R.C. Sproul Proves that God Does Not Exist

I gave a lecture once at an Orlando conference where the whole point of my lecture was to deny as emphatically as I could and as categorically as I knew how the existence of God, and when I began that lecture, I said, “What my task is today is to convince you folks that God does not exist.” “Huuh?” came this gasp from the crowd. “What are you talking about? What kind of game are you playing with?” “I’m not playing.” I said, “The worst thing that we could ever have happen to us is to discover that God exists in the specific meaning of the term, ‘exist,’” because the term, ‘exist’, in our language has derived entomologically from the Latin, ‘existere’, which means – ‘ex’ means ‘out of’ and ‘stere’ means ‘to stand’. So somebody who exists is somebody that’s outstanding – but outstanding in what sense? Well, what was meant by this word philosophically, centuries ago, going all the way back to Plato and before Plato, was the idea that there is being, pure and simple, and pure being depends on nothing for its ability to be. It is eternal. It has the power of being within itself. It is by no means creaturely. The thing that characterizes creaturely existence is not being, but becoming, because the chief character trait of all creatures is they change. Whatever you are today, you will be different ever so slightly tomorrow, and today you’re that much different from what you were yesterday, if it’s only that you’re twenty-four hours older than you were at this time yesterday. Now, the idea of existence says to exist is to stand out of something, and the idea meant to stand out of being, so that something that exists is something that has one foot in being and the other foot in becoming, or in nonbeing. Unless it’s connected somehow to being, it couldn’t be. We wouldn’t be human beings; we’d be human becomings. But if it were – had both feet in being, it couldn’t be a creature. Now, the point I’m saying is is that we don’t want to think of God like this. If you ask me, ‘Is God?’ I say, “Yes, of course God is.” But does He exist? Not in this sense, because that would make Him what? A creature, a dependent derived existence. But rather, we say God is here. God is being, not becoming, not changing. He is eternally the same, and so we say there’s one being. Now, within that being are not three separate existences. Remember the difference in the prefix; ‘exist’ means ‘to stand out of being’ or ‘non-being’, but the word that the theologians use with respect to the Trinity is not the word, three existences, but three subsistences; that is, underneath the pure being of God, at a lower dimension, we must distinguish among these subsistences, which the Bible calls Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Not three existences, not three beings, but rather, three subsistences within that one eternal being.

Channel: Ligonier Ministries

Views: 381,865

Rating: 4.0393043 out of 5

Keywords: god, existence, being, becoming, sproul, rc sproul, existence of god, ontology, ontological argument, god does not exist, god does exist, does god exist, theology, reformed theology, apologetics, christian apologetics, evangelism, christianity, denying god, pure being, the power of being, creature creator distinction, we are becomming, non-being, god is, god is not derrived, philosophy, philosophy of being, one eternal being, eternal being, exist, nonexistent, jesus, bible, atheist, atheism

Id: wVN5Vp58UJs

Length: 4min 32sec (272 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 17 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/Eosei]

Well, I'm uneducated but isn't it problematic to talk about God and what is, and then circle Trinity into just one part of all that is? If God is *being*, eternal and unchanging, whose doing is *becoming* and the process by which they come together into a "creature"? Wouldn't it make more sense to have one subsistence be the eternal unchanging source (Father comes to mind), one subsistence be the becoming (I'd like to say HS, but also I'd rather see *becoming* as the lines and not a blob) and one be that which emerges (the Son, sort of)?