One of the “show stopping” questions posed by atheists is this one: If God created the universe, who created God?
It is a clever question, and has stumped many a person who believes in God, but the question, itself, is flawed. Let me explain.
In my response, I am indebted to John Lennox who’s answer to this very question is embedded at the end of this blog article. John Lennox, is a Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University and a frequent speaker on topics of science, philosophy and religion. He has twice debated the vocal atheist, and Oxford professor, Richard Dawkins, who wrote a book, The God Delusion, using this question as a centerpiece.
The flaw of the question is that it is loaded with the assumption that God was created. The response of the Christian (or theist generally) is that such a notion (that God was created) is not a notion about God at all, but a notion about a god – a created thing. Another word for such a thing is an idol.
“Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved for I bear them witness that they have a Zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” (Romans 10:1-4)
Paul is speaking to the Romans of the Jews, but this message could apply to anyone who seeks to establish his own righteousness and does not submit to God’s righteousness. Paul had a particular authenticity to be able to say this about the Jews, because they were his people. He was one of them. He was not just Jewish, but trained as a Pharisee by the greatest of the contemporary teachers of the time and zealous for the Jewish law to the point of persecuting the followers of Christ (Phil. 3:6) – before he was confronted by the living, resurrected Jesus.
Paul knew something of the righteousness of his former life and of the righteousness of the Jews in his time. Their righteousness consisted of zealously keeping the law. The Pharisees, the protectors keepers of the law, were the people with whom Jesus had the harshest confrontations. He accused them of imposing impossible burdens on others, burdens that they, themselves, didn’t even keep. Primarily, though, they were attempting to establish their own righteousness in reference to the law.
Human beings can make idols out of anything. We can even make an idol of human intellect/mind. As with all created things, the human intellect is limited and finite. Many people, nevertheless, put their ultimate faith in the human intellect. This is idolatry when we trust in our own intellect instead of trusting in God.
Putting faith in our own intellect is, ultimately, foolish. What do we know that God doesn’t know? What can we understand that God doesn’t understand? Relying on ourselves in this way, to the exclusion of relying of God, is (to put it mildly) short-sighted. It is sin, to put it more bluntly.
Self-reliance is the mistake that Eve made in the garden when the serpent tempted her by saying “you will be like God”![1] We want to be our own gods. We would rather rely on ourselves and our own intellect.
This is the basis of pride, which is the essence of sin. Paul says that our pride and self-reliance is why “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise”.[2] But, “the wisdom of this world is foolishness” to God.”[3] As Isaiah says:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:8-9
For these reasons, and others perhaps, Christians today tend to distrust science, worldly thinking, philosophy and even the mind, itself. Some Christians have all but abandoned the world of science, philosophy and the intellect to secular institutions and minds, and this is a terrible mistake!
Christians are skeptical of science. Christians are fearful of philosophy. Christians are even distrustful of their own minds. Many Christians have abdicated the realm of the intellect to modern culture and secular institutions. But here’s the thing: this is sinful too!
Sin[4] means literally (forfeiture or loss from) not hitting the target, to miss the mark. We can sin by directing ourselves in a way that God doesn’t approve, and we can also sin by failing to direct ourselves in a way that God approves. Sin has positive (active) and negative (passive) components.
From a clip from EWTN’s “Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings:’ A Catholic Worldview”
Are myths fiction? The stories they tell aren’t true. Are they, therefore, lies? Are they worthless? Nothing but “beautiful lies”? Nothing but fairy tales?
These are the questions posed by one man playing J.R.R. Tolkien to his counterpart playing C.S. Lewis in a fictional conversation between the two men: Lewis and Tolkien Debate Myths and Lies (embedded at the end of the article).
This interplay, while fictional, is intended to capture the essence of the relationship between Lewis and Tolkien as Lewis was transitioning from the materialism he embraced as a young man to theism. At this point, he is wrestling with doubts that were rising in his mind about the truth of that materialist world view. He was becoming convinced his previous conclusions no longer made sense.
Lewis had been raised on a diet of classical Greek and Latin literature that he learned to read in the original languages. He read these classics along with Celtic, German and other literature filled with myth, allegory and symbolism. The literature captured his imagination as a child and young adult.
As he got older, he embraced materialism, but that materialism eventually clashed with a profound undercurrent of something “real” that appealed to him in that ancient literature. The reality Lewis was confronting might, perhaps, be considered nothing more than a love of art, beauty, poetry and love itself that the materialist enjoys in common with more metaphysically minded men.
But it raises some existential questions: Is matter and energy all that exists? What of the sublime reality we all intuitively “know” and sense in classic, timeless literature and art?
Tolkien’s response to Lewis’s existential angst is the subject of this article. The substance of it continues to resonate and illuminate such modern thinkers as Jordan Peterson, whose thoughts on the same subject are contained (briefly) in a short video embedded at the end.
Meanwhile, I have done a transcript of the fictional reimagining of the Tolkien and Lewis discourse to follow:
I recently heard a Sermon on Matthew 3:15. The verse was posited for the proposition that believers in Christ should be baptized as a public expression of faith in obedience to God. This is a pretty fundamental proposition that most Christian denominations would advocate in some form or another.
In Matthew 3, John the Baptist has been preaching repentance, turning to God and baptism to make the way for one who “is coming soon who is greater than I am – so much greater that I’m not worthy even to be his slave and carry his sandals”.[1] This was Jesus, of course. Then we are told that Jesus went to Galilee to the Jordan River to be baptized by John, and John tried to talk him out of it, saying, “I am the one who needs to be baptized by you….”[2] This is the context in which Jesus makes the statement that was the focus of the sermon.
The New Living Translation of the Bible was used for the textual reference. I tend to use the ESV and NASB translations because they are more literal. They are word for word translations, rather than phrase for phrase (or idea for idea) translations, like the NLT. The word for word translations tend to be considered more accurate and more authentic to the original text. These are things I was thinking as I listened to the message, and I wondered what difference a more literal translation would make.
Navigating by Faith 