Journeeman.

It seems strange to me that humans believe that they can reason the existence of God.

I have heard a lot of arguments that endeavour to do this, but to me they end up being rhetorical arguments waiting for a more sophisticated argument to be created to counterpoint the original conclusion. I guess they are an eternal cyclic argument.

Don’t get me wrong, when I was a young man I thought any reasonable human being hearing the gospel and a good reason why they should believe would just, well, get it. This was a young man’s foolishness.

I used to watch apologetics argue with some of the great debaters opposed to theistic arguments, but over time I started to see a pattern that suggested a kind of futility in the whole thing. Since then I do not have too much time for debates and evidence either for or against theism.

Then there were those who wanted to argue their position on very complex issues such as abortion, death penalties and now gender. To my surprise I have found the same issue of cyclic arguments, and one-upmanship. It seemed to me that I was experiencing who had the biggest appendage in the game.

Many years ago when I worked on a farm I had a dog given to me to train and use called ‘Boy’. I know it wasn’t original, but I inherited him with the name established. Boy’s dad was a big old head dog, and Boy knew his place in the pack. I remember that when Boy and Sam worked together Boy would ‘pee’ against a wall or fence line, and old Sam would follow behind him and ‘pee’ a little higher. Boy knew he was being dominated in his ‘manhood’ by Sam and this set a war for dominance.

What I am noticing in these debates is not just intellectual disagreement, but a deeper human tendency to turn truth into competition. Such competition resembles tribalism and instinct over thought and genuine investigation (even pure curiosity and creativity.)

Another reason why theistic debates do not inspire me is much more philosophical and theological in nature.

God is not knowable by people’s intellectual curiosity. Nor is God deducible by observing nature and its complex and wonderful laws. We can deduce from nature what nature is, and something of its reality, but the Creator remains completely “other”.

As Karl Barth puts it, “God is first and foremost objective to Himself” (The Essential Karl Barth, Baker House, 2019, p.158). In other words, God is not first an object of human reasoning, but is fully known within His own self-knowledge, and only known by us insofar as He makes Himself known.

As such, all knowledge we deduce or claim from reason is merely an attempt either to pull God down into our categories, or ascend to His throne as an equal. Such an attempt is beyond our scope. Just as knowledge comes to the wall of “not knowing” due to the hiddenness of the natural world in its fullness, so too God is not accessible by human construction.

One person could not retain the full knowledge of even a small part of any given scientific understanding, so why do we extrapolate this expectation onto the absolute reality that stands beyond our limited knowing?

What we do know of God is not primary sourcing, but secondary. As Barth once stated, “Our knowledge of God is derived and secondary.”

Let me put it to you this way: without God self-revealing, God remains a projection of human ideas, not the self-disclosure required for us to say, “Ahh, so that is something of who He is.”

Without God giving Himself in revelation—supremely in the incarnation—there remains an infinite gap between the rational creature and the superlative self-complete being of God. Divinity is complete in and of divine selfhood, and all knowledge of God is initiated by God’s own self-giving.

“O Lord (YHWH), our Lord (YHWH)
How majestic is your name in all the earth!”
(Psalms 8:1)

YHWH is the revealed name of God meaning “the One who is,” emphasizing God’s living, self-existent, and faithful presence. So, the clue to the otherness of God is that He is simply (and yet behind the wall of otherness) the self-existing one. Divinity is complete in and of divine selfhood.

Ok, let’s not go deeper in this direction, I just wanted to point out how ‘mysterious’ God is.

A simpler scripture is this one:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
(Isaiah 55:8-9)

Simply put, you and I cannot lift our hands high enough to claim exhaustive knowledge of the full essence and substance of God unless He reveals it to us. That is simply the reality of our human limitation. But we are not good at being told we cannot do something we think we can.

God is otherness.

His thinking is otherness.
His nature is otherness.
His existence is otherness.

And all we are left with is the humble reality that all scratching at the door of heaven is like a mouse trying to burrow through a door of iron—full of self-confidence, but lacking capacity.

Why am I focusing on this?

God, as God, must be self-revealing to be known. Without Him opening the way, we remain locked out of all real knowledge of God.

When we reduce faith to mere rules and rituals, we do so to compensate for our lack. The fixing of this lack requires a key given to access the door. That key is faith, and the door is the incarnation (Jesus as the Christ).

We do not force entry; we approach with humility, acknowledging our human lack. When the door is opened, so too is all that God has given to be known of Him. In that humility and openness, our reason then corresponds as a secondary but real engagement of our agency.

This is not static but relational: God gives Himself in grace, and we respond in faith.

As you can see from this thinking, why would I bother arguing about the existence of God? Such a venture is exhausting and ultimately futile. Better to grow in faith, mature as a person, cultivate a life consistent with what we claim to believe, and show by a life well lived what it means to know God.

Read what challenges you.
Grow your own faith and understanding.
Live out what is consistent with your belief.
Be humble and loving.

You do not need to prove one way or the other, but if life is lived well before God and others, perhaps we might win the right to speak as co-journeymen in this complicated and messy reality we share.

I am happy with what I know about God, and it matters and has real life implications. There is enough required to live a genuine and authentic existence without going to war with everyone who disagrees with us. Be at peace because knowledge is given, not won, and the way we choose to embody this is the real location for setting our witness and example to others.