In a deep and varied recent conversation with Michael Horton, Joseph Minich of The Davenant Institute discussed the themes of his latest book, Bulwarks of Unbelief (Lexham Academic, 2023).
I encourage you to watch the interview. But fair warning: Minich's breadth of learning and depth of reflection can be a lot to chew on! But a gourmet meal is usually worth the extra effort to prepare and enjoy it.
And if the written word is more to your taste, maybe you'd rather treat the video as a tasty dessert to a different main course: Modern Reformation published an entire ten part series with Minich exploring these themes in all their tragic, yet ultimately glorious, detail.
Bon appétit!
Is God's existence a hypothesis? Minich asks us to consider a counterintuitive situation: many modern people, Christians and non-Christians, share the same assumption that believing in "God" is an option. We tend to treat God as the first step in a whole series of factors explaining where everything came from, which we can choose to believe in or not, rather than what he really is: not only the cause of creaturely existence, but the exclusive source of all things, pre-condition for all meaning, and goal of all flourishing.
What Does It Mean to Ask If God Exists?
In many ways, Minich suggests, to ask if God exists is already missing the reality: any god that doesn't necessarily exist falls short of being truly God. If I'm pondering someone or something who can exist or not, I'm imagining something and someone other than the one true God. Indeed, God is identical with his own existence, the "I AM" who purely is without deriving his existence from any other.
Yahweh and the God of the Philosophers
Sometimes it can feel like treating God as pure act or necessary Being can feel like neglecting or even denying the Bible's emphasis on YHWH as the personal covenant God of Israel and the One ultimately revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Minich explores how these different biblical and philosophical ways of speaking are addressing different questions and should be complementary. And we should always remember that any remaining tension between them is reconciled in Christ, and will be reconciled for us when he makes all things new.
The Phenomenon of Divine Absence
Even many Christians (especially those who are intellectually engaged) experience seasons of doubt when we feel God's absence. But Minich argues that to equate absence with non-existence is a peculiarly modern assumption. When we have doubts, we shouldn't supress them, but bring them to God and his people to find mercy and help in our time of need.
In this historical survey and analysis, Minich traces the origins and motivations of modern atheism. In the process, he explores the vast differences between the way pre-moderns and moderns experience and interepret many aspects of the world and our place in it.
Minich encourages us to see that modern life doesn't just lead to threats, like making atheism more plausible; there are also opportunities for mature and powerful Christian witness as well. We shouldn't simply be nostalgic for an earlier, more enchanted time; pre-modernity was different in a whole host of ways, but that doesn't make it inherently superior to our own time. Each era has its unique challenges, but human doubt about God has been a struggle in each, while God's grace in revealing himself persists through them all.
Minich shows how the proofs demonstrating God's existence are particularly limited nowadays: even sound arguments often fail to produce the "inflexible confidence" in God's existence that we want the proofs to achieve. For pre-modern Christians, the proofs existed in a whole web of other beliefs about the nature of God and the dependence of all things upon him. For most moderns, the question of God is now more moral and aesthetic: as much wrapped up in what we find attractive and compelling as in what we find true.
God addresses the whole person, not just the intellect but the will and emotions. Minich argues that our view of God, and worship of him, are distorted when we privilege any of these aspects of knowing God. Beauty and goodness are related, but not the same—we can acknowledge something is good without finding it appealing. The same is true of questions about God's beauty and goodness. At the same time, our sense of what's attractive is distorted by sin and culture and needs to be retrained to find lovely what God says is beautiful—a beauty ultimately fulfilled in Christ as the "desire of the nations" (Haggai 2:7).
While Minich describes our doubt about God's beauty as suspecting him of being a "killjoy," our doubt about God's goodness suspects him of being an outright killer. But even when we complain against God or give our allegience to some idol or another, we implicitly deny the goodness of God. What God says is good are often the very things we find objectionable. And since we often change our mind to suit our desires, it's extremely important to recognize when there's a distortion in our beliefs about what's good and praiseworthy. Minich also explores deep questions about the nature of evil, God's sovereignty, human responsibility, and how everything holds together in Jesus.
While the role of truth in intellectual reflection and apologetics regarding God's existence are an important aspect of Christian education and maturity, Minich explains why they're no substitute for whole-person formation by the Spirit in the word among God's people, growing us more and more into faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. We'll never exhaustively know the mystery of God's being or have unquestionable certainty about all truth this side of glory—but we do see Jesus by faith even now, the very Truth of God and man in person. He is the face of God beholding us and the face of man beholding God. And one day, for us personally, that faith will be sight.
