God Is: Meditations on the Existence, Nature, and Character of God

By Garland Grimes

In ages past, humankind looked out upon a world filled with peril and delight. It was as mysterious as it was beautiful. With other creatures they shared the terra firma, the fertile ground upon which they were collectively dependent. The skies and seas brought forth their own kind, flooding the wind and the wave. In time, all returned to the dust. Like the clouds, they came and went. But the mountains seemed solid, and the stars spoke of a primal order and permanence. Behind this wondrous abode, above and beneath, there was someone else—the one by whom all that is . . . is. It was he whom we call God. He was there before the earth was formed, and he will remain after it has turned to ashes.

Today, many insist that God is simply the mythical creation of prescientific man, the product of darkness and ignorance, of humanity’s struggle with the unknown. An increasing number of our academic and cultural elite consider the very idea of a Supreme Being to be outdated, superstitious, and even dangerous. The danger, of course, is not to the world, but to the world as they would have it. The idea is not so much the threat as the reality, because God does exist, and he is the creator and sustainer of all that is and ever will be, even of our next breath. His presence is inescapable and hence the inspiration for this book. He is! And through the visible manifestations of his divine glory, he infuses meaning and purpose into every aspect of reality. God is the heart of all truth, the wellspring of every goodness, and our supreme joy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781512778915

Garland Grimes

It was the sudden resolution to a long and bitter period of unfulfilled expectations, a decisive moment that transformed Garland’s pursuit of happiness into a serene awareness of the true object of our happiness, the one whom we call God. Not an irrational leap of faith but compelling personal encounters drew Garland ever deeper. Yet the questions still came. What was the real nature of these experiences? Were they genuine? Were they truly of God, or is he the psychological projection of our desire—a crutch, wishful thinking? What do the scholars and sages of this world tell us? Can a puny man know if he is part of a grand design? Searching for answers, Garland began a lifelong study of the world’s philosophies, both religious and secular. What he discovered was convincing evidence for the truths of the Christian religion, for its cogent understanding of the existence, nature, and character of God, in whom our own search may find its purpose in passionate desire and solemn rest. Contact information: Email: [e-mail] Website: www.GodIs.website

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Copyright © 2016 Garland Grimes.

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CONTENTS

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. God Is

2. God Is Creative

3. God Is Intelligent

4. God Is Here

5. God Is Faithful

6. God Is Good

7. God Is Just

8. God Is Gracious

9. God Is Personal

10. God Is Love

11. God Is Triune

12. God Is Truth

13. God Is Worthy

14. God Is With Us

A Coda: The Face of God

Notes

Glossary

ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations are used for books of the Bible:

INTRODUCTION

Is God?

In ages past, humankind looked out upon a world filled with peril and delight. It was as mysterious as it was beautiful. With other creatures they shared the terra firma, the fertile ground upon which they were collectively dependent. The skies and seas brought forth their own kind, flooding the wind and the wave. In time, all returned to the dust. Like a mist, each generation came and went. But the mountains seemed solid, and the stars spoke of a primal order and permanence. Above and beneath this wondrous abode, there was someone else—the one by whom all that is . . . is. It was he whom we call God. He was there before the earth was formed, and he will remain after it has turned to ashes.

Today the narrative has changed. Many of our academic and cultural elite insist that God is simply the mythical creation of prescientific man, the product of darkness and ignorance, of humanity’s struggle with the unknown. They consider the very idea of a supreme being to be outdated, superstitious, and dangerous. The danger, of course, is not to the world, but to the world as they would have it. The idea is not so much the threat as the reality, because God does exist, and he is the source of all that is and ever will be, even of their next breath. There is an inescapable immediacy to his presence; thus, denials of him are forced and fleeting since they cannot be squared with the facts.

People often gravitate to what they want to be true and not necessarily to what the evidence demands. The woeful result is a culture marred by an increasingly cynical posture toward its Judeo-Christian foundations. In books, debates, and lectures, strident atheists demean the Holy Scripture, the Church, and those who still believe. Echoing these formal polemics is a glut of social media, littered with derision that betrays an underlying contempt for God himself—but one adrift in shallow and distorted notions of his nature.

Is God Not?

When we speak of atheism today, we are generally talking about philosophical materialism, atheistic Darwinism, and scientific naturalism. Although these terms are not entirely interchangeable, they represent interwoven strands of the same philosophy. An atheist, of course, is someone who believes that God does not exist. He is also typically a philosophical materialist. This does not mean he is mercenary or greedy. Rather, he believes that matter (not God) is fundamental, that everything, including life and sentience, can be reduced to simple particles. In turn, this perspective concurs with Darwinian ideology, which attempts to explain how higher lifeforms have evolved from lower ones through a process of natural selection. Personally, I have no objection to evolutionary principles per se; the act of becoming is everywhere present and observable. I am, however, at odds with any theory of evolution that is wed to naturalism, the belief that all things are the result of a random convergence of natural causes without any direction from a divine agent.

