What is the difference between reading the tea leaves in a cup for a message from the divine and drinking the tea with a sense of awe at the beauty of creation, as if the experience of the tea itself is a message from the divine? Because our culture (and therefore our minds) are polluted by post-modern principles (that there are many equally true competing truth claims based on the subjective experience of the individual), we might think both experiences are valid or possible, and both have hints of the truth in them, though not the whole truth.
The mistake and temptation would be contentment with the pursuit of partial truths, as if partial truth is enough or the most you can get. That is the best that post-modern thinking can allow. I do not think this kind of framework truly allows one to be convinced of even one’s own subjective truth. Probably, the most you could hope for is to have a strong hunch that the tea leaves are telling you to marry the waiter serving you.
The reason these two scenarios are posed, rather than a scenario where the tea leaves are simply molecules interacting with other molecules based on the universal laws of molecular economy, is because there is an innate story-telling, meaning-making, and meaning-searching instinct in humanity (of which even the molecule ‘theory’ is a kind of ‘story,’ just a really boring one for boring people).
Instead, when we are faced with the world, we commonly have thoughts of its overwhelming greatness. Even the greatest fantasy novels are inspired by the world we live in and the elements that make it up because the nature of reality is truly ‘fantastic’—almost unbelievably so.
One fantastic narrative explanation is that nature is finite, but its greatness is explained by God, the creator who is infinite. These marks of infinite greatness and power are signatures in the corners of the art. The reason it ought to seem too fantastic is because the two—finite nature and an infinite creator—seem like milk and orange juice. No sane person would mix the two and say it’s a fine cocktail.[1]
And yet, the finite meaningfully knowing the infinite God is exactly what we are striving for. Not only is it natural, but it is always worth spending time appreciating the nature of God—who He is and why we know who He is (not just having a hunch about it). This happens in two ways. If we run with the language of God not only being the creator but the ruler of creation, then we learn about the King through His specific revelation (as He invites us into His throne room to meet and talk) and also through His display of His general nature to all people (natural theology—as people walk through His kingdom and see the banners of His glory and might displayed). For now, we will focus on the latter—the banners of His glory strewn through His natural kingdom.
Certainly, His nature is communicated partially through His creation, but its limitations are obvious, given the prevalence of paganism through the ages and idolatry in every age—like insurrectionists within the city walls. God’s revelations of His power and glory are beneficial in general to people (Psalm 19, Romans 1:19ff); however, this is only true insofar as they enable us to bolster and supplement the gospel proclamation of God to people and bridge the general to the special. We know this because the same general revelation will be used as evidence against those who do not acknowledge His rule. Without turning to God, people invariably trade the glory of God for idolatry.
Not so when God is at work, gracefully and specifically giving sight to blind eyes and life to stone hearts, enabling them to begin to comprehend the power of God rightly. He is, after all, the Creator, and acknowledging Him as such must be one of the first steps in understanding the gospel story (shout out to Two Ways to Live).
To spell out the ideas that are hidden in the short words of Ps. 19 and Rom. 1—that the heavens declare God’s glory and that God’s divine nature and power are known by all—could be summarized as follows:
- We can say that in the world there are different kinds of beings and some of them are greater than others (unless you subscribe to PETA’s values). Therefore, in the hierarchy of beings, the greatest must be God by definition.
- Everything in the world has a cause. Tracing causes back far enough, we arrive in principle at the first cause. That must, therefore, be God.
- The observable world is seemingly infinitely complex (who would honestly argue otherwise?). The possibility of it being accidental is therefore seemingly infinitely improbable. This leads us to presume that the being known as God is at work in creating and sustaining it all (only He is able to orchestrate and manage the infinitely complex by definition).
- Humanity has a sense of good and evil. So there must be one who is good—the standard by which all else is recognized and measured, namely, God.
- We also have a sense of beauty and proportion. Where does this come from? (Beauty doesn’t square with arguments of naturalism governed by the principle of mere survival.) Arguably, the presence of beauty is accounted for by the notion that the appreciation of glory is inherent in the creation by the Creator who is most glorious and has given us the faculty to appreciate glory.
- And finally (for our purposes), thankfulness.
Thankfulness and gratitude are perhaps among the most compelling experiences that ought to direct us toward the King of creation.
Acknowledged by the Christian, God is the creator of all. He is also the provider of all good things, both needful and needlessly abundant. The Christian has no problem directing thanks and praise toward God. God is personal and personally relates, not only within Himself but also toward His creation. But the issue of thankfulness is problematic for a naturalist. You cannot be thankful in the abstract. Thankfulness is not a mere feeling or some sort of intellectual concept. What is obvious (when you think about it) and yet overlooked is that thankfulness must always be, and essentially is, a personal matter. When we are provided for, we are appropriately thankful for those blessings, but our thanks are given to someone. Ultimately, this is God. So if you are giving thanks to something, that is idolatry—which ought to make sense of all literal idols and the current practice of thankfulness to the universe, etc. To whom and how can someone who does not acknowledge God ultimately be thankful? Of course, they truly feel thankful, but in their own hearts and minds, it is an enigma as to whom they are thankful. Who provided? (Again, idolatry answers that question with many ‘gods’ or things, or even the self).
Interestingly, at the moment, there is a craze about gratitude and gratitude journals or diaries. People in the productivity and self-help worlds talk about this as a means to manage stress and feel good. It is assumed in these writings that thankfulness can simply be expressed with no object, expressed to nobody and nothing, simply and merely expressed as a standalone action or feeling. The operating principle is that expressing thanks (by writing about it or otherwise) will lead to feelings of thankfulness (read: dopamine and other pop-science words), which contributes to productivity and all that good worker-ant stuff. The irony is that these hacks are basically the pleas of people calling out to an unknown god to have said god rain showers of productive blessing on them in the forms of feel-goods and managers-made-happy. All well and good if that’s what reality at its core is like. But it isn’t, and the mere presence of the human inclination to thankfulness points this out.
Rather, the human experience of thankfulness touches on the personal reality of God and, therefore, the personal reality behind all reality, all creation, and all experience. Is that overplaying it? Not at all!
And yet, even ‘thankfulness’ only points towards the probability of God. It will take the special revelation of God to understand who it is from whom all blessings flow. Just as we cannot know someone aside from their revealing themselves to us, so it is the case with God.
The arguments above are six perfectly fine and compelling arguments. They are the products of natural theology and demonstrate its usefulness. However, the compelling case they make and their usefulness lie not so much in proving God’s existence but in demonstrating philosophically the probability of God. They are helpful intellectually, especially in the field of philosophy.
But theology is concerned with more than the intellectual. Theology is concerned with the personal relation of God to His creation. That is why thankfulness is getting closer to the mark when it comes to the usefulness of natural theology. It starts to join the individual’s experience with the person of God, not just the ‘idea’ of God. It is also why the first five arguments, though intellectually stimulating, are not as helpful. If anything, these all point us to the need to move beyond the merely general nature of their claims and press into the specific nature behind them. This is what God the King does. He invites His subjects into His throne room to hear from Him and meet Him themselves—not to be caught up on the wrong side of a civil war in the kingdom by rejecting their King.
[1] which is a reason why I think the Abrahamic faiths are unlike any other, and why Islam is not necessarily a new religion, but a splinter sect of Christianity – because they hold to a finite creation made by an infinite God.
Bigvai and Shiphrah 