With a Subtitle: Defending Biblical Theism by knowing who God is
A brief Excerpt: Learn how God’s holiness, truth, love, justice, power, and eternal nature reveal the uniqueness of Biblical Theism and expose the contradictions of opposing worldviews.
This blog continues a series that explains HOW to stop the “Slippery Slope” downward from God’s TRUTHS and RULES.
You’ll learn HOW to defend Biblical Theism by explaining the nature and attributes of God (Prime Reality that causes External Reality to exist).
How to Understand Opposing Worldviews
Everyone has a worldview perspective for viewing observable External Reality (everything in the heavens, earth and seas) and for believing an unobservable Prime Reality caused everything to exist (Supernatural God, or naturally-happening processes, or some unknowable causal force).
Each worldview makes exclusive and opposing truth-claims about the connection between Prime-and-External Reality. These truth-claims are so opposite that they are contradictory.
According to the Law of Non-contradiction, opposites (A and Not-A) cannot both be true. For example:
Biblical Theism [A]—the worldview of Christianity—claims Supernatural God created the heavens and the earth, and everything else, out of nothing (ex nihilo), and formed human beings in Our Image or Likeness. (Genesis 1:26)
All other worldviews are Not-A because they all claim a much different and opposing Prime-and-External Reality connection. For example, Naturalism and Humanism claim everything came into existence because of different kinds of random chance, naturally-occurring evolution.
Biblical Theism and Naturalism/Humanism are so opposite (A versus Not-A) that they cannot be synthesized as Theistic Evolution, according to the Law of the Excluded Middle.
Re-read Know Your Worldview in a previous blog [https://bcworldview.org/lest-you-abandon-gods-truths-rules/]. As you read it:
- Identify different truth-claims about Prime Reality and External Reality in each worldview.
- Notice how the concept of Prime Reality influences a perception of External Reality.
- Which worldview do you embrace? Why? How is this leading to a satisfying life?
What is Prime Reality according to Biblical Theism?
[Main truth-claims]
Prime Reality is the Supernatural God revealed throughout the Holy Bible and in the person of Jesus Christ [this is Special Revelation].
“The Son [Jesus] is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:3)
This Prime Reality [Supernatural God ] is revealed as General Revelation everywhere in God’s Creation, so that External Reality reflects the Prime Reality that caused it to exist.
“What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” (Romans 1:19-20 NIV)
[Future posts explain External Reality truth-claims proposed by opposing worldviews.]
This Supernatural Prime Reality of Biblical Theism has a nature and attributes (more than 100) that are different than the Prime Reality of any other worldview. Such as these:
Only Biblical Theism [A] claims Prime Reality is a Three-in-One God who is Holy, Holy, Holy—different from all other gods. Holy is the only attribute of God that occurs in triplicate. Holy means different and separate from everything else.
In contrast, New Agers believe Self-is-god is not separate from External Reality: Self-is-god is the creator AND the creation—the Universe-maker AND the Universe. New Age cannot explain how this occurs.
The Holy Bible is different from all other sacred books in other “religions.” Only The Holy Bible has a meta-narrative of human history (His Story) from the beginning (Genesis) to the end (Revelation), which contains over 300 prophesies that have already been fulfilled and hundreds more to be fulfilled.
God is Supernatural—so He could create naturally-occurring processes (in Nature), which other worldviews cannot explain. Such as:
Photosynthesis: how plants convert light into energy that converts into mass so plants mature/grow.
The oxygen-carbon dioxide cycle: plants exhale oxygen that animals and humans inhale to live; animals and humans exhale carbon dioxide that plans inhale to live.
How male-and-female originated at the same time, with fully functioning reproductive capability, so that their offspring are successfully produced.
The Universal Law of Gravitation, the 23.44 degree tilt of the earth’s axis that enables changing seasons, mass of protons and electrons, and hundreds of other physical laws.
God is the standard of absolute TRUTH and RULES for living: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) and “Do not presume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17).
God’s absolute standard is the opposite of “situation ethics”—doing what feels right—which Humanism advocates.
