God's Hand in History: A Christian Response to Deism

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Painted on the wall of the fourth floor entrance in the place of paine, there is a quote by Max Planck. Planck was a Nobel Prize winning German physicist (alive from 1858 - 1947) attributed with discovering the quantum theory (ask a physics major). The quote reads, "Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith."

Christianity is based on faith, "the evidence of things unseen." This may seem elementary, and indeed it is, but it is crucial. In his article "What Lies Between Christianity and Atheism," Chris Hartline accurately expressed the central tenant of deism; that "God does not order the events of daily life, but rather allows man to live within the laws of nature and morality which he created." One of the reasons for the support of deism is the bitter and ancient problem of pain. This article will not focus on the problem of pain, but I hope some qualified reader will perhaps undertake that issue in a subsequent article. Instead, this article brings the reader into the messy details of deism.

At first glance the previously stated tenant of deism may seem agreeable to Christianity. After all, it does accept some of the truths of Christianity. Deists believe that there is a God, and that He created nature, the laws that govern it, and morality. They also adhere to the fact that nature reflects a divine Creator. "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse" (Romans 1:20). Yet, this is the ‘end of the line' of similarities, and deism diverges from the truth to the middle ground of half-truth.

Hartline quotes Thomas Paine: "this word of God (Creation) reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God." The problem is that deism accepts one half of the truth (God's revelation through nature) but does not take the next step. God, our Creator, did not mean human reason and experience to be the sole ways for us to learn about Him. That is why He gave us His written Word.

By claiming that nature and reason are the way to understand God because God does not directly interact with His creation, deism throws out the written and Living Word of God. The heart of Christianity is that God acted on our behalf because we were dead in our sins, unable to interact with the sinless God. So God willingly sent His only Son in human flesh to be the middle ground between straight up justice and mercy. He showed us grace. We can now know the way to the Father; it is through the sacrifice of Jesus, which we learn about from God's written Word.

This is not to depreciate the role that nature can play in leading us to the truth. Jesus used analogies of nature and farming (common things to His audience) to convey to them spiritual matters that they could not comprehend otherwise. Yet nature wasn't the "truth," it was the means. In His written Word, God has provided numerous examples of His involvement in HIStory that show humans His trustworthiness. We find in Romans 10: 17 that "faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." There is a purpose for God's Word.

God also chose Israel to be His example of how He wants to relate to all humans, "a light to the Gentiles." Those brilliant Greeks and Romans were not able to find the way to the one true, living God just through nature and reason.

We see God's hand throughout history but especially in Israel's history: "He led them out of Egypt and did wonders and miraculous signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the desert" (Acts 7:36). Things that were rationally and naturally unexplainable happened! God made a point to show the Israelites that there was no one else to whom they could attribute their miraculous rescue but Him. Interventions by God have been proven by archeology (ruins of Jericho, remains of chariots at the bottom of the Red Sea), and records of other nations (Egypt, Persia, and Rome). There are numerous documented miracles that occurred in 1967 when a vastly outnumbered ragtag Israeli army backed by the mighty arm of God defeated the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in six days (rightly called the Six Day War ).

In our own country's history we see actual distinct events of divine intervention. There was the impeccable meeting of Squanto to the starving Pilgrims at Plymouth colony. Squanto's life was a miracle in itself. He was a Pawtuxet brave, whose tribe just happened to be the future landing site of the Pilgrims. Akin to the Biblical Joseph, Squanto was captured and sold as a slave in a distant land. But what was meant for evil worked out for the good later. After being released from Spain, Squanto returned to find his village deserted and new comers in his tribal land. He later found out that his capture spared him from the disease that had wiped out his tribe. This was painful for Squanto. To the struggling Pilgrims, Squanto, who had learned English during his capture, was a God-send.

George Washington believed that it was God who had divinely protected him in the French and Indian War. During General Braddock's defeat (July 9th, 1755), Washington was the only officer to return unscathed. Washington had two horses shot from under him and four bullet holes in his clothes. Later during the revolution, his army on Brooklyn Heights succeeded in a last minute escape from superior British forces and ships due to timely winds and a "dense fog".

There are too many miracles to be credited to just "fate" or "chance." It seems more rational to put faith in the ability of the Creator of reason to orchestrate the events of a world He created. How could the Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and of earth, who invested so much of His creativity and attention to intricate and highly complex details, not be intimately involved with His Creation? Think about it.