Why Believe In God - Is there a greater being we should accept as real or true? Why or why not?
Friday 30 March 2012
Why Believe in God?
There are two types of men, those who are afraid to lose God, and those who are afraid that they might find Him… --Blaise Pascal, philosopher and scientist
Does God exist?
This is surely a fundamental question that nearly all humans have pondered with throughout human history. The vast array of religions are a testimony to the human tendency to grasp at the divine. This in itself is perhaps the strongest testimony to God’s existence. It can be said that all humans have an innate desire; an emptiness that they feel must be filled. The human quest for power, riches, sensual pleasure, security, fame and indulgence in natural pleasures is a response to the heartfelt desire for a higher goodness. Temporal pleasures and even natural love is often transitory and ultimately unfulfilling. As humans indulge in their passions their desires continue to go unfulfilled. Many attempt to fill the void with increasing worldly pleasures with little results.
Such powerful and elusive desires are a cry from the soul which seeks something that can not be gratified by the things of this world. For the moment we will consider discontent of the heart as a mark of God calling us to embrace him.
But I demand physical proof!
St. Thomas Aquinas proposed five proofs in which humans can use natural reason to prove the existence of God through extrinsic evidence. Through the use of natural reason we can logically conclude in the existence of God. Yet strictly speaking, God’s existence cannot be definitively proven through laboratory tests and experimental science. Not all things are subject to experimental science. It is illogical to say, "If I can not see, taste, touch, feel or hear something it must not exist!" Reason and extrinsic evidence must also be considered. Experimental science and intrinsic evidence cannot definitively prove historical events, and yet by reason we know they have occurred. And surely were science falters and extrinsic evidence fail, reason and intrinsic evidence can prove the spiritual which can not be measured by material sciences.
St. Thomas Aquinas five proofs of the existence of God
Aquinas’ first proof is through the argument of motion. It can be noted that some things in the universe are in motion and it follows that whatever is in the state of motion must have been placed in motion by another such act. Motion in itself is nothing less then the reduction of something from the state of potentiality to actuality. Because something can not be in potentiality and actuality simultaneously, it follows that something can not be a mover of itself. A simple example of this is a rubber ball motionless on a flat surface. It has the potential for motion, but is not currently in the state of actual motion. In order for this to happen, something else in motion must set the ball in motion, be that gravity, another moving object or the wind. And yet something must have set that object in motion as well (even gravity, a force caused by matter warping the space-time fabric, attributes its existence to pre-existing matter and the exchange of pre-existing graviton particles). Thus pre-existing motions cause all motions. Yet, this chain can not extend into infinity because that would deny a first mover that set all else in motion. Without a first mover, nothing could be set in motion. Thus we acknowledge the first and primary mover as God.
The second proof follows closely with the first and expounds the principle of causality. St. Thomas explains that in the world of sense there is an order of causes and effects. There is a cause for all things such as the existence of a clock. And nothing can cause itself into existence. A clock cannot will itself into existence, it must be created and caused into existence by something else. A clockmaker creates a clock and causes its existence, and yet the material of the clock and the clockmaker did not cause themselves to exist. Something else must have caused their existence. All things can attribute their existence to a first cause that began all causes and all things. We call this first cause God.
Aquinas next explains that things of this universe have a transitory nature in which they are generated and then corrupt over time. Because of this the things of nature can be said to be "possible to be and possible not to be". Since it is impossible for these things always to exist, then it indicates a time when they did not exist. If there are things which are transitory (and are possible not to be) then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. However, as was already explained in his second proof, there must have been a first cause that was not of transitory nature that could have generated the beginning of nature.
In his fourth point Aquinas notes that there is a certain gradation in all things. For instance we can group things that are hot according to varying degrees of the amount of heat perceptible in that object. In classifying objects there is always something which displays the maximum fullness of that characteristic. Thus universal qualities in man such as justice and goodness must attribute their varying qualities to God; the source of maximum and perfect justice and goodness.
Finally, Thomas Aquinas says that the order of nature presupposes a higher plan in creation. The laws governing the universe presuppose a universal legislature who authored the order of the universe. We cannot say that chance creates order in the universe. If you drop a cup on the floor it shatters into bits and has become disordered. But if you were to drop bits of the cup, they would not assemble together into a cup. This is an example of the inherent disorder prevalent in the universe when things are left to chance. The existence of order and natural laws presupposes a divine intelligence who authored the universe into being.
Conclusions from St. Thomas Aquinas’ proofs
These proofs reveal many truths about the divine God. The existence of life and the order of creation can be attributed to God; the cause and creator of the universe. From the principal of causality we know that God is infinite and beyond the laws of nature and our human universe. In order for him to be the first cause, he must have been in existence before all else in the universe. We know that nature is composed of things that are not eternal but are transitory. Thus the universe attributes its transitory nature to a first cause that cannot be defined as transitory and is thus not a part of nature. So God is neither of a finite lifetime, nor is he "inseparably a part of nature". Nature by itself is not God. We also know that God is the divine source of justice and goodness; attributes found in all men and woman in varying degrees. In fact our universal feelings of justice demand a God. Justice is not a human attribute created by us, it is a quality imprinted in our very being by our creator. A being who must also posses the very quintessence of justice in order to endow us with justice.
Finally, we know that God is personal. It can be likewise argued that the qualities that make humans personal and conscience are what place us above other created things such as plants and animals. Since God is a higher order of being, he is likewise the very quintessence of a personal being.
But why do bad things happen to good people?
So where is this supremely good, personal and just God in our world? Why so much misery and suffering? This is a fundamental mystery for which human reason cannot fully explain. Although we can reasonably conclude to the existence of God we cannot hope to fully fathom the infinite and divine intellect of our creator with finite human minds.
However, we can reason that God has decided to endow us with free will, a tremendous gift that gives humans the freedom to choose between love of God and hatred of him. We can choose between good and evil. So why did he decide to give us the freedom to choose evil? It is enough to say that God created us as human beings and not as preprogrammed robots. In his infinite goodness he desired the free love of humanity over forced obedience to his will. For love cannot be forced, it must be given by desire and choice.
Because of our free will, some people have embraced evil and selfishness to satiate themselves at the expense of others. True evil is a result of desire of oneself over that of God, and thus sin and evil is a rejection of God. Because God is of infinite perfection, beatitude, and justice, he cannot allow sin to go unpunished. Neither can he allow sinful people to embrace him in his fullness in heaven. Thus our world, tainted by sin, is racked with much sadness and suffering. Sin separates us from the all-pleasing and loving God.
As emphasized before, the simultaneous existence of good and evil is a mystery to human intelligence, but it in no way proves that God does not exist. It only points to our own finite and limited existence. Our God is infinitely good and just, and thus as the source of our lives were are created to be his friends and children. We are called to live in goodness and justice as a response to our love of God. God loves us, but it is up to us to return his love.
So is there hope? Is humanity forever seperated from the fullness of God by sin? This is a question which I will attempt to answer in my next article.
Monday 26 March 2012
Proofs for God's existence are many and convergent
Pope John Paul II
General Audience of Wednesday, 10 July, 1985. This Papal catechesis on the subject of the existence of God was the second in a series, based on Psalm 18/19: 2-5.:
1. When we ask ourselves "Why do we believe in God?", the first response is provided by our faith: God has revealed himself to humanity and has entered into contact with mankind. The supreme revelation of God has come to us through Jesus Christ, God incarnate. We believe in God because God has made himself known to us as the supreme Being, the great "Existent".
However, this faith in a God who reveals himself, also finds support in the reasoning of our intelligence When we reflect, we observe that there are not lacking proofs of God's existence. These have been elaborated by thinkers under the form of philosophical demonstrations in the sense of rigorously logical deductions. But they can also take on a simpler form and, as such. they are accessible to everyone who seeks to understand the meaning of the world around him.
Scientific proofs
2. In speaking of the existence of God we should underline that we are not speaking of proofs in the sense implied by the experimental sciences. Scientific proofs in the modern sense of the word are valid only for things perceptible to the senses since it is only on such things that scientific instruments of investigation can be used. To desire a scientific proof of God would be equivalent to lowering God to the level of the beings of our world, and we would therefore be mistaken methodologically in regard to what God is. Science must recognize its limits and its inabi]ity to reach the existence of God: it can neither affirm nor deny his existence.
From this, however, we must not draw the conclusion that scientists in their scientific studies are unable to find valid reasons for admitting the existence of God. If science as such cannot reach God, the scientist who has an intelligence the object of which is not limited to things of sense perception, can discover in the world reasons for affirming a Being which surpasses it. Many scientists have made and are making this discovery.
He who reflects with an open mind on what is implied in the existence of the universe, cannot help but pose the question of the problem of the origin. Instinctively, when we witness certain happenings, we ask ourselves what caused them.How can we not but ask the same question in regard to the sum total of beings and phenomena which we discover in the world?
A supreme Cause
3. A scientific hypothesis such as that of the expansion of the un;verse, makes the problem all the more clear. If the universe is in a state of continual expansion, should not one go back in time to that which could be called the "initial moment", the moment in which that expansion began? But, whatever the theory adopted concerning the origin of the universe, the most basic question cannot be avoided This universe in constant movement postulates a Cause which, in giving it being, has communicated to it this movement, and continues to sustain it. Without such a supreme Cause, the world and every movement in it would remain "unexplained" and "inexplicable", and our intelligence would not be satisfied. The human mind can receive a response to its questions only by admitting a Being who has created the world with all its dynamism. and who continues to maintain it in existence.
4. The necessity to go back to a supreme Cause is all the greater if one considers the perfect organization which science ceaselessly discovers in the structure of matter. When human intelligence is applied with so much effort to determine the constitution and modalities of action of material particles, is it not perhaps induced to seek their origin in a superior Intelligence which has conceived the whole? In fice of the marvel of what can be called the immensely small world of the atom, and the immensely great world of the cosmos, the human mind feels itself completely surpassed in its possibilities of creation and even of imagination, and understands that a work of such quality and of such proportions demands a Creator whose wisdom is beyond all measures and whose power is infinite.
Impressive finality
5. All the observations concerning the development of life lead to a similar conclusion. The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality which arouses admiration. This finality which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its creator.
The history of humanity and the life of every human person manifest a still more impressive finality. Certainly, man cannot explain to himself the meaning of all that happens to him, and therefore, he must recognize that he is not the master of his own destiny. Not only has he not made himself, but he has not even the power to dominate the of his existence. However, he is convinced that he has a destiny and he seeks to discover how he received it and how it is inscribed in his being. In certain moments he can more easily discern a secret finality which appears from a convergence of circumstances and events. Thus he his brought to affirm the sovereignty of him who has created and directs his present life.
