Westminster Larger Catechism (WLC)
Question 2. How doth it appear that there is a God?Answer. The very light of nature in man, and the works of God, declare plainly that there is a God; [Rom 1.19-20; Psa 19.1-3; Acts 17.28] but his word and Spirit only do sufficiently and effectually reveal him unto men for their salvation. [1 Cor 2.9-10; 2 Tim 3.15-17; Isa 59.21]
WLC #2 instructs us that God’s real existence is apparent. That much is intimated by the question, “How doth it appear that there is a God?” This is tantamount to asserting, “It does appear that there is a God.” The only question is how. How does God manifest His existence to us?
The word “appear” in this context is an example of figurative language, because God by nature is invisible (1 Tim 1.17; John 1.18).
No one has ever seen God, John writes, as if to remind his readers not only of a commonplace of judaism, but also of the fact that in the episode where Moses saw the Lord’s glory (Exod 33-34), to which allusion has just been made (1.14), Moses himself was not allowed to see God (Exod 33.20). . . . The fact remains that the consistent Old Testament assumption is that God cannot be seen, or, more precisely, that for a sinful human being to see Him would bring death. . . . Apparent exceptions are always qualified in some way.1
The modern axiom, “seeing is believing,” thinks it is warranted, then, to doubt His existence, but the axiom itself, while expressing a truism, is badly applied in the realm of theology. Essentially, it simply acknowledges that sometimes we remain skeptical about the truth of an assertion until we behold the evidence for it with our own eyes.
Even a modern dictionary says the word appear means “to become evident.” An older dictionary, closer to the sense of the word when used by the Puritans, defines it as “to be obvious; to be known, as a subject of observation or comprehension, as in Psa 90, ‘Let thy work appear to thy servant,’ and 1 John 3, ‘it doth not yet appear what we shall be’ (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary).
In other words, the invisible God’s existence is obvious, plain, evident, easily discovered and understood, readily perceived by the intellect. You cannot see Him through a telescope, or a microscope, or in any physical way, but the evidence of His existence fills His entire creation. This is biblical so we know it is true.
Of course atheists deny this, but that only proves they are either lying or blind-and in fact they are both according to the testimony of Scripture, as we shall see. If you stood beside a blind man on the beach at sunrise and he argued there is no sun at all, and certainly no sunrise, would you be persuaded or pity him? If a man doubts the existence of a force called gravity and then jumps off a building, he will fall just the same as a gravity-believer. The God of the Bible is objectively real and does not depend on anyone’s faith for His existence, any more than you or I do. Atheists will bully you into a bad starting point for debate if you let them. They will insist that the evidence for God is not plain, obvious, and convincing, and then, make you try to start without any obvious presuppositions, accepting the burden of proof to demonstrate God’s existence to the satisfaction of the atheist! You can never win that contest because the atheist has a heart problem, not a head problem.
Rather take the same approach that Scripture itself does. Assert the truth that God is, and that everyone knows it, until perhaps their consciences become so seared that they dare to deny His existence. There is no lack of convincing evidence, but only a hostility to truth. This is a more plausible and the biblical explanation for the atheist’s professed skepticism.
To my knowledge, the Bible never accepts the atheist’s challenge to start with nothing and prove the existence of God scientifically or otherwise, and yet the Bible is sufficient for faith and practice (2 Tim 3.16). Rather, the Bible announces God’s existence from its first words (Gen 1.1). In fact, the Scriptures claim to be God Himself speaking through men. Imagine how ridiculous it would be if I were to challenge your existence while you are speaking to me, and then to say that I would not believe your words are yours until you could prove that also.
Your existence is self-evident, and so is your authorship of the words you speak. So it is with God and the Bible, all the howling protests of skeptics notwithstanding.
Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) was a profound thinker who defended the Christian faith and wrote a tract called, “Why I Believe in God” (1976). He argues from a position of biblical confidence and strength:
The point is this. Not believing in God, you do not think yourself to be God’s creature. And not believing in God you do not think the universe has been created by God. That is to say, you think of yourself and the world as just being there. Now if you actually are God’s creature, then your present attitude is very unfair to Him. In that case it is even an insult to Him. And since you have insulted God, His displeasure rests upon you. God and you are not on “speaking terms.” And you have very good reasons for trying to prove that He does not exist. If He does exist, He will punish you for your disregard of Him. You are therefore wearing colored glasses. And this determines everything you say about the facts and reasons for not believing in Him. You have, as it were, entered upon God’s estate and have had your picnics and hunting parties there without asking His permission. You have taken the grapes of God’s vineyard without paying Him any rent, and you have insulted His representatives who asked you for it.
I must make an apology to you at this point. We who believe in God have not always made this position plain. Often enough we have talked with you about facts and sound reasons as though we agreed with you on what these really are. In our arguments for the existence of God we have frequently assumed that you and we together have an area of knowledge on which we agree. But we really do not grant that you see any fact in any dimension of life truly. We really think you have colored glasses on your nose when you talk about chickens and cows, as well as when you talk about the life hereafter. We should have told you this more plainly than we did. But we were really a little ashamed of what would appear to you as a very odd or extreme position. We were so anxious not to offend you that we offended our own God. But we dare no longer present our God to you as smaller or less exacting than He really is.
The fact that so many people are placed before a full exposition of the evidence for God’s existence and yet do not believe in Him has greatly discouraged us who do believe. We have therefore adopted measures of despair. Anxious to win good will, we have again compromised our God. Noting the fact that men do not see, we have conceded that what they ought to see is hard to see. In our great concern to win men we have allowed that the evidence for God’s existence is only probably compelling. And from that fatal confession we have gone one step further down to the point where we have admitted or virtually admitted that it is not really compelling at all. And so we fall back upon testimony instead of argument.
After all, we say, God is not found at the end of an argument; He is found in our hearts. So we simply testify to men that once we were dead, and now we are alive, that once we were blind and now we see, and give up all intellectual argument.
I know that it is not in my power to convert you at the end of my argument. I think the argument is sound. I hold that belief in God is not merely as reasonable as other belief; it is not a little more probable, or infinitely more probable, than unbelief. I hold rather that unless you believe in God you can logically believe in nothing else. I know that you can to your own satisfaction, by the help of the biologists, the psychologists, the logicians, and the Bible critics, reduce everything I have said to the circular meanderings of a hopeless authoritarian. Well, my meanderings have, to be sure, been circular; they have made everything turn on God. So now I shall leave you with Him, and with His mercy.
Van Til’s name is famously associated with an approach to apologetics called “presuppositionalism,” and he made a very valuable contribution to the topic.
Notes:
1. D.A. Carson, on John 1:18
Read more:
A Puritan Defense of the Christian Faith: Introduction
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