Tag: existentialism

The paradox of science

People expect that somehow science can provide the answers to those perplexing questions we all ask about our identity, our value, our meaning, and purpose. Don’t believe it for a minute! Science is hopeless in the area of our existential questions.

Here’s what a bright French philosopher, Rémi Brague, explains: “Simplified literature does its best to make us believe that chemistry, computer science, or any other kind of science can ‘explain’ why we act as we do. However, science has never claimed to ‘explain’ anything at all, if by that we mean ‘to render something comprehensible’”.  Another French philosopher, André Comte-Sponville, concurs: “The sciences do not answer any of the most important questions that we ask ourselves”.

“The dominant view of neuroscience,” Professor John Wyatt tells us, “regards the self as an illusion created by the brain”. That’s a pretty bleak way of understanding yourself!

Yuval Noah Harari has written two books that have been widely diffused, but in them he recounts the same hopelessness: “Life has no script, no playwright, no director, no producer – and no meaning. To the best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and purposeless process, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing”.  That, he avers, is the “scientific understanding”; again, science brings no encouraging hopeful answers to our existential angst. Indeed, it adds to it!

Harari continues: “The scientific formula of knowledge led to astounding breakthroughs in astronomy, physics, medicine, and multiple other disciplines. But it has had one huge drawback: it could not deal with questions of value and meaning”. Well-known scientific writer Paul Davies agrees: “I don’t believe that physics can tackle questions about, for example, purpose or morality”.

Since science deals essentially with matter, energy, motion and the chemical elements and their compounds, the tendency is to see human beings only as complicated (and somehow animated) matter. This not only leaves out the very essence of our humanity, it actually destroys our humanity.

This is why Rémi Brague writes:  “We end up with this paradox: modern science is at the same time the highest realisation of man, the glory of the human spirit, and yet also the most radical factor that contributes to his dehumanisation”.

Obviously, somewhere science has got it wrong. Where? In supposing it can answer all our questions and really tell us who we are. 

Compare that frustrating confusion with the appeasing and ennobling clarity of the Bible’s first page, where we are told who and what we really are: valuable personal creatures made by a wise and loving, infinite and personal Creator God – “in his likeness”.

This profound and realistic starting point is unique to the Judeo-Christian worldview, and it is accompanied by the necessary corollary that our original holiness as God’s image-bearers has been corrupted, though we still share likeness to God in our personal reality.

C.S. Lewis wrote: “It is quite astonishing how rarely outside of Christianity we find – I am not sure that we ever find – a real doctrine of creation. In polytheism the gods are usually the product of a universe already in existence… In pantheism the universe is never something that God made. It is an emanation, something that oozes out from him”.

This is why I persist in affirming first, that man’s research, science, and philosophy can never give us the answers we crave to our existential questions, and second, that the key to the answers is a return to the God of the Bible, the Creator who has revealed himself and tells us the essential truth we need to know.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Religion, God, Bible, Church

Wise thinking requires correct assessment of the proper place and varying importance of Religions, God, Bible, Church.

Let’s begin with religions, which are man seeking after and trying to elucidate the Transcendent, the divine, the Absolute. This is expressed in a variety of particular doctrines, traditions, and practices proposed or imposed on believers. All religions except Christianity issue from the spiritual creativity of pious minds; but sadly, piety does not guarantee the truth of a religious philosophy. In the Bible God relativises the various religions and their gods: “They are all a delusion” (Isaiah 41.29 ESV) but “I made the earth” said the Lord, “and created man on it” (Isaiah 45.12).

God himself, therefore, is infinitely more important than human beings and their religions. It is vital to discover that he is there, and to know what he is like in his infinite Being, his majestic holiness, his divine wisdom, his immense power as Creator… As we hear from God himself, we have access to his revealed truth; that will enable us to discern what is true or false in all human thinking about him. He is well capable of making himself known. It is enlightening to read chapters 40 to 46 of the book of the prophet Isaiah, where the Lord himself speaks a lot about himself.

