John Calvin: Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Self

John Calvin begins the Institutes of the Christian Religion, his 1500 page magnum opus, with the topic of knowledge of God and knowledge of self. The very fact Calvin would begin his entire work this way signifies its importance. As you read the Institutes it is easy to see the magnitude of this topic as it is constantly referenced throughout the rest of the book.

Why is this topic important? Because without a proper knowledge of self there can be no knowledge of God. In short, without a correct understanding of our own depravity and corruption we cannot aspire, nor would we ever be aroused, to seek God.

Likewise, without a proper knowledge of God there can be no knowledge of self. As long as we fail to see God for who He truly is, in all His majesty, we will never recognize or scrutinize our own lowly state but rather will continue to view ourselves in our natural fallen condition as "basically good."

All quotes are from the Battles translation, edited by John T. McNeill. Enjoy!

John Calvin on Spiritual Warfare
John Calvin on Total Depravity

JOHN CALVIN: KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, KNOWLEDGE OF SELF

1.1.1 Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God

Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.

Thus, from the feeling of our own ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, and - what is more - depravity and corruption, we recognize that the true light of wisdom, sound virtue, full abundance of every good, and purity of righteousness rest in the Lord alone... we cannot seriously aspire to him before we begin to become displeased with ourselves.

Accordingly, the knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were, leads us by the hand to find him.

1.1.2 Without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self

Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself. For we always seem to ourselves righteous and upright and wise and holy-this pride is innate in all of us-unless by clear proofs we stand convinced of our own unrighteousness, foulness, folly, and impurity. Moreover, we are not thus convinced if we look merely to ourselves and not also to the Lord, who is the sole standard by which this judgment must be measured. For, because all of us are inclined by nature to hypocrisy, a kind of empty image of righteousness in place of righteousness itself abundantly satisfies us. And because nothing appears within or around us that has not been contaminated by great immorality, what is a little less vile pleases us as a thing most pure-so long as we confine our minds within the limits of human corruption.

As long as we do not look beyond the earth, being quite content with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue, we flatter ourselves most sweetly, and fancy ourselves all but demigods. Suppose we but once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and to ponder his nature, and how completely perfect are his righteousness, wisdom, and power-the straightedge to which we must be shaped. Then, what masquerading earlier as righteousness was pleasing in us will soon grow filthy in its consummate wickedness.

That is, what in us seems perfection itself corresponds ill to the purity of God.

1.1.3 Man before God's majesty

As a consequence, we must infer that man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty.

Yet, however the knowledge of God and of ourselves may be mutually connected, the order of right teaching requires that we discuss the former first, then proceed afterward to treat the latter.

Why Atheists Need God

A précis based on the book Persuasions by Douglas Wilson

What this Book is About:

Persuasions – A Dream of Reason Meeting Unbelief, by Douglas Wilson, is a story of a man named Evangelist who is journeying on a road towards the City. In his travels Evangelist encounters various people who are walking in the opposite direction towards the Abyss. Conversations ensue and Evangelist attempts to persuade these individuals to change their direction of travel. He uses reason and a Socratic style of questioning to expose the inconsistencies in their false thinking and answer common objections. In the end this story is a picture of our journey through life and our call to be thoroughly equipped ambassadors for Jesus Christ. Like Evangelist we have a responsibility to warn those who are heading away from the City of God and we must always be ready to give an answer for the hope that is within us.


Chapter 6: Mark - Atheism:

In chapter six of Persuasions, Evangelist meets a man named Mark who identifies himself as both a scientist and an atheist. A conversation follows in which Evangelist argues that the existence of reason only makes sense within a theistic worldview.

As Mark walks down the road toward the Abyss, he is approached by Evangelist who gives him a piece of paper which speaks about God. Mark brushes aside the tract and disregards any talk of God because he says he does not believe in fairy tales. Evangelist responds "If you object to 'fairy tales,' then why do you borrow from them?" (Wilson, 43). Mark explains that as a scientist he believes in the theory of evolution and that everything we see is the result of time, chance, and matter. He is a materialist who believes nothing exists apart from this process. Evangelist then asks "Why do you believe in the validity of reason? How can time and chance, acting on matter, produce reason?" (Wilson, 44).

