself in some important way. Let us also agree that as sinners we would be utterly hopeless of eternal felicity unless He had provided both knowledge of Himself and redemption. How would God have gone about it?

There is a summary sentence in the New Testament that partially answers this. The passage grandly states that in Old Testament times God spoke through prophets and since then He has spoken by a Son (Heb. 1:1, 2). But how did He speak to the prophets? The text simply says, ‘in many ways’. All right then, what were some of these ‘many ways’? Also, what sort of information or communication was conveyed? By what means did Cain and Abel learn that God requires sacrifice, or for that matter, requires worship at all? If Enoch walked with God and pleased Him, how did Enoch know what God wanted from him in the first place? If, as Paul says, the heathen suppress certain known truths about God before any missionary even finds them (Rom. 1:18), what is the content of their knowledge of God and how do they apprehend it? There are further questions such as: Are the heathen who never hear the gospel truly lost? How shall we discover a true answer to the question? We shall take the Bible as our guide, as usual in all matters of religious belief, but if so, then the Bible must point beyond itself to certain other sources of information.

1. The Inward Prompting by the Holy Spirit

In the first place, there is strong evidence in the Bible that the Holy Spirit, who does now in a very special way convince people’s hearts of sin, has always striven with those hearts. He has used such influences as we can only surmise to prompt members of our fallen race ‘that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him’ (Acts 17:27, see the context; compare Gen. 6:3). This admirable impulse has not often led to true religion but rather to idolatry and polytheism as well as even baser forms of worship. May it not be said that all the multitude of expressions of worship in false religions in the world has at least this much realized truth at its root?

The papal Roman Church since Vatican II continues to make her exclusive claims as sole sphere of salvation and custodian of divine revelation. Yet she, consistent with her insistence that human reasoning faculties remain unimpaired by the fall, allows—or at least seems to allow—that without benefit of special revelation human beings can and do know God in a saving way. I quote:

The sacred Synod professes that ‘God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason’ (cf. Rom. 1:20). It teaches that it is to his Revelation that we must attribute the fact that those things, which in themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, can, in the present condition of the human race, be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty, and without the contamination of error.

This is quite in keeping with the latent doctrine of universal salvation prevalent in many Vatican II pronouncements and in the Church Dogmatics of Karl Barth. Several Roman Catholic theologians of world-wide reputation prepared the way for the Vatican II pronouncements and various subsequent official statements.

In any case, if God is, He must not be ignored but worshiped! Jesus spoke of how the Comforter (Holy Spirit) would be sent to convict the world of sin (John 16:7–10), but it is doubtful if Jesus’ promise relates to the Spirit’s work apart from the preaching of the Word. Aside from that promise, it has been argued from John 1:9 that Christ the eternal Logos (Word) has always been lighting every person ‘coming into the world’ and that such is the meaning of Micah 5:2, ‘one …whose origin is from old, from ancient days’. Whether or not these texts teach such a doctrine, which is doubtful, the presence of God’s Spirit in the world has always been, through what some teachers call God’s ‘common grace’, an influence for good and a restraint on evil. In this way God tells the heathen mother, for example, to care for her helpless infant and not only instructs the civil magistrate to restrain violent men but moves the common man to obey the magistrate, at least most of the time.

J.O. Buswell, a trusted writer, says,

In my opinion the convicting work of the Holy Spirit in the world in general, is a work upon the hearts of all men prior to either faith or regeneration, a work wherein not only is the gospel freely offered to all, but all are brought to a point of enablement to such a degree that, if having been convicted, they reject the Grace of God thus offered to them, but they are subject to the eternal wrath and curse of God because they have not believed (John 3:18), and because they ‘have not received the knowledge of the truth …but have taken pleasure in unrighteousness’ (2 Thess. 2:10–12).

Dr Buswell admits that his idea, rather timidly advanced, lacks clear scriptural support.

This teaching seems to carry the matter too far. I find it hard to adjust to the clear teaching of Romans 10:11–17, that preaching of the Word is necessary for people to know anything at all of a saving gospel and, elsewhere, Dr Buswell grants this.

2. God Reveals Himself Through what He has made

God has certainly revealed Himself through the material ‘heavens and earth’ which He has made. As noted earlier, older theologians call this ‘the light of nature’.

