Audio Transcript

This week, we’re reading Psalms 13–18 together. And on the podcast, we are looking specifically at questions related to two of the most notable verses in that range — specifically, verses found in Psalm 14 and Psalm 16. We read Psalm 14 together tomorrow, and it opens with a very famous line in Psalm 14:1, a famous line that has only one passing mention in our whole podcast archive. Worth focusing on. The question comes from Angie.

“Pastor John, I have a question for you about the most commonly cited Bible text about atheists in the Bible, Psalm 14:1, about the fool who says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ As I understand it, this is not even close to the postmodern atheism of our day, which didn’t exist in David’s day. Everyone was religious, and everyone had a god. Nor is the text about lacking intelligence. Monotheism isn’t the result of a high IQ. Instead, I’ve been told that the fool here (nāḇāl) is one who lacks morals — as in, it’s only possible to nurture a life of sin if the living God gets pushed out of someone’s life as irrelevant to actual life decisions. ‘Practical atheism’ I think is what it has been called over the centuries. Is that what Psalm 14:1 means to you? Or how do you take it? I guess another way to ask the question is this: Does God believe in atheists?”

Let’s quote the two most obvious places in the Psalms where so-called atheism seems to be referred to. And then I’ll quote what I think is the best New Testament illumination of those psalms, and then we’ll try to relate this to our present situation.

This is the one she refers to:

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
     They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;
     there is none who does good.
The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
     to see if there are any who understand,
     who seek after God. (Psalm 14:1–2)

Here’s Psalm 10:3–4:

The wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
     and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord.
In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;
     all his thoughts [or all his plans] are, “There is no God.”

Those are the two clearest statements from the Psalms about this atheism.

“Everyone we talk to truly, deep down has an awareness of the Creator and designer of the universe.”

So, Angie is right that in these two contexts there is a strong emphasis on the practical implications of the claim that there’s no God. And it may well be that the primary intention of the writer is to say that, practically speaking, the statement “There is no God” means, “I will act as if there’s no God and do what I jolly well please.” That’s what Angie is calling “practical atheism.” But let’s see what the apostle Paul has to say about human beings and their knowledge of God.

Paul on Atheism

“Are there atheists?” we could ask Paul. Here’s Romans 1:18:

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

That’s a crucial statement. What truth do all human beings apart from Christ and the Holy Spirit suppress? What is it?

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. (verse 19)

So, the answer is that what could be known about God is being suppressed by human beings.

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (verse 20)

So, God has revealed himself in nature, and his eternal power and his divine nature are clearly perceived, he says, by all. So the next verse says they knew God — all of them:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. (verse 21)

So, Paul is maintaining this astonishing statement. All human beings know God. That’s remarkable. He may be thinking of texts like Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” If you don’t see God’s handiwork and you only see stars, you’re not seeing right.

Day to day pours out speech,
     and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
     whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
     and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,
     and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. (Psalm 19:2–5)

There are a lot of messages in the sunrise. Oh my goodness — if we only had eyes to see. So, Paul says God’s “eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived . . . in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). God is a poet. He’s working sculpture; he’s working poems; he’s writing all over the universe — if we only had eyes to read what he’s writing and saying.

Five Ways We Suppress the Truth

So, Paul says all men know God. But in Romans 1:18, he had said that, because of unrighteousness that dwells in us, everybody suppresses the truth (in one way or the other). So in trying to understand Psalm 14:1 — “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” — we have to ask, In what ways is the knowledge of God that everybody has being suppressed? In what ways can it be suppressed?

Let me suggest five different ways that the truth of God’s existence — as eternally powerful and having divine nature — can be suppressed. Here are the names I would give to them:

1. The non-reality of the existence of God. That’s one way. He just doesn’t exist.
2. The non-effective existence of God.
3. The non-experiential existence of God.
4. The non-worthy existence of God.
5. The heretical non-existence of God.

So, here’s what I mean by those five.

1. The non-reality existence of God is the claim that he is simply not a reality in the universe. He’s just not there. The fancy word would be a metaphysical denial. He doesn’t exist — period.

2. The non-effective existence of God means he’s simply not active. Whatever existence he has, it’s effectively nothing. He doesn’t intervene. He doesn’t act in the world, whatever he is.

3. The non-experiential existence of God means that, whatever existence he has, it means nothing to me, to my experience. I have no interaction with him, and he has no bearing on my life, the way I live.

4. The non-worthy existence of God means that he may exist, but he’s not the kind of being I want in my life. I have no admiration for him at all. He’s unworthy of any attention of mine. I choose not to believe that he’s good or wise or even if he exists at all. It doesn’t make any difference to me. I don’t like the God that I think might exist.

5. The heretical non-existence of God — that’s I think the most common way of suppressing the truth. Believe in God with such false views of God that he’s virtually not the true God. You may say you believe in God, but the God you believe in doesn’t exist. That’s the heretical non-existence of God.

Now, the point I’m trying to make is that there is more than one way to suppress the knowledge of God’s existence. So when Psalm 14:1 says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’” I doubt that we should restrict the meaning to only one kind of denial.

I wouldn’t be as confident as Angie, for example, in saying that in David’s day everyone had a god. Certainly that was the norm. She’s right. I mean, everybody was more or less religious, as far as we know. But, wow, given the deceitfulness of the human heart and the brazen pride that crops up again and again, it would not surprise me if there were people and groups of people in Israel and other nations that simply said, “It’s just all one big machine, and there are no deities.” I don’t know. I just wouldn’t be bold to say that nobody like that existed.

Beware Deadly Folly

The relevance for us is, first, the realization that everyone we talk to truly, deep down has an awareness of the Creator and Designer of the universe. That’s amazing. Everybody you talk to on the street, at the office, at home, on the phone — everybody knows God. And we should pray and speak with the hope that this God that they know would tap into this awareness and cause people to take an interest in the biblical message of God in Christ.

And the second relevance for us is that it is utterly foolish — and that means ultimately deadly — to say there is no God. In any of those five senses that I described, it’s deadly. Both David and Paul agree: with as much evidence as God has given in the world of his existence, only a fool would deny it. David says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’” and Paul, amazingly — maybe even quoting; I don’t know — says in Romans 1:22–23, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God.” We don’t want to be fools. So we embrace God, and we embrace him in Christ.