Genesis 2:1-3

Day Seven: Rest Genesis 2:1-3

And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made.

Thus ends what has rightly been called the sublime Hymn of Creation.
1. God finished His work, on the seventh day. Does this mean that God, in some fashion, worked on the seventh day. To avoid such an interpretation, the Septuagint and certain other ancient versions insert the sixth day in the text instead of the seventh. Others have translated it, had finished. Still others take the passage to mean that God declared His creative work finished. The Creation evidently was completed, as it had already been pronounced very good. Could it be that on the seventh day God fitted up Eden to serve as man's temporary abode in his first state of innocence and placed him in it?

2. God rested from His work.(1) But we are told that Jehovah fainteth not, neither is weary (Isaiah 40:28). Does God need to rest because of fatigue? Surely not. This is obviously an anthropomorphic expression indicating simply that God ceased from His labor of creating, or, as Skinner puts it, desisted from His creative activity. (Since the Creation was finished and pronounced very good, what more was there to do?) Murphy's suggestion is that God's rest arises from the joy of achievement rather than from the relief of fatigue. Moreover, even though God rested from His works of physical creation, He certainly did not rest from works of benevolence (redemption). (2) Heaven is eternal rest, that is, rest from any kind of physical or corporeal activity (surely, however, a principal aspect of the activity of Heaven will be growth in spiritual knowledge). God came out of His timelessness to create the heavens and the earth, in six successive epochs; this Creation having been completed, and Eden prepared for man's first state, God returned back into the timelessness of pure Spiritual Being. Hence the Father's rest continues, and therefore we have no formula, as at the end of each of the first six days, that there was evening and there was morning, a seventh day.All preceding periods had begun and ended; not so the seventhit is still going on. This is evidently what Jesus meant (John 5:17) in answering the Jews who were criticizing Him for healing on their week-day Sabbath. My Father worketh even until now, and I work, said Jesus. That is to say, You Pharisees criticize me for doing a work of benevolence on your little twenty-four-hour Sabbathbut why? My Father's Sabbath has been going on throughout all these intervening centuries from the time He ceased from the creating of the world, yet through all this time He has been doing works of benevolence continuously. Why, then, should you literal-minded hypocrites find fault with me for doing a work of benevolence on your little week-day Sabbath?

3. Pro-lepsis: Resting and Hallowing.(1) Note that to bless is to wish something for that which is blessed (someone has said, infinite multiplication of the something wished); and to hallow is to remove that which is hallowed, out of its secular relations and to devote it to God. (2) This is obviously a pro-lepsis: and who was in a better position to understand this than Moses under whom the observance of the week-day Sabbath was established? Now a pro-lepsis is a connecting together, by the writer of the narrative, of two widely separated events in point of years, in an explanatory way, so that it appears as if they might have happened at one and the same time. Remember that Moses is writing this narrative long after the Creation. This means that God rested on the seventh epochal (aeonic) day, after finishing His Creation (of the physical universe). But He did not sanctify the seventh solar day of the week as the Jewish Sabbath until many centuries later, to be specific, when the Hebrew people under Moses were in the Wilderness of Sin, previous to their arrival at Sinai.In the sixteenth chapter of Exodus we have the account of the institution of the Jewish Sabbath. Moses, however, in giving us the Creation Narrative, connects the resting on the seventh aeonic day (after Creation) and the sanctification of the seventh solar day in the Wilderness of Sin, in such an explanatory way that it appears that the two events happened following the Creation, and at the same time, when in reality they were separated by many centuries. He does this, evidently, for the purpose of teaching the Jewish people why it was that Yahweh selected the seventh day of the week, instead of the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth day, as a day of rest for them, but especially as a memorial of their deliverance from Egyptian bondage (Deuteronomy 5:15). (3) Another example of pro-lepsis occurs in Genesis 3:20And the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. (Eve means Living or Life.) When Adam named her Eye, as far as we know, she was not the mother of anyone; but she was the mother of the entire human race when the Mosaic Cosmogony was written. Hence, Moses appended the explanatory clause, because she was the mother of all living, to show why Adam, with prophetic insight, named her Eve. (4) Pro-lepsis occurs in the New Testament, as in Matthew 10:2-4, in the enumeration of the twelve apostles. Matthew, in giving their names, concludes with the statement, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him. The clause, who also betrayed him, is merely explanatory on Matthew's part, to make clear the identity of Judas. Yet the calling of Judas to the Apostleship and the betrayal of Jesus by Judas were events separated in time by some three years, although it might seem, from the wording of this passage from Matthew's account, that they occurred at one and the same time. There can be little or no doubt that in Genesis 2:1-3, we have another pro-lepsis: only on this basis can the passage be harmonized with the teaching of the Bible as a whole.

(5) A. Campbell (CS, 139), takes the position that the Sabbath was observed from the Creation. However, there is no evidence whatever to support this view. There is not the slightest suggestion of an observance of the Sabbath prior to the time of Moses: the term does not even occur in the book of Genesis. There are intimations of a division of time into cycles of seven days (weeks) here and there in Genesis (e.g., Genesis 8:10-12; Genesis 29:16-30; Genesis 50:10), but there is no necessary connection between these and the observance of the seventh day as the Sabbath; moreover, there is not even an intimation of Sabbath observance associated with them. (6) It is crystal clear that the first observance of the week-day Sabbath occurred in the wilderness of Sin, as related in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus. It is inconceivable that the Procession under Moses would have been on the march from Elim to the wilderness of Sin, as we are told expressly that it was, on the first day of the eight-day period described here, for this would also have been a Sabbath had the institution been in effect at that time. The Law of the Sabbath forbade the people to do any work whatever, even to kindle a fire or to leave their habitations on that holy day (Exodus 16:29; Exodus 31:14-15; Exodus 35:2-3; Numbers 15:32-36); hence, marching on that first day into the wilderness of Sin would have been a flagrant violation of the Sabbath Law. Now, as the story is given, throughout the six days that followed the first day of marching, the people, at God's command, gathered manna (bread from heaven) each day, and, again at God's command, they gathered a double portion on the sixth day. Why so? Because the day that followedthe last day of this eight-day periodwas the first observance of the Jewish Sabbath. The Scripture makes these facts too clear for misconception (Exodus 16:21-30). Not too long after this, the Procession reached Sinai, and there the positive law of the Sabbath was incorporated into the Decalogue (Exodus 20:8-11). (7) The Sabbath was a provision of the Mosaic Law, given to one people only, a people living in a part of the world where it could be properly observed (e.g., without the kindling of a fire, Exodus 35:2-3, Numbers 15:32-36) without working a hardship on them (cf. the words of Jesus, Mark 2:27-28). The wording of Exodus 20:8, Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy, does not necessarily imply a previous observance; remember means, evidently, keep in memory, or do not forget the Sabbath day, thus having reference primarily to their future observance of the day. If it be contended that the word remember here has reference to past observance, I answer simply that the Hebrew people had already observed the Sabbath at least a few times, from the occasion of its institution in the Wilderness of Sin (Exodus 16). The language of this sixteenth chapter makes it too obvious for question that what is described here was the first observance of the seventh day of the week as the Jewish Sabbath.

