God Is
Why I Believe in God
At the moment, I am leading a book discussion of Lydia Jaeger’s What the Heavens Declare. She opens her book by considering Genesis 1:1.
Rather than speculating about the existence of God or offering an abstract meditation on the nature of the world, right from the outset, Scripture lays down creation as the framework within which everything that follows takes place. The creative act is therefore primary and comes before anything that biblical faith can say about the world.
While Jaeger’s goal is to introduce the idea of creation, I found that it resonates with another basic truth that Scripture assumes: the existence of God.
That reminded me of an unpublished essay I wrote a while ago on this question. It is a bit of philosophical theology, but also a bit of personal testimony.
I’ve always liked the first verse of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. It is a simple sentence, but packed with so much. In a line, the entire scope of cosmic history is set up.
Consider for a moment the introduction of God in this verse. He is the first character mentioned, and his introduction comes by way of an action he carries out: creation. The presence of God is simply stated. There he is, now look as he begins his work. God is not explained, justified, or rationalized. Rather, God’s existence is simply assumed.
This is the first basic truth in scripture, God is. God is the creator, not created. God is the creator of the heavens and the earth, not a part of them. God is greater than, greater than anything we can imagine, greater than anything we can discover in all our searching within the cosmos.
When I was in college, wrestling with my faith, I had doubts about who God is, how he relates to the world, and my place in the universe. One might imagine that my interest in and study of science, specifically chemistry, would lead me away from a belief in God.
Yes, science has great explanatory power regarding the structure and function of the universe. Yes, science provides humanity with a great deal of knowledge that can be used to control and manipulate matter and energy. Yes, scientific thinking can and does lead to a great deal of hubris by the scientists themselves.
For me, however, that was not the case. The orderly structure of creation, illustrated through the laws of physics and chemistry, demanded but could not itself provide an answer to the big question: why? The beauty of a night sky, the glory of snow-capped mountains, the intricacy of living creatures also demanded but could not themselves provide the answer to the question how. I could doubt science, I could doubt meaning, I could doubt reason, but I could not doubt God. This first and fundamental truth from scripture is the one thing that could not be doubted.
John Calvin referred to this innate awareness of God as the sensus divinitatis. It seems to me this is the intent of passages such as “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), “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 people are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). The existence of God ought to be obvious to anyone who opens his eyes to look at the creation, so obvious that there can be no doubt.
Alvin Plantinga’s notion of warranted belief in God captures this idea in a manner that matches well with my understanding and my experience.1 Plantinga, using the idea of sensus divinitatis as developed by Calvin and Aquinas, holds that there is an natural knowledge of God present, but only arises in our consciousness upon interaction with any number of stimuli. Like perception, the act of seeing creation gives rise to a knowledge of creator in a basic or a priori sense. It is not an argument; it is a straightforward statement of an obviously true fact. Plantinga goes on to argue how this basic belief is also rational and warranted. In essence, the sensus divinitatis is grounds for belief in God in a manner that is not a mere assumption nor the conclusion of some logical argument. “In the beginning God…” does not need further argument, God just is.
So why don’t more people just open their eyes and see? The answer lies in the basis of sin. Our sinful nature points us away from God, letting us buy into the word of the serpent, “you will be like God”, the fundamental sin that strokes humanity’s pride with the promise of being a god in our own right. In this mindset, even though the creation clearly declares the glory of God, our pride refuses to let us see that. To admit to the existence of God is to admit we, and especially me, are not the center of the universe. We suppress the sensus divinitatis until we don’t hear it any longer.
In God’s infinite and imponderable wisdom, he does not leave us in this state. God works in our hearts and lets us hear the sensus divinitatis over the noise of our pride. He opens our hearts and minds and senses to the obvious evidence of his presence in creation. This is the blessing of justification, that God comes to us and helps us see. Then we are able to see the creation, to understand all the science that helps us to explain it, to work the creation and help it to flourish, and in all these things to say “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”
So how does God prove his existence to us? He doesn’t. Instead he creates a universe, puts thinking beings into that universe and simply states “I am”. At the end of the day, that is enough.
Alvin Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015.