Agnosticism, also prevalent in our day, may best be characterized as a state of indifference toward Deity. Agnostics claim that we lack the evidence necessary to either confirm or deny man’s knowledge of God. This neutrality may appear in the guise of intellectual modesty, more tolerant of religion than atheism. But to argue that there is insufficient data to draw any conclusion whatsoever about God is to blame him for that insufficiency. In the final analysis, there is little difference between one who pretends that God does not exist and another who acts as though we are perfectly capable of running things without him. If he is not an integral and meaningful part of our lives, we are playing the atheist.

Sadly, millions become atheists by degree—not necessarily in principle but in practice. They do not start out with atheistic presuppositions or advance through a series of logical deductions to some inevitable conclusion. Nevertheless, they assimilate the prevailing opinions of our culture, the ideals that are steeped in its humanistic undercurrents. The ensuing intellectual streams eventually overwhelm their thoughts, to the point where God seems strangely remote.

God Is

Against this morass of unbelief, the thesis of this book is that God is real and that he can be truly, though not exhaustively, comprehended. We know more about him than many would care to admit. Though men may attempt to repress their knowledge of him, he cannot be easily evaded. Denying his existence is like denying our own: it is self-defeating. Every thought is a de facto refutation of any such denial.

All things come from God, through him they endure, and in him they find their purpose. Yet to acknowledge his reality is of little benefit to us if we take no delight in his goodness, his righteousness, and his love. These qualities and his other divine attributes therefore compose the subject of this book. Whether he is and who he is are part of the same inquiry. This is because he is existence itself, pure and perfect being. Thus did he describe himself to Moses: I AM WHO I AM. God has no limits; his very nature is to be. To appreciate this fundamental aspect of Deity is to begin to resolve the whys and wherefores that have plagued philosophers of every age.

We are caught up in a glorious mystery, in the wonder of our origin and destiny. We think about God, either consciously or subconsciously. Our reflections cannot be approached casually or superficially because they signify the abiding quest for him who is utterly pure, immeasurably deep, and wholly satisfying. Hence, my topic is more than I could ever hope to cover within the pages of a single book or even in an infinite number of books. Genuine theism is more than a body of ideas. Because God is personal, knowing him leads to divine intimacy. Words can never fully express who he is. Then again, that is what he has given us—words, but words that he can fill.

Knowing God

Life is a gift that must be received, not dissected. Even so, as we strive to capture in cogent language our experience of this gift, we carve out the precepts of some guiding philosophy. Many of our beliefs, however, have been influenced by ideologies that were molded centuries before we were born. Nothing that we presume is entirely original. We sift through various perceptions of the world that have been passed on to us by our predecessors.

Much of what has shaped our present generation—in particular, our spiritual poverty—has its roots as far back as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the atheism of men like David Hume of England, Denis Diderot of France, and Arthur Schopenhauer of Germany. During the same period, there were also stout and faithful believers, men of prodigious intellect who thoroughly refuted the naysayers. But alas, their voices have been silenced by our postmodern religious pessimism. No longer is William Paley’s across-the-board refutation of Hume’s skepticism a compulsory reading for applicants to Cambridge University. Instead, the precepts of pure and undefiled religion (James 1:27) are cast into the flames.

Truth cannot rise to the top when men reject their Maker. While simple ideas may not in themselves appear overtly irreligious, when they are grounded in the dubious assumptions of our darkened age, bit by bit they whittle away at a theistic ethos, and God becomes unthinkable. Our fallen culture is replacing piecemeal the values that derive from a transcendent dimension with values based solely on an immanent and material one. This spiritual vacuum is turning humanity’s riches into rags. Man is now the god of a toxic secularism, and his own devaluation is the inevitable result.

Atheists contend that human beings are the random product of cosmic forces. I assert the exact opposite, namely, that our lives bear the unmistakable marks of a glorious purpose. I commit this book to the defense of that assertion, for the earnest deliberation of those who have yet to believe and those who once believed but have lost their way. I offer no grandiose design for society at large. Society is made up of individuals, and my prayer is that what I have written will help to draw individual men and women back to God, who is the wellspring of life and the fount of all happiness. My hope is that you, the reader, will earnestly and joyfully seek the things that matter most, that you will be led to a true awareness of God, to the supernatural light that shines upon those whose hearts he has made ready.

