In one sense, if there is a God, He must be beyond our
understanding. But we believe He has chosen to reveal Himself to
us. We do not believe we fully know and understand God, but we do
believe that we can truly know and understand what He chooses to
reveal about Himself to us.
Choose your response:
-
-
-
-
Back...
-
How does God reveal Himself? In traditional
Christian thought, there are three main ways,
- General Revelation
- Special Revelation
- Jesus of Nazareth
General Revelation
describes the ways in which God makes Himself known through
creation, and through the things we all share as humans.
Special Revelation
describes the ways in which God makes Himself known directly
- to and through selected individuals.
Jesus Christ is the final
and fullest self-revelation of God.
Back...
-
Choose your response:
-
-
Back...
-
If there is a God, He must be so incredibly
different from us that we have no possibility of
understanding Him at all.
In a sense, this is right. The totality of God is surely
incomprehensible. But this does not mean that we cannot
understand anything about Him. It is possible to have
true knowledge of God without having total knowledge.
On this level, God is no more incomprehensible than the
people around us. We never know and understand everything
there is to know about them, but this does not mean that we
cannot know anything. The fact that people sometimes
surprise us is proof that they are comprehensible, at least
in part.
If God wishes us to know Him and relate to Him, it seems
absurd to believe that He could not create us as capable of
knowing Him.
Back...
-
A God who is so big and powerful, a God Who can
create a universe, would surely not be interested in one
hominoid species on a small plant orbiting an ordinary
star in one of millions of galaxies.
Firstly, we do not know whether or not we are the only
intelligent species in the universe. And if not, there is
no reason to suppose that God is more interested in
the human race than any of the other intelligent species out
there. We believe He is interested in us, not that He is
interested in us to the exclusion of interest in any other
species.
And secondly, is there any reason to suppose that God is
not interested in any part of His creation. If He
cared enough to create us, why should He not take a
continuing interest in us?
Back...
-
If we assume there is a God, there are only a few
possible alternatives.
Choose your
response:
-
-
-
Back...
-
This is a logical possibility. But I have never heard
anyone seriously arguing that God created a universe that He
was then incapable of interacting with. It would seem a
somewhat pointless activity!
Nobody has offered me any evidence that this possibility
is true. I am not sure even what would constitute evidence
for this. In fact, it seems to me that this position, by
its own definition, precludes the possibility of any
evidence existing to support it.
Functionally, if God set everything going and then cannot
do any more, this is equivalent to there being no God. God
is, in this scenario, no more than a name we give to the
'first cause'.
Back...
-
So, perhaps God can reveal Himself to us, but
simply chooses not to do so.
This is slightly more plausible than the first
alternative, but suffers in exactly the same way from the
lack of any possible evidence.
Back...
-
This is a scary option! It sounds remarkably close to
the theory of the bad God. I find it hard to understand a
God who actively misleads us concerning His character, other
than as being evil. God and truth are so inextricably
bound together.
Descartes recognized that if you believe this
possibility, then you have no rational grounds for believing
anything else at all. A God who decides to mislead us
is surely capable of misleading us in every area: our
experiences and memory, as well as our reasoning and
beliefs. This way, quite literally, leads to madness.
|
|