The Bible is very clear as to the fact that nature does have something to say to people about their Creator. Some of the affirmations are clothed in the beautiful poetry of the Psalms. Psalm 104 speaks of the clouds as God’s garments (v. 2), and of beams of light shining through them as beams of His chamber (v. 3). The rest of the Psalm declares how, in detail, all aspects of nature are God’s work in creation, preservation and government. They are all, including mankind and human works, God’s works (vv. 24, 31). The Psalmist’s reflections on nature call attention to God’s greatness, His honor and majesty (v. 1; cf. 86:8); God’s manifold wisdom and great riches (v. 24); His eternal glory (v. 31); and God’s joy in His works in nature. Just as a man, made in God’s likeness, rejoices in doing and making things, so the Creator rejoices eternally in His works. The discerning believer, by means of this revelation, understands his dependence on God and the importance of praiseful worship of God while life shall last (v. 33). He also understands the unnaturalness of the presence of sin and of sinners in God’s perfect creation (v. 35a).

Several ancient manuscripts make the anonymous Psalm 104 a continuation of Psalm 103, thus like 104 a Psalm of David. David the shepherd and king, sweet psalmist of Israel, was keenly appreciative of the lineaments of God visible in nature. He lived in primary relation with nature. He fed sheep; he saw stars at night; he planted his feet in the rocky soil whenever he went some place. Few people today live close to nature. Even farmers nowadays are only slightly in this primary relation to nature—many care for no animals, the mercury lamp steals their view of stars at night and protected both from cold and heat in the cab of their farm tractors, they seldom walk very far on their acres. But David considered (Ps. 8:3) the daily and nightly parade of God’s material accomplishments in earth and sky and wrote the nineteenth Psalm:

The heavens declare the glory of God;

and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

Day unto day uttereth speech,

and night unto night sheweth knowledge.

no speech nor language,

their voice is not heard.

The message from and about God is the same as that of Psalm 104, but we learn also that the message goes forth constantly, day and night (v. 2). Significantly, the point is made that since nature’s testimony is a silent one (v. 3, see asv, nasb, rsv) people may ignore it and do ignore it, even though God holds them responsible to heed it.

That God holds people thereby responsible for their unbelief and disobedience is the important addition to these truths made by Paul’s Epistle to the Romans:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles (Rom. 1:18–23).

All the truth about the light of nature pointed out in Psalms 104 and 19 (Ps. 8 and others could be read also) is here in Paul’s Epistle. The frightening addition is that human beings, as rational, responsible persons, must bear the full weight of responsibility for responding righteously to the knowledge which God has imparted. However, they do not do so. They, in fact, without exception, have suppressed the truth (v. 18) and in spite of the truth of God’s invisible, immortal nature, have practiced idolatry. They are therefore ‘without excuse’ (v. 20) and ‘the wrath of God is revealed’ in Scripture and conscience, as we shall see, against them. They have presently been abandoned to follow out their unrighteous decisions: ‘God gave them up’ (v. 24); ‘For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions’ (v. 26); ‘And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done’ (v. 28).

What then is the content of nature’s message about God? It tells of His greatness, His honour and majesty. It displays the riches of His wisdom, and great glory together with His joy in creating such wonders. Such revelations teach also the utter inappropriateness of sin and of the presence of sinners in God’s world. They have no rightful place here. Practically speaking, though a source of great pleasure for redeemed people, nature’s message to sinners is, in part, one of damnation—though one shrinks from saying it.

There is a message of God’s goodness (benevolence) in nature, as Psalm 104 hinted. It is muted, however, for nature provides earthquakes, tornadoes, pestilences and floods, too. The gifts of sun, wind, rain, fertile soil, fruitful seasons fill people’s ‘hearts with food and gladness’, as Paul says elsewhere (Acts 14:17). The goodness of God ought to bring me to repentance (Rom. 2:4), but sadly it rarely does so (Rom. 2:5).

3. God employs Mankind’s Own Personal, Moral and Rational Nature

A further mode God has employed in speaking to the sinful race in all ages is to employ mankind’s own personal, moral and rational nature.

Certain philosophers, from ancient times, have sought to begin their search for ultimate truths by searching their own hearts and minds. ‘Know thyself’ and ‘I think, therefore I am’ are famed expressions of this method. John Calvin wrote at the opening of his great work of doctrine,

No one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to contemplation of God in whom he ‘lives and moves’ [Acts 17:28]. For, quite clearly, the mighty gifts with which we are endowed are hardly from ourselves; indeed, our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God. Then by these benefits shed like dew from heaven upon us, we are led as by rivulets to the spring itself.

