As a teenager I remember being perplexed by atheism and began to thoroughly research the worldview. I thought, “if logical proofs of God’s existence have been known since antiquity, why are there still atheists?”

When I was a freshman, in 2006, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion was published and very popular among my peers. Some of it is based on misunderstandings of God’s nature and alleged Bible contradictions. Yet, quite a bit was emotionally charged accusations against God’s character.

Similarly, it seems the majority of atheists I’ve engaged with over the years have latched on to the so-called moral problems with Christianity. They’d argue, how could a good God allow slavery, command genocide, or appear to marginalize women?

(Of course, such reasoning isn’t a positive argument favoring atheism. Some god may exist and be wicked! But alas…)

The moral questions are all valid and I’ve enjoyed wrestling with some challenging passages over the years. Yet, it’s still odd to me that these are arguments against Christianity. If God is the source of goodness in the creation, what basis do we have to challenge what He decrees as moral? The atheists must sufficiently and objectively define morality to even claim God is immoral. Typically they either embrace subjectivism or evolutionary pragmatism.

For me, the core argument that defines and proves the Christian God of the Bible is His transcendence. This attribute sets Him apart from most other deities and disproves materialistic naturalism. If God exists independent and above the created order, then He is unmoved by it and timeless. We call this doctrine God’s transcendence.

This isn’t an article explaining the cosmological argument (though that’s a good idea for the future). Briefly, I can assure you God’s existence is logical as the First Cause and Unmoved Mover. God is the only non-contingent being - that is, that which all other things depend on while itself depends on nothing.

Our universe consists of space, time, and energy. Because God is transcendent, beyond those material elements, He must be spaceless, timeless, and infinitely powerful. Thus, we can also define God’s omnipresence, immutability, and omnipotence.

Transcendence in Scripture

Scripture affirms this doctrine of God clearly in 1 Timothy 6:15–16. He is the only ruler of all the universe and lives in an unapproachable light, an existence beyond our complete comprehension. We cannot perceive God without Him revealing Himself first in our realm, ultimately and perfectly through His Son in the incarnation (John 1:18, 6:46).

Jeremiah 23:23-24 is another text testifying to God’s transcendent nature. The false prophets before the captivity promised peace and safety for the nation of Israel. God, the source of truth, is beyond the here and now. His presence fills the whole earth and heavens. And since He is an eternal being, He exists before and outside of the created order.

Therefore, the people should obviously trust God’s message over lying shepherds. The hope of Israel’s final expected redemption is still in the Messiah, the righteous branch of David - who is called YHWH, our righteousness (23:5-6). Perhaps Jesus was intending His audience to connect His words in John 10:11-18 to this passage.

God’s presence fills the earth and His power sustains it; logically, then, He must precede and have preeminence over it. 1 Kings 8:27 further declares God cannot be contained in the heavens. God is not limited by the cosmos. Although, He willfully enters creation to grace us with His love. Solomon was privileged to build the temple as the center of the nation’s worship, but he was humble enough to recognize God is not bound by a material building.

In Job 38 God describes Himself as Him who laid the foundation of the worlds and measured out the sky. He has mastery over creation as one far above it. Thus, He cannot be bound or constrained in any way to it.

There are a number of comforting truths connected to God’s transcendence. Here are just a few:

Special Revelation Is Necessary

The nature of time means there must be a First Cause greater and outside of all other events. Evidence of intelligent design in life may imply character traits of the designer, such as creativity, benevolence, and supreme rationality. These are examples of natural revelation. Being made in God’s image, humans by observation and reason alone can determine that the Creator exists (Psalm 19:1-6, Romans 1:18-21).

However, because God is transcendent, the Creator’s purpose is only known because He has made Himself knowable. Without God interjecting direct, or special, revelation into creation, we could only arrive at deism (Flew’s conclusion, see “There is a God: Flew’s Pilgrimage of Reason”). Such a cold, unresponsive deity is not the God of the Bible. He has revealed Himself as love, and always acting consistent with His character.

Scripture reveals a grand narrative from humanity’s fall in sin to the Messiah’s redemption and ultimately creation’s restoration and renewal. Without God inspiring Scripture, we would not know the story of His amazing grace.

God created a world that reveals Himself precisely because He made us with the capacity of complex language, moral discernment, and spiritual desires. The image of God is encoded into our nature so that we can seek Him (Genesis 1:27). And God, in His perfect wisdom, has given people their exact place and time so that we should find Him. The beauty of God is He has not made Himself hidden (Acts 17:26-27).

While most religions focus on man finding the divine through devotion or mythicism, Christianity recognizes God cannot be attained by means of this world. In fact, God Himself entered creation by sending His Son as fully human, and yet remaining the perfect representation of His being (Hebrews 1:1-3). The mystery of the incarnation resolves the conflict of God’s transcendence with man’s finitude.

