Anthropological Arguments

We are in our third week of the apologetic series of building a cumulative case involving several lines of converging testimonial evidence that clearly demonstrates not only that God exists, but that he loves us and is personally involved with us. 

The first week, we looked at the testimony from Cause and Effect, otherwise known as the cosmological argument. Cause and Effect tells us that everything that begins to exist has a cause. Since the universe began to exist, there must be a cause. And that Cause is the eternal God of the Bible, the Uncaused Cause. 

Then, we considered the testimony from Design and Purpose, otherwise known as the teleological argument. In a nutshell, if something is designed, it is designed by a designer and for a purpose. The universe, Earth, and life itself appear to have been intricately designed. Hence, there must be a Great Designer who designed the universe and us for a purpose. 

This week, we will embark on a set of testimonies that correspond to the condition of man, which may be called anthropological arguments. They point indirectly to God through man’s uniqueness as being created in God’s image. 

The condition of man testifies to the religious nature of humanity. Throughout history, we see that there is a common consent that the supernatural exists. We see that humans appear to have an emptiness and a longing for the divine. We see that man attempts to fill that emptiness and satisfy that longing both horizontally, through the finite things of the world, and vertically in the various religions throughout the world.