WHY GOD NECESSARILY EXISTS

JOHN 1:1–14

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God

(John 1:1).

We are living in an age of unparalleled skepticism about the essential content of the Christian faith. There is a tremendous doubt concerning the origin of human life and of the universe. It is held that we are cosmic accidents, grown-up germs that have emerged from the slime, having no significance and no dignity.

An important question

The secular skeptic understands that if he can demonstrate that God as Creator is unknowable or unprovable, that is as far as he needs to go to destroy all the truth claims of Christianity. This is because if there is no creation, then the whole idea of redemption is just an illusion.

Thus, the technical, abstract question of whether or not we can demonstrate that there is some eternal, transcendent, self-existent Being from whom all other life and reality derives is a critical issue. In fact, what we decide about this issue touches heavily upon everything else the Church proclaims about Christ and God.

The answer in brief

The philosophical argument for God’s existence is this: If something exists now, then Something exists necessarily. What I mean by “necessary existence” is that there is Something that has the power of existence within Itself eternally. That Being cannot not exist. It exists by the sheer power of what It is.

To come at it another way, let’s assume that there was a time when there was absolutely nothing. You don’t have to be a philosopher to answer the following question: If there were a time when there was absolutely nothing, then what would there be now? Absolutely nothing. You cannot get something from nothing. So, since the world presently does exist, there has to be something that has always existed. And, that Something must have sheer existence within Itself.

CORAM DEO

The god of the philosophers is not the God of the Bible. We worship and serve no abstract first cause but a loving Father. Yet, we also know that our loving God is the Self-sufficient Origin of all things. Praise God for His power that allows Him to create the complex beauty of the universe out of nothing.

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