What Do We Mean by 'God?'
When the new atheists were at the height of their popularity, one of the regular sound bites in circulation was: We’re all atheists here. I just believe in one God less. The implication is that, since most modern folks deny the existence of ancient deities like Zeus and Artemis, the denial of the Christian God just continues that same logic. Jesus Christ is thus put into the same category as Zeus or Artemis. The phrase itself was initially uttered by British historian Stephen R. Roberts, but Richard Dawkins did much to popularize it in subsequent years, especially in his bestselling book, The God Delusion.
The problem is: This argument is predicated on a total misunderstanding of the nature of the Christian God. As theologian David Bentley Hart points out at great length in The Experience of God, we need to make sure we’re operating with the correct definition of God. Zeus and Artemis, for instance, are demigods, very great beings among lesser beings, like humans and lions, tigers, and bears. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, on the other hand, is not merely a greater being among lesser beings. His is wholly distinct. He is in fact the wellspring of all creation. Incidentally, this is also why another common sound bite—Who made God?—partakes of the same category mistake. Since the Christian God is, by definition, un-made, any made being would be his inferior. As John Lennox says so well, the biblical name for the “gods” we craft is idols.
When Christians speak of God, they are speaking of the one who stands outside of time and creation. He is in no way dependent on the created order he has brought into being. Rather, the existence he has granted to us as human beings is pure gift.
Creation Ex-Nihilo
The Christian doctrine of creation ex-nihilo holds that God brought the created order into being from nothingness—a pure and primal act of creation. Space, time, energy, and matter were spoken into being by the spiritual, transcendent, and self-existing I AM. The created order is thus a pure gift from our Lord, and his relationship to it is one of care and sustenance rather than necessity. Why is that important? Because we need to be clear that God, the supremely self-sufficient being, is in no way dependent on his creation. If we make that mistake, we bring in a false picture of God. Any God who needed us or was in any way dependent on us would not be the God who reveals himself to us in Scripture and in his Son.
As we survey the created order, we recognize that we are also confronted by the mystery of time. On the one hand, time is linear: Witness the natural processes of birth, maturing, death, and decay. A powerful artistic portrayal of this process comes to us from the American landscape artist Thomas Cole. In his Voyage of Life painting cycle, for instance, Cole portrays the various stages of one man’s lifetime, beginning with youthful idealism, encompassing the disillusionment of middle age, and finally concluding with the blessedness of a good death in which the man’s spirit is surrendered to God.
On the Nature of Time
On the other hand, time is also cyclically progressive. We can see this clearly in the patterns of history, where we chart the rise and fall of empires, as well as the return of previous modes of politics and social organization. Again, Thomas Cole gives vivid expression to this in his Course of Empire series of paintings, in which we glimpse a burgeoning empire that grows to glory, begins to collapse in decadence, and finally gives way to ruins. But in the ruins, we glimpse the continued growth of the surrounding natural world, giving us a picture of the life that endures, even as great empires come and go. We can also glimpse another clear picture of the progressive nature of time when we take into account the explosive growth of science and technology. Technical innovation gives us a clear picture of the development that takes place within the context of finite time.
The nature of divine transcendence also modifies our understanding of time. From an earth-bound perspective, we can see this in great abundance in the breathtaking beauty that’s on display in the created order. From a marvelous sunrise to the colorful exuberance of the insect kingdom, this world is filled with marvels that point beyond themselves in the sheer excess of their beauty.
Great artistic achievements also serve as signposts of the timeless. An old piece of technology like the telegraph may grow obsolete with new innovations, but Homer’s Odyssey and Shakespeare’s plays remain masterpieces because they’ve managed to fasten onto timeless aspects of human experience. Consider these celebrated lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 that serve to showcase the timeless aspects of great art:
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
But Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the ultimate embodiment of transcendence, revealing to us that we are creatures in his created order, made for an eternal relationship with him. Our earthbound sojourn is this punctuated by the bittersweet trials of linear time, but also filled with the promise of transcendence. As we are told in Ecclesiastes 3:11, God has set eternity in our hearts. We begin to recognize this colossal truth when we have a true understanding of how unique our vision of creation is.
Photo Credit: Unsplash/Bobby Stevenson
Kenneth Boa equips people to love well (being), learn well (knowing), and live well (doing). He is a writer, teacher, speaker, and mentor and is the President of Reflections Ministries, The Museum of Created Beauty, and Trinity House Publishers.
Publications by Dr. Boa include Conformed to His Image, Handbook to Prayer, Handbook to Leadership, Faith Has Its Reasons, Rewriting Your Broken Story, Life in the Presence of God, Leverage, and Recalibrate Your Life.
Dr. Boa holds a B.S. from Case Institute of Technology, a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, a Ph.D. from New York University, and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in England.
