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Does God Require Evil to Display His Glory?

We come to our fourth and last post on the relationship of good and evil. Scripture clearly teaches that God displayed His glory in the person and saving work of Christ. In fact, nowhere is God’s glory more clearly seen than in Christ. Does it follow, then, that evil is necessary for God to display His glory? After all, Christ displayed His glory by saving sinners. To answer this important question, we need to distinguish between two entirely different things, namely, God bringing good from evil, and God doing evil that good may result. The former is true while the latter is blasphemy.

Absolute Independence or Dependence on Evil?
To begin, God’s glory as dependent on evil makes God dependent on that which is most contrary to His character to accomplish His purpose to display His glory. Put another way, it says that God is independent and needs nothing, except evil; He needs evil to accomplish His will. After all, God displays His infinite glory by saving evil people. Yet, again, we must distinguish between God bringing good from evil and God doing evil to produce good.

Evil for Good or Good from Evil?
Christ displayed God’s infinite excellence by bringing infinite good from infinite evil. Yet, Scripture strongly condemns those who say “let us do evil that good may come” (Romans 3:8). God is perfectly righteous and cannot do moral evil for any reason. “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he” (Deuteronomy 32:4 ESV).

A Holy Mercy and Sovereignty
Imagine God unjustly condemning billions to eternal suffering to display His goodness to a few. The thought is repugnant in light of God as holy and righteous. “As I live, says the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11). Does a mass murderer display goodness by sparing a few, or does someone beating an innocent animal display his good character by dressing the wounds? Are you impressed with such “goodness”? Is this really God’s glory? In attempts to understand God’s sovereignty and holiness in light of the existence of evil in the world, we should always remember that God’s sovereign rule is a holy rule; God’s foreordination of all things is a holy foreordination. God’s holiness makes His power and rule good and beautiful. Satan’s power is evil and ugly precisely because it is unholy.

A Guilty God and Upside-down Gospel?
Moreover, if God does moral evil to produce good He would be guilty of that which He condemns in others; His critics and despisers would be correct in their accusations against Him. Christ’s redeeming work would be a mockery of God’s excellence if He suffered for that which God is blamable, produced by God’s dependence on evil. The Gospel would be turned on its head and the glory of God tainted beyond repair. Satan’s ongoing blasphemies would have merit and Adam and Eve would have been correct in affirming the serpent’s lies. God commanded Adam and Eve to not eat of the tree lest they die. But did God secretly want them to sin and die, along with the billions Adam represented? Was the serpent correct in calling God disingenuous with malicious motives in His command to not eat of the tree? The thought is blasphemous. Are we really to doubt God’s word as Satan would have us do? May it never be!

Mystery and Perfect Righteousness
In the end, the refusal to accept mystery in light of God’s perfect excellence creates great problems and leads to a denial of God’s perfections. In Christ we have God’s glory on vivid display, including His holiness, righteousness, and infinite hatred of evil. Christ endured infinite suffering that God might be just in justifying the ungodly (Romans 3:21-31). God could not compromise His perfect justice one iota to save a single soul. He upheld His righteousness in saving sinners at infinite cost to Himself. Therefore, God has provided all we need to know His perfect character. We can rest in His infinite goodness, while speculation beyond what He has revealed will lead us astray.

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God the Reason: How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith by Dr. Craig Biehl

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Is Evil Required to Know Good?

Is the existence and knowledge of moral evil necessary for the knowledge of good? And if so, would that not easily explain how evil exists in a universe created by a holy God of infinite power who both hates evil and could have prevented it? Let’s see…

Good Food in the Garden
Going back to the Garden of Eden, did Adam and Eve need to know the taste of rotten food to know the food was delicious? Can you appreciate steak or apple pie without tasting dirt or steamed okra? We can all appreciate a good back scratch without stubbing a toe or getting hit by a truck. And while we can take good things for granted and better appreciate our blessings when we lose them, it does not follow that we can’t appreciate good things without knowing or experiencing their opposite. We certainly can.

Knowing Good Before Going Bad
If Adam and Eve could not have known good until they knew evil, they could not have known God prior to their sin. God is good, yet Adam and Eve knew God personally and lovingly prior to their sin. And it seems contrary to the entire witness of Scripture that if Adam and Eve had obeyed and been confirmed in eternal life that they could not have known God as good, with whom they would dwell in a loving relationship for eternity. If they could not know good, they could not know that which defines God’s character and therefore could not have known and loved Him.