(8) Finally, the Sabbath was an integral part of the Decalogue, and the Decalogue was the heart of the Mosaic Covenant. In Deuteronomy 5:4-22, we find Moses repeating the Ten Commandments, including the command to keep the seventh day as the Sabbath, In Deuteronomy 5:1-3 of the same chapter, we find him stating expressly that God had not made this Covenant with their fathers (the Patriarchs), but with the generation that had been present at Horeb (another name for Sinai), and with their descendants to whom he, Moses, was speaking on that occasion (just before his own death and burial). (Cf. Galatians 3:19. Here the Apostle tells us that the Law (Torah) was added, that is, codified, because of the growing sinfulness of the people under no restraint but that of tradition and conscience). Moses then goes on to tell the people, no doubt to remind them (Deuteronomy 5:12-15), that the seventh-day Sabbath was set apart by Divine ordinance to be observed by the Children of Israel as a memorial of their deliverance from Egyptian bondage, (Cf. Nehemiah 9:13-14). It necessarily follows that the observance must have been inaugurated after that deliverance had taken place, that is, after the Exodus. All these Scriptures account for the fact that we find no mention of the Jewish Sabbath in Genesis, that is, throughout the Patriarchal Dispensation. What, then, was the purpose of the inspired writer (Moses, cf. Matthew 19:7-8; Luke 16:19-31; Luke 24:27; Luke 24:44; John 1:17, etc.) in correlating the observance of the week-day Sabbath by the Jewish nation with the day of God's rest from His creative activity? The answer is obvious: it is to explain why the seventh day was selected to be memorialized instead of any one of the other six days. We have in Genesis the reason why the particular day of the week was chosen; we have in Deuteronomy what the day was chosen for, that is, what it was Divinely intended to memorialize. (There is no need whatever for assuming two contradictory accounts here, nor even for assuming two different accounts.) In a word, the Genesis narrative is to inform us that the seventh day of each ordinary week was sanctified as a memorial for the Jewish nation because that was the great aeonic day on which God rested from His creative activity in the beginning. Thus it may be contended legitimately that the extent of the time involved in these two instances is not any necessary part of the exegetical parallel.

(9) The seventh-day Sabbath was a sign between Yahweh and one people only, the Children of Israel (Exodus 31:12-17). It was divinely appointed a memorial of their deliverance from the bondage of Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:12-15), and as such never had any significance whatever for a Gentile. Moreover, it was to cease with the abrogation of the Old Covenant and the ratification of the New by the death of Christ on the Cross (Hosea 2:11, John 1:17, Colossians 2:13-17, 2 Corinthians 3:3-15, Galatians 3:23-27; Hebrews 8:6-13; Hebrews 9:23-28; Hebrews 10:8-14; 1 Peter 2:24). In our Dispensation, the observance of the seventh day would, of course, as stated above, have no meaning, especially for Gentiles. Hence, in the New Testament writings, whereas Jesus, the Apostles, and the early evangelists often went into the synagogues on the Sabbath (the seventh day) to preach the Gospel to the Jews wont to be assembled there, all Christian assemblies, however, were held on the first day of the week, the day on which the Lord was raised from the dead (Mark 8:31; Mark 16:9, Acts 4:10-12; Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:1-2), which came to be known as the Lord's Day (Revelation 1:10). There is no particular connection between the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Lord's Day. There is, however, a kind of analogy: that is, as the Sabbath was ordained a memorial of the deliverance of ancient or fleshly Israel from the bondage of Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:15), and as Egypt is, in Scripture, a type of a state of sin, so the Lord's Day is a memorial of the deliverance of spiritual Israel (Galatians 3:29) from the bondage of sin and death, through the resurrection of Christ.

(10) Note allusions to the six days of Creation in other parts of the Bible, especially Exodus 20:11 and Exodus 31:15-17. Do these passages require us to accept the days of the Genesis Cosmogony as days of twenty-four hours each? On this point Tayler Lewis (Lange, CDHCG, 135-136) writes with great clarity, as follows: The most clear and direct allusion is found in the Fourth Commandment, Exodus 20:11, -Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth.-' This language is held to be conclusive evidence of the latter having been ordinary days. They are of the same kind, it is said, or they would not have been put in such immediate connection. There could not be such a sudden change or rise in the meaning. This looks plausible, but a careful study shows that there is something more than first strikes us. It might be replied that there is no difference of radical ideawhich is essentially preserved, and without any metaphor in both usesbut a vast difference in the scale. There is, however, a more definite answer furnished specially by the text itself, and suggested immediately by the objectors-' own method of reasoning. God's days of working, it is said, must be the same with man's days of working, because they are mentioned in such close connection. Then God's work and man's work must also be the same, or on the same grade for a similar reason. The Hebrew word is the same for both: -In six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; for in six days the Lord made (wrought) heaven and earth.-' Is there no transition here to a higher idea? And so of the resting: -The seventh day shall be to thee a sabbath (a rest), for the Lord thy God rested on the seventh day-'words of the same general import, but the less solemn or more human term here applied to Deity. What a difference there must have been between God's work and man's workabove all, between God's ineffable repose and the rest demanded for human weariness. Must we not carry the same difference into the times, and make a similar ineffable distinction between the divine working-days and the human working-daysthe God-divided days, as Augustine calls them, and -the sun-divided days,-' afterwards appointed to us for -signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years-' of our lower chronology? Such a pointing to a higher scale is also represented in the septennial sabbath, and in the great jubilee period of seven times seven. They expand upwards and outwards like a series of concentric circles, but the greatest of them is still a sign of something greater; and how would they all collapse, and lose their sublime import, if we regard their antitype as less than themselves, or, in fact, no greater than their least! The other analogy, instead of being forced, has in it the highest reason. It is the true and effective order of contemplation. The lower, or earthly, day is made a memorial of the higher. We are called to remember by it. In six (human) days do all thy work; for in six (divine) days the Lord made heaven and earth. It is the manner of the Scriptures thus to make times and things on earth representatives, or under-types, of things in the heavens, hypodeigmata ton en tois ouranois (Hebrews 9:23). Viewed from such a standpoint these parallelisms in the language of the Fourth Commandment suggest of themselves a vast difference between the divine and the human days, even if it were the only argument the Bible furnished for that purpose. As the work to the work, as the rest to the rest, so are the times to the times.