6. Finally, among the qualities of this world which impel us to raise out gaze aloft, there is beauty.It is manifested in the various marvels of nature; it is expressed in the numberless works of art, literature. music, painting and the plastic arts.It is appreciated also in moral conduct: there are so many good sentiments, so many stupendous deeds.
Man is aware or "receiving" all this beauty, even though he cooperates by his action in its manifestation. He discovers and admires it fully only when he recognizes its source, the transcendent beauty of God
Faith stimulates
7. To all these "indications" of the existence of God the Creator some oppose the power of chance or of the proper mechanisms of matter.To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements, and such a marvellous finality in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us. In fact, this would be equivalent to admitting effects without a cause. It would be an abdication of human intelligence which would thus refuse to think, to seek a solution for its problems.
In conclusion, a myriad of indications impels man, who tries to understand the universe in which he lives, to direct his gaze towards his Creator. The proofs for the existence of God are many and convergent. They contribute to show that faith does not humble human intelligence, but stimulates it to reflections and permits it to understand better all the "whys" posed by the observation of reality.
(Translation and subtitles from L'Osservatore Romano, July 15 1985.)
Before you read any further, stop and close your eyes for a moment. Now consider the following question: for the moment your eyes were closed, did the world still exist even though you weren't conscious of it? How do you know? If this sounds like the kind of unanswerable brain teaser your Philosophy 101 professor used to employ to stretch your philosophical imagination, you might be surprised to discover that there are actually physicists at reputable universities who believe they have answered this question—and their answer, believe it or not, is no.
Amit Goswami
Now consider something even more intriguing. Imagine for a moment the entire history of the universe. According to all the data scientists have been able to gather, it exploded into existence some fifteen billion years ago, setting the stage for a cosmic dance of energy and light that continues to this day. Now imagine the history of planet Earth. An amorphous cloud of dust emerging out of that primordial fireball, it slowly coalesced into a solid orb, found its way into gravitational orbit around the sun, and through a complex interaction of light and gases over billions of years, generated an atmosphere and a biosphere capable of not only giving birth to, but sustaining and proliferating, life.
Now imagine that none of the above ever happened. Consider instead the possibility that the entire story only existed as an abstract potential—a cosmic dream among countless other cosmic dreams—until, in that dream, life somehow evolved to the point that a conscious, sentient being came into existence. At that moment, solely because of the conscious observation of that individual, the entire universe, including all of the history leading up to that point, suddenly came into being. Until that moment, nothing had actually ever happened. In that moment, fifteen billion years happened. If this sounds like nothing more than a complicated backdrop for a science fiction story or a secular version of one of the world's great creation myths, hold on to your hat. According to physicist Amit Goswami, the above description is a scientifically viable explanation of how the universe came into being.
Goswami is convinced, along with a number of others who subscribe to the same view, that the universe, in order to exist, requires a conscious sentient being to be aware of it. Without an observer, he claims, it only exists as a possibility. And as they say in the world of science, Goswami has done his math. Marshalling evidence from recent research in cognitive psychology, biology, parapsychology and quantum physics, and leaning heavily on the ancient mystical traditions of the world, Goswami is building a case for a new paradigm that he calls "monistic idealism," the view that consciousness, not matter, is the foundation of everything that is.
A professor of physics at the University of Oregon and a member of its Institute of Theoretical Science, Dr. Goswami is part of a growing body of renegade scientists who in recent years have ventured into the domain of the spiritual in an attempt both to interpret the seemingly inexplicable findings of their experiments and to validate their intuitions about the existence of a spiritual dimension of life. The culmination of Goswami's own work is his book The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World. Rooted in an interpretation of the experimental data of quantum physics (the physics of elementary particles), the book weaves together a myriad of findings and theories in fields from artificial intelligence to astronomy to Hindu mysticism in an attempt to show that the discoveries of modern science are in perfect accord with the deepest mystical truths.
Quantum physics, as well as a number of other modern sciences, he feels, is demonstrating that the essential unity underlying all of reality is a fact which can be experimentally verified. Because of the enormous implications he sees in this scientific confirmation of the spiritual, Goswami is ardently devoted to explaining his theory to as many people as possible in order to help bring about what he feels is a much needed paradigm shift. He feels that because science is now capable of validating mysticism, much that before required a leap of faith can now be empirically proven and, hence, the materialist paradigm which has dominated scientific and philosophical thought for over two hundred years can finally be called into question.
Interviewing Amit Goswami was a mind-bending and concept-challenging experience. Listening to him explain many ideas with which he seemed perfectly at home, required, for me, such a suspension of disbelief that I at times found myself having to stretch far beyond anything I had previously considered. (Goswami is also a great fan of science fiction whose first book, The Cosmic Dancers, was a look at science fiction through the eyes of a physicist.)
But whether or not one ultimately accepts some of his more esoteric theories, one has to respect the creativity and passion with which he is willing to inquire. Goswami is clearly willing to take risks with his ideas and is fervently dedicated to sharing his investigation with audiences around the world. He speaks widely at conferences and other forums about the exciting discoveries of the new science and their significance, not only for the way science is done, but for society as a whole. In India, the country of his birth, he is actively involved in a growing organized movement to bridge the gap between science and spirituality, through which he is helping to pioneer a graduate institute in "consciousness studies" based on the premise that consciousness is the ground of all being.
Goswami is considered by some to be a pioneer in his field. By attempting to bring material realism to its knees and to integrate all fields of knowledge in a single unified paradigm, he hopes to pave the way for a new holistic worldview in which spirit is put first. In fact, as far as we know, he is the only new paradigm scientist who is taking a clear stand against the relativism so popular among new age thinkers. At a time when the decay of human values and the erosion of any sense of meaning has reached epidemic scale, it is hard to imagine what could be more important than this.
Is science capable of proving the reality of the transcendent dimension of life? Or would science better serve the spiritual potential of the human race by acknowledging the inherent limits of its domain? The following interview confronts us with these questions.
Interview
WIE: In your book The Self-Aware Universe you speak about the need for a paradigm shift. Could you talk a bit about how you conceive of that shift? From what to what?
Amit Goswami: The current worldview has it that everything is made of matter, and everything can be reduced to the elementary particles of matter, the basic constituents—building blocks—of matter. And cause arises from the interactions of these basic building blocks or elementary particles; elementary particles make atoms, atoms make molecules, molecules make cells, and cells make brain. But all the way, the ultimate cause is always the interactions between the elementary particles. This is the belief—all cause moves from the elementary particles. This is what we call "upward causation." So in this view, what human beings—you and I—think of as our free will does not really exist. It is only an epiphenomenon or secondary phenomenon, secondary to the causal power of matter. And any causal power that we seem to be able to exert on matter is just an illusion. This is the current paradigm.
Now, the opposite view is that everything starts with consciousness. That is, consciousness is the ground of all being. In this view, consciousness imposes "downward causation." In other words, our free will is real. When we act in the world we really are acting with causal power. This view does not deny that matter also has causal potency—it does not deny that there is causal power from elementary particles upward, so there is upward causation—but in addition it insists that there is also downward causation. It shows up in our creativity and acts of free will, or when we make moral decisions. In those occasions we are actually witnessing downward causation by consciousness.
WIE: In your book you refer to this new paradigm as "monistic idealism." And you also suggest that science seems to be verifying what a lot of mystics have said throughout history—that science's current findings seem to be parallel to the essence of the perennial spiritual teaching.
AG: It is the spiritual teaching. It is not just parallel. The idea that consciousness is the ground of being is the basis of all spiritual traditions, as it is for the philosophy of monistic idealism—although I have given it a somewhat new name. The reason for my choice of the name is that, in the West, there is a philosophy called "idealism" which is opposed to the philosophy of "material realism," which holds that only matter is real. Idealism says no, consciousness is the only real thing. But in the West that kind of idealism has usually meant something that is really dualism—that is, consciousness and matter are separate. So, by monistic idealism, I made it clear that, no, I don't mean that dualistic kind of Western idealism, but really a monistic idealism, which has existed in the West, but only in the esoteric spiritual traditions. Whereas in the East this is the mainstream philosophy. In Buddhism, or in Hinduism where it is called Vedanta, or in Taoism, this is the philosophy of everyone. But in the West this is a very esoteric tradition, only known and adhered to by very astute philosophers, the people who have really delved deeply into the nature of reality.
WIE: What you are saying is that modern science, from a completely different angle—not assuming anything about the existence of a spiritual dimension of life—has somehow come back around, and is finding itself in agreement with that view as a result of its own discoveries.
AG: That's right. And this is not entirely unexpected. Starting from the beginning of quantum physics, which began in the year 1900 and then became full-fledged in 1925 when the equations of quantum mechanics were discovered, quantum physics has given us indications that the worldview might change. Staunch materialist physicists have loved to compare the classical worldview and the quantum worldview. Of course, they wouldn't go so far as to abandon the idea that there is only upward causation and that matter is supreme, but the fact remains that they saw in quantum physics some great paradigm changing potential. And then what happened was that, starting in 1982, results started coming in from laboratory experiments in physics. That is the year when, in France, Alain Aspect and his collaborators performed the great experiment that conclusively established the veracity of the spiritual notions, and particularly the notion of transcendence. Should I go into a little bit of detail about Aspect's experiment?
WIE: Yes, please do.
AG: To give a little background, what had been happening was that for many years quantum physics had been giving indications that there are levels of reality other than the material level. How it started happening first was that quantum objects—objects in quantum physics—began to be looked upon as waves of possibility. Now, initially people thought, "Oh, they are just like regular waves." But very soon it was found out that, no, they are not waves in space and time. They cannot be called waves in space and time at all—they have properties which do not jibe with those of ordinary waves. So they began to be recognized as waves in potential, waves of possibility, and the potential was recognized as transcendent, beyond matter somehow.
But the fact that there is transcendent potential was not very clear for a long time. Then Aspect's experiment verified that this is not just theory, there really is transcendent potential, objects really do have connections outside of space and time—outside of space and time! What happens in this experiment is that an atom emits two quanta of light, called photons, going opposite ways, and somehow these photons affect one another's behavior at a distance, without exchanging any signals through space. Notice that: without exchanging any signals through space but instantly affecting each other. Instantaneously.