Evil Helps Nothing
Moreover, Adam, Eve, their descendants, and the world were not improved by that which is contrary to God and eternally destructive. Sin kills and destroys. But if knowing good requires knowing evil, the entrance of sin was a good thing that improved everyone’s situation. Of course, God can bring good, even infinite good from sin, but that does not say that good requires sin.

Triune Good Without Evil
Also, knowledge of evil was never needed among the persons of the Trinity for each person to know and love the goodness of the others prior to creation. But if evil were necessary for the knowledge of good, then evil would have been necessary for the persons of the Trinity to know good, an impossibility. God has never needed anything, least of all evil. Yet, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have existed forever in perfect goodness and knowledge, even prior to creation when evil did not exist. God never needs evil to properly know good. Perhaps God does not need evil to know goodness, but people do? But we will know God’s goodness in heaven where evil will not exist and “the former shall not be remembered, nor come to mind” (Isaiah 65:17).

God Can Do What He Pleases
Additionally, the idea that evil is required to know good implies that God is unable to create beings capable of knowing and loving Him apart from that which He hates. Like the false claim that God is too high to communicate with human language, this debases God as unable to communicate His excellence to His creatures without the assistance of that which is most contrary to Him. God would no longer be independent, but dependent on His worst enemy to accomplish His will. Evil would be redefined as that which brings about the greatest good, accomplishing what God could not do without it, requiring a wholesale redefinition of how Scripture explains evil and the attributes of God. On the contrary, God in His infinity, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and wisdom, can do whatever He pleases without limitations. He needs nothing to accomplish His perfect will, least of all moral evil.

Next Up: Does God Require Evil to Display His Glory?

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Does Free Will Require the Option to Choose Evil?

The option to choose evil as necessary for God to create beings with a free will is sometimes said to explain why evil exists in a world created by a holy God of infinite power. At first glance, it looks like a reasonable explanation for the existence of evil. But, is moral evil as necessary for free will a biblical idea?

God’s Perfect Freedom
To begin, God is infinitely and eternally free and has never had the option or desire to choose evil. Yet, God is the freest being in and beyond the universe. Also, we will never be more free than in heaven where no evil or the option to choose it will exist. Heaven would be ruined by the presence or possibility of evil.

Set Free in Christ
Also, Christ set us free from the power, penalty, and ultimately the presence of moral evil; He did not set us free to have the option to choose it. “Having been set free from sin, [we] have become slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:18 ESV). In Christ we have become “partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Peter 1:4). Truly, “If the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). Our situation has been infinitely improved in Christ, but not by the option to choose evil.

More Freedom or More Problems?
The choice of evil not only cannot improve one’s situation, it reduces true and biblical freedom. For instance, imagine yourself in a nice restaurant. You open the menu and see many excellent and tasty choices. What you don’t see on the menu are cat box pizza, rotten eggs, or dirt casserole. Now ask yourself, were you cheated? Would you complain to the waiter that your menu excludes pizza sprinkled with used kitty litter? I hope not. Would you be more free with the option of disgusting choices on the menu? Does the choice of something that will taste terrible, make you sick, or even kill you improve your situation or make you more free? Absolutely not.

True Freedom
Biblical freedom involves the ability to choose the best thing, not the ability to choose evil or that which hurts us and dishonors God. Our situation is not improved one iota by the option to choose things that destroy us and others. When Christ set us free, He empowered us to choose the things which benefit us and others the most, to choose the best of the best—to choose Christ. We were born in sin with the ability to choose evil, but Christ set us free to choose Him. We look forward to the day when evil is banished forever, and the infinitely good and free God dwells with His children made holy and free in Christ. There we will freely love and be loved by the infinitely excellent and lovable God. We shall be like Christ and we shall be free.

Next Up: Is Evil Required to Know Good?

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Is Evil the Equal Opposite of Good?

First of a four-part series on the relationship of good and evil.

God Is the Only Standard of Good
No standard of goodness exists apart from God, and no standard of evil can exist without reference to God’s goodness. God cannot be subject to a standard of good outside Himself, and He alone embodies and defines good, against whom all good is measured. Moral evil exists as contrary and opposed to God’s perfect goodness. But, is moral evil the equal opposite of good?