(11) Thomas Whitelaw (PCG, 12, 13) comments in similar vein: The duration of the seventh day of necessity determines the length of the other six. Without anticipating the exposition of ch. Genesis 2:1-4, it may be said that God's sabbatic rest is understood by the best interpreters of Scripture to have continued from creation's close until the present hour; so that consistency demands the previous six days to be considered as not of short, but of indefinite, duration. The language of the fourth commandment, when interpreted in accordance with the present theory, confirms the probability of its truth. If the six days in Exodus 20:11 are simply natural days, then the seventh day, in which God is represented as having rested from his creative labours, must likewise be a natural or solar day; and if so, it is proper to observe what follows. It follows (1) that the events recorded in the first five verses of Genesis must be compressed into a single day of twenty-four hours, so that no gap will remain into which the short-day advocates may thrust the geologic ages, which is for them an imperative necessity; (2) that the world is only 144 hours older than man, which is contrary to both science and revelation; (3) that the statement is incorrect that God finished all his work at the close of the sixth day; and (4) that the fossiliferous remains which have been discovered in the earth's crust have either been deposited there since man's creation, or were created there at the first, both of which suppositions are untenable. But now, if, on the contrary, the language signifies that God laboured in the fashioning of his cosmos through six successive periods of indefinite duration (olamim, aeons), and entered on the seventh day into a correspondingly long period of sabbatic rest, we can hold the opposite of every one of these conclusions, and find a convincing argument besides for the observance of the sabbath in the beautiful analogy which subsists between God's great work of olamim and man's little work of sun-measured days. (Perhaps I should emphasize the fact here that the Pulpit Commentary, although first published about the turn of the century and recently re-issued, is still one of the sanest, most comprehensive, and most scholarly of all Biblical Commentaries. Perhaps the most erudite of all such sets is the Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical Commentary, co-edited by Dr. John Peter Lange and Dr. Philip Schaff, first published in 1868; the volume on Genesis, by J. P. Lange, is translated from the German, with essays and annotations by Dr. Tayler Lewis. The general content of these Commentaries has been affected very little by recent scientific discoveries and hypotheses. I should say that this is a mark of their true greatness, their reliability.)

(12) Some additional evidence concerning the days of the Creation is in order here, if for no other reason, to demonstrate the general ambiguity with which the Hebrew yom is used in the Old Testament. For example, Genesis 1:5 (here Day refers to daylight); Genesis 2:4 (here yom takes in the whole Creative Week); Genesis 2:17 (here the word indicates an indefinite period); Genesis 35:3the day of my distress; Ecclesiastes 7:14the day of prosperity, the day of adversity; Psalms 95:8the day of temptation in the wilderness (Did not this day last forty years?); Deuteronomy 9:1here day means in a short time; Psalms 2:7here we have an eternal day, a day in God's Eternal Purpose), etc. Note also in the New Testament the Greek equivalent, hemera, John 8:56my day here takes in Christ's incarnate ministry and probably His entire reign as Acting Sovereign of the universe (Acts 2:36, Philippians 2:9-11); Hebrews 3:15in this text to-day takes in the present season of grace, that is, the entire Gospel Dispensation. Thus it will be seen that by the same word yom, and its Greek equivalent hemera, the Scriptures recognize an artificial day (Genesis 1:5), an eternal day (Psalms 2:7), a civil day (Leviticus 23:32), a millenial day (2 Peter 3:8), a judgement day (Acts 17:31), a solar day (Exodus 16:4-5, Romans 14:5), a day-period (Genesis 2:4, John 8:56, Hebrews 3:8, Romans 13:12), etc. Certainly, the sheer elasticity with which these Hebrew and Greek words are used for our word, day, throughout the Bible forbids the dogmatic assumption of a single fixed meaning!

It is worthy of note here that Gleason L. Archer, Jr., whose fidelity to the Scriptures can hardly be questioned, in his outstanding book, published recently, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, after rejecting the concepts of a twenty-four-hour day and of a revelational (special prophetic visional) day, presents the view which I have adopted here, namely, that in the Genesis Cosmogony each of the seven Creative Days must have been a period of indefinite duration (that is, as man measures time). He writes (pp. 176-177): According to this view the term yom does not necessarily signify a literal twenty-four-hour day, but is simply equivalent to stage. It has often been asserted that yom could not bear this meaning, but could only have implied a literal day to the Hebrew mind according to Hebrew usage. Nevertheless, on the basis of internal evidence, it is the writer's conviction that yom in Genesis 1 could not have been intended by the Hebrew author to mean a literal twenty-four-hour day. I fail to see how any other interpretation can be validated on the basis of the content of the Genesis Cosmogony as a whole.

4. The Mosaic Hymn of Creation is especially meaningful in one respect: in v. 31 it sets the sublime optimistic motif of the entire Bible. This verse reads: God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good. What a burst of exultation and benediction to be called forth from the inmost being of Elohim at His contemplation of His own handiwork in its entirety! What order, what beauty, what glory there was, to elicit such Divine exultation! Yetdoes not this verse strike the note of optimism that pervades the Bible from beginning to end? Does it not impress the truth upon us that God's work can never be destroyed, indeed can never be ultimately marred, much less ruined (Acts 3:21); that Good will never be overcome by Evil, but will in fact overcome Evil, in the consummation of the Divine Plan of the Ages? This crescendo of moral victory reaches its height in the New Testament. Even in the midst of the Great Tribulation which man will bring upon himself at the end of the present Dispensation, the spread of evil in all its formsgreed, lust, violence, war, utter preoccupation with earthly thingswhen the saints see these iniquities becoming world-wide, Jesus Himself tells us, they shall lift up their eyes and see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory (Matthew 24:29-30; Matthew 16:17-18; Mark 13:19-26; Luke 21:20-28). Never is there the slightest intimation anywhere in Scripture of the possibility of Satan's triumph over the Creation of God! On the contrary, it is expressly affirmed again and again that Satan and his rebel host (of both angels and men) are doomed; that their proper habitation is the pit of the abyss, that is, segregation in Hell, the penitentiary of the moral universe (Matthew 25:41, 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 1:6), and that to this ultimate destiny they are bound to be consigned by the Sovereign Will that decrees and executes Absolute Justice. (Matthew 25:31-46; John 5:28-29; Hebrews 2:14-15; Philippians 2:5-11; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28; Romans 2:2-11; Acts 17:30-31; Revelation 20:11-15).

5. The Correspondence with Present-day Science of the main features of the Genesis account of the Creation is little short of amazing. (1) On the basis of the panoramic interpretation of the Genesis Cosmogony, the one which we have adopted here, largely on the ground that it does not require any far-fetched applications of the various parts, that is to say, any unjustified stretching of the meaning of the Scripture text, the whole Creation Narrative, in its essential features, parallels the fundamental theories of the physical sciences of our day. On the basis of this panoramic view, there is no need to postulate any post-cataclysmic reconstruction theory (based on the notion of a gap between Genesis 2:1-2) to provide a. way of escape from the difficulties of modern geology. Certainly the stretch of time between the first brooding of the Spirit over the primeval deep and the Divine consilium in which it was decreed that man should be created in God's image, was eminently sufficient to allow for the developments claimed by such sciences as astronomy, physics, paleontology, archeology, anthropology, etc., and, as we shall see later, for those aspects of the biological and physiological sciences which truly can be designated scientific.Besides, the notion of the building of a new cosmos on the ruins of a former one, without even a suggestion, in the Scripture text, ,of any natural or moral reason for such wholesale changes, makes the reconstruction theory a purely arbitrary one on man's part, (2) Again, the oft-heard cyclical theory of cosmic history is usually, either in its origin or in its adoption, a case in which the wish is father to the thought on the part of atheistically and agnostically motivated scientists who would attempt to avoid the problem of Creation by zealously affirming what they choose to designate the eternity of matter. (In passing, it should be noted that the correlation of the word eternal (which most certainly signifies timelessness) with the nature of what man calls matter is per se an obvious contradiction.) Evidently, even though the theory of cycles of catastrophes and reconstructions might reasonably allow for the view that, as Hoyle puts it, matter is infinitely old (a view which he himself rejects), any such cyclical theory deprives cosmic being and history of any meaning whatsoever, and certainly ignores the fact of the Intelligence and Will which, on the basis of the theory of cycles, necessarily establishes and sustains the successive periods of cosmic order that are supposed to emerge from respective prior cataclysms. (Let us not forget that cosmos is order.)As a matter of fact, these cyclical theories have little or nothing to support them, apart from the human imagination which conjures them up.

