Comparing Herman Witsius (Theologian) and Brian Greene's (Cosmologist) views on Man's purpose.

Brian Greene defines significance in this way:

Some people recoil at the notion of parallel worlds; as they see it, if we are part of a multiverse, our place and importance in the cosmos are marginalized. My take is different. I don't find merit in measuring significance by our relative abundance. Rather, what's gratifying about being human, what's exciting about being part of the scientific enterprise, is our ability to use analytical thought to bridge vast distances, journeying to outer and inner space and, if some of the ideas we'll encounter in this book prove correct, perhaps even beyond our universe. For me, it is the depth of our understanding, acquired from our lonely vantage point in the inky black stillness of a cold and forbidding cosmos, that reverberates across the expanse of reality and marks our arrival.

(p. 10, The Hidden Reality)

Witsius defines why God created Man:

The soul of man was formed for the contemplation of God, as the supreme truth, truth itself, and to seek after him, with all the affection of his soul as the supreme good, goodness itself; and it may be said truly to live, when it delights in the contemplation of that truth, and in the fruition of that goodness.

(The Economy of the Covenants Book I, Chapter V, Paragraph XIV).

So we might ask ourselves, what source of significance seems more compelling: getting to know an universe or even multiverse that seems increasingly cold and forbidding or to pursue knowing an infinite and personal God who creates us and invites us with open arms to know Him?

Calvin on Work and Prayer

In the Institutes Calvin elaborates on the Lord's Prayer. He explains why we have to pray for our daily bread even though we have good jobs and can provide for ourselves.

When we ask God to give us, the meaning is, that the thing asked is simply and freely the gift of God, whatever be the quarter from which it comes to us, even when it seems to have been specially prepared by our own art and industry, and procured by our hands, since it is to his blessing alone that all our labors owe their success.

(Institutes, Book III, Chapter XX, Paragraph 44).

God as our father.

I thought about my dad the other day. He was going through some family issues. I then thought about my sons and I reflected that a man cannot know the depth of a father's love for his children until he has children. Of course, I then remembered how incredible it was that God voluntarily sent His own only begotten Son to die for us. I could not comprehend the pain both the Father and the Son suffered for us. It was even more incredible that God adopted us as His children and that He loved us as His children.

I was reading Calvin's Institutes this morning. Calvin was teaching on the Lord's Prayer. He wrote the following about how God is our Father and prayer:

The first thing suggested at the very outset is, as we have already said (sec. 17ñ19), that all our prayers to God ought only to be presented in the name of Christ, as there is no other name which can recommend them. In calling God our Father, we certainly plead the name of Christ. For with what confidence could any man call God his Father? Who would have the presumption to arrogate to himself the honour of a son of God were we not gratuitously adopted as his sons in Christ? He being the true Son, has been given to us as a brother, so that that which he possesses as his own by nature becomes ours by adoption, if we embrace this great mercy with firm faith. As John says, "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name," (John 1:12). Hence he both calls himself our Father, and is pleased to be so called by us, by this delightful name relieving us of all distrust, since no where can a stronger affection be found than in a father. Hence, too, he could not have given us a stronger testimony of his boundless love than in calling us his sons. But his love towards us is so much the greater and more excellent than that of earthly parents, the farther he surpasses all men in goodness and mercy (Isaiah 63:16). Earthly parents, laying aside all paternal affection, might abandon their offspring; he will never abandon us (Ps. 27:10), seeing he cannot deny himself. For we have his promise, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" (Mt. 7:11). In like manner in the prophet, "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will not I forget thee," (Isaiah 49:15). But if we are his sons, then as a son cannot betake himself to the protection of a stranger and a foreigner without at the same time complaining of his father's cruelty or poverty, so we cannot ask assistance from any other quarter than from him, unless we would upbraid him with poverty, or want of means, or cruelty and excessive austerity.

(Institutes Book 3, Chapter 20, Paragraph 36).