No analysis of Christian belief in God is complete without one further point. The God of the Bible is great, and his worshippers acknowledge that ‘his greatness is unsearchable’. Christians speak of the mystery of God, using ‘mystery’ to mean, not a puzzle that can be solved, but a reality which surpasses our understanding.
A two-year-old boy whose father has a brain like Einstein’s can know his father in a happy parent-child relationship. This is knowledge of the most important kind. Yet the boy could understand very little of what is in his father’s mind, however much his father tried to put it into words for him. There are limits to what a two-year-old, Read more
People have been trying for thousands of years to prove that God exists. Some of the arguments used can be traced back to Greek philosophy. Over the centuries several types of argument have been put forward:
- The Ontological Argument — from the Greek word on (being) — attempts to prove the being of God by reason alone; first put forward by Anselm (1033-1109). God is defined as something greater than anything else that can be conceived. Such a being must exist, for if he did not, he would not be the greatest conceivable being.
- The argument in its various forms has fascinated philosophers down to the present day. But most philosophers today would regard it as fallacious on the grounds that it is at best a piece of abstract logic. A definition may be logically self- consistent, but does it apply to something that actually exists? Before we can say it does, we need evidence to show that there is something actually corresponding to the definition.
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American GIs join in prayer with a chaplain during a lull in fighting during the Vietnam war.
Times of war have often brought people to question the mays of God. Warfare causes such grief and pain that a reaction can come which says: ‘If life is as evil as this, how can we believe in a God who both has all power and also wants the best for us?’ This perplexity becomes worse when, as in the 1914-18 world war, both sides claim the support of the same God. Read more
The mainstream Christian view of God, which has been so muddied and pulled out of shape in our time, came from the Bible. How then does the Bible present God?
The God of the Bible is the self-revealing Creator acting as Redeemer. The sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments find their unity in this common theme. The Bible’s history books tell how God is carrying through a great plan for the salvation of a vast international community which the New Testament calls the church. Read more
For many centuries ‘theism’ as we have described it was a relatively stable element in the Christian heritage. But today many different conceptions of God are voiced, and many people are unsure what they should believe about their Maker. What has thrown Christian belief in God into such a state of confusion and uncertainty?
In the churches, Christians have neglected the study of God. Other beliefs have been carefully taught, but belief in God is seldom spelt out. So it is no wonder that eccentricities emerge. Failure to cultivate healthy ideas makes it easy for unhealthy ones to grow. Read more
The fathers’ ways of thought and speech about God were overhauled and upgraded in the thirteenth century by Thomas Aquinas. There are three basic principles in Thomas’s theism:
- God is essentially the act of his own existence, pure and simple. God, we might say, is in no respect a passive principle or static essence, but eternally exists as total, inexhaustible, personal energy — a living God, actively forming and ordering everything in his world.
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Confessing God
All the creeds, confessions of faith and doctrinal bases that have ever gained currency in the church have defined theism along the lines already sketched.
If we say we believe in God, we are saying something about ourselves as well: that we are creatures wholly dependent on God the Creator for our existence, our continuance, our circumstances and our destiny. Read more
The New Testament nowhere describes how Jesus was raised to life from the grave. The risen Jesus appeared to a number of people at different times — on one occasion to 500 people at once — but not to everybody. Not even the guards at the tomb saw him risen. What terrified them was seeing angels at the empty tomb. Read more
Books spell the word ‘God‘ with a capital ‘G’. Why? Because ‘God‘ is to all intents and purposes a name: the proper name of the personal Three-inone — Holy Father, Holy Son and Holy Spirit — whom Christians worship, love and serve. ‘God‘ was the English name for the Trinity long before books existed in English.
In our day, indeed for more than a century, the word ‘God‘ has been bent to suit particular Christian view-points. Books of essays have appeared with titles like My idea of God, The God I want — titles that tell their own story. It has even been claimed that God is dead—which has made some recall Mark Twain’s famous cable, ‘The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.’ Read more
From the day of Pentecost onwards, the resurrection became the focal point of the apostles’ teaching. ‘Then they put him to death by nailing him to a cross. But God raised him from death three days later . . . These are the fundamentals of the Christian faith.
It is worth noting the constant. reference to Old Testament prophecies in the New Testament. Read more