God’s absolute standard is the opposite of rules that each New Ager (“Self-as-god”) imagines and then decides are acceptable within his/her own privately imagined subjective reality.
God’s TRUTH and RULES are not “uncertain’ and “relative” like those preferred by Post-modernists.
God is Love and Grace—this is why He saved Believers through His Son’s atoning death for our sins, and resurrected Jesus to live again:
“God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9 NIV).
Because God is Love, He must be Just by judging good and evil in accordance with His Goodness (Moral Standards); not judging evil would be unloving and unjust and show tolerance for moral wrong.
God is Good – this provides an absolute standard of Righteousness (right and wrong), which is the opposite of relativistic morality and truths that are man-made.
God is Righteous – because He established Moral Standards of right and wrong: Ten Commandments in the Old Testament [OT] and Two Great Commandments in the New Testament [NT]. Consequently, He must justly judge how righteously everyone complies, and this justice must be seen (Jesus’ public Crucifixion).
God wants Believers to judge themselves and repent: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9 NLT).
The Good News for redeemed Believers is this: “God did not send his Son into the world to be its judge, but to be its savior” (John 3:17 NLT).
God is Self-existent (I AM WHO I AM) – always existing before chronological time began and after it ends. As the Creator of chronological time, chronological history is really His Story, not our history or story.
God is Infinite (forever eternal) – the Alpha and Omega—without beginning or end. Named El Olam in Genesis and other OT books.
God is Transcendent (beyond our world and us), but human beings are not. We have access to the transcendent God (Our Father who art in heaven; Abba) through a personal relationship with Jesus. (John 14:6-7)
Only Biblical Theism and Christianity claim God is both Transcendent and Personal.
Transcendent God said: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV)
New Age claims “Self-is-god” and can attain transcendence over objective reality (inside your mind/imagination) by using mind-altering drugs and magic mushrooms.
Islam claims Allah is so transcendent that he does NOT want a relationship with Muslims, but only obedience to prescribed Islamic rules (codified in Sharia Law, in a 1000+-page book entitled Reliance of the Traveller).
God is Personal – not just an impersonal “Force” or “Energy” or “First Cause” or “Prime Mover” – or an impersonal Clockmaker who created everything and then let everything run on its own like a clock does (this is Deism’s concept of God).
God became a human person (Jesus is God Incarnate), who lived amongst us (as Emmanuel: God with us). We can enjoy a personal relationship with Jesus by following Him, and have access to God the Father and the Holy Spirit to have a personal relationship with them.
Believers can trust and obey Jesus’ commands because of “faith” in Jesus as the living Word of God—the “Messenger”—who spoke with unmatched authority to explain the written Word of God. This is significantly different from an “impersonal religion” based on laws, rules, doctrines, traditions, routines, and liturgy (like Islam’s Sharia Law prescribes).
God is Omniscient (all knowing, all wise) and thus is the Source of all knowledge and wisdom: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).
Deism claims the illimitable freedom of the human mind gives us free-thinking ability to discover all truth. Thomas Jefferson stated: “For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
Humanism says human rationality supports this claim: “man is the measure of all things.”
Because the human mind cannot understand everything, we study specialized disciplines such as physics, psychology, sociology, anatomy, histology, biochemistry, theology, etc.
God is Omnipotent (all powerful) – Elohim spoke into existence out of nothing His Creation (the “heavens and the earth” and all therein).
Naturalism/Humanism cannot explain where all inanimate matter, energy, light and darkness, and all living things originated so that ALL could exist and function properly from the beginning onward.
No theory of Evolution or Big Bang theory adequately explains how everything that “is” came into existence from “nothing” (ex nihilo) and then evolved into everything because of “naturally occurring processes.”
Darwin’s still influential book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, describes the survival of the fittest existing species, not the arrival of new species.
God is Omnipresent (present everywhere in the universe) because God is spirit (John 4:24). Hence, God exists in the past, present, and future. God is, was, and always will be—before, during, and after chronological time.