Calvin’s logic is correct, but it is regenerate, sanctified logic. Only Scripture and agencies derived from Scripture speak plainly of mankind’s being, specifically of this rational and moral nature, as being a source of common knowledge of God.

We must start with the fact that mankind was created originally in God’s likeness. The likeness is chiefly, though certainly not exclusively, our personal, rational and moral nature. Though marred by the fall and as to holiness and love for God, wholly spoiled, the image remains. It is mankind’s present possession of that likeness which renders murder a heinous crime (Gen. 9:6) and slander or malicious cursing of other people a vicious iniquity (James 3:8–10). People do legitimately reason of God’s nature from their own. Their common mistake has been to impute God-likeness to their corruptible bodies and to make a visible, physical, corrupt God in their own physical image.

Others (we think of some of the best representatives of ancient Greek philosophy) knew God to be a universal, free spirit, and cautiously said so, even though it was dangerous to deny the prevailing idolatry. Socrates, for example, was executed for atheism. Paul was understood when he appealed to the Greeks on the basis of their God-likeness to see the stupidity of their idolatry (Acts 17:22–34, especially verses 28 and 29). Idol worship turns God into the image of mankind and others of God’s creatures.

So we may be sure that Paul was understood also when he wrote: ‘when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law [Moses’ law] requires …They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when …God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus’ (Rom. 2:14–16). Some moral standards are written on people’s hearts. They know that right and wrong exist; they know what some of the standards are and they know they ought to do right. When they act in a manner that their own standards approve they have good conscience—one that is painless, non accusing—and conversely when they violate their own standards they feel accused by painful conscience. They sense the sanctions of a righteous God threatening them on the Judgment Day.

Thus people everywhere can know and we may presume generally do know that God is, like themselves, a moral being; also that, unlike themselves, He is entirely righteous. On other grounds, they know Him to be Creator and hence moral Governor of all people. Therefore, they expect a judgment day when they must face God, even though they are afraid of Him. ‘It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment’, though a biblical quotation has been written in the sub-consciousness, if not the consciousness, of every human being. The whole existence of ancient Egypt’s reigning elite, no less, was self-regulated in order to come off well in that judgment. Hence, the national wealth came to be devoted to funeral arrangements and memorials.

It is now time to pause for certain reflections. Nothing we have turned up thus far informs people that God is gracious, that He has redeemed them or that He loves them. The promptings of the Spirit in His works of common grace, whereby He preserves human society from utter corruption and self-destruction, perhaps hint at His love. However, nature frowns about as much as she smiles and no prosecutor or judge can be more unrelentingly antagonistic than ‘guilty’ conscience. We turn now to some of the modes of information whereby God conveys His message of love, of grace and of redemption.

4. God’s Original and Direct Revelation

God made Himself known to all subsequent generations of mankind when He spoke to our first parents through original and direct revelation. This may have continued awhile, for some people still ‘walked with God’ (Gen. 5:22; 6:9) and conversed with Him (Gen. 3:8–4:15) through the antediluvian epoch. Here is how one orthodox writer presents this information and supports it.

The Bible indicates that God revealed Himself to mankind at the beginning of human history, and that He hath not left Himself [in any age or place] without a witness (Acts 14:16, 17). There is corroborative data in the study of comparative religious and cultural anthropology, indicating that the oldest religious traditions are the nearest to biblical theism. The scriptural teaching on primitive revelation [i.e. original and direct] must be considered.…There is generally among primitive peoples some trace or tradition of knowledge of the true God.

A century ago there was considerable emphasis on primitive revelation as enduring through time. One of the most cogent and balanced of the era, W. G. T. Shedd (1820–1894), devoted eight pages of his Dogmatic Theology (I, 201–208) to survival of primitive revelation in the universal consciousness of mankind. All sound theology must deal with Paul’s clear doctrine of apostasy from primitive revelation (Rom. 1:18–32). A text prescribed for my college course in apologetics by Fr. W. Schmidt of Vienna summarized evidence derived from researches among every known kind of primitive society for existence of the ‘highest God’ of monotheism in their religious heritage. No society apparently—or at least no known societies—are without it. Monotheism might be a universal inference; it might also be an inheritance from the beginning of the race. Schmidt’s book is a very impressive work, not superseded, as far as I can determine.