Evil Began in the Heart
Evil began as a choice of the will in created beings, with its first appearance in Lucifer. God, however, can never be the source or cause of evil. In fact, moral evil cannot and does not exist apart from the will of created beings. We describe and discuss it as a concept or principle, but it only exists as a choice of the will. It involves more than the mere absence of good because it includes an active opposition to the goodness and authority of God.

Evil Is Temporary
Moreover, the days of moral evil are numbered and will end when God destroys its unredeemed promoters forever. The new heavens and earth will be without sin and its curse, while the saints will dwell sinless with God for eternity.

For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress (Isaiah 65:17-19 ESV).

As the bride of Christ, we long for the “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). “No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him” (Revelation 22:3 ESV). Evil, then, is a temporary stain in the universe that can never be co-equal with good. It brings terrible destruction to its subjects, but only exists as a weak and beggarly thing in God’s grand scheme of things. Those who live and die in its service will be shattered to terrify no more. Satan, the source of all evil, will have his eternal torment in the unquenchable lake of fire.

Good Is Eternal
Good will have no such fate as an eternal perfection of God, who lives without beginning or end. Good existed eternally prior to God creating the heavens, earth, angels, and people, and will continue forever. Perfect and everlasting righteousness will reign forevermore while evil will long be forgotten. “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind” (Isaiah 65:17 ESV). When we are tempted to despair at the increase and influence of the evil disturber of peace and goodness, we do well to remember that his days are short and judgment sure. In the meantime, he unwittingly strengthens our faith and pushes us to Christ, for “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28 NAS). We should be thankful that we will soon dwell in the light of God’s perfect holiness, with nothing to disrupt our view and experience of His infinite beauty, least of all, evil. —Adapted from Craig Biehl, God the Reason (Carpenter’s Son Publishing, 2015).

Next Up: Does Free Will Require the Option to Choose Evil?

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5 Reasons Atheists Can’t Know that God Does Not Exist

A recent Barna research study confirmed what many of us already knew – our society is becoming more inclined to dismiss the concept of a Creator. The study showed that one in four un-churched adults are either atheists or agnostics. Twenty years ago, 18 percent of skeptics were under 30 years old. Today that proportion has nearly doubled to 34 percent—nearly one-quarter of the total U.S. population. Additionally, they found that two decades ago, one-third of skeptics were college graduates, but today half of the group has a college degree. In 1993 only 16 percent of atheists and agnostics were women. By 2013 that figure had nearly tripled to 43 percent. Obviously, our society is drifting more towards an atheistic worldview. For Christians, this means we need to be prepared to answer objections to our faith. Here are five reasons that atheists cannot know that God does not exist:

1. They don’t know what is in their neighbor’s garage without looking inside.
In other words, they have human limitations. God’s rebuke of Job makes the point rather clearly: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me! Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding” (Job 38:2-4). The right answer is humble silence. One must have knowledge and experience of ultimate realities to speak with authority about ultimate realties.

For instance, what atheist has ever been beyond the three or four dimensions of our existence to understand a 5th, 10th, or 100th dimension? We are well-equipped to learn a great many things about the universe we experience with our senses, but woefully ill-equipped to know of things beyond. To claim such knowledge without divine revelation is fanciful.

Similarly, what atheist has ever been to the other side of the universe? With all of our advances in scientific knowledge, we still can’t measure it, let alone know what is beyond it. Scripture tells us that God is greater than the universe He created and that He cannot be subject to its limitations. How, then, could anyone know that God does not exist beyond the universe as we know it? In fact, atheists would need knowledge of everything in the universe and beyond to legitimately know that God does not exist.

2. God is infinite spirit.
He is “immortal, invisible,” and “alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Timothy 1:17; 6:16). To deny God’s existence because we haven’t seen Him says nothing about the actual existence of God. When a Soviet cosmonaut looked out of the window of his space capsule and declared that he did not see God, he said nothing of scientific value regarding the existence of God. (Someone noted at the time that had he opened the window he would have seen God immediately.) The fact that the universe is designed and ordered with uniform and universal physical laws allowed him to be in space in the first place, contrary to random chance. Without God, no capsule or cosmonaut would have been possible.

3. Human opinion cannot serve as the ultimate standard of what God can be or do.
How can a good God exist with so much suffering in the world? How can God make the sun stand still in the sky? How can a man live in a whale for three days, or be born of a virgin? Many such questions confront the believer, the majority of which disappear in the face of a God whose infinite power cannot be limited by the properties of the universe He created and sustains. But beyond the obvious answers, many difficult theological mysteries face our finite and fallen understanding. And why not? If we could understand everything about an infinite God and His universe we would be God.

