‘It is commonplace for contemporary scientists and philosophers to give lip service to the principle that science decides only the how questions and leaves the why questions to religion’ (italics mine), writes Phillip Johnson (The Right Questions, p.68).

However, he continues, ‘the epistemic authority of science is so overwhelming and the standing of theology so precarious that “outside of science” effectively means “outside of reality”, and the premise that science is taken to entail the conclusion that the world has no purpose is effectively a non-existent purpose; how could we know of the purpose if science cannot discover it?’

Johnson rightly adds, ‘The concept of ultimate purpose is probably inseparable from the concept of divine revelation… The right question is not whether God exists but whether God has revealed the nature of the ultimate purpose of the world’ (pp.68f).

To begin to provide some answers to this question as well as some keys to opening up the ‘right questions’ with people in the wider community, let me touch on two New Testament statements.

In John 1:1-2 we read: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

And in his Letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul writes: For he (Jesus Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation;…(Colossians 1:15)

The Apostles St. John and St. Paul are telling us that Jesus is the projection into our world of the God who exists beyond space and time. Furthermore, we come to understand that out of his very nature, God the Father lovesand gives life. Throughout eternity he has given life to a Son – a Son whom he loves and delights in.

This is what the orthodox creeds mean when they speak of the eternal nature of the Son of God. And Article II of the Thirty-Nine Articles states: The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father,…

The fountain analogy. A helpful way to understand this is to think of a fountain. In the same way that the essential nature of a fountain is to pour out water, so God the Father is eternally flowing with life and love, eternally begetting his Son. Indeed, the prophet Jeremiah (2:13) tells us that the Lord says of himself that he is the ‘spring of living water’.

God the Father and God the Son are distinct persons, but they are inseparable from one another. They always love one another, and they always work together – in perfect harmony. Indeed, God the Father is always pouring the fullness of his own nature into His Son.

The source of life. Furthermore, in John 1:3 we read: All things came into being through him (the Word), and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

And in Colossians 1:16 Paul writes: For in him (Jesus Christ) all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through him and for him.

We need to catch the flow of both John’s and Paul’s words: Throughout eternity God the Father’s nature gives life and love which we see in his one and only eternal Son who came amongst us as one of us. Furthermore, the Father hands over to His Son the task of creating others and loving others. God doesn’t need to do this to make up something lacking in his nature. This is who he is and what he does. He loves and he gives life.

Meaning. Drawing these threads together we come to understand that Jesus Christ, the eternally begotten Son of God, is the eternal image and radiance of God. We are created in the image of God and designed to conform to the image of God’s eternal Son – in our love for God and our love for one another. Our existence is part of ‘the continuation of that outgoing movement of God’s love’ (Michael Reeves, p. 43). Here we begin to find the answer to meaning and purpose.

Is all this fiction? Consider the observation of Dr. john Lennox, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, Oxford, UK: “To the majority of those who have reflected deeply and written about the origin and nature of the universe, it has seemed that it points beyond itself to a source which is non-physical and of great intelligence and power.”

For in him (Jesus Christ) all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through him and for him (Colossians 1:16).

In his insightful and challenging book, The Right Questions (2002), Phillip Johnson (who died last month) wrote that at the heart of the cultural changes today is the sharp divergence between two very different world views: the Christian view that states (as in John 1:1-4): “In the beginning was the Word…”; and scientific materialism which says, “In the beginning were the particles” (p.136). (Before his retirement Phillip Johnson had been Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley for over three decades.)

In an earlier chapter in his book, he had observed that “In the beginning was the Word” is dismissed as a ‘non-cognitive utterance of religion’ and therefore one that cannot be evaluated in terms of ‘true or false’ (p.63). On the other hand he also draws attention to an unquestioned assumption that stands behind scientific naturalism, namely that ‘the laws and the particles existed, and that these two things plus chance had to do all the creating’ (p.64).

In this context Johnson points out that everyone needs to ask ‘the right questions’ – especially with respect to the assumptions that stand behind scientific materialism. For example, he draws attention to President Clinton’s announcement in June 2000 with the breakthrough in understanding the human genome: “Today, we are learning the language in which God created life, we are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift” (p.37). And Francis Collins, the scientific director of the government’s Human Genome Project, said: “It is humbling for me and awe-inspiring to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our instruction book, previously known only to God” (p.38).

Johnson comments that both statements ‘seem to say that the genome research actually supports the view that a supernatural mind designed the instructions that guide the immensely complex biochemical processes of life’. He also notes the negative implications, namely that ‘Clinton and Collins seemed to be repudiating the central claim of evolutionary naturalism, which is that exclusively natural causes like chance and physical law produced all the features of life…’ (p.38).