Evangelist continues and explains that a chemical reaction observed in a laboratory is neither true nor false. It just is. And if our beliefs are also simply a product of time, chance, and matter, then neither can they be characterized as true or false. They just are. On Mark's view, our beliefs are nothing more than chemical reactions within our head. But if this is true then it makes no sense to characterize some beliefs as true and some as false. Evangelist has exposed the inconsistency in Mark's worldview. He wishes to object to belief in the existence of God because he thinks it to be false and yet his worldview does not permit the existence of true and false beliefs.

The point Evangelist is making is that the existence of reason only makes sense within a theistic worldview. In order for atheists to argue their case that evolution is true and that God does not exist they have to believe that there are actually good reasons for believing these things. But appealing to reason implies that something exists apart from the material universe and assumes that we can get beyond our pre-determined beliefs to establish what is true, that is, what corresponds to reality. The existence of reason and the ability to discover true beliefs only makes sense if God exists. Hence, Evangelist states, "My question is why the proponents of evolution borrow reason from theism to argue their case" (Wilson, 44).

So it is not the case that the existence of God depends on reason but rather the existence of reason depends on God. Evangelist states, "Reason flows out of His nature" (Wilson, 45). Mark now finds himself in a dilemma. He used to reject the existence of God because he thought he had good reason. Now he realizes that the existence of reason actually presupposes that which he is trying to argue against. Mark can no longer give reasons for his atheism because in order to do so he must borrow from theism. His worldview prevents him from using rationale so that his "atheism must rest on an unsupported presupposition, not on any claim to reason" (Wilson, 45). Evangelist concludes that "The only thing standing between you and God is your unwillingness to have anything to do with Him" (Wilson, 45).

Before the conversation ends, Evangelist encourages Mark to ponder one last thing. If Mark cannot give any reasons for his decision to rebel against God then the source of rebellion must come from somewhere else. Evangelist encourages Mark to investigate the area of morality. Perhaps the reason Mark rejects God is because Mark does not want to live the way God has instructed him to. If this is true then it is not the case that Mark has intellectual problems with the existence of God but rather a problem of volition. Ignoring this observation, Mark continues down the road toward the Abyss despite his not having any reason to do so.

Moral Grounding

(Stand to Reason) Greg Koukl

A common objection to God’s existence is the existence of evil. How could there be a God if there is so much evil in the world? My observation is that in order for that objection to gain any traction, there has got to be real evil or a violation of a real good. You can’t be a relativist and ask this question without being disingenuous. It’s intellectually dishonest if you don’t believe in objective morality to ask about the objective evil in the world. So if there’s a real problem of evil, there has to be real evil. In order for evil to be real, there’s got to be real good. That is foundational.

The objection makes use of a moral standard. If evil is real, then there’s a standard that allows us to identify what is good and what is evil. I think we have the standard built into us and that is why we can look at acts of injustice and immediately know that they are wrong. Our conscience has this ability. I refer to it in the Relativism book as “moral intuitions.” Moral intuition is a way of knowing that’s built into us that we can grasp something that’s true. The thing we grasp is not physical. We’re not looking at it with our eyes. We’re looking at it with a different faculty, but it’s still just as real. This is why people spontaneously react when they see examples of injustice and react, “That’s wrong.”

What makes it so? How is it that things like injustice or cruelty to people or animals are wrong?

We see an act of goodness and it moves us deeply. I think goodness is one of the things that touches us deeply when we watch films that are effective. There is something deep and morally good about an event, a look on the face, a gesture, something noble that happens and it moves us. Consequently, we are deeply touched and maybe even tempted to weep at that moment in the film because something real and truthful that is morally good has been awakened in our heart. So our awareness of objective morality expresses itself both in our awareness of evil and of good.

The grounding question is: Given that there is real evil and good, as well, why is the world the way it is? What properly accounts for this moral feature of the world?

