Is there a God?
Few questions matter more than this one, and the writers in this collection answer it on two levels: whether a Creator exists at all, and whether that Creator can actually be known. The first they treat as settled by the evidence around us; the second, they insist, needs something creation alone can never supply.
Scripture Assumes It
The Bible opens without a defence of God's existence. One writer points out that this silence is deliberate:
C. H. MackintoshThe first sentence in the divine canon sets us in the presence of Him who is the infinite source of all true blessedness. There is no elaborate argument in proof of the existence of God. The Holy Spirit could not enter upon anything of the kind. God reveals Himself. He makes Himself known by His works.
The Witness Of Creation
What the world displays is real evidence, though limited in what it can tell you:
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 sufficient of the existence of a Creator-God!
That evidence is not neutral information. It places every person under an obligation:
C. CrainCreation, both as a whole and in detail, is incessantly declaring there is a Creator, a God over all… The responsibility and accountability of the intelligent finite creature is involved in this testimony of creation. No one, then, can excuse himself for violating the nature and character of his relation to the Creator — a creation of which he knows himself to be a part.
The Witness Within
Alongside the world outside there is a witness inside. One writer describes a sense of God that even people with badly mistaken ideas of Him cannot shake off:
William KellyThere is in every human being, unless he be drunk with superstition or fatally poisoned by scepticism, what has been called God-consciousness, and is forced to own, that God there must be. And though no one could by searching find out His nature; yet when presented to man by revelation, his conscience owns that these attributes and this nature are alone worthy of Him.
Why People Say No
The commentators trace denial to the will rather than to the evidence. There is a motive behind it:
J. Wilson Smith"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.
Another writer makes the same diagnosis by asking how the design in the universe can be missed at all:
A. J. PollockThe universe has millions of proofs of wonderful design to which bias is as blind as the bat in the light of the noonday sun. Bias is not a matter of the head, but of the heart. "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'" (Ps. 14:1).
Existence Is Not Acquaintance
Settling the question of whether God exists still leaves the bigger question untouched:
J. Wilson SmithStill the knowledge of the existence of God is not the same as the knowledge of God Himself; and it is the latter that is our enquiry… 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.
God Made Known In Christ
Where creation stops, redemption begins. The same writer sets the two side by side, and then names where the knowledge of God ends up:
J. Wilson SmithIt tells of love as creation speaks of power, it wins as the other overwhelms, it unveils a Heart as the other displays a Hand.
J. Wilson SmithThe Son declared the Father, so that now God might be known as Father… Now, the judgment borne and redemption completed in His death and resurrection, the barrier is removed; and God can righteously reveal Himself as a Saviour-God and as Father to all who, by His grace, believe on the Son. Hence that welcome word, "And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3).
Summary
- Witness. Creation constantly declares a Creator; Scripture never argues the point, because God makes Himself known by His works.
- Verdict. That witness carries accountability with it, so no one can plead ignorance of the One he owes himself to.
- Refusal. Denial rises from the heart, not the evidence — God means authority and holiness, and the will wants neither.
- Revelation. Knowing that God exists is not knowing God; only God revealing Himself can close that gap.
- Life. Creation shows a Hand; redemption unveils a Heart — and knowing the Father through the Son is eternal life.