The Clarity of God's Existence: The Ethics of Belief After the Enlightenment

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Inexcusability, Redemption,

and the Need for Clarity

What are the implications for Christianity if God’s existence cannot be proven? The central message of Christianity involves a call to repentance from sin and the need for redemption. What is sin, and how does the failure to know God factor into sin? The Enlightenment has been criticized by contemporary Christian philosophers as relying too heavily on reason, but what are the implications if reason cannot be used to know God? In this chapter we will consider the relationship between clarity, inexcusability, and the need for redemption.

The Christian Gospel does not make sense apart from an understanding of sin. For this reason the Apostle Paul begins the book of Romans with a description of sin, with a special focus on the sin of failing to know what is clear about God (Romans 1:20). But what makes sin so bad that it requires redemption through Christ? Why is failing to know God a problem? Skeptics have noted that if we cannot know then we cannot be held accountable. Consider the subtle yet devastating manner in which David Hume challenges Christian belief. After arguing against the possibility of miracles, he says:

Our most holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason; and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is, by no means, fitted to endure. . . . we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.

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For Hume the term faith means blind faith and perhaps even that which is contrary to reason. And yet the Christian religion claims that all persons should believe in God, and that the failure to do so is one of the sins (perhaps the central sin of not understanding that Paul identifies in Romans 3:11) for which Christ died. The following will ask if the claim that all humans ought to know God can be defended if it is not clear that God exists. Is the failure to know God culpable ignorance? Historic Christianity has maintained that unbelief is a sin.² However, after the challenges to theistic belief raised during the Enlightenment (especially by David Hume and Immanuel Kant), many have concluded that God’s existence cannot be proven. If this is true then it follows that humans cannot be held accountable for not believing in God. And yet this would be a serious challenge to the claims of Historic Christianity.

The purpose of this work will be to argue for a principle called the principle of clarity. This principle states that if the failure to know God (unbelief) is inexcusable (culpable ignorance), then it must be clear (readily knowable) that God exists. This means that it is necessary for God’s existence to be clear (readily knowable) in order to make sense of the Christian claim that unbelief is culpable ignorance and requires redemption. Here, the term God will be used as conceived of in theism where God is said to be a spirit who is infinite, eternal, and unchanging in power, knowledge, and goodness. This is distinguished from all forms of non-theism, including deism, pantheism, panentheism, and polytheism. It is also distinguished from a vague higher power or higher being. To establish that there is no excuse for failing to know God requires showing that the alternatives are not rational.

For there to be clarity there must be clear distinctions. Formally, this is stated as the distinction between a and non-a. At the most basic level, there must be a clear distinction between being and non-being. In asking about God’s existence, we are asking if there is a clear distinction between what is eternal and what is temporal, and if eternality can be applied to the material world, the self, or anything else, or if it only can be applied to God. Clarity is required for inexcusability. One is inexcusable if:

1. One holds to self-contradictory beliefs.

2. One does not have integrity—does not live according to the principles one teaches.

3. One does not know what is clear—since thinking is presuppositional (the less basic assumes the more basic), if anything is clear, the basic things are clear. Thus, one is inexcusable if one does not know what is basic.

4. One denies that there are clear distinctions. Clarity requires distinguishing between a and non-a. An example of a basic belief that is clear is the distinction between being and non-being. There is no excuse for failing to distinguish these because their distinction is the foundation of all thought—to give an excuse requires this distinction.

To challenge the claim that unbelief is inexcusable, the critics of Christianity need only to show that God is difficult to know, or not knowable.³ This would provide an excuse for unbelief. Such an excuse would undermine the claim that the unbelievers are guilty for their unbelief, and thus take away any grounds of the need for redemption.⁴ It is therefore necessary for Historic Christianity to establish that there is a need for redemption by showing that unbelief is inexcusable. This must be done before other parts of the Christian message can be understood, such as atonement through a representative, the deity of Christ, total depravity and the effectual calling, or the resurrection of the dead.

The purpose here is not to prove whether God does or does not exist, although the last chapters will consider what steps would be necessary in giving a proof. The purpose here is to consider a question that is part of the ethics of belief: What should I believe? If Historic Christianity claims that all persons should believe that God exists and that he has a specific nature, then all persons must be able to know God. Contemporary thinkers who have attempted to address the challenge that theistic belief should not be held because it is intellectually inadequate (the de jure objection), such as Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, have pointed out that theistic belief is analogical to beliefs that the materialist holds, such as belief in other minds or the reality of the physical world. The present work addresses a different aspect of the question. If all humans are held responsible for knowing God so that one is guilty for unbelief, then God must be knowable by all humans. This work will consider whether or not such a standard can be held after the challenges of the Enlightenment by thinkers like David Hume and Immanuel Kant.