If you are a materialist you cannot answer that question, you cannot explain how morality emerges from material things. There’s no adequate explanation for morality in a purely physical world.

When you reflect on the nature of morality, it has a certain incumbency to it, an oughtness to it. There is an obligation. It isn’t just descriptive, what people did do. It’s what we ought to do. So what best explains this? And obligations seem to be the kinds of things that are held between persons. Therefore, if we have moral laws it seems to suggest there must be a moral law maker, who is the adequate sovereign to make that kind of law obligatory on us.

The existence of objective morality that entails obligation on human beings seems to be best grounded, or accounted for, by the existence of another personal being who himself is the moral law maker and the appropriate sovereign to make such laws that make such demands upon us. That sounds to me a lot like what Christians mean when they say God.

I got some push-back on this particular point from a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy from Purdue when I spoke there recently. He said that just because you have standards it doesn’t mean you have a standard-maker. I said that that wasn’t my argument, that all standards require standard-makers. My argument is more precise than that. My argument is that moral standards, which are a peculiar kind of standard, require a moral maker or one that stands behind it and grounds it in some sense.

Let me give you an illustration that I think makes sense of how this grounding problem works. You can read a newspaper because the skills needed to read newspapers are things that we are capable of developing. So we have the ability to read the information. But what if you said that there are no authors to newspaper articles; there are no delivery boys; there are no editors; there are no headline writers. Those don’t exist. You acknowledge there are newspaper articles, but you deny that there needs to be an explanation for them.

Now that sounds very odd because when you consider the kinds of things that newspaper articles are. They seem to be the kinds of things that require authors. There are thoughts communicated, there are propositional statements that are functions of minds, not matter. No propositions are made of matter. They can be tokened with matter, like ink on a page, but the propositions themselves are not material. Newspaper articles represent the information and propositions, but you say that there is no mind needed for this. That strikes me as really odd.

Newspaper articles, if there are such things, require an explanation. They need grounding, a source. They suggest the existence of authors because that is an adequate explanation for newspapers. I think it’s a perfect parallel with morality. Morality is the kind of thing we also have discovered exists, and it seems to be the kind of thing that requires an author adequate to explain its existence.

So I’m within my epistemic rights to say someone like God is the grounding for morality.

By the way, a common response from atheists to the grounding question is to object that he could be just as moral without God as the theist. Atheists say this all the time. That’s like saying there doesn’t need to be any authors. How do you know? Because I can read really well. Well, the ability to read really well doesn’t have anything to do with the question of whether what you’re reading needs an author. And the ability to behave really well, be moral, and be aware of what moral guidelines doesn’t obviate the need for a moral lawmaker. Those are two separate issues.

Did God Condone Slavery?

(Stand to Reason) Amy Hall

Since God regulated slavery in the Old Testament, does this automatically mean that He approves of slavery? Just as some answer "yes" today, the Pharisees also jumped to a similarly wrong conclusion in Matthew 19 when they asked Jesus a question:

"Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?" And [Jesus] answered and said, "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?...What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."

They said to Him, "Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?" He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way."

Notice what happens here. The Pharisees come with a legal question about which regulations ought to govern divorce, and Jesus responds in a very unexpected way, saying there shouldn't be any divorce. The Pharisees are immediately confused. "But how could it be that there shouldn't be any divorce if God regulated it? Doesn't that mean He thinks it's hunky-dory as long as it's done right?"

Jesus makes it clear that this is not the case.

The Pharisees had missed something very important about law: there's a difference between what's legal and what's moral--between the practical need to deal with reality and the existence of an ideal. The Law was not meant to be an exhaustive list of everything moral and immoral. It functioned as every national set of laws functions--as reasonably enforceable rules to govern their society. And the Pharisees had made the mistake of focusing on merely staying within the regulations instead of going beyond them to seek the goodness of God's ideal.