Now Einstein showed long ago that two objects can never affect each other instantly in space and time because everything must travel with a maximum speed limit, and that speed limit is the speed of light. So any influence must travel, if it travels through space, taking a finite time. This is called the idea of "locality." Every signal is supposed to be local in the sense that it must take a finite time to travel through space. And yet, Aspect's photons—the photons emitted by the atom in Aspect's experiment—influence one another, at a distance, without exchanging signals because they are doing it instantaneously—they are doing it faster than the speed of light. And therefore it follows that the influence could not have traveled through space. Instead the influence must belong to a domain of reality that we must recognize as the transcendent domain of reality.
WIE: That's fascinating. Would most physicists agree with that interpretation of his experiment?
AG: Well, physicists must agree with this interpretation of this experiment. Many times of course, physicists will take the following point of view: they will say, "Well, yeah sure, experiments. But this relationship between particles really isn't important. We mustn't look into any of the consequences of this transcendent domain—if it can even be interpreted that way." In other words, they try to minimize the impact of this and still try to hold on to the idea that matter is supreme.
But in their heart they know, as is very evidenced. In 1984 or '85, at the American Physical Society meeting at which I was present, it is said that one physicist was heard saying to another physicist that, after Aspect's experiment, anyone who does not believe that something is really strange about the world must have rocks in his head.
WIE: So what you are saying is that from your point of view, which a number of others share, it is somehow obvious that one would have to bring in the idea of a transcendent dimension to really understand this.
AG: Yes, it is. Henry Stapp, who is a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley, says this quite explicitly in one of his papers written in 1977, that things outside of space and time affect things inside space and time. There's just no question that that happens in the realm of quantum physics when you are dealing with quantum objects. Now of course, the crux of the matter is, the surprising thing is, that we are always dealing with quantum objects because it turns out that quantum physics is the physics of every object. Whether it's submicroscopic or it's macroscopic, quantum physics is the only physics we've got. So although it's more apparent for photons, for electrons, for the submicroscopic objects, our belief is that all reality, all manifest reality, all matter, is governed by the same laws. And if that is so, then this experiment is telling us that we should change our worldview because we, too, are quantum objects.
WIE: These are fascinating discoveries which have inspired a lot of people. A number of books have already attempted to make the link between physics and mysticism. Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics and Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters have both reached many, many people. In your book, though, you mention that there was something that you felt had not yet been covered which you feel is your unique contribution to all this. Could you say something about what you are doing that is different from what has been done before in this area?
AG: I'm glad that you asked that question. This should be clarified and I will try to explicate it as clearly as I can. The early work, like The Tao of Physics, has been very important for the history of science. However, these early works, in spite of supporting the spiritual aspect of human beings, all basically held on to the material view of the world nevertheless. In other words, they did not challenge the material realists' view that everything is made up of matter. That view was never put to any challenge by any of these early books. In fact, my book was the first one which challenged it squarely and which was still based on a rigorous explication in scientific terms. In other words, the idea that consciousness is the ground of being, of course, has existed in psychology, as transpersonal psychology, but outside of transpersonal psychology no tradition of science and no scientist has seen it so clearly.
It was my good fortune to recognize it within quantum physics, to recognize that all the paradoxes of quantum physics can be solved if we accept consciousness as the ground of being. So that was my unique contribution and, of course, this has paradigm-shifting potential because now we can truly integrate science and spirituality. In other words, with Capra and Zukav—although their books are very good—because they held on to a fundamentally materialist paradigm, the paradigm is not shifting, nor is there any real reconciliation between spirituality and science. Because if everything is ultimately material, all causal efficacy must come from matter. So consciousness is recognized, spirituality is recognized, but only as causal epiphenomena, or secondary phenomena. And an epiphenomenal consciousness is not very good. I mean, it's not doing anything. So, although these books acknowledge our spirituality, the spirituality is ultimately coming from some sort of material interaction.
But that's not the spirituality that Jesus talked about. That's not the spirituality that Eastern mystics were so ecstatic about. That's not the spirituality where a mystic recognizes and says, "I now know what reality is like, and this takes away all the unhappiness that one ever had. This is infinite, this is joy, this is consciousness." This kind of exuberant statement that mystics make could not be made on the basis of epiphenomenal consciousness. It can be made only when one recognizes the ground of being itself, when one cognizes directly that One is All.
Now, an epiphenomenal human being would not have any such cognition. It would not make any sense to cognize that you are All. So that is what I am saying. So long as science remains on the basis of the materialist worldview, however much you try to accommodate spiritual experiences in terms of parallels or in terms of chemicals in the brain or what have you, you are not really giving up the old paradigm. You are giving up the old paradigm and fully reconciling with spirituality only when you establish science on the basis of the fundamental spiritual notion that consciousness is the ground of all being. That is what I have done in my book, and that is the beginning. But already there are some other books that are recognizing this too.
WIE: So there are people corroborating your ideas?
AG: There are people who are now coming out and recognizing the same thing, that this view is the correct way to go to explain quantum physics and also to develop science in the future. In other words, the present science has shown not only quantum paradoxes but also has shown real incompetence in explaining paradoxical and anomalous phenomena, such as parapsychology, the paranormal—even creativity. And even traditional subjects, like perception or biological evolution, have much to explain that these materialist theories don't explain. To give you one example, in biology there is what is called the theory of punctuated equilibrium. What that means is that evolution is not only slow, as Darwin perceived, but there are also rapid epochs of evolution, which are called "punctuation marks." But traditional biology has no explanation for this.
However, if we do science on the basis of consciousness, on the primacy of consciousness, then we can see in this phenomenon creativity, real creativity of consciousness. In other words, we can truly see that consciousness is operating creatively even in biology, even in the evolution of species. And so we can now fill up these gaps that conventional biology cannot explain with ideas which are essentially spiritual ideas, such as consciousness as the creator of the world.
WIE: This brings to mind the subtitle of your book, How Consciousness Creates the Material World. This is obviously quite a radical idea. Could you explain a bit more concretely how this actually happens in your opinion?
AG: Actually, it's the easiest thing to explain, because in quantum physics, as I said earlier, objects are not seen as definite things, as we are used to seeing them. Newton taught us that objects are definite things, they can be seen all the time, moving in definite trajectories. Quantum physics doesn't depict objects that way at all. In quantum physics, objects are seen as possibilities, possibility waves. Right? So then the question arises, what converts possibility into actuality? Because, when we see, we only see actual events. That's starting with us. When you see a chair, you see an actual chair, you don't see a possible chair.
WIE: Right—I hope so.
AG: We all hope so. Now this is called the "quantum measurement paradox." It is a paradox because who are we to do this conversion? Because after all, in the materialist paradigm we don't have any causal efficacy. We are nothing but the brain, which is made up of atoms and elementary particles. So how can a brain which is made up of atoms and elementary particles convert a possibility wave that it itself is? It itself is made up of the possibility waves of atoms and elementary particles, so it cannot convert its own possibility wave into actuality. This is called a paradox. Now in the new view, consciousness is the ground of being. So who converts possibility into actuality? Consciousness does, because consciousness does not obey quantum physics. Consciousness is not made of material. Consciousness is transcendent. Do you see the paradigm-changing view right here—how consciousness can be said to create the material world? The material world of quantum physics is just possibility. It is consciousness, through the conversion of possibility into actuality, that creates what we see manifest. In other words, consciousness creates the manifest world.
WIE: To be honest, when I first saw the subtitle of your book I assumed you were speaking metaphorically. But after reading the book, and speaking with you about it now, I am definitely getting the sense that you mean it much more literally than I had thought. One thing in your book that really stopped me in my tracks was your statement that, according to your interpretation, the entire physical universe only existed in a realm of countless evolving possibilities until at one point, the possibility of a conscious, sentient being arose and that, at that point, instantaneously, the entire known universe came into being, including the fifteen billion years of history leading up to that point. Do you really mean that?
AG: I mean that literally. This is what quantum physics demands. In fact, in quantum physics this is called "delayed choice." And I have added to this concept the concept of "self-reference." Actually the concept of delayed choice is very old. It is due to a very famous physicist named John Wheeler, but Wheeler did not see the entire thing correctly, in my opinion. He left out self-reference. The question always arises, "The universe is supposed to have existed for fifteen billion years, so if it takes consciousness to convert possibility into actuality, then how could the universe be around for so long?" Because there was no consciousness, no sentient being, biological being, carbonbased being, in that primordial fireball which is supposed to have created the universe, the big bang. But this other way of looking at things says that the universe remained in possibility until there was self-referential quantum measurement—so that is the new concept. An observer's looking is essential in order to manifest possibility into actuality, and so only when the observer looks, only then does the entire thing become manifest—including time. So all of past time, in that respect, becomes manifest right at that moment when the first sentient being looks.
It turns out that this idea, in a very clever, very subtle way, has been around in cosmology and astronomy under the guise of a principle called the "anthropic principle." That is, the idea has been growing among astronomers—cosmologists anyway—that the universe has a purpose. It is so fine-tuned, there are so many coincidences, that it seems very likely that the universe is doing something purposive, as if the universe is growing in such a way that a sentient being will arise at some point.
WIE: So you feel there's a kind of purposiveness to the way the universe is evolving; that, in a sense, it reaches its fruition in us, in human beings?
AG: Well, human beings may not be the end of it, but certainly they are the first fruition, because here is then the possibility of manifest creativity, creativity in the sentient being itself. The animals are certainly sentient, but they are not creative in the sense that we are. So human beings certainly right now seem to be an epitome, but this may not be the final epitome. I think we have a long way to go and there is a long evolution to occur yet.
WIE: In your book you even go so far as to suggest that the cosmos was created for our sake.
AG: Absolutely. But it means sentient beings, for the sake of all sentient beings. And the universe is us. That's very clear. The universe is self-aware, but it is self-aware through us. We are the meaning of the universe. We are not the geographical center of the universe—Copernicus was right about that—but we are the meaning center of the universe.
WIE: Through us the universe finds its meaning?
AG: Through sentient beings. And that doesn't have to be anthropocentric in the sense of only earthlings. There could be beings, sentient beings on other planets, in other stars—in fact I am convinced that there are—and that's completely consonant with this theory.
WIE: This human-centered—or even sentient-being-centered—stance seems quite radical at a time when so much of modern progressive thought, across disciplines from ecology to feminism to systems theory, is going in the opposite direction. These perspectives point more toward interconnectedness or interrelatedness, in which the significance of any one part of the whole—including one species, such as the human species—is being de-emphasized. Your view seems to hark back to a more traditional, almost biblical kind of idea. How would you respond to proponents of the prevailing "nonhierarchical" paradigm?
