Why We Believe
Christian faith is sometimes presented as though it rests upon a single assumption: first believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and then believe everything else simply because the Bible says so.
That is not really how Christian faith works.
Certainly, we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and therefore receive what it teaches as true. But our reasons for believing are not a fragile chain in which every belief depends upon first proving another. They are more like many witnesses speaking together.
Creation testifies to God. Reason testifies to God. Conscience testifies to God. The human soul testifies to God. Christ testifies to God. Scripture testifies to God. And these witnesses do not stand separately from one another. They meet and reinforce one another.
This is often how faith develops in practice as well. A person may first be struck by the person of Christ, by His teaching, His death or His resurrection. He may recognise the truth of what Scripture says about the human heart, or feel the force of its moral teaching. He may begin to understand his need for redemption. As he reads further, he discovers that one part of the Christian message illuminates another.
So there are two fundamental questions behind what we believe.
First, why do we believe in God?
And second, why do we believe that the Bible is His Word?
Why Believe In God?
Before we ask whether Christianity is true, there is a more fundamental question: why believe that God exists at all?
The most fundamental reason for believing in God is also the simplest:
Something exists.
There is a universe. There are matter and energy, time and space, stars and planets, living creatures and conscious minds.
Before considering any particular feature of the universe as evidence for God, we therefore have a more basic fact to account for:
Why is there something rather than nothing?
The universe consists of a particular amount and arrangement of matter and energy, governed by particular laws and existing under particular conditions.
But none of those things explains why the universe has that amount of matter and energy, why those laws obtain, why those conditions exist, or ultimately why there is a universe at all.
The universe is what it is, but it does not contain within itself the complete explanation for why it is so.
When Reason Is Refused
The demand for an explanation is not arbitrary. Reason exists in the shape of explanation. To reason is to seek an explanation for why things are as they are.
Those who say that no explanation is needed are simply saying that no reason is needed. They may believe they are being reasonable, but in refusing the need for explanation, they are abandoning reason itself.
Nor is it necessarily true that some extraordinary event would persuade them. A man might say, "If I suddenly grew two feet taller, I would believe in God." Yet if it happened, he might simply conclude that he had some previously unknown condition, they might even give it a name, such as late-onset giantism.
A miracle might also be dismissed as a trick of the mind, or something stranger still. There is always another explanation available to someone who has already decided that God cannot be the explanation.
And sometimes there is pride beneath that refusal. Accepting the truth means accepting that we were previously wrong. The question then becomes not merely whether there is reason to believe, but whether we are willing to follow reason when it leads somewhere we did not want to go.
A Prior Universe Does Not Help
If reality requires an ultimate explanation, could that explanation simply be an earlier universe - or perhaps an endless series of universes stretching backwards without beginning?
That may move the question further back, but it does not answer it.
Imagine an endless series of self-copying books, each copied from another before it. Even if that series stretched backwards without beginning, we would still not have explained why there is an infinite series of books rather than no books at all.
The same is true of the universe.
Even if our universe came from an earlier universe, and that universe from another before it, continuing without beginning, the question would remain: why does this infinite series of universes exist at all?
An infinite chain may explain how each member comes from another. It does not explain why the chain itself exists.
The Ultimate Explanation Must Be Self-Existent
If there is to be an ultimate explanation, therefore, we must eventually arrive at something fundamentally different.
The final explanation for reality cannot itself depend upon something beyond itself. If it did, whatever it depended upon would be the deeper explanation.
The ultimate reality must therefore possess the reason for its existence within its own nature.
It must be self-existent. That is to say, it must explain itself by virtue of its own nature.
The Ultimate Reality Must Be Timeless
This also tells us something about its relationship to time.
Time is itself part of the reality requiring explanation. The ultimate explanation for time cannot therefore depend upon time already existing.
It must exist independently of time.
This does not simply mean that the ultimate reality has existed for an infinitely long period. It is not merely older than the universe.
Time itself ultimately depends upon this ultimate reality.
Only God Can Be Self-Existent
But self-existence tells us something further.
The ultimate reality cannot receive its power from anything else. If another reality gave it the power it possesses, that other reality would be more fundamental.
Its power must therefore belong to its own nature.
But if that power were limited, we could still ask why it possessed that amount of power and no more.
A limited degree of power would itself require explanation.
The ultimate reality, however, cannot depend upon something else to explain what it is. It is the final explanation.
Its power must therefore be unlimited.
This is what we mean when we say that God is Almighty.
This Is What We Mean by God
This does not yet establish everything Christianity teaches about God. We have not yet established the truth of the Bible, the Trinity or the divinity of Christ.