As with divorce, the same was true for slavery. The rules regulating slavery were added "because the hardness of the hearts" of humanity had created a situation where slavery existed and served certain functions in their societies, "but it was not that way from the beginning." In the beginning, there was human dignity and equal value resulting from the fact that every single individual--young or old, rich or poor, royal or commoner--was made in the image of God. But after the Fall, the ideal society was out the window, and God had to deal with what was actually there.

Deeply ingrained cultural patterns don't change overnight, but must be redeemed over time. Slavery was intricately woven into the cultures of the day, so, as with divorce (neither being the situation God desired), God made rules to keep the evil of the practice to a minimum. For example, if you kidnapped someone and made him a slave, you were put to death. If a slave escaped from his master for whatever reason, you were not allowed to return him. If you harmed so much as a tooth of your slave, you had to let him go free--in other words, no person was allowed to keep a slave if he mistreated him or her. Slavery in Western countries would never even have gotten off the ground had these rules been followed; the first rule alone would have prevented it.

Regulating a bad situation is not a foreign concept to us. We see some people using this same principle today regarding abortion. They say it's too much a part of our society at the moment to enforce a complete ban, though abortion is immoral, so they support regulating certain things about it for now in order to reduce the evil of it (banning only partial-birth abortions, or third trimester abortions, or regulating the issues surrounding abortion, for example). That doesn't mean either that they think abortion is fine or that they intend for the situation to remain in that same state forever.

God regulated divorce, and yet He explicitly said He hates it, so the regulation of the practice did not mean He condoned it. Therefore, one cannot assume that God's regulation of slavery meant God condoned slavery.

All that said (and much more could be said), the question remains: If God opposed slavery and would need to redeem the culture from it slowly over a long period of time, why not just prevent it from ever existing in the first place? The same question could be asked of all suffering that results from human sin--why does God allow it? Since the Fall, suffering has served an important purpose in this world. God's highest goal for us is not our comfort, but our more intimate knowledge of, appreciation of, and love for Him. The existence of suffering around us has long been used by God to remind us of the ugliness of sin--a physical illustration of the fact that our hearts are far from God's perfection, and a reminder of our desperate need for Him and His mercy.

Slavery has served this same purpose. Freedom is God's ideal --the kind of freedom found in the Garden at the beginning before the Fall (that is, the freedom to follow God openly and completely, without hindrance). And God's rescuing the Israelites from slavery served for them (and for all generations) as a physical illustration of a spiritual truth. Because they understood the meaning of physical slavery, the invisible truth of their spiritual slavery to sin and their need for redemption could be made visible for all to see and understand. And because they knew God orchestrated their release from slavery, they knew not only that slavery--physical or spiritual--was not the ideal, but that He cared about their condition and desired to release them from it.

The existence of slavery in the world taught God's people both the condition of their own hearts and a crucial truth about their great, good God. This is why it was Christians in the 18th and 19th century who not only worked to see that others were freed from their spiritual slavery, but who also led the way in following God's desire to free others from physical slavery.

As with the other suffering of history, God did not prevent slavery from ever existing, though He could have. But this was neither random, senseless, nor in vain. Just as Joseph said of his own suffering as a slave that "[they] meant it for evil, but God meant it for good," slavery did not pass through this world without accomplishing a purpose even greater than the suffering.

How Can a Loving God allow Evil?

(Awakengenereation.com) Sean McDowell

The Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, will never forget the tragedy of October 2nd, 2006. Charles Roberts, a non-Amish local father of three, entered the single-room Amish schoolhouse, ordered the boys to leave, and opened fire on the girls. He shot ten girls and killed five before taking his own life. The question lingering on many people’s minds was, “Why did something like this have to happen?” What does it say about God that such evil acts occur in His world? If God could prevent such a tragedy, why didn’t He? This same question lingered after 9/11 and the massacre at Virginia Tech.

