The Rival Conceptions of God

Today's Scripture

The Bible's very first sentence already answers the biggest question in religion.

Genesis 1:1 — "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

Isaiah 45:5-6 — "I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God... that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me."

Psalm 5:4 — "For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you."

The Big Idea

Book II begins with sorting. If there is Something behind the universe, what is it like? The deepest divide, Lewis says, is between pantheism — the belief that God is the universe, so everything, even cancer and cruelty, is part of God — and the Bible's claim that God made the universe, is distinct from it, is good, and stands against the evil that has invaded it. Only the second view lets you call evil what it is. And only the second view explains where you got a standard to judge it by.

Reflection

Two big options

Lewis the former atheist begins, surprisingly, with generosity:

"If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Christians can happily admit that other faiths contain real glimpses of truth — yesterday we saw that God wrote his law on every heart. But glimpses still need sorting. The great divide among those who believe in God, Lewis says, runs here: is God beyond the world or identical with it?

Pantheism (from two Greek words: pan, "everything," and theos, "god") says the universe is God — every tree, every star, every event, all of it divine. It sounds exotic, but you have heard it at funerals and in song lyrics: "she's part of the universe now," "the divine is in everything," "trust the energy." The Bible says something sharply different — what philosophers call theism, the belief in a personal Creator distinct from his creation. Genesis 1:1 — "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Creator and creation are not the same thing, any more than a carpenter is a table. Psalm 90:2 — "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God." He was God before there was an "everything" to be part of. Isaiah 45:5-6 — "I am the LORD, and there is no other."

The practical difference shows up the moment you try to pray. An "everything-god" is like the ocean: vast, impressive, and incapable of hearing you. It has no ears, no opinions, no love. A Creator, on the other hand, is a Someone. He can be spoken to, listened for, trusted, and — this is the uncomfortable part — disobeyed.

Why does this matter outside a philosophy classroom? Lewis puts his finger on it:

"If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But, of course, if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Cancer, slums, and straight talk

Stand in a hospital hallway at 2 a.m. while someone you love is in surgery. Now test the two views. Pantheism must finally say that the tumor, too, is divine — part of God, seen from the wrong angle. Lewis refuses politely, then not so politely:

"Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, 'If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realise that this also is God.' The Christian replies, 'Don't talk damned nonsense.'" — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Strong language — and Lewis added a footnote insisting he meant the word literally: nonsense of the kind that is damned, under God's curse, headed for destruction. He was not being edgy. He was refusing to let a tidy theory talk him out of what every honest heart knows in that hallway: this should not be. The Bible talks this way about evil without embarrassment. Psalm 5:4 — "For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you." Habakkuk 1:13 — "You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong." When the Christian God made the world, his verdict was Genesis 1:31 — "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." Good — and now invaded by something that does not belong. Your fury at the tumor is not a failure to see the divine point of view. It is agreement with the divine point of view.

Charles Spurgeon, who suffered terribly from depression and illness, found his comfort exactly here — not in a god who is everything, but in a God who rules everything:

"There is no attribute of God more comforting to his children than the doctrine of Divine Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe troubles, they believe that Sovereignty hath ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all." — Charles Spurgeon, 'Divine Sovereignty'

Sovereignty is an old word for God's complete rule. A god identical with the storm cannot steer the storm. The God above it can — and promises to steer even affliction toward good. Notice that Spurgeon calls this the most comforting doctrine, not the most convenient. Pantheism asks you to stop grieving by pretending the wound is holy. The gospel lets you grieve at full strength, because the One who rules the storm also hates what it broke.

The atheist's borrowed ruler

But what about the third option — no God at all? Here Lewis tells his own story, and it is one of the most famous passages in the book:

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?" — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

This is autobiography, not theory. Lewis had lost his mother to cancer as a boy, prayed desperately for her healing, and watched her die anyway. He went on to survive the trenches of World War I. His atheism was not a pose; it was a wound. Which makes his discovery the more striking: to accuse the universe of injustice, you need a standard of justice the universe did not give you. The atheist's strongest argument secretly borrows God's ruler to measure God with. Lewis concluded that his case against God proved too much:

"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

A fish does not feel wet; a creature born for meaninglessness would never notice the meaninglessness. Our protest is the evidence. Tim Keller pressed the same logic from the other side:

"If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue." — Tim Keller, The Reason for God

Transcendent means "above and beyond everything." You cannot summon a huge God for your accusation and a tiny one for his defense. If he is big enough to blame, he is big enough to have purposes we cannot see from the hallway at 2 a.m.

The God with a face

So the moral clues of Book I have led here: not to a divine fog spread evenly through everything, but to a Creator — distinct from the world, good without shadow, and opposed to the evil that has broken into his work. The New Testament adds the detail that ought to take our breath away. The agent of all that creating was a Person we have met. Colossians 1:16-17 — "For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible... And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

Hold those two phrases together: before all things and holds together. The Christian God is not partly distinct and partly the world, like a fog that thickens in places. He is wholly other — and at the same time closer to every atom than the atom is to itself, sustaining it moment by moment. Pantheism offered nearness without a face. Deism — the watchmaker god who winds the world up and walks away — offered a face without nearness. The Bible refuses the trade-off and gives both.

And that Person did not stay at a sovereign distance. When his disciple Philip asked to see God, Jesus answered, John 14:9 — "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." Every rival conception of God is finally tested here. Is God a faceless everything? Look at the face of Jesus. Is God a distant watchmaker? Watch Jesus touch lepers and weep at funerals. Is God indifferent to evil? Follow Jesus to the cross, where the good Creator did not explain suffering from a safe height — he came down into it, took the worst of it onto himself, and broke its power on the third day. The God who is not everything became one of us, so that everything wrong could one day be made right. Tomorrow Lewis will give this rescue mission its unforgettable name: the invasion.

Going Deeper

Today, let yourself feel one true grief — a news story, a diagnosis, an injustice near you — without spiritualizing it away and without despairing over it. Say two sentences to God about it: "This is evil, and you hate it more than I do. You are above it, and you have promised to overrule it." That little prayer is the whole difference between pantheism and the gospel: a God distinct enough to blame turned out to be loving enough to bleed.