Since the purpose is not to prove or disprove the existence of God, but to consider if such a strong claim as inexcusability can be made about unbelief, the following will not attempt to look at all individual expressions of theistic arguments. Instead, it will consider the basic kinds of arguments—the ontological, cosmological, and teleological—and how they came to be expressed by notable thinkers such as Aquinas and Locke. While fine-tuning of the arguments has been the response in the twentieth century by thinkers like William Lane Craig or Alvin Plantinga, the following will point out that the challenge given by Hume and Kant is aimed at the capacity to know anything about God by reason, and therefore a response must go beyond fine-tuning of the arguments.

The requirement for the clarity of God’s existence is not imposed on Christianity from without, but is maintained by Christianity itself as well as being asked for by critics of theism. Defeaters have been raised to all of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. Skepticism about belief in God, both in terms of the actual existence of God, and the ability to know God, is common. This means that if Christianity is to continue to hold that it is clear that God exists, then it must respond to these defeaters. There is a difference between being personally certain or persuaded that God exists, and being able to show objectively that it is certain that God exists (objective certainty requires showing that the opposite is impossible). Skeptics of theism are asking for objective certainty, and given the statements about inexcusability made by the Apostle Paul, this appears to be a fair demand given both what the skeptic wants and what Christianity maintains.

The need for redemption posited by Historic Christianity assumes objective clarity which in turn establishes inexcusability and a basis for asserting that unbelief is sin. Terrence Penelhum sees this need for clarity when he says: I see the role of natural theology as that of addressing this multiple ambiguity in our world; and if it is a role that cannot be discharged, Christians (and indeed all theists) have a problem in the very fact of ambiguity itself.⁵ If the world is ambiguous, unclear, then there is not a clear distinction between being and non-being, between good and evil, or between true and false, and there can be no basis for making any claims whatsoever.

The claim that humans need redemption asserts that they need to be forgiven by God for something. Exactly how (under what conditions) this forgiveness is given is of central importance to the three theistic religions and is one of the main differences dividing them. To say that unbelief deserves just punishment is to say that a person in unbelief is guilty (morally culpable) for having unbelief, hence deserves just punishment for that reason, and requires the forgiveness of God if this punishment is to be avoided. One implication of asserting that unbelief requires forgiveness is that it must be clear that unbelief is wrong. This implies that the source of the knowledge of God and the source of the explanation of how to be forgiven for unbelief cannot be the same; there must be a distinction between general and special revelation.

General revelation refers to what can be known of God at all times by all persons. It is distinct from special revelation which is given through transmission and has not been accessible to all persons. J. I. Packer describes general revelation in the following way:

General revelation is so called because everyone receives it, just by virtue of being alive in God’s world. This has been so from the start of human history. God actively discloses these aspects of himself to all human beings, so that in every case failure to thank and serve the Creator in righteousness is sin against knowledge, and denials of having received this knowledge should not be taken seriously. God’s universal revelation of his power, praiseworthiness, and moral claim is the basis of Paul’s indictment of the whole human race as sinful and guilty before God for failing to serve him as we should (Romans 1:18–3:19).

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The content of special revelation is a description of the nature of, and the need for, redemption, and also a description of redemptive history. This means that it assumes that the reader can know God from general revelation and can know that there is a need for redemption. The assertion that a person is guilty for unbelief requires that the knowledge of God is available to that person apart from the revelation about how to be forgiven for not knowing God (special revelation). In other words, there is a logical (if not historical) order between these revelations: God must first be revealed to all persons, and this revelation must be ignored, in order for the need of a divine revelation about how to be forgiven for failing to know God to make sense. Because special revelation is not available to all persons at all times, and because special revelation (as revelation about redemption) presupposes that the reader knows who God is, it must be the case that there is a clear general revelation of God if the unbeliever is to be held guilty. Special revelation is not sufficient to establish the guilt of unbelief.