God makes himself known through the Bible. It is a book totally unique in the world, written over more than a millennium by about forty different writers – yet all inspired by the same Spirit of God and therefore able to convey a harmonious understanding of God. Much of the Bible expresses the very words of God himself, as in Job chapter 38, of which Rudolph Otto said, it “may well rank among the most remarkable in the history of religion”. In the Bible God gives his commandments, teaches his wisdom, reveals his love, and calls us to know him. All the Bible is centred on Jesus, the incarnate Lord and teacher, the Saviour of mankind, the Son of God sent by the Father to attest to God’s truth. The Bible itself claims to be God’s Word, inspired by God’s Spirit. By the holiness of its commandments, the profundity of its concepts, and the realism of its treatment of human nature, it certainly appears to be God’s Word. And it proves to be God’s Word when one puts it to the test of personal experience, committing oneself to the living Saviour who calls us through its pages. We find that God does in us what he promises in his Word; so we know it’s true.

The church is the worldwide family of believers, a vast brotherhood of men and women who, having heard or read of God’s self-revelation in Christ and realising he offers fullness of life to all who believe, have been led to agree that he is trustworthy. They do not, for that, make themselves the guarantor of religious truth; rather they merely testify that having received it, they have been intelligently persuaded of its Truth. Hence they do not set themselves up as authorities on religious issues; rather they bear witness to what they see as truth in the Bible. No Christian is infallible; we are all mere disciples, learners in Jesus’ school, followers of our Lord and Saviour. We simply want to know God better through studying Scripture, to please him by the way we live, and serve him by loving our neighbours and by sharing with them the wondrous offer of eternal life and fullness that God in his goodness offers to all.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Yes Christianity is the answer!

Justin Brierley has very judiciously recorded a fascinating swing of opinion among leading intellectuals like Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland. These thinkers and many others have recognised the radical necessity of a key statement in Genesis chapter 1:27 for the understanding of human nature today. This verse affirms “God created man in his own image”, and this and this alone, they realise, can properly undergird our necessary conviction that our human life has any value, significance, and purpose.

Without that basis, considering humans from a purely scientific perspective, we are nothing of importance at all. Juval Noah Harari has shown this: he is strong on analysis, but oh, so weak on hope – when he writes, for example, “to the best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and purposeless process”; and “in a universe devoid of meaning, modern culture… is plagued by more existential angst than any previous culture”. “Scientists have reached the conclusion that there are no free individuals”. “Scientists cannot deliver ethical judgments”. He sums up, “as far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning”.

Wiser thinkers turn away from such purely “scientific” assessment, realising that our human reality cannot be reduced by such unliveable theories, to the level of animals or machines. So these new bright thinkers render a great service to us. Conscious of the inability of science and atheism to find any serious grounds for human value and meaning, these intellectuals are leading the way “back to the Bible”, returning to the marvellous concept of humans made in the image of God.

They are also confronted with a delicate problem, however: how can they benefit from this essential foundation of man’s true value without having honestly to admit the whole context of creation. If God created us, the necessary implication is that we are answerable to him. (That’s why many dislike the principle!)

This stresses out people like Jordan Peterson: he clearly sees this logical consequence and has oriented his life to live as if there is a God. This is honest, and he is a conscientious man. Others may still try to escape the inevitable logic, but if man is made in the image of God, God is our Maker. And we easily discern that the God who gave us a conscience will hold us responsible for our conduct. The same God of Genesis 1 is the God of Exodus 20 where he gives to humankind the Ten Commandments. The God who made us personal, with capacity for speech, is able to speak to us, and his Word is Truth, said Jesus. So here we have at last the key source of truth to understand our human value and to answer all our existential questions! To reject the rest of the Bible’s wisdom while holding to the foundation is illogical. You cannot agree to Genesis 1.27 and stay on the side-lines. Logical consistency demands that we give God his due place and listen to the whole biblical revelation. 

As leaders do that, they will see that many thinkers have got things wrong. If we are made in the image of God, our essential orientation must be towards God, receiving his love, learning his wisdom, obeying his will, and living in a right relationship with him. We came from the creative hand of God, and can only find our place when we put our hand in his.

Living consistently with the foundation of Genesis 1.27 is the only logical and hopeful course of action open to us. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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The west is changing

Human beings will never adapt to “post-truth”. Our inbred discernment recognises that Truth must exist. Truth is indispensable in human relationships as well as any serious reflection. No-one can live without the concept and the reality of Truth.

So now the West, at one time so insistent on the search for Truth, is at a crossroads. Having sought by human reason alone to find Truth and build a wise world-view, it has had to admit its failure. It has descended into post-modern hopelessness, unable to find meaning, value, or any balanced wisdom about human identity.

