CMP Review 2024-06-30

In his 1983 book The second Christianity, John Hick describes the faith of the Old Testament prophets:

God was known to them as a dynamic will interacting with their own wills; a sheer given reality, as inescapably to be reckoned with as destructive storm and life-giving sunshine or the fixed features of the land or the hatred of their enemies and the friendship of their neighbours. He was not to them an inferred reality but an experienced reality.

Dr. William Lane Craig points to these words as an explanation of the idea that we “can know that God exists wholly apart from arguments simply by experiencing him.” In fact, warns Craig, “there’s the danger that arguments for God could actually distract our attention from God himself.”

Perhaps this is part of what Jesus had in mind when He said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes.” And so Dr. Craig invites us: “If you’re sincerely seeking God then God will make his existence evident to you.” Charlotte Mason invites too, in her poem “I Thank Thee, O Father!” Read or hear it here.

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