← Renewing Your Mind
Renewing Your Mind
I AM: The Aseity of God
00:26:26
There is only one Being whose existence is necessary: the One whose name is “I AM.” Today, R.C. Sproul contemplates the glorious doctrine of the aseity of God. For your donation of any amount, get R.C. Sproul’s book Moses and the Burning Bush,...
Loading summary
Transcript5 lines
- [00:00]
A
This concept of self creation gets a lot of credibility and credence in our modern society. But five minutes of careful examination of the concept will reveal to any sentient creature that the idea itself is a logical absurdity and a logical impossibility.
- [00:28]
B
Think about that for just a moment. If something created itself, it would have to exist before it existed. But what about God? Did he create himself? Welcome to Renewing youg Mind on this Saturday, I'm Nathan W. Bingham. At the Burning Bush, Moses received one of the most profound theology lessons recorded for us in the Bible. That's why RC Sproul took the time to teach through this encounter for his series Moses and the Burning Bush. And we'll send you the series on DVD along with the companion book as our way of saying thank you for your donation before midnight tonight@renewingyourmind.org well, during this encounter, God refers to himself as I am who I am. That declaration is not meant to confuse us. Actually, it tells us everything we need to know about God's self existence. Here's Dr. Sproul to explain.
- [01:31]
A
We continue now with our study of the significance of God's name, by which he revealed Himself to Moses and called this name his memorial name for all generations, the name Yahweh, which being translated means I am who I am. Now, in the age in which we live, we see that the Christian faith is constantly under attack in the secular world. And the guns of criticism are aimed chiefly at one target. And that target is the idea of creation. Because every secularist understands that if you can repudiate and refute the biblical concept of creation, you have dealt with the mortal blow against Christianity and against all religion. And we hear in the criticisms a cynical statement that the idea that the universe is created by God, a personal, transcendent, immutable being, is unscientific. It is illogical and it is basically a myth. And that's the critique that we hear all the time. Of course, in recent years we've seen the tremendous conversion of Anthony Flew from atheism to theism in England, the man who once invented a parable that was called by his name, Flew's Parable, where he tried to discount any real evidence for the existence of God. And in his later years he came to theism for this reason. He understood that apart from the God hypothesis, science itself would be impossible. Now we go back to the 18th century Enlightenment to understand the seeds of of the skepticism that we encounter every day. The principal thesis of the Auflaurung or the Enlightenment was the Thesis that declared this, that the God hypothesis is no longer necessary for modern science to account for the origin of human life or for the origin of the universe. Now, prior to the Enlightenment, the medieval synthesis was such that the philosophers, even if they were not believers, had to give obeisance and genuflect at the feet of Christian philosophy because they couldn't account for this universe apart from some idea of a transcendent being. And then with the advent of the Enlightenment, all of this fell away, because now the scholars came along and said, we can explain the universe, we can explain life in its origins without an appeal to some transcendent deity. And some of those among the French encyclopedias publicly declared themselves the personal enemies of God. And they said, we know now how the universe came into being and how life originated. It came to pass through what they called spontaneous generation. They would look at mud puddles, there were no frogs in the mud puddle. And all of a sudden they would see tadpoles swimming around the mud puddle. And they say, oh, oh, voila. Where did they come from? They didn't think about birds flying over and dropping eggs into the water. But the way it was is that these things just, poof, came into being through their own power. That is, they were self created. That's the idea of spontaneous generation. Now, let me just back up for a second and say this. If anything exists now, there are only three possible generic explanations for something existing rather than nothing. Either that which exists is eternal, or it is self created, or it is created by something that is eternal. Now, notice in those three options, and I don't have the time to go into every subset of them, but I can tell you this in all candor. I gave this presentation at Yale several years ago with the opportunity of the philosophers there to interact. And they were mute for the most part. They had to agree that it had to be one of these three. And I said, you realize that two out of the three involved something eternal. So if we can eliminate the third one, then we have already proven the thesis that something has already always been. Of course, you shouldn't even have to go into a debate. As I said earlier, if anything exists now, something has always existed, or nothing could be, unless it comes through the option of, of spontaneous generation, which is another word for self creation. And I want to say to you that this concept of self creation gets a lot of credibility and credence in our modern society. But five minutes of careful examination of the concept will reveal to any sentient creature that the idea itself is a logical, absurdity, and a logical impossibility. Why is that? Well, for something to create itself, quite simply, it would have to be before it was. Let me say it again. For something to create itself, it would have to be before it was. It would have to be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship which violates the most fundamental principle of truth and of science, the formal principle of the law of non contradiction. Nevertheless, we keep finding this over and over and over again by otherwise reputable scholars and scientists who talk this way. When the Hubble telescope was sent out into space to give us more information of the expanding universe, one of the most famous astrophysicists in America was being interviewed on the radio that day. And I was driving my car down the road and the man almost caused me to wreck because he said, 15 to 17 billion years ago, the universe exploded into being. That's heavy stuff. Now, what was it before it exploded into being? 