Yet he also notes that most leading biologists reject the notion of God and God’s involvement.

But can the clear statements of John 1:1-2 be easily dismissed as a crutch for those who need such a foundation for life? In the beginning was the Word, we read, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God… And in John 1:14 we learn, And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

In his Prologue John speaks of the pre-existence of the Word of God. From all eternity the Word has been enthroned in the magnificence of the glory of heaven. But John also speaks of the incarnation of the Word: he is a Person who took up residence with us. And John tells us that the Word incarnate was full of grace and truth. We have seen his glory, he testifies. John was either spinning a falsehood or witnessing to a truth that is beyond human invention.

Indeed, The Gospel of John together with the other three Gospels reveal a transcendent figure. The esteemed ancient historian Dr Edwin Judge once commented: ‘An ancient historian has no problem seeing the phenomenon of Jesus as an historical one. … The writings that sprang up about Jesus also reveal to us a movement of thought and an experience of life so unusual that something much more substantial than the imagination is needed to explain it’.

Furthermore, Paul the Apostle in Colossians 1:5b speaks of the Gospel as the word of the truth. He could have left out any reference to the words the truth, but he doesn’t. He wants to stress that the Christian message is true. Paul’s words reflect not only the words of the Gospel of John but also those of Luke who states that he had verified his account of Jesus Christ with eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1-2). Strange as it may seem the Bible accounts of Jesus are verifiable and true.

Over the years the Christian church has been criticised for taking a western religion to other cultures. But what we often forget is that Christianity is not a western faith. Its origins are in the Middle-East. But more significant is the point that Paul is making in 1:6-7: the Christian gospel is for all the world.

All this brings us back to the question of knowledge. When we ask the right questions we discern that there are some essential assumptions that undergird scientific or philosophical naturalism – assumptions that cannot be tested and which require a step of faith. On the other hand, the step of faith in the statement that there is a creator God, is not a blind step. Its essence is grounded in a verifiable historical figure – Jesus.

This is the Jesus Christ to whom the Colossian believers had responded. It is the good news that he brings that we need to embrace ourselves and introduce to others around us today. 

Throughout this week, ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ will echo across the landfrom New York to San Francisco. The principle of ‘Thanksgiving’ has its origins in a non-sectarian expression of ‘thanks’ to a loving, merciful and generous God.

While Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamations are usually related to a special moment in the American story – as when Presidents Washington, Adams, and Lincoln made their Proclamations – the principle of a day of Thanksgiving continues. For example, in 1789 the first President, George Washington commended that a Day of Thanksgiving be held on Thursday, November 26 of that year.

Washington’s 1789 Proclamation stated: Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and—Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:

When we think about it, Thanksgiving is a very Judaeo-Christian theme, for we find it both in the ‘Law, the Prophets and the Writings’ (Old Testament) and in the New Testament.

The theme of Thanksgiving permeates the Book of Psalms, often setting this in the context of God’s goodness in creation, and his mercy towards his people even when they fell away from their whole-hearted commitment to him.

For example in the opening lines of Psalm 103 we read: Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits— who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s (Ps. 103:1-5).

What is interesting here is that King David, the song-writer, is not talking to God as he usually does in his songs or psalms. He is talking to himself – to his soul. In fact he continues the conversation with himself through the first five verses.

He is telling himself things he knew he needed to hear. He knew himself well enough to realize that he could slide into being a thankless man of God. And so it is that as he considers afresh who God is and what he has done for him, he reflects on God’s goodness. He identifies God’s many blessings, lest in times of disappointment or backsliding he forget the source of his prosperity and success and take God’s grace for granted.

It’s an exhortation we all need to hear. We ought to treat God with great honor, for He is good to us in a thousand different ways. He is never over-indulgent. He disciplines us when we need it, and, for our good he doesn’t give us everything we want when we want it. Yet his kindness is vast – often giving us unexpected good things.

The sad reality is that most of us simply forget to thank God for all his goodness. We take it all for granted. Like nine of the ten lepers Jesus once healed, we don’t even offer one word of thanks.

So important is thanksgiving to God that Paul the Apostle urges us to pray with a deep sense of gratitude in our hearts: Do not be anxious about anything, he writes, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God… (Philippians 4:5-6).

The context in which we find these words of Paul is his exhortation that we rejoice in the Lord (Jesus) always (Philippians 4:4). Glorying in Christ Jesus and all that he has done for us in rescuing us and bringing us into a vital relationship with God, is central. God wants us to so value Jesus Christ that we long for the smile of his approval in all we do.