AG: It's the difference between the perennial philosophy that we are talking about, monistic idealism, and what is called a kind of pantheism. That is, these views—which I call "ecological worldviews" and which Ken Wilber calls the same thing—are actually denigrating God by seeing God as limited to the immanent reality. On the face of it, this sounds good because everything becomes divine—the rocks, the trees, all the way to human beings, and they are all equal and they are all divinity—it sounds fine, but it certainly does not adhere to what the spiritual teachers knew. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says to Arjuna, "All these things are in me, but I am not in them." What does he mean by that? What he means is that "I am not exclusively in them."
So there is evolution, in other words, in the manifest reality. Evolution happens. That means that the amoeba is, of course, a manifestation of consciousness, and so is the human being. But they are not in the same stage. Evolutionarily, yes, we are ahead of the amoeba. And these theories, these ecological-worldview people, they don't see that. They don't rightly understand what evolution is because they are ignoring the transcendent dimension, they are ignoring the purposiveness of the universe, the creative play. Ken Wilber makes this point very, very well in his book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.
WIE: So you would say they have part of the picture but that without this other aspect that you are bringing in, their view is very—
AG: It's very limited. And that's why pantheism is very limited. When Westerners started going to India, they thought it was pantheistic because it has many, many gods. Indian philosophy tends to see God in nature, in many things—they worship rocks sometimes, that kind of thing—so they thought it was pantheistic and only somewhat later did they realize that there is a transcendent dimension. In fact, the transcendent dimension is developed extremely well in Indian philosophy, whereas the transcendent dimension in the West is hidden in the cave of a very few esoteric systems such as the Gnostics and a few great masters like Meister Eckhart. In Jesus' teachings you can see it in the Gospel according to Thomas. But you have to really dig deep to find that thread in the West. In India, in the Upanishads and the Vedanta and the Bhagavad Gita, it is very much explicit. Now, pantheism sounds very good. But it's only part of the story. It's a good way to worship, it's a good way to bring spirituality into your daily life, because it is good to acknowledge that there is spirit in everything. But if we just see the diversity, see the God in everything, but don't see the God which is beyond every particular thing, then we are not realizing our potential. We are not realizing our Self. And so, truly, Self-realization involves seeing this pantheistic aspect of reality, but also seeing the transcendent aspect of reality.
WIE: In addition to being a scientist, you are also a spiritual practitioner. Could you talk a little bit about what brought you to spirituality?
AG: Well, I'm afraid that is a pretty usual, almost classic, case. The ideal classic case, of course, is the famous case of the Buddha, who recognized at the age of twenty-nine that all of his pleasure as a prince was really a waste of time because there is suffering in the world. For me it was not that drastic, but when I was about thirty-seven the world started to fall apart on me. I lost my research grant, I had a divorce and I was very lonely. And the professional pleasure that I used to get by writing physics papers stopped being pleasure.
I remember one time when I was at a conference and all day I had been going around, beating my own drums and arguing with people. Then in the evening when I was alone, I felt so lonely. And I realized that I had heartburn, and I had already exhausted a full bottle of Tums and still it would not go away. I discovered suffering; I discovered suffering literally. And it is that discovery of suffering that brought me to spirituality, because I couldn't think of anything else. I couldn't think of any other way—although I had given up the idea of God entirely and had been a materialist physicist for quite some time. In fact, when my young children asked me one time, "Are you an atheist?" I said something like, "Yeah." And, "Is there a God?" And I said, "No, I don't believe in God." That kind of thing was quite common for me to say. But in that era, around thirty-seven, that particular world—where God didn't exist and where the meaning of life came just from brain-pursuits of glory in a profession—just did not satisfy me and did not bring happiness. In fact it was full of suffering. So I came to meditation. I wanted to see if there was any way of at least finding some solace, if not happiness. And eventually great joy came out of it, but that took time. And also, I must mention that I got married too, and the challenge of love was a very important one. In other words, I very soon discovered after I got married for the second time that love is very different than what I thought it was. So I discovered with my wife the meaning of love, and that was a big contribution also to my own spirituality.
WIE: It's interesting that, while you turned to spirituality because you felt that science wasn't really satisfying your own search for truth, you have nevertheless remained a scientist throughout.
AG: That's true. It's just that my way of doing science changed. What happened to me, the reason that I lost the joy of science, was because I had made it into a professional trip. I lost the ideal way of doing science, which is the spirit of discovery, the curiosity, the spirit of knowing truth. So I was not searching for truth anymore through science, and therefore I had to discover meditation, where I was searching for truth again, truth of reality. What is the nature of reality after all? You see the first tendency was nihilism, nothing exists; I was completely desperate. But meditation very soon told me that no, it's not that desperate. I had an experience. I had a glimpse that reality really does exist. Whatever it was I didn't know, but something exists. So that gave me the prerogative to go back to science and see if I could now do science with new energy and new direction and really investigate truth instead of investigating because of professional glory.
WIE: How then did your newly revived interest in truth, this spiritual core to your life, inform your practice of science?
AG: What happened was that I was not doing science anymore for the purpose of just publishing papers and doing problems which enabled you to publish papers and get grants. Instead, I was doing the really important problems. And the really important problems of today are very paradoxical and very anomalous. Well, I'm not saying that traditional scientists don't have a few important problems. There are a few important problems there too. But one of the problems I discovered very quickly that would lead me, I just intuited, to questions of reality was the quantum measurement problem.
You see, the quantum measurement problem is supposed to be a problem which forever derails people from any professional achievement because it's a very difficult problem. People have tried it for decades and have not been able to solve it. But I thought, "I have nothing to lose and I am going to investigate only truth, so why not see?" Quantum physics was something I knew very well. I had researched quantum physics all my life, so why not do the quantum measurement problem? So that's how I came to ask this question, "What agency converts possibility into actuality?" And it still took me from 1975 to 1985 until, through a mystical breakthrough, I came to recognize this.
WIE: Could you describe that breakthrough?
AG: Yes, I'd love to. It's so vivid in my mind. You see, the wisdom was in those days—and this was in every sort of book, The Tao of Physics, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Fred Alan Wolf's Taking the Quantum Leap, and some other books too—everywhere the wisdom was that consciousness must be an emergent phenomenon of the brain. And despite the fact that some of these people, to their credit, were giving consciousness causal efficacy, no one could explain how it happened. That was the mystery because, after all, if it's an emergent phenomenon of the brain, then all causal efficacy must ultimately come from the material elementary particles. So this was a puzzle to me. This was a puzzle to everybody. And I just couldn't find any way to solve it. David Bohm talked about hidden variables, so I toyed with his ideas of an explicate order and an implicate order, that kind of thing—but this wasn't satisfactory because in Bohm's theory, again, there is no causal efficacy that is given to consciousness. It is all a realist theory. In other words, it is a theory on which everything can be explained through mathematical equations. There is no freedom of choice, in other words, in reality. So I was just struggling and struggling because I was convinced that there is real freedom of choice.
So then one time—and this is where the breakthrough happened—my wife and I were in Ventura, California and a mystic friend, Joel Morwood, came down from Los Angeles, and we all went to hear Krishnamurti. And Krishnamurti, of course, is extremely impressive, a very great mystic. So we heard him and then we came back home. We had dinner and we were talking, and I was giving Joel a spiel about my latest ideas of the quantum theory of consciousness and Joel just challenged me. He said, "Can consciousness be explained?" And I tried to wriggle my way through that but he wouldn't listen. He said, "You are putting on scientific blinders. You don't realize that consciousness is the ground of all being." He didn't use that particular word, but he said something like, "There is nothing but God." And something flipped inside of me which I cannot quite explain. This is the ultimate cognition, that I had at that very moment. There was a complete about-turn in my psyche and I just realized that consciousness is the ground of all being. I remember staying up that night, looking at the sky and having a real mystical feeling about what the world is, and the complete conviction that this is the way the world is, this is the way that reality is, and one can do science. You see, the prevalent notion—even among people like David Bohm—was, "How can you ever do science without assuming that there is reality and material and all this? How can you do science if you let consciousness do things which are 'arbitrary'?" But I became completely convinced—there has not been a shred of doubt ever since—that one can do science on this basis. Not only that, one can solve the problems of today's science. And that is what is turning out. Of course all the problems did not get solved right on that night. That night was the beginning of a new way of doing science.
WIE: That's interesting. So that night something really did shift for you in your whole approach. And everything was different after that?
AG: Everything was different.
WIE: Did you then find, in working out the details of what it would mean to do science in this context, that you were able to penetrate much more deeply or that your own scientific thinking was transformed in some way by this experience?
AG: Right. Exactly. What happened was very interesting. I was stuck, as I said, I was stuck with this idea before: "How can consciousness have causal efficacy?" And now that I recognized that consciousness was the ground of being, within months all the problems of quantum measurement theory, the measurement paradoxes, just melted away. I wrote my first paper which was published in 1989, but that was just refinement of the ideas and working out details. The net upshot was that the creativity, which got a second wind on that night in 1985, took about another three years before it started fully expressing itself. But ever since I have been just blessed with ideas after ideas, and lots of problems have been solved—the problem of cognition, perception, biological evolution, mind-body healing. My latest book is called Physics of the Soul. This is a theory of reincarnation, all fully worked out. It has been just a wonderful adventure in creativity.
WIE: So it sounds pretty clear that taking an interest in the spiritual, in your case, had a significant effect on your ability to do science. Looking through the opposite end of the lens, how would you say that being a scientist has affected your spiritual evolution?
AG: Well, I stopped seeing them as separate, so this identification, this wholeness, the integration of the spiritual and the scientific, was very important for me. Mystics often warn people, "Look, don't divide your life into this and that." For me it came naturally because I discovered the new way of doing science when I discovered spirit. Spirit was the natural basis of my being, so after that, whatever I do, I don't separate them very much.
WIE: You mentioned a shift in your motivation for doing science—how what was driving you started to turn at a certain point. That's one thing that we've been thinking about a lot as we've been looking into this issue: What is it that really motivates science? And how is that different from what motivates spiritual pursuit? Particularly, there have been some people we have discussed—thinkers like E. F. Schumacher or Huston Smith, for example—who feel that ever since the scientific revolution, when Descartes's and Newton's ideas took hold, the whole approach of science has been to try to dominate or control nature or the world. Such critics question whether science could ever be a genuine vehicle for discovering the deepest truths, because they feel that science is rooted in a desire to know for the wrong reasons. Obviously, in your work you have been very immersed in the scientific world—you know a lot of scientists, you go to conferences, you're surrounded by all of that and also, perhaps, you struggle with that motivation in yourself. Could you speak a little more about your experience of that?