This does not mean God is in everything as Pantheistic Hinduism and New Age claim. (This is why Hindus do not kill cows, because a cow might be a reincarnated mother or father.)
God is Almighty – as El Shaddai (in Hebrew) –God destroyed godless/evil nations throughout the Biblical period. Daniel (2:29-45) prophesied that God would use nations to bring about successive destruction: Babylon was conquered by Medo-Persia, which was conquered by Greece, which was conquered by Rome, which declined because of internal immorality. Almighty God told Daniel this prophecy 700 years before it began.
God is Sovereign – the Supreme Lord (Adonai in the OT; Kurios in the NT) and King of Heaven and Earth (Jehovah Sabaoth), who sent Jesus to proclaim, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10 KJV).
God is the Sustainer of His Creation and thus intervenes as He purposes to fulfill His Will to redeem fallen, sinful humans who have saving faith in Jesus Christ.
God sustained the little nation of Israel amongst more powerful nations so that the promised Messiah [Jesus, Son of David] could be born in from King David’s lineage. God preserved the Old and New Testament manuscripts [as Special Revelation] over 1,500 years, much better than all other ancient writings.
Deism claims a Sustainer is not needed because everything was created, set into motion, and then left to run on its own, without any further intervention.
God is Light as opposed to darkness, as exemplified by Scriptures such as these: “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But those who live by the truth come into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done [good deeds] has been done in the sight of God” (John 3:19-20 NLT).
Jesus said: “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life” (John 8:12).
God is forever Faithful – faithfully keeping His promises so this honors His Name and reputation: “When God made his promise to Abraham, he made a vow to do what he had promised. Since there was no one greater than himself … He said, ‘I promise you that I will bless you and give you many descendants’” (Hebrews 6:13-18).
God is Unchanging (immutable) – all the unique attributes of the Triune God of the Bible remain the same forever; for example: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
God is the provider of Divine Providence: “We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). [My spiritual memoir is based on this: God Nods on His History About Me.]
God is the Intelligent Designer of different kinds of created animals and plants so that they reproduce only their same kind (never evolving into other kinds).
Humans are one created kind, and thus one race, according to The Human Genome Project [described in a future blog].
The Bible mentions no kind of Evolution, like other worldviews claim:
- Cosmic Evolution supposedly happened some 13.7 billion years ago, when an already existing singularity (comprised of physical mass and energy) spontaneously exploded as a Big Bang to produce the physical Cosmos (all the stars, galaxies, and our solar system and planets.
- Chemical Evolution supposedly happened some 4.5 million years ago (called Deep Time), when non-living molecules supposedly evolved into a living organism. [The Miller-Urey experiment and others failed to prove that non-life evolves into life, even though all were intelligently designed to do so.]
- Biological Macro-Evolution supposedly started when the first simple organic species evolved into successively more complex species to gradually produce humans. [NO ‘transitional forms’ have been found in the fossil record to prove this; these “missing links” are still missing.]
Ten times Genesis states that God designed each unique kind of creature to emphasize that each created kind is different from all other created kinds:
The current taxonomic system for classifying life is based on the pioneering work of Carolus Linnaeus: all life is derived from the primae specie (original kinds) that were designed by God, with built-in potential for variation. Thus, the canine specie can only reproduce different varieties of dogs (wolf, Great Dane, toy poodle, etc.), but not any other kind. Roses (genus: Rosa) can only reproduce different varieties of roses (climbing roses, tree roses, shrub roses, etc.).
Darwin observed this built-in potential for variation [this is micro-evolution] and then claimed that one species [a “common ancestor”] gradually evolved into successively more complex species over millions of years [this is macro-evolution].
NOTE: future articles explain the connection between Prime-and-External Reality.
| Partner Training Activity: Explain God’s Nature & Attributes |
| Directions: Take turns. -Explain associated Scriptures that inspire your reverence for God. -Use “plain language” a non-believer or new believer understands. -Get feedback from your partner. -Keep practicing until you become confident and competent. |
Salvation – Eternal Life in Less Than 150 Words
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