James P. Boyce · 5 of 48

Chapter II: The Being of God · Part 4

3. A further proof from the Bible is suggested by Nitzsch: namely, the revelation which it makes of God in Christ.

He says, "The proof which is peculiar to Christianity, independent and historical, is not indeed, as some designate it, miracle, but the accomplishment of the passage in Isaiah 40:9. 'Behold your God.' It is revelation in an eminent sense, the existence of God in Christ, John 14:9." [Nitzsch: System of Christian Doctrine, p. 140.]

This is not the same argument as the last. That was an argument from a development extending over so many thousand years, and proving the existence of one, who was contemporaneous with all those years, working out the character of Christ as the Saviour of mankind.

This is based upon the evidence of divine perfection seen in Christ while here on earth. "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." John 14:9.

The revelation of the nature of God seen in the universe commends to us the fact that he exists, for the nature indicated is one worthy of such a being. Hence the force of Paul's language in Rom. 1:20. "For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his Everlasting power and Divinity."

So also with equal self-recommendation comes the character of God set forth in the words of the Bible in which he tells us what he is, and commends his spiritual nature with its unspeakable holiness, justice, goodness, and truth, with its infinite power and wisdom, as the character alone worthy of a God, and which makes us say a once: This is the true character of God. If he exists he must be such as is thus described.

But in his incarnate Son we see the embodiment of that which before had appeared as but an ideal. Although appearing here on earth most obviously as a man, yet the divine attributes and character were so exhibited in him that we perceive the truthfulness with which Christ said to Philip: "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." John 14:9.

(6.) The sixth argument a posteriori is the historical, based upon the fact that the records of history cover so brief a period of time. If man has lived forever, where is the record of that life? It is strange that we find no historical monuments which go beyond few thousand years.

(7.) Finally, an argument a posteriori may be drawn from geology. This science teaches:

(a) That there was a time when life, both vegetable and animal began upon this globe.

(b) That the remoteness of the period of that beginning even according to the wildest hypothesis, is capable of calculation.

(c) That, in both the vegetable and animal life, of which we have fossil remains, there have been distinct successive genera which began with small numbers, gradually increased to their culminating points and then as gradually decreased.

History and geology, therefore, furnish us conclusive proof against the eternity of form and life in the universe, and especially oppose the absurd idea of endless succession of finite objects or beings, in the past. Geology, indeed, seems also to give proof of an actual direct creation of the first beginnings of each of these genera.

Thus, through the proofs of the existence of God, derived from many sources, do we arrive at that certainty of the fact which confirms the teaching of tradition. In the a priori arguments we proceed from admitted first principles to the existence of God, through demonstration, and acknowledge that the arguments are inconclusive if they fail to secure such absolute conviction as do the problems of mathematics. But the arguments a posteriori do not belong to this class of proof, but to that which is the only one found in the accepted theories of science. Scientific proof is only inductive proof, and no induction of science is more certainly true than that God exists. No theory of science more fully answers all of the demands for the explanation of facts than does the theory that God exist respond to all the explanations required. None has been so universally, and so variously, and so successfully, tested. The theory of gravitation has been constantly becoming more acceptable until now it is held as scientifically certain, because of its success in accounting for all facts connected with it. In like manner has the theory that God exists been confirmed to almost universal satisfaction, by the fact that without it there is no explanation of the innumerable facts around us, while with it there is nothing lacking to account for the cause and origin of all things.