This is the context of Paul’s command: ‘Have no anxiety about anything …’ His words are a timeless and universal remedy for anxiety. Prayer and Thanksgiving together commit us into the hands of the God who is Lord and who is committed to bringing good for us out of every situation no matter what it is.

‘Thanksgiving’ by its very nature does not have its origin within us. As Karl Barth put it: Grace evokes gratitude like the voice of an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning.

May your Thanksgiving first be directed to the God from whom all true blessings flow!

Michael Connelly in The Gods of Guilt, writes these words into one of his characters: Everybody has a jury, the voices they carry inside… Those I have loved and those I have hurt. Those who bless me and those who haunt me.

As every playwright knows, no one is perfect. Everyone of us has a character flaw.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed: ‘If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?

The greatest problem on earth. The reality is that all of us, even the best of us, are a strange mixture of good and evil. One way or another, in varying ways and varying degrees, we contribute to the world’s problems. Is there any hope?

The greatest news is that there is hope. And the most surprising thing is that the rescue comes from outside, from the one who set the movement of our existence into motion. Paul concluded his speech to the Athenian academia by saying, ‘In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now God commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all people by raising him from the dead’ (Acts 17:30-31).

Human ignorance. Paul concludes by returning to his opening words – human ignorance. In setting up an altar to ‘The Unknown God’, the Athenians recognized that they actually might not know God. ‘Well,’ says Paul, ‘you might claim ignorance, but the reality is God has never left himself without witness.’ As Paul says in Romans 1, God has revealed himself through the natural order, but men and women have always tried to suppress that knowledge. ‘Well,’ Paul says to the Athenians, ‘God in his mercy is willing to overlook your past ignorance’, but ‘now he commands people everywhere to repent.’

Justice. It is a matter of deep offense to God that we try to live without him, to say that this life is all there is, to think that there is no such thing as truth. Throughout history God has been revealing himself and now ‘he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice’. We may laugh at this, but if we think about it, judgment gives value and dignity to who we are and what we do. If people steal and hate, terrorize and murder and there is no final justice, life becomes meaningless.

The Judge. So we ask, ‘Can God find it in his heart to do anything to save us from the judgment we deserve?’ The answer lies in the person of the judge whom God has appointed. It will be God’s day, but the judge will be one of us – a man whose name we know: Jesus Christ.

If I had to make a choice and choose a judge for myself, he is the one I would choose! From God’s side, he is the Son of God equal to God, to be honored as God. But he is also the one who entered the world as a man; who dwelt among us full of grace and truth. He lived, he spoke and he acted in a way that was different from anyone else. He loved the outcast and brought joy and hope to people from all walks of life. The Gospel narratives tell us that this man died for us.  His resurrection from the dead demonstrates that what he said was true and that his promise of forgiveness, restoration and new life, is real.

What should we do? We need to prepare now for the day when justice will be done. We need to prepare to stand before the all-powerful One, whose pure holiness is frightening to see. So how do we prepare? By repenting; that’s what God commands. Do I need to repent of all my sins and totally change my life? Yes, this is how we need to start. Our biggest sin is to trust any other god than God.

Will this mean a change? Yes! But what we are doing is finding God at last. We will be giving Jesus that central place in our lives that he deserves. It will mean discovering that this is what we were made for and that at last we have become what we were intended to be.

With the rise of secular progressivism and its antipathy towards religion we may be tempted to think that the opportunity to bring God into our conversations is a lost cause. It’s important that we remain calm and remember that God’s truth has touched the hearts of millions through the ages – including the hearts and minds of some of the ablest scientists and philosophers.

For example, the computational, quantum chemistry professor, Dr. HF (Fritz) Schaefer, speaks of Blaise Pascal as ‘the father of the mathematical theory of probability and combinatorial analysis; he provided the essential link between the mechanics of fluids and the mechanics of rigid bodies’ (HF Schaefer, ‘Scientists and Their Gods).

Pascal also spoke of his personal faith this way: ‘At the center of every human being is a God–shaped vacuum which can only be filled by Jesus Christ’ (quoted by HF Schaefer).

With that thought in mind let’s continue to explore the gospel presentation of Paul the Apostle to the Athenian intelligentsia at the Areopagus (Acts 17:22ff).

From the starting point that behind the universe God exists (see last week’s ‘Word’), Paul develops the idea that God is also the ruler and sustainer of the nations. “From one ancestor he (God) made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’…” (Acts 17:26ff).

Paul is saying that history and the rise and fall of nations are ultimately in God’s hands. His words echo those of Isaiah who, having prophesied God’s judgment of Israel, also spoke of the deliverance of his people from captivity (Isaiah 40 – 45). Isaiah said that God would raise up Cyrus, an insignificant prince to crush the great Babylonian empire. In turn Cyrus would free God’s people from captivity and allow them to return to Jerusalem.