But reason has already taken us somewhere remarkable.
God is not merely one more object within reality, differing from us principally by being older, larger or more powerful.
He is the ultimate reason there is a reality at all.
Everything else possesses existence dependently. God exists of Himself.
Everything else ultimately receives its power. God's infinite power is His own.
Everything else exists within time and space. God is the explanation upon which time and space themselves depend.
And this is why the name by which we believe God revealed Himself to Moses is so profound:
"I AM THAT I AM." - Exodus 3:14
God does not, we believe, merely says that He exists.
He says, I AM.
He is not explained by something else. He is not made from something else. He is not sustained by something else. His existence is fundamental.
He is. He must be. He is therefore the great I AM: the self-existent God, the God of all being.
God as the Eternal Cause
Before moving on, it is worth considering what kind of cause God must be if He is the ultimate explanation for the universe.
Ordinarily, we think of causes in terms of time. One event happens, and another follows.
But temporal causation cannot explain the existence of the universe itself, because time is part of what needs to be explained.
The cause of time cannot itself be an event within time.
We must therefore distinguish between two kinds of priority: what comes first in time, and what comes first in the order of explanation.
Something can be logically prior to another without preceding it in time. Its priority lies in being the reason upon which the other depends.
God must therefore be the logical cause of the universe, not a temporal cause. He is not a cause within the universe's history, but the reason that history exists at all.
Consider what this tells us about the nature of God. Imagine the whole of time, from beginning to end, as a single reality. Every event, every physical cause and effect, is contained within it.
What, if anything, could remain independent of this entire reality? One thing is this: truth itself. Take a simple truth, such as 2+2=4. This remains true whether or not the universe exists.
But as we have seen, the ultimate explanation must explain itself, and have unlimited power. A mathematical truth, by itself, has neither of these. 2+2=4 cannot be the logical cause of anything. A personal, timeless, unlimited power, or what Christians refer to as the Eternal and Almighty God, who is is all Truth, can.
And here we encounter something remarkable about the Christian understanding of God. Christ said, "I am the truth" - John 14:16
For Christ to be the truth, He must be the one upon whom all other truths depend, for every individual truth is contained within the fullness of all truth.
Christ is also called the Logos of God. The Greek logos means "word", but also encompasses reason and rational expression. One could say Christ is the Logic of God.
John begins his Gospel with these extraordinary words:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." - John 1:1,3
Notice what John is saying. Christ is not merely the cause of the universe, but a specific kind of cause, a logical cause.
Consider further the words of Christ to His deciples, "Before Abraham was, I am." - John 8:58
He did not say, "Before Abraham was, I was." He said that He exists now, presently, before Abraham.
Later on in scripture He declares that He is the beginning and the end:
"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." - Revelation 22:13
He speaks in the language of eternal, divine, self-existent being.
Indeed the first words of the Bible, are primarily words of explanation. They tell us why there is a heavens an an earth.
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." - Genesis 1:1
The Christian understanding of creation is therefore much deeper than the idea of God performing some initial action which sets the universe in motion.
God is the Almighty, eternal, self-existant, ultimate truth that gives explanation, reason, to why there is a universe at all.
Everything Bears Witness To God
Before turning to particular aspects of creation as evidence for God, we must first recognise the fundamental truth towards which our argument has been leading.
All creation is evidence of its Creator.
For if God is the ultimate explanation for our reality, then everything that exists bears witness to Him by the very fact of its existence.
Every star is evidence for God because it exists. Every atom is evidence for God because it exists. Every living creature is evidence for God because it exists. We ourselves are evidence for God because we exist.
Everything which possesses being, but does not possess the ultimate explanation of that being within itself, points beyond itself to an ultimate Creator.
"For in him we live, and move, and have our being." - Acts 17:28
This is not to say, however, that there are not many other witnesses.
Once we have asked why the universe exists at all, we can ask why the universe that exists has the character it does.
It is ordered. It is intelligible. It behaves according to remarkably consistent laws. Its fundamental properties permit matter to form into shapes necessary for complex chemistry, and life to exist.
This extraordinary suitability of the universe for life is commonly called its "fine-tuning." It does not constitute the whole case for God, nor does Christian belief depend upon any single scientific argument concerning it. It is another feature of creation, which is remarkably consistent with creation being the work of an intelligent Creator.
But creation does more than make us reason.
It makes us wonder.
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." - Psalm 19:1
There is something about looking into a clear night sky, standing before a mountain, hearing the sea, contemplating the complexity of a living creature, or simply considering the immensity of the universe that produces more than an intellectual conclusion. It produces awe.