Moreover, to deny truths taught by Scripture about God and His works because we cannot understand them, or because they go beyond what we know of “natural laws” says, in effect, that what I cannot understand cannot be true. It makes the finite and fallen understanding of people the ultimate standard of what God can be or do. But as we noted above, people who do not know the contents of their neighbor’s garage, or have never been beyond the universe or their three or four dimensions of existence cannot legitimately make their personal opinion the standard of truth concerning ultimate realities.

4. The universe is not built or operating according to random chance.
In denying God’s existence, the atheist leaves time and chance as the principle behind the universe. Yet, all material and energy in the universe operate according fixed and universal laws. In fact, no language, truth, knowledge, science, scientist, or atheist would be possible in a random chance universe.

For the sake of argument, assume that someone could exist with the necessary and ordered functions to view things in a random chance universe. Nothing could be known or said to be true of anything because nothing would have fixed characteristics. We know the meaning of “dog” and “tree” because dogs and trees have certain constant properties belonging to dogs and trees. But the terms would be meaningless if everything randomly changes from one moment to the next. Nothing could be said about anything. How can you do science when the scientist, the lab, and everything else are constantly changing? The atheist could not exist to argue that God does not exist.

Of course, our universe is not like this. We have knowledge, language, and do science. We build things because the elements we discover and manipulate will have the same properties tomorrow as today. No one lives their life according to a universe built and operating according to random chance, regardless of their explanation of the origin of life and the universe. Everyone lives assuming an ordered reality that operates according fixed and universal laws, expecting that the floor will not disappear from under them as they eat their dinner of well-ordered food. Atheists do not live as if their worldview were actually true.

In the end, the universe as we know it would be impossible without God. We can only discuss His existence because He exists.

5. Life is required to produce life, and the impersonal cannot produce the personal.
I recently viewed a short video clip of a brilliant inventor who claims to create “new forms of life” from PVC pipe. His “creatures” reflect the genius of their maker as the breeze powers them to walk along the beach. (No telling what he could have done with a good set of Legos.) His desire is that his creations “live on” after his death. Yet, despite their brilliant design, they cannot think, communicate, love, reproduce or argue against the existence of the engineer that made them. They are not life.

Life makes life after its kind. Our engineer could have children to live on after he dies, but even with his great skill he could not mold plastic or any other inanimate material into life. Babies come from a mom and dad that were once babies that came from a mom and dad. Chickens come from eggs laid by chickens that were once eggs, while plants come from seeds that came from plants that were once seeds, ad infinitum (apart from God). Even the building blocks of life come from life that created them but could not exist without them. This closed loop of life can only exist because God first created life. In the same way, the personal cannot come from the impersonal. Energy and non-living stuff simply cannot create a soul, consciousness, conscience, thought, love, etc. A personal God of infinite power, however, can do so easily.

And so with all the designed and ordered brain power and resources of the world, scientists have yet to create from scratch a single cell, let alone a blade of grass, bug, or anything else that can remotely be called life. Yet the “simple” cell is more sophisticated than anything the collective genius of mankind has ever produced. And with a trillion or so atoms organized to form a cell, and a trillion or so cells cooperating and communicating to make and reproduce a person, including consciousness and every other trait of life, aimless encounters of somehow-existing material and energy is neither a scientific nor reasonable explanation for life.

Atheists are certainly entitled to their opinions about God’s existence. But opinions they are, and those contrary to the nature of reality. In the end, atheists are just as limited as everyone else. Apart from God’s revelation, they can only venture a guess as to what an infinite God could be or do, and that while the beauty, design, and order of the universe scream the genius and power of God.

Craig Biehl received his ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary, and PhD in Systematic Theology from Westminster Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books including the newly-released The Box: Answering the Faith of Unbelief, and God the Reason: How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith. Craig and his wife Angelica enjoy ministering with patients and staff at a local convalescent and hospice center near their home in Philadelphia. For more information, visit www.PilgrimsRock.com.

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The Myth of Faith Versus Reason

Are You Rattled or Ready?
Have you ever been told, “you have faith but I trust reason and science”? Does the suggestion that you believe fairy tales while unbelievers stand on facts and solid intellectual ground bother you? Can you easily answer the claim and prepare your children to answer this and the many other sophisticated arguments of unbelief?

