CHAPTER I — God Is (1)
CHAPTER I --- God Is (1) I. GOD IS (1)
By W. B. WEST, JR.
Introduction. In the midst of a changing world and of things that are being shaken daily, I commend the selection of “The Things That Cannot Be Shaken” as the theme for the 1946 Lectureship at Abilene Christian College. It is a genuine pleasure for Mrs. West and me to be again on the campus of our dear Alma Mater. A high and undeserved honor has been conferred for the third time upon me by the request that I have part in this important and historic lectureship. I assure you of my deep appreciation for the invitation that has brought me here tonight.
Foremost among “The Things That Cannot Be Shaken” is God, whom Aristotle called the “unmoved mover.” The Bible assumes the existence of God. His reality and eternity are accepted. Evidences of His existence are abundant upon the pages of sacred Scripture, but not arguments for it. The man who says, “There is no God,” is characterized as a “fool.” Although frequent reference in my two addresses will be made to the Bible, it will not be the major source employed in my arguments for the existence of God as the Bible assumes His reality. The idea of Scripture as a revelation presupposes belief in a God who can make the revelation. The fact is that belief in revelation is simply an expression of belief in God. In my two addresses the approach made to a belief in the reality of God will be chiefly that of history, intuition, philosophy, and character. My text for this eve-ning is: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
I. HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
The oldest and most universal characteristic of man is his belief in the existence of a Power or Powers superior to himself, whom he personalized early in his history. Whatever else may be said of primitive, medieval, or modern man, that which is most characteristic of him is his recognition of something or someone greater than he to whom he pays homage in his own way. Moffatt, a great missionary to Africa during the last century, claimed that he had found a tribe of people without any conception of a god. Livingstone later corrected his claim. No fact of history has been as well supported by the spade of the archaeologist, the studies of the anthropologist and the researches of the psychologist, than the fact that from times immemorial, wherever man has lived, he has had some conception of some kind of a supernatural being. Cicero once said that: “There is no nation so barbarous, no race so savage, as not to be firmly persuaded of the being of a God.” This belief in God has been so universal that very few of the billions of the race in all its ages have denied the existence of God. It has been questioned whether these few have been deceived as to their real conviction, or have been insincere in their avowal of atheism, for it has seemed to be impossible for man not to believe in God. The unshaken conviction of mankind in general is that this belief cannot be avoided by any man in his normal condition. Some exceptions to the universal belief of man in some kind of a supernatural being does not invalidate its universality. A universal conception of the eye is that it is an organ of vision and can be trusted. This trustworthiness is not invalidated because a man is intoxicated and may not see at all or may see double. It is told that a man was cured of the habit of drunkenness when he went home and saw two mothers-in-law.
GOD IS
If time permitted, many illustrations could be given sup-porting the claim tnat everywhere man has always had some conception of a supernatural being. We could begin with the recognition of the voice of God by the first man, Adam, and go to some of the modern youth who claim to be either agnostic or atheistic, but express their homage in a great homecoming service to something which they conceive as being beyond themselves, namely, their Alma Mater. Along the way we would see men building their objects of worship to an unseen power, even to the number of thirty thousand in one city. Voltaire could be heard praying n an Alpine storm. A Russian girl, who had taken a government examination under the Soviet regime, could be observed walking seven miles from Leningrad to the Sarmian wall to see if she answered correctly the question, “What is the inscription on the Sarmian wall?” She learned that she had given the correct answer by saying: “Religion is the opiate of the people.” After this she fell down and said: “Thank God.” We could have heard H. G. Wells, who is far from being orthodox religiously, say a few years ago: “At times in the lonely silence of the night and in rare lonely moments I come upon a sort of communion of myself with something great that is not myself. It is perhaps poverty of mind and of language that obligates me to say that the universal scheme takes on the effect of a sympathetic person.” Above and beyond these foregoing experiences, we could think of the inexpressibly great expeiiences of Jacob at Bethel, Isaiah in the temple, Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration, John on Patmos Isle, and multitudes of saints through the ages, across the continents and on the islands of the seas, who have known God in the great spiritual experiences of life, all of which abundantly support the claim that the oldest and most universal characteristic of man is his belief in the exist* nee of some kind of a supernatural being.
What is the value of this historical evidence for the being of God ? The fact that all people at a given time believed something to be true is not convincing evidence that it is true, for at one time practically everyone believed that the world was flat. But it does not appear reasonable to believe that from the morning of time to the present practically all men everywhere under various conditions and of different abilities have been deceived in their belief in the existence of God. The observation of Lincoln is apropos here: “You may fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of. the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” So the voice of history in the belief and experiences of men testifies to the reality of God.
II. THE EVIDENCE FROM INTUITION
Whence this universal and age-long conception of God? One source of it is the intuition or innate knowledge of man that there is a God—a knowledge which is derived from the nature of man, his being a sentient, rational, and moral being. Psychologists teach us today that the race felt before it thought. Man has always felt that there must be a God. Nothing has ever been able to take this faith from the universal heart. As John Calvin once said: “The human mind by natural instinct has some sense of a Deity.” A mortally wounded boy who was picked up on the battlefield in France during World War I opened his eyes for a moment and said: “God! God here! God everywhere!” Then he contentedly died.
Belief in the reality of God is indispensable to the life of the conscience. Instinctively and innately there are great' moral principles of the mind and heart like the distinction' between right and wrong and the consciousness of accountability. Paul had innate moral principles in view when he wrote to the Romans: “For when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are the law unto themselves; in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing 'witness therewith, and their thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing them; in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ” (Romans 2:14-16).