AG: Yes, this is a very, very good question; we have to understand it very deeply.
The problem is that in this pursuit, this particular pursuit of science, including the books that we mentioned earlier, The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu Li Masters, even when spirituality is recognized within the materialist worldview, God is seen only in the immanent aspect of divinity. What that means is: you have said that there is only one reality. By saying that there is only one reality—material reality—even when you imbue matter with spirituality, because you are still dealing with only one level, you are ignoring the transcendent level. And therefore you are only looking at half of the pie; you are ignoring the other half. Ken Wilber makes this point very, very well. So what has to be done of course—and that's when the stigma of science disappears—is to include the other half into science. Now, before my work, I think it was very obscure how this inclusion has to be done. Although people like Teilhard de Chardin, Aurobindo or Madame Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophy movement, recognized that such a science could have come, very few could actually see it.
So what I have done is to give actual flesh to all these visions that took place early in the century. And when you do that, when you recognize that science can be based on the primacy of consciousness, then this deficiency isn't there anymore. In other words then, the stigma that science is only separateness goes away. The materialist science is a separatist science. The new science, though, says that the material part of the world does exist, the separative movement is part of reality also, but it is not the only part of reality. There is separation, and then there is integration. So in my book The Self-Aware Universe I talk about the hero's journey for the entire scientific endeavor. I said that, well, four hundred years ago, with Galileo, Copernicus, Newton and others, we started the separatist sail and we went on a separate journey of separateness, but that's only the first part of the hero's journey. Then the hero discovers and the hero returns. It is the hero's return that we are now witnessing through this new paradigm.
Question: "What is Hinduism and what do Hindus believe?"
Answer: Hinduism is one of the oldest known organized religions—its sacred writings date as far back as 1400 to 1500 B.C. It is also one of the most diverse and complex, having millions of gods. Hindus have a wide variety of core beliefs and exist in many different sects. Although it is the third largest religion in the world, Hinduism exists primarily in India and Nepal.
The main texts of Hinduism are the Vedas (considered most important), Upanishadas, the Mahabharata, and the Ramayana. These writings contain hymns, incantations, philosophies, rituals, poems, and stories from which Hindus base their beliefs. Other texts used in Hinduism include the Brahmanas, the Sutras, and the Aranyakas.
Though Hinduism is often understood as being polytheistic, supposedly recognizing as many as 330 million gods, it also has one “god” that is supreme—Brahma. Brahma is an entity believed to inhabit every portion of reality and existence throughout the entire universe. Brahma is both impersonal and unknowable and is often believed to exist in three separate forms: Brahma—Creator; Vishnu—Preserver; and Shiva—Destroyer. These “facets” of Brahma are also known through the many other incarnations of each. It is difficult to summarize Hindu theology since the various Hindu schools contain elements of almost every theological system. Hinduism can be:
1) Monistic—Only one thing exists; Sankara's school
2) Pantheistic—Only one divine thing exists so that God is identical to the world; Brahmanism
3) Panentheistic—The world is part of God; Ramanuja's School
4) Theistic—Only one God, distinct from Creation; Bhakti Hinduism.
Observing other schools, Hinduism can also be atheistic, deistic, or even nihilistic. With such diversity included under the title “Hindu,” one may wonder what makes them “Hindu” in the first place? About the only real issue is whether or not a belief system recognizes the Vedas as sacred. If it does, then it is Hindu. If not, then it is not Hindu.
The Vedas are more than theology books. They contain a rich and colorful “theo-mythology,” that is, a religious mythology which deliberately interweaves myth, theology, and history to achieve a story-form religious root. This “theo-mythology” is so deeply rooted in India's history and culture that to reject the Vedas is viewed as opposing India. Therefore, a belief system is rejected by Hinduism if it does not embrace Indian culture to some extent. If the system accepts Indian culture and its theo-mythical history, then it can be embraced as “Hindu” even if its theology is theistic, nihilistic, or atheistic. This openness to contradiction can be a headache for Westerners who seek logical consistency and rational defensibility in their religious views. But, to be fair, Christians are no more logical when they claim belief in Yahweh yet live life as practical atheists, denying Christ with their lives. For the Hindu the conflict is genuine logical contradiction. For the Christian, the conflict is more likely simple hypocrisy.
Hinduism views mankind as divine. Because Brahma is everything, Hinduism asserts that everyone is divine. Atman, or self, is one with Brahman. All of reality outside of Brahman is considered mere illusion. The spiritual goal of a Hindu is to become one with Brahma, thus ceasing to exist in its illusory form of “individual self.” This freedom is referred to as “moksha.” Until moksha is achieved, a Hindu believes that he/she will be repeatedly reincarnated in order that he/she may work towards self-realization of the truth (the truth being that only Brahman exists, nothing else). How a person is reincarnated is determined by karma, which is a principle of cause and effect governed by nature's balance. What one did in the past affects and corresponds with what happens in the future, past and future lives included.
Although this is just a brief synopsis, it is readily seen that Hinduism is in opposition to biblical Christianity on almost every count of its belief system. Christianity has one God who is both personal and knowable (Deuteronomy 6:5; 1 Corinthians 8:6); has one set of Scriptures; teaches that God created the earth and all who live upon it (Genesis 1:1; Hebrews 11:3); believes that man is created in God's image and lives only once (Genesis 1:27; Hebrews 9:27-28); and teaches that salvation is through Jesus Christ alone (John 3:16; 6:44; 14:6; Acts 4:12). Hinduism as a religious system fails because it fails to recognize Jesus as the uniquely incarnated God-Man and Savior, the one solely sufficient source of salvation for humanity.
Recommended Resource: Jesus Among Other gods by Ravi Zacharias.
Many people are telling us that it's just too hard for people today to believe in the God of Christianity. We have to face it that the leading opinion makers of our culture-- the academics, the media people, the politicians, the scientists-- for the most part find Christianity utterly incredible. Not just slightly incredible, but utterly incredible. Not even worth considering. Way out in left field.
Two hundred years ago, there was a period in intellectual history known as the "Enlightenment." During that period, scholars proudly proclaimed all the wonderful things the human mind could accomplish, if only it could set itself free from bondage to religion. The human mind, they said, should be autonomous (that means "self-legislating"), subject only to its own authority. Intellectual autonomy was the highest principle of the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment, of course, was not really anything new. The same attitude, the same emphasis on autonomy, was present two thousand years earlier in Greek philosophy, four hundred years earlier among the Renaissance humanists, and has existed whenever and wherever people have tried to carry on the work of the mind without God. From a biblical viewpoint, it is simply the attitude of unbelief. It's the attitude that says "My mind is my own."
For people who claim autonomy, the biblical message of salvation is irrelevant. Who needs salvation from sin? For one thing, the would-be autonomous thinker says, we are not sinners; for we decide what sin is, and we're not guilty of it. And if we have any imperfections, we will either leave them alone or else deal with them the way we deal with everything else: by autonomous thought.
So, during and since the Enlightenment, more and more philosophers, scientists, historians, psychologists, economists, political theorists, even the main body of theologians, denied the authority of the Bible. They scoffed at the idea that God created the heavens and the earth, that man fell into sin through Adam's disobedience, that God worked miracles on earth, that the Son of God came to earth as a man, that he lived a perfect life, shed his blood for sin, and rose from the dead. How, they asked, can modern people believe in such ancient, barbaric ideas? Humanity has come of age! We cannot any longer believe in angels, devils, miracles, resurrections from the dead, blood atonement, an infallible book?
Fifty years ago, the theologian-- theologian, mind you,-- Rudolf Bultmann, said that one cannot believe in angels and demons if he uses a telephone and travels in an airplane. I'm not sure what using the telephone and traveling in airplanes has to do with the existence of angels and demons. He never said exactly what the connection was; these people never did. Evidently he thought it was obvious. He kept saying, over and over, that Christianity would have to come to terms with the Enlightenment. Today, Bultmann is gone; he knows better now. But his attitudes are still very much with us.
Now some people will tell you that things have changed today from fifty years ago. Some will say that around the 1960s the intellectual world shifted from "modern" to "postmodern." While the moderns were very proud of their intellectual powers, the postmoderns recognize that intellect isn't everything; indeed, they're even inclined to be skeptical or relativistic. They deny that the human intellect can discover final or absolute truth. And, besides the intellect, postmoderns say, intuition and feeling have their rights, too. While the moderns were skeptical about the supernatural, we're told, the postmoderns appreciate the supernatural. Along with science, they have come to appreciate the religions of the Far East and of Native Americans. They have come to appreciate meditation, psychic phenomena; even sometimes astrology, channeling, tarot cards and past-life regression as paths to truth.
Does this mean that the postmoderns are more open to the Bible than the moderns were? Are they more favorable to the idea that the Son of God came to earth in human history, that he taught with absolute authority, worked miracles, lived a sinless life and offered his body as a blood atonement? Are they willing to bow the knee before the risen and ascended Jesus Christ as the only Lord and Savior of men?
Certainly not. For under the skin they too are Enlightenment people. They do not intend to bow the knee to anyone; particularly, they do not want to bow the knees of their mind. The difference between modern and postmodern is that while the moderns followed the autonomous secular intellect, the postmoderns add that they have a right also to follow their autonomous intuition and feeling. They will accept, now and then, some strange beliefs; but only on their own inner criteria. What they believe they believe on their own authority. Indeed, that lust for autonomy is more powerful than ever. The postmodernist rejects the idea of absolute truth, so that he can be even more autonomous, so that he can be even freer in choosing his beliefs for himself.
And some postmoderns,-- the New Age monists, to use Peter Jones's terminology-- look within themselves to find God: not the God of the Bible, but the God of their own inner selves, the God which is their own inner selves. This is the ultimate autonomy, the self as God, the very worship of self.
So the postmoderns, like the moderns, find Christianity quite incredible. The reason is that the God of Christianity will not bow to the autonomous mind of man. Believing in the biblical God and believing in one's own autonomy are absolutely contradictory, totally at odds with one another. You cannot do both. The God of the Bible is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth. He will not permit himself to be found by a human intellect that shakes its fist in pride and says, "I will be the final judge of truth and right." No two views can be further apart than believing in the biblical God and believing in human autonomy. To one who believes in his own autonomy, Christianity will always seem totally ridiculous, utterly foolish, not worth considering. The believer in human autonomy has already denied the God of the Bible. He cannot even consider the evidence. He cannot even believe in the possibility of the Bible being true.