The West is confronted with increasing desperation because of this terrible inability of godless Reason to find valid and authentic answers to our fundamental questions about life and everything. But change is in the air: finally, public intellectuals in the West are coming to a surprising conclusion. They are looking again at Christianity and coming to realise that it alone lays the proper basis for any understanding of our human reality, dignity, and value. Only Christianity with its revealed Truth can meet both our intellectual and our heart needs for real meaning. If one leaves God’s revealed wisdom aside, the result can only ultimately be confusion.  Only the Maker’s revelation has the total wisdom to guide our paths into the way of real human fulfilment. Thinkers are now coming to envisage this source of Truth with positive hope.

This renewal in biblical truth is documented by Justin Brierley in his informative book, “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God”. He says that “the stories we have been telling ourselves in the last several decades have been growing increasingly thin and superficial.” But turning to Christianity, some “have found themselves drawn to a story that made sense of their deepest longings and desires”. This is the “better story” that the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, led by Jordan Peterson, is opening up to.

One who has discovered that story is Charlotte Gauthier. On reading some theological books from a previous era, she testified, “I found an intellectual Christianity that I could respect. In my arrogant atheist days, I assumed I’d come up with questions that had never satisfactorily been answered before. I was wrong”.

While the West is beginning to reawaken to Christianity’s Truth, the Majority world has been very wise in resisting the sea-change in lax morality that, having invaded the West, would overflow to pervert the rest of the world with its godless permissiveness. The Majority world should continue to reject the bankrupt influence that has only bred hopelessness in the West.

It is not perhaps surprising that missionaries now come from the vibrant communities in the Majority world to bring renewal to the West. They are welcome, for they can contribute to the revival of western church life. Their biblical faithfulness, their passion and enthusiasm, will help overcome the decadent influence that has been infiltrating some churches in recent years. They will help our western churches to return, humbled and contrite, to the former paths of righteousness, once well-trod by those gone before us. They can bring us back to the Biblical faith – which, ironically was brought to them by missionaries from the West when the church was vibrant in its vision for taking the Gospel to the whole world. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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The west is not the best

We live in a global village: news is broadcast to our phones as it occurs, wherever in the world it may be happening. The influence of Western thinking still touches the corners of the globe. But people in the majority world need to be informed by those of us in the West who see the bankruptcy of Western scientific philosophy, that the West, dominated by secularistic thinking that ignores the God of creation, is not the best. 

There is hope of an upturn in Western thinking, however, as the hopelessness of atheistic philosophy becomes more and more apparent, bringing in its train all kinds of moral, social, and mental ills. A better story is being sought, though the passing falsehoods of relativistic atheism still hang in the air we breathe and sadly infect lands further away. People in those lands should realise: the West is not the best. To those who look from afar thinking that the West is Christian, I would say that the general life-style of the masses in the west is godless, not Christian. True, there are many Christians in the West, and in past ages they have gone throughout the world proclaiming the Gospel; but as their influence in society waned in the West, vain and futile godless philosophies have risen to supplant the Christian consensus. 

This state of affairs is due to change, however; the West needs a revival of Christianity, and believers need to regain the confidence to proclaim afresh the life-enhancing truth of the Gospel. This Gospel message speaks of world history in four stages:

First, Creation. God made all that is, and he declared his creation “good”. There was no fault in his working: he made man and woman to reflect his own nature as they were made in his likeness. He made them in relationship with himself where they found deep joy and fulfilment.

Second, the first couple turned away from God’s will, expressed in his commandment. Thinking (as many still do today) that they knew better than God what was right and wrong, they chose to disobey, and in doing so their nature – human nature – became twisted, corrupted, sinful. Banished from enjoying close and friendly relationship with their Creator, they founded their social order independently of God, even antagonistic to his will. All the people of the world suffered from that original perversion; all are born sinners, out of fellowship with God – indeed, under his holy displeasure.

Third, God set in motion his major opus – the salvation of lost men and women. Beginning with revealing to Abraham promises that through his posterity all the world would one day be blessed, God spoke to men of old through the prophets until finally his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, was born, an incarnate human revelation of God. Jesus grew up to teach God’s truth and ultimately to give his life for the redemption of humankind. Thanks to his atoning sacrifice, as the Gospel is proclaimed throughout the world, millions find, through faith in him, the forgiveness he promised and new life, eternal life, in renewed friendship with God.

