Christians are really agnostics; in fact, we all are — here’s why
Stephen H. Provost
Does God exist?
It’s a question I’ve asked before, and I’m far from the only one. But I woke up this morning to a realization: Unless you know what you’re asking about, how can you even ask the question?
You have to be able to define something before you can ask whether it exists. I know a tree can be defined roughly as a form of plant life with a trunk, branches, leaves (or needles), and roots. So, if I see one, I can tell you it exists.
Probably.
There is this qualification: We’re all subject to the limits of our perception, and faulty perception can short-circuit the process. Sometimes our perspective skews our view of things, and sometimes our vision is limited. Other times, we see what we want to see. That oasis may not be an oasis, but just the effect of heat shimmering across the landscape on a 100-degree day.
Biblical perspectives
In order to define something, you have to be able to see it — or, in a broader sense, perceive it — and the Judeo-Christian tradition says this is impossible: “You cannot see my face, for no man can see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). A voice was communicating this, so there was some sense of perception, but later scripture defines the voice of God as a “still small voice” or a delicate whisper, suggesting that it’s more an inner prompting than an audible sound (1 Kings 19:12).
The reason no one can see God is also of interest: “No man can see my face and live.” One has to ask why. A possible answer: The sight of God would be so overwhelming that the human mind could simply not contain it.
That’s a theme found elsewhere, as well, when Solomon declares: “Even the highest heavens cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built” (1 Kings 8:27).
Even the name of the Old Testament deity was kept secret, expressed only in the four-letter code YHWH, commonly rendered as Jehovah or Yahweh. This wasn’t a name, but a shorthand way of referring to someone whose name we don’t know. It’s kind of like saying, “Hey you! Big guy!” There’s a superstitious reason for this: In the ancient world, people believed that names themselves held power. If you knew the name of a divine being, you gained access to that being’s power. But in a broader sense, it also reinforced the point that God could not be defined — not even by a name.
One meaning of the word “define” involves making a clear outline of something or delineating its boundaries, thereby containing it. But if something can’t be contained, how can it be defined? Any definition is rendered meaningless. Paul of Tarsus called the ways of God “inscrutable” — unfathomable — and asked rhetorically, “Who has known the mind of the lord?” (Romans 11:33-34).
He even went so far as to call his god “an unknown god” (Acts 17:23).
Defining the indefinable
Paradoxically, there is a Christian definition of God. In broad terms, it involves a unified trinity (another paradox) responsible for both creation and the redemption of humankind. But there are other definitions of God, apart from Christianity, that don’t involve any of this.
The Judaic definition is that of a creator and lawgiver. Some Pagan definitions view the divine as a council of gods or competing tribes of gods. Then there’s the pantheist model, which identifies the universe itself as divine, and the deist model, which suggests that God created the universe and then basically left it to its own devices.
That’s an incomplete list, and of the above are broad generalizations: They have to be for the purpose of a brief discussion such as this. But the point is that we, as a species, have yet to come up with a single agreed-upon definition of what we mean when we use the word “God.” If we can’t define something, especially something this important and fundamental, how can we even begin to ask whether it exists?
Does a mandocomeci exist? How about a doxig? Or a trudecorr? I don’t know, because I don’t know what those words mean (I made them up). The same principle applies to the word god. If we don’t know what it means, how can we know whether it exists?
Faith as an answer
Christianity supplies the answer. We can’t. We can only have faith. This is why Christians are called “believers” rather than “knowers.” They’re really just agnostics who have decided to believe in spite of their agnosticism. The author of Hebrews describes faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). Or perceived. Or defined. Paul wrote that he and other Christians walked by faith, not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7).
The question then becomes where we place our faith? In the Christian God? The Pagan gods? The universe? Or do we choose to be atheists, literally “without god(s)”? Even atheists can’t really know there isn’t a god, because that would require a definition, too. Besides, it’s very hard to prove a negative, and the Christians are quite right about this: Our human minds are incapable of knowing everything in the universe, much less comprehending it.
So, regardless of our faith — or lack thereof — we’re all agnostics when it comes right down to it.
That’s not a bad thing. It just means we’ve got a lot to learn.