My aim henceforth is simple. I maintain no pretense of neutrality; I am convinced that there is One who rules all things. The reasons I propose for this conviction are just that—reasons, rational justification. Religious knowledge is not based upon a blind leap of faith or an arbitrary acceptance of the Bible. The foundational principles of human understanding are the same for the believer and the nonbeliever. While I do not reason from the Bible, I do reason to it. I begin with a consideration of God’s works in nature, which are evident to all people. From there, I proceed to his work in and among people of faith, past and present. Finally, I expound their sacred writings.

Scripture and the Church stand not upon a presumption but firmly upon the objective evidence of history. And their message, once understood and embraced, is corroborated by the guiding hand of providence and a renewed vision of life. As C.S. Lewis remarked, I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else (from Lewis’ essay Is Theology Poetry? presented in 1944 to the Socratic Club, an Oxford debating society). Working in synergy with the historical evidence is the Bible’s own reasonableness. It can speak for itself. As a rationalist may quote René Descartes or an empiricist may quote John Locke, a Christian is at liberty to quote a biblical text—not because it settles the argument but because it makes the argument—the objective, rational case. For the believer, Scripture is authoritative. With respect to the nonbeliever, when I solicit wisdom from its pages, it is not with the intent to close the discussion. God willing, it will serve to open it.

CHAPTER 1

GOD IS

Existence and Identity

In his soliloquy in Act 3 of Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Hamlet, the despondent prince is faced with a terrible dilemma: To be or not to be. Things were rotten in Denmark, and for Hamlet there was no easy solution. Should he continue this painful act of living—or end it? Most of us would say that it is better to be, that to be is good and not to be is not good. But beyond the sheer fact of our existence, who are we? What are we? What does it mean to be this or that? What is real? Do only physical entities exist, or is there evidence of spirit, mind, and soul? As we peer inward at our own being and outward at this strange and magnificent drama in which we play a part, does it make any sense?

These questions pertain to the subject of ontology, the branch of philosophy that considers the nature and modes of existence, of being and becoming. Why is there something rather than nothing? Can we truly grasp the underlying reality, or must it forever remain a mystery? The desire to understand our own existence as well as existence itself has consumed philosophers from Socrates to Sartre. We, like Hamlet, ask whence we derive and to what purpose. This is quite vexing for atheistic philosophers and scientists, because the one whom they try so hard to disprove can be seen in everything they observe.

In whatever way we deny God, we deny ourselves, our intrinsic identity. For the pantheist, who equates god with the cosmos, our individual personalities are considered an illusion. For the materialist, who regards the spiritual realm as illusory, our cognition is seen as random phenomena. One’s mind is reduced to a brain, and one’s thoughts to chemical reactions and electrical impulses. Sentience and even advanced intelligence are viewed as involuntary responses to miscellaneous stimuli. For both the materialist and the pantheist, the human subject effectively disappears.

Atheism offers no explanation for the principal characteristics of a human being. There is more to you than flesh and blood, more than the sum of your parts. You are an individual person with coherent traits that transcend your physical anatomy. The Greek philosopher Aristotle said that the essence of a thing is determined not by its matter but by its specified form—what it is, not what it is made of. For example, the cells of a man’s body are changing every day and will be completely different every few years. Yet throughout his life, he is the same person. Therefore, as Aristotle concludes, one cannot argue that the man is merely a material object. The noted British philosopher Bryan Magee concurs: These arguments of Aristotle’s against the kind of crude materialism which asserts that only matter exists are devastating, and have never been properly answered. Yet from his day to ours there have continued to be some people who are crude materialists. However, until they can answer Aristotle’s objections their position would seem to call for little further consideration.¹

As you read this page, you are a real subject, an intelligent entity whose thoughts have actual existence. Indeed, your body, your eyes, and your brain compose a medium through which they are conveyed, but the thoughts are more than the medium. Your field of consciousness comprises a wealth of perceptions that cannot be explained solely in terms of physics or chemistry or biology. They are essentially conceptual, not material.

Where do your ideas and beliefs reside? We cannot find them by dissecting your brain. Though your brain and nervous system facilitate your mental processes, they have no awareness of what you contemplate. They do not in themselves compose a single idea. What does? It is your conscious self, which only God can give.

Do you know what stirs your will and emotions? It cannot be reduced to cerebral neurons and synapses. That which moves you to feel and to act arises mysteriously from a place much deeper and freer than the gray matter of your cranial cavity. The profuse variety of intentions and sentiments that you engender are not just cognitive recall. They each represent a new and different expression of you. All these things are profoundly spiritual, and they constitute the vital elements of your unique human identity.

Contingent and Necessary Existence

Philosophers distinguish between things that are contingent (which may or may not exist) and that which is necessary (which must exist if anything is to exist). You and I do not exist necessarily. We are dependent upon the prior existence of someone else. We had a beginning. As articulated in the musings of theologian Robert Barron, we are realized possibilities, not a necessity:

Consider a majestic summer cloud that billows up and then fades away in the course of a lazy August afternoon, coming into existence and then evanescing. Now think of all the plants and flowers that have grown up and then subsequently withered away, and then of all the animals that have come into being, roamed the face of the earth, and then faded into dust. And ponder the numberless human beings who have come and gone, confirming the psalmist’s intuition that our years end like a sigh (Ps 90:9). Even those things that seem most permanent—mountain ranges, the continents themselves, the oceans—have in fact emerged and will fade away.²

Barron concludes that none of these things—the summer cloud, the plants and animals, human beings, and even the stars and galaxies—serve as the basis or reason for their own existence. In our attempt to explain a contingent reality—that evanescent summer cloud—we have appealed to a whole series of similarly contingent realities, each of which requires a further explanation.³ To avoid an infinite regress, an endless series of dependencies, we must come finally to a necessary reality, to something that is the immediate source of its own being.

You and I are contingent. Indeed, the entire universe is contingent. So how did we get here? How did the universe come to be? There must be something more, something that has always been. Whatever it is, however else we might conceive it, we know this much: it must be uncaused. That is, it must exist necessarily, having the power of existence in itself. It must be God.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

(Ps 90:1–2)

A Necessary Being

There is a being who is impossible to conceive as not existing, above whom there is none other. By logical necessity, this being must always be. He is eternal; his existence does not depend upon any prevenient cause. Yet he is the first and primary cause of everything else.

Anything that has a beginning needs an explanation (or cause) for its being. But something that has always existed, since it has no beginning, needs no cause. We know there is something that has always been, because if there was ever a time when there was nothing, there would be nothing now. From nothing, nothing comes (ex nihilo nihil fit). Otherwise intelligent people may deny this proposition, but the denial is a fool’s errand. Something does exist; therefore, something has always existed, of a nature vastly superior to what we can see and touch and hear.

The Big Bang theory asserts that our universe began as a primal singularity, a point of zero volume and infinite density. According to this cosmological model, all matter, energy, space, and time were once infinitesimal, without measurable properties. We cannot say that this singularity was nothing, but what it was is contrary to all that we know from natural science. It could only have proceeded from a source that is independent of the material world and unimpeded by the laws of physics.

Both mathematical and empirical evidence reveal a universe that has not always existed. At virtually every point of observation, it shows itself to be contingent. As indicated by the second law of thermodynamics, which describes the loss of usable energy, our universe is winding down from a state at which it must have initially been wound up. It had a beginning, one that defies scientific description. It is ultimately a temporal physical effect of an eternal metaphysical cause, a cause eclipsing the natural, something supernatural.

As a general rule, atheists once believed that since there must be something that has always existed, it may as well be the universe. But with the mounting evidence for a cosmological beginning, it is difficult to eschew the idea of an antecedent Power. Some have proposed a creation without a Creator, the emergence of everything from nothing. But the universe could not have caused itself. Equally unthinkable is the suggestion that it began without any cause whatsoever. Those who toy with these ideas are not privy to some esoteric insight. It does not matter how many degrees they have or how many papers they have written on the subject. Talking in riddles, appealing to magic, demonstrates the lengths to which some will go to rid themselves of the Almighty.

Metaphysical inquiry has not been rendered obsolete by the natural sciences, because above space and time there is God, pure Mind. It is he who ordains and creates and sustains all that we observe. Unlike the universe, he must always exist. If anything is to exist, there must be this Necessary Being.

Innate Knowledge of God

Why is there something rather than nothing? Yet, how could there ever be absolutely nothing? We can think of matter, of stars and galaxies, as not existing. What we cannot imagine is pure nothingness. We can mentally eliminate everything in the universe, but even a void is something. The eighteenth-century philosopher Jonathan Edwards put it this way: That there should be absolutely nothing at all is utterly impossible. The mind, let it stretch its conceptions ever so far, can never so much as bring itself to conceive of a state of perfect nothing.

We can never travel to the edge of reality. Existence, pure Being, is the inextinguishable fact. When there is nothing else, there is God, the Most High (Gen 14:18). He is the very act of being. Our being reflects his being, our thoughts his supreme and all-encompassing thought. To think is to acknowledge him. To deny him, one must affirm him. The sixteenth-century theologian John Calvin said,

That there exists in the human minds and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute, since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead. . . . Since, then, there never has been, from the very first, any quarter of the globe . . . without religion, this amounts to a tacit confession, that a sense of