The fourth stage is still to come, foretold by the prophets whose predictions of the first coming of Christ proved true. Jesus himself revealed that at the end of the age he would come in glory to judge the world in righteousness, ushering his believing flock into eternal life, and punishing the unrighteous with the just penalty that is their due.
Throughout the world, this Gospel message gains believers who escape that ultimate judgment. Will you be among them?

Clive Every-Clayton

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Reason and revelation

In the search for authentic answers to our existential questions, we can obtain understanding from two sources. The first – that we use every day – is the human faculty of reason. In his book “Miracles”, Oxford don C.S. Lewis wrote: “All knowledge depends on the validity of reasoning… Unless human reasoning is valid, no science can be true”. This seems obvious, when you think about it. You cannot argue against the value of reason; that would be using reason to deny reason. 

So we use our reasoning powers to try to understand what our life is all about. But then C.S. Lewis raises the question of where our human reason came from, and he asserts that the presence of human rationality in the world is a miracle. He was inspired by Professor Haldane who wrote, “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of the atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true… and hence I have no reason for supposing that my brain be composed of atoms”.

Atheism crashes profoundly against this rational argument, for C.S. Lewis concludes, “we must believe that the consciousness of man is not a product of Nature” – not the result of a long chain of chance, aimless, material processes since the dawn of time. “Nature”, he repeats, “is quite powerless to produce rational thought”.

Yet we are rational beings. Andrew Marr ended his TV programme on evolution by saying, “Man is the truth-seeking primate”. We use our reason every day to test what we think is true. That is the way we are. And the only logical source of those reasoning powers is not impersonal matter, but the Supreme Intelligence of the personal and infinite Creator who made us “in his image”.

So our reasoning faculty itself points us to a reasonable, wise Creator. And God has come to our rescue as we vainly search for something solid on which to ground our search for true answers. He has revealed truth that we need to know. Truth about ourselves, and truth about God.

So as we seek answers to the big questions of life, our reasoning is valid, since it is given to us by our Creator and reflects the supreme Reason with which he acts. Yet our reason has its limits; it needs the enlightenment that can only come from God’s revelation. God’s truth has been revealed in the Bible. “The whole Christian theistic position,” wrote Cornelius van Til, is “the only system of thought that does not destroy human experience to something meaningless”. Atheistic philosophy leads to that meaninglessness; this is the woe of our supposedly post-Christian generation. 

It is reassuring to note, in our supposedly post-truth age, that thinkers are now returning to realise that God alone can furnish the basis for true understanding. Atheism is on the way out; a return to the God of revelation is on the up. And the key truth now more and more put in evidence as the only basis for a hope-filled vision of our human reality, is there on page 1 of the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth… God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1.1, 27). 

As God made us and gifted us with reason and speech, so he is ultimate Reason, and he reveals his truth though speech: “In the beginning was the Word (the logos, Reason)”… The Word was God… The Word became flesh” in Jesus (John 1.1-14).

Clive Every-Clayton

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Ultimate human fulfilment

The fullness of human happiness – or blessedness, which means the same – is to be found only in a harmonious relationship with the Creator God and Saviour, who loves us with infinite tenderness, warmth, compassion, and wisdom. If you’re looking for an authentic answer to our human predicament – be forgiven and get into that relationship. That is to “know God”, which is how Jesus defines “eternal life” (John 17.3). It means hearing Jesus’ call to repent, deny our selfishness, and commit to following him. Having taught his disciples for three years, Jesus said to them, “If you know these things, happy/blessed are you if you do them” (John 13.17). The obedient disciple is the fulfilled human being; the holier you are, the happier you are.

As Jesus began to delight his hearers with his passionate proclamations, from the very start in his famous Sermon on the Mount (found in Matthew’s Gospel chapters 5 to 7), he cried out, “Blessed are those who…” followed by virtues to acquire. By these beatitudes which include being “pure in heart”, and “hungering and thirsting after righteousness”, he was indicating the way to true happiness. The word Jesus used in the Greek original for “blessed” means “most fortunate” – but not just because of good fortune or luck. Rather, this is the greatest human fulfilment that God himself grants to those who come into that intimate personal relationship with him, where we receive and follow his wisdom, spurn the sins that he hates, entrust our whole lives into his loving hands, share our joys, our sorrows and our worries with him, and seek to please him in all that we do. 