We can describe the physical processes taking place inside a star without explaining what happens within us when we look upon a sky filled with them. We can explain how mountains were formed without explaining why their magnificence affects us. We can describe the wavelengths of light in a sunset without saying very much about why it is beautiful.
The heavens testify to God, but so does the heart that looks upon the heavens.
There are moments when the natural response to existence is not merely analysis, but wonder and thankfulness.
Thankfulness seems to reach beyond the gift towards a giver, while awe, sometimes accompanied by a sense of fear or reverence, seems to turn our thoughts instinctively towards God.
The Christian does not substitute these things for reason. They accompany reason.
We know things in several ways. We reason. We observe. We experience. We possess intuition and moral conscience. We recognise beauty. We love. We grieve. We distinguish between good and evil.
And remarkably, these different faculties do not lead us away from God. They each testify to Him.
Our Conscience Testifies To God
Let us now consider conscience more closely, for it offers a kind of knowledge distinct from reason.
Human beings do not merely observe what people do. We make judgements about what people ought to do.
Reason and observation can tell us that certain kinds of behaviour are beneficial. We can study which actions contribute to human flourishing, which promote happiness, and which cause suffering.
But conscience tells us something more. To say that cruelty causes suffering is an observation. To say that cruelty is wrong is a moral judgement. To say that we ought to be honest, even when dishonesty would benefit us, is something more than recognising the benefits of honesty.
The word "ought" is remarkable.
Our conscience does not speak to us merely in the language of preference. It does not tell us that justice is something we happen to like, in the way that we might prefer one kind of food to another. It tells us that justice is right.
And when we ourselves act wrongly, conscience turns its judgement upon us.
We experience guilt.
We may regret a foolish decision because it harmed us. But moral guilt is different. In guilt there is the consciousness not merely that we have made a mistake, but that we have done something we ought not to have done.
Conscience therefore seems to testify not merely to a moral feeling within ourselves, but to a moral truth beyond ourselves, and remarkably, to a personal authority: One to whom we feel accountable, as a child does to a father, or a criminal to a judge.
This is precisely how Scripture describes it:
"Their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another." - Romans 2:15
Conscience does not give us a complete knowledge of God. Nor does it mean that every person's moral judgement is equally clear or equally correct. Conscience can be ignored, distorted and hardened.
Yet conscience also reveals something remarkable about human dignity.
We are creatures capable of recognising that some desires ought to be resisted, that other people possess claims upon us, and that there are things worth doing even at great personal cost.
A man may sacrifice his own advantage because he believes something is right. He may tell the truth when lying would profit him. He may show mercy when revenge would satisfy him. He may give his life for someone else.
Conscience therefore fits remarkably well with the Christian claim that man was made by a personal and moral Creator, in His image, with the capacity to recognise something of the difference between good and evil.
Why We Believe In God
There are other movements of the human heart which point in the same direction.
There are moments when we experience something profoundly good - life itself, the birth of a child, recovery from danger, unexpected kindness, extraordinary beauty - and the natural response is gratitude.
But gratitude is personal.
Thankfulness reaches beyond the gift towards someone to be thanked.
At such moments the human heart can seem to recognise something before the mind has finished putting it into words: that life is not merely a possession, but a gift.
Our longing for justice points in a similar direction.
We know perfectly well that justice is not always accomplished in this life.
Good people suffer. Wicked people sometimes prosper. Innocent people can die without vindication. Human courts can fail, evidence can disappear, crimes can remain hidden, and those responsible can escape every earthly judgement.
Yet something within us refuses to conclude that injustice becomes right simply because nobody punished it.
That conviction is extraordinary. It suggests that our idea of justice reaches beyond what this present world actually provides. We anticipate a judgement which human society cannot finally give: a setting right of things, in which evil is truly judged and good is not finally forgotten.
And so, when we consider why we believe in God, we find that the testimony is not merely outside us. It is within us as well.
Reason tells us that limited existence requires an ultimate explanation. Creation displays order and power. Beauty produces wonder. Conscience testifies to good and evil. Guilt testifies to accountability. Thankfulness reaches beyond the gift towards a giver. And our longing for justice reaches beyond the imperfect judgements of this world towards a final Judge.
Christianity does not tell us to abandon reason for feeling, nor to distrust every human faculty except abstract reasoning. The God who made the universe also made the mind that reasons about it, the conscience that judges within it, and the soul that wonders at its beauty.
Everything outside us testifies to God. Everything within us testifies to God.
But that brings us to another question. If there is a God, has He spoken?