It is worth noting now that the claim that there is a clear general revelation of God also provides a framework for determining which books that claim to be special revelation are in fact special revelation. A book that claims divine origin, or a prophet who claims to have special revelation, and yet communicates a message that contradicts what is known of God from general revelation, cannot actually be special revelation or from God. Much has been made about the Nag Hammadi texts, or Gnostic Gospel. Yet these are not theistic works, and so it should not be a surprise that they are not part of the canon. Thus, while it might be the case that the particular content of special revelation cannot be deduced from general revelation, many impostors can be ruled out if God is known from general revelation.

The principle of clarity is a necessary presupposition of the redemptive claims of Christianity. If unbelief is inexcusable, then it must be clear that God exists. This does not mean that every specific Christian thinker expressly stated, or even thought about, the consequence of this if/then statement. The argument is that this has not been sustained as it should be, particularly after challenges to belief in God given during the Enlightenment. Many Christians have taken the knowledge of general revelation to be an immediate, intuitive knowledge and so have not seen the need for proofs. And yet the antecedent (that unbelief is inexcusable) is asserted by Christians and is an important part of the redemptive claims of Christianity. In fact, it will be argued here that there is a relationship between this principle and the way in which redemptive claims are held. When a given thinker holds that unbelief is inexcusable, that thinker is necessarily committed to also holding this principle. It would be unjust to punish someone for unbelief unless it was clear that he had an epistemic obligation to believe. But where this principle is thought to be impossible to hold, or too strict, then the inexcusability of unbelief will also be abandoned in favor of some kind of inclusivism, pluralism, or universalism.

1.1. Christian Scriptures and Clarity

J. I. Packer notes that the Christian scriptures affirm that God can be known through general revelation:

God’s world is not a shield hiding the Creator’s power and majesty. From the natural order it is evident that a mighty and majestic Creator is there. Paul says this in Romans 1:19–21, and in Acts 17:28 he calls a Greek poet as witness that humans are divinely created. Paul also affirms that the goodness of this Creator becomes evident from kindly providences (Acts 14:17; cf. Romans 2:4), and that some at least of the demands of his holy law are known to every human conscience (Romans 2:14–15), along with the uncomfortable certainty of eventual retributive judgment (Romans 1:32). These evident certainties constitute the content of general revelation.

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The clarity of God’s existence is affirmed in the Christian scriptures. In the Old Testament, David asserts, The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’ (Psalm 14:1). Only that person who is negligent or unreasonable can fail to know God. It is this passage that inspired Anselm to look for a proof that could be used by all persons to know God. Anselm is an example of a Christian thinker who affirms that it is clear that God exists, apart from questions about whether or not his ontological argument does what he would like it to do. In Psalm 19 David says, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament displays His handiwork (Psalm 19:1). The heavens are accessible to all humans, and so the implication is that all humans can know God, his glory, and his handiwork. The Prophet Isaiah also affirms the principle of clarity when he says, The whole earth is full of His glory (Isaiah 6:3). The implication is that since the whole earth is full of the glory of God, humans everywhere can know God.

Both the Ten Commandments and the Apostle Paul begin with the sin of unbelief. The first two commandments are against any failure to know God, or replacing God with something else. In Romans 1:20 Paul states, For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Although they knew God, their minds became darkened and they exchanged this for idols. In verses 21–27 Paul then describes how the failure to know God as one should results in numerous other sins. Clearly, Paul believes that God can be, and should be, known by all humans and it is the failure to do so that leads to other sins and requires redemption. When Paul spoke to the philosophers in Athens he affirmed that God has made it possible for all persons to know him:

He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:26–28).

According to Paul, the Greek philosophers, and all humans who dwell on the face of the earth, can and should know God. In Hebrews 11:1 faith is defined as the evidence of things not seen. Faith is contrasted with sight—what is seen—and not with reason or proof. Proof can be of what is not seen, and therefore it requires faith to be committed to reason and accept the conclusion without visible verification. In verse 6 it says that God is the rewarder of those that diligently seek him, reminder of what was said in Romans 3:11–14, that sin is the failure to seek, to understand, and to do what is right.

This can also be seen in the Lord’s Prayer. It begins Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name (Matthew 6:9). God’s name is to be hallowed (glorified). However, if God cannot be known, then his name cannot be glorified. It is therefore a necessary presupposition that God can be known, and that he can be known by fishermen and tax collectors, not only by philosophers.