(3) Again, the Genesis account of the Creation is in strict accord with the nuclear physics of our time in presenting radiant energy (light), of some kind, as the first and ultimate form of physical energy. This, as stated heretofore, is a commonplace of present-day physical science.
(4) Especially, however, is the Order of the Creation as presented in the Genesis Narrative in the closest harmony with present-day scientific thinking, and indeed with the facts of human experience. And the amazing thing about this correspondence is that it is true, despite the fact that the Mosaic Cosmogony can certainly be proved to have had its origin in pre-scientific times, that is, before the sciences, as we think of them, had begun to be developed. In the Genesis Narrative the word good, as We have noted heretofore, signified the order that prevailed as a result of the ordinations of the Word and the broodings of the Spirit; hence, at the end of the creative process God is said to have looked out on the whole and pronounced it very good, that is to say, the order was perfect, perfection signifying wholeness, Obviously, energy, especially the different kinds of radiant energy (light), were necessarily the first physical existents; hence, we are told that these were created on Day One. This was the necessary physical beginning of the cosmos, insofar as human experience and science can determine. (The Primal Energy is, of course, the Divine Intelligence and Will.) Again the creation of both light and atmosphere necessarily preceded the appearance of all forms of life: without light and atmosphere plants could not perform the mysterious process of photosynthesis, the process by which solar energy is captured, so to speak, and converted into stored food energy for beast and man. Without photosynthesis no form of animal life, the human body included, could exist. Morrison (MDNSA, 26-27): All vegetable life is dependent upon the almost infinitesimal quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, so to speak, it breathes. To express this complicated photosynthetic chemical reaction in the simplest possible way, the leaves of the trees are lungs and they have the power when in the sunlight to separate this obstinate carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. In other words, the oxygen is given off and the carbon retained and combined with the hydrogen of the water brought up by the plant from its roots. By magical chemistry, out of these elements nature makes sugar, cellulose, and numerous other chemicals, fruits and flowers. The plant feeds itself and produces enough more to feed every animal on earth. At the same time, the plant releases the oxygen we breathe and without which life would end in five minutes. Let us then, pay our humble respects to the plant. Animals give off carbon dioxide and plants give off oxygen. It has recently been discovered that carbon dioxide in small quantities is also essential to most animal life, just as plants use some oxygen. Hydrogen must be included, although we do not breathe it. Without hydrogen water would not exist, and the water content of animal and vegetable matter is surprisingly great and absolutely essential. Oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon, singly and in their various relations to each other, are the principal biological elements. They are the very basis on which life rests. There is, however, not one chance in millions that they should all be at one time on one planet in the proper proportions for life. Science has no explanations to offer for the facts, and to say it is accidental is to defy mathematics.

And, finally, in this connection, without the subhuman orders to provide for man the means of food, shelter, clothing, medicines, etc., he simply could not exist in his present natural state. (Moreover, according to the Divine Plan, man's natural state as a person created in God's image is the necessary pre-condition to growth in holiness which is the very essence of the Spiritual Life, just as the Spiritual Life is the necessary preparation for the Life Everlasting (1 Corinthians 15:44-49, Romans 8:18-25, Matthew 5:8. Hebrews 12:14, 2 Peter 3:18).

To summarize: the general order of the Creation as set forth in Genesis was, briefly, as follows: energy, light, atmosphere, lands and seas, plants, water and air animals (and it is a commonplace of biology today that animal life had its beginning in the water), land animals, and finally man and woman. This, as we have noted, was an order determined by the very nature of things as they are known by present-day science; hence, it presupposes a directing Intelligence and ordering Will. (Surely Order, anywhere, or of any kind, presupposes an Orderer.) Again, this universal order consisted in the harmony (hence, unity) of all natural non-living and living processes. Every created class of things was fulfilling the function, and attaining the end, for which the Creator-God had brought it into existence; in a word, there was perfect harmony and unity of all the component parts of the whole natural Creation. This universal order prevailed, of course, until sin entered the world. Sin is transgression of the law of God; it is lawlessness (1 John 3:4) and this is disorder.

It is of the utmost importance to emphasize here the fact that the order in which the various parts, non-living and living, of the natural Creation are said to have been brought into existence, in the account given us in the first chapter of Genesis, is precisely that which is claimed by modern science. Yet the Genesis Cosmogony was written, as we all know, long before men knew anything about radiant energy, atomic processes, cellular processes, plant photosynthesis, psychosomatic entities, etc., or their sequential inter-relationships. This is a fact, I contend, which can be accounted for only on the ground of the special Divine inspiration of the Mosaic Cosmogony.

I consider it a privilege to present here the following conclusive paragraphs from the pen of Dr. Unger (IGOT, 184-186): In the first two Chapter s of Genesis in an account unique in all ancient literature, the Pentateuch catalogues the creation of the heavens and earth, and all plant, animal and human life. Other nations have their creation stories. But these are important only by sheer contrast in accentuating the sublimity and grandeur of the inspired record. Purged of the gross polytheistic perversions of the numerous non-inspired creation legends by virtue of its advanced monotheistic point of view, only the Genesis account arrives at the great First Cause in that incomparably magnificent opening word: -In the beginning God created. -' (Genesis 1:1). Lifting the reader with one stroke out of the morass and confusion of the polytheistic accounts, in which primitive peoples in their naive efforts to explain the origin of the universe attributed each different phenomenon to a separate cause in the form of a deity, the Pentateuch conducts us at once to that which was totally beyond the grasp of the natural mind, the concept of the universe as a whole as the creative act of one God. By inspiration the author of the Pentateuch has the secret which the polytheistic writers of ancient Mesopotamia blindly groped after, the unifying principle of the universe. In an age grossly ignorant of causation, Genesis stands out all the more resplendently as a divine revelation. The discovery of secondary causes and the explanation of the how of creation in its ongoing operation is the achievement of science. How cause produces effect, how order and symmetry prevail, how physical phenomena and organic life are interdependentthese and similar questions science has answered. But science can go only so far. The elements of the universe, matter, force, order, it must take for granted. Revelation alone can answer the why of creation. The Bible alone discloses that the universe exists because God made it and brought it into being for a definite purpose. The account of the origin of the cosmos in Genesis, moreover, is not only incomparably superior in every respect to ancient cosmogonies and creation accounts, but what is all the more amazing in the light of the utterly unscientific age in which it was produced, is its scientific precision even when judged by the standards of our modern scientific age. Commenting on the account of creation which we find in Chapter I of Genesis, W. F. Albright calls the -sequence of creative phases-' which it outlines as -so rational that modern science cannot improve on it, given the same language and the same range of ideas in which to state its conclusions. In fact, modern scientific cosmogonies show such a disconcerting tendency to be short-lived that it may be seriously doubted whether science has yet caught up with the Biblical story.-' (This excerpt from Albright occurs in the article, The Old Testament and Archeology, in the Old Testament Commentary, H.C. Alleman and E. E. Flack (Philadelphia, 1948), p. 135).