What if the Opposite Is True?
What if you could easily see that all such arguments are built on unreasonable blind faith, that your trust in the Word of the Creator and Sustainer of all things is reasonable and supported by every known fact in the universe? What if you could increase your joy, comfort, and faith in Christ and Scripture in the face of the most sophisticated attacks of unbelief? And, what if you could do this all without reading countless technical books? Well, you can.

Using simple language and illustrations, the Unbreakable Faith course and companion books God the Reason and The Box explore the amazing nature and implications of the infinite excellence of God’s perfections, exposing the unreasonable blind faith of unbelief while boosting your knowledge and love of God.

Everyone Has Faith…in Something
All people reason by faith in an ultimate authority by which they interpret God and the universe. Atheists trust their own ability to interpret the world and answer ultimate questions about God and reality, while Christians trust God’s explanation of such things. Atheists reason by faith in themselves while believers reason by faith in God. Both use reason and both have faith. But who reasons rightly? And which object of faith can speak with authority and be trusted to answer ultimate questions about God, life, and the universe? Here lies the issue.

We Have Limits
If my atheist neighbor can’t know the contents of my garage without having a look, he can’t be trusted to explain the nature of an infinite God and His universe. God must tell us such things. And complete knowledge of the universe and beyond, or the omniscience of the God the atheist denies, is required to know that God does not exist. (For simple and fun examples of how to see and expose the unreasonable faith of unbelief, see The Box: Answering the Faith of Unbelief.)

A Rock and an Empty Place
Believers trust the One who created, sustains, and knows all things, who clearly displays His power and genius in the universe, who orders and sustains every law by which we do science (random chance produces no laws), whose moral law is written on every heart, whose goodness appears in every raindrop, flower, and morsel of food, who dwelt among us and suffered to display His perfect nature and purchase our eternal happiness. Believers trust the God who has personally and clearly explained His nature and works, including the ultimate nature of the universe He created and upholds. Atheists trust their opinions.

No God—No Science
Every scientific discovery affirms the genius and power of God. And speculation about God, as well as science, would be impossible in a random chance universe—no laws, language, truth, knowledge, logic, experiment, or scientist would be possible. Our world cannot exist apart from the personal and powerful God of Scripture. Whose faith, then, is reasonable?

Want to Learn More?
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How to Refuse a Bit Part in an Idiot’s Tale

Two Paths
Believers travel on a “path of life” where “fullness of joy” abides “forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). Created and adored by a God of infinite excellence, our earthly delight in God’s goodness gives a small taste of the boundless love and happiness we will enjoy forever in our future home with God.

The journey of unbelief, however, takes a different road. Grasping a barren hope to a gloomy end, the godless life has been expressed as part of a tale “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”; a “brief candle” on “the way to dusty death.”[1] And while Macbeth spoke from personal anguish and loss, his words will haunt anyone willing to ponder a life without eternal significance. In them Shakespeare echoed Solomon’s view of earthly pursuits without God: “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” (Ecclesiastes 1:2-4).

The Dividing Line
The line between insignificance, despair, and eternal death on the one hand and significance, joy, and eternal life on the other is drawn for us in the first four words of Scripture, “In the beginning God.” When God stands as the author and explanation of the universe, life becomes worthwhile, a gift to be treasured. When God is cast aside as mythical or unimportant, the words of evil Macbeth ring true and the world recedes into pointless absurdity. Apart from the God of Scripture, all life, meaning, design, beauty, language, knowledge, truth, and morality are impossible. “In the beginning God,” then, forms the proper starting point for right thinking and living. In the infinite excellence of the Maker and explanation of all things we have the answers to the deepest questions of life.

Life, Truth, and Eternal Purpose
Scripture unfolds the great works of God from eternity past to eternity future in the new heavens and earth. In our relationship to the Creator and Sustainer of the universe we have life and meaning, while our trivial existence gains importance as part of God’s eternal purpose. From His love and grace we have forgiveness of sin and eternal life in Christ, in whom we possess all good things and the divine resources to resist the evil forces that would destroy us. Covered in His righteousness we will “stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy” (Jude 24). From God we have all truth and the ability to know truth; the basis for a proper understanding of God, ourselves, and His universe; and the sure foundation for joy, assurance, and unbreakable faith in the midst of an antagonistic culture of unbelief.

