If God exists, why doesn’t he prove it?

The author of The End of Faith asked, “How is it fair for God to have designed a world which gives such ambiguous testimony to his existence?” Christians typically respond to the new atheists with answers from the Intelligent Design movement or from other developments of Thomas Aquinas’s “proofs” of God’s existence. By contrast, orthodox Christians of the first century, far from advancing philosophical arguments for the existence of God, maintained that those who deny his existence suppress the knowledge they already have of him from the things he created…

This article may be found at AbsoluteParadox.com, a new confessional Lutheran apologetics web site, and at the web site of Modern Reformation.

4 thoughts on “If God exists, why doesn’t he prove it?”

  1. Powerfully argued. In fact the reasoning and rhetoric are so skillfullly argued that it makes me suspicious of its central argument. If God’s message and methods are so counter to rhetoric and reason then why does it take someone like Kierkegaard or this author to understand and express it. It seems to me that it is possible to argue that what Jesus, Paul, and the New Testament condemn is the idolotrous use of reason and rhetoric not the God-given use. While a person does not have to be a technical scholar or intellecual giant to understand and embrace the faith, nevertheless, God’s message does not contradict the correct use of God’s creational gifts when they are exercised with humility and the fear of the Lord. I have been a part of communities that have outright disdain for reason and rhetoric in the name of foolishness. They are some of the most abusive and senseless environments on earth and they do it all while they celebrate the foolishness of the gospel.

  2. Are the leaders of these communities really celebrating the message of the crucified God, or are they just exalting their own anti-intellectual ideas? There have always been those who despise creation, including the human intellect, as unspiritual according to their man-made, fleshly religion (Colossians 2:8-23). Ironically, they do so by relying on their own reasoning just as much as did the philosophers Kierkegaard criticized.

    According to him, since the Incarnation can never be understood by natural reason, it can only be accepted by faith. See 1 Corinthians 2.

  3. Kierkegaard said that Man can know God only through Revelation, which must be accepted as Authoritative.
    My experience; It is God that removes the blinders from my eyes(evidenced by faith in the Redeemer), he has revealed much of his providence in the practice of this faith. God’s providential revelations demand recognition and gives me the responsibility to submit to his Authority.

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