6. Unscriptural Notions of God and Creation.(1) Atheism, means literally, no god. The term is applied generally to any theory that the universe is the product of blind chance; of fortuitous concourses of atoms, etc. (2) Agnosticism, which means literally, without knowledge. As Robert G. Ingersoll once put it: I do not say that there is no GodI simply say that I do not know. I do not say that there is no future lifeI simply say that I do not know. It has been rightly said that an agnostic is a man who wants to be an atheist. It is so much easier to profess agnosticism than to defend atheism. (3) Pantheism, meaning literally, all is God. Pantheism identifies God with the world, nature, the universe, etc. Objections: Pantheism is self-contradictory in that it tries to attribute infinity to God, yet shuts Him up within a finite process; moreover, it contradicts our intuitions as intelligent creatures that we are not particles of God, but unique self-conscious entities; and finally, it makes God include within Himself all evil as well as good, or takes the only possible alternative of regarding evil as illusion. But an illusion cannot be an illusion of nothing.Pantheism denies God's transcendence.(4) Deism, the view that there is a God, that He created the world and set it going, and then withdrew from all further intercourse with it, much as a man winds a clock and then expects it to run forever of its own accord. Objections: (a) Deism came into existence in the age in which Newton's concept of the rigidity of the laws of nature dominated all science. As someone has put it, Having brought God into the picture to account for these laws of nature, it then bowed Him out with thanks for His provisional services. (b) To accept deism is to reject special providence, prayer, miracle, redemption, inspiration, revelation, resurrection, immortality, etc., in short, the entire Plan of Redemption that is revealed in the Bible. (c) The concept of an infinite God who would create and then take no further interest in His Creation simply makes no appeal to man's spiritual consciousness. Such a concept of God has nothing to offer in the way of meeting human aspiration and human need. Such a God is not, cannot be, a God of Love. Deism denies the immanence of God. (5) Materialism, the theory that all phenomena of human experience are traceable ultimately to matter in motion.Objections: (a) Our only means of knowing matter is through the instrumentality of mind; hence, in knowing matter, mind proves itself to be of a higher order than the matter which it knows. (b) The attributes (powers) of mind are of a higher rank than the attributes of matter. Perception, consciousness, self-consciousness, meaning, the sense of values, and the like, simply cannot be explained on the ground of any powers inherent in matter. (c) Mind, rather than matter, proves itself to be the eternal and independent principle. It must continue to be so regarded until it can be scientifically demonstrated that mind is to be identified with the activity of brain cells. But all attempts to explain the psychical from the physical are failures: psychology cannot be reduced to sheer physiology.(d) Matter was never known to generate per se thought, feeling, or will. The sensible man knows intuitively that he is essentially spirit, although in this present life tabernacled in a body. (e) We must accept the eternity of spirit or find ourselves without any explanation of the noblest phenomena of our own being, viz., consciousness, personal intelligence, intuitive ideas, freedom of choice, moral progress, our beliefs in God and immortality, etc. Man simply refuses to believe what the materialist tries to tell himnamely, that he is of no higher order of being than the brute. (f) Modern research in the area of the phenomena of the subconscious supports conclusively, the spiritualistic interpretation of man, that is, the conviction that the person is essentially imperishable soul or spirit which the ultimate dissolution of the body cannot affect. (6) Dualism, the theory of two eternal self-existent principles, namely, Mind and Matter, or God and Energy-Matter. Objections: (a) It is unphilosophical to assume the existence of two unoriginated and unending principles, when one self-existent First Cause is sufficient to account for the facts. (b) Those who hold this view usually admit that matter is an unconscious, hence imperfect, substance, and therefore subordinate to the Divine Will; obviously, this is equivalent to admission of the priority of God as Eternal Spirit, Mind, etc. (c) If matter is inferior to mind it belongs in the realm of secondary causation. But this leaves us where the doctrine of Creation begins. This doctrine does not attempt to dispense with the First Cause; it ascribes adequate Efficient Causality of all things to God. (d) Creation without the use of pre-existing matter is in harmony with what we know of thought-power, and is, therefore, more reasonable than the notion of the eternity of matter, (Cf. recent research in the phenomena of extrasensory perception and psychokinesis. See Vol. I, pp. 93-98, of my Survey Course in Christian Doctrine.)

(7) Emanationism, the theory according to which the universe is the product of successive emanations from the being of God (variously designated Unity, The One, The Monad, etc.). This view is untenable because it denies the infinity and transcendence of God, because it makes the Deity include within Himself all evil as well as Good, and because it leads logically to pantheism, hence is subject to the same objections that are valid against pantheism. (8) Naturalism.Atheists and agnostics of our day prefer to be known as naturalists. However, because of the ambiguity of the word nature, so-called naturalismwhatever form it may takeis little more than denial of the supernatural, the superhuman, etc., especially what is known in Bible teaching as a miracle.

(9) Humanism is another favorite facade behind which modern-day atheists and agnostics hide. (a) Humanism may be what is roughly described as humanitarianism; for example, the humanism of the late Clarence Darrow. This type of humanism is rooted in extreme pessimism. In essence it is personal commitment to the task of ameliorating for our fellows the tragedy of living in this present evil world: to victims of this insatiable pessimism, the idea of a future life is not even entertained, nor is such a life even considered desirable. (b) Again, humanism may, and often does, take the form of the deification of man; subjectively, it is a chest-thumping philosophy, well exemplified in the poetry of Walt Whitman, William Henley, et al.(c) True humanism, however, is the humanism of the Bible, the humanism based on the two Great Commandments (Matthew 22:34-40; Matthew 5:1-12; Matthew 25:31-46; Galatians 5:22-25). This is the humanism that flows spontaneously out of the heart that is filled with love for God and for one's fellow-men. In our world, selfish and sinful as man may be, there is still altruism as well as self-seeking, co-operation as well as conflict. (See Pico della Mirandola's famous Oration on the Dignity of Man.)

(10) Polytheism is the name given to belief in many gods. Practically all the nations of antiquity invested every natural object with its protecting god or goddess, nymph or naiad. These polytheistic deities were, generally speaking, personifications of the forces of nature, and in particular of the Sun-Father and the Earth-Mother. (11) Monotheism, is thename given, to belief in one God only. Biblical monotheism is properly designated a self-revelation of the living and true God. The greatest spiritual struggle that the ancient Children of Israel faced continually was that of retaining the monotheistic self-revelation of Yahweh-Elohim, communicated to them, through the mediatorship of Moses, instead of drifting into the idolatrous polytheism of the tribes by which they were surrounded on all sides. (12) Henotheism is belief in one god, accompanied, however, by recognition of the existence of other deities. (13) What is known as monotheism (belief in one God) in religion is that which is known as monism (belief in one First Principle) in philosophy. Ethical monism is the designation which has been used at times to signify, from the viewpoint of philosophical terminology, the essence of Biblical religious theory and practice.

