Christian Worldview Concepts

Basic Beliefs of the Christian Worldview - God Is and God Spoke

Christian Basic Beliefs: God Is - The Metaphysical Necessity

The first and most important element of the Christian worldview is that "God is," that is, God exists as a self-existing, self-sufficient being whose existence is necessary for anything else to exist. In order for there to be a Christian worldview there must be a God. In a Christian view of reality, God is ultimate. He is the Source of everything else that exists.

In his excellent book, He is There and He is Not Silent, the late Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer aptly describes the metaphysical² necessity, pointing out that there are only three possible answers to the question, "What is the nature of reality and how did it start?" One answer is that everything that exists has come out of absolutely nothing. The second is that the universe had an impersonal, chance beginning. The third option is that the universe had a personal beginning.

Option One: The Universe Came from Absolutely Nothing
Philosophers such as the French existentialist Jean Paul Sartre claim that the question of reality is meaningless because everything came from nothing and is going to nothing. Schaeffer correctly points out that when someone claims the universe ultimately came from nothing, they must say absolutely nothing. Schaeffer explains, "It must be absolutely nothing. It must be what I call nothing nothing. It cannot be nothing something, or something nothing. If one is going to accept this answer, it must be nothing nothing, which means there must be no energy, no mass, no motion and no personality." (F. Schaeffer (1982), He is There and He is Not Silent, Tyndale House Publishers, p. 178.) Schaeffer rightly challenges the self-refuting claim of those who assert that everything came from nothing. "You must not let anybody say he is giving an answer beginning with nothing and then really begin with something: energy, mass, motion or personality. That would be something, and something is not nothing."

If the universe must have come from something, how is it that some Christians believe God created the universe out of nothing — so called creation ex nihilo? The simple answer is that God can create something from nothing because 1) he is something and 2) nothing exists before he creates it. We will explain this further under Option Three.

Option Two: The Universe had an Impersonal Beginning
Within scientific circles, the notion that the universe had an impersonal beginning from elementary particles is the majority view (e.g., Bryan Green, The Elegant Universe, Stephen J. Hawking, Carl Sagan, Cosmos). However, if the universe did in fact emerge from an impersonal beginning, there is no way for conditions to develop that would give rise to personal beings in such a universe. As soon as you explain the existence of everything as having an impersonal beginning, you are forced to accept the fact that the universe is also without meaning. If the universe as a whole is devoid of meaning, then all of the particulars within the universe are without meaning. If all of the particulars within the universe are without meaning, then human beings are without meaning. However, since human beings live their lives as though they do have meaning, expressing desires for connection to other human beings, those who subscribe to this view of the universe owe the rest of us an explanation to the existence of meaning in a universe whose beginning was impersonal. On its face, the impersonal beginning option is invalid.

No one has sufficiently demonstrated how an impersonal, chance beginning produced a universe containing people who possess a sense of individuality, purpose and meaning. Some attempt to overcome this deficiency by constructing some form of cosmic pantheism (e.g., Mother Naturism), but Schaeffer rightly describes these attempts are mere semantic solutions.

Option Three: The Universe had a Personal Beginning
Finally, we arrive at the third and final option: that the universe had a personal beginning. Someone once said that when you get done with any basic question there are usually not many people left in the room. If the preceding two options are wrong, there remains only one that can be true — the universe had a personal beginning. What questions does this option answer that the other two do not?

1. The universe has meaning because its origin has meaning.
2. The particulars within the universe have meaning.
3. Human beings, as particulars, have meaning.

Only a personal, infinite, self-sufficient, self-existing Being is big enough to accomplish what would need to be accomplished in order for the universe to have meaning. These features are necessary for the universe to be what it is. The question before us is this: does the nature of this necessary Being correspond to the description of the God of the Bible? The answer is a resounding "yes."

"God is" — there is no other option, and Christians need not be embarrassed or ashamed to proclaim this from the rooftops. This is not merely the best answer, it is the only answer. God is the only being who does not have an antecedent to his existence.

The implications from the fact that "God is" are monumental. First, all that exists traces its ultimate origin back to God. Nothing exists that did not have God as its Source. Second, everything in creation has meaning and purpose. Third, humans as God's special creation made in his image (Genesis 1:26), are valuable because they are related to God — they are his image. The ultimate meaning for human existence comes from the fact that each human being is a unique, one-of-a-kind person whose value is derived from the true and living God.

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² Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that deals with the question of reality and what is ultimately real. A sub-discipline in metaphysics is ontology, which deals with the issues of being or what it means to exist.