I can say that this is no mere theory; I have lived this way as best I could from my youth, and can testify that in the good days as in the bad days (like when I had cancer, when my daughter was long in hospital, and when my wife died) God’s goodness and love upheld me.

True, at the beginning I struggled to yield all of my life without reserve to do the will of God, because I thought my way was best; but the day I did surrender was one of the happiest days of my life. If you’re afraid of totally submitting your will to the will of God, so was I. What helped me was to realise just how much God’s love, shown in the total self-dedication of Christ on the cross, dying to save me from hell, was the same attitude of love God has to me all the time. And it is from that kind and loving heart that my Lord and Saviour in his wisdom would choose what he considered would be the very best path for me. So I trusted him, and gave him my all, without reserve, and have kept that attitude all my life.

My recent blog posts have spoken about heaven. Why is heaven a place of supreme happiness and blessedness? Because the will of God is done perfectly there! Jesus indicated this when he taught us to pray, “Father… your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. On earth, we see a lot of terrible things that sin and wickedness do, and that God allows, as he respects our freedom. The prayer asks God to prevent the worst and instead see his holy will accomplished, “as it is done in heaven”. In heaven there will be no sin or evil, that’s why it is a place of supreme happiness.  

Will you be there? 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Hope of heaven

The deep reason why we all apprehend death is that we fear some kind of judgment in the next life. People of various religious or philosophical persuasions do all sorts of difficult things to try and free themselves from that fear. Both the anxiety and the religious or mental effort we expend on this issue testify to two essential truths.

First, we understand in our conscience that evil ought to be punished. This intuition comes – whether we realise it or not – from the fact that we humans were originally made in the likeness of a good and holy God. He endowed us with an understanding of good and its opposite, making us conscious that we are responsible to him for our behaviour.

The second essential fact that this fear communicates is the realisation that we have done reprehensible things. Our conscience is not clean; this should instruct us that we need forgiveness, and only God can forgive.

God did not create us with the total freedom to potentially commit all kinds of misdeeds without ever facing any kind of divine assessment with some corresponding sanction. This is built in to who we are: we are God’s creation, answerable to him for our lives. We are not chance by-products of a haphazard impersonal explosion of material substances; that kind of philosophy leads logically to moral chaos and is unliveable. Fortunately, God himself has told us, by sending his Son, Jesus, that “the Creator, at the beginning, made man and woman” (Matthew 19.4). The same Jesus informed us also that there would be a day of reckoning.

Now it is of the utmost importance to be ready for that Day of Judgment, because it determines our destiny for ever and ever. It will either be bliss or horror. There is no half-way house. The invention of “purgatory” was an erroneous idea of some early Christian thinkers, but it has no basis in the sacred Scriptures. On the contrary, Jesus taught that at the last Day, when all will be gathered for the final judgment, there will be only two camps – the saved who are “blessed” to enter into God’s glorious kingdom, and the lost who Jesus said “go away into eternal punishment”, describing it as “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25.46, 41). 

Those who receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour, in a decision of repentance and faith-commitment to follow him, may legitimately nourish the hope of “eternal life” because Jesus made that formal promise in the Gospels. Listen to his words and pause to take them in: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5.24). Did you get that? No judgment – that is, no punishment, no hell. Passed from death to eternal life. Wow! That’s worth having! How? By faith in Jesus and in the Father who sent him to be our Saviour.

Jesus says again, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3.16). That’s how to be sure of not perishing in eternal punishment – by entrusting yourself to Christ as Lord and Saviour, to believe in him, to follow him, and obey his teaching. Jesus added, that “whoever believes in him is not condemned” – there is that assurance again – no hell. Instead, “the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6.23).

Clive Every-Clayton

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A relationship with God?

There is, within the mystery of God’s divine nature, a relationship between the Father and the Son whom he sent into the world. This is a relationship of love: “the Father loves the Son” said Jesus (John 5.20). He also tells his disciples that “the world must learn that I love the Father” (John 14.31). There is therefore a deep love relationship existing in God, and this was so in eternity before the world began: Jesus tells his Father, “You loved me before the creation of the world” (John 17.24). 