Some modern psychological theory makes much of alleged innate memory of race experience. Sometimes this is called primal history, or Urgeschichte. The Bible does not either affirm or deny this but the unity of humankind in being essentially one biological family suggests that certain traditions would be passed down to us all—or nearly all. I cite a striking personal example. There is in the Culver family an interesting tradition at least 1,300 years old, though I discovered it only recently. My father’s given name was Cyniard. He never liked the name and always wondered where it came from. He knew only that he was named for a distant relative of his grandfather’s generation, but he did not know that he, himself, was of English descent, a tenth generation American of the Culver family, likely through Governor John Winthrop, the elder, and that Culver is an old Saxon name. In 1973, in reading the first volume of Trevelyan’s History of England, I found my father’s given name, Cyniard, attached to a young king of the Saxon kingdom of Mercia, in Great Britain. The mystery was solved—at least for me. A fragment of culture from our ancestors in continental Saxon Germany still survives, for a grandson and a great-grandson bear my father’s first name. We can pass tradition on for thousands of years without knowing we do. Some words of common English speech, for example, can be traced to sources thousands of years removed. All language is populated with verbal fossils of remote antiquity.

Perhaps most of the best ideas people have about God have come to us in this manner. My own teacher of theology thought that ‘most of what men believe about God has come to us in this way’. He thought it accounts for the truths in ethnic religions, though garbled, misunderstood and corrupted.

There is no evidence that God communicates with people today in any reportable manner. For good reasons we live under a ‘silent heaven’, walking wholly by ‘faith and not by sight’.

Later we shall study God’s providence. Providence is God’s general direction of history and there is also His special control, which we call the miraculous.

5. God Reveals Himself in Special Works

Hence we may speak of how God has revealed Himself in special providential and miraculous works. Sometimes we do not know if some extraordinary event falls in the category of God’s ordinary working (the ‘laws’ of nature) or His special working (miracles). The distinction, however, is valid and, in either case, what God does says something about Him. If, as some claim, it was a landslide that cut off the waters of Jordan when the Israelites passed through, or a natural wind which parted the Red Sea, it was God’s omniscient, omnipotent working in a special providence. We truly do not know how He works in either creation or providence, as the Almighty overwhelmingly reminded Job (Job 38, 39). We know no more about how God performs miracles.

We do not know whether the first plagues of Egypt came of natural causes or not; their timing certainly did not. God’s power operated in either case for special reasons. One of them was to teach Pharaoh and all the nations who heard the report of them. Pharaoh had said, ‘Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice’ (Exod. 5:2). But the Lord said, ‘I will …multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt …The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt’ (Exod. 7:3–5, see also verse 17). God purposed that Pharaoh and all of his people would learn some things about the Lord God of the Hebrews. Moses said to the Egyptian king during one of the plagues, ‘I will stretch out my hands to the Lord. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know that the earth is the Lord’s’ (Exod. 9:29 emphasis added).

Not only so, by those events the people of God of that generation and all later generations were to be taught (as we now are being taught) about God: ‘Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs [miracles] I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord’ (Exod. 10:1–2 emphasis added).

Throughout biblical and Christian history God’s people have learned many things about their God through the biblical miracles and providences of God. The prophets frequently rebuked Israel of old for forgetting about God’s miracles of deliverance or for misinterpreting them.

From these texts and others the reader of the Bible will learn or have confirmed several things about God. Israel discovered that their God never fails to keep a promise. They came to understand, as David (quoted by Lincoln with reference to divine providences in the American Civil War): ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether’ (Ps. 19:9 kjv). We may be sure that God still reigns. By His reign He taught England and Wellington on the one hand and France and Bonaparte on the other by the battle of Waterloo, as later all the nations in the great wars of the twentieth century. God speaks to us also through raindrops and wild flowers, and all the true discoveries of science, as Tennyson wrote in 1869:

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root in all, in my hand,

Little flower—but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is.

6. The Message that Comes from God through Scripture

In a special category, because it is a perfect revelation and includes all the others, is the message from God that comes to people through the Holy Scriptures. Extended discussion of this belongs to another locus of doctrine, but several observations about the Bible as a source of truth about God are appropriate here.

