The Vision (3/31/11): No such thing as an actual atheist

Image:  "New Atheist" Author Christopher Hitchens

I and several other CRBC men have enjoyed meeting on Tuesdays mornings this year at PVCC to discuss Robert L. Reymond’s A New Systematic Theology (Thomas Nelson, 1998). This past week we began the section on the doctrine of God. In the opening chapter Reymond notes that, in truth, there really are no atheists. He states:

All this means that there is no such thing among mankind as an actual atheist. There are only theists, some of whom claim to be atheists. But God’s Word declares that these “atheists” are not real atheists; they only attempt to live as though there is no God. But they know in their hearts that He is “there” and that He will someday judge them for their sin. As we have said, they are theists who hate, and attempt to do everything they can to suppress, their innate theism. Their “intellectual problems” with Christianity are in reality only masks or rationalizations to cover up their hatred against God and their love of and bondage to sin. These “practicing atheists” insist that the burden of proof lies with the theist to prove God’s existence to them. But the burden of proof is actually theirs to prove that the physical world is the only reality and that no supernatural spiritual being anywhere exists. This, of course, they cannot do. Thus, their “atheism” is their own unproven “grand assumption”—an assumption, by the way, which they cannot consistently live! (p. 153)

Indeed, “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 53:1).

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff