Created for Community

Connecting Christian Belief with Christian Living

Grenz, Stanley J., Smith, Jay T.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781441220561
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This revised edition of a classic college-level introduction to theology presents the core doctrines of the Christian faith, encouraging readers to connect belief with everyday life. Stanley Grenz, one of the leading evangelical scholars of his era, and Jay Smith, an expert on Grenz's theological legacy, construct a helpful theology that is biblical, historical, and contemporary. The third edition includes a foreword by John Franke, a new preface and afterword, resources for further study, and updated footnotes. The book's easy-to-use format includes end-of-chapter discussion questions and connects theological concepts with current cultural examples.

1
Knowing the God of the Bible in the Contemporary World

Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

John 17:3

“We no longer need to prove the existence of God to the people living around my church.” The pastor’s remark grabbed my attention. “The people living in this ‘yuppie’ neighborhood in the heart of Toronto,” he explained, “all assume the reality of the supernatural.”

The pastor’s observation is confirmed by opinion polls that consistently indicate that the vast majority of people in the United States and Canada claim to believe in God or to acknowledge some divine reality. Yet this does not mean that these people enjoy a personal relationship with the living God. Indeed, many people in the early twenty-first century simply choose to ignore the existence of God. God may exist for this populace, but for a complex variety of reasons, people in Western culture are discounting the practice, and in some instances the possibility, of a living faith.

At the heart of our faith is the testimony that through Jesus Christ we have come to know the only true God. We declare that to know God means more than merely asserting that a vague, generic Supreme Being exists. We likewise cannot assume that all religious traditions automatically lead their devotees to the God of the Bible.

On the contrary, we assert that biblical faith entails a personal relationship with the God who encounters us in Jesus. Knowing this God, in turn, leads us to see all of life in a special way. Our faith commitment motivates us to live for the glory of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a faith shaped by the Trinity. It is this faith that provides the foundation for knowing how to live for God’s glory. Theology assists in this process, for it facilitates us in our quest to know the God of the Bible.

God and the Contemporary World

But how can we continue to proclaim the ancient message about the God of Jesus our Lord in the contemporary context? Does our Christian confession still remain credible in today’s world? And can we truly anticipate that people will listen when we declare that God has encountered us in Jesus Christ?

In responding to these questions, we must remind ourselves that our world is populated by people with many differing opinions about, and attitudes toward, religious matters. Therefore, our claim that the Christian faith is true may take several forms.

Is There a God? Our Response to Atheism

Certain people today deny the existence of any God whatsoever. “There is no God,” they firmly assert. We may call this denial “atheism,” a word that means literally “no God.” Atheists argue that the universe is not the creation of a purposeful God. Rather, it is shaped by blind, random natural forces. Or they see in the presence of evil in the world conclusive proof that a benevolent God cannot exist.

An atheistic spirit has filtered into our general cultural ethos. Pressured by a scientific worldview that leaves no room for religion, many people have discarded the concept of God.1 For them, God has become either the God-of-the-gaps for whom no gaps are left or a debilitating limitation on human freedom.

What can we say to people who do not acknowledge the reality of God?

Intellectual atheism is a relatively new development in the history of humankind. It did not gain a widespread following until long after the church expanded into the world dominated by Greek culture. In fact, it is in one sense a result of the rejection of the Christian gospel by intellectuals standing in the tradition of the Greeks.

Let’s look at this historical development, for it provides a window on our world today.

The Greek philosophers loved to engage in intellectual argumentation. Above all, they debated whether or not we could devise philosophical proofs for theological beliefs, including the existence of the one God, understood as the First Cause of the world.

Influenced by the Greeks, Christian philosophers devised arguments that they thought actually proved God’s existence. These Christian thinkers intended to provide intellectual confirmation of faith in God. Apologists such as Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) thought that they were simply living out Augustine’s famous dictum, “I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand.”2 Like other thinkers, Anselm was convinced that intellectual proofs for God’s existence offered the “understanding”—the logical persuasion—that Christian faith naturally evokes.

Christian philosophers developed three basic types of arguments for God’s existence:

• ontological proofs,
• cosmological and teleological proofs, and
• moral proofs.

• A first type of argument—the ontological approach—claims to demonstrate God’s existence by considering the idea of God itself.

Ontological proofs begin with a commonly held definition of God. They then show that there must be a Being (God) who corresponds to the definition. These arguments claim that by definition God cannot merely be an idea in our minds but must also actually exist.

In his classical ontological proof, Anselm defined God as “that than which no greater can be conceived.”3 He then offered two possibilities: either God exists only in human minds or God exists both in human minds and in reality. But if we conceive of God as existing only in our minds and not in reality, Anselm added, this God is not “that than which no greater can be conceived.” Indeed, we could conceive of a God that exists both in our minds and in reality. The God whom we conceive of as existing both mentally and actually is obviously greater than the God who we believe exists only in our minds. Therefore, Anselm concluded, by definition God must exist.

Several centuries later, the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) argued in a somewhat similar manner. God, he said, is the “supremely perfect Being.”4 Now if God does not exist in reality, Descartes reasoned, he lacks one perfection—existence. But the God so conceived—as perfect in every way but not existing in reality—is not the most perfect being.

In the 1800s, Georg Hegel (1770–1831) offered a quite different ontological proof. He defined God as the infinite one, who stands as a contrast to finite beings. The idea of such a God, Hegel argued, is necessary to our human thinking process. The mind, he noted, cannot conceive of finite reality without at the same time thinking of an “infinite” that lies beyond the finite.5

More recently Norman Malcolm (1911–90) asserted that God must exist because by his very conception he cannot not exist. Malcolm believed that God’s existence is by definition necessary existence.6 That is, God necessarily exists or exists by necessity.

• The second type of philosophical proof—the cosmological and teleological arguments—seeks to demonstrate the existence of God by drawing on evidence provided by sense experience.

Cosmological and teleological arguments build from our observations of the world. They conclude that God must exist as the explanation for certain aspects of the universe that we readily observe.

Thus, cosmological proofs purport to demonstrate that God must exist as the ultimate cause of the universe itself. The world must have come from somewhere. And this somewhere is God.

Already in the thirteenth century, the great Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) developed a series of cosmological and teleological arguments, which are often called “the five ways.”7 Among Thomas’s five ways is an argument often considered the best example of the cosmological proof. According to Thomas, every contingent reality must have a cause that explains its existence. In Thomas’s view, something is “contingent” if it could either be or not be, it does not exhaustively explain itself, and its existence and being are not self-evident. In referring to reality as “contingent,” Thomas was indicating that the universe is made up entirely of contingent things. Because the universe is contingent, it must have a noncontingent cause. Any such cause would have to be a necessary, infinite being. We call this noncontingent cause of the universe “God.”

Teleological arguments, in contrast, look to more specific details of the universe. They claim that God must exist as the cause of some specific characteristic we observe in the natural world. The aspect philosophers most often cite is the apparent design or order in the universe. The design of the universe declares the existence of a cosmic Designer.

Perhaps more widely known is the teleological argument proposed by William Paley (1743–1805). Paley’s proof draws an analogy from the common watch, which in his day was an impressive array of springs and wheels, rather than the electronic timepiece we wear today. Paley noted that a precise mechanical instrument such as a watch declares the existence of its designer (the watchmaker). In a similar manner the intricate construction of the natural world bears witness to the existence of its Designer. We call this cosmic Architect “God.”8

Early in the twentieth century F. R. Tennant (1866–1957) offered an updated version of the teleological argument. Unlike many thinkers for whom Darwin’s theories were a stumbling block to faith, Tennant saw the evolutionary development of the universe as a pointer to God’s existence. Specifically, he found a “wider teleology” within evolutionary nature. Many strands have worked together in the production of higher and higher levels of creatures, he declared. The evolutionary process climaxed in the appearance of humankind, the moral creature. This grand cosmic cooperation, Tennant claimed, provides ground for reasonable belief that God must exist. God is the one who gave direction to evolution.9

The cosmologist Robert Jastrow has offered a restatement of the cosmological proof. He argued that the widely held big bang theory once again makes the postulate of God intellectually respectable.10 God is the one who set off the big bang that started the universe.

• A third philosophical proof begins with the human experience of being a moral creature.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) offered a classic formulation of this approach. Each human, he noted, lives out of an unavoidable sense of duty. Kant did not mean that all humans share a specific moral code. Rather, he argued that behind the various and differing codes of conduct humans devise is a common feeling of being morally conditioned, or held responsible by the sense of duty.

Kant concluded that God must exist if this experience of moral obligation is to have any meaning. In a truly moral universe virtuous conduct must be rewarded and wrongdoing must be punished. But for this to occur, there must be a Supreme Lawgiver. This God guarantees that ultimately moral justice will be done.11

Hastings Rashdall (1858–1924) devised a somewhat different formulation of the moral proof. He noted that ideals—standards and goals toward which people strive—exist only in minds. But, he added, certain ideals are absolute. These can exist only in a mind adequate for them—namely, in an absolute or divine Mind. Therefore, he concluded, God must exist.12

Perhaps the most well-known contemporary formulation of the moral argument came from the pen of C. S. Lewis in his widely read book Mere Christianity.13 All human societies reflect a universal code of morality, Lewis claimed. In all cultures certain conduct is praised, while certain other actions are universally condemned. According to Lewis, this phenomenon indicates that behind the universe lies something that is conscious, has purpose, and prefers one type of conduct to another. Hence, this “something” is more like Mind than like anything else we know. Consequently, Lewis concluded, the “something” at the foundation of the world is God.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, British theologian and scientist Alister McGrath has entered into a variety of debates with atheist Richard Dawkins, among others, on the existence of God. In his apologetics, McGrath argues for God’s existence from all of these positions—cosmological, teleological, and moral—yet adds a few more. McGrath also argues for God’s existence from anthropological and aesthetic positions. Anthropologically, McGrath notes that as early as Pascal, there has been articulated an intuitive human need for ...