Is God Distant or Near?: Christian Apologetics

HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:00:01 - 00:00:34 What if the universe has a designer who never stepped away from his creation? Not a distant force who set things in motion and then disappeared, but a creator with complete authority and a specific plan to where it's all heading. The Bible describes a God who is entirely separate from creation and yet intimately involved in it at the same time. Today we are unpacking why that matters. Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Kaysie Vokurka, and joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program, Dr. John. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:00:34 - 00:00:35 Hello, Kaysie. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:00:35 - 00:01:26 Dr. John has written this book called The Big Argument: Does God Exist? And we are looking at chapter 13 in this program, which is called Who Is God and What Is He Like? And this is by Stephen Thompson. John, this chapter describes God as not in nature. Natural phenomena are but the reflections of his greatness. But it also says he has a special form of immanence that allows him to relate to creation without remaining in splendid isolation. Some very interesting terminology used here. So what's the difference between transcendence And immanence, and why does the balance matter for how we understand the Creator? GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:01:26 - 00:02:15 So these are very interesting concepts that were brought out in this chapter. And it's something perhaps that many people aren't aware of or don't think about, which makes it quite interesting. He's drawn out a very, very interesting point here. So by transcendence, what it means is that God is completely outside our universe, outside everything physical that we can detect. He's not part of this universe. He's completely outside. And this is different to, for example, the gods of a lot of other religions where they represent totems. It might be a snake or a giant turtle or whatever it is. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:02:15 - 00:02:17 Where God is in nature itself. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:02:17 - 00:02:31 That's right, or a particular superhuman, you know, like some of the Greek gods, these sort of things. So God is outside of this, but the whole— so that's why he's transcendent. He's totally outside and above. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:02:31 - 00:02:32 Independent. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:02:32 - 00:02:50 So he's all-powerful over his creation. He made it, he's outside, he can control it, he can do whatever. He's totally transcendent across it. Now the immanence aspect of it is that He also has the ability to connect with it, and He chooses to connect with it. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:02:50 - 00:02:51 Hmm. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:02:51 - 00:03:31 And it's sort of in a— it's sort of a process of a relationship. In other words, He's made this universe, He's made this whole system, but yet He connects with it. And this is one of the fascinating things where the Bible talks about God. We are made in the image of God. And the Bible then goes on to talk about how this Creator wants to have this relationship with us. And it's expressed as love. And the Bible talks about and expands this love in different, different places. It's sort of like a sacrificial love. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:03:31 - 00:03:31 Yeah. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:03:31 - 00:04:44 It's a very deep love. So this is a fascinating picture that is painted of the Creator. So the Creator is this being that is nonphysical, is totally different. We'd call it spiritual because it's some totally different entity in which He exists. It's something that in many ways we can't comprehend. We use the term spiritual in that, or supernatural, in that it's outside nature. But at the same time, He wants to connect with us like a person, like a friend. And so that's the whole concept of this immanence, that He wants to be with all this nature. It's sort of like a sense of enjoying us, enjoying being with us. And, and that's the picture that the Bible paints of God in, in sort of 3 forms. It talks about God the Father as the sort of, you know, the Creator. And then there's part of God where He has this ability to physically interact with humans. So we, we hear about in the garden, God walked. with, with Adam and Eve. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:04:44 - 00:04:44 Hmm. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:04:44 - 00:05:34 But then we also hear about how the Spirit moved over the face of the waters. And Jesus talked about how God's Spirit would always be with, with us. And so this was like a personal part of God that somehow interacted with us, perhaps more in the mental concept, in our, with our minds, was able, connected us with our mind. So it's an, it's an amazing picture, we define it in human terms as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sort of thing. But these are terms that are used to try and help us as humans to understand this Creator, what this Creator was like. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:05:34 - 00:05:35 Hmm. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:05:35 - 00:05:51 And it's interesting that Stephen, in his chapter, Talks about and gives a very interesting example. If I heard a scratching at the door, I would say, oh, what was that? Yeah, I'd say, what was it? HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:05:51 - 00:05:54 Likely a cat or something. Yeah, yeah, possibly. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:05:55 - 00:06:20 And so, but if I hear a knocking at the door, my reaction is, oh, who's that? Who is that? So there's this person. And this is, this is what this whole concept of eminence is trying to convey to us. Right. So you can imagine if that was just a— if God is out there, He could have been a what. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:06:20 - 00:06:22 Yeah. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:06:22 - 00:06:51 Right. Because we have robots that can create things, right? We have machines that can make things. They're a what sort of thing. W-A-T. And W-H-A-T, rather. And And so, but he said, God is not like that. God is a who. God is a who. He's this Creator. And so this is a wonderful concept about explaining what is God like. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:06:51 - 00:07:21 Absolutely. Yeah. And so some of the things you mentioned there is the fact that the universe is completely under the Creator's control. And God even God maintains his authority over creation as that all-powerful being, as well as a connection with it personally. But how do you think God's ultimate authority over creation interacts with things like natural laws, which scientists observe? GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:07:21 - 00:07:40 Yeah, so this is one of the arguments that atheists often bring up and people that ascribe to the naturalistic worldview. that they're frustrated in that they can't do an experiment to test God. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:07:40 - 00:07:40 Yeah. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:07:40 - 00:08:23 So you can't say, right, you say God answers prayer. God, please make a copy of Darwin's book appear on my desk. You know, then I will believe. You know, we can't, we can't do an ex— we can't force God into an experiment. And this is because God is outside this and He obviously has set up laws. But we know from the Bible that at times He chooses to intervene. And again, though, this really frustrates science because they say, how? We can't test this. We can't set up a group of experiments to test this. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:08:23 - 00:08:23 Yeah. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:08:23 - 00:08:48 But really, this is scientism, which we've talked about before, because really from a science perspective, what science's pure view is to understand nature. All right. And what we have to do is in understanding nature, we have to observe nature. We have to understand. And we have overwhelming, huge numbers of reports of supernatural events. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:08:48 - 00:08:48 Hmm. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:08:48 - 00:09:30 In the Bible, the main miracles that were performed in the Bible, such as the crossing of the Red Sea, the parting of the waters, so that they were witnessed by a huge number of people. They were witnessed by a whole nation, saw that effect happen as they walked across as they were moving out. The Exodus from Egypt was witnessed. Matter of fact, we find that when the Israelites then were moving into Canaan and they crossed the Jordan, so that people didn't forget that God actually stopped the water flowing in the Jordan, Joshua said, go and pick up these— was it Joshua or Elijah? Anyway. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:09:30 - 00:09:31 Joshua, yeah. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:09:31 - 00:09:32 Yeah. Pick up these rocks. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:09:32 - 00:09:33 Boulders. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:09:33 - 00:09:41 And make this pile of rocks. Right? These came from the middle of the river that was normally underwater. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:09:41 - 00:09:42 Yes. Right? GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:09:42 - 00:11:15 Every leader from each tribe is to pick up one and put it there, make this pole so we never forget that that miracle occurred. And there are a lot of other examples. Like Jesus was seen by people after His resurrection. The disciples saw His ascension occur. He miraculously ascended to Heaven with the angels. And that And that empowered them to go out at the cost of death and spread the message that God was real within the Roman Empire at that time. So these are the areas that I think frustrate scientists today looking back. But what they— science looks at the evidence, and we have overwhelming evidence when we look at it because that there must be a God. There must have been this transcendent Creator God, because we can't explain the laws, the origin of the laws of matter. We can't explain the universe itself, how it came to be. I mean, Stephen Hawking says things exist because of gravity. Well, who made gravity? And anyway, gravity is just a physical force. It doesn't encode design capability and all this sort of thing. They are totally ignoring these other aspects of the fact that we have a mind that can understand and interpret the laws that are governing the motion of the planets, the movement of bodies, the chemical reactions that occur. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:11:15 - 00:11:57 Yeah. And those miracles that you just mentioned, many of those involve the reversal of a law of nature or going quite against the norm, which suggests that there was some power acting on that normal process that was not— that we don't have control over, which for it to have control over nature, it's very powerful. It's far beyond human power. And so that suggests especially given that those accounts had a lot of eyewitnesses, that suggests that there's something more to the picture than the pure natural processes that we observe happening regularly. So yeah, these are some interesting points, aren't they? GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:11:57 - 00:12:38 Exactly. But it fits into the realm of a transcendent Creator who could do that, who also wants to connect with his creation. And he sees a group of people that he loves that are witnessing for him problems and He intervenes at that stage. And it's interesting that a lot of these miracles have enabled the knowledge of God to continue on. If those miracles hadn't have occurred, the knowledge of the Creator would have been wiped out. And it's interesting that that fits again the description of there is, there are laws and that if people break these laws, there's a consequence of a judgment. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:12:38 - 00:12:39 Yeah. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:12:39 - 00:12:49 And that there is evil and that that evil is trying to eliminate that knowledge Yeah, yeah, very interesting. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:12:49 - 00:13:11 And this— the chapter talks about how God's personal involvement with his creation, he will eventually, you know, want— he wants to remove this element of evil and elevate the universe to a complete state of harmony and peace. Obviously, it's, you know, going through, I guess, experimental time. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:13:11 - 00:13:12 Yeah. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:13:13 - 00:13:17 But what does this tell us about currently where creation is and where it's heading? GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:13:17 - 00:13:26 Well, we know from physics that the whole universe will eventually run down anyway. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:13:26 - 00:13:26 Okay. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:13:26 - 00:14:06 But the Bible talks about how God is going to make a specific ending to this, to eliminate evil. And I think when, particularly as we get older, there's this natural longing, we long for that time when we've seen so much evil and bad things happen in our lifetime, but we see so much potential for good if evil wasn't there. And we see that if God's simple laws that are outlined basically in the Ten Commandments that are given in the Judeo-Christian accounts, that this would solve so many of the world's problems, really. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:14:06 - 00:14:07 Hmm. GUEST - DR JOHN ASHTON - 1 00:14:07 - 00:14:21 And that it's selfishness that has really And that's what's led to so much destruction and people making choices to disobey these natural laws that's led to these problems and pain. HOST - KAYSIE VOKURKA - 1 00:14:21 - 00:14:55 Yeah, well, I guess it makes us really curious about God's plan for this planet and His ultimate plan for restoration. Because, you know, as we've mentioned so often, we just have this longing for something better. It gives us a picture of that. So thank you for sharing your thoughts on these questions. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments because we'd love to hear about your journey.