God in the Dock

By placing what, at first sight, seems reasonable, that man defines what is true, had far reaching consequences. It opened the doors to many subsequent philosophies, most of which accepted Descartes foundation that man is the judge of all things. Even the existence of God is brought before the mind of man to decide whether that concept is reasonable.

The tide was turning. Now it is God who is in the dock and man is the judge. Man is supreme and God, instead of being worshipped and obeyed, becomes the object of study. The difficulty is that it is impossible to put God under a finite microscope when he himself is infinite and we are definitely finite!

The scholar and writer, C.S.Lewis astutely analysed this tendency man always has to minimise his own sin and to place Almighty God in the dock, saying:

”The greatest barrier I have met is the almost total absence from the minds of my audience of any sense of sin. The early Christian preachers could assume in their hearers, whether Jews, Metuentes (God fearers), or Pagans, a sense of guilt. (That this was common among Pagans is shown by the fact that both Epicureanism and the mystery religions both claimed, though in different ways, to assuage it.) Thus the Christian message was in those days unmistakably the Evangelium, the Good News. It promised healing to those who knew they were sick. We have to convince our hearers of the unwelcome diagnosis before we can expect them to welcome the news of the remedy. The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man, the roles are quite reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge; if God should have a reasonable defence for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock..’”