What does the statement ‘the fool says in his heart there is no God’ mean?

G’day everyone, Dave Deane here, and our question for the week is: What does the statement ‘the fool says in his heart there is no God’ mean?

This statement is found in two passages in the Bible: Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1.

At first glance, this seems to be saying that atheists are stupid or unintelligent or cognitively sub-par in some sense. And, understandably, this seems problematic for at least two reasons: first, because it’s clearly rude to use an adjective like fool to describe someone, and second because it’s arguably not true. After all, there are many intellectually brilliant people in our world who don’t believe in God.

So, we could leave this question right here and suppose that this is just another case of antiquated nonsense from an old dusty book… OR we could press in a little further and see if this is, indeed, what these passages are saying.

And… yes. You guessed it – we’re gonna dive in!

From the very first sentence of Scripture, the Bible simply declares God is – “In the beginning God…” (Gen. 1:1). In other words, His existence is simply assumed from the first page through to the last page. There are times in Scripture where humanity ignores or turns away from God, and for that they are rebuked. But atheism, the believe that there is ‘no God’, isn’t really mentioned… that is, of course, with the seeming exception of this statement – “the fool says in his heart ‘there is no God’” – occurring Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1.

Now, when we put chapters 14 and 53 side by side, we see they are slightly different versions of the same psalm. Why the duplication? Well, in our English Bible’s there are 150 in total, but these chapters can be divided into 5 distinct books:

• Book 1, chapters 1–41,
• Book 2, chapters 42–72,
• Book 3, chapters 73–89,
• Book 4, chapters 90–106, and
• Book 5, chapters 107–150.

So, the seeming duplication makes sense, when we see that the statement originally appeared in two separate books with, perhaps, separate recipients.

And, for various reasons, scholars seem to think that the psalm of chapter 14 is closer to the original form than what we have in Psalm 53. And that seems significance, because chapter 14 occurs in book 1, and there are other similar statements in book 1 that seem to expound upon what chapter 14 verse 1 means, when it reads ‘’the fool says in his heart there is no God’?

For example, in Psalm 10 we read:

• v. 4 “In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’”
• v. 11 “He says in his heart, ‘God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it.’”

You see, Psalm 10 helps us understand the meaning of the statement in Psalm 14:1 and 53:1, by connecting the bold assertion ‘there is no God’ to the ‘wicked’ and the wicked, Psalm 10 tells us, are those who ‘boast of the desires of their soul’, are ‘greedy’ (v. 3), proud (v. 4, 6), curse, deceive and oppress the helpless supposing God will not notices (vv. 7-10) and, ultimately, are those who ‘renounce God’ (v. 3, 13).

Altogether, then, Psalm 10 gives something of an interpretation for us: those who say ‘there is no God’ are people who live and behave as though God takes no notice of their wicked ways. And the respective contexts of Psalm 14 and 53 seem to support this interpretation, not to mention the Apostle Paul himself who refers to Psalms 14 and 53 in Romans 3, where he builds his case that no human being is righteous before God.

This interpretation finds further support throughout the Bible, such as Psalm 73, Jeremiah 5, Zephaniah 1 and so on, where the wicked are characterised as those who live as though God is far off, uninterested and indifferent to human affairs.

And it also finds support in the form of the words themselves.

The Hebrew word translated as ‘fool’ in Psalm 14:1 and 53:1 is nābhāl, which actually derives from the name of a man mentioned in 1 Samuel 25:25, to refer to moral character. So, again, the Psalmist’s point isn’t that people aren’t smart enough to know, rather it’s because they do know and reject what they are smart enough to know that they are fools. The intellect is involved in that rejection, of course, but it is fundamentally an issue of human morality. There is a head problem, yes, but more fundamentally, a heart problem, which is why the statement says “the fool says in their heart…”

Again, these ideas are found in the writings of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” (Rom. 1:21-23)

So, to sum this all up then: What does the statement ‘the fool says in his heart there is no God’ mean?

This statement is essentially an expression of practical atheism. The fool is a person who, knowing of God or the gods, comes to the point in their heart where they say, ‘there is no god for me.’ In other words, this isn’t strictly about intellectual capacity but human morality – living life as though the moral authority of God has no place or position in your personal affairs. And that, friends, is something that can be said of BOTH Christians an atheists today. The fools are not limited to those who openly state, “There is no God”; they include those who profess belief in God but live as though His Being and His word is of no consequence… They are those who, like Adam and Eve, knew the authoritative truth of what God had said concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, yet followed the counsel of their own hearts in eating what God forbade.

In the summary words of Solomon: “People may be right in their own eyes, but the LORD examines their heart.”