Why Jesus Apologetics

(Part 2 — The Divine Mind and the Meaning of Rational Order)

The Christian Vision: Mathematics as the Language of the Logos

When the Gospel of John opens with the words, “In the beginning was the Word (Logos)”, it makes a profound metaphysical claim. Logos in Greek means not only “word” but also reason, logic, order. The universe, John declares, originates not in chaos or blind force but in divine rationality.

For early Christian thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, and later Kepler, Newton, and Pascal, the rationality of mathematics was therefore not a coincidence—it was a reflection of God’s own mind. Augustine wrote that

“the numbers by which we count are not themselves bodily things, but are immutable and eternal; and if anyone can see them, he sees through the light of the unchangeable Truth.”¹

To Augustine, this meant that mathematical truths exist not “out there” in some impersonal Platonic heaven, but within the eternal intellect of God. We perceive them because our minds are made in His image.

“If there were no rational mind, there would be no numbers at all; yet since the mind itself is changeable, the numbers by which it reasons must exist in an unchangeable Mind.”

St. Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio (II.8).²

This view, that mathematics is the language of God’s creation—dominated Western science for centuries. When Kepler described his astronomical discoveries, he called them “the thoughts of God after Him.”  Isaac Newton similarly saw mathematical law as evidence of a divine Lawgiver:

“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”³

Theism thus provides not merely emotional comfort but a deep explanatory framework: mathematics is intelligible because the universe was designed by an Intellect.

Atheist and Naturalist Objections

Atheist philosophers often counter that positing God to explain mathematical order simply shifts the problem back one step: If God made the laws of logic, are they arbitrary? Could He have made 1 + 1 = 3?

But classical theism does not say God created logic or mathematics the way He created matter. Rather, they flow from His nature. God is not subject to reason, nor above it—He is the eternal Reason. To use an analogy: as light shines because it is luminous, so God’s thoughts are logical because His nature is rational.

A second objection holds that mathematics can be explained through human convention and evolutionary necessity. According to this view, we invented counting as a survival tool. But this fails to account for the objectivity and universality of mathematics. Two stones and two more stones make four, regardless of human existence. The Pythagorean theorem was true before any human drew a triangle. As philosopher Roger Penrose (himself not a theist) observed, mathematics seems to possess

“an independent existence.”⁴

A third response, atheistic Platonism, accepts the objectivity of mathematical truths but denies they come from a mind. However, this leads to metaphysical dualism: two eternal realities—the physical and the abstract—existing independently. Yet, as Plantinga points out, such abstractions “exist” but explain nothing. They cannot think, act, or cause.⁵

By contrast, if these truths are ideas in an eternal consciousness, their existence and explanatory power both make sense. God does not merely “know” arithmetic; He is the ground of all rational truth.

The Rational Structure of the Universe as Theological Evidence

The physicist Paul Davies, though not an orthodox theist, confesses that naturalism struggles to explain why the laws of the universe exist at all:

“There is no logical necessity for laws of nature to exist, let alone laws that people can discover and understand. The universe seems to be ordered in a very subtle way that calls for an explanation.”⁶

When we add to this the human capacity to comprehend those laws through mathematics, the picture becomes even more remarkable. The theistic worldview naturally connects these facts:

– The universe is structured by rational law because it was designed by a rational Lawgiver.

– The human mind can grasp that structure because it was made in the image of that same rational Mind.

Atheistic naturalism, on the other hand, must treat this harmony as an accident—a lucky coincidence between mindless matter and abstract reason. As philosopher Alvin Plantinga quips, that’s like believing

“a monkey randomly typing on a keyboard could produce Shakespeare’s sonnets and then understand them.”⁷

The Meaning of Necessity: Could 1 + 1 Ever Equal 3?

Now we return to our starting question: could “1 + 1 = 2” ever have been false?

If it could not, then it is a necessary truth—true in all possible worlds. But necessity belongs to the domain of the eternal, not the contingent. Therefore, any worldview that recognizes necessary truths implicitly acknowledges an eternal rational ground of being.