[1] William Shakespeare, Macbeth. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, accessed February 11, 2014, http://www.shakespeare.mit.edu/macbeth/macbeth.5.5.html, Act 5, Scene 5.

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Overjoyed in Our Robe of Righteousness

As God is glorified in the display and communication of His holiness and happiness, and as that display and communication is by the grand medium of Christ in His redemptive work, so the saints’ happiness in heaven will be as participants in God’s ultimate purpose in viewing and loving Christ and His redemptive work. “The beatifical vision of God in heaven consists mostly in beholding the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, either in his work or in his person as appearing in the glorified human nature.”[1] The saints will view God’s glory in Christ as “the image of the invisible God,” whose perfections shine forth most prominently in the acts and fruits of His redemptive work.[2] The souls of the saints in heaven will be “ravished” in beholding the “beauty and amiable excellency of Christ as appearing in his virtues,” in viewing the “height” and “sum” of His glory, “appearing in and by the exercise of dying love to them.” In viewing Christ “they see the transcendent greatness of his love shining forth in the same act that they see the transcendent greatness of his loveliness shining forth.”[3]

They see everything in Christ that tends to kindle and enflame love, and everything that tends to gratify love, and everything that tends to satisfy them: and that in the most clear and glorious manner, without any darkness or delusion, without any impediment or interruption.[4]

What is seen by saints in their earthly body is mingled with darkness and the spiritual deformity of sin, but the vision of their “glorious redeemer,” the “Sun of righteousness,” will be seen “without clouds” and in full light in heaven.[5]

Moreover, the saints “have the additional pleasure of considering that this lovely virtue is imputed to them. ‘Tis the lovely robe, and robe of love, with which they are covered.”[6] Thus the glory of Christ’s righteousness by which they are overwhelmed with joy is the righteousness in which they are covered, providing an additional basis of their great happiness in Christ.

[1] M 1137, Jonathan Edwards, The “Miscellanies,” 833-1152, ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw, vol. 20 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 515. See also “True Saints, When Absent from the Body, Are Present with the Lord,” Jonathan Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1743-1758, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach, vol. 25 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 238. Edwards included the view of the ongoing works of redemption on earth as viewed by the saints already in heaven as part of the happiness of the saints in heaven. See M 917 and M 1061, Works 20:166, 429-30.

[2] M 777, Jonathan Edwards, The “Miscellanies,” 501-832, ed. Ava Chamberlain, vol. 18 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 431. See also M 1137, Works 20:515.

[3] M 791, Works 18:494-5.

[4] “True Saints, When Absent from the Body, Are Present with the Lord,” Works 25:230.

[5] Ibid., Works 25:230-1.

[6] M 791, Works 18:495.

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The Infinite Merit of Christ: The Glory of Christ's Obedience in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards by Dr. Craig Biehl

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The Wishful Atheist

High Ground or Thin Air?
Atheists claim the high ground of reason and science while viewing Christian faith as blind and wishful thinking. But could the opposite be true? Could atheism be unreasonable wishful thinking, while Christianity is both reasonable and consistent with what we know of the universe?

A Limited View
We begin by asking the question, what would an atheist need to know in order to know that God does not exist? Answer? Everything about everything in the universe and beyond. Infinite knowledge. In other words, the atheist would need to be God to deny His existence. Of course, people write books, teach at universities, and accomplish many marvelous things, but none are equipped to describe reality beyond our three or four dimensions or to know what inhabits the other side of the universe. Christians and atheists alike forget where they put their wallet, purse, or car keys, and can’t know the contents of their neighbor’s garage without having a look. How, then, can such limited people know that God does not exist, or what an infinite God can be or do? Apart from God’s revelation, our limitations render such claims meaningless.

An Unreasonable Standard
Next, Atheists point to apparent contradictions in Scripture to deny the God of Scripture. But God infinitely exceeds our limited understanding. In fact, we could never know Him if He did not condescend to make Himself known. Our limitations before an infinite God make mystery reasonable and necessary. To say the God of Scripture cannot exist because I cannot understand or logically reconcile something in my mind presumes my limited understanding to be the ultimate standard of what God can or cannot be or do. Finite and fallen people are ill-equipped for such a lofty role. Scripture describes God as infinite Spirit and higher than the universe He created, whom no man has seen or can see (John 1:18; 1 Timothy 6:16). Arguments against God’s existence based on our limited experience and understanding are futile in the face of a God who transcends reality as we know it. He is not limited by what He created.

