Materialism posits that only physical matter exists and that everything we experience, including consciousness, can be explained in terms of material interactions. There is no need to invoke spiritual, non-physical entities or forces to understand the universe or human experience. This view thus inherently denies the existence of a spiritual realm, which is central to Christian belief.
Historically, materialism has roots in ancient Greek philosophy but gained prominence in modern times with the scientific revolution, which emphasized empirical evidence over metaphysical speculation. In this context, materialism tends to reject dualism—the idea that mind and body are separate substances—and instead suggests that mental states are nothing more than the operations of the brain.
Reformed Christianity emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the total depravity of humanity, and the necessity of divine grace for salvation. Materialism, by contrast, reduces human existence to mere physical processes, leaving no room for the soul, sin, or salvation through faith in Christ. Here, materialism is seen not just as a misunderstanding of the human condition but as a direct challenge to the Christian doctrines of creation, redemption, and eschatology:
Creation: Materialism denies the doctrine of creation, where God speaks the world into existence, imbuing it with spiritual significance. Instead, it suggests an accidental, unguided process, undermining the belief in a purposeful creator.
Fall: Materialism inherently denies the Christian doctrine of the Fall into sin. Without the concept of a spiritual fall, there's no room for the understanding of sin as an inherited moral corruption needing redemption, thereby negating the fundamental Christian belief in the necessity of Christ's atonement for salvation.
Redemption: The materialist perspective negates the need for redemption, since it does not acknowledge human sinfulness or the fall from grace. In Reformed theology, redemption is central, with Christ's atoning work on the cross seen as the only means to reconcile humanity with God.
Eschatology: Materialism offers no room for the afterlife or the resurrection, key tenets of Christian hope. Reformed Christians believe in the bodily resurrection and the new heavens and new earth, where material and spiritual are integrated in God's eternal plan.
From this viewpoint, materialism not only impoverishes human life by confining it to the physical but also leads to moral and existential nihilism, contrary to the rich, meaningful existence offered through a relationship with God. To Reformed Christians, materialism is thus not merely another philosophy but a worldview that needs to be critically engaged with and ultimately transcended through faith.
“Materialism is the view that everything is ultimately material in nature. At the most fundamental level, everything that exists consists of nothing but matter and energy. Everything is governed by the basic laws of physics and, in principle, can be completely explained in terms of those physical laws. Every object is a purely physical object. Every event that occurs has a purely physical cause (if it has any cause at all. In short, the universe is just a collection of clumps of matter following the laws of physics.
Materialists reject the idea that there are immaterial or spiritual entities, such as souls, angels or God. For that reason, they deny that there is life after death. (“After you die, you rot,” as more than one Materialist has said.) Materialism is the most widespread Atheist worldview in our day, mainly because of the extent to which modern science has come to dominate our view of the universe and ourselves. Science has been able to explain so much about the world that some people expect it will eventually explain everything. But science ultimately explains things in terms of matter and physical laws, so if science can explain everything, it follows that everything must be material in nature governed by the laws of physics.
Many people find Materialism attractive because it places great emphasis on such scientific explanations. Its view of the basic constituents of the universe is relatively clear and uncluttered: only matter and energy exist. Nevetheless, its advocates often don’t recognize that it faces a number of formidable difficulties and challenges that make it hard to defend rationally.
For example, Materialism has great difficulty accounting for our mental lives and our conscious experience of the world. If you’re a consistent Materialist, you ought to conclude either that you are literally mindless (which isn’t a very appealing conclusion) or that minds and consciousness can be explained in entirely material terms (which no Materialist has been able to do). Minds, ideas, thoughts and sensations are so very different from physical things that it’s hard to see how they could be explained in purely physical terms. Physical things have physical features, such as size, shape, speed, and mass- but minds and ideas don’t have those features. (What size is your mind? How much does it weight?)
In contrast, ideas in our minds can be meaningful and true. But it makes no sense to ask what clumps of matter “mean” or whether they are “true” -unless those clumps of matter have been arranged in a meaningful way by a mind (for example, pebbles on a beach arranged to spell out “I love you”).
There is a further difficulty for Materialism. Recall your earlier answer to the Goodness Question: you agreed that some things really are objectively good or bad. However, many philosophers have raised this question: If Materialism is true, what basis is there for claiming that anything in the universe is objectively good or bad, right or wrong? In a godless, mindless, purposeless material universe, on what basis could one clump of matter be ultimately considered any better or worse than any other clump of matter?
Clumps of matter as such aren’t good or bad, right or wrong. They are just what they are and do what they do, following the laws of physics. So if human beings are ultimately just clumps of matter alongside all other clumps of matter, what basis is there for making meaningful moral judgments about how human beings behave? In a Materialist worldview, the only real laws are the laws of physics. But the laws of physics only tell us how clumps of matter do behave. They tell us nothing at all about how clumps of matter ought to behave, in any meaningful moral sense.”
(Anderson, What’s in a Worldview? 69-70)