It is not, you see, as though the moderns and postmoderns have studied the evidence objectively and come to a reasoned conclusion that God does not exist. Rather, they reject the biblical God from the outset of their investigation. The unbeliever starts with the idea that Christianity can't be true. He cannot take the evidence seriously. He knows that if the evidence does prove the Bible, then he will have to bow the knee, including the knee of his mind. And he will not seriously consider that. Oh, he may be polite in a conversation about religion. But in the final analysis, he is not an unbiased party to the discussion. He has already made up his mind. For him, the discussion is over. For he will not, he cannot, seriously question the autonomy of the human mind.
The claim of autonomy; that's what makes Christianity so hard for people to believe today. That is why Christian views of the family, of sex, of education, of justice, of the sanctity of human life are increasingly marginalized in modern society. Our secularized society looks at us with increasing condescension and pity. They do not listen to our arguments; they don't take us seriously. Our positions are simply incredible. They violate the main premise of secular thought, the premise of autonomy, man's right to be the final judge of truth and falsity, right and wrong.
You can argue any crazy idea and get a hearing from Oprah or Phil. But try to get some serious attention for the Lordship of Jesus, or the reality of the Resurrection, or even the Ten Commandments. No, you'll be told; those are "religious" views. We can't consider them as part of the public dialogue. You may believe them privately, but don't promote them on TV; don't teach them in school; don't mention them in a political campaign. If you dare to proclaim the relevance of Scripture to society, well, then, you are a fanatic. You are trying to force your religion down people's throats. (Never mind that Christians can say the same things about secularists with equal plausibility.) Of course, some religious views are o.k.: transcendental meditation is o.k.; native American spirituality is o.k.; Islam and Buddhism should be given a place in any public forum. Only biblical Christianity is excluded.
Talk to a secularized scholar and try to get him to consider the hypothesis that God created the world. You'll find that his resistance to the idea greatly exceeds the bounds of normal rational discourse. Why? There are two possibilities, aren't there? Either the world is basically personal or basically impersonal. We know that the world contains impersonal objects and forces: matter, motion, time, space, chance. We also know that it contains persons-- beings with minds, with self-consciousness. The two possibilities are: either the impersonal reduces to the personal or the personal reduces to the impersonal. That is, either the persons in the world are nothing more than matter, motion, time, space and chance; or the matter, motion, time, space and chance are the creations of a great person, who uses them for his wise purposes.
If the world is basically impersonal, it is a pretty dark, dreary, and hopeless place. Happiness, justice, love, beauty might spring up for a while, but they are cosmic accidents of no ultimate importance. Finally they will be consumed in various cosmic explosions, and nothing will remain to remember them. Ultimately they are meaningless. If the world is basically personal, the situation is different: personal values like happiness, justice, love, and beauty are wrapped up in the very core of the universe. They are what nature and history is all about. In time, it will be the matter of the world that will be burned up, to be replaced by a new heaven and earth wherein dwells righteousness.
So: is the world basically personal, or basically impersonal? One would think that either hypothesis is at least worth considering at the outset of the discussion. But do the secularists give equal attention to both? Do they consider equally the evidence for both? My sense of it is that they routinely assume that the universe is impersonal, and they do not give any serious consideration to the other possibility. Consider Darwinian evolution, Marxist economics, Freudian psychology. Did Darwin, Marx, or Freud consider the evidence for the existence of God and conclude objectively that God did not exist? Certainly not. Theyassumed that God did not exist, and they went on from there to develop impersonalist explanations of life, history, economics.
Why? Because impersonalism and autonomy go together. If God exists, then autonomy is at an end; we must bow the knees of the mind. But if God doesn't exist, then we are on our own, free. We can set our own standards, believe what we want to believe. So to assume autonomy, the secularist also assumes an impersonal universe.
Consider the debates in our time about evolution and abortion. Both of these are real hot-button issues, but there is very little real communication about them. People who believe in evolution and abortion tend to cling to them with an almost fanatical devotion. When the Vista school board, with a Christian majority, considered asking the teachers to mention some of the "weaknesses" in the theory of evolution, they encountered massive resistance. Why? Doesn't every theory have weaknesses? Of all the theories of human science, is evolution alone infallible?
Same for abortion. Those who favor abortion today are not trying to encourage free debate on the subject. They don't want schoolchildren to hear the other side. Why is this? because these are, today, test issues in the battle for human autonomy. The battle over evolution is essentially a battle over the autonomy of human science; and the battle over abortion is-- well, of course-- a battle over "a woman's right to choose," even "a woman's right to choose the life or death of an innocent child."
What about the anti-evolution and anti-abortion positions? Aren't anti-evolutionists and anti-abortionists equally dogmatic? Sometimes they are, certainly. My gut feeling is that among the anti's there is more rational thought, more consideration of the other point of view. But that isn't important. Both sides are fighting over fundamentals, over basic assumptions. They are fighting over the question of whether people should be, or should not be, autonomous. And that issue is fundamental, basic.
So why is it hard to believe in God today? It is hard, because belief in the biblical God goes radically against the whole drift of our culture, against the whole cultural consensus, against human autonomy. For those who uphold their own autonomy, belief in the Christian God is not only difficult, it's impossible.
And if you believe in God, but are somewhat swayed by our cultural consensus, you will find belief in God a very difficult thing. You will be torn back and forth, tempted to abandon what belief you can muster.
Well, how can we believe in something which so many think is impossible? First, I want you to know that God is very much aware of the situation. Indeed, everything I've told you so far comes right out of the Bible. Listen to what God says, in 1 Cor. 1:18-25:
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
You see, there's nothing new about the modern or postmodern cultural consensus. The apostle Paul had to preach into the same kind of intellectual environment 2000 years ago. These people also believed in their own autonomy. And they too believed they had no need of salvation from sin.
Even more important, God designed the Gospel to address precisely such a culture. In that first century environment, the Gospel proved to be the "power of God unto salvation." Not only wisdom, but power. It cut through the culture like a hot knife through butter. Christians went through suffering and persecution, but the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church, and in three hundred years the Roman Empire was Christian. Are you afraid that the Gospel cannot appeal to people today? Then you don't know what you're dealing with. The Gospel is the most powerful force there is. The word of God, energized by the Spirit, cuts into people's hearts. It destroys the wisdom of the wise and the intelligence of the intelligent. The worldly wise moderns would dismiss Christianity as impossible foolishness; but God's word turns the tables. It exposes the world's wisdom as the foolishness that it is.
How does it do that? It does that by setting forth Christ-- Jesus Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Jesus is the eternal word of God, who was eternally with God and who is God. As such, he shows us a whole new way to think. He offers us a new mind; a mind which Paul in 1 Cor. 2:16 calls "the mind of Christ."
You see, if you start from human autonomy, you can't believe in God. If you look for some logical argument that runs from the assumption of human autonomy to the conclusion, "God exists," you won't find one. When you start from that premise, you will conclude over and over again that God does not exist. The only way to believe in God is by means of a whole new way of thinking, a new mind, the mind of Christ.
The mind of Christ says, first of all, we are not autonomous. We are creatures of God, under his control and under the authority of his word. Our minds were made to think his thoughts after him, to presuppose his authority, not our own. Once we surrender our own autonomy, we are freed from its terrible bondage, and our very concept of possibility changes. Things which seemed impossible now seem possible. Now we are free to believe that the world is not fundamentally impersonal, but personal-- a place of great excitement and drama, a place in which the most important elements are not electrons and quarks, but righteousness, love, beauty, and holiness. We can look at the stars, or the human eye, or the human conscience, or the 66 books of the Bible, and be free to say what is so very obvious after all: these didn't just happen; they were designed by a great mind, a mind who loves beauty, truth, love, goodness, righteousness.
And the mind of Christ also gives us the freedom to see ourselves as we really are. Once we're set free from the assumption of autonomy, something else becomes obvious: we are sinners; we have done wrong. No more room for boasting, no more time for minimizing our moral failure, no more assuming that we can solve our own problems. If the world is in the hands of an absolute person who loves righteousness, truth, beauty and holiness, we know we look terrible in his eyes. But take heart. For the mind of Christ also proclaims Christ crucified: Christ who lived a perfect life and died as a blood sacrifice, as a substitute for us, to take away our sin. A barbaric idea? Not once you see your sin and understand how terrible it must be to a holy God. Sin is so bad, so very bad, that only death will deal with it.
So bad it is, that you cannot save yourself. To imagine that you can is to go back to the spirit of autonomy. Salvation, reconciliation with God, is a gift. Your responsibility is simply to receive it in faith. Do you want that gift this morning? Say to God, yes, I know I cannot rule myself. I know that I don't have the final wisdom. I renounce my autonomy, my self-rule. I seek your wisdom, and I acknowledge your rule, your Lordship over my life and my thoughts. I know that I have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, and I deserve your awful judgment. But I hear your promise in the word of God. And I throw myself upon your mercy, for the sake of Jesus your Son, who loved me and died in my place. If you can say that prayer from the heart, then you have the mind of Christ.
How Great Thou Art
Amazing Grace 402
432, Jesus, What a Friend
Vast the Immensity
How to Believe in God in the 2000s
2. Why It Is Easy to Believe in God Today
Prov. 1:7, 1 Cor. 1:26-31, Rom. 1:18-25
Last week I tried to explain to you why it is so hard to believe in God today. It is hard, because the whole mood of our culture is focused on autonomy. Autonomy is self-law, seeking to live and think according to our own standards, rather than looking beyond ourselves to God. People who try to live autonomously will never find God, because autonomy excludes God. We can escape from autonomy only if God reaches down in his mercy and gives us a new mind, by his grace.
But in another sense it isn't so hard at all, and that is the perspective I'd like to bring you this morning. Last week, we looked at the problem from the human side, thinking of the development of human culture following our fall into sin. This week, I'd like to look at it from God's side. If we want to turn away from autonomy, it is important for us to learn to see things from God's point of view. Of course, we are not God; so we cannot entirely see things from his point of view. But he has revealed himself to us in Scripture, so we do have a reliable account of how he looks at things.
So let's look at belief in God from God's side. It ought to be easy, shouldn't it? Let's assume that God exists and that he wants to reveal himself to us. Do you think it would be hard for him to do it? No; God can do it just like that. If he can make the whole heavens and earth in six days, if he can rule the whole course of nature and history, then certainly he can make himself known to his creatures. He can adjust everything in the world and in us so that revelation can get through.
Can God communicate clearly to us? Of course. Revelation without clarity is not revelation at all. An unclear revelation is, to some extent, a revelation which has failed. The more clarity, the better the communication. Now if the majestic, sovereign, all-powerful God of the Bible wants to communicate with us, do you have any doubt that he could communicate clearly?