What is the value of this intuitive evidence for the existence of God? The inward testimony of intuition that there is God can never be eliminated from the human heart There is a feeling of dependence on a higher Power and a longing for communion with Him, until, as Augustine said: “Our hearts find no rest until they rest in Thee.” Someone has said that the response of the human soul to the heart of God is comparable to the response of the needle to the pole. The needle is thrown into a stir of activity by the pole. A circle of needles around the earth pointing to one spot would show the presence of something in that spot influencing the needles. A circle of souls around the earth and through the ages pointing in one direction is evidence of the reality of the Eternal Pole. A boy who was flying a kite so high that it was out of sight was asked: “What are you doing?” The boy replied: “Sir, I am flying my kite.” The inquirer replied: “But I do not see it.” The boy said: “Neither do I, but I know that it is there because I can feel it pull.” So the men and women of the world have for all ages felt the pull of the Unseen and have known the reality of God. A joy of inward peace, or sense
Of sorrow over sin,
He is his own best evidence
His witness is within.
And not for signs in heaven above
Or earth below they look,
Who know with John his smile of love,
With Peter his rebuke.
O world, thou choosest not the better part,
It is not wisdom to be only wise
And on the inward vision close the eyes,
But it is wisdom to believe the heart!
Columbus found a world, but had no chart
Save one that faith deciphered in the skies
To trust the Soul’s invincible surmise
Was all his science, and his only art.
Truly did Pascal write: “The heart has reasons that reason does not know.”
III. THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
We have considered the evidence of history and intuition and their values for belief in the existence of God. We come now to what is well known and old in philosophical circles, the ontological argument, which is closely related to the intuitive but sufficiently distinct to merit separate treatment.
The word ontology is derived from two Greek words, ontos and logos, which mean “the reason or ground of being.” Stated briefly, God exists because we think He does. This is the argument from thought to Being. Human thought is always a signpost pointing to something beyond itself; deny this something and all human thought is denied. The very idea of God is possible to us only because God is behind it; and by God, Anselm, the father of the ontological argument, meant “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Anselm argued that the fool who denies the existence of God thereby proves only that he is a fool, for he shows that he has the idea of God in his understanding even though he does not go on to understand that such a being exists.
Descartes added to the conception of Anselm by saying that the idea of God, that is, of a perfect being, could not originate in the human mind since it is finite and imperfect. Consequently, it must be referred to a perfect cause or God; therefore, God exists. The contingency of all finite things,
since the reason for their being does not lie within themselves, requires the assumption of a being whose ground of existence is in himself alone: self-existence is a necessary element of perfection, and therefore of God. Another way to express it is that the idea of God includes necessary existence; therefore God necessarily exists.
What is the value of the ontological argument for the existence of God ? It was severely criticized in Anselm’s day and by Kant, who accepted it as regulative of thinking, but not constitutive of knowledge. It is true that it has the weakness of saying that every thought of the mind must have an objective reality, but in all fairness to its most ardent supporters it must be said that they “do not contend that every subjective conception must have an objective reality, but only that certain ones must have,” such as are conceived by the mind as demanding necessarily a corresponding objective reality, because of the idea of God in the mind is an idea of him as necessarily existent; consequently, the mind must believe in him as actually existent. Somehow the ontological argument —always being shown out at the front door in a polite manner —enters quietly again at the back door. It seems to be here to stay, a valuable argument for the existence of God.
IV. THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
The word “cosmological” is from two Greek words, kosmos and logos, the former meaning “world” and the latter “a reason for.” In its usual acceptance, the cosmological argument deals with the principle of causality as applied to the relation of God to the world. It is claimed that God is the cause and the world the effect. A more exact statement would be that everything begun is the result of a cause sufficient to produce it. In this form, the argument might be called the aitiological, the Greek word, aitia, meaning “cause” but for the purpose of generally accepted understanding, we shall use the term cosmological. The most common response of the man on the street to the challenge to prove that there is a God is a sweeping gesture of the hand, and a rhetorical question: “Who, then, made all this?” Every honestly thinking person knows that every effect has a cause and every cause an effect. The world and all that is within it is here. What or who caused it? A beautiful and ordered world is seen everywhere. On a clear night in Texas when the sky is a blaze of brilliant diamonds against a deep blue curtain, with one star differing from another star in glory, presenting a ceiling of unsurpassing beauty, we overwhelmingly exclaim with David: “The heavens declare the glory of God.” The gorgeous beauties of the sunrise are the glory of God’s trailing robes, and the rainbow is the scarf which He throws about His shoulders. The sun, the moon, and the stars send forth their light to guide by day and by night. When we see these manifestations of a Divine Cause we say with the Hebrew poet: “When I consider thy heavens, the moon, and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that Thou visitest him.” During the French Revolution a revolutionist said to a peasant: “I will have your steeples pulled down that you may no longer have any object by which you may be reminded of your superstitions.” The peasant replied: “But you cannot help leaving us the stars.” A man who never goes to church went with a preacher one night to a planetarium. When he saw the unfoldment and the enactment of the great drama of the sky, he said to the preacher, who was sitting by his side: “There is no room in what we are seeing tonight for chance, is there?” It is no marvel that, speaking of the heavens, Pascal once said: “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.”
One can go from an observation of the heavens to the beauties and wonders of the world of nature and as obviously and convincingly see a Divine Cause. One makes a visit to the Himalayas of that intriguing land of India, to the towering Alps of picturesque Switzerland, to the vast rooms and corridors of Carlsbad Caverns with their fascinating formations, or to the grandeurs of Grand Canyon and unreservedly says with the Psalmist: “The firmament showeth His handiwork.” It is said that an atheist living in New York went to Los Angeles by the way of Grand Canyon. Leaving Grand Canyon, he said: “No longer do I disbelieve. I now believe in God.” “God Is and God created” is the only answer when we look at the cosmos or the world about us. Truly has God said: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1) and “By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear” (Hebrews 11:3).