In the aftermath of the Katrina floods, Dr. Billy Graham was interviewed by Newsweek. He was asked how a loving God could allow such suffering and evil. Dr. Graham’s response was simple, “I don’t know. But God has allowed it, and there is a purpose that we won’t know maybe for years to come.”¹

He’s right, of course. None of us can completely know why God allows tragedies. God does not answer the “why” question in the Bible. This side of Heaven we cannot fully understand the origin of evil and the reasons God has for allowing it to continue in the present. But this does not mean, as some have surmised, that evil counts against God’s existence or that God does not have a sufficient reason for allowing it. In fact, the reality of evil may be one of the best reasons to believe that God exists.

What Is Evil?

Before attempting a Christian defense for the existence of evil, it is first important to understand the nature of evil. Evil is not something that has an independent existence of its own. Rather, evil is a perversion of good—a corruption of something that already exists. Tooth decay, for example, can only exist if the tooth first exists. Rot can exist only if the tree first exists. Simply put, evil is when things are not the way they are supposed to be.

Ironically, then, to complain about the problem of evil is to argue that there is a way the world is supposed to be (which only makes sense if God exists). You see, if evolution is true, then the world as we know it is the result of the blind forces of chance, random mutation, and time. The world just happens to be the way it is, but it was not designed to be this way. Therefore, if the world just happens to be this way, then how can someone complain that it should be another way?

Moral judgments (such as claiming that a particular act is evil) can only be made if there is an independent reference standard of good. Otherwise one is like a hiker stranded in a cloudy forest at night without a compass. There would be no way to distinguish north from south without the reference point of the compass. Similarly, there must be an independent reference point distinguishing between good and evil. If God does not exist, then there is no ultimate basis to make moral judgments. Seen in this light, the reality of evil actually requires the existence of God rather than disproves it.

Where Did Evil Come From?

The Bible makes it clear that God’s original creation “was very good” (Genesis 1:31). There was no evil, sin, death, or pain. Yet the reality of evil today is unmistakable. So, where did it come from? Scripture teaches that evil began with the God-given free choice to disobey (Genesis 3). God gave people free will and they abused it. God is not the cause evil, but He does allow it.

Some people wonder why God couldn’t create the world in such a way that we would never sin, thus avoiding evil altogether. If God is all-powerful, couldn’t he create such a world? If God is all-good, wouldn’t he want to create such a world? Thus, the problem of evil is often stated this way:

1. If God is all-good, he would want to defeat evil.
2. If God is all-powerful, he could create a world without evil.
3. Evil is not yet defeated.
4. Therefore, an all-good and all-powerful God must not exist.

Let’s consider each of these points in turn and see if this argument is valid, or if there are in fact reasons why God might allow evil in this world.

STATEMENT 1 says that God would want to defeat the present evil and suffering. Since God is good, must He eliminate all present pain? As a parent, I realize the value in allowing some suffering. I don’t put a bubble around my son protecting him from all harm. Sometimes pain can be a means of personal growth and ultimate good. James recognized that suffering produces perseverance (James 1:2-4). Dentists, coaches, and teachers all know that sometimes being good is not to be kind.

Sometimes suffering is a means through which God draws people to Himself. C.S. Lewis said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”²

Dr. Francis Collins is one of the leading geneticists in the world. As a non-believer, he was intrigued by the peace and faith of Christians who went through seemingly unbearable suffering. With his interest peaked in spiritual things, Dr. Collins decided to investigate the evidence for the existence of God. After a thorough consideration of the evidence, he became a believer. While the evidence convinced his mind, the hope of the suffering believers attracted his heart. God used the suffering of Christians to draw this brilliant scientist to Himself.³ A good person can be good and still allow evil if he has good reason to do so.

STATEMENT 2 says that God could create a world without evil, but since evil exists God must not be all-powerful. The answer to this criticism lies in properly understanding what it means that God is all-powerful. Can God do anything imaginable?

One student asked me, “Can God make a rock so big he can’t move it?” (Bart Simpson would say, “Can God make a burrito so big he can’t eat it?) Although this seems like a tricky argument, the answer is very simple. No, he cannot! You might be thinking that this is a limitation of God, but it is not. A physical object that is so big that an all-powerful God cannot move it is a contradiction—a meaningless idea. There simply cannot be such a thing. It is like a square-circle. Philosopher Gregory Ganssle explains, “To say that God is all-powerful does not mean that God can do any task I can name in words. It means that he can do anything that is not a logical contradiction.”⁴ The Bible also makes it clear that God, because he is perfectly good in His character, cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18; Titus 1:2).