Sure he can. Sometimes people talk as if you have to be very smart and very well educated to believe in God. There are big, fat books filled with complicated arguments for God's existence. Most of these arguments have been debated for centuries. Some people think they're pretty good; others think they're full of holes. Most people don't understand these arguments at all; it's all very dense and opaque. I don't think these arguments are all bad. At least they sometimes manage to gain the attention of people who like to think they belong to the intellectual class.
But that's all rather beside the point, isn't it? If God wanted to make himself known to us, would he have revealed himself only to very smart and very well-educated people? Is God, after all, an elitist? Does he want to deal only with people who are very, very bright? I don't think so. Remember, we are talking about the God of the Bible. And that God is not an elitist, not a respecter of persons. He does not marvel at the intelligence of intelligent people, or at the extent to which they educate themselves. Imagine God looking down and saying, "Oh, look at Joe; what a wonderful mind he has!" or, "Oh, look at Susie; what a great education she has." The very thought is rather funny. God made Joe's mind, and he provided Susie's education. But to God, neither one of them is terribly impressive.
And consider our need. We are fallen, sinful. What we need is salvation from sin, divine forgiveness. In revelation, God wants to tell us how our sins can be forgiven. Do you think he would tell that only to the smart people, to the well-educated? If anything, it is very nearly the reverse. In 1 Cor. 1, Paul reminds the Corinthians, who thought they were very smart, that not many of them were actually very wise by worldly standards. This passage, verses 26-29, follows the one I quoted last week:
Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of the world and the despised things-- to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.
So if you believe in God this morning, it's not because you are especially smart, or well-educated. More likely it is because you are dumber than most. Of course, that is only a generalization. I say that because I don't want my colleagues at the seminary to get upset. And I hope you saw the point of that passage. God doesn't want people boasting about how they discovered him by their own wisdom. Rather, he wants all the all the credit, all the glory, for himself.
So: when God reveals himself, he doesn't reveal himself obscurely, so that only very bright, or very well-educated, or very sensitive, or very well-disciplined people can find him. He hasn't revealed himself only to some great Guru and his disciples. He reveals himself clearly. He reveals himself so that it is easy to believe. Psm. 19 says that
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the works of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world.
The Apostle Paul says that God is clearly revealed, even to the most wicked of human beings:
What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-- his eternal power and divine nature-- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (Rom. 1:19-20).
God not only can reveal himself clearly; he has done so.
God reveals himself in everything he makes, including us. Just as there is a label on most of our household items telling where it comes from, "Made in Taiwan, Made in Japan," so there is a seal on the whole world, including us, that says, "made by God." The greatness of creation reveals something of God's power. Its design reveals something of God's intelligence. We ourselves are God's image, God's reflection. A reflection in the mirror is different from the real thing. But the reflection images everything in its own dimension. If you are rational, reasonable, God is far more. If you are a loving person, God is far more. What of sin? Sin defaces the image, mars the image. But in an odd way, even sin reflects God. For in sin, man is trying to play God. That is what sin is: trying to be your own God, trying to be autonomous.
We are surrounded by his revelation on every side. It is outside us, inside us, pervasive. "Underneath me, all around me, is the current of thy love." It is inescapable. It is not something we have to search for with great efforts. The Bible commands of us no pilgrimages, no hard mental exercises, no scrunching of the nose or squinting of the eyes.
God's revelation is everywhere, just as God himself is everywhere. In Psm. 139, the Psalmist asks
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
And, of course: we cannot escape from God, for we can never escape from ourselves.
Further: God has made the world so that you can't really make sense of it without taking him into account. Proverbs 1:7 says that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." Without God, human knowledge falls apart; it collapses. It turns into foolishness. Psm. 14:1: "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God." Last week we saw in 1 Corinthians: "Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" Try to understand the world without God, and you will end up saying very foolish things.
Let me give some examples. As we saw last week, many postmodern intellectuals say that there is no absolute truth, but at the same time, they deny that Christianity can be true. But if all truth is relative, if nobody knows anything for sure, how can they be so sure that Christianity is not true? That is contradictory. As Van Til said, that is being rationalistic and irrationalistic at the same time. As the Bible says, that is being foolish.
Listen to the debates on the TV news. You'll hear a lot of talk about ethics: abortion, poverty, use of military force, the death penalty, sex, the family, censorship and tolerance, "rights" to various things, equality of gender, sexual orientation, and so on. Many people are very insistent about their values, whether those values be liberal or conservative. But what basis do they have for believing that this is right and that is wrong? What basis do they have for saying that I have a right to this or that, and you have an obligation to provide me that right? Often no basis at all. For these people who are so sure of their moral values are also mired in a relativism that says nothing is absolutely right or wrong. Again, they are caught up in contradiction: dogmatic and relativistic at the same time.
Try to make sense of the universe without God. Without God, the universe is ultimately irrational, the result of chance. When you try to develop a scientific or philosophical account of the world without God, you are trying to come up with a rational account of an irrational world. This can be gussied up with a lot of sophistication, so that it looks impressive. But in the end the attempt is foolishness. I'm not saying that non-Christian scientists don't discover truth. They cannot help discovering truth, because they are surrounded by God's revelation. But when they use their scientific knowledge to deny God, they lapse into foolishness.
So you see that the Christian worldview is not just slightly better than all the others; it is the only one which does not collapse into foolishness. If we don't believe, it's not for lack of evidence. The evidence is clear; God's revelation is clear enough that believing in him should be easy.
Ah, but you say, it isn't easy! Sure, I understand. But that takes us back to last week, doesn't it? If God's revelation of himself is clear, and yet believing in him isn't easy, then there must be some problem with us. The problem is not in God's revelation; it's in our hearts.
A while ago, we looked at the first chapter of Romans, where Paul tells us that God is clearly revealed in the world, even to the wicked. Let us listen to a few more verses, talking about how sinful people respond to that revelation:
For although they knew God (N.B.), they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator-- who is forever praised. Amen. (verses 21-25)
The problem is in our hearts. Sin darkens the heart. When you reject some of God's revelation, it becomes harder to see. When we claim autonomy (this is hard to say)-- God gives us up. We become hardened, habituated to a sinful way of thinking and living, so that it isn't easy to believe any more. We choose this path; we exchange the truth of God for a lie; and we must take the responsibility for it.
When we try to rule ourselves, even to rule our own thinking, we become fools. The trouble is that it's hard for fools to abandon their foolishness. To abandon our foolishness, we must abandon our autonomy, that so-called freedom of thought that only enslaves the mind. The fool prizes his freedom of thought above everything else. He insists on the right to be God's judge, no matter how foolish that idea is. He would rather be rational and irrational at the same time than to submit to God's standards for reason and morality. He would rather try to find a rational structure in an irrational universe than to acknowledge the creation as a work of God. The hardest thing in the world is admitting that you have been a fool. To admit that brings shame; it means admitting that we are not so smart after all, that we are among the foolish, weak, and lowly things that God seeks to save. The smartest people find it hardest to admit that they've been foolish. Humanly speaking, that's why there aren't that many smart people in the church-- except of course on the faculty of Westminster.
But there are people for whom belief in God is easy. The most fortunate among us were raised in Christian homes, where Christ was head of the home. They heard Bible stories from their youth, memorized Bible passages, learned the catechism. They received discipline-- sometimes spankings-- when they did wrong. They either went to Christian schools or home schools, or else they went to public schools, but came home to parents who could and would take the trouble to unteach all the false values they were hearing in the public schools. Those parents prayed with and for their kids. They protected their children from music, movies, friendships, that would lead them away from God, training them gradually to become salt and light in the world, to lead others to Jesus. For children like that, God is in everything. They could not go anywhere or do anything without thinking of God. God was not only in church, but at breakfast, lunch and dinner, in their daily chores, in their studies, in their growing participation in the affairs of the world.
There are other people who did not grow up this way, but who, by God's grace, came to see the foolishness of unbelief, and repented of their intellectual and moral willfulness. Many of them will tell you that the difficulty of believing in God is not intellectual, but moral. The problem is not finding the evidence, but bending the knee.
And that is why Jesus Christ, who is our savior from sin, is also our savior from foolishness. Foolishness and sin are opposite sides of the same coin. Foolishness is sin, and sin is foolishness. Who, after all, in his right mind, would rebel against the all-powerful Lord of heaven and earth? Who in his right mind would despise infinite love?
Following the passage I quoted earlier in 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul says,
It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God-- that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let him who boasts boast in the Lord.
See that connection? Christ is divine wisdom, and his wisdom is righteousness, holiness, redemption. Wisdom is an ethical matter. Foolishness is sin; wisdom is righteousness. When Jesus died for sinners, he died for fools.
So, if there are fools here this morning, and if by God's grace you are willing to admit that you are fools, I invite you to come to Jesus for wisdom. When you see the world from God's point of view, it really opens up. It's not a chaos, not an irrational world of chance; it really is the most wonderful order. When you bow the knee before Jesus, he will show you a world brimming with righteousness and holiness and redemption, with truth, goodness and beauty. There's only one disadvantage: when you study the world with Jesus, you will not be able to boast, except in him.
Confess now that you have sinned-- in thought, as well as word and deed-- and trust in the wisdom of Jesus, his sacrifice of his life on the cross, as your only hope for eternal life, and as the beginning of wisdom. With Jesus as the foundation of your life, no area of your life will be without God. You won't be able to think of anything without relating it to him. There may be temptations and failures; but in essence, believing in God will be the easiest thing in the world, for it will be the foundation for everything else.
453 O, the Deep, Deep Love
Psm. 19
Vast the Immensity
Psm. 139
How to Believe in God in the 2000s
3. Believing in God Through the Bible
Two weeks ago, I spoke about why it was so difficult to believe in God today, because of the persistent unbelief of our culture. It seems as if, to participate in the intellectual, social, moral and political life of our time, you almost have to believe in human autonomy, the idea that we are responsible only to ourselves. Last week, I argued that, nevertheless, God has revealed himself, and revealed himself clearly. The problem with believing in God is not a lack of evidence, but our autonomous rejection of the evidence, our persistent desire to be our own bosses in intellectual matters and in all of life.
The two previous sermons focused mostly on what theologians call "natural revelation--" revelation in the creation, and particularly in ourselves as God's image. This morning I am going to focus on "special revelation," God's revelation to us through prophets and apostles, and especially through Scripture.
As we saw in the first chapter of Romans, natural revelation tells us that God exists, and it tells us of his "eternal power and divine nature." That is, it tells us what kind of God he is. It also tells us God's standards of right and wrong, imprinting them on the human conscience.