The Bible claims to be not one but a series of messages about God, beginning with the earliest prophetic deliverances of the Old Testament through the last of our Lord’s apostolic witnesses (Heb. 1:1, 2; 2:1–4). The gospel of Christ was promised in the Old Testament (John 5:39; Rom. 1:1–3), and fulfilled and spelled out plainly in the New Testament (Rom. 1:15–17; cf. Luke 24:25–27, 44–47). The Scriptures are a complete guide to what we must believe as well as all the information we need for service and holy living (2 Tim. 3:16, 17). There is also imponderable, mysterious power in the Scriptures, when read in the vernacular language of any people, and made known by preaching and teaching. That power will convert and reform individuals while also improving and refining their morals, manners, economy and material culture. Such is the power in the Bible, the written Word of God (see Rom. 10:9–17; Heb. 4:12; 1 Peter 1:23–25).

7. God’s Unique Revelation in His Son

God has revealed Himself uniquely in His Son, the Second Person of the Godhead, our Lord Jesus Christ: ‘God who in many parts and many manners spake in time past to the fathers by the prophets has at the last spoken to us by a son’ (Heb 1:1, 2 literal translation). The Greek text does not furnish ‘The’ or ‘His’ before huiō, son. The point of emphasis is that though revelation in the old dispensation had been through authentic prophets, in the new dispensation revelation came through one of a superior order, that is a Son of God not a son of man. (It is a subtle point not missed by commentators on the Greek text even though suspect by some not competent in such matters.) His very name, Immanuel, means ‘God with us’ (Isa. 7:14). John wrote: ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.…No one has ever seen God; the only God [the only begotten Son (kjv)], who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known’ (John 1:14, 18).

This revelation stands apart from all the others, the end of all searching, the consummation of all hope for finding God or of His finding us. Jesus Christ provides a perfect revelation in that it is complete and final. When God had finished speaking through our Lord there was nothing more to say; so the risen, ascended Christ ‘sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high’ (Heb. 1:3; cf. Col. 2:9; John 14:8–19; 16:12–15). His work as revelator was essentially finished.

We shall yet learn more of our Lord when we see Him face to face, for there is more of His ‘grace ready to be revealed’ (1 Peter 1:5 rsv). However, God presently has no new avenues of revelation to open. In a certain way, this is true of the Scriptures. There are no new verses or chapters to be written, but it is possible every time we read the Bible or hear it expounded we may notice a new-to-me fact or gain new insight into truth only dimly perceived before.

As we reflect on the variety of modes of acquiring knowledge of God discussed in this chapter, it becomes apparent that very little of God’s grace and redemption are known to us apart from the three last mentioned: God’s providential and miraculous works, the Scriptures, and the Lord Jesus Christ. The other sorts of revelation, each valid in some circumscribed way, are inadequate, being both partial and obscure. All of them must be tested and judged by Scripture. Each achieves a normative, dependable status only as interpreted by Scripture. The Bible and Christ alone are complete and perfect while only Christ speaks about God (or anything else, for that matter) in a final way.

In an important sense, all revelation is by Jesus Christ, the ‘founder and perfecter of our faith’, for He provided all the others, being the Creator of both universe and mankind (John 1:1–3). He was the Giver of that original revelation, and the experiences of Israel whereby they through providence learned of God (see 1 Cor. 10:1–3). His Spirit also gave us the Holy Scriptures (1 Peter 1:10, 11).

The Bible also obviously occupies a unique place in revelation. Its report of primeval, original revelation, while incomplete, is sufficient for all the information we need to have and the only dependable one we have. The Bible includes some of each of the others. The Bible bears to us all we need for life and godliness (2 Tim. 3:16, 17; cf. 2 Peter 1:3), and it interprets them properly. Christian understanding of the Bible grows in individual lives and through the generations of readers and scholars in the history of the church. Furthermore, the only truly authentic report we have of the person and redeeming work of Christ is found in the Bible. Without the Holy Scriptures we could not know truth about Him unmixed with error. So, even though our faith for salvation is wholly on Christ, we learn of Him in the Bible:

Jesus loves me this I know

For the Bible tells me so!

And, though ‘If anyone hears my voice’, said the risen Christ to John the Revelator, ‘and opens the door, I will come in to him’ (Rev. 3:20), the voice with which he speaks always expresses the truths of the words of Holy Scripture. In addition, amazingly throughout our lives the Bible seems to speak in the language of the particular translation in which we first heard and read the Bible.