On Deist Again

Dear Sir,—I was interested to read in a recent issue of "Salient" "Deist's" article on the Christian religion. The writer raises many questions which have been, and are being asked by many university students.

"Is there a God?" There is a universal inherent belief in a supreme being, right from the naked, nomadic tribesman to the highly sophisticated New York socialite. But can we prove there is God? It is impossible to get God, put Him in a test tube, and prove His existence by chemical analysis.

A spiritual God can only be found by a spiritual method—faith. But what is faith? The Bible says that faith is "the substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Faith is not opposed to facts as was once thought hut it Is merely complementary to facts, and facts are complementary to faith.

Some say that they cannot believe the Bible because of scientific inaccuracies in the Bible and say that they are positive proof that the scriptures are not divinely inspired. True, there are statements that do not stand up to close scientific scrutiny but that does not prove that the Bible is not divinely inspired. It is not a scientific text book. The Bible is a collection of books written in the language and in accordance with the concepts of various ages. So that the people of those ages could understand them — not V.U.W. professors.

And so while it is scientifically fallible, the Bible is spiritually infallible. However, there are in the scriptures many scientifically accurate statements and Inferences which were generally unknown at the time. For example, the book of Job, which was probably written about 3500 years ago, alludes to the sphericity of the earth.

"Deist" says, "I believe that to expand the personality of God beyond that of a creator introduces too much of the element of supposition." And that is true if we try to reason with our own intellience. But if we accept the Bible as being inspired of God, then surely there need not be just a vague conception of Him. It distinctly tells us that "God is a spirit." Failure to realise this fact is, I believe, partly why we have so many professed atheists in our midst. Some of them have the idea that God is supposed to be a benign old gentleman while others have the idea that God is supposed to be a terrible tyrant. When the Bible says that God is a spirit, it doesn't mean that He is a wispy spiral of vapour. Obviously, such conceptions of God can only lead to scepticism or atheism.

Many look at the world and ask, along with Deist, 'It God is a loving being why is there so much sickness, famine, hatred, sorrow, and general misfortune in the world today?" To answer this question we must try to get a correct conception of God. He is, as we are told, a God of love; but he is also a holy God. Also, He cannot force man to do anything against his will.

But man has sinned and has thus severed himself from a holy God who cannot tolerate sin. The misfortunes in the world is the price for sin. But God, in his loving capacity, has provided a solution—His son Jesus Christ, through whom we may obtain salvation.

"Deist" uses the term "Christian" rather frequently, but he fails to define—whether inadvertently or intentionally I cannot say—what a Christian is.

The Bible teaches that a Christian is one who has a personal trust, apart from meritorious works, in the Lord Jesus Christ, as delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification. And so I put forward a question for all of us to ask ourselves, "Am I a Christian or am I not?"