Even atheists who affirm logic and mathematics rely on this ground, though they may deny its personal nature. Yet the Christian claim is that what we call logic or reason is not an impersonal principle but a living Reality—the Logos—in whom all truths cohere.

As the Apostle Paul wrote, “By Him all things were created… and in Him all things hold together” (Col. 1:16–17).  The same divine Word that orders galaxies also makes 1 + 1 = 2.

The Deeper Implication: Reason Is Not an Accident

If the universe were truly random, the existence of unchanging mathematical law would be a miracle. If human consciousness were purely the result of blind evolution, the fact that it mirrors that law with exact precision would be inexplicable.

Theism alone provides a unifying account:

– Ontologically, mathematical order arises from God’s rational nature.

– Epistemologically, human reason mirrors that nature as God’s image-bearer.

– Empirically, science succeeds because the same Logos governs both mind and matter.

Thus, the truth of “1 + 1 = 2” becomes more than arithmetic—it becomes a witness.  Every addition problem silently testifies that the world is intelligible because it was conceived in thought; that logic governs because the Source of all things is logical; that reason exists because Reality itself is Reason.

As C.S. Lewis put it,

“Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”⁸

From Counting to Contemplation

When we teach a child that one apple plus another makes two, we are doing more than arithmetic. We are introducing them—without realizing it—to a reflection of the divine rationality that holds the cosmos together.

Mathematical truth is universal, timeless, and immaterial.  Those are precisely the attributes theology ascribes to God’s intellect.  So when we affirm that 1 + 1 = 2 could never have been otherwise, we are, in effect, confessing that reality itself is grounded in immutable Reason.

The same Reason that orders numbers also orders nature, morality, and meaning.  To recognize that is not to diminish science but to complete it—by acknowledging that the intelligibility of the universe points beyond itself to an Intelligent Creator.

The Arithmetic of the Logos

From the simple certainty of 1 + 1 = 2 we have journeyed through the deepest layers of logic, metaphysics, and theology. What began as a child’s arithmetic exercise turns out to open a window into the structure of reality itself.

Mathematics is not merely a human invention; it is an expression of necessary truth. The number “2” exists whether or not anyone counts, and the law of addition holds in every possible world. This tells us that mathematical truths are immaterial, universal, and eternal. They are not made of atoms or bound by time. Yet they govern every atom and every moment.

Naturalism can describe this harmony but not explain it. It can record that mathematics “works,” but it cannot tell us why an immaterial order should so perfectly mirror the physical cosmos, or why the human mind — itself a product of dust and chemistry, on that view — can so effortlessly read the language of the universe.

Platonism, on the other hand, tries to preserve objectivity by positing an impersonal realm of eternal forms. But these forms are powerless — they cannot think, will, or create. Theism alone unites truth with intellect: mathematical laws are not orphaned abstractions but the living ideas of an eternal Mind.

The Christian revelation identifies this eternal rationality as the Logos — the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:3). The Logos is not merely the first cause of the universe but its reason, its structure, its mathematical harmony. In Him, as the Apostle Paul said, “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).

To say 1 + 1 = 2 is therefore to utter something profoundly theological. We affirm, in miniature, that the universe operates according to unchanging reason; that reality itself is logical because its Creator is Logic Himself. Every equation, every symmetry, every law of physics is an echo of the divine mind.

This means that when a child learns arithmetic, she is not only discovering how to count — she is touching eternity. The symbols she writes on paper participate in truths older than stars, truths that were already true when no world yet existed, because they are thoughts in the eternal intellect of God.

In the end, mathematics becomes a form of worship — a silent doxology to the One whose rational nature upholds all things. The simplicity of 1 + 1 = 2 whispers a cosmic secret: that reason is not an accident, truth is not a convention, and the order of the universe is not self-explanatory. Behind every number and every law stands a Mind — infinite, intelligent, and good — who spoke, and the equations began to sing.

Endnotes

1. Augustine, Confessions, Book XI.

2. Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, II.8.

3. Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica, General Scholium (London: 1687).

4. Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality (New York: Knopf, 2004), 11.

5. Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980), 3–4.

6. Paul Davies, The Mind of God (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 169.

7. Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 312.

8. C.S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 108.