Is God imaginary?
Few questions cut deeper than whether God is real or a projection of human wishing. Writers in this collection answer on two fronts: they argue that the universe itself forces the question of a Maker, and they insist that no argument alone can produce the certainty people actually want.
The World Argues for a Maker
Scripture never opens with a defence of God's existence. One writer treats that silence as deliberate, and compares the case to something nobody demands proof of:
F. B. HoleThat God exists and that He originated all things is assumed and stated. Unbelieving men may demand that proofs of His existence be produced, but nowhere in Scripture does God condescend to furnish such proofs. Were He to do so they would not be intelligible to the feeble minds of puny men. Moreover they are no more really needed than proofs that the sun exists and shines. That fact could only be doubted by a man who had neither sight nor feeling.
The instinct behind that is simple. Made things point back to a maker, and we cannot think any other way:
J. N. DarbyTake this world: there is evidence of skill, there must have been a designer, someone must have made it. So with a watch (the common illustration), someone must have made it. So they once brought a globe to an unbelieving geographer; and when he asked, who made that? "Nobody" was the reply. What do you mean? I ask who made that globe? "Nobody" — and of course, he was confounded. I am not capable of conceiving of such a thing existing without a cause; but if I see it there, I must find someone who formed it.
What the Argument Cannot Give
Here these writers are unusually honest. The design argument lands you at an inference, not at a Person you know:
J. N. DarbyLogic says, If such-and-such is true, then such-and-such must be; but this does not say that it is, which is a very different thing to my soul. If I say "must be," that is a mere inference. The moment I get a testimony that it is, how different!
The same limit is drawn from Romans 1:20. Creation shows power; it does not show character:
J Wilson SmithWhat is invisible in the Creator should be and is seen, and seen clearly, being understood by the things that are made — even His eternal power and Godhead — not, indeed, His grace, or truth, or love, but infinite power and design, so much so that people are left thus without excuse. Creation declares the power of God. It does not reveal what He is in Himself — His nature — but to any, except those wilfully blind, it is evidence enough of the existence of a Creator-God!
The Denial Is Not Neutral
Commentators here trace atheism to the will before the mind. The conclusion is convenient, and that is precisely the suspicion they raise:
J Wilson SmithThe wish that there should be no God — none to exercise full authority over us, or restrain our wills, or condemn our sins, or call us into judgment; none, in short, to whom we should be thus responsible — is present in every human heart. Sin has produced that wish; and how easy to move from the idea to the belief, from the wish to the word, "No God"!
Note that this cuts both ways. If wishful thinking can invent a God, it can just as easily abolish one — and the second wish has a motive the first does not.
Answering the Charge of "Imagination"
Darby takes the accusation head-on, and tests it by what it produces. A fantasy can distract you; it cannot change you:
J. N. DarbyHe will tell me it is imagination; but imagination does not produce holiness and godly affections — it produces poetry. There is nothing lasting in it. It may take me out of myself and out of sorrow for a moment, but it never delivers from either; it leaves the man what he was, or worse. No man can satisfy the sharp edge of hunger by merely imagining a feast. Imagination deals with things outside us which are not real; this is what is actually and lastingly in us, a present reality.
He also concedes what an honest sceptic will press: the believer's certainty is not transferable as an argument. Yet he answers that a doctor who tells you your pain is imaginary has only shown the limits of his own knowledge — and he adds that proofs and personal knowledge do different work:
J. N. DarbyProofs may and do leave responsibility without excuse; but enjoyment of the thing itself within takes away the need of proof. "Whether he is a sinner or not I do not know. One thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see."
God Steps Out of the Realm of Guesswork
If God stayed silent, the sceptic would have a strong case. The claim of Christianity is that He has not:
Ernst-August BremickerWhat God is can only be fully revealed in the Son of the Father. In the Son God opens His heart. No angel and no man could ever have done this... He alone knew God and therefore He alone could reveal Him as He is.
Summary
- Evidence. Creation leaves no one with an excuse — design implies a Designer, as surely as a globe implies a maker.
- Limit. That evidence proves only that God must be; it never tells you what He is like, so the argument alone leaves the heart unsatisfied.
- Motive. The denial rises from the will, not the microscope: sin wants no authority, no restraint, no judgment — and the wish quietly becomes the belief.
- Test. Imagination produces poetry, not holiness; a fantasy meal never fed a hungry man, and a fantasy God never changed one.
- Answer. God closed the gap Himself — He is known not by reasoning up to Him but by His revelation in the Son, received by faith.