15 to 7. The only option was non being. There was nothing. That boom exploded into something. And the most fundamental scientific precept was violated ex nihilo nihil fit. Out of nothing, nothing comes. And whenever an otherwise distinguished astrophysicist declares that you get something out of nothing, at that moment he stops being a reputable astrophysicist. I've referenced in the past an essay I read by Nobel Prize winning physicists from the west coast who wrote this essay saying the time has come where we must discard the concept of spontaneous generation as being illogical and unscientific. Well, I have to say to you, dear friends, I think the time for that was the very first time it was uttered in the 18th century. But anyway, this particular Nobel winner said we can no longer speak scientifically about spontaneous generation. Now we have to speak in terms of gradual spontaneous generation. I'm not making this up, I promise you. I read it, I said gradual spontaneous generations. And now there's a good one. Now we can't get something out of nothing quickly. We have to be patient and wait long enough for nothing to give us something. The extremes to which people will go to do away with the God hypothesis. I think one of the most brilliant philosophers, I've already mentioned him once in this course of the 20th century was Jean Paul Sartre, the French existential philosopher, in his massive work on being and nothingness. And in that he argues that if God exists, then morality is impossible. Because for morality to be significant, people have to not only be free, but they have to be autonomous. And if God exists, we could not be autonomous since we can't be autonomous, we can't really be moral. And so the existence of morality makes the God hypothesis impossible. A Dutch philosopher by the name of Leipen countered that argument from Jean Paul Sartre and said it's not the existence of God that makes morality impossible. It's Sartre's morality that makes the denial of the existence of God necessary. Because that's what this issue comes down to. It's really not an intellectual question in the final analysis, it's a moral one. And fallen human beings will go to every extreme they know to banish God as their judge from the universe. The big flap now about intelligent design is about the same thing. If it's design, it has to be intelligent. But we want to have unintelligible design, unintentional intentionality, and the absurdities mount up forever. Really. The idea of self creation is an attempt to explain the universe like a rabbit out of the hat, where there's no rabbit in the hat. Until the magician waves his magic wand and voila, out comes the bunny out of the hat. Now I know how that's done, but I'm not going to ruin it for you now. But, but in any case, what they want is a rabbit out of the hat. Without the rabbit, without the hat and without the magician, they want to just poof the rabbit to create itself. I mean, why don't people laugh about this? This is ridiculous. It really is ridiculous. And instead of being defensive about that, we need to start laughing at people who talk like this because they're making no sense whatsoever. Now, in contrast to self creation, which is a logical impossibility, we have the idea of self existence or what we call in theology, the concept of a city. When I see that word on the blackboard, when I see it in a textbook, I know that the vast majority of people in the pew have never heard of the Word and it's so obscure and esoteric, they don't care about hearing about the Word. But I have to tell you honestly and personally, I see that word and I get chills up my spine because in that one little word is captured all of the glory of the perfection of God's being. That what makes God different from you and different from me and different from the stars, the earthquakes and any creaturely thing, is that God and God alone has a city. God and God alone exists by his own power. Nobody made him, nobody caused him. His existence is in and of himself, which differs again from every creature. You had mothers and fathers. You are not self existent. I am not self Existent cars are not self existent. Stars are not self existent. Only God has the concept of self existence. But you say, wait a minute, here's where people stumble all over the place. Even somebody like Bertrand Russell, when he wrote his book why He's Not a Christian, he said that when he was 18 years old, he was reading an essay from the philosopher John Stuart Mill. And before that time Bertrand Russell affirmed the existence of God. He says, but as a young man he said, I read this essay. And Mill said, well, if the law of causality is true, then the Christian God can't be true. Because if everything has a cause, then God would have had to have had a cause. And whoever caused or whatever caused God to be would have been superior to him. And so the whole law of causality destroys the idea of God. Now this is Bertrand Russell, one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, being influenced by another brilliant philosopher, John Stuart Mill, making a first grade elementary ABC primer error. The law of