The Innate Knowledge of More

The question is usually posed in moments of sadness and desperation. It is spoken ruefully, tragically, and yet points to an intrinsic hope—sometimes only the slightest sliver of hope.

“Is this all there is?”

That is the question that dawns on all of us at one time or another. In moments of pain: “Is this all there is?”

In moments of hopelessness: “Is this all there is?”

In moments of mourning: “Is this all there is?”

And when we face death: “Is this all there is?”

Everyone hopes the answer is no. I think most of us know instinctually, somehow, the answer is no, even if we can’t explain why or how.

There is something inside us that deeply believes—so deeply it is difficult to see—that deeply believes there is something more.

I wonder if it is this same internal conviction that compels explorers and scientists to go on searching for things they don’t even know exist. It is why C.S. Lewis wrote in one of his first published poems:

Sing about the Hidden Country fresh and full of quiet green.

Sailing over seas uncharted to a port that none has seen.

It is why an afterlife seems not only desirable, but almost necessary.

In Christianity, we might call such innate heart-knowledge an inborn consciousness of God. From Cicero to Tertullian to Calvin, each believed as much—that every person has an abiding awareness of God. This does not necessarily mean God is an intuitive truth to all people, only that there is something in us that testifies to his reality.

Charles Hodge, that great man of God, describes it this way:

In the Christian sense of the word, “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” This sublime idea of God no human mind ever attained either intuitively or discursively, except under the light of a supernatural revelation. On the other hand, some philosophers dignify motion, force, or the vague idea of the infinite, with the name of God. In neither of these senses of the word is the knowledge of God said to be innate, or a matter of intuition. It is in the general sense of a Being on whom we are dependent, and to whom we are responsible, that the idea is asserted to exist universally, and of necessity, in every human mind. It is true that if this idea is analyzed, it will be found to embrace the conviction that God is a person, and that He possesses moral attributes, and acts as a moral governor. Nothing is asserted as to how far this analysis is made by uneducated and uncivilized men. All that is maintained is that this sense of dependence and accountability to a being higher than themselves exists in the minds of all men.

Our sense of God, perhaps similar to our sense of the general “more-ness” of life, comes in large part from the natural, moral law. Why do we appeal to a standard of fairness and justice, to notions of mercy and forgiveness? It is not only or primarily because we are taught versions of these ideals in school and at home. We are taught them because they are eminently sensible (not in the way of “making sense,” but in the way of being “able to be sensed”).

Our singing for a Hidden Country, our appeal to a moral baseline, and our deep mindfulness of divinity are all repressible, but they are unkillable. Because they are born inside us and tied up with our very life.