But there is something else we need to know from God. We have sinned and fallen far short of his glory. Do we have any hope of God's forgiveness? Or can we look forward only to his terrible wrath? Nature does not show us the way to forgiveness. We cannot find that out from exploring the fields and oceans, or by looking inside ourselves. So where shall we look?
There is another revelation, a "special revelation." How very special it is, because it presents us the good news of Jesus. It tells us that we may indeed find God's forgiveness, and more we can positively become righteous through Christ. So we can live through all eternity in the joy of knowing that God loves us.
That revelation came to us in three stages. In the first stage, God spoke to some people directly. We read that God spoke directly to Adam and Eve, to Cain, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to Isaiah, to many others. When the Lord Jesus lived on the earth, many people heard God speaking to them through his lips.
After God brought his people out of the land of Egypt, they camped around Mount Sinai, and there they heard the voice of God directly. This was the only time in history that the whole people of God had been gathered together to hear God's voice directly. What do you suppose it was like? A happy time, a joyous festival? Not really. It was fearsome, terrible. God met them in thunder, lightning, in a thick cloud over the mountain, with a loud trumpet blast. The mountain was covered with smoke; God descended in fire. The people were told not to come near, lest they die. They must not be allowed to see the Lord. And then they heard the voice of God. Not reassurances or comforts, at least not obviously so. He gave them the Ten Commandments.
The people didn't want this to go on. You know, there are people today who will say, "I don't want to read the Bible to learn about God. I want God to speak to me directly." When people say that, they don't know what they are asking. When God spoke to Israel, the people were scared out of their wits, utterly devastated. They didn't want to listen any more. They knew they were sinners, and they feared God's terrible judgment. So they turned to Moses, their leader, and said, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die." (Ex. 20:19). Moses agreed, and God agreed, and from then on Moses went up into the mountain to talk to God, and he came back down to tell the people what God said.
And so we come to the second stage of God's special revelation. In the second stage, God spoke to certain people, like Moses, and told them to pass his word on to the rest of us. Those people are called prophets and apostles. A prophet is somebody who speaks for God, who has God's words in his mouth. In the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, God said to Moses,
I will raise up for them (the people of Israel) a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command them. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account. But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything that I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death.
Now that passage, and there are a number of similar ones, is important. You might think that God's own words, spoken directly, would carry more authority than those of a mere prophet. You might think that the prophet's words are only a pale reflection of God's words. You might think that although you can't argue with God, you can argue with a human prophet. You might think that the word of God loses some of its authority when it passes from God's lips to the lips of a mere man.
But from the passage I read, you can see that that isn't so. The prophet has God's own words in his mouth. "I will put my words in his mouth," says the Lord. When somebody disobeys those words, he is disobeying God's words. Listen, "If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account." If you were an Israelite in those days, and Moses came up to you and said "Thus says the Lord," you had better listen. Those words aren't just Moses's words; they are God's own. They have the same authority as God's own direct speech. Same for Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, any true prophet of God.
Jesus said the same thing to his apostles: He said he would send the Spirit to "guide you into all truth," John 16:13. The Apostle Paul, too, who was a latecomer to the group of apostles, said of the gospel he preached that it "is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation of Jesus Christ," Gal. 1:12. Paul's words, too, were nothing less than God's.
But there is still a third stage in God's special revelation. God said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and commands I have written for their instruction," Ex. 24:12. In Ex. 31:18, we read that "When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the testimony, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God." In the next chapter, Moses takes these writings down the mountain, and again it says, "The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets," Ex. 32:16.
That's the third stage: special revelation committed to writing. The writing was the writing of God, written by God's own finger. What's going on here? I guess the best way to describe this for people in the 1990s is to say that God gave Israel a written constitution. God did speak directly to people sometimes, but that was not to be the normal, regular style of divine government. Nor did God promise that a prophet would always be readily available, although from time to time he provided those. As God ruled the people as king, he wanted them above all to turn to his written words.
In the ancient world, a great king would often make a "covenant," a "treaty," with a people. The king would author the treaty; he would have it written down. The treaty or covenant would be written down, so that everybody knew their obligations. It would be put in their religious sanctuaries, and there would be a public reading of it every so often. To obey the treaty document is to obey the king; to disobey it is to disobey the king. That is what the Ten Commandments are: God's treaty, his covenant with Israel, written by God's finger on tablets of stone. Notice that God is the author: he speaks in the first person: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other Gods before me," and so on.
But read on through the Old Testament, and you'll see that Israel's written constitution goes beyond just the Ten Commandments. The Book of Deuteronomy says over and over again that the people are to keep all the statutes, commandments, decrees, laws, testimonies, words of God. These are not just the Ten Commandments, but all the words of Deutreronomy, the whole law. In the New Testament, Jesus said the same thing of the whole Old Testament:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:17-19)
The Apostle Paul said of the Old Testament, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work," 2 Tim. 3:16-17.
The Old Testament, then, is the written constitution of the Christian church. What of the New Testament? Well, the New Testament is written by the apostles and by others who knew the apostles' doctrine. We have seen already that the apostles' message came from God. Surely that is also true of their writings. Peter says that ignorant people distort Paul's writings, "as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction," 2 Pet. 3:16. You see that Peter regards Paul's writings as Scripture, like the Scriptures of the Old Testament.
In the apostles' writings we hear the same note of authority that runs through the Old Testament. In 1 Cor. 14:37-8, Paul says "If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord's command. If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored." Get that? Everybody's ideas are to be tested by Paul's letters, by his written words. If anybody dares to disagree with Paul's words, the church is to ignore him. Paul's letters, together with the Old Testament, are the written constitution of the people of God.
Some people have said that a written word always has less authority than the living voice of a prophet. But that's not the way God thinks about it. The statutes, commandments, ordinances, testimonies, words of God, written on tablets of stone or on papyrus, or on modern paper, have the very same authority as God's direct speech. Scripture is "God-breathed," words spoken by God. When we hear the words of Scripture, we are hearing the words of God. It's just like hearing God directly, although not nearly as scary. But maybe we should be a little scared; for hearing God's words puts a solemn responsibility upon us. Do we want to be called least in the kingdom of heaven? That is the consequence for disobeying God's words in Scripture.
The direct word of God, the word of the prophet, the written word of God: all are the same in power and authority. No hierarchy, no decreasing scale. They are all the same. So God speaks to his people through this holy book.
Is it possible for people living in the 1990s to believe that God speaks through a holy book? Depends, again, on where you start. If you start with your own autonomy, that is, believing that you have the final say about truth and falsity, right and wrong; if you start with the assumption that you have the right to accept or reject every book you read according to your own likes and dislikes, then you've rejected Scripture already. No; for such people it is not possible to believe that God speaks in a holy book. Many people assume that today; it is the normal assumption in most cultural circles. But that assumption at least begs the question; and is it even plausible, once you start thinking about it? How can we be the ultimate judges of truth and falsity, right and wrong?
The idea of the holy book is also impossible if you think that the God of the Bible does not exist. If you think that the impersonal forces of this universe are more fundamental than the personal ones. If you think that chance is more fundamental than personality, molecules more fundamental than goodness or beauty, then our doctrine of the Bible will seem pretty incredible.
But if you're willing to set intellectual fashion aside, and to consider the possibility that the God of the Bible might really exist, then it's different. For this God is a person, and persons tend to want to communicate with other persons. And this God is sovereign Lord of the universe. If he desires to communicate with his creatures through a holy book, who on earth is going to stop him?
Why this holy book and not some other? Well, the only other slightly plausible candidate is the Koran; but the author of the Koran thought that in writing the Koran he was teaching biblical doctrine. In my opinion, he didn't teach it very well, but that's the direction the argument would have to take. Even Mohammed, however, recognized the Bible as God's holy book, as did Mary Baker Eddy, Joseph Smith and other authors of rival holy books. The very idea of the holy book is a biblical idea. No other tradition has it-- not the Confucian, nor the Buddhist, nor the Hindu. Only religions based on the Bible even talk about holy books. Which pretty well narrows the candidates down to the Bible itself.
But the best proof of the Bible is what happens when you read it. For when you read Scripture, with trust and faith, something wonderful happens. God himself draws near. Imagine! He condescends to speak to us within the covers of a book. Quite amazing, really. And it's not as if he gives us the book and then goes away. No: when you read this book in faith, you enter into a very personal relationship with God. In 1 Thess. 1:5, Paul says that the gospel came to the Thessalonians "not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction." The Gospel is words, but it is never just words. When you hear this message in faith, something very wonderful, very supernatural is taking place. When the words go into your mind, the Holy Spirit speaks them to the heart. When the risen Christ opened the Scriptures to the disciples after his Resurrection, they marvelled how their hearts burned within them as Jesus taught them the Scriptures. The Bible is not only the place where God has spoken; it is the place where he still speaks-- with power and assurance, causing our hearts to burn with in us because of how wonderful it is.
So much here to be thankful for! And the greatest thing to be thankful for is the Gospel itself-- the message of the book. As with the divine voice at Mount Sinai, there is much here to make us tremble; but there is also much to fill us with joy. The law of God, the Ten Commandments and the others, show us our guilt. They show us that we are under God's wrath. But Scripture also shows us Christ; indeed, Christ is their main theme. Christ the divine Son of God, who came to earth to live our life and to die the death we deserve on account of sin. Through him, Scripture offers us eternal life. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life," John 3:16. Whoever believes in him... Do you believe in him this morning? If so, I hope your heart is burning with the wonder of God's mercy, his grace, and his love.
And if you know Him that way, as your own Lord and Savior from sin, you will want to know more of his words in Scripture. These are the words that nurture you, that enable you better to worship Jesus and obey him. As you grow in the knowledge of your sins, the greatness of Jesus, and the greatness of salvation in him, you'll find these words more and more precious. Moses said in the wilderness, and Jesus repeated it in his wilderness temptation, that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God," (Deut. 8:3, Matt. 4:4). As you grow, you'll want to know more and more of God's words. Don't remain a child in your study of Scripture, as so many Christians do today. Press on to a really mature and thorough knowledge of Scripture, and apply it to your life. You'll never regret it.
We began our series asking how modern and postmodern people could believe in the existence of God. We've now moved far beyond that question. Believing in the biblical God involves far more than believing in the bare existence of a supernatural figure. The Biblical God is Lord over all, and he wants to rule every aspect of our lives. The Bible shows us what he expects of his servants, and what he promises to those who trust his Son. Belief in the biblical God, then, is incomparably rich. It is a whole new way of life. If you want to experience this new life, then pray with me:
