Last week, Tertius and
I discussed the first chapter of Romans, comparing its language to statements about
faith in Hebrews. Specifically, we were interested in how much about God may be
known from nature, and how that knowledge is different from what may be known
by faith.
Paul says in Romans,
“For
what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to
them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine
nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in
the things that have been made.”
Tertius and I agree that “eternal power and
divine nature” takes in quite a bit.
“I am profoundly concerned that your god exists and wields the power you describe. It is literally my greatest existential fear; a terror that has genuinely kept me up at night, because in the event that it is true I am knowingly signing myself up for an eternity of torment that goes beyond anything I am capable of imagining.
I have no concern whatsoever that his authority is legitimate, however. It is not, at least over what I understand to be me, Philip Sandifer. The self that I am solipsistically invested in has an independent consciousness from your god. I am but a sinner, cast out into a material world and fundamentally separated from your god. But where you view my sin as my imprisonment in a lowly, materialist prison, I view it as my freedom from the tyrant you choose to serve.
To misquote Blake, I am of the devil’s party and know it.”
Apparently it is possible to grasp quite a
bit about both the power and the divine nature of God from an atheistic perspective.
What seems near-impossible for the atheist to do is make the leap to the perspective
of faith described in Hebrews:
“By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”
He created it with his word. He upholds it with his word.
Pray for Phil Sandifer. God has given him
the gift of life and the gift of a keen intelligence, and yet he remains unable
to get his head around the very simple concept that his “independent
consciousness” is only independent because God graciously allows it. It is “upheld”
by the word of God, giving him the capacity to think thoughts opposed to God
and to mouth words of defiance back to his creator. That’s a lot of grace, which
is a good thing, because there are lots of Phil Sandifers out there in need
of it.
Paul adds one more thing in Romans: “So
they are without excuse.”
Quite so.
Quite so.
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