7. Theism (from the Greek theos (god): Latin equivalent, deus).The theistic God is the God of the Bible. Theism is the doctrine of the living God, the I AM (HE WHO IS), the Creator, Preserver, and Sovereign of the universe, both natural and moral (Exodus 3:14, Psalms 42:2, Hosea 1:10, Deuteronomy 6:4, Mark 12:29, Matthew 16:16, Acts 14:15, Romans 9:26, 1 Thessalonians 1:9, Hebrews 10:31). The God of the Bible is not personificationHe is pure Personality (Exodus 3:14). The God of the Bible is Pure Actuality; in Him all potentially is actualized; hence He is the living and true God. He is Wholeness, that is, Absolute Holiness, For the theist, God is transcendent in His being and immanent in His power. Thompson (MPR, 253): It is in theism that the concept of God comes alive, that rational thought can echo something of what religion finds God to be. It is in theism that the ultimates of existence and value are more than mere abstractions. It is in theism that religious thought can, for the first time, advance beyond myth and symbol and make rational contact with the objects of religion. No philosophical theism, however, can do justice to the objects of faith. It is true only so far as it can go, and it cannot go far. Yet it can go far enough to underwrite faith's affirmation that Goodness and Truth are one Being. (Job 11:7, Hebrews 11:6).

FOR MEDITATION AND SERMONIZING

The Fool's Decision

Psalms 14:1The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Note the phrase, in his heart, that is, that which is primarily emotional in man. One simply cannot logically think his way into atheism: the fact is that there must be a First Cause or First Principle who is sui generis (self-existent), that is, without beginning or end (Revelation 1:17-18); the only possible alternative would be that at some time, somewhere, and somehow, nothing created something. This, of course, would be absurd: as the ancients put it, ex nihilo, nihil fit.This Power which we call First Cause or First Principle in philosophy, we think of as God in Christian faith and practice, Atheism, therefore, is not a product of intelligence; it is, rather, the result of an emotional imbalance of some kind. I am convinced that the majority of atheists are professed atheists primarily because they want to be known as atheists.A perverted will is more often the source of unbelief and irreligiousness than ignorance or any other cause. (We are reminded of the Russian astronaut who said that he looked throughout the stratosphere, throughout the stretches of celestial space, but he failed to see any God anywhere. What stupidity! The living and true God is Spirit, not to be apprehended by the physical eye (John 4:24). But of course it is practically certain that this astronaut had never looked into the Biblethe fact that accounts for his stupidity!) Essentially we are what our thoughts make us to be.

We call attention here to three commonplace evidences of God in the world which are incidental to everyday experience, so much so in fact that, like the shining of the sun, we are prone to overlook their eternal significance. These are as follows:
1. Life.With the coming of every spring, as the poet has put it so exquisitely,

Whether we look or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.

(1) This profound mystery called lifeso elementary, so pervasive, so wonderfulwhat is it? The only answer issilence. This Stream of Life flows out from Someone, Somewhere, Somehow: it rises through the vegetable psyche and through the animal psyche, reaching its height in the rational psychein self-conscious personality (man). (2) We are born, not made; we were born of our parents, our parents were born of their parents, and so on and on and on. The first human parents were obviously the handiwork of previous Life. Life is generated, not created. The red River of Life (physical life is in the blood, Leviticus 17:11) has been flowing out from Somewhere, Someone, for ever and ever. This Someone is the living God (Matthew 22:32; Matthew 16:16; Acts 14:15; 1 Thessalonians 1:9; 1 Timothy 4:10; Hebrews 10:31) who breathed into the lifeless creature whom He had formed of the dust of the ground the Breath of Life (Genesis 2:7); hence, man is said to be the image of God (Genesis 1:27), (Note that the Source of this River of Life is the I AM, HE WHO IS, the Living One (Exodus 3:14; Revelation 22:1; Revelation 1:17-18) whose very essence is to be: in our God of the Bible existence and essence are one.) (3) Lifein whatever form, physical, spiritual, eternalis the gift of God (Acts 17:24-25; John 1:4-5; John 3:16; John 11:25-26; Romans 6:23; 1 John 5:11-12). If there is no God, no eternally Living One (Revelation 1:17-18), there is no explanation of life. Science still stands mute before the mysteries of being, What is energy: What is life? What is consciousness? What is self-consciousness? Man simply does not know: he can only imagine and speculate. As Tennyson has written

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flowerbut if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

2. Law.(1) Our world is a world of order; otherwise, there could never be a science, because science is man's effort to discover and to describe the order he finds in the various realms of being. (2) We hear so much about the laws of nature. But what are they? They are descriptions of the processes which take place in naturenothing more, nothing less. These laws may tell us how things act in their various interrelationships, but they do not tell us why they act as they do. (Two atoms of hydrogen, for example, unite with one atom of oxygen to form a molecule of water: this is how the process takes place. But why does it do so, in just these proportions? Science cannot answer this question. Faith alone can answer itbecause the answer is God, the Will of God.)

(3) Every effect in nature has its cause. M. M. Davis (HTBS, 15): A caravan was crossing the desert. An early riser reported that a camel had been walking about the tent during the night. He was asked how he knew it, and he pointed to the tracks in the sand, saving that nothing but a camel made such tracks. And when we look about us, we see the tracks of Jehovah. We see them in the hills and mountains, in the valleys and plains, in the rivers and oceans, in the flowers and trees, in the birds and fishes, in the sun, moon, and stars, in the covenant of the day and night, in the coming and going of the seasons, and, most of all, in man himself. With all his splendid achievements-and they are splendidman has not been able to make things like these. (4) It is just as true today as it ever was that design presupposes a designer.Titus, (LIP, 436), writing from the viewpoint of an evolutionist, in stating the teleological argument, has this to say: Take, for example, the long process of development leading to the human brain and mind of man. The process has produced minds which begin to understand the world, and it has produced thought and understanding. This is unintelligible unless the course of evolution is directed. (5) The most famous argument from design for the existence of God is that of William Paley, in Chapter s I-VI of Paley's Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, a book first published in 1802. The argument is as sound as it ever was: nothing has ever been discovered that would negate it. In crossing a heath, writes Paley, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place: I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? Why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, viz., that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g., that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. This mechanism being observed (it requires indeed an examination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge of the subject, to perceive and to understand it; but being once, as we have said, observed and understood), the inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose for which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction and designed its use. (I have reproduced here only a small fraction of Paley's complete argument. I urge every Bible student to secure a copy of Paley's book and read the argument as a whole; it is thoroughgoing, completely logical, and in my humble opinion, incontrovertible, that is, by any person with an unbiased attitude.) The application is obvious: The Cosmos, Universe, World, etc., like a great watch, is so replete with evidence of order and design, that the presupposition of a Supreme Architect or Designer is unavoidable. (6) As thought presupposes a thinker, as adaptation presupposes a being to adapt, as behavior presupposes a being to do the behaving, as love presupposes a lover, so law presupposes a lawgiver.Scientists, in their use of the term law, pay tribute, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to the Supreme Lawgiver. (It should be remembered that science borrowed this term from jurisprudence, not jurisprudence from science.) (7) Where there is law, there is the lawgiver. This is true in the natural world: the Will of God, expressed through the Word, and actualized by the Spirit, created the cosmos, and sustains it in its various processes. But will belongs to the person and personality; hence, the orderly natural processes which men describe in terms of laws are but the methods by which the Divine Person expends His energy. Science admits the fact of law; to be consistent, it must admit the fact of the Lawgiver whose Will is the constitution of the cosmos.

