For from him and through him and to him are all things. (Romans 11:36)
Unbelievers often dismiss what they hear about God, or anything that their worldview cannot explain, by saying there is always a rational explanation. They say it with confidence, as if they have removed the need for God, or as if their worldview is complete. In their usage, the phrase points to science, and their science points away from divine involvement. To them, rational means empirical and naturalistic. It is not a neutral statement, nor is it rational. It is a declaration that God is excluded from the start.
The problem is not that they affirm rationality, but that they lie about it, and what they affirm is in fact irrationality. They assume that reason begins with human observation and develops through fallacies such as induction. They treat science as if it defines the boundaries of what is reasonable. This is arbitrary and absurd. Rationality is not owned by science. It belongs to God. He is truth and the one who makes all things consistent with himself. The word of God is not one among many sources of information. It is the foundation of every fact and thought.
When the unbeliever says there is always a rational explanation, he means there is always a scientific explanation. He thinks in terms of causes that can be measured and repeated without reference to God. But this misses the most obvious point, that science assumes their essential principles without evidence that would satisfy their own requirements or definition of rationality. From the Christian viewpoint, even the things he calls scientific exist because God made them so. God is the cause behind every cause, the explanation behind every explanation. Nothing exists apart from his will. Nothing continues apart from his power.
This is why the Bible speaks of God as the one from whom and through whom and to whom are all things. Science cannot even reliably observe patterns in creation, still less can it explain why those patterns exist or why they continue. Every physical process operates because God causes it to operate. Every so-called natural law is an expression of his constant activity. When a miracle occurs, it is not an interruption of reason but an expression of the same divine power that sustains ordinary events. The difference is not between reasonable and unreasonable, but between the ways in which God acts.
Miracles are rational because they proceed from the rational Creator. They are not violations of order, but works of the one who established all order. The parting of the Red Sea was rational. The resurrection of Jesus was rational. The healing of the blind and the raising of the dead were rational. They were rational because they happened in a world made and ruled by God, and they were done according to his purpose.
Those who reject this are not standing on higher intellectual ground. They are suppressing the truth. They use the patterns and theories they imagined about creation as evidence against the Creator, just as Paul described in Romans 1. They see what God has made and how he rules it, but they refuse to acknowledge him. They say they are explaining the world, but they are explaining it away. Their “rational explanation” is irrational because it in fact violates all logic and ignores the source of all reason.
The Christian, however, can take their statement and speak it truly. Indeed, there is always a rational explanation. God is always the rational explanation. When a sick person recovers, the reason is God. When the harvest grows, the reason is God. When a person comes to faith, the reason is God. When the sun rises, the reason is God. Whether he works through what we call ordinary means or extraordinary acts, the cause is the same.
This is true reason, which is faith. Faith sees the world as it is. In fact, it is the only way to see truly, so that it sees the hand of God in everything. It perceives that every process depends on God. It perceives that miracles and daily life are both expressions of God’s active involvement. It sees both as the work of the same Lord who governs all reality.
The Christian thinks, prays, and lives in the constant knowledge that God is the explanation for all things. In this understanding, the spiritual and the rational are one. God is never an optional hypothesis or a heuristic device, but the present and active cause of all. This is the only rational position, that everything exists and happens because God has willed it.
When the unbeliever says there is always a rational explanation, he has no idea what he says. God is the only rational explanation. It is irrational, and entirely stupid, to suppose that matter and energy can sustain themselves. Man’s theories and methods can never come close to removing the Creator as the immediate rational explanation for all things. His will determines the events of history and the motion of matter. His power sustains galaxies and grass. His word governs angels and ants.
From him and through him and to him are all things. This is the absolute description of reality. Every star and every cell begins in him, depends on him, and returns to him. Science — that is, the fallen thinking of a group of men — cannot add to this or subtract from it. To reject God is to reject reason itself, because God is Reason.
There is always a rational explanation. God is always the rational explanation. This is true for the believer who prays and sees his prayer answered. It is true for the scientist who measures and calculates in a world that does not hold itself together. It is true for the unbeliever who denies God with the breath that God gives. All things are from him. All things are through him. All things are to him. This is the only rational way to understand the world, and it is the truth that will stand when every godless explanation has failed.