People must know of Jesus Christ to resolve their eternal need for spiritual life. The clockmaker god of deism is not one who even needs believing or would demand worship. But for Christianity, how can anyone believe without hearing? And how shall we hear without a preacher? (Romans 10:14). Thus, the purposes of God, His ultimate designs for creation, are perceivable by the revelation of His Word.

Almost every religious tradition claims revelation, whether other scripture, cosmic signs, or dreams and visions. The need for revelation to explain God doesn’t itself tell us which forms are valid. The rational religious person should take due diligence to weigh and evaluate the consistency of prophecy with itself, logic, and evidence. I’d love to explore the details of Biblical prophecy in a later article!

God’s Image Post Fall

Although made in God’s image, humanity certainly fell into sin that now pollutes our nature. We all have a propensity towards wickedness. The Reformed thinkers consider man henceforth unable to respond to God, their doctrine of total inability. The Bible presents a different view.

Men become hardened to God’s call by suppressing the truth (Romans 1:18). They often reject life because they love the darkness, not because they are unable to comprehend it (John 3:19-20). Furthermore, receiving the witness of God, His divine revelation concerning the Son, is the same ordinary sense in which one receives the witness of men (1 John 5:9-10). It is greater in content and quantity, but not differing in function or substance.

James 3:9 indicates all persons retain the image of God, despite their separation from God. This is not to imply humans can seek God apart from His initiation. Because God is transcendent, He must first reveal Himself, which He does freely to all through our conscience (Romans 2:14–15), the Holy Spirit (John 16:7-11), and the uniqueness of the atonement and resurrection (John 12:32).

We Can Trust God

Naturally then, the transcendence of God makes Him reliable in His Word. He is not moved by space-time because He exists as a purely non-contingent Being. He designed a universe of highly precise order, intelligence, and beauty. It’s logical then to think of God as a master planner. In fact, being outside of all things, He is able to see the end from the beginning (Psalm 90:2, Isaiah 46:10). Since God is immutable (Numbers 23:19, Malachi 3:6) and eternal, His promises must reflect His nature of being unchanging and non-contingent.

For God to exist as a maximally perfect Being, His promises cannot depend on deception, falsehood or any kind of defects. Scripture affirms God’s nature as absolute truth in Titus 1:2, John 14:6, and 1 John 1:5. God is the fullness of good and knows all timelines to never need (or desire) defects to achieve His purposes. Thus, whatever conditions exist for His gift of eternal life, they must exist as the best possible conditions.

Finite or dependent agents, like humans or angels, exist with ontological limitations - lacking a complete understanding of all facts with constraints on their powers and goodness. God is then the only Being worthy of our trust with an unlimited potential of His essence. We may break promises to accommodate changing circumstances. God, however, is never surprised by any event in history so as to revise His plans (Genesis 50:20).

God promises many things in Scripture, the most important being the gift of eternal life. The secure position of the believer is found in God’s nature, character, and the content of His promise itself.

Salvation Can Only Be Grace

God exists completely independent of any other event, His aseity. And since He is eternal and the source of moral goodness, He must be infinitely holy - ontologically separated from sin. David in Psalm 5:4-6 says God does not tolerate evil and He hates the wrongdoers. He never approves or delights in the presence of sin.

Sin creates an impassable gulf between humanity and God that efforts from within this realm cannot cross. There’s no amount of good that might outweigh our bad deeds with God, simply because of His unchanging holiness. Since wholeness with God cannot be earned, it must be freely given by Him. Salvation is only through grace received by faith (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Assurance of that salvation is often thought of as an introspection and subjective measurement of moral content. However, validating divine promise by human, finite means is incompatible with an eternal and unchanging God. We should think of assurance as the essence of faith. In other words, essential confidence is external to the human experience by nature of the promise. The believing one has eternal life (John 6:47), and we know that belief is sufficient because of the testimony of God (1 John 5:6-13). Simply put: God said so! And we know God must be unchanging and perfectly good. He then cannot lie or be mistaken.

The freeness of grace does not render obedience meaningless. God wants us to enjoy the full potential of blessings now and future rewards by walking as disciples.

Hebrews 4 is a beautiful passage about striving to enter God’s rest. The opportunity for perfect fellowship with God always remains. His Word is active in our lives, cutting between our soul and spirit to judge our hearts. And also because we have a faithful high priest, Jesus Christ, we can continually and boldly approach the throne of God’s grace in times of need.

God is transcendent but never beyond our reach. He wants to call you His child, give you His Spirit, and promise you a resurrection life. What’s stopping you from receiving His grace?