The God Who Is There

Regardless of a man's system, he has to live in God's world.

In a fallen world, we must be willing to face the fact that however lovingly we preach the gospel, if a man rejects it he will be miserable. It is dark out there.

But when the world can turn around and see a group of God's people exhibiting substantial healing in the area of human relationships in their present life, then the world will take notice.

The problem which confronts us as we approach modern man today is not how we are to change Christian teaching in order to make it more palatable, for to that would mean throwing away any chance of giving the real answer to man in despair; rather it is only a problem of how we many communicate the Gospel so that it is understood.

The present chasm between the generations has been brought about almost entirely by a change in the concept of truth.

But if one begins to consider the differences between Christianity and rationalistic philosophy’s answers, one must begin by understanding that man and history are now abnormal. It is not that philosophy and Christianity deal with completely different questions, but that historic Christianity and rationalistic philosophy differ in their answers—including the important point as to whether man and history are now normal or abnormal. They also differ in that rationalistic thinking starts with only the knowledge finite man can glean for himself.5

Whenever men say they are looking for greater reality, we must show them at once the reality of true Christianity. This is real because it is concerned with the God who is there and who has spoken to us about himself, not just the use of the symbol god or christ which sounds spiritual but is not.

First, I am not an apologete if that means building a safe house to live in, so that we Christians can sit inside with safety and quiescence. Christians should be out in the midst of the world as both witnesses and salt, not sitting in a fortress surrounded by a moat.

Knowledge precedes faith. This is crucial in understanding the Bible. To say (as a Christian should) that only that faith which believes God on the basis of knowledge is true faith, is to say something which causes an explosion in the twentieth-century world.

Once the truth of God’s existence is known to us, and we know that we have true moral guilt before a holy God, then we should be glad to know the solution to our dilemma. The solution is from God’s side, not ours.

Before a man is ready to become a Christian, he must have a proper understanding of truth, whether he has fully analyzed his concept of truth or not. All people, whether they realize it or not, function in the framework of some concept of truth. Our concept of truth will radically affect our understanding of what it means to become a Christian. We are concerned, at this point, not with the content of truth so much as with the concept of what truth is.

To the extent that anyone gives up the mentality of antithesis, he has moved over to the other side, even if he still tries to defend orthodoxy or evangelicalism. If Christians are to take advantage of the death of romanticism, we must consciously build back the mentality and practice of antithesis among Christians in doctrine and life. We must do it in our teaching and example toward compromise, both ecclesiastically and in evangelism. To fail to exhibit that we take truth seriously at these points where there is a cost in doing so, is to push the next generation into the relative, dialectical millstream that surrounds us.

Many people have never analyzed their own point of tension. Since the Fall man is separated from himself. Man is complicated, and he tries to bury himself in himself. Therefore, it will take time and it will cost something to discover what the person we are speaking to often has not yet discovered for himself. Down inside of himself man finds it easy to lie to himself. We, in love, looking to the work of the Holy Spirit, must reach down into that person and try to find where the point of tension is.

This reality of which I speak falls into two parts: the fact that the universe truly exists and it has a form, and then what I would call the “mannishness” of man—which is my own term for meaning that man is unique.

Modern man cannot talk about the object of his faith, only about the faith itself. So he can discuss the existence of his faith and its 'size' as it exists against all reason, but that is all. Modern man's faith thus turns inward. In Christianity the value of faith depends upon the object towards which the faith is directed. So it looks outward to the God who is there, and to the Christ who in history died upon the cross once for all, finished the work of atonement, and on the third day rose again in space and in time. This makes Christian faith open to discussion and verification.

Whoever saw a couple get engaged simply because they wanted to enjoy the marriage ceremony? What they want to do is to live together.

As long as a genuine continuity remains between the defined verbalization and what is added, then all kinds of enrichment can be brought in.

there is a sufficient basis for morals. Nobody has ever discovered a way of having real “morals” without a moral absolute. If there is no moral absolute, we are left with hedonism (doing what I like) or some form of the social contract theory (what is best for society as a whole is right).

The validity and meaning of love rest upon the reality that love exists between the Father and Son in the Trinity. When I say I love, instead of this being a nonsense word, it has meaning. It is rooted in what has always been in the personal relationship existing in the Trinity before the universe was created. Man’s love is not a product of chance that has no fulfillment in what has always been. Love is a thing not only of meaning but of beauty and wonder to be nourished in joy.

Because God created a true universe outside of himself (not as an extension of his essence), there is a true history which exists. Man as created in God’s image is therefore a significant man in a significant history, who can choose to obey the commandment of God and love him, or revolt against him.

With the propositional communication from the personal God before us not only the things of the cosmos and history match up but everything on the upper and lower stories matches too: grace and nature; a moral absolute and morals; the universal point of reference and the particulars; and the emotional and aesthetic realities of man as well.

Logical positivism claims to lay the foundation for each step as it goes along, in a rational way. Yet in reality it puts forth no theoretical universal to validate its very first step. Positivists accept (though they present no logical reason why this should be so) that what reaches them from the “outside” may be called “data”; i.e., it has objective validity.

The optimistic jump is a necessity because man is still created in the image of God, whatever he may say about himself, and as such he cannot go on living in meaninglessness.

With the Christian answer it is now possible to understand that there are true moral absolutes. There is no law behind God, because the furthest thing back is God. The moral absolutes rest upon God’s character. The creation as he originally made it conformed to his character.

To the new theology, the usefulness of a symbol is in direct proportion to its obscurity.

So when the new theology uses such words, without definition, an illusion of meaning is given which is pragmatically useful in arousing deep motivations. This is something beyond emotion. An illusion of communication and content is given so that when a word is used in this deliberately undefined way, the hearer “thinks” he knows what it means.

It is not “just a religious book”; the Bible is rooted in space-time history and speaks of the totality of reality.

When we use the phrase “it is only human,” we are usually referring to something sinful. In this sense, the Christian should feel a calling not to be “human”; but in a more profound sense, the Christian is called to exhibit the characteristics of true humanity, because being a man is not intrinsically being sinful man, but being that which goes back before the Fall, to man made in the image of God.

Whether the symbols to express this are those of painting, poetry or theology is incidental. The vital question is not the symbols used to express these ideas (for example, the words of the existential philosophers or the sounds of musique concrète) but the concept of truth and the method of attaining truth. The watershed is the new way of talking about and arriving at truth, not the terms the individual disciplines use to express these ideas.

The communication which God has made to man is true, but that does not mean it is exhaustive. This is an important distinction which we must always bear in mind. To know anything exhaustively we would need to be infinite, as God is. Even in heaven we shall not be this.