  All this mind-boggling and totally unique revelation ensures that “God is love” (1 John 4.8), from all eternity. And his love overflows to the personal creatures he brought into being, so that we ourselves may enter into a loving and harmonious relationship with the God of love. Amazing – but true! This is our “raison d’être”; this is what our human existence is really all about. So failing to be in meaningful relationship with God is what it means to be “lost”. And to enter into this relationship with the God whose love is strong, compassionate, faithful, and eternal is to find the most wonderful fulfilment of which human beings are capable.

If this sounds unrealistic, you should realise that millions of believers in Jesus know this in their experience. The key question, then, is how do we enter into this relationship?

In fact, some kind of relationship exists already between you and God; it may be distant, indeed, it may be quite negative if you don’t want God in your life. But God is not far away from you. He calls people throughout the world to come to him, to trust in him, to commit to following him. 

When Jesus was asked what was the first and the most important commandment, his reply was both clear and radical: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12.29-30). God wants you to love him – because he first loves you.

To love God is to be in a harmonious relationship with him. He is not only the divine Lover, he is a heavenly Father – and he is also our Creator, our Lord, and our Master. Loving God involves seeking to please him – as Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14.15). Now pay attention particularly to this that Jesus added: “Whoever has my commandments and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him… My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14.21-23). He is saying that God, Father, and Son, will come to dwell in the hearts of those who respond to his love by loving him in return.

This is how a harmonious relationship with God starts. We have first of all to be persuaded that God loves us very much. “This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him” (1 John 4.9). “God demonstrates his love towards us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8). “The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2.20). Meditate on that until it warms your heart!

Clive Every-Clayton

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Which God?

If, as I have been maintaining, the real purpose of our existence, and the way to true human fulfilment is to be in harmonious relationship with God, some may wonder which God I am referring to. I have emphasised that God is our Creator who designed our human faculties, making our species originally in his likeness. This first principle comes from the first page of the Hebrew Bible, to which Christians refer as the Word of God. 

It follows therefore, as is recorded in the same Bible, that the Creator continued to communicate with mankind, particularly to Abraham to whom the Lord promised offspring through which the whole world would be blessed. Further on in the Scriptures we read of God’s prediction of a coming Messiah, a descendant of King David, and when Jesus began his ministry it was known that he was of the offspring of Abraham and of the tribe of David.

“God so loved the world that he sent his only Son”, said Jesus, referring to himself. He many times referred to God as his Father, specifically as “my Father” and “the Father who sent me” (John 10.29, 5.37). “The Father knows me and I know the Father”, he declared (John 10.15), and he even asserted, “I and the Father are one” (John 10.30).

Jesus’ miraculous life, his unblemished holiness, his profound wisdom, his authoritative declarations about God, his unsurpassed excellence in moral teaching, his love in giving himself as a sacrifice for others, and his powerful resurrection from the dead – all unite to corroborate that here, for one time in history, there appeared on earth a man who had truly come from God.

What are we to make, then, of the gods that religious thinkers have set forth in the innumerable religions of the world? They all testify to the foundational reality about our human species – that we feel deep down that we were made by God and that he must be there. All religions are peoples’ various attempts to get in touch with God, to guess what his nature must be, to propound ways of pleasing him – because it is in our very human nature to discern that there must be a God “behind” this glorious creation.

But how to discover him? God has given signs of his existence in two complementary ways: first in his works of creation, and secondly in his words of revelation. “The heavens declare the glory of God”, wrote the biblical poet (Psalm 19.1). The beauty of nature, the mathematical precision of the universe, and the human conscience disclose something of the greatness, power, and holiness of God. But human minds are darkened in such a way that we cannot correctly perceive – from nature alone – who God is and how we can truly know, love, and worship him.

God therefore revealed himself in clearer ways – by communication in words to those like Abraham and the biblical prophets, notably Moses who received the Ten Commandments from God and saw his glory (Exodus chapters 20, 33 and 34). All this prepared the most astounding and unique revelation of God in world history, when “God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law” (Galatians 4.4-5). Having “spoken” in previous ages “through the prophets, God has ultimately “spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1.1-2). Jesus renders us the ultimate service of being the supreme revealer of his Father, “the one true God” who sent him (John 17.3), and also the unique redeemer of mankind.

Clive Every-Clayton

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