Just because God is all-powerful does not mean he can do impossibilities. Even God cannot make truly free beings and ensure that they always do right (if he wants them to remain free). All God can do is create the circumstances in which a person is able to make free choices and then, so to speak, stand back and let the person choose. Although we may not completely understand why, God has determined that free will is worth it. One reason often cited is the possibility of love, which cannot be programmed; it must be freely chosen. Yet in giving us the freedom to love, God also gave us the freedom not to love.

What Is God Doing About Evil?

Ultimately, the Bible records the story of God’s personal plan for the world. On one hand, God is confronting, judging, and restraining evil. And for the evil that is unaccounted for in this lifetime, God will bring final justice to the wicked and vindicate the righteous in the life to come. What promise do we have that God is working to bring justice to the world? The answer is the death and resurrection of Jesus. God inaugurated a process in the resurrection of Jesus that will one day be brought to fruition for the entire creation. God will do for the entire creation what he first did for His Son, Jesus. N.T. Wright explains:

According to early Christians, what was accomplished in Jesus’ death and resurrection is the foundation, the model and guarantee for God’s ultimate purpose, which is to rid the world of evil altogether and to establish his new creation of justice, beauty, and peace…God’s future had already broken into the present in Jesus.⁵

We are not called merely to understand what God is doing about evil and then to continue our lives as normal. Rather, we have been called by God to be a part of the solution. God calls us to be His agents of healing and transformation in anticipation of the final resurrection.

¹ Jon Meacham, “God, Satan, and Katrina” Newsweek (March 20, 2006), p. 53.
² C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 93.
³ Francis S. Collins, The Language of God (New York: Free Press, 2006).
⁴ Gregory Ganssle, Thinking about God (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 117.
⁵ N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove, Ill.: 2006), 102.

Can God Make a Rock So Big He Cannot Lift It?

This is one of my favorite questions that comes up from time to time. Indeed, many atheists and skeptics have posed this question in an attempt to stump Christians and somehow disprove the omnipotence (and existence) of God. Maybe you've been there. What is so ironic about a question of this type is that rather than prove any sort of deficiency in the character or nature of God, this question actually shows a lack of clear thinking and logic on the part of the skeptic! In other words, the question itself is flawed and fallacious in several ways and, unfortunately, the person raising the question has not taken the time to truly think this problem through.

Problem #1: this question commits the fallacy known as a loaded question. Imagine if I were to ask you, "Have you stopped beating your spouse yet?" If you answer yes, that means you were beating your spouse but you have since stopped. And if you answer no, that means you're still beating them! Either way you answer the question, you automatically concede that you beat your spouse! This is a no win situation because the question itself starts with a false assumption and is therefore a "loaded" question. Likewise, the question "Can God make a rock so big He cannot lift it?" also starts with a false assumption, i.e., that God is not omnipotent. If you answer "Yes" to the question, that means that God is not omnipotent since He can make the rock but isn't powerful enough to lift it. But if you answer "No," that also means that God is not omnipotent since He couldn't make a rock so big He cannot lift it! In other words, the question itself is dishonest, a pseudo-question, since it begs the question by assuming God is not omnipotent.

Problem #2: this question commits a categorical fallacy. The question itself is incoherent and meaningless. Suppose I were to ask you, "What does the color blue smell like?" or "How much does the number seven weigh?" These are category mistakes because colors don't smell and numbers don't weigh anything. They are logical impossibilities. In the same manner, asking the question "Can God make a rock so big He cannot lift it?" is essentially to ask "Can God's power defeat His own power?" This is nonsensical and a category error since the question is being incorrectly applied. Greg Koukl has stated, "The question is nonsense because it treats God as if He were two instead of one. The phrase 'stronger than' can only be used when two subjects are in view...Since God is only one...it makes no sense to ask if He is stronger than Himself."