Isaiah was saying (as we find throughout the Scriptures) that God continues his work in the world, constantly using human decisions to work out his own greater purposes for men and women. It is because of this that Paul could write in Romans 8:28: And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,…

There is always a purpose to God’s plan. He wants us to come to our senses and turn back to him – as did the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable. Tough times can be God’s wake-up call for us. It’s easy to blame him when things go wrong, but that is absurd for we are the problem. It’s easy to say that God is distant or uncaring. ‘Not so,’ says Paul to the Athenians: ‘God is near you – nearer than you think. And, quoting from a 6th century BC Greek poet, he points out, In him we live and move and have our being. He continues by quoting either Aratus or another poet, Cleanthus: For we too are his offspring.

In quoting from non-biblical writers Paul lays out an important principle for us: to reach a cynical audience with the things of God. Look for ideas or words in the culture that illustrate a gospel truth – not all human utterance is wrong (after all, we are still image-bearers of God, albeit distorted ones).

To return to Paul’s point: he is saying that all men and women are God’s creatures. All of us not only receive our life from him, but our very existence is dependent on him. ‘Your poets agree that we are God’s offspring,’ he continued. ‘How ridiculous it is, therefore, to reduce God to something less than we are – gold or silver or stone.’

‘What’s more, when you create an idol, you are in fact trying to reverse the roles of yourself and God. You want to make yourself God’s creator, not God your creator.’

We have this assurance: despite the suffering and evil in the world around us, God is still in control, working out his greater purpose. We have every reason therefore, to ask him to restrain wickedness and vice and direct our leaders to exercise their responsibilities wisely and justly for the benefit of all.

And, like Paul, let’s constantly look for points of connection with the culture so that we can more effectively reach the minds and hearts of people around us with God’s good news.

GK Chesterton is reputed to have said, ‘When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing anything’.

In today’s changing world Christianity is often dismissed as being anti-intellectual: ‘No-one with half a brain could be a Christian’. Many reject it, not because they think it is false, but because they think it is trivial. If they think at all about the meaning of life, they want something that hangs together and makes sense of the complex cluster of their ideas, their longings and their experiences. Many simply want a world-view that makes them feel good.

And if we raise the subject of God, people tell us they don’t like the idea of ‘God’ because he would want to interfere with their life and be a kill-joy. ‘God is all right,’ they say, ‘as long as he doesn’t intrude into my space. I’ll call you, God. Don’t you call me!’

We live in a society where there is a complex set of ideas – longing for freedom, belief that this world is all there is, and a relativism of ‘your truth and my truth’. Yet in the cities of the West there is a lingering memory of the God of the Bible. Most people still agree that, if there is a God, there is only one God and that he exists as a spirit – without a body. People also agree that, if God exists, he is love – not someone filled with hate.

Response? How then do we respond to such a cluster of ideas? In Acts 17:22-31, Luke records Paul’s address to the Areopagus in ancient Athens. In Acts 17:16 we read that when Paul first came to the city he was deeply distressed to see that it was full of idols. John Stott commented, ‘Paul saw that the city was smothered with idols. He felt deeply distressed and provoked by the idolatry because it dishonored the name of God.’

Luke records what Paul did: he spoke in the synagogue with the Jews and devout persons, and also in the marketplace with those who happened to be there. We can’t help but admire Paul – not content only to be an intelligent tourist, taking in the sights and culture of one of the most remarkable cities of the ancient world.

Paul’s response was to defend and promote the God of good news. It is evidence of his impact that the Athenian philosophers wanted to ask him questions: ‘What is this babbler trying to say?’

Two groups took him to task. The Epicureans, ‘philosophers of the garden’, reckoned the gods were so remote that they had no interest in or influence on human affairs. Life was a matter of chance. Men and women should pursue pleasure for there would be no judgment, and no life after death. The Stoics, ‘philosophers of the porch’, said there was a supreme god that they confused with a pantheistic ‘world soul’. They emphasized fatalism, submission, and coping with pain (‘stoicism’).

Into this bazaar of ideas and beliefs Paul came. When asked what he taught, he stood up at the Areopagus and said: “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:22ff).

It was an ingenious opening to what became both a defense and a presentation of God’s gospel before the Athenian intelligentsia. Without quoting from the Bible yet drawing from what it reveals about God, he engaged with contemporary ideas within Greek thought. He pointed to five features about this ‘unknown God’ – features that I will identify next Wednesday.

In the meantime, you might like to consider the world-views and beliefs held by people you know. You might also consider questions you could ask them, to get them thinking about the larger issues of life and their place within it all.