Is there a God?
Scripture does not argue for the existence of God — it assumes it. The very first sentence of the Bible, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," presents God as the self-evident starting point of everything.
C. H. Mackintosh opens his notes on Genesis with this observation:
C. H. MackintoshThere is no elaborate argument in proof of the existence of God. The Holy Ghost could not enter upon anything of the kind. God reveals Himself. He makes Himself known by His works. "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork." ... None but an infidel or an atheist would seek an argument in proof of the Being of One who, by the word of His mouth, called worlds into existence, and declared Himself the All wise, the Almighty, and the everlasting God.
F. B. Hole makes the same point even more directly:
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, and it is just because unbelieving men have neither sight nor feeling of a spiritual sort, that they doubt, or even deny, the existence of God.
Yet while God does not stoop to formal proofs, He has not left Himself without witness. The created world itself testifies to His reality. J. Wilson Smith writes in Can God Be Known?:
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. (See Romans 1:20.) 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 sufficient of the existence of a Creator-God!
A. J. Pollock illustrates this with Napoleon's famous reply to his officers who were debating whether God existed:
A. J. PollockIt is told of the great Napoleon, that, happening to overhear some of his officers debating whether there was a God or not, he stepped forward, and pointing at the myriad stars, quietly said, "Gentlemen, who made those?" Then turning on his heel he walked away, suggesting that his question was sufficient answer to their questionings, as surely it was.
He continues:
Who_Made_the_WorldWe are told that the sun is one million, three hundred thousand times greater in volume than the earth. And yet sun, moon and stars, are all upheld in space by God's almighty power. "The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His ETERNAL POWER AND GODHEAD" (Rom. 1:20).
But creation, while proving God's power, cannot reveal God's heart. The deeper question is not merely "Is there a God?" but "Can God be known?" J. Wilson Smith addresses this in a companion paper:
The knowledge of the existence of God is not the same as the knowledge of God Himself... How is this moral distance to be bridged? How can man possibly reach to God? Creation with its complex wonders cannot help him. The wisdom of the world is only speculation, leaving the hapless student in the cloud-land of uncertainty... What, then, is necessary? How alone can this knowledge be obtained? By revelation. It is essential, if man is to know God, that God should reveal Himself.
And the crowning revelation is in the Person of Jesus Christ:
Can_God_Be_Known"God is love," the proof being in the gift of His only-begotten Son. Amazing gift, unthought of and unwhispered by creation — a gift unsought by man, and, alas! how coldly spurned, too. The Son declared the Father, so that now God might be known as Father.
Smith also addresses why people deny God at all in his paper "There is No God":
The idea of God is distasteful to the natural mind. "God" implies authority, and we all know that restraint is irksome; but, further, when "God" means holiness, and the judgment of evil, and the disallowance of that which we naturally like, then we do our utmost to banish from our minds, if possible, the existence of any such God at all.
The 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 latent in every human bosom. Sin has produced that wish; and how easy to advance from the idea to the belief, from the wish to the word, "No God"! Yet, after all, he who should thus speak is called a "fool"; for can there be folly more self-evident than the rejection of God?
He recounts the striking story of a Russian nobleman who wrote a pamphlet to disprove God's existence:
There_is_No_GodHe was satisfied that his work was unanswerable by reason, but the thought struck him that, while he had satisfactorily silenced the feeble voice of reason, he had not touched that of faith... He said to himself that if God reveals Himself, not to reason, but to faith, the only thing for him was to ask God graciously to do so. On bended knee he sought that favour, and an abundant answer was the kind result.
The consistent testimony of these writers is that God's existence is not a debatable hypothesis but a self-evident reality written across creation — from the myriad stars to the tiniest living creature. Romans 1:20 is the key verse: His "eternal power and Godhead" are "clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made," leaving every person "without excuse." But creation only proves that God is; it cannot tell us who He is. That deeper knowledge — the knowledge of God as Father, as Love — comes only through faith in Jesus Christ, who "declared the Father." The denial of God, Scripture says, is rooted not in insufficient evidence but in the moral will: the human heart would rather have no God than face One who is holy and to whom it is accountable. The answer to "Is there a God?" is therefore not an argument to be won but a Person to be met.