Problem #3: this question commits a straw man fallacy. The goal of the skeptic who asks this question is to somehow undermine the Christian concept of an omnipotent God. It is thought that if it can be shown there are some things God cannot do, this would prove that God could not be omnipotent and thus could not exist as Christians have traditionally portrayed Him. However, this line of reasoning is attacking a distorted concept of Biblical omnipotence and is therefore guilty of the straw man fallacy.

So what does it mean then that God is omnipotent? Omnipotence doesn't mean that God can do anything. There are actually quite a few things that God cannot do. He cannot make squared circles. He cannot make a one-ended stick. He cannot sin. He cannot improve His morality. So God is "limited" in a sense. But not one of these "limitations" has to do with power, rather, they are logical contradictions. Also, notice that His "limitations" are not due to any defects in His character or power but rather they are the result of His perfection and rational nature! As Norman Geisler has stated, "He is only 'limited' by His unlimited perfection." To say that God is omnipotent then is to say that God can do anything so long as it is logically possible and consistent with His nature. God's omnipotence does not mean that He can do what is impossible but only that He can do whatever is actually possible.

C.S. Lewis stated:

I know very well that if it is self-contradictory it is absolutely impossible...His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense...It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities...nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God (Problem of Pain, 18).

Life Is Like Monopoly

The following illustration was taken from J.P. Moreland.

Imagine I invite you over to my house one night to play a game of monopoly. On this particular night however, I explain to you that the rules are going to be a little bit different. The monopoly board is in front of us, there is a refrigerator in the kitchen, a television in the living room, some coins in front of us, and a handful of jacks. Now when it's your turn, you can do anything you want, just let me know when you are finished.

On your first turn, you line the monopoly board with hotels and think this spells the beginning of my demise. You say to me, "Okay, your turn." I take my arm and swipe it across the board, knocking all of your hotels off. I then go to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, make myself a sandwich, and say, "Okay, your turn." You say to yourself, "I'm going to try this one more time." So you take all the hotels once again and line the monopoly board and say, "Your turn." This time I turn the monopoly board upside down, flip a couple coins, watch some television, and say, "Your turn." Now if you were faced with this type of situation, it wouldn't take you long to realize that if the game as a whole has no purpose, the individual moves within the game have no value or meaning. The only way your moves within the game of monopoly have meaning is if you discover the purpose of the game and you align yourself with that purpose.

And so it is with life.

Like the game of monopoly, the only way our lives have any ultimate value or meaning is if life has purpose behind it. And the only way life can have purpose behind it is if God exists and there is life after death. Think about it. Let us suppose that there is no God and that atheism is true. What does this mean? It means that we as human beings are simply Johnny-come-lately biological accidents on an insignificant speck of dust we call earth which is hurtling through empty space in a meaningless and random universe that will eventually die a cold heat death. In reality, we are really no more significant then a swarm of mosquitoes. In a universe where there is no God and no afterlife, our actions are meaningless and serve no final end because ultimately each one of us, along with everyone we influence, will die and enter oblivion. In this kind of universe, the mention of morality is an incoherent babbling and hence there is no difference between living the life of a saint or a sociopath, no difference between a Mother Theresa and a Hitler.

IF there is no God.

But, if God does exist, and there is life after death, then suddenly the universe and our individual actions take on meaning because there is ultimate purpose to life. Our actions not only make a difference in this life but also in the life to come. Meaning, value, purpose, and reason, can only exist within a theistic worldview. The absence of these in an atheistic worldview is what philosopher William Lane Craig frequently refers to as "The absurdity of life without God."

What is the purpose of life? It is not happiness, nor pleasure, nor power, nor fame. The purpose of life is to know God and make God known. But ultimate value and meaning does not simply come from knowing the purpose, but in aligning oneself with that purpose. And this means aligning ourselves with Jesus Christ, the author and perfector of our faith. "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent…and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice" (John 17:3, 18:37).