I Can Prove He Is There

You have four and you can rank them.

You know which one is strongest and which one has the weakest step in it and where that step is. You know the standard objections and the standard replies to the objections, and you know which replies you find honest and which you think are a bit thin.

You did not learn this to win anything. You learned it because you needed it. There was a period, some years ago, when the whole thing was going, and the arguments were what held.

And they did hold. That is worth saying plainly, because a certain kind of person will tell you they should not have and they are wrong.

But here is where you are now, and it is a stranger place than doubt.

You are entirely persuaded that God exists. You have not the faintest idea what it would be like for Him to know you.

If somebody said to you He knows your name, you would not object. You would agree, because it follows, and then something in you would go quiet, because agreeing that it follows is not the same as knowing it.

You can establish that He is there. You have never once been on the receiving end of being known.

What this page will not do

I am not going to dismantle your arguments. They are good, they held you when nothing else did, and the fashion for treating apologetics as a substitute for faith is mostly written by people who have never needed one.

I am not going to tell you the head knowledge is the problem. It is not a problem; it is a floor, and a floor is not a defect just because it is not a roof.

And I am not going to promise you an experience. I do not know what God will do or when.

What I am going to do is show you that you have been asking one question extremely well and that there is a second one, and that the second one is answered somewhere else entirely.

You are not further from Him for having reasoned your way here. Scripture says come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord, Isaiah 1:18, and the invitation to reason is issued by God rather than tolerated by Him, and the Holy Spirit is on that path with somebody who can rank four arguments.

The verse is about mutual knowing

There is a line in John 10 that has a shape people usually miss.

I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.John 10:14

Two clauses, and they run in opposite directions.

Know my sheep. That is Him knowing them. That is the one you would concede immediately: an omniscient God knows everything, therefore He knows you, therefore your name is known. It follows from your first argument and you have never doubted it. Scripture stands under that in John 10:14, and the Holy Spirit does the part no sentence can do.

And am known of mine. That is the other direction, and it is the one you have no grip on. It is written, in John 10:14, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written off a page and into a life.

And notice what it is not. It is not and am understood by mine. Not and am established by mine. Known, in the same word He uses about Himself knowing them, which is a word about acquaintance rather than about information.

The verse assumes both run. He knows them; they know Him. That is presented as ordinary, as what the arrangement is, not as an advanced state for particular people.

You are not outside the second half of that sentence. Scripture says I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine, John 10:14, and the knowing is described as running both ways as a matter of course, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes the return direction a real thing rather than a doctrine.

Why the arguments cannot get you there

Here is the structural reason, and knowing it will stop you trying harder at the wrong thing.

An argument establishes a proposition. It can get you to God exists, and yours do, and that is a genuine achievement and not everybody has it.

It cannot get you to God knows me, because that is not a proposition of the same kind. It is a proposition about a relation between two particulars, one of whom is you, and no general argument delivers a particular.

You can prove that a shepherd exists. You cannot prove, from the outside, that he knows this sheep. That is established by the sheep hearing its name, which is a different category of event entirely and does not arrive by inference.

So the last few years have not been a failure of reasoning. You have been applying an excellent instrument to a question it was not built for, and getting the answer that instrument gives, which is agreement without acquaintance.

You are not going to reason your way into being known. Scripture says the Lord knoweth them that are his, 2 Timothy 2:19, and the knowing is stated as a fact about His action rather than as a conclusion anybody derived, and the Holy Spirit is not withholding a proof He never intended to supply.

What it is like, when it comes

Almost nobody describes it the way you are expecting. Scripture settles that in John 10:14, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it rather than these words.

You are expecting something like certainty, but warmer. A sense, an impression, a thing that would satisfy the part of you that evaluates. I am not putting my own idea over you; Scripture says it in John 10:14, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it live.

What people who have it actually describe is much less dramatic and much harder to argue with. They describe being addressed. Not persuaded of something; spoken to about something particular, usually small, usually inconvenient, usually about them rather than about God.

That is the difference between the two halves of John 10:14. The first half is about a category. The second half is about somebody being called by name in a field.

And the reason it has not happened to you may be nothing more than this: you have never left a silence in which it could. Every question you have taken to God for years has been a question about Him, framed as an argument, with an answer you could evaluate. That is not my opinion. Scripture stands behind it in John 10:14, and the Holy Spirit brings it near.

You have not been on the receiving end because you have never stood where receiving happens.

You are not unaddressed. Scripture says my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, John 10:27, and the hearing is described as a property of belonging rather than as a talent, and the Holy Spirit is not speaking only to people who are less thoughtful than you.