1.2. Historic Christian Thinkers and Clarity

In this book, Historic Christianity will take the process found in Acts 15 as the model and refer to what the best minds have agreed upon after much discussion. Acts 15 recounts the Council of Jerusalem in 50 A.D., after which there have been other formative councils, such as Nicea dealing with the Trinity, and Chalcedon dealing with Christology. The basis for much discussion is the scriptures, and so these councils are not taken to be infallible. But here it will be maintained that there is a Historic Christianity that is based on a worldview which is being developed over time through working out implications and growing in consistency. This occurs in the context of a challenge to the faith, and requires the pastor/teachers to respond to the challenge. The most recent example is the Westminster Confession of Faith, which resulted after the challenges of the Reformation concerning the nature of justification, atonement, sacraments, sovereignty of God, the place of scripture and role of the church.

This view of Historic Christianity is in contrast to a view, expressed by Bart Ehrman in his Lost Christianities, that there are only Christianities, and that what decides which of them comes to be called Christianity is a power struggle mainly at the political level. There is no doubt that there are power struggles and political intrigues. But it is also true that there is rational consistency between ideas, so that we can speak of systems of ideas (worldviews), and that people argue in favor of these worldviews because they are convinced they are true. Texts such as the Gnostic Gospels were not rejected simply due to power struggles, but because they contradict basic ideas in the rest of scripture, such as theistic belief. This is called Historic Christianity not necessarily because it has been held by the majority at any one time (although throughout the centuries it is the majority position), but because it is the most consistent with the scriptures and the presuppositions of Christianity from general revelation.

Thus, we can speak about Historic Christianity which is based on theism, holds to the Trinity and the dual nature of Christ, and claims that sin is the failure to seek, understand and do what is right. Furthermore, it asserts that redemption is required, and that redemption can only be attained through the death and resurrection of Christ. There is much more to the Christian worldview, but in this book we are considering its assumptions—specifically the assumption of theism.

The Westminster Confession of Faith (as well as the Larger and Shorter Catechism) affirms the principle of clarity. The Confession itself begins by saying, The light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable.⁸ In his commentary on the Confession, A.A. Hodge affirms that the Confession begins this way in order to maintain that there is no excuse for unbelief: That the light of nature and the works of creation and providence are sufficient to make known the fact that there is a God, and somewhat of his nature and character, so as to leave the disobedience of men without excuse.⁹ G. I. Williamson also notes that the Confession affirms inexcusability:

It has long been the habit among Christians (even of Reformed persuasion) to speak of the insufficiency of natural revelation, as if there were something defective in the revelation it makes of God. This may be seen in the traditional use of the ‘theistic proofs’ . . . After these, and similar arguments, were developed and brought together, it was hoped that unbelievers might be convinced that (a) ‘a god’ probably exists; and (b) that if he does exist, he might possibly be the God of the Bible. Only when the possibility of the existence of ‘God’ was thus ‘proved’ was it expected that the unbeliever would admit further evidence that might confirm the fact that God really does exist . . . What is wrong with this approach? Simply this: every fact (and the sum total of all facts) proves the existence of the God of the Bible. And there is good reason. This God is. He always was. He existed before anything was made. And the whole universe exists only because he planned it. Every detail of the related aspects of existence has the precise character and purpose that God intended. It therefore has meaning that is God-given. . . . Everything in heaven and earth says that the true God is, that he is glorious, that he is creator and ruler of all, and that we are his creatures.

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It is important to note that Williamson is opposed to simply showing that God probably exists. Rather, he wants to affirm that God is readily knowable, and this is the basis for inexcusability. If this is what is affirmed in the Westminster Confession of Faith, then it is a significant position within Christianity, and has had major influence. What will be argued here is that it has not been developed as it should be, and that most Christian apologists have not maintained the important relationship between clarity and inexcusability.

The Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms both begin by asking, What is the chief and highest end of man? The answer given is that Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.¹¹ This cannot be done if God is not knowable. In its consideration of the Ten Commandments, the Larger Catechism says that what is required of all men in the first commandment is the knowing and acknowledging of God to be the only true God, and our God; and to worship and glorify him accordingly.¹² Again, here it is affirmed that all humans can and should know God. This is a, if not the, major confession of the Reformation, and is still held to as a doctrinal standard by many Protestant denominations. Benjamin Warfield says, No Catechism begins on a higher plane than the Westminster ‘Shorter Catechism’.¹³ This is