Without Excuse in a Sea of Evidence
Scripture tells us that all people know God in a way that leaves them without excuse for not worshipping or giving Him thanks (Romans 1:18-22). God’s power, genius, and goodness are displayed clearly in all things, including the stars, our conscience, and the food on our table. No one visits a bakery and denies the existence of a baker, uses a computer and denies the existence of a programmer, or sees a baby and denies the existence of a mother and father. Yet, atheists deny God while drowning in a sea of evidence.

Willful Mystery
Why do they do this? They “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18) because they do not like the implications of God as their maker. If God created and sustains them, apart from whom they have and could do nothing, then they owe God all love, honor, and obedience. They deny the obvious because they do not like where the evidence leads them. They refuse to deny their presumed independence and authority and reject the reality of their dependence on God for all things. As they love darkness and hate the light, they view God as a direct challenge to their love of sin and self-rule (John 3:19-20).

Wishful Thinking
So, unlike the Christian realist, the atheist suffers from wishful thinking. He imagines no heaven or hell, no ultimate judgment, and no God to whom he must humbly bow the knee. He devises what he could never know or determine. Yet, someday he will be confronted with reality as God has determined it to be, regardless of what he imagined it to be. The presumed omniscience of the atheist will be exposed as a denial of the obvious, from contempt for the One who gave him all good things, to whom he owes all things. It’s no wonder, then, that Scripture tells us: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1 NAS).

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Corrie ten Boom Meets Lieutenant Rahms

Shortly after her arrest and imprisonment for protecting Jews from the Nazi reign of terror, Corrie ten Boom met with Lieutenant Rahms, her pensive and troubled interrogator. He showed Corrie unusual kindness in his initial visits, though Corrie rightly suspected he was manipulating her to gain information about others involved in harboring Jews. Corrie spoke to the lieutenant about her ministry of preaching to the “feeble-minded” in what she called her “church for mentally retarded people” to which Lieutenant Rahms responded in typical Nazi fashion, “If you want converts, surely one normal person is worth all the half-wits in the world!” Nervous and contrite, Corrie ventured a reply, “The truth, Sir…is that God’s viewpoint is sometimes different from ours—so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things.” Corrie “knew it was madness to talk this way to a Nazi officer,” but she continued. “In the Bible I learn that God values us not for our strength or our brains but simply because He has made us. Who knows, in His eyes a half-wit may be worth more than a watchmaker. Or—a lieutenant.”[1]

In a later encounter, Corrie spoke to the lieutenant about the message of God’s Book. “It says…that a Light has come into this world, so that we need no longer walk in the dark. Is there darkness in your life, Lieutenant?” After a long silence, and in a surprising moment of candor, the officer admitted, “There is great darkness….I cannot bear the work I do here.”[2]

I do not know the fate of Lieutenant Rahms. We can hope that his earthly darkness drove him to flee from eternal darkness and embrace the Light of the World. Maybe we will see him in heaven. Or, sadly, like Pontius Pilate, maybe he traded justice and reverence for God for his short-term power and livelihood and became an eternal tragedy.

Many participants in the Nazi reign of terror likely struggled with the evils with which Lieutenant Rahms struggled. Many made eye contact with the precious people who were dehumanized as apes by a worldview that saw Aryans as the apex of evolutionary progress. Most could not distinguish Jewish children from their own. Many saw the disproportionate accomplishments of Jews in society, contrary to the assertions of the propagandists. Yet they participated in the murder.

What lives might have been spared the terror of the racist Aryanism if people were rightly treated as endowed with dignity, as created in the image of God. What concentration camps would never have been built and what trains would never have carried their priceless cargo if people acknowledged dependence on God for purpose, meaning, and a moral compass. What horrors might have been prevented if Nietzsche had bowed the knee to the “God of the weak” and had never penned his deadly philosophy. The Nazi god, the Aryan pinnacle of human evolution, was no god, with no ultimate standard of right and wrong, no ultimate accountability, and no ultimate consequences for evil behavior. As William Penn once said, “If we are not governed by God, then we will be ruled by tyrants.”[3]

Many were partners in the evils of the Holocaust, so beware—if you reject and ignore God’s moral compass, someone else will provide one for you…. And the prevailing winds will drive us where we never dreamed we would go.

[1] Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place (Chosen Books, 1971; Bantam Books, 1974), 160.

[2] Ibid., 161.

[3] Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, rev. ed. (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1982), 34.

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