The first, most basic tenet of the Christian faith is that there exists an all-powerful, immaterial, transcendent, personal God. This claim, of course, runs exactly counter to the atheist’s claim that no God exists, or the pantheist’s claim that God exists but is not personal. On the Christian view God exists independent of His creation. On the pantheist view God exists as creation. Since all three views are contradictory to each other, we may ascertain which is true, at least partly, by eliminating those views which cannot possibly be true.  Let us first consider Pantheism.

Pantheism teaches that God exists as the universe. This view states that God is everything, and that individuality is an illusion caused by the mind. If Pantheism is true then individual minds themselves are part of the illusion, and therefore can provide no basis for explaining it.

Pantheism also fails to address the problem of evil in a logically consistent way. If God is all good, then evil must exist as independent of God, contrary to the pantheistic idea that God is everything. If God is all evil, then good must exist independently. Some might contend that good and evil, right and wrong, are really just illusions, inapplicable to what really is. If this view is true, then to be right is as meaningless as being wrong. Why then does the pantheist try to convince others of the truthfulness of his worldview? Any attempt on the pantheist’s part to proselytize would be tantamount to one mind arguing with another mind that only one mind exists! Clearly this worldview fails the internal consistency test and therefore must be rejected.

In the remainder of this chapter I hope to erect a positive case for the existence of the personal God of the Bible.