Back of the loaf is the snowy flour,

And back of the flour the mill;

And back of the mill is the wheat and the shower,

And the sun, and the Father's will.

(-Maltbie B. Babcock)

(8) Not only in the vast reaches of outer space, nor in the complexities of the submicroscopic atom, are we brought face to face with the Primary Intelligence and Will, but in the moral realm as well. The distinction between good and bad, right and wrong, rests eternally in the Will of our God, the God who is Absolute Justice (Psalms 89:14; Psalms 85:10). All moral norms emanate from God, either implanted in man by creation or communicated to him by revelation (Romans 7:7). (9) The same is true in the spiritual realm. The law of Moses was God's Will for the Jewish Dispensation (John 1:17). The Gospelthe law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1-4)is God's power unto salvation to all obedient believers throughout the present Dispensation (Romans 1:16-17; Romans 2:12-16). Why so? Because it is the Will of God with respect to human redemption. God wills that all men shall believe, repent, confess Christ, be baptized into Christ, and continue steadfastly thereafter in the Spiritual Life (Acts 16:31; Acts 2:38; Romans 10:9-10; Galatians 3:27; Acts 2:42; Galatians 5:22-25), and He promises eternal redemption on these terms and conditions (Hebrews 9:11-12). If the Bible does not have its source in the Will and Love of God, it is a miserable hoax. If it is not all that it claims to be, it is the greatest imposture ever perpetrated on humanity.

3. Love.(1) This master passion which has inspired innumerable hymns, songs, poems, works of art, and deeds of sacrificial service, is an ever-present energy flowing out from Someone, Somewhere, even as life and law. Those who concern themselves so much with the problem of evil and its origin, need give attention also to the fact of good and its source: for Love is the Highest Good, the Summum Bonum. (2) What is love? It is not sensuality. It is attraction to an object combined with the desire for oneness with that object. The nobility of the love is determined by the nobility of its object. (3) As the essential principle of life is growth, and of law is authority, so the essential principle of love is sacrifice.He who loves much will give much. One will inevitably espouse the interests of the object of one's love: for example, the mutual love of sweethearts, the love of parents for their children, the love of a patriot for his country, the love of the man of true piety for his God. So when our God looked out upon the world and saw His moral creatures in danger of perishing forever, He incarnated Himself as their Savior (1 John 4:8, John 3:16, Matthew 1:23; Hebrews 2:14-18; Hebrews 4:14-16). Love is the greatest force on this earthit is far mightier than the sword. It will be the sole motivating force in Heaven: there faith will become knowledge; hope will attain fruition, but love will be all in all, imperishable, and sovereign (1 Corinthians 13:13).

The night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one;

Let the light of the bright world dies

With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,

And the heart but one;

Yet the light of a whole life dies

When love is done.

(Francis W. Bourdillon).

Strange, yet powerful, echoes of Godlife, law, and love-forces of Heaven, universal in scope, without beginning Or end. Man is here today and gone tomorrow, but life, law, and love are for ever. Life presupposes a personal God, law a sovereign God, and love a compassionate God. Only a fool says in his heart, There is no God. Practical atheism is, of course, far more common than theoretical atheism. The practical atheist takes no account of God in his life; he lives as if there were no God; he is altogether heedless of the outcome of his ways, of the inevitability of. inflexible Justice.

Are you a practical atheist? Then you are foolish. Are you a theoretical atheist? Then you, too, are foolish, Atheism is foolishness, the essence of which is stupidity. The denial of God is the most stupid decision a person can make, because it. not only consigns him to the complete loss of God as his eternal destiny, but it also enslaves him to a warped and twisted outlook on his life and its meaning in this present world. Turn ye, turn ye, before it is everlastingly too late (James 4:8).

The Living God

Acts 17:22-31. Joh. 4:24. Who-or what-is God? What does the word signify? Whoor whatis its true referent?

Let us approach this question, first, negatively:
1. God is not just an idea in the human mind. (There are those who insist that instead of God having created man in His image, man has in fact created God in his imagination.) To this we object that any group of men capable of fabricating by sheer imagination a God of Justice, Love and Grace such as the God of the Bible, or of a Revealer of God such as Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be, would themselves have to be gods. If Jesus had not lived at all, the writers of the Gospels would have been as great as He by virtue of their ability to imagine such a Personage and to put on His lips such a Teaching as that revealed in their biographies of Him. Jesus Himself declared expressly: He that hath seen me hath seen the Father (John 14:9). It is the contention of this writer that the conclusive proof of the existence of God is to be foundbut only by honest and good hearts, of course (Luke 8:15, Matthew 13:14-15, Isaiah 6:9-10, Acts 28:25-28)-in the life and teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ (John 17:1-5, Hebrews 1:1-4). If Jesus was not all that He claimed to be, then He was the rankest imposter who ever appeared in the world.

2. God is not just a projection of the father-image, as the Freudians would have us believe: religion, they say, is essentially belief based on wish, that is, wish-fulfilment, In reply to this rather subtle deception, it will be noted (1) that it tends to lead to a gross idolatry of Man, (2) that Freud exemplified his own wish-fulfilment notion by his bitterness and dogmatism about religion, that is, his extremism exemplifies his own inner desire, not just to explain religion, but to explain it away; (3) that his writings show that he had not the faintest conception of what genuine religious experience is, and little or no understanding of the essential unity and spirituality of the content of the Bible (a characteristic of many so-called learned men); (4) that his basic thesis is flatly contradicted by the fact that religious conviction has led innumerable believers to suffer persecution and even martyrdom for their faith (wish-fulfilment and vicarious sacrifice cannot be reconciled); (5) and finally, the Freudian, and indeed all atheistic arguments, simply ignore the fact of the Mystery of Being, the explanation of which man's history shows to have been always his most universal and profound concern. The various arguments for the existence of God are hardly affected by the Freudian hypothesis.

3. God is not a material object or idol, not a likeness of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below. In the ancient Greek temple the statue of the god or goddess occupied the main room known as the cella, e.g., the statue of Athena Parthenos (Athena the Virgin) in the cella of the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis. To devotees of pagan temple worship, the statue was, literally, the god or goddess. Idolatry is expressly forbidden throughout Scripture (Exodus 20:4-6, 1 John 5:21, 1 Corinthians 10:14, 1 Thessalonians 1:9). (Are not artistic representations of Jesus, in sculpture, statuary, portraiture, etc., under the ban of this same Divine prohibition of idolatry in any form, and hence evidences of human profanity?)

4. God is not nature nor is He anything in nature. Some wag has facetiously suggested that the pantheist (who identifies God with nature) could well perform his daily devotion each morning simply by kissing his pillow before arising to the duties of the day. God is not natureHe is the Author of nature. (Genesis 1:1, Acts 17:24, Colossians 1:16-17, Hebrews 1:1-4.) God is not anything in nature: hence He is not to be worshiped as sun, moon, stars, earth, or any created thing. The religious experience reaches far beyond the esthetic, that is to say, from nature itself to the God of nature, from the created to the Creator.

5. God is not a personification of anything whatsoever, The old pagan deities were all personifications of natural forces (such as Zeus, of the sun, or Athena, of wisdom), but the living and true God is not personification in any senseHe is pure personality (Exodus 3:14).

6. God is not an impersonal energy, influence, or principle. He is not of the order of electricity, the atomic process, the life process, and the like. He is not just an impersonal principle, such as Mind, for example. God has mind, to be sure, but we only create confusion when we say that God and Mind are identical. Nor is God some abstract impersonal influence. Of course, God is good; but God is not to be identified with the abstract moral influence, Good. God is love, too; but this does not mean that God and Love are one and the same: it means that our God is the God of Love (John 3:16, 1 John 4:7-21). In the sense, of course, that He is the Creator-God, He may properly be designated philosophically the First Principle (from principium, source, origin, from princeps, the first in line when a Roman military company (centuria, century) numbered off.) This does not mean, however, that God is an impersonal abstraction of some kind. Principle is the first thing in nature, law the second, and matter, as we know it, is third.

Approaching the subject, then, affirmatively, who is God?

It will be noted that Jesus used two designations for God, (1) Spirit (John 4:24), and Heavenly Father (Matthew 6:26; Matthew 6:9; John 17:11). The former gives us insight into the nature or type of being of God; the latter designates God's special relationship with His Covenant children. By these two terms Jesus has given us a clearer insight into the meaning of the word, God, than can be gotten from all the sophisticated names coined by the philosophers. By these two designations Jesus has made God intelligible, that is, congenial to man.

1. God is Spirit.God is the one and only infinitely perfect Spirit, the Creator and Ruler of all things, and the Author of all good. This is to say that God as to nature is personal, having understanding, affection, and free will, but not having a body. (Romans 11:34, John 3:16, Luke 22:42, Isaiah 46:10, Ephesians 3:11). Where there is spirit, there is personality, uniqueness, otherness, vitality, and sociality. Therefore, our God who is a Spirit is a personal God, a living God, a loving God. In the sense that God is personal, we too are personal: we have been created in His image (Genesis 1:26-27). Strong (ST, 250): God is not only spirit, but He is pure spirit. He is not only not matter, but He has no necessary connection with matter. Again: When God is spoken of as appearing to the patriarchs and walking with them, the passages are to be explained as referring to God's temporary manifestations of Himself in human formmanifestations which prefigured the final tabernacling of the Son of God in human flesh.

2. God is Heavenly Father.A distinction is essential here: In a universal sense God as Creator is the Father of all spirits (Hebrews 12:9; cf. Genesis 2:7). It is as Redeemer, however, that God is to His Covenant-elect, their Heavenly Father. There is no evidence in Scripture that the natural, the unregenerate, person, the one who has never accepted the terms of Covenant relationship, has any right to address God by. this special relational Name. (1 Corinthians 2:14; Ephesians 2:1-10; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:6; John 14:13-14; 2 Corinthians 6:18) (Note especially Luke 15:3-7; Luke 15:11-32. What we have here is not the Narrative of the Prodigal Son, as it is commonly designated; what we have here in fact is the Narrative of the Forgiving Father. There is no portrayal of God which compares with this in all the literature of man.)

To summarize (according to Knudson, RTOT, 65): God is no blind force in nature, no vague spiritual presence, no abstract principle, but a living personal being, who distinguishes himself from the world which he has made, freely communicates himself to his children, and by his sovereign will guides the course of nature and history.

What should we learn from these truths about God? We should learn (1) that our God is always yearning for us to draw near to Him (James 4:8); (2) that true worship is the communion of the human spirit with the Divine Spirit, according to the means and appointments of the Word of truth (John 4:24; John 8:31-32; John 17:17); (3) that our chief end in life is to love and serve God here, that we may enjoy unending fellowship with Him hereafter (Romans 6:23, 1 John 1:1-4, Matthew 25:34).

The Living Word

Hebrews 4:12-13, 1 Samuel 15:22. Nothing is so displeasing to God as disregard for His Word. Yet the world is full of persons todaymany of them church-memberswho talk ignorantly and glibly about what they call the mere Word. (There are no meres in the Divine vocabulary.) The Word has been from all eternity, from before the foundation of the world and the creation of man. To trifle with the Word is to commit heinous sin (Matthew 24:35, Mark 8:38, 1 Thessalonians 2:13).

Note the following matters of profound importance:
1. Practically all the confusion (sectism) in Christendom is directly traceable to man's presumption: that is, caused by his adding to, subtracting from, or substituting for, the Word.
2. Exaltation of feelings, experience, the inner consciousness, etc., as authority in religious faith and practice, over the plain teaching of the Word, is mysticism.For eighteen centuries the Church has been loaded down with all forms of mysticism, every one of which effectively nullifies the power of the Word.

3. Exaltation of institution above the plain teaching of the Word results in literalism, legalism, and especially in traditionalism.Traditionalism exalts ecclesiasticism, hierarchism, and church dogma and decree, above the authority of the Scriptures, whereas the Bible is our all-sufficient Book of Discipline, fully adequate to furnish the man of God completely unto every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). If a creed contains more than the Bible, it contains too much; if it contains less than the Bible, it does not contain enough; if it contains the same as the Bible, it is unnecessary, because we have the Bible. Let us endeavor, therefore, to speak where Scripture speaks, and to keep silent where Scripture is silent.

4. The Word of God cannot be resisted by material things: when God speaks, all nature obeys (John 1:1, Hebrews 1:3, 2 Peter 3:5, Psalms 33:9). The only power on earth that can resist or neglect God's Word is man's free will (John 5:40, Romans 13:1-2, Hebrews 2:1-4, and the man who does either nullifies God's power to redeem him. Cf. Romans 1:16note the qualifying phrase, to every one that believeth.

5. There will be just two classes in the Day of Judgment: those who have done, and those who have not done, what is commanded in the Word (Matthew 7:24-27, Hebrews 5:9). The supreme question is not, What must I feel to be saved? but is always, What must I do to be saved (Acts 2:38; Acts 16:30; Acts 22:10). Men must do something to be saved: they must do what God requires them to do to enter into Covenant relationship with Him. They must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31); they must repent, turn from sin (Acts 2:38; Acts 17:30, Luke 13:3); they must confess Christ (Matthew 10:32-33, Romans 10:8-10); they must be buried with Christ in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life (Acts 2:38, Galatians 3:27, Romans 6:3-5); they must continue steadfastly in the essentials of Christian faith and worship (Acts 2:42, 2 Peter 1:5-11); they must bring forth in their lives the works of faith and the fruit of the Spirit (2 Peter 3:18, James 2:14-26, Galatians 5:22-25). Note especially, in closing, the solemn warnings in Hebrews 4:12-13, and in 1 Samuel 15:22.