causality does not say that everything has to have a cause. The law of causality says that every effect must have an antecedent cause. And that's what we call a formal truth. It's true by definition, just like saying a triangle has three sides. Because an effect by definition is something that is caused by something else. And a cause can only be a cause if it produces an effect. But we're not talking about God as an effect that has been caused by something before him. He is self existent. He owes his being to nothing outside of himself. He has the power of being within himself. Think about that, and your ardor to worship him will, I believe, be intensified. What's the difference between self creation and self existence? Aren't they both a challenge to logic? No, self creation is illogical and absurd, as I've already seen. Just take the idea of something eternally existing in its own power, having the power of being within itself. What principle of logic does that violate? Is there anything irrational about that now? And I understand, I'm not a conceptualist who said if I have a concept that can pass the test of rationality, therefore it must be true. I'm not saying that, I'm simply saying that the idea of self existence violates no law of reason. It's a perfectly eminently rational concept. Now I want to take it further. Not only is the idea of self existent being possible, but I think that Thomas Aquinas had it exactly right. Centuries ago he said God's being, unlike any other thing that exists, is what Thomas called necessary being. This is a tough idea. I'm going to help you wrap your arms around it and your head around it. What Aquinas meant by necessary being is two things. One, a necessary being is a being who cannot not be. It is by the sheer necessity of its eternal being, of its acidity. Self existent being is that sort of being that is not hypothetical or again dependent on some other concept, but is necessary. It's being cannot not be. God can't not be. He is, I am, eternally and forever. And not only is God's being necessary, the kind of being that cannot not be, so that it's ontologically necessary, but it's also logically necessary. Going back to what I've been saying all along, that if anything exists now, something, somewhere, somehow must have aseity, must have the power of being within himself that is not derived from something outside himself. This is being. It is supreme being. This is transcendent being. Let me be real quick with this last word, transcendence. When we talk about God's transcendence, we're talking about that way in which God is greater and superior to anything in the finite created world. He's above and beyond it. And even philosophers who wrestle with the stuff I've been saying this night, they will agree that yes, somewhere, somehow, something must have the power of being. Or nothing could be. Something has to be eternal. And if it is eternal, it's eternal because it can't stop being. And they say, but why with all of this stuff in the universe that is created and undergoes change and mutation, why can't there be some pulsating core within the universe from which everything else derives? Why do we have to say that we need a transcendent being? Now here's where I want you to think carefully. When we use the word transcendent with respect to God, we're not talking about geography, we're not talking about where God lives. And when people say they recognize that there has to be some self existent eternal being, but they don't want it to be transcendent, don't you realize that if it is self existent and if it is eternal and it is pure being, that is by definition transcendent. It's a higher order of being. Not that it lives in a higher part of the universe, but I don't care whether it's in California or east of the sun, west of the moon. If you have anything that is self existent eternal, has the power of being within itself, then by that very definition it transcends everything else in the universe. And it is that about which God calls Himself. I am.
- [23:46]
B
And there is no other. You're listening to Renewing youg Mind on this Saturday as we continue RC Sproul series Moses and the Burning Bush. What I and so many of you appreciate about Dr. Sproul's teaching style is that he was able to express really big ideas like this and make them understandable. And what you just heard is a big idea. The Transcendent Nature of God over the past few Saturdays, we have been going over this profound theological lesson that God taught Moses. We read about it in Exodus Chapter three, and we want to help you continue your study. Request the complete series on DVD along with the companion book, which is when you give a donation before midnight tonight@renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast Show Notes. In addition to the book and dvd, we'll unlock all the messages in the Ligonier app and the study guide as well. Perhaps use this in your small group as you take advantage of the study questions in the study guide. This offer does end tonight, so respond now at renewingyourmind.org or for our global listening audience, respond at renewingyourmind.org global thank you. Speaking of Global these past few days I've been in Malaysia as Ligonier Ministries hosts hundreds of guests for our Southeast Asia Conference on the theme the Holiness of God. Please pray for this event and for the work of the Lord through Ligonier in service to local churches and Christians throughout Southeast Asia. Next time, RC Sproul will point out an important detail in the account of Moses and the burning bush. Many times we can romanticize the achievements of the great figures we find in the Bible, but they were fallible men, with one exception. Next Saturday, Dr. Sproul will explain the vast superiority of our Savior Jesus Christ. So I hope you'll join us then here on Renewing your Mind.
- [26:17]
A
Sat.